Book a Month Challenge: October

Ha! You thought I forgot didn't you? Just because November is 2/3s gone, doesn't mean I intend to shirk my Book a Month obligations. October's theme was "haunt." I didn't so much choose a book to fit the theme last month, but I did manage to read three novels (3! You can tell that I ran out of Dr. Who DVD's). So here's the plan: I'll tell you what I read and you can decide which one best fits the theme.

First up: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. This is the novel that seems the most likely candidate for the "haunt" theme but the fact of the matter is, it was also the dullest. It's about a young woman who works as a waitress in a small town in Louisiana shortly after vampires have "come out of the closet" to live among humans with the help of synthetic blood. I've never read a vampire book before, no Ann Rice when she was all the rage, never read Dracula, so I don't really have a reference point for vampire books, but this one struck me as a little lame. It sucked. (Sorry, but who can resist that pun when talking about a bad vampire book?) The main character falls in love with a vampire while also trying to solve a series of murders in her town. That was about it. And not once during the whole novel did I understand why anyone would want to date a vampire. However, I listened to Kenneth Turan review "Twilight" this morning on NPR, and I understand that if you're a teenage female, dating vampires is now the thing to do. Perhaps I'm just in the wrong demographic.

Second: Midwives by Chris Boujalin. This was my favorite of the three. Midwives tells the story of a Vermont midwife who performs an emergency cesarean section to save a baby who's mother the midwife believes has died. The baby's father and midwife's apprentice later claim that the mother was not yet dead when the midwife performed the emergency surgery and the midwife is tried for involuntary manslaughter. The novel, told from the perspective the midwife's daughter, thoughtfully examines the life of the midwife's family during the trial, the trial itself, and the practice of midwifery. Boujalin does a fantastic job of describing the intricacies and process of a criminal trial. He avoids the trap of the overly dramatic cross-examination or the stunning bit of evidence that completely exonerates or condemns the defendant and accurately describes the long and complex process of constructing a criminal defense. I was also drawn in by the larger issues at the center of the novel and the trial described therein: namely whether we ought to view pregnancy and birth as a medical condition to be treated by doctors in the controlled environment of a hospital or whether it ought to be viewed as a fundamentally natural process that the human race has managed for thousands of years, and that occasionally and rarely requires medical intervention. My own experience with pregnancy and birth straddles this divide, and I found the novel's discussion particularly compelling. (While pregnant, I received prenatal care from a midwife and had planned to have Garion outside of the hospital, at a birth center. Garion turned out to be breech, and was born by cesarean-section in a hospital.) I'm not exactly sure how this novel fits with the "haunt" theme, but I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

Third: The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory. This is a work of historical fiction told from the perspective of Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn who was the second wife of Henry VIII. Mary is, as a young girl, mistress of the King. The King later sets her aside and her sister Anne moves in to not only become the King's mistress, but to play a significant role in orchestrating the King's divorce from his first wife so that she can become the second wife. Which, as everybody knows, didn't end so well. The book is well written and Gregory is truly talented at bringing the reader into the world of 16th century England and its monarchy. How does it fit the "haunt" theme? Well, there are a lot of beheadings, so I'd surmise there are few ghosts too. I mean, if you were beheaded, don't you think you'd hang around as ghost for awhile to make the King's life a little miserable?

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Also, if you're looking at the time of this post and thinking, "wow, Kerry is really slacking off of work today!" , I am not. Garion came down with a mysterious vomiting disease last night so we're home sick. Well, he's home sick and I'm home blogging.