The Reader

Yes, I have strayed away from The Hour I First Believed. I needed to refresh my desire to read and to write by starting a new book. I guess I'm a commitment-phobe I can't stay with the same book for very long. Hopefully one day I'll return to The Hour I First Believed, but for now, I'm in love with The Reader.
Bernhard Schlink is an amazing writer. In my first encounter with him, I'm completely enthralled. The Reader, though set in a time I have no knowledge about, is so easy to relate to. Maybe it's because Michael is close to my age, at 15 years old. Maybe it's because he's attempting and succeeding to revive his social life with kids his age. Or maybe it's because his inner commentary just seems so similar to mine. Even though I'm not having an illegal affair with a 30-something year old woman and recovering from Hepatitis, I'm still able to understand him.
The Reader has very intimate details, some that can be reviewed as disturbingly graphic. Not disturbing in an 'oh gross' way but more in a unconventional, unfamiliar way. It shakes the boundaries that I thought I was confined to.
Schlink's diction is beautiful. Every page I just want to keep reading and reading. I also find it nice that his chapters are short. No one likes to read super long chapters. The beautiful thing about Schlink's writing is how he is so delicate with the human form and mind. He dives into the emotions between Michael, the 15 year old, and Hanna, the streetcar conductor that changes Michael's view. Each chapter seems to switch between Michael's view during his affair with Hanna and his view after Hanna when he's much older.
I like this book's intimacy. I like how Michael is truthful and desperate. But he's not disgustingly desperate, he's lovingly desperate. He is passive sometimes because he's smart and knows his boundaries. I admire Michael because he has more courage than I do. He is open for love and he is proud of his love but it hasn't blinded him. He feels the pain but he's not crippled.
I've never been so enraptured by a book. No, I take that back. I fell head over heels for Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job but this is different. This is the first book that when I'm reading it I feel mature and I feel like someone else might struggle with the story. I'm arrogant and I like to reestablish my dominance, so this book makes me feel so good. When I'm not feeding my inner power hunger I'm vulnerable and now I'm becoming more sensitive to Michael's struggles and his desperation for love.
I began the book last Monday and finished it today. I never read that fast. I never read everyday. Except for this book. I put my own drama in a corner to get back into Michael's head. The writing is beautiful, and the characters are amazing. Now that I've read the whole thing the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, 'Take It Easy (Love Nothing)' pop into my head.

Don't take it too bad it is nothing you did.
It's just once something dies you can't make it live.
You're a beautiful boy.
You're a sweet little kid but I am a woman."
So I laid back down and wrapped myself up in the sheet
And I must have looked like a ghost 'cause something frightened me
and since then I've been so good at vanishing

Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth
Someone might get hurt, but it won't be me
I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free...
and a little bit empty

This only makes me love the book, and the song, even more.
Before I read through everything I was afraid I would come to resent Michael. When he was still with Hanna he was gravitating towards other girls. Even though Hanna is a rough character, she is still loveable. Maybe it's because I like the strong feminine character, and maybe I liked that it connected so well to the Bright Eyes lyrics. But I can't seem to resist her.
That was all part one.
part two, Hanna leaves. She disappears. Michael cries. He suffers, but it's internal. And like Bright Eyes he turns a little arrogant towards the people he knows only faintly, to people he knows he becomes distant and empty, and in his own mind he questions everything, wondering if it was anything he did to run Hanna away. After the affair, there is one place where he meets her again.
He's a law student watching over a war crimes case. His study group and class are able to look in on the case to see what it's like to be an actual lawyer. There are about six defendants, all women, all who have committed terrifying crimes. Now I don't want to go into too much detail because I believe that this book needs to be read by as many compassionate people as possible. (If you're not a passionate, empathetic person you might not fully appreciate this story.) Anyways, Hanna is a defendant. Michael sits back watching Hanna being forced to confess to some of the crimes she never actually committed. He realizes she has an inner weakness that links everything from Michael and Hanna's past together. It's devastating, but questions are answered and there has to be some relief from that.
part 3. Hanna stands in jail, alone. Michael is unable to face the future, or his past. I feel like I can't tell you much more. All I can say that it comes to a devastating end, but there is some relief along the way.
Can I say how much I love this book enough? I watched the trailer for the first time since I began reading the book yesterday and I am excited about how true it seems to have stayed to the book. Now all I can do is watch the movie. I can't wait.

There is no god. Or at least Caleum doesn't think there is. He asked all the same questions anybody would after losing a family member or witnessing something horrible or whatever. If there is a God then why is he letting this happen to me?
Mo's falling apart. Her drug addiction is getting a little better, but she's completely emaciated. Her PTSD has taken complete control. She's skin and bone, her hair's falling out but she's kind of confident. Kind of. She's comforting Caleum now as he breaks down and reverts to the same alcoholic tendencies that his estranged father had. Mo's completely plagued by physical pain, and she's 'doctor shopping.' As one doctor doesn't prescribe her pain meds, she moves on. When she finds one that does, she keeps him, but she never stops the 'shopping.' The more doctor's prescribing pain meds the better. As Caleum reverts to drinking, Mo's a narcotics addict. Eventually the cops find her 'doctor shopping' out and she gets hauled into the station. Mo's forced to find a shrink and start going to NarcAnon meetings. In a pitfall of rage, Mo goes off on Caleum who has taken her drugs away. To prove his point that they're in this together, Caleum drowns the pills in a river of alcohol.

Now Lamb does something that I never expected. He pulls away from his story and starts telling the reader about someone completely different, someone who we've never heard about. Now I'm questioning if I've just been out of the news loop lately because I feel like this story must have an underlining meaning. Something that relates back to Columbine but I just can't put it together yet. Lamb tells the story of Jesse and Morgan Seaberry. Sound familiar at all? Not to me. Jesse's the screw up of the family - the drug addict, the criminal, the unwanted one. Morgan on the other hand is the star. He's practically perfect in every way. He's a star student, a funny kid. He has charisma and a hunger for knowledge. They're brothers battling for attention and Morgan's winning.
The mother is the narrator. She figures that even though the elder Jesse's a screw up, she must have done something right eventually with the incredibly intelligent Morgan and the kind-hearted Alyssa. The mom gets cancer, she beats it, she pulls through. Happy story. By the end of the chapter Jesse's still a screw-up, Morgan's still perfect and Alyssa is still the lovely baby.

I guess I had let it go unnoticed, but the book apparently is compartmentalized in parts. Part one, Butterfly. Butterfly included the event, the immediate effects, and Caleum and Maureen's downfalls. At the end, Mo decides she can't stand it living in Colorado anymore and they decide to move back to Caleum's roots in Connecticut. I believe the actual idea for naming it 'butterfly' comes from the conclusion chapter. At a gas station, Caleum runs into a substitute teacher from Columbine. He recognized him from his revealing confessions about his fear of becoming a father at the Columbine recovery session held at the school. During Caleum and the sub's conversation a 'cabbage butterfly' softly landed on the sub's shoulder. it went by unnoticed. Right as the sub thought he was feeling excited about having his first child with his girlfriend he expresses feelings of fear, fear that his own son will turn out like Dylan or Eric. Caleum reassures him, even though he knows nothing about fatherhood. Caleum then asks him who he had been subbing for that day and it turns out that he had been the sub for Caleum's English class. The butterfly gets shooed away.
Part Two: Mantis.
It opens one year after the event. Mo's answering a questionnaire about her trauma. An evaluation maybe. For the first time we get to see the clinical side of Mo's PTSD, besides her Xanax abuse. This woman is really messed up in the head. She's got some problems.
Caleum's cleaning out a drawer at the farm, he comes across his old date book where he kept to do lists and important dates. After the event there weren't many entries, except for one written on July 29, 1999. Caleum reflects on that day, it was a day on the road coming from Colorado to Connecticut. They stopped at a Cracker Barrel, he chased the dogs outside to get them some exercise while Mo stayed inside, attempting to eat. He noticed she was completely unaware of what was going on. He called it 'psychic numbness.' As he reflects on the passage he lets the reader know that that was seven years ago.
Caleum starts to show his own obsessive compulsive tendencies. He keeps all old news clippings of the Columbine event stored in a large Tupperware container. Every once in a while he'll get drunk and stay online for hours, just searching and searching for info on the boys. Searching for some way to eliminate the troubles that are taking control of his and Mo's life. He describes the weapons they used. The way they dressed in Nazi-like attire. The way they got a hold on the guns they used. They're not you're typical evil monster, but the reality of their terror makes them even more scary.
Caleum becomes obsessed with connecting Chaos Theory to Dylan and Eric's actions. He's persistent, almost too persistent.

A note: I don't know if I can refer to them by their first names anymore. It doesn't feel right.

Maureen, Mrs. Quirk, is finally getting some help. And yes I finally remembered her name. The police department has been setting up a timeline of events and they're recruiting witnesses of the incident to come back to the school and relive some of their trauma. Bad idea, I know. Mo (Maureen) is traumatized even by the thought of that, and luckily enough for Mr. Quirk (whatever his first name is) Mo is shocked enough to give into his persistent recommendations of seeing a therapist. So she goes and she sees the therapist and basically the therapist contradicts everything that Mr. Quirk has done and says.
When I picked this book I really wanted to read about Columbine. I wanted more juicy details about the actual event not about a fictional couple pretending to deal with the aftermath. Maybe I'm a little sick in the head but I wanted to see the scene inside the school, the real terror and emotion then. So far, that's one chapter's plot. Otherwise it's Mr. Quirk and Mo fighting, whining, or apologizing. I'll get through it but not without some mind-dragging.
You see I have some problems when it comes to reading. I kind of have reading A.D.D. which I think can just be explained as regular A.D.D.. I read about a good book in one of my magazines, I go to Barnes & Noble, buy it and then get home and realize I have mounds of other books I've already started reading. I think I'm going through the A.D.D. stage with The Hour I First Believed. With no real dramatic plot twists or heart-wrenching details, I get bored. I'm afraid to announce that I've become bored.
I'm bored with the story, I'm bored with the characters and I'm bored with the author. Not to mention that the book is fat. Yes it's got big font size, but still it's fat.

The Hour I First Believed Blog
number two


When you've been running your heart out for a while you get into a trance. You start to forget your running and you just start to think. You forget you're working so hard to just keep moving because all you can seem to focus on are your thoughts. The breaths you take are the only sounds you can hear. The inner monologue starts to take control, you're in cruise control. Then you come around the corner and you're done. It's over. Stop running. It's ok.

Reading excepts from Dylan and Eric's journals is like running your heart out. In the book there's an entire chapter dedicated to their journal entries leading up to the shooting. Lamb quoted some of what they said on their confession tapes too. It's their voice. It's not fiction, it's them speaking. I fell into a trance when I read them. It was like I forgot that I was reading, but I was watching them write, their plans unfolding. I watched them vent into their journals about the jerks at school who teased them that day, the ultimate reason for their attack. The most horrific thing was that I understood them. I understood that being rejected and being teased sucks. I understood their anger and that's what caught me off guard. That's when I stopped running in my mind. When I reached the end of the chapter I came out of my trance, realized that it was about one in the morning and that I had school the next day. When I went to bed I was thinking about Dylan and Eric, I understood that they were angry, but I couldn't imagine ever coming into school and shooting everybody and anybody I saw. I'm not like them. I'm nothing like either of them and even trying to comprehend their motives was unthinkable.

But still. These two guys were months away from graduating high school. They had plans after high school, they were thinking of college and the military. Then they rejected those thoughts and went out, bought guns and well...did it. Maybe with some therapy or attention or someone to talk to or care about could've prevented this. Maybe if someone had paid some attention it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. But I guess we'll never know.

The Hour I First Believed Blog
number one


The minute I had read the review for The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb, I wanted it. Ever since watching Bowling For Columbine I've kind of had a secret interest in the Columbine High School shootings. In Bowling For Columbine you see raw footage, video from security cameras documenting the terror that these two boys brought in with them that day. These images are stuck in my mind. You see the two boys coming into the cafeteria with two guns in each hand. You see the unarmed students dashing for cover, leaving their backpacks and lunches behind. It's basically a slide by slide video but it gets the point across. The terror is real, this can happen. I'm not a big cryer, but I cried when I saw that. I couldn't even imagine any kind of catastrophic event at school, let alone a shooting. I can't seem to comprehend the idea of someone my own age or someone in one of my classes possessing the drive to kill. It's impossible. It's unthinkable.

The book chronicles the life of Mr. Quirk and Mrs. Quirk who both worked at Columbine High School. Mr. Quirk was a social studies teacher and Mrs. Quirk was a school nurse. Right before the shooting Mr. Quirk's aunt passes away and he has to go back to Connecticut or wherever he grew up. The next thing he knows he's switching the TV on and there's footage of kids screaming and running out of Columbine High School. His wife is still there, he doesn't know if she's dead or alive.

The book follows his life dealing with his mentally damaged wife after the shooting. She suffers from PTSD and becomes completely emotionally stale. You get a taste for their scandalous life before moving to Colorado early on in the book which makes their awkward, strained relationship even more awkward and strained. It's a bit heartbreaking, it's hard to decide who to feel sorry for. Mr. Quirk who's dealing with an emotionally unstable and unfaithful wife, or Mrs. Quirk who has to suffer from the memories of the Columbine shooting everyday? The answer is never obvious and I still have some digging to do.