Wake by Anna Hope

Posted on February 10, 2014 by pagesofjulia

With expertly written characters and a convincing melancholy tone, Anna Hope brings the aftermath of World War I to life through the lives of three English women.

wake

Anna Hope’s debut novel, Wake, follows three English women over a span of five days in 1920, building toward the two-year anniversary of Armistice Day and the end of World War I.

Hettie works in London as a dance instructor, paid by the dance to twirl with strangers, many of whom are missing limbs. She struggles to support herself as well as her irritable, aging mother and a brother who has not worked–or hardly spoken–since the war’s end. The festive, exotic dance hall where she works presents an interplay between light and dark, and Hettie’s forays with a more fortunate friend to a breathtaking speakeasy emphasize class differences. There, she meets a handsome, wealthy young man who intrigues her, but the distance from which he regards the world seems unconquerable.

Evelyn handles veterans’ pension complaints, a thankless job that keeps fresh the wound left by her boyfriend’s death in France. Asked every day to consider the fates of damaged young men, her bitterness grows. She used to be close to her brother, an officer, but he has not been the same since he returned.

And Ada is nearly mad, haunted by her son, whose death “of his wounds” has never been properly explained to her. Her loving husband feels that he has lost a wife as well as a son. When a young man appears on her doorstep and speaks her son’s name, Ada is staggered; this event threatens to precipitate her descent into mental illness.

Woven among the three women’s stories are brief views of military exhumation of unidentified bodies, candidates for the unknown soldier who will be reburied and honored on the anniversary of Armistice Day. These scenes establish and emphasize a gray, cold backdrop to the lives of Hettie, Evelyn and Ada.

Hope’s strengths lie in nuance and atmosphere, as she gently and subtly reminds the reader of humanity under the worst of conditions. The pervading mood of the novel is reinforced by poverty, an inability to talk about past trauma and the presence of countless maimed and begging young men. As the lives of her three protagonists come together and the unknown soldier nears his final grave, Wake’s deeply moving, ultimately universal story speaks evocatively across nearly a century.

This review originally ran in the February 7, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 dances.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Turtle Island by Gary Snyder

Posted on February 6, 2014 by pagesofjulia

turtle island

You all may recall that I am NOT a poetry person. I may be a tad too literal; I loved Shel Silverstein but never graduated from there. Clearly it didn’t help that I attempted Gertrude Stein later in life; her poetry is analogous in my mind to modern abstract art. Either I am a hopeless moronic philistine, or these people are making fun of us to our faces with some of this stuff.

So how did I end up here? I didn’t do my homework. I had heard enough good about Gary Snyder from people I respect for long enough that I finally jumped on a title somebody referenced: Turtle Island. I requested it from my local library. (I LOVE this service.) I went to pick it up when they told me to; and sure enough, on the cover, “Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1975.” Well, heck, I’ll give it a whirl. (Pops and I are planning a readalong of a Snyder essay collection, Practice of the Wild, coming up, so I’ll get the prose, too.)

Snyder’s poems are short – rarely over one page (in a small format book), and often shorter. They tend towards the natural world and our relationship with it, and these of course were the subjects I was looking for. He’s really pretty accessible – for a poet. I don’t follow the stream-of-consciousness sort of thing very well, but I tried to just let his words float over me when I lost the thread. To mix a metaphor.

I liked several quite well. “Control Burn” (not “controlled”) has a clear message, and one I can get behind; and it read fairly straightforwardly. [Actually, as I look again, it would make for a very coherent sentence if you just took out all the line breaks and added a little punctuation. Look at that. I like poetry when it most resembles prose. sigh] I liked “The Call of the Wild” for its message as well; I appreciated a list of “Facts” (including “General Motors is bigger than Holland.”) but again that’s cheating: it is not a poem. Is it? Hm. If a list of facts can be a poem, maybe I’m a little better off than I thought. “The Wild Mushroom” is a more traditional poem with a recognizable meter, and it rhymes! (I am a philistymes.) It could also serve you as an abridged guide to which wild mushrooms are edible, which poisonous and which might “bring you close to God”; utility in poetry is always welcome, yes please.

“Mother Earth: Her Whales” is a lovely ode to all the earth’s inhabitants and indictment of what we’re doing here. And I love the tale of an ancient turquoise ring from Jemez discovered under the ruins of an apartment complex in Kyoto: “The Jemez Pueblo Ring.” I also like when he writes about his family, mostly his young sons; his tenderness shows clearly through.

But naturally, for me, things really get good when he switches to “Plain Talk” (the final one of the book’s four main sections), which is also known as “prose.” Here Snyder identifies problems with our world – we’re talking about the big problems, like population, pollution, and consumption – and recommends big fixes – with actions organized by social/political, community, and “our own heads.” He is concerned with the relationship of humans to the rest of the world: water, earth, dirt, plants, animals, mountains, air. His prose arguments are beautiful, well thought out, well informed (although brief), and resonate with me perfectly. I suspect that they assume certain things (bison on the plains are a good thing. our kids should play in the dirt) that not everyone agrees with; but I’m on his frequency. The people who think the big car, the big house in the big city, kids who wear designer sneakers, and the fancy career are important goals may not follow along here.

Snyder’s philosophies strike me as abundantly obviously correct, but also (sadly) far too simple and hopeful to work in our complex and stubbornly wrong world. He has all the problems described correctly, except that everything is far worse now than it was when this book was published in 1974. In that respect, it’s not good news, but Snyder shows great foresight in predicting the ways in which we’re doing even more poorly now; and further, I think it’s remarkable how relevant and right he still is in 2014. If you read this book today with no knowledge of its publication date, I think you’d find it intelligent, only understated or optimistic.

This prose conclusion to Turtle Island is absolutely the perfect conclusion to the poetry that precedes it. I confess that if I had to rate the poetry sections, I would probably end up giving this book a bemused 5 feathers or some such, with the qualification that I’m pretty sure there’s more here that I missed. But with this conclusion in “plain talk” to tie it all up for me, Turtle Island becomes a philosophical achievement along the lines of Thoreau, Abbey, Jensen, Dillard, and the like. In fact, I was often reminded of Abbey (as when Snyder refers to growth as a cancer); Jensen (as when he refers to a need for total change and starting over), some thoughts I’ve come up with (“on my own,” in theory, but clearly informed by my reading & discussions), and also with Ken Kesey’s band of Merry Pranksters.

This conclusion to the book bodes extraordinarily well for my shared reading with Pops of Snyder’s essay collection. Stay tuned.

Rating: 9 Ponderosa pines.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell

Posted on February 4, 2014 by pagesofjulia

New research and new angles on The Great Gatsby and its place in history.

carelesspeople

Sarah Churchwell (The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe) takes on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mythically proportioned masterpiece in Careless People, an expansive study of biography, history, literary criticism and cultural connections. Her inquiries focus on a double-murder involving a socially ambitious lower-class woman and a respected rector, both married but not to each other, found shot to death in each other’s arms. The case captured national attention in 1922, the year Scott and Zelda returned to New York–and the year in which The Great Gatsby is set.

With an appealing, freshly curious manner, original research and newly discovered resources, Churchwell explores the possible connections between Fitzgerald’s experiences in 1922 and what happened at the same time in his most highly regarded novel. She also compares the plot of The Great Gatsby to the real-world action of 1922. In the book, which alternates between the Fitzgeralds’ lives during the period The Great Gatsby came to life with the unfolding of media coverage of the murder case, Churchwell incorporates Fitzgerald’s correspondence, including delightful poems exchanged with Ring Lardner, and lists of slang (including some 70 ways to say “drunk”).

With elements of fun and tragedy–like the lives of its subjects–Churchwell’s study of the Fitzgeralds, The Great Gatsby and the world that birthed it presents new perspectives on a literary icon.

This review originally ran in the January 28, 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: 8 unattributed clippings.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Snowblind by Christopher Golden

Posted on February 3, 2014 by pagesofjulia

A full-throttle paranormal thriller starring a variety of complex, likable characters.

snowblind

Coventry, Mass., was expecting a snowstorm, but nothing like the one that blows through the opening pages of Christopher Golden’s Snowblind. The novel begins with small-town residents managing their relationships, jobs and businesses, readying for the possibility of power outages and blocked roads. Just as readers are drawn into the lives of the diverse sympathetic characters, though, they’re ripped away from us–and something more terrifying (and more cognizant) than ice and wind is involved.

Fast forward a dozen years. The survivors of the first storm–men and women still mourning their loved ones–are faced with a disturbingly similar weather pattern headed their way. Coventry is still haunted by the unexplained deaths, and now the lost townspeople are coming back to try to warn the survivors of the returning danger. Families will have to pull together quickly to avoid a second tragedy.

A fast-paced, thoroughly engrossing supernatural thriller, Snowblind employs likable, multifaceted characters linked by their small-town connections and a tragic past. Golden’s writing is suspenseful and action-driven; it’s not ornate, but he still takes time to develop stories about characters’ relationships and backgrounds that will engage readers. The terror evoked is visceral and real and, along with a fairy-tale element and realistic backdrop, grips readers from the very first pages. Snowblind is a tale of trauma, individual responsibility and, ultimately, redemption.

This review originally ran in the January 28, 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 snow plows.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Falls the Shadow by Sharon Kay Penman

Posted on January 27, 2014 by pagesofjulia

falls the shadowI call Sharon Kay Penman one of my favorite authors, and yet it has been far too long since I read any of her work. It felt so good to curl up inside Falls the Shadow.

I began reading Penman with The Reckoning, back in 2001 or thereabouts I believe – that was on a trip overseas with my father. I fell in love with the Wales pictured in that historical novel, and I loved the romance and tone of epic historical tragedy. Falls the Shadow comes just before that book in Penman’s Welsh trilogy, so I recognized the youthful characters in this novel that I loved so much in that one; kind of a strange way to go about reading a series (or a history), but it was enjoyable this way, too. Often in life, I think, we learn stories out of chronological order; so be it.

This book centers on the fate of Simon de Montfort in 13th century England, under King Henry III’s ill-fated rule, and the parallel story of Llewellyn, Prince of Wales. Nell, Henry’s sister and daughter of King John, was widowed at 15 and took an oath of chastity; but her friendship with Simon would challenge that oath, and eventually break it so they could marry. Simon was a minor lord, and a Frenchman to boot; their union scandalized both the Church and the English power-brokers, who would have married Nell into a political alliance rather than for love. Simon, with Nell behind (or even often beside) him, would challenge the weak King Henry to stand by his word, to allow Englishmen a say in their own lives. They had four sons and a daughter, who play large roles in The Reckoning.

Falls the Shadow spends some time in Wales, as well, on the rivalry of several generations of princes: the sons of Llewellyn Fawr: Davydd and Gruffydd; and Gruffydd sons’s: Owain, Llewellyn, Davydd, and Rhodri. Welsh tradition divides land and property among the sons (even the illegitimate ones), but Llewellyn Fawr recognized that this division of political power among princes led to a Welsh weakness that would only be exploited by their shared English enemy. Instead, he hands all his power to Davydd, beginning the bloody battles between brothers that continue at the close of this book.

So, Falls the Shadow deals with the political intrigue and power struggles of Wales and England (and involving their neighbors as well); charts the filial intrigues & alliances of both Welsh and English royalty; sees battles fought and power debated; and tells the romantic stories of such marriages for love as that of Llewellyn and Joanna, and Simon and Nell. This is one of Penman’s shorter books at nearly 600 pages of tightly spaced small print; and yet I’ve never seen so much type go by so quickly. For being historical fiction with an epic sweep and involving those bygone times in which everyone seems to have the same names… Penman’s fiction is positively riveting. I am completely lost in it, and sorry to see it end. Luckily, she still has several books I haven’t gotten to yet.

As she writes in the Author’s Note, Penman originally intended for this to be the story of both Simon and Llewellyn; but she found the two men each too large to share the stage, so Falls the Shadow became Simon’s story and The Reckoning, Llewellyn’s. Just as the Welsh play into this novel, though, Simon’s children will play in Llewelyn’s story, too.

Penman’s attention to detail feels very real; and I’ve written on this before, but it’s my understanding that she is very faithful to the historical record. I know she makes overseas research trips because I’ve followed them on her blog. And yet for all the research, history, and fact, the dialogue and the emotions feel both relevant and absolutely real.

I love this author. If you like large, sweeping, engrossing stories that involve both large-scale and individual-scale humanity – do check out Sharon Kay Penman.

Rating: 8 swords.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (audio)

Posted on January 24, 2014 by pagesofjulia

heart-shaped boxWell, NOS4A2 is a hard act to follow. Although of course, Joe Hill wrote that one second; I’m out of order.

Heart-Shaped Box is about an aging rock star. Judas Coyne is mid-fifties when we meet him; he’s a little melancholy, a little rough around the edges, a little broody over his ex-wife and two dead bandmates. His collection of the obscurely macabre makes him an easy mark for an online auction offering a ghost for sale; but when he buys the dead man’s suit – which is supposed to come with the dead man’s spirit – he gets more than he paid for. The ghost turns out to be no stranger to Jude, but the step-father of an ex-girlfriend he called Florida. She was just one in a string of much younger women who he calls by the states they hail from; his current live-in is Georgia, and it turns out that by buying the ghost, Jude has gotten her into a pickle, as well.

Judas (real name Justin) and Georgia (real name Marybeth) will battle the dead man together, and in so doing, they’ll have to confront some metaphorical ghosts as well: her youthful traumas, his lifelong ones, and his dying father he hasn’t seen in 30 years. Jude’s two dogs, big beautiful German shepherds named Angus and Bon, play a role as well. They travel from a New York farm to the southern homes of Florida, Georgia – and Jude himself, who has been trying to outrun Louisiana all his life. It’s no coincidence, I think, that all his state-named conquests come from south of the Mason-Dixon line.

There are many strengths in this book, and I can’t help but think of them in terms of Hill’s outstanding second novel and the work of his larger-than-life father (ahem), for better or worse. Like King, Hill excels at creating believable worlds: Jude’s heavy metal rock stardom, the goth chicks he dates, and the world of the dead. As in NOS4A2, the creepiness of the supernatural, the other, is both deliciously excruciating, and entirely real – fully wrought, finely detailed, rooted in our true greatest fears, and with a sense of style. I really liked his characters, too: complex and ambiguous but ultimately people we want to root for.

I did have a few concerns here and there. I worried that Hill might struggle to keep up the tension. When I’d already had my heart raised by several repeated near-deaths and checked to see that I was about 1/3 of the way through, I wondered. But it turned out I should never have doubted! Because not long after that came the moment – I was walking home from the train and stopped in my tracks in an “oh shit” moment where he racheted things up and oh, good, we’re back in the world of the man who wrote NOS4A2. And in hindsight I like the time we spent prior to that moment, too; it was all necessary to build up the background that paid off in the end, so my bad, Mr. Hill. Hats off.

Later I had a few moments of doubt when Georgia and Florida began to be conflated… I wondered if it wasn’t a little misogynistic to have these two young women (who each have a lot of personality and personal history to build them out) begin to merge into one. It was a plot point, and not an accident born of Hill’s inherent prejudice, which helps some. I’m a little ambivalent on that point.

But really, that’s searching for criticisms. This supernatural, psychological thriller rattled my bones and kept me rapt; and I loved the cultural references (there’s Stephen King again) and strong sense of place(s), which is another of my favorite things in novels. I’ve left the plot purposefully pretty blank here because I want you to enjoy it for yourself: if you love being frightened by a truly well-put-together feat of storytelling with great characters, you’ll love Heart-Shaped Box. Um, you should be okay with blood, too.

Rating: 8 swings of the razor blade.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

Maximum Shelf: The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

Posted on January 22, 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 January 15, 2014.

weight of blood

“That Cheri Stoddard was found at all was the thing that set people on edge, even more so than the condition of her body.” So opens Laura McHugh’s delightfully and darkly disturbing debut novel, The Weight of Blood. The town of Henbane is agitated because it is so good at keepings its secrets–and bodies are so easy to hide in the twisted, wooded Ozark Mountains.

The story begins with the first-person perspective of 18-year-old Lucy Dane. Lucy has it pretty good: she has a reliable best friend, a loving relationship with her father, and neighbors who make up an extended family of sorts. And she’s just begun working in her uncle’s store, where she gets to rub elbows with the sexy Daniel. But Lucy is troubled by the disappearance of her sort-of friend Cheri, a developmentally disabled schoolmate whose freshly dead body was only recently discovered–a year after she went missing. She’s also still troubled by the unexplained disappearance of her mother, Lila, who walked out of the house carrying a handgun and nothing else when Lucy was a year old.

The perspective then shifts to that of Lila herself as a young woman, newcomer to the Danes’ hometown of Henbane. Henbane is almost a character unto itself, insular, suspicious and largely unmarked by passing time. For a fee, residents can avoid a “city burial” (embalmment and the involvement of the authorities) in favor of a private grave-digging service. And the local lawyer will advise you not to trust local police until you find out who’s related to whom. It is anything but a friendly destination for a damaged teenager like Lila, who immediately runs up against the Dane brothers: the older Crete, who runs several businesses including a farm and a store, and his little brother, Carl, who becomes her husband before she turns 19. Superstitions have her labeled a witch before she’s unpacked her few belongings.

Through Lila’s eyes, the reader will find out slightly more about her background than Lucy knows, but Lila works hard to remain a mystery to both the reader and Henbane locals, including Carl. The perspectives continue to alternate. While Lucy keeps the reader up to date on current goings-on, it is through Lila that we begin to learn the ugly secrets that Henbane keeps. Other characters, too, get occasional chapters told from their point of view (in omniscient third person; only Lila and Lucy get first-person treatment), and one of the strengths of The Weight of Blood is that its engaging, complex, fully wrought characters extend beyond its protagonists. Lucy’s best friend, Bess, and Bess’s mother, Gabby (who was, in turn, best friend to Lila); Carl and Crete; the love interest, Daniel; a surrogate grandmother; and a local drug dealer all get sensitive handling and character development. But it is the measured building of tension and the careful doling out of hints of evil that star, as Lucy’s coming-of-age experience brings the classic bildungsroman to meet the gritty thriller.

While helping Daniel clean out an old trailer belonging to her uncle, Lucy discovers a clue: a lost item that she knows used to belong to Cheri, because Lucy gave it to her. Next, Bess overhears a reference that she shouldn’t have. With Daniel’s cautious support, Lucy begins to look into Cheri’s death, and the matter of where she spent that unaccounted-for year. But, of course, in a town this small, where everyone recognizes headlights and knows where a particular truck might be heading, investigations are dangerous. Like her mother before her, Lucy is told outright that it would be risky to go to the police for help. And as she probes the question of Cheri’s fate, and finds it apparently linked to her mother’s, Lucy will be disturbed at how close her inquiries lead her to home.

Carl and Crete, the Dane brothers, are heir not only to the off-the-books grave-digging business, the combined local grocery store and restaurant, and various secrets, but also to mental illness and corruption. As its title suggests, The Weight of Blood is concerned with the strength of our bonds to our family, and the tension between biological ties of blood and the families we choose for ourselves. In a remarkably convincing portrayal of young adulthood, Lucy allows McHugh to explore themes of loyalty: where it’s owed, and to what extremes.

The atmosphere McHugh evokes in this masterful debut is wonderfully spooky, exemplifying Southern noir with a backwoods mountain twist and a matter-of-fact willingness to bury its dead out back and walk away. Taut pacing, lively suspense and atmosphere are the strongest points of a novel that also has an engaging plot and beautifully built, sympathetic characters to its credit. For fans of dark, suspenseful, well-structured thrillers, The Weight of Blood is a delicious and nail-biting treat.

Rating: 7 baby possums.

Come back tomorrow for my interview with McHugh!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill

Posted on January 20, 2014 by pagesofjulia

eating dirtDoubly recommended by the authors of Fire Season and Dirt Work, this one moved to the top of the list.

Eating Dirt is the memoir of a tree planter. Charlotte Gill works seasonally planting trees in the Canadian west. She is employed by a company of tree planters, who contract in turn with big business – mostly logging – to replant sections of clear-cut land, usually. The daily job is to travel out to the plot in question (via beat-up truck, or boat, or by foot), load up one’s bags – a belted & suspendered piece involving two side saddle-bags and one at the rear, at hip height – with seedlings, stomp around on varying surfaces, and use a shovel and one’s hands to repeatedly insert seedlings in soil (clay, gravel, duff). It involves much bending, and the loss of fingernails. They encounter cougars, bears, muck, dirt, rain, bugs, rocks, and unspeakably sore muscles.

Gill has quite a bit in common with Christine Byl of Dirt Work: the dirty, male-dominated outdoor environment, the satisfaction of a job well done in a world populated by trees, twigs, green and brown and wild things. Not to overemphasize these two books’ similarities – because each is unique and lovely on its own and neither is derivative – but they both caused the same combined reaction in me, of yearning jealousy and thankfulness that I don’t do that for a living. What can I say. I love to be outside and wish I spent more days and nights there, but I also fret enough over my bad knees with my office job, and I like taking a shower and feeling clean after being dirty. In fact, the question at the front of my mind as I’ve finished this book is: what did clean mean in those years that make up the majority of human history, in which we didn’t have seemingly endless showers at our command?

Dirtiness aside, Gill writes with humor and wisdom and the kind of occasionally zoomed-out perspective that I like in a nature-based memoir. A little research into the history of earth, trees, and people – and the relationships between them – brings her perspective, that of just one person, into focus within a larger picture. And as a bonus, she’s based in the same general region that my parents recently moved to. We have all been learning about the Pacific Northwest – including the trees of the area – and this book offered some welcome insights to that end.

One of the more surprising subjects of Eating Dirt, for me, was the ambiguous or controversial nature of the work. I read “tree-planting tribe” and expected that it would be all green-ness and good; but as I said in my opening synopsis, Gill’s employers are most often logging companies, banking on the profitability of trees, not their inherent worth as trees themselves.

And we got paid… by the very same business that cut the trees down, which canceled the altruism right out of the equation.

Any good they provide, then, is already offset by those who paid for their planting. It’s not as simple as it seems at first glance, and Gill wastes no time in making that point.

Her voice is gritty, and her perspective not so much unapologetic in general as clear-eyed about its dual nature. She’s funny and clearly likeable – like Byl, someone I’d like to know, although I’d be intimidated by both women’s toughness. I enjoyed what I learned about the world from Gill, but also very much value what she’s encouraged me to think about.

Nature has done its big job. Like a ball thrown up in the air, all has risen, crested, and begun its arc back down into earth. After many years spent outside we come to see this – the parabola – as the contour of life itself. It’s the path the sun takes across the sky. The shape of a story. Ours included. Beginning, middle, and end.

Right up there with some of my favorites of the past few years. Recommended.

Rating: 7 red tree voles.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

did not finish: The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai (audio)

Posted on January 16, 2014 by pagesofjulia

borrowerI made it exactly 25 pages into this one (although via audio, which was about 30 minutes, give or take). I remember hearing about The Borrower ever since it came out in 2011, and it sounded real cute: children’s librarian befriends sweet little boy who might be gay and whose censorious, bigoted, ultra-religious parents are a drag; she ends up either liberating or kidnapping him, depending on your angle, and they have adventures together. Nice story, right? In fact, it opens with a story time reading of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, which drives home the fact that this plot has been done before. And that’s no complaint or criticism. As Makkai notes in the voice of her narrator, “you can always count on a librarian for a derivative prose style.” I can dig that little joke (and also fear it is too true).

But things went south quickly after that. Faced with the censorious mother, Lucy (the librarian/narrator) rails that she would never “defy the Constitution” by refusing to check out certain books to a ten-year-old boy at his mother’s request. Now, I sympathize with Lucy’s gut reaction and not with the nasty mother; but I think it’s only respectful to be clear on what the Constitution actually says. The First Amendment protects the right to speech, press and assembly; it most certainly does not protect the right to read anything one likes (unfortunately), and the rights of minors have been curtailed in our courts in favor of their parents’ right to decide for them, with abundant clarity. This use of the “defy the Constitution” argument was outrageous and left me reeling. From a librarian, no less!

Next Lucy notes that

I wasn’t at all concerned about (the boss) enforcing this, or even remembering it a month later. And if she tried to fire me because I’d checked out a book to a patron of the public library, I’d have so much free legal representation within ten minutes that her gin-soaked head would spin.

Well, that’s bold – and naive. If this librarian were fired for checking out a book to a ten-year-old that the child’s mother had expressing forbidden her to check out to him, I think her legal case would be in some doubt; and while it’s conceivable that the ACLU or a similar organization would take the case on, I wouldn’t bet my job on it. I’d put the chances pretty low, in fact. To think that every unjustly-fired, underpaid city employee gets “so much free legal representation within ten minutes” to make heads spin is… idealistic, at best.

And then Lucy snobs out on her profession of librarianship, except oops, it might not be fair to call her a professional because she’s non-degreed and thus in most work environments ineligible to be called a “librarian” at all (this is a subject on which there is some controversy within the field and I don’t want to enter into that now, but I think it does bear on the credibility of this novel): in reference to the cardigan she’s wearing,

I hated that I’d started to look like a librarian. This wasn’t right. In college, I’d smoked things. My first car had angry bumper stickers. I came from a long line of revolutionaries.

Now this made my head spin. Librarians are about as diverse as any other demographic group you’d care to examine, and certainly there are those cardigan-clad shh-ing grannies with buns; but there is also no dearth of tattooed, funny-looking, hipster, punk, revolutionary-as-hell librarians. And you know what? Some of us wear cardigans, too. Despite the disappointingly cartoonish view of librarians represented by these lines, they also made me wonder if Makkai realizes who her audience is for this book: I am assuming that at least in part those attracted by her basic plot would be librarians (I am one), and she just alienated us with her snobby narrator.

So. This review threatens to be as long as the tiny piece of this book that I read; I should stop. I think I’ve effectively communicated that I was disgusted by the 25 pages’ worth that I listened to, and very comfortable turning away towards greener pastures. In fact, I’m now starting a novel by Joe Hill, whose librarian character in NOS4A2 was possibly a little bit of a cariciature in the other direction – with her purple hair and all – but also closer to the librarians I know. So there.

I am not assigning this a number rating after such a brief read but clearly if I did, it would be a low number of my grumbles.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on January 15, 2014 by pagesofjulia

wizard and glassHow to continue to describe the outrageously imaginative, engrossing masterpiece that is Stephen King’s Dark Tower series? Oh my word.

Wizard and Glass is book 4 and, I think, my favorite so far. We met the gunslinger in book 1; met his three compatriots in book 2; and were reunited with the boy Jake in book 3. As this next installment opens, the ka-tet of Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy find themselves in Kansas; but it is a strange, other-worldly Kansas, perhaps parallel to the one we recognize. Along the road, the group stops for the night and Roland tells a story. This telling will fill the vast bulk of the book, so that as in The Wind Through the Keyhole, it’s a story within a story, with the inner one taking top billing.

Roland’s tale is that of his first love, his first adventure and battles as a gunslinger, and the genesis of his quest for the Dark Tower, which is by this point a quest willingly shared by his companions. It’s a great story, what King does best.

Roland begins by referring to the way he won his guns, and his right to be a gunslinger, in a fight against his teacher, Cort. Roland was 14, and his father was angry, and also worried, and sent Roland away along with his two best friends, Cuthbert and Alain. They travel to the back-country town of Hambry, in the barony of Mejis, where they are given a deceptively simple task that immediately complicates. Roland encounters a young woman named Susan and falls in love; their love is (naturally) thwarted by her unwilling role in the intrigue in which Mejis is entwined. Roland, Cuthbert and Alain, assisted by Susan and a deeply likeable local named Sheemie, will end up doing battle with the forces of “the good man” (who is of course bad) in this outer barony; and Roland’s love is doomed.

This story is endlessly moving, and engrossingly suspenseful. There is something sweepingly large and yet entirely believable about the teenage love story of Roland and Susan; and Cuthbert and Alain, who until now have been referred to only obliquely, become fully-developed great friends to the reader as well as to Roland. The reader is every bit as enthralled as Roland’s contemporary ka-tet (Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy) are; and I loved the slight jolt King inserts when Eddie breaks in to ask how Roland could know the story from all angles: what Susan thought, what the witch did when she was alone… this reminds us just when we’re starting to lose ourselves in Roland’s tale, that we’re actually still on the side of the road in Kansas with the new ka-tet, at the same time.

When Roland finishes talking, the five companions continue on the road towards… the emerald city. Genres, and worlds, mash up again when they come to the emerald castle and encounter the Wizard (of Oz?) – he of the book’s title, and we’ll also see the glass for the first time (which played such a role in Roland’s story). At the finish of the book, relatively little has happened to our main characters; they return to following the path of the Beam in search of the Dark Tower. But the wizard does entreat them to abandon their quest, and each in turn gets to articulate that he or she is by Roland’s side by choice now and from now on. The saga continues.

I am reeling; I never wanted this book to end; I reveled in it and rather tore at my hair when I realized I’m still wait-listed at my local library for the next in the series. (The horror!) My former policy of reading series willy-nilly with no respect for their order is gone; I am a purist. Stephen King has reformed me.

Rating: 9 pulses of pink.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »