Book Review & Some Random Thoughts

In an attempt to take my life back (with a nod to Sue), I'm going to start including other facets of my life here beyond my reproductive tract. I'm currently reading Prague: A Novel by Arthur Phillips. I had not heard of the author until a few months back when I heard a radio interview promoting his second novel, The Egyptologist. Beyond an ardent Discovery Channel fan, I was intrigued by the idea of a fictional retelling of Carter's discoveries, so I put it on my wish list. Then one day in the book store I ran across a hardcover of Prague on sale for a ridiculously low price. Even though I had read the first sentence, I decided to give it a go. I thought, he can't keep that up for the entire book, can he? Well, yes, yes he can. Here's the first sentence:

The deceptively simple rules of the game Sincerity, as played late one Friday afternoon in May 1990 on the terrace of the Cafe Gerbeaud in Budapest, Hungary: 1. Players (in this case, five) arrange themselves around a small cafe table and impatiently await their order, haphazardly recorded by a sulky and distracted waitress with amusing boots: dollhouse cups of espresso, dense blocks of cake glazed with Art Nouveau swirls of translucent caramel, skimpy sandwiches dusted red-orange with the national spice, glass thimbles of sweet or bitter or smoky liqueurs, tumblers of bubbling water ostensibly hunted and captured from virgin springs high in the Carpathian Mountains.

The story moves along at a snail's pace, fighting and scratching its way out from behind endless adjectives and clever wordsmithing. I can see the author sitting at the keyboard, coming up with one set of descriptive monikers only to delete those and put in an even cooler set, grinning with glee at his cleverness. Its his first novel, so perhaps this can be chalked up to that, but whoever his editor was should be fired. I'll take a close look at The Egyptologist before shelling out the cash and delving into it. Having said all that, the capitals and other great cities of Eastern Europe are on my list of places to visit before I need a walker, so I continue reading.

In the random thoughts category, coming to a crossroad in life like I have this week makes one wax philosophical. What's My Role? is the question du jour. (OK, sorry, I'll stop, just dissing Mr. Phillips.) I am the family historian and geneaologist, having taken over the family tree project from my older brother and putting every detail I could get my hands on into a sophisticated software program. I also saved a box of old photos from my grandmother's house after she passed away so a scrapbook could be made, noone else seemed the least bit interested in them. I am the daughter/sister/wife/aunt/cousin/friend who has everyone's birthdays and anniversaries marked on my calendar, who never fails to send a card or a present, even though most people in my life don't reciprocate. I live 2,000 miles from where I grew up and went to school, so a large segment of friends and all of my family are far away. I feel the need to keep in contact with them, and do, but I'm not sure exactly what fuels my actions. Do I want to make sure they haven't forgotten about me, or am I looking for compliments? I have an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, and there are members of it that are dead to me, even though they breathe free air somewhere. My relationship with my mother is particularly and peculiarly strained, but we have come to an uneasy understanding of the amount of contact we can each tolerate. This is part of why I wanted to have a baby. A fresh start. A new beginning without tragedy or weirdness or secrets. Maybe its my destiny to be the one who watches everyone else and writes it down instead.