Through-story
I ran out of time and out of steam before completing Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven this week, and didn’t make it to the finish line. To tell the truth, I lost impetus before the library due date arrived, and switched to another book.
It’s not that I disliked Horse Heaven; in fact, the stories, characters, and language are actually quite wonderful. But that’s what it seems like—not a novel, but a series of short stories, strung together because they are all about the same subject—horses and all the people who surround them (owners, trainers, jockeys, etc.) in the racing business. And while I love horses and stories about them, I have never been a short story person. Short stories are, to me, like all the worst parts of starting to read a new book, with none of the payoff of getting to enjoy it once I’m invested.
As I kept going, the anecdotes and vignettes were beginning to add up, and I had hopes they would eventually converge into something, but it was taking a long time. I liked the picture she was painting, but a “through story” never developed, so the book didn’t drag me along in the way a novel would, making me want to know what would happen next.
While “through-story” isn’t a concept commonly used in readers’ advisory when we talk about appeals, maybe it should be. Without it, a compelling quality of story—momentum—is missing, and without momentum some readers have trouble getting to the end of a book. Even those of us who revel in language, character development, and world-building can have trouble with a book essentially lacking a plot—that ordered sequence of events that includes exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. While a plot may exist in Horse Heaven, its presence is so diffuse as to be indiscernible (at least to me).
After reading it for at least an hour a day for about a week, I received an email notice from the library that my book would be due in three days. I felt sure I was getting close to the end, or at least the three-quarter mark, and could beat my deadline, but when I checked the page count on my Kindle I discovered that I was at page 267 out of 543! At that point I decided to go read something (shorter) with a beginning, middle, and end that is all of a piece. I’ll come back to Horse Heaven someday when I’m in a different mood.
Harking back
After I finished the latest Vera Wong, I decided to reread yet another of Rumer Godden’s books. I recently described the plot of In This House of Brede to my cousin, and it made me want to experience it again for myself after so long. It was kind of a masterpiece of its day, although it’s a weird book for an atheist/agnostic like me to enjoy so much, considering that it’s about the life of a cloistered nun and her abbey; but I have a soft spot for it because it was my introduction to her writing.
I remembered finding it on my parents’ bookshelves, which is equally strange, because as fundamentalists, they didn’t even consider Catholics to be Christian. But I finally figured it out: My parents loved to read but weren’t good about going to the library and also didn’t frequent the bookstore. My mom did, however, have a subscription (de rigueur back in the 1960s and ’70s) to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. During the long, sometimes boring summers of my youth (I was an only child in a neighborhood with no other kids my age), I would lie on the floor of my dad’s study and devour all the stories contained therein, and that was how I happened upon this book. (I was amazed, in later years, to pick up and read the uncut versions of some of those books and realize all that I had missed!)
The book begins with the protagonist’s life-changing decision to give up her exceedingly busy and successful life to try to become a cloistered Benedictine nun. Philippa Talbot is 42, a widow who has made a great success in a government position in finance in the days after World War II when she would have been the only woman in the room who was not taking dictation. The story begins with her leaving her job on her last day—handing out her treasured possessions to some of the people who worked for her, entrusting her cat to her beloved housekeeper of many years, and getting on a train, with one small carry-on bag, to travel to the 120-year-old abbey in Sussex in the south of England. Should she successfully stick out her years there as a postulant and a novice, receive her preliminary clothing, and take her final orders, she would become a permanent fixture for life at Brede Abbey.
The humanity of each of the characters strikes you from the first page. The interaction between Mrs. Talbot and the young secretary from the typing pool; her detour, once she gets off the train, to the nearest pub for a last whiskey (or three) and a farewell cigarette; and her admission through the door into the enclosure, surrounded by the entire community (90-some nuns) in their wimples and habits, is vivid and engaging.
The story remains so throughout. It is a neat balance; it depicts life within the walls of the abbey—the structure of ceremony and ritual, the customs, the traditions, the pageantry—but it also focuses in on each of the characters, describing the tests, the deprivations, the stumbling blocks, and also the joys as they struggle to live with purpose, outside of the mundane world of competition and financial success. The nuns and other characters are beautifully drawn, both individually and in their complex interactions with one another. The back stories are not dictated in a straightforward way, but are instead dropped here and there between the recounting of the current day-to-day life of the cloister, giving the entire book a freshness and cohesion despite the rapid switches in time and perspective.
It is an earnest look at the examined life of a community formed by diverse personalities who share a world view, but it is also a gorgeous, colorful kaleidoscope in its descriptions of the minute details of living in this world with its sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings. The sacred and the mundane are present in equal measure, as are Godden’s luminous observations of the natural world and the beauty to be found in a cherry tree against the sky, a soaring lark, a stone statue, or the transcendent face of a soloist whose voice rises to the rafters in devotion.
It may not sound like your cup of tea, but you never know; it certainly gave me a few totally absorbed afternoons, and this was for the third time!
The Mare (the girl)
Having read Horse, by Geraldine Brooks, a few months back, when someone recommended the book The Mare, by Mary Gaitskill, I was primed to read it, especially because the teenage main character was named Velvet, immediately transporting me back to the joy of reading National Velvet in my childhood. And, similar to that book, this story was about a disadvantaged child whose encounter with horses changes things for her, although the child in this one is a much more extreme example. I didn’t grow up in a financial or social environment that would indicate the need for escape, but I was an introverted, solitary child who longed for the connection with horses in lieu of any relationship with people, so books like this spoke to me, and still do.
Velvet (short for Velveteen) Vargas is the daughter of a single mother, Sylvia, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. They, along with Velvet’s little brother, Dante, live in Crown Heights (an inner city section of Brooklyn), and it is a limited, hand-to-mouth existence. Sylvia is hard and bad-tempered, shaped by the fearful responsi-bilities she has been forced to take on from a young age, and she is alternately loving, manipulative, and abusive with her children. The effect on Velvet’s sense of self, in particular, is both negative and confusing, and Velvet is a troubled, conflicted child.
Through Velvet’s school, they find out about the Fresh Air Fund; although the actual organization apparently sends children to six-week summer camps so they can have outdoor experiences and take leadership workshops, the program in this book pairs up inner-city children with more well-to-do host families from the country, with whom they spend a couple of weeks’ holiday. Both Dante and Velvet participate, although we never hear any more about Dante’s experience after he is put on a bus at Penn Station that first summer.
Velvet, age 11, is matched with Ginger and Paul, from rural upstate New York. Ginger is a painter, although she has been blocked for a long time; she is also a recovering alcoholic. Paul is a teacher, and met Ginger at an AA meeting. They have been together for some time without having children, and Ginger longs for some kind of connection; they initially sign up to host because Ginger wants to experience what it might be like to adopt an older child. (Paul has a daughter from a former marriage and is lukewarm, at best, about this.)
Ginger and Paul live near a horse stable, and it is the incentive of being able to ride horses that most appeals to Velvet about the experience. The book carries its characters through several years, as Velvet transitions from child to teenager while paying sporadic weekend and holiday visits to the couple’s home, and is told through the primary viewpoints of Velvet and Ginger, with a few scattered chapters giving added perspective from Paul and Sylvia.
The surface story is a coming-of-age saga, but the underlying context is the stark contrasts inherent in race and socioeconomic class. The switch between Velvet’s world and Ginger’s holds up the realities of inequality in our country by showcasing minority poverty and its relationship to white liberal guilt and its accompanying savior complex.
My reaction to the first part of the book was positive; it’s written in a rather quirky style that appealed to me because it was so internal. Conversations are had, but they don’t exist as present-tense dialogue; rather, each person is narrating from her sole point of view, and relating the conversations second-hand as she perceives them. It makes for an experience that is simultaneously cerebral and intimate.
The path of the story is choppy; sometimes we get to see the same scene and actions as experienced by Velvet and then again by Ginger, but at others we see things only from the one point of view and then the timeline is continued by the other, as when Velvet narrates her day at the barn and Ginger takes up the story when Velvet returns to the house and Ginger tries to get an account of the day’s events out of a recalcitrant and somewhat inarticulate teenager. Everything about the story is filtered through one or the other psyche (with the exception of the few short chapters related by Paul or Silvia), so there isn’t really a factual feel about it, since both viewpoints are opinion colored by personality and emotion.
Where the book started to break down for me was when Velvet (at home in Brooklyn) started paying attention to boys, and one boy, Dominic, in particular, and her attention is riveted on him to the exclusion of her own family, her host family, and the horses. Although it was probably a natural development in the life of a young girl from this neighborhood and, more widely, that of a pubescent girl from any neighborhood, it was a disappointing distraction from Velvet’s previous one-track focus on her almost mystical relationship with the horses and with one mare in particular.
The mare was a problem horse from whom everyone was warned off, as she was both unpredictable and occasionally vicious, but Velvet felt a kinship with the horse that developed, over the course of several years, into something so compelling that to draw the attention away from that to a helpless crush on an older boy who doesn’t really want her was disappointing. (Some of the best writing in the book is when Velvet is trying to articulate the feelings and internal dialogue between herself and the horses and how those translate into action.)
I also have to say that although I don’t mind stories that are more character- than plot-driven, I truly loathe ones that are open-ended, and when I got to the last page of this book I had a momentary flare of irritation that I had spent so much time persevering to finish reading it. In retrospect I don’t exactly regret it, but I really wish there had been a more definitive story arc with an end as engaging as its beginning.
Malbrey #2
I had no real intention, after finishing Gentlemen and Players, of continuing to read the Malbrey series (or at least not now), but the sequel was available at the library while everything else in which I was interested was wait-listed, and I did kinda want to know what happened next and to whom, so…I checked it out.
I almost quit reading Different Class about 30 percent in because, in the flashback portion of the story, one of the little sociopathic boarding school boys tortures a mouse, and I really don’t need to be reading about that right now.
But…I kept going. And it was for one specific reason, which was that I haven’t recently encountered another author whose use of metaphor and language spoke to me like Joanne Harris’s does.
One example was when a new teacher joins the staff and the protagonist (Classics Master Roy Straitley, still) notes that he’s a “Suit,” and basically falls into line in every respect with Dr. Devine, his mentor on the staff. Straitley remarks that the new teacher is “a bonsai version of himself,” the most vividly literary way ever to say that Dr. Devine has a “mini-me.” I love a literary phrase that also makes me laugh out loud and picture Mike Myers in a bald cap and a white suit.
Another is when Straitley is reflecting about the new school Head, who has turned out to be one of Roy’s troubled students from 20-some years ago, and ruminates, “”He’s the one releasing the ghosts, like a child with a magic lamp that, instead of casting light, releases nothing but darkness…”
Then I hit the 50 percent mark and decided that, after all, literary language could only make up for so much. The animal torturer moved on to multiple and then increasingly more horrifying subjects to satisfy his “condition,” as he calls it, and yeah, it turns out that I’m one of those bleeding hearts who can cheerfully regard the murder of a fellow human being when it furthers the mystery, but draws the line at killing off the dog (or pulling the wings off of flies, for that matter). Basically, the balance shifted and I cared less about literary expression and more about not putting any more nightmarish visions into my long-term memory. So Joanne Harris will have to find another reader, because although this guy will probably get his in the end, I can’t bear to read through all the things he did to deserve it. On to less disturbing material…
Plagued by the penultimate
Have you ever reached the denouement of a book, the place where all the hints and clues and separately insignificant moments are tied up for you so that you have that blinding flash that the author has purposefully manipulated, that one in which you say “aHAH!” and suddenly understand everything that has been happening? You feel so satisfied with that moment of revelation, only to turn the page and realize, after flipping even further, that there are still multiple chapters to go in the book—and maybe you felt impatient and somewhat robbed of your moment at having to keep reading?
I, like so many other people, have incorrectly thought of the word “penultimate” as meaning the last, or the greatest, something that is somehow beyond the ultimate when, in fact, the definition of penultimate is, in Brit-speak, “the last but one,” or in American, next to last. It is the part just before the last. And this is what I see as a big flaw in so many books, the most recent one I have read being Gentlemen and Players, by Joanne Harris of Chocolat fame.
I have mentioned several times in various reviews on this blog how much I loathe an epilogue—the wrap-up in which the author apparently grows tired of showing the reader and decides to tell instead, an action I almost always consider an easy out. I wrote about it most notably in my review of Things You Save in a Fire, in which the author wrote a near-perfect ending but then continued past it to wrap up each and every little hangnail, robbing the reader of the feeling of completion in order to give the author the satisfaction of thorough explanation. I concluded that review by saying, “The difference between an author who knows when to quit and one who doesn’t can be as slight as 20 extra pages, but what a difference it makes. After all, isn’t imagination a big part of enjoyment when it comes to the peculiar habit of reading?”
This was also my experience with Gentlemen and Players.
There are two narrators in this book about a posh British boys’ school called St. Oswald’s: the classics professor, Roy Straitley, otherwise known as Quasimodo (his room is in the Bell Tower and, yes, he’s a bit hunched), and a mysterious antagonist who shares a complicated past (and a deceitful present) with the school and whose stated intent from the beginning is to bring the school down by irretrievably tarnishing its reputation. Straitley (for the most part) narrates the action taking place in the present, while the mystery person is concerned with telling about the experience of being raised in close involvement with the school and its professors, students, administrators, and staff, but nonetheless remaining an outsider, never being able to be of the school. It is an exploration of age, gender, class, work ethic, and values—but all of those are subsumed in its identity as a psychological thriller, a cat-and-mouse game.
The prose is literary, as is appropriate for a tale about a school that still values the teaching of Latin (its motto is Audere, agere, auferre—to dare, to strive, to conquer); but we are at the juxtaposition of old and new as dusty classrooms make way for computer labs and crusty eccentrics have to learn how to check their email to get departmental updates.
The mystery part of the plot is undeniably thrilling; but in order to reach it, there is a lot of set-up in the present and a lot of flashback to the past that is occasionally a slog to navigate. I’m not saying it’s not necessary; I’m just not sure the payoff is adequate. I will say that it is quite crafty, and the twists and turns the story takes are worthy of a Patricia Highsmith novel. But after experiencing the major revelations near the end, I could have wished that they had been the finale, rather than the penultimate. Granted that there are sequels and the extension of the story beyond its climax does lead the reader towards those stories; but I’m not sure I believe the let-down from that rather spectacular revelatory climax was justified.
There are three sequels to this book, although I find it hard to image there is that much more material to explore here, and you could easily read this as a stand-alone and be done. I may read the others at some point, to find out. I have vastly enjoyed some of Harris’s other works, including Chocolat and Peaches for Father Francis, Five Quarters of the Orange, and Blackberry Wine.
One purely cosmetic warning about this book: If you decide to read it in Kindle form, as I did, you may find it quite confusing when the narrator switches from one protagonist to the other, because there is no indication of who is speaking, beyond tone and context. In the hardcover and paperback books, symbolism in the graphic form of a White King or a Black Pawn from a chess set at the beginning of each chapter signalled from whom we were hearing. This would have been easy to incorporate on the Kindle version, and that they didn’t was a problem.
Reimagining
I just read James, by Percival Everett. Despite being 300 pages, it was a quick read, unlike the story from which it was taken, which took me twice as long to reread. I think there were two reasons for this one going so quickly: One was that it leaned on the presumption that you already knew the original tale and therefore the author gave himself permission to shorthand much of the action and description from that book; the other was that almost the whole story took place in either internal or external dialogue, without a lot of world-building, scene-setting, or exposition.
These things led to an interesting experience if you were hoping to confront this old story from a completely new perspective. I wanted to embrace this book, but I struggled a bit.
The premise that the slaves spoke patois in front of the white “massas” but used the common language when alone seemed a natural outgrowth of their situation; they had to communicate important information with one another without the white people catching on to what was being said, and they had to hide their real personalities behind a façade of ignorance, foolishness, and passivity, so they learned code-switching from childhood. Everett completely enthralled me with this; but then he took it a little too far. I expected the character James to be a bit more than ordinary, given his interactions with Huck and others in the original, but did his life experience really allow him the latitude to become as extraordinary as Everett has written him?
He is painted as an educated man—not just a slave who has learned to read and to speak with a careful use of diction. Would the surreptitious reading sessions in Judge Thatcher’s study in the wee hours really lead to a thorough understanding of the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and John Locke? Even southern college-educated men of that day were not necessarily cognizant of the intricacies of philosophical thought, so the requirement that we believe it of a man who has had to gain all his education on the sly in stolen moments is a little hard to meet.
This was, to my mind, a central flaw of this book, for the simple reason that we went from perceiving the disguise the original “Jim” presented to the world—the stereotypical shuffle-footed, awkward, ignorant, well-behaved and possibly well-intentioned slave—to yet another disguise for “James”—the cynical, perceptive, erudite man who is playing that character for half his world while laughing about it with the other half. I actually liked that for its dark irony; what I’m trying to say is that there was an opportunity here for us to get to know the real person, but except for some tantalizing and admittedly affecting glimpses here and there, we went from one façade to another. With as much internal dialogue as there was from James, there was nonetheless too little understanding of the man himself. While being able to recognize that he is quick-witted, thoughtful, and compassionate, I didn’t feel that I really understood how he acquired all those positive character traits, because he doesn’t let us in.
The other thing the book thoroughly exhibits is the two-faced nature of slave owners who wish to be regarded as benevolent protectors of their “childlike servants,” but turn on a dime, when challenged, to become brutalists who exult in wielding a belt or raping a child. And again, I found myself applauding the exposure of the stereotypes but wincing at the one-dimensional portrayals—not so much of the slave-owners, but of the slaves! Several other reviewers have noted that the women in this book seem to be present on the page merely to highlight their own ill treatment; they have no agency and almost no personality but are merely offered up as horrifying examples of the results of human ownership. Again, I have no quarrel with exposing the heinousness of the practice, but how much more affecting would the book have been had readers been able to better identify with these women as individuals with personality?
I don’t want to come across as hyper-critical of this book. I admired what he tried to do and was caught up in it while reading it. I am also a fan of his writing style and language, which can be beguilingly beautiful. It actually troubles me to go against the reviewers who gave it unreserved praise (not to mention the National Book Award!). But afterwards, while reflecting on what I had read, I also wished there had been more—more story, more depth of character, more nuance, more exploration. I am curious, now, to read others of his books to see what my reaction to him as a writer might be when not influenced by the rewriting-of-a-classic aspect of this one. I’m sure you’ll hear more about it from me eventually.
Wrapping up
This year it feels more like a winding down than a wrapping up. I read the fewest books in one year since I started doing the Goodreads Challenge 12 years ago. That year I read 75 books; my highest number ever was in 2019, when I read 159 books while working full-time from January to October (I retired from the library in October of that year). You would think it would be the reverse, since I have so much more time now than I did then; but there were some factors at play that ensured I would read a lot more then. First, I was running three teen book clubs, so I had to read one book per month for each club, plus a couple extra books in each age range (the clubs were 6th- and 7th-graders, 8th- and 9th-graders, and grades 10-12) so I would have ideas to propose as the following month’s read. I was also reviewing books for both the teen and adult library blogs (both of which I supervised), so I was heavily invested in spending all my spare time reading new teen and adult fiction to showcase there. And finally, of course, there was a certain amount of reading for my own particular pleasure! I basically worked, commuted, ate, slept, and read, and did absolutely nothing else!
Nowadays there are circumstances that tend to decrease my reading time: With my particular disability, sitting in one position for long periods of time isn’t great for keeping my legs at their best possible condition for mobility. I also watch a lot more on television these days, now that streaming services let you binge-watch an entire five-season show, one episode after another for as long as you can stay awake, as opposed to waiting for one weekly episode for a 12- to 20-week season and then waiting in turn for the following season. And I spend way too much time “doom-scrolling” political stuff online, or keeping up with friends on Facebook. Finally, once I took up painting I started spending at least a few days a week focused on making a portrait or two or a still life featuring items from my antique collection.
Anyway, this year I read a meager-for-me 66 books. Some of them were literary and some of them were chick lit, some were re-reads of beloved stories, and others were authors previously unknown. My statistics include:
23,782 pages, with an average book length of 360 pages
(shortest was 185, longest was 698)
Average rating was 3.6 stars
Some favorite new titles were:
The Unmaking of June Farrow, by Adrienne Young
Starter Villain, by John Scalzi
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers
All the Dead Shall Weep, and The Serpent in Heaven, by Charlaine Harris
Found in a Bookshop, by Stephanie Butland
I felt throughout the year like I was having trouble discovering books that really resonated with me. Although I had some pleasurable reading discoveries, I never found that one book or series or author that really sucked me in and kept me mesmerized for hours at a time. I found myself reading during breakfast or on my lunch break and easily stopping after a chapter or two to go do something else, rather than wanting to settle in for a solid afternoon of reading. I’m hoping to find more compelling books in the new year. But reading continues to be one of my best-beloved pastimes.
Slog in the woods
I just finished The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore, and perhaps my headline has telegraphed my reaction?
It’s not a bad book. It’s actually an intriguing story, at least initially. It takes place at a summer camp in the Adirondacks owned by the wealthy Van Laar family. This summer is the first time in three generations that any Van Laar child has ever expressed a desire to attend the camp, and ordinarily the family wouldn’t encourage their offspring to mix with the mundanes; but Barbara Van Laar has been such a problem for the past year or so that her parents are happy to put her in this controlled environment at a certain distance from home. She’s still close by—the camp is on one-half of the vast acreage owned by the family—but she’s not underfoot, sulking about in her all-black punk get-up, provoking her father and slamming doors, so all parties are happy with this solution. Until, that is, she goes missing.
Then we get the previous history of the family, which includes a son, Bear, who himself went missing (though not from camp) before Barbara was born, and was never found. A local man was blamed for his disappearance and assumed death, only to himself die before anything could be proved. The family believed he was the culprit, and let the whole thing go until Barbara’s disappearance sparks new interest in that similar set of circumstances, leading to speculation that someone else might have been at fault and is still out there preying on Van Laar children.
The problem is not with the storyline, it’s with how we glean each small morsel of information a teaspoonful at a time. There are seven points of view in this novel, and also a timeline that jumps from the ’50s to the ’60s to the ’70s (present day is 1975) to “day one” etc. of the search for Barbara, and both the narrator and the timeline switch in almost every one of the rather short chapters.
We get the story from the POV of Barbara’s camp counselor, Louise; from her bunkmate Tracy; from Bear and Barbara’s mother, Alice; from Judyta, a junior inspector on the case; from the widow of the presumed kidnapper of Bear; from the manager of the local motel at which the inspector is staying…. And it’s not just the current story regarding Barbara, or even the past story of Bear, it’s also the events leading up to the marriage of Alice into the Van Laar family, the relationship between that family and the managers (current and past) of the camps and with the police officers (current and past) of each investigation. The suspects include a boyfriend of Louise’s who is also the son of the Van Laars’ closest friends, who may have been double-dipping (or taking smorgasbord) in the pool of available females (including Barbara); we get the perspective of Jacob Sluiter, a serial killer (and an initial suspect in Bear’s disappearance) who has escaped from jail and is headed for the Van Laar preserve…kitchen sink doesn’t begin to describe the cast of characters here. The jumping around from person to person and era to era is disconcerting and ultimately offputting—or at least it was to me.
The resolution has a tender, ah-hah moment attached to it that made me momentarily soften toward the story, but there is also an implausibility about it that stuck with me longer than did that small detail, and I finished the book feeling frustrated—unsatisfied by the consequences meted out (or not) to various characters and dismayed by the cynicism surrounding the treatment of the rich vs. the “regular” people, even though I know that differentiation to be all too true in real life.
I do think that this is one of those books to which reactions will be diverse; certainly there are many people who adored it and gave it top marks. I will say that the writing is good, and the characters she develops beyond a certain point are believable and sympathetic; but much of the supporting cast struck me as cardboard clichés who took away from the total effect and made me wish they had either been developed more fully or left out altogether. I think a final pass by an editor determined to trim about 100 pages would have greatly benefited this book. It felt like the author couldn’t quite decide whether to write literary fiction, a mystery, or a full-on thriller, and cutting out some of the extraneous material might have propelled it towards a more defined identity. I was sufficiently engaged that I pushed to finish the book today before it went to the next person on the library check-out list tomorrow when my turn is up, but not so much that I will necessarily seek out this author again.
Back to Ardnakelty
After weeks or months of reading nothing but formulaic genre fiction—some of it quite entertaining but none of it particularly special—I forgot what it’s like to suck up some genuine literary prose. While reading The Hunter, I was reminded that Tana French’s characters are so immediate and solid that they jump off the page at you—their physicality, their mannerisms, their patterns of speech, their inner thoughts, all draw such a finely tuned picture of who they are that you are right there inhabiting the story alongside them. And not just the characters, but the setting, the look and feel of the natural world she portrays, lets you perceive the particular texture of the dirt under your bare feet and the golden-green hills silhouetted against the horizon.
The Hunter is the second of her books set in the village of Ardnakelty in the west of Ireland and centered around the American transplant, Cal Hooper, and the local teenager, Trey Reddy, with whom he has bonded. And as with its predecessor (The Searcher), French is telling a story that, while it has a mystery of sorts at its heart, is more a tale of people, of community, of life-changing choices.
In the first book, Hooper, a former Chicago detective, had recently moved to this small community and started making it his home, although he will always be an outsider to its provincial inhabitants. But it’s now two years on, and Cal has settled more deeply into his role as a citizen of Ardnakelty, in a relationship with local woman Lena and still serving as a foster father of sorts to Trey Reddy. He and Trey have built up a nicely profitable woodworking business, repairing old and building new furniture for the locals, and their future seems like clear sailing until Trey’s wayward father Johnny shows up, bringing along an Englishman whose ostensible purpose is the exploration of his Irish roots. But Johnny Reddy is an opportunist bent on exploiting the easy advantage, and his scheme to find gold in the townland sets everyone at odds and leads Trey astray as she tries to cope with the fallout from her father’s return.
Johnny Reddy has always struck Cal as a type he’s encountered before: the guy who operates by sauntering into a new place, announcing himself as whatever seems likely to come in handy, and seeing how much he can get out of that costume before it wears too thin to cover him up any longer.
Trey, two years older, has neither forgiven nor forgotten the unidentified villagers’ role in the disappearance of her brother, Brendan, and thoughts of revenge smolder close under the surface of her thoughts. Johnny’s scheming and double-dealing with the tourist Englishman and the participation of the men of Ardnakelty give her what she sees as the perfect opportunity to get back at them, but there are events, intentions, and emotional currents she’s too young and too fixated on her goal to suss out for herself. It’s left to Cal and Lena to help her walk a perilously narrow path without falling off an unanticipated cliff.
In my review of the first book, I called it subtle, lovely, and special, and this continuation is no less nuanced and intriguing. But you have to be able to sufficiently immerse yourself in that subtlety in order to appreciate it. French’s books always get radically opposite reviews from readers, with some lauding their slow burn, intricate plots, and gorgeous prose while others liken reading them to watching paint dry! I am obviously of the former opinion, loving every small shift of expression and change of attitude and tone by each character and holding my breath to see which way the wind will blow next. You will have to decide for yourself where you land. But if you enjoy the work of such writers as Donna Tartt, Kate Morton, and Diane Setterfield, give this book (and its predecessor) a try. There are rumors of a third book to round this out into a trilogy, and I say, Bring it on!
Constructive maundering
This week my breakfasts were beguiled by a book I have meant for some time to read: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome. You may or may not have heard of it; although it is considered a classic, it’s not the kind typically assigned as part of a high school curriculum. Nonetheless, as Wikipedia cites, “The book, published in 1889, became an instant success and has never been out of print. Its popularity was such that the number of registered Thames boats went up 50 percent in the year following its publication, and it contributed significantly to the Thames becoming a tourist attraction. In its first 20 years alone, the book sold over a million copies worldwide.”
I only know about it because I am a science fiction fan(atic), and a reader of the books of Robert Heinlein and Connie Willis. Three Men in a Boat is mentioned in Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit—Will Travel, wherein it inspired Willis to read it and then title one of her time travel series To Say Nothing of the Dog, the actions in that book being a loose tribute to the original.
I have mentioned Willis’s book here before, describing it as a sort of French farce featuring a hapless cast of misfits and, now having read the original inspiration, I can see even more clearly where the frenetic, chase-your-tail style in which Willis wrote her book originated. Three Men is chock full of the most hilarious minutiae of everyday life, not to mention the mental maunderings of its narrator, who wanders away from each topic to discuss the most useless and suspect bits of information, only to eventually work his way back again to the original subject, pulling himself up and getting on with the narrative.
It’s not exactly a story, per se; its main protagonist and first-person voice, “J.,” is more concerned with travelogue—commenting on points of interest as the boat advances up the Thames—coupled with self-indulgent flights of fancy about Man and Nature and the recounting of numerous ridiculous anecdotes about his fellow travelers, his dog, random bartenders and fishermen he has encountered during his life, and so on. He will ramble on about the next stop along the river—its history and monuments, what events transpired, who slept in what public house and which one now stocks the best ale, who is buried there, etc.—and then comment about the petty details of their day on the boat—who inadvertently dragged whose shirt through the water, what food they had to eat and its effect on their mood and/or bowels—interrupting all this once in a while to recount a close call with a launch or a ferry, a hang-up of their boat inside one of the river’s locks, and then switching to laudatory ravings about nature…and so it goes for about 185 pages.
An example of the flowery language he uses when making his observations about the natural world:
“Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looks at us with such dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out of her. It makes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or to care for us. She is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved, and her children touch her hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smile from her.“
One reviewer on Goodreads remarked that the book is abrupt and atonal, what with the author occasionally forgetting that he’s writing a comic novel to come out with these paeans and flights of fancy but, for me, that’s the fun of it, the whimsical British humor.
The account, once they have made their decision to go on holiday on the Thames for a fortnight, is completely driven by the sights they see and the stops they make up the river, so one can see why the book was popular when first published and how it generated so much interest in boating as a tourist activity; people would naturally want to observe all these things for themselves. But 135 years later, although some of the landmarks will retain their ruins and their burial grounds, all else will have changed enough to be unrecognizable, so the pleasure in reading Three Men in a Boat becomes more nostalgic than anything else.
I must say, however, that the humor with which Mr. Jerome tells his tale is so engaging that I actually saved bits to read out loud to my cousin when she came by the other day. He has a way of having his protagonist say something so that you don’t know whether it is meant for him to be serious or tongue in cheek; it’s hard to pull off being ironic and gently making fun of your characters but at the same time presenting them and some of their views in all seriousness. I laughed out loud a few times.
Here’s an example: They had just finished eating supper, which they really wanted after a long day of rowing.
“How good one feels when one is full—how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal—so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.
“It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon, it says, “Work!” After beefsteak and porter, it says, “Sleep!” After a cup of tea, it says to the brain, “Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”
(I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I have ever been quite that inspired by a cup of tea!) He then goes on for another entire paragraph delineating the effects of muffins, brandy, and so on, and concludes with this thought:
“We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father—a noble, pious man.”
And thus it goes, with the conversation moving from the positive effects of a good meal to the discussion of whether they would be happier away from the world living on a desert island, to fears about damp and drains, to the recounting of an anecdote about sleeping in the same bed with a stranger at a crowded inn…
This book is not one I would unreservedly recommend that everyone should read, but it has a certain reminiscent air for me of the beloved antics of Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and Co. in the tomes of P. G. Wodehouse and, if you like that kind of story where the characters are disingenuous and rather simple-minded while the writing itself is quite clever, then you might enjoy Three Men in a Boat. But even if you don’t read it, do have a go at To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis.
The Book Adept 