Reading Journal: "North River"

I loved this book. Pete Hamill is a master of his craft. His stories evoke such a realistic feeling of bygone eras that you feel like you're there, but he always slips in a bit of magic, too, in letting you into the minds of his characters.

This book is set in the New York of 1934 in the depths of the Depression. Dr. Delaney tends his patients as best he can while wondering whether his vanished wife is alive or dead. He is shocked one day to find his 3-year-old grandson Carlito on his doorstep. He hires Rose, a tough young Sicilian immigrant to cook and tend the child. Slowly, as these three lonely people form a household, the numbness around Delaney's heart starts to melt.

As in"Snow in August," the decent people have to cope with criminal elements that are a constant menace. But, thankfully, this story had a happy ending. One of the most beautiful scenes was in the next to last chapter when they go dancing.

"The lights were muted. The band was playing 'You Made Me Love You.' He put his right hand on her waist and took her right hand in his left, and they began to move. A fox trot. He could feel her tension, her fear of clumsiness. Then as she relaxed, she pressed against him. Here for a few hours, they could believe that they would be together forever. And so they danced and danced."

The paints I used for the background were Apple Barrel's "Wild Berry", "Denim Blue" and Anita's "Sand." I wrote the title and author with a Hunt 22 nib and Best Bottle ink. The ink did not work as well on the acrylic painted background as gouache. It tended to blob, as you can see in the dot over the "i" and in the loops of the "b" and "l". The text was written with a Pilot P-700.

I brushed the magazine photo with matte medium to reduce the shine, adhered it with double-stick tape, and dabbed the torn edges with Colorbox ink.

"Woman in Red"

What an intriguing story! Set in two different time periods on a small island off the coast of Washington, it begins with the present day as Alice has just been released from 9 years in prison. She was found guilty of crippling the man who hid and killed her child while driving drunk. He got away with it because he basically owned the whole island. Rebuffed by most of her neighbors and even her remaining son, she gradually becomes friends with Colin, a recovering alcoholic who hit bottom after his wife died on 9/11. As they get to know each other, they come to realize that her grandmother was "the woman in red" in his grandfather's most famous painting. (I couldn't help being reminded of Andrew Wyeth and his Helga paintings.) At this point, the author switches to 1943 and begins to tell the forbidden love story of William and Eleanor, interspersing it with the modern-day troubles of their grandchildren. This bare bones description doesn't do justice to the plot, or the characters. It was a page-turner and had a wonderful surprise ending.

This is another one of those rather "ugly" backgrounds that I've learned to trust will be just what I need for a particular book. See how the text page resembles sand and water. I could not have purposely created that. I would have tried too hard.

I frequently use matte medium as a glue. I like that it doesn't show if any oozes out. And I often use it on top of a picture when I want to reduce the glossiness. It works great when the picture is not too big, but I've had problems with wrinkles and air bubbles when it covers a whole page. So I tried a new technique this time and liked the results. I laid the picture on some wax paper and brushed the top with matte medium to counteract the shine. After it was dry, I applied double-sided tape on the back, just along the edge that would be next to the gutter. Then I put tape on 3 edges of the journal page and carefully rolled the picture down onto the page. I had purposely not cut the picture to size because I can never completely match it to the edges of the journal page. It's just easier to trim after it's stuck in place.

"Songs of the Humpback Whale"

This was a most unusual book. It is the same story told from the viewpoint of five different characters. In many cases, the exact scene is repeated at scattered places throughout--and to complicate matters, the mother tells the story in a normal, forward-moving manner, but the daughter relates everything chronologically backwards. So while Jane tells what happened on July 3 in the front of the book, daughter Rebecca is relating what happened on August 2. This is the pattern followed throughout, so by the end of the book, Mom is telling about the events that took place on August 2 and Rebecca has completed the circle and made it back to July 3. It was somewhat disorienting, to say the least.

Basically, Jane has left her husband and with Rebecca is driving in a meandering way across country from San Diego to her brother who works in an apple orchard outside of Boston. Once there, they fall for a couple of 25-year-olds...one way too old for Rebecca, and the other a bit on the young side for Mom...never mind the fact that she's still married!

This book definitely did not have a happily-ever-after ending. Jodi Picoult is a wonderful writer and I've enjoyed the other books that I've read by her, but wasn't crazy about this one. It felt like an experiment for a writing class.

The background paint used was Anita's brand, 'Emerald' thinly brushed with 'Nubby Linen'. The title strip was art paper with botanical inclusions which I wrote on with Schmincke burnt sienna gouache with a #6 Mitchell nib. The author's name was written with a brown Micron .005 pen. I cut the strip with some wavy scissors and brushed the edges with a Colorbox "Bisque" fluidchalk inkpad.

"The Sonnet Lover"

When Robin Weiss falls to his death in NYC, one is led to believe that it was suicide, but then suspicion falls on Orlando. The story continues at a villa outside Florence where Rose Asher has been persuaded to spend the summer searching for some sonnets that Robin had supposedly found and that he believed to have been written by Shakespeare's Dark Lady. Things are complicated by Rose's current lover who is the president of the college where she teaches, and her lover from 20 years ago who also happens to be Orlando's father. I'd give this book a grade of B-minus. Not a bad summer read, but not one I found particularly engaging.

For this illustration, I used a paper napkin. Directions for doing this can be seen in the August 2005 archives "Consider the Lilies."

I got a bit too heavy-handed and tore it, but it really doesn't matter. That's one of the blessings that I've received from working in these composition journals. All my life I've been both blessed and cursed with perfectionism. It made me a hard worker and a valued employee, but it often stymied my creative efforts. In the last few years, I've learned to loosen up a bit and just embrace whatever happens. Life is messy and it's okay.

"Hardscrabble Road"

 This book consists almost completely of conversations and interior monologues. There is very little action, although the plot is convoluted and simple at the same time. The best part of the book for me was the things people had to say about the state of the modern world, and I think the author was balanced in her depiction of liberals and conservatives, or as she had one character say, "The older I get, the more I think the distinctions are wrong. Left and right. Conservative and liberal. It's not that. It's libertarian and authoritarian. It's people who want freedom and people who want control."

The characters are interesting and colorful. They include a Benedictine nun who's also a lawyer, a two-time Nobel winner, a Rush Limbaugh type, a young man who works with the homeless, and Gregor Demarkian a retired FBI agent who's called the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot.

"True Evil" by Greg Iles

Many books bill themselves as page-turners and swear you won't be able to put it down. This one lives up to that promise. A mad scientist and a greedy lawyer team up to get rid of inconvenient spouses for wealthy clients, making them die from seemingly natural causes--for very hefty fees! Alexandra Morse is a special agent whose sister alerted her to this scheme while on her deathbed.

With relentlessness, Alex began to unravel the truth by investigating clients of the divorce attorney that her brother-in-law had consulted. She soon discovered that an unusual number of them were now widowed. The book progresses with breathtaking speed as Alex matches wits with the evil doctor who appears to anticipate her every move. Her own life is almost snuffed out several times before the dramatic and satisfying end to this modern Southern gothic tale.

The cover of this book showed a snake coiled in the middle of a bed. Very apropos to the story, but since I'm deathly afraid of snakes and don't even like to look at pictures of them, I sure didn't intend to put one in my journal! Besides, I try to come up with my own idea to illustrate a book. Thus, the scientist manipulating a virus and the poor little lab monkey.

"We Shall Not Sleep"

 This book was the 5th, and final, book in Anne Perry's series about World War I. It takes place during the final weeks of the war in the autumn of 1918. All three of the Reavley siblings are in Belgium where their main goal is to get the Peacemaker's German collaborator to London so he can testify to that man's identity and treasonous actions. Complicating matters is the rape and murder of an army nurse, for which Matthew is briefly a suspect, as is the German prisoner. They are both exonerated when Lizzie, the woman Joseph as come to love, reluctantly admits that she, too, was raped several weeks earlier when neither of them were there.

Ever since I learned about the events that took place in Anne Perry's youth, I have been fascinated to reconcile that horrible event with the high ethical standards that she so eloquently espouses in all her novels. I can't seem to get my head around these facts that seem to be at such odds. Here is a quote from the book that really struck me:

"You know what you did, and why, and what drove you. And you know she didn't deserve it. Begin by not lying to yourselves. What I say is true, for you, for me, for everyone."

Was this an apology of sorts for the murder of her best friend's mother that she helped bludgeon to death as a 15-year-old?

I rarely specifically paint pages for a book I've read. Instead, I flip through my reading journal until I find a prepainted set of pages that seems to go with the story. This book had mentioned over and over the miserable conditions that WWI soldiers had to endure due to vast amounts of mud and filthy water contaminated by decomposing bodies. The colors of this background seemed to reflect that, and also paired well with the photo. This is the second time I've used a family member to illustrate a book I've read (see "The Lost Mother" - April 2005 archives.)

Since this story featured a young pregnant woman, it was the perfect opportunity to use the picture of my grandmother Josie, especially since she was expecting my father who was born in 1918, which is the year in which the novel is set.

Sometimes, when I get ready to paint pages, I will reach into the drawers where the paints are stored and grab two or three without looking, just to see what the result will be. I expect that's what happened here. Not especially pretty, but then neither is war. The colors used this time were Blue Lagoon, Nutmeg, and Eggshell. I wrote the title in a hand that I learned from Alan Blackman, using Ziller Glossy Black ink with a Mitchell #4 nib. The review was written with a Uniball Vision Micro, while I did the quote with a Nikko G nib and Ziller Midnight Blue ink. The note at the very bottom of the page that tells about the photo was done with a Pigma .01 brown pen.