The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare

Posted on July 1, 2014 by pagesofjulia

veronaI had a pleasant reread of this early Shakespeare comedy in preparation for the Houston Shakespeare Festival this summer. Of course you saw my post the other day about what a special copy of the book this is…

The Two Gentlemen of Verona is an earlier and a lesser-known Shakespeare play, but I think it’s still excellent in all the usual ways: clever wordplay, mild bawdiness, romantic wafflings or confusions that may threaten our modern sensibilities just a touch, but overall, with the potential to be wildly entertaining in the right hands. I remember the performance I saw as a youngster being accessible (having read the play beforehand helps, of course).

The two gentlemen are Valentine and Proteus, and they are best friends. Valentine is prepared to leave Verona to seek his fortune in Milan; Proteus stays behind because he is in love with Julia, and determined to win her. Valentine finds his love in Sylvia, daughter to the Duke of Milan; and Proteus’s father is convinced to send his son away, separating him from Julia just as they declare their love for each other. Proteus is sent to join his friend Valentine, which should be a happy reunion; but fickle Proteus falls for his friend’s betrothed, betraying both his friend Valentine and his own love, Julia. Determined to win Sylvia away, Proteus reveals Valentine and Sylvia’s elopement plan. The Duke has Valentine banished; and the action of the play moves to the woods.

In what might be seen as a vague early shadow of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the woods are host to a banished Valentine and his servant Speed – who are taken in by a host of bandits – and who are pursued by a grieving Sylvia and her faithful servant – who are pursued by a love-stricken Proteus, her father the Duke, and the Duke’s intended son-in-law Thurio – who are accompanied by Julia, serving as a page (in male drag of course) to Proteus, thereby in pursuit of her love. If you had trouble following that, all is as it should be.

You might recognize a few lines:

What light is light, if Sylvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Sylvia be not by?
Unless it be to think that she is by,
And feed upon the shadow of perfection.

Or:

It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,
Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

Speed, servant to Valentine, and Launce, servant to Proteus, have their share of buffoonery, great scenes with wordplay and witticisms that are typical of Shakespearean comedy. All ends well (although we sniff at the treatment of certain female characters, and the slurs upon Jews. Time-typical Shakespeare, again); and the play is, indeed, funny.

I look forward to seeing this summer’s live performance.

Rating: 7 gift-dogs.

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The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Posted on June 30, 2014 by pagesofjulia

An eccentrically fun family vacation, with far more style and spunk than your average beach read.

straub

The Vacationers by Emma Straub (Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures) is peopled by charming, funny, expertly portrayed characters who feel very real and yet slightly fantastical.

The Post family is headed from Manhattan to Mallorca for a two-week vacation, ostensibly to celebrate: Franny and Jim are approaching their 35th anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has just graduated from high school. Joining them will be their son, Bobby, with his girlfriend, Carmen, and Franny’s BFF Charles and his husband, Lawrence. However, Jim has recently left his decades-long career at Gallant magazine amidst shame and scandal, and his transgressions at work have followed him home. Sylvia’s big goal of the summer is to lose her virginity before starting college in the fall. Charles and Lawrence’s is to adopt a baby–a plan they haven’t yet shared with the Posts. Bobby and Carmen are on uneven ground; they have a secret to break to his parents, and it doesn’t help that the Posts have never liked Carmen. More secrets and scandals, new and old, will come to light under the Spanish sun.

Straub’s greatest strengths are her endearingly quirky protagonists and a plot with more twists than a European mountain road, but her secondary characters are also cleverly wrought. The Posts’ absent hostess, Gemma, is Charles’s second-best friend; Franny tries not to let that annoy her. Sylvia’s local Spanish tutor, Joan (“pronounced Joe-ahhhn”), is a delectable temptation for both Sylvia and Franny, but it’s a retired tennis pro who really turns Franny’s head. Luckily, a motorcycle-riding pediatrician becomes Jim’s ally in trying to re-win his wife’s heart. Despite the considerable dysfunction of this family, this tale about them has a surprisingly happy ending.

This review originally ran in the May 30, 2014 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 olives.

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A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeline L’Engle (audio)

Posted on June 26, 2014 by pagesofjulia

swiftly tiltingThis is book 3 in a series, following A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door.

In this episode of the Murrys’ lives, Meg is an adult, recently married to Calvin and pregnant. This makes for a change: no one is really a child any more (well, Charles Wallace is 15. But he’s an odd one, isn’t he). However, the voice of the characters is not noticeably more mature. (She uses rather big words! But simple sentences.) On the one hand, this means that L’Engle’s novels remain accessible to the youthful population she intended. On the other, it does feel like children’s or young adult lit. Just a note. I’m still enjoying.

Where A Wrinkle in Time dealt with hard science and Meg’s social awkwardness, and A Wind in the Door emphasized the importance of all the parts of the world, large and small, A Swiftly Tilting Planet expands on that concept of interconnectedness and applies it to international politics and the possibility of nuclear war. An added element of fun and fascination is provided by time travel: Charles Wallace has a unicorn friend named Gaudior this time as his guide, and they travel through time to visit Calvin O’Keefe’s forebears throughout history. The unicorn, and the different historical settings, were excellently done, in my opinion; I was almost sorry when we returned to the present. But not to worry: the Murrys’ present makes up a smallish minority of this book’s focus; we spend most of our time immersed in history, from ancient times through the early New England settlers and the US Civil War.

On Thanksgiving, Calvin’s mother and therefore Meg’s new mother-in-law, Mrs. O’Keefe, is present when the family receives word from the President (Mr. Murry is an important man) that nuclear war is imminent. The normally antisocial Mrs. O’Keefe pipes up to charge Charles Wallace with preventing it, and this is when he meets Gaudior and they travel through the centuries. L’Engle employs the classic time traveler’s hope, to change the present and future by going back and changing some detail of the past. (The butterfly effect is entirely ignored.) During these travels, Charles Wallace has to learn to deemphasize his intellect, not rely on his IQ, but go with the flow. This is an interesting lesson for our boy genius.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet is a departure from the first two books, which concentrated on science (and science starring a young girl!); this one is more social science, you might say, or the nature and effects of relationships (familial and otherwise) and the bonds of society. Readers looking for the science might be disappointed. But I found the fantasy of time travel via flying unicorn, and the chance to meet individual characters in history (a fictional, but realistic, history), very engaging and entertaining.

I missed L’Engle’s narration of this audiobook, as I’d enjoyed the author’s own voice in the first two in this series; but I must say that Jennifer Ehle’s reading was quite similar. (She is a little less gruff.) If we have to change narrators mid-series, at least let them be like enough that I don’t feel jolted; so well done on that count. And Ehle’s narration was fine in itself. I will be listening to the final two books in turn – already have them loaded. I still recommend L’Engle’s work.

Rating: 7 letters.

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The Cormorant by Chuck Wendig

Posted on June 25, 2014 by pagesofjulia

cormorantThis is the third in a series, preceded by Blackbirds and Mockingbird, which I enjoyed.

Miriam Black is back, in disjointed chronology, still battling her demons and the curse of her “gift” of seeing how and when people die. She has moved on from stealing from the dead, and trying to prevent deaths through various means, to the only way she’s found that works: she can prevent deaths only when she kills the killer. She has broken with Lou, good old Lou from books 1 and 2, and has been on something of a mission. When the book opens, she’s being held in a room by two… possible FBI agents, but possibly something else. The split chronology takes us backward in time, explaining how she got there. I’ll use the present tense for this past, as the book does.

Miriam receives an offer: $5000 to tell a guy how he dies. She has tried to sell this talent before, but this is the biggest number she’s seen, and comes just as she’s evicted from a bad living situation; so Miriam buys a cheap car and heads for Florida. She carries three phone numbers with her there: that of the man hiring her, Lou’s, and her mother’s. These are the three folks she knows (so to speak) in Florida.

But when she appears at the man’s house and touches him, the death scene she sees involves her – is a message for her, in fact. A threat from her past resurfaces; and suddenly everyone she’s come in contact with is in danger, and Miriam is set on a path again.

Miriam is still a great character: foul-mouthed and tough, yet vulnerable and even, occasionally, compassionate. I love her personality; and she has another …maybe love interest is the wrong term, but she has another encounter in this book which keeps things interesting. I like the bird theme, too; look out for the powers of the gannet as well as the cormorant here.

Wendig’s unique writing style continues to amuse. He’s almost over-the-top with his odd metaphors:

Those things taste like cough syrup that’s been fermenting in the mouth of a dead goat, but shit, they work.

Eventually, her bladder is like a yippy terrier that wants to go out.

But I like it. Remember you can always get your daily fix (more or less) at his blog, too.

The nice people in Wendig’s books are a nice touch, and a realistic one. You can sense his descriptions approaching a world that is all evil – but he holds back, and I applaud him for it. The evil bits are all the more poignant when we get to see that there are good people in Miriam’s world, too. Sometimes she’s even one of them.

I continue to look out for the next Miriam Black novel, which is to be titled Thunderbird. Still recommended.

Rating: 7 gold watches.

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The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier (audio)

Posted on June 20, 2014 by pagesofjulia

runawayFrom the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring (which I read pre-blog, and loved), another historical novel of women’s lives. I recently tried reading Chevalier’s The Lady and the Unicorn, but I found I couldn’t appreciate it. No such problem with The Last Runaway.

Honor Bright is a small-town British Quaker in 1850, a young woman recently abandoned by her fiance, her future uncertain. Her sister Grace will soon be departing for the New World to marry; Honor decides, somewhat impetuously, to accompany her and find a different life. She can always come back home, right? But the sea voyage – heralded as the shortest and easiest passage possible – nearly kills her, she is so seasick. When she finally sets foot in America, she knows that, no, she can never go home.

On the overland trip to Ohio (by coach – their plan to take riverboats being prevented by Honor’s seasickness), where Grace’s fiance awaits, Grace falls sick and dies. Honor will arrive alone, and ahead of the letter announcing her coming, so that the fiance, Adam, expects one sister but finds another. His brother has likewise died, leaving him now with a widowed sister-in-law as well as this almost-sister-in-law. Honor’s place is decidedly uncertain, and uncomfortable. The new Ohio Quaker community of Faithwell does not look approvingly upon Adam’s strange household. The pressure is on, therefore, for Honor to find herself a husband; but she is without even a friend in her new hometown.

She does have a friend a day trip away, however, in Wellington: Belle Mills, of Mills Millinery, who nursed Honor through an illness and sheltered her, and gave her work. Honor is a gifted seamstress and quilter, and her skills were appreciated in Belle’s shop. Quakers can’t wear colorful or decorative hats, but Honor enjoyed making them for others; and Honor got along with Belle, although the non-Quaker’s coarse speech and whiskey drinking were new to Honor. (Honor’s sewing and quilting are a strong framing element throughout the story: quilts in the English and the new American styles are described, and provide examples of Honor’s homesickness, and her new community’s intolerance of her English traditions. I thought of my mother, the quilter, who I think would appreciate these details.) Also simultaneously fascinating and disturbing is Belle’s brother, Donovan, a slave-hunter; and this is where the conflict of the novel begins.

As a Quaker and as a moral being, Honor is naturally repelled by slavery; but it is easier to abhor the peculiar institution from England, where it is distant and (forgive the phrase) black-and-white. In Ohio, Honor sees black people for almost the first time, and encounters runaway slaves who she is naturally inclined to help; she also sees Donovan working to re-enslave them. When she does marry local dairy farmer Jack Haymaker, Honor finds not a soulmate or even companion; but she does find a nasty mother-in-law and sister-in-law. When they discover that Honor has been offering minor assistance to runaways – food, water, directions to the next stop on the Underground Railroad, in Oberlin – they forbid her to help further.

The issue, then, is between obedience to her new (if unlikeable) family, versus her feelings about slavery. Honor will grow as she has to form new relationships, and not always easy ones: alliances with a black woman in Oberlin named Mrs. Reed, and with the colorful Belle Mills; and she has to find a way to relate to her new husband and in-laws that will work for each of them.

I noticed I was approaching the end of this audiobook and things felt so up in the air I couldn’t believe they’d be wrapped up in time. And indeed, the reader would appreciate a sequel to find out what finally becomes of Honor’s new family; but they are sent on their way in good time, with no loose ends, at least. Honor’s character sees a satisfactory arc: she grows, expands, speaks up for herself, considers different positions and stakes her own. And her new life is indeed established in the end.

I thought the Underground Railroad was ably portrayed, if only simplistically; the runaway slaves have some personality, and Belle Mills is a great hit. The quilting element, as I said, was an added appeal as well. But it’s Honor herself who stars, rightfully. I think Tracy Chevalier still has it here, and would recommend this novel. It’s somewhat lightweight in the issues it addresses, perhaps, but it makes its points, and is more accessible than novels on this subject sometimes are, so it will appeal to the popular reader.

The audio performance by Kate Reading (great name, that!) is fine as well. I liked the different accents she used; they provided real color and personality. I would happily recommend this format.

Rating: 7 tin cups.

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Maximum Shelf: I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

Posted on June 18, 2014 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 May 27, 2014.

I am pilgrimA woman is found dead in a ratty New York City hotel. Despite the outward hallmarks of a “simple” murder–one motivated by rage, sex or money–it quickly becomes clear that this is an intelligent and carefully planned crime. The room is awash in sulfuric acid, and the victim has been stripped of her face, fingerprints and teeth. A powerful antiseptic has been used to destroy all DNA on the scene. Detectives link the crime to a borrowed library book about investigations, written by one of the world’s best professional investigators, a man who doesn’t officially exist. The author of that book happens to be present at the crime scene: he is the unnamed narrator of I Am Pilgrim, an intricately plotted thriller of global proportions, and the debut novel by screenwriter Terry Hayes.

Hayes has made an inspired choice in selecting an unnamed narrator to tell this story–information can be meted out methodically, with all the oblique references and foreshadowing one might expect from a secret agent. We learn from the man who eventually consents to the code name “Pilgrim” that he has a complicated past in many cities and countries around the world, including the small Turkish town of Bodrum, which is improbably linked to the murdered woman in New York City. When detectives learn that the hotel room in question had been occupied since the morning of September 11, 2001, more questions are raised–who checks in to a NYC hotel on that morning?–and international implications begin to be theorized. Pilgrim planned to be on hand at the scene only as a consultant, to assist his friend, NYPD homicide detective Ben Bradley. But perhaps he belongs there after all.

As it turns outs, the nameless murder victim in New York City is the least of Pilgrim’s concerns.

On the other side of the world, years ago, a young boy watched his father’s beheading at the hands of the Saudi Arabian government. That boy has grown up to become a mujahid and go to war in Afghanistan against the Soviets, and has now taken on a false Lebanese identity while hatching a grand plan to take down the “far enemy,” the Western world as embodied by the United States. This unnamed man is nicknamed “the Saracen,” as our narrator is called Pilgrim, and the central plot of I Am Pilgrim is the buildup to their final standoff.

A retired chief of the most secret intelligence agency in the United States, Pilgrim is called in by the President himself after three bodies with various nationalities are found, scorched and disintegrating, in a grave of quicklime in a deserted village in the Afghani desert. The Saracen has been hard at work for decades. No crude airplane hijackings for him: the destruction of the Western world will require brilliance, finesse and absolutely thorough preparation. With his test run in the desert complete, he’s ready for the biggest scheme of all. And as good at his job as Pilgrim is, the Saracen is his match.

The coincidence of Pilgrim’s presence in the N.Y.C. hotel room will ease his transition back to full-time work on a seemingly unrelated assignment, and he reenters the underground world easily enough. Disguised as just another FBI agent, he’s sent to Turkey, ostensibly to investigate the suspicious death of a young American billionaire there. In reality, he’s hunting the Saracen. One of the many successes of I Am Pilgrim is that within 600-plus pages of mysteries within mysteries, a plethora of subplots all link together smoothly. In seeking the Saracen, Pilgrim hopes for no less than to save the world, but he is also concerned with his cover mysteries, including the death of the American billionaire in Turkey–despite local investigators having ruled it accidental, and having tried to close the case–and the murder of the still-anonymous woman in the shabby hotel in New York.

Within this elaborately plotted thriller of international espionage, Hayes inserts a charmingly detailed past and personal story for Pilgrim and his supporting characters, including Detective Ben Bradley and the U.S. director of national intelligence, who is nicknamed the Whisperer. (Hayes has a fondness for aliases.) Pilgrim’s childhood, Bradley’s heroism and modesty, and the Whisperer’s rise through the ranks of secret government agencies are realistic and enthralling. I Am Pilgrim not only circumnavigates the globe but also reveals an appreciation for and study of fine art, and references world history in building its background. In these ways, whimsy and realism are advanced in parallel by the rich context, strong characters and framing elements Hayes employs.

This debut novel is lengthy, but uses every line to full effect; the page count is necessary to pursue the involved and involving story Hayes has planned. Fully wrought characters and an ambitious, but impeccably designed plot are unfurled at a breakneck pace; the reader’s only problem will be finding time to race through I Am Pilgrim in as few sittings as possible.

Rating: 8 doses.

Come back for my interview with Hayes later this week!

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did not finish: Tantric Coconuts by Gregory D. Kincaid

Posted on June 16, 2014 by pagesofjulia

tantricOh dear. I had such high hopes for this one. And with such a great title!

Ted Day is a workaholic small-town Kansas lawyer who gets carsick. Wild Bill Raines, Ted’s grandfather, demanded that Ted finally take a vacation – and then died suddenly, leaving Ted his old beat-up RV. Against his better judgment, Ted resigns himself to a road trip with his elderly terrier, Argo.

Angel Two Sparrow is a spiritual consultant whose father fears she has inherited the “loco gene” of the women in their Lakota family. She has just inherited No Barks, a half-wolf dog, and a converted Bookmobile (converted into what, it is unclear) from her father’s Aunt Lilly – not upon that lady’s death but upon her imprisonment, having shot and killed her ex-husband because a bear told her to in her dreams. Angel’s ambition is to be a traveling spiritual consultant, so No Barks will accompany her in the Bookmobile.

The two bump into each other, hard, and literally, at a campground in New Mexico. They exchange a few witty and vaguely flirtatious lines and then get into the meat of it: Ted agrees to be Angel’s student (her first, though he doesn’t know this), and he and Argo join her and No Barks in the Bookmobile for a two-week course of study. At which point this intriguing and charmingly odd (if slightly over-cute and dialog-challenged) story takes a turn for the worse. I was dismayed to find myself reminded of Sophie’s World all over again: Ted and Angel turn out to be mere vehicles for the expression of simplified spiritual philosophies, and the dialog becomes downright atrocious. (“I’m glad you mentioned this, and I want you to know I’ve taken your observation very seriously,” intones Angel on page 85, as if she had just completed a series of classes in management-speak. I made it five more pages before quitting on page 90.) Author Kincaid also includes the occasional footnote recommending further reading, including one pointing his reader to the Wikipedia page on neuroplasticity.

I was taken by Ted and Angel’s contrasts and the possibility for a rather silly romance, which may indeed be where they are heading, but terrible dialog and a transparent use of these characters to teach Philosophy 101 will not allow me to follow them there. Best of luck to them, and the dogs too.

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The Falling Sky by Pippa Goldschmidt

Posted on June 12, 2014 by pagesofjulia

My father also reviewed this book here.

An astronomer’s professional and personal journey, both eased and challenged by her scientific mind.

falling sky

Pippa Goldschmidt’s The Falling Sky revolves around Jeanette, a young astronomer deeply dedicated to her work but uninspired by the competitive bureaucracy of postdoctoral research. The stars and galaxies make sense to her in a way that people do not; she is a talented and intelligent scientist whose rational lens often fails her in navigating the world of human relationships. In a Chilean observatory, she makes a discovery that could turn the scientific world on its head; what she will do with this new and disruptive evidence will similarly upend her personal life. Amid the commotion, a new love affair with an old friend and the disorder of her professional ambitions combine to reawaken a childhood trauma, a tragedy from which her family has never recovered.

The Falling Sky incorporates hard science (Goldschmidt is an astronomer as well as an accomplished writer) with the story of a young woman struggling to find and establish her own place in the world. Artists, romantics, philosophers, mystics, feminists, photographers and scientists will all identify with aspects of Jeanette’s journey. Those familiar with the Edinburgh setting will be pleased by its evocation. But perhaps the most remarkable and unusual element of Goldschmidt’s striking debut novel is Jeanette’s perspective: the reader sees her world as she does, with an emphasis on objectivity, data points, the relativity of time and space, and the search for connections between distant galaxies. As Jeanette sighs, “the lack of information is appalling,” but her story comes around to a satisfying conclusion nonetheless.

This review originally ran in the May 20, 2014 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 connections.

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Gone Feral: Tracking My Dad Through the Wild by Novella Carpenter

Posted on June 11, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Back-to-basics urban farmer Novella Carpenter investigates family in her second contemplative memoir.

gone feral

When Novella Carpenter was 36, her father went missing. It turned out to be a false alarm, but the threat of losing him helped Novella realize that, if she was ever to get to know George Carpenter, she might be running out of time, since their relationship had been stuck somewhere between uneasy and estranged for years. Gone Feral: Tracking My Dad Through the Wild charts her journey home.

After a romantic meeting in 1969 San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, her parents embarked on an idealistic European tour before settling on a farm in Idaho in “voluntary poverty.” But the marriage ended when Novella and her sister were five and seven, and their mother moved them to Washington State; Novella didn’t see much of her father after that. Now, three decades later, she has a small urban farm in Oakland, Calif., which she documented in her memoir Farm City. When she and her boyfriend, Bill, decide to try to get pregnant, she wonders about her own genetic legacy. Breeding ducks, chickens and milk goats has taught her the importance of the stock line. In working to become a parent herself, after the scare of George going missing, she goes in search of her father, hoping to build the relationship they never had.

George is still scraping by near the Idaho farm where Novella was born. He’s a regular backwoods curmudgeon, making a meager living by logging and cutting firewood and sharing his cabin with wild animals. She hopes they’ll go fly-fishing, re-creating the romance of A River Runs Through It. Maybe they’ll forage for wild foods or he’ll teach her how to fell a tree perfectly. Instead, he rants about the devils that possess the old family farm and exhibits previously unnoticed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (the legacy of his service in the Korean War). Novella is disturbed, angered all over again at what she sees as his abandonment, and concerned about the genes she’ll pass on to a child, if she ever succeeds in getting pregnant.

Gone Feral is reflective, as Novella ponders the paradoxes of her upbringing–for example, the liberal hippie value system (hers and her mother’s) that rejects her father the mountain man–and wonders what it is she really wants for her own child. Traveling through the country and her own past teaches her about herself, her origins, and how to build a future that includes father as well as child.

This review originally ran in the May 20, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 5 babies.

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guest review: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan, from Mom (audio)

Posted on June 9, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Thanks Mom for sending these reading notes.

I’m reading a Playaway version of Worst Hard Times. I picked it up because it’s a World Book Night item, on display at the library when I went to pick up my box of Catch 22 to give away. I was most interested in this audio player-book just sitting on the shelf. (Add earbuds, battery, and stir.)
worsthardtime
It’s a pretty grim picture. Worst Hard Times is the dust bowl story, and follows people’s stories in several of the farms & towns of the worst areas. Egan writes for the NY Times, and recently wrote a scathing attack on the idea that the landslide in Oso was one of those “acts of God” that are so unfortunate but . . . . (Actually there was lots of warning by geologists, an earlier landslide in the last decade, with the logging of the hilltop as the coup de gras).

The Dust Bowl is called the worst man-made disaster of the U.S., and easily understood in hindsight as a tragic result of lack of understanding of natural forces, as well as grasping for even more wealth when the land was giving its riches reliably during the wet years of the Twenties. He gives more details than can be born, almost: the dust swirling, no plates set out until time to use them, wet bedsheets hung up over windows every night, people dying of “dust pneumonia.” The old cattlemen said it was a crime to uproot the prairie grass, and that the land would be ruined – more importantly, to them, even than the loss of the land for cows.

This area, which was called the Great American Desert, was given to the Apaches. When the government decided to give the land to settlers, Texas, especially, made every effort to eradicate the buffalo in order to drive off the Indians.

So, a good story. The reader, not so much. (He’s “an accomplished actor, director and combat choreographer” according to the audio blurb. Huh?) He put a little too much hick into the voices when he quotes them, and, like some readers I’ve noticed, makes women’s voices especially irritating, with a too-high intonation. The most irritating, though – a subjective reaction, I know – is his pronunciation of Boise City as /boyZAY/. Really?

Oh, Mom, I do so get it! The pronunciations from my recent read of Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods are fresh in my mind – unfortunately the only one I can cite specifically is urinal as “your-RYE-null” (very strange!) but there were others, equally odd & distracting. I think I’m more upset by the overly hick accents and the obnoxious women’s voices, though.

Does Egan overtly make the comparison between our hubris & lack of foresight with the Dust Bowl, and same with the recent mudslide (etc. etc.)? Or leave us to figure it out? If the latter, readers like yourself make the connection without difficulty; but I always appreciate the former. If you have a statement, go ahead and make it, please! Stand up for what you think.

I would say yes. I’m not through yet, but he lets a lot of characters say this. He also writes of the preachers who said that people are being punished for some sin, or that prayer & positive thinking will make it all better.

The sodbusters are all from the devil, according to the cattlemen. The saddest part of that is not that they are right, but that the dust dunes and drought ends up killing even the grass that remains.

There’s a scientist who explains it perfectly, and after Roosevelt’s election, he gets put in some government function to help solve the problems. There’s a town where the people agree to follow this guy’s recommendations for saving the land. Don’t remember the details, but hope to see this followed up in a later chapter.

There’s a newspaper owner (Dalhart or Boise City) who stops reporting all the bad stuff. Then he decides the people just need to embrace the situation. Look at the black clouds, the wind, the dead earth, and see the majesty of nature. Nuts! He doesn’t mention embracing all the death.

So I think Egan will have a strong conclusion to this effect.

The roaring boom of prosperity and the miracle of turning land into wheat (=$$) is a big theme. Plain people learning that they could have become rich if they planted every acre. They couldn’t tear up the prairie fast enough. We even have what he calls suitcase farmers, entrepreneurs who come to town and pay someone to rent their land and plant wheat. They just wait around for the harvest and the profits. After the bust and the drop in wheat prices, off they go, with no more interest in the land they have mined. How much hubris can you stand?

This does sound like a good story – though decidedly grim, as you say. I’d like to put it on the (long) list… Thanks for sharing!

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