Day: September 21, 2013

Coming Clean

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I should be puttering around the apartment getting everything all tidy just in case our unit is one of the randomly selected ones for inspection on Monday. There’s stacks of books on the dining room table, some plastic crates of Blacklight’s things, the laptop cases, the iron and the tote bag of tote bags to stash in my car trunk. The bathroom could also use a clean. The clean dishes should be put away before I need to use them to make Blacklight’s breakfast. Basically, our apartment isn’t spotless but it could use some love.

But after reading Kimberly Rae Miller’s Coming Clean, a memoir of being the child of hoarding parents, my apartment doesn’t seem untidy at all. You can walk across the room without needing to block out what sort of filth and rot strata you’re stepping on. All the plumbing works. We don’t have to eat only sealed convenience food because our kitchen isn’t functional. And once Blacklight lurches into the living room, the only thing keeping him from sitting on Mr Couch will be my reluctance to give up my sprawling throw pillow nest and share the darn thing with him.

As an adult, Kimberly Rae Miller strives to be clean and tidy. Maybe she strives a bit too hard because a dear friend notices that she purges things when she’s upset. But as a child, living in houses packed so full the only working bathroom door couldn’t be shut or not having hot water was her normal. And those conditions weren’t because her parents didn’t know any better. Her father has a genius IQ and a need to collect and retain things most people would call trash. Kimberly’s mother, herself the child of hoarders, initially fights the encroaching tide of things but herself falls victim to depression and hoarding when medical issues cause her to become disabled. From early childhood onward, Kim learns to conceal the mess and paper over with a veneer of perfection. In the days before Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive who would believe the straight A student with all the extracurricular activities was living in extreme conditions that forced the neighbors to complain?

Coming Clean is a slight book but man does it carry an emotional heft. There’s fear, shame, hope and trying to make a difference even when her parents can’t seem to change. You don’t know if you should stop by Home Depot for contractor size roll of huge black trash bags and industrial strength rubber gloves to help Kim rescue her parents from another mess….AGAIN…or if you should grab Kim’s phone, stomp it into bits and implore her to just let her parents rot before it ruins her life so badly that there’s no coming back. But what you should do? Read Coming Clean and give thanks to Kimberly Rae Miller for opening up and exposing the raw wounds of her childhood. If her opening up helps one person dealing with a hoarding loved one or gives them comfort that they are not alone? It’s worth it.

One of the Family

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Like Monica Dickens herself, the bulk of the people in One of the Family are descended from a popular Victorian author. If I need to explain which popular Victorian author Monica DICKENS descends from a) we have a problem b) you have never read my blog before or c) you are my husband Blacklight and he doesn’t pay attention to what I read because playing Minecraft is his secret job. Most of the late E.A. Morley’s descendants lead the average upper-class Edwardian life. They’re not titled but are comfortable and have solid jobs. One brother is more posh then the other, one sister is modern and free and the other emotionally tied to their mother even as a married adult.

At the center of this cozy little world is brother Leonard (works for a posh department store) and his family. Leonard and his delightful but vague wife Gwen have three children, eldest married son Austin, unmarried daughter Madge and beloved afterthought and all around scamp Dicky. Their ungainly niece Bella, regards their family and house as a sanctuary from her own posh and cold home. Now the tales of this cozy family in it’s own cozy little world are all well and good but happy families can be deadly dull, so enter mysterious stranger Toby Taylor.

Now this is where my lizard brain starts working. And drawing literary conclusions that not might be then truly correct but please bear with me. As I read One of the Family, it’s cozy center family, the mysterious interloper who isn’t exactly who he seems, tragedy and joy Mr Interloper brings to our cozy family group against the background of a changing Edwardian world…how could I not be reminded of Howard’s End? Okay, so England in transition isn’t represented by the property Howard’s End. And the Morley clan isn’t the Schlegel clan. But we do have our Mr Interloper (Howard’s End Leonard Bast/One of the Family Toby Taylor) coming into the core family, causing happiness and longing and death and leaving behind an illegitimate child to a young mother who decides to go it alone. Bear with me a little more please? And the excellent film version of Howard’s End came out in 1992 and One of the Family was published in 1993.

Even if my slight deranged theory of possible inspiration from Howard’s End isn’t true and it’s just the fact there are limited plots and plot devices, One of the Family is still an good read. You have Leonard and his siblings adjusting to the changing world. Their daughters are exploring different roles then how their own mothers were raised. Madge, who the servants think is a lesbian, has cut her hair short and throws herself into settlement work and turns down the chance of marriage until late in the story. In fact, I really wish Madge had never married since marriage depletes her. Bella chafes against her parents rules and disappointments and when she turns up pregnant decides to keep her child and raise it openly to the shock of her family until she chooses a most unsuitable man over her child.

And then you have Toby Taylor. Failed doctor, would be healer, son substitute, confessor and seducer. He is Chaos, Death and Life all rolled up into one. Monica Dickens wisely doesn’t turn the entire narrative over to him. It’s much more compelling and interesting to have snippets of Toby, his relationship with an actress mistress, interactions with patients and visits to his ailing mother in a hospital. We know a little more about Toby then the Morley who encounter him in various facets but not the whole picture. Would Bella swoon as much over Toby if she knew the truth about encounters with his mistress and her cousin Sophie? Would Gwen and Leonard trust Toby with Dicky’s fate if they knew exactly how solid his medical credentials were?

it wasn’t until I finished the book and read the back flap of the dust jacket I realized One of the Family was Monica Dickens’ final novel. Until then I had been caught up in the story of an extended well to do family in Edwardian England. There’s something sad about reading an author’s last book or story. Sometimes you weep because that final work is only a ghost of what the author was capable of (Dominick Dunne’s Too Much Money) or they died too soon (Shirley Jackson’s Come Along With Me). Other times, you sit down with the last book, read it and are happy the author lived a long and productive life. Luckily Monica Dickens’ One of the Family falls in the last category.

Am I glad One of the Family is Monica Dickens last book? No. I would have loved to have more books from her. But life isn’t. And to end her career on a solid novel is a good thing, there’s no regrets or whys. And One of the Family should be one of your Monica Dickens reads.

 

 

Nightingales Are Singing

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Let the Monica Dickens book binge continue!

Nightingales Are Singing starts in post-war England. Thirty something Christine Cope is a spinster who runs the book department at a London department store. She’s plump and lonely and leads a narrow life with her father and aunt and their animals. Occasionally she goes out with her jerk-ass cousin Geoffrey who treats her like dirt. Geoffrey is from the rich side of the family and my brain imagines him as sneering and pompous as Vincent Price in Leave Her to Heaven. Christine meets a US Navy officer, Vinson Gaegler, who seems nice enough but all the food parcels, cigarettes and nylons and steaks in the world can’t replace Christine’s dead love Jimmy. My brain Vinson is played by the early 1950s Kirk Douglas.

But Vincent persists and Christine (played in my brain by Jeanne Crain using her best MGM British accent) goes to America to marry him. And if Christine didn’t like her life in England, well, America is going to be just as and possibly more challenging. Vinson may love the US Navy even more than Christine. The Admiral coming to their wedding party seems to mean more to Vinson then his new life with Christine. But the fault doesn’t lay entirely with Vinson. Sure he has a hard-on (Blacklight: “do you have to be so crude?” Me: “yes”) for the Navy and could have given Christine the damn ‘How to be a Navy wife book” BEFORE they got married,  but Christine has her faults too. She is used to be taken care of by her Aunt Josephine, being a career woman and not realizing that married life is more than a pretty dress and fresh lipstick when Hubby comes home. And she is still carrying a torch for the dead Jimmy.  Add that to culture clashes and of course things will go dark. At one point, I started making a “dead” checklist (baby, car, marriage, dog, lover, another dog…), but I kept reading.

Nightingales Are Singing didn’t grip me in the same way as Kate and Emma. Once Christine hits America, I started wondering how many pages until her nervous breakdown or the revelation Vinson is gay. Apparently he’s straight but I have my doubts. Either that or Vinson, scarred by his trying mother, is just Navy-sexual. Because I only see him being able to impregnate Christine if he pretend she was the Admiral. (Blacklight: “You think everyone is gay.” Me: “No, just Vinson.”) What is fascinating besides playing “Is Vinson Gay?” was the look at being an English woman transplanted to America as a bride. Learning to deal with shops, America’s “classless” class system, the surreal world of being a military spouse (I’ve seen actual How to be a Military spouse guides and wow…the regulations when you’re not the one in uniform), and being an older bride. The tragedies mounting on Christine at a certain point seem like something you would have heard on “Queen For A Day”. The only thing that doesn’t die are the poor goldfish trapped in a weird tank in the kitchen. Wait, did anyone remember to feed them when Christine goes off for the week with her doomed lover?

If you want to be a Monica Dickens completest or are interesting in seeing how she might have used her own experiences as a military spouse (I really hope she didn’t endure everything Christine goes through), then track down Nightingales Are Singing. Otherwise, you may wish to stick with the true memoirs.

Kate and Emma

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

You know it’s a good writer’s biography when after you shut the book you scamper-damper to get all the author’s books through inter-library loans. And it’s like Christmas when the inter-library loans come in.

Now if you’ve read my review of Monica Dicken’s An Open Book, you know that the section where she discusses her researches into child welfare with the “Cruelty Man” had me choking back the tears. So of course the moment a whole lovely stack of Monica Dickens novels got lugged home from the library, I was digging out Kate and Emma, the book inspired by the “Cruelty Man”. If you haven’t read An Open Book, the “Cruelty Man” (or lady) is a child welfare officer. And the parents usually loathe the “Cruelty Man” and assumed their children are going to be snatched away and stuffed in a home.

But let’s talk about Kate and Emma shall we?

In the simplest of terms, Kate and Emma is the story of two teenage girls, Kate (unloved and unwanted girl from the lower class) and Emma (a judge’s daughter). But one day while Emma is visiting her father’s court in the Juvenile system, sixteen year old Kate is one of the cases. Kate has run away from home and her parents don’t want her back. Just another case in the hundreds or thousands that Emma’s father has seen. But something about Kate stirs an interest in Emma. And the two become unlikely friends.

Now at this point, a novel where the lower class Kate and upper class Emma could go a few ways. The easy way is to have Emma take Kate under her wing, tidy her up, educate her and have Kate find Mr Right and her and Emma could live next door to each other and everything would be tea and scones and lovely forever and ever. That would be a very boring book. And yes this is coming from someone who adores Cinderella/makeover stories like Jutland Cottage and The Thing About Jane Spring. But what makes those books different from the very boring but would certainly sell to a certain market book is a certain bite and wit.

Luckily, Monica Dickens doesn’t take the easy way. In fact, the alternating voices of Kate and Emma took a few chapters to get used to but give it those few chapters and you’ll find it hard to put down Kate and Emma.

Kate is fortunate enough to land in a loving foster home with run by Mollyarthur who wouldn’t be out of place as a character in a Maeve Binchy novel. She loses some of her hard shell and starts her unlikely friendship with Emma. In the warm safety of Mollyarthur’s house, both Kate and Emma bloom. Only Kate gets pregnant. It’s not that surprising.

What is a surprise is Emma’s response to the situation. She wants to live with Kate and have the two of them raise the baby on their own. Emma’s even willing to have people think Kate’s baby is her own. Kate has her own plans. But what Kate ultimately does (marriage to the baby’s father) sets her on a doomed path. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that Kate will follow her mother’s path of an unfortunate marriage with too many children too fast and not enough money.

But as Kate marches towards her fate, Emma’s life isn’t all cream. In fact, it’s never been perfect as it seems from the outside. Emma is the oddball of her three siblings. Her family is haunted by the tragic drowning death of her younger brother. Her parents have distant relationship that is just barely holding on. She’s fortunate enough to come from a well-connected family and can find a job and rise in the ranks of her uncle’s supermarket business. She’s not popping out a baby every year by a dim-witted husband in slum rooms and dodging the landlord. But she has her own tragedies including her part in the one that nearly destroys both her and Kate.

Emma means well. She has a core of caring and compassion that with care and training would make her a wonderful child welfare worker like her mentor and father figure Johnny Jordan. But Emma hasn’t trained as child welfare worker, she blinded by guilt, money, privilege and friendship. Deep in her heart of hearts, Emma knows Kate is on the same path as her mother, turning the child who forced her into an ill-considered and ill-fated marriage into a whipping boy. The point when Emma sees a burn on Kate’s son made with a poker by Kate and doesn’t scoop that little boy up is the moment you want to smack Emma upside the head for not saving him. You want to tell her that betraying the bonds of friendship with Kate is worth it if it means saving Kate’s son. Or Kate herself.

Kate and Emma is not an easy read. It’s not a fun frolic with comic episodes. If you want that sort of Monica Dickens’ book, pick up One Pair of Hands. There are parts that will make you cry. You’ll wish the horrors of Kate’s life would end. If you’re me, you’d want to know more about Mollyarthur and Johnny Jordan. And you’ll want to thank the person who whined about Monica being so obsessed with the welfare of horses over children and sent her down the path to writing Kate and Emma.