Kate's Point of View

Conducting the same exercise I am left with significant gaps in my life story. One day a year is not enough to tell the story. Or is it?

David Nicholls, in One Day, explains the twists and turns of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley’s lives. He illustrates the mundane and the extraordinary events that make up any lifetime. And he does it with one day a year.

On July 15th, just as Dexter and Emma are about to graduate university, they officially meet and enjoy one night of fun and love. Although there is a connection between them, Dexter has plans for worldly adventure and Emma has dreams of her own success so they part ways. Over the years, as told through phone calls, letters and live interactions, Emma and Dexter keep in touch.

It has become increasingly common to see the narrator in a novel change from one character to another throughout the story. Sometimes this method seems like the easiest, or even laziest, way to accomplish an end. But some authors, such as Nicholls, are able to use the different voices to illustrate depth that couldn’t come from just once voice.

Throughout One Day Dexter is easy to hate and Emma, although more sympathetic, is maddeningly accommodating of Dexter. While the reader may never overcome these feelings, empathy for each character is created when the story is told in their own words. During on stage of their friendship, Emma is dedicated to Dexter and regularly sends him long letters and books that are carefully selected to augment his phase of life. In return, Dexter sporadically sends postcards with no more than a few words on them. The reader knows from Dexter, though, that while drunk he is penning pages long letters to Emma that he never has the courage to send.

Because each chapter in One Day represents only one day, the novel is easy to read and easy to put down and pick back up again without losing your place. There are phases in both Dexter and Emma’s life that are incredibly frustrating to read about but they’re too likeable to stop reading about them.

But, when finishing down One Day, I’m curious if the reader is left thinking about either Dexter or Emma or if, as I was, they are too busy reflecting on how representative one day a year of their own life could be.

Conversely, siblings form a bond created by years of shared experiences. I will be among the first my siblings call for help when they need to make hard decisions. I nearly always have someone I can go to a movie or grab drink with. And throughout all the relationships in my life, there are three people who know me nearly as well as I know myself and will always be there for me.

Freud’s Blind Spot: 23 Original Essays on Cherished, Estranged, Lost, Hurtful, Hopeful, Complicated Siblings, edited by Elisa Albert, examines the strange forces that bring siblings together and drive them apart. The stories feature siblings as best friends, strangers, bullies, rivals and as memories. The theme throughout, although sometimes not stated, is that regardless of the dynamics, our relationships with our siblings are an important part of the equation as to who our adult selves turn out to be.

Albert does a great job at keeping the book cohesive, even with wildly different styles in writing, ranging from essay to comic to question and answer. The three sets of essays formatted as messages back and forth between siblings are fascinating. In two stories, one sibling will send the other a questionnaire about a variety of things: earliest memories, was it true that you…?,did you like me?, etc. The responses, as well as the questionnaire sent back in reply, tell a story and describe the people involved as well as any prose could. (“Did I make you a lesbian because I was so cute? Was I your first love?” “Yes. You still are, and always will be.”) They also offer a model by which readers can engage in conversation with their own siblings.

In her essay Gender Studies, Mary Norris struggles as she reflects on her relationship with her brother and her sister, one in the same. Her brother Dennis undergoes gender-reassignment surgery and becomes Dee. Is Dee the same person as Dennis? Is it okay for Mary to mourn the loss of her brother before she can accept the new person in her life? How can she adjust habits developed over a lifetime? “This is my brother…. This is Dee.” Because its not portrayed as an after school special, where people confront an issue, struggle but ultimately live happily ever after, the reader is brought along with Mary in her pain and questions.

Other stories are more light-hearted reflections on childhood and growing up. On being too young to know the meaning of phrases, but suggesting to your mother, when she announces being pregnant with your new sibling, that maybe she get an abortion. When your relationship with your sister changes the day she sits behind you in the birthing tub to support you during childbirth. The bond the forms between brothers when they feel like hired help to their mother and turn roofing a house into a summer-long disaster.

Freud’s Blind Spot offers something for every person who has a sibling, wants one or wishes one never entered his or her life. It will cause readers to pause and consider the reason behind their love or hate for the people who grew up with them. To reflect on people who are part of their lives through chance and the effect those people have on them now.

Set in the eighteenth century England amidst a time of political turmoil, The Lady’s Sipper centers on Alice Ibbetson, an artist who is grieving over the recent loss of her baby sister. She starts to see joy in her life again after stealing away in the middle of night to steal a lady slipper, a rare type of orchid, so that she may preserve and study it. The man on whose land she found the orchid, Richard Wheeler, suspects her of the thievery but can prove nothing. Sir Geoffrey Fisk, one of Ibbetson’s art patrons, knows of the flower and starts to harass her to get seeds from the plant so he may grow more and profit from them. In very short time, the plant hiding in Ibbetson’s art room is ruling her life.

Although focused on reclaiming his lost flower, Wheeler, a Quaker, is distracted by having to constantly defend his religion and his fellow Quakers from religious persecution. Swift gives great insight into the bravery shown by the pacifist Quakers and the price paid for defending their religion. The religious and political tension she creates is carefully explained and has relevance still today. (Although not all of today’s issues end with heads displayed on stakes around the gaol!)

Throughout The Lady’s Slipper, Swift writes of things in such detail that you feel like you are holding the lady slipper in your own hand and seeing townspeople as if they are right in front of you. When seeing an orchid that Fisk wants Ibbetson to crossbreed with the lady slipper, she describes the new orchid:

The artist in her followed each part, the curving yellow column with its hairs bristling at the pink-tinged base, the halo of petals flaring like a sunset. … The red orchid was an imposter, Alice though – an imposter in outrageous fancy dress.

Swift deftly layers plots to build a story that is complex and engaging. The whodunit mystery of the stolen flower – although not a mystery to the reader – and religious turmoil lead into a tale of murder, wrongful death sentences and a love story.

If runs into any pitfalls, and it doesn’t see many, it’s in the ending of her story. As the book progresses, it gets more and more action-packed and fast -paced. And just when the storyline should climax, it turns unbelievable. Not all readers will be left disappointed because Swift does tie up every loose end and the “good” characters end up where they should.

But life isn’t that forgiving, is it? If one insect can effect weather throughout the world, and outcome of one plant can wreak havoc on a town, then certainly the outcomes of people will be affected as well, regardless of whether we like them or not.

Building on the success of Freakonomics, authors Steve D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are at it again. By pooling their knowledge of microeconomics (Levitt) and skills in writing and journalism (Dubner), as well as calling on experts from a range of topics you wouldn’t quite believe exist, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance presents a collection of all the facts you never knew you wanted to know.

Freakonomics was illustrated with charts and graphs and armed readers with trivia that could jumpstart conversations at the dullest of dinner parties. SuperfFreakonomics takes it a step further. This collection was designed to resemble your middle school textbooks. Nearly every colorful page contains some picture, factoid, illustration or, of course, a table or graph. (How else would you explain economics besides tables and graphs?) In addition to making the book more visually entertaining than its predecessor, it also helps readers understand and remember more of the facts Levitt and Dubner painstakingly present.

In a chapter called “How is a Street Prostitute Like a Department Store Santa,” the title is pulled from all of two sentences of text and one illustration. It’s a great example of how SuperFreakonomics makes things memorable. Such a small amount of text, but by embedding a pictures of a team of Santa Clauses smack in the middle of a chapter on prostitution, how could you not remember the two sentences explaining the similarity? (The relationship between these two professions is intentionally omitted here. Why give a spoiler on a strange topic like that?)

While the authors present their work as economics, both Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics bear little resemblance to what many people will remember from their university days. By focusing on microeconomics, the study of market behavior of consumers and companies in an attempt to understand decision-making processes, Levitt and Dubner present more of a collection of pop-economic facts … the entertainment magazine of economics.

SuperFreakonomics is pretty much a guaranteed success, partially because of name recognition but also earned through a solid collection of studies and facts presented in an easy-to-read manner. However, the entertainment magazine comparison does indicate one drawback to this format of book. It is not the type of book you should sit down and read in a week. Rather, it’s meant to be savored, to sit on your coffee table and be enjoyed in small bites. Enjoyed in this way, each reader will be ready to jumpstart a whole new round of awkward dinner party conversations.