Clearly, I Need Professional Help

So, prior to going back to therapy (which - it will soon be obvious - I clearly need), I have read yet another post-apocalyptic novel.  No, I don't know what is wrong with me.  Yes, I agree that something is very, very wrong.  I promise my next novel post will not involve the end of the world as we know it.  I'm blaming this one on the Twilight series and the accompanying films - one of which my teenage daughter dragged me to recently.

Lately I've been getting book ideas from O magazine, and one of the books from her list that looked interesting was Justin Cronin's, The Passage.  For those of us who are (more than) a little tired of pretty, sparkly vampires, Cronin delivers true monsters - and not the kind of monsters who invade our pretty little unsuspecting world, but monsters we create ourselves.  I find that an interesting little twist on good old Vlad.

And I LOVED it.  It's a good long read - a dark, twisted Odyssey with a whole cast of interesting, likeable and flawed characters rich with moments of heroism, great twists and richly painted settings and plot events.  One of the very best things about it is the ending, which is just as flawed and complicated as real life really is, and it is one of those books that you are so sorry to see end when it's over.  Every once in a while I read a book that makes me want to pause before picking up anything else (and this is very, very rare with me - I ALWAYS have a book in the queue).  The last book I can remember feeling this way about was Memoirs of a Geisha - after which I took a week-long hiatus so that I could continue to live in Japan a little longer.  I think it says something that I was sorry to leave Cronin's world - which is arguably nowhere near as nice a place as Golden's Japan.  If it hadn't been so wonderfully and completely terrifying, I'd have handed it to my teenager - 'honey, this is what vampires are really like!'  No one sparkles in the sun in The Passage.

So hopefully this marks the end of my little post-apocalyptic orgy (which I will confess also included a viewing of The Road and The Book of Eli - seriously - WHAT is WRONG with me?).  Someone please recommend something a little more hopeful and uplifting for me to read now!

Intrusions - Ursula Hegi

From a craft point of view, this novel is a really interesting read. I read Stones from the River quite a while ago and remember loving it, so I thought I would take on another novel by Hegi. WELL, this one is quite different. First of all, it has 169 chapters! This is because the main characters (a married couple, Megan and Nick) are constantly "intruding" on the author's attempt to complete her book. Megan is undergoing a bit of an early mid-life crisis (she's only 30) - attempting to deal with her mother and grandmother, evaluating their life choices, and evaluating the state of her marriage. In the meantime, the author's children, husband and lack of motivation are competing for her attention, as are the constant interruptions of her characters as they argue with her plot choices for them and insist that certain decisions aren't true to their characters. While not much actually "happens", the book is worth reading in a sort of esoteric way and is a worthwhile addition to a collection of books on writing, the creative process, or the intersection of fiction and reality. I found myself wondering to what degree the book's author was Hegi herself - in other words, how far removed was Hegi from the "fiction" of her novel? This is a good book to discuss with a group.