A Changed Man...Needs More Change

A Changed Man by Francine Prose

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Obviously, it is about a "changed man," and really it is the whole premise of the book that reeled me in (based on the book jacket).

By the way, it is not YA...


Short Summary(spoilers)

A recovering neo-Nazi finds himself in a suburban home with a ready made family of a forty-something divorced mother of two boys after he promises to be a spokesperson for an anti-hate organiziation with the hope he can prevent other guys like him from becoming guys like him.

First off, the neo-Nazi is named Vincent which in my mind just doesn't go together. The divorced mother is named Bonnie which also doesn't go well together since she lacks the spunk and confidence of a bubbly woman. Think putty colored business suits, sensible pumps, limp blonde ponytail, and no-nonsense right-hand-arm of the anti-hate organization for which she works.

So, how does Vincent end up here? Well, he was never really into the white supremacist scene. He has the anger issues, the idea that the media/goverenment has some huge conspiracy against the working man, and demeaning thoughts about women in general.  Bonnie's boss, a Holocaust survivor and founder of World Brotherhood Watch (whose last name is Maslow...reminds me of that whole humanistic approach from psychology...you know, the hierarchy of needs) thinks Vincent is harmless when it comes to being a serial rapist or anything of that sort and convinces Bonnie he should stay at her house until other living arrangements are made.

So, his initial conversion is not completely genuine (it was based on a drug high). He is just hoping world Brotherhood Watch will take him in and protect him from his crazy skinhead cousin, Raymond, from which he stole a truck, 1500 dollars, and a caseload of drugs. Then he ends up kicking back in front of a TV with Bonnie's son, Danny, and causing a specatuclar sensation for World Brotherhood Watch at fancy dinner parties and a Maury-like talk show where the former skinhead and the Holocause surviver are now brothers.

What I Think:

The big problem for me is that I just didn't really see how or when Vincent changed. I also don't see how he fell for Bonnie since they never really had one of those huge connecting moments. She took off her glasses once for him, they kissed briefly, and he thought about how it would be really easy to take advantage of her since she practically through herself at him. Oh, but wait...he is a changed man! He didn't even steal Bonnie's son's stash of drugs when he left town. What a changed guy! Then he gets to speak at a graduation ceremony because he is the reformed face of white supremacy.

I usually love everything written by Francine Prose, but I just wasn't crazy about this one. She definately got the right voice down for a semi-neo-Nazi and a bland suburban divorcee, but she just didn't make their voices come together. She just didn't create enought change in Vincent to warrant his golden ticket at the end of it all. The novel is described as darkly comic by the publisher, and I suppose that is why he is named Vincent and why he gets to be the keynote speaker and why a bunch of other stuff is included. But, it is not darkly comic enough for me. Or maybe it's that I am so used to reading first person YA that I just can't get too involved with darkly comic adult fiction.

But, I still want to read My New American Life, which also promises to be darkly comic. Maybe I'll get it better this time.

View all my reviews

Bullyville...Be a Bully or be Bullied

A few weeks ago, I heard of a bullying incident at my son’s school. I don’t know what became of it, but just know I am very thankful none of my children have ever been a victim of bullying. Most kids and teens will face some sort of ridicule at one time or another because, let’s face it, some people don’t understand or truly consider or want to consider the harm of making someone feel ashamed. I know I faced a lot of that growing up. But, bullying is a whole other level because it includes ridicule and intimidation, and in some instances turns physical. How do you deal with that as a kid? How do you deal with it as an adult?

This week I am reviewing Bullyville by Francine Prose. I guess you can tell one of the major themes of the book. Normally this is not the type of book I choose to read because it deals with a younger protagonist and is missing a romantic love story. But, I completely love Prose’s style of writing, and something else in the book jacket caught my interest—9/ll. Yes, that 9/ll, and it’s like an underlying current running through the novel. I wanted to see how she merged it into the storyline, since I’m also tying in 9/11 to a novel I am writing. What a way to study it…through the writing of a great YA author!

So, what does 9/l11 have to do with bullying? Well, it is the reason why Bart is able to enroll at Baileywell Preparatory Academy on a fully paid scholarship. And, everybody knows Baileywell is really Bullyville Prep or Bullywell. Bart and his friends have grown up hearing horrid stories of students who attend Bullyville, but Bart doesn’t really know the full extent of it or even how much truth is behind those rumors.

Quote: I’d heard all those stories—and scarier ones—before I started at Bullywell. But what happened to me there seemed even worse, I guess because it happened to me.

Quote: I had only been at Bullywell for less than five minutes and already I was learning to laugh hysterically at unfunny jokes—jokes on me!

Back to 9/11—what does it have to do with his enrollment? Bart was a hero, a Miracle Boy, and a compassion case all wrapped up in one. Both of his parents worked at the World Trade Center. His father was one of the thousands that was killed, but his mother’s life was salvaged due to the fact that she had to stay home with Bart who had the flu.

Listen to what Bart has to say about all this: Boy, the lucky orphan. The kid who lost his dad, but saved his mother’s life. I had everything, grief and hope, tragedy and consolation, wrapped in one neat package.

Bullyville was a gift, a reward for an outstanding young man, yet it was also a charity case.

Well, my review is getting pretty long, but it’s because I love this book. I won’t give you any more details other than this was the worst years of Bart’s life and that Bart deals with public and private tragedies and losses—the Big Event that shook America, his father’s abandonment for a younger women, the deaths of his father and a close friend, the bullying. And, I’ll tell you the ending is very powerful and hopeful.

I’ll end with this:

Each time I hit him, it was like there was something behind it, aiming my fist, a force that was making me pound…I hit him once for Nola, and for how unfair it was that she’d died. One punch for every time he’d made me miserable since I came to Bullywell, one for the ketchup, one each for the names, the kids, the locker, the text message supposedly from my dad. And then I was hitting him for my dad….for the towers and the planes flying into them…

Goldengrove...A Place of Grief

Goldengrove: A Novel

“Spring and Fall: To a young child”

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

“Spring and Fall: To a young child” is just one those poems I will never forget…it is both somber and lyrical, but beyond this, I did a whole paper on the literary merit of this poem back in the 90’s when I was an undergraduate at UTPA. I mean, I know what the poem is about, so when I saw Francine Prose’s novel, Goldengrove, at a “new books” display, I knew this would be no happy read.

And, just as Hopkin's poem, Goldengrove delves into the grief and sorrow brought by death, awakened longing, and the turmoil of emotions. In Goldengrove, a 13 year old girl named Niko mourns for the death of her older sister, Margaret, so named by her parents as inspired by Hopkin’s poem, almost foreshadowing or sealing the fate of their eldest daughter to a young death. To Niko, Margaret is the embodiment of all things divine with her dazzling beauty, melodic voice, and love of vintage Hollywood. Margaret’s death leaves a hole, haunting all who are close to her and crippling their capability to cope.

In her need to understand Margaret‘s death and keep a part of her alive, Niko draws closer to Margaret's grieving ex-boyfriend, an intense artist named Aaron. What starts as an innocent relationship of therapeutic mourning, soon turns into something neither of them wants to understand. Niko slowly turns into Margaret. She wears her scent and her clothes, haunting Aaron with her growing resemblance to Margaret and getting in way over her head with this brooding boy left behind by her sister. Niko hardly understands the new feelings she is experiencing, but she does know it is something she can not share with anybody. The intensity of grief turns to a perversion of desire. Aaron wants Margaret--he wants to taste Margaret on Niko’s lips.

I heard him say, thickly, "Sugar." I was afraid he'd called me something he used to call Margaret. Maybe he had, because he stepped back and spun my chair around and looked as if he was wondering who I was and how I got there.

As the speaker in Hopkin's poem reveals, “Sorrows’ springs are the same.“ Death brings pain--any death, whether it be the death of a loved one, of innocence, of an ill-fated relationship.

One of the things I love about this book is how Francine Prose brings in many allusions to works not known by many young people today. Of course, you have the poem reference, but she also includes Nick‘s name, “Vertigo” and “My Funny Valentine.” I’ve heard of all these before, but even I had to do a little research and look up things like the lyrics to “My Funny Valentine” (Actually, when I think of that song, I always think of "American Idol " because someone always sings it, and it’s one of those songs I never want to hear.) Goldengrove is a tightly woven piece with many references tied together to create an overall structure--to create a style not found in a lot of books.

For instnace, Aaron plays a version of “My Funny Valentine” for Niko by the German songwriter and singer who shares Niko’s name. Margaret had sung this song with a sultry, sensual voice right before graduating from high school. But, this version by Niko is darker with melancholic undertones and an undercurrent of a demented reality, representing the escalation from innocence to something more reckless and dangerous. As Niko says (the protagonist), it is a “song like a suicide note” with lyrics pleading for death to stay near. I guess in a way this version was Margaret’s anthem for her life and her sensual interpretation was a mockery to the belief held by many that it is merely a love song. But for her, Niko’s version (the singer) was her truth. It was a truth she shared intimately with Aaron, and now Aaron is sharing it with Niko. Aaron is showing her the true Margaret and scorning Niko for not being Margaret…then he makes her into Margaret.

I could tell that Aaron wanted me to look at him while he fed me.

Ice cream slid between my lips, shockingly cool and smooth. I'd braced myself for the dish-detergent taste. But taste was the least of it, really. I opened again. I took the spoon. Ice cream slipped down my throat. Delicious.

I don’t believe Prose meant for Goldengrove to be aimed at a YA audience even though the protagonist relates events that occur during her teen years. The narrative is darker and more sophisticated and at times lyrical, mournful, and…and…the best phrase I can come up with is beautifully despairing.

The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.