The six pigs
The Cherokee don’t see the Seven Sisters when they look up at the sky and see the Pleiades. And in fact there are not just seven stars in that cluster, there are thousands; but the seven noted by most people are the brightest ones. The Cherokee call them “pigs in heaven,” and only identify six of them. Their legend says the “pigs” are a group of disobedient boys who neglected their chores. When they were rebuked by their mothers, they began to dance and then drifted up into the sky to hang there as a reminder that tribal children need to do right by their people, rather than adopting the American focus on doing right by themselves.
I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven, the sequel to The Bean Trees that I reviewed a couple of weeks back. It’s the continuation of the story of Taylor Greer and her adopted daughter, Turtle, who was dumped in Taylor’s passenger seat by a Cherokee woman on Taylor’s trip through Oklahoma.
When Taylor and Turtle end up on television as a result of an incident at the Hoover Dam, a tribal lawyer named Annawake Fourkiller sees the show, does some research, and discovers there is something fishy about Turtle’s adoption. She is pursuing it because Turtle is an example of a child who has been removed from her roots and her heritage, and Annawake thinks it is in her best interest to be returned to the tribe. Taylor, understandably, doesn’t agree; first, everyone in Turtle’s family failed her and allowed terrible things to happen to her, so Taylor figures they had their chance and blew it; and second, she has been Taylor’s child for more than three years now and to separate them would be irreparably harmful to them both. So she takes Turtle and disappears.
The rest of the book is split between Taylor and Turtle’s life on the run and scenes from the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma where Taylor’s mother, Alice, has relatives, and where, it turns out, someone is looking for Turtle and asks the Nation for assistance.
There is a message running through this book that is a continuation of that in the first. My interpretation of it is that you can be born into family or you can create one, but in either case, people need connection, a safety net, people who love them. Again, this book written in 1993 resonated for me concerning present-day happenings: The current administration is in the process of invalidating the temporary asylum status of a large number of Haitians and Syrians. I saw a post from one man whose company employs a large number of the Haitians as workers, who commented that they were much the best workers he had ever had. All I could think was, Well, that’s a positive affirmation…but can we not value them simply for who they are rather than what they can do for us?
There were certain aspects of this book that I didn’t particularly enjoy (for instance, the insertion into the story of an odd woman who tags along for a while during Taylor and Turtle’s journey away from Tucson via Las Vegas), but that journey did illustrate the theme, which is that if you don’t have people backing you up, or you feel that you can’t call on them, then your life can become precarious and unworkable in a hurry. The parts I enjoyed the most took place in Oklahoma, when Taylor’s mother, Alice, goes to visit her cousin on the Cherokee Nation to meet with the lawyer and scope things out on behalf of Taylor.
I’m glad I reread this duology, and also glad to report that it remains relevant decades after it was written.
A mesmerizing tale
I just finished reading The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield. It’s kind of a mystery to me—not the book itself, but my history with it. My Goodreads listings show that i read the book in 2015, and that I gave it a four-star rating. I reference having enjoyed it in reviews of two others of her books, and I just bought it for a friend’s birthday based on that information; but when I started reading it, I had absolutely no memory of the story! That IS the year that I read 152 books (I was a librarian who ran three teen book clubs with a different book to read for each, which accounted for 72 of those—one to discuss, another to propose for next month), so there have been some books that faded from memory based on the rapidity with which I went through them. But this wasn’t like that; it wasn’t even vaguely familiar.
I didn’t remember anything beyond what one could get from reviewing the synopsis: A famously reclusive author decides out of the blue to tell her life story to a minor biographer who has no idea why she was singled out for this task. Over many encounters with the press during her career, prolific and popular author Vida Winter created various life histories for herself, but all had proven to be false—or as she phrased it, “a story.” Now, though, at the end of her life, she has decided to come clean, and has summoned a biographer with some parallels in her own life story to tell Vida’s truth.
When I first started reading I sort of recognized the opening scenario, which was of the biographer’s daily existence working in a used/rare bookstore beside her father. But I have read several books that started out approximately that way and, as the story went along, I struggled to find anything else familiar about it. So, I simply gave in and read it as if it were brand new.
I’m glad that I gifted it to my friend, because that prompted me to read it myself, and not only did I become totally immersed in it, but also believe my friend will like it. (She’s listening on audio, so it may take her longer to finish.) The characters are interestingly bizarre, the storytelling is well paced and carries you along with it, there are various surprising reveals that give the story a twist here and there, and the book is resolved nicely, with enough secrets revealed to be satisfying but without that “tied-up-with-a-bow” feeling that I dislike.
The person who synopsized it for Goodreads concludes the description with these words:
“The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children.”
This was an astute observation that I can only echo. Several classics figure in the story, including multiple mentions of Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, which bears some relation to a particular aspect of the story. I read that book maybe 15 times between the ages of 12 and 17, and the way this book is written—with a slightly gothic flare and an acute understanding of human nature—makes me feel the way I did when revisiting Jane. It also features twins, about whom I was obsessed when I was a child (I was an “only,” who fantasized a missing twin who should have been my companion), so that made it even more fascinating.
The book is rich in language and imagery, and Setterfield really knows how to tease out a story. I read her book Bellman & Black a few years ago (based on my “memory” of having enjoyed this book, ironically enough) and disliked it; but this one redeemed my faith in her, as did Once Upon A River. I’m glad to now be able to definitively say that I have read and will remember The Thirteenth Tale!
Calamities
Calamity is somehow such an East Coast word, isn’t it? and specifically more of a Southern one. I mean yeah, its word origin traces back to Middle French and, before that, Latin, but it’s not a word that you hear frequently in conversation in, for instance, California or the Pacific Northwest. We’d be more likely to call it a disaster or a catastrophe or a tragedy, I think. But when I saw the title The Calamity Club on the cover of Kathryn Stockett’s new book, I immediately thought Deep South. And sure enough, the setting is Oxford, Mississippi, about as Deep South as you can get, and it takes place in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, too.
There are many forms of calamity to be found in this book, large and small: Eugenics, racial inequities, misogyny, abuse, abject poverty, alcoholism, suicide, infidelity, betrayal, crushing back taxes, and pure-dee meanness, as my Okie dad would have characterized it. But despite all that, the book somehow manages to convey both a hopeful tone and a sense of humor that lift it out of the dark despair of reading, say, Demon Copperhead, The Goldfinch, or The Poisonwood Bible. Out of that trio I finished the first two but not the third, and to make it through Demon Copperhead I had to read it in three chunks, interspersing it with lighter, more positive books in between. But I remained both engrossed in and entranced by The Calamity Club throughout, and looked forward to each day’s chapters.
Much of that is due to its passionate, intense, and brilliantly realized characters. Although one could argue that there is an ensemble cast many of whom hold equal weight, the two main protagonists who stand out are Meg, an 11-year-old girl abandoned at age nine and currently a resident at the Oxford orphan asylum, and Birdie, a young spinster recently come to Oxford to borrow money from her self-involved sister’s wealthy husband to save her mamma and meemaw (grandmother) from losing their home.
Although Meg is bright and engaging, her spirit is systematically being crushed by the inexplicable hostility expressed towards her by the director of the orphanage. After two years, she is slowly letting go of her initial hope that her mother will return for her and realizing that, as one of the “big girls,” she also has little hope of being adopted.
Birdie and Meg cross paths when Birdie accompanies her sister to the orphanage where Frances does volunteer work, and the director persuades her to put the books in order (she’s a bookkeeper) before the next inspection of the facility. Birdie is appalled and later haunted by Meg’s circumstances, while Meg finds a kindred soul and an unexpected source of support in Birdie. This short-term encounter is the scaffolding on which several of the later plot points are built.
The story has many turns and many themes, provided by the circumstances and issues of these and other characters in the context of the Great Depression. The story features both extraordinary acts of kindness and shocking inhumanity as it explores its various calamities, some inherent to the prejudices and inequities of the day and others rising from the empathy or callousness of the people involved.
There were a few moments when I felt like Stockett dwelt too long on a story thread while I grew impatient to find out what happened next but, apart from wishing for a tiny bit more editing, I found this book to be pretty flawless. There was never a moment when I grew weary of the story—I kept on wanting to know what happened to the very end, which in some ways came too soon. Although telescoping information in a kind of wrap-up allows the reader to extrapolate the likely fate of every one of the characters, there isn’t a detailed or tidy resolution for this cast. But perhaps leaving those to the imagination are part of the brilliance of this book.
A relevant read
I have been filling in my reading list with some rather random stuff, because I have been transitioning from my old Kindle Fire (13 years and counting) to a new device. Nothing wrong with the old Kindle, but Amazon let me know that after May 20th they wouldn’t be supporting it any longer, which meant I could continue to read anything that was already on there but would no longer have access either to new purchases or to library books, because Amazon wouldn’t deliver them there. So, I had to be out of pocket for a couple hundred dollars to support capitalism and put more money in Bezos’s bottomless pockets. Gee, thanks.
Anyway, I did some research and decided to get the Kindle Paperwhite, because it’s specifically meant for reading (which is the only thing I did on my Kindle) with some anti-glare properties that would supposedly be easier on my eyes, yadda yadda. So I ordered it, received it, set it up, and immediately loathed it. First off, it has the dimensions of a postcard, and with the size of the type I need to use, it shows about two paragraphs before you have to turn a page. Second, it’s black and white. Nobody told me that (and I didn’t think to ask, because I assumed that anything newer than mine would be inherently equal or better), and I am all about the color. No, I don’t read the text in color, but I do consider books by their covers, among multiple other criteria, and who wants to see a pallid black and white version?
I immediately packed it up and sent it back, replacing it with a Kindle HD 10, which is the same size as my old Fire, is in color, and handles my library in essentially the same fashion, with a few variables. I can also use it as a tablet if I ever want to, although that is not my plan.
In the time it took to negotiate all of this, I was thrown back on books already on my old Kindle, and one that I reread was The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver. I was stunned to realize this book was written back in 1988, because the issues dealt with in the course of the story are so relevant to the present moment.
The basic story is entertaining. Marietta “Taylor” Greer is a stubborn and enterprising young woman who leaves rural Kentucky headed vaguely toward “the west” and a better or at least a different life; but an encounter with a Native American woman in a bar parking lot somewhere in Oklahoma changes her trajectory. The woman accosts her as she’s about to drive away, puts a bundle through the window into the passenger seat of her ancient Volkswagen, and says “Take this child.” Then she hurries over to a pickup truck with two men inside and drives away, leaving Taylor the new caretaker of a horrifically abused, underweight, mute, three-year-old Cherokee girl. Taylor and Turtle (named for her propensity to hang on to anything and anyone with the intensity and persistence of a snapping turtle) end up in Tucson, Arizona, living with single mom Lou Ann and her big-headed baby, Dwayne Ray. Taylor gets a job at a tire store called “Jesus is Lord,” working for Mattie, whose business and home serve as an underground railroad-type station for undocumented immigrants.
In other words, all the characters in this novel truly are characters, as quirky and individual as Taylor herself, and their stories are equally as engaging. But it’s the so-called politics of the story that stunned me with their in-the-moment relevance. Today, basic human kindness has turned into a partisan football, and the United States government is hell-bent on excising it.
The theme conveyed in the story is that natural human rights should be extended to everyone, not just to citizens, and views the people in question as displaced persons with an urgent need for asylum, not as “illegal immigrants” to be expelled. The Guatemalan refugees Estevan and Esperanza are portrayed as intensely individual rather than as clichés. The story also acknowledges that most of the characters in the book are, in fact, displaced from their own points of origin, and that the importance of recognizing that commonality leads to the formation of a support system as binding as a family. Kingsolver wrote this in the ’80s with amazing prescience. I recommend it as a good read all around, and plan to pick up the sequel as soon as it’s available from the library, to re-experience that part of the story.
The Orchard
I have been quite baffled by the last few books I have read by Peter Heller. His earlier books had a plot, an arc, and a conclusion, if not the perfect resolution, and then I ran up against two or three that just seemed to…stop. They felt unfinished—they seemed confusing as to his intentions in writing them, and I was disappointed, because he is so gifted in his ability to capture the beauty of the natural world through his characters’ eyes that I will read nearly anything he writes, but…finally, in The Orchard, there is a cohesive story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending, even if they are slight and still take second place to his descriptive passages.
The book is a coming-of-age story told from the viewpoint of Frith, now in her 30s but looking back on her life from about age 12 onward. Her mother, Hayley, a renowned translator of the work of poets from the Tang Dynasty, walks away from her heroin-addicted husband and her career at a Denver university to set up house in a rustic cabin in the quiet hills of the Green Mountains of Vermont to raise her child. She and Frith move there when Frith is seven, and live a life that is both idyllic and hand-to-mouth, making a perilous living from selling the apples from their orchard and the syrup made from the maple trees they tap each year while thoroughly immersing themselves in the pleasure of vanishing into the pines.
The book is a combination of in-the-moment narrative with reminiscence, and is punctuated by some of the simple but transcendentally beautiful poems of Li Xue, translated by Hayley, as well as some poems that may have been Hayley’s own.
Hayley and Frith’s story starts out slowly, but builds to a deeply emotional climax. It’s all about the love of family, the joy of friendship, the experience of doing work that is fulfilling, and the quiet and perceptive appreciation of the natural world. This is not a book like some of Heller’s that are action-packed adventures with a bucolic setting; rather, it is a heartfelt exploration of humanity.
There were many slightly disappointed reviews of this book on Goodreads as being too simple, too slow-paced, not based in reality. It’s hard, sometimes, when you have come to expect a certain thing from an author, to receive something else; but Heller is almost always surprising, and I felt this one accomplished what was intended in a way that was both relatable and evocative.
Continued enjoyment
I read two books this week. One was the sequel to the cozy mystery I reviewed in my last post. The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Orchid Hunting, by Naomi Kuttner, would seem to follow one theme from the previous book—gardens. But orchids are less about gardening and more about collecting, especially because people mostly grow them either in pots (if they have a few) or in a greenhouse (if they have a bunch), and the word “hunting” in the title is no coincidence; orchid aficionados are all about seeking the rare, the storied, the unattainable bloom. A symposium on the subject is sure to draw a large group of rabid fans, and that is the set-up for this second story about Dante the retired assassin and his friends—Eleanor the (former?) con artist, and Charlie, the gardener who sees and talks to ghosts. Just your ordinary paranormal cozy mystery!
Dante has been working hard to acclimatize to “civilian” life with the assistance of regular AA (Assassins Anonymous) meetings on Zoom. He is learning to love the cat who insisted on moving in with him, and is easing up on his isolationist habits by actually contemplating a first date with the local veterinarian. But when the orchid symposium comes to town and Te Kohe’s resident expert on orchids dies under suspicious circumstances, Dante and his new friends team up to try to figure out which of the three other prominent figures at the gathering might be responsible, and why—and they only have the length of the convention to solve the mystery, so they’re on a tight timetable.
There are a couple of subplots; one involves Inspector Avery, who is actually back in town on vacation, choosing to spend his days off at the orchid symposium, and the other features a beautiful but weirdly attentive woman Dante is convinced has appeared at a suspicious moment and may be a threat to his retirement (and continued existence).
I enjoyed the inclusion of the paranormal elements, weaving together Charlie’s talent for perceiving the dearly departed with New Zealand’s flora and fauna and cultural/spiritual beliefs. The Pūriri or Ghost Moth was the perfect guide to help solve the mystery of the elusive Ghost Orchid all the collectors were pursuing, as well as an additional vehicle to expose the murderer. Another entertaining read from this series.
The other book harks back a few months to my discovery of the fantasy author T. Kingfisher and her weirdly wonderful stories. Kingfisher started out as a children’s book author called Ursula Vernon, but she began to feel confined by the inability to include certain elements in her storytelling (murder and mayhem) and decided to branch out into adult fantasy and horror fiction, as well as what she describes as her “occasional oddities.” The latter are the books with which I enthusiastically connected, including Nettle and Bone, A Sorceress Comes to Call, Hemlock & Silver, and a few others. I’m not much of a horror reader (too suggestible), so I will probably give some of her books a miss, but I am completely on board for her fantasy, so I put Nine Goblins on my waiting list at the library and finally snared it this past week.
The story had a bit of a slow start, because there was a lot of scene-setting background to get through before the action began, and it also turned out to be on the short side, a novella of only 160 pages. But once I got past the descriptive information-dump about goblins, orcs, elves, and other competitors for real estate with the ever-expanding human race, it turned into a typical whimsical Kingfisher tale with underlying Terry Pratchett vibes about more serious themes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I discovered in the acknowledgments that Nine Goblins was actually the first of her “occasional oddities,” self-published in 2013, and that its success (though modest) led to all the vastly better-known others. So I’m glad to have come across it as Kingfisher’s “origin story,” so to speak.
Next up: The Calamity Club, by Kathryn Stockett, and The Orchard, by Peter Heller. Stay tuned.
A cozy assassin
I am a long-time mystery reader, but not in general a particular fan of the “cozy”—I tend to like my mysteries on the darker side. But I just read a charming and unexpectedly funny one that made me laugh out loud while keeping me guessing.
The book is The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Gardening, by Naomi Kuttner. There is a sequel I already have queued up on my Kindle, and a third book comes out later this year, which I will most certainly pursue when
it lands.
Although I did enjoy the novelty (for me) of a story set in New Zealand, with its unique flora and fauna and different sensibilities to the more common British cozy, the real attraction of the book was its characters and their difficulty fitting in with the small-town vibe.
The title character is Dante, a former MI6 assassin who has lived a life so focused on one thing that he has no idea, in retirement, what appeals to him. He has chosen to settle in the town of Te Kohe but, despite its friendly and outgoing atmosphere, Dante is maintaining the lifestyle he learned when he was trying to fade into the background and make no impression. He is socially inept, wishes to avoid the inevitable outreach from what he perceives as intrusively nosy neighbors, and hides in his sparsely furnished house subsisting on protein shakes.
The first person to breach his privacy is Charlie Wilson, a 20-year-old gardener who is determined to continue the botanical services he provided to the former occupant (now deceased) of Dante’s house. Dante considers that he might enjoy learning something about gardening while allowing Charlie to do the heavy lifting, so he acquiesces to Charlie’s employment.
Next is an invasion by local landowner Ted Andrews, who has done his research and has decided that Dante can assist him by providing bodyguard services at an upcoming big event. Dante is less than thrilled to be called upon for this, but Ted makes a forceful case that convinces Dante the easiest route to his peaceful existence is to go along with it.
The most significant and also the most mysterious character is Eleanor Graham, who presents as a typical social manager of her small town, with a finger in every pie and extensive knowledge of all the town’s inhabitants and their foibles, but who drops hints about a past life that was vastly more exciting and certainly in some cases illegal. She fills the role of prime sleuth, although the others contribute and there is also a police presence.
The crime and ensuing mystery here are clever and not obvious; there are some unexpected twists as regards the character and abilities of the three incipient friends (and those of the villain), and the best part of the book is what I call “deadpan” humor. I was also charmed by Dante’s inadvertent acquisition of a cat whose attentions advance him towards a more human and humane outlook.
My sole complaint is that the gardening promised in the title turned out not to play much of a role in the story and, since that is what attracted me to the book in the first place, I felt this as a lack. But otherwise, a greatly entertaining lighthearted read!
The comforts of formula
Many writers of series (especially the ones with recurring themes, such as mysteries) fall into a pattern with their books—what one would call a formula. Depending on how well they perform within the confines of that formula, it can be either immensely satisfying to discover a story with all new characters and situations that is nonetheless comfortingly familiar, or it can quickly become tediously repetitive and cause you to seek out fresher fare. The books of Dick Francis, in my opinion, mostly fall into the former, positive category, and I have been re-reading some of my favorites lately when there seemed to be a dearth of new books to enjoy. (I’m sure they were out there, I just wasn’t finding them, and the frustration at my lack of success sent me back to some old familiars.)
The genius, if you want to call it that, of Francis’s books is that they all revolve around horse-racing, but within that broad context he explores many different aspects and occupations contained within or sometimes just adjacent to that world. So while many of his protagonists are jockeys or former jockeys, there are also books in which the main character is a horse trainer, an owner, a groom who escorts horses when they must fly overseas to far-flung racing meets, a sports photographer, a wine merchant, a banker, a jeweler…and he manages nonetheless to set all the stories in the world of horse-racing.
You do need to know that, based on the time period in which most were written (he began in 1962) and adding that to the upbringing, work ethic, and societal circumstances of the author, there are some features that may grate on a contemporary reader—chauvinistic or stereotypical assumptions about men’s and women’s roles being the most prominent. But if you can put those into the timeframe and mindset in which they were written, you can still gain much enjoyment from his tales about the world of horses. Also, because his female characters do have definite personalities and quirks, the macho nature of his stories is much less problematical than those contained within, for instance, the Mitch Rapp books of Vince Flynn (wherein all women wear pencil skirts and “high” ponytails!).
Whatever his profession, the protagonist is usually a competent (and more than usually clever) man connected somehow to the world of British horse-racing who becomes involved in some kind of quandary: a crime, a conspiracy, an act of violence. He is often reluctant to become involved, but is propelled by his ethics and innate sense of fairness to put things right. The villains are typically people who are outwardly respectable or even admired, but in truth are ruthlessly involved in some type of corruption—fraud, kidnapping, sabotage, murder. Despite not being a professional detective, the protagonist rather methodically uncovers the truth about these people and their misdeeds using a combination of intelligence, expertise, and resilience. He never makes it through entirely unscathed, usually coming up against the villains and their flunkies at least once or twice, when he is either physically or psychologically punished for his “nosiness,” surviving beatings, torture, financial ruin, or some form of betrayal. He ultimately manages to expose the criminals while surviving whatever retribution they have to offer.
Francis almost always manages to add in at least one romance for his amateur sleuths, and there is a fair amount of humor of the dryer Brit variety involved as well. He is also good with his descriptions of specialized professions or hobbies, bypassing the temptation to information-dump by placing the reader right in the moment in which the action occurs.
I have written about Francis and his books before, but felt the need to mention them once more because periodically re-exploring them gives me pleasure and perhaps, should you choose to read a few, might give some to you as well. The majority of the books are stand-alone one-offs as regards the personnel, but he does have a series of four about a former jockey named Sid Halley, and a duo involving trainer/rider Kit Fielding. So look out for those and read them in order if you come across those first.
Feel free to add a comment about series or authors whose books you find lend themselves to reading more than once or twice!
The art is “Before the Race,” by Edgar Degas, charcoal and pastels on paper.
Re-read break
I have three books on the holds list at Los Angeles Public Library for which I am #1 in line, so while I was waiting i decided to do some rereading, because every time I have books on hold and start something else new, all of them become available at once and then I can’t finish them all! Apparently whoever has them now is taking their own sweet time, however, because I have now been rereading for two weeks! I’m not going to review the books I have completed in that time period; some I have already reviewed, and others are serial genre series that are easy and enjoyable and need no promotion; if you know them, you probably like them too. These are pretty fast reads, but thoroughly enjoyable. Here’s what I read:
Two Georgette Heyer Regency novels
Two Sid Halley books (out of four) and one Kit Fielding book (out of two) by Dick Francis
One Charlaine Harris book I had missed (it was written in 1984)
The Harris book was something I had wanted to read because it was her second book ever and emerged from a personal experience of Ms. Harris’s, but it would probably be triggering for many people, and was also extremely dated. The others are by authors I have always enjoyed binging.
I’ll probably keep going with this until one of those three books becomes available, and then I’ll be back to reviewing.
Burn(ed)
Once again I have to ask: Peter Heller, where are you going with this?
I picked up his book Burn from the library early in the week and once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. I’m having some trouble right now with excessive edema in my legs, so sitting up for periods longer than the half hour I usually dedicate to eating a meal can be problematic in terms of extra swell and knee pain. I kept turning the pages on this one for another half hour or more in every instance, because I so wanted to know what came next. But I never found out…despite finishing the book.
Jess and Storey have been friends since childhood, growing up as close-by neighbors in rural Vermont. They still meet up every year (Jess having moved to Colorado) for a few weeks of hiking, camping, and hunting in various wilderness areas of the upper northern states; this year, they chose moose hunting in the middle of Maine. Jess is particularly glad of this year’s trip; his wife left him and he needs the distraction and the away time with his friend.
There has been a lot of rash talk on the news from secessionist groups in Maine and a few surrounding states about leaving the union, but the guys figure this is something that will work itself out in the courts. That’s until they emerge from their vacation off the grid to replenish their provisions and buy a tank of gas, only to discover that the town they chose to visit has been decimated. Unlike when a wildfire passes through, leaving some houses partially or wholly standing amongst the devastation, the force behind this act was concentrated and deliberate; although a few outhouses and sheds remain, every single house in the town is burnt down to its foundations. The implied savagery is bewildering and disturbing.
The strangest part of it is there are few bodies—they have discovered just four out of a population of more than 2700—and no live people left in the town, but for some reason all the boats docked by the nearby lake are pristine and untouched. There is no cell phone reception, no radio reception, nothing to tell them what happened here, but it’s plain that the talk of secession has escalated into a real and frightening battle. They have no idea who is “winning”—secessionists or U.S. military (or could Canada be involved?)—or how far the devastation stretches, so they decide to figure out a route to get back home (Storey has a wife and two daughters in Vermont), scavenging food from the lockers in the boats, camping under cover in the woods, and dodging human contact after they discover that the new world order is to shoot first and ask no questions. Then something happens that interferes with this plan and changes their whole trajectory.
Up to this point, I was breathless with the need to keep reading. But then the book goes off into a lot of flashbacks into Jess’s teen years and, while interesting, it didn’t further the story at all. It also seemed strangely inappropriate that he would be sitting around reminiscing about this in the midst of the disconnect the two friends are experiencing from the present-day world.
I should also add that the book, as is usual with Heller’s writing, is a poetic and passionate ode to both nature and human emotion, which I always appreciate. I was enthralled by both the possibilities and the story-telling; I kept waiting for progress, for some kind of reveal, but we just kept circling around the same information—we don’t know what’s happening or who we can trust, we don’t know what to do about it, we need to go home. After the event that changes their focus, the story was still compelling until I turned a page after a particularly dramatic scene to discover that it was the last page. What?!
I honestly don’t know what Heller is doing. I do understand some of the statements he was attempting to make—the pondering over human nature and friendship, the disbelief and dismay at the violent divisions over things that seem small but accumulate into a reason for war, but…I want to know how it ends! This is the second of his books that has simply stopped in what I would consider mid-story with no resolution. It is a beautifully written story, but…what happens? Will there be a sequel? Or is that it? As someone similarly frustrated said on Goodreads, Gripping? yes. Satisfying? no.
I don’t know whether to say to read it anyway for what it does offer, or to be outraged by what has been omitted. It was too good to call it a waste of time, but…I’d love to know other reactions to its abrupt full stop.
The Book Adept 