New in Paperback- Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeannette Winterson

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
Published by Grove Press ISBN 9780802120878
Trade paperback, $15, 240 pages

Jeanette Winterson wrote a critically acclaimed novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, loosely based on her life growing up in a Northern England industrial town. Her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, is the non-fiction version of that story.

The looming figure in both books is Winterson's adopted mother, who is always referred to in the book as Mrs. Winterson. Her parents were Pentecostal and her mother raised Jeanette to become a missionary.  Mrs. Winterson was abusive, frequently locking Jeanette out of the house overnight, leaving her to freeze on the porch steps.

During those long nights, it was books that saved young Jeanette. That was where she fell in love with language and books, and where she found truth, beauty and security in her lonely existence. Books saved her sanity and her life.

Mrs. Winterson spent much of her time at church meetings, and was always angry and disappointed in Jeanette. At the age of sixteen, Jeanette told her mother that she was in love with a woman and Mrs. Winterson uttered the phrase that became the book's title, "Why be happy when you can be normal?".

The fact that she was adopted affected her as well. Her mother wanted a boy and she finds some papers in her mother's things that confuse her. As expected, the confrontation with Mrs. Winterson about this does not go well.

Jeanette decided to try and find her birth mother and that journey is interesting. She searches long and hard and eventually finds her mother, although her own reaction to meeting her mother is much more complicated than she imagines.

Winterson's memoir, with its poetic language, gives hope to people who feel that they are different from everyone else around them, that life is too difficult. It can help them to find their own voice as she found hers. One of the passages I marked is this one:

"A tough life needs a tough language- and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place."

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? is a beautiful finding place for those who feel lost too.

rating 4 of 5

New in Paperback: I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

Published by Grove Press ISBN 978-08002145918

Trade paperback, $14, 224 pages

Lily Tuck's I Married You For Happiness is a quiet, lovely look at the marriage of Nina and Phillip after Phillip dies unexpectedly. The writing is sparse, beautiful, sad and packs such a punch. The hardest parts to read are when Nina puts her hand in her husband's coat pocket after he dies and pulls out bills, a to-do list, tickets- all the stuff that accumulates with life, and when Nina realizes the little things that will change. Who will open her jewelry safe? Now she can throw away the rowing machine in the basement. No one will care if she brings the bottle of wine in the bedroom. Those little things just pierced my heart.

It is written in Nina's stream of consciousness, her memories coming out in dribs and drabs. The day their daughter was born and Phillip was stranded in Miami and missed the birth. Secrets about an expensive purse purchased, infidelity, an abortion, that he will now never know. She'll never know the entire truth about the girl killed in Phillip's car when he was in college.

Phillip was a mathematician and Nina an aspiring artist, two people who come from different mindsets, yet they made a life together in spite of their differences. They met in Paris and vacationed in France every year. You will get more from this novel if you read French, as both characters speak it occasionally. Phillip references mathematical theories that would more interesting to me if I understood them, but Nina doesn't either.

I think that anyone who has been married for many years will read this remembrance of a marriage and recognize themselves in Nina and Phillip. And one line that keeps coming back to me is "time is what prevents everything from happening at once."

Although this is a slim book, it will stay with me for a long while.

This is the second book I have read recently from Atlantic Monthly Press, the first being Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante, and I think that I will definitely have to look deeper at their catalog; they have great literary fiction that require the reader to think.

rating 4 of 5

Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman

Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman
Published by Grove Press ISBN 978-082119810
Hardcover $24
288 pages

Francisco Goldman fell in love with the much younger Aura, a graduate student from Mexico, studying literature at Columbia University. To his surprise, she agreed to marry him and they lived a very happy life. He recounts their short life together in his fictional memoir Say Her Name.

On vacation in Mexico, Aura has a surfing accident and dies. Goldman is devastated, and his pain is made more unbearable by his mother-in-law who blames him for her daughter's death, and vows that he will pay for what he has done. She implies that there was foul play, and not only does he have to deal with his loss, he has to worry about being arrested for Aura's death.

Goldman's grief is palpable and visceral. He was

"no longer him. No longer a husband. No longer a man who goes to the fish store to buy dinner for himself and his wife. In less than a year I would be no longer a husband than I was a husband."

Not written as a traditional memoir, Goldman tells Aura's story, using her own writings and diaries to do so. Aura is a poet, and this book has a very poetic, almost dreamy feel to it. He delves into her childhood, her close relationship with her mother, and her insecurities. Although we know that Aura dies, she comes to vivid life on the pages of this book. It is a loving tribute from a husband to his wife.

Goldman lays his grief out on the page for all to see, and it is hard to read at times. He cannot bear to pass by the restaurants and other places they used to go to together. He builds a shrine to her in their apartment, complete with her wedding dress hanging on the mirror.

Say Her Name takes the reader on an honest, emotional journey. We get to know Aura so that her death has an effect on us.  There is an element of mystery as well; how did Aura die and did her husband have any responsibility?

Aura and Goldman both studied Mexican and South American literature; if I knew more about it, that would have deepened my appreciation of the book even more.

Readers who liked Calvin Trillin's About Alice and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking will be moved by this story as well.

Rating 4 of 5 stars