Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, part the first

Posted on September 2, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Clearly I will need to publish this review in two parts, for the sake of your patience with my long-windedness. Actually I fear three posts. This is a fascinating book about which I have mixed feelings and many tangential thoughts; also at about halfway through, I’ve filled three bookmark slips of paper with notes rather than the average one-or-less-per-book, so there you are. This is my review of roughly half the book.

pilgrimattinkercreekDespite a promising beginning, I am not sure that I love Annie Dillard as much as do many of my favorite authors. Odd, that. In fact, I enjoyed Christine Byl’s Dirt Work far more. And she hasn’t won any Pulitzers (yet).

For one thing, there is too much theology for my taste, and too much metaphysical rambling metaphor: seeing visions, entering the past and seeing the future. Too much philosophy, man’s (“man”! too much “man”! 1974 this was published, by a woman, and still the universal creature is “man” rather than person or even woman for goodness’ sake) …man’s self-consciousness, relativism… and not enough just being. I’d rather spend more time in the picture and less time examining the frame and the picture-maker, if the picture is our world.

Wikipedia brought some interesting thoughts to mind. [I take Wikipedia with salt; but I still find it a useful starting point for general knowledge.] For example: “The author has described [Pilgrim at Tinker Creek] as a ‘book of theology’, and she rejects the label of nature writer.” What is up with people “rejecting the label of nature writer”? Edward Abbey did, too, which rejection I think in turn his readers reject. Of course, Dillard’s point – that this is more theology than nature writing – helps explain part of my problem with it. But then, there is excellent nature writing within it: I love the finely detailed discussion of insect habits. Oh, and while we’re mentioning him: “Edward Abbey in particular deemed [Dillard] Thoreau’s ‘true heir’.” Both these quotations from Wikipedia come sans specific reference, although there’s a solid-looking reference list at the end of the article. So, take that with salt, as I said.

Dillard did remind me of Thoreau, which is both a compliment (obviously) and a qualification, for me personally, as I struggled a little with Walden, too. Walden was apparently the subject of Dillard’s master’s thesis, so we can expect some parallels there. I would call these two books a readalike pair, and recommend the one if you liked the other.

Now, on the Annie Dillard Wikipedia page, I found more useful phrases: “one critic… call[ed] her ‘one of the foremost horror writers of the 20th Century'” for her apt descriptions of the natural world (I imagine that critic had the mating practices of the praying mantis in mind!), which I find delightful, and true in a most positive sense. And “In The New York Times, Eudora Welty said the work was ‘admirable writing’ that reveals ‘a sense of wonder so fearless and unbridled… [an] intensity of experience that she seems to live in order to declare,’ but ‘I honestly don’t know what [Dillard] is talking about at… times,'” which is, again, a great way to put it, and I couldn’t agree with you more on all counts, Ms. Welty. Both these quotations are attributed, by the way: the first, to Dillard’s website, and the second, to the NYT review in question. Not attributed, however, is the assertion that “In 1971 she read an old writer’s nature book and thought, ‘I can do better than this.'” This would seem to belie the phrasing of the Wikipedia Pilgrim article that she “rejected the label of nature writer.”

But oh, then I got to chapter 7, “Spring.” I am entranced! She writes about learning languages and yearning to decode birdsong, about the mockingbird that sings from 2am til 11pm in her chimney in springtime; about newts, to whom “no one pays the least attention… except children”; more about trees (I love it); and then the part about the duck pond, which is hilarious, wise, and again hilarious. This is where we meet the plankton about whom she is rather passionate, and she studies them under the microscope.

I don’t really look forward to these microscopic forays: I have been almost knocked off my kitchen chair on several occasions when, as I was following with strained eyes the tiny career of a monostyla rotifer, an enormous red roundworm whipped into the scene, blocking everything, and writhing in huge, flapping convulsions that seemed to sweep my face and fill the kitchen.

Rather, she does it as a “moral exercise”, because “if I have life, sense, energy, will, so does a rotifer.” In chapter 7, I love this woman and this book. It was in chapter 7 that I got up from my lunch – during my lunch break, I walked away from lunch – to find Liz, who was on duty at the reference desk, to read her a page aloud. (That was the page about the duck pond and the frogs.) So along with my complaints, there is much to love in this book. Take for example the section on the mating habits of the praying mantis: Dillard portrays these practices as horrifying, hilarious, and disturbingly like our own; it is a feat. I think I like her best when she digs into the science and minutia of the natural world, and exclaims in joy, fear, disturbance, or wonder at it. In other words, when she is a nature writer (wink).

Stay tuned for my review, part the second, and we will all find out together what my final feelings for Dillard will be.

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Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George

Posted on August 26, 2013 by pagesofjulia

evilElizabeth George’s 18th novel starring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers of Scotland Yard will be published in mid-October of this year. This series dates back to 1988, and I was introduced to it by my mother; we have both been great fans.

Series readers will of course recognize the two familiar main characters, joined by the likeable Detective Constable Winston Nkata, sundry less sympathetic Scotland Yard superiors, and Barbara’s neighbors, Taymullah Azhar and his daughter Haddiyah. Simon St. James and his wife Deborah, sadly, barely cross the stage in this novel; and of course those readers who have been keeping up with the last 3-4 books in the series will know about the death of Lynley’s wife Helen, whom he is still grieving. As with most series, I think, an integral part of the reader’s enjoyment is in recognizing characters as old friends, and in that sense, it felt good to be back in the company of Lynley – upper class but down-to-earth, flawed and suffering, but trying to make a go of it with a new woman; and Havers – lower class and struggling all around, socially awkward, but devoted to Azhar and Haddiyah.

A brief plot introduction, and then I’ll avoid spoilers as this book is not yet published. Haddiyah’s mother Angelina is back on the scene just long enough to lull Azhar into complacency, and then she takes Haddiyah and runs. Azhar and Barbara together hire a private investigator to try to track the missing daughter, but his rights are limited: he was never listed on her birth certificate, never married her mother, and his paternity is unproven. Then Angelina turns up in Italy with a new beau, distraught that Haddiyah has been kidnapped from her. Naturally, Azhar is a subject; just as naturally, Barbara is committed to proving his innocence and bringing Haddiyah home.

From a thoroughly charming opening scene in which Lynley tries to charm his new girl by showing up at her roller derby match (!), we mostly stick with Barbara, who is at the zenith of her anti-authoritarianism. Consistently poorly-dressed and disrespectful, and usually described by her superiors as unprofessional, she outdoes herself here. While these are central tenets of Barbara’s character, her total flouting of law and order and disregard for keeping her own job in pursuit of Azhar and Haddiyah’s best interests gets a little outrageous. In prior books I felt that her devotion to the job was also an important part of her character; here, not so much. Her single-minded and, yes, stupid behaviors are at best an abrupt turn in her character’s development, and at worst, inconsistent with the Barbara we’ve come to love.

My criticisms continue. There is an utterly unbelievable beating; an unlikely mix-up of victims; and an indictment of prejudice which is nevertheless upheld, thus seeming to discredit the indictment in the first place. What had been a promising long-term relationship between well-loved characters, building in this series through many books, is thrown out the window in a flash – much like the sudden murder of Helen Lynley a few books ago, leading me to suspect that Elizabeth George enjoys wrenching some of her readers’ favorite characters away from them. Perhaps most infuriatingly, a promising beginning to a romance is left unresolved. This may be intended to keep us hanging on edge for the next book. However, all it did was make me mad. I actually, literally threw this book upon finishing it. (You can ask Husband.) I don’t think I’ve done that before. I’m no reader of romance novels, but I do enjoy a good, realistic, even sappy romantic thread in my thrillers or what have you. I have been teased and disappointed here, and I resent it. I had been doubting and hoping against doubt that George would pull this one through when she dropped the budding love affair, and I am now done with her.

Furthermore, I am not the only one to note that George’s books have been getting longer, and this, I believe, is her longest yet. That’s my awesome editor at the above link, noting that Just One Evil Act weighs in a good bit over 2 pounds. Now, page count is not always a problem – I would like to point to Stephen King’s outstanding 11/22/63 at 850 – but here, George could have written this plot up in 400 pages rather than more than 700, and I think it would have been better done. Her sentences, too, are overlong. Again, you know I have no inherent problem with long sentences. Take my word then when I say that George lost track of her editor in this work.

I regret this loss of a long-term love, but I don’t think I’ll be able to follow Havers and Lynley where they next tread.

Rating: 3 rambling plot threads.

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Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl

Posted on August 22, 2013 by pagesofjulia

dirt workChristine Byl opens her memoir with the pleasant scene of herself and three fellow crew members, crusty and dirty, having a post-hitch beer at a small-town Montana bar. A young woman approaches and asks how she keeps up with the boys, one of whom volunteers that it’s all they can do to keep up with her.

She then backs up and tells the story of how she got there. Like many young women in our culture, Christine was expected and expecting to go to college, to do cerebral work and keep her hands (literally) clean; but a summer gig held her, and she reveled in physical challenges, in learning new things, in the mechanical world. Eventually she reveled in her hardening muscles and her expertise, in surprising men with her ax-work and in mentoring other young women coming up in the “matriarchy” of trail work (still predominately male) within Glacier National Park.

After six seasons in Glacier, alongside boyfriend and eventual husband Gabe (a delightful character: mostly off screen, but clearly a capable young man in his own right, and clearly happy to stay lovingly out of Christine’s way), she does return to graduate school, in Alaska. But during the summers she still works on building and maintaining trails, this time in Denali. Christine and Gabe come to love Alaska – yes, even the winters: there is a delightful passage arguing that the light summers are in some ways harder than the dark winters, and I made both my parents (recently moved from the Mexican to the Canadian border) read it. They settle a few miles outside the borders of Denali National Park, and Christine finds a balance between the cerebral – she gets an MFA in fiction, and writes this beautiful book; and the physical – she and Gabe now run their own independent trail-building company.

So many things to love in this book; where to begin? As a sometimes volunteer trailworker myself, I don’t pretend to know 2% of what Christine does; but I might know just enough to appreciate what she loves about it, and what a challenge it can be. I still haven’t mastered the efficient, all-day ax swing myself, but I’d like to. Also, I have a friend named Susan who I’ve written about before, who has a great deal in common with this author. (I briefly wondered if “Christine Byl” was a pseudonym.) Susan, like Christine and apparently like many trail workers, has an advanced degree but chooses to labor for a living; she’s a woman in what is clearly a man’s world, and is half of an independent trailbuilding company. I get the impression that while it’s hard work, Susan and her husband Ryan wouldn’t do anything different.

Christine writes beautifully about the phenomenon of choosing to do physical work when she could be keeping her hands soft. She writes about the well-intentioned questions her family asked, about when she was going to get a “real job”: she says that they have confused happiness with orthodoxy. (I can only imagine how many of us can sympathize with that concept!) She writes about the “sorority” of men in trailwork, and the way that pulls women together; she writes about the pride she feels when upending male expectations of her blonde head and small frame. As a writer, and clearly a gifted one, she structures this book as solidly as she would a bridge or retaining wall. Each of 6 chapters is represented by a tool (axe, rock bar, chainsaw, boat, skid steer, shovel), a location (North Fork, Sperry, Middle Fork, Cordova, Denali twice) and a locale (river, alpine, forest, coast, park, home). Within those chapters she roves and rambles, musing on natural phenomena, social relations, her own body and personality, strengths and shortcomings, and then returns to tool and place to ground herself. The structure of this book, then, is both well-anchored and floating, and I found that it worked very well.

I was charmed by Christine Byl’s honesty; her love of place; her range of experiences and understanding of two worlds, that of universities and that of woods; and of course her lovely writing. She’s hard as nails, with two hernia surgeries and a preference for outhouse over indoor plumbing. She’s brash and can tend towards a loud and dirty mouth (that makes two of us), but she’s got a soft core. I like her; I’d like to be her friend, and of course I’d really love to learn from her.

Rating: 10 pulaskis (my personal favorite trailwork tool).

I fear I’m getting out of control with the perfect-10 ratings, friends, but what can I say: it’s been a great year for reading. I will take a little of the credit, in that I think I’m getting better at picking what I’ll like, and not wasting time on what I won’t. But mostly, wow, there are some amazing books out there!

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The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders

Posted on August 21, 2013 by pagesofjulia

An exhaustive, engaging examination of how murder and the murder mystery novel infiltrated our modern world by way of 19th-century Britain.

murder

Judith Flanders (A Circle of Sisters) tackles an unwieldy subject in The Invention of Murder, telling the tale admirably well, even entertainingly.

The Victorian British, Flanders tells us, were the first to identify murder as an object of fascination–inspiring in turn a passionate interest in trials, executions, motives and, eventually, the developing profession of solving crimes. The action opens in 1811 with the murdered Marr family, and quickly moves to 1820s Edinburgh, where Burke and Hare infamously killed so they could to sell the corpses to doctors as medical specimens. Flanders introduces a lengthy list of famous (and obscure) murderers and serial killers, culminating, of course, with Jack the Ripper. Alongside the killers and their victims, she presents Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and many contributions by Charles Dickens to illustrate her thesis that murder in life inspired murder in art. Fictional murderers and detectives play a role equal to their real-life counterparts, as Sweeney Todd and Sherlock Holmes take the stage.

Flanders also tracks the evolution of the police force from a force of deterrence to an investigative organization, along with the parallel development of murder and detection in literature and on the stage. The penny-blood (or penny-dreadful), a cheap booklet telling a sordid and often illustrated tale of horror, morphs into the detective novel (and play), as the public shifts its interest from bloody murder to the newly invented and increasingly sympathetic crimesolvers we know and love today.

This review originally ran in the August 2, 2013 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 dismembered parts.

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Light of the World by James Lee Burke

Posted on August 16, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel are joined by their daughters as they battle evil in the hills and valleys of Montana.

lightoftheworld
Light of the World, James Lee Burke’s 20th novel starring Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux, returns to the Montana hill setting of 2008’s Swan Peak. Fans will be thrilled to find Robicheaux and Clete Purcel joined by their respective adult daughters in a hard-hitting, intense battle between good and evil. Burke’s writing is poetic–reverential in praise of natural beauty, contemplative of human nature–and invokes a strong sense of place. Clete, the rough-and-ready, hard-drinking, softhearted private investigator, is lovable as ever; Robicheaux is the flawed hero who has charmed us from the first, fighting his demons and protecting his clan.

Years ago, Dave’s daughter, Alafair, visited serial killer Asa Surette in prison to interview him for a book she never wrote. Instead, she published a condemning series of articles advocating the death penalty. Later, Surette was killed in a collision with a gasoline tanker. So why is he now lurking around the cabins in Big Sky Country where Robicheaux, Clete and their families are trying to relax? The evil in this powerful story of suspense has supernatural undertones, as wolves skulk in the woods above the ranch and planes fall out of the sky. Alafair teams up with Clete’s daughter, the reforming New Orleans hitwoman Gretchen Horowitz, and they make as remarkable a pair as their fathers. As the story unfolds, a rodeo cowboy who speaks in tongues, a serial killer who should be dead, ex-cons, rapists, bear traps and evil that dwells in caves in the hills all come together in perhaps the greatest showdown of Burke’s career.

This review originally ran in the July 30, 2013 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 howls.

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The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland

Posted on August 14, 2013 by pagesofjulia

forestloverWhat a lovely book. I recently read and enjoyed Scott Elliot’s Temple Grove enough that I attended to his “Note on Sources,” and requested several from my local library. This was one of those – aided by my enjoyment of Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue and Clara and Mr. Tiffany.

Like those two of her books, this is historical fiction dealing with a female artist. [Also think of Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring.] The three historical periods, geographic locations, and women in question are quite diverse, but there is a very clear thread connecting them all as female, artists, and historical; I appreciate that showing of diversity in her subjects and also of a singleminded interest. I am safely a Vreeland fan now. Fairly naturally, considering that they deal with female artists of earlier times, her books also address women’s struggle for independence.

Emily Carr, like the subject of Clara and Mr. Tiffany, is a real-life historical figure about whom we don’t know everything; this is a fictionalization of her life. She was born in British Columbia in 1871 to British parents. She showed an inclination for sketching and painting early on, which hobby was encouraged by her father at first, but he expected her to grow out of it in favor of more womanly pursuits (like marriage), and she didn’t. We meet Emily or “Millie” when she’s struggling to make ends meet and trying not to depend too much on the trust fund she shares with 4 sisters, teaching art for a living and befriending local Native Canadian Indians. The sisters mostly do not approve this association. Her favorite subjects are natural scenery and native people and their lifestyles; she travels to islands and outposts for these subjects; again, this is not appreciated by her family. She does enjoy some good female companionship, though: Sophie is an Indian woman and fellow artist (a basketmaker) who befriends her in broken English; Jessica is a less adept painter but rather saucy lady friend; Alice is her “good” and friendly sister; and after Emily musters the courage to travel to Paris to study the “new” art (see below), she meets fellow painter Fanny, a New Zealander and kindred soul.

To give you an idea of the Paris of Emily’s experience, as a moment in time, I share these lines.

“Van Gogh’s been in his grave for twenty years, Cezanne for four, yet art collectors still don’t buy them, and despise what’s new now.”

“What is new now?”

“Their offspring. Léger, Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Modigliani, Derain, Rouault. Many directions.”

Momentous times, then!

Back in Canada, Emily ages as we watch her struggle with art and life. She wants desperately to represent the native people’s lives and art, and the powerful forest surrounding her. Or, as she comes to learn, she wants to more than represent or copy: she wants to communicate what these things make her feel. Her study in Paris under various teachers advances her practice, but still doesn’t get her there. We follow Emily through a series of lifestyles and decisions that form a crooked path but ultimately continue to move her toward a higher form of the art and communication she desires.

There is one man who begins to be a love interest for Emily; but as the title implies, she finds herself unable (for various reasons) to participate in physical, person-to-person, romantic or sexual love with this man. She is not the forest’s lover in a carnal sense – this book is not that weird. And Emily does continue to relate to people. Jessica and her sisters, and most importantly Sophie, retain a hold on her heart; and she forms a new (platonic) relationship with a damaged white man who understands Indians better than whites. But in a very real way, her relationship with the natural world is the most magnetic in her life.

I often observe that I like an author’s earlier (or lesser known) work better than the later. (I hope this is not just me being contrary. I don’t think I do it on purpose.) In this case, though, I think my favorite of her books is still her most recent, Clara and Mr. Tiffany. The earlier two I’ve read are both wonderful; but I sometimes felt this showed its earlier origins. It is occasionally less graceful. While she is mostly “on,” there are some awkward phrases, too. Observe these two single sentences, on two facing pages. I find one smoothly appealing, and the other a bit effortful.

Emily felt as if smelly white scum had eked out her pores.

versus

A breeze shifted the ends of foliage, like the tips of fingers moving.

Do you make the same observation I do? (Which one is which?)

Criticisms aside, though, this novel is far more graceful than not; and while I could pick apart lines like the one above, the sum of its parts is glorious. Vreeland’s greatest strengths are those I recognize from her other books. She understands art, and the artist’s struggle to get it just right. She addresses women’s issues compassionately as a natural part of the story of one woman in history. And unique to this work, the natural world and its beauty, value, power, importance, and scale play a deservingly large role.

Another success for Susan Vreeland.

Rating: 8 smears of viridian.

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Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe

Posted on August 12, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Available as 11 pages in quite small type here.

I am 98% sure that I was led to this story by a mention in Judith Flanders’s The Invention of Murder. I’m always up for some Poe; he’s batting 1000 with me. I have a complete works volume on my shelves somewhere; maybe one of these days…

I’m pretty sure the reason I came to this story from the above book is that it is cited as one of the earliest mystery stories in literature, that is, in which a detective (in this case an amateur) puzzles through the clues to come to a conclusion of whodunit. It begins with a fairly lengthy (several long paragraphs) discussion of analytical powers, in which our narrator argues that whist or draughts are both more challenging intellectual games than chess. [I am not familiar with whist or draughts so can’t comment on that.] The point of all this rather cerebral discussion finally becomes clear: the narrator’s roommate, a Frenchman named Dupin, is an analytical genius. He can tell what the narrator is thinking. And he will solve… The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

by Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons (click to enlarge)

illustration by Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge, via Wikimedia Commons (click to enlarge)

In a tone and a climate I recognize from The Invention of Murder, we learn that a mother and daughter have been brutally killed in their home on the Rue Morgue. All the doors are locked from within, and a very large amount of cash has been left behind, spilled on the floor. The Parisian police are stumped. Dupin, however, reasons through what clues he finds – having been allowed special access to the crime scene, naturally – and comes to a very strange and improbable, but correct, conclusion. Occam’s Razor aside.

The strengths of this short story, as always with Poe, lie in its atmosphere: brooding, dark, melancholy, cerebral. The character of Dupin is not well-rounded or human, but that’s okay. He plays a role. Our narrator is there, Watson-style, to provide a foil for Dupin’s analysis. The solution to the mystery is most strange and enjoyable for its strangeness. Realism this is not.

An enjoyable quick read and a good early example of a genre I love. Well worth a few minutes.

Rating: 8 thick tresses of grey human hair.

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The Norman Maclean Reader

Posted on August 5, 2013 by pagesofjulia

macleanAh, Norman Maclean. This is the last of his published work that I’ve found, following A River Runs Through It, and other stories and Young Men and Fire. I am very sorry to have reached this end. Maybe I’ll still find more. Also, I’m seeking a decent and well-regarded biography of him and have found none, so if you have it, speak up.

This is a collection of Maclean’s work, including excerpts from the longer books I’ve read already, a few previously published articles, and several previously unpublished pieces, including chapters from his book on Custer that Maclean worked on for years and finally gave up (prior to beginning either of his published works). Also included are letters he sent to a few friends and mentees; these might be my favorite part, although that’s a tough competition. The introduction, by editor O. Alan Weltzien, is a little on the academic side, referencing Maclean’s teaching career and his work with Aristotle, Shakespeare, Shelley and Wordsworth, and the concept of tragedy and its place in life and art; but if it required me to slow down and pay special attention, it was worth it.

Maclean too can be quite cerebral and academic – he was an academic by profession, after all – as in his discussion of Freudian philosophy (which “will not run with sex alone”) in the last chapter of the Custer book, called “Shrine to Defeat.” I enjoyed the Custer chapters very much, which are like Young Men and Fire in being contemplative, personal, philosophic studies of historical events. But I think my favorite sections are the more autobiographical, memoir-ish stories: if you can find a copy of the story called Retrievers Good and Bad (originally published in Esquire 88 in October 1977), you’re in for a treat. This is an early attempt to communicate some of Maclean’s feelings about his brother Paul’s death, and the abruptness of it – through dogs. What else could we ask for?

Following the Custer chapters and a selection of shorter works (and excerpts from his published books) come letters from Maclean to:

  • Robert Utley, much younger Custer scholar, to whom Maclean offers advice and mentorship while asking for tidbits on Custer; their relationship evolves until Maclean (still never having published a book), the teacher, poignantly requests help from the student who has now published several. a charming friendship.
  • Marie Borroff, former student of Maclean’s (formally, that is; Utley was correspondent and friend and only informally a “student”) who becomes a highly regarded scholar, poet, teacher herself. this relationship in letters is even more affectionate.
  • Nick Lyons, younger teacher, writer, fisherman, publisher whom Maclean befriends after Lyons wrote a favorable review of A River Runs Through It.
  • Lois Jansson, widow of Bob Jansson, USFS ranger whose work on and after the Mann Gulch fire Maclean highly regarded and treated with respect in Young Men and Fire.

As I said earlier, these letters might have been my favorite part of this book. Of course they reveal, far more than his published writings, an unedited, raw, personal Maclean. I enjoyed that man, who shares the humor, cleverness, playfulness, and philosophies of the edited and published one, but with the added charm of vulnerability, fears, and requests for help from his loved ones. He also shares his personal losses – chiefly that of his beloved wife – in these letters more than anywhere else. I deeply appreciated having access to this new side of an author I’ve come to love recently.

A few more thoughts – on Hemingway – you know I had to go there:

A blurb by Alfred Kazin on the back of this book calls A River Runs Through It “as beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway.” Now, I confess I am in danger of seeing Hemingway everywhere. I love him; I’ve read a lot of him, repeatedly, as well as several biographies. Maybe it’s a flaw of mine. But I saw Hemingway in these writings, too.

The joke has many variants, some of them dirty and all of them grim, but essentially it is one joke and underneath the many variants is a kindly undertone, as if some joke had been played upon the bluffs of the Little Bighorn for which there should be universal forbearance, on the chance that the joke played there is played some time on all of us. Clearly, our dead are delivered from oblivion when they become a joke on us.

Bear with me; I know that first one is a longish sentence and Hemingway is known for short ones, but you’d be surprised. He knew how to carry on, and in just this fashion: the repetition of that short, simple, but aurally striking word “joke”; the subject matter of death and war handled with a wry, cynical lightness. Likewise the cadence of this section-ending line:

They thought it over and after some of the weariness was gone, Little Wolf and all the young men enlisted and went back to their old job of fighting in the country that had been their home.

More great stuff from Maclean. Recommended, as usual.

Rating: 10 selected letters.

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The Fame Thief by Timothy Hallinan

Posted on August 1, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Timothy Hallinan’s quirky thief/detective (last seen in Little Elvises) is forced to delve into long-past Hollywood scandals by a nonagenarian crime boss.

famethief
The Fame Thief is Timothy Hallinan’s third novel starring Junior Bender, a professional burglar with a second calling as a crook’s detective–because bad guys need their mysteries solved, too. Irwin Dressler, no less powerful a crime boss for his 93 years of age, hires Junior against his will for a strange 60-year-old case, the theft of a Hollywood actress’s most valuable asset: her fame.

Dolores La Marr was a kid from Scranton, scarcely beginning to make it big in 1940s Tinseltown, when her association with that era’s fashionable gangsters landed her in a nasty, full-color scandal. Strangely, no one but Dolly took the fall, and all these decades later, Dressler still wants to find out who set her up. Junior quickly learns that this mystery is not as dead as it seems, and that some dangers only increase with age.

The refreshingly unassuming Junior is a fun riff on the typical private investigator: his specialty–committing crimes, rather than solving them–brings him an unusual perspective. The elderly Dressler is a fabulous, deadpan wiseguy in “eye-agonizing” golf pants, backed up by two unusually domestic versions of the standard muscled goon. And Junior’s own domestic concerns–a teenage daughter, her jokester boyfriend, an ex-wife and a randy new girlfriend–fill out the eccentric, likable cast. Fast-paced action and a building body count pair nicely with humor in this series, bound to keep the reader coming back for more.

This review originally ran in the July 12, 2013 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 slow-speed car chases.

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Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (audio)

Posted on July 31, 2013 by pagesofjulia

flightAnother beautiful, thought-provoking book from Kingsolver; and another outstanding narration by the author herself. Like The Lacuna, which I called one of the best books I read in 2012, this will be a standout. I fear this will be one of those longer reviews, as I have so much to say…

We open with a young mother of two in a less-than-thrilling marriage, named Dellarobia Turnbow, hiking up a mountain to meet a man for adulterous purposes. On her way there, she’s distracted by an amazing sight. The hills appear to be aflame, but there is no sound and no heat. She is amazed, and disturbed, and stands up her would-be lover and goes back home; it’s something like a religious experience, although she’s not particularly religious. She does, however, attend church – one of many compromises for the sake of her mother-in-law, who terrifies her.

Dellarobia lives on her in-laws’ sheep farm in Tennessee and rarely gets to leave the property. Her husband is kind but dull. She is frustrated. The strange thing happening up on the mountain, however, will expand her world: it has implications for climate change, and is variously interpreted as an event of an environmental as well as a religious nature.

The cool orange flame on the mountaintop is a mass migration of Monarch butterflies, pushed out of their normal overwintering site in Mexico by a mudslide that killed a village, caused in turn by clearcutting and climate change. Dellarobia doesn’t have the context to begin to comprehend such happenings, so she has to learn slowly; aiding her in this process is the amazing Dr. Ovid Byron, an entomologist who has written the book (many of them) on Monarchs who shows up to park his camper on the Turnbow farm and study their special mountain. Ovid is a striking figure – physically, as a black man, he is of such a minority in the rural mountains of Tennessee as to be exotic to Dellarobia; audibly, his accent (similar to Jamaican) is mellifluous and musical; and intellectually, he boggles Dellarobia’s mind and pushes her to new ways of thinking. This is a young woman who would have gone to college if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, and her thwarted ambitions are sparked by Ovid’s presence.

Meanwhile, the local religious community becomes convinced that Dellarobia prophesied the Monarchs’ arrival, that she had a vision; she is tentatively treated as a hero or religious figure, which doesn’t sit well with her feared mother-in-law, Hester. The media – local, and then national – blows things out of proportion, highlights the sensational, and alternately threatens to turn her into a sex symbol or accuses her of suicidal tendencies. Her marriage – which we learned in the opening scene was not strong or happy – is predictably strained by all the activity and attention. And perhaps most poignantly, her small son Preston is told by Ovid that he is a scientist, and begins a new way of thinking, himself.

As a family story or the story of one woman, alone, this would be an extraordinary masterpiece. Dellarobia is a remarkable woman, and I think she is probably representative of many young women who have greater abilities than they end up exploring, trapped (in Dellarobia’s case) in rural and familial circumstances that limit her. Just as in The Lacuna, one of Flight Behavior‘s greatest strengths is Dellarobia’s realness: her quirks, her frustrations, her fantansies, her day-to-day life and thoughts. We get to experience this story inside her head, and the inside of Dellarobia’s head, all by itself, would be a glorious gift for Kingsolver to bestow upon us. The other characters too, all of them, are fully realized, more real than the people I know in the real world; they’re complex, and even the initially unlikeable ones (I’m looking at you, Hester) are multi-faceted and deserving of our sympathy in the end.

But! That’s not all! There’s more to this story than Dellarobia and her family of wonderfully real, odd people. The Monarch butterflies, climate change, the complexities of farming in a changing world, the environmental movement, 350.org, and academia are all explored and examined in a wonderfully nuanced way. Idealistic young – and old – environmentalists show up on the scene as well, and there’s a lovely scene in which one of them quizzes Dellarobia on her commitment to leave a smaller carbon footprint. As it turns out, being rural and poor puts her in a pretty good place footprint-wise already, a fact which humbles (not to say embarrasses) her interlocutor.

Dellarobia turns out to be the perfect vehicle for teaching us all the science of Monarchs, of migration, of weather patterns and geography, of climate change, and of relationships among people and cultures. She’s ignorant, but not unintelligent, and once she learns how to open her mind, she is an inquisitive student; and Ovid Byron is a wonderful teacher, and let me add, his dreamy accent, so well performed in this audio edition, is to die for. [I do recommend listening rather than reading, upon which more in a moment.] However, this is never a polemic, and Dellarobia is far, far more than a vehicle; you remember I was terribly bothered by that issue in Sophie’s World, and a little bothered by it in Ishmael, but there is no trace of it here. As I wrote above, Dellarobia is very, very real. Instead, this is a moving, complex story, starring sympathetic, believable characters, that also handles some large, important questions: like, what are we doing with our world?

I have a quick note to make on the ending, mostly for my father. Pops has noted that where Derrick Jensen is brutally honest about our future, Bill McKibben tends to draw intelligent conclusions and then inexplicably end on what feels like an unrealistically optimistic note. Well, in the same vein, Kingsolver may end things a trifle more hopefully than is realistic – it feels good, you understand, but it’s a McKibben ending rather than a Jensen one, if you follow. And then she thanks McKibben in her Author’s Note, so that’s fitting.

The Author’s Note also includes a brief discussion of what in this story is true to life (and how she found it out), and what is fiction. This is a well-researched book, and I appreciate her delineating the boundary between fact and fiction, as I always do.

The audio narration by Kingsolver herself could not be improved upon. Dellarobia has an Appalachian twang and darling figures of speech. Her BFF Dovey is even cuter and mouthier; she collects jokey church billboard sayings, some of which Dellarobia is sure she makes up (“Moses was a basket case”). Dellarobia’s in-laws have their own audible personalities; her husband Cub is nothing in life if not sloooow in all respects including speech. And Ovid Byron! Oh, the accent. Swoon. Kingsolver does all these beautifully. If you have to read this book rather than listen to the author read it, then fine, but I pity you. Get the audiobook!! Do it!

Rating: without question a perfect 10 newborn lambs.

This book is so wonderful – particularly in Kingsolver’s masterful narration – that I wonder if I should go back and try some of her earlier work again. I remember being decidedly nonplussed by The Poisonwood Bible, and I know I’ve read The Bean Trees but have no impression of it (which is not a good sign); I can’t decide if I’ve read The Prodigal Summer or Animal Dreams or not (also not a good sign). But The Lacuna and this one are both so grand, I feel I should delve more deeply. Also, while I’m pondering past readings, I wonder why I keep getting Kingsolver crossed with Margaret Atwood in my mind? I wanted to attribute The Robber Bride (which I enjoyed) to Kingsolver. Maybe it’s that I’ve found them both a little hit-or-miss; I was less impressed with The Year of the Flood and ambivalent about Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin; have no impression from Surfacing; but loved The Penelopiad, and found The Edible Woman mindblowing.

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