In this issue: Reviews of “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma” and “Land of Milk and Honey”
MONSTERS: A Fan’s Dilemma
by Claire Dederer
Published by Knopf (April 25, 2023), Hardback – $16, Paperback – $32
Hardback Edition – $16.59
Audiobook Edition – $5.95
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
A few weeks ago I got a call from a very good friend with a very bad problem. She had purchased a beautiful oil painting of a small ship that was struggling in big waves. The sails were down, the boat was tilting, and at the bottom of the frame was a small plaque saying the art was a gift to “Superintendent ____.” Thinking schools, my friend did some research only to find the recipient was the superintendent of a prison. And the artist who painted it had beaten, raped, and murdered a child and committed several other heinous crimes. The painting that my friend loved was now hated. And what to do with it?
Before she made any decision, I suggested she read a book called MONSTERS. The essence of Dederer’s book is how do we balance the love or appreciation of a work of art if it was created by someone we considered a monster.
What is a monster? To the author, it’s “someone whose behavior disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms.” It’s when we find something beautiful, but it has a stain, which we cannot remove.
The author often invokes the #MeToo movement. Many immoral or unethical people (mostly men) were excused from their behavior because that’s the way the world worked then, that society had different mores and norms, that people just didn’t know better. Many people feel that way about Hemingway or Picasso, who treated women with outright cruelty at times. Those who appreciate their writing or art often justify the behavior because it came from a “genius.” “The genius isn’t so much a kind of person as a status of person: a person who can do whatever he wants.”
Sometimes the “genius” becomes embroiled into a larger movement. Wagner, who was a rabid anti-Semite, is known not only for the music he wrote but for the essays he wrote vilifying Jews. Both aspects of his work became tied to Hitler and the Holocaust, and to this day, many people will not or cannot listen to his music.
There are chapters on Roman Polanski – a brilliant director who raped a girl when she was 13. But the author is taken with the film “Rosemary’s Baby.” Then, there is Woody Allen, in a relationship with the child of his former partner and accused of molesting another. But the author loves the movie “Annie Hall”. To Nabakov, who wrote “Lolita,” Dederer admits she was repulsed by the book as a teenager, but now sees the first person novel as a way for readers to understand what it is like to steal a childhood.
Most monsters in this book are men. The few women we seem to perceive that way are mothers who abandoned their children, so they could go on making or performing their art. Joni Mitchell gave up her daughter when she was unmarried and pregnant at 21. Author Doris Lessing left Rhodesia without two children from her first marriage but brought along her third one, a son, to London. What does that say to the two left behind?
In the final chapters, Dederer focuses on the monsters in our own lives, the drunk mothers, the abusive fathers. “The real question is how to love someone awful…Families are hard because they are the monsters (and angels, and everything in between) that are foisted upon us. They’re unchosen monsters.”
This book would be an excellent choice for book clubs. It fosters deep thought and discussion and perhaps a reappraisal of the art, literature, and music we bring into our homes and hearts. Finally, I still have not heard from my friend, so I don’t know what she will do with that beautiful painting.
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
by C Pam Zhang
Published by Riverhead Books (September 26, 2023), Paperback $20.73
Reviewed by Ashley Riggleson
Having read and really enjoyed the concept of C Pam Zhang’s debut novel, How Much of These Hills is Gold, I could not wait to see where Zhang would go next. And her newest work, Land of Milk and Honey shows that she is a gifted and versatile writer.
Set in a world that seems frightfully possible, Land of Milk and Honey follows a young chef during a time of great turmoil. A thick smog has engulfed the planet, leading to food scarcity. Humans survive on a kind of nutritious flour, and while all physical needs are met, it leaves much to be desired in terms of its taste. The chef dreams of fresh food, and when she discovers a job opening in a controversial community on a mountaintop (in one of the few places where the smog has yet to spread), she leaps at the chance to cook with real meat, fresh fruits, and vegetables.
In her preliminary research, however, she becomes aware of some difficult truths. First, this oasis is only open to the very rich. And when she arrives, there are massive stockpiles of food that she is forced to throw away. Since much of the world is living in food deserts, this abundance strikes the chef as reprehensible. But there is more. The chef soon meets her employer’s daughter, Aida, a young scientist who believes she can save the world. At first, the chef is not allowed to leave the restaurant where she cooks meals, that she finds she is unable to eat, but as her relationship with Aida begins to grow into something more than friendship, she realizes there is more going on under the surface of this community than she originally thought. She soon becomes embroiled in something much larger. And while Land of Milk and Honey has a tense plot, at its core, this novel asks us to consider what, in light of this set-up, is moral. Aida and the chef discuss this issue in some detail, but by the end, there are no easy answers.
Between her first and second novels, Zhang has grown tremendously as a writer. Her prose is clear and beautiful, her plot is compelling, her characters complex, and her use of imagery spot-on. But what really distinguishes this novel is its sense of atmosphere. Zhang flawlessly conveys the chef’s sense of oppression to the reader, and though there is joy and even love in its pages, this novel feels, at all times, quite claustrophobic. Zhang’s choice to pass on this oppressive sense to readers is a respectable one. That said, as a reader, I found the continued sense of dread to be somewhat frustrating, and it made Land of Milk and Honey flag in the middle. And while some may consider this use of atmosphere to be a flaw, I think it is a risky but purposeful decision.
Although I did not initially consider this novel to be a favorite of mine, since finishing it, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. Certain scenes have stayed with me, and the themes of class inequality, the intersection of science and morality, capitalism, love, and survival that Zhang explores seem extremely prescient in today’s world.
Additionally, one certainly cannot fault Zhang’s prodigious imagination. At the end of the day, I am floored. This frightfully realistic novel, set in a world which (thankfully) has not yet come to pass, sounds like a warning. Readers are sure to remember this text well after the final page is turned.
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