Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House is a story of romantic love that transcends the boundaries of age and physicality. Misanthropic and lonely Peggy Cort is the local librarian in a small town on Cape Cod. She comes to befriend a boy named James who visits the library and who has one literally fatal flaw - he can't stop growing due to a problem with his pituitary gland, and literally becomes the gentle giant of the town, as well as a tourist attraction and spectacle. Forced to live on his own in a large house made just for him, Peggy tends to his every need and is attuned to his soul. The love story is quite compelling, though the ancillary characters didn't seem to have much to add to the story. A good, though sad, summer read.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
A Female Cormac McCarthy?!
Courtney Collins' debut novel, The Untold, has the grit, realism, brutality, and beauty similarly captured in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy novels. While the writing and setting is stylistically similar, Collins has a distinctive voice. In this novel, she tells the story of real-life Jessie Hickman, a horse thief living in the Australian outback in the 1920s, on the run from her law. It's a beautiful read that moves at a quick pace. However, given the austerity of the novel, I'm not sure it will stick with me for a long time. Just as I was getting to know the characters more intimately, the book ended, but perhaps this was intentionally. Jessie Hickman was elusive to those around her, and while she stays in our grasp while we are reading, she slips away in the end. Recommended!
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
An Oldie, A Goodie
Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, is classic Americana at its best. I enjoyed all three stories in this collection. There is a serenity and simplicity to the stories, but also a subtle complexity to the characters and their internal worlds. Plus, the back drop of the stories is described in beautiful but not overly flowery language. And, Maclean is funny too. All in all, its worth taking a few sunny afternoons and settling into these novels, in which the waters flow smoothly on the surface but rumble with depth just under the surface.
More on Marfa
Tony Cano's The Other Side of the Tracks is a book I learned of when I visited Marfa, TX for the first time last year. Cano's book follows the coming of age of a Mexican teenage boy in the 1950s in Marfa, when he and his friends, who call themselves The Chinglers, begin to challenge the unspoken racial divide between Mexicans and whites living in small-town Marfa. Cano writes of dynamics on school sports teams, local establishments, and young love between Mexicans and "Anglos." While the writing isn't beautiful, the pace is good and Cano's voice is authentic and draws the reader in to day to day life at that time, and to the protagonist's thoughts about being treated as lesser by many whites in the town. I'm fascinated with all things Marfa, so this book provided a new lens through which to see this unique place.
The Sound of Things Falling
Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez hits it out of the ballpark with his novel The Sound of Things Falling. From the first page to the last, this book had me absolutely riveted. Its a quiet, almost sleeper sort of book, and the translation is gorgeous. The narrator is a young law professor named Antonio Yammara, who meets Ricardo Leverde at the local pool hall. As he slowly learns about Leverde's life, and in particular, the love of his life Elaine Fritts who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, he becomes more intrigued and intertwined with Leverde's story, eventually leading him to meet Leverde's daughter who lives a reclusive life as a beekeeper outside of Bogota. A really beautiful, captivating book, ultimately about how we can become intertwined in each other's life stories, which can both wound us and heal us deeply. Read this one!
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