The Right of Privacy and Harper Lee

I visited Monroeville, once.  In the summer of 1990, I, my husband and a friend were driving home from the beach when one of us spied the interstate exit that leads to the home of Harper Lee.  My friend had (finally) read To Kill a Mockingbird, she was still overwhelmed by the power of the story and she wanted to see Miss Lee’s home town.  My husband knows how much I care about the book and he thought it would be a treat, so he steered us onto the highway.  Once we hit the center of town, the two of them started plying me with questions so they could pick out landmarks from the novel.   How far was the Finch house from the school?  Was the Radley house on the same or opposite side of the street?  My husband suggested (I think he was joking) that, with a bit of research, we’d be able to locate Miss Lee’s new address and he would take us to her door.  I began to feel very uncomfortable.  Not only do I get tongue tied around famous authors, (I displayed something like Tourette's syndrome in front of Dr. Seuss) I couldn’t get past the feeling we were trespassers here, arriving only to gawk.  A late summer thunderstorm started and I wanted to leave but the two of them kept driving on, looking for clues and making suggestions.  Hail came down and a corner of my mind suggested this was God’s (or Truman Capote’s) way of telling us to “Get the Hell Out.”  When tree limbs started to fall, we turned the car around and finally went back to the interstate.  The rain stopped outside of the town.

I’ve been wishing that weather would come down again on those currently trying to mind Miss Lee’s business.  Years ago, she was just another woman who wanted to write and the world pretty much ignored her.   Aided by friends, an agent, and editors, she developed a novel of transcendent beauty.  When the book was done, Miss Lee lived up to her contractual promises surrounding the book’s publication and its adaptation into a motion picture.  Since then all she has asked for is the same private life most of us enjoy.  In this final area she’s had less success, due mainly to the bad manners of others.

Initially, there were demands that she write still more books, from people who didn’t understand what the first book had cost her.  Then, there was the small but steady army of trespassers who believed their enthusiasm for her work outweighed her need for privacy.  Mixed between these were the sycophants who professed admiration to her face and then exploited her acquaintanceship for fame and fortune.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a town selling itself with her characters or a reporter whose alleged health issues mend once she moves into the house next door.  (If this is true, the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins hospital need to relocate to Monroeville, Alabama.  The town is obviously a modern-day Lourdes.) In my opinion, it comes down to this: any person who makes money from Harper Lee’s life or her work without her documented permission is a parasite and probably a thief.  

All of this was bad enough but things went to hell this year.  The announcement that her first story Go Set A Watchman would be published should have had literary enthusiasts hugging themselves with delight.  Instead, people started worrying that "Watchman" wouldn’t match the quality as  “Mockingbird.”   Then pundits started suggested that publishing Watchman might not be Miss Lee's idea at all.  The account of the lawyer who located the work (the same attorney who has successfully protected Miss Lee’s rights since her sister’s retirement) is reviewed with extreme skepticism.  (Anyone who believes papers can’t stack up in the back of a law office has never worked in one.)  Now the state of Alabama has gotten involved because a physician, who did not examine Miss Lee, reported a rumor she was seen curled up in bed and uncommunicative after the death of her sister.  This really sets my teeth on edge.  Miss Lee loses her sister, the last member of her closest family and they’re surprised she’s in bed and depressed??  What did they expect, a party?  A river of avarice, curiosity and innuendo has robbed this woman (described as “a national treasure") of her privacy and everyday enjoyment of life.   If this is how we treat the people we cherish, God help those that we hate.

I think something needs to be clarified: Miss Lee is not her work.  She is no one’s “treasure” to be owned or bandied about.  She is a human being with rights and privileges, including the right to be left alone.  If she doesn’t want to be interviewed, promoted, hash-tagged or dragged out for the public consumption, that is her prerogative.  If her work has inspired or moved you to the point of communication, send her a letter but don’t expect a reply.  The whole point of a thank-you letter is to express your feelings, not promote a correspondence.  If you really appreciate her work, apply the principles of TKAM to your life and be nice to other people.  Fight for the disadvantaged and be sensitive to their needs.  But have some consideration for the author’s wishes and (unless you have clear and convincing, first-hand evidence of maltreatment) leave the poor woman alone.

Miss Lee’s work has a public life and people can treasure or criticize that at will.  If people are worried about the quality of her upcoming book, they don’t have to buy or read it. Since “Watchman” is an early draft, it is unlikely to show the same level of skill as TKAM but it will aid literature students who will see how one story can be molded from another.  No new book can tarnish or impair the quality of To Kill a Mockingbird.  TKAM stands as it has stood for the last fifty years, a clear story about the good and evil in humanity and life in a small, Southern town.  

Although this rant is about separating the art from the artist, it is tempting to give Miss Lee the last word. In TKAM’s climactic chapter, Heck Tate refuses to publicize the service of a recluse because, “All the ladies in Maycomb, including my wife’d be knockin’ on his door bringing angel food cakes.  To my way of thinking…draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight – to me, that’s a sin.”

People have been banging on Miss Lee’s door for years now, bringing nosiness, cupidity and gossip.  I hope the finding of the state’s investigation will allow her to close it again to all save those that she wants to see.  If not, Monroeville needs to bring back the rain and get set for one hell of a storm.

The Failed Rebellion that Jump-Started the War

They say there's one day a year when everyone's Irish and that's St. Patrick's Day.  Well, that's what I've heard in America, where everyone insists they're part Irish and celebrates March 17th like it was their personal 4th of July.  On such matters, I defer to the late Frank McCourt who said "A well-placed bomb at the New York St. Patrick's Day parade would wipe out the cream of Irish mediocrity".  (Thank heavens he said it before 2001; today, a remark like that would land a quipster on the no-fly list).  Me, I wish my family was Irish but my mother's people mainly came from England and Italy and my dad's Celtic ancestors sailed to America after they were "unfriended" in Scotland and Ireland.  In other words, they were Ulster Scots.  But, like lots of people I know, I'm a big fan of the Auld Sod and I can give you a reason why.  No one I know can break your heart the way Irish writers and Irish stories do.  And given the time of year this is with the the tide of Easter rising, the Irish tale I go back to is Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916.  Seldom does a group of armed rebels bring me so close to tears.

Now when I was little, the only Irish history I knew centered around "The Famine" (long ago) or "The Troubles" (still going on).  Ireland was one country when it starved but at some point, it became two.  Something happened in-between those events but I wasn't really sure what so I had no idea about the first class tragedy described in this wonderful book.  Without sounding the dreaded "Spoiler Alert" I can give you a thumbnail list of events.

In the early days of the first world war, a few extremely devout, not-that-organized Irish Nationalists wanted English Rule out of Ireland.  From what they heard in the streets, most Irish people agreed, not as zealously as the Nationalists but enough to keep them encouraged.  These lovers of Ireland agreed that the time was ripe for revolution although they couldn't agree on much else since all of them had their own political ideas and every man thought he was in charge (with the exception of Constance Markievicz, all the rebels seem to be men).  At any rate, two or three small groups of men conspired to start a rebellion in different parts of Ireland - a rising, if you will - on Easter morning and they thought the people would join them and throw out the British government.   Well, they failed. Of all the "risings" that were supposed to occur, only the one in Dublin gained ground, where 1,250 Irish insurgents battled 16,000 British soldiers and another thousand Dublin police for five days before they fell.  None of the local citizenry joined the cause and the only government office the insurgents took over (the post office) was surrendered five days after they grabbed it.  The Easter rising sank like the Titanic.

But here's where the tables turn.  A British General named Maxwell was ordered to clean up Dublin and he entered Ireland as military governor on the 28th, the day before the Post Office was surrendered.  Now, his assignment was a sizable task but public sentiment was, for once, with the British, so Maxwell had a chance to build a peace.  Instead,  he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, first by arresting about 1,500 innocent civilians along with the 1,800 surviving rebels. Within the week, the accused were being tried by court-martial (though none of them were soldiers) without access to counsel, a jury or judicial review, although those were required by law.  Maxwell confirmed the death sentences and started executing rebels before he'd been there a week.  The first three went to the firing squad the day after their "trials".   The Irish civilians that were not in the jail thought this was moving too fast.  Arrest the rebels, of course, and make sure that justice is done but if someone's charged for treason as an English citizen, aren't they entitled to an Englishman's rights?    People didn't like the rush to judgement and now the stories of some British abuses were coming to light.  (Of all the individuals in the book, my favorite is Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, a pacifist and campaigner for equal rights who irritated everyone sooner or later.  He was odd individual as well as brave, caring man and what happened to him during the Rising is a never-ending shame.) Even England became concerned about the haste but they got the news too late.  Fourteen rebels are executed by firing squad before the 12th of May.  The last of these, already dying from his wounds, was carried on a stretcher to the front of a firing squad and tied to a chair because he could not stand.  This was more than Irish citizens could bear.  The failed Easter rebellion became the prelude to the Ireland's War for Independence.

 So, enjoy St. Patrick's Day and smile at all the people wearing green but remember a bit about Irish history.  It's the history of people everywhere.  There are good times and bad times  and some heartbreaking times but there are dreams and people that never quit trying. Whoever they are, wherever they come from and no matter how long it takes, there will always be someone who cares for justice and someone willing to die to be free.  When they fall, someone will remember the dead and someone else will pick up their flag.  And in the end, if the cause is just, the dream will never die.  And that thought could heal a broken heart.

In Praise of a Stubborn Soul

Ordinarily, we don't honor disobedient people. Our history does, as many rebels are the  heralds of overdue change, but in this world where most folks "go along to get along" the contrary soul is a resented member of a community.  Every town has these intractable dissenters who, even when they are right, still alienate their peers with their hard-headed ways. Born outsiders, these nonconformists follow their own lonely stars though life, with few friends for love or guidance, not because they want to be difficult but because time and circumstance force them into this uneasy role.  That is the theme of T. K. Thorne in her second historical novel, Angels at the Gate, and it stars one of the Bible's most baffling women: Lot's wife, the woman who disobeyed a command from God's angels and looked back, at cost of her life.

 I never understood the behavior of Lot's wife when I read her story in Sunday School.   To me, when the town is literally falling to pieces around your ears and two white-garbed, winged men suddenly appear, shouting "Run for the hills and don't you dare look back!" it's time to follow orders and get the heck out of Dodge.  Yet, she looks back at the disaster, turning away just as her survival is assured.  Why would someone behave so foolishly?  T. K. Thorne creates a reasonable answer for this woman whose name goes unmentioned in the Bible.  Here, she is Adira, a girl with a mind of her own travels disguised as a boy so she can stay with her widowered father.   Adira finds it difficult to obey anyone when her good sense suggests otherwise, even the father she loves and respects.  Then, as a "girl posing in boy's clothing" Adira can't help but notice men and women are treated differently in her world.  Eventually she has to choose between the the life she wants as a female and the freedom she's enjoyed as a male.

 T. K. Thorne combined religious, archeological and historical study to create this story of a woman who followed her own path in the world.  Here at last is an explanation for God's angels, those messengers who warn Lot and his family of their peril and the rest of Lot's behavior in Genesis.  Lot is the nephew of Abraham and described in the Bible as a righteous but Thorne recounts his actions and leaves it up to the readers to draw their own conclusions.

And, in the end, this is is not the story of a male who follows orders to escape but the woman who watched him leave before making a choice of her own.  Lot's wife may have been been a willful and stubborn woman but she had a life and reason for her actions and she deserves a better epitaph than "The Lady who turned into Salt."  Thanks to T. K. Thorne, Lot's wife is transformed back into woman, wayward and strong but alive.

March 5. 2015 is the publication date of Angels at the Gate.   Her book is available at Amazon and other booksellers if you live in the area of Birmingham, Alabama, you can  meet the author and obtain a signed personalized copy if you attend her publication party at The Harbert Center 2019 4th Ave N, Birmingham, Alabama 35203 between 4:30 and 7:00 p.m.  Details can be found at https://www.facebook.com/events/1560009640943936/

It's Time for a Southern Book

I think things are headed towards Spring.  That sounds crazy after last week's snow storm, but Saturday the sun was pouring down like paint over the Sherwin Williams globe and there was a warmth in the light I hadn't felt since September.  The sunlight is life here in the Deep South and it's a birthright we've come to expect like warm food and good stories.  There's a lot about this land that's cringe-inducing but not our warmth and not our stories.  Like the land, they are strong and good and so linked to this place that many could not have appeared anywhere else on earth.  It takes a Southerner to sculpt some of these tales.

The light and heat are characters inside Carson McCuller's Ballad of the Sad Cafe. The setting is a Georgia summer and if you read it, you'll fall under the story's spell and start pulling at the side of your collar to let in a little cool air.  There was none in Georgia, not during those summers before air-conditioning when people woke up sweating and laid themselves down to sleep on damp, wrinkled sheets at night, half way to dehydration.  The heat is an omnipresent character, an enhancer of the scenes and it helps drive the conflict in this wonderful tale of uneven love.

The characters are as odd a triangle as literature has fashioned.  There is Miss Amelia, an ungainly and raw-boned woman more at home with overalls, moonshine and animals than people and as mean-spirited and invulnerable an individual as anyone in the little town could describe until she meets Cousin Lymon.  A deformed and strange little man, Lymon sparks no feelings of friendship and is almost certainly a liar but he's is taken in by Amelia and his presence transforms her character.  Although no more at ease around people, Amelia softens her sharp business practices and even turns part of her store into the cafe in the evening, all because it entertains Cousin Lymon. She becomes a nicer person and the town is a better place for it.  This good feeling is shattered by the return of Marvin Macy, a cruel, vicious man whose one attempt at good behavior was caused by (you guessed it!) his love that Amelia spurned.  For some reason, Lymon gives the same unquestioning adoration to Marvin Macy that Amelia gives to him.  With allegiance of Cousin Lymon, Macy finally has the weapon to strike back at the woman he once loved.

It's not surprising this strange tale comes from Carson McCullers.  She was a woman who always felt "set apart" from the rest and she had begun to endure a series of life-altering health problems and romantic disasters by her early thirties, when she wrote this tale.  Although sometimes uncomfortable in her own skin, Carson had an incredible empathy for her characters that shows in her writing and you find yourself caring for Amelia and seeing at least some of the charm Cousin Lymon holds for her.  Carson was able to endow her characters with love and humanity that we start to care for these deformed and scarred people who are, whatever their shortcomings, all helpless in the face of the person they love because, in the end, that's a feeling we've all known. 


I'm not sure how much joy Ms. McCullers got from her life:  she was far too young when she died, she spent too much of her last years impaired by a series of strokes and her writing shows a mind deeply familiar with the pain of loneliness.  But along with all that, she had a rare capacity for love and understanding that brought her deep happiness and the gratitude of many people.  And, as she pointed out,  most people prefer giving love to receiving it if they are given the choice.  That kind of love still grows deep around here.  You can feel its warmth, like the heat in the light.

Vanity Fair Amongst the Lotus Eaters

Sometimes I miss California.  Some of my family moved there when I was young and once we'd traveled west to see them, California became more than another state on the map; it became a state of mind.  It was a place with gentler weather and attitudes that believed in potential as much as my home state believed in realism, or at least that's how it seemed at the time.  Granted, this was between the late 60's and early 80's when California was "the place to be" and I was getting trips to Disneyland but I still miss that pervasive feeling of "yes" that was the California I knew.  The residents (very few of the people I met there were natives) might have seemed a little self-indulgent at times but most of them turned out to be very kind and I really loved being there.  All those feelings rush back whenever I pick up Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City.

Maupin was another Golden State émigré when he started writing a syndicated column about San Francisco and the other immigrants who found themselves in its embrace during the 1970’s. He wanted to report on the phenomenon of grocery-store cruising (think of it as singles bar with produce) without naming any names.  So he published a fictionalized news column that introduced the slightly out-of-step Midwesterner, Mary Ann Singleton to this meat market with a butcher’s shop.  People wrote to his paper's publisher asking for more of Mary Ann’s adventures and Maupin obliged adding Mona Ramsey, the aging refugee from the 60’s whose ramshackle life was, in her own terms, “down to seeds and stems” and Mona’s best friend, Michael “Mouse” Tolliver.   No one would believe it now but Maupin broke ground in Tales of the City with Michael as one of the first leading gay characters in a continuing serial.  By this time, California readers of his column were faxing it to friends in Barstow and Phoenix.  A whole host of wonderful characters showed up including the perpetual lothario, Brian Hawkins and everyone’s favorite landlady, Anna Madrigal.  Then the real fun began.

Have you ever read Thackeray’s comedy, Vanity Fair?  It’s a wonderful satire of English society where everyone is trying to get ahead, socially, financially or otherwise.  It has a host of characters and the minor ones you meet in the beginning find their way back to the plot by the end.  Tales of the City is like that.  The plot is ridiculously interconnected (although many of the characters don’t know all the connections) so half of the fun of the story is guessing where and how the guy in Chapter Two will come back in Chapter Ten.  Maybe that was Maupin’s way of playing games or keeping his readers interested but I think it was an observation about San Francisco: never mind how big this place looks from the air; we’re really a very small town.

Like any small town, secrets and scandals abound and there's a half-hearted mystery to boot but the clearest theme in this first book is that San Francisco is a great place if you are looking for your life. (There are nine installments in this series so far and I've quit believing Maupin when he says he's finished; he fooled me twice before with those words and twice fooled is my legal limit.)    Maupin opens this book with a quote from Oscar Wilde:"It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco."   Maybe that's because for some, it remains "the place to be."  A place where the very nature of being includes a laid-back enjoyment of life.  Where anything can happen and anyone can reappear.  Now, that's what I call potential.

The Girls After My Own Heart...

There are lots of books about young women.  And there are lots of books about gorgeous women.  There are books about tall women, women who don't realize how lovely they are and too damn many books about women who stay thin or physically fit without effort.  Now a lot of these gals aren't bad characters; heck, some of them are my long-time favorites but it does get tiresome to run into the same type of heroine, day after day.  Thank God for Sue Ann Jaffarian and her creation, Odelia Grey.  They're the girls that break the cliches.

Odelia may be fictional but she's a girl after my own heart.  She's not thin, she's not young and (like me) she works for lawyers.  Not the usual girl on the book cover.  At the start of her first adventure, Too Big to Miss, Odelia's life is a bit in the dumps.  Her good boss is retiring, the last date needed firing and skinny shop girls want to treat her like dreck.  Odelia knows how to stand up for herself and she gives as good as she gets but it's sad living that much of life on the defensive and the death of her friend Sophie makes things worse.  Of all of the over-weight, under-tall, not-so-youthful people in the world, Sophie was one who charged Odelia's confidence, insisted all people are beautiful, regardless of Body Mass Index and got Odelia to believe it too.  Now, Odelia has to close out her Sophie's professional and personal business affairs and what Odelia learns in the process turns her own world upside down.  Despite set backs and set-ups, the heroine of Too Big to Miss moves forward, trying to find justice for a friend who wanted decent treatment for everyone.  If you read it, I know you'll like the finish.

I had the pleasure of hearing Sue Ann Jaffarian speak a few years ago when I was feeling low.  Like me and Odelia, she's a professional paralegal and none of us would be described as skinny or tall.  Still, Sue Ann impressed me with her verve and frank remarks about her life as a novelist.  She said she'd always wanted to be a published writer and she finally decided to become one.  Fear didn't stop her and failure of the first book didn't stop her either.  She wrote again and again, refusing to give up so she eventually achieved her goal.  Now she's one of the recognized authors of "cozy" mysteries, those books with just enough blood and zing to keep a reader interested but not nauseated.   Perfect books for a snow day or a holiday or a sick day propped up in bed.  I love them, not just because I know the life of a paralegal or a bit about Julian, California (it's the site of another mystery series Jaffarian writes and close to where my grandparents lived.) but because her characters are so darn likeable.  I suspect they take after their author.

But Odelia's the girl after my heart, along with the gal who created her.  Both of them take risks and don't apologize for being themselves.  They're smart, funny and  and they leave you with memories you'll love.  Those are good traits to find in any heroine.  They're even better when they appear in real life.

Drawing back the curtain

One of the amazing powers of literature is its ability to draw aside the curtain.  Writers who have experienced other roles in life use their background for a book and the readers get a glimpse of life-in-the-trenches written by someone who knows what they're talking about.  Want to see World War I as a medic?  Pick up Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.  How much of Mad Men is true?  Try Jerry Della Femina's From those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, a terrific book on advertising.  Those books and others entertain us with insights into the human condition but they also enlighten readers by revealing a world we've never known.  One of my best friends recommended a book that fits in this shelf.  No matter what else happens I guarantee you won't forget You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger.  Who could give us a better inside view at military intelligence than a former OSS officer?

Roger Hall was an army lieutenant during World War II, ensconced on a base in Louisiana when luck and poor work on the commander's baseball team led to a transfer to the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA.  Because of his training as a teacher, the OSS initially had him teach other recruits the basics of scouting and patrolling.  Hall was qualified because he'd grown up near the training camp and already knew the landscape.  Eventually he went to paratrooper school where he got the immortal advice on landing, "Feet together or broken ankles. Take your choice, sir."  After that came more training, testing and some instruction in Spies 101 where the exams included being able to walk into any town, without ID and then get a job in and data on a place that ought to be using security.  In order to keep up one cover story, our hero ends up making an impromptu plea in a factory to buy war bonds.  The speech is so successful, the newspaper writes an article on him.   Nothing like keeping a low profile!

Hall's intelligence shows as well as the attitude that made him a writer instead of a CIA agent: As one commander said, "You're much too impatient with inefficiency, either above or below you and with yourself as well.  In an organization that makes as many mistakes as this one has and always will, too much obvious impatience will brand you as a maverick."  Hall was an intelligent maverick and a lucky man to boot.  When he's sent into occupied France, he parachutes, not into a nest of Nazis but behind American lines.  Patton got through two hours before he landed. Then he does map duty in unoccupied France and battles a stuffy British major.  He finally goes from training to real action just in time to take the surrender of Hitler's troops remaining in Norway.  Hall runs from one operation to the next, helping where he can and learning a lot about the brave, incredible people who did the impossible to aid the Allies during World War II.  Because of of this book, we get a birds-eye view of a small but important section of a very big war. 

There's a rumor that the CIA used to show copies of this book to their new recruits and say, "Never let this happen again."  I think that's sad.  People in the intelligence community must be smart to do their work and many smart people are iconoclasts, Roger Hall included. Yes, they can be harder to monitor (ask any teacher with gifted students) than the rest of us average Joes but these are the people we rely on for original and critical thinking, a commodity sorely needed in security and defense.  As it is, Roger Hall served his nation and the world, first in secret and then by telling tales.  Thank goodness he survived the war to pull the curtain back for us.

When the door to the unknown opens

Every once in a while an author comes along that recalls the viewpoint of a child.  Not any child in particular, only what it was like to always be the youngest person in the room, with the most amount of instruction, whose opinions carry the least weight in a family.  Because, along with being loved and read to and coddled and warm, that's what it feels like sometimes when you're a kid.  Anyway, Neil Gaiman knows that.  Like Roald Dahl and T. H. White and Lewis Carroll before him, he remembers how even loved kids sometimes want more from their lives, more attention, more influence, more glamor.  And he puts this in his books, along with what comes from granted wishes.  The man's written many terrific books but if you're not familiar with his work, may I begin the acquaintance?  Let me introduce you to someone special, a girl named Coraline.

Coraline is a girl with a problem.  As a matter of fact, she is bored.   Her family's moved into a very old house that has been turned into apartments and her parents have focused on their work.  Her folks love her and care for her but, right now, they're too busy to pay much attention.  The neighbors aren't bad, but they're grown and they always mispronounce her name and predict she's going into danger.  This is not what a young girl wants.  Nope, Coraline wants some attention, and a mother who cooks, a father than listens and a look in the apartment next door.   There's a brick wall and a locked door between that empty flat and hers, at least there is until Coraline sneaks out the key, opens the lock and the bricked wall she once saw has vanished...so Coraline goes exploring.  Like Alice through the Looking Glass, she finds a world much like her own until you get to the details.  Here, the folks pays attention and the toys are all alive and the "other mother" cooks and looks at the world through sewn-on, shoe-button eyes.  There's something not right with this world even with all these improvements and Coraline returns to the real world before they can change out here eyes. And this is where Coraline leaves Alice behind.

Now I love the Alice books.  From 5th grade through 8th grade, I re-read them continually and I can still recite Jabberwocky by heart.  But Alice's adventures are bordered by her workaday world.  When the story needed to end or got too complex Alice would wake and the Red Queen and Mock Turtle would vanish.  Magic couldn't follow her back.  But Coraline eventually realizes opening the door let the "other world" into hers and real parents are no match for the Other-Mother's schemes.  In order to return to her world, Coraline has to save it, with the aid of a cat and her brain.   Well, there's a whole lot more but you'll need to read the book.

Coraline's perfect for anyone who is waiting or for folks who've yearned to explore the unknown.  If you remember feeling curious about the other side of the world or wondering what's inside a stone, spend an hour or two with this brave adventurer.   And remember to watch your step and avoid people with buttons for eyes.

A Book for Dark Cold Night

We're deep in the throes of winter now with the mercury hugging the bottom of the temperature gauge and snow depth being measured in feet.  Everyone I know is huddled up, snuggled down, wrapped in layers and beseeching God for a little Global Warming to thaw out the frozen ground.  During these long, frozen nights a house almost becomes a living thing, cradling and caring for the creatures within. Our slippered feet scuffle across its floors and we sink into chairs by the fireside content, with our books and our layers, to let winter rage outdoors because it can't touch us in here.  Winter is the time to cherish your home.

So this may not be the best night to read The House Next Door, the second novel by Anne Rivers Siddons.  It's a great story, set in Atlanta in the 1970's and it's the kind of book that will keep you wound up in its pages, but imaginative people may want to leave this till summer.  During these months we need to believe we are safe when we're home and the house in these pages is wicked.

No one in the neighborhood wants to see the new house go up.   This is a settled, nice block of people with comfortable lives and the new home threatens their pattern.   The small forest between lots will be gone, the new neighbors may not fit in and the house design is modern, at odds with the brick and mortar homes that fill their tree-lined street.  So the success of the finished house is astounding.  With muted steel, wood and glass it harmonizes with the earth on its pie-wedge shaped lot and appears so organic one visitor whispers it looks like it grew there instead of being constructed.   It's a fantastic house to look at and it's brand-spanking new.   So why does it seem to be haunted?

In literature, most houses become haunts for a reason.   Somebody died there, someone was tortured there, it was the site of a terrible conflict.  All of those hauntings make sense.   The House Next Door changes the formula a bit and suggests (like Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House) that some houses are born bad.  No rationale or reason but a cold determined intelligence in the walls that discovers what is dearest to every human and destroys what they care for in a way that will hurt them the most.   At least that's what Colquitt Kennedy thinks.

Colquitt is the narrator in The House Next Door and prime witness as the unwilling next-door neighbor.  Colquitt knows she and her husband have been (until now) luckier than they deserve: they've fought no wars nor sacrificed for the good life they have and their prosperity comes from being in the right place at the right time.  She and her husband, Walter, both work for what they have and they appreciate their life but she's keenly aware that they haven't really earned the good they've known. Part of The House Next Door is what happens when middle-class-to-affluent Americans come face-to-face with a crisis and how they earn the lives they've enjoyed. 

Since the book is almost forty years old, the tale is a bit dated (some situations would not have developed if these characters had cell phones) but the central ideas transcend.  In Danse Macabre (a fine critical book on the horror genre) Stephen King explains why the concept of haunted houses gets to us so.  Home is the one place we can be vulnerable, where we can shed the protective persona we show to the outside world.  When home isn't safe or sane, then no place is safe anymore. 

As for me, the book is a great read for a long winter's night but I know when to put it down.  Like Colquitt and her husband, I love my home and my life and if I pass a certain point in this story, I will have to finish the novel and then read something wholesome for a few hours before I can shut my eyes.  So read the book with my blessing but do it in easy stages, or when you're away from home.  If you imagine houses have feelings, leave one for spring.  You need to find comfort where you live when the world is cold.

Unhappily Ever After...

Yes, it's hearts and flowers day, the annual celebration of the "people in pairs" that make up a big segment of our civilization.  Hey, I'm all for marriage.  A good marriage becomes the third part of a romantic relationship and it nurtures the people in it as well as those around it.  It brings out the best in the partners.  But people are limited and, despite our prayers and best wishes, not every romance becomes a good marriage.  Listen, if you go by Stephen King's volume of that name, you may rethink Valentine's Day altogether.  If a good marriage is the base of the best of all worlds, you'll find nothing but hell in the bad.

The title tale is one of King's famous "what if" thoughts that popped up during an article on BTK.  You remember him?  I do.  I, and later my mother, lived in Wichita during the years that serial killer was free.  His actions were terrible and one of the bad parts when they caught him was he looked so ordinary, which is part of King's point.   If monsters look and talk and dress pretty much like everyone else, how can the sane person pick one out? The answer is, sometimes we can't.  In real life, Paula Rader couldn't because, even in a good marriage, one spouse can't know the other completely.  A Good Marriage  explores what might have happened if she had.  Here, Darcy Anderson is a middle-aged housewife, comfortable with a her empty nest home, devoid of drama.  Then a discovery in the garage leads to research and an inescapable conclusion: her quiet, Scout-leading, coin-collecting husband is actually one of those unseen monsters, a torturing serial killer.  To Darcy's credit, she realizes that none of her husband's past awful actions are her fault but what happens next falls on her.  If she turns him in, what will that do to her just-grown children and those who, like her, knew only his good side?   If she doesn't can she live with what she knows?  Can she trust her husband won't kill or again or that he will let her survive?  Darcy is a good woman who, one way or the other, has to do a really bad thing. What she does makes the story worth reading.

The companion tale, 1922, looks at love and murder from a different perspective, one that owes much to one of his earlier tales, Delores Claiborne.  If you remember, Delores Claiborne had to confess she killed her husband, Joe St. George, to escape being charged with a murder she didn't commit.   Well, imagine if Joe murdered Delores and you hear the story from his perspective.  That's closer to Wilfred James in 1922.

Wilfred is a man with two dreams, to farm and live life as he likes.  By the way, one of the best parts of this story is how the isolation of the prairie is captured.  The middle of the Great Plains can feel like the back edge of nowhere and those who live there begin to crave the endless space or they hate it.  My mother hated it and so does Mrs. Wilfred James, so much so she's willing to sell her inherited land to a food processing concern and move to a city like Omaha.  Wilf needs the farm and he knows any processing plant that goes in will ruin the water that feeds his acreage, so he can't let her sell it.  An unsolvable problem, especially since Wilf can't come up with the bucks to buy out his wife, not that he would.  As far as he's concerned, the inherited land should be his, an asset of the marriage and no judge is going to break apart the land or his relationship.

Now everyone knows the wage of sin is death, like they know Stephen King writes scary stories so don't be surprised when I say 1922 is not something to read late at night. Like an idiot, I did and more than one unpleasant image showed back up in my dreams.   1922 is an entertaining, if predictable tale and I'm sure I'll re-read it but when the sun will be high for hours.  I can stand a lot of King's spookier creations trolling around in my subconscious (hell, I love Bag of Bones and It) but I draw the line at rats.  'Nuff said.

So if you're in love this Valentines Day, I'm happy for you.  Go celebrate it.   If not, I hope you're a happy singleton (to steal a word from Armistead Maupin) and please celebrate your life as it is.  Either way is good.  Just remember that "to love" is an active verb and the basis of any good marriage is two people actively working together to make a love that nurtures them both.  If you forget that, you're looking for trouble.  Find it and you might end up down the well, with the rats.