Reviews: Cartwheels in a Sari, The 19th Wife, and Spellbinder

Whew, I've been slacking! Just on the posting though, not on the actual reading, which is an improvement!

I finished Cartwheels in a Sari by Jayanti Tamm first. It's a very well written, interesting memoir about growing up as part of a cult. When her parents break their guru's rule about sex and her mother ends up pregnant, their guru tells them he has arranged for a special soul to be sent to them, a soul that will be his perfect disciple on earth. Tamm was told from infancy that she was this special soul. The story follows her into her 20s, when she finally breaks with her guru.

The thing I liked most about Cartwheels in a Sari was the honesty with which Tamm writes. In some memoirs, the author's bias or agenda seeps heavily into the narrative. With this book, however, Tamm tells her story moment by moment as she felt about each event as it happened. The result is that in addition to being a good story, the book helps you understand the mentality of such a cult and why someone would feel the need to be a part of it. I was reading this book at the same time that I was listening to David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife on CD, and there were a surprising number of parallels.

The 19th Wife is really two stories spliced together, plus fictional newspaper articles, school papers, letters, journal entries, and Wikipedia entries. The first story is that of Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young's wives who ended up divorcing him and becoming one of polygamy's most outspoken critics. It is her fictional memoir, which is based on her actual memoir.

Interspersed with Ann Eliza's story is that of Jordan Scott, a "lost boy" who was kicked out of the polygamist cult in which he was raised and left to fend for himself. When he comes across a picture of his mother online accompanying a story about her arrest for the murder of Jordan's father, Jordan finds himself heading from California to Utah to find out what really happened.

The whole thing took up 15 CDs, which took me two months of driving to and from work plus listening at home to finish. It was a lot. I was fascinated by the two main story lines, but the supplementary "documents" got to be a lot. I think that if I'd been reading the book instead of listening it would have been better, and they certainly added depth to the two main stories. Definitely a book worth reading, and really interesting when read in conjunction with Cartwheels in a Sari, about a totally different yet eerily similar cult situation.

Finally, I just sped through a galley lent to me by a coworker: Spellbinder by Helen Stringer. It's a young adult novel coming out next month, I believe. It reminded me a lot of The Prophecy of Sisters by Michelle Zink, which I wrote about here. Both follow main characters who find out there is more to their reality than they believe (think other worlds and supernatural beings) and that they have key roles to play in the overall scheme of the universe. Spellbinder has more humorous bits; even the wording itself tends toward sarcasm instead of drama. The Prophecy of Sisters, on the other hand, is very much about the drama. Spellbinder is also contemporary; Prophecy is set a couple of centuries ago. Both were fun reads. Prophecy leaves you hanging, and while Spellbinder wraps up most of the story, there's definitely room for many sequels to come!

Currently reading: The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mom Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid by Ellen Currey-Wilson.

Currently listening to: The Graveyard Book by (and read by!) Neil Gaiman at home, and Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise in the car.

Review: At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream

Whew, what a title! The cover is what drew me to this book initially. That, and the opening story, in which our protagonist fights of a living coonskin cap he's acquired while taking out the trash with nothing but tube of Burt's Bees lip gloss and some breath spray.

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life is Wade Rouse's memoir about giving up urban life in St. Louis and moving to rural Michigan with his partner, Gary. Inspired by Thoreau's Walden, which his grandmother introduced him to during his rural Ozark childhood, Wade sets out to establish his own simple country existence, which he dubs Wade's Walden.

What ensues is by turns hysterical, ridiculous, embarrassing, and touching. Whether he's sneaking in a covert shopping binge at an outlet mall or singing Kelly Clarkson at the local karaoke bar while getting hit on by a pair of girls, Rouse's anecdotes are always over the top and saturated with pop culture references.

The book is divided into sections, with each chronicling progress with one of the ten areas Rouse has decided to work on during his time in the country. These include getting to know his neighbors, taking care of the fuzzy woodland creatures, and deepening his relationship with Gary. At each step, Rouse must also confront the rural childhood he fled when he moved to the city so many years ago. Each section concludes with a scorecard-style tally of who's winning: Wade's Walden or Modern Society.

I must say I enjoyed the book. If you can handle the exaggerated style, it's certainly fun. It even has some good messages tucked in amongst the drama.

Now reading: Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult by Jayanti Tamm. Surprisingly well done; more when I finish it!

Article: Abandon a Bad Book?

It's like I always say...life is too short to read bad books!

Review: The Nanny Diaries

I finished The Nanny Diaries last night. It's been on my shelf for years, and every time I cleaned out my books I would read the first few pages, think, "Yep, I still want to read it," and put it back. But after reading the quick, witty Sleeping Naked is Green by Vanessa Farquharson, I was in the mood for something similarly written.

I really enjoyed the first 250 or so pages of the book. To me it was good girl fiction, including a boy (but not too much), a mom and sister, helpful friends, a stressful situation, and--of course--a cat. I was either rooting for or against pretty much every character in the book.

The last 50 pages? Not so much. It almost felt like the authors were done writing and had to think of a quick way to end the book. I guess some would argue the final situation was inevitable, but I wanted it to end on a different character's terms. Instead of feeling satisfied, the way you do when you've just finished a fantastic book (the feeling the rest of the book made me anticipate!), I was left with quite the opposite, kind of like I'd eaten something that hadn't quite hit the spot and was now beginning to disagree with my stomach.

I guess, though, that authors who can make you care that much about their characters are talented indeed. The sequel, Nanny Returns, will be out on December 15th, if you're interested. I just might pick it up and see if it makes up for the first one's ending!