We're reading a variety these days. From humor to historical fiction, and everything in between.
Here's what we discussed:
American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins
What in God's Name - Simon Rich
Horrorstor - Grady Hendrix
These Women - Ivy Pochoda
Visitation Street - Ivy Pochoda
A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles
Just Mercy - Bryan Stevenson
My Italian Bulldozer - Alexander McCall Smith
The Second-Worst Restaurant in France - Alexander McCall Smith
Lamb - Christopher Moore
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - Kate DiCamillo
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
Apeirogon - Colum McCann
Juneteenth - Ralph Ellison
Middlegame - Seanan McGuire
The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix Harrow
Gedeon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
The Lady from the Black Lagoon - Mallory O'Meara
The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Ann Warner
The Pioneers - David McCullough
From Mary Lou in Maryland:
Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth (1999). This novel was extracted and edited by John F, Callahan from manuscripts left unfinished by Ellison at his death in 1994. Ellison had worked on an ambitious work of fiction, probably 3 volumes, over the 40 years following the publication of Invisible Man in1952. Ellison’s wife assisted Callahan, the literary executor, in developing the book that emerges as Juneteenth. In the Afterward Callahan provides a brief but informative discussion of the decisions he made in selecting and structuring materials from Ellison’s manuscripts and notes into a single-volume novel. Set in the 1950s, it tells the interrelated life-stories of two men, the race-baiting New England Senator Adam Sunraider and the old Black Baptist traveling minister Reverend Hickman, who adopted the young white boy “Bliss” and raised him to be a member of the Black evangelical movement. Bliss deserts the Reverend as an adolescent and forges a new identity, renouncing his upbringing. Still, his Senate speeches echo the Black Southern Baptist rhetoric and style. This is a very American novel, focusing on the essentially American historical and cultural issues of slavery and racial injustice, with a style that reads in part like Whitman and in part like Faulkner. The structure is a series of rambling narratives and flashbacks that gradually reveal the often-shocking stories of the two men. This complex novel is more than worth the energy and attention it takes to read it.
Tom Willard, Buffalo Soldiers (1996). In July 1866, the U. S. Congress passed a law creating 6 regiments of Negro troops (4 infantry, 2 calvary) to absorb Negro soldiers from the Union army, many of them formerly enslaved persons. President U. S. Grant sent them, under white officers and along with white regiments, to pacify the western frontier, where Indians, Mexican revolutionaries, and outlaws were creating havoc. The Indians called the Negro troops “Buffalo Soldiers” because their hair was similar to buffalo fur. This is the background for Willard’s novel. He creates a number of characters to inhabit the known military history of the forts, battles, and cultural groups of the western frontier from 1866 to 1885. Some historical figures also are portrayed, including Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson (of Vicksburg fame), who led the 10th Cavalry Regiment (Colored). The primary fictional character is Augustus Sharps, a former slave and champion marksman who took his last name from his rifle. He is unusually literate for a former slave and these skills bring him acknowledgement, in addition to his military skills. Still, he encounters a great deal of racial prejudice, despite some supportive while officers. The major female characters are the women of Laundry Row, who live in or near the quarters of the colored soldiers and do laundry for the troop. Several romances develop and figure prominently in the lot, along with campaigns and battles. An appendix lists the names of some of the Buffalo Soldiers who won Medals of Honor for their service in the 9th Cavalry (Colored) and the 10th Cavalry (Colored).
Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News? (2008). I think this is the best Jackson Brodie novel so far. Police detective Louise Monroe is still a major character in the plot, but the most fascinating character is the resourceful 16-year-old orphan Reggie Chase, the only one besides the reader who believes something criminally terrible is going on. Like Atkinson’s earlier novels, this one begins with a horrific crime in a chapter entitled “In the Past.” Then it shifts to the present, with Jackson in Yorkshire, conducting surveillance at a playground. Jackson is always making mistakes and this time he boards the wrong train and is almost killed as a result. The plot unfolds thereafter with scant participation from him. Reggie is the link between the varied characters whose lives are somehow involved in the unfolding crimes. Jackson and Louise never would have solved the mysteries without her. Once again, Atkinson skillfully brings the many apparently unrelated characters and plot lines to a surprising and unconventional resolution. Through no skill of his own, hapless Jackson Brodie once again lands on his feet.
Connie Schultz, The Daughters of Erietown (2020). While this book is an interesting enough journalistic portrayal of small-town culture in the 1950s and 1960s, I found it lacking as a novel. This may be in part because I had more than enough of the racism, sexism, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness of those decades while I was living through them. The major cultural and political events of the times are a backdrop to the lives of the characters, but they seem to exert little influence. It is near the end of the book, in the late 1970s, before the characters exhibit any meaningful (and not always convincing) development. The central character, Ellie, is the only one who manages to surprise us. There are lots of secrets and some suspense, but no intricacy of plot. Despite what appears to have been intended as a positive ending, the novel is basically a sad story. Schultz is probably a better journalist than she is a novelist.
No comments:
Post a Comment