Narrative Non-fiction links

The Narrative Journal
http://poynter.blogs.com/narrative/

The Narrative Digest's Narrative Library
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/resources.aspx

The Narrative Digest's Essays on Craft
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/essays.aspx

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/NiemanFoundation/Audiences/JournalistsAndWriters.aspx

Loving Frank (Nancy Horan)

Loving Frank could be said to be akin to Kate Chopin's The Awakening in that it is a woman's awakening to her own sense of self, her needs and aspirations apart from her partner's or her responsibilities as wife, lover, or mother. Written as if Mamah Borthwick Cheney was writing her own memoir in third person, the fictional story brings to light a largely secret chapter in a real-life affair with the same woman, a largely secret chapter in Frank Lloyd Wright's larger-than-life history. Beginning in Frank Lloyd Wright-country, Oak Park Illinois, in the early twentieth century, the clandestine lovers eventually leave their respective spouses to live a life together. But a description based on just the love affair or the "awakening" of a woman realized falls short of the Horan's prose, which is intoxicating with feelings of desire, guilt, shame, thrills, and quiet moments of determined resolution that this reader adored. So much so, that the page-turner disaster that closes the book and scars the infamous Taliesin house in Hillside, Wisconsin leaves shock and heartbreak in the wake of the last page read. Loving Frank is Nancy Horan's first novel. But her previous life as a journalist and the years living in Oak Park herself has brought this beautiful story alive on the page. For Horan has given voice to Mamah, a woman whose voice and life were all-too-soon silenced by the passing of years and a seemingly passing shadow towered over by the life of a world-famous architect like Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Audacity of Hope (Barack Obama)

The Audacity of Hope (Barack Obama)

You know you like a book when you tell everyone how good the writer is. And this was never more true than Barack Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope. He is an incredibly thought-provoking, articulate writer. And given for his present position, quite surprisingly humble. I am impressed that he published his beliefs in such a public way, his views on foreign policy, on community, and on family, among others. You’ll want to savor this as I did, enjoy the spell he casts over you, as you seem to be there in an armchair opposite the man, as if listening to him speak about each thing that is so important in this world.

Death of a Red Heroine (Qiu Xiaolong)

I adore books that cast me in a midst of a country, immerse me in all the senses, especially taste and smell, not withstanding a complicated culture and history like China's. Granted, Xiaolong has written the protagonist of his first crime novel--Chief Inspector Chen--as one of a kind. Chen is an English and literature scholar well versed in Chinese and Western poets, who writes and recites poetry throughout the novel. Added to that is Chief Inspector's penchant for good food, which he describes in succulent detail. So, the promotion to head of a "special" crime force seems strange to not only the reader, but to his colleagues as well. When he is placed on a case that involves the murder of Guan Hongying, a designated "national role-model worker" in the reign of Chairman Mao, everyone doubts Chen will be able to solve the case. More so when the case turns political and the high cadres--the upper echelon of the Communist Party--may be involved. The prose itself is tough to read, a stilted, unnatural English, which may lie in the difficulty of the translation or the style of the author. The author loses some points for the deux ex machina to conclude the novel, however clever the interweaving of the Chinese setting and conflicts fascinate me in this mystery story.

Style, baby, STYLE

You're not getting any reader through your piece of prose, unless you've got style. And part of style, lies in knowing the rules. Everyone says that, right? 'Cause once you know the rules, then you know which ones to break. That's the beauty of it. So, learn 'em and learn 'em good.
Then your very own styled prose is filled with broken bits of standards along with idiosyncrasies no one else can claim.

Time-Tested Writing Guide:
William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White. The Elements of Style: http://www.bartleby.com/141/

For Science Writing:
A Field Guide for Science Writers, 2nd Edition. Deborah Blum, Mary Knudson, Robin Marantz Henig, Eds. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

For Non-Fiction Writing:
John Franklin. Writing For Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Non-Fiction. New York: PLUME, 1986.

William Zinsser. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Non-Fiction. New York: HarperCollins, 1976.

For Memoir:

Natalie Goldberg. Writing Down the Bones. Boston & London: Shambala, 1986.

For Travel Writing:
L. Peat O'Neil. Travel Writing: See the World. Sell the Story. Cincinatti, OH: Writer's Digest Books, 1996.

The Seven Sisters (Margaret Drabble)

Half of us in the book club were split on whether The Seven Sisters was a good read or not. Sure, I respect the limited perspective offered by Drabble's main character Candida in this novel, as the world is seen only through her somewhat naive glimpses of the world around her. We never find out full truths or explore beyond what Candida can see. She, in her intimidated way, rarely ventures out beyond what her imagination allows. So, even the move to one of London's seedier sides from her very comfortable married life in Farlingham is a surprise. A move motivated by the infidelity of her husband Andrew, the acceptance of the upper class community of his affair with a mother whose daughter committed suicide. Candida's move also motivated by an isolation from her own three daughters, communication and closeness being her weaknesses. But I couldn't get past the affected writing, the shifts in perspective that turn out to be lies, and the pretenses of death. So, that the drama is as superficial as the world as I understand it through the main character's eyes.

No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)

After reading The Road and hearing the movie, No Country for Old Men, was receiving accolade after accolade, I was determined to read this 2005 McCarthy book. Boy, oh, boy was I glad I did. What a read. I had trouble putting it down. You know, those books that you read right before sleep, where your eyes grow heavy and your head starts to nod. Well, that just didn't happen with this book. In fact, I literally felt my adrenaline start to race, and my eyes scanned quicker, trying to keep pace with McCarthy's writing, flipping pages, curious as all hell to see what happens next. The dialogue is one of the best I've read, even though the truisms coming from bad-to-the-bone Anton Chigurgh and welder-on-the-run Llewelyn Moss sound like they could have come from the same character. I love what the book jacket depicts as the theme: "an enduring meditation on the ties of love and blood and duty that inform lives and shape destinies." The characters all seem to embody the belief that they are, not was or will be, just are. So be their demise. The only one that seems to escape this predetermined existentialism is Sheriff Bell, who follows the characters throughout the book, only to make his own decision on whether to stay with the killer til his own bitter end or to make a change that might save his own life, regardless of right or wrong.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver)

Kingsolver never fails to send me flat in awe-struck wonder at her non-fiction prose and send me reeling from the truths that sink in after a read. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is no different, save for contributions to this book from husband Steven Hopp and daughter Camille Kingsolver. Moving from dry, water-deprived Tucson to verdant farm in the Southern Appalachians, Kingsolver and her family resolve to live on what they can grow in their garden, raise in their chicken and turkey coops and buy locally. What the book becomes is a diary of that experience, including recipes for each season, and a testament to how possible this venture can be. A book club book, we came together on May 3rd over a completely local dinner, determined to change our shopping ways after reading this book and understanding better the distances our food travels to our table and at what cost to our local farms and dependence on oil. I went to the local farmer's market to buy the book club dinner I was hosting. Spinach so crisp, I ate it like lettuce the entire week. Cilantro, long, bushy, so smelly. A thick slap of halibut that melted, flaked when grilled. Asparagus, spicy red potatoes. And wine from Bainbridge Island and Mt. Baker. Over and over I heard from my book club friends how wonderful the meal was . . . and all I can say is that I did very little but cook it. It's the love and work the farmers put into that food that brought out flavor we so miss when we buy sub-quality food from the grocery store.

What is the What? (Dave Eggers)

What is the What? is a sad, sad, story. How could it not be? It's the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a "Lost Boy" from war-ravaged Sudan. Albeit it's not pure autobiography, the disclaimer by Deng says that much of the story is true. Eggers tells Deng's story through a series of flashbacks, flashbacks during and shortly after a violent robbery of Deng's apartment in Atlanta, Georgia, ironically his sanctuary after years of suffering, starvation, and deprivation running from one group or another in his native Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya.All proceeds from the sale of the book go to t he Valentino Achak Deng Foundation: http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org/. For me, the story brought to life the reality of the suffering of what remains ongoing in Sudan--now in Darfur, Sudan. It makes a news headline or a story more than just a place far-far away. It's a person like you or I, suffering in fear, starvation, without family or love, and without shelter. What the book leaves you with is to answer the question of what exactly is the what that will make a deranged world sit right.

The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

Gruesome. Scary. Devastingly awful. That's what I thought of the bleak scene painted in Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, as I read it in a two-night marathon. I couldn't put it down. The world as we know it has ended, and yet what has caused the end is never told. The land is covered with ash, in many places, the trees are burnt, the tires of cars melted, bubbled into softened pavement. Corpses sunken, beyond recognition lie along the road, in empty, decrepit houses. And a father and a son, both also never named, travel this road trying to survive despite long periods of starvation, lack of water, of shelter from the snow and wind. More grievous, more threatening are the tribes of "bad guys" as the son calls them who scavenge, steal, rape young boys and women, and then kill all they encounter to eat--that's the "bad guys" version of surviving. Beyond all hope, the boy and his father endure until the very end. What a read. An unusual read, to be sure. But considering I could not put it down, perhaps it was because of that pull of love amidst the destruction and waste that would have devastated most that kept me reading on.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (Erik Larson)

When I started this book, I was thrilled that I'd be going to Chicago for my sister's wedding, right to the heart of where the story takes place. Only, when I was there, I kept trying to figure out where oh where was the World's Fair and the time-consuming structures that had been erected over a century ago, where had it been located? Later, nearly at the end of the book I find out that very little of the landscape or architecture survived beyond that year in 1893. Much of it was destroyed in riots, none of the buildings really meant to last. All the effort for a single year. Unbelievable. Behind the design and the construction is architect Daniel Burnham who oversaw the building of the fair. George Washington Gale Ferris, too, left his mark, little known until his namesake left an indelible mark on every fair and festival thereafter with his Ferris wheel. The Ferris Wheel was almost a losing bid among the others who attempted to outdo the Eiffel Tower, if you can believe it. And the creepiest of creeps, Herman W. Mudgett, lived just a few miles away, committing murder after murder in a building he'd designed himself, complete with hidden doors and gas pipes exposed, vats, and kilns big enough for bodies. It's the shadow of this evil that darkens the otherwise white city, so named because all the buildings erected for the fair were painted white. Larson does an admirable job tying these story lines together, and bringing in bits and pieces of history, a history that includes Susan B. Anthony, Buffalo Bill, and even the sinking of The Titanic. A must read, if you believe me.

Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)

Marjane Satrapi's book Persepolis is a graphic novel both history of Iran during the period of the Shah, his downfall and then Iran's war with Iraq, and autobiography. It is the story of her early childhood--pre and post teenage years, when she first begins to think she'll grow up and be the first female prophet. Only she vacillates between becoming a prophet of God or a prophet of Marx. The disappearance of family members and friends, the charged marches, the bombing by Iraq, and forced dress--the burqa and the scarf--from this little girl's eyes is disturbing, even if her way of coping makes you laugh. Reading a graphic novel is a different experience, but not necessarily a bad one. The pictures and the captions leave many more interpretative gaps to the reader, which may make for a powerful read.

The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri)

Now I don't wonder why Lahiri won the Pulitzer prize, and I haven't even yet read The Interpreter of Maladies, her debut collection of fiction that took that prize . The Namesake transported me so completely into a world I've never been and yet longed to be for much, much longer than the final page. Her description, the sensation of touching, of feeling, of tasting were powerful, as were the turns of phrase that persisted beyond each page turned, lay deep in the recesses of my mind, digesting, resonating those truths of what she'd written. For me, it wasn't merely a coming of age novel, a story of a boy from an Indian American family in the US, it was the story of growing up in a family who have all the right intentions, but who don't realize how suffocating a life pre-determined with high expectations can be, how difficult trying to make a life apart remains. Yet, the first generation of an immigrant is a powerful story, and Gogol is the central figure, even though we meet and live in the lives of his parents in the beginning of the book--Ashima and Ashoke. Once he's born, it's Gogol who embodies the first-born immigrant whose life is pulled between the world his parents recreate of India in a suburb of Boston and the America he's known all of his life. All of this and a curious namesake, given to him by his father because of a tragedy he'd lived long ago and never told to his son he'd named. To Gogol, his name is meaningless, ridiculous until at the age of 18 he learns the true history of his name. A name perhaps more powerful because he changes this name to a "good name," a name his parents had intended all along for him to use outside the home. His other name--Gogol--would be more intimate, more familiar, for family only. And it's that namesake that leaves a powerful final message as the book ends, too.

Book suggestions?

Every night I try to have a wee bit of time to read, that wee bit between settling down for the night and when my eyes start to droop too heavy. I have a lot of books to choose from, what with a house full of books and lists upon wish lists of books from the local library. So, that wee bit of time never goes far enough to make a dent in all those books I want to read, let alone books I'd like to read again someday. 'Course the worst, just the worst, is when you believe so fervently that the author is going to get the story together by page 10 or 50, and when he or she doesn't, boy, do I feel cheated. Wee time is meaningful time best spent. So, I try to select the best-est of books, which come from recommendations of trusted friends and literary types, and of course, the Sunday edition of The Seattle Times' Book Review. Want to be let in on some of those best-est of books? Check out the Bookclub Blog at: http://jees-bookclub.blogspot.com/

The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World (Kati Marton)

I've heard that Hungary boasts the most Nobel prize winners, which for a relatively small country is quite impressive. But I had no idea of the impact a select nine Hungarians had on the world, forced to flee their native country because of antisemitism and the events leading to World War II. Author Kati Marton interweaves narratives of these individuals' lives, their personal motivations, hardship, romance, defeat, and the sweet recognition of their accomplishments into a story of our own history. Names easily recognized to us like Laurence Olivier or Ingrid Bergman, Albert Einstein, and Theodore Roosevelt are influenced by these men. Perhaps as striking is their ability to surpass enormous obstacles to become part of history--loss of family, friends, the antisemitism that displaced them from their native Budapest, and a language that isolated them linguistically from the rest of the world. Scientists Edward Teller, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner led the movement to develop the nuclear weapon in advance of Hitler. These scientists also worked to develop the computer. Major film makers Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) and Alexander Korda (The Third Man) created legendary movies, directing Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, for example in Casablanca. Photographers Robert Capa and Andre Kertesz's photos live on; Capa's fuzzy D-Day photo on Omaha Beach is recreated in Steven Speilberg's film: Saving Private Ryan. Capa's love affair with Ingrid Bergman, his war photography that brought the war to the public in the U.S. Kertesz's photos that captured emotion in a single moment.And writer Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon) prophesied the dictatorial state even before the Soviet Union had expanded its reach to his homeland: Hungary.

The Ghost Map (Steven Johnson)

I have mixed feelings about this read even though the premise of the book is a gripper--cholera is killing thousands of people in densely packed 19th century London--and John Snow tracks the disease to a source: a water pump that the residents are all using to collect water. Only no one believes him. Everyone--including the scientific community--says it has to do with "miasma," this theory that the stink of garbage and sewer infects people with disease. I would have preferred the author to draw the plot forward using John Snow, who is known today as the "Father of Epidemiology," how the events of that period unfolded with cholera itself as the heartless murderer, the femme fetale, and how Snow is stymied by the ignorance of the scientific community, who albeit in good faith sabotaged the health of the population with misdirected intentions. But Johnson doesn't do this. He goes round and round again, losing the plot line in a series of repetitions. And then in the end he keeps going, going into the this picture of how the city has become such a well-oiled, economically viable home to millions of people (where sewer, water, heat can be delivered to more people for less money than in the rural areas), tacking on a couple of chapters at the end of the book that lead the reader to envision the implications involved in the urban density of today. Only, he says the epidemic wouldn't be biological--like cholera or avian flu--necessarily, but technological. In the urban density possible today 25,000 people can be stacked in a building 110 stories high on a 1 acre of space. So, that unlike cholera, which spread comparatively slowly in a wider area, a terrorist attack of a space t his small would have an incredible magnitude and an effect which as we know was nearly instantaneous. And there is no cure either; nothing to stop the imminent deaths. So, when I closed this book I wondered if this book was about the cholera epidemic and how Snow's tracking system set the standard for a field--mapping out illness to locate a source. Or was it how science won out over the scientists. Or was this a story of how the city can grow to numbers unimaginable because of these ingenious systems we've devised to accommodate a mass of people in a relatively small area, numbers that can be easily decimated if the systems that were set up to accommodate the masses become inadvertently the very tools toward destruction. Or maybe it's all of these themes and stories combined, and that was just too much for me in a single book.

The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

Barcelona, 1945. I'd picked this one from the three I have out from the library, even it was the longest at 486 pages and probably the most likely I could renew. Maybe it was because I was still mesmerized by WWII (Remember, I'd just finished reading Villa Air-Bel, which is also WWII, but in France). This story takes place in Spain. But the war is in the background, this horror of the government turnaround that led to mysterious deaths and tortures . . . but all of these seem to revolve around this terribly evil person: Fumero.But more likely, I was intrigued by the beginning of the book, the kind of haunting that comes from not knowing and needing to know what happens next. For this book is less about the book--The Shadow of the Wind--that becomes the title, but more about the young boy, Daniel, who slowly uncovers what happened to Julian Carax, the author of the book, The Shadow of the Wind, and what happens to Daniel in the course of uncovering Carax's own story. So, that I no longer care what the book is about that Carax wrote, just about the story unfolding. Perhaps too many coincidences happen along the way . . . but there was something about the tension created by the story of what happens next that kept me turning pages long into the night. Those nights when I go to bed two hours past my bedtime because I found I simply could not put this book down. So, would I recommend this book? Undoubtedly.

Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille (Rosemary Sullivan)

I just barely finished this 400-page historical wonder before the library reminded me that my renewal is up again. Whew! This was one of those page-turners that I'd be darned to return until I completed the last page. This book recounts a terrifying period of history, focusing on a group of writers, poets, playwrights, artists, and political activists that were literally stuck in Nazi-occupied France, hiding out in Marseille as the Vichy government played puppet to Hitler. The government rounded up Jews, anti-Nazi writers, and any other "elements" that could be considered dangerous. What they feared? Being imprisoned and sent off to the internment camps, with little water, food, or shelter to survive. Little did they know--or anyone really at that time--that those internment camps were extermination centers.The clandestine group included such famous folks as André Breton, Max Ernst, Victor Serge, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, and scores of others. Led by stiff and staid Varian Fry, a US activist turned international diplomat for refugees, and helped by Miriam Davenport, heiress Mary Jayne Gold, Danny Bénédite and his British wife, Theo, they began a program financed privately by the Emergency Rescue Committee to get endangered writers and artists out of France and to the US. These people went to extraordinary, even harrowing lengths to survive and to escape, despite the many threats and obstacles.Sullivan draws their stories so vividly, detailing how the events of WWII brought these people together and radically changed their lives. The book ends with a synopsis of what happens to each of these individuals following the war. What we hope for--the blessing of peace and safety for each of these people after the war--is not what we get. A sad reminder that memory is never left behind.

Cheating Destiny (James Hirsch)

"America's biggest epidemic," according to James Hirsch, author of Cheating Destiny, is diabetes.  Hirsch, who is a Washington-Post journalist, has juvenile diabetes himself, as does his famous brother, Irl Hirsch, who works at the University of Washington as diabetes researcher and clinician. And during the course of writing the book, James Hirsch's three-year old son is diagnosed with diabetes as well. Family genetics play an awfully sure role in developing diabetes.

A little over 50 years ago, there wasn't yet insulin. Now there is plenty of insulin but also still plenty of blame. I live with a man who is diabetic, and am familiar with how much responsibility we place on those with diabetes. If they would only be more careful, monitor their diet more, exercise more or in moderation, then they wouldn't have such highs. They wouldn't have such lows.

Hirsch argues that key figures in the history of diabetic care have created our current attitude, to place the "burden" on the diabetic. To shift some of that responsibility to the health care industry would be more accurate and more helpful. Insulin--which is key to control--has seen sky-rocketing costs. Preventative care not profitable enough. Ironic indeed, since diabetic supplies are hugely profitable to pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, health care clinics, and manufacturers. Bigger bucks are made when the diabetic is ill, has heart disease (as many will), loses a limb or goes on kidney dialysis. The list of maladies caused by living with diabetes is long, the bill statement longer.

Hirsch tells this story as his story, making those of us who know little of the disease cognizant of the daily struggle a person with diabetes lives with, that day-by-day recognition that what is done today prevents what might happen tomorrow, or in other words: how to cheat destiny.

My Year of Meats (Ruth Ozeki)

I just hate it when you've got a good book in your bag that you want to read, but then the holidays creep up and all the fun of being with friends and family soak up free reading, alone-time like a Bounty towel on a wet counter. But that's not really the part I hate--it's when the library send the notice that your book is due in two days, and you know, you just know that this is one of those books that has a line of people out the door waiting to take from your unwilling hands. Plus, Ozeki is speaking next quarter at Cascadia Community College. Such was my hurry to get My Year of Meats read before the library started charging me for my time. I set a quota of a 100 pages a day. But yesterday I blew that quota out of the water and just stayed up until I was finished--there wasn't much sense in putting it down--I was completely hooked until the last line of the last page; it was that good. First of all, the narrator--Jane Takagi--is both vulnerable and do-or-die. And she's got this reality-tv-like assignment--to find interesting characters (who is an "American wife) whose lives will appeal to a Japanese audience on a TV series sponsored by an American meat company: BEEFEX. Her icky big-boss wants to stick to the script--generic, stereotypical white women with well-washed, teethy grin kids and a working husband--but add in beef-cooking recipes that would be unusual. Only Takagi can't seem to memorize the same script. Instead, she finds documentary-type stuff: a family who adopts kids from various countries around the world, the lesbian couple with two kids, the ex-stripper Bunny married wheelchair bound John, had a now 5-year old daughter who's already "developing," and the parents just think she's taking after the buxom mother. Only, that's when everything begins to unravel for both that small community and for Takagi's personal and professional life and the beef about beef starts to resemble a not-so-pleasant truth. My only advice: don't wait for the library's return notice to start the read. You'll want to savor every last bite.