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To Be Mona

Easton, Kelly

Last Updated: Sep-03-2010
Annotated by:
McEntyre, Marilyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel for Young Adults

Summary:

As the story opens, Sage Priestly, 17, is running for class president against Mona, whose popularity Sage finds both threatening, fascinating, and a matter that keeps her in a state of uncomfortable envy. In her efforts to "be Mona," Sage undertakes a drastic diet, changes her haircolor, and focuses all her leisure dream time on Roger--a boy she can't see is incipiently abusive, though her long-time friend, Vern, loves her in a healthy and faithful way--a love that is tested when Sage starts dating Roger and suffering actual physical abuse.  As we learn about her troubled social life, we also learn that at home Sage is a caregiver for her single mother whose bipolar disorder  and depression pose a huge and confusing challenge to the teenage daughter.  Vern's parents eventually intervene to help both Sage and her mother get appropriate care and oversight, and Sage begins to recognize in Vern (and his gay friend Walter, who has suffered his own social challenges) the kind of friend that will last.  The book includes an afterword in which the author provides a note from personal experience on bipolar disorder (one of her parents was bipolar) and abuse, and lists helpful resources. 

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Annotated by:
Spiegel, Maura

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

The story follows the final twelve or so hours in the life of a 62 year old widow, emblematically named Dante Remus Lazarescu, (Ioan Fiscuteanu). Suffering with stomach distress and a terrible headache (eventually diagnosed as a subdural hematoma and late stage liver cancer), he spends his last night being shuttled by ambulance, or rather by an ill-equipped van serving as ambulance, from hospital to hospital, unable to secure the emergency surgery that would save him. The hand-held camera and long uncut takes -some are six or more minutes- give the movie the feel of unfolding in real time. In places, it has the look of a documentary, and it has been compared to Frederick Wiseman's Hospital (1970).

Before the odyssey begins, we meet Mr. Lazarescu in the cramped, unkempt Bucharest apartment he shares with his three cats. Of his circumstances we learn that he is a retired engineer whose only daughter has emigrated to Toronto, and that despite having had ulcer surgery years earlier, Mr. Lazarescu drinks heavily. In his every encounter -with neighbors and with a string of doctors- he is reprimanded for his drinking, implicitly or explicitly blamed for his ill-health. From the television blaring in his apartment we hear news of a truck gone out of control that has rammed a tourist bus. Casualties from the accident are taxing hospital resources, which accounts in part for why this ill-smelling elderly man who appears to be drunk (but turns out to be having a cerebral bleed) is a low priority, although this doesn't account for the callousness with which he is treated by much of the medical staff.

The most significant relationship in the film is between Mr. Lazarescu and the ambulance nurse, Mioara (Luminita Gheorghiu) who shepherds him throughout the night. Almost everything we know about her is what one knows from watching someone at her job; in Puiu's hands, this vantage turns out to be richly informative. (Ms. Gheorghiu's body language speaks volumes.) Mioara and Mr. Lazarescu hardly speak to one another; they don't "open up" to one another or have a "meaningful moment," nothing to compare, for example, to the Popsicle scene between the nurse, Susie, and patient, Vivian Bearing, in Wit (see annotation). The power of the relationship in this film is in what is not overt, but what is palpable nonetheless -that Mioara's presence means very much to Mr. Lazarescu, and that doing her job includes letting him know that she is standing by him, that he is the priority, the only priority. Mioara staunchly meets the irascibility and chastisement of various physicians in her efforts to advocate for her patient as he is passed off from one hospital to the next.

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Tainted

Pennie, Ross

Last Updated: Sep-01-2010
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Zol Szabo, is public health doctor for the Hamilton Ontario region. He is also a single parent to a seven-year-old, Max, because his wife could not deal with Max’s physical disability. But Sol thinks there is hope for Max in an injection of a miraculous new substance called “Endotox” that may loosen the contractures of his arm. Soon he his investigating a cluster of variant CJD (mad cow) cases that may be related to Endotox. But they also seem to be connected to the grocery store where Sol does his shopping. The products that all victims had in common were an imported candy and a sausage, both Max’s favorites.

Conspiracy theories about corrupt pharmaceutical companies and the antics of a pair of unethical mink farmers lead the investigation in many different directions, all personally threatening to Sol because of the health of his son or the ire of his boss. Pressure from his superiors to avoid publicity cramps Sol’s freedom. He seeks help from an attractive woman detective who, of course, sticks with him to the terrifying (and satisfying) conclusion.

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The Blood Spilt

Larsson, Asa

Last Updated: Sep-01-2010
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Attorney Rebecka Martinsson returns to her northern Swedish home to recover from a traumatic experience. She becomes involved in the investigation of the murder of Mildred, a woman priest who was found hanging from a beam in her own church. The investigating police office, Anna Maria Mella, meets opposition, especially from the local organization of hunters, who clearly resented Mildred for having offered shelter on the church lands to a stray wolf. 

It is clear that Nalle, a large, mentally challenged boy, was close to the dead priest, and that his single parent father Lars-Gunnar did not appreciate their friendship. Nalle begins to trust Rebecka, as he trusted Mildred, and he appears to know something. But Anna Maria learns that Mildred had another enemy in her jealous, male colleague; moreover, some of the women in town resented her freedoms.

The many historical and personal ways in which the members of this isolated community are entwined becomes part of the investigation, but before it is complete Mella is confronted with two more murders and two suicides.

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Summary:

Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis in 1799 on the southern coast of England. With her father, she learned to hunt for fossils that have become popular curiosities among tourists. But the science of paleontology was still in its infancy. Her father died in 1810 leaving his small family in precarious circumstances. The following year, at the age of twelve, Mary unearthed the full skeleton of the world’s first ichthyosaur--more than 30 years before Richard Owen would propose the term, dinosauria (terrible lizards) to describe the class of these extinct creatures.

For the rest of her life she was driven to scour the cliffs day in, day out. Wearing odd, bulky clothing to protect her from the elements, she found many important fossils, including the first Plesiosaur and the first representative of a certain kind of pterodactyl.  She sold them to scholars. Although isolated and poor, she kept up with the new discoveries through the literature, and was skilled at reading the landscape and the unique bones.

Mary never prospered from her work, but received all visitors with generosity, flattered and proud of the small attention they gave her. Lacking privilege and a husband, her discoveries were taken over by male scientists who used them to build the new science and their reputations. Religious concerns over the age of the objects is a backdrop for the discoveries; however, Mary appears to have been convinced that her fossils challenged the standard interpretations and yet unshaken in her faith. She died of breast cancer at age 48.

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The Parabolist

Ruddock, Nicholas

Last Updated: Sep-01-2010
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Jasper Glass and his brother Jonathan are medical students in Toronto, circa 1975. Their father is a repressed, language professor endlessly writing a never-to-be published book on French idioms.  Jasper is having an affair with a married classmate, and he lusts after his dissection partner, Valerie. But Valerie isn’t interested.

In its wisdom, the medical faculty has decided that electives in the humanities must be taken to broaden the educational experience. Jasper and his friends opt for literature. When the graduate student assigned to the teaching task dissolves in angst over how to communicate with savage medical students, the young, Mexican poet, Roberto Moreno, becomes their instructor. The students love Roberto, and through him they learn to love poetry too. Valerie especially loves Roberto. Jasper learns to deal with it.

Over the course of the year, the friends have many adventures. Jasper rescues a young woman from assault, and she, in turn, defends him from a wrongful accusation. Jonathan loses his way and fails miserably. They meet a sinister psychiatry resident who abuses his position with patients, colleagues, and students. Only slowly do they realize the full potential of his dangerous mind. They deal with that too. 

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Annotated by:
Holmes, Martha Stoddard

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Criticism

Summary:

Garland-Thomson, an important figure in disability studies scholarship and activism, analyzes the social phenomenon of staring, particularly staring at people with distinctive bodies. After exploring why we stare and what staring is, i.e., "a physical response...a cultural history...a social relationship...[and] knowledge-gathering," the book analyzes the dynamics of staring, including the learned prohibition against staring and the dynamic power relationship between starers and the objects of their stares, whom Garland-Thomson terms "starees."

She illustrates and analyzes four key "scenes of staring": staring at faces, hands, breasts, and bodies.  The book proposes a new "ethics of looking" in which starees offer starers a collaborative relationship that produces "[s]taring as beholding...a way to bring visual presence to another person, to see them as they need to be seen" (194). Garland-Thomson positions her argument in relation to key works of cultural criticism and sociology including Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others (see annotation), Erving Goffman's Stigma, Elaine Scarry's On Beauty and Being Just, and the ideas of historian Michel Foucault. Her evidence includes  auto/biographical narratives of scenes of staring, summaries of key historical contexts, examples from visual art (photography, painting, film, and cartoon), and literature, and auto/biographical narratives.

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Doctor Pascal

Zola, Emile

Last Updated: Aug-09-2010

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Doctor Pascal practiced medicine for twelve years. He now lives off his investments and has devoted his life to research on heredity. He has a giant armoire filled with his findings, including files on each of his family members. His mother, Madame Rougon, worries about her son. She had expected him to become a famous doctor. Instead, he accumulates possibly scandalous files about his family.

Madama Rougon tries to enlist Clotilde, Doctor Pascal’s niece, into her cause. Clotilde lives with her uncle and is loyal to him, but she sometimes fears that her uncle is tampering with God’s plans. One day, Clotilde gives in to Madame Rougon’s pleadings and gives her the key to the armoire. Dr. Pascal surprises them rifling through his work. He feels as if his family has betrayed him.

Clotilde repents, but when a Capuchin preacher comes to town, she again changes her mind and tries once more to destroy the files. Pascal once again catches her and to regain her trust tells her all about his project. She is half-convinced and promises to think it over.

She is also considering a marriage proposal from Dr. Ramond, whom she consults when Pascal falls ill. Pascal is afraid he is going mad, but he recovers, having received a serum Ramond invented. At this point, Pascal realizes he is in love with Clotilde, but so as not to interfere in her young life, he presses her to marry Ramond. She admits she can’t for she loves Pascal.

They become lovers, but Clotilde is called away to her ill brother in Paris. She returns home when she discovers that she is pregnant, but Pascal dies two hours before her arrival. Before his death, he had completed his files, but M. Rougon and his old servant Martine burn them.

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Annotated by:
Belling, Catherine

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

The narrator of this novel, fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone, is autistic (or, more accurately, probably, has Asperger's Syndrome). He lives with his father and believes his mother died two years before. Christopher is extremely good at mathematics, seems to have a photographic memory, but does not like novels (other than detective stories, which are about observation and logic), because he cannot empathize with human emotions or make sense of the indirect or figurative. For Christopher, metaphors, like fictions, are lies. He is very fond of dogs, and hates to be touched by people.

When a neighbour's dog is killed, he decides to investigate and, with the encouragement of his teacher, to write a book about his investigation. He quickly makes some very disturbing discoveries. He learns that his mother is not dead after all, but living in London with the husband of the dead dog's owner. The fact that his father has lied to him devastates Christopher. He runs away to London to find his mother, and his courage and tenacity allow him to solve not only the mystery of the dog's death but that of his family's past and future.

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Less Than Zero

Ellis, Bret

Last Updated: Jul-30-2010
Annotated by:
Henderson, Schuyler

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

19 year old Clay has returned to Los Angeles for the Christmas break, his first time back after leaving for a Northeastern college.  He spends the next month meeting with his clique, going to parties and restaurants, visting a friend hospitalized for anorexia, lying on his bed at home and joining his family at the mall or for dinner.  As Clay and his friends are the progeny of LA's wealthiest, this typical return-from-college-for-the-Christmas-break story also entails driving expensive cars, steady drinking, constant smoking, copious amounts of cocaine and marijuana, and frequent sex (gay, straight; voluntary, paid-for).  Dulled by drugs and boredom, these teenagers are drawn to excesses to jolt them out of their expensively-maintained ruts: to prostitution and snuff films, to dead bodies in the street and, ultimately, to sadistic child abuse.

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