What's in a Desk?

In the spirit of fall clean-up, the Fab 5 took on a big project: the book Great House by Nicole Krauss. This is no small effort--it takes up a big piece of real estate on the bookshelf, and it is not a quick and easy read. Add to that another hurdle. This is one depressing book. We met at Barbara's house, and she was afraid that if she finished it over the weekend, we would be walking in to find her still in her bathrobe with greasy hair, given up on life thanks to the novel.

So far I'm not really selling this book, and book club doesn't sound like so much fun.

We kicked off the evening with a travelogue by yours truly, where I showed them several hundred photos of my family eating pasta and gelato. If you want to know more about our month away, you too can get my travelog (don't worry, no several hundred photos there) on the blog we kept for our families: quistworldtour.blogspot.com.

But I digress. The travelogue helped us procrastinate beginning our discussion, which I sensed several of us were sort of dreading. In the end, though, this book offered a lot to talk about, even if none of us really liked it. It's a strange thing to know that you can appreciate a book that you don't like. But there it is.

The book is very cerebral. While the characters are fully developed, everything that happens in the book, for the most part, seems to happen in their heads, and it takes some hard work to wrap your hands and mind around something concrete. Every character has constructed an idea of themselves and their lives, and they bend their lives around that construction.

One man has an idea of who his wife is and what there relationship is, and every move he makes is shaped by what he thinks she wants and needs. A woman spends a good portion of her life writing at an odd, imposing desk, building a career for which she gives up everything else. When she feels she must give the desk to someone else, she feels that her writing is over. A father's life and marriage are rearranged to try to fit around the constructions of who he thinks his children are. A pair of siblings live their lives around their concept of their father, a man whose own life is built around the memory of his father. Everyone has experienced loss, and everyone is trying to figure out how what they remember fits with who they are and who those important people in their lives really were.

The desk that the writer gives up shows up in different times and places in most of the stories. It is an enormous, imposing desk with lots of oddly-shaped drawers, and it has one drawer that is locked. As far as we can tell, the desk has had a strange, foreboding sort of effect on everyone who has come across it, and they have all wondered about the locked drawer. At the end of the story (spoiler alert!), we find out that the drawer was empty when it was locked. Many have wondered about it, speculated about the secret and possibly valuable contents, but no one has tried to open it. And there is nothing inside.

This emptiness echoes through the lives of the characters--all believe there is a very important secret that they could discover if they tried, but for the most part they don't even try. And if they do, they find more emptiness.

Your can see how this is not such an uplifting book. The thing of it is, as I read, I could see that this is the work of a master writer. It is beautifully written, lovely language. But so painfully sad. I have read The History of Love by the same author, and though this book seems to get the most lavish praise, I would recommend that one instead of Great House.

We ended up our evening with some karaoke-style singing from Nancy, minus the karaoke machine. She graced us with some enthusiastic renditions of ELO songs, which will forever change my perception of that particular band....She has some Strange Magic.

I did skip writing about the last book we read, Property by Valerie Martin. This was a novel about a rather enigmatic main character, the wife of a plantation owner. She was trapped in her marriage, but the slaves that served the couple were trapped in even more severe ways. Again, this is not the most uplifting book, and the characters were not very likeable. Sonya had recently read Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill, which also dealt with slavery. She highly recommends it over Property. If you want to read something by Valerie Martin, I recommend Mary Reilly, her take on Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. It's sort of a creepy, romantic, gothic novel that is much better than the little-known Julia Roberts movie made from it.

Next up for the Fab 5: Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Soaking up a little summer sun in the early winter!