Carol's Comments June 2013

Carol’s Comments June 2013

By Carol Rusinek

Hello Everyone! Welcome to another issue of Carol’s Comments. I am a volunteer at the River Park Branch.  Shortly before this year’s One Book, One Michiana event ended, I really missed spending time with my favorite authors and topics. So for the next few months, I indulged in some serious comfort reading.

The first book I couldn’t wait to snatch up was The Secret Keeper, the latest bestselling novel by my all-time favorite author Kate Morton. Set primarily in World War II and present day England, the book centers on well-respected actress .Laurel Nicolson and her mother Dorothy. After Laurel witnesses a horrific event as a teenager in 1961 that she has kept secret for fifty years, she desperately tries to unravel the mysteries in her mother’s past that led to that fateful day. During her investigation, she uncovers her mother’s complex friendship with Vivien Jenkins and Jimmy Metcalfe. She also learns how pivotal decisions her mother made in 1941 led to disastrous consequences that irrevocably changed the trio’s lives forever.

Like her other three novels, Morton uses her signature writing style that alternates between time periods and character perspectives to narrate the story. This unique literary technique helps the reader better understand the characters’ personalities and motivations.

As with her other novels like my particular favorite, The Forgotten Garden, The Secret Keeper has an incredibly satisfying surprise ending that the reader could never imagine, This spellbinding story was so engrossing that not even the new season of Mad Men could distract me. As always, Kate Morton’s fabulous storytelling never disappoints me!

Over the past six months, I became obsessed with the 1920s again. For instance, I watched Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris whenever it aired on Encore and played the soundtrack constantly.

When I discovered in Entertainment Weekly that Baz Luhrmann’s new film version of The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio would be released in May, I searched for a book similar to Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, the fictional biography about Hadley Hemingway which I adored in 2011. After reading positive reviews in The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly about Z: a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler, I knew this book would soon return me to the Jazz Age’s literary world.

In Fowler’s mesmerizing, fast-paced novel, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald acts as the principal narrator. She recalls her tumultuous 20 year relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald beginning with their whirlwind courtship and marriage in 1920, then their wild escapades in New York, Paris and Hollywood and finally ending with Fitzgerald’s struggles with alcoholism and her own descent into mental illness.

Fowler’s captivating book also describes Zelda’s intense disapproval of Ernest Hemingway’s controlling, obsessive friendship with her husband as well as her own little-known writing career. The author offers a sympathetic and poignant portrait of Zelda Fitzgerald, an unconventional, vivacious and often misunderstood woman who truly embodied the Jazz Age spirit but was unfortunately trapped in a doomed marriage.

Although I liked The Paris Wife much better than Z, both books provide an insightful glimpse of the woman behind the successful writer. To learn more about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s extraordinary lives, I strongly recommend reading Zelda, the definitive 1970 biography by Nancy Milford and Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel Tender is the Night which stunningly portrays the couple’s combustible marriage in fictionalized form.

I love classic TV, especially situation comedies from the 1960s and 1970s. My all-time favorites are That Girl and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Marlo Thomas and particularly Mary Tyler Moore were my role models because I always dreamed of having a career and living in my own apartment one day.

So after reading an excerpt of Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s upcoming book, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic in Entertainment Weekly this Spring, I couldn’t wait to check it out. In fact, I was the first person to place a hold on it in the SJCPL system before it was published!

Armstrong extensively chronicles the development of the series initially as a comeback vehicle for Ms. Moore to the groundbreaking and acclaimed television show it became. Devoid of sensationalism, this entertaining book reveals how writer/producers James L Brooks and Allan Burns provided a nurturing environment especially for their female writers to create episodes and endearing multidimensional characters that portrayed the modern woman in a realistic yet humorous way. By the time the series ended in 1977, not only did Mary Richards become an enduring feminist heroine but The Mary Tyler Moore Show remains a beloved television classic that still significantly influences today’s TV female characters.

Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted is very fun to read because it’s filled with enlightening and hilarious anecdotes. For instance, my favorite chapter involved the sitcom’s pilot episode. When a disastrous initial taping before a studio audience almost ruined the program’s chances of ever airing, the show was ultimately saved when the writers added a positive comment about Rhoda Morgenstern to a secondary character’s lines.

Armstrong’s irresistible book is essential reading for all Mary Tyler Moore Show fans as well as pop culture enthusiasts like me. It’s so enjoyable, I couldn’t put it down!

 All books reviewed in my column can be found at all SJCPL locations. For more information, visit the Library’s web site at www.libraryforlife.org . Thanks for reading! See you next time.

Previously posted at the SJCPL blog