Memoirs are becoming a huge hit in the graphic novel genre. After Maus, Persepolis and Blankets, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is the next big thing. The subtitle: A Family Tragicomic says it all really.
Fun Home (Bechdel's nickname for the funeral home her father owned) tells the story of Alison growing up in a supposedly conventional home with a strict father who loves interior design, flowers and young men, a mother who only has eyes for Oscar Wilde and her two “normal” brothers.
From an early age onwards, Alison feels that she's not the girly girl her overcompensating father wants her to be. It takes her several years to come to terms with these feelings and when she's at college, she finally embraces her sexuality.
Fun Home chronicles her confusing childhood, her father's double life and their relationship which is filled with uncomfortable silences but eventually leads to understanding aided by a mutual love for James Joyce.
Alison Bechdel's epic odyssey to make peace with and come to terms with the reasons behind her father's death is dark, funny and very touching. Her drawings are beautiful and add depth and detail to her voyage of self discovery. Fun Home is an exceptional memoir and a visual treat.
Besides eating too much chocolate, which I know I'm not supposed to anymore, I also watched a lot of movies this Easter weekend despite the lovely sunny weather. We went to the park as well, worked a little, visited the gruesome twosome aka my mother and grandmother but mainly we just chilled.
I also started reading Ian McEwan's Solar on Sunday but I fell asleep even before I reached page 30 which isn't a good sign, I guess I just wasn't in the mood for environmental issues, besides I've always had a love-hate relationship with McEwan. I truly loved The Cement Garden and On Chesil Beach but hated Amsterdam and Atonement, both utter abominations if you ask me.
Anyway, we kicked off the weekend with Monsters on Friday. It's a low budget Sci-Fi / thriller / drama in which a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border after earth has fallen victim to an alien invasion. The director, Gareth Edwards, created all the special effects with his computer and simply followed his two main characters as they backpacked through Mexico, using the footage they just happened to stumble on. With “subtle” reference to the illegal aliens who want to enter America, Monsters for me, was more of an atmospheric and offbeat romantic indie with some death and devastation to spice things up.
Next up Management, again an offbeat romantic indie. Why aren't you surprised, right? This time it's one that went straight to DVD in the States and straight to the 1€ bin in Belgium. A very dowdy Jennifer Aniston plays a traveling art saleswoman who tries to shake off a flaky motel manager played by Steve Zahn, who falls for her and won't leave her alone. This tale of a stalker turned lover was charming, understated but lacking any pezaz making it easily forgettable.
Julie & Julia starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep is based on two true stories: that of cooking legend Julia Child and of amateur cook turned blogger turned author Julie Powell. Julie Powell decided to cook every recipe in Julia Child's famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking during the course of a year and blog about it but little did she know that her pet project would be her ticket to stardom. I just loved both stories in the movie: two women cooking their selves to fame, as well as Julie Powell's book / collection of blog posts which the film was based on. It was a cute, entertaining and above all inspiring movie, perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Greenberg, finally, is Ben Stiller's first attempt at some serious acting. I'm not a big Stiller fan but the Pumpkin adores him so when he stares in the latest Noah Baumbach, we're both happy. Stiller plays a recently released mental patient who moves to Los Angeles in order to figure out his life while he housesits for his brother and falls for his assistant played by Greta Gerwig. There's not much going on really, just two tortured souls living their lives and annoying themselves and each other along the way.
Yesterday I did my first live interview in the store. It was nerve wrecking at first but ended up being lots of fun.
I interviewed Helen Grant about her novels (The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, The Glass Demon and Wish me Dead) and young adult fiction, a genre that is slowly breaking through in Belgium. The idea behind the interview was to introduce Helen and YA to the Belgian public.
I’ve known Helen for a while now and I’ve interviewed her before so I wasn’t particularly nervous about that but, while I was preparing my questions on Friday I started thinking about everything that could go wrong: what if we move too fast (we had an hour to fill), what if she answers multiple question at once and I am left with nothing to say, what if we start repeating ourselves and worst of all, what if it’s not interesting? Luckily, Helen is such a good storyteller that the latter could never be the case but, the other potential problems were all new to me because when you do a private one on one with somebody entertainment value, length and improvisation are never an issue.
In the end we easily filled that hour, I had to skip a few questions and improvise a little but fortunately nobody noticed. I am happy to say that Helen, myself and more importantly the audience had a great time, we had lots of interaction and more than half of them bought one of her novels so we must have done something right.
What I personally loved about doing a live interview was getting the response of the audience, something I hardly ever get with my written texts and interviews because there you are subordinate to your subject. People always remember what the text was about but never who has written it. Sure, occasionally someone will come up to me and say they read or liked my articles but seeing their reactions literaly unfold in front of you is quite something else.
Sadly, not a lot of people showed up. Maybe it’s because it’s the Easter holidays or because the weather is ridiculously good for this time of year or that just not many people are interested in YA in Belgium. Who knows? It was fun and that’s all that matters.
This week I started tweeting for the Groene Watermanand now I am seriously contemplating reviving my own account which died a slow and unsuspecting death on August 9th 2010. After checking my account today I was surprised to find many interesting book related items on it so.... maybe I should take the plunge yet again?
I know I once said that Twitter was the equivalent of blogging for people with the attention span of a fruit bat but if you're short on time, which I am these days, yet bursting with ideas, suggestions and your daily ramblings, it makes perfect sense. So if you want to be my new sparring partner, check out @Ginny_Jones
On our trip to London I finished Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. I had read several rave reviews and knew it won the National Book Critics Circle Award last year so I decided to give it a shot.
It’s hard to summarize this story about the music industry because it is told by several narrators whose stories are intertwined and shift from the past to the future, from NY to Naples and everywhere in between. It’s basically the perfect postmodern rollercoaster ride starring a cool cast of characters such as an aging record producer, a lovelorn kleptomaniac, a terminal singer who isn’t capable of dying and a genocidal general just to name e few.
Each chapter features a character with a wonderful story to tell that easily flows into the next one like a babbling brook. Egan doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the music industry from the Seventies onwards but it is a captivating and clever one enforced by her prose which is a pleasure to read, no matter how absurd or at times unpleasant the subject matter.
Jennifer Egan effortlessly takes us from place to place, time to time, and character to as she creates a pitch-perfect fictional mosaic. Her style is rich and adventurous (she for example includes a power point presentation as a chapter) and complements this tale about the passing of time perfectly.
As each character takes his or her own moment in the spotlight, he or she is desperate for a second chance and wants to hold off the approaching goon aka death, making music the perfect metaphor for this novel seeing as time is like the grooves on a record album, jumping from track to track in no particular order.
I savored every minute of A Visit from the Goon Squad but if you’re still not convinced of its splendor, take it up with the Pulitzer committee seeing as they just awarded her the prize.
We just got back from another exhausting trip to London. Don't get me wrong, it was great but we always return utterly knackered seeing as we do almost everything on foot so we can take in the sights.
We started with the London Book Fair which was a big gathering of agents, publishers, booksellers and suppliers aka the in crowd. It was fun browsing the booths but the bubbling atmosphere and added stress of customers was missing seeing as it was solely for people in the business making it a dry and slightly dreary affair that was brought back to life by various lectures and author interviews. We attended a lecture on ePub which was very interesting according to the Pumpkin, I just studied the floorplan.
Besides an abundance of books, our trip also consisted of a kick-ass boutique hotel in Hendon, the science museum which is huge, the Saatchi gallery which was surprisingly small and made me doubt the relevance of modern art once again,
Hummingbird cupcakes (yeah baby!), the Camden Markets, Notting Hill, loads of squirrel-infused walks and picnics in the park, several restaurants that I’d been dying to try like Leon and Canteen (sadly the World Food Cafe is no longer), a Muslim Fundamentalist demonstration which freaked me out (understatement) and lastly some mandatory shopping at Marks & Spencers, Boots and HMV. Oh, and I also got myself some funky new All Stars and a hot pink Ugly Doll (curtousy of the Pumpkin).
And for the first time ever, I managed not to buy anything at Waterstones because I came to the shocking conclusion that I already owned everything that was remotely interesting. There was basically nothing left to buy making me feel anxious, unfulfilled and aware of my moderate shopping addiction.
Tomorrow the pumpkin and I are off to the London Book Fair to do some browsing, attend some lectures and basically revel in literary loveliness. We'll be in London for a few days so I naturally made a schedule seeing as I can't leave home without one. I'm physically incapable of going with the flow.
It took me three weeks and many doctor's appointments but I finally finished Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and I absolutely loved it! It's actually the best book I've this year.
Major Pettigrew is a retired widower living in a quiet English village filled with the usual society ladies, gossiping neighbors and trivial scandals. He befriends Mrs. Ali who runs the local grocery store together with her nephew since her husband died. Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali both share a love for Rudiyard Kipling and often get together to discuss his work and slowly but surely the uptight Major falls for this Pakistani beauty but love is never easy, especially when his womanizing son returns together with a contractor who decides to build a mini mall in the village and last but not least there's Mrs. Ali's traditional family, who think England is no place for a widow.
Major Pettigrew's last Stand is British rural life in all its charming and devastatingly delicious loveliness. The characters are wonderful and simply leap from the page as they go about their day to day business. The story is simple, sweet and not as predictable as you may think due to various ingenious little subplots.
American author Helen Simonson was written a terrific debut novel that will convince you of the beauty of all things pure and simple. Witty, engaging and delightful, this novel will definitely put a smile on your face.
I've been going a little Penguin crazy lately. It all started with wanting to jazz up our study and I decided that some literary decorations were the way to go, starting with a big Penguin collage which I made from the Penguin postcards set (still a work in progress as you can see).
Then I realized that you can also download PDF's on the Penguin website with the covers of their gorgeous Red Editions of which 50% of the profits go directly to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. The Vanity Fair one is my absolute favorite so I had it made into a poster. I was considering getting a few printed and doing a “Red” wall but we just don't have the space seeing as our hallway was recently consumed by New Yorker covers.
All these covers have actually ignited my apparently dormant passion for book design, making Penguin 75 (a beautiful book celebrating 75 years of Penguin cover Design) a must have. I have to admit, there are some really stunning covers in there from the classic orange ones to some by pretty awesome guest designers such as Chris Ware, Ruben Toledo and Charles Burns. My inner girly girl was quivering from aesthetic delight.
To top things off, I also bought a Penguin mug so I can now sip my morning coffee from Jane Austen's masterpiece Pride and Prejudice.
Slowly but surely, Penguin is taking over my life.
Yesterday was April Fool's Day, my mom's 51st birthday (I'm so not kidding), the kick off of the Literaire Lente (Literary Spring) in Flemish bookshops and The International Day of the Edible Book, which was celebrated with a tasty piece of chocolate fiction.
Memoirs are becoming a huge hit in the graphic novel genre. After Maus, Persepolis and Blankets, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is the next big thing. The subtitle: A Family Tragicomic says it all really.
