The Grand Jury Wants You

The Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury will be holding five Q&A sessions in March at various Libraries across the County.

These one-hour discussions may be of interest to:
n  Prospective jurors: next year’s Civil Grand Jury
n  Citizens wondering, what is the Civil Grand Jury
n  Citizens with complaints about local government

We will have applications for the 2016-2017 Jury.
We will have information pamphlets available.
We will have complaint forms as well.


 
The five scheduled meetings are:

n  Wednesday, March 9^th  Guerneville Regional Library

                                           5:30 – 6:30       14107 Armstrong Woods Rd.
                                                                           Guerneville, CA 95446.
                                                                           (707) 869-9004
  n  Friday, March 11^th  Rohnert Park Cotati Regional Library
                                                                         3:30 – 4:30        6250 Lynne Condé Way
                                                                         Rohnert Park, CA 94928
                                                                                   (707) 584-9121
 n   Saturday,  March 12^th    Petaluma Regional Library
                                                         11am – noon    100 Fairgrounds Drive
                                                                                        Petaluma, CA 94952.
                                                                                        (707) 763-9801
 n  Tuesday, March 15^th  Sonoma Valley Regional Library
                                                2 – 3 pm           755 West Napa Street
                                                       Sonoma, CA 95476
                                                              (707) 996-5217
  n  Wednesday, March 16^th  Sebastopol Regional Library
                                                      4 – 5 pm           7140 Bodega Avenue
                                                                                  Sebastopol, CA 95472.
                                                                                      (707) 823-7691
Application Deadline for the 2016-2017 Jury is April 6^th, 2016.

Someone by Alice mcDermitt

Trite – banal – boring. That about sums it up.

I certainly thought I recognized the author’s name when the book was passed out for out Library Book Club.  When I went to the “Also By” page in front, however, I didn’t know any of the titles.  She’s had a book published every five years since the nineties.  I’ve kept track of most everything I’ve read since about then and not a wisp of her.

Probably like most readers, for each one I finish, there are three others where I either browse a few lines here and there, or take out (or buy) and then stop after a chapter or two.  I think Alice McDermott falls in the latter category.  I’d bet there’s one of her books on my bookshelf with a dog-ear, 40 pages in.

For me, this was a bad retro rewrite attempt at Betty Smith’s, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”    There was nothing new in “Someone”.    No sparkle   –   I wanted Gene Kelly and Frankie out “On The Town”. 

No hopes, no dreams – a funeral parlor?   I get that this was sort of her idea, just someone, nobody special.  But there’s a reason successful authors write about special people  --  it’s interesting ! ! ! or at least entertaining.  This book was neither.

The writing was sophomoronic – she used all the [see my opening line] gimmicks taught in memoirs IA.  This works if the author can balance achieving disbelief (in her remembering all these “growing up” images) with the sorts of things a child remembers (p.47 – “There was a tall brown dresser against one wall, Mr. Hanson’s doorman’s cap on top of it and, between two windows, a dressing table with perfume bottles and jars of cream and a silver-backed brush still threaded with Mrs. Hanson’s black hair.”) age 9.

Quite often I am known to suggest that an author had a great short story, but then the publisher made them expand it into a novel for commercial reasons.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.  In McDermott’s case, I fear she wrote an epic novel to start with and the publisher kindly chopped the middle of it out.  What’s left is a two-part book – both parts short stories – fictionalized memoirs.  Well, maybe not so fictionalized.  McDermott is at that age where one has to start dealing with the aging and death of parents. 

That’s probably where all these themes in this current book are coming from. 

Maybe it’s not fiction at all.