LitPicks - January '07

My Friend Nan: The first two books come recommended by a friend with an uncanny ability to find books that critics eventually come to admire. Trust me, when she likes something, it's going to be big—critically, in the mainstream, or both. (Also LitPick Jan 08.)

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works




Marley and Me
By John Grogan, 2005
305 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Nan called to say she was giving everyone in her family a copy of this book—high praise, indeed, because she isn’t exactly a dog lover. In fact, she doesn't like people who are.

So obviously I was intrigued, all the more so because Nan has unerring literary taste, choosing books long before critics get around to them (Cold Mountain, A Suitable Boy, Atonement). So maybe she was on to something. Of course she was, and by now Marley and Me is a best seller.

On the surface, the book is about a man and his dog, a giant, unruly yellow lab, what may be "the worst dog in the world." On another level, though, the book becomes a meditation on love, loyalty, unbridled joy, and intense devotion to life even in the face of adversity. These are the book’s lessons for our own species. Author John Grogan, the "me" of the title, lays down the thematic lines in the closing chapters, turning a hilarious canine version of The Odd Couple into Tuesdays with Marley.

True, books about dogs are always sentimental, and this one is no exception. But it manages to rise above the bathos because Grogan doesn’t let us wallow in it. With foreshortened lives, dogs mirror in fast-forward mode our own lives and have a lot to teach us about living fully. That’s what Grogan is up to here, and he pulls it off.

Check out our Reading Guide for Marley and Me.

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Atonement
Ian McEwan, 2002
480 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
His fellow Brits once dubbed him "Ian Macabre" due to his string of dazzling yet morbid novels. But this time around, Ian McEwan has written a gorgeous, lush book, taking on the genteel shades of Jane Austen, particularly her Northanger Abbey and its young heroine with the over-active imagination that lands her in so much trouble.

McEwan begins his story in 1935 on the Tallis family’s country estate. The plot revolves around a false accusation made by 13-year-old Briony Tallis—a sort of innocence gone awry. Her lie is compounded by chance mishaps and willful malignance. The sad consequences lead Briony to spend years working to atone for her guilt, first as a young nurse during World War II and finally as a well-known author in 1999.

But McEwan moves beyond Austen's staid world of 19th-century fiction. He moves in a modernist direction: like Virginia Woolf, he uses multiple voices and time periods. Like post-modernist John Fowles (as in The French Lieutenant’s Woman), he shifts endings and realities.

If I've made Atonement sound dry and academic, it isn’t! It’s a compelling, beautiful narrative— told with grace and compassion. You care deeply for these characters because McEwan does. And you know at once, from the opening lines of the book, that you’re in the hands of a masterful writer.

See our Reading Group Guide for Atonement. And don't miss the gorgeous 2007 film adaptation with James McAvoy and Keira Knightly.

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Emma
Jane Austen, 1815
560 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Start the new year off with a dance! A brilliant, complex dance—with skip-steps, turns, and sashays. Emma is Austen’s masterpiece, a story in which triple strands of plot bob and weave in and around one another, and Austen never misses a step.

As Austen herself admitted, Emma Woodhouse is a difficult heroine because she’s not particularly likeable. Wealthy and beautiful, she is in today's parlance a control freak—bossy and headstrong, insisting that everyone follow her lead whether they hear the same tune or not. She’s a matchmaker extraordinaire, or thinks she is, except that she continually gets it wrong with near disastrous results.

Austen’s witty, critical eye is in fine fiddle, drawing sharp-edged portraits of character types: hypochondriacs, garrulous elders, social climbers, handsome rakes, and salt-of-the-earth yeoman farmers. Of course, what makes Austen so rewarding and endlessly funny is that we recognize these same types in our own era—some 200 years later.

The book is also an interesting study in the strictures of social class. Two characters attempt to break into the rarefied atmosphere of the upper-class gentry but are rebuffed—one gently and the other not so gently. For all of Austen’s often-subversive wit, this book ends with all characters placed securely in their “rightful” 19th-century class divisions. (Not till Persuasion does she champion social mobility and a growing middle-class.)

Nonetheless, you will emerge from this book breathless, as if you’ve just finished a fast-paced, boisterous country reel.

There are two fairly good (not great) film versions: one with Gwyneth Paltrow (1996) and the other with Kate Beckinsale (1997). I actually prefer the Beckinsale version, though it's not as polished as the Paltrow one—and I like Paltrow's Emma better. But the Beckinsale version captures more of the book's humor. Watch them both and decide for yourself.

See our Reading Guide for Emma.

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