“It was frightening, though, how little time you got. You only became yourself when you were twenty-three or twenty-four. A few years later, you had an old man’s chest hair. It wasn’t worth it.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (MAY 15, 2011)

The thirteen stories in the collection Bullfighting from Irish author Roddy Doyle examine various aspects of male middle age. Eight of these stories first appeared in New Yorker, and in this volume the post-boom stories collectively offer a wry, bittersweet look at the years past and the years yet to come. We see middle-aged men whose wives have left them, middle-aged men whose children have grown and gone, stale marriages, marriages which have converted lovers into friends, the acceptance of disease and aging, and the ever-looming aspect of mortality. Lest I give the wrong impression, these stories are not depressing–instead through these marvellous stories Doyle argues that middle age brings new experiences and new emotions–just when we thought we’d experienced all that life had to offer.

In “The Photograph,” Martin tallies up the pros and cons of aging:

“Getting older wasn’t bad. The balding suited Martin. Everyone said it. He’d had to change his trouser size from 34 to 36. It had been a bit of a shock, but it was kind of nice wearing loose trousers again, hitching them up when he stood up to go to the jacks, or whatever. He was fooling himself; he knew that. But that was the point—he was fooling himself. He’d put on weight, but he felt a bit thinner.”

As Martin faces his first serious health issue, he recalls the recent death of Noel, a friend from his youth. Martin tries valiantly to make light of his own health problem with mixed success.

In “Funerals,” middle-aged son, Bill starts ferrying his elderly parents around to funerals. What begins as a one-off favour turns into a weekly habit. Bill discovers that his parents actually look forward to funerals and that they view them as outings to be followed by a trip to the chip shop. Instead of feeling burdened by becoming their regular chauffeur, Bill finds himself fascinated by their behaviour and pleasantly comfortable in their company, yet at the same time some sort of seismic shift has occurred in the relationship:?

“He could enjoy their company and listen to them flirting. They weren’t his parents any more; he wasn’t their son. He was a middle-aged man in a car with two people who were a bit older. Once or twice, in a rush that made him hang onto the steering wheel, he was their son and the car was full of himself as a boy and a stupid, awkward young man, hundreds of boys and men, all balled into this one man driving his wife’s Toyota Corolla and trying not to cry.”

Bill isn’t sure why he wants to spend so much time with his parents, but he does know that he’s beginning to feel uncomfortable with his own crowd:

“He stayed clear of the local funerals, the old neighbours. He didn’t want the conversations. What are you up to these days? How many kids is it you have? He didn’t want to talk to men he’d once known who’d lost their jobs so recently they still didn’t understand it. Great, great. Yourself? There’d be too many middle-aged women who used to be girls, ponytailed men he used to play with, a mother he’d fancied–in the coffin. Fat grannies he’d kissed and–the last time he’d gone to one of the local ones–a woman with MS, shaking her way to a seat in the church, the first girl he’d ever had sex with.”

Bill finds his parents child-like, and there’s a comforting sensation to the day trips he takes with them as they attend funeral after funeral. It’s as though Bill is a parent once again–after all his own children are grown and no longer need his care.

If I had to pick one favourite story in this stellar collection, it would be “Animals.” In this particularly poignant story, George, the middle-aged narrator, whose children are now grown and gone, recalls his life as a family man through memories of the animals the family owned. At one point, George tells how he once colluded with the local pet shop, Wacker’s over a lost canary. The canary, Pete, escaped from the cage, and George returns home to find “four hysterical children in the kitchen, long past tears and snot, and a woman outside in the back garden, talking to the hedge.” The woman is George’s wife, Sandra and she’s pretending that the canary is in the hedge:

“–Listen, he said.—I’m going to bring the kids to Wacker’s, to see if Pete flew there. Are you with me?
Sandra looked at him. And he knew: she was falling in love with him, all over again. Or maybe for the first time—he didn’t care. There was a woman in her dressing gown, looking attractively distraught, and she was staring at George like he was your man from ER.

–While I’m doing that, said George,–you phone Wacker’s and tell him the story. You with me?
–Brilliant.
–It might work.”

Some people measure their lives by the holidays they’ve taken, the jobs they’ve held, or the homes they’ve lived in, but George measures his life as a husband and father through the family pets. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that middle-aged George finds that his loyal companion is a dog.

The stories include some gentle humour as we hear of one man who brags about picking up 57-old-twins. Another story tells of a couple whose relationship devolves into insult slinging (“Four decades of arse parked inside a piece of string”) in some sort of aging contest. Doyle’s characters, while sketched lightly, are fully realized individuals who cope with the various problems and disappointments of middle age: loneliness, illness, failure, and boredom. These stories examine middle-aged life from all angles, so we also see that middle-age is a mixed bag with consolations in unexpected places. Bullfighting, a rich mature collection from Doyle, shows us a writer at the top of his game, and Doyle’s stories are infused with generosity and wisdom–even as they examine, so excellently, the foibles of human nature.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (April 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Roddy Doyle Wikipedia page on Roddy Doyle
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Dead Republic Paula Spencer

Bibliography:

• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993)
• Wilderness (2007)
• The Deportees: and Other Stories (2008)
• Not Just for Christmas ( 2008)
• Bullfighting: Stories (2011)

Barrytown Trilogy:

• The Commitments (1987)
• The Snapper (1990)
• The Van (1991)

The Last Roundup Trilogy:

• A Star Called Henry (1999)
• Oh. Play That Thing! (2004)
• The Dead Republic (2010)

Paula Spencer Novels:

• The Women Who Walked Into Doors (1996)
• Paula Spencer (2006)

Children’s Books:

• The Giggler Treatment (2000)
• Rover Saves Christmas (2001)
• Meanwhile Adventures (2006)
• Her Mother’s Face (2008)
• A Grey Hound Girl (May 2012)

Nonfiction:

• Rory and Ita (2002)

Movies from books:

• The Commitments (1991)
• The Snapper (1993)
• The Van (1997)

“Why does she always want more, when this was all there was? ‘I’m sorry, Emmy,’ her mother would say, with her teacher’s maddening patience, ‘but that’s not how the world works.’ ”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 24, 2011)

Stewart O’Nan may simply be genetically incapable of writing a bad book. His characters are written with precision, intelligence and verisimilitude; they’re so luminously alive that a reader can accurately guess about what they’re eating for dinner or what brand toothpaste they use.

In Emily, Alone, Mr. O’Nan revisits Emily, the Maxell family matriarch from a prior book, Wish You Were Alone. Anyone who is seeking an action-based book or “a story arc” (as taught in college writing classes) will be sorely disappointed. But for those readers who are intrigued by a near-perfect portrait of a winningly flawed elderly woman who is still alive with anxieties, hopes, and frustrations, this is an unsparingly candid and beautifully rendered novel.

Emily Maxwell is part of a gentle but dying breed, a representative of a generation that is anchored to faith, friends and family. She mourns the civilities that are gradually going the way of the dinosaur – thank you notes, Mother’s Day remembrances, and the kindness of strangers. Her two adult children have turned out imperfect – a recovering alcoholic daughter and an eager-to-please son who often acquiesces to an uncaring daughter-in-law.

With her old cadre of friends dwindling and her children caught up in their own lives, Emily fills her days with two-for-one buffet breakfasts with her sister-in-law Arlene, classical music, and her daily routine with her obstreperous dog Rufus, who is instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent life with an aging, sometimes unruly, always goofy and loving animal.

Whether she’s caring for and about her Arlene, trying to keep up with family holiday traditions, keeping tabs on a house sale nearby, and trying to do the right thing in educating her children about executor’s duties, Emily struggles to find purpose. She recognizes that time is not on her side any longer and reflects, “The past was the past. Better to work on the present instead of wallowing, and yet the one comforting thought was also the most infuriating. Time, which had her on the rack, would just as effortlessly rescue her. This funk was temporary. Tomorrow she would be fine.”

The thing is, we all know Emily. She is our grandmother, our mother, our piano teacher, our neighbor. She is the woman who gets up each day and attends the breakfast buffet or participates in a church auction, or waits eagerly for the mail carrier or feels perplexed about preening teenagers who blast their stereo too loud. She is the one who wonders whether she should have tried a little harder with her kids, even though “she’d tried beyond the point where others might have reasonably given up.” She is the woman who senses that life is waning but still intends to hang on as long as possible and go for the gusto.

The fact that Stewart O’Nan can take an “invisible woman” – someone we nod to pleasantly and hope she won’t engage us in conversation too long – and explore her interior and exterior life is testimony to his skill. Mr. O’Nan writes about every woman…and shows that there is no life that can be defined as ordinary.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 74 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (March 17, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Stewart O’Nan
EXTRAS:	Author Q&A and Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Last Night at the Lobster

Bibliography:

• In the Walled Cities: Stories (1993)
• Snow Angels (October 1994)
• The Names of the Dead (1996)
• The Speed Queen (1997)
• A World Away (1998)
• A Prayer for the Dying (1999)
• Everyday People (2001)
• Wish You Were Here (2002)
• The Night Country (2003)
• The Good Wife (2005)
• The Last Night at the Lobster (2007)
• Songs for the Missing (2008)
• Emily, Alone (2011)
• The Odds: A Love Story (January 2012)

Nonfiction:

• The Vietnam Reader: The Definitive Collection of Fiction and Nonfiction on the War (1998)
• The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy (2000)
• Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season (2004) (written with Stephen King)
• My New Orleans (2004)

Movies from books:

• Snow Angels (2007)

“You don’t see them at first. Then suddenly a random detail snags your attention like a stray mouse: an old lady’s handbag, a stocking slipping down a leg, bunching up on a bulging ankle, crocheted gloves on the hands, a little old-fashioned hat perched on the head, sparse grey hair with a blue sheen.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (FEB 3, 2010)

Baba Yaga is a star player in Eastern European myths. The Russian version involves a crackly old witch ready to spark terror in children’s hearts. Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic, in her wonderful book, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, lays out modern-day interpretations of this age-old myth.

These “witches,” Ugresic tells us, are all around us—old women limbs curling from arthritis, shuffling along, waiting, pondering the end of their lives. The book is laid out in three sections—each a different take on the myth.

The first one touchingly details the relationship between an old woman and her daughter (the narrator). Living in exile in Zagreb, the old lady spends each of her days with fixed routines—a treat at the local pastry shop, a glance at the newspaper, dusting perhaps. Ugresic does such a brilliant job detailing this woman’s every action and gesture as she waits slowly for death to come, that the book is worth reading for this alone. “She uttered her truisms with special weight,” the narrator writes of her mother, “Truisms gave her the feeling, I suppose, that everything was fine, that the world was precisely where it should be, that she was in control and had the power to decide.”

Plagued by dementia partly from old age and partly from cancer that has spread to the brain and is barely contained, her one regret is not being able to see the city of her youth ever again. “She had snapped shut almost all of her emotional files. One of them was slightly open: it was Varna, the city of her childhood and youth.” Since she is not capable of travel, Mom sets the daughter off to find and record the city of her youth.

Some background information about the author would be relevant here. Dubravka Ugresic now lives in Amsterdam with a Dutch passport. When war broke out in Croatia in the early 90’s she took a stand against the nationalistic government for which she was forced out of the country as part of a “witch hunt.” An exile herself, you can detect the emotional weight of Ugresic’s own experiences here. In the story, when the narrator returns to her mother with pictures of her hometown now irrevocably changed, the mother can no longer recognize it. It’s a haunting and moving portrait not just of old age, but also of exile’s deep loneliness.

The second interpretation looks at three old women—Beba, Pupa and Kukla—who visit a newly founded spa retreat as part of their joint vacation together. The friends kick it up and have a good time even as the story individually zooms in on each woman’s life regrets.

To each of these women, love doesn’t (or hasn’t) come easy. The “egg” in the title too is based on a Russian folktale and it stands for love—one that is nearly inaccessible. “Love is on the distant shore of a wide sea,” goes the legend. “A large oak tree stands there, and in the tree there is a box, in the box a rabbit, in the rabbit a duck, and in the duck an egg. And the egg in order to get the emotional mechanism going, had to be eaten.”

So even if “Baba Yaga” has laid an egg, will it get eaten and by whom? In here Ugresic also does a wonderful job of showing up the beauty industry and all its attempts at keeping old age at bay.

The final interpretation is an essay laid out by a folklorist, Aba Bagay, who offers the general discourse and ideas behind the Baba Yaga myth. In a final fantastic touch, she slowly morphs into that crackling, bird-like creature a part of “Hags International.”

It is important to note here that writing about old age and women is not easy. This is the sort of material that can easily slip into gushy sentimentality. But Ugresic is a far better writer than that. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is funny, touching and even illuminating—but never, ever sappy. It’s going on my list for top reads for the year. Her interpretations of the original myth are searing and inventive. “They shuffle around the world like armies of elderly angels,” Ugresic writes of these sweet old ladies. In other words, Baba Yaga is only as scary (or as endearing) as the old ladies we all know. That ought to reassure the young ones, shouldn’t it?

In her wild, fun and imaginative book, Dubravka Ugresic turns the myth of Baba Yaga on its head. While doing so, she validates what Bette Davis once said (and what one of Ugresic’s characters also acknowledges): “Old age is no place for sissies.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Canongate U.S.; Tra edition (February 2, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Dubravka Ugresic
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Europe in Sepia And of another interesting book: The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony

Bibliography:

• In the Jaws of Life and Other Stories (1992)
• Fording the Stream of Consciousness (1993)
• The Museum of Unconditional Surrender (1998)
• Lend Me Your Character (2004)
• The Ministry of Pain (2005)
• Nobody’s Home (2007)
• Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (2009)

Non-fiction:

• Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream (1994)
• The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays (1998)
• Thank You for Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia (2003)
• Karaoke Culture (2011)
• Europe in Sepia (February 2014)