Review of Room by Emma Donoghue

Here's another review from my Goodreads. This time its about Room by Emma Donoghue.


How did Emma Donoghue do it? How did she write an entire novel from the first person POV of a five year old boy? Who'd never been outside? Because he was born to a woman who was locked in a garden shed for years by a man who kidnapped her? How did Ms. Donoghue do it and not write a book that was exhausting, heart-rending, and unreadable? I don't know, but I'll know something about writing when I figure it out. 

I think part of the magic of this book is that it is told by the child. His innocence and ignorance make the circumstances of the book bearable. We, the readers, aren't exposed to the mental anguish Jack's mother experiences because Jack is just telling us about the only world he has ever known. It's a world his mother has filled with magic and routine and love, a world in which she also manages to protect her child from his father, the man who kidnapped her when she was 19. Jack doesn't know that, of course. All he knows is that Dora the Explorer is his friend because she talks to him, and that green beans are his "enemy food." 

At five, Jack is beginning to ask the questions that will prevent his mother from maintaining the fiction of the room, the fiction that the world is 11' X 11', and that everything on TV is unreal. Five is the age when children go to Kindergarten, often the first time they leave their parents' care for the better part of the day. At five, Jack is exposed to the world in a much more dramatic way. 

I will figure out how you did this, Emma Donoghue.

Getting ready for CCCC 2015 in Tampa #4C15

It’s been years since I went to a big English teacher conference. I last went to CCCC (Conference of College Composition and Communication) back in 2003. Before that, I went in 1996 when I was a graduate student. I went as an observer only both times. This time, I’m presenting.  

Kate Ristau, my writing/editing partner in crime, threw our hat into the ring at the National Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE) CCCC conference last year, and damned if they didn’t accept our proposal. The proposal? Teaching grammar with humor. 

If you keep up with me at all, you’ll know that last year, Kate and I published a small book about commas called Commas: An Irreverent Primer. We took the errors that we most often saw in our student’s papers and wrote a book covering only those errors. The twist is that Kate is a folklorist and YA author, and I write books about dragons when I’m not writing novels set on alpaca farms. So, the grammar book about commas is populated with fairies, grammar dragons, and unicorns grumpy about the Oxford comma. 

Kate proposed a panel based in creative writing about teaching grammar with our weird of kind humor. Then Kate promptly quit teaching (I’m jealous/proud of her…that’s a different blog post). The upshot is that our proposal was accepted, but now I’m the one who gets to go, because I’m the one who can get a faculty grant to pay for it. 

In about a month, off I go to Tampa, Florida, to talk to teachers of English about teaching grammar to college students who don’t want to learn it. Yeah, I’m freaking out a little. It’s one thing to profess in front of a classroom of college students who know nothing about your topic; it’s another thing to tell a roomful of experts something new. 

I’ll talk about the comma book for sure, but I’m also going to do  show and tell about another project I’m working on: a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) study guide based on the comma book. I’m having groups of students write an adventure based on their assigned chapter of the comma book based in a world that mimics the one in the Comma book…that is, lots of grumpy grammar dragons and the like. 

I could go into all the relevant narrative/exposition/learning jargon here, but I won’t; you can hear it at the conference or in the slides I’ll post later. I also hope to have a working “study guide” via Google Forms to share with the panel attendees. 

One restriction is that I only have 12-15 minutes to talk about all this. That’s about three slides, if I’m doing it right. That’s not a lot of time. It’s also an eternity. 

If you are at CCCC in Tampa this year, be sure to come to my presentation. It’s during the last session on Saturday (M.05), just before lunch, so bring an apple or a really crinkly bag of chips. If you have your grammar dragon already, bring it along and I’ll sign it if we can hold him down long enough. If not, I’ll sign a book for you. 

I have two pieces in the Northwest Passages

The Northwest Passage is the literary magazine at Western Oregon University, where I teach composition and literature.

I have two pieces in the issue that came out yesterday (1/13/15).

"The Berkeley Peet's" is a poem about--you guessed it the coffee shop in Berkeley, California.

"Slow Rodeo" is a short story about a drunk guy who decides to play bull poker. I am told it's really funny.

You can pick up your copy on campus, or you can follow the link and contact the Northwest Passage staff. They can probably send you one.

http://www.wou.edu/northwestpassage/

Review of "This One is Mine" by Maria Semple

So, I'm trying to catch up with my GoodReads reviews. I'll start with the books that have left an impression, whether good or not so good. Some will be recent reads for me, others will be historical. I read This One Is Mine 2 1/2 years ago, for instance.

Enjoy!
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This One is Mine by Maria Semple
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book sticks with me. Perhaps it's because the characters are drawn so well, each with his or her own type of pain and failures, contrasted with their ambitions. No one is trying to be the bad guy, but they all make choices that injure other people.

And yet, they all grow a little. Well, except the junkie. But at least he warns everyone that he is a junkie, and no one should expect anything beyond junkie behavior from him.

Somehow, Semple redeems everyone else. I'm still trying to figure out how.


View all my reviews

What should Maren write next?

http://goo.gl/forms/DOohh65rtK

I am trying to decide on a new project. I just finished a children's adaptation of A Midsummer's Night's Dream, and it was so fun.

So, help an indecisive writer out. Please take my one-question poll by following the link above. I've put the one question below, so you can ponder it.

Thank you in advance!
m

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If I were to write another children's play, which of the following do you all think I should write?

1. Jungle Book or any number of the "Just So" stories by Kipling
2. Beowulf
3. Gilgamesh and Enkidu
4. Theseus and the Minotaur (might get the Icarus myth in there, too)
5. Lillith Myths (I kind of like the evil/not evil dichotomy. Kind of like Maleficent, which my girls loved)

Another manuscript done!

Why, yes. That IS another manuscript completed. Thank you for asking. 

Answers to your questions:

1. This is my fourth completed novel manuscript. 
2. It is 59,000 words (plus or minus) or 218 pages long. 
3. It took about 2 years to complete, start to finish.
4. During those 2 years, I also finished (and sold) Fuzzy Logic, the book that is coming out in 2015, and I wrote an adaptation of A Midsummer's Night's Dream, also premiering Summer 2015. 
5. The title of this book is Sparks. 
6. The elevator pitch is: A woman struggles with not only a new love affair, but the fact that the monster which she doesn't want to believe lives under her barn gets pissed when they tear the barn down. She doesn't want to believe in magic, or buy a cow. She just wants things to go back to normal. 
1. I'm still working on the pitch. 
7. Yes, I'm shopping this manuscript around. If you are a publisher or editor who is intrigued or piqued, please contact me. Otherwise, I'm compiling a list of places to send query letters. 

Finishing this manuscript is a FANTASTIC way to finish this awesome year. Thanks for coming along on the journey with me!

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Reader Question--Why do writers do that? #1

A friend sent me this really interesting question, and I asked him if I could use it as part of a blog post. He said I could as long as I took his name off of it if I made him look dumb. Heh heh heh. Kenny’s never going to live this down.

This sparked an idea. If you have a question about something you read or saw on TV or a movie that seems like an odd choice for a writer to make, send it to me! I’ll either try to explain it or agree with you that it was a lazy writer move.

So, with that out of the way, here is Kenny from PDX’s question:

Hey Maren!  

I was hoping maybe you could either explain something to me or validate a writing criticism I have regarding a particular technique in film and TV (and, presumably, literature as well. Here it is, as an example from the episode of Orange Is The New Black that we just watched, although it could be from anything:  

Larry, husband of Piper, is recounting a gossip during an NPR interview about inmates that he heard from her. He says that she is afraid of her cellmate, Claudette, because she might shiv Piper any night. This was because when Piper first Claudette, she had heard that Claudette was in prison for murder. Since then, they have become friends. Claudette hears the radio interview where Larry describes his wife's cellmate as a murderer. 

Claudette goes to Piper and says....  

Claudette: Is that what you think of me? ...that I will kill you? (Something like that.) 

Piper: [Mouth agape, says nothing.]  

Claudette: [Looks disgusted, storms off.]  

Drama ensues.... 

Here's my criticism of this kind of thing each time I see it: Piper could have easily explained why Larry said that and diffused the whole situation. 

Piper: I'm so sorry! When I first met you, I had heard that you were a murderer and you were so cold and mean. I was afraid of you. That's what I told Larry, but that was before you and I became friends. I don't feel that way now and I haven't had a chance to tell him how things have changed because he isn't answering my calls.  

Maybe Claudette stays mad at Piper, but at least she has an explanation. I see this kind of thing all the time and it feels like sloppy, lazy writing because it's not realistic to me. People don't just fail to respond to false accusations without any explanation in real life. It seems to me like the writers need to come up with some drama, so they made Piper be so shocked that she couldn't respond and then cut the scene off to leave it suspenseful.  

Am I being overly critical here? Have you seen this type of thing? I don't know how you could miss it since I see it in just about every show and every movie I watch. Is this sloppy writing? And more importantly, how many shitty writing mistakes have I made in this email while critiquing the writing of others? :)  

Kenny from PDX

Hi Kenny—

I’ve seen this scenario in lots of TV, movies, and literature, too. And, you’re right: it can be annoying. 

Let’s look at a couple legitimate reasons a writer might create a scene like this.

1) Actual people (like me) often feel gobsmacked by confrontational situations and cannot get words out of their mouths in time to keep the other person from storming out of the room...especially if that person wants to storm out of the room. 

2) DRAMA! does not ensue from rational conversations. So, a writer who wants to create DRAMA!, avoiding rational human behavior is a good idea. 

So, the next question is why do readers/viewers like you have this reaction? I was immensely frustrated with Pride and Prejudice when I first read it (at 9 years old). Why don't these idiots TALK to each other? Answer: the book would be 500 pages shorter (and more boooorring-er) if they did. 

I think it speaks to your comment about how easily the situation could have been diffused. If you were in a similar situation, you would have simply provided the information needed and bada-bing, bada-boom, no drama. If these were real people, I’d have no patience with them, either.

As I alluded to above, though, this doesn’t make for dramatic reading. It doesn’t make you need to turn the page, or stand around the water cooler and complain about what idiots the characters are. Why tune in each week to watch a bunch of people going about their daily life, being polite to each other and considerate of people’s feelings? We want to watch other people make fools of themselves, make bad choices, and date the wrong people.

There are deep-rooted psychological reasons for all this, but let’s just use the word “catharsis” for now. “Catharsis” is loosely defined as: “Things could be worse. Thank heaven they’re not as bad as what I just read/saw.”

At the end of a show, you can sit back with your wife and say, “God, those people are dumb. She shoulda just said ‘I didn’t mean it,’ and it would have been fine. I’m glad we’re so much smarter and better adjusted than they are.”

“Oh, and not in prison.”

See? Things could be worse.