Ms. Hen reviews BREATH, EYES, MEMORY

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Edwidge Danticat

Vintage Books

1994

Ms. Hen read this novel because she had read another book by this author, and she enjoyed it. She found this at Commonwealth Books in Boston, a little bookstore tucked away in an alley, which sells rare books and prints, and sometimes there’s a cat lurking around the place, but she wasn’t there the day Ms. Hen went in.

When Ms. Hen started to read this, she thought it was a very typical novel about a black woman coming of age. But as she read, it became a little different. The young girl, Sophie, lives with her aunt in Haiti. Her mother moved to New York to make money, but did not take her daughter because she didn’t know how life would be in the United States. Her mother sends for the daughter, and Sophie goes on a plane to New York.

Ms. Hen has read many novels about black women, which are somewhat similar. Everything by Toni Morrison, and others like her. A lot of the time, the woman gets raped or molested, or something to that effect. This book was like that, but not quite the same. Sophie never becomes close to her mother, and the results are that they have a fight and do not talk to each other for years.

This isn’t just a novel about a woman’s sexuality. It is about coming home, and finding family, mothers and daughters, being a fatherless child, and women. There is a lack of male characters in BREATH, EYES, MEMORY; the men are in the background. They are shadow characters.

Even though this novel was disturbing to Ms. Hen, she found it beautiful to read. The words danced on the page, music sang from the sounds of the words, and even though it upset Ms. Hen, she found it a pleasure to read. She decided that this is a book that could not be read straight through, she had to take pauses to stop and reflect, to think about what happened, and weigh the characters’ lives and situations.

There are several chickens in this novel, since portions of it takes place in a rural area in Haiti.  Sophie and her mother are on the plane coming back, “She picked at the white chicken they gave us for lunch, while I gave Brigitte a bottle.” Sophie tells her mother she developed bulimia after she had her baby. Her mother doesn’t understand why she would do that when thing are so plentiful in the United States.

Ms. Hen thinks this is a sad novel, but a powerful one. She understands why this is important, but it makes her uncomfortable. She likes being made uncomfortable, but not too much. Sometimes she just wants to read a book and not be disturbed by the problems of the world. She prefers to find joy in reading, not by reading about people who are happy, but about people who can laugh at themselves. There is nothing to laugh at in this book. It’s about the sadness of the world, which can be heavy, but it exists, and we should acknowledge it.

Ms. Hen reviews LITTLE SISTER

LITTLE SISTER

Directed by Zach Clark

2016

Ms. Hen knew nothing about this film before she watched it. She watched it because it was recommended to her on Netflix, and this film gave her déjà vu of something she has seen or lived before.

This is a movie about a young novitiate nun, Colleen, aka Sister Joan of Arc, a member of the Sisters of Mercy order in New York City. (The Sisters of Mercy are also a post-punk band from the eighties and nineties. Ms. Hen thought this was funny, and she decided it was meant to be funny, as she continued to watch the film.)

The story propels when Colleen get an email from her mother to tell her that her brother is back from fighting in Iraq, and his face is disfigured.. Colleen thinks she needs to go home to see her brother, so she asked the Mother Superior to let her borrow the car.

One of the funniest scenes in the movie is in the beginning, when Colleen goes to a club to see a friend perform. She’s a nun in a club, and coming out of the bathroom some women try to talk to her. One of the other humorous pieces in this film is when Colleen is trying to cheer her brother up by lip-synching, “Have You Seen Me?” by GWAR. Ms. Hen doesn’t remember the last time she was so dazzled by a funny moment in a film.

This is a story about a dysfunctional family that loves each other no matter what. Ally Sheedy as the mother is brilliant, she is unstable, smokes pot, and disturbs her daughter and her son, and the son’s fiancée. Colleen is confused by her mother’s behavior, but Colleen cannot do anything to change her, because she has found God, and has to do her work.

This is not a film where the protagonist finds love and lives happily ever after, rather it’s about finding the love of her family. She loves her brother, and she wants him to be happy. In between the story, there are bits of home video of the two when they are young and having fun, making up stories and playing.

Ms. Hen got the idea that if this film was made in the 1990s, Winona Ryder would play Colleen. It’s exactly the type of role that she would play, a young woman who is lost, but with a dark sense of humor. There were parts of the film in which the actress, Addison Timlin, reminded Ms. Hen of Winona Ryder’s character in BEETLEJUICE.

Oh, and the chickens! There are some fabulous chickens in LITTLE SISTER. There are two points in the film where Colleen sees chickens, and when she goes to a farm, she exclaims, “Chickens!” Ms. Hen’s favorite chicken scene was when Colleen is driving and has done drugs and hallucinates that her brother’s fiancée was a chicken sitting next to her in the car before they crashed into a tree.

Ms. Hen doesn’t think nuns are positively portrayed in American films these days. She does like CALL THE MIDWIFE, but that’s British, and it's television. Ms. Hen thinks this film could bring a new light to nuns in America. Ms. Hen has known some nuns; most of them are strange, and singular-minded, but kind.

Ms. Hen thinks this film is excellent, and she is happy she watched it. She thinks there might be hope for American independent cinema after watching this. She doesn’t like a lot of American films, because they can be so formulaic, and homogenized, but this film is not. Say yes to LITTLE SISTER, and understand why Ms. Hen loves it.

Ms. Hen reviews WHITE TEETH

WHITE TEETH

Zadie Smith

Vintage Books

2000

Ms. Hen has heard about this novel for years and years, and she has meant to read it for a long time, but it has always slipped her mind. She understands now what the hype is about, it’s an amazing novel, and she will do her hen best to do justice reviewing it.

This novel is about three families, told from different points of view throughout the novel. It’s mainly about Archie and Samad and their journey from fighting in World War II together, to becoming husbands to younger women and fathers later in life.

Many cultures inhabit this novel: Samad and his wife are Pakistani, Archie’s wife Clara is from Jamaica, and the Chaflens are part of the English middle class. Smith takes such care in describing each culture because she seems to know them all, and the voices of the characters speak distinctly from each other in a way that Ms. Hen has not read often in a novel before. It’s difficult to capture a voice of a character, but the author brings each one to life with vivaciousness.

Another aspect of this novel that Ms. Hen notices was the historical depth that encompasses the story. Turn the novel one way, and it’s about Bengal, and turn it the other way, and it’s about genetic advances in science. Ms. Hen was surprised by the way this novel twisted and turned and kept becoming something else. It’s mainly a novel about families, but the unique life within each family is what gives it its beauty.

The women characters are well written, but Ms. Hen was impressed by how well the male characters are well drawn as well. This is not a women’s novel, by any means, the men involved can be rough and disconcerting, but Ms. Hen enjoyed that aspect.

There are several mentions of chickens in WHITE TEETH, but Ms. Hen’s favorite passage was when Joshua Chaflen and Irie have a discussion about animal rights and chickens:

            “Do you know how battery chickens live?”

            Irie didn’t. Joshua explained. Cooped up for most of their poor chicken lives,

            in total chicken darkness, packed together like chicken sardines in their

            chicken shit and fed the worst kind of chicken grain.

Ms. Hen thinks this might be one of her all-time favorite chicken quotes from a novel. She knows that these facts are true, and it makes her a depressed hen, even though she does eat chicken at times. Blaspheme! She knows. But she’s just a purse.

A motif of teeth runs through this novel. It makes Ms. Hen think more about her teeth, and how she should take better care of them. She doesn’t want Irie to grow up to be a dentist, but she thinks it’s inevitable.

Ms. Hen thinks this is one of the best books she has read so far this year. She doesn’t know why it took her seventeen years to read it since it was first published, but the world is full of books she hasn’t read. A hen can dream of reading all the great books of the world, but there are eggs to lay and coops to fly away from, and time is precious, but limited.

Ms. Hen reviews Iceland

Iceland

Ms. Hen doesn’t know the exact reason she went to Iceland. It might have been because the airfare and the place she stayed was inexpensive, or it might have been the fascination with the movies she watched and music she listened to. Or it might have been the fact that she’s never been so far north in the world. Anyway, she went, and she came back. She survived nine nights alone in Iceland, which she thinks is a little too long to stay in a foreign country by herself. During her last two days there, she pretended that she lived there, she did ordinary things that a hen would do if she were home: she did some writing, she walked around, she went out to lunch.

Ms. Hen thinks that not everything about traveling is wonderful. Her first day in Iceland, the gentleman who owned the Airbnb where she stayed, told her that the shower had an odor. He told her that the water comes from the ground and you can take a shower for as long as you want because it never runs out. When Ms. Hen took a shower, she was appalled by the fart-smelling water. She knew it was sulfur, but she thought it was disgusting! Every day, she took a shower, and hurried up to use her Lavender and Honey body wash to get rid of the stinky smell. Some days, she gagged when she first smelled the water.

The hot water in the sink smelled, too

But that was the only bad thing Ms. Hen experienced in Iceland. She went on some tours: The Golden Circle, The Game of Thrones tour, which you may have read about, and a trip to the Secret Lagoon, with dinner and a northern lights hunt. She thought the Golden Circle Tour was touristy, but she liked the geysers the best, because she had never seen any. And she saw the Northern Lights! Ms. Hen was lucky because it rained most of the week, and the night she went on the tour the sky was clear. She went swimming in the hot springs and she loved being in the hot water. It was about 40 degrees F outside when she went in, but the pool was like going in a hot bathtub.

Ms. Hen at the geyser

She thought she would have been better off having a car, but since Ms. Hen is driving impaired, and she always takes the subway and walks at home, she didn’t feel comfortable driving there. The only rude person in Iceland was the bus driver who wouldn’t let her on the bus because she didn’t have exact change. After that, Ms. Hen gave up on the bus. She knew there was a way she could pay with her phone, but she is a hen who doesn’t like to get too technical.

A cute truck parked at the hospital, which Ms. Hen walked by

So Ms. Hen walked around the city the days she didn’t go on tours. The city is full of art and murals. And it’s also full of gift shops and hotels. There are so many tourists! Ms. Hen thought the food she had was good, but it was expensive. She ate in a lot to save money. She ate a lot of fish and chips when she went out. She also ate Thai food twice, since those places were near where she was staying. One of her favorite restaurants she went to was called Vinyl, which was an all-vegetarian cafe that also sold records and featured a gramophone.

Ms. Hen at Vinyl

Ms. Hen tried to understand the Nordic way when she was in Iceland. The Icelandic people are soft-spoken, polite, and don’t let things bother them. One example of how things work in Iceland: when Ms. Hen was on the shuttle bus to the airport on the way home, one person on the bus had a ticket for the wrong bus company, but the driver said, “Don’t worry, we don’t kick people off the bus. We’ll get you to where you need to go.” Ms. Hen was amazed by this. If that happened in the U.S., the person would be booted off the bus. But Ms. Hen admired the Icelanders for being kind and genuine.

Ms. Hen had a wonderful time in Iceland. She would recommend going there to anyone. She would have liked to see more of the countryside, but she thought what she saw was beautiful. She is an adventurous hen, and enjoys flying out of her coop sometimes. 

Ms. Hen reviews ZAZIE IN THE METRO

ZAZIE IN THE METRO

Raymond Queneau

1959,1960

Librarie Gallimard

Translated from the French by Barbara Wright

Ms. Hen read this book because she had seen the movie, and thought it was cute and zany, and wondered how the book would compare. She learned that the book was considered not able to be made into a movie, and she read the book was classified as a New Wave book, even thought it was written in 1959, before the French New Wave started.

Ms. Hen really enjoyed the movie. She thought it was similar to AMELIE, only about a little girl who wants to ride the Metro in Paris and can’t because there’s a Metro strike. She goes to visit her Uncle Gabriel, who is a cross-dressing dancer in a night club, while her mother has a love affair for the weekend. The movie is fast-paced, and the actress who plays Zazie is awkward in a charming way.

Ms. Hen didn’t like the book as much as the movie. This rarely happens with her.

The book is written is a strange way, and a very pretentious way, Ms. Hen thought. Misspelled words riddle the book! On every page, there is something similar to “Snot,” for is not, and “eggsagerated,” for exaggerated, and so on and on. Ms. Hen had to stop to try to figure out what each word was, and it slowed down her reading.

This is a very short book, but it took longer to read then Ms. Hen thought it would because it was dense with these incorrectly spelled words.

Also, there were no inner lives of the characters. Reading ZAZIE IN THE METRO is like reading a screenplay. When Ms. Hen, and most people she believes, read a novel, they want to know what in going on inside the characters’ heads. That’s the beautiful aspect of a novel, the ability to know what at least one person is thinking. There was nothing to about the inner workings of Zazie and her compatriots, and that annoyed Ms. Hen. She thinks that some readers might enjoy this, but Ms. Hen is curious hen, and she wants to know the people in the book intimately.

There are a few chickens in this novel, but that didn’t make up for how much Ms. Hen didn’t enjoy reading it. It takes more than chickens or hens for Ms. Hen to like a book.

Ms. Hen does not recommend this novel. She would suggest the movie instead, which never happens, she knows! But rare things do happen, like leprechauns, and mermaids, and the Metro in Paris getting shut down.

Ms. Hen reviews some museums in Iceland

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

Reykjavik Art Museums

National Museum of Iceland

Ms. Hen is a hen who likes museums. She enjoys the quiet and beauty of places where she can learn new things and be inspired. Before she went to Iceland, she read about the different museums that are in Reykjavik that she wanted to visit. She didn’t go to all of them, but she went to a few.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

Ms. Hen read about this museum, and learned that it is the largest collection of penises in the world. Ms. Hen is not a perverse hen, but she loves things that are weird and freaky, so she decided she had to go. She stumbled upon the museum during her first day in Iceland while she was taking a walk in the rain looking for a coffee shop. The museum is a small room, full of jars of animal penises, which are very strange looking. There are huge whale penises sticking out of the wall, a polar bear penis, a killer what penis. There are also very small ones that are just a speck, like a house mouse penis.

This museum was full of Americans, which disturbed Ms. Hen. She thought it was because Americans are all perverts, or perhaps because there would NEVER be such a museum in the United States. Either way, Ms. Hen spent enough time there, took some pictures, and bought a shot glass. The museum is expensive, it costs about fifteen dollars, which Ms. Hen thought was too dear, but she considers it a once in a lifetime experience.

A variety of penises in jars

Reykjavik Art Museum

Ms. Hen went to two of the Reykjavik Art Museums, Kjavasstadir, and Hafnerhus. She didn’t go to all three museums because she didn’t have a car in Iceland, and it was a rainy day, and she didn’t want to walk too far. The Kjavassatir was right near where she was staying. It is a small museum with only a couple of galleries, but it was lovely. There was an exhibit of things from Ikea, which Ms. Hen thought was strange, but other exhibits of paintings and videos interested her more.

The Hafnerhus is situated near the center of town. It houses paintings from the Erro Collection, who is one of Iceland’s best-known pop artists. Ms. Hen was impressed by the breadth and color and urgency of his work. She even found a hen in one of his paintings.

Can you find the hen?

The National Museum of Iceland

Ms. Hen loves history and things that are old. It was quite an ordeal for her to get to this museum, because she had to walk a long way, but she loved it. She enjoyed looking at artifacts from the time of the Vikings to modern times. Her favorite things were the cones that the Vikings drank out of; she didn’t get a picture of them, but they were beautifully decorated horns that were used for everyday use and also for ceremonies.

She took some pictures in an area of the museum where nobody was hanging out. She liked the replica of the farmhouse where a family would live together in one room. And she thought the little boat was charming. Ms. Hen admires a culture that can hold on to the past without resentment.

Ms. Hen thinks Iceland is a perfect place to visit museums because most of the time it is raining, and it’s a good time to be inside. The outdoors are beautiful, too, and Ms. Hen can enjoy nature, but there are lots of things to enjoy in the world, like penises in jars, pop art, and Nordic history.

Outside the art museum on a sunny day

Ms. Hen reviews the GAME OF THRONES tour in Iceland

Ms. Hen gets stabbed at The Bloody Gate

Game of Thrones Tour

Iceland, Gray Line

When Ms. Hen was planning her trip to Iceland, she noticed there was a GAME OF THRONES tour. She had tried to watch GAME OF THRONES, but she was grossed out by the misogyny in the first three episodes of the first season. But she wanted to go on the tour. She didn’t want to be someone who goes on a tour and has never watched the show, so she watched the second season in two days, since she found out that had the most scenes filmed in Iceland. She was hooked! She watched all six seasons by the beginning of March, to get ready for her adventure in Iceland.

When she got on the bus for the tour, she was startled by a man in a costume with a sword taking tickets. He was the tour guide, Theo, and he talked for the entire eight hours of the tour. He was extremely entertaining, or Ms. Hen thought so, but he had a bit of a dirty mouth, and she could understand why some people who live sheltered lives would be offended by his remarks. Ms. Hen does not live a sheltered life, and she is used to perversity, and sometimes even enjoys it in the right context.

Theo had been an extra on GAME OF THRONES for many seasons: he was in the Night’s Watch, he was a Wildling, and he was a sentry overlooking the Bloody Gate. He had lots of inside stories about GAME OF THRONES, including one about the costumes of the Night’s Watch. He said they were made of very thin material, and they were designed in South Africa. The men who were the extras in the Night’s Watch were all Icelandic, and even though they were used to the cold, they were not used to being soaked in such flimsy clothes in the rain. They were told to act like they were suffering, but they didn’t have to act, because they already were.

The first stop on the tour was the Laxness Horse Farm, where the horses from GoT lived. Icelandic horses are much smaller than other horses, and they are a pure breed. Other horses are not allowed to come to Iceland, so they had a hard time filming GoT with the actor who plays the Hound, since he is so large. The scenes with him in Iceland are shot in an awkward way, as Ms. Hen remembers. The people on the tour got to feed the horses at the farm! Ms. Hen was excited about this, since the horses were so beautiful.

The tour went to the waterfall where the scene was filmed when the dragon kills the little boy in the field, and afterwards Daenerys chains the other two dragons in the dungeon. Ms. Hen was amazed that this area passed for the Mediterranean, even though it is in Iceland. The scene was filmed in the height of summer when everything was green.

Ms. Hen and the tour got to go to the Bloody Gate, in Thingvellir National Park, an ancient site where the Vikings held their Parliament. Ms. Hen was awed by the Bloody Gate, she even climbed down into it, though she is not a very agile hen. She thought she might fall, but she didn’t. The rock formations are beautiful. Ms. Hen learned about the authenticity of the show. Theo told the group that there was a poor extra who had to carry a crate full of lemons back and forth doing the takes over and over because the producers and directors wanted the show to be authentic. They didn’t want a crate with a few lemons on top, or the little plastic lemons; they had to have a crate full of real lemons for Sansa because Littlefinger knew she liked lemon cakes and he wanted her to be happy. She might have been happy, but the extra carrying the crate was not.

Ms. Hen at The Bloody Gate

Also, there was a scene in which a rabbit was cooking on a spit, and the directors wanted a real rabbit, because if it were fake fur and plexiglass, it would burn black smoke and have an odor. Theo showed a picture of an arm, and he was wondering if someone actually donated their arm to the show, since the people wanted it to be so authentic. Ms. Hen knows that was a joke.

The group went to a Viking village where the scene when the Wildlings kill the people in their house and tell Ollie to go tell the crows that Mance Raider is coming. Theo told a disturbing story about how he had been an extra in many films, and he liked doing evil things. He said he got to play a zombie, and he thought it couldn’t get better than that, because zombies were so evil. Then he said he got to be more evil, because he played a zombie Nazi, and he was so excited because he thought that was the absolute worst character to play.

At the Viking Village

But then, in GoT, he got to murder a six-year old girl, and he decided that was the utmost evil part to play, a child murderer. He described in detail the young actress who played the little girl, and how every time he had to pretend to kill her, she did a better job acting. He said she is going to be a famous actress someday.

At the Viking village, he demonstrated different ways to stab and punch someone while filming to make it look realistic for the camera. Ms. Hen thought it was interesting, because it’s something a hen doesn’t hear every day. Also, the village was situated overlooking a waterfall, which was lovely. Iceland is full of waterfalls, almost to the point where Ms. Hen wanted to say, “Oh, no, not another waterfall!” But she couldn’t, because how could a hen say that?

Ms. Hen says, "Oh, no, not another waterfall!"

Ms. Hen thought the GAME OF THRONES tour was one of the highlights of her trip to Iceland. She would recommend the tour to anyone, especially with the exuberant madman Theo at the helm of the ship.