I have to admit, for my money, Alice Munro is pretty bankable. From her regular stories in The New Yorker to The Beggar Maid I never finish Munro without having taken something from it. I'm late getting to LOGAW according to its 2001 publication date; she occasionally falls off my radar. I like her, but she's not a head straight for her place on the shelf in the bookstore writer for me.
That said, I really enjoyed Lives, some of this, I'm certain is because it appeals to many of my own personal sensitivities. And, this probably doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, but there is something a little Angela Walkerish in Munro's Del. Although, undeniably Del's issues are far more fraught and the consequences more immediate. You know as much on page one, the stand alone line "He was not our uncle, or anybody's" tells as much with the chills it sends down your spine. And, the line is well-played because the rest of the book is never quite as traumatic nor tragic as that for which that line sets you up, which oddly enough allows the myriad of struggles Del negotiate through the rest of the novel something of a relief.
The novel follows the pitfalls and struggles of Del working her way through adolescence, feeling like she doesn't fit in and no one gets her. She feels like a certain kind of girl, in a certain time and place, but maybe what works about it is that ultimately, it's about being a girl. Whether you are or were a girl like Del or not you recognize the struggle, the doubt, the want. "I felt that is was not so different from all the other advice handed out to women, to girls, advice that assumed that being female made you damageable.." Isn't the place from which we all start?
# 2 Where you Once Belonged Kent Haruf
With a title like Where you Once Belonged you can't go in expecting much in the way of happy, which isn't all that surprising with Haruf; however, for some reason the end of this novel comes off like a sucker punch you watched connect with the side of your face, slow motion, in the reflecting window in front of you - which still lays you out.
The story is primarily Burdette's, the town bad boy and one time hero, told from the perspective of Arbuckle, conveniently enough, the town newspaperman. It opens with Burdette returning to Holt, Colorado after an eight year hiatus that the reader learns over the course of the next 150 or so pages was time spent on the run. The narrative moves back and forth from the present to long ago and recent past. It is full of well-developed, yet stunted, secondary characters. It is a novel in which the newspaper man spends his time watching a town where everyone is watching someone else. all. the. time.
Haruf's narrative is so successful for two reasons, in my humble. First, the narrator is true to form in his reportage of the events surrounding Burdette. The details of his story unfold as if they were told in an extended newspaper article, or a story and it's follow up. The level of detail never surpasses the barest facts, and while Haruf provides plenty of information from which the reader may draw all sorts of conclusions about the main character, the narrator never connects those dots for you.
Second, the parts that aren't centered on Burdette are told in similar prose, and yet, they come across more like the stories sisters share when they return to their home town for the holidays. The kind of catching up gossip that we all hear. And therein lies the rub. It is in the telling of these small details of the secondary characters that the tragedy of the book is driven home. These are sad, wandering, stilted human beings stuck spinning - cogs in the wheel - and we know them. Equally important, they know us. They tell our stories in the same broad strokes that we tell theirs and they draw the same conclusions we draw. That's the kind of sad with which this novel leaves you. The dull ache of hurt under the hand at your cheek three seconds after the punch you saw coming lands.
The story is primarily Burdette's, the town bad boy and one time hero, told from the perspective of Arbuckle, conveniently enough, the town newspaperman. It opens with Burdette returning to Holt, Colorado after an eight year hiatus that the reader learns over the course of the next 150 or so pages was time spent on the run. The narrative moves back and forth from the present to long ago and recent past. It is full of well-developed, yet stunted, secondary characters. It is a novel in which the newspaper man spends his time watching a town where everyone is watching someone else. all. the. time.
Haruf's narrative is so successful for two reasons, in my humble. First, the narrator is true to form in his reportage of the events surrounding Burdette. The details of his story unfold as if they were told in an extended newspaper article, or a story and it's follow up. The level of detail never surpasses the barest facts, and while Haruf provides plenty of information from which the reader may draw all sorts of conclusions about the main character, the narrator never connects those dots for you.
Second, the parts that aren't centered on Burdette are told in similar prose, and yet, they come across more like the stories sisters share when they return to their home town for the holidays. The kind of catching up gossip that we all hear. And therein lies the rub. It is in the telling of these small details of the secondary characters that the tragedy of the book is driven home. These are sad, wandering, stilted human beings stuck spinning - cogs in the wheel - and we know them. Equally important, they know us. They tell our stories in the same broad strokes that we tell theirs and they draw the same conclusions we draw. That's the kind of sad with which this novel leaves you. The dull ache of hurt under the hand at your cheek three seconds after the punch you saw coming lands.
Home by Marilyn Robinson
I should begin by saying that Housekeeping might be one of my all time favorite books ever and Gilead, while I loved it less, definitely moved me. I can pick up that book on any given day and read any paragraph just to be dazzled by Robinson's wicked control of the language. I am not a God kinda girl, but the image Robinson creates of the joy all humans should have when they come into contact with the miracle of water pops into my head at least weekly.
That is to say, I had crazy high hopes for Home, which was given to me by a friend a week ago. It took me that long to read it. Not because it isn't good, but because it doesn't require that you finish it. That the conclusion is a foregone from so early is part of the problem, but that's not entirely it. It's hard to explain. The pace of the novel invites a slow read, but that doesn't account for it either. The novel is infused with the same sort of moments you find in Gilead,
Somebody shouted fox and geese, and they all ran around to make the great circle, and then to make the diameters, breathless, the clover breaking so sweetly under their feet that they repented of the harm they were doing even as they persisted in it.
or
Who would bother to be kind to him? A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their face. Ah, Jack.
although they are fewer and further between. They are beautiful moments, but I don't care where they are leading even if I didn't already know. Neither the urgency of Gilead nor the adventure of Housekeeping are present in Home and although there could have been other means possible by which to propel the reader either of those would have worked beautifully. In the absence of any kind of forward inertia, the language was enough for this reader but probably not most.
That said, I do love a little melodramatic anything now and then and the final two pages of this novel deliver.
That is to say, I had crazy high hopes for Home, which was given to me by a friend a week ago. It took me that long to read it. Not because it isn't good, but because it doesn't require that you finish it. That the conclusion is a foregone from so early is part of the problem, but that's not entirely it. It's hard to explain. The pace of the novel invites a slow read, but that doesn't account for it either. The novel is infused with the same sort of moments you find in Gilead,
Somebody shouted fox and geese, and they all ran around to make the great circle, and then to make the diameters, breathless, the clover breaking so sweetly under their feet that they repented of the harm they were doing even as they persisted in it.
or
Who would bother to be kind to him? A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their face. Ah, Jack.
although they are fewer and further between. They are beautiful moments, but I don't care where they are leading even if I didn't already know. Neither the urgency of Gilead nor the adventure of Housekeeping are present in Home and although there could have been other means possible by which to propel the reader either of those would have worked beautifully. In the absence of any kind of forward inertia, the language was enough for this reader but probably not most.
That said, I do love a little melodramatic anything now and then and the final two pages of this novel deliver.
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