Good and bad ideas.

The job search continues. Meanwhile, if you have any documents you need me to proofread, let me know. (Please don't let this blog inform your opinions of my badass proofing abilities.)

Thitherwardly with this week's book reviews! Two books by Jeffrey Eugenides and one about a serial killer.

The Marriage Plot
By Jeffrey Eugenides

I have elsewhere described this book as "an English Major's Utopia/therapy session for lost 20-something (both categories that appeal to me)."  It occurs to me through reading reviews by others that these are not universal categories and not everyone was as pleased with this book as I have been. The number one complaint seems to be that all of the characters are white, and one of them is wealthy. To which I reply, "You've never studied the marriage plot in English class, have you?"

Not being an English major shouldn't ruin the reading experience for you--in fact, you'd be amazed how often being an English major ruins it. If literary allusions are a deal-breaker for some, they're my blind spot.

This is the story of three students trying to keep their college graduation from becoming the apogee of their whole lives. Madeline studies English; Leonard, biology; and Mitchell, religion. In the midst of their trying to find meaning in their post-graduate lives, a tangled love-triangle ensues. Mitchell loves Madeline, who loves Leonard, who is manic depressive and by turns loves everything and then nothing. Each of the characters is so different from the other, and each is so strong, that the book grips you in the force of their personalities.

I love the sections focussed on Leonard and on Mitchell. Leonard, like many real-life people with bi-polar disorder, is magnetic, fascinating, and frustrating. Mitchell is his foil--a loner and a wanderer. I never really grasped the reason they both go for Madeline, though I feel a kinship with her in her nerdiness and struggle to find her way. Eugenides delivers musical prose and even humor. I can't recommend this book highly enough to the English Majors in my life (oh, the section on semiotics alone!), and to everyone else: it's a wonderful modern love story.

The Virgin Suicides
By Jeffrey Eugenides

You might as well know, Eugenides has written three novels, one every ten years since 1993.  The Virgin Suicides, then Middlesex in 2003 (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and then The Marriage Plot in 2011. Each of these books is wildly different. You might just as well know that The Virgin Suicides is my least favorite of the three.

Probably the most striking fact about The Virgin Suicides, is that it is written from the first-person-plural perspective, giving an already dream-like book a strange, elusive quality. The book is not so much about a family with five daughters who all commit suicide, but about how we--society-- are simultaneously obsessed with those around us, and completely ignorant of them.

The book begins with the death of the youngest sister and precedes through the months leading up the the deaths of the other four girls. There is a touch of magical realism in the book. Impossible events occur, distorting the POV and timeframe, everything (a tube-top, an elm tree, a stuffed chameleon) is invested with meaning. The book feels very poetic and experimental. In some passages it works and in some you begin to feel sort of adrift in a way I'm not sure is intentional. One passage nicely demonstrates the tone of the book and, fittingly, my feelings about it:

"Most people remember the Day of Grieving as an obscure holiday. The first three hours of school were canceled and we remained in our home rooms. Teachers passed out mimeographs related to the day's theme, which was never officially announced, as Mrs. Woodhouse felt it inappropriate to single out the girls' tragedy. The result is that the tragedy was diffused and universalized. As Kevin Triggs put it, 'It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry about everything that happened, ever.'"

Zodiac
By Robert Graysmith

A true-crime book about a famous serial killer.

Tim and I listened to the audio book version on a camping road trip together. This was a singularly bad idea, as I felt we were going to be stabbed to death in our tent (which was, ironically, set up near a camper full of missionaries) AND that, impossibly, someone was lurking in the overstuffed back seat of our car.

It's rather macabre to say you "enjoyed" a book about a serial killer, but I have to admit that this book got under my skin in a way I couldn't resist.

The Zodiac case is an unsolved series of murders that took place across California in the late 60's and early 70's. The murderer was fond of writing cryptic letters and actual cypher puzzles to area newspapers and detectives, boasting about his crimes. Author Robert Graysmith was a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the Zodiac murders, and took it upon himself to investigate the the murders. (A film version was directed by David Fincher in 2007.) The book goes into detail about the confirmed Zodiac killings, as well as a number that are believed to have been committed by him--upwards of thirty murders. The book benefits from Graysmith's proximity to the events. In some cases, he tails suspects and collects evidence which he presents to the many detectives who worked on murder cases in different counties. It is harrowing to discover how many murder cases have no resolution and no hope of ever being solved.

In general, the writing is very straight-forward, though it can be hard to keep track of the many police officers and reporters described in the book. I'm not sure what twisted impulse leads people (myself included) to read books like this, but I will admit that I was hooked from beginning to end.