The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey

Posted on July 27, 2020 by pagesofjulia

A single discovery touches three siblings’ lives in surprising ways in this poignant, gleaming story.

The Boy in the Field is a stunning novel of tenderness, interconnectedness, cause and effect by Margot Livesey (The Flight of Gemma Hardy; Mercury). Matthew, Zoe and Duncan are walking home from school one day when they find him, in a field with cows, swallows, bluebottles: a beautiful young man, really just a boy, bloodied and unconscious. He speaks one word: “Cowrie,” Zoe reports to the police. “Cowslip,” says Duncan. “Coward,” says Matthew. With their discovery, they save his life.

The teenaged siblings are close, loving and very different from one another. Matthew, the eldest, is thoughtful. He hopes to become a detective one day, and becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of who hurt the boy in the field, and why. He puzzles over motivations. Zoe has “a gift for finding things: birds’ nests, their mother’s calculator, a missing book, a secret.” She worries over her parents’ relationship and explores her own first sexual experiences; she is drawn to the ways in which people come together and apart. Duncan, the youngest, is observant, almost preternaturally sensitive and a gifted painter. Finding the boy will start him toward a discovery about his own life that might be destructive.

The novel unfolds through alternating chapters from the perspectives of Matthew, Zoe and Duncan. Their parents, Betsy and Hal, are compelling characters as well, less known than the children but multi-faceted, imperfect and endearing. Livesey’s deceptively simple prose renders each sibling as both sweet and complicated. Their shared experience, finding the injured young man, begins for each of them a different kind of acceleration: into adulthood, out of innocence, into reconfigured connections. Matthew gets to know the police detective assigned to the case; his relationships with his girlfriend and his best friends irrevocably change; he notices for the first time that he’s drawing away from his younger siblings. Zoe has out-of-body experiences, breaks up with her boyfriend and meets a young philosopher, and it is Zoe who discovers the chink in their parents’ marriage. Duncan sinks into the paintings of Morandi, gets a new dog and launches an investigation of his own. By book’s end, the three will grow both closer and apart through this shared experience.

The Boy in the Field is a coming-of-age story, a mystery, a sharp-eyed examination of individual lives and relationships. Despite the violent crime related to its title and the insecurities that arise for various characters along the way, this brilliant novel offers a sense of beauty and safety in its quiet ruminations.

This review originally ran in the July 21, 2020 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 brushstrokes.

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Luster by Raven Leilani

Posted on July 24, 2020 by pagesofjulia

Race, sex, shifting social rules, art, inspiration and digestive troubles plague the compelling protagonist of this debut novel.

Raven Leilani’s first novel, Luster, is a rocket-paced, sensual fever dream of sex, trauma, relationships and conflicting perceptions.

Edie is in her 20s and struggling, with her crappy shared Bushwick apartment, her low-level position in children’s publishing, her uninspired sexual choices and her irritable bowel syndrome. Her parents are dead, but the psychic wounds they inflicted are not. Her painting is not going well, and she is a Black woman in New York City. “Racism is often so mundane it leaves your head spinning, the hand of the ordinary in your slow, psychic death so sly and absurd you begin to distrust your own eyes.” Early on, her affair with Eric seems different, refreshing, in spite of, or because of, the 23-year age gap. Then Edie gets fired and evicted, and she spirals, landing, weirdly, in the middle of someone else’s marriage. She knew from the start that Eric was in an open marriage–his wife set a lot of rules for his relationship with Edie. But suddenly she finds herself taken in, literally, by Rebecca, living in their guest room in New Jersey, asked to mentor this white couple’s adopted Black daughter, Akila. Surreality seems to be Edie’s default, but now the funhouse mirror tilts again.

Edie’s first-person narration is nearly stream-of-consciousness, long sentences overflowing with imaginative visual impressions and self-deprecation: “as the car is pulling away he is standing there on the porch in a floral silk robe that is clearly his wife’s, looking like he has not so much had an orgasm as experienced an arduous exorcism, and a cat is sitting at his feet, utterly bemused by the white clapboard and verdant lawn, which makes me hate this cat as the city rises around me in a bouquet of dust, industrial soot, and overripe squash, insisting upon its own enormity like some big-dick postmodernist fiction and still beautiful despite its knowledge of itself, even as the last merciless days of July leave large swaths of the city wilted and blank.” Edie’s particular blend of despair, panic and self-destruction is spellbinding. As she hesitatingly helps Akila with her hair and accompanies Rebecca to work (conducting autopsies at the VA) and to a midnight mosh pit, Edie begins to paint again. She is inspired by the minutiae of this family home: lightbulb, dinner plate, Rebecca’s body.

Luster is intoxicating and surprising, never letting readers settle into recognizable patterns. Leilani has crafted an unforgettable novel about a young woman making her own way.

This review originally ran in the July 20, 2020 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 Captain Planet mugs.

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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Posted on July 22, 2020 by pagesofjulia

In this meticulously researched and beautifully crafted book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson argues that the U.S. has a race-based caste system.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns) offers a singular and vital perspective on American society with Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. This examination of caste and its consequences on every aspect of culture is unusual, eye-opening and of life-or-death importance. As in her previous work, which she continues and deepens here, Wilkerson lives up to the scope and significance of her subject matter, delivering a book that is deeply researched, clearly structured, well-written and moving.

The root of so many social ills in the United States, Wilkerson argues, is not precisely racism but casteism, which is closely linked to the concepts of race invented and reinforced since before the country’s founding. “Caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive,” she writes, and then explicates and defines her terms precisely, with the support of exhaustive research. “Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”

Wilkerson interrogates and defines caste systems by comparing and contrasting three: those of Nazi Germany, India and the United States. The job of analyzing more than 400 years of American history, social structures on three continents and the complexities of sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, philosophy and more is an enormous one, but Wilkerson is more than capable. She lays out eight pillars of caste, including divine will, heritability, occupational hierarchy, and terror as enforcement. She puts to work a number of convincing metaphors to illustrate her points: infectious disease, the challenges of owning an old house, actors (mis)cast for a theater production, rungs on a ladder, the biblical concept of the scapegoat. She uses a new vocabulary to recast old problems, usually referring not to terms of race or class but of caste, and discusses recent electoral politics with descriptions rather than names, defamiliarizing the familiar and thereby offering her reader a fresh perspective.

Wilkerson’s understanding of caste proposes a nuanced take on the Trump election: many working-class white voters did not in fact vote against their interests, but rather prioritized one interest–upholding the caste system–over others, including access to health care, financial stability and clean air and water. She effectively argues that while “caste does not explain everything in American life… no aspect of American life can be fully understood without considering caste and embedded hierarchy,” and shows how it causes psychological and physical health damage to everyone living within this system.

Caste is a thorough, brilliant, incisive investigation of the often invisible workings of American society. Original, authoritative and exquisitely written, its significance cannot be overstated.

This review originally ran in the July 6, 2020 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 9 owners of old houses.

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The Secret Music at Tordesillas by Marjorie Sandor

Posted on July 20, 2020 by pagesofjulia

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book by the author in exchange for my honest review.

Marjorie Sandor (author of the lovely essay “Rhapsody in Green“) shines a light on the Spanish Inquisition through the voice and music of one man with her historical novel The Secret Music at Tordesillas. It is 1555, and the Spanish Queen Juana I of Castile, also known as Juana (or Joan) the Mad, has just died at Tordesillas following forty-seven years of gentile captivity. One of the handful of musicians employed for her entertainment is the elderly Juan de Granada, who chose not to leave the palace when the rest of Juana’s retinue did; instead, he remains to be questioned by inquisitors, firstly over the fact that he is not at church. The novel is told in his first-person perspective as he recounts his life for a very specific audience, the commissioner and scribe sent to investigate rumors of a secret Jew at Tordesillas. This choice of narrative voice and audience is the first interesting move by Sandor to bring her subject to light. The ways in which Juan aims to ingratiate himself serve to characterize and set the tone; we are always clear on who holds the power in this transaction.

Juan’s story begins by cycling back to 1492, when the Jewish quarter of Granada was conquered and cleared out, and ten-year-old Juan was baptized. He relates how his family and neighborhood were torn apart and forced to assimilate, how he escaped, and how he came to be a part of Infanta Juana’s household as a small boy. Clutching his father’s oud (“that antiquated ‘lute’ of the Moors”) and already well trained in music, he is lucky to continue his musical education and play for royalty. He travels with Juana to Flanders for her wedding to Archduke Philippe, and then back to Spain; he is rarely away from her, in fact, in all his years. And therefore he is frequently with Inés de Castro as well, one of Juana’s most trusted ladies, and a central figure in Juan’s long life.

The old man sits for hours spinning his story for the commissioner and the scribe; there is a hint of Arabian nights in the way he holds his audience, both those two in the book and us, the readers. Between the times he brings us back to his immediate situation – under threat of the suspicion of his inquisitors – we get lost in the story, the present tense of young boy and then young man and then maturity. Juan and Inés, and others, walk a fine line between dangerous secret Jewish traditions and outward propriety. Numerous cultural, musical, and culinary details mark this tightrope.

I confess I was often confused. Better familiarity with this period in history and Spanish and Jewish cultures would have made me a much better reader for this novel. Perhaps I’m unusually ignorant of this material; if you’re like me in that regard, be prepared to keep close track of the details, and perhaps to do a little research as you go.

One of the first things I notice about Sandor’s writing is its lyricism, which is fitting since this is a novel about music and the appreciation of music. I was unfamiliar as well with the implications of musical instruments and styles, but didn’t feel troubled about that; the way Juan talks about his family background and the significance of music was effective and affecting. It was often a lovely story to get lost in, even if I sometimes missed a cue. It is also, of course, a disturbing story. “You know how vigilant the pious are. It is their duty to keep an eye on us all.”

It has been a theme for a few reviews now that I’ve gotten a bit bogged down in the middle of a book. Especially after a few such experiences in a row, I guess this is likely to be at least as much about me as about the books in question. This story is both lovely and absorbing; I don’t know what to say about my small struggles. Perhaps because of my unfamiliarity with the historical period, I was not the perfect audience. There is always so much more to learn!

Rating: 7 lemons.

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Love and Ruin by Paula McLain (audio)

Posted on July 17, 2020 by pagesofjulia

From the author of The Paris Wife, about Hemingway’s first wife Hadley, comes this novel about his third, Martha Gellhorn. Each novel focuses on the woman first, with Hemingway in a supporting role. This one is told from Gellhorn’s first-person point of view, with very few, brief glimpses into Hemingway’s own perspective – I enjoyed these but I think it was wise to limit them. We follow Gellhorn from young womanhood, early in her writing career, into meeting Hemingway in her 20s – he’s married to Pauline – and into the Spanish Civil War, where Gellhorn finds the talent she will be best known for: she becomes one of the most important war correspondents of the 20th century. The arc of their relationship defines the novel’s timeline, but it is as much the story of the woman. Such a fiery relationship with such a larger-than-life figure as Hemingway does threaten to dominate, but one of the things I love about Gellhorn is that there was so much more to her than this, and I think McLain communicates that.

A little like with The Trespasser, I felt a slowdown in the middle of this book. I’m not sure it’s a criticism of McLain, or simply the fact that Hemingway is a difficult character: mythic, swaggering, enormous, and perhaps difficult to write without becoming a sort of cardboard cut-out who makes dramatic (not to say predictable) pronouncements. I even considered the possibility that I’m a bit sick of him; maybe I’ve read too many fictional treatments of the man. I definitely rolled my eyes at Gellhorn’s hand-wringing and devotion over her selfish, cruel, immature lover, but I had to remind myself that this nonsense is likely perfectly realistic. Which doesn’t make it any easier to sit in.

Whatever that was about, McLain pulled me back. It’s definitely a good strategy, I think, to keep Gellhorn front and center. Along with Hadley, she’s my favorite of Hemingway’s wives; she didn’t entirely take his shit, and had a formidable career of her own. She refused to sublimate, which is why their marriage failed, but it’s why she got to keep herself, too. In the end, I was left feeling really good about this read, although it hadn’t always been easy to take in. Kirkus writes, “Martha comes across as one tough cookie, Ernest as a great writer but a small man,” and well, yes. Welcome to Hemingway.

It’s been a long time since I read The Paris Wife – almost ten years – which I remember loving without reservation. But I suspect I’m a more critical reader now, so I’m not certain at this distance that the first was a better book. Certainly I recommend Love and Ruin for the Hemingway completist, and I think it’s a good overview of the Gellhorn story. Kirkus further writes that “it basically rehashes information and sentiments already available in [Gellhorn’s] own memoir and published letters,” but I don’t know why that has to be such a criticism. Having that information presented in a stylish fictionalization seems like a service, and I found it an enjoyable read.

Rating: 7 rabbits.

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The Trespasser by Tana French (audio)

Posted on July 15, 2020 by pagesofjulia

The Trespasser is the sixth book in Tana French’s ‘Dublin Murder Squad’ series, starring Antoinette Conway and her partner Steve Moran. Conway is chafing at her mistreatment by the rest of the murder squad, the good old boys’ club that hates her (she interprets) for being a woman, for having brown skin, for not playing their games. Moran’s all right, a good partner, and more or less loyal – she brought him into the squad, after all – but she has trouble trusting him entirely. It’s just a part of her personality, and/or, a result of the continuing abuse and harassment she experiences.

They work the night shift, and keep getting assigned low-level domestics and bar fights. Until Aislinn Murray: a Dream Date Barbie-type in a magazine-perfect flat, with a shadowy past. The squad pushes Conway and Moran to settle this one quickly, by charging the obvious suspect: a new boyfriend who had a date with Aislinn the night she died. But the two young detectives have some more complicated theories in mind. The Trespasser is part “straight” murder mystery, as they race to solve Aislinn’s murder, but it’s also part murder-squad intrigue, and a hefty part psychological drama: Conway has some formidable strengths, but it seems one of her greatest weaknesses is a certain suspicion, not to say paranoia, that makes it hard for her to trust Moran or anyone. In Tana French’s signature style, much of the turmoil of the story takes place not in exterior action but inside Conway’s head, as she argues with herself about what she can believe in.

In the middle, this one got a bit slow for me, and like The Witch Elm could have used some acceleration; but by the end, it zipped along as cracklingly as the best of French’s work. I still hold The Likeness to be her finest, but this one is solid.

And then, holy smokes, talk about amnesia. I just searched this blog for previous Tana French reviews and found that I’d read this one shortly before its 2016 publication. I can’t believe it – not for a moment did it feel familiar. I’m losing my mind. Previous review here, and I’m keeping the rating. This reading seems a bit different from that first experience in that I detected a slow-down in the middle; also, reading vs. listening makes a big difference with French’s atmospheric, heavily Irish stories. I love hearing them done aloud with the accents and the musical lilt and pacing, and wouldn’t want to consider reading them if I had the audio version available!

I can’t believe I forgot this book.

Rating: 8 schemes.

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Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard

Posted on July 13, 2020 by pagesofjulia

My buddy Vince lent me his copy of this very slim collection (just three essays, under 70 pages), saying he’d found it very comforting early in the pandemic and social isolation, and pointing out that the essays refer to Dillard’s time in the Pacific Northwest, when isolation was a bit of a theme for her.

My relationship with Dillard’s writing has been complicated since the beginning, when I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and loved it, but not without qualification. We’ve had our ups and downs. When I found out that the rose-printing, bloody-pawed cat at the beginning of that book was a fiction, my trust was broken, and it turns out that I’m still dealing with that.

The three essays that make up Holy the Firm feel representative of Dillard’s work, although perhaps a bit at the abstract end of the spectrum, with fewer (as I told Vince) sticks and bugs than I prefer. It’s the minutia, the close attention to sticks and bugs, that I loved most about Pilgrim. And I am not the intended audience for musings on God, religion, or the church. I found myself often screwing up my face, a bit impatient with her (and when she describes her cat’s behaviors, I’m still hung up on the made-up cat, and unable to buy in). Put briefly, I’m sure this brief collection has a lot to offer the right reader, but it wasn’t for me on the whole.

There were, however, some lovely lines.

The earth is a mineral speckle planted in trees.

It is the best joke there is, that we are here, and fools–that we are sown into time like so much corn, that we are souls sprinkled at random like salt into time and dissolved here…

Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace, that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved.

On the other hand, I was suspicious of Dillard’s claim that “No drugs ease the pain of third-degree burns, because burns destroy skin: the drugs simply leak into the sheets.” (Indeed, a few websites indicate otherwise.) I’m not sure I believe in the burning moth in the first essay; I’m suspicious of the story of Julie Norwich (and offended by some of Dillard’s gendered expectations for her). This author and I may not be made for each other. We may have different priorities; we certainly have different rules for what constitutes nonfiction. But I still get to keep what I loved about Pilgrim. It’s nice that books work that way.

My favorite passage in the whole book was the one about buying communion wine.

How can I buy the communion wine? Who am I to buy the communion wine? Someone has to buy the communion wine… Shouldn’t I be wearing robes and, especially, a mask? Shouldn’t I make the communion wine? Are there holy grapes, is there holy ground, is anything here holy? There are no holy grapes, there is no holy ground, nor is there anyone but us…

I’m out on the road again walking, and toting a backload of God.

In the end, I’m left with a sense of dissatisfaction with the essays as a whole, and a sense of grumpiness toward Dillard. But in the details, in individual lines, I definitely found moments to love. Perhaps more than ever, keep in mind that your reaction to this book will be different than my own – recall Vince’s recommendation and appreciation. To each her own.

Rating: 5 accidents.

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The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Posted on July 10, 2020 by pagesofjulia

“This book is very close to perfect,” says the front-cover blurb by Seanan McGuire, and I confess I raised my eyebrows. But I just finished this book, and I agree.

I’m going to take an unusual step and repost my colleague’s review of this book as published by Shelf Awareness (on March 2, 2020), because I think it’s an excellent review and it’s why I purchased this book. (Which is not my typical fare.) My comments follow. Thanks, Jaclyn, for your good work!

A repressed orphanage inspector takes a stand for six magical children and their charismatic caretaker in this humorous, inclusive love story.

In this sparkling romantic fantasy, TJ Klune pits a mild-mannered paper pusher against the forces of discrimination, inhumane bureaucracy and precocious children, with hilarious and inspiring results.

“Make sure the children are safe… from each other, and themselves,” Extremely Upper Management of the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY) instructs 40-year-old Linus Baker. Linus’s thankless task is inspecting orphanages that house magical children. He blanches at the children’s powers but treats them kindly and believes his work supports their welfare. His quiet life with his old Victrola and “thing of evil” cat Calliope gets interrupted when administration dispatches him to remote Marsyus Island Orphanage, home of six especially unusual children.

Though no stranger to telekinesis or witchcraft, Linus balks at the group: a distrustful forest sprite, a button-hoarding wyvern, a female garden gnome who swings a mean shovel, a boy who turns into a Pomeranian when frightened, a green blob who likes to play bellhop and “Lucy,” the six-year-old son of the Devil. However, their gentle, unflappable caretaker, Arthur Parnassus, unsettles Linus most of all. He exhibits no intimidation at parenting the magical equivalent of a nuclear warhead, and Linus, “a consummate professional,” finds himself attracted to the orphanage’s master in a most unprofessional manner.

However, his reservations about the children fade as Linus gets to know them and sees Arthur’s commitment to giving them a thoughtful, loving upbringing. The intention of remaining detached and going home in one piece evaporates when Linus learns that the island’s non-magical inhabitants have threatened the children. Nevertheless, Arthur Parnassus is more than he seems and, sooner or later, Linus will have to choose between remaining safe but complicit in an oppressive system or standing up for the people he has come to love.

Stuffed with quirky characters and frequently hilarious, this inclusive fantasy is quite possibly the greatest feel-good story ever to involve the Antichrist. Klune, who has previously won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Romance (Into this River I Drown), constructs a tender, slow-burn love story between two endearingly flawed but noble men who help each other find the courage to show their true selves. Charged with optimism and the assertion that labels do not define people or their potential, The House in the Cerulean Sea will delight fans of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series and any reader looking for a burst of humor and hope.

—Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

It started just a hair slow for me, perhaps because the style and genre weren’t what I’d been involved with lately (or much ever), but soon the magnetism of the story took hold. Linus is frustratingly meek; it took me a minute to get invested in his future. But there is certainly magic here, not only in the fun, quirky, vulnerable children, but in Klune’s imagination and the lovely house in the sea. By the end, I cried. This book is just deeply sweet, and sometimes we need that. It’s also got some powerful messages about acceptance, authenticity, honesty, and the value of a built or chosen family; and those messages are nicely couched in a story that is sweet but not precious. I found it most moving; TJ Klune has a new fan. I’m so glad I stepped away from my standard reading material. We all need that sometimes.

Rating: 9 buttons.

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personal news: cross-post from Foxy

Posted on July 9, 2020 by pagesofjulia

Just a little bit about what’s going on in my life these days; back to book reviews tomorrow. Moving In and Moving On.

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Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey

Posted on July 8, 2020 by pagesofjulia

A former U.S. Poet Laureate remembers her mother, and wrestles with her brutal murder, in compelling and feeling style.

Natasha Trethewey, two-term United States Poet Laureate, forges a serious, poignant work of remembrance with Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir. Trethewey’s mother, Gwen, is the focus of this book: the daughter’s memories and what she’s forgotten, and, pointedly, the mother’s murder at the hands of her second ex-husband. The murder took place just off Memorial Drive in Atlanta, Ga.; the aptly named thoroughfare runs from downtown to Stone Mountain, monument to the Confederacy, “a lasting metaphor for the white mind of the South.”

Trethewey is the daughter of an African American mother and a white Canadian father. Their marriage was illegal; she was born just before the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case that struck down laws banning interracial marriage. Memorial Drive begins with her upbringing in Mississippi with her doting extended maternal family, necessarily recounting her early understanding of race and racism. This happy period ends abruptly with mother and daughter’s move to Atlanta, when Trethewey’s parents divorce. Atlanta has its strengths, such as a vibrant African American community, but very quickly, Gwen meets the man who will become her second husband. From the beginning, Joel is a sinister figure. Twelve years later, 19-year-old Trethewey returns to Atlanta from college to clean out her mother’s apartment after Joel brutally murders Gwen.

While this central event is harrowing, Memorial Drive does not focus only there. Trethewey ruminates on memory and forgetfulness, and recalls her developing love for and skill with metaphor, language, writing. Back home in Mississippi, her great-aunt “would appear each day at the back door, singing my name through the screen, her upturned palm holding out toward me three underripe figs… she was teaching me the figurative power of objects, their meaningful juxtapositions.” During the painful retelling of her stepfather’s physical abuse of her mother, Trethewey resorts to the second person, a whole chapter delivered to her younger herself. Concluding: “Look at you. Even now you think you can write yourself away from that girl you were, distance yourself in the second person, as if you weren’t the one to whom any of this happened.” Memories of her mother often appear as images, offering symbolic interpretations of the 12-year gap left by trauma. While Trethewey does pursue forensic exploration (transcripts of recorded phone calls between Gwen and Joel, as well as a visit to a psychic), this memoir is more introspection than true-crime investigation. And it is gracefully and gorgeously rendered, as befits a poet of Trethewey’s stature.

Trethewey declines to offer a neat conclusion, but she succeeds in making meaning from pain. Memorial Drive is loving and elegiac, disturbing and incisive.

This review originally ran in the June 18, 2020 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 lost records.

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