Whim and Grimm

I recently read Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version, a collection of 50 fairy tales, which includes some well known tales as well as many lesser known tales.  These fairy tales were first published just over 200 years ago by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm.  I have not read the originals, so I am not sure how Pullman's re-tellings compare.  I did not find his notes at the end of each fairy tale to be very interesting, though I enjoyed the fairy tales.  Filled with poor millers, golden apples, wicked stepmothers, and dense forests, the stories are very archetypal and form the basis of other themes in literature.  There are some common structural elements and themes - things happen in threes, good conquers evil, and magic often happens.  While I enjoyed the swiftness and wit of the tales, the characters are often nameless and there is little emphasis on their interior life, nor emphasis on the description of the setting.  Plus, after reading fifty tales, the themes do start to get repetitive.  Nonetheless, they are inventive, entertaining, and an important contribution to the canon of literature. 

Bringing the Great Migration to Life

I enjoyed Anaya Mathis' debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, which follows the lives of Hattie Shepherd and all of her children.  The Great Migration took place from 1910 to 1930, and was characterized by millions of African Americans moving from the rural South to the urban Northeast in search of opportunity and to no longer be subject to segregation.  In this book, Hattie moves at the age of fifteen from Georgia to Philadelphia.  She has her first children (twins) at the age of seventeen and lives a life of hardship and making ends meet by the skin of her teeth and the strength of her character.  I enjoyed the narrative structure, wherein the chapters are essentially interwoven vignettes of Hattie's different children and the very different paths they end up taking in their lives.  This is a story of grit, courage, the strength of familial bonds, and the sacrifice and challenge of motherhood.  This would be an interesting book to read coupled with Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, which I hope to read soon.  

Doig Dull This Time Around

Having enjoyed several of Doig's later novels, I was excited to pick up English Creek, the first of Doig's Montana trilogy.  Set in Montana in the 1930s, the story is told through the perspective of Jick McCaskill, a boy on the cusp of being fifteen years old and coming into his own.  Unfortunately, I felt the story was filled with way too much detail and moved at a snails pace.  There was no climax and no real drama or intriguing moments.  While Doig's writing is jaunty and pleasant, this was my least favorite of his books. 

A Tale of Courage

Ingrid Betancourt's memoir of her six years of captivity in the Colombian Jungle, entitled Even Silence Has an End, is a detailed account of her daily life under horrific circumstances.  At the time that she was captured, she was running for president of Colombia.  This is a story about hope, the will to live, and surviving against all odds.

The Round House

Louise Erdrich has written fourteen novels as well as short stories, a memoir, and children's books.  Her most recent novel, The Round House, won the 2012 National Book Award.  Curious to see what the buzz was about and not having read any Erdrich since college, I was immediately drawn in to the story as soon as I picked it up.  The Round House takes place in 1988 on a reservation in North Dakota, and is told from the perspective of thirteen-year-old Joe.  Joe's mother Geraldine is the victim of a horrific crime.  Joe and his father attempt to piece what happened together and to bring the attacker to justice, which is not an easy task when it is not clear exactly where the crime took place (private land, government land, Native land, etc.).  Ultimately, Joe sets off with his friends and starts to learn of the crime, eventually taking justice into his own hands.  The story was very powerful, and had a potent mix of humor and tragedy.  I found Erdrich's channeling as a thirteen-year-old boy to be convincing, in the range of emotions he feels for his parents, his friends, and the very grown-up situation he unexpectedly finds himself in. 

Richard Ford 101

Richard Ford's short story collection Rock Springs is a great introduction to his longer works.  Ford's stories mostly take place in working class small towns, often in Montana, and featuring just a handful of characters.  He usually focuses on men on the cusp of being down and out, on the edge of becoming drifters, about to make decisions that will alter the course of their lives.  In his title story, Ford writes from the perspective of a man trying to figure out how he ended up at a Ramada Inn with a stolen car hidden in the woods and a woman leaving him in the morning.  He writes of more successful lives led, "Through luck or design they had all faced fewer troubles, and by their own characters, they forgot them faster.  And that's what I wanted for me.  Fewer troubles, fewer memories of trouble."  Ford explores the relationships between small nuclear families (often a man, a woman, and their son).  Some of the images in the stories seemed very similar to scenes in Wildlife and Canada, perhaps as early precursors.  For example, in "Optimists," the protagonist writes of "hearing my father's steel-toed boots strike the floor," a similar image to a scene in Canada.  While not uplifting, Ford has a very distinctive writing style that I like very much, though I imagine that not everyone may agree, perhaps finding the dialogue too unrealistic or the moments of intimacy between the characters too forced.  I think this is a great introduction to reading Richard Ford, knowing that his novels (at least the two I have read) are very similar in theme and style.  It is interesting to me to contrast scenes from this book, some of which take place in Montana in the 1960s, to scenes in Doig's The Bartender's Tale, in that the setting is the same but the way it is written about is very different. 

O Pioneers!

O Pioneers! was the first book that Willa Cather wrote as part of her "prairie trilogy."  Written one hundred years ago, with the title of the book based on a Walt Whitman poem, O Pioneers! is a great book that features the Nebraska landscape which is also the setting for The Song of the Lark and My Antonia.  The novel's protagonist is Alexandra Bergson, a Swedish immigrant who came to the United States with her family as a child.  Using her business know-how and instinct, Alexandra is able to help her family's farm grow and prosper.  Other wonderfully drawn characters include Alexandra's brother Emil, the first in his family to go to college (his farmer brothers Lou and Oscar think his education ruined him), the captivating and radiant neighbor Marie, and Ivar, the barefoot elder who lives in a cave and tends to Alexandra's horses in the later years of his life. 

The book explores family relationships, forbidden love, and the experience of working the land.  It is an easy read and a really good story, but my favorite of Cather's prairie trilogy is My Antonia.  Nonetheless, these are some of my favorite lines from O Pioneers!:

"...the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one..."
"I'm cowardly about things that remind me of myself."
"Out of her father's children, there was one who was fit to cope with the world, who had not been tied to the plow, who had a personality apart from the soil.  And that, she reflected, was what she had worked for." 
"It was like a sigh which they had breathed together; almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of awakening something in the other."
"Good night, sister.  I think you did pretty well by us."

The Night Birds

The Night Birds, by Thomas Maltman, is a well researched novel that takes place in the 1860s and 1870s and focuses on the Dakota Sioux uprisings in Minnesota.  Asa is a young boy who comes to know his aunt Hazel, who tells him of his family history, complete with love stories, Ozark healing traditions and folklore, battle scenes, and descriptions of the natural landscape.  The story focuses on the clashes and relationships between the Native Americans and European settlers who populated the area.   While many of the scenes are vivid, I felt that the writing was somewhat labored and did not have a fast enough pace for me.  While it was interesting to learn about the history of a part of the country that I know little about, the book did not hold my interest all the way through. 

My (Awesome) Antonia

Usually I keep a pencil nearby to mark down on my bookmark passages and pages that I want to return to while reading a book.  By the time I reached p. 20 of My Antonia, the classic work of fiction depicting farm life in Nebraska, I had written down really every page number.  I was absolutely blown away by the quality of writing of this work.  The description of the landscape and characters were very vivid.  Cather used very simple language in a poetic manner.   Jim Burden grows up as the neighbor of Antonia Shimerda, a girl with eyes brimming with life and an indomitable spirit.  The novel follows the lives of Jim, Antonia, and their families and friends through their years of childhood into adulthood.  Here are a few of my favorite lines:

"He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history."
"My grandfather said little.  When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative.  I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity , and was a little in awe of him."
"I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.  I was entirely happy.  Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.  At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

I feel that My Antonia surpassed Cather's The Song of the Lark in overall greatness, and I definitely now want to read all of Cather's books.  An absolute pleasure, and it amazes me that a book written nearly 100 years ago can still feel like it comes right to life.  Perhaps an early contender for one of the best books read in 2013!

Doig Does it Again!

I just had the pleasure of reading Ivan Doig's latest novel, The Bartender's Tale, set in Montana in 1960.  Told from the perspective of Rusty Harry, a twelve year old boy, the story focuses on Rusty's relationship with his father Tom, the legendary bartender of the town of Gros Ventre.  While focusing in on small town happenings, Doig also infuses the book with interesting history by introducing a character named Delano who works for the Missing Voices project for the Library of Congress, who is tasked with seeking out "lingua americana" which he finds no shortage of once he befriends Tom and learns about his past.  And while Delano learns about Tom's past, so does his son.  In addition, some rather unexpected folks roll into town that affect the father/son duo. 

Doig's books are so pleasant to read - great dialogue, an interesting array of characters, and a glimpse into small town life.  While the plot is not dense with intrigue and riveting scenes, Doig spins a good old-fashioned tale that is winsome and smart.  Doig's book are just plain fun to read, and great stories to boot.  I will definitely be reading more of his novels soon!

The Sweetest of Thursdays

Not surprisingly, I greatly enjoyed Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday!  I would not say it was one of my favorites of his novels, but it is always a treat to see how Steinbeck describes a place, crafts dialogue, and introduces a motley cast of characters.  Considered a sequel to Cannery Row, the story follows Doc, who works in his homegrown lab named Western Biological to learn about various creatures he finds in tide pools, and Suzy, the new gal in town, as well as an extensive supporting cast including Hazel, Whitey No. 2, Mack, the Seer, and Joseph and Mary (one person!) all who populate Cannery Row in Monterey, CA.  What I love about Steinbeck is his unique way of telling a story - he invents phrases like "tom wallager" and has chapter names such as "There's a Hole in Reality through which We Can Look if We Wish" and "Oh, Woe, Woe, Woe!"  This is a story about our basic humanity that focuses on classic themes such as love, loyalty, friendship.  While not much happens on a grand scale, Cannery Row shows off Steinbeck's way of infusing lyricism into the most regular of human activities - throwing a party, playing matchmaker, helping out a friend, and even and most importantly, making brownies.

Boyd's Brazzaville Beach

I was such a fan of William Boyd's novel Waiting for Sunrise that I decided to read one of his earlier novels, Brazzaville Beach, as my first book to read in 2013.   Boyd did not disappoint!  Brazzaville Beach's protagonist is the gutsy Hope Clearwater who lives and works in Africa, studying the behavior of chimpanzees.  After making a game-changing and unsettling discovery about her subjects, this sets into motion various forms of intrigue.  Complete with love stories, civil strife, kidnappings, and sabotages, the story moved at a fast pace and was full of the bright and dark sides of humanity. 

This was a very engrossing, smart, easy to read novel, and shows off just how versatile Boyd is as a writer, having picked a totally different subject matter, era, and backdrop than Waiting for Sunrise.  Highly recommended, and might be interesting to pair with Ann Patchett's State of Wonder as another far flung tale featuring a female protagonist navigating her career and relationships. 

How Did it Take Me So Long to Discover William Boyd?

Waiting for Sunrise was a flat-out outstanding, page-turning, brilliant novel. I was riveted from the first page onward.  Set against the backdrop of WWI in Vienna and London, the book follows the life of Lysander Rief, a young man who is an actor and becomes ensnared in a passionate love affair.  The book then takes a sharp turn as the protagonist enters the war and becomes involved in a special mission.  This book was intriguing on many levels and while I thought the parts about the war dragged on a bit, it held my interest and was quite riveting.  I will definitely be reading more by William Boyd soon!  It delights me to have stumbled upon a new author. 

You Can't Beat a Classic

Written in 1877, Black Beauty is a tale of a horse's life told through its perspective.  The author, Anna Sewell, grew up with horses and wrote the novel as a treaty to encourage people to treat horses humanely.  The story reads as a memoir of Black Beauty's life and follows him from his birthplace and then from owner to owner, some of whom are kind and compassionate while others are inhumane.  While the story does not have a climax, it nonetheless held my interest throughout.  The book does an excellent job at conveying the importance of treating animals with kindness and compassion, and was a very easy to read and smartly written.  This is a true classic!

A Romp with Capote

While I greatly prefer In Cold Blood and Music for Chameleons to this unfinished novel, I will still read anything by Truman Capote because it is all a demonstration of sheer brilliance.  Answered Prayers is less plot driven than it is an over the top romp through the high society that Capote moved through once he was famous (the work seems largely autobiographical).  It wasn't particularly cohesive as a narrative nor are any of the characters particularly memorable, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  Here is an example of how Capote packs a punch in just a few sentences:

To all these people, the living among them, I must by now be the merest memory.  If that.  Of course, Boaty would have remembered me, but not with pleasure (I can well imagine what he might say: "P.B. Jones?  That tramp.  No doubt he's peddling his ass to elderly Arab buggers in the souks of Marrakech"); but Boaty is gone, beaten to death in his mahogany house by a heroin-crazed Puerto Rican hustler who left him with both eyeballs dangling down his cheeks.

Way out in Wenatchee

I was delighted to learn about Amanda Coplin's debut novel The Orchardist right around the time I had planned to visit a local orchard to do some apple picking.  Also, having lived for many years in Seattle and been to Wenatchee, I was interested to read a book about the beautiful part of Washington state east of the mountains.   In many ways, The Orchardist was a great book for the fall season.  It was a book that took its time, with many lush and vivid descriptions of the natural landscape and life on the orchard.  The story centers around Talmadge, a man who lives in solitude on his orchard until he unexpectedly becomes intertwined with two young women, Della and Jane, who escape difficult circumstances.  This was a well written, engaging first novel from Coplin, but it tended to drag on and ultimately I felt the book focused more on the depressing elements of the character's lives without enough focus on the redemptive spirits of the protagonists.  The descriptions of hardships and emotional challenges seemed to be more finely written and believable than the moments of happiness and connectedness. 

Two Debuts

The possibility of discovering a fresh voice in fiction is why it is exciting for me to read debut novels.  For example, I instantly became a fan of Amy Greene after reading her first novel Bloodroot.  Now, I can't wait for her next book.  I recently took on two other debut novels penned by women.  

The Age of Miracles, written by Karen Thompson Walker, tells the story of a young female protagonist, set against a backdrop of a world being slowly but forever altered.  Set on the California coast, the story explores an interesting concept the author calls "the slowing" wherein the days grow longer and longer, throwing off the number of daylight and evening hours contained in each day.  This affects crops, animals, tides, and of course, humans.  The humans are affected both physically as well as in their relationships with others.  While this was a smartly written, easy to read novel, it missed the mark for me.  I think the novel tried to do too many things - part coming of age tale, part sci-fi apocalypse tale, and part straightforward novel, by trying to do so many things I think this diluted the story overall.

Shelter, by Frances Greenslade, was a really wonderful book.  Set in rural British Columbia, Greenslade tells the story of two sisters raised off the grid by a loving mother and father.  After their father is killed in a logging accident, the girls are then abandoned by their mother.  Left to fend for themselves, the girls forge different paths and discover the strength to navigate a different world than the one in which they were raised.  I found the story to be very believable.  Very well written and an easy read!

Discovering Richard Ford

I picked up Richard Ford's latest novel, Canada, curious by the sweeping title.  After reading the first two pages, I was hooked.  Canada is a tale of a middle class family in Montana.  The narrator, Dell Parsons, tells the story of his parents (his mom a Jewish erudite quiet woman, his dad a loquacious Southerner) who decide to rob a bank.  After the robbery, Dell and his twin sister go in different directions, with Dell being driven across the Canadian border by a neighbor.  I was riveted by the plot and the taut language, and was captivated until the last page.  I loved Canada so much that I checked out another Ford novel published in 1990 called Wildlife, which I also really enjoyed.  Similar to Canada, Wildlife explores a middle class small nuclear family in Montana.  The insights of the teenage son as well as the dialogue between the family members were written in very simple but beautiful language.  Both of these books are highly recommended!

Re-reading In Cold Blood

Truman Capote is one of my top ten favorite writers of all time.  I remember reading In Cold Blood for the first time several years ago.  It was haunting, beautifully written, impossible to put down.  A "non-fiction novel," In Cold Blood tells the true story of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Texas.  Capote spent six years researching the book, which included extensive interviews with the townspeople and the murderers.  The result was a great masterpiece, riveting in its intimate view of a close-knit small town community as well as of the histories of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock.  While a very depressing story, I think this is a must-read in the canon of American literature. 

Revisiting Dave Eggers

I remember when I first discovered Dave Eggers and how much I loved A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What.  Thus, it was with great excitement that I picked up Eggers' newest novel.  While A Hologram for the King is an easy and unique read, I found several elements to be lackluster, including the dialogue, which is usually one of Eggers' strengths.  I commend Eggers for taking on so many disparate topics and settings in his novels, but I did not enjoy this book nearly as much as his earlier works.