Book Review | Book Chatter

In a Perfect World
By Laura Kasischke
HarperCollins
October 2009
309pp

Here’s the blurb from the publisher:

This is the way the world ends…

It was a fairy tale come true when Mark Dorn—handsome pilot, widower, tragic father of three—chose Jiselle to be his wife. The other flight attendants were jealous: She could quit now, leaving behind the million daily irritations of the job. (Since the outbreak of the Phoenix flu, passengers had become even more difficult and nervous, and a life of constant travel had grown harder.) She could move into Mark Dorn’s precious log cabin and help him raise his three beautiful children.

But fairy tales aren’t like marriage. Or motherhood. With Mark almost always gone, Jiselle finds herself alone, and lonely. She suspects that Mark’s daughters hate her. And the Phoenix flu, which Jiselle had thought of as a passing hysteria (when she had thought of it at all), well . . . it turns out that the Phoenix flu will change everything for Jiselle, for her new family, and for the life she thought she had chosen.

The Short of It:

This is not a feel-good book. It’s a bit dark, and often times depressing, yet there is beauty between its pages and I found its simplicity oddly comforting.

The Rest of It:

The first third of this book is spent setting up the characters. Jiselle starts off as sort of one-dimensional. She falls in love with Mark Dorn and eventually quits her job to care for his three children. As a pilot, he is rarely home and as an ex-flight attendant, Jiselle is well aware of how such a career works. However, she becomes frustrated by his long absences and spends a lot of her time remembering how it used to be. In the mean time, the Phoenix Flu has hit. Celebrities are dropping like flies and panic has set in. To top it all off, Mark is detained and unable to return home so Jiselle is suddenly a single-parent.

The end of the world as we know it, is a scary thing to ponder. If you’ve ever experienced a natural disaster first-hand, you can sort of appreciate, on a smaller scale, the kind of chaos that is possible. For example, when I was in the big Northridge Quake…it did not occur to me that gasoline would be scarce. I mean, there are pumps everywhere, right? True, but when there is no electricity those pumps don’t work. Nor do ATMs or credit card machines, so if you’re without cash when the big one hits, then you’re up the creek without a paddle.

This book is sort of like that. Kasischke reminds you that food is scarce, that gasoline is at a premium and that medication is a luxury. As you follow along, you realize just how precious that torn scrap of paper is, or that empty plastic bag. As the characters are slowly stripped of their possessions, what remains is a simplicity…a quietness that is somehow comforting. A simple meal, a game of charades, conversation by candlelight…these are things we typically do not appreciate in the fast-paced world we live in today.

What I found particularly shocking was the author’s use of actual celebrities within the storyline. This put a 2009 “stamp” on it and made it all the more real. Additionally, the pandemic storyline strikes a little too close to home. In the book, the Phoenix flu loosely resembles the Avian flu but with H1N1 raging all around us, its hard not consider the similarities.

Reading about the end of the world is not pleasant and Kasischke does not paint a pretty picture but the novel is very thought-provoking and there are moments of quiet beauty. I found it to be very visual in the telling. A book club would have a lot to discuss.

Source: This review copy was provided by HarperCollins in conjunction with Book Club Girl.

Forgetting English
By Midge Raymond
Eastern Washington University Press
November 2008
152pp

Here is the blurb from the publisher:

In this collection of award-winning stories, Midge Raymond explores the indelible imprint of home upon identity, and the ways in which new frontiers both defy and confirm it. The characters that inhabit these stories travel for business and for pleasure, out of duty and in search of freedom – and each comes face-to-face with the unexpected. From a biologist navigating the icy moonscape of Antarctica to a businesswoman seeking refuge in the South Pacific, the characters in these stories are in search of escape, but once stripped of their daily lives, they are confronted with who they actually are, and who they are meant to be.

The Short of It:

This collection of stories is a restorative tonic for the soul.

The Rest of It:

I am not a fan of short fiction but every now and then I give it a try and usually I am disappointed. That said, I was not disappointed by Forgetting English. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the beauty of the writing that I spent an entire morning on the couch enjoying it. From one story to the next, I found myself completely and utterly absorbed. Each story is so different and yet there are common themes…insecurity, yearning, shame and the need to escape.

My favorite story happens to be the book’s title. Forgetting English and is about a teacher by the name of Paige that has taken a teaching job in Taipei in order to escape her life back home. She befriends Jing-wei in an effort to learn Chinese. Both women have secrets and as their stories unfold, we learn how much their friendship means to one another and how flawed the human spirit can be.

I found myself embracing several other stories as well:

Translation Memory (a married couple grieve in their own way after suffering a loss)
The Road to Hana (a married couple struggle with the realization of what they’ve become, or what they’ve always been)
The Ecstatic Cry (researchers in Antarctica, Empire penguins and the need for human contact)

It’s not often that I tell anyone to go out and get a particular book, but this collection is a real treasure. The writing is effortless and natural and each story, although brief, is very satisfying in the end. This is a great collection to curl-up with. I recommend that you get yourself a copy.

Midge Raymond won the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. For more information about the author, click here. I initially read an excerpt and decided that I had to read the collection so if you’d like to read an excerpt, click here.

Source: This copy was sent to me by the author, Midge Raymond.

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