Tag: literary fiction

Day 879: A Spool of Blue Thread

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Cover for A Spool of Blue ThreadBest Book of the Week!
I haven’t read much Anne Tyler lately, but having just finished A Spool of Blue Thread, I think I should read more. This is one of those novels that seems to have more layers, the more you think about it.

Red and Abby Whitshank live in a lovely house in a Baltimore suburb that Red’s father Junior built for a client years ago. The house was Junior’s pride and joy, and he was constantly adding to it and refining it. Red, also a builder, has kept it in tip-tip condition. But now Red and Abby are in their 70’s. Red has recently had a heart attack, and the family gathers to decide what to do after Abby begins having gaps in her memory.

The family can sometimes be contentious, and their most troublesome member is Denny. Abby has always had a habit of inviting in strays, what her family calls her “orphans,” in an attempt to re-create the welcoming atmosphere in the house when she visited as a girl. The children have always resented these extra presences. But when Denny was four, Abby took this habit to extremes by insisting on taking in the orphaned son of one of Red’s workmen, a two-year-old boy named Stem. Denny is clearly jealous of Stem, and so is moody and unpredictable. He travels around from job to job and doesn’t tell the family about his life. He is undependable, leaving at the drop of a hat, and then can’t understand why no one asks for his help.

By the time Denny arrives, expecting to move in to help Red and Abby, Stem and his family have already rented out their house and moved in. Although there is some comic tension about who is helping whom, the family is all together again with the girls visiting frequently, and they enjoy telling their family stories.

After a tragic event, the novel moves back in time to the day when young Abby fell in love with Red. This has always been one of Abby’s favorite stories, but now we see a different side to it and to her.

Then the novel moves back farther in time to examine the relationship of Junior and his wife Linnie. At first, we’re shocked by some of its revelations, but we learn that human relationships are deep and complex.

This is a lovely novel about family stories and secrets, about how different people’s realities differ, about love and forgiveness.

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Day 873: Fidelity

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Cover for FidelityBest Book of the Week!
Fidelity begins in 1913 with the return of Ruth Holland to her home town in Iowa after an absence of ten years. As a naive young woman from a privileged background, Ruth fell in love with a married man. When he was diagnosed with tuberculosis a few years later, Ruth left town to join him in Arizona.

Ruth’s good friend, Dr. Deane Franklin, would like to see Ruth’s old friends welcome her back as she returns to her father’s deathbed. He knows that Ruth’s life has been difficult, both emotionally and economically, and would like people to show some sympathy. He wants to introduce Ruth to his new wife Amy. But Amy thinks this suggestion is shocking and can’t imagine why Deane would want her to know this scandalous woman.

Eventually, the novel returns in time to show how the affair started and progressed. It is not until Ruth returns that she learns how difficult things also were for her family after she left.

The plot of Fidelity, which was written in 1915, closely mirrors a situation in Glaspell’s own life, in which she ran off with a married man and later married him. She wrote the novel to answer the question “Was it worth it?”

During Ruth’s visit back home, she meets a woman who teaches her to recognize another type of fidelity—to herself. Although we don’t know where this fidelity will take her, we know that she will keep to it.

Of course, the novel is also meant as a condemnation of the small minds in Ruth’s home town. Even though they have known her from a child, most of her former friends misinterpret her actions in terms of her new reputation. Only her youngest brother Ted and a few friends see her for the person she has always been.

I found this novel completely fascinating from beginning to end, even though I’m not sure I would answer the question the same way Ruth did. The novel is particularly insightful about its characters, making readers understand and sympathize with even some of its unlikable ones.

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Day 862: The Remains of the Day

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Cover for The Remains of the DayBest Book of the Week!
Having seen the movie The Remains of the Day years ago, I think it is just as well I waited so long to read it. Even so, some of the book’s scenes made me envision the movie, though I had forgotten most of it.

Stevens is the butler for Darlington House in the 1950’s. Lord Darlington, whom he served for 30 years, is gone, and now Stevens works for Mr. Farraday, an American. At Mr. Farraday’s suggestion, he has decided to take a holiday to visit the former Miss Keaton, who used to be the housekeeper in Darlington House. He surmises that her marriage is not altogether happy. She has split from her husband, and Stevens hopes she will agree to return to Darlington House as housekeeper. As he travels, he keeps a diary reflecting his thoughts on the journey.

To Stevens, his professional capabilities are the most important areas of his life. He reflects a great deal on such concepts as what dignity consists of. He has removed himself emotionally from the events of his own life, so much so that when his father is dying in the house, he won’t leave the dinner party he is serving. Stevens’ dedication is taken to such an extreme that when he sees in Mr. Farraday a disposition to banter with him, he, who has no sense of humor, begins to practice witticisms.

The Remains of the Day is the striking portrait of a unique individual as he comes to consider some of his life’s decisions. He has devoted his life to the service of Lord Darlington, whose political decisions before World War II left him a ruined man. Stevens thought he was helping Lord Darlington do important work, but later he had to re-evaluate that idea. In the meantime, Stevens ignored a possible other life for himself with Miss Keaton.

This novel tells a sad, sad story. Stevens is not always a reliable narrator for us, as his perceptions are as limited as his point of view. This is a novel of depth and brilliance, intricate as a puzzle box, as we delve the depth of Stevens’ psyche.

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Day 859: They Knew Mr. Knight

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Cover for They Knew Mr. KnightBest Book of the Week!
At the beginning of They Knew Mr. Knight, the Blakes are an ordinary, relatively happy middle-class family. Things are fairly tight for them financially, and their house is too small for the family. The two girls, Freda and Ruth, share a small room, and the boy Douglas lives up in the cold attic. Still, only two family members are discontented. Thomas Blake has always resented his feckless father having sold the family factory just as Thomas was old enough to work there and learn the business. He works there but only as an engineer, not as the owner. And his father left his mother and siblings penniless, so that Thomas and his wife Celia have had to support them ever since, his brother Edward being unable to hold down a job. The other discontented family member is Freda, the oldest girl, who dreams of leading a wealthy and fashionable life.

On the way to work one morning, Thomas saves Mr. Knight from falling on the stair to the train. Mr. Knight is a wealthy financier, and he immediately takes Thomas under his wing. He helps him buy back his family’s factory and gives him tips on investments. Soon, the family is doing enough better to move into a bigger house.

But Celia doesn’t like Mr. Knight or the effect he has on Thomas. She doesn’t like how Mr. Knight leaves Mrs. Knight alone all the time and flaunts his young mistress before her. She doesn’t like how Thomas has become a little self-important and doesn’t confide in her anymore or spend as much time with the family. She doesn’t like their new house and misses her old busy life.

As the Blakes’ fortunes improve, we get a growing sense that all will not be well for long. Celia finds herself in a big house with maids and nothing to do. Her new garden doesn’t inspire her, and the children are grown and going about their business. The two eldest have unhappy love affairs, both with charming but morally lax people they meet at Mr. Knight’s parties.

Through all this, Mr. Knight himself remains a shadowy figure, appearing seldom. He seems generous, but we already know he is restless and prone to losing interest in projects. We wonder what will happen when he loses interest in Thomas, who keeps trying to pay back the money he owes him, only to have Mr. Knight point him toward a new investment opportunity.

Celia is the main character in this novel, which manages to build up a fair amount of suspense over everyday concerns. Part of the novel touches on her spiritual needs, as she has sometimes felt she’s had a glimmer of the knowledge of God and wishes she could get closer to it.

I was completely gripped by this novel and its picture of the fleeting quality of happiness, the corroding effects of greed. Except for Mr. Knight, the main characters are mostly very human and likable. You want the Blakes to come through their acquaintance scatheless, but you know they will not. If it’s not telegraphing too much about the book to say so, this novel reminds me very much of The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, only we are more attached to the characters.

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Day 858: Fates and Furies

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Cover for Fates and FuriesFates and Furies is about a marriage. Lotto and Mathilde marry shortly before graduating from college, after knowing each other only two weeks. They are both very tall and blonde, considered by many to be a golden couple. Lotto is charismatic and loud, always the center of attention, with many faithful friends. Mathilde is quiet and aloof.

Although Lotto has had a bit of a Southern Gothic upbringing, he is the son of wealth and privilege. However, his mother cuts him off when she hears of his marriage. Mathilde appears to have no family or money. So, the couple’s first years are tough, as Lotto tries to make it as an actor in New York while Mathilde supports them. But one night Lotto stays up drunk and writes a play. When Mathilde reads it, she knows he has found his vocation.

The first half of the novel is from Lotto’s point of view. Success seems to come easily to him after he writes his first play. Even though he is prone to depression if things don’t go well, he has hit after hit. Mathilde quits her job to take care of the business side, and he becomes a little self-satisfied. Still, all in all they are remarkably happy. He considers his wife a saint.

It is not until the second half of the novel, when we see the marriage and past from Mathilde’s point of view, that we learn a different truth about their lives. Mathilde, who has been alone for much of her life, is fiercely loyal to Lotto. But she is no saint.

Lauren Groff seems to write completely different novels each time out. This one shows the complexities of human relationships. That this relationship is almost operatic in scope gives the novel a slightly gothic trend.

I have mixed feelings about this novel. I think we are supposed to like Lotto more than I did, but I distrust charismatic people. I think Lotto may be a little stereotypical, however, while Mathilde is mostly a cypher until her half of the book, when many secrets come out. It is not until we learn Mathilde’s side of things that the novel really begins to unfold. It is certainly an interesting novel and one that could provoke discussion.

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Day 840: Juggling

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Cover for JugglingI am usually a huge fan of Barbara Trapido, but I have to admit to being slightly disappointed by Juggling. I think my problem is in the depiction of its characters.

Christina is the youngest of two sisters. Her parents, Alice and Joe, decided to get married after Alice’s best friend died and Alice decided to adopt her baby, Pam. They all moved to the U.S. from England, and Christina came along seven months later.

Christina is a pushy, lippy, verbally active child, and from early on she doesn’t get along with her father. She finds him too controlling and manipulative, even though he seems to encourage her sauciness.

When Alice met Joe, she was dating Roland. Later, Roland met and married Gentille, Peter’s French mother. Although Peter gets along with Roland, the move from his quiet Paris apartment to England and boarding school is hard on Peter until he comes under the protection of Jago.

Jago is a popular boy in school, but like many popular boys, he tends to be a bully and hangs with a thuggish crowd. Still, he is good friends with Peter until adolescence, when Peter’s lack of coolness becomes too obvious.

Fatefully, Christina and her gentle sister Pam enroll at the same school as Jago and Peter. Christina is fascinated by Jago, but she and her sister are too clean cut in their American fashions for him to be bothered. Still, Jago finds himself drawn to Pam. Pam is oblivious and begins a friendship with Peter based on a mutual love of music. Then a terrible event occurs that changes everything.

This Trapido novel is all over the place, with a boy who floats in the air, another boy who is a mean bully, a Cambridge don who cheats his student by stealing her paper, reshuffling of partners into too many combinations, a woman who purposefully tries to cause problems between a woman and her daughter. And we’re supposed to like all the characters, I think.

I usually like Trapido characters despite their flaws, but in this case I didn’t. I found it hard to like Christina, who takes everything so personally that she splits from her family about something that happened to someone else, even splitting from that person, who was not at fault. I didn’t buy her antipathy to her father. In fact, if anyone is manipulative, it is she. The more likable characters, such as Peter and Pam and Alice, are neglected for the loudmouths and bullies. About the only one of the more forceful characters I liked was Dulcie, who is loud and exuberant, not a bully.

Trapido seems to have made a thing about people pairing up with the wrong partners. In this case, there are just too many of them and too many coincidences. Hence the title of the book, I suppose.

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Day 836: My Name Is Lucy Barton

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Cover for My Name Is Lucy BartonBest Book of the Week!
Lucy Barton grew up very poor in rural Illinois. She looks back to a time as a young married woman, living in New York City with her husband and two daughters and learning to write. At the time, she had not returned to her parents’ house since she went to college. Something horrible associated with her father is hinted at.

Much of Lucy’s story centers around a stay in the hospital, where for some weeks she has an undiagnosed illness. Her husband can’t bear hospitals, so he asks her mother to come. Her mother stays with her, never leaving her room and refusing to use the cot the nurses provide. During this visit, her mother tells her stories about people they both know.

For much of their lives, Lucy’s family has been outcasts. At school other children complained that they smelled funny. For many years, they lived in a garage with exposure to extreme cold and no access to running water. When she was a little girl and both her parents were at work, her older siblings at school, her parents would lock her into her father’s truck. One time a snake was in there with her. These are some of the horrors of Lucy’s childhood.

link to NetgalleyWe can see that Lucy loves other people for the slightest show of kindness. We can understand why.

My Name Is Lucy Barton is an affecting story about a woman learning to deal with her own past and loving people despite it. The novel is also about becoming a writer.

Strout’s prose is wonderful as usual, picking out the little details of life that make her prose so convincing. I delight in Strout’s depictions of ordinary life and people.

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Day 832: Sweetland

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Cover for SweetlandBest book of the week!
At the beginning of this novel, Moses Sweetland is an old man living in a small community on an island off the coast of Newfoundland. Although the island thrived at one time, now it is occupied by just a few families, including Sweetland’s niece Clara and her autistic boy Jesse.

All his life, Sweetland has lived on the island, which is called Sweetland after his family. Now, the Canadian government wants to buy out the remaining residents, move them off the island, and decommission it. The lighthouse where Sweetland worked for years is now a battery-driven beacon that gets serviced a couple of times a year.

At the opening of the novel, Sweetland is among only a few people who have refused to take the deal. If they don’t all take it, no one gets it, so someone has been leaving Sweetland threatening notes.

This is a powerful novel that covers most of the major events of Sweetland’s life in flashbacks. We see that events have left him very little except the life on the island, where he traps animals and catches fish, and his relationship with Clara and Jesse.

To tell much more would be to tell too much. Suffice it to say that Crummey gets us to care very much for this crusty old man and also for his community. As in Galore, which I really loved, Crummey brings back even the ghosts of the little island.

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Day 828: Sex and Stravinsky

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Cover for Sex and StravinskySex and Stravinsky is about two families that live far apart from each other but eventually meet. Caroline and Josh live in England with their daughter Zoe, while Hattie and Herman live in South Africa with their daughter Cat.

Caroline is Australian, tall, beautiful, and vastly capable. All her life she has been striving to please her mother, who continues to favor her other daughter Janet. Caroline leaves Australia to study in England and eventually marries Josh, a small, mild-mannered theatre academic. They struggle financially for their first few years. They are just able to afford their own house when Caroline’s mother moves to England without warning. She demands that they buy her a house and give her an allowance, and they seem unable to resist her commands. So, they continue struggling, living in a bus even though they have two professional salaries.

Hattie was Josh’s girlfriend until she met Herman. She was a ballerina despite the lack of support from her family. But when she married Herman, she started teaching and began writing a series of children’s books about a girl who wants to dance. Herman, a wealthy businessman, is away on business most of the time, and Hattie’s teenage daughter Cat treats her with contempt.

Caroline and Josh’s daughter Zoe has always wanted to learn ballet, and she adores the ballet series written by Hattie, who was Josh’s first love. But Caroline thinks Zoe is being silly about wanting to dance, even though Josh’s career deals heavily with ballet. Caroline says that in any case they can’t afford ballet lessons.

When Josh goes to a conference in South Africa, he reconnects with Hattie. Caroline finds out something shocking about her mother that sends her flying to South Africa to find Josh; Hattie finds out her lodger has a secret identity.

Trapido’s novels are witty and engaging. I always love them. They are sparkling with amusing dialogue, they have likable and not so likable characters, but ones that seem to be real people. Trapido continues to be one of my favorite writers.

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Day 824: The Optimist’s Daughter

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Cover for The Optimist's DaughterLaurel McKelva Hand, a widow from Mississippi who now designs fabrics in Chicago, is called to New Orleans, where her elderly father is undergoing an eye operation. Laurel is anxious. Her experiences with the health issues of her mother were not good; there is a sense that something about her mother’s final illness wasn’t handled well.

Judge McKelva’s new wife, Fay, younger than Laurel, is vulgar, frivolous, and stupid. She objects to the procedure. But the judge has a cataract in his other eye, and without the operation at this time, he would end up blind. Dr. Courland thinks the operation will save the judge’s sight, so it is performed.

While the judge struggles to recover, Fay complains about missing Mardi Gras and goes shopping. Unfortunately, as they say, the operation is successful but the patient dies. Although the judge is ordered not to move, his wife shakes him, later saying she was trying to “shake him into life.”

Back home for the funeral in the small town of Mount Salus, Mississippi, Laurel is greeted by old friends who are preparing for the funeral. Fay arrives later and is obviously upset at what she views as an intrusion. It soon appears that Becky, Judge McKelva’s first wife, is the elephant in the room, along with the genteel friends’ incomprehension of what led the judge to marry Fay.

Since Fay has told everyone she has no family, they are surprised when the Chisoms arrive from Texas for the funeral. They are obliviously and cheerfully vulgar, and they add a good deal of macabre humor to the funeral. Fay is so determined that the judge will not be buried next to Becky that she buries him in the unpleasant newer part of the cemetery, right next to the new interstate.

When Fay leaves briefly for a visit with her family, she makes it clear that she expects Laurel to be out of her house when she returns a few days later. Laurel must reconcile herself to the loss of all her parents’ belongings and her childhood home as well as residual pain about both her parents’ and her husband’s death.

This very short novel, written in 1972, is considered Welty’s best, although I confess to a preference for the more lovable The Ponder Heart. The Optimist’s Daughter compresses a lot in just a few pages. At times, the Southern darkness almost reminds me of the grotesque humor of Flannery O’Connor, who is a bit too much for me, but Welty is kinder to her characters.

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