Deep Down True / by Juliette Fay

Homemaker Dana Stellgarten has a tendency to be a little too nice. Consequently people, even the ones she loves, take advantage of her open, companionable nature and generosity, something which seems especially evident now at a particularly volatile time in her life. Her husband Kenneth recently left her for another, younger woman and now she and her two kids--Morgan, 12, and Grady, 7--have to get by on the meager monthly alimony checks. When Dana's teenage niece Alder shows up on the front door, wanting to move in after another falling out with her mom, it seems things can't get any worse. They do though. Before long, Dana learns that her daughter (only a sixth grader) is bulimic and Grady, whom she knows has been deeply wounded by the divorce (but how deeply?), has been fighting and causing trouble in school. Alder too, still sleeping on the couch a month after her arrival, has something going on which Dana suspects may not be entirely respectable. And what is she going to do now that her ex-husband's just told her that he's working at half his normal salary? A weaker mother might be reeling from the seemingly endless succession of woes but strangely, with Dana, that's not the case at all.

When Juliette Fay's debut novel Shelter Me, published in 2009, managed to distinguish itself from the other, always endless proliferation of domestic fiction novels, many readers and critics chalked it up as a one-hit wonder. It wasn't. With the same effortless storytelling of Anna Quindlen and the striking familiar-ness of Elizabeth Berg, Fay's Deep Down True attracts the reader with a welcomed magnetism, managing to do what so many other similarly written novels can't avoid: lose the interest of the reader mid-way through leaving the anticlimactic conclusion just that--a disappointing anti-climax. Dana as a character is both sympathetic but flawed, limited yet capable, thoroughly revealing that the disproportionate amoung of careless offenses and injuries tossed her way are very much felt and internalized like anyone else would feel them. There's a curious, yet entirely accurate, way in which Dana is affected by and reacts to her life circumstances. She's subjected to the very same social threshing floor her kids are confronted by, misled by her own judgments, plagued by her desire for acceptance and inept at expressing her emotions. And quite a bit of the book is devoted to just the type of extremely uncomfortable emotional navigation faced by people at all levels, a world of untrustworthy peers and awakened sensitivities which, as Fay is so apt at detailing, changes little with age. As it follows through very well on the world seen through Dana's eyes, the novel conveys a colorful portrait of an imperfect yet not despairing, broken-hearted yet willing-to-work-at-it character who grows up a little in her own way right alongside her kids. (FIC FAY)

First Lines Quiz: Week 1

FIRST LINES QUIZ -- Week #1 » Online quiz software

First Lines Quizzes!!!

It's Adult Summer Reading Program time here at Moore Library and this year we've got some exciting new things. Checkout the link seen here or take a look at our website (http://www.texascity-library.org/) to preview everything that's being offered. Starting today, our first First Lines Quiz will be debuting on the Moore Musings blog. For each opening line, select the title of the work it corresponds to by circling the letter next to it. When finished, return your quiz (or a printout of your completed quiz if taken on the blog) to the reference desk. Patrons may only take each quiz once (quizzes taken online on the blog count as a turn). Prizes will be awarded each week to those who answer each question correctly. Check it Out!

The Nativity Story (DVD) Directed by Catherine Hardwicke

What is special about this film, first released five years ago? The screenwriter for the film, Mark Rich, had the idea of presenting the story of Jesus’ birth as first and foremost told through the characters involved in the story, how they are changed and affected by a miraculous event. He had imagined that such a film could not be made by a major film studio, but perhaps owing to the success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion two years before, the project was welcomed. The script itself served to draw in the director Catherine Hardwicke, who at first wondered why she had received such a script for her perusal. But while reading it, she found she liked the idea of the movie trying to make Mary into a real person.

The film is moving, taking you into the world of long ago, into the villages and cities of the past. One critic suggests that Hardwicke overloads the film with historical detail, (i.e., showing the wheat harvested and the cheese made) but the actors keep the action on the story, so that the authenticity does not intrude itself too much. One is reminded of how hard everyone (or almost everyone, since King Herod doesn’t have to bestir himself physically) had to work in those days. The angel in the film looks just like a person, but how can you depict an angel anyway? It reminds me of a preacher who laughed at commercially produced angels with rosy cheeks and golden hair while noting that when angels do appear in the Bible, the first thing they usually say is “Fear not”, which suggests their awesome and even terrifying appearance.

Mary is courageous, and believable in her conviction of the rightness of what has befallen her, while at the same time fearful for her situation. Without her cousin Elizabeth, she stands alone and condemned, even by her loving parents. Interestingly enough, some Catholic discussion of the film focused on whether or not Mary could feel pain in giving birth, or whether she could be so humanly upset with her parents, as she is when they announce her betrothal. In my view, the only thing basically Catholic that is missing from the film is the view that Mary’s parents might not have fully understood their daughter’s plight, but would have cherished and honored her word above all.

It is touching to see how Joseph changes, from his first shock and dumfounded grief to his new awareness of his role and responsibility towards Mary – in essence, his feelings toward her child. As they journey to Bethlehem together, the film shows their growing closeness and love for each other, all the more marked when they seem so alone, so far from family ties. If you glanced at or considered this film briefly before, I suggest giving it a more patient audience, leaving aside all the preconceptions that this story holds for us today. You will be rewarded.

Galveston: A Novel / by Nic Pizzolatto

Born in New Orleans but raised in Lake Charles, Nic Pizzolatto first gained notice for his writing as a student at LSU and later at the University of Arkansas where his inherent talents soon won him a teaching fellowship. His 2006 short story collection Between Here and Yellow Sea was shortlisted for the National Magazine Award and this, his first novel, was a finalist for the 2010 Edgar prize. Currently Pizzolatto is a staff writer on the cable television show "The Killing" appearing on AMC and recently, according to his website, he's been in preliminary talks about a screenplay for Galveston.

At 40, Roy Cady gets the news that he's dying; not by accident--it's lung cancer--which he figures is a life of hard living caught up to him. It might be easier to take though if he didn't also have the sneaking suspicion that his boss, one of New Orleans most dangerous loan-sharks, is trying to murder him, suspicions proven true after a routine errand turns violent. Deciding he'd like to live at least a little longer, and wanting to die on his own terms, Roy escapes the scene of the crime with a jittery teenage prostitute and some petty cash, headed west for the Texas border and hopefully some reliable distance between he and his enemies. His intentions, one being to ditch the girl at his first opportunity and the other being to disappear into the scenery, don't turn out so well when the girl, an underager named Rocky, manages to hitch along for the ride and then tricks Roy into retrieving her kid sister in Orange. Now Roy, a rogue more comfortable on his own yet somehow bound to these two misbegotten individuals, must try to hide out in the one place he's always felt drawn to--Galveston. A coastal locale well past its prime where strangers are oddly welcome and scraggly drifters like Roy come in all sizes, the island is where the trio feel out a refuge amid the seedy motels, tattered saloons and tawdry seaside amusements. But this adventure holds more than meets the eye as soon some eerily familiar and startling revelations emerge, one of which will affect the lives of all three for years to come.

This is the kind of story a lot of people wish they could tell and the kind of book a lot of writers wish they could write. Galveston, a familiar locale, is also a familiar tale, a story evoking an oft-repeated scenario of flight, consequence and repercussions. Probably a bit too dim for a 'caper' novel, it's the kind of memorable crime noir fiction which readers will remember more for its somber truths than its catchy passages and colorful characters. It is at any rate a solidly thorough standalone novel, perhaps due to the fact that the characters are the type of real people, the real everyday folks, whom everyone sees but nobody really knows. Roy and Rocky are archetypes and yet their's is a world of mystery where some secrets, likely more than a few of them, can never reach the surface. In another way, maybe the book's not really about that. Perhaps it's not intended as a character-driven story but rather one connecting the power of memory to a particular time and place. For Galveston is in many ways an atmospheric novel, surviving off the mesmerizing, if at times mildly melodramatic, descriptions of 'place' and 'aura' acutely manifested by its author. Pizzolatto's gift for description, his incandescence and lucidity are clearly relevant and readers will find they may be seeing bits and pieces of themselves in the pages. (FIC PIZZOLATTO)

Shadows On The Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland / by Rowan Jacobsen

Disaster seems to like the Gulf region these days. Hurricanes, Floods and national emergencies have become part and parcel of the lives of Gulf Coast residents. So when an Oil Rig owned by the Deepwater Horizon company exploded off the coast of Louisiana, sending millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, it was just another arrow to the heart of those who make their livelihoods in the swamps and marshy regions at the mouth of the Mississippi River--particularly in Louisiana, particularly in the bayous and fisheries along the coast. But as bad as the oil spill was, it doesn't touch the damage done to the Gulf every year by what one expert in the book calls "a 100-year catastrophe."

Readers who believe they know the story of how the oil spill only compounded the damage done to an already vanishing Louisiana wetlands will find their worst fears more than realized. As author Jacobsen states, the height of the BP spill roughly equaled the amount of dispersant that flows down the Mississippi from the Heartland's dishwashers and washing machines; acres of marsh destroyed by oil slicks can't compare to the amount that disappears in every hurricane and incrementally each year under natural soil erosion. In essence, nothing can stop the coast of Louisiana from disappearing as soon--Jacobsen sets the timetable at 40 years or so--New Orleans and the rest of South Louisiana will be washed away with the tides.

This is a really depressing book. So much so that the author's substantial sympathy and admiration for the Gulf region gets mired in the overwhelming and ongoing tragedy affecting the area. Shadows on the Gulf reveals the BP oil spill in its entirety, explains why it will affect quality of life for us all and then goes on to remonstrate on the further problems compounding the issue. Jacobsen, a longtime journalist and ecological advocate not only explains why the Gulf's wetlands are important, he bolsters his argument for its conservation with the data that the region provides the best oyster reefs and fish nurseries in the world and proves critical habitat to most of America's migratory songbirds and waterfowl as well as a home base for the energy and shipping industries. If the Gulf fails, the drastic effects will ripple across America and ultimately the world. That it will fail is inevitable unless a national effort is made to save it. (508.76 JACOBSEN)

Other Kingdoms / by Richard Matheson

Alexander White goes by the pen name of Arthur Black. It's a publicity exercise of course--audiences of the type of dark horror fiction he writes would want an "A. Black" book, not an "A. White" novel. In his relatively successful career as a writer, all of his books have been fiction. But at 82, he now recalls a story that, though it is indeed stranger and more mystifying than all of his novels, is true--word for word. Born in Brooklyn in the year 1900, Alexander White was 18 when he finally broke free of his oppressive shackles at a home domineered by his autocratic father and joined the American Army in the trenches of World War I. There he met a soldier, a dying Englishman named Harold Lightfoot whose last words to Alexander were "keep away from the 'middle'".

Disturbed by his friend's mysterious epitaph and even more so when he discovers a sizeable golden nugget in his pack, Alexander sets off for Harold's home of Gadford to look for answers. He doesn't have to look far to find way more than he could have ever bargained for. When his search leads him to a small cottage where a woman named Magda lives, it is only the beginning as his life becomes ever more entwined with the life of a woman, a witch, and her dealings with the very peculiar yet very real "wee folk" of the forest. Matheson, known for his stellar horror novels like I Am Legend, Hell House and Stir of Echoes, merges into the world of fantasy in this sharply written tale of a man caught up in a world he could never have imagined. Much like more contemporary historical fantasy, near-history rather than ancient, Other Kingdoms weaves together a snapshot of twentieth century life, the ravages of the modern world with the ages old realm of myth and mysticism. Even readers only slightly familiar with fantasy will have no trouble grasping the plight and evolution of Alexander White, who recreates a time and a place certainly stranger and unfamiliar to our own, but which somehow seems very near and very recognizable all the same. (SF MATHESON)

U.S.A. Trilogy / by John Dos Passos

Born in Chicago in 1896, John Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of his father John Dos Passos Sr., a prominent attorney of Portuguese ancestry. Following the death of John Sr.'s wife in 1910, he married John Jr's mother Agnes and acknowledged the younger Dos Passos as his biological son. Despite his somewhat irregular family situation, Dos Passos received a first rate education, boarding first at the Choate School then Harvard and ultimately studying abroad at the Sorbonne institute. Traveling extensively over the next few years, he met up and mingled with people all over the world including several widely-known American ex-pat writers living in Europe. His 1938 novel U.S.A., a trilogy describing the three decades between 1900 and 1930, is by far his most famous work and one of the most endearing descriptions of American history to be put into fictional form.

A new century dawns on the United States of America and with it a conflux of new people with new ideas, better machines and bigger buildings, different dynamics and deeper conflicts that are all configured together inside this "slice of a continent". For people like Fainy "Mac" McCreary, the first generation American son of Irish immigrants, it's a chance to get out and see the country apart from the east coast. For J. Ward Morehouse, the new century brings a wave of new business opportunities and the promise of prosperity. Excitement also finds Charlie Anderson of Fargo, North Dakota as he hops the rail and begins a nomadic life toward anywhere and everywhere, seeking for a job where he can work with his hands and a woman who'll love him. All the while, as individual lives come and go, America steadily creeps toward its destiny.

U.S.A. is unique among American novels, both for it's length, three full-size novels in all; its subject, three decades of history; and its depth of personal encounter where individual lives are illuminated to the reader. The novels which make up the trilogy--The 42nd Parallel, 1919 & The Big Money--create an unforgettable depiction of a still young country. Represented through a collective experience which spans all places, races, classes and backgrounds is a story about a place and a people who form a nation. Crucial to the plot are events, small and large, indirectly affecting the central characters (a cast of about 12 individuals in all) like the lingering presence World War I, job shortages and unionization as well as, in some cases like that of J.Ward Morehouse, the overwhelming surplus of opportunity and enterprise.

But one shouldn't think that because of its length and range of characters that U.S.A. requires a deep investment. Dos Passos masterpiece isn't a prudently serious novel; nor is it a conventional work where a diluted backstory must be trudged through to realize the plot. It's a funny book with sardonic humor and intermediary "updates" never far from the central narrative. The author uses several startlingly clever literary devices to capture the aura of early twentieth century life. With his "newsreels", he broadcasts the headlines and impressions upon the public conscience; in his "camera eye", he subtly incorporates a vague autobiographical soliloquy inside a stream-of-consciousness arrangement. Within the sweeping scope of the story are major historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford and Dale Carnegie as well as lesser known names now all but forgotten. To be sure there's a lot to the book. And it may take a reader some time to get through. But the point is never to vigilantly keep track of every detail. For as Dos Passos himself summarized, the book is "many things . . . but mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people". (FIC DOSPASSO)

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit / by Sloan Wilson

In post-World War II America, Tom Rath is just another New York City businessman. His life revolves his job to which he commutes by train every morning, his wife Betsy and their three young children. As modest middle-class Americans, Tom and his family are just trying to make ends meet. So when an offer for a riskier but higher paying job comes his way, he takes it. The gamble pays off. Before long Tom catches the eye of his new boss Ralph Hopkins who wishes him to be his personal assistant, a prestigious but far more rigorous position meaning Tom will now have to choose between becoming a workaholic businessman or be just another 9-to-5-er who at least has time for his family. As he mulls his options, his homelife becomes more complicated. His only living relative, a grandmother, has died and left her estate home to Tom who now has to decide if he and his family should live on the property or accept the offer to sell the land as a potential housing project.

There's something else too. Even ten years later, the war is never far from Tom's thoughts. On his way to and from work, he reminisces about his harrowing combat experience as an Army paratrooper, the violence involved in killing enemy soldiers at close range and the loss of his best friend (partly of his own error). There's also a girl he knew in Rome, an Italian refugee named Maria, whom he'd had an affair with while on leave. When by chance he meets an old Army buddy and learns that Maria gave birth to his son after he left Italy, he must decide between keeping the love child a secret, hoping he can somehow forget about it, or letting his wife know and hope she'll understand. For Tom Rath, just another man on the street in a gray flannel suit, it seems like the entire world is held in the balance.

Penned in 1955, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is the quintissential 1950's story, one which entails the baby boom of the post war years, the suburbanization of American families, expanding American enterprise and the still lingering after effects of the war itself. Rath is a great character (Gregory Peck as Tom in the 1956 film version gave a sound performance). A man of admirable qualities, he's also plagued by many problems. Reading about Tom, the time and place he inhabits and the life which pulls him in so many different directions, creates intrigue about every aspect of the book right down to the peculiarly sad life of mega-mogul Ralph Hopkins. Here we see an individual feeling the grind of the corporate sinkhole, the decentralization of home and work, the burden of an ambitious wife and, not to be sold short, the first real problems confronting American veterans in quite some time. The book is a solid snapshot of an American decade more associated with conformity and standardization than indecision and uncertainty. Touching on the kind of America Updike would depict a decade later, it is one which brilliantly concentrates all of the trials and inadequacies, the ambiguity and suspicion inherent in post-war life into one identifiable character and condition. (FIC WILSON)

Peter Pan's personal soundtrack

Yesterday, Flavorwire posted an entry on their blog imagining the songs on Peter Pan's iPod (or mixtape, for all of you who remember such things). Take a look here and see if you agree.