Scribner, 2014. 531 pages.
Historical Fiction
Our Been-There-Read-That Bookshelf
fairly brims with moderately memorable historical fiction: a few pages into
this one, we realize we’re reading something beyond the moderately
memorable. Set in World War II Germany
and France, revealed through deftly intertwined narratives, this National Book
Award Finalist concerns itself with the internal lives of two adolescents—a
sightless French girl and a gifted German boy—as they negotiate a broken,
brutal external world. Blind since early
childhood, Marie-Laure lives in Paris with her father, master locksmith at the
Museum of Natural History. When the Nazis
occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to the coastal citadel of Saint-Malo. Werner Pfennig grows up in a German
orphanage, demonstrating precocious aptitude for radio technology. His talents earn him admission to a
blood-chilling academy for Hitler Youth, and Werner soon finds himself
journeying through the dark heart of war, eventually to Saint-Malo. As Marie-Laure and Werner move toward
inevitable meeting on the Brittany coast, abbreviated chapters present big
themes and intricate detail with prose that is at once sweeping and tightly
composed. The result is luminous
historical fiction: All the Light We Cannot See achieves a convergence of
history and personal experience that lingers in our memory long after the last
page turns.
Parting Words: She listens until his footsteps fade. Until all she can hear are the sighs of cars and the rumble of trains and the sounds of everyone hurrying through the cold.
Parting Words: She listens until his footsteps fade. Until all she can hear are the sighs of cars and the rumble of trains and the sounds of everyone hurrying through the cold.
Atria Books, 2014. 238 pages.
Non Fiction and Biographies
A mid-summer book drought ends with this
compelling memoir by a first-time author-cum-ranch-hand. The story is set just north of Yellowstone in
the windswept Madison Valley, an area we have hiked, a remote landscape we—like
the author—feel connection to. Time and again, we have happened upon bleached bones
strewn across sublime Montana trail and therefore understand
apprehensions experienced by one charged with safeguarding cattle contiguous to
a wild, natural place... the conflict between idealism and pragmatism in a land
of predators and domesticated prey. Without this connection, one may be
tempted to reduce this story to: got a job as a ranch hand, worked like a dog
for a year, and killed a wolf. But more
probably, even those with no particular fondness for wild and natural places
will appreciate Andrews’ description of the daunting frontier. And even those with no previous experience in
fence building, with no burning interest in riding the range and caring for
cattle, will benefit from his reflection upon the complications of shared
environmental space: the inescapable variance between conservation of
wilderness and relentless encroachment by… us.
Parting Words: I am still haunted by the
endless grassy sweep of the Madison Valley, the herds of elk that move like
clouds across it, and the wolves running creek bottoms in the morning half
light.
Henry Holt and Company, 2013.
Nonfiction and Biography
It happens once a year: we get a
hankering for an intellectually provocative journalistic critique of
historically significant-yet-under-examined voraciously anti-communist
siblings. Go figure! John Foster Dulles (serious, matrimonially
faithful Secretary of State) and Allen Dulles (gregarious, seriously callow CIA
Director) have been summarily scuttled from our collective national
memory. Why? Because, to be painfully succinct, they f-ed
up. But their dual biography is an important,
if slightly tedious, reading experience.
Shaped by a raging missionary mentality, a politicized pioneer spirit,
and fervent belief in American exceptionalism, the Brothers Dulles were convinced that
Good-with-a-capital-G and Evil-with-a-capital-E were at war in the
mid-twentieth century world—and that they had providential calling to fight the
covert fight.
Parting Words: They are us. We are them.
Parting Words: They are us. We are them.
Little, Brown and Company, 2013. 771 pages.
The Pulitzer Project
Early in the year, we do the heavy
lifting and hoist this big, captivating, lovely-but-flawed coming-of-age story from
the shelf. A cataclysmic moment of
violence launches Our Protagonist Narrator on a so-tragic-it’s-comedic life
trajectory, an exhausting physical and psychological journey from youth to
adulthood and, for us, an exhausting flight of heart-and-mind-flipping
fiction. Despite many maddening
contradictions, The Goldfinch wins our hearts and minds, most of the time. It is slow to build but moves at an urgent
pace. It is long… but not too long. It is large and loud and trenchant and
sprawling, nothing like the small and subdued and subtle, intimately-rendered
titular painting—but married to it in eloquent ways. When we come to the end, we take the Pulitzer Prize winner—with its loss and love, ugliness and beauty, sorrow and survival,
ruin and redemption—wrap it with newspaper, seal it with duct tape, put it in a
pillowcase, then in a shopping bag, and store it on a hopeful shelf in the
climate-controlled recesses of the Cellar Door.
Parting Words: I add my own love to the
history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and
pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to
preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to
hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of
lovers, and the next.
Riverhead Books, 2013. 417 pages.
Historical Fiction
Here we have an imaginative convergence
of Brink-of-Civil-War history, slapstick comedy, rip-roaring adventure and,
ultimately, heartfelt exploration of appearance and reality, race and identity,
action and inaction—all with a Twain-like tone.
And Good Lord, we have two unforgettable characters: narrator Henry
Shackleford, a young slave in Kansas Territory, and controversial abolitionist
John Brown. An early-in-the-action argument
between Brown and Shackleford’s master turns predictably violent and, before we
can murmur Huckleberry Finn, young Henry is on the run with Brown—disguised as
a girl and nicknamed Little Onion—rollicking across a blood-stained, socially-strained landscape toward a definitive moment at Harper’s Ferry. Was John Brown a madman or a martyr, a
terrorist wreaking havoc through armed insurrection, or a visionary executing
God’s wrathful will? The Good Lord Bird
will not silence historical debate, but Little Onion’s narrative voice imbues
Brown with flesh-and-blood humanity, and the story reverberates with grace,
humor, and genuine wisdom.
Parting Words: Up above the church, high
above it, a strange black and white bird circled ‘round, looking for a tree to
roost on, a bad tree, I expect, so he could alight upon it and get busy, so
that it would someday fall and feed the others.
Little, Brown and Company, 2013. 834 pages.
Fiction Favorites
During the Dog Days of summer, we enjoy
this beguiling behemoth in the privacy of backyard shade: from the sequestered
comfort of a weathered Adirondack chair, with an outdoor cushion for lumbar
support, a cold compress to sooth throbbing temples, and a tall glass of
something iced within reach. A few dense
pages into this Man Booker Prize Winner, we recognize themes requisite to the
Victorian sensation novel, updated with a crisp, postmodern tone. Adultery?
Check. Amateur Sleuthing? Check.
Apparitions? Check. Concealed Gold? Check.
Forgery? Check. Illicit Opium Use? Check.
How about Murder? Prostitution?
Seances? Seduction? Sketchy Behaviors? Thievery?
Check, check, check, check, check… check! The plot thickens meticulously, and much of
the story is set in nineteenth-century Hokitika, New Zealand. In the language of the Maori, Hokitika means
around, and then back again—an appellation explaining much about the novel’s
elaborate, circular narrative path. The
plot revolves around planetary movements, and characters correspond to zodiac
signs. The opening chapter is hundreds
of pages long; the final chapter, just two.
Dickensian chapter headings wax as the page count wanes, synopsis
eclipsing narrative in the closing pages. A fascinating read, a good read... but pass the cold compress and the tall glass of something iced, please.
Parting Words: “Are your eyes closed?” “Yes. Are Yours?”
“Yes. Though it’s so dark it
hardly makes a difference.” “I feel—more
than myself.” “I feel—as though a new
chamber of my heart has opened.” “Listen.” “What is it?”
“The rain.”
Plume, 2014. 322 pages.
Historical Fiction
One moment in time: In Nipomo,
California, 1936, a young mother sits roadside, surrounded by a cluster of
ragged, clinging children. Another woman
emerges from an automobile and approaches, photographic equipment in hand. Charged with documenting the plight of
migrant agricultural laborers, she raises her camera, clicks the shutter,
capturing the tableau in black and white—an iconic image of Depression-era
America. A great photograph speaks to us viscerally,
intellectually, historically. But can it
move beyond the moment to illuminate a life—or does it, in static poignancy, obscure
both truth and reality? Mary
Coin expands upon that moment in
time, exploring both the potency and limitations of photographic art. The woman with the camera, Vera Dare, is
drawn from real-life photographer-of-note Dorothea Lange. The young mother, Mary Coin, is derived from
the original Migrant Mother, Florence
Owens Thompson. Throw in a fictional current-day
professor of cultural history who is researching a family secret, and we have a
a smooth and satisfying late-year read to stash on the shelf.
Parting Words: The picture slides down
the screen and disappears. But it will
always exist. In a cloud. In an invisible language of zeros and ones. There is no erasure.
HarperCollins Publishers, 2014. 322 pages.
Nonfiction and Biography
Mid-year, we pull page-turning
nonfiction off the shelf. In late 1961,
twenty-three-year-old Michael Rockefeller—great-grandson of Standard Oil
magnate John D. Rockefeller and son of then-New York Governor Nelson
Rockefeller—vanished without a trace in dangerous waters off the southwest
coast of New Guinea. Young Rockefeller
had been on an artifact-collecting expedition for his father’s recently-founded
Museum of Primitive Art when his catamaran capsized while crossing a turbulent
river mouth. An expedition partner
stayed with the boat and was rescued, but Michael reportedly made a swim for
terra firma and disappeared. Before
long, wild rumors began circulating: Rockefeller had indeed reached shore, only
to be killed and consumed by native Asmat, warrior tribesmen with lifeways
built around retributional violence, headhunting, and ritual cannibalism…
locals who knew Rockefeller by name.
Retracing Michael’s ill-fated progress, an author-journalist ventures into remote New Guinean jungles,
shedding light on a generational whodunit that at once confounded the Dutch
colonial government and aggrieved one of the world’s most powerful
families.
Parting Words: Even for a stone ax or a necklace of dog’s teeth, do not ever
share this story.
Penguin, 2008 (1978). 226 pages.
History and Travel
Peter Matthiessen, Great American
novelist, naturalist, travel writer (and CIA agent!) passed away in April. In fitting reading tribute, we visit one of
his finest: a first-person chronicle of an eighty-five day trek through the
rarefied heart of the Himalayas. While the
ostensible objective of the trip is to join a fellow naturalist in a study of
the mating habits of the Himalayan Blue Sheep, Matthiessen gives us more than
Bharal bacchanal. He describes the
Dolpo Region of the Tibetan Plateau in evocative detail: the lay of the land, the
people, the flora and fauna… the air up there.
He shares his oft-thwarted search for the elusive snow leopard, his equally
oft-thwarted search for the equally elusive Lama of Shay, believed to be the modern
incarnation of a twelfth-century Buddhist spiritual leader. He meditates upon the death of his wife; he
meditates upon the Buddhist principle of peace through acceptance. He meditates, albeit briefly, upon the
existence and range of the Yeti.
Matthiessen has left us, but The Snow Leopard holds a special place on
the shelf, a luminous recollection of travel and transformation, a lyrical
rumination upon external and internal life-journeying.
Parting Words: Under the Bodhi Eye, I
get on my bicycle again and return along gray December roads to Kathmandu.
Ecco Press, 2013. 561 pages.
Fiction Favorites
Ranchers and Indians and Oilmen, oh
my! Eli McCullough claims the fictional
distinction of being the first male child born in the newly–formed Texas
Republic. Captured by the Comanches,
returned to the white man’s world, torn between two irreconcilable cultures,
Eli parlays ruthless ambition, uncompromising hardheadedness, unflinching
resilience, and heart-rending wit into an accumulation of wealth and power that
twines across the McCullough family tree.
Eli’s narrative intermingles with time-traveling narratives of Peter and Jeannie, a
sensitive son and a high-strung great-granddaughter whose lives unfold
in considerable shadows cast by the family patriarch. The Son claims a Texas-size chunk of shelf
space: a smart, passionate, violent, panoramic generational epic, a coming of
ages and ages and ages saga as ambitious and absorbing as the House of McCullough.
Parting Words: A child like that would
be worth a thousand men today. We left
him standing in the riverbank. As far as
I know, he is looking for me yet.
That's all they wrote... and some of what we read in 2014.
Happy New Year and Happy Reading in 2015!
Happy New Year and Happy Reading in 2015!
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