memoirs of a vampire in the dark

I have, of course, a few things going on in my reading world. When I finished "Jamaica Inn," I had a hard time picking what I would read next. There are just too many books on my "to read" list. Just check out my Goodreads account. I grazed the stack and grabbed a Doris Lessing book I found at The Strand recently: "The Memoirs of a Survivor." My radar pinpointed Lessing because we've had "The Golden Notebook" on our Fiction Favorites table a few times at the old Barnes & Noble. I scanned the cover, and decided this might be one of those hidden classics. Turns out it is. There are a lot of people who seem to like this book. It claims to be slightly autobiographical, so I figured I'd give it a go. At 189 pages, it should be a breeze, right? Well if there's anything I learned from Virginia Woolf (and actually, there was a lot) it's that a short book can sometimes take much longer to read than a long book. It's all about cognition. Lessing starts what seems to be a beautifully abstract story, but she philosophizes with the best of 'em, and halfway through this work, I got bored. Obviously, not all philosophical writers are boring, and I think when the mood strikes me I'll return to this book. But it's not quick train reading.

Lessing's genderless narrator tells the reader of the current times, in which Britian is becoming a wasteland. People try to cling to their homes, but government services and consumerism have fallen to the wayside. Bands of young people rove the country, and this narrator is seemingly randomly assigned to become the caretaker of a 13-year-old girl, Emily, and her odd cat-dog. The narrator lives in an apartment building, and begins seeing visions of another person's home on the other side of the living-room wall. This is not a neighbor's home we're peeping into, for on the other side of the wall is actually a hallway. The narrator can step into the other world and roam the rooms, and even spends time cleaning them and otherwise interacting with the space, which we later find to be scenes from Emily's childhood. Emily is no trouble to the narrator, but begins hanging out with some of the gangs that pass through, and the narrator fears she will leave. She does not, though, partially because her cat-dog (Hugo) would be in danger of being eaten.

I attempted to scan the book for a good example of Lessing philosophy, but I got bored. I'd much rather my mind migrate to the next book I picked up, "Let the Right One In." I borrowed this book from a coworker after having seen the Swedish film. This book was quite the opposite of its half-finished predecessor. There's not a lick of philosophizing among the hundreds of pages of vampire-story goodness -- Lindqvist leaves that to the reader. Because I already knew the story, it was easy to visualize the events, if not a tiny bit distracting. I prefer to read a book before I see its movie version, but had I not seen the film, I don't know that I would've picked up the book. I suppose it sounds redundant to say the book was like an expanded version of the film, but it's true. There was an additional subplot and more explanation of what in the movie were mysterious details.

There were a few points in "Let the Right One In" (originally titled "Let Me In") where I could tell the translator had trouble making a sentence flow without repeating itself, but I appreciated the straightforward style the novel uses to lay out the events. That doesn't really mean this was a light read -- the subject matter made sure of that -- but it was quick. The main character is Oskar, a young boy who is bullied at school, which causes him to fantasize about killing more than most, I would think. So it makes perfect sense that he would enter into a passionate friendship with a child vampire who recruits men to do her killing for her. Eli took notice of Oskar because of his violent tendencies, so she intended to exploit him. But like the boy who is dared to date the loser and then falls for her (see "10 Things I Hate About You") Eli finds that her relationship with Oskar is unique. In a moment of potential weakness, she cannot kill him even though she is starving for blood. Her prior blood-seeking sugar daddy, Hakan, was exploited by Eli because of his perversion. He was able to love Eli because of her still-childlike body, and his desire to be with her competed viciously with the conscience that plagued his murderer self. Hakan lost Eli because he could no longer kill, and it's ironic that he wanted so badly to die but instead became a vampire and needed to kill to simply survive. Hakan's eventual demise is outlined in the major subplot that didn't make it into the movie. That scene is more gruesomely played out than Eli's killing of the school bullies, which thus became the peak of gruesomeness in the film.

I'd like to see a sequel to this book, and there may very well be one. I know the author has other vampire books, so I'll have to do some research, because they just may not be translated yet. But I'd like to see how the story plays out. Oskar told Eli he wanted to kill people who deserved it, so the randomness of vampire killing may not suit him, unless he becomes a Robin Hood-esque vigilante vampire. And there's another question: Would he let Eli turn him? Eli offered and Oskar declined, but who says he couldn't change his mind? Eli's cycle of leaching off human killers won't end until she partners with another vamp for eternity, and a child-vampire duo is tragically romantic. In this respect I had hoped for a little more from the book's ending, because just like in the film, the last scene is Oskar taking Eli in a trunk on a train with no known destination. The book did highlight what is only implied in the film -- that Eli was actually born a male. This touch is intriguing but sad because of the mutilation he endured. Oskar is confused but accepting of this knowledge, and in the end I like to think it only makes him love Eli more.

During (though not because of) this reading, something struck me. I knew that next I wanted to read something real. I've ignored nonfiction for a long time, but there are so many great books that I want to add to my "read" list, and I don't mean that book I read about how to find a job ... although I guess that counts. And now, for a list of nonfiction books I've read.

David Sedaris "Me Talk Pretty One Day"
David Sedaris "Holidays on Ice"
Chuck Klosterman "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs"
Cynthia Shapiro "What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here?"
Tori Amos "Piece By Piece"
Donald Miller "Blue Like Jazz"
Amanda Hesser "Cooking for Mr. Latte"
Virginia Woolf "A Room of One's Own"
Rick Warren "The Purpose-Driven Life"
Greg Behrendt "He's Just Not That Into You"
Lynne Truss "Eats, Shoots & Leaves"
James Frey "A Million Little Pieces" (yes, I'm counting it)

There may be a few more but that's the gist from the shelves I have here in NYC. That list is too short. A few essays, a few biographies, and a few life lessons. So, I went through those shelves and pulled out the nonfiction that I haven't read, and I stacked the books up on my TV to pick something new. Some highlights I hope to devour soon:

Truman Capote "In Cold Blood"
Mary Roach "Stiff"
Stephen King "On Writing"
David Grann "The Lost City of Z"
Elie Wiesel "Night"
Anne Frank "The Diary of a Young Girl"
Bob Dylan "Chronicles"
Adam L. Gollner "The Fruit Hunters"
David Sedaris "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim"

You may remember me starting something called "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read." Yeah, I wanna finish that, too. But for now, I'm reading a few things at once. "The Autobiographer's Handbook" is for inspiration in writing. Wade Rouse's "At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream" is for entertainment. And Marie Winn's "Central Park in the Dark" is for substance and train riding. Naturally, I could write all day about the book's first 60 pages, but I'll save it for a day when I'm in less danger of being late to work. Let it suffice to say I'm loving every page because it reminds me of field studies in high school, and it's a way of exploring the park I can't experience while just passing through. Which reminds me, I'm also making my way through the poetic essays of Colson Whitehead's "The Colossus of New York." Go, nonfiction!