The Grownup - Gillian Flynn

I'm sort of an unapologetic Gillian Flynn fan. I like her writing. (You can read my review of Sharp Objects here, and Dark Places here). I like the tone of voice she uses for her narrators. They sound real to me, even if they always are a little bit too weird to be real. I love how she always keeps you guessing.

The Grownup is no exception. Part of a larger anthology edited by George R.R. Martin called "Rogues", I picked up this little nifty story as a kindle single for $1.99. The narrator remains nameless as we learn her backstory of growing up the child of a con-artist, pan handler, which eventually led her to working in the back room of a psychic's parlor giving handjobs for three years before finally graduating to the dubious task of reading people's auras. 

Enter Susan Burke, who has a bit of a problem with a possible haunted house, a disturbed stepson, and an absentee husband. Thinking to make a quick easy buck, the narrator coaches Susan along and eventually is invited to the home to "cleanse" it. 

In true Gillian Flynn fashion, it would be giving too much away to go into the rest of the plot, but I will say that the technique, the pulling one over on the reader is a feat accompli once again. Although at one point I thought to myself, "Hmmmm she's getting a little explain-y at the moment." (See, I'm on to you Gillian Flynn). The narrator is the passive observer of Susan Burke and her stepson Miles and then must contemplate which reality she will inhabit when it comes to these characters' actions and motives. 

The ending is deliciously ambiguous as the narrator struggles with her own discomfort at being in such a situation in the first place, but that's all to Gillian Flynn's writing. And I'm just immensely pleased with the whole show.

4/5 Stars. 

City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin

Peter Jaxon, Alicia Donadio, Michael Fisher, Sara Wilson, Hollis Wilson, Amy NLN - What can you say about characters who, through two thousand pages of text, are more like friends than fictional characters. Finishing City of Mirrors left me with the same kind of melancholy feeling you get when you look at old pictures from your senior year of high school, or those last parties from college, or that goodbye dinner you had at your last job. It's a bittersweet nostalgia - a longing for a feeling or a time to continue.

City of Mirrors (COM) is the final part of a trilogy that began with The Passage and continued in The Twelve. A bit of time has passed since I finished the Twelve, and if I'd had time, I probably would have liked to have gone back and re-read both books before diving into COM. The start of the book does a pretty good job recapping what has occurred in the prior volumes (through more excerpts from "The Book of Twelve", but you miss a bit of the flavor and detail that seems a little overwhelming when the narrative actually begins. 

When COM begins, Alicia is still outside the Homeland area having undergone some horrible brutalization there. She makes her plans to find Zero and kill him, thus ending the viral line. Peter, Sara, Hollis, Caleb, and Kate have started new lives in Kerrville, Texas. Amy is presumed dead, destroyed in the final battle of The Twelve. Here the narrative jumps around a bit in time. The characters age, and the entire population of Kerrville, some 200,000 strong, starts to disperse into outlying townships, beyond the protective walls of the city, as people begin to assume the viral threat is over. 

However, Fanning, the Zero, has other plans. He intends to finish what he started, the annihilation of the human race. Cronin spends a few chapters getting into Fanning's backstory. His love of Lear's wife Liz, her premature death, his own breakdown afterwards, and the depths of despair that led him to go about his vicious genocide. To be honest, I thought this ran on a bit long, and mostly because it turns out that even though this stuff makes you understand Fanning, it doesn't make him sympathetic. I kind of found him to be a pathetic whiner.

But then, the story gets down to business. And the threat to Kerrville, and a vastly aged Peter and co. - they are now in their 50s - must deal with the threat of a new viral horde. The tension Cronin builds in these chapters is incredible. He's really the master at taking things in directions you never see coming. The chapters also give you a good idea of just how worthy an adversary Fanning is for our friends; how he overpowers and out-thinks even Amy. (Spoiler - sorry, you didn't really think Amy was going to die in the second book did you?)

It was strange to see my friends all grown old. I think Peter, Hollis, Sara and Michael are all permanently in their 20s in my mind - as I am in my own. Peter makes an observation at one point that looking in the mirror is strange because your reflection sometimes does not match your own perception of yourself. This resonated with me, as for sometime now the adult transformation or epiphany I thought would arrive has left me as I always have been, me, still me, in a slightly older body. 

The ending of the book went on a bit long. Cronin does a wonderful job wrapping up every story line (except maybe Michael's) to let you know what becomes of all our friends, where the Book of Twelves comes from, and how the Global Conference on the North American Quarantine Period comes about. The fascinating thing about the epilogue, occurring 1000 years after the events in the first book, is how it makes you think of time. The reader has just left our friends and 900 years later, we are with a new character who is puzzling over the way time and distance distort and challenge historians. They have airplanes again? And industry? But yes of course, it's 900 years later. Look at how far our own world has come in 900 years. 

That being said, I also wouldn't have minded a little bit of mystery at the end, with Cronin allowing me to make up my own mind about the passage of time for our characters. Open-ended stories that left them wandering in my mind for some time to come. All in all COM was a great book, although I thought the Passage and the Twelve were a bit better. I'm so satisfied with the ending. But . . . I miss my friends.

4.5/5 Stars.

Hamilton: The Revolution - Lin Manuel Miranda (with notes on an unforgettable night in New York City)

I'm not entirely sure if this book took me so long to read because I was savoring every minute of it, or because at parts my eyes were too watery to keep reading (I'm looking at you "It's Quiet Uptown"). In any case, I absolutely adored this book. Reading it both before and after seeing the live show in person was pretty much the best decision I've made in my entire life (aside from saying yes to marry my husband, without whom the trip may have been a lonely pilgrimage and the only person who really looks at my strange obsessions and just shrugs them off without judgment).

In any event, if you are a fan of the cast album, and you've been reading the annotated genius.com lyrics, and you've read article after article on the internet wondering what indeed does the show LOOK like, not just sound like, this book is definitely for you. Also, do you like funny stories and great pictures? Yeah, this book is for you too.

The book begins at the beginning, at the forming of the cabinet - Lin Manuel Miranda (writer), Tommy Kail (director), Jeffrey Seller (producer), and Andy Blankenbuehler (choreographer). From this hefty brain trust grew the words, music and ideas that shaped the entire show. And really, if you haven't heard of Hamilton yet, google it, watch the 2008 White House Poetry Jam, and I dare you to not be intrigued. 

The book is full of great anecdotes regarding all the principle actors and contributors, how they came to be involved with the show and how they felt/feel about their role. It's fascinating. I saw an interview with Lin Manuel Miranda when the book first came out a few weeks ago and he said that so many times historians have to go far back in time to recreate these types of stories, and to piece together the information from surviving fragments of history, but this book does all that work up front and while it feels fresh, it also feels really special. In under a month, the original cast will splinter and begin to go their separate ways. The original cast will be filmed this month to save the performance for posterity (I haven't seen any notations regarding the footage to be released for general consumption - still gotta sell those tour tickets y'all). But if and until that footage is released, this book and it's amazing photographs are the keepsake album you wish you could have scrapbooked yourself. 

Also the annotations are amazing because LMM references Harry Potter in several locations, basically cementing the fact that he is my patronus, you know if such things were real. Also, this is pretty much the most physically beautiful book I own, so there's that.

5/5 Stars.

I'm fairly certain I don't have to explain that actually seeing the show on Broadway on June 10th was an experience I will NEVER forget? We arrived in NYC on June 9th and after finding our hotel and mostly navigating the subway system, we dropped the bags and decided to have lunch and then walk into Times Square. In what I promise was a completely random event, we chose 46th Street as our path and walked past the Richard Rogers theater for the first time. 

As you can see, there were brave folks in their sleeping bags waiting for last minute cancellations (I'm not entirely sure who gives their tickets up last minute without trying to garner the $1,500 per ticket price for which they are now going on stub-hub, but hope springs eternal). That evening we attended a Yankees game. Our seats were less expensive than our Hamilton tickets, but only because I chose to sit up in the outfield, along the third base line. It was chillier than we had anticipated, but luckily we wore jackets and the home team won.

The next day was Hamilton day, also, our 10th wedding Anniversary. We went to a diner in the morning and then headed uptown to the Met to see some great art and hopefully keep me distracted from watching my watch every second as the longest countdown ever to Hamilton. This was good in theory, but Hamilton kept popping up wherever I went, including the large collection of John Trumbull paintings at the Met, including this annoyingly described one:

Don't worry Met, I know you meant Angelica Schuyler Church, not Mrs. John B. Church.

Anyway, finally, the evening approached and we showered, changed and headed out to dinner where we were surrounded by giddy theater goers, some who would be attending Hamilton that night. The funny thing is, all the anticipation of seeing it, all the barely contained glee I had felt in the MONTHS leading up to this trip, I felt serenely calm once we sat down to dinner. I was going to see the show, it was really happening. I wasn't going to need to wonder anymore if the real life event would live up to my expectations. 

So after dinner we headed back to the Richard Rodgers theater and waited in line with the other theater goers. Once inside, it was a bit of pandemonium as patrons thronged the souvenir booths and purchased hats, shirts, coffee mugs, books, pins, cards, CD's, all kinds of stuff to remember the show by. We then found our seats in the rear of the orchestra, under the mezzanine overhang, which meant that some of the stage would be partially obstructed, the top portion, from where some of the chorus sings during songs. The funny thing about partially obstructed views at Hamilton though, is that no one cared. I mean, you're in a room with people who either paid a lot of money for the privilege, or forewent a lot of money for the privilege and there we all were. Watching the show together. The vibe was fairly electric. 

Then the show started and I forgot to keep breathing. With each principle actor who started a verse of the opening number the crowd applauded. Then LMM came on-stage in answer to "What's your name man?" and when he said "Alexander Hamilton" the place erupted. Somewhere during Aaron Burr, Sir, I remembered that breathing was important and began doing that laborious task again. But the spell, the feeling, was still there and my whole self tingled with the sensation of sheer joy. 

At intermission I fought my way downstairs to the ladies room (don't freak out ladies, the line is long but it moves fast, everyone wants to get back to their seats in time). I was so focused on reliving the first act in my brain that I almost missed the fact that I was standing next to Magic Johnson as he tried to make a phone call in the small hallway where the ladies room queue is formed. He's hard to miss though because he's huge.

Act II was glorious and I was nervous that I might sob my way through Blow us All Away, Stay Alive (Reprise) and It's Quiet Uptown, but my tears were held to silent streams and occasional sniffles. So I was kind of proud of myself. I read on LMM's twitter that sometimes he looks out in the crowd and see a stranger crying and that makes him more emotional. What a softie, but also what an experience to look out and see that something you created touches people so deeply. Sigh. The night was incandescent (I was told amazing was too pedestrian an adjective to use). 

Afterwards, me and hundreds of others who had seen and not seen the show that night, lined up outside to try to get a moment to say hello to the actors as they left the theater. First Phillipa Soo came out but I was too far back in the crowd to get an autograph. Same for other minor actors who came out the door. Finally the crowd thinned and I was able to snag a 'graph from Rory O'Malley (King George the III, the fourth). 

Then the stage manager announced that no more actors would be coming out to sign anything, and we walked the two blocks back to our hotel. Upon arriving back, even though I usually am asleep by 10 p.m. and it was now well past midnight, I could not sleep, my brain was too awake playing and replaying the scenes from the show, the moments I knew were coming, and those that came as a total surprise. My body felt warm like after a day in the summer sun and eventually sleep claimed me. 

The rest of the trip was so fun, visiting the top of the Empire State Building, perusing J.P. Morgan's Library, visiting Alexander and Eliza's graves at Trinity Church (Angelica is there in an unmarked grave she shares with a Livingston), silently sobbing to myself in the corner of the south excavations of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum (seriously so moving, so sad), and then an amazing dinner with my first friend, my sister, brunch on sunday morning and a visit to the High Line park in Chelsea before heading home. The trip managed to make time slow down for once. The week after returning seemed to fly by in comparison, but for those four days, in addition to being in the Room Where it Happens, we also caught some moments for ourselves and managed to make time slow down and Take a Break. 

9/11 Museum. Original steel from the building bent like a twig.

 Reading this book over the past week has made me relive so many of the events of our trip and the night seeing Hamilton. It was the perfect way to keep the images and thoughts fresh in my head. Aside from being one of the most physically beautiful books I own, it will be a book I return to again and again to remind myself of how lucky I am to be alive right now.

Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow

Wow. Staggering. This book is a staggering feat of research in both depth and breadth. An exhaustive study into the mind and life of the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, the ten-dollar founding father. 

I'm fairly Hamilton obsessed and will be seeing the musical by the same name on Friday at the Richard Rogers Theater in the "greatest city in the world" New York City. To say I could not be more excited is a literal statement - by the time Friday comes I will likely be visibly vibrating with excitement. In my usual fashion, once I'm hooked, I basically have to ride the obsession train until its reached its final destination, or I'm distracted and wander off to a different connection. Lucky for me, this particular obsession involves lots of singing to myself in my car and watching videos on YouTube.



Did I mention that I'm seeing the show on Friday?! This will probably be the last time my husband grants me Valentine's Day carte blanche to purchase tickets to something.

Lately, my Hamilton game has been tight. I recently annotated a lyric on genius.com (you can find that here and also upvote it because that Little Mermaid reference is on point) and I've been to the end of YouTube watching SadSadConversation videos of Lin Manuel Miranda (click here). I also became the recent recipient of a gift of Dueling Shots (only take the Burr one if you want to shoot first). 

Anyway, in my desire to spread my obsession beyond the arts and into actual real academic territory, I started reading the book that inspired it all. It's not really casual summertime fair, and the fact that LMM read it on his honeymoon is puzzling and amusing all at the same time. But that said, this was no hard history slog. Chernow seemed to know just the right amount of minutiae to get into in his storytelling. He drew on sources contemporary or near-contemporary to the events so there wasn't any guesswork or editorializing. Where inferences could be made, they were made. But each fact, each segment of Hamilton's life described in the book was in furtherance of the portrait of the character Chernow was painting of Hamilton. 

There were no excess facts that meant nothing or were zero value-added. Chernow could easily have included details upon details of the massive documents Hamilton produced creating the first National Bank but that wasn't necessary for the story and really would have bogged the biography down to the point where the facts would have exceeded my curiosity. 

A. Ham. Damn!

I'm so thrilled that the success of the musical is shedding light on this eminently fascinating founding father. A boy who grew up from illegitimate parentage in the Caribbean, arrived as a teenager in America and, largely self-educated, relied on his bravery in battle and his prowess in writing to rise to the most inner circles of government. 

At times tragic and sad (especially towards the end), Hamilton is a study in hard work, brilliance, excess, bravado... so many things. If you weren't aware that Hamilton was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr (spoiler alert - you clearly have never seen the famous Got Milk? commercial), you are probably also likely unaware that his son died two years prior in a duel on the same dueling grounds. Again, tragic.

Phillip Hamilton. Okay, I get it Phillip, I see you. "God, you're a fox." 

Painfully flawed, and utterly human, Hamilton fought both his parentage and politics to put forth his vision of what he believed was best for the country. It goes without saying that Aaron Burr does not come out so well in this telling, but more surprising was the really detailed ways in which Thomas Jefferson was a total A-hole (despite my ardent love for Daveed Diggs who plays the character in the show). 

Image credit here.

I really enjoyed reading what otherwise could have been a stale bloated story of a financial genius. I will certainly read Chernow's earlier, and I'm sure just as masterfully pieced, biography of Washington.

5/5 Stars.