by Tyler Perry, a.k.a Madea

(Riverhead Books, 254 pages, $23.95)

Therapy in drag

Mabel “Madea” (Southern speak for “mother dear”) Simmons is at it again. Not satisfied to strut her stuff in the movies Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea’s Family Reunion, the not-to-be-trifled-with grandmother is dispensing wit and wisdom once more, this time on the printed page, her first book. It might qualify as self-help, if, for example, what you seek help for is how to be arrested, or how to provoke bees in a hive into hostile action. And who would have thought that a bee sting could tickle?

Masquerading in mascara, Tyler Perry is able to speak the heresies through his alter ego, which might otherwise be filtered. Just a sampling of the topics on his/her mind bring a giggle: “The Miracle of Vaseline” (no, it’s not what you think), “Glaucoma Medicine” (“You have to roll the glaucoma medicine from the left to the right if it’s your left eye that has the glaucoma. If it’s the right eye with the glaucoma, you roll from the right to the left… my doctor stands on the corner of Twenty-Ninth and Third and passes out his prescriptions, and you have to buy a dime of it”). “Being a Good Host” and “Being a Successful Stripper and Other Business Opportunities” receive equal billing.

While some commentary glorifies racial stereotypes (“Black men like big women – the thicker, the better”), other observations and advice will ruffle a few feathers in the opposite direction. “What in Hell is ‘Acting White’ supposed to Mean” is a topic that rates a little less flippant sincerity. “When kids in the ’hood do well in school, speak proper English, and get a good job, some people in the neighborhood say that these kids are “acting white” and turn their backs on them. I’ve got something to say to all those people, three little words: ‘Go… to… hell!’ If speaking the King’s English, getting a good job, and being able to afford what you want and have the American dream is acting white, then be white. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not acting white. It’s acting like you’ve got some sense!”

Being articulate has made Perry a success. He is only half the age of Madea (she claims to be 68, but perhaps fidges on that), and as recently as six years ago was homeless. Reading Madea’s commentary, you get the sense that Perry’s true desire is to mentor a young black population confronted with the pains of poverty, racism and the child abuse that he endured himself. His irreverence serves a purpose, and that is to disarm, so that some very poignant – and quite loving – advice is bestowed upon them. His message of self-acceptance is disguised by a sardonic vale of lace and wit. His 10th commandment? “Live every day like there is a tomorrow to make it up. Live like every day on this earth, you have a tomorrow to apologize.”

by Sarah Waters

(Riverhead Books, 450 pages, $25.95)

Romance has a shelf-life

London has become Hitler’s dartboard, and the normal causes of love’s demise – jealousy, infidelity, unfulfilled expectations or just plain burn-out – are all trumped by the knowledge that at any moment the ordinance from the bloated belly of a bomber could be spiraling downward upon the object of your desires, or even yourself.

There is no 25-words-or-less synopsis for Sarah Waters’ plotless tale The Night Watch. The story unknots the coarse hemp and manila that binds together the lives and loves of several young adults who endure the blitzkrieg of London in World War II. Waters has chosen to work backward in time, when the relationships literally forged in fire have cooled. It is 1947, and the continuing lives of wartime friends and lovers are more or less spent. They have become passive, self-contained and guarded. Waters banks on us being curious as to how they got to be the way they are, but for those who cannot immediately identify with any particular citizen of her novel, the hints of great secrets in their past evoke only the mildest curiosity.

In order to be truly interested in the secrets, we have to be truly interested in her characters. Here is where the accomplished author has gambled, leaving each reader to decide for themselves if there is a payoff. Rather than pulling us in by the actions that exposed, defined and, more importantly, animated her players, Waters chooses instead to give us still-life portraits embellished only slightly by their interactions, after the major dramas in their lives have already expired, and along with it much of their passion.

Thank God there’s a war. Her somber characters are at last encaffeinated as Waters brings on the blitz. At once, her Londoners have the purpose that eventual victory and peace usurps. Her depiction of London under siege is as brilliant as the flames that incinerate the ashen sky, and is by design or by accident a metaphor for souls under siege.

Except that under siege her lesbian characters enjoy an acceptance, or at least a tolerance, that is rescinded once the war is over. Their heroics no longer count for anything:

“‘Don’t you know the war’s over?’ the man behind the counter in a baker’s shop asked Kay.

He said it because of her trousers and hair, trying to be funny; but she heard this sort of thing a thousand times, and it was hard to smile…. He handed over the bag, saying, ‘There you are, madam.’ But he must have given some sort of look behind her back because, as she went out, the other customers laughed.”

Mickey, her comrade and fellow ambulance driver during the war, is reduced from that much-revered status to become a much-unnoticed pumper at the petro-pub, barely able to get permission for a few extra minutes to catch up with Kay over lunch.

“‘Look at me, Mickey!’ [Kay] said. ‘Look at the creature I’ve become! Did we really do those things – you and I, when the war was on? Sometimes I can’t bring myself to get out of bed in the mornings. We carried stretchers, for God’s sake! I remember lifting’ – she spread her hands – ‘I remember lifting the torso of a child…. What the hell happened to me, Mickey?’”

Hell is, in fact, what happened to her and her fellow inhabitants of The Night Watch. The mosaic of relationships that Waters presses upon the printed page is made from the bloodstained glass combed from the rubble of blitzed London. We are tempted to touch it just to see if it is as sharp as it looks. While her female characters fare well in this kind of portraiture, her male characters, regardless of sexual orientation, are all defective, but in ways that alienate rather than inspire our compassion. They are without nobility. One abandons his lover rather than have to explain details of a “miscarriage” to the authorities. Another, from his upper prison bunk, spatters the issue of his loins during an interlude in the bombing upon his very tepid homosexual cell-mate. Other males are stodgy, dogmatic and repressed. The distilled impression that is left, intentionally or not, is that heterosexual males are not capable of investing the same sincerity and depth in a love relationship as their lesbian counterparts are because there is no depth or sincerity.

Dismay not. That debatable perception may be lost in the debris of London wreckage. There is a scene in which a crew must dig through the rubble after a bombing run, and, rather than discovering another body, salvage a life. Similarly, there is a bit of rubble on the surface of The Night Watch, but claw through that and what is unearthed is well worth getting your fingernails dirty.