Author: whatmeread

Day 410: Inheritance

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Cover for Southern Son: InheritanceIt seems extremely difficult to write a novel about an actual historical person. The writer must strike some kind of balance between doing justice to the person and to actual events and inventing details and dialogue to make the novel interesting. As well as having to invent huge swaths of the subject’s life, I am guessing that the author sometimes has to struggle with whether to include all the known events, especially if they don’t fit in with the author’s view of the subject’s character.

Inheritance, the first book of a trilogy about John Henry (Doc) Holliday, shows evidence of a great deal of research. It begins when Holliday is ten years old, shortly before he finds out his mother is dying from tuberculosis, or consumption. The novel follows his life until his departure from his home state of Georgia for Texas when he is twenty-one.

The engaging Doc by Mary Doria Russell, which I read a few years ago, revealed Holliday as a much-misunderstood individual, demonstrating how his reputation as a gunslinger was exaggerated by the press from a few incidents, showing his innate courtesy and all his contradictions. Despite its obvious intentions, Inheritance had the opposite effect on me, at times making me lose a considerable amount of my sympathy for him.

One false step is taken, I think, by starting the story so early in his life. He is supposed to gain our sympathy as a motherless boy with a stiff and judgmental father, but the depiction of children in this novel is not convincing. In fact, at the beginning of the novel I was troubled by flat characterization, as most of the main characters’ relatives and acquaintances have only one quality. His cousin Robert is competitive, his mother and cousin Mattie are loving, and so on. Only very slowly do some of the characters develop a few other dimensions.

The novel is written in a workmanlike style, a little too given to clichés, but certainly fluent enough except for a tendency to use “refugee” as a verb. There is some evidence of this usage as a colloquialism, especially during the Civil War, but it is used here in the narrative as well as in the dialogue.

Although the point of view appears to be third-person limited, at times it slips into third-person omniscient, which causes some confusion and a problem. Certainly, I do not hold with changing a person’s views to make that character more acceptable for the current time. Even when a fictional historical character has too modern a viewpoint, that bothers me. Holliday is definitely depicted as a racist who treats African-American characters even worse than I would expect from a character self-described countless times as a “gentleman.” So, when the reader cannot always discern the attitudes of Holliday from the attitudes of the narrator, the effect is unfortunate.

Overall, Inheritance is a novel that balances a great deal of knowledge of its subject with some inexperience in writing.

I received this book through a giveaway from Unabridged Chick.

Day 409: The Secret in Their Eyes

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Cover for The Secret in Their EyesBest Book of the Week!
I picked up this novel because I saw the excellent Oscar-winning movie from a few years ago. It had been long enough that, even though the movie stayed fairly close to the book, I didn’t remember some of the key plot points. The movie emphasized the crime-solving aspects of the novel, which is more about political corruption, Argentina’s violent history, and finally, a love story.

Written as a novel within a novel, the story spans more than 30 years. Benjamín Chaparro has retired after a long career as deputy clerk in an examining magistrate’s court, the court responsible for carrying on criminal investigations. As he wants to find something to occupy himself in his retirement, he decides to write about a case he worked on 30 years before, the ramifications of which seriously affected his life.

In this case from the 1970’s, a beautiful young woman, Liliana Colotto, has been found raped and murdered in her apartment. Although it is not a customary part of his duties, Chaparro’s judge sends him to the crime scene to observe the investigation. He is struck by the woman’s beauty and also by how the police are trampling all over the crime scene to get a look at her.

Her husband, Ricardo Morales, is in the clear, because a neighbor saw a man come to the woman’s door after her husband left for work. The investigation takes a false start when the other deputy clerk in Chaparro’s office decides that two workmen in the apartment building did it and has a confession beaten out of them. Chaparro figures out what is going on very quickly and files a complaint against the clerk, Pedro Romano. This incident has far-reaching effects on both the case and Chaparro’s life.

After this false start, the case goes nowhere. Chaparro has been meeting with Ricardo Morales periodically to keep him informed, but the investigators have been unable to find any clues to the identity of the mysterious man. The case is about to be closed when Morales shows Chaparro some snapshots of his wife, and Chaparro is able to discern the secret in the eyes of one man–that he was in love with Liliana Colotto and angry at her marriage. Chaparro sees the secret because he has his own–he has been in love with his married coworker, Irene Hornos, for years, since he first saw her. It is not revealing too much to say that Chaparro and Morales soon identify this man as Isidoro Gómez, because as I said, the focus is not on the solution of the crime but on the aftermath.

Several years go by before Gómez can be found. With the clever help of his friend and coworker Pablo Sandoval, Chaparro is able to get Gómez to confess to the murder, even though they have no evidence against him except the fact that he was late for work for the only time on the day of the murder. This should have been the end of the case, but because of corruption, political influence, and state-sponsored terrorism, the case and its ramifications follow Chaparro and Morales for more than 20 years.

The present-day story is concerned with the difficulties of writing and of Chaparro’s heart-yearning over Irene, who is now a judge. He has never spoken to her about his feelings, even though he left his first wife when he realized he loved Irene. He has been using his book as an excuse to meet with her to discuss it and the case.

This novel is wonderfully well written and absorbing. The conscientious, upright, deprecating Chaparro makes wry and cynical observations about the workings of the judicial system. The novel suspensefully shows how a state-sponsored reign of terror can affect the lives of even very ordinary citizens who are just trying to live their lives and how it can create injustice even in a case that has nothing to do with politics. The Secret in Their Eyes provides a fascinating look at a time in Argentina that many of us know little about.

Day 408: Folktales of the Native American

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Cover for Folktales of the Native AmericanI have read some of the folk tales of the Celtic peoples (mostly Irish and Welsh) and the Norse and Russians as well as the more recent ones of the Grimm brothers. Last year, I reviewed Robert Graves’ book about Greek myths. Except for the really amusing and cynical fairy tales of Charles Perrault, I find them almost uniformly violent–full of murders, rapine, and theft. (Of course, kids love that kind of stuff.)

What strikes me about the Native American tales assembled and retold by Dee Brown is that even though some are about battles, they do not focus on the gruesome, as European tales are prone to do. More of them are about how things were created or how some animals got their markings, or they are comic tales about trickery and deceit. The stories seem to be more similar to the few African ones I have read than to European myths.

The tales are simply told, most of them no more than two or three pages long. I think in general folk tales suffer from not being told aloud. In print they lack the tale teller’s expression and gestures.

Day 407: This House Is Haunted

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Cover for This House Is HauntedThis House Is Haunted fittingly begins when Eliza Caine and her father decide to attend a reading by Charles Dickens of his ghost story A Christmas Carol. Unfortunately, Eliza’s father takes a chill as a result of this outing and dies.

It is not long before the landlord informs Eliza that, rather than owning the house she has lived in all her life, her father had been leasing it, and the rent is exorbitant, too much for a schoolteacher to afford. Grief-stricken Eliza rather hastily decides that she wants to change her life, so she applies for a job as governess at Gaudlin Hall.

With this Dickensian beginning and the title of the novel, it is no surprise that Eliza will soon find herself living in a haunted mansion.

In fact, things become strange before Eliza even arrives at the house. In the station at Norwich, she feels someone push her in front of a train, and she only survives because a Mr. Toxley pulls her back. When Mr. Toxley and his friendly wife learn of her destination, however, they react oddly.

Eliza is especially taken aback by her reception in her new home. After being dropped at the house by Heckley, the surly and taciturn coachman, she is received by the children, Isabella and Eustace Westerley. No adults but Heckley are anywhere to be seen. She was engaged by an H. Bennet, whom she believed to be the master, but no one by that name resides at the Hall. When she finally gets a chance to talk with the Gaudlin solicitor, Mr. Raisin, he is evasive. The villagers behave oddly when they find out who she is. And the situation soon gets a lot worse.

All of this is a lead-in to a pleasantly creepy ghost story of a Victorian nature, with reminders of Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw. The narrative style is convincingly appropriate, more inclined to the descriptive than the conversational and old-fashioned without being difficult for the modern reader.

image for NetgalleyIf I have any complaint at all, it is that the title itself telegraphs a little too much too early. I did not feel the chill that I sometimes feel when a ghost story takes me by surprise. In addition, the style of writing itself promotes a lightness of tone that never led me to dread. In general, though, I found the novel entertaining and endearingly old-fashioned in style and tone.

Day 406: Annals of the Former World: In Suspect Terrain

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Cover for Annals of the Former WorldIn the second book of Annals of the Former World, John McPhee returns east to examine the geology of the Appalachians along I-80. Beginning with the Delaware Water Gap, he travels along the highway with geologist Anita Harris exploring the road cuts to see what can be determined about how the landscape developed. The two continue on this route through Pennsylvania and into Ohio, where they explore Kelley’s Island, travel along the Cuyahoga River for a spell, and end at the Indiana Dunes.

Having explained the basics of plate tectonics in Basin and Range, McPhee now travels with a geologist who is skeptical of the broad application the theory has found, particularly in relation to the Appalachians. Harris takes issue with the idea that the mountains were formed by the ramming of the African coast up against North America. She believes that a study of the rocks does not support this concept.

In Suspect Terrain is deeply concerned with glaciation. As well as explaining how glaciers could have formed this area of folded and complex geology, McPhee breaks off to expatiate on how the theory of the Ice Age came about, among other geological ideas. He also tells how Harris herself figured out how to use the color of conodonts, a kind of fossil, to make it easier to find the conditions for oil.

I find it fascinating to try to imagine the pictures of the earth that McPhee describes, how different they are from the continent as it is today. McPhee tells us how rivers ran to the west instead of to the east, huge tropical seas took up the middle of the continent, the glaciers shoved rock down from Canada to create places like Staten Island.

McPhee is an extremely interesting writer. To be sure, the subject matter, the ideas it evokes, and the language he uses demand full attention, but this series of books is involving.

Day 405: The Child’s Child

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Cover for the Child's ChildEven though The Child’s Child is a relatively short novel, it seems to take a long time to get to the payoff. Although Barbara Vine’s novels are more character studies than thrillers, they always involve a certain amount of suspense.

This book uses a novel-within-a-novel structure, with the exterior novel taking place in 2011 while the interior one begins in 1929. The themes of unwed motherhood and homosexuality and the extent to which both are stigmatized are the same in both stories.

Grace Easton is a graduate student working on a thesis about the portrayal of unwed mothers in literature. She and her brother Andrew have inherited a house and impulsively decide to share it instead of selling it. However, they have not discussed issues such as how to deal with prospective mates, and soon enough Andrew, who is gay, has brought home James, a writer. Grace and James do not get on, and she begins to feel uncomfortable in her own home.

One evening Andrew and James witness a brutal crime against a gay friend, about which they will be called upon to testify. James is extremely upset by this event, and his reaction leads to unforeseen complications.

Grace has promised to read the manuscript (the interior novel) written by an acquaintance’s father with a view to telling the acquaintance whether it is publishable. She has been avoiding reading it while she works on her thesis but finally begins. We are led to understand that, while presented as a novel, it is actually a true story of the writer’s relative.

In the interior novel, Maud Goodwin becomes pregnant at fifteen and is immediately rebuffed by her family, with the exception of her brother John. John has recently taken a new job in a different county, and his solution to his sister’s problem is to set up housekeeping with her, the two of them posing as husband and wife to avoid her shame. John is homosexual, which of course was illegal in those days, and has vowed to remain celibate, so he knows he will never marry.

The interior novel takes up the bulk of the book, which I found unfortunate. I thought John was in some ways foolish, and Maud becomes a bitter, ungrateful woman. My immediate thought, even as John was deciding what to do, was that Maud’s situation could just as effectively and more sensibly have been taken care of by her posing as a widow and sharing a house with her brother.

Sadly, John lacks judgment in where he bestows his affections, and when he chooses a partner he basically seals his fate. I had some sympathy for John, but he exits the novel fairly early on, and I grew to dislike Maud more and more.

It isn’t until the narrative returns to the present time that I feel the novel regains its focus and finally provides some payoff, and the long-anticipated suspense. In addition, sadly, the themes of the novel seem labored and obvious, to the point where the author has characters voicing them instead of letting the reader figure them out. If you want to try Barbara Vine, the name Ruth Rendell uses for her psychological suspense novels, I suggest instead A Dark-Adapted Eye, which is one of my favorites.

Day 404: Swamplandia!

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Cover for SwamplandiaBest Book of the Week!

Swamplandia! is the third book I’ve read in the past few months that has a strong young female voice (with Tell the Wolves I’m Home and Where’d You Go, Bernadette). All of them were very good.

Before I start, though, a comment on the cover for the hardcover copy of the book, which is not the one I read or the one shown here. I was not really clear about whether this book is considered appropriate for young adults or not (probably), but the hardcopy cover makes Swamplandia! look like a children’s book, showing a very young girl piggyback on a character who looks somewhat like the Mad Hatter, both watching an alligator. Let me warn you that Swamplandia! is definitely not for young children.

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree and her family live on an island in a hokey-sounding amusement park in the Florida Everglades called Swamplandia! There, they dress up as Native Americans (their grandfather, who founded the park, was a German-American farmer from Ohio) and breed and wrestle alligators. Ava’s mother Hilola was the main attraction until she became ill with cancer and eventually died.

Since then the family has tried to cope with its grief while also attempting to save the floundering park. Homeschooled and with little contact with the mainland, the Bigtree kids have been raised in a sort of dream land. They all possess a thorough and subversive knowledge of the history of Florida and of its flora and fauna but not many skills for dealing with the outside world. Kiwi spends almost all his time reading, Osceola believes she has a ghost lover, and Ava is aiming to become a world-famous alligator wrestler.

When tourists stop arriving on the ferry, Chief Bigtree, the children’s father, makes one of his mainland journeys to raise money to save the park, but not before Kiwi apparently abandons them to get a job with the park’s competitor, The World of Darkness. Sixteen-year-old Osceola and Ava are left alone on the island until Osceola floats away on an old barge to join her lover.

Frantic to save Osceola, young Ava joins up with a mysterious man named the Bird Man, who claims to know his way into hell, which is where Ava assumes she must go to bring Osceola back from her ghost lover. As our apprehension grows, we follow Ava’s journey while periodically cutting over to observe Kiwi’s serio-comic adventures at the hell-themed World of Darkness.

Russell creates a lush world in Swamplandia! and a compelling narrator in the innocent/wise Ava. The language of the novel is gorgeous, its heroine engaging. You will find yourself immersed in a damp world bursting with life, and you won’t want to leave it until you know what happens to Ava.

Day 403: The Town

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Cover for The TownThe Town is the second of Faulkner’s “Snopes” novels about the rise to power of Flem Snopes in Jefferson, Mississippi. Written in a style that is remindful of a bunch of old Southern men sitting on the porch swapping stories, it is narrated by three different alternating voices. As a pioneer in novels with multiple narrators, Faulkner is a master.

One of the narrators is a character we met already in The Hamlet, V. K. Ratliff, the itinerant sewing machine salesman who is most knowledgeable about Snopes’ true character, having been deeply scorched by him. Ratliff enlists the Jefferson city attorney, Gavin Stevens, in his observations of Snopes. The third narrator is Charles Mallison, Stevens’ nephew, who tells us himself that he wasn’t even alive during the times of his first tales but was told the stories by his cousin Gowan.

The novel covers the events of nearly 20 years, from the arrival of the Snopes family in Jefferson to the events shortly following the death of Flem’s wife Eula. Although some of the events are tragic, the tone of The Town is more comic than that of The Hamlet, perhaps because the lives of the folks in Jefferson are not as grim as those of the poor sharecroppers in the first novel.

The novel focuses first on the young Gavin’s infatuation with Eula Snopes. Rumor has it that Snopes’ appointment as power-plant supervisor–highlighted by his attempted theft of all the plant’s brass fixtures accompanied by an effort to frame the plant’s two black firemen for the theft–is in return for him closing his eyes to his wife Eula’s affair with Manfred de Spain, the town’s mayor. Young Gavin, newly returned from university at the time, is incensed by this rumor and determined to protect Mrs. Snopes’ reputation. Later, as Eula’s daughter Linda grows up, Gavin tries to save her from “Snopesism” by helping educate her and trying to get her a place in an eastern university.

These two novels are fascinating because of Faulkner’s ability to make central a character who barely has a line of dialogue in either book. He effectively makes Snopes the major presence in the novels by having the other characters observe the results of his actions while endlessly speculating about what he actually does and why he does it. As always with Faulkner, the prose is beautiful.