Psychological Fiction

This weekend I finished "The Girl With No Shadow," the sequel to Chocolat, both written by Joanne Harris. I was involved and committed as I got to the end. A good book by my standards contains the kind of story I don't want to let go, am not content putting down the book until I finish it, and desperately want to know how it ends, even if I'm pretty sure how things will go. A dramatic and histrionic personality disorder theme dominates the book and I wonder what goes on in peoples' heads who habitually manipulate people to get the attention they want, and what they want. The character in the book met my suspicion of people who are like this in real life, which is that they have led their entire lives concocting one manipulation after another, and possibly several at once. One line I like is how the manipulative female character in the book states that certain types of charms and cheap, seductive manipulation always work to win men over to them quickly, which the histrionic-personality-disorder type knows how to do very well, but that it typically doesn't work when the histrionic type tries to manipulate women. It's flattery, wearing dresses, and overtly manipulative comments like "Don't you know how to treat a woman?" "Aren't you going to say hello?" and "Does this skirt look too 1970s to you?" (These are examples I just made up. As might be obvious, I'm not very good at it.) Chocolate gets a lot of page cover, as does practicing witchcraft and the ability to find the joy in life. I like one of the Library of Congress classifications as noted at the beginning of the book: "psychological fiction." I must find more of it.

My last living grandparent, age 96, plus 49 weeks and two days, died last Thursday morning. My mom waited until evening to tell me so it wouldn't ruin my work day. It was a little more difficult to function at work the following day, but I was OK. I didn't have any meltdowns. My first thought about her death was that, even though I didn't get a chance to see her in the months or years before her death (she wasn't remembering much of anyone, anyway), I keep parts of her with me all the time: an appreciation for her sense of humor and patient, peaceful nature; her blue-checkered tablecloth and placemats, embroidered with men and women on Victorian bicycles, that she made; her gigantic Art Deco vanity with giant round mirror; a wooden lyre-backed chair that reminds me of the dining chairs she had in her house; her love of all things blue; her appreciation for her mother's handmade hooked wool rugs, which decorated her house, upstairs and downstairs, in almost every room; her blue cornflower Corelle dishes that I always used when I visited her; a few recipes like brown sugar ham and grasshopper pie; the way we used to go shopping at her local mall and sit and watch people, and giggle and find amusement in noting ones who weighed more than her; the way her green eyes sparkled when she took her time telling a funny story about the past; her appreciation for drop-leaf tables; the way everything smelled good there (fresh and clean, with traces of musky floral antique); and an appreciation for her style and good taste in clothes, food, colors, blankets, Colonial bedspreads and beautiful furniture.