Book Review: Summer House with Swimming Pool

I loved Herman Koch's novel The Dinner so I couldn't wait to read this book. His characters are so despicable. There wasn't a single one in The Dinner that was redeemable. This was true again in Summer House With Swimming Pool. I'm starting to wonder what goes through the mind of this author!




If you read this book, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Koch has little respect for women. His characters view them as nothing more than sex objects, including the two young girls in the novel who are 11 and 13-years-old. Koch pushes it to a limit that sent alarm bells ringing through my mind. The girls pose for a couple of boys as they stand on a diving board and are squirted with hoses as part of a "Miss Wet T-shirt" contest. The girls' father finds it amusing. I found it disturbing.


What kind of father is okay with boys making his daughters into sex objects at that (or any) age? One of the boys gets angry at the younger girl and calls her a "slimy bitch." Again - what kind of father allows a boy to call his 11-year-old daughter that in front of him?




All of the male characters in the novel are atrociously misogynistic. I couldn't stand any of them. I knew the book would take twists and turns that rattle the rational mind, but didn't expect some of the things that came up. Again, it made me wonder what in the world goes through Herman Koch's mind? That being said, I can't wait for his next book to be translated into English. So what does that say about my own psyche?








HERMAN KOCH is the author of eight novels and three collections of short stories. The Dinner, his sixth novel, has been published in twenty-five countries, and was an international bestseller. He currently lives in Amsterdam.




*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Book Review: What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

I can't decide how I feel about this book. It was initially off-putting as author Kristin Newman immediately jumped into her sexual escapades around the globe. It reminded me of twentysomethings who think it's cool to brag about "that time I was so wasted," or "I was so drunk," etc. But instead, it was Kristin boasting about all the men she slept with in various foreign countries. I don't consider myself that prudish, but there were times when it seemed like she was trading sex for a place to stay or a ride when she needed one.




But her writing won me over and soon I was caught up in the adventures and locales she described. As a writer for several sitcoms, she had the time and the money to spend on periods of extended travel and her stories were entertaining and funny. It was easy to see how she made a living entertaining people with humor.




Then I'd teeter back to not liking her. Maybe it was jealousy in part because I'm more aligned with the "people who were breeding" in my twenties and early thirties while she was globe-trekking. (Is it my imagination or is her book title purposely offensive?) I can admit that a part of me wishes I'd been as wild, carefree and uninhibited as she was. Then I remember who I am, and that I'm not an extrovert who gloms onto strangers and takes them up on their offers to fly halfway around the world to stay at their place. That's just not me.




But I loved the adventures and the travel descriptions. So I teetered back to liking the book again.




Overall, I'd have to say I liked the book. It kept me reading and made me drool with envy. Unfortunately, Kristin's sexual romps were distracting in what was otherwise a great travel memoir.




Decide for yourself. You can read the opening chapter here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/221612141/What-I-Was-Doing-While-You-Were-Breeding




*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Picking Cotton

Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson
answer questions at Miami University.

In 1984, Jennifer Thompson was raped in the middle of the night in her own off-campus apartment. She woke to find a man in her room. Once she realized that he intended to rape her, she decided to focus on her assailant and memorize every detail about him that she could in order to help the police catch and convict him. She narrowly escaped her assailant that night and underwent a rape kit at the hospital and worked with the police to make a composite sketch based on her description of the man. She later picked Ronald Cotton as her rapist from a batch of photos, and identified him again in a line-up. Cotton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He served 11 years before DNA evidence proved he was innocent in Jennifer’s attack and he was exonerated of the crime.

Thompson and Cotton have since collaborated on a book that tells their stories, and now make public appearances together to bring awareness to the fallibility of eye witness identification and the number of people wrongly convicted based on that testimony.

I was fortunate enough to hear them speak last night as part of Miami University’s Criminal Justice Week. The room was packed to standing room only, and yet, as Jennifer spoke, you could have heard a pin drop. No one moved. No one rustled or made any sound at all. We were riveted.

I know that Jennifer has told her story hundreds, if not thousands of times now, and yet, she mustered up all the fear, anger, rage, and hate that she went through. Her performance made us feel as though the rape and trial had happened just months ago. We were right there with her, hating Ronald Cotton, too. Except that Ronald Cotton was the wrong man.

Once she finished, he rose from his seat and walked up to the podium to tell his account of the story. Soft-spoken and much less emotional than Jennifer, Ronald described the confusion he felt when he heard that the police were looking for him. He went to the police station to clear up the matter and was instead handcuffed, arrested, and placed on $150,000 bail that his family could not pay. Later, in court, Jennifer identified him again as her attacker and the jury came back with a guilty verdict.

He told us all of this matter-of-factly. Then the judge asked him if he had anything to say and instead of words, he broke into song; a song he had written to God while he was incarcerated awaiting trial. He sang it for us, just as he had in court, and we sat spellbound.

Despite the fact that Ronald has shared the platform with Jennifer during all their speaking engagements, his speech was not as polished and practiced. Instead, his quiet demeanor came through and we could feel what a gentle man he is.

Both Jennifer and Ronald described what life was like once he was released from prison. He wanted to meet her, but she was scared to death that he would hate (and possibly hurt) her for what her testimony had done to him. Family members finally convinced her to meet him so the two met at a church. She immediately apologized to him, telling him that she could never apologize enough, but hoped that someday he could forgive her.

“I forgave you years ago,” he said. And that changed everything for her.

I read Picking Cotton a couple years ago, so was already familiar with the story, but hearing them speak together was more powerful than I ever could have expected. They intend to keep traveling around the country, encouraging people to work toward justice reform. If you ever have the opportunity to hear them speak, do. Their story will change you, too.

Our House Got TP'ed!

We woke up this morning to find that our house had been TP'ed during the night. Halfheartedly toilet-papered; they only used two rolls, but still. It came as quite a surprise. And that's exactly how we reacted: surprised.

When I think about toilet-papering a house, I think of juvenile pranks intended to either irritate the person who lives there, or elevate them, like athletes who dump a cooler full of Gatorade on their teammates. I'm not sure how this episode was intended. It was pretty harmless, and we found it amusing, so I'll go with it being fun-spirited.

We're trying to figure out who might have done it. I wondered if my husband was the target? He's a teacher. One of his students could have figured out where he lives. Or it could have been aimed toward my daughter's attention. Maybe a neighborhood boy likes her? Of course, our house could have been chosen at random. Or it could have been the antics of one of the neighborhood kids who knew that we wouldn't get upset about it.

Whatever it was about, it amused us. We've never had this happen, and felt oddly special to have been singled out.

I'm sure we would have felt differently if it had rained.

Now I'm wondering what will happen to our house on Halloween?

Summer Ends with a Snowball Fight

My husband knows how to create magical moments. One of which was the snowball fight that my kids and their cousins partook in as summer ended.

He grabbed the Tupperware container that has been filling our freezer for eight months. Inside, were a dozen snowballs that he and my daughter collected during their snowball fight last winter. He had the foresight to save some so that we could have a snowball fight with my son when he came to visit from Georgia -- where he rarely sees snow.

So we summoned the kids from the pool and went from this:

To this:

Summer passed so quickly that I didn't even blog. And now we're zooming forward to winter, which means more snowballs, and then another epic snowball fight next summer. One of the more joyous cycles of seasons and life.

love anthony

from Amazon

My nephew is autistic.

Ever since he was diagnosed, I've read anything I come across that has to do with the subject. The back blurb of Lisa Genova's novel love anthony caught my attention immediately. She tells the tale of a woman who is grieving the loss of her autistic son, and trying to make sense of his short life.

Not surprisingly, I flipped immediately to the Author page to see whether she was dealing with autism in her own family, but the brief bio on her gave nothing away. I bought the book and began reading instead, and knew I'd made the right choice on page 15, when Genova writes this about her character:

     When Anthony turned three and they were told with certainty what they were dealing with, she believed she'd find somebody somewhere who could help them, an expert who could transform their lives.
     She scoured every self-help book, then every medical journal, every memoir, every blog, every online parent support network. She read Jenny McCarthy and the Bible. She read and hoped and prayed and believed in anything claiming help, rescue, reversal, salvation. Somebody somewhere must know something. Somebody must have the key that would unlock her son.

When Wyatt was diagnosed, I, too, read Jenny McCarthy's book, and blogs, and memoirs, trying to see if there was something we could do to pull Wyatt through "the window" as Jenny described it. We inundated my brother and his ex-wife with information and they processed their own information, and we all moved toward acceptance at different speeds.

I'm not Wyatt's parent. I'm his aunt. And as such, I know I can't cure him. I can't experiment with the multitude of approaches that seem almost limitless in their scope. It's not up to me - or any of us, really, to try to "save" Wyatt. This book helped me see that. My brother and his ex-wife already seem to know that. This is Wyatt. He is autistic, and that's okay.

But there's still that niggling to figure out how to connect with Wyatt in some way. The boy in Genova's book is so much like Wyatt that I was both excited and nearly compelled to write to the author and tell her how much her book validated everything we've experienced with Wyatt. He is so like the boy in the book that I was astounded. And I came away from the reading with one little take-away that I feel like I just have to try.

The boy in the book likes musical birthday cards. I know Wyatt isn't Anthony, but I'm going to go buy a card anyway, because what if Wyatt likes it, too? I'm not sure I can ever stop trying to reach him.

Hollywood Comes to Mansfield

When the producers of The Shawshank Redemption began scouting locations, they wanted an empty prison to use. With its imposing structure and stone walls, the Ohio State Reformatory (OSR) was the perfect choice.



Much of the movie features the cell blocks where Andy and Red reside, and the outside yard where their friendship was formed. I had hoped to see the cell blocks featured in the movie, but learned that they had to build that set somewhere else since prison cell blocks don’t face each other. Some of the administrative offices were in good enough condition to be used as movie scenes. The Warden’s office was intact, and the safe we see him enter his ill-gotten gains into was set into the wall here.


I shared the shots of Brooks’ apartment in my last post. That was on location, as well as the room where Red approached the parole board each decade.

What I don’t have pictures of are scenes from other movies filmed at the Ohio Reformatory. Movies like Air Force One, Tango & Cash, Fallen Angels and Harry & Walter Go To New York. Plus, Marilyn Manson once used the site as a backdrop for a fashion layout.

Haunted Mansfield

Not surprisingly, the Ohio Reformatory is also the site of many paranormal investigations. On several occasions throughout the year, the prison hosts Ghost Walks, overnight Ghost Hunts, and Haunted Prison Halloween Tours in October.

Zac Bagans of Ghost Adventures filmed an episode here. Apparently, his partner Nick felt burning sensation in one of the cells. (But then again, doesn’t someone from Ghost Adventures always feel some sort of attack?)

The TAPS crew of Ghost Hunters filmed here, too.

My husband is dying to go on an overnight ghost hunt, but I’m not as eager. The building is creepy enough during the day, with lead-based paint peeling from the walls and ceilings and rusted iron bars disintegrating onto my body and clothes. I peered into many of the cells and then scurried down the rusty plank toward the slightly-more sturdy rusted stairs.





Though I’m sure I’ll give in eventually and hunt for ghosts all night, I was satisfied wandering through the prison during the day. In addition to our regular self-guided tour, we took a “Behind the Scenes” guided tour of the nooks and crannies of the prison. For $5.00, it was quite a value! We spent an hour and a half with our guide, exploring the basement, solitary confinement, the attic, the armory, both cell wings, and learned the history of the prison and the changes it underwent throughout the years.

It’s actually a beautiful building. Even the decrepit parts were majestic, in their way. But I felt no need to wander around there at night with a flashlight and EVP device, crouching in musty, cramped cells looking for ghosts. After all, Ohioan Jeffrey Dahmer’s picture is hanging among the Ohio Penal System artifacts at OSR, and I have no desire to meet him, dead or alive! Nor any of his prison pals, either.