I just finished Fin & Lady, by Cathleen Schine. I don’t know if I’m recommending it to you, or if I’m just telling you about it.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I enjoyed reading it, but I was very conscious of Reading a Book. One main character (named, improbably, Lady) is a Perfectly Cool Girl; it was hard for me to accept her as real. She’s just sooooooo pretty and witty and always says the right thing and everyone loves her.

Lady is the guardian of her half-brother Fin, who has recently lost both parents. While reading about how this arrangement worked out, I thought:

1. Either this author does not have children, OR

2. She does have children, and her children are fundamentally different from my children, OR

3. She does have children and her children are of the same species as mine, but she is nevertheless as susceptible as any Hollywood screenwriter to the Cute ‘n’ Convenient Child Character: a child who fits into a single woman’s life like a witty, fulfilling, adorable handbag

Fin is the kind of child who would be played by an older version of that kid with glasses in Jerry Maguire: he’d come into a room, listen intelligently and appreciatively to an adult’s witticisms and wisdom, feel tremendously grateful for all that adult has done for him, make an adorable or thoughtful or wise-beyond-his-years remark, and then leave the room for seriously DAYS without needing anything from the adult.

I didn’t feel this way while reading the book, exactly: I too enjoy the fantasy of the Surprise Left-to-Me-in-a-Will Child Who Works Out GREAT Because I Am So Extremely Awesome. But I did keep realizing I was reading that kind of fantasy. It didn’t feel to me that this is how things would actually go. So I guess that’s what I’m saying: it’s a good fantasy, the way an romance novel that ends with the deliriously happy wedding is a good fantasy. I thought it was a good STORY, and I ENJOYED reading it, but I didn’t believe it. It would make a good movie.

Right before that, I read The Valley of Amazement, by Amy Tan.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Any complaints I have about this book are my own damn fault: if I don’t know perfectly well by now that Amy Tan books make me want to leap off a cliff and hope to fall as fast as possible, then I don’t know how to end this sentence. But I DID read it, and I DID end up feeling like there was no point in the continuation of the human species.

And, simultaneously, I thought, “What? This makes no sense.” For example, a woman has her child TAKEN from her. And then she thinks, “Welp, guess I’d better find a job.” She has powerful friends, but she doesn’t use them to help her get the child or anything. What is going ON? It’s a hundred years ago and in another country, but was there seriously NOTHING she could do about it? And if not, we’re back to opening our arms eagerly for the rapidly-approaching rocks below, so really there’s no right answer here. Either life really is that terrible, in which case it’s the cliff and/or no more reading Amy Tan books; or else it isn’t, in which case no more reading Amy Tan books.