Ms. Hen reviews The Mare

The Mare

Mary Gaitskill

Vintage Books

2015

Ms. Hen bought this novel at a charming used bookstore called Yes Books in Portland, Maine when she was there last month. She used to be a fan of Ms. Gaitskill until she saw her at Bennington at one of the residencies, and Ms. Hen heard her read and lecture, and she was not impressed. She remembered learning about this novel when it came out, and it was supposed to be decent so she picked it up.

The Mare is about a young Dominican girl who participates in the Fresh Air Fund, an organization that helps bring inner city children to rural areas, so they can experience nature, and go swimming, hiking, and get away from the dirtiness and danger of urban life. Velvet stays with Ginger and Paul in their house, which Velvet does not think is a rich person’s house at first. Velvet takes horseback riding lessons at a place next door, and she begins to love the horses and the lessons, especially one horse named Fugly Girl. Ginger takes care of Velvet, but Velvet’s mother, Silvia, does not like that a white woman is trying to be a mother to her daughter. Ginger and Velvet have a complex relationship, and they try to fill needs each other has.

One of the aspects of this novel that Ms. Hen did not like was the fact that Ginger, a forty-something white woman, is a sniveling idiot, and pines for a child. Ms. Hen does not think that every woman that doesn’t have a child is heartbroken.  Ginger is a clichéd character, as many characters are in this book. Ms. Hen would like to read about a character who is a forty-something woman who is happy she does not have a child. Ms. Hen believes that some women think that life is better without children, and they only mess up everything. They can be too much work, and if a person has a difficult time taking care of herself, a child can be a burden.

Velvet and her mother and brother are also clichés. Ms. Hen found it somewhat offensive that a white author is writing about a culture that she does not know personally in such a stereotypical way, like the descriptions of the people in the neighborhood and the things they say and do. Velvet’s mother is a rough woman, who beats her child, and cannot read or write. The way Ginger treats Velvet’s family is racist, and the whole program could be considered racist of bring young people from the inner city to the country to see how the other half lives, and it could make them become depressed about their own situations.

Some things about this novel are positive, however. Ms. Hen liked the way it was written: there are very short chapters told from a first person point of view, from the eyes of the different characters. Most of the book is told through Velvet and Ginger’s perspective, but there are also chapters from Paul and Silvia. Even though Ms. Hen liked the way it was written the voices were not consistent throughout the novel, especially Velvet’s. She is a child, and she makes remarks that a child would not make with her education and life experience. Ms. Hen also liked the descriptions of the horse, and how the horse and Velvet were similar; both needed to find a friend and be rescued.

Though there are some good things about this novel, Ms. Hen thought it was mostly a waste of time. She thought this novel was offensive on many different levels. This novel is over 500 pages, but even so, it zips through, since the chapters are short, which made Ms. Hen happy that it was over fast.

Ms. Hen reviews Ship Fever

Ship Fever

Andrea Barrett

W. W. Norton

1996

Ms. Hen decided to read this collection of short stories because she found it at the Little Free Library in Boston, and she picked it up because she liked the cover. She didn’t realize at the time she found it that she had read another book by this author years ago, THE FORMS OF WATER, which she remembers enjoying.

These short stories are all connected, but they do not contain the same characters and information. All these stories are about history and science, with a little bit of sexiness thrown in to make it interesting. Ms. Hen likes history, but she does not really understand science, even though she admires it, and knows to some people it’s fascinating, and that’s how they spend their spare time. A lot of the characters in these stories are scientists or pursue science.

One of the stories that made Ms. Hen think was, “Rare Bird.” This takes place in the 18^th century, and it’s about a woman who is interested in the behavior of swallows in England. People she knows believe that the swallows can be brought back to life when they appear to be dead. Ms. Hen thinks this story is fascinating because it is not only about science but it’s also about how women were treated in that era. Women weren’t supposed to be passionate about anything except for frivolity, and this character and her friend were outcasts because they wanted to perform science experiments. It made Ms. Hen think that a lot of the world has not changed, and some women still only care for superficial, primal things, and not the pursuit of higher learning.  Ms. Hen is not a hen who would do science experiments for fun, but she is a hen who admires women who do what they want and pursue intellectual stimulation.

The title story, “Ship Fever,” is the longest story in the collection, and Ms. Hen thinks it is the best and most thought provoking. This story is about a young doctor, Laughlin Grant, in Quebec City in the 19^th century during the Irish potato famine. He does not treat a lot of patients in the city; he studied in Paris, and as a result, his methods are more advanced than the New World doctors of that time. He doesn’t believe in bloodletting, and that is a practice that is accepted in that area. His childhood friend, Susannah, has a husband who is a journalist, and he writes about the emigrants traveling from Ireland on ships that are diseased with typhoid. Laughlin goes to Grosse Isle where the emigrants are being treated. Sickness and death are everywhere. Ms. Hen had never read about this before, and it is based on historical fact.

Ms. Hen thinks this story mirrors what is happening today with the migrants coming from the south of the border from the United States. People were treated horribly in the 19^th century who were from Ireland; Canadians and Americans didn’t want them; they thought they were lazy and dirty and useless, much like how the migrants from Central and South America are now are perceived. Ms. Hen knew about this history, but she had never read anything similar to this before. These were her people, even though her ancestors did not come over from the potato famine; they came to the United States shortly after that. It’s been almost two hundred years since then, but the general public seems to have forgotten who the people were that nobody wanted here in the past, who were considered animals and disgusting. People are people and everyone just wants to live a decent life.

This book surprised Ms. Hen. It wasn’t quite like what she usually reads. She doesn’t read a lot about characters who are interested in science, but she enjoyed these stories. There’s more to the world than the sphere in which we live.

Ms. Hen reviews Men Without Women

Men Without Women

Haruki Murakami

Alfred A. Knopf

2017

Ms. Hen decided to read this collection of short stories because she is a huge Murakami fan, and she has been reading a lot of books by Asian writers lately, and she thought he would fit in. Lately, Ms. Hen has become a Japanophile: she loves anime, and live action Japanese shows on Netflix, and she loves sushi, and all things that have to do with Japan. She would love to go there someday, but it’s a long plane ride. She will have to wait and see.

This collection of short stories, as the title suggests, is about men without women. Ms. Hen didn’t know if she would like this, because she prefers to read about women’s problems, but all the stories here are excellent. They’re romantic stories from the point of view of men, which Ms. Hen thinks is unique, and not American. American men don’t usually discuss their lack of women at length. But these stories are about Japanese men.

One of the stories that Ms. Hen enjoyed was, “An Independent Organ.” This story is about a man who was a type of playboy, and always had several girlfriends. He was a doctor, and he had his secretary keep track of all his women. He falls in love with one of the women he was having an affair with, and she breaks it off with him, and he stops eating and dies, essentially of a broken heart. When Ms. Hen read this, she doesn't think it is quite realistic that a man like that would die of love, but this is a Murakami story. After she read this story, she had to stop reading and rest for a little while, because she was overwhelmed.

Another story Ms. Hen enjoyed was, “Kino,” about a man whose wife cheated on him and got divorced. He opens a bar where his aunt owned a coffee shop, and tried to make a living. Strange things happen at the bar. Ms. Hen liked this story because it was otherworldly, and despondent. A cat appears in the bar, but then disappears.

Ms. Hen also liked the story, “Samsa in Love,” a sequel or prequel of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” The beetle in that story wakes up to find himself as Gregor Samsa, and doesn’t know how to act like a human. He finds himself in an apartment, and his family has gone out, and he eats the food left behind, and figures out that he needs to wear clothes. A hunchbacked locksmith comes to fix the lock to his room, and he becomes enamored of her. She doesn’t know what to think of him, but they make plans to meet at another time. This story is strange, and endearing, but it made Ms. Hen want more. A war is starting outside Gregor Samsa’s house, and Ms. Hen wants to know what will happen.

Murakami has a tone and a voice that is all his own. When reading his work, Ms. Hen knows it is him, and she feels comfortable in his universe. He might be one of the greatest writers alive today. She has read reviews of his work, and even though some people don’t like his short stories, Ms. Hen does. A short burst of a weird world is what Ms. Hen needs sometimes. Maybe all the time. The world doesn’t seem weird enough to her, so we need to find ways to make it weirder J

Ms. Hen reviews Dear America, Notes of Undocumented Citizen

Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

Jose Antonio Vargas

Harper Collins

2018

Ms. Hen read this because it was a gift from a hen friend.

She couldn't figure out how to write about it to give it justice, so she

decided to write this in verse. This is a person’s story about how his life

was a lie, and how he was brought to America, and didn’t know he was gifted

here illegally. His mother who loved him

sent him to live with his grandparents who loved her,

and he never knew he was not supposed to be here until

he tried to get a driver’s license.

He hid the truth from almost everyone who surrounded him.

He lived his life as a fallacy.

Ms. Hen knows what this is like,

to be in hiding, to shield the truth

from the world.

But his lies were different.

His safety depended on it.

Until he decided to tell everyone. He had worked illegally

at newspapers, including The Washington Post.

It’s a risk for people to come to this country illegally,

but the reward is so much better.

Because here there exists a chance to become what they could not

in their home countries: safe, successful, or sane.

The American dream is what a person wants it to be.

Nowhere on Earth is perfect, but it’s the idea of perfection

that drives people to come to America. The dream of a better life,

of what they did not have in their own countries.

A hopeful future. A place to blossom.

Mr. Vargas fights for the rights of people to be here,

to try to live that dream. Ms. Hen admires this.

Ms. Hen thinks this is an important book that asks

complicated questions that should be pursued,

and pursued further and further until they’re unraveled

and almost figured out.

Ms. Hen reviews Severance

Severance

Ling Ma

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2018

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because she saw the author at the Pen Hemingway Awards Ceremony where she won a runner-up for SEVERANCE. She heard the author read from the novel, and she became fascinated with the post-apocalyptic story of a woman surviving the fever outbreak in New York by herself.

This novel is about a young Chinese American woman who lives in New York. The story is told in flashbacks. Candace Chen moves to New York after college and for the summer afterwards, wanders the streets of the city taking photographs. She starts working at a publishing company, and begins a relationship with Jonathan, a young man who dissociates himself from materialistic culture. The novel is satire, and it’s funny in places when the character talks about all the possessions she has and the things she wants, like expensive facial cleansers and moisturizers.

A fever wipes out most of the country and Candace drives out of the city. She is found by a group of people who are headed toward the Midwest to a place called the Facility, where everything they need will be available. Nobody knows what the Facility is until they get there.

Candace is a woman who has been swept along the tide of her life: she works at a job she doesn’t like producing Bibles, she finds herself with a man who is eccentric, and she gets picked up by a group of people who think they are saving the world. But she has a strong will that she inherited from her mother, a Chinese immigrant, who wanted the best for her only child. A section of this novel describes Candace’s parents’ story. Her father was a hard-working man, who got hit by a car and died too young.

Ms. Hen thinks this is a unique novel about a woman’s struggle to survive a world catastrophe. Ms. Hen doesn’t know what will ultimately happen to this character, but she realizes that sometimes a reader does not have to know everything. Ms. Hen enjoys science fiction, especially by women about women, because for a long time the genre has been dominated by men.

There are several chickens in this novel, which pleased Ms. Hen. Ms. Hen’s favorite part that mentioned chicken was when Candace’s father and she passed the U.S. citizenship test and went out to eat, “The afternoon my father and I passed our citizenship test together, he took us to the KFC across the street and ordered a deluxe combo of fried chicken with all the sides. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but because he never treated himself, I ate a few pieces along side him, feigning a festive, abundant appetite.” Her father explained to her that when he was young meat was scarce and he only got to eat it during the New Year’s celebration. Ms. Hen thinks this is sweet and full of pathos, and she is happy that the characters celebrated becoming American by eating fried chicken.

Ms. Hen loved this novel. It’s starkly different from what she has been reading lately. She has read a few novels about the Asian immigrant experience, one she chose not to write about. She read this novel quickly because she thirsted to know what happened next. She would recommend it to anyone to wants to be provoked, and to be guided to view our society with a new lens.

Ms. Hen reviews The Allagash Brewing Company

Ms. Hen outside the brewery

The Allagash Brewing Company

50 Industrial Way

Portland, ME

Ms. Hen decided to take a short trip to Portland, Maine recently. She had been there before, and she wrote a review of Portland years ago, but she wanted to go someplace that was easy to get to. Even though she doesn’t usually go places where she has already been, she figured there are things that she hadn’t seen, so she booked her stay.

Ms. Hen went on a brewery tour of the Allagash Brewing Company on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. The place was a long walk from where she was staying, so she took an Uber both ways. The brewery is situated in the middle of a residential area, and even though Ms. Hen is not afraid of walking, there is not much to see on the way.

Ms. Hen is a fan of Allagash White, which she usually drinks when she goes out. She learned that that particular beer consists of 80 percent of the sales of the company. The young woman who gave the tour was knowledgeable and enthusiastic. She explained the history of the company and about the owner, Rob Tod, and how he started the company. He got sidetracked from his college degree in education, and started working at a brewery in Vermont to pay the bills, and became enthusiastic about beer. When he started the company, he had a difficult time trying to sell his beer, and he would go to the bars that had it on tap and would buy pints for people to introduce them to the beer so they would enjoy it and spread the word. The company didn’t fully take off until the early 2000s when the craft beer movement became fashionable. After that Allagash became successful.

Ms. Hen tries Barrel and Bean

The guide explained that Allagash is Belgian style beer, which is considered “kitchen sink” beer, and that means they will put anything in it, unlike Germans who have strict rules about their ingredients. German beer only has four ingredients: water, barley, yeast, and hops. Ms. Hen remembers going to the Sam Adams brewery in Boston and learning that particular beer is German style, and it’s the only one that is allowed to be imported into Germany. Ms. Hen likes the idea that anything can be put in a beer, and thinks that the German method might be a little snobby.

The tour guide told the group that there is a tank in the brewery that makes smaller batch beer that are experiments. Every person who works at Allagash, from the servers, to the accountants, to the machinists, has the opportunity to create their own beer recipes. She explained to the group that the creations are piped into the employee break room to taste while they’re on breaks. Ms. Hen thinks that’s cool! They can drink beer on their breaks! (That wouldn't be possible where she works.) She said if the beers they create are popular, they will serve them in the taproom, and if the public likes them, they will produce them.

Beer fermenting in barrels

Ms. Hen thinks this is a great opportunity for people to be creative about their jobs. Ms. Hen has mostly worked at corporations where there is no place for creativity for everyone. Ms. Hen doesn’t think she would work at a brewery, but she thinks that it must be a fun job if they drink beer on their breaks, and everyone has a voice in the products they create.

Ms. Hen tried a beer she loved at the end called Barrel and Bean, which has coffee in it, and is 10 percent alcohol. It has a slight coffee taste and is delicious. Ms. Hen ate a Caprese sandwich from the food truck that was parked outside the brewery, and had a pleasant afternoon drinking beer in Portland. She read some reviews that some people said that this was the best thing to do in Portland, and she thinks it was informative and enjoyable. The next time she drinks an Allagash White, she’ll enjoy it even more, knowing where it came from, and the history behind it.

Ms. Hen drinks Allagash Saison after the tour

Ms. Hen reviews The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer

Viet Than Ngyuyen

Grove Press

2015

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because she saw the author at the Pen Hemingway Award ceremony in April of this year. She thought he was smart and serious and funny and self-deprecating all at the same time. She was curious about his novel that won so many awards and had garnered such respect, so she decided to read it.

The first thing she noticed about THE SYMPATHIZER is that the writing is dense. It is extremely different from the last novel she read, A FREE LIFE, which was such an easy read that she breezed right through it like walking through the park on a spring day. She understands the benefits of a book that is dense, but it took a lot of time and trudging for Ms. Hen to get through.

This novel is about a young Vietnamese man during the Vietnam War who is the child of a French priest and his maid. He never knew who his father was until his mother told him when he was old enough to understand. He becomes a double agent, because he can see situations from both sides. He becomes educated in the United States, and speaks perfect English. The novel is his confession when he becomes captured.

Ms. Hen couldn’t help but notice that all the female characters in this novel are either sex objects or mother objects. She finds that disturbing. She can’t understand why a novel that is so decidedly against women could win so many awards. She thinks that someone might say, “But that’s not what this novel is about! It’s political and it’s about war and people’s decisions they make and how someone’s life could get messed up!” She understands this argument, because she can see problems from both sides like the character in the novel. But the lack of complex women characters is unmistakably noticeable to her. Sure, it’s wonderful that a minority writer wins the Pulitzer and multiple other awards. But Ms. Hen thinks it’s disconcerting that he doesn’t respect women characters enough to make them more interesting than a whore or a mother.

When Ms. Hen read this, she was reminded of another writer whose female characters are one-dimensional, Philip Roth. She wanted to find out if critics had written about the two together, so she did some research and discovered that there is a scene in THE SYMPATHIZER that is copied from a scene from a Philip Roth novel that Ms. Hen has not read (and will not read because it sounds perverse) called PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT. Imagine thirteen-year old boys doing disgusting things with food and that’s what it is. Ms. Hen found an article about this. You can read it here:

https://lithub.com/an-unnecessarily-close-reading-of-that-scene-in-portnoys-complaint/

Needless to say, Ms. Hen does not like to read about such things, and was disappointed that such a witty and charming person could be so biased and unpleasant. Ms. Hen didn’t like this novel, and she won’t be reading any other books by this writer again soon.