california uber alles

A couple of very good novels set in this lovely, complicated golden state have roused me from my blogging slumber: The Ruins of California by Martha Sherrill and This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. The books have little in common, though both were written by women and have men as fairly primary characters (Paul Ruin, the father in Sherrill's coming-of-age tale, figures prominently, while Homes' protagonist is Richard Novak, an extremely well-off trader who undergoes a major transformation during the course of the novel). I'm pairing them here simply because both offer strong senses of (this) place, one that all too easily can be characterized in broad stereotypical brush strokes. Neither author falls into that particular trap.

The Ruins of California is a kind of expanded coming-of-age story in which the protagonist, Inez Ruin, first begins her story at age 7. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mother and Abuelita (Peruvian grandmother) in Southern California. She visits her father, an entreprenur and ladies man, who lives in Northern CA, throughout the course of the story, which ends when Inez is in her early 20s. One of the surprises in the book is that the focus eventually becomes Inez's relationship with her father, who turns out to be a more complex and interesting character than I suspected at the outset. From her father's first marriage, Inez has a half-brother, Whitman, who grows up to be a surfer dude, fleeing responsibility and growing up. I'm a sucker for reading about sibling relationships and this one is rich and beautifully drawn. These characters stayed with me for several days after I'd finished the novel. None of them are static. They all change and grow and struggle. Their stories play out against a backdrop of California, starting in 1978 and moving up to 1990. Sherrill is lighthanded yet quite effective in using the styles and historical landscape in the story without making the details seem forced. A very enjoyable read.

My first encounter with A.M. Homes' writing was back in 1990 when I read her fine, edgy collection of short stories, The Safety of Objects. While I haven't kept up with her work, I'd read laudatory reviews of her latest novel, This Book Will Save Your Life (and really, who can resist a title with such a clever marketing bent? Not me). The story begins with Richard Novak reflecting on a bout with pain that felled him the day before and landed him in the hospital. Middle aged and divorced, his house tettering above a sinkhole in the Los Angeles hills, Novak suddenly finds that solitary existence he's cultivated and grown to love leaves him feeling empty in the wake of his medical scare. Through a series of strange encounters, Novak expands his world to include the owner of a donut shop, a woman he meets crying in the produce section of the grocery store, an incredibly friendly next-door-neighbor who's a well-known actor, and a famous reclusive author. Homes makes Novak symphathetic, not an easy thing to do with such a privileged guy who has a devoted housekeeper, personal trainer, and nutritionist. The emotional stakes get higher when Novak is faced with the prospect of seeing his 17-year-old son Ben who doesn't exactly rate as estranged but their relationship is strained and awkward. While the denouement of the novel was not to my taste, I really got caught up in Homes' story. Novak's struggles offered grist for my personal mill, and for that alone, I recommend this book. Homes, by the way, got blurbs from disparate and cool corners: Stephen King; Lily Tuck; filmmaker John Waters; writer, psychotherapist , and JuBu Mark Epstein; and Michael Tolkin, who wrote The Player.