Review 2474: North Woods

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In early colonial days, a couple flees one of the colonies into the wilderness of Massachusetts. There, they settle in a valley.

A settler with a baby is kidnapped by natives. When she becomes ill with fever, they leave her with an old white woman, who cares for her. But when white men come after her and plan to kill the natives—the old woman’s friends—she murders them. Before this happens, one of the men gives the captured woman an apple, and she drops the seeds on the ground.

An apple tree grows.

After the French and Indian Wars, Major Charles Osgood gives up his uniform and decides to grow apples. His friends think he has lost his mind. He searches all over until a child leads him to an apple tree near a ruined cabin in the wilderness. The apple is marvelous. He builds a house and takes cuttings from the tree to make an orchard, producing an apple called Osgood’s Wonder.

So Daniel Mason goes on relating the history of this plot of ground, from one owner to another. People die, are murdered, are conned, become ghosts, run mad, the wilderness recedes and then returns, the house is ruined and rebuilt, added to, ruined, rebuilt. Each section is linked to others by characters, coincidences, and place. Some of the incidents are funny, some fates are sad, some characters get what they deserve. Tales are punctuated by songs written from the grave.

I can’t really convey how much I enjoyed reading this unusual novel. It’s steeped in the beauty of the forest. It somehow manages to involve you despite some quite short (some longer) stories of its characters. You get worried about the fates of apple and chestnut trees! I loved this one. It did exactly what a book is supposed to do, pulled me into a different world and made me reluctant to leave it.

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Review 2473: My Father’s House

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Helen of She Read Novels has posted a note about Readers Imbibing Peril (RIP XIX), which I always forget about but usually participate in. As somewhat of a suspense novel, My Father’s House qualifies, so let this be the start of my participation this year. Most of the action is on Instagram at @PerilReaders, but I am not a great user of that.

My Father’s House is a book I read for my Walter Scott project, and it is also the first in O’Connor’s Roman Escape Line trilogy. It is based on the true story of the Escape Line, a group of people who helped captured soldiers and others escape from the Nazi occupation of Rome. In particular, it focuses on Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, one of the group’s founders.

After Rome is overrun by the Nazis, the Vatican gives Monsignor O’Flaherty a duty of ministering to British soldiers in Nazi captivity. Being an Irishman, he isn’t eager to do this duty. However, when he sees the condition of the men and the ease with which the Nazis break the Geneva Conventions, his manner to the Germans is such that he is removed from the duty. In this way, he comes to the attention of Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann.

O’Flaherty then decides to form a group to help soldiers escape from the Nazis. The group becomes successful enough that Hauptmann begins receiving threatening communications from Himmler.

Much of the novel centers around a Rendimento, as the Choir, the central group that runs the Escape Line, calls their missions. The group has planned its mission for Christmas Eve (1943), thinking that Hauptmann won’t expect it, but in the last few days, Sam Derry, an escaped British major who would normally run it, is incapacitated. They begin training Enzo Angelucci instead.

The main focus of the novel is whether the mission will be successful, but the narration travels around in time and person via transcripts of interviews of several of the participants. In some respects, this structure is interesting, helping you get to know the other characters, but they didn’t all have distinct voices, and you didn’t get to know them well. There is also the disadvantage that the approach tends to interrupt the building suspense.

I thought the novel was very interesting in its subject matter. I’d never heard of the Escape Line. However, as the first of a trilogy, I’m not sure how much more there is to say, even though no doubt there are many adventures to recount. I didn’t feel as if I got to know most of the characters in the novel, not even the Monsignor.

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WWW Wednesday

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I stole this idea from the Chocolate Lady who stole it from someone else. What’s WWW Wednesday? It’s really just a check-in that I do once a month. I talk about what I just finished reading, what I am reading now, and what I expect to be reading next. That gives you a chance to do it, too! I wish you would!

What did I just finish reading?

I just finished the second of Caroline Graham’s Inspector Barnaby series, Death of a Hollow Man. I have long been a fan of Midsomer Murders, which is based on this series, although Graham only wrote a few books. I tried reading the series years ago but stopped after the first book because my ideas of the characters had been created by the TV show. In this book, there’s another shock, because Barnaby’s daughter Cully is depicted as acidic. However, I enjoyed the book, despite knowing the solution because of being so familiar with the TV series. Graham does a pretty brave thing in this book, using half the book to do the build-up and spending lots of time developing the characters before the crime.

What am I reading now?

I actually haven’t started reading the next book but have taken it out as I write, and I know absolutely nothing about it except it’s on my Walter Scott prize project list. It’s I’m Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam, and I see it’s about the muse of Paul Gauguin. Well, that should be interesting. I’m looking forward to it.

What will I read next?

I went through my pile of To-Read books, and I took out all the books that will fill holes in my Century of Books project and put them in a little pile on my bed table. I’ve been trying to read one every other book. Death of a Hollow Man filled in 1989, and The Chateau by William Maxwell will fill in 1961. I’ve been reading lots and lots of books for the same years and quite a few published before the years my project covers, so I know I won’t make my deadline of reading all the books this year, but I will forge on! By the way, I know nothing about this book, including why I bought it!

What have you been reading, and what will you read next?

Review 2472: 2024 Dostoevsky Read-A-Thon: The Gambler

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The Gambler is known as Dostoevsky’s most autobiographical novel, written in 26 days to foil the claims of an unscrupulous publisher. For Dostoevsky himself was a gambling addict and made a fool of himself over a girl called Polina when he was much older than his fictional alter ego. I read The Gambler for the 2024 Dostoevsky Readathon hosted by Russophile Reads. You can read his much more thorough evaluation of The Gambler here.

Alexey is a tutor for a Russian family returning at the opening of the story from two weeks’ leave to a German spa and gambling town. He works for the General tutoring his young niece and nephew and he is madly in love with Polina, the General’s older niece.

The General is broke, although he is madly pretending not to be. In fact, during his leave, Alexey has been pawning things for Polina. The General is in love with a Frenchwoman named Blanche, who is clearly after the money he expects to get when his aunt dies. Also hanging around are a Frenchman named des Grieux, whom the General has been borrowing money from and who has his eyes on Polina, and a rich Englishman whom Alexey likes named Mr. Astley.

As usual with Dostoevsky’s main characters, Alexey is in a sort of frenzy, this one of love for Polina. In attempts to gain some kind of equality with the other characters, he instead repeatedly shows his immaturity.

I have read most of Dostoevsky’s novels but I didn’t realize he could be funny until this one. The General hears that his aunt is ill and may be dying, so he keeps sending telegrams asking if she is dead in his desperation to seal the deal with Blanche. Suddenly, his aunt, called Grandmother in the novel because she is Polina’s grandmother, appears in town. And does she appear. She takes over the novel until she departs, making Alexey her escort to the casino, where she at first wins a lot of money.

Then loses it, but has the sense to go home. In the meantime, she disinherits the General. She is the most truly Russian character in the novel, with the other Russians trying to pretend they are cosmopolitan.

Eventually, we learn from Alexey’s experience what it’s like to be a gambling addict. For Alexey goes to the casino to try to win enough money to help Polina.

This is a short, sometimes funny, sometimes sad but always lively story about Alexey’s inability to understand what is going on, and about greed in its various forms. Note that the story contains lots of stereotypes in depicting people from countries other than Russia.

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Review 2471: Literary Wives! Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.

Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

My Review

Their Eyes Were Watching God is another reread for me. I looked over my original review and still agree with it. I can make one more comment. This time around I really tired of the dialect and was happy that it became less as the work went on. Writing novels in dialect was popular between the late 19th century and the early 20th, but it is sure hard on the reader. You can find my original review here.

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

Janie’s journey is a search for both love and selfhood, and it involves three marriages.

When she is a naïve 16, Janie’s grandmother arranges a marriage for her with Logan Killick, a much older farmer. Janie believes those that say married people learn to love each other, but very soon she finds this isn’t always so. Keeping house isn’t enough for him. He wants her to do heavy work around the farm. The last straw is when he announces his intention to buy a second mule so that Janie can plow, too. For Logan, a wife seems to be someone who can save him from hiring a farmhand. Janie puts up with a few months of this and then walks off with flashy Joe Stark.

Joe is a guy fall of ideas and ambition who becomes a powerful force in the all-black town of Eatonville. (On a side note, I didn’t understand until I read Dust Tracks on a Road what a big deal this town was.) Unfortunately, a trait Joe shares with Logan is that a wife should do as she’s told, so he doesn’t allow Janie to take part in any of the pleasures of living there. She must bind up her beautiful hair, mind the store but not take part in the conversations in it, and act stately, because she is the mayor’s wife. Both these husbands treat Janie more like a symbol of what they want than a person. There is also the issue of Joe’s verbal and sometimes physical abuse of her.

After Joe dies and she’s been a widow for nine months, she takes off with the much younger Tea Cake. She’s in love. When he takes her $200 and loses it gambling, she is only worried that he left her. He does consult her on plans and lets her do what she wants, and certainly he provides opportunities for fun, but he is also jealous and beats her once just for show. It’s a different culture and time, but I was fairly appalled at everyone’s reaction to the beating.

In the Afterword, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., points out that Hurston wanted to show characters who are real, not all good, not all bad. I guess that’s my way to understanding why Janie remains so in love with Tea Cake. And he does treat her as a person. But it seems to me that in the search of love and selfhood, Janie only gains selfhood once Tea Cake is gone.

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A Century of Books: How Am I Doing? August Report

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In January, I foolishly decided to join Simon Thomas’s Century of Book Challenge, even though I knew that reading 100 books, one for each year in a century, from 1925-2024, would be tough because last year I only read 169. So, how am I doing?

Here are the holes in my project with the books listed for this month below. If you want to see the details, see my Century of Books page.

I read a lot fewer books in August than usual because first, I was traveling, and second, I got sick.

  • 1925-1934: entries needed for 1928, 1929, and 1931
  • 1935-1944: entries needed for 1939 and 1944
  • 1945-1954: entries needed for 1945, 1948, 1949, and 1950
  • 1955-1964: entries needed for all years except 1956, 1958, 1959, and 1962
  • 1965-1974: entries needed for 1967, 1969, 1971, and 1973
  • 1975-1984: entries needed for all years except 1975, 1976, and 1978
  • 1985-1994: entries needed for all years except 1987, 1992, and 1988
  • 1995–2004: entries needed for all years except 1998, 1999, and 2004
  • 2005-2014: entries needed for all years except 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014
  • 2015-2024: complete!

Since July 31, I have read the following books:

  • The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky from 1866 (too early to count for this project)
  • Envy by Yuri Olesha from 1927
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston from 1937
  • A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell from 1959
  • The Book of Lamentations by Rosario Castellanos from 1962
  • Broken by Karin Slaughter from 2010
  • The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves from 2023
  • The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer from 2023
  • The Bee Sting by Paul Murray from 2023
  • The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng from 2023

If I Gave the Award

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Now that I have posted my review of the last of the shortlist for the 2020 Pulitizer Prize for Fiction, it’s time for my feature in which I decide whether the judges got it right. The Pulitzer Prize tends to choose only three books for its shortlist, so in some ways the choice is easier, in some ways more difficult. In this case, two of the choices were ones I really liked.

Let’s start with the one I didn’t like as much, The Topeka School by Ben Lerner. Now, there is nothing intrinsically unlikable about Lerner’s books, it’s just that they’re all about himself, as evidenced by his alter ego, Adam Gordon, being the protagonist for all and having a biography very similar to his own. I’m saying this on the basis of two books, but I think it’s true. The novels are somewhat funny, poking subtle fun at himself, and he is obviously into wordplay, but I guess I just don’t like him very much. In this case, the novel focuses on Adam’s high school years, his relationships with his friends and girlfriend, and his prowess on the debating team.

The choice between the other two novels is difficult for me. The Dutch House was my favorite Ann Patchett novel until she wrote Tom Lake, and frankly, they’re pretty much a tie for me. It’s about the disastrous effects on his children of a father’s lack of understanding, almost a willful blindness, of both his first wife, the children’s mother, and his second. It’s about the consequent loss of his children’s inheritance, the Dutch house, and their fascination with it. And it’s about the closeness of siblings who only had each other to rely on. I really love this book.

I was gripped, though, by The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, the winning book. It’s a historical novel about the mistreatment and even murder of black boys in a Florida school for boys, aka, a detention center, based on the true history of the Dozier School for Boys. Its protagonist, Elwood Curtis, is a right-minded boy who makes the mistake of accepting a ride from a stranger in what turns out to be a stolen car. Once incarcerated in the school, he begins collecting a record of the abuses he sees.

It’s not hard to see why the judges picked The Nickel Boys over The Dutch House, a more personal novel. But that’s what I like about it. Both novels touched me emotionally, so I guess this time I declare a tie. I didn’t love The Nickel Boys as I loved The Dutch House, but it is extremely powerful. They are both very good novels.

Review 2470: The Topeka School

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It’s unfortunate for me that Ben Lerner’s books seem to be devoted mostly to exploring his own psyche, as evidenced by his main character’s biographical details matching his own, because I’m not much interested in his psyche. Sadly, his books keep ending up on the shortlists of the projects I’m pursuing. This one is from the shortlist for the 2020 Pulitzer prize.

In The Topeka School, we encounter Adam Gordon, the protagonist of Leaving the Atocha Station. In this novel, he is sometimes older, sometimes younger than in the other, but the bulk of the novel is set in 1997, when Adam is a senior in high school.

Adam is the son of two psychoanalysts who work at the Foundation, a prestigious psychiatric hospital. His mother Jane has become famous by publishing a popular book about the relationships between men and women, and his father Jonathan works mostly with disturbed teenage boys. Adam is navigating relationships with friends, sex with his girlfriend Amber, and preparations for debating competitions.

Lerner has a fascination with words, and words play an important part in the novel. For example, Adam’s high school group includes a boy named Darren he’s grown up with who is behind developmentally. Although the group has been taught not to leave Darren out, inclusion involves submitting him to indignities, like leaving him to walk home from the lake after a party. But mostly, he is called names. Names are what hurts him most.

Aside from being a champion debater, Adam likes to participate in rapping with his friends (I’m probably using the wrong words) even while realizing that he and his upper-middle-class friends have little in common with the people they’re imitating and no true understanding of the idioms they’re using.

We also periodically check in with Darren, who has feelings he can’t express. And there’s Jane, who begins receiving abusive phone calls from men after her book is published. She responds by pretending that the phone connection is poor, so she can’t hear, which eventually makes them hang up.

One of the funniest scenes in the book is the first one, where Adam is in a boat with his girlfriend at night. He is pontificating about something only to realize that his girlfriend has left the boat and swum to shore. Later, when he finds her again, she tells a story about sneaking out of the room while her stepfather is talking, and he doesn’t notice that no one is there. Adam does not at this point understand what this story has to do with him.

Then there is a type of debating described in great detail, where the object is to present as many points as possible as fast as possible even if they are ridiculous, because the opponent loses points for missing an argument. And at several points, characters speak gibberish .

All the while, there is a tension going on between Adam’s pro-feminist familial upbringing and the hyper-masculine society he’s lived in as a young man. Unfortunately, although Jane is a great character, she isn’t very important in the novel. Nor are the other women. Only Adam is important.

The novel explores the past of the family and how it affects the present, using Jonathan, Jane, and Adam as narrators. But really, almost all of it is about Adam.

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Review 2469: Turn, Magic Wheel

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I became interested in Dawn Powell after hearing a story on NPR about her being buried in an unmarked grave in Potter’s Field after being a well-known writer. That made me look for one of her books, and I found this one, a social satire about 1930s New York.

Dennis Orphen has just published his latest book, based on the life of his best friend Effie, the ex-wife of a famous Hemingway-like writer, and only thinly disguised. It is not until he sees Effie’s reaction that he realizes she might not take it well.

Although Andy Callingham left her years ago for Marlene, Effie is still waiting for him to return. His likes have become hers, and she endlessly talks about their past. Dennis reflects that she was once independent enough for Callingham to leave, but he wonders what is left of the Effie she was before.

While Dennis meets his married lover, Corinne, visits the social scene (whose members are probably easily recognizable to Powell’s contemporaries), and visits his publisher in a series of fairly brutal satiric scenes, Effie is summoned to Marlene’s hospital bed. Marlene has fled because of Andy’s interest in a young Swedish actress, but now she is dying. The hospital calls Effie because they share a last name.

For the first time since he left, Effie contacts Andy to summon him to Marlene’s deathbed. While they wait, Effie is subjected to Marlene’s ramblings, just as besotted as Effie’s own. Will Andy come or not? If he does, who for?

For me, the funniest thing about this book is its depiction of “Hemingway,” who I always knew was an egotistical jerk. I’m sure if I was more familiar with the 30s social scene, I would recognize other characters. No one in this novel is absolutely likable, although Dennis comes out better than he starts, and Effie is simply deluded.

As for the writing, it’s sharp, with witty dialogue, betraying a wicked eye.

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