Ms. Hen reviews Less

Less

Andrew Sean Greer

Little, Brown Company

2017

Ms. Hen read this because she happened to find it at a Little Free Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was planning on going to Cambridge, so she looked online to see if there are any Little Free Libraries there, and of course, there are. She picked this book because she had heard that it won the Pulitzer Prize this year. She didn’t realize that she had read another book by this author, THE IMPOSSIBLE LIVES OF GRETA WELLS, which she adored.

At first, it was hard for Ms. Hen to get into this novel. She didn’t know what to think of it. She had just finished reading THE HELP, which was long and serious, and not funny at all, so she was not prepared for how to read LESS. This novel is funny in the way that it looks at people and analyzes them and picks them apart. This novel is charming and unique.

Less is about a moderately successful gay writer, Arthur Less, who is about to turn fifty, and decides to turn down a wedding invitation from his ex-lover, Freddy, because he believes it would be traumatic and embarrassing. Instead, he accepts invites from all around the world to literary related events. He travels to Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, Morocco, India, and Japan, all while thinking of Freddy and his new husband.

LESS is a self-deprecating look at a man who thinks he is a loser, but is not. Arthur Less is a writer who has loved and been loved, published a few books, and some people admire them, and some people do not. The novel that Arthur Less writes that gets rejected by his published is about a gay man walking around San Francisco thinking about his life, and Less calls it a gay ULYSSES. He changes the novel to make it more of a humorous journey, which is similar to LESS.

When Ms. Hen read this, she couldn’t help thinking of the essay writer, David Sedaris, who writes with a similar style and subject matter. Ms. Hen read ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY while she was in France. Ms. Hen also thinks LESS has echoes of MOBY DICK, in the way that Arthur Less keeps chasing his great white whale, which Ms. Hen decided is his career, and also love.

There is one mention of chickens, when Less is in India driving down the road, looking at things, “the endless series of shops, as if made from one continuous concrete barrier, painted at intervals with different signs advertising chickens and medicine…” Ms. Hen likes to find the chickens when she is reading; it’s like a game for her. Some books have myriads of chickens, and some have none.

Ms. Hen thinks that this is one of the most original novels she has read. She has not read anything quite like it before. LESS is funny and bittersweet and adventurous and romantic. She believes that more humor should exist in the world, because if we can laugh, especially at ourselves, it makes life a lot more bearable.

Ms. Hen reviews The Help

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

Penguin Books

2009

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she found it at the Little Free Library near where she lives, and there weren’t a lot of other good books the day she went. She also read this because she thinks it goes along with the theme of the last book she read, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, the subject matter being about racism in the South. This novel, however, is about the 1960s, and the problems that the maids in Jackson Mississippi had with their bosses and the people in the town.

This novel is about a group of young white women in Jackson, Mississippi and their maids. The Junior League meets for bridge at each other’s houses and they have a discussion about the fact that the help should not use the bathrooms because they are not sanitary. Aibileen, Elizabeth’s maid, is ashamed that the women think she is dirty. Skeeter, one of the white women, who is unmarried, is upset about the fact that her friends don’t treat their help well. Skeeter is the editor of the newsletter for the league, and Hilly, the president, insists that she put the piece about the “home sanitation,” in the newsletter, but Skeeter doesn’t want to do that. Skeeter has moral quandaries with the League and considers writing about the women who work for her friends.

Skeeter and Aibileen start to write a collection of stories about what it’s like for the maids in Jackson to work for their bosses. Other women join in, and Skeeter gets the book ready for publication. The town is full of problems; white people don’t regard the black people as equal to them. Aibileen tries to teach the little girl under her care what is right and wrong, but she doesn’t know if the girl will remember when she grows up.

Ms. Hen liked this book; she thought it was charming, but it was a little too charming in places. The racism seems sanitized, and too easy to deal with. This novel was written by a white woman, but she writes in the voice of black women. Ms. Hen found it hard to believe that these women’s voices were accurate. Ms. Hen has read Alice Walker’s THE COLOR PURPLE, and she thinks Ms. Walker does a superior job of writing in African American voices compared to Ms. Stockett. Ms. Hen understands that it’s important to stretch as a writer, but she thinks that some Southern African Americans might be offended by the way the book is written.  

Another aspect of this novel that Ms. Hen found hard to manage was its length. The book is too long, and it seemed to take eons to get to the point.  Ms. Hen thinks that a lot of bookclubish books are that way, they meander and wander and take forever to read. Sometimes a novel is worth spending a lot of time reading, if it’s a high quality book, but Ms. Hen didn’t think this is the best book she has read.

Even though Ms. Hen didn’t think this was the best novel, there are a lot of chickens and hens throughout the book. She finds that a lot of books about rural areas have plenty of chickens. One of the maids, Minny thinks while she fries chicken, “I watch the chicken sizzle, try to forget she’s there. Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.” Later on, the two women have an argument about the chicken they are eating for lunch. “ 'Take the breast,’ she says, her blue eyes bugging out at me. ‘Go ahead.’ ‘I eat the leg and the thigh,’ I say, taking them from the plate.” Miss Celia wants to be nice to Minny to let her have the breast, but Minnie doesn’t want it. She thinks that Miss Celia doesn’t know how things are supposed to be.

Even though Ms. Hen didn’t love this book, there are moments of brilliance and hilarity. The novel took too long and was difficult to read in places. She is going to try to steer clear of the book club books for a while. She prefers living on the edge.

Ms. Hen reviews The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead

Anchor Books

2016

Ms. Hen decided to read this simply because she had heard it was good. She is always interested in reading about American slavery and the plight of African Americans, because she likes to read about tormented souls. Ms. Hen thinks that the best literature is about people with messed up lives. She likes to read about other people’s problems.

When Ms. Hen started reading this, she couldn’t get the book she had read recently, KINDRED, out of her head. KINDRED is also about slavery in the South, but it is more of a science fiction novel. Ms. Hen expected that this book would be similar to that in the way that it was magical and fanciful, but it was not as she expected. Yes, the part about the Underground Railroad actually being a railroad is fascinating, but in the beginning, she wanted more fantasy. But as she got into the book, she realized it is not like this, and she got into the story.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is about Cora, a slave in Georgia, who lives in the house on the plantation where the outcast women live. She is ostracized because her mother ran away when she was young. She has a difficult life growing up without a mother, and always wanted to know what became of her. She is chosen by one of the men, Caesar, to go with him when he escapes, because she is a lucky charm, for the obvious fact that her mother managed to get away. They run and are almost caught. They find the Underground Railroad and are whisked away on a locomotive to safety and possibly freedom.

Cora goes with Caesar to South Carolina to find a thriving former slave community there. They manage to start to have a life, but she is almost caught. Cora goes to the underground railroad and ends up in North Carolina. She travels around until she finds people to help her.

The runaway slaves have a difficult life trying to make their way in the world. Ms. Hen has read many books about this, but this one is different. This novel has a fairy tale essence to it, it seems like it is meant to be a dream. Cora suffers and struggles, but she has a will to survive. The railroad is a symbol for all the people that made it, a symbol of perseverance and determination and dreams of a better life. Ms. Hen can imagine what it’s like to run for her life, and be terrified. That’s what reading fiction helps us to do.

There are lots of chickens and hens in this book, which made Ms. Hen happy. One of the other slaves on the plantation in Georgia, Ava, wanted Cora’s small plot of land, “She cherished her chickens more than those children and coveted Cora’s land to expand her coop.” Cora has a piece of land where she grows vegetables. Ms. Hen thinks it’s strange that a woman loved chickens more than her children, but in their time, some things didn’t make sense.

Ms. Hen truly loved this book. It has an airy, lightweight, but heavy, contradictory way about it. It is a road novel, an adventure novel, and a novel about a woman who overcomes great hardship. Readers should aspire to Cora’s strength. Ms. Hen recommends this novel to anyone who wants to be inspired to carry on.

Ms. Hen reviews In Evil Hour

In Evil Hour

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Avon Books

1968

Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she has read every other novel by Marquez, and she wanted to finish them all. This is not considered his best book, but it is his first published novel. Ms Hen didn’t like this as much as she liked the others. She thinks there may have been something wrong with the translation, because the prose is not as liquid and glorious as the other books she has read.

Even so, there are hints of the genius to come in this novel. Some elements of other novels appear, such as a telegraph office, and twisted love affairs. Ms Hen thinks that some writers have distinct styles that echo in all their works. Marquez is one of those writers whose voice carries in the scope of his writing. Another author who Ms. Hen believes follows this tradition is Haruki Murakami. All his books are fantastic, but they are similar and have recognizable traits.

Even though Ms. Hen doesn’t think this is the best Marquez novel ever, she finds it worthwhile to look back to where he started, to see the how the seed of brilliance first sprouted.

Ms. Hen reviews Unlocking the Air

Unlocking the Air

Ursula K. Le Guin

Harper Collins

1996

Ms. Hen likes science fiction, and is especially interested in women's science fiction writers right now. Even though this collection of short stories would be considered magical realism, it is what Ms. Hen enjoys. These stories are strange and wacky. These are the type that inspired Ms. Hen to want to be a writer in the first place: the idea that a story can be anything a writer wants. Ms. Hen doesn’t think writers try to write like this anymore, and if they do, the writing in uninspired. In MFA programs, the instructors try to get rid of the desire to write genre fiction like this out of the students, but Ms. Hen wants to try to go back to being a dreamer and writing things that are bizarre.

The first story in the collection is “Half Past Four,” which is an odd collection of stories in itself, about characters who have the same name and are in different situations. It took a few sections for Ms. Hen to figure out what was happening. The names of the characters, Ella, Ann, Stephen, and Theodore are in different stories and are different people in each, but they all have to do with families and relationships, and how dysfunctional people’s lives can become.

“Spoons in the Basement,” is about a woman, Georgia, who discovers coffee spoons in a closet in her house that she didn’t know were there. She doesn’t know the history of the house and who could have left them. After that, she finds a section of the house where people are living that she did not know about. This story made Ms. Hen think it’s an allegory, that there are things we don’t know about in our lives, that are underneath everything, that could either be upsetting or comforting to us. Georgia accepts that there are two nice young women living in the basement, but she doesn’t like that a middle-aged couple are living there as well. It shows that some people have innate prejudice; there shouldn’t be anyone living in a person’s house that is unknown to them, and Georgia should have been upset about all of them.

The story that haunted Ms. Hen the most was, “Olders,” which is about a woman whose husband gets hurt in a battle, and who needs to recover. The doctor comes to help him, but he is working on finding out the secret of the island. The injured man is dying and is turning into a tree. When the native people of the island die, they transform into trees. The man’s wife is not from the island, so she is not like this. Ms. Hen thinks this is a creative story, the kind that she is interested in writing. The tree people made Ms. Hen imagine what it would be like to die and become a tree. When a person is dead, nothing matters anymore, but if we become trees, we could die again, or we could get hurt if someone chopped us down. The tree people could suffer as trees, as we suffer in life.

Ms. Hen recommends this collection of short stories to anyone who is willing to go out on a limb and read a strange book, to stretch the imagination to where it is able to go, and to reach to the outer limits of our minds. Ms. Hen is a quirky hen, and she likes to be around kindred spirits who like the same things.

Ms. Hen reviews The Life of Elves

The Life of Elves

Muriel Barbery

Europa Editions

2015

Translated from the French by Alison Anderson

Ms. Hen picked up this novel because she loved another by this author, THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG, and she liked the title of this one. Ms. Hen found this book in a dusty bookstore, which she frequents sometimes called Commonwealth Books, which is located in an alley in downtown Boston, near the Financial District and shopping area.

Ms. Hen didn’t know what to think of this book at first. It has a very quiet and unassuming tone, and at times, she didn’t understand what was going on. This is a strange book with a strange premise, and Ms. Hen wasn’t sure if she liked it that much. She didn’t hate it, but there were times when she was reading when her mind couldn’t help but wander.

This is a novel about two girls, Maria and Clara, who live in France and Italy, respectively, who both have special powers and are enjoined to the Elven world. Maria can communicate with animals, and Clara has a gift for music. They are connected to each other in a special way.

Maria lives in the countryside in a village in France with her adopted family. Her grandmother cures people with herbs. There is a scene in the novel in which Maria moves three cloves of garlic on the hearth, and that converted the image, and that idea was repeated throughout the novel. The idea is that a simple item can be changed, and made into an artistic representation of the same thing that was there before, but morphed into something more beautiful.

Clara learns to play the piano quickly, and she could learn any piece immediately and by heart. She is taken to a place in Rome, away from her village in the mountains, in order to learn music and help discover what she is meant to do. She makes friends with the people in Rome, but does not leave the place where she lives that often. She learns about the Elven world through Petrus, who drinks and tells her stories.

There are several hens and chickens in this novel, which made Ms. Hen like it more than she would have if there weren’t. She finds that there are usually hens and chickens in French novels, because they love chickens. Ms. Hen has been to France, and she met some hens there.

Ms. Hen didn’t completely love this novel, because she couldn’t get into it enough. But she thinks it is a good book to read in the middle of summer because there is a lot of talk about snow and cold. She likes to read books about winter in the middle of a heat wave. Yesterday where Ms. Hen lives, it was 96 degrees, and it felt like 104. She doesn’t like the summer. The only good thing about summer is the fact that it’s not winter, and there is no ice on the streets, and she has more energy to read because the days are longer J

Ms. Hen makes a friend in France

Ms. Hen reviews Hospital Sketches

Louisa May Alcott's former house in Louisburg Square, Boston

Hospital Sketches

Louisa May Alcott

1863

Ms. Hen bought this small book many years ago, and finally got around to reading it. She is a big fan of Louisa May Alcott, especially the book that was never published during her lifetime because it was considered too racy, A LONG FATAL LOVE CHASE. She admires LITTLE WOMEN, but thinks Ms. Alcott would have been better off writing from her heart rather than pandering towards the attitudes of the times in which she lived.

This book is based on letters Alcott wrote to her family when she worked as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. She worked for six weeks in a hospital in Washington before she developed typhoid and was sent home.

The character Tribulation Periwinkle has a hard time deciding what to do, so she decides to be a nurse. She signs up, and has a difficult time procuring a rail pass to Washington from Boston. She goes from office to office in search of a pass, and men everywhere insult and dismiss her, but finally she succeeds. Ms. Hen thinks it’s horrible the way the character was treated like a child simply because she was a woman, and the men she dealt with thought she wasn’t worthy of respect. Ms. Hen knows that if this happened today, she hopes the character would not have to go through so much trouble. And she would be paid for their efforts.

Louisa lived at 20 Pickney St. on Beacon Hill when she was young

Ms. Hen thought it was fascinating that the Army brought young women to Washington to nurse soldiers who had absolutely no training in such work. Her first day on the job, the head nurse gives her a pail, a brush, and some soap, and tells her to wash the men who had just come from the field of Battle in Fredericksburg. Miss Periwinkle gets to know the men and cares for them, she helps them to feel better, and she learns a lot in the process.

Another aspect of this novel that struck Ms. Hen was the character’s attitude towards the former slaves. Miss Periwinkle’s family housed runaway slaves in the Underground Railroad, so she has some experience with the situation. The character saw the African Americans in Washington, and was afraid of them at first, but then she begins to understand that they are like everyone else, and they are beautiful.  She hugs and kisses a little African American boy that’s in the hospital, and the other nurses are horrified, but she wants to help the child be loved like any other child. She doesn’t like that the other nurses treat the former slaves the way they do.

Ms. Hen knows some things about hospital from first-hand experience, and Miss Periwinkle’s experience with surgeons and doctors are similar to the ones that Ms. Hen has had. The doctors are, for the most part, high and mighty, and are difficult to catch to write an order or do something for a patient. Not all doctors are like this, but many are. Things were the same during the Civil War. And the way they treat the nurses and other people in the hospital is disrespectful, though now, the nurses are also grandiose, since they make a lot of money, and think they’re smarter than the other workers around them. Ms. Hen doesn’t mean to rant, but she deals with these situations often. Ms. Periwinkle was not a trained nurse, and she was a volunteer, which confounds Ms. Hen, because if she were a nurse now, her experience would be transcendent.

Ms. Hen liked this small book. She wanted to read something fast, and she thought it was entertaining and charming, and she learned a lot about the way things used to be in world of hospitals, compared to the way they are now.

Ms. Hen, protecting herself from germs