I was upstate visiting family over the Labor Day weekend. I had envisioned a three-day break (albeit one potentially fraught with family dysfunction) before the onslaught of autumnal business, but it turned out to be one of those weekends in which I was cyber-chained to my office, such were the demands of my very "entitled" clients. Having been quiescent all summer -- indeed, often difficult to tear away from their Hamptons Hideaways, Ibiza Idylls, Barbados Breaks, South-of-France Sojourns (OK, I'll stop now) -- they all re-appeared last Friday, clamoring to be divorced NOW. As in RIGHT AWAY. "I want to get on with my life." Yeah, me too. [Insert hollow laughter here.]
I did manage to get some reading done -- quite a bit, in fact. My family took pity on me and pretty much left me alone when I wasn't shouting down the phone or furiously pecking away at my Blackberry. So, here's the rundown:
Room, by Emma Donoghue. Purchase, beg, borrow, or steal this one and read it immediately. (Go on, I'll wait.) Mesmerizing account of a woman kidnapped and held hostage for several years, told entirely from the point of view of her five-year-old son, fathered by her captor and having spent his entire life in the one-room garden shed/bunker that serves as their prison. (None of the foregoing is a spoiler, by the way, as you learn these facts in the first chapter.) Nominated for the Booker Prize.
Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray. Another Booker Prize contender, this one is set in a Catholic boys' prep school in Dublin. Just a touch long-winded (nearly 700 pages), but well worth the commitment. The protagonist dies at the beginning of the first chapter, and yet somehow that doesn't slow down the narrative. The adolescents, the teachers, the obnoxiously "progressive" headmaster, the priests, the inevitable girls' school next door, the mostly-dreadful parents, the drugs, the sex, the texting, the casual bullying, all combine into a compelling stew of a novel that's difficult to describe. "Creepily hilarious" is about the best I can do.
A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century, by John Brewer. I have just started this non-fiction work that explores the 1779 slaying of Martha Ray, the mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, by a young clergyman. The author approaches the story via accounts of the incident in contemporary news reports as well as later, Victorian-era versions of the events. The story morphs over time, the emphasis/interpretation evolving with changing attitudes and social mores. I can say one thing: 21st-century crime reporters have nothing on their forebears -- this case was treated every bit as sensationally as any current-day crime of passion, driving news of the American Revolution off the front pages of London papers.
And what of M. Proust? Never fear, I have not abandoned my intrepid trek through Swann's Way. I'm not too proud to confess that I'm not sure what to say to you all about it -- it's so beautiful, so all-consuming. I will report further when I have something not entirely banal to say.