This Boy's Life

In This Boy's Life, Tobias Wolff tells the story of his upbringing in the 1950's, starting with a car trip taken by him and his mother to escape an abusive man, which lands them in Utah, and soon after Seattle.  Wolff's mother eventually meets another man, Dwight, who doesn't like or accept Tobias (who renames himself Jack) from the get go.  Wolff writes of his relationship with his mother, his friends, his father, and his brother.  He straddles the line between being a kid who gets good grades and is a Boy Scout, and one who falls in with the wrong crowd and might end up with few opportunities.  This is a well written memoir that can be read in just a few days.  The language is straightforward and simple, but pierces right to the heart of things. 

How Marjorie Celona's Debut Novel Made Me Cr(Y)

Marjorie Celona's debut novel, Y, centers around the life of Shannon, a foster child who is abandoned as a newborn by her mother on the steps of the YMCA.  We follow Shannon's life from home to home, until she comes to life with single-mother Miranda and her daughter Lydia-Rose, who try their hardest to create a new sense of family for Shannon, who never feels like she truly belongs.  Interspersed with scenes of her foster family are scenes of Shannon's birth mother Yula and father Harrison, in the days when they first meet as well as the days leading up to Shannon's birth.  The novel moves quickly, with punch and unflinching detail, but even two-thirds of the way in, while I liked the writing I had not yet really been moved by any of the characters.  Yet,  I found myself with tears in my eyes in the final parts of the novel, when Shannon comes face to face with her past.   It is very rare that a book brings me to tears, and for that quality alone, I recommend Y. 

Kent Haruf is Back, with Benediction

I remember vastly enjoying Kent Haruf's novels Plainsong and Eventide, and was thrilled to learn that Haruf recently published a new work of fiction called Benediction.  The backdrop, as is the case in several of Haruf's other novels, is a small town called Holt located in the high plains of Colorado.  This story centers around the life and approaching death of Dad Lewis who has only a short time left to live as he is dying of terminal cancer.  It is interesting how I just happened to read this book after reading A Death in the Family, which also focuses on the death of a patriarch in a small town, though nearly a century earlier.  With simple, graceful language, Haruf introduces us to a diverse cast of characters that surround the protagonist and intersect with his life in different ways, including a preacher that is new to town and his wife and son, an elderly neighbor and her daughter, and Dad's immediate family, his wife Mary, daughter Lorraine, and estranged son Frank.  This work highlights some moving small moments and gestures, as well as gives one a sense of the importance of community and neighbors in small town life.  I did not enjoy Benediction as much as Haruf's earlier works, but it is well worth reading nonetheless. 

Agile Writing from Agee

James Agee's classic novel, A Death in the Family, was published in 1957 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958.  The story revolves around the death of the patriarch of a family living in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1900s.  The book closely follows each family member and their internal thought process and interactions with each other shortly before and after learning Jay's death, the one major event of the novel.  Other than this, the book focuses on smaller details and intimate moments, between brothers and sisters, mothers and their children, etc.  There are many beautiful passages, including a very moving scene between Jay and his wife Mary, which neither could have known would be the last time they would see each other.  In this scene, they are up in the middle of the night, and Jay freshens the covers so that Mary will have a warm bed to return to after seeing Jay off. 

Here are a few of my other favorite passages:

"I need never fear: nor ever shall I lack for loving-kindness."
"Rufus felt his father's hand settle, without groping or clumsiness, on the top of his bear head; it took his forehead and smoothed it, and pushed the hair backward from his forehead, and held the back of his head while Rufus pressed his head backward against the firm hand..."
"I know it's just unmitigated tommyrot to try to say a word about it." 
"He put his hand around her arm and felt how little it was.  He could feel a vein beating against the bone, just below her armpit."

Southern Fried Stories

Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find, is filled with great story titles, memorable one-liners, macabre moments, and scenarios bordering on the absurd and outrageous.  Her work is very original, and her talent is evident.  O'Connor lived to be only 39 years old, and in that time she published a total of 32 short stories.  The stories in this collection are set in the rural South, and are considered to part of the Southern Gothic style.  My favorites were, "A Late Encounter with the Enemy," which focuses on a grandfather attending his granddaughter's graduation, "Good Country People,"which tells of the brief affair between a Bible salesman and a wooden-legged well educated woman, and of course the infamous title story in which a family outing quickly becomes a murderous tale, where even grandma isn't spared.  In "Good Country People," I really liked these two lines:

"Well, young man, I don't want to buy a Bible and I smell my dinner burning." 
"True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind."  

All in all, this is a rather zany collection of unique stories.

Man vs. Marlin

The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952,  is one of Ernest Hemingway's classic works of short fiction, and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953.   The story is about a fisherman named Santiago who has both a physical battle with a marlin he tries to catch off the coast of Havana, Cuba, as well as a psychological battle within himself.  Hemingway is quite economical in his words, yet he vividly captures the scene so much so that you feel you are alongside Santiago in his boat as he captures the fish, then patiently waits for it to come to the surface, and then battles against sharks who want to eat the newly captured and killed fish strapped to the side of his boat.  There are some intriguing elements to this book, one being Santiago's relationship with a boy named Manolin.  They have a very tender and loving relationship, revealed to us through just a few exchanges between the two of them.  Santiago also has emotions toward the fish he aims to kill and sell.  He states, "I love you and respect you very much.  But I will kill you dead before this day ends."  He further describes fish as as "noble" and "more able" than man, and acknowledges the fish's "greatness and his glory."  Interestingly, he even at one points admits that the killing of such a great fish is "unjust."  Hemingway writes, "Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him.  How many people will he feed, he thought.  But are they not worthy to eat him?  No, of course not.  There is no one worth of eating him from the manner of his behaviour and his great dignity."  As the fisherman becomes more tired, hungry, in pain, and even delirious, he continues to ponder the concept of killing the fish.  Ultimately, his great effort is not rewarded and we are left to ponder the message of this short but powerful "man vs. nature" story.  This is a book best read in one sitting!

Turnips and Tragedy

Tobacco Road, by Erskine Caldwell, was published in 1932 and focuses on the lives of a white sharecropper family, the Lesters, who live in poverty in rural Georgia.  The novel takes place over the course of just a few days, starting with Jeeter Lester's son-in-law passing by the Lester house along Tobacco Road with a bag of turnips.  Fueled by desperation and hunger, Jeeter tries to take Lov's turnips, and subsequently repents for this as he believes it to be a sinful act.  Jeeter and Ada Lester had seventeen children, most of whom left home to seek a more prosperous life as a result of industrialization, and more specifically, cotton mills.  Jeeter Lester steadfastly refuses to leave his land and go work in the cotton mills, given that the land had been in his family for two generations.  As Lov states, "The ground sort of looks out for the people who keeps their feet on it.  When people stand on planks in buildings all the time, and walk around on hard streets, the ground sort of loses interest in the human."  Despite his desire and need to farm his land, Jeeter has few options as storekeepers won't extend credit to him for seed and fertilizer, and he was also the victim of predatory lending.  Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, Caldwell's famous novel unflinchingly portrays the degradation, oppression, and racism prevalent in those times.  It is an unsettling work, brought to life by the day to day struggle of the Lester family. 

Three with Ford

I'll read anything that Richard Ford writes, because I was a huge fan of Canada, Wildlife, and Rock Springs.  Women with Men is a collection of three long stories (shorter than novellas), that highlight intimate moments, mixed signals, unspoken thoughts, and crossroads moments between men and women. Two of the stories are set against the backdrop of Paris but my favorite story was "Jealous," which takes place in Montana and focuses on Ford's typical nuclear family of an estranged mom and dad and their teenage son.  Larry sets off with his aunt to visit his mother, but on the way, they stop in a small town where things quickly take an unexpected turn.  I loved the few exchanges of dialogue between the father and son, as I did in Ford's other books.  This wasn't my favorite Ford work, but very readable nonetheless. 

Riveting River Tale: Deliverance

Deliverance, published in 1970 by James Dickey, is one of those novels that you really could pick up and not put down, to be read in one sitting in a couple of hours.  Set in the north Georgia wilderness (in "the country of nine-fingered people," as Dickey writes) on the Cahulawassee River, four middle-aged men decide to spend the weekend on a canoe trip down river.  What was supposed to be an invigorating weekend shaking the men out of their office life ennui quickly turns into a harrowing few days of life and death.  Dickey's writing moves swiftly and builds tension slowly but surely.  While some of it seems a bit over the top, there is a kind of lawlessness to the tale that makes it riveting.  I enjoyed the book, but other than the protagonist, we learn little of the interior life of the other characters, which would have been very interesting had the story been told from multiple perspectives. 

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.