Summer reads - best book to share: Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff | Emma G Keller Jul 22nd 2013, 15:04
Some books are just too good to keep to yourself. David Rakoff's unique novel – written entirely in verse – is one of them
Welcome to Guardian US summer reads. Each Monday until Labor Day we'll give an award to celebrate a new book that suits your summer mood and plans. All featured books will be summer 2013 publications. Last week, we announced our pick for best beach read: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan.
The week after Labor Day we'll ask you to vote on your favorite of our summer selections. The book with the most votes will be given an additional Guardian US readers' choice award.
Read along with us throughout the summer and tell us what you think of our picks on Twitter.
The week after Labor Day we'll ask readers to vote on their favorite of our summer selections. The book with the most votes will be given an additional Guardian US readers' choice award.
Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff
Some books are meant to be shared. David Rakoff's novel is one of them. It's just much too good to keep to yourself.
This is the book you bring to your girlfriend's parents when you arrive nervously for your first weekend at their beach house. It's what you take to your boss's annual summer barbecue. You can stuff this into your backpack for your boyfriend to read aloud to you in your Oregon tent. Or put it next to the bed for your guests.
LDMDCP is a grand novel that spans 20th-century American generations and families in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen. Only it's written in verse. Which means it's a slim volume. It has a clever cover that spells out the title in an unusual way – and that's just the beginning. Those of you with more to prove will want to drop the words 'anapestic tetrameter' and call it a modern-day Canterbury Tales or even The Wasteland. Don't bother. To compare it to anything is to do it a disservice. LDMDCP is uniquely brilliant.
With not much writing time left, Rakoff – a well-known contributor to This American Life who died of cancer last year just after finishing the book – managed to create whole characters from a handful of words.
The tales of his strength and his temperabounded
And God help the soul who might think them
Unfounded.
If Frank said that one time, in Wichita, Kansas,
He'd killed a man who had addressed him as
Francis.
The stories moves across states and time, linked together by coincidences that Rakoff describes in little jewel boxes of scenes that propel the action forward. Here's one of a 1960s Mad-Men type office seduction:
How had it begun, before things all turnedrotten?
She can pinpoint the day, she has never
forgotten
How he came to her desk and leaned over her
chair
To look at some papers, and then smelled her
hair.
"Gardenias," he'd said, his voice sultry and lazy
And hot on her ear, Helen felt she'd gone crazy.
"A fragrance so heady it borders on sickly,"
He'd purred at her neck and then just as quickly
Was back to all business, demanding she call
Some client, as if he'd said nothing at all.
Each story is set in its own period, ending in the early years of this century. Knowing he was dying, Rakoff wrote unsparingly about Aids and Alzheimer's.
On Aids:
Victor, a handsome star of the ballet
Whose turnout, they said, could turn anyone gay
Coughed once, and then he expired like
Camille -
Not quite, but the true facts seemed just as
surreal-
And what could one say about poor lovely,
Marty?
Whose fever spiked high at his own dinner party
Between the clear soup and the rabbit terrine
By eleven that night, he was in quarantine.
Marco was the anchor of Bay Area News Day.
Fevered on Friday and dead the next Tuesday.
Gorgeous and baritone, gifted with words
And felled by an illness that struck only birds.
You'll have your own favorite moments. Mine is the wedding scene, where Nathan has been asked to give a toast to his former best friend and girl friend, Josh and Susan. Every couplet of this excruciating, heartbreaking, hysterically funny event is a gem.
That the couple had asked him for this
benediction
Seemed at odds with them parking him here by
the kitchen.
Without spoiling it for you, I'll just say that the event has one of the best endings ever.
So buy this book. Read it before passing it on. Then buy another copy to keep, but you'll probably give that one away too. It's the perfect gift.
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