Fiction Review: All the Light We Cannot See

Title: All the Light We Cannot See
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Scribner, 2014, 531 pages
Source: Library

Publisher's Summary:
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. 

My Review: 
I don't usually review big best-sellers. In fact, I don't usually read them, probably due to a not very admirable stubbornness that refuses to jump on the bandwagon. In this case, the general story (and that cover) kept catching my eye at the library, and I initially made an attempt to listen to the audio book. I think that there was something wrong with the recording, though (this sometimes happens with my ancient MP3; files get a little scrambled), and it just didn't seem to make sense or grab my attention. I gave up. [As noted, this is not a condemnation of the audio book, since I think that the problem lay in problems I was having with my device.]

But I kept talking to people who really liked it, so I finally took the hardback out of the library, and read it during the holidays. To my surprise, I quickly became engaged with the book and ended up liking it very much. (Okay, I can hear you saying that I shouldn't be surprised to like a book with so many literary prizes, but that's me. Literary prizes make me suspicious.)

What makes the book work? For one thing, the characters are unusual but not unbelievable. Werner, in particular, is no hero. He has a particular kind of genius, but that doesn't translate to any ability to stand up to injustice and wrongs through most of his boyhood. A hard life has taught him, instead, to keep his head down and obey orders, which he does through most of his life. But he is human, and so what his orders lead to sickens him, and creates in him a growing tension that I expected to break out in a different way than it did. (I only now see that what happens to him in the end is an expression of this).

Marie-Laure is perhaps even more amazing--the blind girl who learns to do so much, and goes through so much, without giving up. Her story is a more conventional coming-of-age tale, in many ways. Certainly she grows up through the terrible events that are the crux of the book. She is a more likable character than Werner, but I think that the brilliance of the book lies not with her ability to overcome obstacles, but in the development of Werner as a human and humane individual who is nonetheless not a hero who stands up to the Third Reich. He humanizes the German side of things, without being the kind of desperate rebel we prefer to glorify. At first, I was put off by this failure on his part, but in the end, I saw him as a way of understanding how so many basically good people ended up going along with the Nazi regime.

The writing style makes this a much faster read than the page  count would suggest. Short chapters alternate between Werner and Marie-Laure, and sections switch back and forth between the crucial final days in Saint-Malo and the years leading up to that point (this may have been part of my problem with the audio book, as it is harder to track switches like that on audio, without visual cues). The settings and voices are clear and easy to track.

My Recommendation:
Read it. It's not perfect; there are some things about the ending that I wasn't wild about. But it's a good read, and it helps us see two sides of something in this time when empathy seems to be in danger of extinction.

FTC Disclosure: I checked All the Light We Cannot See out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Non-fiction Review: Walking to Listen, by Andrew Forsthoefel

Title: Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
Author: Andrew Forsthoefel
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2017. 371 pages
Source: Library

Publisher's Summary:Life is fast, and I've found it's easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I'm slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us.

At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read -Walking to Listen.- He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide.

In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt. But he also encountered incredible kindness from strangers. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn't know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself.

Ultimately, it's the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level. 

My Review:  
This was one of my "oh, that looks interesting" choices while sorting books at the library, and I started reading with a bit of skepticism, as well as curiosity about the stories he would listen to, and how much a kid fresh out of college could/would learn from it all. By the mid-point, the author had totally won me over.

Forsthoefel does an excellent job of conveying who he was at each stage of the journey, with both a certain amount of self-deprecation and also a kindness toward himself that shows an unexpected maturity. And he truly does set out with a focus on others, listening to anyone who will talk to him. This leads to his first struggle: how to listen to people who say horrible, racist things. He never does wholly resolve that, though he reports the advice he gets as he asks others that question. I think the best advice he gets is to ask people, "what makes you think that?"

As someone who is more interested in walking in the mountains, and reading accounts of the long trails, his choice to walk roads bothered me at first. Didn't he know that would be terribly hard on his body, and he'd have to look at a lot of ugly places? Eventually, I figured out that he may not have known all of that, but he was okay with it, because (unlike me) he wanted to walk where the people were. It's a different kind of thing.

As the walk stretches on and Forsthoefel reaches the West (in high summer, about the worst possible timing for crossing Arizona, Nevada, and Death Valley), the author starts to develop a new understanding of what he is doing. That includes a suspicion that he is, at least in part, hoping that someone will give him the answers. Answers to what? To everything, including who he is and what he is doing. Before he is done, he has learned that no one else can tell him that, though there's no denying he got a lot of wisdom (and a certain amount of BS) from the people he listened to all across the country.

In spite of the book's length, I realized when he lists the people who traveled often long distances to be at the finish with him, this narrative only scratches the surface of what went on during the months of his walk. But it's a darn good start, and reflects a maturity and wisdom beyond his years--and they are well earned by walking.

My Recommendation:
If you like to read about people who do interesting things, this is for you. If you read (as I did), Peter Jenkins' A Walk Across America, you might want to read this to see how the walk works some 40 years later. And if you are looking for a little reassurance that there are good people out there, this is for you as well.


FTC Disclosure: I checked Walking to Listen out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Middle Grade Monday: A Solitary Blue. Audio book review

 

Title: A Solitary Blue

Author: Cynthia Voigt; Narrated by Jeff Woodman

Publisher: Recorded Books, 2011. Original: Atheneum, 1983. 204 pages.

Source: Library digital resources

Publisher's Summary:

Jeff Greene was only seven when Melody, his mother, left him with his reserved, undemonstrative father, the Professor. So when she reenters his life years later with an invitation to spend the summer with her in Charleston, Jeff is captivated by her free spirit and warmth, and he eagerly looks forward to returning for another visit the following year.

But Jeff's second summer in Charleston ends with a devastating betrayal, and he returns to his father wounded almost beyond bearing. But out of Jeff's pain grows a deepening awareness of the unexpected and complicated ways of love and loss and of family and friendship -- and the strength to understand his father, his mother, and especially himself.

My Review: 

I struggled with this review, because I both really liked the book and felt like there is a deep flaw. More on that in a bit.

This is the 3rd book in the Tillerman series, and at first I didn't think it was much connected, though Jeff is a minor character in Dicey's Song. It looked like this was just his story, but it does connect to the Tillerman's story and moves it forward, as well. But the main character and the focus of the book is Jeff, and the strange childhood that makes him the boy he is when Dicey meets him. I found Jeff a compelling character, and the narrative style of both the writer and the reader--it's a powerful audio book--makes him distinctive and unforgettable.

The book takes us from the time Jeff's mother leaves--at age 7--until he's nearly through high school, and we see all the relationships through Jeff's eyes. So we have his naive belief in his mother's dedication to "causes," his fierce love of her and obsession with her when she returns to his life (a bit oedipal, but it kind of makes sense), and then the equally fierce anger and even hatred when he realized that she isn't at all what he believed. And we watch him turn to the one thing that he never knew could help make up for missing parents: nature, and especially the sea.

The flaw in the story comes with Jeff's relationship to his father, which feels a little unbelievable on both ends. That is, through most of Jeff's childhood, his father is beyond "distant." He's completely disconnected and unbelievably willing to believe that the boy can manage without him. And then...when Jeff has a crisis and the depths of his disturbance are forcibly brought home to the Professor, they are somehow able to connect in a way that seems to erase all the years of neglect. I guess I'm not wholly a believer that age 13 (or so) is one where that kind of miracle can happen so easily. Why doesn't Jeff have any resentment of his father's neglect and emotional absence? It's hard to buy.

That said, I'm glad he doesn't, because the two seem to have worked out an interesting life that makes Jeff a good fit with the Tillerman family!

Recommendation:

Read this, but read the books in order, and be prepared to be frustrated with a couple of pretty bad parents. The reader, even a middle-grade reader, will be aware that people are not what they appear, long before Jeff is, and will feel some pain and discomfort while waiting for him to see the truth. Melody's character makes this book tend a bit more toward YA than middle grade, so I'd say ages 12 and up, even though there is no sex or violence. 

FTC Disclosure: I checked A Solitary Blue out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Two Middle Grade Classics

 A little late with this this morning!

Today I'm reviewing two of Madeleine L'Engle's books, the first two about Vickie Austin. First published in 1960 and 1963, they introduce a character and a family who continued to appear in books up to L'Engle's death. I'm reviewing both, not because they don't stand alone, but because most of what I have to say applies to both.

 

Title: Meet the Austins and The Moon By Night
Author: Madeleine L'Engle 
Publisher: originally published by Vanguard, 1960 (Meet the Austins) and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1963 (The Moon by Night). About 240 pages each. My paperbacks were published by Bantam and Dell, respectively.
Source: My bookshelf.

The Story:
In Meet the Austins, we do just that. We meet narrator Vickie Austin, age 12, and her family: her home-maker mom, doctor Dad, and siblings. John at 15 is the oldest and steadiest. Suzy is 9, and a pretty, bouncy blonde with the ambition and brains to become a doctor. Rob is 4. In spite of the catastrophe with which the book opens--a friend of the family has been killed, and his daughter Maggie will be coming to live with them for a time--the book really does just feel like an introduction. Nothing much really happens. Vickie establishes herself as a kid on the cusp of adolescence and in position to have a hard time with it.

The Moon By Night is a great deal more eventful, but again, most of the story feels like it is there to allow Vickie to struggle with growing up. Two years have passed, and everything is changing again. Not only is Maggie leaving the family to live with her legal guardian, but the whole family is going to uproot from their little New England Village and move to New York for a year. John is going off to college. And to help the family make the transition, they do a cross-country camping trip.

My Review:
Okay, looking at my summaries, you'd think I don't like these books, but I do. However, I also think they aren't as good as some of L'Engle's other work, in part just because they don't have that extra sense of importance. In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg and the others have to save her father from a fate worse than death, and save the world along the way. These are very much just stories about coming of age, without any more drama than the teen years provide all on their own.

I think that Meet the Austins is one of the author's weakest books. It feels very episodic, and lacks a central cohesion. It's still a fun read, but doesn't compel. The Moon By Night feels a little more purposeful. Less happens to Vickie, and more happens because she acts. It is still a story without big issues and significance, but under the very simple story line a lot of major life issues come up. We meet Zachary Gray, a character L'Engle brought into a number of books, crossing over between the Austin Family books and the Murray family from Wrinkle. Zach is a great means of getting at some issues about life, death, and choices, and maybe even a few the author didn't realize.

I've been sensitized by recent articles about abusive relationships and controlling boyfriends, and boy, does Zach set off the alarm bells! He is definitely trying to control Vickie, as well as manipulating her emotionally, hurting her (emotionally) and then apologizing so that she feels sorry for him and always forgives...I wonder if L'Engle realized what an abuser she was creating? Understanding him this way also helps me understand why this super gorgeous guy picks on younger girls who are not generally recognized as pretty, a plot point that is otherwise unbelievable. I'm happy to say that, in the end, Vickie stands up to him, which also makes me think that L'Engle knew exactly what kind of person she had created.

For books that were written about the time I was born, these don't feel all that dated. A few attitudes about gender roles and dress (surprisingly few!), and a lack of seatbelts were the most obvious relics of another age. The tour of campgrounds across America amused me (though it also was a bit dated, as things have changed in the Parks, and not all for the better), as did L'Engle's reaction to the Southwest. Obviously, that denizen of the east coast forests wasn't as taken by the desert as I am! I can't hold that against her, though I would love to have the opportunity to show her just how not-dead those lands are.

Recommendation:
These are not the author's best work, but for those who like to have "the whole story" they fill it in with fast, easy reads that are well-written and definitely not a waste of time. I think that Vickie's issues might make for some possible openings for conversations with daughters on the cusp of puberty.

Full Disclosure: I have owned copies of both books for years, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Book Review: English Creek, by Ivan Doig

Title: English Creek
Author: Ivan Doig, read by Scott Sowers
Publisher: originally Aetheneum Books, 1984 (339 pages); Audio by Recorded Books, 2010.
Source: Library digital collection

Publisher's Summary:
In this prizewinning portrait of a time and place -- Montana in the 1930s -- that at once inspires and fulfills a longing for an explicable past, Ivan Doig has created one of the most captivating families in American fiction, the McCaskills.

The witty and haunting narration, a masterpiece of vernacular in the tradition of Twain, follows the events of the Two Medicine country's summer: the tide of sheep moving into the high country, the capering Fourth of July rodeo and community dance, and an end-of-August forest fire high in the Rockies that brings the book, as well as the McCaskill family's struggle within itself, to a stunning climax. It is a season of escapade as well as drama, during which fourteen-year-old Jick comes of age. Through his eyes we see those nearest and dearest to him at a turning point -- "where all four of our lives made their bend" -- and discover along with him his own connection to the land, to history, and to the deep-fathomed mysteries of one's kin and one's self. 


Review: 
Really, after that summary, what could I add? This IS "a witty and haunting narration," and I will add engaging, humorous, and poignant. Doig manages to tell the story of a family and an entire region through the events of a single summer seen through the eyes of one 14-year-old boy. Admittedly, the narrator is looking back at it from his old age, so there is a strong filter of mature insight (which is why it is definitely an adult novel, not YA. It isn't that it has as much sex or swearing in it as many teen novels do, it's that the perspective is ultimately an adult one).

Doig's writing is, for want of a better word, lyrical. Or maybe I just mean that he seems always to light on the mot juste, and without effort (am I envious? Yeah, maybe a little!) (I am also aware that it is nothing like effortless from Doig's end. He's just good enough to make me feel it was inevitable when I read it).

I pulled out just one example that struck me at the time: Jick is reflecting on the sheepherders in the Two Medicine National Forest, and the ways in which they occupy themselves--reading, building pointless cairns, carving. But then he mentions the others, the ones who "couldn't be bothered with pastimes. They just lived in their heads, and that can get to be cramped quarters." And we know those are the ones who are more than a little crazy, and we understand why.

Mr. Sowers' narration lives up to the writing. He has just the right accent (Montana with just a hint of the Scots burr that Jick inherits from his parents), and develops each character clearly and distinctly. I had no trouble following--I couldn't turn it off!

Recommendation:
As always, for those who love historical fiction, Montana, the American West, and great writing. I can say that listening as well as reading a book like this is a good way to understand even better why the language works.

Full Disclosure: I checked English Creek out of my digital library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Book Review: The Bartender's Tale

The Bartender's Tale, by Ivan Doig.  Fiction; coming-of-age novel for adults.

I've reviewed Doig's work before, and confessed that I consider him to be one of the best.  I have always focused on Mr. Doig's use of language--which remains masterful.  But this book struck me, as well, with his ability to create twists of events which strike the reader, as they do the characters, as both utterly unexpected and yet somehow inevitable.  As I read, I think I see the unraveling coming from far back on the left, yet when it arrives it is sudden and around the corner on the right.  In fact, early on I thought Doig was going to disappoint me with a book that was too inevitable.

The Bartender's Tale, like many of Doig's books, is the first-person narrative of an adult recalling the pivotal time of his childhood--in this case, the summer when Rusty Harry, son of the legendary owner of the Medicine Wheel, the best bar in Montana, or certainly in Gros Ventre, is twelve.  The year is 1960 (a year which I am forced, however reluctantly, to admit makes this an historical novel), though 1960 in Gros Ventre, Montana, looks little like 1960 in New York or San Francisco.  Or even, as Rusty's new-found 21-year-old half-sister finds, like Reno.  The hippie era has not reached Montana.

Rusty and his father have worked out their own way of living from the time Rusty was six, and Tom Harry came and collected him from the aunt who had been raising him (in Phoenix; and the one really hard thing for me was figuring her as Tom's sister.  But there might be those who look at my brothers and me and wonder if we are really kin.  Lives take different tracks by middle age).  But into their peaceful existence come no end of disruptions: a friend for Rusty, a collector of "lost voices" from the Smithsonian, and above all a never-known daughter for Tom.

How it all works out, and Rusty and his father manage to come out sane, alive, and mostly on an even keel, is the result of the quiet brilliance of Doig's plotting.  That I can't pass the halfway point without becoming hopelessly hooked and unable to stop reading is the result of his even more brilliant twists of the language.

Del Robertson comes from the Smithsonian to try to capture the language of rural Montana before it is lost.  Ivan Doig has done the job for him, smoothly, convincingly, and without apparent effort.  I never know when I finish one of his books if I should be inspired to be a better writer, or should quietly pack away my pens, because I can never equal his mastery.

I found The Bartender's Tale excellent reading, but I'm in a dilemma--I didn't think it was quite as good as The Whistling Season.  That should mean a lower rating, but I think it still deserves five stars.  Call it 4.5, though it might be more reasonable to up WS to 5.5 and leave this its five stars.

Book Review: Between Shades of Gray

Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys.  YA Historical Fiction.  Audio book, read by Emily Klein.

First things first: this has NOTHING to do with Fifty Shades of Grey (Gray?), and it's almost a shame that the books came out about the same time, because it does Sepetys' book no favors to create confusion with a story of that nature.

Between Shades of Gray is, in fact, an historical novel of the Soviet takeover and depopulation of Lithuania just as WWII was beginning.  In the horror of what Hitler did in so much of Europe, history has lost sight of what Stalin did--and did almost as horribly--in the Baltic states, another forgotten genocide.

The first-person narration by Lina, the teen-aged daughter of a university professor, manages to convey her tensions and fears effectively through a style that seems at first flat.  In fact, I restarted the story three times, distracted by other books (I keep a large selection on my MP3 at all times).  Part of my reluctance was knowing what I was getting into--a story of immense inhumanity and inevitable suffering.

What I forgot--and was brought powerfully back to me as the story progressed--was that all such stories are also stories of immense humanity.  As the political system, and the guards it created, unfolds as completely inhuman, focused on the destruction of a people, those people gradually move out of shock and self-focused fear and become, if anything, a stronger community than ever.

I appreciated that Sepetys did not sugar-coat humanity.  That is, while the political prisoners learned to stick together, and work together, they remain themselves.  The irritable and despairing Bald Man doesn't stop being either irritable or despairing--at least in his words.  But he does what needs to be done, including shutting up when Lina's mother insists.  People do desperate things to keep a family together, or protect a loved one, and Lina must move from condemnation to understanding--and does so, with a fairly convincingly adolescent reluctance.  The title, in fact, is an excellent reflection of the key thing she must learn--to move from the black-and-white world of childhood into a more nuanced understanding that can accept grey areas.

Perhaps my largest criticism is that the story ends rather abruptly, leaving me wondering how they survive the nine more years before being allowed to return to Lithuania.  However, the story ends at the point where, in essence, Lina grows up: when she becomes a leader and a major source of strength in their small band of survivors.  It is Lina's move from childhood to adulthood that makes this a story, not a history book, and not merely a recital of horrific events.

To return to the "flat" narrative style, because it has been criticized by a number of reviewers, I have to say that I found that flatness effective.  When telling of a traumatic event (which seems rather an inadequate description of ten years of penal servitude in Siberia), a person can either maintain an emotional distance, or dissolve into a pool of grief and loss, overwhelmed by what has happened.  Sepetys manages to convey Lina's feelings without overwhelming the reader.  It is a delicate balance which she manages pretty well.

I give Between Shades of Gray a just scant 4 stars, as I did feel a little dissatisfied with the ending.