Snapshot Book Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book does a wonderful job of looking at hard choices and the long-term, wide-reaching impacts they can have. Edwards' treatment of each character's internal strife--the husband and father David, the wife Nora, the nurse Caroline, and son Paul--is both touching and compelling in a way that drives the reader through the book, feeling fascination, frustration, and compassion both with and for the characters throughout the story.

It's a beautifully sad tale told in a picturesque way. Each strand of the story is treated with careful details so that not too much attention is paid to those that don't matter, but nothing interesting or essential is ignored. Edwards does a fine job of wrapping things up emotionally for her characters, in the end; however, the events and actions she ends with are disappointingly predictable. However, life itself can sometimes follow predictable patterns, so perhaps she was merely staying true to the story. Either way, it will be a joy to see what she comes up with next.

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Snapshot Book Review: Swimming

Swimming by Nicola Keegan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first two-thirds of this book were right on the mark: it's a book about swimming, family dynamics, and growing up. We follow the main character, Pip, through her childhood and adolescence as she deals with her sister's debilitating illness and depression, her mother's agoraphobia, and her father's virtual withdrawal from the family by catapulting herself into the world of competitive swimming.

Having been a swimmer myself, I found the various passages describing swimming and the feeling of "having swum" very accurate. My favorite passage is the following: "It hurts to write with a pencil, to sit down on a chair, to pee, to take of my sweater, to run up the stairs, to answer the phone, to open a book, to get in a car, to get out of a car, to take off my shoes, to lie down on my bed. The ache is proof of an efficient swim; the more I ache, the faster I become." That is exactly how it feels and exactly what you have to think when you are training--otherwise any sane person would just give up!

The book begins to fall apart, however, when Pip begins to fall apart. It was strategic of Keegan not to end Pip's career on an Olympic high note, because many of the issues in the book would have remained unresolved or else have been too quickly and falsely resolved. However, as Pip tries to resolve things for herself and the writing tries to reflect her mental state, I, as the reader, found myself becoming less and less interested. Fewer things happen as the book progresses in this manner, and the introspection becomes tired and overdone. By the end of the book, I was no longer flipping pages with eagerness to get to the next one; I was flipping pages to get the thing over with. Feeling that way about any novel is never good.

I hope to see more work by Keegan, particularly fiction dealing with family drama and/or athletic careers, because she handles these very well and, with a little more work, will undoubtably keep a reader captivated throughout the duration of a novel. Really, though, I hope to find another book titled "Swimming" that focuses solely on a swimming career. And I don't mean a book like Phelps' No Limits, either. I want a story. I want a story told well.

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Do you remember....

Long distance calling? Remember when calling another state cost extra? Or even another area code? Imagine picking up your cell phone today and thinking, “Gotta keep this short—it’s long distance.” Instead, it’s now, “Gotta keep this short—or call back after 9 when my minutes are free!” Unless of course the call is international; then that really is long-distance….

Card catalogues? And not the online ones, either—the kind that used thousands of indexed-size cards all lined up in long narrow drawers along library walls. You would page through alphabetically until you came upon the author’s last name of the book you wanted . . . or didn’t, and had to ask the librarian.

VHS? Remember walking down to a Blockbuster to rent a movie? Remember them not having the one you wanted? Or any of the ones you wanted? Remember when the previous renter didn’t rewind the movie you finally ended up renting and having to wait while it whirred backwards in your video cassette player? Sometimes you finished half your popcorn by the time the movie was ready!

Then, trying to skip the previews was nearly impossible, because usually you’d go too far and have skipped past the beginning of the movie. Then, there would be a fight over the remote control, because someone would be convinced they could do it better. . . . Now, with DVDs, all we have to fight over is what to order next on Netflix.

Search engines before Google? Yahoo! might still be known in some circles, but does anyone remember AskJeeves or Altavist? What about Lycos, InfoSeek, Dogpile, or Netscape? Does anyone even consider searching anything but Google anymore? And would they still say they “googled” it even if they “yahooed” it?

Dial-up internet? Forget smartphones or even WiFi. This was the era of don’t-pick-up-the-phone-or-you’ll-knock-someone-off-the-internet and, if-you-pick-up-the-phone-while-someone-is-connecting, you’ll-get-an-earful-of-“screeeechhh!beeep!scheglamphmlbigphlpl!beep!”

And most of all, does anyone remember a time before the internet?! It’s a wonder we were able to survive. We had to use real maps to get anywhere! We used the telephone to make reservations and appointments! We looked up numbers and addresses in…the yellowpages! (Can you believe they still print those?) And we sent mail via the Postal Service! Just think if you had to wait three days to receive your e-mail. . . .

A Little Bit of Heartbreak: Rutgers Half Marathon

I knew before I even got to the race that I wasn’t going to PR. (For those who are still wondering, PR stands for “Personal Record.” And yes, it is being used here as a verb.) I had been feeling tired and “out-of-it” all week, and mentally I was simply not as excited about this race as I had been for the one in DC (in spite of the fact that I was running the Rutgers race with friends, and I ran DC alone).

Race day arrived, and despite a foreboding forecast, the sun was shining and the skies were clear. The course turned out to be impressively flat and scenic, and the race was well-attended. All-in-all, excellent conditions.

Unfortunately, good conditions weren’t enough. I ran a time slightly faster than my Queens half-marathon time, but considerably slower than my most recent DC time, clocking in at 1:37:05.

The real disappointment came when I looked at the race results. I came in 4th in my age group—which is great!—but if I had run my DC time in this race, I would have taken 3rd. Third place! I would have placed in a race with over 3,000 participants! It is a weird dichotomy to feel happy to have run a sub-7:30 pace while feeling sorry that I didn’t run as fast as I “could have.”

Could I have pushed myself harder? In hindsight I want to say yes, but in actuality there is just no knowing. Next race, though, I am going to check my watch. Looking back at my split times, I was on pace to PR up until the last 5k of the race! So if nothing else, at least there was a lesson learned.

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Gender Place (All Women)	Age Group Place (F20-24)
13.1 miles	1:37:05	7:24/mile	22/1351	4/183

Snapshot Book Review: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fabulous story. Fabulous characters. Fabulous life lessons. This book would have received a fabulous five stars, if only the author would have written it in true, distinguishable, convincing African-American dialect. Instead, two of her three narrators merely sound like a white person who, two-thirds of the time, throws in some bizarre truncated language, trying to sound uneducated. In short, Kathryn Stockett writes like a white person trying to sound black. And it's a shame, because who can blame her? She is.

The story itself is beautiful. Structuring it so that it is told from three different first-person points of view is also wonderful, because it keeps you, the reader, from "rooting" for only one group of people or considering only one possible outcome to any particular action or set of events.

However, Stockett's attempts to write in African-American dialect fall far short of their goal. Not only does she fail to convincingly portray the sound of a black woman speaking, but she fails to distinguish the two black maids who narrate her story (Minny and Adelaide) from one another. Fortunately, they are discernible by their attitudes and circumstances throughout the novel, but when it comes to their speech patterns and "voices" they are completely indistinguishable.

The novel, as an entertaining piece of literature, was a pleasure to read. However, as a critical writer and English major, I cannot help but give Stockett and her editorial team the criticism that they deserve. I hold out hope that she improves upon this aspect in her next novel--because after the success of The Help, there will surely be one.

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