On Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi – Santa Fe, NM
- At November 29, 2010
- By Jessica
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This is a truly magnificent book, one that stays with you and disturbs your sense of stability as I imagine an earthquake would as it trembles and shifts the ground beneath your feet. It was written in 1994, and takes place in a small fictitious town outside Dusseldorf between WWI and WWII. However, it struck me as a warning that the events of today – a global financial crisis, hatred between ethnic and religious groups, North Korean and Iranian ceaseless quests for nuclear weapons, and a general unease about the future – could lead us into the same type of chaos as Adolf Hitler brought to Germany during the second World War.
As many other reviewers have mentioned, the first chapters drag. The events in the life of the protagonist, a dwarf named Trudi, prior to the war seem somehow gratuitous – a mother who suffers from mental illness and dies before Trudi’s fourth birthday and a semi-rape in a barn by the local boys. In another book, these events may have formed the character but in this one they become insignificant when compared to how the unfolding of the Nazi regime and subsequent atrocities and hardships of the war brought to light the daily inner battles that are synonymous with the human condition: love vs. hate, good vs. evil, guilt vs. instinct, religious hypocrisy vs. healing…you will find it all in this extraordinary novel.
Once the true historical events that lead up to the war enter the story, this book is impossible to put down. I stayed up nearly all night reading it and slept fitfully after. I woke up with the story and the characters gripping my heart and mind. Hegi’s characters are masterfully drawn. Her characters are well-rounded with both admirable and despicable traits. Even the protagonist is, at times, hard to like.
This microcosm of humanity, the town of Burgdorf, is every community in the world, interwoven with mutually dependent people, woven together as a tightly knit sweater, one that unravels when caught on a nail of circumstances impossible to anticipate. This book is a heartbreaking testimony to both a terrible time in history and the human condition.
On An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
- At November 16, 2010
- By Jessica
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This novel, described as a historical mystery, was first published in 1998. It was recommended to me by a friend, perhaps because she knows I write mysteries and love historical fiction. Although many people shy away from long books – this one is 725 pages – I usually enjoy them. I’m a fast reader and love to lose myself in a good book.
An Instance of the Fingerpost is the tale of a mysterious servant girl named Sarah Blundy who is accused of murdering a priest for whom she works. The author places the story in mid-17th century England, using real historical figures as his characters, such as the philosopher John Locke and the early chemist Robert Boyle. The book is in four parts, each told from the perspective of one of the main characters and does a good job of demonstrating how events can be interpreting completely differently when observed through different sets of eyes.
While the story held my interest, primarily because of the highly intellectual and erudite voice of the author, I found the outcome predictable and the plot convoluted. This is a book that is too long. But its length is problematic because the frequent digressions mid-scene remove us from the action and, more importantly, the story. The author uses the characters to demonstrate how much research he has done and, while impressive, this technique ruins the narrative flow.
The subplot of the beginning of medical experimentation and practice was fascinating and, I believe, accurate. The historical interconnections between the characters could have been better explained. The author throws in so many subplots, such as the character Sarah Blundy becoming a prophetess in the end, that detract from and confuse the main sub-plot, namely the secret adherence to Catholicism (even the king, George II, is a secret Papist) in a fundamentalist Protestant England.
I was most interested and involved in the few parts that dealt with the social structure, lifestyles, relationships and actions in the book. Least interested in the author’s showing off of his education and confused by the flashbacks to unexplained historical events that supposedly were the catalysts for what happened in the story. Of particular note, the only sympathetic and likable character was the only purely fictitious one – Sarah Blundy. The true historical figures were depicted as pompous and pretentious.
On Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer
- At November 15, 2010
- By Jessica
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Sometimes it’s really important to read a book that someone you barely know highly recommends. I really don’t think I ever would have found Man in the Woods had it not been thrown out there as the best book she read this year by a woman I have never met but with whom I share a ListServ. The older we get the smaller our world becomes through perfected self-selection: of the friends we choose, the foods we eat, the clothes we wear. We watch the same TV channel for news, go to the same nail salon, work out in the same gym. While I never really thought about it before, the same can be said of what we read. Diane, the proprietress of Diane’s Books, knows exactly which books I will like so everyone in my family goes to her when my birthday rolls around. This proves I must like the same type of book, although the books I read cross all conventional lines of genre, author, etc.
While reading Man in the Woods, I was grappling with whether or not this is a spiritual book. Paul, a good man, accidentally kills Will, a bad human being, during a chance encounter in a park. The altercation begins over a dog that Will has both stolen and abuses, so Paul’s killing is immediately part of a moral question: Good Man + Defenseless Abused Animal >= Bad Person?
Paul lives with Kate. She is making millions off her book Prays Well with Others. Kate adores Paul, although we see glimpses of her resentment of him since she makes all the money. Paul doesn’t seem to have a problem with Kate paying the bills, but he doesn’t like it one bit that she always corrects him. She’s got the brains and he the brawn.
Paul and Kate are basically good people who are covering up Paul’s murder in the woods. Kate has a daughter, Ruby, with psychological problems, Paul’s sister gets in a car wreck, and even Shep, the dog Paul saves and then calls his own, gets Lyme disease. Kate is a recovering alcoholic who credits her success to God. In fact, they all believe in a higher power. Kate believes if she loses her faith her world will fall apart, Paul believes if he loses his dog his world will fall apart, and Ruby thinks that the gold cross she gave to Paul’s sister to protect her actually caused the car wreck. Kate doesn’t like dogs very much but, at one point in the book, she makes a point of noticing that D-O-G is a reversal of G-O-D. This was not an observation made, if you will, in vain.
Publisher’s Weekly also praised Man in the Woods as one of the ten best books of 2010. I really enjoyed reading it. The story is wonderfully written, the characters are drawn well, I could smell, taste and feel everything. But I couldn’t help feeling I was being manipulated. In fact, I always feel manipulated when fiction writers and politicians use God as an excuse for not taking full responsibility for actions. By the end of the book, Kate loses her faith, Paul loses his dog, and the world does fall apart. The ending makes me wonder if Scott Spencer infused his novel with spirituality to show that it is just the crutch that keeps human beings from falling into the abyss of randomness that is, in fact, the reality of human existence.
On South of Broad by Pat Conroy – East Hampton
- At September 10, 2010
- By Jessica
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One of the most common remarks I hear about Pat Conroy is that “he takes a hundred words to say what he could have in ten.” While that may be true, those words are so lovely that I wish he had taken even longer to describe the South as he knows it. Some writers are great story-tellers and some are masters of language. Pat Conroy is both.
I loved The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, two previous novels by Pat Conroy. His writing, including his newest novel South of Broad, captures the psychological complexity of family relationships in a way that is both unique and contemporary.
Since my daughter moved the Charleston, where South of Broad takes place and where Pat Conroy lives, I have spent many pleasurable weeks there. Conroy captures every detail of this unique city, from its magnificent architecture to the sweet and salty scents blowing off the harbor to the dark history of the slaves on whose backs both the city and the harbor were built.
In many ways, Charleston itself is the most intriguing character in the novel. With the exception of the narrator named Leopold Bloom King, an outcast turned gossip columnist, and his mother, a nun and James Joyce fan turned high school principal, the other characters seem at once stereo-types and unrealistic. There is also a far-fetched sub-plot, in which Leo and his friends go to San Francisco in search of a childhood acquaintance dying of AIDS. In another sub-plot, also stretching the limits of credulity, the father of this dying boy is a psycho murderer who stalks the hero and his friends, leaving happy faces with tears painted in red nail-polish as his calling card. Even as I report it here, I want to say: “Aw, c’mon Pat…that’s ridiculous.
If one can suspend reality, however, this book is a great read. I found myself loving the magnanimous and fatalistic Leo, the beautiful language, and the genuine hilarity on every page. It is operatic in its plotting, running the gamut from suicide, rape, child-abuse, AIDS, racism, hurricanes, mental illness, betrayal, lust, and murder to friendship, love and sex. And, of course, the literary references to Ulysees throughout the novel, starting with the obvious key characters named Leopold Bloom and Molly, are great fun.
On Every Last One by Anna Quindlen – East Hampton, NY
- At August 31, 2010
- By Jessica
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When I was at Barnard College in the 1970s, Anna Quindlen was a year ahead of me. She was famous in her own way even then. I admired her focus and early recognition that she wanted to be a writer. I love her work, particularly her New York Times column “Life in the 30’s” and her wonderful novels Object Lessons, Black and Blue, One True Thing and Rise and Shine. Her voice represents my entire generation of women and her words speak for all of us.
Every Last One does not disappoint. It is classic Quindlen. The narration sneaks up on you, moving in on an ocean of placid rhythm, hiding the riptide underneath. The subject matter of this book is brutal, the murder of the narrator’s husband and two of her three children, reminding me of the author’s own Black and Blue (about wife beating) and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (about pedophilia and murder). These books deal with horrible things that do happen, although we live in fear of them ever happening to us.
My only criticism of this book is that the main action was completely predictable. It was obvious to me what was going to happen, who was going to do it and why. However, the narrator’s sense of guilt and karmic responsibility for a transgression of her own came as a complete surprise, adding depth and complexity to an otherwise gruesome yet expected outcome that was revealed entirely too soon. A good read and beautifully written in true Quindlen style.
On Wolf Hall and the Man Booker Prize – East Hampton, NY
- At July 11, 2010
- By Jessica
- In Readings
- 0
I don’t place much value on prizes – or best-seller lists – to help me decide what to read. But I have found that the Man Booker Prize is usually awarded to a book of extraordinary depth and originality, so I follow this prize looking for gems. Noteworthy among the titles I found among Man Booker winners or short-listed titles were: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999), Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002), On Chesil Beach (2007) and Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan, and White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (2008). These are all must reads…up there with The Essays of Montaigne and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. That is why I was so disappointed by Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, the 2009 Man Booker Prize winner.
Wolf Hall is undeniably a tour de force. It is the story of Thomas Cromwell’s ascent to power and fortune during Henry VIII’s notorious reign. Unlike other historical or fictional accounts of the era that I have read, this one paints a sympathetic portrait of Cromwell and depicts in vivid and convincingly accurate detail the way of life during those times. Some of the language is breathtaking and the author’s eye/word coordination is admirable. My chief criticism of the book, however, is that the author seems more determined to impress the reader with her cleverness and wit, as well as knowledge of historical events, than she is in moving us forward and touching us inward with the extraordinary emotional impact that these events must have had on the characters. Instead of a riveting story, we are left with a rather pretentious accounting. Mantel also introduces what seems like hundreds of characters, none of which emerge as truly important to the story except Cromwell of course. These characters appear as cameos and bit players; just as we start to think we could get involved with them they disappear. I would have liked to know more about Cromwell’s father and wife, the nun who feigns to see the future, etc. The characters are just props to set the stage with.
I enjoyed the portrayal of Cromwell himself as a kind of Dick Cheney to Henry VIII’s George Bush – a master manipulator, behind the scenes string puller. Ironically, both Henry VIII and George Bush have something else in common…they seem proof that the choices leaders make really can change history.