Ms. Hen reviews The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Gertrude Stein

Vintage Books

1933

Ms. Hen decided to buy this book because she was browsing in a used bookstore, and found this. She had heard of Gertrude Stein from many places, including Hemingway's A MOVABLE FEAST, and Ms. Hen was curious about her writing. She also remembers Kathy Bates' portrayal of her in the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS.

This novel is an autobiography of sorts about Stein's partner, Alice B. Toklas. In the beginning of the book, Toklas describes her young life, and how she eventually arrived in Paris. She describes the salon that Stein has on Saturday evenings, and how she sat with "the wives of geniuses." Stein was like the genius, and Toklas was her wife.

A section of the book is about The Great War, when a lot of people left Paris, and they did not have their Saturday evenings. Coal was scarce, and Stein would not wait in line to get it for free, because she said she had no need to get it free. She was a driver for the American Fund for French Wounded, and she drove around France and gave soldiers rides to where they needed to go. After the war, their lives returned to the way it was, and Stein worked hard to get published.

Ms. Hen wanted to like this novel, but it was tedious. The sections about the parties went on and on, and the women met all these people, and they became good friends with them. The people who were their friends were interesting: Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and the list goes on. There's only so much Ms. Hen can read about fascinating people these women met. It sounds like they had a lot of fun, but Ms. Hen thinks it's boring to read about people meeting talented artists over and over again.

Also, what Ms. Hen thinks is remarkable, is that there is no mention of the relationship between the two women. They were lovers, but that is not mentioned in the book at all. Ms. Hen thinks this is deliberate on Stein's part because it would not have been as successful if this were the case. This book was Stein's biggest success, after it came out, she toured the United States, and became a celebrity writer.

Even though Ms. Hen was disappointed in this novel, she thinks it's an important artifact about history. Stein writes about the world that she and Toklas knew, which is completely different from the way the world is now, obviously. But this book is so close to them, it's about all their friends, and the good life they had. Ms. Hen thinks it was successful because people in the United States wanted to know about the fascinating lives of artists in Paris at the time. They did live amazing lives, but Ms. Hen still thinks this is a difficult book to read, but she read the whole thing. Sometimes, when she's not interested, she doesn't finish a book, but even though it was hard, she did, because even though it was painful, she was still curious.

 

Ms. Hen reviews The Company She Keeps

 

The Company She Keeps

Mary McCarthy

Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc

1942

Ms. Hen picked this book up at a used bookstore recently because she liked the author's name, and she has a memory of seeing her memoir, MEMOIRS OF A CATHOLIC GIRLHOOD somewhere around, possibly in her house. She thinks that book is one that her aunt would have brought to her family's house, because it's a title she would have liked.

This is a novel in stories, about a young bohemian woman in the 1930s who lives in New York, and works at various jobs, and has a few husbands and lovers. In the story, "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," the woman, yet unnamed, has an affair on her husband, and she fears spinsterhood if she leaves him and her lover does not marry her. In "Rogue's Gallery," Margaret works for an art gallery, whose owner is stingy, and manages money badly, and makes most of his money from miniature portraits of dogs.

In "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt," Meg is on her way to Portland, Oregon, and she gets drunk, and has a regrettable affair with an older man. In "The Genial Host," Meg describes the host of a party, who conducts his events like an artist, but tries to control her. "Portrait of the Intellectual as a Yale Man," is about a young man who has an affair with Meg, told through his point of view. "Ghostly Father, I Confess," is about Meg at her analyst reliving her family history and where it has brought her.

This novel reminds Ms. Hen of a couple of books, LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER, which was a scandal in its day, similar to this one, and LOLITA, because it is risque, but droll and descriptive. Ms. Hen read that when this novel came out, an alarm went out, because in the story, "The Man in the Brooks Brother Shirt," is about a young woman having sex with a man she does not know, which was outrageous at the time, especially written by a woman. 

Ms. Hen liked this book because she thinks it's a window to the past, to the way the world used to be, especially relations between men and women. Ms. Hen thought the first story, "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," was ridiculous because the young woman thought that she would end up alone if she left her husband, and her lover did not marry her. She liked the next story better, and they got better after that.

Ms. Hen understands that this novel is semi-autobiographical, and the writer said she did have an affair with a man on a train going west. Ms. Hen thinks this is interesting that she would expose herself like that, and brave. Women didn't do those things back then.

Ms. Hen recommends this novel if you want to be angry about the way women used to be treated, but want to learn about it. The last story, "Ghostly Father, I Confess," is about the woman being treated badly by her husband and her analyst, and they tell her that she is hysterical. This would not happen these days, thankfully, because Ms. Hen likes to think women are treated with more respect by therapists. We have come a long way, but not long enough.

Ms. Hen reviews The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Viking

2020

Ms. Hen decided to read this simply because it was recommended to her on Amazon. Sometimes she feels guilty buying books on Amazon, but she received a gift card for Administrative Professionals Day, and she wanted to buy things that interested her. This book piqued her interest.

This novel is about a thirty-five year old woman, Nora, whose life has turned upside down. Her cat dies, she loses her job, and her only piano student is stopping lessons with her. She has a lot of regrets in her life; she wishes she had ended up in a different place. She decides life is not worth living, and she swallows a bunch of pills. She ends up in a place called the Midnight Library, which is guarded by a woman who appears to be her school librarian, Mrs. Elm.

Mrs. Elm explains how the library works. A book called The Book of Regrets spells out each of Nora's regrets. Every other book is about a life Nora could have lived: the regret that she didn't marry her fiance, Dan, or one where she could have been a rock star, or one she was a glaciologist. Nora opens these books and is transported to her parallel lives where she made different choices.

This novel reminds Ms. Hen of a TV show from the 90s called SLIDERS, in which characters slid to parallel universes where something different in history happened. It also makes her think of a novel she read recently called FAMOUS MEN WHO NEVER LIVED by K Chess, about our world that has a parallel dimension where some characters get trapped in our dimension.

Ms. Hen thought this novel was fantastic, and she finished it very fast. She believes she is a hen who has lead many different parallel lives, and she relates to this character. She doesn't believe in regrets, however, because regrets only make a person bitter. She thinks the future is always in front of us.

Ms. Hen finished this novel on her porch on Saturday, which was a beautiful day where she lives, it was 72 degrees and sunny, the exact temperature of the Starship Enterprise, and when she was reading it she got very emotional. She was embarrassed that her neighbors might see her crying, so she held the book in front of her face as she was finishing it. She felt silly that she was ashamed, but it was that good! This book made her feel better about the world.

Ms. Hen loved this book, and she would recommend it to anyone. She might even read it again some day, which she doesn't do with most books. Nora went through a lot of other lives in different dimensions, but what she learned is it's the little things that you do that make a difference, and love is the most important part of life.

 

Ms. Hen reviews Her Body and Other Parties

 

Her Body and Other Parties

Carmen Maria Machado

Graywolf Press

2017

Ms. Hen decided to read this because again, her imaginary friend whose name begins with an A recommended it to her. She thinks it's amazing that an algorithm should know her that well, but she doesn't know why she's amazed. She shouldn't be because the machines are watching us all the time, and they know everything we do.

This is a collection of short stories, and they are all dark and supernatural, and like fairy tales. The longest story in the collection, "Especially Heinous," is about the TV show LAW AND ORDER SVU, which Ms. Hen has always thought was disturbing. In this story, the main characters of the show are haunted by doppelgangers of themselves, and they live in a supernatural world. In the story "Real Women Have Bodies," women are disappearing and being sewn into evening gowns sold at a store in a mall. Ms. Hen's favorite story is "The Resident," which is about a woman who is a resident at an artist colony in a rural area where she used to go camping with the Girl Scouts when she was young. She is unstable, and has an episode in front of the other residents. Ms. Hen liked the setting because it reminded her of where she went to graduate school.

This collection reminded Ms. Hen of some other books she has read, "ST. LUCY'S HOME FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES," and "STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN," both are collections of short stories, mostly about women, with a lot of sex intertwined. This collection of short stories was very well received when it came out; it got rave reviews, and it was a National Book Award finalist.

Ms. Hen thinks it's curious that this book did so well. Not because it isn't good, but because it's so strange. Ms. Hen thinks the general public does not like books or other things that are this odd, but the general public always surprises her. Ms. Hen thinks this book did well because the stories are not afraid; they don't shy away from going to dark and disgusting places that some books fear.

Is it possible for a book to be afraid? Ms. Hen thinks so. Ms. Hen also thinks that some books should mind their own business. Either way, she enjoyed this, and it inspired her to write a story in this style, dark and psychological. Ms. Hen enjoys the morbid and sick side of life, and books like this satisfy her hunger.

Ms. Hen reviews Tender is the Flesh

 

Tender is the Flesh

Augustina Bazterrica

Scribner

2017, 2020

Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses

Disclaimers

1. This book should not be read by vegetarians.

2. This book is not for the squeamish.

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because her imaginary friend whose name begins with an A recommended it to her. It's amazing how well she knows Ms. Hen. Normally, she does not listen to machines, but she decided to pay attention this time, and she was rewarded.

This novel takes place in a dystopian future in which all the animals in the world have disappeared. Scientists have decided that the population needs to eat animal protein, so human meat processing plants have emerged. The protagonist, Marcos, works at a plant that breeds and slaughters head, or what they call human meat. Marcos' father owned the plant which processed cattle, so he has transitioned into this career, which pays a lot of money. He finds himself disgusted by the head that is killed for food.

Marcos is devastated over the loss of his son, and his wife left him, and is living with her family. His father is in a nursing home, and his sister lives far away, and he doesn't like the fact that she succumbs to popular beliefs. People eat human meat throughout the novel, and Ms. Hen is disgusted by this. A female head is delivered to Marcos, and he does not want to slaughter her.

An aspect of this novel that Ms. Hen decided she could learn from is its escalation. The novel is disgusting at the beginning, but then it gets more and more repulsive. Ms. Hen thinks this was done on purpose to freak out the reader. In this way, the novel reminds her of GEEK LOVE, which is a narrative that tends to build up tension and perverseness as it goes through the story. 

This novel also reminds Ms. Hen of the book she just read, CHILDREN OF MEN, but instead of all the children in the world disappearing, all the animals disappear. TENDER IS THE FLESH is wilder, however, and more shocking. The idea is the same: in the future, the world is startlingly different, and not what we expect it to be.

Ms. Hen was grossed out by this novel, but she found that she could not put it down. She read it faster than she reads most other books she has read recently. She's not sure if it was the writing style, or the subject matter, but she believes this is an important book that shows how humanity can turn to the dark side, and it's not that unrealistic.

Ms. Hen would not recommend this novel for vegetarians, or humanitarians, or anyone who cares deeply for anything, truly. This novel is meant to shock, and it does. The fact that it is written by a woman is interesting to Ms. Hen, and she wonders what type of woman she is. There are times when she read this, when she was so disgusted that she thought it was funny. She wonders if she's the only person to react this way. Sometimes the best way to react to horror is to laugh, because there's nothing else to do.