Sunday Salon: New York, New York

This amazing photograph is from a collection called 'The City' by Lori Nix

Biting the Big Apple by Bella Vendramini, Lip Service by MJ Post, Not Quite What I Was Planning and The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs.

I feel like I've been in New York this week. It started with Biting The Big Apple, a memoir from an Australian/New Zealand actress as she studies, lives and loves in New York City. Bella (we're on a first name basis) and I are basically complete opposites. I too have lived, loved and worked overseas, but with much more planning and control than Bella, who sort of launched from experience to experience by the seat of her pants. Her way definitely makes for a better memoir. This book is compulsive reading, probably more so for Australians like myself as we get all of the cultural references and language mangling. We also get the difference between Australia and New York, and Australia and the USA in general, which you'll never understand unless you're Australian. I read this book in about a day, and it was highly entertaining. Who couldn't love irresponsible, yet apparently highly talented Bella? She's very likable and self deprecating, which makes her endearing. The main beef I have with the book concerns Bella's romances. She has two major romances - the first is her own "Mr Big" (whose fake name in the book is James), some rich guy who is intellectual, sensitive and wonderful. Well, he would be if he wasn't an abusive and raving alcoholic who abuses Bella verbally and emotionally, and almost does her physical harm. The second is a nice Israeli musician who is apparently great in the sack, but pretty dumb. He doesn't believe in Bella's dreams or in creativity in general. Obviously Bella dumps James because he's an abusive alcoholic and eventually gets together with the not so smart guy. What bothered me was in the final chapters Bella was saying that she had to leave Israeli guy as he didn't believe in her dreams and THAT WAS WORSE THAN WHAT JAMES HAD DONE TO HER. Um, what? At the end of the book, after being very clear at the beginning about the things James had done and said to her, she goes soft on him at the end? Call me crazy, but I'd consider a mentally and psychologically abusive guy to be far worse that a guy who didn't believe in me. I wouldn't want to be with either, of course, but really... Things made more sense when I read this interview conducted with Bella after the book was published. Apparently she and James married after she wrote the book, although they are now separated. Ah...I see. She was writing the book either just before or during their reconciliation, so she decided to justify her choice and say the Israeli guy was the more abusive of the two... Oh, Bella. So to sum up, it was a good read, very funny in places, cringe worthy in others, but I can't overlook the fact that she justified an abuser and tried to hold him up as a hero.


My next New York book was The Friday Night Knitting Club. I've been wanting to read this one for while, and picked it up on a whim at the library. It was an interesting book, quite clearly a first novel. I found it intriguing and compelling reading, even if it didn't actually have a plot until the last quarter of the book. Prior to that it was basically just getting to know the women who frequent the club. I agree with other reviewers who have argued that the characters are stereotypical. Yes, they are. And it is unabashedly soppy, with a death, a reunion, a late in life romance, a planned for yet still unexpected baby and a break up. I'm not a knitter, but I imagine knitters would love this book for all its knitting references. I noticed that Julia Roberts is starring in the screen adaptation of the book, and it is due out in 2010. I don't think I'll bother going to see it.


My final New York book is MJ Rose's Lip Service. I heard the author interviewed on the Writers on Writing podcast. I like erotic fiction, as long as there is a storyline and the sex is all relevant. Otherwise it would just be porn, and how boring would that be? Lip Service was compelling enough for me to read it in 24 hours. It was a slow build - Julia, a psychologically fragile unhappily married woman becomes a phone sex "therapist" in order to research a book for a sexual therapy institute. The book delves into Julia's repressed sexuality, her redundant relationship with her psychiatrist husband Paul, and her long term friendship with Jack, who has been in love with Julia for years. I thought Rose did a great job, and the twist at the end is pretty neat.

My final read this week was Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs By Famous and Obscure Writers. I heard about this book on the Writers on Writing podcast too. Seriously, that podcast has done wonders for my branching out in reading styles. I've read and enjoyed a whole bunch of books that I probably wouldn't otherwise know about if it weren't for the show. The story behind the six word memoirs in Not Quite What I Was Planning is that Ernest Hemingway was asked to write a story in six words. He said - For sale: baby shoes, never used. Pretty intriguing, huh? So the editors at Smith Magazine asked, via their website, for six word memoir submissions. The results are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and often brilliant. Some examples:

Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends.
Crappy parents killed my self esteem.
Revenge is living well, without you.
Country girl seeks, finds, abandons city.
So devastated, no babies for me.
In a Manolo world, I'm Keds.
She walked barefoot in wet cement.

Interesting stuff.

Happy reading, friends!