Library Journal's annual "Best Of..." lists are officially in print and most of you know that I worked for two months on the list for this year's literary fiction stand outs. Now I can talk a bit more about some of them and also about the fact that, naturally, each of the three of us who read the thirty-six contenders had to compromise a bit on the finalists. The wonder is that without this assignment I'd probably never have found such gems as "Boy Swallows Universe," or "Night Boat from Tangier."
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Kevin Barry was a revelation for me. My sister and I have often lamented that we just don't "feel" our Irish roots. Far better, we thought, to have more exotic blood flowing through our veins. Alas, our DNA test disabused us of our dreams. Yet reading Barry's novel was a visceral experience. The language spoke to me, even though - perhaps especially because - it came from the mouths of Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, a couple of two-bit crooks who share a long history of crime, violence, and the love of one woman.
An air of menace surrounds them even though, when we meet the two, they are at the tail end of their careers and lives, sitting in a run-down ferry terminal waiting for the arrival of Dilly, a young woman they both lay claim to. They pass the time reminiscing about their partnership, their youth, their breaks with each other and their eventual reunion. Who else, you might wonder, would want them?
Barry exquisitely sets up scenes of horrific violence juxtaposed with others of tenderness, even love. This dichotomy reminded me of that famous scene in "The Godfather" that toggles back and forth between a baptismal ceremony and a mass gangland killing. Barry's narrative style is comprised of short, staccato sentences offset with poetic, musical cadences. This novel is a remarkable reminder of why the Irish are considered consummate storytellers.
"The Water Dancer," on the other hand, was a tough sell for me. I had to read it twice before I came around. First of all, I thought that it might be a better fit in the historical fiction category or even in fantasy. The story centers around an enslaved man named Hiram who is the son of the plantation owner. Taught to read and write, he comes to believe, without any reason, that his white father might raise him up to help run the property that is falling into disrepair under the hands of the actual heir, Hiram's half brother, who is a womanizing wastral without a shred of business acumen.
As a devoted fan of author Ta-Nehisi Coates' non-fiction, I read in awe his brilliant case for reparations outlined in a famous article in The Atlantic, I was disconcerted by his use of a stilted, outdated linguistic style for his debut novel. It felt forced and inauthentic to me. I also had to work past the fantastical premise Coates put forth surrounding Hiram's talent of conduction, a means of seeing the past and the future and traveling in between. Then I reminded myself of Coates' work on the Black Panther graphic novels and decided to accept that he needed to give Hiram a bit of superhero power, the better to eventually work with Harriet Tubman on the underground railroad.
What eventually spoke to me was Coates' decision not to focus so much on the physical horrors of slavery, the whippings, dismemberments, and constant torture that we've come to know from history, but rather to speak of the emotional devastation wrought by family separation. In fact, it is Hiram's sense of loss at barely remembering his own mother that is at the heart of his future activism. Coates eloquently evokes the eternal emptiness suffered by parents whose children are sold from them, offering a stark reminder of what's happening a century and a half later on our southern border.
More thoughts on our decisions as the week progresses, in the meantime, happy reading!
Don't you just love reading a novel where the author's humanity so clearly shines through the pages? I felt overwhelmed by this phenomenon while reading Leif Enger's "Peace Like a River" and "Virgil Wander" and it settled upon me again while I was enthralled by "This Tender Land." Kreuger is a prolific writer so I have no excuse for telling you that this is the first novel of his that I've read. It will not be the last.
Our narrator tells us in the prologue that he is a storyteller, that this is a divine gift with which he entertains his family, in particular, his grandchildren. Readers will continue to return to this prologue to reassure themselves that the narrator, Odie O'Banion, does live to share his amazing tale with us. It has been compared to Huck Finn's days on the river but for me it seemed much more momentous, almost Odyssean.
Odie and his older brother Albert were orphaned in the early 1930's and sent to live at a boarding school in northern Minnesota, a school specifically designed for the "Americanization" of Native tribal children. In Dickensian style the school is run by a childless, heartless woman, aptly named Thelma Brickman. The pupils learn little and suffer mightily, especially if, like Odie, they stand out from the crowd for their wit or spunk.
I don't want to and couldn't possibly relate the entire gloriously convoluted plot to you. What I will say is that to escape physical and sexual abuse and the fear of being blamed for the death of a student, Odie and Albert devise an escape plan that includes a mute Indian boy named Moshe and Emmy, an orphaned toddler imbued with a surreal wisdom beyond her years. They are the most wonderful company!
Krueger's love of the natural world graces every page of the motley crew's adventures as they canoe down the Gilead River on their way to the great Mississippi and potentially salvation in the form of a distant aunt of the brothers whose last known address was St. Louis. Take a look at a map as I did and just imagine these children with little but the clothes on their backs and hearts full of hope as they elude false newspaper accounts of their circumstances and bounty hunters hungry for a reward. We are in the middle of the great depression after all, the dust bowl era, a time when even a decent person might be tempted to sell out the kids for a bowl of soup.
The children will encounter the best and the worst that humanity has to offer, a traveling revival show and a lonely, desperate man willing to enslave them just for their company. They will misplace their trust in eachother and others yet discover deep wells of goodness in their fellow man. Moshe will learn of the horrors visited upon his native ancestors, falling into a pit of despair. Albert will fight the need to simply walk away from the burden of the group and Odie will commit a crime that will haunt him, forcing a reckoning with his belief in God, love, and forgiveness.
Examining the meaning of life through the lives of four children on a quest for what each might call home, William Kent Krueger tenderly tells a universal story in luminous, languid prose, gently teasing out the best in even the worst of villains. This novel is so full of heart, such a lovely antidote to the anxiety inducing tweets and posts of the digital world. As Odie tells us in his prologue, "Things were different then. Not simpler or better, just different." William Kent Krueger's words are a balm for the soul.
I passionately spoke for this novel to make the cut on Library Journal's ten best list but alas.....perhaps I can convince you readers instead. So often I complain that there isn't an original plot under the sun, that everything new has been done before. I guess that's why Luiselli's imaginative, original, heartbreaking novel impressed me so much.
We see the children in the news every day, their emotionally ravaged faces, their gorgeous dark eyes shyly peering out at the cameras from behind the bars of whichever state sponsored holding pen the border patrol agents have consigned them to. Will they ever see their families again we wonder. Valeria Luiselli's "The Lost Children Archive" will ignite a fire in your heart without providing the water hose to squelch it.
An unnamed family sets out on a summer road trip from New York City to Arizona. Freelance journalists, each of the parents has a singular agenda. Dad is researching the
history of the lost Apache tribes, while mom has a generalized plan to document family separation at the border, specifically looking for a friend's two missing girls, for whose safe crossing she has paid dearly.
In the back seat of the car are two children, step-siblings, dad's son and mom's daughter. It's a credit to Luiselli's remarkable narrative skills that she creates two anonymous children who become so fully alive on the page. Their intuition is such that they understand before we do that this adventure, meant to unite the family, may well drive a permanent rift between their stubborn, individualistic parents. The boy, older and less trusting of the world, will nevertheless call upon his boundless imagination to protect and care for his baby sister with a love that will force a catch in your throat.
Luiselli pens scenes that will stay with you for ages. Mom has read of a government plan to round up undocumented children and fly them back to Mexico. Whether or not they are actually Mexican doesn't seem to matter. They drive to the airfield, protected by armed guards, unsure what they can do except helplessly watch as, on the horizon, they see the little silhouettes weighted down with a single backpack each, being herded on to the jet. Later in the story, the children see other children much like themselves clinging to the roof of a freight train as it speeds away from ICE agents who are actually firing at them. An indelible image indeed.
This novel appeared daunting to me, especially since we were reading on a specific time frame, yet it surprised and haunted me. Though rife with facts it reads like a parable. Storytelling and myth making are extolled. The slow fading of love between the parents is beautifully rendered while the profound love they hold for their children is palpable. Unabashedly political yet deeply personal this eye-opening novel definitely makes my top ten.
Olive Kitteridge doesn't suffer fools gladly. Cold, grumpy, judgmental, Olive can be a handful. Just ask any of her neighbors in the small town of Crosby, Maine, where Olive taught math at the local high school and her husband, now deceased, ran the pharmacy. Just ask her son, who moved as far away as he could to be free of her constant criticism. But don't ask those whose lives Olive forever changed even when she didn't realize it. They might tell you Olive saved them.
This is the dichotomy that the remarkable Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout so ably sets out on the page. How she makes us scream with fury at Olive's
cruelty one minute, then quietly tear up at her acts of compassion the next. Olive Kitteridge is a conundrum, but we all know someone like her. Sometimes we may even see ourselves in the aging Olive who believes most folks are just full of crap, that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and that the indignities of aging pretty much suck.
If you read the first "Olive Kitteridge" you'll jump right in to "Olive, Again." The format of linked vignettes still works beautifully, giving the reader small but spot on glimpses of the mundane but never boring goings on in Crosby over generations. There are some hilarious scenes, especially if you're the type of person who would rather have your nails torn out one by one than attend ONE more baby or bridal shower. Olive is the master of the eye roll who will never understand the etiquette of oohing and aahing over diaper bags and onesies. But, give her the chance to be useful, like helping a young woman give birth in the back seat of a big old Pontiac, and yes, Olive is there.
There is a poignant chapter in which Olive has to come to terms with aging and dependence after she falls on her porch and has difficulty getting up. For several weeks she's visited by two very different young female aides and therapists who tend to her injuries. The one happens to be a Muslim in a headscarf about whom Olive worries incessantly, afraid that she'll cross paths with the second woman, Betty, a local who drives a pick-up truck and sports a Trump bumper sticker. Hearing in town that Betty has a pretty horrible existence, and trying to fathom why anyone would support that "orange monster," Olive sits down with her and simply asks, "What is your life like, Betty?" No one had ever taken even that minimal amount of interest in Betty before. The floodgates open.
Elizabeth Strout excels at stream of consciousness writing. Through the busy mind and constant thoughts of a woman like Olive Kitteridge, Strout lays out the visceral fears and pains of the aging single woman, the loneliness, regrets, the missed opportunities, but also the moments when we say yes to love, to connection. This lovely, thoughtful book may not have made Library Journal's top ten this year but it's still an exceptional read. I just wish I hadn't seen the TV special because now, rather than utilizing my full imagination when I visualize Olive, all I can picture is that fabulously talented curmudgeon Frances McDormand in the title role.
