Two Wheels by Greg Moody

Posted on October 14, 2015 by pagesofjulia

two wheelsAn unusual treat: I read this book all of my own choosing.

Two Wheels is the first in Greg Moody’s series of murder mysteries framed by the professional road bike racing world. Naturally, it is set in Europe, although the main characters are Americans. Jean-Pierre Colgan is the world’s best, and leader of the accomplished Haven team, sponsored by Haven Pharmaceuticals. He is a cocky and not entirely likeable character, which is a fine thing because he dies in the opening pages when his brand-new, high-tech American toaster explodes. In the first quirky turn, we then see Colgan enter heaven – or something like heaven – where he is greeted by Il Campionissimo, Fausto Coppi. Anquetil, on the other hand, won’t speak to him.

Next we meet the American Will Ross, a washed-up retired racer drinking himself stupid in Belgium, who inexplicably gets hired to replace Colgan on the Haven team. Will is as surprised as anyone, still more so when his ex-wife turns out to be part of the team’s management. With no love lost between them, her position only makes his hiring more confounding.

Cheryl is the team soigneur, also American and regretting the recent end of her own race career. She and Will get off to a rocky start, but she will turn out to be an ally. Tomas Delgado is team mechanic, and an old friend of Will’s: good news. The rest of the Haven squad is understandably unhappy to have Will join them, but he is just starting to get the hang of things again – find his legs, and his lost passion for the sport – when the body count begins to rise. Colgan’s death, of course, was no accident. Somebody seems to have it out for the Haven team, and Will finds himself attempting an awkward impromptu investigation, in the interest of saving his own skin. Oh yes, and there is French detective Godot, who reminds us of Columbo and seems to be imitating that American icon on purposes. There is a thread throughout the story of the tension between American and French culture: television, slang, American football versus professional cycling.

Two Wheels is not quite a cozy, as the murder weapon of choice is plastic explosives and the results are pretty bloody; but it fits into the sub-genre of mysteries defined by their framing elements. The plot of the mystery itself is enjoyable, if not especially remarkable unto itself. Will is a little slow on the uptake as investigator, and a big coincidence revealed late in the book falls a bit short of credible. As a mystery, then, Two Wheels is fine but not unique. The cycling motif is more distinctive, and adequately well done; the pain and love of the sport, the pavé of Paris-Roubaix and the climbs of La Ronde van Vlaanderen are convincing. Moody is at his best when he works with Will’s self-deprecating humor; for lyrical praise of the road I recommend Tim Krabbe’s The Rider instead; but the whole package is perfectly entertaining, often funny, and overall loveable. Obviously, Two Wheels will be most appreciated by those who share Moody’s and Will’s love for the sport. I think it could be the start of a promising series.

Rating: 6 kilometers.

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

Posted on October 12, 2015 by pagesofjulia

BreakfastatTiffanysWhere to begin? Breakfast at Tiffany’s is so classic as to seem larger-than-life. As is often the case, though, I’d never seen the movie either (that’s up next), so at least I didn’t have any of those preconceptions working against me.

I love this beginning, because it speaks to me:

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.

The narrator is awfully like Truman Capote himself, and looks back upon a time when he was living in a brownstone apartment building in New York City. The bartender from around the corner, who was a friend or at least a regular acquaintance at that time, has asked him to visit. It’s about Holly Golightly, who was the narrator’s neighbor and another bar regular. Joe Bell, the bartender, reports that she has ostensibly been spotted in Africa, of all places. There she is reputed to have slept with a woodcarver:

“I don’t credit that part,” Joe Bell said squeamishly. “I know she had her ways, but I don’t think she’d be up to anything as much as that.”

Which is a rather excellent characterization of Joe Bell, I think.

We then flashback, as the narrator recalls his coming to know Holly, her outrageous comings and goings and relationships, and her departure – fleeing the city while out on bail, headed for Rio. He got a postcard:

Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany’s, but almost.

The narrator concludes that he hopes Holly eventually found somewhere she belonged, “African hut or whatever.”

Of course that summary leaves out everything in between, which is the good stuff. I think I’ll leave that be, and if you’re like me and had never read the story, I hope you will.

Holly is a mysterious character. Her erstwhile Hollywood agent says, “She isn’t a phony because she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes.” She is said to have given different versions of her past, although I think we never see her do so on-screen: she may give no version at all, but I’m not sure we ever hear her own voice offer contradictory stories. That may be one of the layers of artifice to this tale, which is obsessed with artifice. Damn; I already need to go back for a reread.

Holly is almost too fabulously odd and wild, somehow sweet and conniving at once, too fantastical, for my tastes. The narrator, now, he’s somebody I’d like to study. I love that he is off-screen (because we look through his eyes, we never see him) but also the center of everything: we see through his eyes, see what he sees. He is both undescribed and reveals himself everywhere, like Gatsby‘s Nick Carraway. Is he honest? Is he real? In what artifices is he engaged? And, of course I wonder, to what extent is he Truman Capote? (I read recently that Holly is based “by Truman’s admission” on a few women he knew – stay tuned for my review to come of Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir. It will be worth your wait.)

There’s a lot going on here; I think it’s a good candidate for a close reading. And I’m especially curious now about the movie, because the novella I just read doesn’t lend itself easily to the screen. For one thing there’s that narration question; and I think there’s actually less action, less ramping-conflict-to-denouement than movies like. I read this as a mystery story, in part: which is the real Holly? And I fear a movie would be apt to go ahead and answer that question, where Capote hasn’t. But this is all guesswork. I’ll be looking for the movie next.

Holly and our unnamed narrator are both compelling and memorable characters. I expect I’ll be wondering about them for some time now. Her story is sensational and salacious, and interesting in that regard; but I find the mystery of Holly’s inner truth (if you will) the central gem of this book. It is, of course, decorated by Capote’s language and eye for detail, as in characterization via dialog; for example, Holly goes on amusing and surreal several-page-long monologues which bring her into focus for me. But my favorite line of the book was this one:

Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring; which is how I felt sitting with Holly on the railings of the boathouse porch.

And I think we’ll leave it at that.

Rating: 7 pieces of memorable speech.

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My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South by Rick Bragg

Posted on October 8, 2015 by pagesofjulia

Extraordinary, brief, true stories of the Deep South that are funny, haunting and redolent.

my southern journey

My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South showcases the singular voice, humor and perspective of Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Bragg (All Over but the Shoutin’), in short, entertaining stories. As he introduces it, “this book is a collection of Southern stories, but it is not a litany of pig pickins and frat parties and cutthroat beauty contests.” Rather, these are fervent, funny, heartfelt memories of places and cultures that need remembering.

Bragg shares his experience of the Deep South, from his family home in northern Alabama to Florida, Louisiana and the Alabama coast. Readers quickly become acquainted (or reacquainted) with his large and lively family, as Bragg brings immediacy and intimacy to his setting and cast of characters. His mouthwatering descriptions of the food of his homeland–centered on various forms of pork but with a heavy emphasis on Gulf Coast seafood as well–are flavorful and evocative. He occasionally claims that “I can’t write well enough to tell you how good it was,” a risky writerly trick that Bragg easily pulls off. He considers the red dirt of northeastern Alabama as both physical and symbolic. Bragg’s tone is self-effacing and often hilarious, which belies his ability to approach serious issues, like his treatment of overfishing and the Deepwater oil spill.

In exploring family, a sense of place or home, and the distinctive details of Southern food and culture, Bragg exhibits an exquisitely nuanced, clever voice, partly disguised by a down-home accent. Readers will laugh, and cry, and yearn to head South.

This review originally ran in the September 25, 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: 9 paper bags of cracklin’s.

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Mot by Sarah Einstein

Posted on October 7, 2015 by pagesofjulia

A brief, quietly powerful memoir of the author’s friendship with a homeless, mentally ill veteran.

mot

Sarah Einstein had worked with the homeless for all of her adult life when she met Mot. After being assaulted at work (at a drop-in center for adults with mental illness), Einstein left her job. Her marriage, just a year old, was faltering. In Mot, a gentle veteran who had lived outdoors for many years, she found a mildness that appealed to her. However, Mot also lived with a slough of harpies, dead ancestors, deities and villains in his head.

In her memoir, Mot, Einstein reflects on this relationship, the trips she took from her home in West Virginia to visit Mot in Amarillo and Oklahoma City, and the time she was able to bring him home with her. In a deceptively simple narrative, readers learn about the pantheon that lives in Mot’s head, a mythology Einstein is only sometimes able to follow. She relates the difficulties of her own marriage, and questions herself as she moves away from direct service. She doesn’t claim to have the answers, although in her epilogue she exhorts her readers to find ways to contribute. Mot is not, however, about helping the homeless at its center: it is about one man’s strengths, his kindness and skills (fixing up old cars, pruning apple trees, building things), and his difficulties in separating reality from those he calls the “Big Guys Upstairs.”

In her lovely, unadorned and unassuming storytelling, it becomes clear that Einstein is herself flawed and troubled. But the glimpse into Mot’s individuality and a rare friendship is illuminating and singular.

This review originally ran in the September 25, 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 summer thermostats.

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A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup

Posted on October 6, 2015 by pagesofjulia

A comprehensible survey of poisons and a celebration of the Queen of Crime.

a is for arsenic

Chemist Kathryn Harkup combines her scientific expertise and love of a good mystery in her first book, A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie. B is for belladonna, and C is for cyanide, as Harkup works her way through 14 mysteries and 14 discrete poisons, with meticulous and informed explanations of the science behind each toxin’s effects (an appendix contains chemical structures). Each chapter also details famous real-life cases involving these deadly substances, including those that might have inspired–or been inspired by–Christie’s work, and analyses of how accurately the Queen of Crime represented the science within her stories. Generally the renowned writer does very well: as Harkup explains, Christie worked as a volunteer nurse in World War I and showed such aptitude that she was encouraged to continue her education and training as a pharmacist. By the Second World War, her work as a dispenser left her ample time to pursue her other profession, writing bestselling stories and novels.

Harkup’s writing style is accessible to the lay reader, although she does become technical when discussing poisons’ actions on the body, with full detail at the cellular level. She keeps these explanations short, however, and general readers will be able to follow along. For Christie fans, the review of famous mysteries is great fun, and the few spoilers come with ample warning. A Is for Arsenic is both informative science and a spur to read or reread the most popular mysteries ever written.

This review originally ran in the September 25, 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 grains.

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Maximum Shelf: The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals by Gerardo Ceballos, Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich

Posted on October 1, 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 September 23, 2015.

annihilation of nature
Three academic scientists–Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University and Gerardo Ceballos of National Autonomous University of Mexico–come together in a plea to halt Earth’s sixth mass extinction. The attractive, large-format The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals contains original illustrations by Ding Li Yong and 83 color photographs to accompany the authors’ heartfelt arguments about the value of global and regional biodiversity and the danger of extinction that currently faces so many species.

As stated in the preface, the goals of this project are to share the dire conditions with the general public, and convince that audience of the relationship between the continuing health of these diverse species and human well-being. In pursuit of these objectives, the authors have chosen to highlight mammals and birds specifically, because they are visible, sympathetic and thus likely to appeal to human compassion. The Annihilation of Nature is plainly written, well-organized and filled with arresting images.

Ceballos, Ehrlich and Ehrlich begin by describing the incredible richness of Earth’s diverse forms of life, which they call a “legacy”–humanity’s duty to protect and appreciate. They outline the planet’s previous five waves of mass extinction and their natural causes, making the point that the present sixth event is different in that it is caused by human actions. The current time period is called by many scientists “the Anthropocene,” in which “a huge and growing human population has become the principal force shaping the biosphere (the surface shell of the planet’s land, oceans, and atmosphere, and the life they support).” To illustrate the interrelatedness of human actions with every natural system, basic concepts such as the food chain are reviewed. The bulk of the book is then devoted to four chapters on extinct birds, endangered birds, extinct mammals and endangered ones. A combination of illustrations and photographs brings the reader’s attention to the long-gone dodo and the passenger pigeon, and species in need of conservation like the Philippine monkey-eating eagle and the New Zealand kakapo (a nocturnal flightless bird). Extinct mammals include the baiji–a freshwater dolphin endemic to China, called the “goddess of the Yangtze”–and the Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial predator with several unique physical features including striped patterning and rearward-facing pouches on individuals of both sexes. Mammals in danger today include a variety of large species: whales, big cats (lion, tiger, cheetah), bears, apes, rhinoceros and elephants, joined by the small but scrappy Tasmanian devil.

All life forms in an ecosystem are intricately interconnected. When gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, their impact was profound and widespread: elk populations came under control and trees such as aspen, willow and cottonwood began to recover. The health of the willow helped beavers to rebound and beavers in turn improved riparian conditions and contributed to healthy populations of fish, waterfowl, amphibians and reptiles, as well as regulating stream flow. Songbirds have returned to the park in greater numbers with its new tree growth. Smaller predators have declined in numbers, which in turn increases numbers of small prey and then of mid-level predators like foxes and bald eagles. All these benefits came from the reintroduction of one keystone predator.

Having shared the remarkable and evocative profiles of so many creatures, the authors make their central point in chapter 8, “Why It All Matters.” Here they lay out the many human-caused factors that contribute to species extinction and population extinction, including habitat destruction; chemical pollution and plastic debris; the introduction of non-native species and diseases; legal hunting and illegal poaching for meat or valued body parts such as tusks, horns and organs; and killing because of competition for food sources (the Sumatran orangutan, which vies with farmers for fruit) or because some species are seen as pests (crop-raiding Asian elephants) or predators of livestock (the gray wolf). Finally, climate change is deemed a major cause of ecological upheaval and extinction. If forced to choose a number-one factor, the authors name toxic pollutants, but climate change “may be the most threatening problem ever faced by humanity” and “climate change alone could be sufficient to finish the sixth great extinction now under way.”

Finally, Ceballos, Ehrlich and Ehrlich argue that biodiversity must be valued and protected for many reasons, from the aesthetic and ethical through the services they provide to the world’s ecosystems and to humans: dispersal of seeds, insect and pest control, pollination and the sanitation role of scavengers such as vultures. Keystone species are described as those with an outsized impact on their environment. In an impassioned final chapter, the authors touch on means to conserve threatened species, including the question of direct or personal action versus institutional change. They consider ethical questions, such as whether to allow limited sport hunting of African elephants to help fund their conservation, and end with a message of hope, despite the dire picture painted by most of the book. “If we could just adopt a global policy of humanely and fairly limiting the scale of the human enterprise, gradually reducing the population size of Homo sapiens, curtailing overconsumption by the rich (while increasing needed consumption by the poor), then we might leave some room for the natural systems all humanity depends on.”

The Annihilation of Nature shows a deft hand with the complexities of its subject, as when wind turbines–good for the reduction of fossil fuel use–turn out to threaten insectivorous bats and the endangered California condor, or in discussing the economic inefficiency of allowing a species to die off to the brink of extinction (or even paying subsidies to kill them, as with the black-tailed prairie dog) and then spending millions to conserve the same species. This is a beautifully produced, deeply moving, powerful story that communicates what it intended to, with great emotional impact.

Rating: 7 extant individuals.

Come back on Monday for my interview with Paul Ehrlich.

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Mary McGrory: The First Queen of Journalism by John Norris

Posted on September 28, 2015 by pagesofjulia

A pioneering journalist’s compelling life story, evocatively told.

mary mcgrory

John Norris’s Mary McGrory: The First Queen of Journalism is a well-researched and engaging biography of a fascinating figure, as well as an accessible view of some five decades of U.S. political history.

Mary McGrory had been a book reviewer for the Washington Evening Star for more than a decade when her editor offered her the chance to cover the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Her first political assignment became the beginning of an influential career: she would go on to cover 12 presidential elections, and everything between. Boston Irish Catholic, with a strong impulse to volunteerism and charity, very proper and private in her personal life, Mary happily smoked and drank with the heartiest of her male colleagues. She flirted and made the men carry her bags, but “perhaps more than any other journalist in American history, she pushed her editors (and they were invariably men) to come to terms with the fact that women had something worthwhile to say.” Not an impartial journalist, even as she worked to push Bobby Kennedy into the 1968 presidential race, she practically hired Eugene McCarthy’s campaign manager herself. She never liked Nixon; dated Jack Kennedy before he was married (or president); was propositioned by Lyndon Johnson. Despite such drama, however, her greatest accomplishments were journalistic, as her exhaustive list of awards indicates.

Even with such absorbing material, Norris (The Disaster Gypsies) earns his reader’s respect with careful attention to detail and a precarious but precise balance between his primary, individual subject and the context of U.S. and world history. Mary McGrory is a striking story, meticulously and entertainingly portrayed.

Come back on Wednesday for my interview with John Norris.

This review originally ran in the September 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: 7 Christmas parties.

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South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature by Margaret Eby

Posted on September 25, 2015 by pagesofjulia

A selective survey of Southern literature and its value to the South and the world.

south toward home

In her introduction to South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature, Margaret Eby points out that “there is no popular category known as Northern literature.” The South and its literary products have been admired and maligned; it is a region and a body of work that are considered sometimes inspired and sometimes devoid of culture and intelligence. But for a Southerner, it is simply (or complexly) home. Raised in Alabama, Eby undertakes a tour of the literary sites that speak to her, acknowledging that the authors whose legacies she ponders make a less than comprehensive list.

Eby visits the well-preserved homes of Eudora Welty, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, along with the sadly less appreciated (or appreciative) areas in which Richard Wright and Harry Crews grew up. She contemplates the complicated relationship of Harper Lee with her birthplace; John Kennedy Toole’s mysterious life story; and the recent marks left by Barry Hannah and Larry Brown in Faulkner’s hometown. In making a physical journey, Eby breathes the air of these literary greats, and takes the time to share their histories in coming to tentative conclusions about what their work contributes. She also includes a list of recommended reading. As its title (a reference to Willie Morris’s North Toward Home) suggests, this study pursues a sense of Southern identity through its literature, and along the way helps to elucidate what makes Faulkner’s challenging writing so rewarding and why Toole’s New Orleans lives and breathes. South Toward Home is a thoughtful, well-informed evocation of both South and home.

This review originally ran in the September 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 peacock feathers.

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The Living by Annie Dillard (audio)

Posted on September 24, 2015 by pagesofjulia

the livingMy difficulty and back-and-forth feelings about Annie Dillard continue with this epic story of pioneer families in my place of residence, Bellingham, Washington.

The Living spans more or less the second half of the 19th century, and it expands to fill all those years and all that space. It is a big story, with lots of characters – several families, over generations – and I’m not sure it ever chooses one or several to center around. This is not a book that benefited from my regrettable new habit of taking months to finish an audiobook: I flailed a little in trying to finish, and I confess a feeling of relief now that it’s over.

There were certainly strengths. Dillard is an inspired writer, some of the time, and there were certainly passages I paused to appreciate, and will share with you here, in a little while. The stories were often moving – individual episodes, that is, within the larger saga – and the characters were often compelling, interesting, diverting people I wanted to get to know better – but again, only for a moment, and then we’d zoom out and on to a different character who was less intriguing. These were all small pieces of a whole that, as a whole, failed to capture my attention. There were moments of glittering, evocative, engaging story or character, but then we returned to a larger, sweeping view that repeatedly challenged me to continue to care. Again, this might work better with a quicker reading. It certainly didn’t work for me in the way I experienced the book.

Witness these shining moments of writing, though…

She lay under mats in the bottom of a canoe once, during the Indian troubles, and Rooney told the Haidas she was clams. Lived in five or six different places, including a stockade. She felt her freedom, reared two boys to manhood, busted open this wilderness by the sea, buried the men on their lands. She saw a white horse roll in wild strawberries and stand up red. She took part in the great drama. It had been her privilege to peer into the deepest well-hole of life’s surprise. She felt the fire of god’s wild breath on her face.

Great imagery there, and a strong retrospective view of the gravity of this woman’s life and what she’s seen.

He had long ago concluded that he possessed only one small and finite brain, and he had fixed a habit of determining most carefully with what he would fill it.

A funny and wise moment.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.

And, who among us doesn’t love such a quotation?

But the whole thing might have worked better if presented as a series of vignettes; the parts of it that I loved were relatively few and brief, with a great deal to be slogged through in between. Dillard created some likeable characters, but it’s almost as if she didn’t like them very much, herself. She asked some interesting questions about humankind and the broader sense of what we’re doing here, but she spent so much time setting them up as sort of clinical questions that she forgot to make me care about them, or about the little creatures involved.

I’m sorry to say this one didn’t work for me, especially (by coincidence) as it came up against Stegner’s The Big Rock Candy Mountain, an infinitely better, more compelling story with its own momentum.

This review was short because I’m a little sick of The Living and very glad to be quit of it. I’m sorry. You can find better reviews elsewhere; me, I’m looking forward now, not back.

Rating: 6 deaths.

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The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

Posted on September 23, 2015 by pagesofjulia

big rock candy mountainThe Big Rock Candy Mountain is the story of a family, struggling to make a life in the early days of the twentieth century and bouncing around the American West.

Elsa Norgaard is eighteen years old when she leaves her family’s farm in Minnesota to head west, offended that her father and her best friend plan to wed. She takes the train to her uncle’s grocery in a pioneer town in North Dakota, a journey that makes her feel free but also makes her physically ill. In Hardanger, she meets the charismatic Bo Mason, who runs a blind pig (illegal whiskey joint) and is seemingly talented at everything: baseball, shooting, style. His wild nature and occasional violence frighten her, but she is drawn to his charm and his dreams and promises. They marry, and move.

Bo and Elsa have two sons, Chester (Chet) and Bruce, before we see them next. Already a pattern has been established: Bo, the eternal optimist and occasional romantic, chases his fortune. He pursues chances to get rich quick, to settle his family in the good life they deserve. He believes the developing West offers enormous opportunities for the brave and restless. The title The Big Rock Candy Mountain refers to a hobo folk song of the 1920’s which describes a paradise, where “there’s a lake of stew and of whiskey too” and “the jails are made of tin.” (Stegner refers to the song elsewhere, as in the title of an essay collection, Where the Blue Sings to the Lemonade Springs). One of Bo’s tragic flaws is his stubborn belief in the truth of that paradise, if he could just uproot his family one more time and find it.

He has others. He falters in his sense of responsibility to family, leans perhaps too hard on his constant wife Elsa, and is abusive toward his sons – particularly Bruce, the younger, who is a sensitive boy. A violent event related to Bruce’s toilet training sends Bo away, for years. But Elsa brings her sons back to him when he homesteads in Saskatchewan. Over the years Bo runs a hotel; a cafe; another blind pig; tries farming wheat, bootlegs whiskey on the back roads, and opens a casino. He and his family live in small towns in the Dakotas and Washington, in Canada, for a spell back in Elsa’s hometown of Indian Falls, Minnesota, and later in Salt Lake City, Reno, Tahoe. As an adult, Bruce will reflect,

Since I was born we’ve lived in two nations, ten states, fifty different houses. Sooner or later we’re going to have to take out naturalization papers.

The story is told from all four perspectives – Bo’s, Elsa’s, Chet’s and Bruce’s – at different points, and spans some thirty years. It’s a big story, a saga even, and runs nearly 600 pages. I have been sticking to shorter books than this lately, but I nevertheless found this a relatively quick read, because it has such momentum. Each of these characters is complex and compelling, and the expansive drama of their family life is engrossing, and keeps the pages turning. It references a larger story, of the development of the United States: Prohibition and expansion, cultural evolution.

I read this book in a few days, as I also neared the end of listening to Annie Dillard’s The Living (almost as long, over 400 pages). The latter took me much, much longer, and that review will come up soon; but it made for an interesting parallel. Both cover the frontier days of similar locations (The Living is concentrated on northwest Washington state, which is a small part of the larger setting of Big Rock Candy), and span decades of family life. I shan’t review Dillard here, but I will say that Stegner came out ahead, in terms of sympathetic, engaging characters and story. I found The Living more effortful.

Stegner is a fine storyteller. This novel evokes the mountains and the plains, the droughts and sun and rain and blizzards that the Masons live through, and the cultural challenges; but I think most of all it evokes character, the complicated nature of men and women doing their best, trying and failing and occasionally succeeding at business and relationships. It is an autobiographical novel, I have read, with Bruce as Stegner and Bo as Stegner’s difficult father. Indeed, Bruce’s reflections as a young adult upon his family and the hardship of almost entirely hating his father, the question of where home lies for an itinerant man, family, nation, are some of the best, most eloquent, and memorable parts of the book. The narrative of the Mason family story is an outstanding yarn, a tragedy and a tale of adventure, among other things. I loved the whole thing, but Bruce’s ruminations were my favorite part.

Rating: 8 cases of whiskey.

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