Ah, those feminine wiles that men cannot resist–like being completely ignored. I spent a lot of this book chuckling and I think it was meant by AlcottAh, those feminine wiles that men cannot resist–like being completely ignored. I spent a lot of this book chuckling and I think it was meant by Alcott to be a bit of fun and not to be taken too seriously. There are scenes early in Little Women when Jo is writing plays for the girls to perform or trying to hawk one of her stories to a magazine, and this story seems as if it might be one of those.
I found it interesting that all the male characters are duped by Jean Muir, while only the very young and very old women are. Alcott might be telling us that women are more perceptive, or maybe it is just the jealousy of the women of similar age that keep them aloof and suspicious. Secretly, all us women must wish we could have the power over men Jean exhibits–few ever melted for me, and absolutely none of them just because I batted my eyes correctly.
I love Alcott’s easy style and simple prose, and I find her portrayals witty and enjoyable, even when slightly ludicrous. Anything that elicits a smile is worth a read, so I am satisfied in having read this one. ...more
I willingly admit that I did not expect a book about training and rowing at the 1936 Olympics to make me cry. I am not particularly a sports fan and aI willingly admit that I did not expect a book about training and rowing at the 1936 Olympics to make me cry. I am not particularly a sports fan and all I have ever thought about rowing crew is that it is, like polo, a sport for the wealthy. But these boys were not wealthy; they were farmers, lumberjacks, and working stiffs. They struggled to make enough money to stay in the university, and they rowed with the same kind of heart with which they lived.
Of course, one of the things that made their story so dramatic was the time and place in which it occurred. The 1936 Olympics were Hitler’s showcase, his propaganda extravaganza to hide his sinister reality from the world. These boys were a tiny thorn in his thumb, but they symbolized everything America would then come to be in the war that followed–tenacious, determined, capable and faithful.
This was my father’s generation; that unbelievable era of good men, who stood, without hubris, and challenged the world of the Great Depression and the inhumanity of World War II. We have lost almost all of them now. My father is gone, his friends are all gone, and these boys–the men that they became–gone as well. They are gone, but the idea of them, the truth of them, lives on for some of us. I hope it will live on for most of us.
In speaking of this generation, Daniel James Brown, says:
...I was swept with gratitude for their goodness and their grace, their humility and their honor, their simple civility and all the things they taught us before they flitted across the evening water and finally vanished into the night.
I’m sure no one could ever had said it better.
The book is marvelously written. It centers on Joe Rantz, telling his story in detail, but not failing to bring to life each and every one of the men involved in this enterprise, including the coaches and the amazing Englishman, George Pocock, who handmade the boats the boys used.
The rowing events are painted in descriptive terms that bring the action to life. I could feel the burn in the muscles, the exhaustion after the long races, the cold of winter practices. That these young men were both willing and able to do this is incredible in itself. What they learned from doing it was something they could carry with them all of their lives, and something that enriched them beyond measure.
Like so much in life, crew was partly about confidence, partly about knowing your own heart.
If this story proves anything, it proves that these were men who knew their own hearts....more
The cover of the book, Chenneville, reads “a novel of murder, loss and vengeance.” That is a good summary of the plot of this story of a Union soldierThe cover of the book, Chenneville, reads “a novel of murder, loss and vengeance.” That is a good summary of the plot of this story of a Union soldier who comes home to the news that his younger sister and her family have been murdered by as evil a character as you could imagine. Recovering from serious war injuries, John Chenneville is not able to set out to seek justice immediately, but when he does, he becomes obsessed with finding and punishing Albert Dodd, the monster he follows.
The story then becomes one of the journey and the heart of the man–his need for justice, his desire for peace and to find whatever life might be left to him. The novel it most reminded me of was Cold Mountain, not that the plot has any similarity beyond the journey itself, but that the crux of the story is in the searching both characters must do of their souls and the people and incidents they encounter along the way.
This is Paulette Jiles at her best. It rivals News of the World for being enthralling and when I had reached the last page, I wanted the story to go on and on. I hated leaving John Chenneville. I felt I had walked across Texas with him.
There is, of course, Paulette Jiles amazing descriptive powers; the way she draws you into her settings and her people and makes you one with the everyday details of their lives. I picked a passage at random:
The next day he dressed and drank hot water from his mess kit pan. He was short on coffee. He had to get more water to the horses, and so he went out and went to work on the well windlass. The boxed-in opening of the well had a roof over it about eight by eight. He found a good set of tools in the barn; hammer, various sizes of nails, a handsaw, and a crowbar. They were lined up on the wall on pegs just as Mr. Parker had left them in his journey out of this world and into the next. The feel of his hand was still on them. A shaft of gray rainy light poured into the entrance, dim watery daylight on steel and cast iron. Another front had closed in.
Perhaps it will not affect others as it does me, but I feel every sense engaged in this writing. I taste the blandness of the hot water, I smell the leathery sweat of the horses and hear them shuffling as they wait for the water they need, I feel the heft of the hammer with the echo of the last hand that held it, and I smell the coming rains.
So, if you are in the mood for a long journey, you could do worse than traveling with John Chenneville. He learns some things along the way, perhaps you will as well. ...more
Another Henry James novel scratched off my list, and perhaps the last. I might like to re-read The Turn of the Screw at som3.5-stars, rounded down up.
Another Henry James novel scratched off my list, and perhaps the last. I might like to re-read The Turn of the Screw at some point, but I don’t think I will tackle another. This one is quite adequate in both the story and the characterization, but I suspect I read him more because he was admired by Edith Wharton (I keep trying to discover what she found), than that I fully appreciate him myself.
This is a shorter novel, which I think contributes to its being one of his better works. When he writes shorter pieces, he maintains a kind of discipline and focus that he seems to lose in his longer ones. Catherine, our heroine, is an interesting female character. She is a bit naive when the story begins and remarkably stubborn in the face of her father’s strong dislike of her choice of beaus. As it would happen, we know almost immediately that her father is right, but that does not make his treatment of her palatable in the least.
Her second family member, Aunt Lavinia Penniman, is even worse, in my estimation. I cannot remember when I have disliked a character more. She is thoughtless, self-centered and manipulative; and it delights me that Catherine does not make a model of her behavior.
James is adept at character studies, and Catherine is both interesting and unusual. Like Wharton, he knows the New York upper-crust and I suspect does not like them very much. At least he fails to think their money is their salvation and he knows the dangers that threaten the heart when money becomes the motivation....more
The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.
Virgil Wander is not an easy man toThe surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.
Virgil Wander is not an easy man to describe and this is not an easy book to review. It has a quirky, almost outlandish, element, but each of the oddball characters seem alive and real, so I was able to go with it and find the joy in the reading.
When we meet Virgil, he has just been fished from the water after taking a dive from a cliff in his Pontiac. It is uncanny that he has survived, but he has, with only a bit of brain fog to show for the experience. The brain fog doesn’t keep him from functioning, although it does rob him of adjectives, but he feels, instinctively, that he has become a different person than the one who went into the brink.
Imagine my relief when Dr. Koskinen, wheezing lightly, face patchy with rosacea, said, “For now I think you shouldn’t worry. You are less dizzy, your words are coming back. Don’t fear occasional ghosts. Every day my mind suggests two or three impossible things.”
Virgil lives in a town called Greenstone in Minnesota, a mining town that has gone bust, and one that is small enough that almost all the inhabitants know one another. Virgil is the owner of the Empress theater, a very low-profit venture, and also the town clerk. The town had at least one semi-famous citizen, Alec Sandstrom, a one time ball player who climbed into a plane and disappeared some years earlier.
Immediately following his discharge from the hospital, Virgil meets a man flying a kite by the water, and the man is inquiring about Alec, because he has just discovered that Alec was his son. This man, Rune, along with Virgil, comprises the hub around which the story orbits. The two of them have lives to rebuild and questions to answer and they need one another in order to find the solutions they seek.
I’m still contemplating how well I liked the surprising ending of this one, but I must confess it fits rather well with the overall unorthodox story line. I rooted for both Virgil and Rune, beginning to end, and I laughed more than once trying to imagine this town and these people. I thought of other slightly odd but lovable characters I have encountered, and I think Virgil ranks near the top. He has such a good and open heart, and he surprises himself more than once with his impulses to take care of others.
This is the second book I have rescued from my “short-list” and I am happy to have it solidly ensconced among the “read”. A bit of fun in a spat of rather darker stories, this one was good timing. I believe it landed on the list because I had loved Leif Enger’s novel, Peace Like a River. That one is superior to this one, but they are so different from one another as to lack kinship and defy comparison. I am in awe of Enger’s ability to take his imagination into such diverse places and leave us with characters we feel we truly know.
One other small observation from Virgil: Your tribe is always bigger than you think....more
Finally my IRL book group has picked a book I thoroughly enjoyed. I doubt I would ever have picked this one up otherwise, so I am feeling a little graFinally my IRL book group has picked a book I thoroughly enjoyed. I doubt I would ever have picked this one up otherwise, so I am feeling a little grateful to the member who chose it.
Based on a real event, this is the story of the transporting of two giraffes from New York, after arriving in a ship that had just survived a hurricane, across the country to the San Diego zoo. The events are related in retrospect by the boy who drove the truck that transported them, now an old man in a Veterans home.
The boy, Woody Nickel, is an orphan who has clawed his way from the Texas panhandle dust bowl, where he has buried his entire family. He has made his way to New York and a cousin, but the hurricane leaves his cousin dead and him alone again, which is why he gets the bright idea of following the giraffes to California. How he comes to have the job of driving, the adventures and problems encountered on the trip, and the others involved, including a girl named Augusta who wants to be a reporter for Life Magazine and the zoo representative, Mr. Jones, forge a story that is exciting and very real.
The giraffes themselves, who are simply called Girl and Boy by Woody, are marvelous characters. While reading, you develop a genuine sense of who they are, their personalities, and the attachments our three main characters feel for the animals. This is a coming-of-age story, and the giraffes play a huge part in shaping the people, particularly Woody.
I’m always surprised when a book like this one leaves me in tears, but there were some flowing as I reached the end of the trip and the end of the story with Woody. They were tears of emotion more than of sadness, and I wished with all my heart that I might nuzzle the gentle creatures who were able to transform a lonely and lost boy into a better man. ...more
This is the story of a town, a Western town trying to grow up in the Dakota flats and prairies; and it is the story of a man, Blue, mayor in name alonThis is the story of a town, a Western town trying to grow up in the Dakota flats and prairies; and it is the story of a man, Blue, mayor in name alone, who wanted to save it, populate it, and make it grow into something good and viable. But, the town is named “Hard Times”, and it lives up to its name in every possible way.
The story opens with a visit from the worst kind of evil bad man, The Man From Brodie. He murders indiscriminately and then he burns the town to the ground, leaving only a handful of survivors. When the burying is done, most leave, but Blue stays, with a badly burned prostitute and an orphaned boy to take care of. The struggle to survive is visceral and punishing, and through Blue’s narrative we come to know what the cost of surviving is both mentally and physically.
This might be a study in what happens when good men do nothing, but I kept asking myself what exactly the good men could have done other than die with their fellows. Perhaps it is more about the way life tricks you into thinking that survival is winning, or how easily opportunities are missed that might alter the trajectory of your life completely
What is sure, is that there are moments of decision, turning points, when we lose the life we know and step into the future that we can only hope to shape into something better.
When was the moment, I don’t know when, with all my remembrances I can’t find it; maybe it was during our dance, or maybe it was some morning as a breeze of air shook the sun’s light; maybe it was one of those nights of hugging when we reached our ripeness and the earth turned past it; maybe we were asleep. Really how life gets on is a secret, you only know your memory, and it makes its own time. The real time leads you along and you never know when it happens, the best that can be is come and gone.
Whatever you decide the theme of this novel might be, there is no denying that E.L. Doctorow tells a story that you will never forget. The writing is powerful and dynamic; graphic and moving. If you are thinking you do not like Westerns, fear not–this is not typical of that genre at all. Rather, you will find here the soul of a man, laid bare with all its regrets; a glimpse at pure evil, free of any trace of remorse or humanity; and a revelation of how the aftermath of such evil can make the ordinary heart harden into stone.
Doctorow was a city boy from the East who must have given a lot of thought to how people survived the travails of the westward expansion. He must have searched for the element in a human being that makes him go on in the face of total failure and destruction. I think he believed that element to be hope.
A person cannot live without looking for good signs, you just cannot do it, and I thought these signs were good.
A huge thank you to my friend, Howard, who ferrets out the books that no one seems to read anymore and gives them to me like gifts. ...more
A wonderfully powerful play about the importance of the individual in a democratic society. We are taken into the jury room, where eleven men have alrA wonderfully powerful play about the importance of the individual in a democratic society. We are taken into the jury room, where eleven men have already made up their minds to convict a sixteen year old boy of murdering his father and sentence him to the electric chair. But one man, Juror #8, wants to be sure. He wants to weigh the facts and examine the evidence and remove all doubt from his own mind as to the guilt of this boy, and in doing so, he changes the course of the case and reveals a great deal about the members of this panel.
It’s very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.
All of us wants Juror #8 to be sitting on our jury if we are accused of a crime, so each of us should try to be Juror #8 if we are ever in a position of such authority over another person. The good old golden rule.
BTW, the movie with Henry Fonda and a cast of other well-known actors is excellent and follows the play almost word-for-word. ...more
“Hewey Calloway tries to live a life that is already out of its time. He attempts to remain a horseback man while the world relentlessly moves into a “Hewey Calloway tries to live a life that is already out of its time. He attempts to remain a horseback man while the world relentlessly moves into a machine age. He tries to hold to the open range of recent memory even after that range has been cubed and diced and parceled by barbed wire. He lives in an impossible dream, trying to remain changeless in a world where the only constant is change.” - Elmer Kelton, Introduction
The way Hewey saw it, the Lord had purposely made every person different. He could not understand why so many people were determined to thwart the Lord’s work by making everyone the same.
Hewey Calloway is a man out of time. He is a cowboy in a world that is rapidly becoming infested with automobiles. He likes to believe his way of life is indestructible, but he looks around him and sees fewer men like himself and more like his brother, Walter, who has succumbed to the lure of a farm and responsibilities of a family.
This novel is written in a light and humorous tone, and there is much to laugh at in Hewey. He is marvelously candid and logical, and I found myself rooting for his survival.
He had never seen any harm in an occasional small liberty with the facts, provided the motive was honorable.
I always liked God better when I found Him outdoors. He always seemed too big to fit into a little-bitty cramped-up church house.
Lots of people talk about what the Lord wants. Wonder how many has ever asked Him.
Looks to me like if they want people to pay attention to the rules, the rules ought to make sense.
Therein lies the problem, because the only life that makes sense for Hewey is a free one, and all he sees around him are ways in which men’s freedoms are curtailed. None of the joys of the town can usurp the pleasures of the range for Hewey. He still breaks mustangs, and in many ways he is one.
Despite the humor, there is a current of sadness that runs through this novel for me. It is the sadness of loss. If we are honest, each of us who lives a long life will see our way disappear to make room for whatever changes the future brings. I have felt it myself with the advent of technology. I live with it, even relish parts of it, but I know in my heart that I would trade it in a heartbeat to go back to that world in which a book could only be found at a library, a bookstore, or a drugstore paperback rack; when summer meant pedaling all over town on bicycles with your friends and an occasional milkshake at the pharmacy lunch counter; when Sundays were for church and dinner at Grandma’s and excitement was bag lunch day at school.
The world moves on, and if you do not move with it, it will leave you behind. But, there are worse things than being a “good old boy”, worse things than being an anachronism, provided you can manage to keep the part of you that makes you who you are....more
I waited a long time to get my turn for this book from the library. I was anticipating it with relish, because several of my trusted friends had lovedI waited a long time to get my turn for this book from the library. I was anticipating it with relish, because several of my trusted friends had loved it and said they, like me, had not enjoyed Kingsolver’s last few books. I was all prepared to be swept away, and I was in the beginning, but Demon has a voice that captivates you and then wears on you and then wears you out.
At least Kingsolver wasn’t preaching to me in this book, but she did seem to be in love with the sound of her own voice, because she wrote pages and pages on subjects that could have sufficed with much less, and she repeated herself endlessly regarding both the lousy DSS system, the details of drug addiction, and the hopelessness of anyone who is born in the hills of Appalachia. At some point, for me, that hopelessness became a bit like the prejudice she seemed to be railing against.
The first 200 pages of this book were somewhat enchanting, the middle was a slog, and the ending was not enough to make up for that. It was not a bad read, but not the 5-star read I had hoped for. Perhaps in the end, you cannot tell someone else’s story as well as they do. David Copperfield is 10-star material, Kingsolver transformed it into something just a tad over okay.
I had said to myself once before that Kingsolver and I were done with one another, but this book tempted me back for another try. This time, I think, the breakup is permanent. So many other authors I want to give a fair chance.
If you have the stomach for the endless beating of the opioid drum, this book will be for you. There are meant to be redeeming moments at the end, promises of better lives for a few, but those seem more like dreams, while the sinking and despair that consumed ninety percent of this book seemed all too real....more
It is 1969 and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is now a sadly ordinary print linotype worker, earning enough money to keep his family under a roof and to sharIt is 1969 and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is now a sadly ordinary print linotype worker, earning enough money to keep his family under a roof and to share an occasional drink at the local pub with his Dad, and not much more. The times are a turmoil, both personally and politically. There are black men working in the plant with him and riding on the buses, the TV airs skits that seem to ridicule his wholesome view of his childhood, Nelson wants the material things his friend has and that Harry cannot afford, and Janice is screwing her co-worker, information which is supplied to him from his mother via his dad.
He doesn’t really know what to do with any of this upheaval, but he does know his world is neither fulfilling nor peaceful. Being Harry, he goes about living his strange life in some almost incomprehensible and destructive ways.
I had to keep reminding myself that this book is a reflection of the time in which it was written and at times is almost a parody. Updike is hitting his reader in the face with all the prejudices, untruths, dirty truths, propaganda and confusion that real people were dealing with. I was there in 1969 when the book is set and 1971 when it was written, and I can attest that there were literally two worlds operating one on top of the other and some of us only got glimpses of the one we did not live in. This book is raw because life was raw in 1971 and, while we are viewing Vietnam and LBJ and Civil Rights from a safe remove, Updike is staring it smack in the face while he is writing. Even the hippie movement gets an unvarnished look, with Jill being almost a perfect encapsulation of all that was wrong and right with it.
There are moments in this book when I just want to close the covers and walk away. I truly hate the over-emphasis on sex as both a driver and a definition of people. I truly hate the way these characters reach for the slimiest and least fulfilling side of life. I truly hate the lack of concern Rabbit and Janice have for their son, Nelson. And yet, there is something beneath the surface that draws me in, that reminds me of how often we struggle to be better than our circumstances or ourselves will allow us to be. I cannot, somehow, truly hate Harry and I cannot stop myself from feeling sorry for Janice.
I am going to take a whole heap of showers and wash some of this grime off of me, and I am going to read some really wholesome novel that is sweet and hopeful. I am probably going to take a long, long break and then inevitably come back to Rabbit Angstrom again for more of Updike’s riveting prose, because there are two more of these books and I need to see what tree the wreck that is Harry’s life ends up wrapped around. ...more
Rabbit is poor. You could give Rabbit ten million dollars in 1970s money and he would still be poor. This guy has no idea what the important or good tRabbit is poor. You could give Rabbit ten million dollars in 1970s money and he would still be poor. This guy has no idea what the important or good things in life are. His mind stays in the gutter, he has no respect for other people, he has raised a son which is even worse than he is, and he is married to a harpy. I muster some sympathy for him now and again, (who wouldn’t feel sorry for this: there isn’t a corner of the Springer house where Harry feels able to breathe absolutely his own air., but mostly I think at this point in his life he is unredeemable.
In the hands of a lesser writer, Rabbit Angstrom would bring nothing worthwhile to the literary world, but John Updike somehow manages to make me see him as a reflection of his society, his age, his world. He is obsessed with women: his wife, a girl he hopes is his daughter from his affair in book one, his friends’ wives (all of them). He never looks at any woman, with the possible exception of Janice’s mother, without speculating about her sexually, even those he professes to find unattractive. He obsesses over women, but he does not like them and he surely does not understand them.
He senses intelligence in her but intelligence in women has never much interested him.
Just as Rabbit does not like women, I do not like Rabbit, but I cannot seem to look away from the wreck his life has become. If he died tomorrow, what would he leave? Who would remember him? Why has he lived? He hasn’t even gotten that much out of life for himself. And, by the way, Rabbit’s tangible riches are simply middle-class money and a position of some authority at the car dealership–and even that is an illusion.
Rabbit’s son, Nelson, is a spoiled, misguided, self-centered piece of work. Oh yes, you could feel sorry for his floundering, but I find I don’t. He might not approved of Rabbit, but he is his father and he has provided for him well, so he doesn’t deserve this:
Mom-mom can’t last forever and when she kicks the bucket that leaves him and Mom in charge of the lot, with Dad up front like one of those life-size cardboard cutouts you used to see in car showrooms before cardboard became too expensive.
There is nothing to admire and little to redeem these characters, but then, John Updike knows how to turn the tables at the last moment and have the title make sense. Damn, Rabbit is rich....more
John Ehle is quite the master of both the Southern mind and the complicated relationships people have with one another. WinneAug 5, 2022 - Aug 6, 2022
John Ehle is quite the master of both the Southern mind and the complicated relationships people have with one another. Winnette Plover is on trial for her life. She has killed her husband, Lloyd Earnest Plover, but of course, there is more to the story than that. Ehle tells us Winnette’s story through changing points of view, including Plover’s best friend, Blue; Blue’s girlfriend, Anne; his ex-wife, Mavis; Mr. MacMillan, Winnette’s attorney, and Winnette herself. The only key character we do not hear from is Plover, but believe me when I say we get a very clear picture of exactly who he was.
As the story develops, Winnette’s life begins to fit into place and we absolutely know, early on, that this could never have had anything but the disastrous ending it has come to. But even knowing that, Ehle has some surprises for us. He also manages to keep the outcome of the trial a mystery until the verdict is delivered, which I think proves his ability to design a plotline that holds through to the end. Finally, he also manages to incorporate enough humor into this story to keep it from becoming morose.
To anyone who has read The Land Breakers, this is a complete departure from that novel. It is not historical in content or setting, and it tells a very intimate tale, while The Land Breakers was more the story of a group of people. However, this book accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish with the same kind of deft control and clearsightedness. I enjoyed it, in its difference, in much the same way. This is my third Ehle, and I hope to read them all before I am done. How do we lose these magnificent writers? Why on earth does this book have only 3 reviews and 50 ratings? I’m thinking we need a revival! ...more
What a delightful book and marvelous debut. I closed the book hoping this author will continue to write with this kind of quality for a long, long timWhat a delightful book and marvelous debut. I closed the book hoping this author will continue to write with this kind of quality for a long, long time.
Nobody could not love Marcellus, the octopus, and truly also Tova, the industrious cleaning lady, who is so much more. In fact, both of them are so much more than they initially seem to be!
It is a feel-good story that will still leave you in tears. What more can you ask for?...more
A year like this one anything you do is a mistake. Just being a rancher is a mistake. Only real difference I see between ranching and poker is, witA year like this one anything you do is a mistake. Just being a rancher is a mistake. Only real difference I see between ranching and poker is, with poker you got some chance.
This is an age-old story of man against nature, man against man, and man against government; and Elmer Kelton tells it so well that you can feel that he has lived much of it in his own lifetime. There is a drought in West Texas, where Charlie Flagg owns a ranch and leases another large section of land to run cattle and sheep. Drought is not a new experience for Charlie, he has lived through the big drought of 1933, but this drought is to prove different, this one continues beyond the limits of memory and leaves few men standing in its wake.
It was a comforting sight, this country. It was an ageless land where the past was still a living thing and old voices still whispered, where the freshness of the pioneer time had not yet all faded, where a few of the old dreams were not yet dark and tarnish.
Charlie loves this land and he lives in the memories of the old days, when the line between right and wrong was less gray and more black and white. He is a bit of an anachronism, but that is because he still has the honor and dignity of the best of his generation. He pulls his own weight, and he doesn’t want a handout.
His son, Tom, has a young man’s view of life. He wants to make the rodeo circuit. He doesn’t understand his father’s brand of pride and principle, and he certainly fails to have his wisdom.
Tom Flagg said behind him, “I’d testify to anything for a free trip to Washington.” Charlie grumbled, “There’s damn little in this life that ever comes free. One way or another, you pay for what you get.”
Charlie’s hired man is Lupe Flores, who has lived in the house next door to Charlie’s, raised his large family, and managed the ranch, working alongside Charlie for years. Through Lupe, and his son, Manuel, we get a chance to look at Mexican-Anglo relationships and the fight a man like Charlie has between what is expected, which is to look down at the Mexican population, and what he truly feels, which is respect and a knowledge of how much he depends on this good man who works beside him.
To make things worse, the government programs that were promised as help for the farmers and ranchers in the region are proving to be a sand trap in themselves, and those who might have survived otherwise are being pulled down by them.
There was a time when we looked up to Uncle Sam; he was something to be proud of and respect. Now he’s turned into some kind of muddle-brained sugar daddy givin’ out goodies right and left in the hopes everybody is going to love him…It’s divided us into little selfish groups, snarlin’ and snappin’ at each other like hungry dogs, grabbin’ for what we can get and to hell with everybody else.
This book might be labeled as a “western”, but like so many great books, it is more than the label it is slapped with…it is a book about humanity, about struggle and about perseverance; it is a book about survival–it just happens to be set in the West.
My thanks to the Southern Literary Trail for making this our August selection and to Howard, whose remarkable review let me know that regardless of what I had planned, this book was not one I wanted to miss reading.
It’s funny how easy it is to make people believe what they want to believe or what they are most afraid of.
The Ballad of Tom Dooley is a song by the KIt’s funny how easy it is to make people believe what they want to believe or what they are most afraid of.
The Ballad of Tom Dooley is a song by the Kingston Trio which probably caught the imagination of everyone who heard it in the late 1950s. It is based, very loosely, on a true story, but if you try to make sense of it from just the lyrics of the song, you will be destined to failure.
What Sharyn McCrumb has done is research the events and subsequent trial of Tom Dula, the actual man hanged in North Carolina for the senseless murder of Laura Foster, and reconstructed a version of the story that makes sense from the known facts. She is convinced that she got it right, and she well may have.
The story is character driven, and McCrumb, herself, compares it to Wuthering Heights, with Ann Melton and Tom Dula easily seen as Kathy and Heathcliff-like lovers. I have heard it said that one person always loves a little more, and perhaps that is true. In this case, maybe sadly so. This novel explores what can happen when a psychopath, a narcissist, a handsome layabout and a promiscuous girl become entangled in too close quarters and the results are manipulation and tragedy.
For the last few days, I needed a break from any reading that required close concentration or careful thought, and this book filled the bill. It was very enjoyable, like reading a murder mystery, but much more centered upon the psychological aspects of the characters themselves. We knew Tom Dula would be hanged at the outset, so this book was much more about the journey than the destination. I will not hesitate to read McCrumb again, right now I have got to try to stop singing.
“Hang down your head, Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry. Hang down your head, Tom Dooley. Poor boy, you’re bound to die.”...more
I wasn’t sure I wanted to, or maybe not sure that I could, relive the days of the Pandemic lockdown again, even if I could live them with Lucy. There I wasn’t sure I wanted to, or maybe not sure that I could, relive the days of the Pandemic lockdown again, even if I could live them with Lucy. There are parts of this novel that I did not enjoy, which I often find is so for topics that are just too close and current. What I did enjoy, immensely, were the things I always love in Strout’s Lucy Barton novels–the characters and their relationships and interactions with one another.
I love bumping into characters from her other novels; I love how human and flawed her people all are and how they inspire us to root for them; and I especially love how Lucy tries so hard to see the other side of every coin. Because, like it or not, there is another side to every coin, and we human beings bring a lot of baggage with us on the trip and sometimes it crowds our fellow passengers.
Lucy makes some big decisions in this novel, which a lot of us were forced to do when the pandemic took over our lives. She also comes to some unavoidable realizations:
When I thought of the New York apartment, I thought: It is gone, as all things will be gone someday.
They will indeed, and what is left when we are gone is whatever impact we left in the lives of others who remain behind. Smart lady, Lucy Barton. ...more
I see that we are passing through this world like a river of water flowing through a river of earth.
This book feels like a goodbye. As Andy CatletI see that we are passing through this world like a river of water flowing through a river of earth.
This book feels like a goodbye. As Andy Catlett looks back over his life, his accomplishments, his joys and trials, and his memories, it feels as if his counterpart, Wendell Berry is doing the same. It is easy to read this into the stories, as Wendell Berry is the elder statesman now. He is eighty-eight, and the production of this book seems a kind of miracle that even he must wonder if he will have the opportunity to ever repeat. In that sense, it is a sad book, but in another, it is a delight, for it is a memory of a job well-done, and what more would a man such as Berry want?
I, like Berry, am on the downside of life. Hopefully a while to go, but knowing I will never hike across a field and leap a fence again. Nope, if I make across the field, I will have to open the gate. Like Berry, I also have more associates of life behind me than with me. I spend too much time, sometimes, thinking of the losses, the absences, the empty spaces. I can walk, mentally, through the house my father built now and see all its flaws, the ones I never saw when I was a child living there. Someone else walks through it now, and I wonder if they love the woods and creek as I did; do they know the best spots to hide with a book and avoid chores–in fact, does anyone have chores anymore?
I think one of the things I love so much about Berry is that he stirs in me memories of my own self, my own raising, and the good people who filled up my world, my mind and my soul. Andy Catlet describes a memory, that isn’t even his own, but has been passed down to him from his grandmother
He sees Grandmother sitting on the step to the back porch of the house as he knew it. She is hulling peas.
What I saw in my mind’s eye was the thin, gaunt face of my own Grandma, who always took the snaps out onto the porch, pinching and snapping them for our dinner. It was one of the rare times during the day you might catch her sitting. There was always so much to be done.
I have walked the woods with Burley Coulter, reclaimed the land with Elton Penn, felt the loneliness of Old Jack and listened to the stories shared in Jayber’s barbershop. While doing so, I have walked the woods with my uncles, Dorsey and Bud; reclaimed the land with my Great-Uncle Naman; felt the loneliness of my Uncle Shem, who married so late in life but is remembered mostly as the perpetual bachelor at my Granny’s house; and listened quietly in a corner to the laughter of my Daddy and his brother, W.L., who ran, of all things, the community barbershop, and traded stories galore.
Lest I make it sound like there are only men of strong character to be found within these pages, let me tip my hat to all the women who stand behind them and make them strong. To Grandma Lizzie, who dares to mount up, still dressed in her nightgown, and reclaim her man from a kidnapping by soldiers of either the Confederacy or the Union (that detail having been forgotten); to Mary Penn, who states bravely, when asked how Elton weathered the storms of life, “he had me”; and to Lyda Branch, who links her arm in Danny’s and forms a couple that thinks and acts as one person.
Thank you, Mr. Berry, for all your stories, for sharing the membership, for transporting me home. It has been a very personal journey for me.
If you have not read any of Mr. Berry’s works, don’t start with this one. This is a swan song. Get to know these wonderful people first. I suggest a lovely place to start is Jayber Crow. I first entered Port William in his company, and I have never wanted to leave it for very long....more
When Emmett Watson is given an early release from Salina, a juvenile prison, due to the death of his father, he has a plan. He will take his younger bWhen Emmett Watson is given an early release from Salina, a juvenile prison, due to the death of his father, he has a plan. He will take his younger brother, Billy, and they will head for Texas and a new life. But, he hasn’t figured on Billy, who has a plan of his own to find their long lost mother, whom he believes is in California. His plan involves following The Lincoln Highway from their home in Nebraska to San Francisco, but there is almost an immediate wrench in the works with the arrival of two of Emmett’s fellow inmates who have escaped Salina. What ensues is a mad road trip and a lot of character revelation.
This book is a metaphor for life. Like life, you may plan the trip, think you know exactly where you are going and how to get there, in fact, plot it out neatly on a map, but it is not only unlikely, but impossible, that your plans will be followed, for life has a mind of its own. Just when you seem to be on track, life will throw you a detour, a roadblock, a missed turn or a side trip. What you will find, if you are perceptive, is that the journey is far more important than the destination, that what makes it worthwhile, or not, is usually the company you keep along the way, and one true friend to share your room in the Howard Johnsons is worth a suite of rooms in the Hilton alone. What you will also find is that you have your own destiny, with disappointment and heartache, and while you share the road with others, the choice for your future is yours alone.
Towles has created a cast of characters that are distinctive, believable, lovable and pitiable, but never dull. I find him to be the best of the modern writers, proving time and again that he can write about completely different subjects in equally enthralling ways. I count A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility among my favorite books. I wondered if he could do it again. I am not on the fence; I loved this book. ...more
I never thought to read this novel because I know the story too well from watching the movie countless times. It is one of my favorites…that Luke smilI never thought to read this novel because I know the story too well from watching the movie countless times. It is one of my favorites…that Luke smile that Paul Newman perfected, that vivid depiction of the cruelties of the chain gang, the proof that unmitigated power, even over criminals, is a bad thing. In fact, there is very little to separate the criminals from the guards in this book, which put me in mind of The Shawshank Redemption (another movie I have watched too, too many times.
Ah, but this is not a movie review, it is a book review, and this book is stupendous. The descriptions are riveting, you can hear those chains rattling, you can feel the sweat trickling off the brows of these men, and you can feel the stifling air in the box. I think the reason there is a great movie adaptation of this book is that Donn Pearce wrote a great book in the first place.
Luke is a petty criminal, sentenced to two years for decapitating a street full of parking meters while intoxicated. He is also a war hero. But the line between hero and criminal is very thin, and it may be that Luke deserves punishment for crimes other than those he is charged with. The crime he is not guilty of is thinking of himself as a hero. He knows he is flawed, but he also knows no one can take who he is away from him unless he lets them, and that sense of individuality is the source of all his troubles. You just know from the beginning that he is not going to do an easy two years and wave goodbye.
The characters here are strongly delineated and the plot line is tight and perfect. The descriptions of the environment are completely realistic, and you know Donn Pearce did not come to his understanding of this world through library research. He’s got some experience with incarceration, the nature of prison life, and the conventions that helped the men make it through days that must have seemed both endless and repetitive.
If you are one of the few people on this planet who has never seen the movie, I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you want a glimpse inside a 1950s power trip, read this book. If you don’t mind gritty and realistic looks at the underbelly of society, and how it beats down the human spirit, you couldn’t do better than this.
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