Jamesland

Rating:
Summary: Astonishing Character Development
Review: In addition to being beautifully written and expertly plotted, Jamesland has truly human characters. As I read, I realized that I had come to feel as though Alice, Aunt Kate, Helen, Pete, et al (the main characters) were people I actually knew. The characters are complex and, like real people, flawed. Huneven pulls off an extraordinary feat in making these characters so complicated, interesting, and ultimately likeable. I found myself caring deeply about these people-- wanting their success and cringing at their pain-- and I think that's the sign of a fine novel. You do not need any prior knowledge of William and Henry James to enjoy this novel.

Rating:
Summary: A (Real) LA Story
Review: Jamesland opens with Alice, great-granddaughter of philosopher William James, having an odd waking dream of a deer in her house. Alice fixates on the deer as a portent of a coming change in her life, and the very next day her life begins to change slowly and inexorably. The book does not dwell on the supernatural, though it does have a bemused dialogue with the otherworldly throughout. Mostly it is about three forty-somethings whose social and professional lives are deteriorating and reconfiguring. I'd call it a mid-life crisis, but these characters have that quality, peculiar to Californians, of being youthful, unserious adults. The book is mostly set on the East Side of Los Angeles in neighborhoods that I know well. It was great to read a book that addresses a somewhat larger Los Angeles than usual. Movie stars are around, and Hollywood is nearby, but they are just parts of the great stew of the city, things that are noticed but after a while not accorded any greater importance than things like Griffith Park or the LA River. The only other book that I have read that successfully turns LA's flashy side into just another bit of peripheral scenery is T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain. Huneven is well-known in Los Angeles as the food critic for the LA Weekly, and the way she writes about food in this book is magnificent. Pete (who along with Helen, a modern sort of minister, are the other two wayward adults) is a former near-celebrity chef who is recovering from a nervous breakdown, suicide attempt combo. His character is both abrasive and charming, the type of person who makes you nervous the moment he steps into the room. His background as a chef is the venue for Huneven's descriptions of foods. It was nice to see that Huneven did not place this book firmly in the world of food and restaurants in the way that many writers tend to crib from their day jobs. Instead, Huneven manages to weave her knowledge skillfully into the larger narrative. The book itself is a rather satisfying meal, best taken over a few languorous days on a sunny balcony or sitting on a park bench.

Rating:
Summary: Re-Reading
Review: Jamesland was such a delight to read. So enjoyable a read that I sped through the book and dove into Round Rock afterwards. I read Round Rock out of sequence without loss. Jamesland begs another reading. I found myself empathizing with problems philosophical, psychological, and spiritual that I might have dismissed had the book not been so masterfully written. Huneven brings dignity to her characters by embracing their difficulties with her impeccable writting style. Whip smart. Spiritual? Clear and intellectual. I have given these books as impromtu presents to friends and family.

Rating:
Summary: Re-Reading
Review: Jamesland was such a delight to read. So enjoyable a read that I sped through the book and dove into Round Rock afterwards. I read Round Rock out of sequence without loss. Jamesland begs another reading. I found myself empathizing with problems philosophical, psychological, and spiritual that I might have dismissed had the book not been so masterfully written. Huneven brings dignity to her characters by embracing their difficulties with her impeccable writting style. Whip smart. Spiritual? Clear and intellectual. I have given these books as impromtu presents to friends and family.

Rating:
Summary: five stars!
Review: Michelle Huneven has given us a wonderful and brilliant gift. If you want to be deeply delighted and completely moved, read Jamesland immediately.

Rating:
Summary: At Home in Jamesland
Review: Michelle Huneven, relying on an exquisite use of language and a sharp sense of humor, has created a wonderfully bizarre love story that blooms from the City of Angels. Dysfunctional much of the time, but secure in their desire to improve themselves and find love in the right places (even if they hang around the wrong places a bit too long), Pete and Alice have every reason to disturb and rankle the other. But within the healing orbits of an unusually honest minister (Helen) and Alice's eccentric aunt, Kate, we can rejoice in their respective baby steps toward something resembling a "normal" life. Thrown into the mix is--almost literally--the ghost of William James and an assortment of Los Angeles inhabitants such as a jive-talking, white cross-dresser and a beautiful, aging movie star. Huneven, who simply is a brilliant writer, begins this novel with a haunting image that carries through until the final pages. This is a spectacularly successful work of fiction that deserves to be read.

Rating:
Summary: At Home in Jamesland
Review: Michelle Huneven, relying on an exquisite use of language and a sharp sense of humor, has created a wonderfully bizarre love story that blooms from the City of Angels. Dysfunctional much of the time, but secure in their desire to improve themselves and find love in the right places (even if they hang around the wrong places a bit too long), Pete and Alice have every reason to disturb and rankle the other. But within the healing orbits of an unusually honest minister (Helen) and Alice's eccentric aunt, Kate, we can rejoice in their respective baby steps toward something resembling a "normal" life. Thrown into the mix is--almost literally--the ghost of William James and an assortment of Los Angeles inhabitants such as a jive-talking, white cross-dresser and a beautiful, aging movie star. Huneven, who simply is a brilliant writer, begins this novel with a haunting image that carries through until the final pages. This is a spectacularly successful work of fiction that deserves to be read.

Rating:
Summary: Charm and wisdom.
Review: One of the reviews (PW) called the narrative ``slow going." Not so. Perhaps stately, but never boringly slow. Good wise stuff, plus plenty of charm on every page. Two characters, of a type not always easy to make appealing, really work well. One is Pete, the obsessively blunt, often bizarre, sadly awkward failed chef. The other is Kate, an elderly aunt to main character, who drifts into Jamesland, a state in which she's living in a couple of centuries. Very funny stuff on New Age-y-ness, mediums. Very wonderful concrete evocation of the real Los Angeles. Very wonderful evocation of great meals. And good advice: a handsome nice guy with an adorable dog is not necessarily the answer to one's prayers.

Rating:
Summary: Moving, funny, deep, beautifully observed
Review: Right from the luminous, haunting opening, this novel's heroine will stay with you for a long, long time. Alice is as unique and touching a character as any written by Jane Austen. I loved this book. And, by the way, the PW review above is stingy. Huneven's theological musings give this book depth and backbone. Just a wonderful, wonderful novel.

Rating:
Summary: Food for Thought
Review: The characters in Michelle Huneven's "Jamesland" are adrift, without anchors, without much to hold them from the damnation of insanity at best and never finding a partner at worst: "Embarrassment, white-to-blinding, sickened him (Pete)...she'd pull away for sure...and at the very least consign him to a remote stratum of acquaintinship reserved for the marginal and dicey. The handle with care crowd." Pete is one of a small circle of misfits along with Helen, a minister and Alice, a bartender-biologist who through no fault of their own, find themselves drawn together: more out of desperation than by any kind of attraction personal or otherwise.
They all live in Los Angeles, in the Los Feliz-Silverlake-Glendale area, and all are recovering from a Love gone wrong, but they're hopeful: "This was the first man since Nick she'd (Alice) kissed in over a year, and the enormity of this step was mitigated by not only a certain relief but also a certain vengefulness, a sense of evening the score..."
Huneven's style is sardonic and witty and her prose is fat and juicy; oozing with lives well observed. Don't visit Jamesland if you don't have the heart or the stomach to digest a world slightly askew: a world of weaklings and failures that nonetheless still seek a connection, a chance at happiness.