Meet Lola, a Filipina nanny working in California to send her daughter back in the Philippines to medical school, while her husband waits patiently at home, an executive for Hallmark. Ruth, an immigrant as well, is Lola’s “teacher of America” and runs a placement service for nannies.

“Three women one baby. Usually it is the other way around,” Lola remarks to her nanny friend, though she knows well the challenge from raising her own children in a close knit community of the Philippines.

Lola works for Claire, a middle-aged mother of William and wife to Paul who is an aspiring comedic writer with one toe in Hollywood’s door. While Paul works many long hours, Lola is hired to help Claire, a composer who reflects deeply on her role as a mother and artist: “Music was all or nothing. Art gave no B pluses, no credit for trying. If I couldn’t make that, I’d be better off tending my son or working in a hospital. I still didn’t know if I could make that. And I was almost forty.”

While the relationships Mona Simpson explores are reminiscent of The Help in the complexity of paying someone to basically care and love for a child while parents pursue dreams closer to their own terms, one of the biggest differences is that the female role has been liberated from the stay-at-home fragile female with mothers like Claire pursuing professional careers. Claire is very aware of the choice she has made but still does not feel the freedom to seriously continue her creative work as a composer. At one point she admits to her husband, “I wanted to be a father.”

The chapters alternate between Lola and Claire. These two women and the choices they make stay with the reader long after finishing the book.

Though we may have long forgotten the freedom our first generation immigrant ancestors felt, you will think about the abundance of choice we have in the United States and how it must feel for a new immigrant like Lola. You will think about the choices your mother made, the choices you have made with your own children. I don’t have children but the novel still affected me deeply as women seem driven by an invisible force to fulfill as many roles as possible, making them central to the intricate relationships of the family.

As Lola explained the Filipino language to a child very dear to her: “Lola is grandma. Yaya for nanny. Ate, older sister . . . Tita for auntie . . . Inday, little sister . . . They are names but they are not exactly names. They are positions . . . Then we say the rosary.”

Mona Simpson will be at Lemuria for a signing (5:00) and reading (5:30) on Wednesday, September 15th.

This is a long rambling blog, but this time I promise that the picture has something to do with the blog – it’s supposed to “capture the absurdities of contemporary life”

It’s funny. Even though I am constantly thinking and talking about books I hate reading reviews. I generally scan over them to see what is getting the press. I may skim the ones about the books I have read or plan to read to see if they are favorable, but I rarely actually read a review. You would think that it would help me at work to read them (you know – so I can sell the books) but I really don’t think it does help. For one thing – and I don’t think this is a revelation – but, they generally ruin the plot of the book for the reader. Or at least they effect the way you read a book. You know, this one is about a family, or this one is about terrorism – when in fact the reviewer may have missed the point. And of course sometimes the plot of a book isn’t really the point, but still…

I’ve been watching the reviews of Jonathan Franzen’s new book Freedom though and I think I’ve been interested for a couple of reasons: First, the media buzz around The Corrections in 2001 was such a big deal that everyone seemed to have an opinion about Franzen – you know, he’s the one that snubbed Oprah. I personally thought that it was a good idea to snub Oprah, but the novel itself fell flat. But he made such a bang that you couldn’t help but watch. After all, what else in the literary world does anyone other than us care about. (I liked his essay from Harper’s) The second reason that I have been watching for reviews of Freedom is that I actually really liked the book. I read it on vacation and just ate it up. I liked it, but I’m not really sure why – maybe some of these smart people who get paid to write reviews can help me out, right? Well, the first one I heard was on NPR one day – the reviewer said that he didn’t like the book because of Franzen’s disdain for his characters. I’m not sure if I like that as a reason to give a book a negative review, but I guess I see his point. I’m not sure I agree – the characters are definitely imperfect but I’m not sure that I think Franzen himself dislikes them.

This week the print reviews hit in the New York Times and the cover of Time. The Time piece describes Franzen’s self consciousness  – I happen to suspect that it’s a bit of an act – he’s just the to perfect nerd hero. (nerdy glassed, mussed hair, professor jacket, memoir about birding)

Here’s a quote from the NYT’s review: “it felt, at times, as if he were self-importantly inflating the symbolic meaning of his characters experiences”. Interesting and I guess I agree but don’t really mind. I think one of the most helpful thing I’ve read is that Franzen is trying to write the big American novel. It’s big and sprawling and covers a lot of ground. Again from the NYT’s review – Franzen’s characters capture “the absurdities of contemporary life”. Maybe it’s as simple as that – I like this book because I can relate. I’ve often suspected that a big part of the reason that I like books so much is a simple curiosity about other people.

With John Brandon’s Citrus County being this month’s First Edition Club pick (and his first novel Arkansas being a big-seller too), I thought now would be a good time to introduce (or remind) everyone about McSweeneys–how wonderful it is AND how you can buy all sorts of McSweeneys publications right here at Lemuria.

So, first things first, the introduction.  McSweeneys was started in 1998 as a literary journal edited by Dave Eggers (you know Dave Eggers, the author of What is the What, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Wild Things, Away We Go, You Shall Know Our Velocity and Zeitoun) that only published works that had already been rejected by other magazines.  Since then it has evolved with authors now writing stories that are intended specifically for McSweeneys.  The company has gone from being just one quarterly journal into a small publication house that not only turns out the quarterly, but also has four other imprints and two monthly magazines (the Wholphin and The Believer).

Now that you know a little bit about McSweeneys and its beginnings, take a look at this list of my personal favorite authors who have been published by McSweeneys in one way or another:  Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon, Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Per Petterson,Stephen King, and David Foster Wallace.

And guess what.  We have a little of everything here at Lemuria–books published by McSweeneys imprints, McSweeneys quarterly, issues of Wholphin, and issues of The Believer.  You should come by and take a look.  I’m afraid this little blog post doesn’t do them much justice.  -Kaycie

As I was straightening some bookshelves this week, I came upon a new memoir: Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell. Everyone knows that I am a sucker for memoirs, especially sad ones, so I grabbed it and started reading. It is the story of a friendship between Gail Caldwell and Carolyn Knapp.

If Knapp’s name seems familiar to you, she wrote several bestselling memoirs a few years ago. Her most popular work was, Drinking: A Love Story, which was on the New York Times list for several months. Knapp was, as she put it, a ”high-functioning alcoholic” as well as an award-winning journalist and Ivy League graduate from a prominent New England family. She appeared to be a happy and successful young woman but drinking had slowly taken hold of her life. Sadly, she would die from lung cancer at the age of forty two.

Knapp and Caldwell met when they were middle aged and a unique friendship began. Both were writers who had struggled with alcohol and also shared a great love of books.

Gail Caldwell is chief book critic for the Boston Globe and in 2001 won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.  She opens her memoir with“It’s an old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that.” She also wrote, “Death is a cliche until you’re in it.’’ How true, how true.

This book begins with Knapp’s death but Caldwell chronologically unfolds the back story of their relationship; telling how Knapp was the perfect friend but even funnier and more interesting than one could have imagined. They shared a passion for dogs and spent many hours talking while taking their dogs on long walks.

“What they never tell you about grief,’’ Caldwell writes, “is that missing someone is the simple part.’’ Seemingly small things take on huge proportions. For instance, she can’t force herself to throw out her set of keys to Knapp’s house. “These are keys to locks and doors that no longer exist, and I keep them in my glove compartment, where they have been moved from one car to another in the past couple of years.’’

As one reviewer put it, “Maybe the story of Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp’s friendship is an old story. But it is also a holy story. A familiar yet emotionally complex story that can bring a reader to tears.” For sure. -Norma

As I was driving home one night last week, Mississippi Public Broadcasting was replaying the morning edition of “Fresh Air”, so I got to hear the excellent review of Gary Shteyngart’s new novel Super Sad True Love Story. Readers will remember him from the 2002 publication of Russian Debutante’s Handbook and the 2007 release Absurdistan, both of which Lemuria readers liked, according to our computer files.  I’m predicting that Super Sad True Love Story will be a big hit as well.

Since the review on MPB had already piqued my interest, I wasted no time in opening this novel. At the start, the protagonist, a thirty-nine year old Russian immigrant to America, is playing out his last days of a year long sojourn back in his home land, where he has been unsuccessfully trying to recruit clients for his business, “Post Human Services, which specializes in immortality. Yes, I did say, “Immortality!” So, I have let the cat out of the bag. Yes, this is a dystopian novel, but not like Margaret Atwood’s. Perhaps think of the impression you, reader, had of the near future as you once read George Orwell’s 1984, or maybe Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Back to Super Sad True Love Story………The business which Lenny Abramov tries to market and recruit for only wants those best specimens of human beings who have not only the intellectual, but also the physical attributes,  to endure forever. A one night stand with a 22-year-old  gorgeous Asian girl named Eunice Parks, a selfish, totally contemporary global prototype, throws Lenny into a helpless state of love. The word itself “love” rarely exists  in this almost apocalyptic America. Once back in New York, Lenny texts and emails Eunice, whose luck is running out in Russia, and who feels compelled to return to help her physically abused mother and sister, offering Eunice a place to stay.

This austere novel could be seen as a satire on technology taken to its ultimate extreme, depleting and horrific. All human beings wear “apparrats” which hang from their necks, constantly recording multiple amounts of data of everyone walking by, even their cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Equally shocking is the fact that their sexual desirability, personality attributes, and all sorts of physical  sustainability quotients are also projected for the entire wireless connected world to view. So, actual human contact, or even normal conversation, rarely occurs since basically everything one wants to know about another human being is literally at his or her finger tips. Actual love between one person and another, a dying art, rarely occurs; however, Lenny sees the possibility with Eunice and actively pursues her.

As the novel progresses, New York deteriorates and  National Guard tanks clutter the streets. Lenny, desperate to keep his job, worries about his credit score, which can be seen on every corner of the city on credit towers, along with other passerbys who also have equally troublesome scores. Eunice, who is staying for free at Lenny’s apartment and ultimately using him to her ultimate advantage, worries about her raging father who is abusing her mother and sister. Her powerful assertiveness, in which she “minored” in college, threatens to squash Lenny, who has the “savior complex.” An old fashioned book lover, Lenny hopes futilely to have a relationship in which he actually reads literature and poetry to his beloved. He treasures his first edition Chekhov collection of short stories, which a young  international traveler noted “smelled bad”.

As far as predictability, Super Sad True Love Story, may take the prize; yet, I will keep reading to see how Shteyngart plays it out. As far a contemporary language and futuristic devices, the author excels. The colorful jacket says it all graphically: the multicolored  “buttons”, a symbol of the high tech world of mobile devices, are all bright colors, except for the one circling the word “sad”, which is stark black. The irony is inescapable. The title would have read, “Super True Love Story”—how sad!  -Nan