I dipped into two fiction books this weekend, one Richard Bausch's new collection of short stories Something is out there. and the former bestseller by Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah's Key. They couldn't be more different.
Keeping strictly to the early-morning ritual, Diana prepared coffee, boiled one egg and lightly buttered two slices of toast for him, then put cereal on for the girls, and went and dressed for the day, while they ate. When they were finished, she rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. In the usual rush, she saw the twins off to school, brushing Lauren's hair for her, nagging Kelly about brushing her teeth thoroughly to get the food particles that had lodged in her braces. All as usual. So much the exact pattern of her mornings. The ordinariness of it made her happy, and it surprised her. It also increased her sense of unreality.The economy of this opening paragraph is a pleasure. We know Diana's day is structured, regular, but not a burden. That Diana's husband is a creature of habit, a reserved man - one egg, the toast lightly buttered - I call up the picture of an English parson. We also know that this will not be a typical day, but we don't know why, and so Bausch has created suspense in a scene of the most familiar ordinariness. Bausch fashions a world that is familiar almost to the point of cliche, but rescued from that fate by its being particular to individual lives. He accomplishes this through the use of detail. Each of the three worlds of his I have entered so far envelops me in its totality. We get to know its key citizens, usually just two or three people, very intimately. We go deep, not broad. The kind of encounter I leave feeling it has been of value.
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Bertrand waved to us, then pointed to the phone, lowering his eyebrows and scowling.Was this written for the Disney channel? "Like he can't get that person off the phone?" Like I can believe this sentence is being spoken by a Parisian 11-year-old who is continually 'scoffing' and 'adding grimly' - can she never simply 'say' anything? "First, her height, which dwarfed all her girlfriends - as well as her feet" Second, which comes after first, this is not a sentence. And, if I read this correctly, did her feet dwarf all her girlfriends?
"Like he can't get that person off the phone," scoffed Zoe. "Sure."
Zoe was only eleven, but it sometimes felt like she was already a teenager. First, her height, which dwarfed all her girlfriends - as well as her feet, she would add grimly...
Ms. de Rosnay also makes the unfortunate choice to use Zoe to give less cultured readers the basics in French everyday life:
"I have to go," I said. "Meeting with Joshua."School on Wednesday not on Thursday. Got it. Glad we got that exposition out of the way. I keep waiting for Mickey Rooney to run on from behind a curtain and sing a number.
"What do we do with Zoe?" asked Bertrand.
Zoe rolled her eyes.
"I can, like, take a bus back to Montparnasse."
"What about school?" said Bertrand.
Roll of eyes again.
"Papa! It's Wednesday. No school on Wednesday afternoons, remember?
Bertrand scratched his head.
"In my days it - "
"It was on Thursday, no school on Thursdays," Chanted Zoe.
"Ridiculous french education system," I sighed. "And school on Saturday mornings to boot!"
The chapters are of Disneyfied length, I guess that is so that the Americans can trot off to the kitchen between them to get popcorn and sugared soft drinks and maintain their status as the leader of stupidity and obesity in the Western world, while not forgetting who anyone is. So far the structure is predictable and the prose is the most ungainly I have read in a good long while. I am interested by the Vichy occupation and I have heard that the plot is a killer, so I will try to stay with this book a bit longer. I can only guess that its popularity has to do with the fact that no one could tell a well written book from a poorly written one when the subject was the holocaust. Or maybe it was Oprahed?
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