"My Year of Meats" Ruth Ozeki

"I'd worked in this small niche of the media industry for eight or nine years, and during that time, it always struck me that the funniest, most interesting, most tragic, and most culturally profound interactions always happened either behind the camera or when the camera was turned off."  Ruth Ozeki writing about her experiences in the television industry

I read a book!  I know, you're saying, "But you read all the time."  Lately, I've  reading pages, not books.  I'll sneak few pages when I'm riding in the car or I'll try to grab some reading time before my eyes close at night.  But it has been a long time since I could read for more than a few minutes at a time.  I started "Meats" three nights ago, and spent several hours each night reading.  It was a luxury to be able to come home from work, eat and then just sit an read.  A luxury I will have to start scheduling into my life.

"Meats" was a book I was putting off for awhile.  A friend and colleague of mine recommended the book for its humor and wit, but I was worried that the message of the book would be too strong.  Ozeki says that she had not set out to write a novel about the meat industry, and her plan was just to write about Jane, a woman who directs documentaries about American life for Japanese television.  The connection to meat came from the realization that women are treated as chattel in much the same way that cattle are, and so the industrialization of the meat industry is a metaphor for the treatment of women.

The intelligence of the writing and the story of the meat industry remind me of the writing of Jane Smiley, with the same sharp wit and humor. If one hasn't keep up with the news on antibiotics, hormones and confinement lots, this book will be a good dose of reality.  The pace of the novel is more like a thriller than a book about relationships, and we are sympathetic to the lives of the characters, even the ones we might not like so much.

The book follows a year in the lives of two women, Jane and Akiko.  The twelve chapters,  January to December,  use quotations from  Sei Shōnagon's "The Pillow Book" for epigraphs.  Jane's story is in first person, Akiko's by an omniscient narrator, and faxes, e-mails and letters provide other voices.

Jane is happy to have a job, even though her creative freedom is hampered by the requirements of the corporate sponsor, BEEF-EX, and the traditional attitudes of the account executive, John Ueno (pronounced John Wayno), who want shows about the model Caucasian family from middle America with a traditional wife, a loving father and 2.3 children, who all like to eat beef.  Each episode of "My American Wife!" will focus on this mythical family life and a specific beef recipe, to entice the women of Japan to want to be more like their American counterparts and eat more beef.  However, Jane pushes the boundaries of her responsibilities, looking for families that lead interesting lives, regardless of color, creed, income, sexual preferences or dietary choices.

Akiko is Ueno's wife, and he requires her to watch "My American Wife!" each Saturday morning, make the recipe from the show and fill out a survey answering questions about Educational Value, Authenticity, Wholesomeness, Availability of Ingredients, and Deliciousness of Meat.  To occupy her time while he is at work, she reads "The Pillow Book" and starts writing her own diary.  She also writes articles for magazines for pregnant women, although she has never been pregnant.  Ueno is desperate to have a baby, and thinks meat is the answer to her problems.  But as Akiko watches "Wife" each week she begins to understand her relationship with Ueno better and realizes that meat is not the answer.

The investigation of the meat industry is the backdrop for helping these two women find meaning in their lives and relationships.  Their lives are complicated and there are no easy answers.  There is always a concern by me in a book like this that the men will be depicted as universal bad guys, but that is not the case.  Their characters are not as fully developed as those of the women as would be expected, but they come in all stripes, the good and the confused.

Overall, a very good read.  I think I have another Ozeki book on the shelf somewhere.  I'll have to go look for it.