A Collection of Beauties at the Height of their Popularity, by Whitney Otto. Random House, 2002

I found this an odd book. Not just the format- vignettes loosely bound together, styled after a Japanese courtesan’s ‘pillow book’ from the Edo period , each vignette featuring a different member of a group of friends. Set in 1980s San Francisco, these friends are late 20 somethings, all well educated but none working in the field that they are educated for. They float through life; drinking, smoking pot and sometimes doing coke, attending art openings and going to restaurants but mainly meeting at the Youki Singe Tea Room, a North Beach dive where pot smoking is allowed- but only in a small room.

Elodie is the woman who sets the tales down. She writes only when in the Tea Room, leaving her notebooks there. The characters- the collection of beauties- seem to have no ambition, content to simply live like butterflies, pushed by the winds of life. Connections between them turn to love, break up, and realign. There is no real plot; it’s just events happening in the vignettes.  

While reading the book, I didn’t much care for most of the characters. Which makes it odd that I later found myself thinking about them, and going back and rereading sections of the book. The prose is beautiful.The vignettes are like little jewels. The book is physically beautiful, too, illustrated mostly with old Japanese woodblock prints but with a couple of 20^th century works. To read this book is enjoyable, even if I didn’t connect with most of the characters. 

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Frog Music, by Emma Donoghue. Little, Brown & Co, 2014

‘Frog Music’ takes place in two times: a month in one time line and a handful of days in the other. Donoghue alternates between the past month and the present few days as Blanche Beunon, exotic dancer in San Francisco in 1876, tries to survive and get justice for her best friend of a month, Jenny Bonnet. A cross dressing young woman who carried a gun and rode a stolen high wheel bike, Jenny seems a less likely target for murder than Blanche herself. Blanche frantically scrambles to stay safe from her former pimp and his sidekick, fighting to get her child back (whom she cared not a bit for until reminded of him by Jenny), and get the truth about why Jenny was killed.

Formerly, Blanche lived in relative comfort, supplementing her income as a dancer/stripper with semi-high class prostitution; supporting her idle, sociopathic but beloved Arthur and his friend Ernest in style; and even buying the building they live in. At that point, the only mistake she figured she’d made was having a baby, P’tit, who, lest he interfere with Blanche’s ability to work, is put out by Arthur to a ‘baby farm’, horrific places where most of the infants died. Once Blanche finds out the circumstances of P’tit’s care, he suddenly becomes the most important thing in the world to her. At this point, Jenny has-literally- run into Blanche, and, despite this unpromising meeting, they become friends. But Jenny speaks her mind, which makes her a dangerous friend for Blanche.

Set against a heat wave that won’t let up, race hatred against the Chinese, and a smallpox epidemic, the pace never lets up. Blanche goes through a lot of changes and faces hard things. The killer turned out to be a total surprise to me, as did the reason Jenny was killed and not Blanche. This is one of the tensest books I’ve ever read, yet it is filled with the little details of what life was like in that time and place. I was surprised to find that the author based the book on a real event; don’t read the afterword before you read the story or it will be ruined for you! Not as good as Donoghue’s ‘Slammerkin’ but then, not many books are as good as ‘Slammerkin’. 

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Love & Haight, by Susan Carlton. Henry Holt & Company, 2012

Chloe is seventeen and pregnant- even though she used protection the one and only time she had sex. It’s 1971 and Roe v Wade is still two years in the future, and abortion is only legal in California and New York. Chloe lives in Arizona. Lucky for her, she has an aunt who lives in San Francisco and a friend willing to take a road trip with her over winter break. So Chloe and MJ find themselves in ‘Frisco with no real idea where aunt Kiki lives, unable to get hold of her by phone, and it’s getting late. That pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the trip- nothing goes easily or as planned. Abortion may be legal, but there are still hoops to jump through to obtain one, especially for someone under 18. Add to this Chloe’s occasional doubts about her proposed action, her feelings about her previous relationship with MJ’s brother, and the fact that Kiki is a stoner performance artist and you’ve got it.

The book is very short, and I think because of this the characters aren’t developed very well. MJ seems to serve as chauffer and conscience; Kiki is the cool adult; Chloe’s mother is the feminist. MJ’s brother, Teddy, is the good guy Chloe should have waited for- the perfect, understanding guy. Even Chloe’s portrayal seems rather surface, which is odd, given that the book is from her POV. But the author does get the feel of the time and place well. The characters all fit that time and place, even if they aren’t deep. I knew people like Kiki and Chloe’s mother! It’s a very quick read, and while not great, it’s not bad, either, and would serve as a good book for a young teen to introduce them to the issue of abortion.

I do have to say that it was alarming to find an era I lived through listed as ‘historical fiction’! 

 

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