short pieces: Walker, Tolkein, Stegner and more

Posted on January 25, 2016 by pagesofjulia

Ah, the irony: I said just the other day that I was done with Faulkner, and yet here we are. In a continuation of going through those pages that have been piling up, I’ve read a few essays and short stories – including one by Faulkner.

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner: This may be the format for him & me, because I found him perfectly comprehensible and amusing in this short form. It seamlessly evokes a small Southern town with its prejudices and whisperings and feelings of rectitude; it has atmosphere. It also has an engrossing, entertaining, and fully-formed story in it. And I think this is a mark of the master of the short story: that it can feel complete. Those less adept at it leave us feeling like we missed out on something. Not so here. I won’t say any more about the story itself, except that yes, Faulkner can be enjoyable; and if you’ve balked before, as I have firmly balked, you might consider giving this one a try. If you hate it, it’s only six pages long.

An interview with Terry Tempest Williams from YES! magazine: “Survival Becomes a Spiritual Practice.” I still love Terry Tempest Williams. She is wise, even when she can be kind of gauzy and dreamy, as here. I like that this interview addresses two “places” that “we” are in just now: a state of the world, as well as her own geographical placement, moving back and forth between Vermont (where she teaches part of the year at Dartmouth) and her home in the Utah desert.

“The Sense of Place” by Wallace Stegner: If I ever get my hands on an audio-cassette player, I have a whole collection of “sense of place” essays by Stegner, read aloud by the man himself, and I cannot wait to hear them. Send me a tape player, somebody.

This essay rounds out that inaccessible collection, as I understand it. Stegner describes us as being defined by place as well as defining place. He presents a possibly controversial idea, that

at least to human perception, a pace is not a place until people have been born in it, have grown up in it, lived in it, known it, died in it – have both experienced and shaped it, as individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities, over more than one generation.

A few lines earlier:

The deep ecologists warn us not to be anthropocentric, but I know no way to look at the world, settled or wild, except through my own human eyes.

I like this honesty, because I acknowledge and respect the caution not to be anthropocentric; but Stegner makes a true point that we can only know the one perspective, really. (I guess I would counter that being less anthropocentric should simply involve acknowledging that there are other perspectives. I think Stegner gets that, though.) He gives equal airtime to those who have, perhaps, grown up nowhere, too.

If the rest of this essay collection continues on this path – of exploring what we mean to our places and vice versa, how we define one another – I need to hurry up and find that tape recorder.

“Leaf by Niggle” by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (because that is how his name is spelled out at this link. Funny, I never knew what J.R.R. stood for, I don’t guess). What an enchanting story! Niggle is a “little man… who had a long journey to make.” He doesn’t want to take his trip, but he knows he has to. He’d rather finishing this painting first: a painting of trees and countryside. He wants it to be perfect. But there are other pulls on his time, and he ends up being forced to go on his journey without perfecting his work. In fact, he’s so rushed he does not even pack a bag. I won’t tell you the rest…

I wondered throughout if this was a big beautiful allegory for art, for the making of art – Tolkien’s own writing, or any of ours. There are some lovely images and moments:

He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees.

And,

There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture. Soon the canvas became so large that he had to get a ladder…

Can’t you just see Middle Earth developing, demanding that Tolkien attend to it, in the same way?

“My picture!” exclaimed Niggle.

“I dare say it is,” said the Inspector. “But houses come first. That is the law.”

Ah, and there’s the rub.

This story can be said to comment on religion, the value of art, the question of what we owe our neighbors; it indicates some of Orwell’s 1984; there is a great deal in this short story (nine pages). Strange and fanciful and lovely, like all of Tolkien’s work.

“My Father’s Country is the Poor” by Alice Walker, 1977, The New York Times. In a short two and a half pages, Alice Walker paints beautiful, heartbreaking pictures: of her father and her own life, of a visit to Cuba, of the difficulties of race, culture, class, and their inextricability. She tells us “what poverty engenders… what injustice means.” Only Alice Walker, and even in 1977, so much that we should attend to. I don’t want to comment too much on this; better that you go read her words, which are few and flawless.

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The Treacherous Net by Helene Tursten

Posted on January 21, 2016 by pagesofjulia

Detective Inspector Huss works to protect a Swedish city beset by multiple violent crimes.

treacherous net

The Treacherous Net is the eighth book in Helene Tursten’s series starring Detective Inspector Irene Huss, who continues to be challenged by upheaval in her workplace and her personal life.

In the city of Göteborg, Sweden, Huss is frustrated with the new female boss of her Violent Crimes Unit, who uses her sex appeal to manage the men in her department; she has no use for Huss, the only other woman. Huss has lost her longtime partner, now the boss’s deputy, and the unit is short-staffed and overextended by an unusually high crime rate. Gang-related murders are up, a mummified corpse has been found bricked into a chimney during demolition of a burned-out building, and two teenaged girls have been raped and murdered. One was from an affluent family who promptly reported her missing; the other had scarcely been missed. Meanwhile, Huss worries over her supportive but stressed and overworked husband, her aging mother and her young adult daughters, now out on their own. A new addition to her work team will ease some of the load–and present new challenges.

Huss is a tough, committed investigator and a loving family woman, and her shifting alliances present a twist on the standard police drama. Several of the actors involved with the crimes in question are well-developed characters as well. But The Treacherous Net is most accomplished in its plot, with several threads exploring history, long-standing social stigmas and the power of the Internet. This fast-paced, gritty thriller offers both a dark story and a striking hero.

This review originally ran in the January 5, 2016 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 6 cups of coffee.

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poetry: Dickinson, Frost, Coleridge and more

Posted on January 19, 2016 by pagesofjulia

The papers have been piling up on my desk. Once upon a time, while working as a librarian, I had a volunteer who helped me out one full day per week, who was herself a retired librarian. I was at the start of my career. She said once that you can always tell a busy and productive librarian by all the piles on her desk. (My mother points out that this is not necessarily a sign of productivity, but I like Anne’s thought better.) Well, I have piles. Hopefully this wisdom applies to writers, too.

I often pick up tips or follow links to short pieces of writing. For whatever reason, I am much more eager to pick up a whole book than I am to read an essay or short article; must be a mental block. When I come across short things that need reading, I often print them out and stack them up. After carrying this stack of papers cross-country on at least two trips now, I have finally gotten around to some reading. Today’s theme is poetry. And you may know that I am a perfect amateur when it comes to reading poetry, so these are the layperson’s interpretations.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (text of 1834), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: this was by far the longest poem of the stack, but it was a pure pleasure. I can remember my mother reciting the lines, “water water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink… nor any drop to drink” from way back, but I’d never read the whole thing. I love the rhythm, the rhyme, and the sound: I found myself mouthing the words, repeating lines and stanzas, tapping out the beat; the pure language and music of it is astounding art. I enjoyed some of the usages that are no longer modern, and have some questions for Mom (who is, among other things, a linguist) about historic pronunciation. Beyond all of these features, there is a story, that I found charming as well – particularly the concept, that this man must tell his story, that it is something like a bodily need. Naturally, for those of us that love stories, that is appealing. As I often feel when I encounter poetry, I wish I had an expert to help me delve into its depths; but I found The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to be more accessible than most. It has musicality and storytelling, and was easy to follow. Clear win all around. I can’t wait to read it aloud. Will Husband tolerate it?

Next, two Robert Frost poems: “The Oven Bird” and “Mending Wall.” I am sure I pulled these two titles from something I read recently, but I didn’t make note of the reference; why?? I’m afraid Frost lost me. For one thing, I kept looking for rhythm and rhyme, which Coleridge did so beautifully, and what I found here was no rhyme, and any rhythm was scarcely or not at all discernable to my untrained mind. The subjects were a little obscure to me as well. Ah me. I need the seminar course.

And then a batch of poems I pulled from someplace, some months ago, with the bizarre idea that I wanted to try memorizing poetry. (This may go nowhere.) They are therefore, mostly, short. I’m afraid I have lost my original source for the list. Nevertheless, here they are.

“Risk,” by Anaïs Nin: eight lines, clever, thoughtful and wise, unrhyming but perfectly clear to me: lovely.

“Nothing Gold Can Stay,” by Robert Frost: nice, short, clear Frost for a change. Like many in my generation, perhaps, I first met this poem in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. (I haven’t seen the movie; does Ponyboy recite the poem like in the book?) I seem to still have it memorized from that childhood reading. It made an impression; and it rhymes. Maybe I’m simpleminded, but it’s easier when it rhymes. I like that it involves nature as well as a plainly stated concept about Life.

“The Fish,” by Elizabeth Bishop: I read this aloud to Husband and he nitpicked the details of the story, because he is a fisherman and perfectly literal-minded. I find it a lovely piece of description and imagery, but I share his concern that she let the fish go without removing those other nasty hooks. No rhyme, but I found it a perfectly readable, comprehensible piece of carefully composed writing.

“Kubla Khan,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: I recognized the language, the lilt and sound immediately, and felt glad. The story here is less clear to me, but I like the sounds. This is where I definitely need an expert to walk me through.

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” by Dylan Thomas: unlike Coleridge, whose beat varies throughout, this one has a single, strident, regular rhythm. It is a strong poem, and with strong subject matter. I again wanted illumination of the finer points, but have no trouble understanding on some level what he is getting at, and the tone and pace of it is powerfully captivating. I would certainly be glad to have this one handy in my head to recite at will.

“Hope,” by Emily Dickinson: it’s been a long time since I’ve read Dickinson (high school English with Mrs. Smith; I still own a big fat volume of it), but I suspect not all of her words are so clear as these, and I feel sure not all are this hopeful. I love love love the image, and every line of this short, charming poem is as good as every other.

“Richard Cory,” by Edward Arlington Robinson: am I the only one who thought of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby? Sort of as a counterpoint. Powerful images, a strong and regular beat (although not so drumlike and insistent as Thomas), and a clear and striking finish. Not my favorite here – perhaps because its ending is so disturbing, as it is meant to be – but very good.

“No Man is an Island,” by John Donne: I have always been captivated by this poem, because its concept is so big and calls for contemplation. There is the added attraction of its famous penultimate line, which as we know as been recycled as the title of one of the finest novels I know. Free verse again, but somehow still with a rhythm, a compelling set of sounds that propel it to its finish.

“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost: I am aware of some question as to Frost’s point in this one, and again wish I had a friend to discuss. Pleasant images, certainly, that I would sit comfortably with for an afternoon. Clearer than those Frosts, above. But somehow not my favorite.

This has been an enjoyable and thought-provoking exercise; I should do it more often. As to memorization, my busy schedule says HA!, but I would love to learn a few of these by heart: “No Man Is an Island”; “Hope”; “Do Not Go Gentle”; “Risk.” And for that matter, I would love to be able to recite “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by heart – but it is fifteen and a half pages long; I may as well aspire to learn the Odyssey (which would be great). I would happily settle for paraphrasing, and a few individual lines here and there. My brain is filling: for years and years I knew the title, author and synopsis of every book I’d ever heard. And then in the last two years or so, I stopped being able to add new ones, except for the very most outstanding of the books I continued to discover; and the less impressive of those from years back began to fade away. Ah, me. Rage, rage against the dying of the light…

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The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

Posted on January 18, 2016 by pagesofjulia

tender barI loved this one.

The Tender Bar is a memoir of one man’s life in a bar. JR was a little boy surrounded by women and girls: he lived with his mother, grandmother, aunt and four girl cousins (and a grandfather, uncle and a boy cousin, but still). He felt drawn to men: in his hindsight telling, he felt the lack of a father, and sought male attentions and teachings, and a model for becoming a man. He found this in his uncle, but even more so, in the hallowed space just 142 steps away, where his uncle tended bar.

This is both a bildungsroman and the story of a bar. By some extension, it is thirdly the story of a place: Manhasset, Long Island, a town historically fixated on drinking and comfortable, sociable places to do it in. We see JR’s childhood – deeply chaotic and troubled in his home life, but bolstered by a beloved and mostly stable (if chaotic in their own way) group of men from the bar. We see him grow up, learn about himself and the world, and experiment with concepts of what he owes to his world and what he’ll do with himself. There is always the bar, at the center of these concepts. Eventually, JR becomes an adult, and the bar ages alongside him. Losses come with age, culminating in the losses of September 11, 2001, which were widespread for a town that commuted into the City and into the World Trade Centers.

I loved many things about this book. I loved the format, which begins with some (presumably research-based) backstory about Manhasset, and with some musings on bars and life. (See my book beginning.) I loved Moehringer’s tone: of immense and frequent humor, often self-deprecating, but also of sober reckoning. He made me laugh out loud until I had to put the book down and hold my belly. I liked the perspective he took, the places where his adult’s wisdom did and did not inform his telling of the child’s experience. I felt drawn to the family, the bar community, and JR’s difficulties with differences in class (when he goes off, of all places, to Yale) and geography (moving at one point to Arizona, where his accent stands out). Despite being totally foreign to me, the Manhasset setting made sense, came alive in this telling. (And not for the first time: Manhasset is the model for the setting of The Great Gatsby.) And of course as much as anything I loved this bar: I loved his love for the bar, and sympathized with it, and I loved the place itself. I recognize and feel affection for a place with playfully rude, unhurried service, a divey atmosphere but with professional cocktail construction. It is a literary place, named Dickens in Moehring’s youth and later changed to Publicans but keeping its nod to culture, song and theatre, and especially words. JR tried for years to write about the place while in the place – the concept that the reader knows would eventually become The Tender Bar.

In this place he meets men (and some women) from all walks of life, professors and police officers and bookies and poets and more. He compares the bar to the Iliad (sure to either win my heart or offend me; here, the former):

In fact the bar and the poem complemented each other, like companion pieces. Each smacked of ageless verities about men.

And he goes on to identify the Ajax, the Hector, the Achilles he finds in Publicans.

I’m sure I give the impression that this is a book seeped in testosterone, and that’s not untrue, but it’s more nuanced than that. For years, JR looked for men to teach him what it meant to be a man. It was something of an obsession for this mostly-fatherless boy (although one wonders how much of that is inserted in hindsight). There are women in the story, too, of course: a girl cousin, a girlfriend, female friends, but centrally his mother, from whom he learns a lot. In the end, he acknowledges that she did a better job of many of the virtues he looked to men for, than did the men he found.

He offers nuggets about writing. As attributed to a priest he meets in the bar car of the train from the City back to Manhasset:

Do you know why God invented writers? Because He loves a good story. And He doesn’t give a damn about words. Words are the curtain we’ve hung between Him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don’t strain for the perfect sentence. There’s no such thing. Writing is guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the reader’s as much as yours. Think about that the next time you curl a piece of paper into your typewriter.

I could spend all day on this quotation alone, some of which I’d take issue with – I think words are very important, and I think the perfect sentence is to be sought – but there’s a lot to ponder and a lot of wisdom there.

I feel like I’ve gotten to know JR Moehringer by reading his story, and I like him. I acknowledge his flaws but would be his friend. That’s a fine outcome for a memoir, I think. This was an excellent book, in its stories, its characters, its format, the details of its writing, and its emotional tone. It’s a little like The Liars’ Club in its best parts: funny, self-deprecating, sad, beautiful, brave, honorable, ironic. I raise my glass.

Rating: 9 pet mice.

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The Narrow Door by Paul Lisicky

Posted on January 14, 2016 by pagesofjulia

The Narrow Door is literary, smart and poignant, an extended eulogy for a friend and a meditation on friendship.

narrow door

The Narrow Door is a striking memoir of love and loss by Paul Lisicky (Lawnboy; The Burning House). At its center are the life and death of Denise, Paul’s longtime best friend; in parallel, Paul and his husband slowly pull apart and finally break up. The ups and downs of these two relationships define the story Lisicky tells, but they also give him space to muse on larger questions: the craft of writing, competition among writers, the meaning of love and events in the larger world.

Paul met Denise in the early 1980s, when they were both teaching assistants at Rutgers. They became fast friends, talking on the phone for hours, sharing the pain and joy of writing. Denise becomes a published novelist first, but Paul’s later success threatens her. A tender passage about “Vincent” and Gauguin, about the painters’ competitive feelings and their wrecked friendship, helps Paul deal with his struggle with instincts leaning both toward and away from competition with Denise. This is only one example of the wide range of Lisicky’s subject: the Deepwater oil spill and the Haitian earthquake likewise influence his reactions to Denise’s cancer diagnosis and other immediate concerns. Paul and Denise are Joni Mitchell fans, and their story is guided by her music. When a hotel in Atlantic City is demolished, Lisicky writes, “It comes down as a person would…. I take it personally.” These disparate threads are tied together expertly, with tenderness, in careful prose.

Paul’s husband, identified simply as M, is a successful poet and has his own, weaker friendship with Denise. He supports Paul when she dies, but soon after, the couple begin their drift apart. The Narrow Door employs a disordered chronology, in sections headed by year: 1983, when Denise and Paul’s friendship is budding; 2008, when she dies; 2010, when Paul and M are at their rockiest; and times in between, as these relationships grow, change, climb and descend. When he fights with Denise, Lisicky considers losing a friend, as opposed to breaking up with a lover: “Sure, it might feel like rage, but aren’t rage and love part of the same water?”

This is an artistic work, poetic and layered and carefully structured. The tangled sequence of events emphasizes the ever-changing nature of relationships and emotional reactions. Lisicky’s tone is sometimes elegiac, sometimes gently humorous, and consistently introspective, questioning. The Narrow Door is not a long book; nonetheless, it requests the reader’s measured consideration of language, pitch, philosophy and emotion. This portrait of a friend in all her complexities is lyrical, intellectual and occasionally challenging. In an austere mood, Lisicky avoids the idea of comfort for its own sake but asks, “Couldn’t there be some rigor to comfort?” The Narrow Door answers with both, in a compelling package.

This review originally ran in the January 4, 2016 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 cups of coffee.

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Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries by Kim MacQuarrie

Posted on January 13, 2016 by pagesofjulia

This mesmerizing history of the Andes Mountains smoothly brings colorful characters and outrageous stories to general readers.

andes

Kim MacQuarrie (Last Days of the Incas) has long been fascinated by the vast region defined by the Andes Mountains. Having traveled and studied the length of these mountains, 4,500 miles of South America, he shares their stories in Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries.

Protagonists range over centuries and national borders, and include Pablo Escobar, the modern Colombian drug lord; Charles Darwin as an amateur naturalist in Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands; the 1980s Shining Path guerrilla movement in Peru; a teenaged girl sacrificed by the Incas in the 1400s; Che Guevara, making his final stand in Bolivia; and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, whose lives likewise end in Bolivia. MacQuarrie explores cultural conflicts with sensitivity, as in examining Hiram Bingham, the “discoverer” of the Machu Picchu ruins in Peru, who conveniently ignored earlier local knowledge of the site. Finally, MacQuarrie introduces the Yámana people of the southernmost points of Chile and Argentina, and meets with the last speaker of the Yámana language.

Life and Death in the Andes is captivating, its fascinating tales told with enthusiasm as well as careful research when dealing with relatively straightforward facts or with the story of “Juanita”–a young woman who lived in the 15th century–told as “an imaginative reconstruction based upon historical, ethnographic, forensic, and archaeological evidence.” This engaging history of dramatic stories and arresting characters is entertaining as well as informative, and its readability serves to recommend it widely.

This review originally ran in the December 22, 2015 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 8 coca leaves.

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The Red Storm by Grant Bywaters

Posted on January 12, 2016 by pagesofjulia

The case of a disgruntled P.I. with mysterious enemies is set in atmospheric 1930s New Orleans.

red storm

Grant Bywaters employs his expertise as a licensed private investigator in his first novel, The Red Storm. William Fletcher was a 1920s black prizefighter whose ambitions for the heavyweight title were frustrated by the prejudices of his day. After the end of his boxing career, he becomes a P.I. in New Orleans, a city Fletcher credits with a “more lax view on segregation.” He struggles to make a living, though, so when a contact from his old life shows up more than 15 years later requesting help, Fletcher reluctantly agrees to investigate, even though Bill Storm is a wanted murderer. Storm wants to find his estranged daughter. But as soon as Fletcher contacts her, violence breaks out around both Fletcher and Zella Storm. What, exactly, has Storm gotten him into?

Fletcher is a loner, with racial tensions adding to the distinctive anti-authority stance his profession tends to take. Zella is a peppery character, with an ambitious career singing in French Quarter establishments that would rather she just take her clothes off. Bywaters evokes a recognizable New Orleans and surrounding swamps, and the police are hard beset by organized crime, both local and inbound from New York City. Fletcher may be just the man to help out, if he can keep himself and Zella alive. The Red Storm‘s plot is solid, but it is the setting in both time and place that distinguish this classically styled noir P.I. story, which Bywaters flavors with period slang as liberally as a Creole cook spices food.

This review originally ran in the December 22, 2015 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 6 songs.

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The Winter Girl by Matt Marinovich

Posted on January 11, 2016 by pagesofjulia

At a borrowed home in the Hamptons, a couple pulling away from one another are drawn toward the house next door–and its secrets.

winter girl

Matt Marinovich’s The Winter Girl is a brief, chilling story of boredom’s path to crime and secrets uncovered.

Scott and Elise have decamped from New York City to the Hamptons, where they are staying at Elise’s father Victor’s house in unaccustomed splendor while he dies in the hospital of cancer. Their lives have been put on hold as Elise spends her days visiting with Victor and Scott mopes around the house, drinking Victor’s liquor cabinet dry. His career as a photographer has fallen off, although he still takes his camera out to the lake some days. His marriage to Elise is failing, for reasons that are more a natural drift than explicitly detailed. As Scott tells it, “Slowly, we’ve stolen the best parts of each other, carted ourselves away.” It is winter; the backdrop to Scott’s malaise is stark.

In his boredom, Scott starts watching the house next door, which clearly has been emptied for the winter. Every night he watches the light switch off on its timer at 11 p.m. He grows a little obsessed, so the next move is clear: while Elise is at the hospital one day, he breaks in, just to have a look around. “I felt like a suburban astronaut, exploring an abandoned home in which the crew had gone missing.” This is exciting, thrillingly illicit, and he brings Elise in for the fun, which has the perhaps surprising effect of reviving their passion. It also starts a string of increasingly criminal and disturbing thoughts and actions, and begins to unravel a long-guarded tangle of secrets. Just as tension has begun to build, Victor announces he will return home to die. But he seems to be getting stronger, not weaker. Questions pile up. What is really happening to Victor? And what is in the house next door?

Told in Scott’s first-person perspective, The Winter Girl offers strengths in its unsettling tone and moody, atmospheric setting. The events Scott relates become a little surreal in his off-hand telling; the reader is challenged to buy into his perspective, or stand back and try to see matters in a calmer light. Marinovich (Strange Skies) offers an unnerving and entertaining story. However, as the revelations mount, their pacing feels a bit rushed: the stakes rise steeply enough as to be a little jarring. On the whole, though, the experience is exhilarating, if a little leeway is allowed for accelerating surprises. And the dramatic denouement leaves the reader eager for more.

This review originally ran in the December 22, 2016 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 6 times I felt a little rushed.

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Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation by Robert J. Norrell

Posted on January 6, 2016 by pagesofjulia

History and literary criticism enrich the first biography of Alex Haley, author of Roots and Malcolm X’s Autobiography.

alex haley

Alex Haley wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to him), and Roots, the story of his family from Africa through slavery and the Civil War. Separately, these books had a profound impact on how the United States viewed race relations and its own history. Together, their influence could hardly be overstated, and that is what Robert J. Norrell argues in Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation, the first biography of Haley and a study of his two seminal works and the controversies they fostered.

Norrell covers Haley’s forebears and Tennessee childhood, his three marriages and a writing career growing from the Coast Guard (where ghost-writing personal letters led to public relations assignments) to magazine work, which led to his interviewing Malcolm X for Reader’s Digest and Playboy. The process for Malcolm’s Autobiography (1965) was dynamic, as Haley walked the fine line between Malcolm’s voice and Haley’s more moderate political position, and as Malcolm’s views on race relations evolved. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Roots (1976) was even harder won, as Haley drew a short book contract out over more than 11 years of research and travel. The effect of the book, and its accompanying television miniseries, was astounding. And yet the rest of his life and work would be shadowed by accusations of copyright infringements and invention in what Haley called a work of nonfiction.

With sensitivity and careful study, Norrell examines Haley’s embattled life and extraordinary achievements. His final conclusion about this “likeable narcissist” is that despite Haley’s imperfections, his influence was prodigious and deserves our respect and continued study today.

This review originally ran in the December 18, 2015 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 7 pieces of gossip.

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Maximum Shelf: Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets

Posted on December 29, 2015 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on December 9, 2015.

breaking wildBreaking Wild is the first adult novel by Diane Les Becquets, author of highly praised young adult novels including Season of Ice and The Stones of Mourning Creek. Carefully crafted characters and measured pacing define this tale of two women’s parallel personal journeys in the wilderness of northwestern Colorado.

Amy Raye Latour is a wife and mother, an accomplished outdoorswoman and a strong personality. She is on a camping and hunting trip with two male friends. The men have brought down elk with rifles, but Amy Raye hunts with a compound bow; she needs to get away from her companions to find the stillness and quiet required to get close enough to her prey. So she sneaks away from camp on their last morning, with only a light pack. When she doesn’t show up again that night, her friends call local authorities.

Pru Hathaway lives in the nearby town of Rio Mesa with her teenaged son, Joseph, and her dog, Kona. Pru is an archeological law enforcement ranger with the Bureau of Land Management; Kona is certified for search-and-rescue, including avalanche conditions. The sheriff, Colm McCormac, is a friend; when he gets the call about Amy Raye, he turns to Pru.

The personalities of the two women shape the novel: they are both more complicated than they seem on first meeting, and while they are very different, both have concealed and storied pasts. One of Les Becquets’s triumphs is the tantalizingly paced release of new information: about Pru’s personal history, about Amy Raye’s troubles and the tangled web of her life, any strand of which may be implicated in her disappearance. Similarly meticulous is the build-up to Pru and Amy Raye’s expected meeting. This is the story of a chase: Pru and Kona pursue Amy Raye through the backwoods, tracking her movements through drifting snow and rugged terrain, hoping to find her before she succumbs to a mountain lion or the harsh winter conditions. As one party makes a move, the other makes a corresponding move, and the pressure increases. Breaking Wild is not only a masterpiece of characterization, but a feat of taut anticipation and suspense.

Somewhat relieving this tension are flashback interludes to Pru’s and Amy Raye’s respective histories, and the personal dramas of the present timeline. Pru’s son, Joseph, although not entirely untroubled, is a sweet young man; he wonders if Pru and the sheriff–himself an intriguing minor character–should date. Amy Raye’s marriage is not without its cracks, a situation perhaps symbolized by the description of her hunting in the early pages: her husband prefers to shoot with a camera, and has asked her not to keep guns in the house. Thus she uses the compound bow instead, and it is this choice that causes her to leave camp alone in the first place.

Three sections–entitled “Bear,” “Cougar” and “Deer”–further shape the book; chapters within those sections alternate between Pru’s first-person perspective and a third-person view of Amy Raye’s experiences. This format is telling. The natural landscape of northwestern Colorado is a pivotal feature, the backdrop that sets the stakes for a spectacle of life and death, informing every detail, every decision made. Both Pru and Amy Raye repeatedly note the temperature and humidity level, the wind strength and direction, in judging where, when and if to travel. When Pru first tells Kona to “go find,” on page 36 of more than 300, the reader knows that Amy Raye will not be so easily located. From then on, animal life and nature’s rhythms are increasingly crucial to Amy Raye’s subsistence. Is she hunting, or being hunted? She has gone into the wild seeking something undefined: “In that moment she felt everything–life, death, the tangy sweet smell of pine, the freshness of the rain. It was the immensity of those feelings that drove her mad at times.”

While the niceties of backwoods survival are fully developed, the drama of the natural world is less central to the story than the human dramas. The travels of Amy Raye and Pru give them room to grow, and to ask and answer questions of how to love; what a healthy relationship looks like; the nature of addiction; and the meaning and forms of family and community. Indeed, part of what Amy Raye has gone into the woods to find is a connection to her past; Pru found solace in the outdoors when she suffered a personal tragedy. So the two threads of the story–family and community, natural wilderness–intertwine, just as the lives of two women do.

Les Becquets portrays a credible and compelling cast of characters, especially the two strong women at its center. Breaking Wild is a rare novel in its mastery of both plot and character, with deliberate rhythm, thrilling suspense and a striking backdrop. Its breathless momentum carries through to a dramatic conclusion.

Rating: 7 arrows.

Come back tomorrow for my interview with Les Becquets.

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