Nothing: Something to Believe In – Nica Lalli

I was intrigued by the concept of this book, a straightforward look at what it means to be outside of organized religion in our society, to be “nothing.” The text follows Lalli’s journey as a nonbeliever from her early childhood to raising children of her own. The question she asks her parents in the beginning of the book, “What are we?” (Lalli 29) is repeated again at the end by her own children. This lends a form of symmetry to the book, even if it is unsurprising.

We watch Lalli struggle to create her own identity and answer her own questions about religion, in the face of evangelists of all stripes who try to convert or pressure her. It is an introspective book, simply written and very much in the writer’s head. I felt more like she was telling me about the story than as if I was actually there. I would have preferred to really enter into the scenes. The reader is held at such a distance from the key moments that they lose some of their emotional impact.

Lalli does bring up the major issues for nonbelievers in our society. At times, I worried that she was going to turn as absolutist as the religions she despised, but towards the end she seemed to have found a more tolerant position.

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of my Father – Augusten Burroughs

This is a very dark memoir from the author of Running with Scissors, dealing mainly with his early childhood experiences and his relationship with his father. The author claims to have a vivid memory, and indeed I felt like I was complicit in the disturbing scenes. I did doubt a little that he can remember the first time he stood up on his own as a toddler, but the rest of the memories were crisp, clear, and glimmered as tidbits of information.

If this was fiction, it would be classed as a psychological thriller. Burroughs’ destructive relationship with his father (and to some extent his mother) creates a haunting world of fear and reprisals. Seen mostly from the child’s point of view, the reader is left to make meaning of the scenes and sometimes disparate memories. It is the kind of writing that assumes its readers have the intelligence to think on their own, and firmly avoids overwriting.

After Burroughs is finally taken away from his father, we are given a bit of his life as an adult. We see the writer trying to come to terms with what happened, trying to piece it together as we as readers do. He conveys the sinking feeling that something was very wrong with his father, but that he may not ever be able to prove it.

The section where the young Burroughs is befriended, then rejected by construction workers at his house is crushing. That scene, and others where the human need for love and acceptance is displayed, then disappointed, will break your heart.

The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment – A.J. Jacobs

Jacobs’ book is not quite a traditional memoir. One of the leading practitioners of “participatory journalism” as he calls it, Jacobs is that guy you probably heard about who read the entire encyclopedia one year, and then spent another year following all the rules of the Bible. In this book, he lays out nine short adventures that he has undertaken, from attempting to embody the rules of George Washington to outsourcing his life to India.
It’s the kind of book that drew me in by the concepts of the experiments, but held my attention by the genuine quality of writing. Always refreshing. It is fast-paced, with interesting topics. He inserts plenty of interesting facts without making the book seem like a list, and he is genuinely funny. Besides the humor, there are lessons that he extracts from his experiments, which he weaves in fairly painlessly.

My favorite experiment was what he refers to as “The Rationality Project,” where he attempts to combat irrationality in his brain and focuses on a list of many common brain biases. For example, how we tend to remember being stuck in a slow line, but not in a quickly-moving line, and then conclude we are always stuck in the slow line. Or how we tend to eat all of what’s on our plate. It’s a fascinating, quick look into the brain for those who are interested in how we make decisions.

I did wish each of the pieces were a bit longer, mostly because I was genuinely interested in both the experiments and how he handled the fallout from them (especially his attempts at Radical Honesty.) It made me want to go out and try some participatory journalism of my own.

No Greater Love – Mother Teresa

No Greater Love is technically not a memoir, more a collection of Mother Teresa’s prayers, thoughts, stories and ideas. What you imagine you’d get if you had a chance to sit down with her and just listen for a couple of hours. I’m including it here because I read it to understand this amazing woman more deeply, and I feel as though it falls loosely into the memoir genre, as there are autobiographical pieces to it. As a non-Catholic, non-Christian, I found plenty of interest in the book.

Mother Teresa’s message is unswervingly one of peace and love for our neighbors. As you might imagine, Jesus does feature prominently, and I do have to confess to kind of skimming the parts where he’s most often mentioned. However, the major message is just to be kind to the people around you. Especially the people right around you. She is very clear about that, and it is hard not to get behind it. “It is easier to offer a dish of rice to meet the hunger of a needy person than to comfort the loneliness and anguish of someone in our own home who does not feel loved.” (Mother Teresa 27) This message resonates with me, and I believe deeply that it is our responsibility as human beings, whatever our religious beliefs or non-beliefs, to help out especially those in our own neighborhoods.

She writes in simple, uncomplicated prose, almost in aphorisms. Despite the fact that you are always clear that Mother Teresa is a Catholic nun, the book avoids being overly preachy. Certainly, it is a rebuke to anyone who thinks that dropping by a house of worship on the weekend is the most important part of their faith.

The story is in its essence a bildungsroman. Mathilda’s sister Helene has recently died, and Mathilda’s quest is to solve the mystery of her life and death. On the way, she reveals the intricacies of her own. In addition, Mathilda’s private grief is mirrored by the grief of the world at large. The setting is sometime in the near future, where terrorism has taken over and attacks in the United States are commonplace. The terrorism is vague, the ignorance and fear-mongering all too realistic. Mathilda’s confusion about public and private grief is well drawn. She wonders why people killed in a terrorist plot are given moments of silence, her sister’s death is hushed.

With a young, quirky narrator, one cannot help but think of the all-time great child narratives. Lodato has done a masterful job where the comparisons come easily and enhance his story. Mathilda has the spunk and determination of Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet, she is not simply a rewrite. Imagine Scout without the support and sagacity of Atticus, without the friendship of Jem, abandoned to her own confused desires, and you get Mathilda. The language also pays homage to The Catcher in the Rye. Mathilda is a younger, female version of Holden Caulfield. She is struggling through a sexual awakening and just wants someone to pay attention to her. The fact that she is largely alone is also an echo of Holden’s despair, although Mathilda has more of a sense of purpose. Both characters do seemingly inexplicable things, driven by youth and depression. The connection is reinforced with vocabulary and phrases that typify The Catcher in the Rye. Holden’s “to tell you the truth” rings coming out of Mathilda’s mouth, recalling both characters’ insistence on and avoidance of that same truth. She also picks up Holden’s unique and old-fashioned use of the word “lousy”: “This town is lousy with teachers” (Lodato 206). It works for Holden, and it works for Mathilda.

This is not, in the end, an uplifting book. Mathilda solves some mysteries and grows, but the book ends without a reassuring “and then everyone was happy again.” Grief is not something easily abandoned, and I respect Lodato’s decision to end his book the way he does, even as something in me longs for a happy ending for Mathilda’s sake. The question you are left with in the end is a good one: what will come of youth growing in a society where terror and hatred are part of their everyday lives?

All that aside, I found it to be a rollicking good story, while also being a leap of feminist rights. I have a deep seated admiration for books that were written in worlds very different from mine and yet can draw me in and make me laugh as though I know the author personally. It is a relatively easy plot to follow, with plenty of mysteries to keep a reader engaged.

The development of Helen I found particularly interesting, especially because at the beginning, she is a bit of a cipher and almost runs the risk of seeming too odd to belong properly in the story. When the narrative switches to her point of view, and you see the whole downward spiral of her marriage, her past actions become much more explicable. I found myself flipping back and forth, like someone who just watched The Sixth Sense for the first time and needs to start again at the beginning.

Although Helen does fall for the narrator towards the end, what I enjoyed more was that she didn’t just clasp at the next man to pull her out of her predicament. Which, I have to say, I wouldn’t have blamed her for doing. Brontë makes very clear the limited choices that women were faced with in marriage. The book certainly made me feel extremely grateful for the property, divorce, and child custody laws that I live under today. The shocking actions and cruel words of the characters remind me of daytime television, and it is no wonder this book caused a stir on publication. They are no less distressing to a modern reader, and I spent most of the book wanting to shout aloud, “I can’t believe he just said that!”

Should you read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall? I think so. It may be occasionally wordy, but the brilliance of the writing and the intelligence and strong will of Brontë’s heroine carry you through. For people who hate this kind of literature, you may find something in it that you will enjoy. For those who are already fans of the Brontës, this is a book not to be missed.