In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. 

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

Sometimes I think about the fact that I say I'm this big lit buff and yet there are some really famous authors that I've never read. Also, sometimes Powell's has a sale and there are books that I think I should read on the sale rack. Sometimes these two things coincide and thus, I recently read Capote's In Cold Blood.

I don't know what I really expected from the book. It's true crime, a genre that I've never really been super into (except for that brief semester in college when I was totally going to join the police ahaha I would be the worst police) but it was such an important piece of American lit that I felt I had to read it. 

The book itself is really good. Although it is technically nonfiction, it reads like a novel, completely seamless and without some of the awkwardness you can get from nonfiction accounts. Capote brings the reader to understand not only the events but the feelings surrounding them, delving into the psyche of whole towns and all the surrounding bystanders. 

You can tell while you're reading, although Capote certainly doesn't lean in any direction particularly, that he has completely done his research and at least felt some compassion for the killers, Perry in particular. After reading the book and looking up some things on my own, apparently he interviewed them several times and was even accused of having a not-strictly-platonic relationship with Perry. You didn't get the sense of that in the book but you could tell that he sympathized with his backstory. When you read it, however, it seems hard not to.

Not to say that you sympathize with the killers because, well, they did kill an entire family. It's just the way Capote tells the entire story that lets the reader see all aspects and make their own judgments. You're never in doubt that Perry and Hicks committed the crime but there is a lot of exploration into how psychology stood at the time, especially in criminal cases which was very interesting.

There has been a bit of backlash that not everything is 100% accurate and that doesn't surprise me. The book reads so smoothly that it does seem likely that a bit may have been fabricated (especially the last scene). However, I think overall the book captures the true nature of the case and represents feelings correctly, if not the exact facts.

You can see why it was such a big hit and is surprisingly easy read for what it is. If you're up for something challenging theme-wise, it's a great read.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

A long long time ago on this blog, I reviewed another book by Shirley Jackson called The Haunting of Hill House and absolutely loved it. Since then, I've been meaning to read another Shirley Jackson book but never really got around to it. When I saw this book, with its gorgeous new cover illustrations by Thomas Ott, on display at Powell's, I realized I had to read it. Plus, it's short and as I'm moving cross-country this week, I could probably manage it for the blog.

This is one of those books that I feel like I can't say too much about because all the details unravel as you read the novel. It's told in first person by Mary Catherine Blackwood, a younger daughter of a once respected family that is now blacklisted in the village for unknown reasons at the beginning of the novel. Her headspace is ridiculously well thought out and written, you can hear her voice and feel her thoughts as easily as if she were speaking to you. 

The other characters in the novel are just as intricately drawn. Merricat's older sister Constance is a delight, watching her through Merricat's eyes and trying to distinguish the real woman from the figure her sister sees. It takes you ages to figure out what's going on with Uncle Julian. And their cousin is deliciously dastardly, at least in Merricat's mind.

Castle is the kind of book that you have no idea where it's leading when you're reading and that just adds to its mystery. The climax comes suddenly and the denouement is unexpected. It's the kind of book you just keep thinking about in the days following, still puzzling out little details which you never quite caught. 

It's suspenseful and darkly gothic in the best way. It's also very short at under 150 pages so I definitely recommend it for a bit of a darkly light read.

The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood

Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat. First meat. Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds--everything! Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten. Marian ought to feel consumed with passion, but she really just feels...consumed. A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, The Edible Woman is an unforgettable masterpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.

I've decided to read more Atwood novels as I thought The Handmaid's Tale was a revelation. I completely unintentionally decided to read The Edible Woman next, not knowing that it was the first novel she had written. Surprise!

I really enjoyed The Edible Woman, even if it was a bit vague at times. I thought the heroine, Marian, was quiet relatable, even if there were a few moments where I didn't quite follow her thinking and she did inhabit a completely different era than me. She seemed like a normal woman in her early twenties and I could understand a lot of her decisions. That makes for a good main character for me.

I especially enjoyed the side plot of her roommate trying to seduce a man so that she could have a child. It's easy to forget how hard single women had it back in the sixties and the idea of having to seduce a man just so you could have a child, even if you wanted to raise it by yourself, seems ridiculous to modern audiences. The best part of the whole charade, however, is when the man she tricked finds out about it and starts yelling at her for using him for his body. This gender reversal makes a real impact and I thought was really well done.

Perhaps the most impressive part of The Edible Woman is that it was written in 1965 when Atwood was 24. She didn't get it published until 1969 and it ended up getting swept up in the feminism movement of the early seventies. To know that it was written so much before that and predated a lot of feminist ideas is really interesting, though. I like that Atwood wrote this without a ton of buzzwords in her head, that this came out of real experience of being a single girl in the mid-sixties. It makes it feel more real.

This book was very interesting, entertaining and just well written. If you're a fan of Margaret Atwood, I would recommend it.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

I'm sure you've heard of this book. If you haven't, you've probably heard of the 1975 movie with Jack Nicholson. It won all the Academy Awards that year and very rightfully so. It's a very good movie, funny and moving and an interesting look at the problems within the psychiatric systems of the early 1960s. What you may not realize is that this amazing movie is based on an equally good book.

In 1960s Oregon (around The Dalles), a man named Randle Patrick McMurphy finds himself sentenced to a mental hospital. He's not that upset about it, though, because he came from jail on assault and battery charges and figures that it will be much nicer spending his sentence in the relative comforts of the psychiatric hospital rather than prison. He comes on to the ward and meets a lot of interesting characters: Harding, a smart man who's probably just repressed, Billy Bibbit, who has a childish charm, a stutter and mother issues, Cheswick, a loud mouth with a good heart but no followthrough, Chief Bromden, a tall half-Native American man who pretends to be deaf and mute, along with many others. None of them seem that bad to McMurphy and he begins pal-ing around with them.

What McMurphy didn't expect, however, was Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched rules the ward with an iron fist, using subtle shaming techniques and enforcement of rules to take almost all personal liberty and just plain old will to live out of the patients. She is not happy to find the rebellious and impulsive McMurphy on her ward and the two spend most of the novel butting heads, Ratched trying to keep control and McMurphy trying to buck the rules for himself and the other patients.

The story is mostly the same in the movie as it is in the book. All the same events happen, if in a bit of a different order. However, one very interesting difference between the film and the novel is that the novel's narrator is Chief Bromden. Instead of having an omniscient or limited third person narrator, everything is told through Chief Bromden's point of view. Although he's an important character in the film, this puts him in a much more prominent place for the novel. The reader learns more about him and his past and there's a lot more depth as a result. The Chief, having been thought of as deaf and dumb for so many years, has the advantage that everyone speaks normally around him, unafraid that he'll be able to repeat anything he hears. As such, he's a great narrator for the piece.

The only real problem I had with the book was the style it was written in. Chief Bromden's a good man but he's also been in a mental ward for almost twenty years when the novel begins. He also hasn't spoken for years. As such, he's speech patterns and ways of narrating are twisting, turning thoughts jumbled with half crazy ideas and observations that have to be taken with a dozen grains of salt. Although it's an interesting and very affecting style, it's also hard to decipher at times. There would be moments when I would read a whole page and then realize I had no idea what was going on. It takes a good deal of focus to keep up with the novel at times. It's worth it but it is hard work.

The story itself is completely immersing. Each of the characters are both easy to like and then completely foreign as their own mental powers overcome them. I'm also always a sucker for the kind of stories where the villain of the piece is a character that has power of authority over the main characters. I am absolutely terrified of movies where the 'bad guys' are the police or the government. Knowing that Nurse Ratched not only has the power to get them committed indefinitely but also can send them out for electroshock therapy and operations is terrifying. Having that kind of power over another human being is scary enough but in the hands of Nurse Ratched? *shiver*

Perhaps the most important thing about the whole story, and what makes it so powerful, is that it's based on Ken Kesey's own experiences working as an orderly in a mental hospital in California in the 1960s. Although the characters are not based on real people, obviously, all the experiences and ideas of the novel are grounded in truth and observation. This is what Kesey experienced and he felt so strongly about it, a classic was born. 

The movie is amazing and I highly recommend you take some time to watch it if you haven't seen it. The novel is very good as well. I think I prefer the film but the book is definitely worth a read, especially if you like the Chief. It's a powerful story that will stick with you long after it's over.

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

My first thought when I hear The Bell Jar is of teenagers wanting to seem deep and claiming it as their favorite book. For years, I only knew Sylvia Plath's most famous work as that depressing novel that was written by the woman that killed herself. Looking back, that is a horrible thing to think and I'm a little embarrassed by the thought but honestly, that's what was in my head.

I bought my own copy during the strange grave-robbing-esque experience that was going to Borders during its last two weeks. I got my hands on a lot of nice copies of classic books and The Bell Jar was no exception. I'd always kind of wanted to read it and here was my chance.

I didn't actually sit down to read it until this Christmas Break, when I decided to read a bunch of "classic novels" I had on my bookshelf but had never actually taken the time to get through. After tackling 1984 (which I'm sure I'll write on at some point), I picked up The Bell Jar.

The Bell Jar was nothing that I expected. Instead of sad poetry about some girl cutting herself (I really had no idea what I was getting into), here was a well-written and surprisingly funny tale of a girl in the big city for the first time, trying to find her way through an internship and some pretty bizarre friends. Despite the obvious sixties setting, she was very relatable and the kind of girl that I thought I might have been friends with.

The novel tells the tale of Esther Greenwood, a young girl who earns a summer internship in New York. We meet her in the middle of it, going to parties, hanging out with girls she both likes and doesn't like and trying to come to terms with her own future. After she makes it back home and discovers some unhappy news, she finds herself spiraling out of control into a depression she can't see a way out of. 

Perhaps one of the reasons this book is so good is that it's semi-autobiographical. Almost all of the events happened to Plath in much the same way, with perhaps only small details changed. Although it's sad to think of all of this happening in truth, it also creates a relationship between reader and author/character that is stronger than most. 

Plath's writing style is amazing, as well. I'm not one to go on and on about that kind of thing but I just couldn't get over it while reading.  There is one section where most of the young girls get food poisoning from a lunch outing. Not to sound impolite but the way Plath describes the feeling of having food poisoning made me read the section out loud to my mother in the car, the whole time exclaiming "Isn't this just brilliant?" As someone who has had severe food poisoning, I was so impressed by how exactly she got everything down to the last detail. It was wonderful (and a bit gross). 

The Bell Jar is a great book and, while not the most light-hearted thing in existence, not a manual for emo children, either. There is great wit, great style and just an overall sense of what being a young girl with a passion for writing was like in the fifties and sixties. I enjoyed it and recommend it wholeheartedly.