Psychic Living

Genre: Advice and Self-Help

Creating a sacred space gave me the creeps. Probably, because it was my first journey to the universal with only a piece of book for a guide. Regularly doing its first few steps, I found myself murmuring the ritual in my sleep, I woke up terrified knowing that I have not memorized the entire process, I might especially miss the petition for safety. I remembered Staccy mentioning a cat she did not have, jumping out of a bag at home. As for me, it was though someone else was in the bathroom when I was really just by myself.

I love this modern book although I am not really up to now done with it. I guess I would never be until I tried to follow the steps conscientiously to its last page only to be dismayed in the middle part by someone who actually consulted the same psychic and claimed that the latter made a mistake in one of her readings and should not be trusted.

While others claimed to have reaped rewards, I am stuck with the question of whether I am ready to call for an Angel Party. So there, like her cover pose, it sits waiting for me to pick it up and read from where I left off. Don’t dare me. I know I’m chickenshit.

The Women’s Room

Genre: Feminist

Other than the coincidence how “toilet booth” let me see our local kasilyas as a bifurcation–an answer to my homework, Marilyn French made a catchy start here; otherwise, I won’t have checked out The Women’s Room for two weeks. The main one she named Mira, a straight A’s student, highly estimated by her teachers got married to Norm who’s graded C’s and found herself supporting him through medical school until she agreed to full-time domesticity when he earned his M.D. (half-way of a 686-page bk). Yes, she could’ve left Norm but she had to bear his children to be eventually suctioned into this “secret society” conceived of by French or else we wouldn’t have met French’s beautifully dressed “playdolls” that she paraded using reality as a backdrop. I was glad to once again meet so few of my friends or to have met people that I haven’t or perhaps will never meet if at all. I was glad to read of the idiosyncrasies of Mira’s friends as she rose up and down the economic strata. I just lost count remembering who to pair her fictional characters with who every now and then. Val, one of Mira’s friends, shared her stand on Harvard (at that time the story was set), gays, love (and because I just borrowed The Women’s Room I recorded myself (click here) reading an exerpt that I enjoyed with its “mockery and adoration” or communes, rape (near the denouement), men… The novel rippled back and forth in time. Marilyn shifted perspectives and at times conversed as to how her novel might have been written or what’s going to happen next then it’d unfold after several pages like a TV soap. She would then ask her reader if she’s a convincing misandrist. I swore at two or three of her dragging rationalizations and as if predicting the mind of her audience, she continued to recount. This one is definitely written by a woman with a gift of gab.

Childhood

Writer: Andrei Alexis

Genre: Trinidad Blues

Personal Rating:

Thomas was fair to his description of Henry; complementing his eccentricities with his gentleness. I admired the latter even with his refusal to see his mother’s defects, for not reproving Thomas despite his lies, for the lessons he taught him in his lab—-what if everything else including manure and cotton could be turned to gold? Like Thomas, I wondered why Kata chose to be with “abusive and loveless” men but on her deathbed sought for Henry’s presence, undeniably the one she loved after all– the same man Thomas would have wanted to be revealed as his father. I admired the writer’s peculiarities — with all the timetables, bullets, assumed dialogues, the footnotes, lines of poems quoted –every single thing which made perfect sense to me as I got to its finale, where it became clear as to where Thomas got his sense of humor, or if the rigorous training from his Trinidadian grandmother paid off. What a moving book this is from Andre’ Alexis! Alexis is a natural joker who is logical and sentimental at the same time. Every few pages or so, I reacted “hah!” Twice, I really laughed so hard. I didn’t expect to be crying but I did for the same people Thomas was bereft of. No wonder in 1999 this became a prize-winning national bestseller in Canada!

Novel reviewed by Lorelie