character

Weird admission: I grew up around every kind of Mormon kid you can think of, and yet I have rarely thought about how sex and Mormonism (don't) mix.

And when I say "every kind of Mormon kid you can think of," I am indeed talking about, well, Bountiful.

So, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance -- as a memoir -- could not possibly be more of a departure from my idea of what it means to be Mormon than you could get. Here we have a young woman -- a year younger than me, actually, and I'm trying not to think about what that says about what I've accomplished so far in my life -- struggling to be a good Christian and a modern woman. Perhaps, on the surface, that leads one to imagine a story of 1. a series of bad dates, 2. leaving her religion behind altogether or 3. finding the man of her dreams and living happily ever after.

But memoirs are real life, and Elna Baker brings so much more than you might imagine to the page. Here is a Mormon girl with great (often hilarious) parents, who wants desperately to lose weight, who corners herself into "happily ever after" and then has to figure out what that might actually mean.

It's brilliant. Laugh-out-loud, close-your-eyes-because-it's-too-awkward, learn-about-Mormon-underwear, remember-your-first-kiss, remember-your-first-heartbreak, remember-who-you-are brilliant.

Bizarre example -- perhaps not the best, other parts of her story are so much better, but I don't want to ruin them for you, and this illustrates Baker's unique neuroses --

"As I sat across from Jeff, I could think only of the things that would happen to me if I did something impure like let a man touch my boobs. My body was a temple and I needed to respect it as such and not defile it. The things I did with other people before I was married would limit my ability to completely love my partner because it introduced an element of comparison. Sexual acts were supposed to make me feel unholy in the presence of God, like my light had been diminished. I thought about what Mormons call the 'eternal consequences' of your actions: Sexual immorality is the second worst sin, the first being murder...." (p. 63)

You might -- if it doesn't make you throw up in your mouth -- call it a "coming of age" memoir.

And on that note, I'm going to mention I finished reading The Stone Angel a couple days ago.

I kind of can't believe I only discovered Margaret Laurence this year. Like, can I really have called myself a book snob before 2009 if I hadn't read Laurence? I love her. I love that reading her work makes me feel more connected to Canadian history, and specifically a younger kind of Canadian history that starts west of southern Ontario. I am charmed and made uncomfortable by her characters, their loves, their mistakes, and their never-resting unhappiness with their lives. I loved The Diviners, I liked A Jest of God, and I fricking can't believe I lived before meeting Hagar Shipley. Could there be a character more self-aware, regretful and watchful, who also manages to know absolutely nothing of herself? I actually laughed out loud in one spot of the book, when she is drinking with a stranger in an abandoned fish warehouse; he tells her of his wife, she says, "Well, the poor thing.... Fancy spending your whole life worrying what people were thinking. She must have had a rather weak character." (p. 227)

Ah, Margaret Laurence -- how you winked at your readers.

romance

"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment, "can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse for the sake of the provision and security of a wife.... It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem only a commercial exchange in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other." -- p. 49

Yes folks, I'm reading Sense and Sensibility, digging on Marianne's blissful romantic ignorance and Elinor's painful down-to-earth sense.




Ooh, and thanking my lucky stars I'm not 17 anymore. But rather, erm, 27. (Yikes. Clearly I'm at the advanced age wherein any romantic attachment would merely be me playing nursemaid to my older, sickly lover. Any takers?)

(I just wrote, "any takers?" on my blog. While talking about my love life. Le sigh.)

Besides evaluating the merits of high school reunions (skipping) and sleeping (true bliss!) and taking full advantage of brackets (grammar is for losers), I really did think a lot about romance this weekend.

In part because I read my first romance novel in a very long while. At least, my first true romance novel in a long while -- it was a joint venture written by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, but much smoother than their last outing. Last time, I found myself skipping all the parts written by Mayer, whereas this time I didn't really notice the switch between writing styles. And, like all Crusie novels, it kind of avoided the typical "woman is five-foot-eight, size six, drives red sports car and listens to Springsteen" cliches. Instead, woman is plump and loves food and is given to bouts of scary, scary anger that are rather unbecoming. (Jane would not approve, let's be honest. The woman preferred William Cowper's sleep-inducing religious poetry to Alexander Pope's joking. Yeesh.)

Bizarrely, I sort of forgot these stories end with happily ever after. (Spoiler, sorry.) In fact, this one really had to reach to get to the ever after part. And at points I wasn't sure I bought the whole Agnes-softens-wants-long-term-relationship-with-hitman scenario. Or, alternatively, hitman-softens-starts-picturing-Agnes-as-wife-and-mother-to-his-children play. Can five days really work such magic? And should it?

Clearly I've been reading too much Margaret Laurence of late. Now, I've only just read two books by now, but I'm thinking Laurence is not a big one for the fairy tale endings. Which is pretty awesome -- perhaps even skewing my sense of reality back to.... reality....?

"Does one have to choose between two realities? If you think you love two men, the heart-throb column in the daily paper used to say when I was still consulting it daily, then neither one is for you. If you think you contain two realities, perhaps you contain none." -- p. 150

contemplating neuroses

"I honestly do not know why I feel the daft sting of imagined embarrassments. The ones that occur are more than plenty, God knows. I must not let myself think like this. I don't know why I do. Unless to visualize something infinitely worse than anything that could possibly happen, so that whatever happens may seem not so bad in comparison." -- p. 68

quiet

My great mistake was in being born the younger. No. Where I went wrong was in coming back here, once I'd got away. A person has to be ruthless. One has to say I'm going, and not be prevailed upon to return.

But how could I? (p. 13)

I'm wading through Margaret Laurence's A Jest of God.

I say wading, because I can't bear to sink into it and the loneliness of heroine Rachel Cameron.

Really, "heroine" -- so far -- is an overstatement. Rachel is so sad! Possibly depressed. She is a school teacher in her early 30s, living alone with her widowed mother in her hometown. She sleeps in her childhood bedroom, teaches in her childhood classroom, gets her hair done by the same dresser she's known all her life....

But here's what I like: It's bloody honest.

This is my second Laurence novel, first released in 1966. And yes, on the surface Rachel is a lovely martyr. But in her head, she's railing against her mother's bridge parties. She shakes her fist -- in her head, again -- at her smug married sister. She purposely turns a blind eye to children being bullied in the school yard, not because she doesn't care, but because she can't let them know she cares.

And she's evaluating the whole time. There's a bitterness to her character, but I match it to hope for a turnaround. There's a plot to come, yes? Laurence could not have written a Governor General's Award for ability to depress? And surely Margaret Atwood would not have written the afterword if Rachel turns out to be little more than the put-upon Anne Elliott of Manitoba?

I'll keep you posted. And then, I will start reading new book club selection The Year of Magical Thinking.