Non-Sequitur Libris.

These three books seem like they're totally unrelated to one another. But looking at them in a heap, I see that they're all about women and their lives. This is sort of refreshingly unintentional. What is odd, however, is that all three of these books-about-women... are written by men. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.


The Painted Veil
By W. Somerset Maugham

In this short novel, an English woman living in Hong Kong in the 1920's--Kitty Fane--cheats on her husband, Walter Fane. Walter is the colonial bacteriologist (apparently that's a thing), and in retaliation he removes her to the heart of cholera-stricken China. Although it looks, on the surface, like a novel about a couple in turmoil, this is a story about self-discovery and growth.  It's almost a bildungsroman for the stifled 1920's housewife.

The writing is beautiful. The book is immanently quotable:

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.” 

In the moments when it slips into philosophical observation, it is a wonderful book. The story is also enchanting and exotic. The threat of death hangs in the air and the characters live in an unfamiliar world.  However, those characters are a little flat, but in a forgivable way. Kitty herself is slightly obnoxious. She is supposed to be a flighty, stupid character, but her flightiness and stupidity at first make it hard not to be frustrated with her. If you're alright with not being able to totally sink your teeth into the characters, the book is worth reading for its apt observations of human character.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
By Stieg Larsson

The second of three books in Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy," this book is difficult to put down. After four hours you wonder how you got tricked into reading Larsson's short little sentences so voraciously. Especially since it's not really all that good. Where the first book is cohesive, the second book is oddly all over the map. And the main theme--the illegal sex trade--never really shows up except as something that puts the plot in motion.

It seems, at times, like the book is mainly a platform for Larsson's two obsessions: women's rights and describing in minute detail everything that Lisbeth Salander eats and wears. The odd thing is that these painful details (she eats a lot of apples and Billy's Pan Pizza; she wears a lot of fluffy sweaters and black t-shirts) are sort of fascinating. Salander is abnormal but wonderfully sympathetic, so anything she does is intriguing, even, somehow, after 600 pages.

Added bonus: there are many fewer scenes in this second novel that burn your eyeballs while you're reading them.

She's Come Undone
By Wally Lamb

Oh Oprah, why must your book club be replete with books that are so pointlessly nauseating?

This is the story of Dolores, whose name means "sadness." Nothing good happens to Dolores. Ever. In fact, Dolores's whole life rolls out like one looooong series of pamphlets designed to help teenagers cope with every possible trauma in life. Without giving anything away, among Dolores' many problems is that she is fat and unpopular, and from this, the book seems to say, springs all of the worthlessness of her life.

I will admit that if I had read this book when I was 12, I might have gotten more out of it. Opposing camps disagree on whether Lamb has completely bastardized the voice of the woman narrator, or whether he is pitch-perfect. I don't really care for that argument. That's the benefit of being an author, you can make your characters think and feel whatever you want. However, I don't have to like the fact that Dolores is obsessive, weak, and vaguely homophobic. She doesn't strike me as a hero of self-enlightenment. She strikes me as a perpetual victim, someone immature and not remotely to be admired. She's frankly rude to everyone in the book, which makes her hard to care for. You're not supposed to say that about people who have awful things happen to them, but after reading 400 pages of her thoughts and feelings, it seems self-evident.

Even though I wasn't too fond of Kitty from The Painted Veil, her journey is much more... genuine?