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Tag Archives: notables
It’s Notable–“The Round House” by Louise Erdrich
I’m a few titles in to this year’s Notable Books List from the American Library Association, and just finished “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich.
One sentence summary–An adult Ojibwe man looks back on his youth, and his response to a brutal sexual attack on his mother.
One sentence evaluation–This is classic Erdrich, excellent writing and even better character development, all wrapped up in contemporary Ojibwe culture–a great book group book.
I find something especially compelling in novels about how crime impacts people. I recently finished another Notable, “Canada” by Richard Ford, with a similar construction of a man looking back on how crimes committed by his parents pulled his family apart.
In “The Round House,” Joe tells the story of events that happened in 1988, his mother not coming home as expected, and then finally arriving home with awful injuries. Watching his parents floundering in response to the attack, he relies on his strong ties with friends and extended family. LIttle by little he comes to understand what happened to his mother; his father’s role as a tribal judge pulls in further information, and interesting aspects of tribal law. When Joe puts in place his response, it’s in the full context of all of the people who have surrounded him.
I’ll recommend this to Erdrich’s fans, and because it has few of the fantastic elements of some of her other books, I think it might work for people who haven’t taken to some of her previous work. I think it’d also be of interest as an outlier for people who read traditional mystery series–a different slant on a crime novel, with an ending that isn’t formula, but is expected in the best storytelling sense of tightening and sharpening the telling toward a dangerously pointed end.
“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes, another Notable
I’m slightly sheepish in saying that I was happy about “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes because it’s just 163 pages. As I work my way through this year’s Notable Books list, a shorty is a relief.
Barnes is a British writer, and here presents a British story. It’s told by a middle-aged man, Tony Webster, who looks back on his boarding school friendships and early love life.
Tony describes how his school group of three boys grows to take in a fourth, Adrian, who is especially smart and who sees the world a little differently than the others. When Adrian takes up with Veronica, a girl who Tony dated, Tony writes them an ugly letter.Tony heads off for an adventure in America, Adrian commits suicide. Eventually Tony marries Margaret, they raise a daughter, and then divorce. Tony feels himself going along and getting along. Then Veronica’s mother dies, and leaves something to Tony, and this brings back the past. It also brings Veronica back into his life.
Tony wonders what his role was in Adrian’s suicide, in the unhappiness that led to his death. HAD he done something terribly wrong as a youth? Was he responsible for…something?
I confess that when I got to the end of this book and to the revelation regarding this mystery, I had to re-read the ending, and I wished that I had the gumption to re-read the whole book. I went to amazon.com to read what people had written about the book, and was relieved that several had noted that the resolution seemed confusing and underwhelming, given the lead-up.
And that may be what is genius about this book–how remarkably realistic for Tony to look back from the distance of many years, and end up not quite sure.
And is that what makes Peter Barnes a genius writer? That he can get us inside of this man’s head, for good and for ill, and engage us in these reflections? Barnes is known for elegant writing, directing the reader’s attention to the correct place, using just the right word, and yet also shining a glaring light on people’s weakness. I’ll recommend this to my reading friends who are good with a literary novel, good with what is not expected, and good with Barnes’ particular “sense of an ending.”
What a Notable–“Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand
Finally, I’ve read “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand. I’ve heard so many people comment on this nonficiton story of Louis Zamperini, a runner on the US Olympic team who became a World War II hero by surviving for weeks on a life raft, and months in Japanese Prisoner of War camps.
And it was good, one of the titles on this year’s American Library Association Notable Books list.
Laura Hillenbrand (who has an interesting story of her own) follows up her stellar “Seabiscuit” with this compelling story. She tells it straightforwardly and chronologically. Hillenbrand has that gift for telling the story in a way that is clearly shaped and considered, for example, in how people are introduced and then brought back into the story, and yet her style gets out of the way of the story.
What I’ll remember from this book is both the evil behavior of many of the Japanese captors, and the survival of the prisoners. How DO people maintain their dignity and selfhood in the face of so many attempts to break them? In Zamperini’s case, he was made a target of beatings and cruelty because of his fame. Yet he survived. I knew that the sections set in the POW camps would be horrifying, but I found myself especially touched by Zamperini’s return to home. He was beloved, a hero, and yet he was falling apart, drinking himself nearly to death, before he turned himself around at a Billy Graham event.
I noticed how Hillenbrand goes out of her way not to judge the behavior the men who were stranded, or were prisoners. She works hard to set a context where every rule and every expectation are turned upside down, where people survive by doing things they never thought they could do. She also makes a point of developing characters, not allowing all Japanese or all American people to be presented a certain way.
I finished this book on Independence Day. It seemed an especially fitting day to reflect on the people who have been called the “greatest generation.” I’ll recommend this to a lot of people–fiction readers will appreciate the strong story, history fans will find sound information, and people who enjoy “extreme” stories of survival certainly will find much to value. I think that many people have avoided reading this because they shy away from the depictions of the camps, and I understand that. And yet I’d still encourage people to read this with open eyes and mind. The book’s subtitle, “A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” reflects Hillenbrand’s success in showing that even out of this horror, goodness survived.
“Swamplandia” from the Notables List
I finished “Swamplandia” by Karen Russell a couple of weeks ago. It makes me a little nervous to blog about a book that isn’t entirely fresh in my mind.
Readers may recall that “Swamplandia!” was part of the drama of the Pultizer Prize for fiction this year. It was one of the three finalists for the prize, but the committee decided that none of the finalists was worthy of the prize itself.
I picked it up because it’s on this year’s American Library Association Notable Books List, and I continue to read my way through that list, having taken a brief detour through the One Book One Lincoln finalists.
In short, it’s a contemporary story set on an island just off of Florida, about a girl whose left to fend for herself when her family and the family business fall apart. It’s a fairly quirky story, with some hilarious parts, and some remarkably sad and troubling parts. I felt some queasy dissonance when quirky met evil in this book.
“Swamplandia!” is told by Ava Bigtree, a thirteen-year-old whose mother was a feature performer at the Bigtree business called Swamplandia!–in the nightly finale, she would dive into a pool full of alligators. But her mother dies, Swamplandia loses its audience to an inland theme park, her brother and father go inland on their own pursuits, and Ava takes a dangerous partner in her quest to find her sister.
When this book works, it’s because the characters are so distinctive, and yet they yearn for the usual things–love, security, and identity.
I sense that this is one of those books that most readers either love or hate. I land somewhere in between. I enjoyed reading this, but finished it primarily to check it off of my list. It was toward the end when Ava is looking for her sister that I finally felt a stronger pull.
I’m reflecting on my typical response to novels that are usually described as “quirky.” Many novels in this category read like a series of humorous images and characters without the glue of dramatic tension or intriguing relationships. I think that this accounts for my initial lack of connection to “Swamplandia!” Even so, I’ll recommend this to readers of literary fiction who enjoy stories of unusual families or situations.
“Inside Scientology” from the Notables List
I continue in my reading of the American Library Association Notable Books List with “Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion” by Janet Reitman.
Reitman is a journalist/writer who was inspired to write this nonfiction book after she began writing a feature article on Scientology for the “Rolling Stone” in the summer of 2005. Her interest had been piqued by the actor Tom Cruise, a prominent Scientologist who often speaks out regarding Scientology.
Local readers may recall that Scientology’s founder, L Ron Hubbard, was born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911.
Reitman describes the evolution of Hubbard’s concept of “Dianetics” to the church of Scientology that exists today. I hesitate to attempt a brief description of the framework of Scientology. Foundational ideas include a belief that people are immortal souls who come back to the earth over and over. A practice known as auditing leads people to move past traumatic events that keep them from reaching their full potential. Scientology holds strong positions against much psychiatry and the prescription drugs it uses; they consider their own processes as much more successful. As people progress through auditing into upper levels of the church, they typically pay more and more money to move forward. Reitman sees money as central to the story.
Reitman seems less interested in the belief system behind Scientology, and more interested in the structure of the church, the personalities who run it, and how it raises money.
The view that she presents is primarily from outside–Scientology’s leaders did not speak with her. She relies heavily on former Scientologists, those who have left the religion, to get inside views of the structure of the church. She describes people who left the church having been treated shabbily or worse, detailing in particular the death of Lisa McPherson in 1995.
She gives an overall picture of a “church” in quotes, which she implies is actually a business that uses the cover of religion to shelter money. Further, she reveals how the personalities who head Scientology, first Hubbard, and now David Miscavage, shape the church in sometimes bizarre ways. She presents Miscavage as a sheltered young man who came to lead the church in his 20s, ill prepared for the job. She details many ways in which his direction seems irrational.
Yet she concludes with optimistically-toned interviews with young people currently engaged in Scientology.
I expect that the Notable Books committee chose this title because it brings forward information on an important topic of interest to many readers. I would point out that Reitman sometimes employs language that seems biased, describing Hubbard as a huckster, and using terms such as “concoction” that carry laden meanings. I would have preferred more measured reporting.
Even so, I’ll recommend this to readers who prefer nonfiction and who like to read about current events and issues. I was struck by the parallel stories of a belief system on one hand, and the personalities behind it on the other. That is where much of the energy in this book lies–in the end, it is a story about people.