Giving it up for offbeat narrators

HALLIE EPHRON: In another step back from the Pit of Despond, I’m Happy to Report: I AM reading. After three rounds through the Harry Potter books and after multiple false starts trying to read novels that made me too anxious to keep reading, finally I’m on a reading roll and reading books through to the end.

I broke free by following my daughters’ suggestions of what to read, with the caveat that she NOT recommend anything heartbreaking or violent. Running out of Kleenex here.

Molly recommended Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine… which I know we talked about on Jungle Red back in June/July but which blipped past me along with most of the rest of anything going on at that time beyond my doorstep.

Looking back, I see that it wasn’t everyone’s cuppa, but it sure is mine. I loved it so much. I came to love HER so much. I actually slowed down near the end so the pages would last longer. I needed an uplifting story about a clueless underdog and that’s exactly what it is.

I have a soft spot for intriguingly unreliable narrators who are oddballs, who see the world through their own distinct lens and march to their own drummer. One of my favorites is Anders, Tobias Wolff’s curmudgeonly book critic in his short story, “Bullet to the Brain.” Anders wait on line at the bank is interrupted by a robbery. And he can’t resist snarking about the robbers’ pedestrian dialogue:

Two men wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against the guard’s neck. The guard’s eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. “Keep your big mouth shut!” the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word. “One of you tellers hits the alarm, you’re all dead meat. Got it?”

The tellers nodded.
“Oh, bravo,” Anders said. “Dead meat.” He turned to the woman in front of him. “Great script, eh? The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes.”

Needless to say, things do not turn out well for Anders (see story title). And the narrative turns a corner midway through and we’re remembering all the things that Anders has chosen to forget. He is, after all, human.

I enjoy ultimately appealing characters who are out of the mainstream, now with Eleanor Oliphant topping a list that includes Olive Kitteridge, Christopher Boone (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time), Lizbeth Salander, and and Beth Harmon (The Queen’s Gambit).

These characters are all memorable because they are SO skewed in the way they filter the world and ultimately so human, a product of what-came-before which we only discover by reading through their story.

Whose advice have you learned to trust in picking your next read, and what book (character!) made you slow down as you reached the end?

AND congratulations! to Judy Singer! You're the winner of a copy of BLOOD ROOT. Please email (hephron "at" gmail dot com) me your mailing address, Judy, and Leslie Wheeler will pack up a copy and send it your way.