A very agreeable surprise

I went looking for a Barbara Kingsolver book-on-tape to listen to while walking in Winrock Mall in the mornings. 6 circuits = one hour, plus lots of space in a side-pocket for a round of Tai Chi. This resumption of walking for exercise started two weeks ago now, and I'm doing it at the Mall because there are plenty of shaded parking spaces near the buildings. At both the Y and my old gym, the parking is a big, flat, roasting pan of tarmac, and I'm just goddamn well *not* going to put up with finishing my exercise and walking out to a rolling oven of a car for the drive home (we're still regularly hitting the mid-nineties here after ten in the morning, which is when I begin to become a human being). We all nod and grimace in a friendly manner at each other, we mall-walkers; and we're all kinda old. Okay by me; I *am* kinda old and getting older, certainly compared to the young mommies wandering around in the nice coolth in there with their baby-laden strollers.

Anyway, I couldn't find Kingsolver at the library, and I'm not yet ready to take on Proust, but here was this odd little novel called SLEEPING WITH SCHUBERT by someone I'd never heard of, one Bonnie Marson (Bonnie? Alarm bells ring), published in 2004. In a hurry and in desperation, I took it.

A thirtiesh lawyer from Brooklyn has her body and mind partly taken over by the ghost of Franz Schubert, for no explicable reason, and finds herself not just playing piano divinely but composing music. She then has to deal with the machinations of various helpers and hinderers, exploiters and decriers, plus somewhat complicated relationships with a couple of attractive men, while trying to figure out what this "inhabitation" is all about and how to resolve it. The book began as an agreeable fantasy (with a somewhat annoying chick-lit flavor -- I shamelessly skipped some of the excess about men and clothes and dithering angst), but to my surprise it broadened and deepened into a rather thoughtful, sensitive, and sometimes funny study of some interesting aspects of the situation as presented: rivalries and intrigue in the classical music world; the effects on Franz of increasingly broad exposure to modern music; the changes in the people around Liza as they come to accept that she's at least partly an established musical genius *and* a participant in some kind of supernatural strangeness; and the shifting ground between the body's original owner and the uninvited visitor as they come to know and appreciate eachother, albeit with only emotional communication rather than verbal.

I really enjoyed the exploration of these matters and others, and the shaping of a sometimes meandering story to an unexpectedly satisfying end. *And* I almost went nuts with the chick-aspect: Liza, our heroine, is in many ways the antithesis of a heroine: sappy, silly, unable to remember or stick to any kind of schedule so that she's always apologizing to people for standing them up, and, worst of all, spineless. Everybody pushes her around, and while she makes snappy and insightful retorts in the silence of her mind, her actual behavior is almost always cravenly evasive (she'd sure as hell never be *my* lawyer!). While this drove me to distraction, it also reminded me of how uncommon it is these days to find a female protagonist who is *not* strong and feisty, or at least clearly meant to seem that way. I guess that's a good thing, at the same time that I have to recognize, however unwillingly, that Liza's wimpy behavior is a lot more likely in a real woman than is the stout and witty personal judo of the new ideal heroine.

On the other hand, here are some working friendships with men who are not love-interests; an exasperating but realistic sister-and-family component, and the occasional truly felicitous bit of phrasing. Franz's interpolated remarks are interesting and sometimes acute, as are the glimpses of his remembered 19th C life as seen in the dreams he gives to Liza; and the powerful effec ts of the music -- not just on audiences but on Liza herself -- is tellingly conveyed, for a reader who's also susceptible. It's good, lovingly worked-out fantasy fiction, found in a genre (the modern romance) where many SF and fantasy readers would seldom look (because what you *do* find there mostly is vampire Gothic that manages to be both erotic and boring, often in the same paragraphs, and reincarnated soul-mates overcoming an endless train of phony obstacles so they can come together yet again; one or two of those, and you never bother looking on the romance shelves again).

So I thought I'd mention Bonnie Maron's book here. Writers need to have good work publicly applauded, especially in a commercial world overbearingly dominated by Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Crud at one end, and Tom Wolfe and books like THE SHIPPING NEWS at the other. Let's hear it for lighthanded thoughtfulness, imagination, and charm -- imperfections and all.