Lark Erhardt is six-years-old in 1938, a young girl struggling to make sense of the grown-up world around her in the midst of a the Great Depression. She lives with her parents in a single room at the train depot, where her father works - steadily, unlike many in small-town Minnesota in this time - but she dreams of the day her family with leave the depot behind and build their own home, a Cape Ann, a dream of a house with hollyhocks and a window seat.
Little Lark is the consummate worrier, principally over her upcoming first confession. She worries, too, about her mama, Arlene, whose constant rows with the hard-gambling Willie hang over the family like a dark cloud. She also must make sense of her Aunt Betty, whose domestic situation is far more precarious than Lark's, and her friend Hilly Stillman, a World War I veteran - and hero - suffering from shell shock two decades on.
Faith Sullivan writes beautifully and brings depth and dimension to every character in the novel. Writing from the perspective of a six-year-old is undoubtedly a challenge; I found it took some getting used to for the reader, but ultimately Sullivan's skill as a writer brings a sense of authenticity to The Cape Ann that many books with an older narrative never achieve.
Three-and-a-half stars.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Monday, March 21, 2016
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Warmth of Other Suns is narrative nonfiction at its finest. Like The Son, I discovered Isabel Wilkerson's Warmth in The Atlantic's 2015 best books guide. It is a masterful history of the Great Migration, that movement of six million mostly rural and often sharecropping blacks from the South to cities across America.
Wilkerson tells the broader history through the personal narratives of three individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who migrated from Mississippi to Chicago in the 1930s; George Starling, who left the citrus groves of central Florida for New York City in the middle of World War II; and Robert Foster, who left small town Louisiana for Los Angeles in the early 1950s. Their lives post-migration held little in common with one another. Ida Mae and her husband worked a succession of unskilled and poorly paid jobs while laying down roots on Chicago's South Side. George Starling took a job with the railroad that saw him traverse his own route time and again; in his absence his children fell victim to the drugs and gangs of Harlem. Robert Foster was perhaps the most successful but least fulfilled. A surgeon of no small renown (he was the personal physician of Ray Charles, for example), he constantly searched for acceptance and approval that were never quite enough.
Against this background, Wilkerson tells the larger story of demographics and discrimination in America, supporting a central argument that the members of the Great Migration were, in ways both large and small, no different from the immigrants who crossed an ocean to reach what they believed would be a land of milk and honey. (She also notes that virtually every individual who was part of the Great Migration steadfastly disagreed, although this reader was certainly convinced, and I believe Wilkerson still is, as well.) Wilkerson conducted interviews with 1,200 individuals, no small feat of anthropology, and delved into a history of Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and urban life in America.
I was reminded repeated of Barbara Myerhoff's outstanding work, Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto, which is certainly among the seminal works on the immigrant experience in America. Wilkerson has accomplished no less. In a different vein, I could not help but think of The Warmth of Other Suns as the second act of After Appomattox; Wilkerson provides more than enough examples - many, sadly, a half-century or more after the Civil War ended - that certainly lend credence to Stetson Kennedy's assertion that, "The nation had evidently made up its mind that, so long as the South remained inside the Union and did not go back into the business of buying and selling blacks, it could do what it damned well pleased with them."
The Warmth of Other Suns is a phenomenal work of narrative non-fiction. It should be required reading for every high school student in the country. I'm with The Atlantic: it will be hard to top this, certainly in the category of nonfiction.
Wilkerson tells the broader history through the personal narratives of three individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who migrated from Mississippi to Chicago in the 1930s; George Starling, who left the citrus groves of central Florida for New York City in the middle of World War II; and Robert Foster, who left small town Louisiana for Los Angeles in the early 1950s. Their lives post-migration held little in common with one another. Ida Mae and her husband worked a succession of unskilled and poorly paid jobs while laying down roots on Chicago's South Side. George Starling took a job with the railroad that saw him traverse his own route time and again; in his absence his children fell victim to the drugs and gangs of Harlem. Robert Foster was perhaps the most successful but least fulfilled. A surgeon of no small renown (he was the personal physician of Ray Charles, for example), he constantly searched for acceptance and approval that were never quite enough.
Against this background, Wilkerson tells the larger story of demographics and discrimination in America, supporting a central argument that the members of the Great Migration were, in ways both large and small, no different from the immigrants who crossed an ocean to reach what they believed would be a land of milk and honey. (She also notes that virtually every individual who was part of the Great Migration steadfastly disagreed, although this reader was certainly convinced, and I believe Wilkerson still is, as well.) Wilkerson conducted interviews with 1,200 individuals, no small feat of anthropology, and delved into a history of Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and urban life in America.
I was reminded repeated of Barbara Myerhoff's outstanding work, Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto, which is certainly among the seminal works on the immigrant experience in America. Wilkerson has accomplished no less. In a different vein, I could not help but think of The Warmth of Other Suns as the second act of After Appomattox; Wilkerson provides more than enough examples - many, sadly, a half-century or more after the Civil War ended - that certainly lend credence to Stetson Kennedy's assertion that, "The nation had evidently made up its mind that, so long as the South remained inside the Union and did not go back into the business of buying and selling blacks, it could do what it damned well pleased with them."
The Warmth of Other Suns is a phenomenal work of narrative non-fiction. It should be required reading for every high school student in the country. I'm with The Atlantic: it will be hard to top this, certainly in the category of nonfiction.
Monday, March 14, 2016
West of Sunset
Stewart O'Nan's novel chronicles F. Scott Fitzgerald's last years, as he attempts to reclaim his fame and repay his creditors by working as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Out of options, he is grateful for a job that lets him make headway on his bills, among them Scottie's tuition and Zelda's institutionalization fees. In many ways, West of Sunset is the perfect complement to Call Me Zelda, the novel which tells of Zelda's last, lost years in an Asheville asylum.
Beautifully written, it does begin rather slowly, but the deeper the reader falls into the story, the clearer it becomes: O'Nan has captured the essence of Fitzgerald. The man is far removed from the heady days of the Roaring Twenties. No longer on the make, this Fitzgerald is old beyond his years, run down by alcoholism (his own) and madness (his wife's). He is desperate and, often, destitute, torn between the past and the present, obsessed with his failures and resolving to be better. In that sense, he is perfectly human, and brilliantly crafted by O'Nan.
Having made his career out of the ashes of World War I, it seems fitting that the end came just as World War II was heating up. Fitzgerald appears in these pages as the ultimate arbiter of the interwar years.
West of Sunset is a highly readable work of historical fiction, particularly for those who are familiar with F. Scott and Zelda. Four stars.
Beautifully written, it does begin rather slowly, but the deeper the reader falls into the story, the clearer it becomes: O'Nan has captured the essence of Fitzgerald. The man is far removed from the heady days of the Roaring Twenties. No longer on the make, this Fitzgerald is old beyond his years, run down by alcoholism (his own) and madness (his wife's). He is desperate and, often, destitute, torn between the past and the present, obsessed with his failures and resolving to be better. In that sense, he is perfectly human, and brilliantly crafted by O'Nan.
Having made his career out of the ashes of World War I, it seems fitting that the end came just as World War II was heating up. Fitzgerald appears in these pages as the ultimate arbiter of the interwar years.
West of Sunset is a highly readable work of historical fiction, particularly for those who are familiar with F. Scott and Zelda. Four stars.
Saturday, March 5, 2016
How Green Was My Valley
Clearly, I was confused. I had it in my mind that How Green Was My Valley was a memoir, something along the lines of James Herriot. It's not; it's the fictional coming-of-age of Huw Morgan, youngest son of a mining family in the lush Welsh valleys...which are slowly being defaced and devoured by heaps of black slag.
Unfortunately, I didn't like this book as much as I expected I would. The first reason is that I had trouble with the cadence. Richard Llewellyn has written the words - narrative and dialogue alike - in an honest and unmistakeable Welsh way. This adds to the authenticity of his work, certainly, but to an American reader, it's a bit jarring to read a sentence such as "It is nothing to fly at hundreds of miles an hour, for indeed I think there is something to laugh about when a fuss is made of such nonsense." Add to that the Welsh names and, well, I often felt like I was looking at words, rather than reading them. (I'm still not sure if the main character, Huw, would pronounce his name Hugh or Who or in some other way entirely. These things bother me.)
Beyond the prose itself, the story often felt a bit, dare I say, boring? I had a hard time caring about a boxing match for 10 pages, or a football match for a similar number, and too often I was left with the feeling that the event did nothing to move the story along. The lack of larger, external events compounded this for me. I must have been nearly halfway finished before the first reference to Queen Victoria clued me in to the approximate time that the story was set. In the end, I reckoned Llewellyn was writing in another time and for another audience, one that didn't necessarily include me.
Unfortunately, I didn't like this book as much as I expected I would. The first reason is that I had trouble with the cadence. Richard Llewellyn has written the words - narrative and dialogue alike - in an honest and unmistakeable Welsh way. This adds to the authenticity of his work, certainly, but to an American reader, it's a bit jarring to read a sentence such as "It is nothing to fly at hundreds of miles an hour, for indeed I think there is something to laugh about when a fuss is made of such nonsense." Add to that the Welsh names and, well, I often felt like I was looking at words, rather than reading them. (I'm still not sure if the main character, Huw, would pronounce his name Hugh or Who or in some other way entirely. These things bother me.)
Beyond the prose itself, the story often felt a bit, dare I say, boring? I had a hard time caring about a boxing match for 10 pages, or a football match for a similar number, and too often I was left with the feeling that the event did nothing to move the story along. The lack of larger, external events compounded this for me. I must have been nearly halfway finished before the first reference to Queen Victoria clued me in to the approximate time that the story was set. In the end, I reckoned Llewellyn was writing in another time and for another audience, one that didn't necessarily include me.
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