A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett

Posted on April 4, 2013 by pagesofjulia

I found this story online, for free, here. Thanks to the Open Library project.

thanks to the Boston Public Library for sharing

thanks to the Boston Public Library for sharing

I finally got around to this one, and I’m so glad I did. I’ve seen it referenced before, but it was in Iodine that I saw the allusion that finally got me. And it was pretty easy to find online in full-text form, so no excuses.

It is a simple story. A girl named Sylvia (Sylvy) lives with her grandmother in the woods; she is fortunate to have been the one of a “houseful of children” to be chosen for this life, because she was very unhappy with people and in the city, and now she blossoms. The birds and trees are her friends. She meets a hunter, a pleasant enough young man, who initially scares Sylvy (because he is people) but who she comes to like and esteem. He is seeking a rare bird, a white heron, who does not usually roost in these parts but who Sylvy has seen and knows. In her admiration for the hunter, Sylvy climbs a very tall tree before dawn – a feat of great proportions – to locate the heron’s nest. Perhaps you can see where the central conflict comes from.

This is a very fine example of the art of the short story. It is a brief tale, and simple, but layered and allegorical and very moving. There are only three human characters, of whom the hunter remains unnamed and the grandmother is usually referred to simply as “the grandmother”; only Sylvy consistently gets a name. This adds to the simplistic, and the symbolic, effect. On the other hand, the natural world is well characterized. I love the cow:

…though she wore a loud bell she had made the discovery that if one stood perfectly still it would not ring.

Or the tree Sylvy climbs:

…it must truly have been amazed that morning through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined spark of human spirit wending its way from higher branch to branch… The old pine must have loved his new dependent.

We can see here the important role that nature plays. Indeed, Sylvy herself is part bird:

…her bare feet and fingers… pinched and held like bird’s claws to the monstrous ladder [of the tree] reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself.

Her tree-climbing adventure seems to me to clearly be an epic journey of a rather religious nature; but I am inexpert in religious texts & symbolism, so I’m not sure I can articulate that for you.

Part of what I love about this story is the deceptive ease with which we sympathize with the bird over the hunter. I read this story in the car, and Husband expressed an interest, so I summarized it for him (which was a pleasure in itself), and he took it for granted that we want the bird, as it were, to win. Well, that’s an easy conclusion to come to; we’re animal lovers, he rescues baby birds that fall out of nests (I call him St. Francis), we like the woods. And this hunter, after all, is a sporting sort, interested in bagging a rare species, rather than feeding his family. But I don’t think the same sympathies would have occurred, let alone been obvious, to Jewett’s original audience (in 1886); they certainly aren’t obvious to the hunter and the grandmother in the story. In other words, Husband and I had very clear-cut sympathies, but I think we read this story differently than it would have read in 1886. The fact that it is moving to us today as it presumably was then, but in a different way, is remarkable to me, and thought-provoking.

This is a lovely little short story in the style of realism, in praise of nature over human industry, allegorical and sweet and very powerful. I have left quite a bit unsaid – like, the ending – because I want you to read it. The link’s at the top of this post, and it won’t take long. Go.

Rating: 9 breaths of fresh air.

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (audio): second half

Posted on April 3, 2013 by pagesofjulia

hunchbackIn brief: better than the first half.

In the first half of this classic novel, I felt there was a bit much explication of aspects less interesting to me personally: most to the point, the architecture of Paris and the history of that architecture. This turns out to be a historical facet that does not fascinate me. If you feel otherwise, enjoy. I said then that Hugo’s strengths lay in the narrative of his story, especially in dialogue; and it seemed to me that this second half had more of that. I am still refraining from plot summary, since that question is well answered by the internet at large. So, briefly, in this second half our characters meet their fates. La Esmeralda, Quasimodo, Claude Frollo, Phoebus, Gringoire and Sister Gudule are for me the central characters, and each comes to a resolution by the end; Hugo wraps up very neatly in that regard.

I found the story interesting – not riveting, but engaging in that I cared about the fates of these characters. It moved a little too slowly to be called riveting, but I did remain mostly attentive. (The description of Parisian building styles through the centuries was not entirely absent in this latter half of the book, so I did still zone out some.) Gringoire’s comic soliloquies are among the best moments; and the Archdeacon’s depravity was shocking and certainly absorbing. I think he easily equals the sociopaths featured on Criminal Minds. One of my observations on finishing this book is that 15th-century French society unfortunately allowed for such crazed and dangerous behaviors if one only held a high position in the church.

This is mild praise, you realize. The Hunchback of Notre Dame struck me as a fine story, but unremarkable. And yet Victor Hugo is a big name, and this one of his best-known works (I am not excited about Les Miserables!), so what have I missed? Well, for one thing, there is this assertion that I got from Wikipedia:

Hugo introduced with this work the concept of the novel as Epic Theatre. A giant epic about the history of a whole people, incarnated in the figure of the great cathedral as witness and silent protagonist of that history. The whole idea of time and life as an ongoing, organic panorama centered on dozens of characters caught in the middle of that history. It is the first novel to have beggars as protagonists.

Notre Dame de Paris was the first work of fiction to encompass the whole of life, from the King of France to Paris sewer rats, in a manner later co-opted by Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert and many others, including Charles Dickens.

And when put in this perspective, I see its value a little more clearly. Upon its publication in 1831 there were no novels like this; okay. On the other hand this is Wikipedia (and there is a sentence fragment in the above quotation, oh the horror), so, grain of salt. Certainly I can see how this is a great, sweeping view of 15th century France, as stated involving both the King and the beggars, and I am happy to nod to the precedent set even if this is not my favorite example of the genre.

The narrator, David Case, turned out to be perfectly fine and appropriate. I liked the different voices he plays for the very different characters of Gringoire (comic, self-important, whinging), the Archdeacon (dark, conflicted), Esmeralda (sort of a wilting lily), and Quasimodo (deaf). He gave the piece flavor.

In the end, though, I shrug at this lengthy audiobook and move on without looking back.

Rating: 5 gargoyles.

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Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place by Scott McClanahan

Posted on April 1, 2013 by pagesofjulia

The author of Stories and its followups, Stories II and Stories V!, shares a memoir of Appalachian boyhood filled with the requisite hardships but ultimately redemptive.

crapalachia

Scott McClanahan centers Crapalachia on two characters of his West Virginia youth who rule over much of the narrative–his Grandma Ruby, an ornery, fantastical mother of 13 (or so) children who also photographed dead people, and his uncle Nathan, who had cerebral palsy and enjoyed listening to the radio preacher and having six-packs of beer poured down his feeding tube. We also meet his schoolboy friends, like Little Bill, an eventual roommate with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a destructive crush on a girl down the street.

Crapalachia is an unusual story told in an unusual fashion, peppered with second-person references, advice to the reader on how to live, how to remember and forget. The attentive reader will also appreciate McClanahan’s “Appendix and Notes” for its revelation of where he’s twisted the truth (as he remembers it) to suit the story he wanted to tell. Like many memoirists, McClanahan is concerned with the nature of memory, its credibility and value. He sometimes gets mired in the unpleasant, cringeworthy details of life, then pans out for grand, loving, hopeful statements. This is a gritty look at life–in Appalachia, yes, but also in a universal sense. Historical detail turns what looked to be a memoir of childhood into the subtitle’s promised “biography of a place.” In the end, despite various tragedies, this poetic, rambling series of remembrances is surprisingly optimistic.

This review originally ran in the March 26, 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 gallstones.

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Iodine by Haven Kimmel

Posted on March 28, 2013 by pagesofjulia

iodineThis is my new favorite author. I can’t even tell you… I want to read this book aloud to strangers and shout and cry. I adore her. What a powerful book, and story, and what wordsmithing.

I will tell you very little about the plot of Iodine. Its protagonist is a young woman named Trace, who also goes by Ianthe. The perspective shifts between a third person view of Ianthe and a third person view of Trace and a first person voice, in which the woman who is both women narrates; and she is the quintessential unreliable narrator. She relates memories and then states that they never happened. Her story is revealed slowly and disjointedly, in such stingy scraps that I had to go back and reread, trying to wring out the detail; but the effect is more tantalizing than awkward or confusing the way mixed-up timelines can be.

It is a disturbing story. Trace, along with the other characters we slowly come to know, has a history that upsets us. There is a strong thread of incestuous and otherwise inappropriate sexual longings running through this book (as we saw in those opening lines). Be prepared to be a little uncomfortable at times; but oh, the payoff. And again I give you the beautiful language:

Her red hair was curled and teased and sprayed into an elaborate dome; there were waves and… like the outline of paisleys, it was busy, stiff, bright hair. Not the red she was born with – this was the color of a ripe cantaloupe mixed with blood.

Kimmel has many strengths. Her prose is also poetry. She can characterize a minor player in just a few lines so crisply that I recognize a thoroughly unique and yet familiar man or woman.

Scherring was less a man than a character in a short story, and it was a story Trace rather liked; she liked how the years had disappointed him, and ruined that perfect family, and revealed gin to be poison to the liver.

Her characters are very real, straight from a mundane and yet terrifying Americana, and their lives are both disturbing and everyday.

Iodine is far more a psychological thriller than was Something Rising. There is more Patricia Highsmith here and less Tennessee Williams. There is also definitely something of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River, although the protagonists of the two books are different in many ways.

One aspect of Iodine that was also present in Something Rising is a study of literature, in this case of Greek myths, of archetypes, of Freud and Jung: several characters are deeply mired in academia, speaking in a language of myth & archetype, which makes for a beautiful and strange little subculture that they live in. Trace/Ianthe is both very much a part of this world, and also outside of it. I found this erudite framing element to the story very charming and also a little ridiculous, which I think is how Kimmel intended to portray it. It certainly made me interested in reading some of what Trace reads; but not all of it! (I will be looking up Sarah Orne Jewett’s A White Heron, finally, after seeing it referred to in various places before this book.)

I think I’ve made a hash of this review. I don’t want to say much about the plot, and I can’t do Kimmel’s extraordinary talent justice. She has a lovely way with words; I would read her stories about absolutely anything, but find this damaged, disturbed microcosm of the American Midwest especially enthralling. I was riveted throughout, and upon finishing, had to just sit and absorb the effect of this story. My fascination with Kimmel continues and she remains highly recommended.

Rating: 9 black dogs.

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Adventures in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird

Posted on March 25, 2013 by pagesofjulia

adventuresI have a friend named Fil who won’t stop bringing me books. I’ve told him how badly my reading is backlogged, but still we can’t have dinner or a drink without bringing me a book, or several. There are worse problems to have. He certainly does a fine job of selecting them, there’s no question about that; I just worry about finding time for them all. This one, however, fit perfectly into a hole in my reading at the time it arrived: I was a little behind and needed a quick read to review for you all here when he brought me this small, slim paperback of 119 pages. Perhaps it’s wrong to choose one’s reading based on length! but sometimes it does go that way. So, enter Isabella Bird.

From a brief bio in the opening pages, I learned that she was born in 1831 in England, and was sickly and in poor health for the first 40 years of her life, until she traveled to Hawaii and climbed a volcano. From there, she realized that outdoor activity was much more her style than were British sickrooms, and she embarked on a different lifestyle. Adventures in the Rocky Mountains is a collection of letters (and excerpts from letters) she sent to a sister back home while tramping around the Rockies, then not yet a part of the United States but a frontier dominated by hard drinking, hard living, and men.

Bird’s writing is remarkable for its lovely, evocative descriptions of natural scenery, as well as its equally evocative, but less praising, descriptions of frontier life. She retains some disdain for the uncivilized dress and manners of some of her neighbors, but before we call her prudish we will note that she was “bagging 14ers” in a time and place when women were scarce, and were hardworking frontier wives rather than adventurers. In other words, despite preferring a well-dressed conversationalist as companion to a ragged and “coarse” one, she was a tough cookie. A quotation from one of her letters graces the front cover: “There’s nothing Western folk admire so much as pluck in a woman…”

Aside from the descriptions of natural beauty and frontier life, I found a third reason to recommend this book: the character of Mr Nugent or ‘Jim’ (never referred to without the ‘single quotation marks’!), and his dog ‘Ring’ (also always so designated). ‘Mountain Jim’ is a well-known ruffian and desperado with no end of violence and criminality in his past – he confides in Bird at one point such atrocities that she can’t bring herself to relate them. But he is also a perfect gentleman, apparently, in the right mood. He is a “countryman” of Bird’s, a wonderful conversationalist, and quite chivalrous as well as respectful of her abilities to be one of the guys. He is described as charmingly as are the Rocky Mountains. For that matter, the less prominent Evans (another very likeable but also alcoholic and problematic frontiersman) gets a similarly colorful character sketch; and the UNlikeable Lyman as well; so really I should add characterization of people generally to Bird’s list of literary talents.

I am going to stop telling you and show you, through a few choice passages, below.

on a sunset:

The sun was setting fast, and against his golden light green promontories, wooded with stately pines, stood out one beyond another in a medium of dark rich blue, while grey bleached summits, peaked, turreted, and snow-slashed, were piled above them, gleaming with amber light. Darker grew the blue gloom, the dew fell heavily, aromatic odours floated on the air, and still the lofty peaks glowed with living light, till in one second it died off from them, leaving them with the ashy paleness of a dead face. It was dark and cold under the mountain shadows, the frosty chill of the high altitude wrapped me round, the solitude was overwhelming, and I reluctantly turned my horse’s head towards Truckee, often looking back to the ashy summits in their unearthly fascination.

on ‘Jim’:

Heavily loaded as all our horses were, ‘Jim’ started over the half-mile of level grass at a hand-gallop, and then throwing his mare on her haunches, pulled up alongside of me, and with a grace of manner which soon made me forget his appearance, entered into a conversation which lasted for more than three hours, in spite of the manifold checks of fording streams, single file, abrupt ascents and descents, and other incidents of mountain travel.

on a sunrise, and the lightening of the world:

There were dark pines against a lemon sky, grey peaks reddening and etherealising, gorges of deep and infinite blue, floods of golden glory pouring through canyons of enormous depth, an atmosphere of absolute purity, an occasional foreground of cottonwood and aspen flaunting in red and gold to intensify the blue gloom of the pines, the trickle and murmur of streams fringed with icicles, the strange sough of gusts moving among the pine tops – sights and sounds not of the lower earth, but of the solitary, beast-haunted, frozen upper altitudes.

on a high mountain lake:

I thought how their clear cold waters, growing turbid in the affluent flats, would heat under the tropic sun, and eventually form part of that great ocean river which renders our far-off islands habitable by impinging on their shores.

on society, even where people are scarce:

…in truth, this blue hollow, lying solitary at the foot of Long’s Peak, is a miniature world of great interest, in which love, jealousy, hatred, envy, pride, unselfishness, greed, selfishness, and self-sacrifice can be studied hourly, and there is always the unpleasantly exciting risk of an open quarrel with the neighbouring desperado, whose “I’ll shoot you!” has more than once been heard in the cabin.

Isabella Bird’s story of travel through Colorado Territory in the 1870’s, told in letters to her sister, spans almost precisely three months in time; but it is a lifetime of beautiful, incisive, gorgeously told observations, and we are lucky to have them today.

Rating: 7 breaths of rarefied air.

As usual, thanks Fil!

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (audio): first half

Posted on March 21, 2013 by pagesofjulia

hunchbackThis is a long book, and listening to it as an audiobook makes it longer still. I’ve been at it a week and a half now and am not quite halfway through, so I thought it might be appropriate to break it into two reviews – to remind myself, as much as anything else.

I will not devote too much space to plot synopsis here; this work has plenty of presence in the public consciousness and a rather thorough Wikipedia article as well. The story within the book most centrally concerns Quasimodo, the eponymous hunchback, and Esmeralda, a beautiful young gypsy woman with several admirers. While the story revolves around these two protagonists and their eventual fates, its range is much larger than that. Between events in the lives of Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and the other characters who effect their stories, Hugo describes the architecture of Paris (note the prominence of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in the title and in the story) and the history of both the city and its architecture. He connects changes and trends in architecture to changes in culture, and thereby tells a larger story than just that of his characters; this is also a book about Paris and its people in history.

It can get a little dry. I find this reading (listening) experience to be mixed: at its best, Hugo is hilarious, dry, droll, witty, and sketches people and scenes charmingly. At its drier moments, however, my mind wanders as he describes architecture (I confess, not a particular area of personal interest) and the various period styles involved in the Cathedral, etc. I can blank out on this book for 30 minutes at a time, and I am not highly motivated to fight it; I just let Hugo’s words wash over me, gathering the main effect, and wait for Esmeralda et al to reappear and entertain me. While I am a fan of some forms of narrative within descriptive or didactic ramblings (The Perfect Storm being the perfect example of this done beautifully), this is not one of the more effective or enjoyable versions I’ve come across.

The narrator of this version, David Case, has what I assume to be a fine French accent (that is my mother’s area, not mine), but its nasal, whinging nature can be a little trying. I don’t want to give the impression that I am impatient or annoyed with this book (or this narration) on balance; but I do have some criticisms, you see. I turned it off for a few days in favor of MUSIC (what a joy!), but I was glad to get back to it.

I think this is a great story, and a great point of cultural reference, and I am getting some (needed, and appreciated) education on French culture. I am enjoying it – particularly the narrative parts. It takes a little patience and forbearance – a little more than a faster-paced story would – but I believe it will be worth it. More a Dickens than a Lee Child, you see.

Have you read The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Or do you have any other experiences with similar classics: medium-lengthy, verbose and descriptive, a little challenging but worthwhile?

Rating: I’m going to finish it before I judge.

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Ramblers: Loyola Chicago 1963: The Team that Changed the Color of College Basketball by Michael Lenehan

Posted on March 20, 2013 by pagesofjulia

A dynamic, emotional study of one college basketball team’s role in the civil rights movement.

ramblers
Michael Lenehan’s Ramblers chooses one college basketball team, and one season, to illustrate a sea change in the sport–and in the United States. The Loyola Chicago team of 1963 was not the first to send black and white players out on the court together, but Lenehan makes an excellent case for the significance of this particular team’s actions at a key moment in the national struggle for civil rights. He examines their competition over the course of the season, focusing on two teams in particular: Mississippi State, whose players had to sneak out of state due to a ban on playing teams with nonwhite members, and Cincinnati, which was also an integrated team, but one with an increasingly antiquated playing style.

Relying on primary sources and interviews to study a handful of individual players, coaches and administrators, Ramblers passionately evokes the beauty of a great game in a time of great change, and works as a metaphor for changes taking place across the nation as well. Lenehan handles the game with an ease and comfort that indicate his expertise, and Ramblers combines his passion for basketball with an intimately detailed history–including a deeply moving digression into the 1962 riots at Oxford, Miss. Lenehan eventually follows each of his subjects through to the present (or the ends of their lives), giving Ramblers a feeling of completeness. Throughout, he maintains a sense of fun appropriate to a book that’s ultimately about the antics of college kids.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the March 19, 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: 7 fast breaks.

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The Prisoners by Guy de Maupassant

Posted on March 18, 2013 by pagesofjulia

demaupassantPerhaps the best and the worst of The Prisoners is that it is like the other de Maupassant short stories I have read. This is to say that it is finely crafted with great attention to detail and wonderful expressiveness in very few words; it is also to say that it covers more of the same ground as I have seen in other of his work. That is, it is about the Prussian invasion and occupation of France in the Franco-Prussian War, and it highlights the honor and resourcefulness – and occasional corruptness and idiocy – of the French.

In this story, a young woman who is “daughter and wife of a forester” is home alone with her mother. The daughter’s wife is serving in the French army; the father is in town drilling with the local militia. This young woman is strong and unafraid. When half a dozen Germans show up demanding to be fed dinner, she tricks them into her cellar – once, apparently, an underground prison cell – until the local militia can come to take them into custody. The young woman is represented as a fine example of patriotism, courage, and quick wits; the French should be proud of her (and her father certainly is, although it is implied that the leader of the militia is happy to take credit for the capture). The militiamen, however, don’t get an uncritical treatment. I will leave this part spoiler-free, but an unfortunate and avoidable incident highlights that they are less competent than our daughter-and-wife.

This is yet another brief, effective short story from de Maupassant, who likes to both praise and expose his countrymen and -women for their behaviors during the Franco-Prussian War. He’s one of the very finest short story writers I’ve read, for his incisive use of language and imagery. Another winner.

Rating: 7 pumps.

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Something Rising (Light and Swift) by Haven Kimmel (audio)

Posted on March 14, 2013 by pagesofjulia

somethingrisingSomething Rising (Light and Swift) was an amazing audio listening experience. I was transfixed, and need to go looking for more Haven Kimmel immediately.

This is the story of a girl named Cassie, whom we meet at, oh, ten years of age and follow until she is about 30. Her mother is from New Orleans but as a young girl followed a handsome pool player named Jimmy to a little town in Indiana, where they married. They had two daughters, Belle and Cassie, but Jimmy was a bad choice from the start, never sticking around long, mostly continuing to shack up with his prior fiance. He’s not a terribly good father to the girls, but through him Cassie learns to worship the pool table he plays on. It’s not Jimmy but his brother, Cassie’s Uncle Bud, who teaches her to play; and this is how she makes her living, supplemented by the odd day labor.

The fact that Cassie is an extraordinary pool player is not the point of her story, although it does help define her personality and her tendency to be roughly competitive. Her appreciation for geometry and order help her make sense of the world. She is also a handywoman, outdoorsy, and a good and generous friend if not loquacious. Early in life she worships Jimmy, but that will change.

Cassie reminded me of the protagonist of Once Upon a River. Both young women are untameable and live by their own rules on the edge of the civilized world. Both are sensitive and vulnerable despite being strong and capable. Laura, Cassie’s mother, is a proud, damaged Southern belle out of a Tennessee Williams play, but stronger; Belle, Cassie’s older sister, goes quite nuts under the strain of Jimmy’s failures and Laura’s anger. Laura and Belle are literary women, and Cassie by contrast feels that she is not, but she does awfully much reading & writing (partly to communicate with her mother and sister) for a woman without literary leanings of her own. I think this is something she doesn’t see in herself, but it’s there.

The story is full of drab, flat, gray American landscape and the ennui of the working class upon it, which is also a somewhat familiar theme; but it’s evoked so crisp-and-clearly, so beautifully, that it took my breath away. I shared a teaser with you the other day, but I couldn’t stop collecting more exemplary turns of phrase:

  • “Every day was a vaccination.”
  • “‘Howdy’ was always ironic, except when it became a habit. And then it was the speaker’s entire life that descended into irony, and later into self-parody. Cassie studied Wally’s face in profile but couldn’t tell where he stood.”
  • “Cassie was the daughter of a great romance, if what was meant by romance was wreckage.”
  • “CDs instead of records, but the songs she wanted to hear: if that didn’t sum up the struggle.”

A large part of what I loved about this book was Cassie, her story, the strange sad beauty of her life & her world; but another large part was the lovely way with words that Kimmel employs. This book is a poem. And the audio reading was divine as well: Chelsey Rives renders Laura’s New Orleans accent, Belle’s nervous worryings, and Cassie’s clipped tones perfectly. I didn’t want this book to end, not least because I wanted to know what happened next, but also because I wanted to hear Chelsey tell me more about the sultry Gulf Coast and the knockings of the pool balls at Uncle Bud’s.

Something Rising (Light and Swift) is a sad story, but with all the dignified grace of the greatest sad stories, and although Tennessee Williams peeks out here and there, there’s far more hope in Cassie’s world than there is in TW’s: this is also a coming-of-age story, and ends with a possible future. I wish I could follow Cassie into it.

Clearly I loved this book, and recommend the audio highly. And… I’m off to find more Haven Kimmel.

Rating: 9 cigarettes.

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Released by Amber Polo

Posted on March 11, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Full disclosure: This book was sent to me by the author, who very astutely offered me dog treats with it for my two babes and therefore got in the door easily. Great trick, Amber!

releasedLiberty Cutter is a librarian recently returned to her hometown of Shipsfeather, Ohio, having taken the position of public library Director. She’s there to learn more about her own history and that of the town; ever since her mother abandoned her at age 5 in the children’s section of the local library, she’s had precious little information about her background and family. (She was raised by four law librarian aunts who apparently lacked any sense of fun.) Shipsfeather is a strange place: no one in town wants to talk about the past. As the book opens, Liberty dashes off to a massive fire that destroys her library. City officials are less than helpful, but she ends up reopening in an beautiful old school building, with the help of the friendly townspeople and her excellent staff. It turns out that her new library building was already occupied! Underground from the old Academy lives a pack of dogshifters, who it turns out are humankind’s original librarians, and are pleasantly disposed towards Liberty. And it’s a good thing, because the werewolves are the enemies of librarians everywhere – book burners, no less! I’ll mostly quit here for the sake of spoilers, but: Liberty makes new friends, and the library gets a fresh and healthier new start.

The first in a series, Released is great fun, if you’re a fan of books, dogs, or libraries (preferably all three). It does rely heavily on the reader’s appreciation of these framing elements, but this doesn’t concern me overmuch, because I doubt many people pick up such a book who aren’t. Shipsfeather is full of library references: “thank Dewey,” Liberty thinks, when things go right; certain characters talk in “Dewey-speak” (substituting Dewey numbers for nouns). This idyllic small town has far more enthusiastic librarians and library patrons than seems realistic, but again, we’re happy to forgive. The dogshifters in the basement are named and described by breed (and their country of origin plays an important role, too), in another instance of casual indulgence in our mutual interests. The chihuahua is, of course, my favorite character (and he shares a name with a major Mexican beer!).

There is plenty to like: the fantasy is clever and cute, the characters are likeable in their eccentricities, and again, there’s plenty of dog- and library-play. There is some romance, of the swooning and weak-kneed, he’s-so-handsome-and-strong variety. It’s all “clean.” I could make a few criticisms, too. The plot and fantasy realm is not terribly complex; this is a light-hearted romp, not a world-building feat. The dialogue can be a little tedious and unreal. Phrases like “even so” don’t feel right in dialogue, and likewise the lack of contractions: “I will do everything I can” in informal speech. The humor is heavy on the puns – not a problem for every reader, but noteworthy.

Released is easy-reading fun, not crafted in high literary style but a worthwhile jaunt. I enjoyed it, despite a few stylistic flaws, and found myself thinking about the sweet characters and the sweet little world of Shipsfeather as I fell asleep one night this week; and they made me smile. And that’s always worth a few points.

Rating: 5 liver treats.

Thanks, Amber, for sending me a copy of your book.

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