Ms. Hen reviews ALIAS GRACE

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood

Doubleday

1996

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she likes Margaret Atwood, and she had heard of the Netflix show, and was curious about the book. She checked it out of the library, and even though it was a hardcover, she read it nonstop for a week, and did not do anything else with her spare time. Ms. Hen thought it was that good.

ALIAS GRACE is historical fiction about a young Irish woman living in Canada, Grace Marks, who is in prison for murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and the housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. She was convicted along with her fellow servant James McDermott, who has been hung for the crime, but her sentence was commuted to life in prison. The novel centers around Dr. Simon Jordan interviewing Grace, trying to discover if she is innocent because she cannot remember what happened during the time of the murders. Dr. Jordan is a doctor of the mind, and he has traveled to Europe to visit lunatic asylums there, in hopes of starting a quality one in the United States, where he is from.

Grace never has any good luck. Her father is a drunk and beats her mother, and does not work. He is English, and in Ireland, he gets in trouble for associating with Orangemen. The family emigrates to Canada, and the mother dies on the way. Grace has to do all the work of taking care of the family, and her father sends her out to get a job in service. Grace makes a friend, Mary Whitney, whom she shares a bed in the house where they both are servants. She is employed at lots of other houses until she ends up at the Kinnear residence in the countryside. Nancy hires her because she cannot do all the work alone.

Grace doesn’t know what is happening in the house, until James McDermott tells her that Nancy is Mr. Kinnear's mistress. Grace thinks Nancy is strange, because she is friendly one moment, and nasty the next. Grace doesn’t like working at the house. Grace tells Dr. Jordan all about her life, up until the times of the murders. She thinks that he will help her get out of jail. She doesn’t know what has happened to her family or the people she has known. Dr. Dupont, who is in disguise, and is someone Grace has known previously, hypnotizes Grace, and she becomes possessed, or so it seems. Dr. Jordan is upset that the people in the audience want him to write about the hypnosis, but he doesn’t want to do so because he thinks it would make him a laughingstock in the medical profession.

Ms. Hen thinks this is one of the best books she has read in while. She has read some great books lately, but this is one of her favorites this year. She thinks that ALIAS GRACE is historical fiction about how terrible it is to be a woman, and THE HANDMAID’S TALE is futuristic fiction about how terrible it is to be a woman, so they are variations on the same theme. Grace feels threatened by men; she cannot go anywhere or do anything without the fear of men. Her friend Mary Whitney tells her she should not go to the privy (outhouse) by herself at night alone, because something could happen to her. That is what women had to deal with in the early nineteenth century, and the problems continue today, but in different ways.

Even though this novel is tragic, Ms. Hen was happy that it is full of hens and chickens. One significant scene in which chickens played part is when Nancy tells Grace to kill a chicken for dinner, and Grace can’t bring herself to do so, “I went to the henyard and caught a plump young fowl, a white one, crying all the time, and tucked it securely in my arm, and went towards the woodpile and the chopping block, wiping my tears with my apron; for I did not see how I could do such a thing.” Jamie Walsh comes along and kills the chicken for Grace. Grace is delicate and can’t handle killing a chicken, but she changes and becomes a different person when she helps McDermott kill Nancy.

Ms. Hen cannot begin to describe how much she loved this book. She thinks she feels this way because she understands the character, someone who is trapped, and does not have any choice about the course of her life. But Grace lived her life, and she dealt with her troubles. This novel is based on actual events, and Ms. Hen shudders when she thinks that these things could have happened to someone. The world is a difficult place for women, and always has been.

Ms. Hen reviews STONE ARABIA

Stone Arabia

Dana Spiotta

Simon & Schuster

2011

Ms. Hen read this book because she learned about it a while ago, and it was on her library list for a long time. She finally got around to reading it, and she was glad she did. There are very few books that Ms. Hen can’t stop reading, and this is one of them. She sped through this novel because she was engrossed with reading about the characters’ strange lives.

This novel is about a woman, Denise, and her family: her relationships with her brother, her mother, and her daughter. Denise lives alone and she worries about her brother Nik, a talented musician who has never become completely successful. Nik battles with drugs and alcohol, and keeps a record of his life he calls the Chronicles, written documents that are not completely factual. Denise worries about her mother, who is slipping into dementia. Denise thinks she is losing her memory also. Her daughter, Ada, wants to make a documentary about Nik and his life.

Denise lives alone and she watches the news constantly. She becomes obsessed with tragedy when she reads and watches TV, and cries herself to sleep over the stories of children killed at school, and an Amish girl who is kidnapped in upstate New York, and many others. Denise can’t help but become distraught over these news items and she loses sleep and becomes depressed.

This novel reminded Ms. Hen of the book she had just read, DEMONOLOGY, by Rick Moody, because it seemed to her as if the characters lived in the same world as the characters in STONE ARABIA, a weird world, and one that is unpredictable and could explode at any moment. Ms. Hen read in the acknowledgements that Dana Spiotta thanked Rick Moody, and Ms. Hen imagines they must be friends and have compared notes about writing. Ms. Hen enjoyed STONE ARABIA more than the other book, however. She thinks this book has better substance and color and has more sympathetic characters.

There was something about this book that Ms. Hen loved. She loved that Denise was unstable, and her brother was talented and erratic. She loved the fact that Denise is trying to figure out what her brother wants and what he is going to do next. Denise and Nik are the only children in their family, and their father left them when they were young, and the mother worked a lot, so they were left to themselves much of the time. They were their only family in the beginning of their lives, and they knew each other so well, that they could predict what each other would do. Ms. Hen thinks this is one of the only novels she has read recently about adult siblings who have a close relationship.

Ms. Hen recommends this book because it is like real life, and it shows a family and how dysfunctional it can be, but how they can love each other. Some families don’t have a connection like the one in this novel. This novel also shows how adults can unravel and become unstable and almost lose their minds. Modern day society is not set up for sensitive people who take everything personally. Delicate people can crack if they don’t take care of themselves. Ms. Hen knows this is true, but she is a tough hen now, as tough as she can be, for a hen.

Ms. Hen reviews DEMONOLOGY

Demonology

Rick Moody

Little, Brown and Company

2001

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she found it at a used bookstore, read the opening paragraph about a man wearing a rubber chicken head, and fell in love with the beginning of the story, “The Mansion on the Hill.” It took her a while to read the entire book, because she was focused on other things, but she got around to reading it in between library books.

Ms. Hen found that a lot of the stories in this collection have to do with car accidents, or other types of accidents. The story, “Mansion on the Hill,” is about a man grieving his sister who has died in a car accident. He starts working at a wedding company, and strange things happen there. The story, “Forecast from the Retail Desk,” is about a man who can predict the future, and he predicts his classmate’s death in a car accident when he is in high school.  The story “Hawaiian Night” is about a party at a resort, and a boat accident occurs.

Ms. Hen didn’t like the story “Pan’s Fair Throng,” a type of fairy tale. She doesn’t think it fits in with the collection at all, and she thought it was jarring. Whenever she reads collections of short stories, there are usually one or two she does not like.

The story, “The Carnival Tradition,” is the longest in the book. Ms. Hen didn’t like some of the characters, but she liked the story because it is about memory, and the things that happen to people when they remember things. It is a haunting story about two people, who were a couple for a short time, who look back to when they were young.

Ms. Hen read the story, “Boys,” in a class when she was in college. She recalls learning that it’s a good example of repetition in a story, and poetic writing. She thinks she had to do an exercise that had to do with the story, but she doesn't know if she remembers correctly.

Ms. Hen wanted to punch lot of the characters in these stories in the face. Many of them are quite obnoxious, especially in the story, “The Ineluctable Modality of the Vagina.” The two characters in that story irritated Ms. Hen.

Ms. Hen liked this collection of short stories, though she thought some stories were better than others. She didn’t love the book, but most of the characters are realistic and seem genuine, and she admires that in writing. Characters are what make quality writing, even though the reader might not enjoy them, and wouldn’t want to hang out with them, if they’re well drawn, they make the writing come alive.

Ms. Hen reviews KINDRED

Kindred

Octavia E. Butler

Beacon Press

1979

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she is interested in women science fiction writers. She had heard of Octavia Butler, but did not know anything about her. She is one of the only African American women science fiction writers. She is also the only sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Ms. Hen was impressed when she learned this.

This novel is difficult to read. Dana and her husband, Kevin are moving into a new house on Dana’s twenty-sixth birthday. Suddenly, she gets transported to the antebellum South, where her ancestor, Rufus, a slave owner, is about to die as a child. She saves him from drowning, but almost gets shot by his father, then is sent back to present day. Dana keeps going back to Maryland in that time, and it always happens when Rufus is in trouble and might be killed. She is considered a slave because she is black. Once she goes back with her husband Kevin.

Ms. Hen thought this book was hard because it brought her into the mind of a 1970s woman stuck in the time of slavery. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be Dana sent back to that time again and again, but it was realistic, though it is complete fantasy. It disturbed Ms. Hen to feel this way, to feel as if she were helpless and had no control over the character’s lives. This is what slavery was, having no control over your own destiny, and always at the whim of the master.

This book reminded Ms. Hen of slave narratives, and it was based on such books. Ms. Hen has read Frederick Douglass, NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Ms. Butler read this book as well and created her novel inspired by what she read. It also reminded Ms. Hen of BELOVED by Toni Morrison.

Ms. Hen thinks this is a book that everyone should read because it makes the reader look at what happened to this character and try to figure out what occurred. She is sent back in time to make sure her great-grandmother was born, but she learns of the details of the horrible circumstances in which the people lived. She got to see first-hand the experiences of her ancestors. There is no explanation why this happened, but Ms. Hen thinks it is a lesson that we must learn from the past, and teach the future generations the history of ourselves and the world around us.

Ms. Hen loved this book, though she thought it was disturbing. But since she is a hen that likes to be disturbed, she gives it high marks. Not everything Ms. Hen reads can be nice, and she likes it that way. This book also goes along with Ms. Hen’s going down the rabbit hole theme, and especially the TV show THE MINISTRY OF TIME, the Spanish show about time travel. Ms. Hen will travel through time as much as she can, because she is an adventurous hen.