A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Marg's Review)

Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to aver the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city's demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own whilst starting at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nationale. We meed Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life - divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house - and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang - who thrived and faltered - and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertone of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption, and the universal tendency to reach for both - and escape the merciless progress of time - in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating  work from one of our boldest writers.

With inside cover copy like that, and the fact that this is the book that won the Pulitzer prize and others, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize as well, who needs a review!

When I look back on this book in a couple of years time I think the thing that will still be strong in my memory is the structure of the book - if you could call it structure as such. It isn't a novel as much as it is an interlocking collection of short stories. This isn't a book that goes from point A to point B. It probably starts at point G and eventually gets to point Z with side trips past point A and B.

In my own mind I was trying to think of a comparison to show how this book works and the closest I could come up with was one of those puzzles we used to have as kids where there was a mixed up picture in a square and there was one piece missing so you had to move all the pieces around until the picture was formed. At first you would get occasional glimpses of what the jumbled image was going to look like, but then you would have to break the picture up to make another piece of the puzzle fit. Eventually though, the last piece slides into place and you see the whole image.

Another analogy might be a really long conversation with a very good friend, where you jump topics with ease, reminiscing about the past, talking about the future, and sharing a joke. Never a linear conversation but rather one that starts at one point, and then ends up somewhere completely different and you find yourself wondering how you got there!

Another aspect of structure that was very different in this book is that Egan experiments with all different forms of storytelling. There are chapters written in the form of a magazine column, another in Powerpoint as well as different tenses and points of view.  I think the Powerpoint chapter was amazing! The language was sparse, the story barely there on the page, but the concepts and the narrative were still strong enough to be clear for the reader, and I loved that we got to see Sasha's future life.

After looking at the structure, how about the characters. I can't say that I particularly related to the characters that we met in the pages of the book, but such is Egan's skill that you actually didn't need to. Our two main characters are Sasha and Bennie. Sasha is on a date with Alex when her habit of stealing things, anything, causes her to steal a wallet whilst in the bathroom. As she analyses why she steals with her shrink, Alex crosses one of her boundaries without even knowing it. We meet Sasha again as a young woman struggling to make ends meet living as a runaway in Naples, and then through the eyes of her best friend Rob who has plenty of demons of his own.

In the next chapter we meet Bennie, who is Alex's boss. He is a divorced man who is struggling to relate to his 9 year old son. One way that he can occasionally connect is through music, but even that is problematical. Through the book we see Benny with his ex wife in happier times, then we meet him as a youth revelling in the punk rock scene with his friends. We meet his mentor Lou and his very young girlfriend and her friend.

The links as we move from chapter to chapter are at times tenuous, but they are all there for a reason. Along the way, Egan makes comment about some important issues. Not only the power of music to transcend time, but also for example the power of media when a washed up PR person is employed to try and rehabilitate the image of an African dictator.

Another chapter that I really liked, not because it was enjoyable but because of the food for thought it provided, was the final chapter. It is set in New York in the not too distant future and Egan has taken our current obsession with social media and expanded it to the nth degree to come up with a quite scary world where even the youngest child has exposure to the media in a way that is similar to our own world but amplified many times over. A washed up musician is being bought back for a live concert and one of our characters is being asked to find some parrots - people who can spread the word, hype up the event to make it a success, to make it the kind of event that everyone who is anyone will claim to have been at even if they really aren't. In a way it kind of reminded me of a discussion of the difference between buzz and hype and how one, or the other, is generated, whether it is organic or whether there is someone in the background pulling the strings to manipulate the public.

This is the second Egan book I have read and liked. A few years ago now I read The Keep which was a kind of modern, gothicky ghost story. I am not sure why I haven't bothered to go and track down her other books. I will definitely be watching to see what the author comes up with next as she doesn't seem to be afraid to take risks in her writing and to take her readers on the journey with her!

Rating 4/5

The Age of Innocence (1921)

This is a story about love and duty, about the choices we make and the way we let others make choices for us, about the life we have and the life we could have, if only we’d reach out and take it.  It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and well worth a read.

Newland Archer is a young man in the prime of his life.  He’s a member of the upper echelon of New York society and he’s about to be married to May, the most beautiful and sought-after girl of the season.  On the same night that their betrothal is announced, he meets her cousin, Ellen Olenska.  And so it begins.

The Archers and all the other families in New York society live by strict codes.  Nothing is said outright, but they all understand each other: everything they say has a hidden meaning and everyone follows their codes so religiously that the hidden meanings are clear.  But some things can never even be hinted at – anything too unpleasant must be put aside.  As the narrator describes early in the book during a conversation between Archer and his mother: “it was against all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever allude to what was uppermost in their thoughts.”  Archer’s betrothed, May, follows these codes completely – she is the “perfect” woman.  But he begins to see that there may not be anything else at all underneath her perfect exterior.

Archer feels different from his fellow men, and he wants to push back against these strict rules of behavior.  As his relationship with Ellen develops, he feels both more desirous of breaking free and more hemmed in and unable to escape than ever before.  His life is inevitable and he feels unable to act according to his own free will.  His feeble attempts continue to fall short.

Archer and Ellen meet in society and catch spare moments alone in hallways or Opera boxes.  They fall in love in an innocent way and neither sees it happening.  But to the reader it feels so real.  In one scene, when they are seeing each other after a separation, Archer is struck anew by everything that Ellen is.  He says to her “Each time you happen to me all over again.”  This is what love feels like.  To capture that in a novel is what makes reading such a pleasure.  And this novel is a pleasure, indeed.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)

Title:  Gilead

Author:  Marilynne Robinson
Published:  2004, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Genre:  Literary Fiction
Accolades:  2005 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2004 - National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, 2006 - long list Orange Prize for Fiction

76-year-old Congregationalist Minister John Ames is dying of a heart condition.  Still capable of preaching and mentally sharp he has decided to write a letter - a journal of his thoughts - to his young son to explain the family's history, who he is, and what he believes.  Set in Gilead, Iowa in 1956 this quiet, profound book is the story of a life and a faith that can move mountains if only it can forgive.

There are certain books that as soon as you read the first two or three pages you know that it is special - that it will change you somehow - maybe not lightning bolt jolts, but small, subtle movements near your heart.  Gilead was that book for me.  Gilead begins with John Ames counting the blessings of his life and expressing the joy of having found love and having a child in the twilight of his years.

" I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle." page 52

What simple words written or spoken that could be life-changing - some one's salvation - maybe we need to say them to those we love.  As we read on though we discover when the "prodigal son" of a life-long friend comes back to town that John Ames has yet to give the greatest miracle of all - forgiveness. Though Ames is a minister he still struggles with a human soul and Robinson deftly and beautifully describes his torment and his epiphany.

In the bible Gilead means hill of testimony and that is what the book Gilead is for John Ames his testimony of a well-lived life. 

My Rating: 5 out of 5

A Visit From the Goon Squad (2011)

Title:  A Visit From the Goon Squad

Author:  Jennifer Egan
Published: 2010, Borzoi Book - Alfred A. Knopf
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Accolades: 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award, long list for 2011 Orange Prize

A Visit From the Goon Squad is a novel that is written as a collection of stories that center around Bennie Salazar a music executive, his kleptomaniac assistant Sasha and the people that weave in and out of their flawed lives. Each chapter is a story that moves through the timeline of Bennie and Sasha's lives and as readers we witness the moments that changed them.

A Visit From the Goon Squad has received critical acclaim, but somewhat mixed reviews from the "everyday" reader.  I understand the division. This book is difficult to pinpoint and to categorize - just writing the first paragraph of this review was hard because it is a difficult book to explain.  But I will tell you that I loved it.  The writing is crisp, honest, and inventive.  There are proses in this book that are so vivid and accurate that I had to stop and read them again and again.

"It's turning out to be a bad day, a day when the sun feels like teeth."  page 60

Time is a key element to the story (The Goon Squad is a reference to time) - it is always there hovering over the characters and they each feel its impact as it changes their relationships, values, and themselves. The book weaves back and forth through a time span of about 50 years starting in the 1970's and ending in a somewhat dystopian 2020.  My favorite chapter is the chapter that is written as a power point by a teenager of today. It is so in the moment - our current time - it is brilliant.

A Visit From the Goon Squad is a remarkable, strangely moving story about the one thing we can't escape - the impact of time.

My Rating:  5 out of 5

His Family (1918)

Roger Gale is a widower with three adult daughters and he has suddenly realized he doesn’t know them.  That is where the action begins in His Family, the 1918 winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  This realization would doubtless concern him no matter what, but he is especially dismayed because he had promised his wife when she died that he would keep an eye on the girls and report back to her when they met again in the afterlife.  He has since suffered a crisis of faith and withdrawn from his family.  But now he means to get to know them once again.

Each daughter represents a possible path for a woman to follow, and tracing the drawbacks and benefits of each path is a major theme in the book.  One daughter, Laura, is a socialite, a party girl with no plans to have children and with no social consciousness.  Another, Edith, is a mother of five who is so wrapped up in her own children that she cannot think or speak of anything else.  The third, Deborah, is a social reformer and suffragist who is terrified to marry and have children because she fears she will never be able to go on with her work, which is the most important thing to her.  Roger Gale is most often perplexed by each daughter, and even more so by the interactions between them.  The narrator clearly favors Deborah, the social reformer, from the start and Roger gets there eventually too. She is, obviously, the best of his daughters.

The woman question was on the top of the nation’s mind in 1918, so it’s no surprise that this book was awarded the Pulitzer.  But there is more to it than that.  A deeper and more enduring theme is mortality and how we find immortality in the lives of our family.  Before she died, Roger’s wife told him, “You will live on in our children’s lives.”  Throughout the book he realizes the truth of that statement, as he gets to know his daughters and finds himself in each of them.  He feels the roots of his family before him and seeks comfort in the fact that he, too, will be a figure in the distance to the coming generations. 

Finally, Roger often contemplates the youth of mankind – he feels as a child still, and he sees everyone else in the same way.  All his life he has felt that he is just beginning, and now he is already nearing the end.  As he walks through a birch grove on his farm one evening, he comes to an understanding of it all.  “It seemed to Roger that all his days he had been only entering life, as some rich bewildering thicket like this copse of birches here, never getting very deep, never seeing very clearly, never understanding all.  And so it had been with his children, and so it was with these children of Edith’s, and so it would be with those many others – always groping, blundering, starting – children, only children all.”

The book also deals with the growth of New York City; immigration and poverty; and World War I.  Roger Gale came to New York when horses and carriages traveled its roads, and now he has to face the crush of modern life with its fast cars, tall buildings and bright lights.  Little did Roger know that the chaos of urban life was only just beginning.  One facet of this new city life that Roger struggles so much with is the influx of immigrants and the rise of tenements.  As he gets to know Deborah he sees her work with the children of these tenements and he gains a new understanding of the deprivation they face.  When World War I breaks out, he is faced with suffering on an even grander scale.  Roger comes to a new understanding of humankind and he learns to make sacrifices to help those beyond his own family. 

These political themes play an important role in the book, but it’s true strength is in dealing with the personal.  As Roger Gale comes to know his daughters, we come to know more about life.  Can we ask anything more from a novel?

Review: The Age of Innocence

Title: The Age of Innocence
Author:  Edith WHarton
Published: 1920, D. Appleton & Company
Genre:  Classic
Accolades:  1921 Putlitzer (first Pultizer given to a woman), Modern Library List: 100 Best Books of the Century, Radcliff Publishing Course:  100 Best Novels of the Century and on and on...

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, but I was wonderfully surprised at the depth of Wharton's wit and her satirical analyze of the society in which she belonged.  With the introduction of our protagonist Newland Archer we are given a "fly on the wall" perspective of what it was like to live and circumvent the twists and turns of high society in New York City during the Gilded Age.  Archer is very much a product of his society and it's rules and is happy to live by them because he understands what happens to those who try to go against the norms of his world.  When Archer meets his fiancee's cousin Ellen Olenska, a woman who is escaping a scandalous marriage, he knows that this women is capable of changing his world for better or worse, but like a moth drawn to the flame - he can't resist.

I found myself thinking about what it would have been like to live in that tightly guarded circle of society and how difficult it was to become a part of it or to escape it.  You would almost have to be born into it to understand the nuances of what is expected - lessons that took a lifetime to learn.  The society wasn't about money because they frowned upon the new money and crassness of the Carnegie's, Frick's, and Rockefeller's. Even those captains of industry could not buy themselves memberships into this elite group.

Wharton's development of her characters is artfully crafted as you realize that the characters that appeared to be weakest and shallow are the strongest and most manipulative. What one would do to preserve appearances due to the code is tragic and heart-felt.  Love is not the number one priority - it is your placement in society.

My Rating: 5 out of 5
Note: I read the 2008 Oxford World's Classic edition

1989 - Breathing Lessons

I could have guessed before starting Breathing Lessons that the book would involve an ordinary family in Baltimore facing problems in an awkward but genuine way and somehow bumbling through to a moderately happy and definitely realistic end. That description fits every Anne Tyler book I’ve read and it fits this one too.

Unfortunately, this book sticks close to the basic theme without the variations that made the others I’ve read more interesting. For instance, Digging to America applies the basic theme to immigrant families; The Amateur Marriage takes the story further, to a post-divorce phase; The Accidental Tourist takes the show on the road to Paris; and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant turns it around to the children’s perspective.

In contrast, Breathing Lessons is the basic story. It takes place in one day, when Ira and Maggie Moran drive to a funeral and, on the way back, stop to visit their granddaughter in Maggie’s attempt to reconcile their son and former daughter-in-law. In describing the events of the day, Tyler tells the story of the Morans’ courtship, marriage, and children’s lives. She does it with her typical and impressive authenticity.

My only problem was that Tyler’s authenticity seemed too typical. Stripped of the variations that livened up the other books, Breathing Lessons lacked a hook to grab my attention. If this had been the first Anne Tyler book I ever read, I would have loved it. But having read four others already, I felt like I was covering old territory with this one.

NOTES

Tyler won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons.  It was my Pulitzer choice for the 2011 Battle of the Prizes, American Version challenge.

A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain

In this 1993 Pulitzer fiction winner, Vietnamese immigrants to Louisiana speak about their experiences in the old world and the new.

It seems very daring (and that is probably why this collection seems to be overlooked) that Butler decided to tell these fifteen stories from the Vietnamese viewpoint, but he's delicate, sensitive and very knowledgeable about that culture, so it works beautifully.

A few of the stories are fragments, and there's one titled "The American Couple" that approaches novella length. My favorite story is "Love", about a jealous husband with a "butterfly" wife and the extremes -- both serious and comedic -- that he will pursue to eliminate his competition.

1929 - Scarlet Sister Mary

Scarlet Sister Mary won the Pulitzer as a weird switch. The Pulitzer committee wanted to change the scope of the Pulitzer from "a novel which presented the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standards of American manners and manhood" to become "a novel which preferably shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life".

And, yet, even in this, Scarlet Sister Mary fails. Peterkin's depiction of uneducated blacks living in the low country of South Carolina in the early part of the 20th century is hardly believable, given today's understanding. They are the progeny of slaves who stayed where they had lived because they had no choice to go anywhere else. What could they possibly do? They continued living largely as their ancestors had.

Whites are not a factor in the book except as occasional mention that they do exist. This is not a criticism, just an observation. Peterkin's description of the life of these people, particularly that of Sister Mary, really is fiction. She suggests picking cotton is easy, more like a party, and everyone enjoys doing it. The life of Mary, a mother of 10 children with no father in the home, seems almost easy. More like a teenager bouncing through life. Some deep heartache, but even that passes.

There is a reason that Scarlet Sister Mary does not appear on any "best works" lists. An easy read, though.

1933 The Store

Set 20 years after the Civil War which freed the slaves of the plantations around Florence, Alabama, those living there are still trying to sort out the relationships and rights of both white and black residents. The Store explores love and loss, trust and betrayal, and the vagaries of reputation and fortunes of the Vaiden family, both the whites and the blacks of that name. The store itself is a dream of Colonel Miltiades Vaiden which, once achieved, is rarely again mentioned and unimportant in the story.

Vaiden, a former Colonel in the Confederate Army, had his money stolen shortly after the end of the War by J. Handback when Vaiden's cotton was put in trust to Handback and then Handback was able to declare bankruptcy and deny the proceeds of the sale of the cotton to Vaiden. This created a resentment on Vaiden's part which festered for the many years since. Handback, believing the Colonel holds no resentments, hires him to work in the Handback store. Since the Colonel gives the same service to the blacks as to the whites of the community, this frustrates Handback. "A nigger pound is not the same measure as a white pound." He removes Vaiden, setting him up to oversee Handback's cotton plantings and his colored tennants thereby setting up the environment which allows Vaiden to get even with Handback. This allows the Colonel to buy his long-dreamed of store beginning a series of repercussions throughout the full community, affecting both whites and blacks, Southerners and Yankees. An intriguing read, with a bit of a ghost story included for good measure.

Until I read the other review, I was not aware the story was part of a trilogy.

Mambo Kings Review

I chose to not finish this book. While it is well written and captures its subject well, part of that subject -- sexual encounters -- is something I prefer not to read. At least not with the frequency that it happens in this book. That said, this book would not be qualified even as soft porn. There were, for my tastes, just too many encounters described at more detail than I preferred to experience.

As I read the portion of the book that I did read, maybe a little more than 1/2 of it, I enjoyed the pictures it paints of its main characters, their dreams and their daily lives as they struggle to fulfill those dreams. Set in the US at the time when Latin music was in its hey day, the Mambo Kings participate in that scene, even to the point of having an opportunity to meet the great Desi Arnaz. Did this book deserve the Pulitzer Prize? The writing is enchanting and does pull one into the story. But for those who, like me, prefer to avoid that which impelled me to put the book down without finishing it with no pan to try again, I offer this brief review.

Review: To Kill a Mocking Bird

Title: To Kill A Mockingbird

Author: Harper Lee

Published: 1960, J.B. Lippincott Company

Genre: Modern Classic, Literary Fiction

Accolades: 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Radcliff Publishing Course: 100 Best Novels of the Century, National Endowment for the Arts - The Big Read List and on and on and on...

Most of us have either read the book, seen the movie, or at least heard of this 1960 modern classic. I remember watching the movie years ago with my mom and listening to her tell me that I just had to read the book - "it's one of the best books out there, Jayme." Well mom, it only took 35 years, but I did finally read it and once again you were right.

The story about how one man stood up against the convictions of a small southern town in the 1930s to do what was right is insight fully told through the eyes of his daughter. Her voice is fresh and distinct and pulls you in from the first sentence. But it's the little nuggets of wisdom through out the book that holds you-

"but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." (page 120, To Kill A Mockingbird

The writing is clever and the topic captures a time in America's history that as painful as it is the story needs to be told. This book is literary art.

My Rating: 5 out of 5
Note: I read the 2010 50th Anniversary edition from Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Randy -1917- His Family - Ernest Poole

The title "His Family" refers to both the nuclear family and the family of all mankind. I think Poole's central theme is the tension that we all have in balancing our obligations to both families. I don't feel the novel was about women deciding between family and vocation- it was broader than that.

For me, the last chapter made the book. (I'd like to quote some of this chapter, but don't want to be a "spoiler").

Highly recommended.

Ag_in_TX's review of "So Big" (Ferber - 1925)

So, after a long hiatus, I'm back! I was at the library last week and saw "So Big" as I was walking down the aisle and decided I'd saddle back up with this project.

Once again, I'll avoid a synopsis of the book as those are all over the Intrawebs. I'll just touch on my thoughts.

To me, the overriding theme of the book is a little deeper than "search of beauty". The theme is answering the question: "How do we spend the currency of our lives". To Selena, she believed we should create - to grow, to build, to struggle, to love. To her, that was to live.

We saw how, over the course of the book, Dirk gravitated towards what most of us gravitate towards - to be comfortable. He was not bad, or evil, or money grubbing. He just wanted to be comfortable.

The figure of Roelf juxtaposed nicely with Dirk - he who had nothing - he who had a father who thought he was useless - he who arrived in Paris with 5 francs in his pocket - he was the one who pursued creating with a passion. But even then, Selina loved her son just as much and just as deeply, even though he had chosen a different route.

This book illustates how status in life is not so important in the greater scope of things. We all will die and return to dust. What matters is what we build, what we create, and whether we left the world better than it was when we came into it.

Review: The Edge of Sadness

Title: Edge of Sadness
Author: Edwin O'Connor
Published: 1961, Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Religion, Modern Classic
Accolades: 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Father Hugh Kennedy has returned to his clerical duties after taking a sabbatical to confront and deal with his alcoholism. But he is not returning to his flourishing, well established parish. He has been assigned to "Old St.Pauls" a decaying church in a derelict part of his hometown. In his search for understanding he is reunited with the Camrody family, a wealthy Irish family he thought he new well growing up, but they have secrets of their own.

Where do I begin writing a review about a book which I think is the best book I've read all year? From the synopsis it seems as if this is a heavy, depressing book. It isn't. The book is narrated by Father Kennedy and it is his reflective account of key past events in his life and how they have impact on the present. There is a lot of narration, so the book moves slowly which is OK because there is so much to stop and ponder in this book. It took me 2 weeks to finish because I would put it down and reflect. O'Connor's writing is powerful and honest, but at the same time it is gentle and spiritual. The writing is so believable that I had to keep reminding myself that this is fiction - not a memoir.

"And there were moments when... I would suddenly become aware of a stillness that was something quite apart from the stillness of the night. It was an interior stillness, a stillness inside me, a stillness in which there was the absence of distraction and unrest. A stillness in which quietly, and without effort, I seemed to come together, to be focused and attentive, to be really present, so to speak, a stillness from which it seemed natural, even inevitable, to reach out, to pray, to adore..." (page 223, The Edge of Sadness)

And then there is the Camrody family. The Camrody family is led by the patriarch Charlie Camrody - a larger than life, rags to riches man whose influence on his family is complete. As Father Kennedy is reunited with this family of his childhood he realizes that what one sees and what one knows can be two completely different things. As truths are revealed the impact on Father Kennedy's self and spirituality are profound. But again this is not a depressing book. The dialogue that O'Connor writes with the Camrody is pitch perfect capturing the essence of each person. Charlie Camrody:

"Did you read about that, Father? Did you read about Charlie Camrody the rent gouger? Oh my, ain't that a terrible thing to be called? By the son of little Georgie, that I knew all my life like a brother. And then the papers get on me and say, "Ain't it awful, Mr. Camrody, when a young feller like that calls a fine man like you names?" (page 322, The Edge of Sadness)

But what I liked most about this book was Father Kennedy. He is not a perfect person, let alone a perfect priest - he's not even a great priest, but he's honest. He's someone who is stuck and doesn't know he's stuck until...

How much do I love this book? Well, the copy that I read I had borrowed from the library, so I ordered my own copy online and this book goes on my "searching for first editions list." That should tell you something.

My Rating: 5 out of 5
Note: I read the 2005 Loyola Press edition.

The Killer Angels - Winner, 1975

Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, on which the 1993 movie Gettysburg was based, is a historical novel that gives the story of the Battle of Gettysburg through the perspectives of several different individuals on both sides of the war. I was afraid that I would have trouble following the story as I have trouble envisioning war maneuvers in my mind and keeping track of who is fighting for which side. I was listening to the audio version of the book, so when, in the beginning, the key players for each side were listed, I wrote them down so I could keep track. This helped me immensely. I found that even though I did not always follow exactly what was happening in a battle, Shaara's writing made clear which events were good and bad for each side.


The thing I enjoyed most about this book was the detail provided about the lives of each of the individuals whose perspectives Shaara used to tell the story. He showed their human sides and truly made me care about people on both sides of the battle. I especially enjoyed the depiction of Lee, which I felt fit perfectly with the description I am reading in Freeman's biography from 1934. The Killer Angels is a useful read for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of the Civil War as many of these men had fought together in the United States military before the war and cared about each other.

Early Autumn, 1927

Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield tells the story of the Pentlands, a staid New England family. By extension, Bromfield offers an indictment on the "Pentlands" of high society in the early 1900s. They represent old money, Puritan values, and respectability. The story reads like a melodrama with secrets galore, family jealousies, poor marriages, and, in the end, the obligatory "all is not as it seems" twist. It would make a great soap opera. The story centers about Olivia, a wife of a "Pentland" who is nonetheless the most trusted person by the family patriarch. She is visited by an old friend with scores to settle, Sabine. Throughout the story we find out more and more about the family history complete with illegitimacies, pettiness, and forbidden love.


Bromfield so wants to write like Wharton. He even mentions her! His humor is blunt where Wharton's is subtle and witty. His characterization is obvious where Wharton lets her characters unfold gracefully. Finally, his word choice is stale. Thanks to the author, I now hate the word "indolent." The adjective is appropriately applied to Bromfield’s writing. Bromfield wrote approximately thirty books. I'm surprised he didn't run out of words at two. His vocabulary was made for non-fiction.

So, I can't recommend this one. It's unremarkable. If I was prone to suspicion, I'd suggest that the 1927 Pulitzer award was reserved for a Columbia University alum. I'm sure that can't be. Interestingly, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was also published in 1926.

Wish I could ask Sinclair Lewis his opinion about the criteria for the award. A future topic!

I recommend reading this book with a tall glass and Maker's Mark. It's fitting that the bottle is dipped in wax.

Arrowsmith, 1926 Winner

Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith is the tale of one of the easiest characters to dislike that you will read.  This winner of the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for the novel is a great book but most of what I read in blurbs and reviews about the main character being a devoted scientist did not ring true for me.  Rather, Martin Arrowsmith starts out as a child and, 450 pages later, remains so. The story revolves (in his mind so does the universe) around a man who is torn between practicing medicine and investigating the causes of diseases as a research scientist.  The story is somewhat of an homage to Lewis' father and brother and their dedication to the medical profession as well as a satire on the practice of medicine in the late 1800s and early 1900s (I've yet to fully get the "turn of the 20th century" usage straight in my mind).  It is purported to be the first novel that takes up "Science" (that's right, capital "S" Science") and Lewis is masterful.  Along the way, Arrowsmith agonizes over what to study in medical school, he agonizes over which of his fiancees to marry (really), he agonizes over the absence of his wife while she is away at home (but seduces a teenager as a balm for his lonely heart), he agonizes over his practice in rural North Dakota (ok, that's redundant), he agonizes over his research in the big city, he agonizes... you get the picture.  He should become an artist he has so much angst.  He's tiring!

Along the way he is supported unconditionally by his wife Leora.  Leora is considered by those in literature circles ( I assume they gather in circles) as a model of character development.  She is also the focus of feminist critiques, and rightly so.  She is everything Arrowsmith could ask for, given his character, yet he is never satisfied.  He's a child. Does Leora represent his mother, never mentioned in the story, as the taken for granted female figure?  Perhaps, if you want to be kind to Lewis.


Arrowsmith is not a good doctor.  Nor is he really a gifted scientist.  He manages to stumble on discoveries but not due to talent;  He spends time doubting himself than he does thinking and puzzling through scientific problems.  When he chooses to be, he is sedulous.  He perseveres.  That is his sole redeeming quality but one he practices only intermittently.  Or maybe he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  When confronted with his deficiencies as a scientist, he mopes, then quits, then drinks, then mopes again, then returns.  He is a practitioner of what Thomas Kuhn would call "normal science."  Most scientists are.  He is portrayed as much more.  He is not.


One could imagine a discussion of Arrowsmith as representing all of us.  He is a flawed character, no hero, as Lewis writes.  But he is more than flawed.  We are all flawed but we learn from our mistakes, we grow up.  Martin Arrowsmith doesn't learn.  He marries a woman yet devotes none of himself to her once married.  He marries again and does the same.  Why does he continue to want a female companion?  At least his colleagues who marry are honest about their need for a woman to assist them in their professional and social climbing activities.  Abhorrent yes, but honest.  Martin has no such integrity (I know it sounds strange to call the use of women by men in that fashion as integrous but the women are portrayed as opportunist as well. Hmmm, sounds like another topic of a feminist critique--does mutual lack of hypocrisy mitigate otherwise cadish behavior?).  In this regard, the story is much more simplistic. Had Lewis wanted to write about science and medicine, he could have done so without the whiney Arrowsmith as the protagonist.  Had he wanted to write about a whiney man, he could have done so without the gratuitous Latin terms to define bacteria.  Martin Arrowsmith is, as the boys in the film Swingers say about Wayne Gretzky, a whiney bitch. (Great scene of guys playing and old NHL video game.)  Most of us are not.


In the end, most people will enjoy the book because it is written masterfully.  It is a complete book.  A glass of Jim Beam Rye whiskey will aid in the digestion of this book.  Along the way Martin Arrowsmith will join you.


There was a film (awful) of the same name made from the book starring Ronald Coleman and Helen Hayes. It was directed by John Ford--say it an't so!-- but it doesn't resemble the book.  I consider it unremarkable but only because I respect Ford.

Beloved - Winner, 1988

Beloved
By: Toni Morrison
Alfred A. Knopf, 1987

Toni Morrison is a name that is often thrown around in literary circles, and, as I had never read anything of hers prior to this, I looked forward to reading (or listening to, which I ended up doing) Beloved to see what the talk was about. The story of Beloved focuses mainly on a runaway slave, Sethe, and her daughter, Denver, as they try to make a life for themselves in Ohio in the years following the Civil War. Though Denver was not born until after her mother's escape, they both spend their lives dealing with the physical and psychological effects of slavery.

Many images brought forth in Morrison's novel are painful to read about, but it is important that we understand, to the extent possible, the horrors and human toll of slavery. Morrison's writing is poetic and full of imagery that is beautiful but hard to understand at times. Because I was listening, there were times that I found myself completely lost. I thought I had missed something and went to Spark Notes online to make sure I knew what was going on. Towards the end of the book, Morrison begins shifting more and more between different perspectives. I think that if I had been reading the book this would have been clearer. What I did love about listening to Beloved is that it was read by Toni Morrison herself. I believe that there are emotions that only an author can put into the reading of his or her own text, and this recording was no exception. I would definitely recommend this book for more mature readers. There are books that have been written throughout history that might not be the most enjoyable to read but are vitally important. Beloved is not my favorite book, but I do believe that, for the sake of understanding our past, it is important.

So Big

I finished reading So Big by Edna Ferber and I was pleasantly surprised.  I didn't know much about Edna Ferber other than her name until picking up this book.  I am embarrassingly impressed.  She is responsible for such works as Showboat and Giant.  (For a sideways look at the making of Giant, seeWelcome to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.  You won't be disappointed.)  She regarded herself as, foremost, a playwright.  She was also was an incredibly strong woman at a time women were continuing (have they stopped?) to struggle for recognition and equality.  Her persona is evident in her highly regarded, So Big.


The story centers around a woman, Selina DeJong, and her son, "So Big" Dirk.  If you read the book, you'll quickly know the reason for the nickname and, in the end, you 'll understand the metaphor.  Selina is a strong woman faced with a difficult and unimagined life living on a "truck farm" populated by Dutch immigrants on the outskirts of Chicago at the turn of the 20 century (that's 1800's to 1900s right?).  She starts out as a school teacher whose first impression of the fruits of the farmers' labor (cabbage) as a thing of beauty.  So she is very different from the parents of the children she will be educating.  She becomes a widow and rears her son in a way that she hopes will steer him to the beauty in life, whatever he determines that to be.  That's as much plot as I'll disclose because I highly recommend this book and hope you'll give it a chance.  For those of you from the Prairie State, you'll appreciate the references to Chicago.

I took many things away from this book.  For those who are about to enter a career path (e.g., high schoolers, college students) this book offers a message that you will no doubt hear at your commencement ceremonies. (And if you don't you should!)  When choosing your life path, choose the path that fulfills your spirit.  Life is hard enough you will work hard enough to not pursue a life that will do more than put vegetables on your table, buy you the next new thing, keep you dapper and stylish, and ensure your place as the one with the largest toy box.  It is perhaps easier to do that than to seek out and create beauty.  (As Everett Sloan playing the part of Mr. Bernstein in Citizen Kaneputs it, "It's easy to make a lot of money.  If all you want is to make a lot of money.")

For those already well down our paths, it is never too late to be part of the creation of beauty.  Hard work is it's own reward, true.  But hard work towards a larger and deeper purpose is redemptive. Patience with life is portrayed as so much more than a virtue in this book.  Here, patience is directed to oneself, rather than others.  We might try being patient with ourselves and our toils since they are directed to a full life.  Many of our life's loves are not found in the short term.  In a society that rewards quick results and virtue in making one's first million before 30,  Ferber reminds us that virtuosity is not a goal but a life's journey.  Surely a reminder for all ages.

This is an excellent book.

Review: The Road

Title: The Road

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Published: 2006, Vintage International

Genre: Science Fiction

Accolades: 2007 Pulitzer Award for Fiction, 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction Shortlist, 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and on and on and on...

I picked up a copy of The Road in the Detroit airport after my plane had been delayed (again) and I needed something to read. Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down (I almost didn't mind the delay - almost). The Road is a frightening postapocalyptic novel about a nameless father and son who are traveling south to escape another brutal winter in the mountains. It is a story of grief and lose and struggles with the question- what keeps one going when all hope is gone and death is not the enemy?

I really enjoyed this riveting book. The writing style was unique, almost sparse, capturing the the feel of the countryside and a world without hope.

"It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond ran along the crest of a ridge where the barren woodland fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single grey flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last hope of christendom." (page 16, The Road)

The most moving part of the story is the relationship between the father and son. The father does everything he can to provide hope to his son by telling him that they have to continue on "to carry the fire" in a hopeless world even though the father has long ago stopped believing.

This is science fiction at it's best. A story that kept me engrossed while I read it and thinking about it hours after I had finished reading it.

My Rating: 5 out of 5

Laura's Review - Tinkers

George Crosby remembered many things as he died, but in an order he  could not control.  (p. 18)

Tinkers is about George Crosby's final days.  Lying in bed in the front room of his house, surrounded by family, he takes a mental journey through his life, as well as his father's.  His thoughts meander in a mostly slow and meditative way.  The prose is richly descriptive and even dreamlike in places:

The afternoon became warm, and with the warmth the first bees appeared, and each little bee settled in a yellow cup and took suck like  newborn. Howard stopped Prince Edward, even though he was behind in his rounds, and gave the mule a carrot and stepped into the field full of flowers and bees, who seemed not to mind his presence in the least, who seemed, in fact, in their spring thrall, to be unaware of his presence at all.  Howard closed his eyes and inhaled. He smelled cold water and cold, intrepid green.  Those early flowers smelled like cold water. Their fragrance was not the still perfume of high summer; it was the mineral smell of cold, raw green.  (p. 60)

Throughout his adult life, George carefully concealed the scars left by his father's abandonment.  On his deathbed it all comes back to him, but he also begins to see that paternal abandonment, while manifested in different forms, goes back at least two generations.  At 80, George has broken the cycle.  And he has inherited a more positive, useful quality:  that of a "tinker."  George's father sold goods to country folk and handled all manner of small repairs along the way.  George repairs clocks, and his memories are interrupted by excerpts from an 1870s clock repair manual.

I first heard about Tinkers when it won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize  for Fiction, and I couldn't wait to read it.  This type of book is typically right up my street.  Unfortunately, I was  disappointed.  I just couldn't get into  the rhythm.  Maybe it was my mood.  Or perhaps it was because I kept comparing it to two other  books I loved, which explore similar themes: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home.  Whatever the reason, and despite the beautiful writing, something about Tinkers fell short for me.




 My original review can be found here.

Review: Tinkers

Title: Tinkers

Author: Paul Harding

Published: 2009, Bellevue Literary Press
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Accolades: 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Spoiler Alert

George is dying. He has lived a long and fruitful life, but he has one regret - he has lost contact with his father who left George's family when George was a boy. As his body slowly shuts down his mind loses it's concept of time and his thoughts begin to wander from past to present as he recounts the moments and people who have shaped him.

In his first novel Paul Harding has written an original story about family and lose. The story is free flowing because it is the random thoughts of a man who is lying in his hospital bed dying. The story line changes back and forth between past and present as George thinks about his life and his hobby "tinkering" with old clocks and George's father Howard who was a "tinker" who traveled throughout northern Maine and Canada. Once you understand the pattern of this patternless book the imagery and the ethereal style of Harding's writing is almost magical. When trying to understanding the coldness of George's mother Harding lets you into her deepest thoughts - the thoughts one even hides from oneself:

" It is winter, and the tree has been stripped of its bright mantle of leaves. It is winter because she lies awake with a bare heart, trying to remember a full season. She thinks, I must have been a young woman once." (page 88, Tinkers)

When Harding explains why Howard left his family and never came back, he does it by comparing Howard's new wife and the wife he left in one powerfully written sentence:

"Howard brought her flowers every day, and oranges... He lifted his nose from a crate of limes, refreshed and eager to get home to a wife who spoke words out loud as she thought them up and held nothing to whirl and eddy to collect in brackish silences, silences that broke like thin ice beneath you to announce your drowning." (page 174, Tinkers)

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is a book of many layers that left me thinking about it days after I read it. I don't keep many books that I read, but I will keep this one to reread when I want delve into another layer of this powerful book.

My Rating: 5 out of 5

Tinkers - Wendy's Review

He tinkered. Tin pots, wrought iron. Solder melted and cupped in a clay dam. Quicksilver patchwork. Occasionally, a pot hammered back flat, the tinkle of tin sibilant, tiny beneath the lid of the boreal forest. Tinkerbird, coppersmith, but mostly a brush and mop drummer. – from Tinkers, page 12 -

George Washington Crosby is eight days from death on the opening page of Tinkers - he is hallucinating and remembering, he is pondering his life and the life of his father. George has spent his life fixing clocks – and time plays a crucial role in this novel about fathers and sons, and connections with others. While George lays dying from cancer, he reflects on the small things which have made up his life, including the house he has lovingly built and the intricate details of clock repair.

Read the names etched onto the works: Ezra Bloxham – 1794; Geo. E. Tiggs – 1832; Thos. Flatchbart – 1912. Lift the darkened works from the case. Lower them into ammonia. Lift them out, nose burning, eyes watering, and see them shine and star through your tears. File the teeth. Punch the bushings. Load the spring. Fix the clock. Add your name. – from Tinkers, page 15 -

But Tinkers is not just George’s story…it is the story of three interconnected generations of men: George’s father Howard (an epileptic), and Howard’s father who suffered from dementia. Narrated alternatively between these three points of view, the story is nonlinear.

Howard is a dreamer and a tinker, a man who relishes the beauty of nature and spends whole days picking wildflowers and constructing art from twigs and grass. His seizures come when he least expects them, and eventually tear apart his fragile marriage. George’s memories of Howard are of a father often mysteriously late coming home, and one frightening episode of Howard seizing at Christmas dinner.

Howard’s father is a minister whose slow descent into dementia confuses his son who describes his father as ‘a strange, gentle man.‘ Howard’s loss of his father mirrors George’s loss of Howard.

Harding’s prose is like reading a long, narrative poem. Beautifully constructed sentences and stories within stories characterize Tinkers. Often the story feels like water in a river – rippled, unpredictable, dipping around corners and eddying around obstructions…and so, Harding’s use of water as a symbol in the novella seems appropriate.

The overriding themes of Harding’s Pulitzer Prize winning effort are that of time passing, the dreams of men, and the passage from life to death.

What of miniature boats constructed of birch bark and fallen leaves, launched onto cold water clear as air? How many fleets were pushed out toward the middles of ponds or sent down autumn brooks, holding treasures of acorns, or black feathers, or a puzzled mantis? Let those grassy crafts be listed alongside the iron hulls that cleave the sea, for they are all improvisations built from the daydreams of men, and all will perish, whether from ocean siege or October breeze. - from Tinkers, page 78 -

I enjoyed this slim book whose size belies the depth of the prose. This is a beautiful story which reads more like a meditation than a novel. Full of lyrical phrases, it is not always an easy book to understand, and yet it is a deeply satisfying read.

Readers who are not intimidated by literary novels which use symbolism and metaphor liberally to explore deeper issues, will want to read Tinkers. This is a novel which left me thinking about the characters long after I turned the final page.

Highly recommended.

Laura's Review - Gilead

I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you. (p. 52)

John Ames is a Congregationalist minister living in Gilead, a small Iowa town. Late in life, he was blessed with a wife and son. Now, aware that his heart is failing, he begins writing a long letter to his son, to be read when the son comes of age. Gilead is that letter. In it Ames tells his life story, shares hopes and dreams for his wife and son, and explores matters of faith.

Ames was himself the son of a preacher. Through his writings he tries to come to terms with his strained relationship with his father, now long dead. He mourns his first wife and child, both of whom died too soon, and he rejoices in having found love at an advanced age. But there is one matter that weighs heavily on Ames, and his letter serves as a sort of catharsis.

Ames' best friend is a Presbyterian minister, Robert Boughton. The two have spent years leading Gilead's faithful, and developed a deep and lasting friendship. Boughton had several children; Jack, the black sheep of the family, was named after Ames. When Jack Boughton returns to Gilead after a long absence, Ames must face long-suppressed emotion and conflict, and accept his inability to control events after he has passed on.

This is a magnificent novel. The pace is leisurely and conversational, initially masquerading as an amusing portrait of small-town religious life, full of little details like the bizarre Jello salad concoctions served at church suppers. But Gilead is so much more: it is a celebration of life, love, friendship, fathers, sons, and forgiveness.

Marilynne Robinson followed Gilead with Home, which presents the same story from the Boughton family's perspective. Each book stands on its own, and is beautiful and moving. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The richness and depth of this story become apparent on reading both books. These are not to be missed.


Read my review of Home

My original review can be found here.

Olive Kitteridge - Winner, 2009

Olive Kitteridge
By: Elizabeth Strout
Random House, 2008

Olive Kitteridge is a story about life. Strout used a collection of thirteen short stories about the people of coastal Crosby, Maine with one connecting character, Olive Kitteridge, to tie them all together. Sometimes Olive is the main character and sometime she is only mentioned, but in the end the story of her life has been told. I laughed, I cried, I felt annoyed, I felt empathy. It is raw and beautiful.

Because Strout's novel is a compilation of short stories, there is not a true climax of the story, but that fits well. The reader really gets the sense that they are just following through life with these people. Their experiences are mundane, which is okay because there is something in Olive Kitteridge that most people of all ages can relate to. She explores what it is like to be young and what it is like to be old. I will warn that there are parts of this book that deal with situations and contain language that might not be suitable for all ages. That aside, I enjoyed Olive Kitteridge and would be interested to if others felt the same way.

The Way West

[Cross-posted at Naked Without Books]

I finally got back to the Pulitzer Project with The Way West, the 1950 fiction winner by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. The novel, which takes place in 1845, features Dick Summers, a mountain-man-turned-farmer who was also a character in the prequel, The Big Sky. Summers reminded me a great deal of Woodrow Call from Lonesome Dove, except a little more gregarious. Strong and silent, Summers is the type of character we've come to demand in a novel about the west.

Summers is asked to lead a wagon train from Missouri (near Independence) to Oregon. His wife has just died of fever and he misses his mountain days, so he agrees. The hardships of the pioneers and their conflicts with one another are detailed, as is the vast country through which they travel.

The captain of the wagon train is actually a guy named Tadlock, who is full of self-importance and one putrid idea (shooting all the dogs on the wagon train, wanting to carry on business as usual instead of tending to a dying man) after another. Not too far down the trail, realization dawns on the other pioneers that Tadlock is ill-equipped to lead and Lije Evans, a likable giant of a man is elected to take over and grows in confidence about his leadership ability as he ably handles several life-and-death situations. He and Dick Summers also have a fine bromance.

I was surprised and delighted with Guthrie's flash of sly humor in the chapter where the all-male council of the wagon train gets together and debates whether it's right to ask the womenfolk to cook with buffalo and cow chips. It's a no-brainer because they're crossing the Great Plains and wood as a fuel source is in scant supply but there's still delicacy and formality amongst these rough and travel-weary pioneers. When one of the council, a man named McBee (who is the forerunner of what would one day be "trailer trash") dares to refer to the substance in question as "shit", the others recoil from him like characters in a Jane Austen novel.

Sometimes Guthrie's prose gets a little purply as he gets caught up in describing the scenery on the way to Oregon, but one can hardly blame him since the pioneers are seeing views they'd never seen before. Another tiny complaint that I have is that some of the characters are briefly introduced and followed then only seen again rarely, in passing. However, there are two sharply drawn minor characters. One is Curtis Mack, a philanderer who seduces then abandons the teenaged Mercy McBee. Mack is a spineless, gutless bastard but he knows he's loathsome and struggles mightily with his shame and guilt. The other is Judith Fairman, whose misery from being pregnant and on the trail increases tenfold to include grief and remorse when her understandably overprotective behavior contributes to her small son's fatal accident. By the way, the son's name is Tod, which is the German word for death. Coincidence or Guthrie serving up some grim humor?

My favorite thing about The Way West is the sun-baked (western version of 'hard-boiled') dialogue. Here's the taciturn Dick Summers talking about getting the wagon train across the treacherous Snake River: "It ain't easy, but it ain't beyond doing. We'll get it done."

The ending of the novel was the prose equivalent of the ending of one of those 1950s Cinemascope westerns with a big rousing triumphant narration of Lije Evans' thoughts as he gets his first gander at Oregon. One can almost hear the orchestra music swelling, blaring out Aaron Copeland and see the huge yellow leathery-looking letters of the end credits rolling. It came off a little forced.

I was expecting to like The Way West more than I did, but in retrospect, it might have been better to read The Big Sky and The Way West together as if the two books were one big story. I'm almost sure that Guthrie won the Pulitzer on the strength of both novels combined.

The Way West was made into a movie in 1967 with Robert Mitchum as Summers, Kirk Douglas as Tadlock, Richard Widmark as Lije Evans and a very young Sally Field (pre-Flying Nun) as Mercy McBee and was directed by Andrew V. MacLaglen who directed Shenandoah (1965) which is one of my all time-favorites. Although The Way West received rather tepid reviews, I'm intrigued by that casting and would like very much to see it for myself.

Lamb in His Bosom - Winner, 1934

Lamb in His Bosom
By: Caroline Miller
Harper & Brothers, 1933

In her book, Lamb in His Bosom, Caroline Miller portrays the lives of an extended family living in backwoods Georgia in the years leading up to and during the Civil War. It follows each member of the family through the years, focusing especially on the daughter, Cean Smith (nee Carver) who is recently married at the beginning of the book. Miller provides a beautiful description of the trials and joys of life and dependence on God in the rural South and I found myself truly drawn into the lives of these characters.

What truly interested me most about this book was the fact that I had also recently finished Gone With the Wind (Pulitzer winner, 1937). Both stories took place in Georgia in overlapping time periods but from opposite viewpoints. I believe that if Scarlett O'Hara lived near the Smiths and Carvers she would have dismissed them - using her term "white trash" - but these families were so much more. We see that, while they don't own plantations or slaves, they work hard and make a good living - even affording small luxuries at times. They know no other way of life and, so, have no other expectations than what comes. It was fascinating to compare the two stories of different classes of Georgians from the same period.

My favorite things to read about, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, are the ways that people live their lives everyday. Lamb in His Bosom provided me with a vivid picture of rural life unlike any I had read before. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all!

The image above is the first edition cover art published by Harper & Brothers.

House Made of Dawn - 1969

House Made of Dawn
By: N. Scott Momaday
Harper & Row, 1968

N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn provides an interesting look into the struggles Native Americans who come from reservations to find identity. He follows the life of a young man named Abel who has returned to his reservation in New Mexico after fighting in World War II. He has been deeply affected by the war and struggles to hold a job and maintain relationships. Abel moves to California to try to find himself but eventually realizes that he will only find himself back home on the reservation.

Momaday based his story on his life experiences as a Native American and on the real experiences of other Native Americans. I found the book a bit difficult to follow and was not surprised to discover after reading that it was originally intended to be a collection of poems. There were times that the story felt a bit disjointed for me. I do think that he provides an interesting perspective on real issues for the Native American community and would be interested to hear how Native Americans read it today.

Bybee's Results for 2009 and Plans for 2010

I threw myself into a frenzy of hunting and gathering Pulitzer fiction when I was back in the USA during February and July that I'm a little surprised that I only read 3 Pulitzers last year!

They were:

• Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry


• The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder


• Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout

For some reason, The Bridge of San Luis Rey caught on like crazy among my coworkers. I was surprised but pleased that my copy has been read and enjoyed by several readers.

During 2010, I really want to make some headway on the list. I'm more than halfway through, so this is the time for a little push. I'm eager to read The Way West by A.B. Guthrie, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, and American Pastoral by Philip Roth.

Although I am never NEVER correct, I'd like to go ahead and try to predict the 2010 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: The Help by Kathryn Stockett or American Rust by Philipp Meyer.

Laura's 2010 Goals & Progress

I've been working on this perpetual challenge since 2007.  In 2009, my goals was to read 6 Pulitzer winners, and I achieved that goal.  I've now read more than 25 of the 80+ winners, and I've decided I'm not really trying to complete the list; however, there is some good literature to be found here!  My 2010 goal is to read another 6, including the 2010 winner.

Pulitzer Prize Winners Read in 2010 (will post as completed)
2005 - Gilead (Robinson) - review
2010 - Tinkers (Harding) - review


A complete set of my Pulitzer Prize winner reviews can be found here.

J.C.'s Progress - Updated

Read and/or Reviewed:

• 1937 - Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• 1961 - To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• 1995 - The Stone Diaires by Carol Shields
• 1992 - A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
• 2000 - Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• 2003 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• 2006 - March by Geraldine Brooks

To Be Read (currently on my shelf):

• 1921 - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• 1923 - One Of Ours by Willa Cather
• 1928 - The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
• 1932 - The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• 1940 - The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• 1953 - The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• 1973 - The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
• 1976 - Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
• 1981 - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• 1983 - The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• 1985 - Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
• 1986 - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• 1988 - Beloved by Toni Morrison
• 1991 - Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
• 1994 - The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
• 1996 - Independence Day by Richard Ford
• 1998 - American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• 1999 - The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• 2001 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
• 2002 - Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• 2004 - The Known World by Edward Jones
• 2007 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• 2008 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Laura's Review - Angle of Repose

Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner
569 pages

What interests me in all these papers is not Susan Burling Ward the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West they spend their lives in. What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them. That's where the interest is. That's where the meaning will be if I find any. (p. 211)


Lyman Ward is writing a family history. More specifically, it's the story of a marriage between his grandmother (Susan Burling Ward) and grandfather (Oliver Ward) who lived in the American West in the late 1800s. Day after day, Lyman pores over family records, news clippings, and letters, and records his thoughts on cassette tapes. Lyman lives alone, is out of touch with his family, and severely disabled due to a bone disease. He gets around in a wheelchair, and uses only a few rooms of his house. Every evening a neighbor woman stops in to check on Lyman and give him his bath, and they have a nightcap together. The story of Susan and Oliver Ward begins around 1870, when Susan was a budding artist in New York. She moves in artsy social circles, and spends nearly every minute with a very dear friend, Augusta. When Augusta decides to marry Susan sees their relationship beginning to change, and she sets her sights on Oliver, a mining engineer. While they agree to marry, the union is put off for several years while Oliver establishes his career and readies a home for himself and Susan.


When frontier historians theorize about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut-off who settled the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother. So much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization: what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. (p. 277)
In moving west, Susan sacrificed all she knew and held dear. Accustomed to moving in cultured, literate circles, she initially threw herself into mining camp life with gusto. But she brought her art supplies with her, and continued to draw. Augusta's husband Thomas, now a successful magazine editor, commissioned several pieces and relied on Susan for her interesting portraits of life in the far-off west. Susan also enjoyed evenings by the fire with two of Oliver's colleagues, Frank Sargent and Ian Price. In them she found others who loved literature and stimulating conversation; it fed her soul.


I know that Grandfather was trying to do, by personal initiative and with the financial resources of a small and struggling corporation, what only the immense power of the federal government ultimately proved able to do. That does not mean he was foolish or mistaken. He was premature. His clock was set on pioneer time. He met trains that had not yet arrived, he waited on platforms that hadn't yet been built, beside tracks that might never be laid .... Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality. (p. 382)
Oliver was a successful engineer, rewarded for his hard work through promotions and special projects. He was a bit of a dreamer, envisioning possibilities and developing new materials and methods in his own time. He was usually a bit ahead of the curve, with ideas not quite ready for prime time. And while money was often tight, Oliver refused to allow Susan's earnings to be used to support the family. Oliver and Susan had a family, and moved several times for Oliver's work. Their son Ollie (Lyman's father) was often sent to stay with relatives in New York, because the mining camps were deemed unsuitable.


Through his research, Lyman carefully pieces together the story of Oliver and Susan's marriage, reconstructing the series of events which brought their relationship to the "angle of repose" (the angle at which soil settles after being dumped). Susan loved Oliver and had faith in his abilities, but was often disappointed with the actual results. She wanted so badly for her children to grow up refined and "Eastern," and became increasingly frustrated with their living conditions and the people she encountered day-to-day. Susan and Oliver's fortunes, and their hopes for the future, ebb and flow over the years. As Lyman tells Susan and Oliver's story, he tries to come to terms with his own failed marriage and the rapidly changing world around him.


I absolutely loved this book. The prose captured me instantly, and I became completely wrapped up both in Lyman's California of 1970, and the dusty Victorian mining camps. I identified strongly with Susan: her feelings of isolation, her persistence in keeping her artistic talents fresh, her devotion to her family, her longing for intellectual stimulation. And my heart went out to Lyman, with his own isolation and struggles with a failing body. These characters were so real to me; during the week it took me to read this book, I thought about them all the time. Towards the end, I wanted to prolong the relationship -- instead of rushing to finish, I read the last 50 pages very slowly, setting the book aside to make it last. This will undoubtedly make my "Top 10" list for the year. ( )

My original review can be found here.

Alice Adams -- 1922 Winner

Grounded in outmoded attitudes about class and distractingly highlighted by outmoded attitudes about race, Alice Adams has not aged well. In his 1922 Pulitzer winner, Booth Tarkington presents a heroine striving to climb the short social ladder of her Midwestern city using only her charms and well-rehearsed mannerisms.

Watching Alice struggle is painful. She has self-awareness sufficient to know she is doing things wrong, but lacks the tools to do them right. And it never seems that the game is worth the candle.

Finally, after watching Alice dither for most of the book, circumstances force her to face reality and make some difficult but intelligent decisions. The book ends on a gloriously hopeful note, which is the most redeeming feature of the story.


Also posted on Rose City Reader.

All the King's Men - Winner, 1947

Thanks to the modern miracle of books on CD that can be checked out through my local library, I was able to listen to All the King's Men while working. Warren's book, not to be confused with Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's 1974 investigation into Watergate - All the President's Men, is the story of the political rise and fall of the fictional governor Willie Stark, loosely based on Huey Long, former governor and U.S. Senator from Louisiana.

Warren creates an interesting story that definitely brought to mind images of the rampant political corruption in Louisiana in the first half of the 1900s (and arguably even later) that I learned about in history class. He also show, I believe, his incredible literary skills by simply keeping his story straight. Warren makes extensive use of the "flashback" literary tool to the point that the reader tends to lose all sense of past and present. While I'm sure this is effective when reading the actual book, it caused me some problems as I listened. I often had trouble remembering where we were in time, especially after pausing to go home for the night.

For this reason I definitely recommend reading the actual printed book. Something else that helped me to follow along generally was the fact that I had watched the Academy award-winning movie adaptation recently. While the movie leaves out multiple story lines and deviates from the plot of the book, seeing the movie helped me to envision what was going on in the book and anticipate the time-jumping. Warren did claim that he did not intend for this book to be a political story, but I feel that it and the movie are both important commentaries on how power can corrupt. If you have a chance, read the book and/or watch the movie.

The image above is Huey P. Long.