The Writing Life Too

Cloud cover this morning with temperatures in the 80s later on. I’ve been outdoors a lot this week and have been picnicking, eating el fresco, and walking in the evenings, so I feel drenched in summer. Today I’m going for a boat ride and we’ll land on the shores of the Willamette for a picnic. My memories of my childhood have been stirred a lot this week, especially when I was watching fireworks on Wednesday night head turned to the spangled sky, and felt connected back in time and to other places and people.

Back to summer reading. I’ve just finished Janet Evanovich’s latest book in her Stephanie Plum series, Lean Mean Thirteen—it’s a fun romp, with lots of misadventures, laugh out loud dialogue, and sexual tension. Evanovich has implanted a terrific device in the series in that Plum wavers undecided between her sometimes boyfriend Joe Morrelli and bad boy Ranger. The series work best when Ranger and her coworker in the bond bail business, Lula, a former ‘ho. are around a lot and in her 13^th book in the series she wisely showcases both of these characters. The story also includes her nemesis Joyce Barnhard, and her ex-husband, Dickie. All the secondary characters in the series are wacky or at least interesting and I believe that the key to her success is mining her quirky secondary cast.

Another book that I read recently is a thriller, Sharp Objects. It’s the first novel from Gillian Flynn and has so much tension in it that you practically break out in hives while reading it. Flynn’s protagonist Camille Preaker, a reporter, returns to her Missouri hometown to investigate the murders of two preteen girls. Back home, Breaker is forced to confront her past and truths about her twisted family. Camille is also fresh from a psych ward for reason I won’t divulge, but let me say that this character has a backstory that you’ll never forget. You’ll also never forget the whole Gothic feel of the story. If you like your stories sweet, or your characters to remain safe amid a saccharine world, by all means, do NOT read this book. If you want a real thrill ride, to shudder at depravity and suffering, and to study a fresh voice in this crowded genre, read Sharp Objects.

Flynn was lucky to garner a blurb from Stephen King whom she has never met who wrote: “To say this is a terrific debut novel is really too mild. I haven’t read such a relentlessly creepy family saga since John Farris’s All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By, and that was thirty years ago, give or take. Sharp Objects isn’t one of those scare-and-retreat books, the effect is cumulative. I found myself dreading the last thirty pages or so but was helpless to stop turning them. Then, after the lights went out, the story just stayed there in my head, culled and hissing., like a snake in a can. An admirably nasty piece of work, elevated by sharp writing and sharper insights.”