Category Archives: Adult Fiction

So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger

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It comes as no surprise to me that I loved So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger.  Way back in 2008 when I read Enger’s  Peace Like a River, I picked it as one of my top books of the year.  What I didn’t expect is that I would love So Brave, Young, and Handsome as much as I did.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered reading a criticism of Enger’s second novel that said that it doesn’t quite come up to his first, and that colored my perception going into it.  I don’t know about that, especially since it has been a while since I read the first one.  I do know that I loved the second one as much as the first, and that So Brave, Young, and Handsome has the distinguished honor of making me laugh out loud (almost!) on several different occasions.  What more could I ask for in a book?

I think I’ve found my second favorite book of the year!  It would be in first place if I hadn’t already awarded that position, but I’m really somewhat comparing apples and oranges here since So Brave, Young, and Handsome is fiction.  Rather than summarize it here, I’m borrowing this summary from Leif Enger’s website:

In 1915 Minnesota, Monte Becket—”a man fading, a disappointer of persons”—has lost his sense of purpose. His only success long behind him, Monte lives a simple life with his loving wife and whipsmart son. But when he befriends outlaw Glendon Hale, a new world of opportunity and experience presents itself.

Glendon has spent years in obscurity, but the guilt he harbors for abandoning his wife, Blue, over two decades ago, has finally lured him from hiding. As the modern age marches swiftly forward, Glendon aims to travel back into his past—heading to California to seek Blue’s forgiveness. Beguiled and inspired, Monte soon finds himself leaving behind his own family to embark for the unruly West with his fugitive guide—a journey that will test the depth of his loyalties, the inviolability of his morals, and the strength of his resolve. As they flee from the relentless Charles Siringo, an ex-Pinkerton who’s been hunting Glendon for years, Monte falls ever further from his family and the law, to be tempered by a fiery adventure from which he may never get home.

With its smooth mix of romanticism and gritty reality, So Brave, Young, and Handsome often recalls the Old West’s greatest cowboy stories. But it is also about an ordinary man’s determination as he risks everything in order to understand what it’s all worth, and follows an unlikely dream in the hope it will lead him back home.

After that brief-but-thorough introduction, I want to share a few of my favorite passages.  What more can I really do for this book to commend it to you, my dear readers, than to share a few of the bits that made me laugh or sigh?

First, a few one (or two)-liners, shared without context but lovely, just the same:

Why was I a slave to sentiment when it failed me so reliably? (34)

In times of dread it’s good to have an old man along.  An old man has seen worse.  (104)

At this Siringo woke coughing, coughed himself to an elbow and spat the wicked day to life. (192)

We rose and smacked and patted down our corrugated sleeves.  (35)

“Corrugated sleeves.”  I love that.

“Did you know he was a wanted man and a felon?”

“No,” I said, aware of my neck hairs.  (42)

How’s that for creating atmosphere?

“Well, it ain’t any good. You don’t ever wake up and say to yourself, what a pretty day, I feel good today.  No,” he reflected, “a jail ain’t nothing but a collection of corners.”  (63)

I am thankful to say I’ve never seen the inside of a jail, but I can see it just this way.

The turtle was there too, and together the three of us watched the rain turn into hail.  It began as fingertips but changes to knuckles and fists.  (65)

Fingertips, knuckles, and fists.  Of course.

What can be said for Kansas?   Plain describes it nicely, both as grassy tableland and unadorned prospect.  It’s wide and there you have it.  To one born amid forest and bluff on the upper Mississippi, Kansas is so wide and its sky so flat it’s disturbing.  “Aren’t there any hills at all?” I asked Hood Roberts as we built up the fire in the morning.  We were camped by the road and in that rosy sunrise could see miles of plain at every point of compass.  (87)

I remember feeling similarly the first time I visited Texas.  How amazed I was to see a train–from engine to caboose–in one glance, with no tree or bend to obscure the view.

A group of young women was also heading for California.  Zealous botanists, they left the train at every stop to hunt local wildflowers, which they suspended in bunches from the coach ceiling.  The drying blossoms swayed overhead, purple asters, orange skyrockets, white blooms plain as your chin but with the stunning names of heliotropes; most dangled low enough so passengers had to dodge them to walk, but it was also true we had the best-smelling coach on the train and no one minded except a soft banker in a homburg who sneezed hard under the waving fauna.  (227)

I absolutely love the sheer improbability of this scene.  It makes me smile.

“It’s peculiar, to reach your destination,” he told me.  “You think you’ll arrive and perform the thing you came for and depart in contentment.  Instead you get there and find distance still to go.”  (236)

We followed this old ruin into his house.  It was adobe and cool as a shovel of earth. (238)

“Cool as a shovel of earth.”  Yes.

“By the time the doctor could be convinced, it was too late for him to do much.  He did recommend a priest, although I was friends with one already.”  “That’s unforgivable,” I said.  “Nothing is unforgivable, although I admit I have yet to pardon this doctor.  I will have to do so before the end lest the Almighty rethink my standing.  There are certain unfairnesses I don’t much like, but then it is His story to tell.”  (245)

And one more, one I need to have inscribed on the wall across from our bed, so I can see it every morning before I face a new day:

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.

I hope this glut of shared passages hasn’t supersaturated you past the point of reading this wonderful story.  I share so many mainly for my own benefit, that I can read this post and remember what I love so much about Enger’s writing.

Really, if you haven’t read anything by Enger, he needs to move to the top of your TBR list.

Please, Mr. Enger, write another book.  Soon.

(Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008)

More reviews:

Pete Peterson at The Rabbit Room

Across the Page

As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves

Chamber Four (This review isn’t as complimentary as mine, but it’s an interesting look at Enger’s “narrative playfulness.”)

**Special thanks goes to Europeanne for loaning me this Kindle book.  If you’d told me even a year ago that I’d be borrowing a book from someone in Belgium, I would’ve laughed.  The kindnesses of the book blogging community continually brighten my world  :-)

 

 

 

 

Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

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Sometimes you just need a cozy, comfort read, you know?  That’s what The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books are for me.  Although there is an element of mystery involved in these books (and the ones at my library are actually shelved with the mysteries), you won’t find Precious Ramotswe brandishing a gun to protect herself against a violent criminal she has been trailing for weeks.  No, instead you’ll find her sipping bush tea and contemplating her upcoming marriage to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, owner and chief mechanic of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.  Mma Ramotswe does rely on her wit and her womanly intuition to solve a few mysteries, but there’s  more observation, characterization, and even philosophical pondering than whodunnit in these novels. 

In Tears of the Giraffe, Mma Ramotswe is hired to find out what happened  to a young American man who disappeared about ten years ago from a communal farm in Botswana where he worked.    There is also the case of the philandering wife of a mild-mannered butcher shop owner, and to top it all off, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s housekeeper is angry and vengeful over the fact that her nice little apple cart is about to be upset with his impending marriage.  Mma Ramotswe promotes her secretary, Mma Makutsi, to assistant private investigator, and together they grapple with some very large philosophical and moral issues.  The best part of the story, though, is when Mma Ramotswe and Rra Matekoni find themselves in the unexpected position of parenting a lovely pair of siblings that Rra Matekoni brings home with him one day from the orphanage where he often volunteers. 

Here are a few nice snippets from the book, to whet your appetite:

This one is from the perspective of the missing boy’s mother, a woman who came to Africa from the U.S. and found her true home:

I think I can say that I had never been happier in my life. We had found a country where the people treated one anther well, with respect, and where there were values other than the grab, grab, grab which prevails back home.  I felt humbled, in a way.  Everything about my own country seemed so shoddy and superficial when held up against what I saw in Africa.  People suffered here, and many of them had very little, but they had this wonderful feeling for others.  When I first heard African people calling others–complete strangers–their brother or their sister, it sounded odd to my ears.  But after a while I knew exactly what it meant and I started to think the same way.  (29-30)

I’ve always had a latent interest in Africa, and reading these books fulfills a certain desire I have to know more of that continent.  (I realize that Africa is made up of so many very disparate countries, but surely Botswana must be one of the most beautiful!)

I love this description:

By midday any vehicle left out in the sun would be almost impossible to touch, the seats too hot for exposed flesh, the steering wheel a rim of fire.  Shade would prevent this, and under every tree there were nests of cars, nosed up against the trunks, like piglets to a sow, in order to enjoy the maximum protection afforded by the incomplete panoply of grey-green foliage.  (55)

And another nice word picture:

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked down at his shoes, and remembered, for a moment, how it was to be a child, back in the village, all those years ago.  And remembered how he had experienced the kindness of the local mechanic, who had let him polish trucks and help with the mending of punctures, and who by this kindess had revealed and nurtured a vocation.  It was easy to make a difference to other people’s lives, so easy to change the little room in which people lived their life.  (83)

I could go on and on, really.  I’ve read several books by Alexander McCall Smith, but The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency remains my favorite series.  Steady Eddie and I have even watched a few episodes of the cancelled HBO series based on the books (we got them from Netflix and from the library) and enjoyed them.  The program has the same gentle, rhythmic feel that I’ve come to love about the books, and the actress who plays Mma Ramotswe plays her just like I’d imagine her to be.  Reading about Precious Ramotswe and her life in Botswana is soothing and enjoyable, the perfect bedtime read.  Highly Recommended!  (Anchor, 2000)

Other books by Alexander McCall Smith I’ve read and reviewed:

“Don’t Send a Boy to Do a Man’s Work” & “The Consent” by Wendell Berry

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It’s a slow go, since I’m reading stories from That Distant Land as I read other things, but I’m enjoying this collection of Wendell Berry’s short stories.  

I read “Don’t Send a Boy to Do a Man’s Work,” a story that I remember reading in one of his novels (?) that I’ve read.  It’s a largely humorous tale of twelve year old Athey Keith and a hog-killing at his home that he hosts/supervises alone since his father has to take a shipment of tobacco to Louisville.  A host of Port William farmers descend upon the Keith farm, and all goes well until a keg of Jim Pete Markham’s best whiskey, brought to the hog-killing by the gadabout, Put Woolfork, is opened.  My favorite little snippet from the story is this one, a description of the lazy Put Woolfork:

The second complication was in the person of Put Woolfork, who left his mother’s little farm above Squires Landing before daylight that morning, driving a mule to an old spring wagon with springs relaxed almost to the axles.  Only the summer before, Put had acquired a wife to help his mother help him with the farmwork.  And he had got wind of the hog-killing.  (15)

I love that phrase–he “aquired a wife to help his mother help him with the farmwork.”  Isn’t that just perfect?  :-)

I also read “The Consent,” which is the romance (of a sort) of Tol Proudfoot and Miss Minnie Quinch.  I don’t remember reading about either of these characters in any of the novels I’ve read, so this tale was entirely new to me.  Reading this story of a confirmed bachelor farmer and an old maid school teacher was a delight.  It reminded me a little bit of something out of some of Sarah Orne Jewett’s works, although I can’t be more specific than that.  Perhaps they’re similar to me because they both fall into the subgenre of regionalism.  (I’m writing off the top of my head here, so any Berry experts out there can correct me if Berry’s works do not fit into this classification.) 

I love this description of Miss Minnie:

When she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to a teacher’s college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterward used.  For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other.  (27)

Simple, eh?

“The Hurt Man” by Wendell Berry

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I’m reading through That Distant Land, a collection of Wendell Berry short stories that has been recommended time and again to me as a way to get a broad view of Port William, Berry’s fictional Kentucky hamlet in which his novels are set.  I thought I’d record the quotations I like from some of the stories I read and comment on them when I can.  There won’t be anything profound here in these posts, just some Reflections in Progress. 

The first story is “The Hurt Man,” a story set in 1888 and written from the point of view of a five-year-old Mat Feltner.  In the story, his mother helps a man who has been injured in a fight. 

His outgrown dresses he saw worn daily by a pretty neigbor named Margaret Finley, who to him might as well have been another boy too little to be of interest, or maybe even a girl, though it hardly mattered–and though, because of a different intstinct, she would begin to matter to him a great deal in a dozen years, and after that she would matter to him all his life.  (3)

I like the picture of marriage that Berry paints here.  As his wife, Margaret Finley will indeed “matter to [Mat] all his life.” 

The town was the product of its own becoming, which, if not accidental exactly, had also been unplanned. It had no formal government or formal history.  It was without pretense or ambition, for it was the sort of place that pretentious or ambitious people were inclined to leave.  It had never declared an aspiration to become anything it was not.  It did not thrive so much as it merely lived, doing the things it needed to do to stay alive.  ( 4)

Mat would remember the town’s then-oldest man, Uncle Bishop Bower, who could confront any stranger, rap on the ground with his long staff, and demand, “Sir!  What might your name be?”  (4)

Uncle Bishop Bower reminds me of my maternal grandfather, the only grandfather I ever knew.  He was a giant of a man, with a personality to match his stature.  He would “produce” (my granny’s tongue-in-cheek way of saying “introduce”)  himself to people by enveloping their hands in his meaty one and pronouncing gruffly, “Miller’s my name.  What’s yours?” 

But in spite of her losses, Nancy Beechum Felter was not a frightened woman, as her son would learn.  He would learn also that, though she maintained her sorrows with a certain loyalty, wearing black, she was a woman of practial good sense and strong cheerfulness.  She knew that the word was risky and that she must risk her surviving child to it as she had risked the others, and when the time came she straightforwardly did so.  (6)

 Mat had been surprised when she did not follow him into the house, when she waited on the porch and opened the door to the hurt man and then to his friends.  But she had not surprised him after that.  He saw her as he had known her:  a woman who did what the world put before her to do. (10)

Loss came into his mind then, and he knew what he was years away from telling, even from thinking:  that his mother’s grief was real; that her children in their graves once had been alive; that everybody lying under the grass up in the graveyard once had been alive and had walked in daylight in Port William.  And this was a part, and belonged to the deliverance, of the town’s hard history of love.  (10)

Loss has been on my mind a lot lately.  We’re none of us immune, even when we think we’re invincible.  The storms of last week have taught us in the Southeast (yet again) the lesson.  I love that Berry’s story ends hopefully, though.  That even the loss ”belonged to the deliverance.”  Small consolation, perhaps, to those living the loss, but it is indeed a “part . . . of the town’s [and our] hard history of love.”

Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry

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It’s no secret ’round these parts that I think Wendell Berry is a genius.  I have loved both of his novels that I read over the past few years.  Jayber Crow (linked to my review) was my first encounter with Berry, and I was captivated.  I went on to read Hannah Coulter (linked to my review) and loved it just as much.  I expected to love Nathan Coulter as much; in fact, I expected to learn more about this second husband of Hannah’s that would somehow illuminate their life together.  While I can’t say that I was disappointed by the novel (Berry’s writing could never disappoint me), I was a less than enthralled by the story.  The overall tone of the story is subdued.  The story covers a few years of Nathan’s childhood, so Hannah doesn’t figure into the story at all.  I found Nathan’s and Brother’s relationship with their father depressing; after their mother’s death, they move in with their grandparents and have little more than a working relationship with him as they tend the farmland together.  It took me a while to read this book, even though it is very short at just over a hundred pages in length.  I think I was never in any real hurry to get back to it, but I didn’t not like it enough to abandon it altogether. 

I don’t want to do this story an injustice in this review, so now that I’ve expressed some of the reasons why I didn’t like it, I will now focus on the parts I did like.  Something kept me reading it, after all. 

First, there’s the writing.  Wendell Berry’s writing in this novel is just beautiful.  Much of this novel is description, and I can’t think of anyone who does it better.  This is a word-picture of Nathan’s grandfather:

He always hurried, even across a room, setting his feet down hard.  You could never imagine him turning around and going the other way.  When he walked through the house he made the dishes rattle in the kitchen cabinet, and you half expected to find his tracks sunk into the floor.  He was tall and learn, his face crossed with wrinkles.  His hair was white and it hung in his eyes most of the time when he wasn’t wearing a hat, because he didn’t use a comb for anything but to scratch his head.  His nose crooked like a hawk’s and his eyes were pale and blue.  (21)

The brightest spot in the story is the presence of Nathan’s uncle, Burley Coulter.  Burley Coulter is a very memorable character, a part of the Port William membership who also appears in Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter.  There’s a vignette in Nathan Coulter about Nathan and Burley catching a whopper of a catfish; the story of this catfish turns into a true “fish tale,” and before it’s all said and done, even Burley is tired of the ruckus it has caused.  The story is brilliantly executed, and I was reminded of my own uncles and cousins (and even, to an extent, my own father) who loved to fish.  I was surrounded by fishermen growing up, and reading of jigs and lines and all night fishing trips was familiar and enjoyable for me. 

Still, Berry captures the essence of thickskinned and pigheaded masculinity in this story, I think, and perhaps that’s why I have a hard time loving it.  There’s not much redeeming about the stubbornness of the Coulter men’s relationships with one another, with the exception of Burley, who seems to make a joke of everything.  Nathan and Brother make a game out of “passing” their father while working the tobacco fields, just like their father and Burley had done with their grandfather.  However, it is a serious game, this stuff of coming into manhood, and it’s not exactly a joyous legacy:

And Brother and I had thought about it and talked about it between ourselves.  In a way passing him would be the finest thing we could do, and the thing we could be proudest of.  But in another way it would be bad, because it would kill him to have to get out of the way for anybody.  We’d told each other that we might never do it, even when we were able, because of that.  And both of us knew that if the time ever came it would be a hard thing to do, and a risky one.  Once we’d passed him we could never be behind again.  We’d have to stay in front, and it was a lonely and troublesome place.  (92)

I suppose the bottom line is I love how the story is told; I just don’t love the story.  I understand that Nathan Coulter is one of the first Port William novels.  Perhaps this explains the almost episodic feel to it; there are stories, but they are interspersed with stretches of description, etc.  These stories remind me of Rick Bragg’s, at least a little.  I think if you like Berry you would like Bragg.  I’ve read All Over but the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man and reviewed them here.  Click the links and you can read my reviews, which include quotations, for a taste of Bragg. 

Reviews Elsewhere:

 

Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery

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I’m really not one for sappy romances (or really romances at all, to tell the truth–as I’ve said before, the only romance I’m really interested in is my own ;-) ), and Kilmeny of the Orchard is a sappy romance.  I chose to re-read it mainly because it’s one of L.M. Montgomery’s shorter novels (perhaps the shortest?), and I had neither the time nor the inclination to tackle a longer work right now.  Magic for Marigold (my review here) was something of a dud for me this time, and I really wanted to read one more of Montgomery’s works for the L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge this year.  While reading Kilmeny, I was of two minds:  one was loyal and L.M. Montgomery-loving and felt a tad bit guilty because the other mind existed at all; the other was critical and cynical and enjoyed the novel but was reading it all and rewriting a parody of it simultaneously.  I’m going to state outright that I do indeed love L.M. Montgomery’s works and I count reading her novels as a young teen as one of the formative reading experiences of my life.  Steady Eddie and I went to PEI for our honeymoon, for Pete’s sake!  :-)   For the sake of this blog post, I’m going to let the critical and cynical mind take over.  If you’re a dedicated Montgomery fan who will be offended, stop reading now.  :-)

The story is classic Montgomery.  Eric Marshall, the stalwart and handsome son of a wealthy elderly businessman in the Big City, takes over the teaching position of a friend mid-year in a tiny little hamlet, Lindsey.  Marshall happens to have a doctor friend (who specializes in diseases and disorders of the throat, no less) who warns him against going to this village and falling in love with some provincial lass.  Marshall enjoys his job but goes about his life without so much as a ripple until he happens upon an exquisitely beautiful young woman playing a violin in an orchard (which stops just short of being enchanted).  As it turns out, the girls is mute but not deaf; she carries around a slate on which to write her thoughts.  (This, of course, reminded me a little too much of The Trumpet of the Swan, which isn’t exactly a book one should be thinking of when one is reading a romance novel.)  Her name is Kilmeny Gordon, and her tale is a tragic one, but not an unusual one given that she is a heroine in a Montgomery novel.  Of course, Eric falls in love with her and she with Eric.  Her affliction threatens to keep them apart, until a very exciting ending brings about a resolution that all romance lovers will appreciate:  the boy gets his girl, and his wealthy and wise old father approves. 

So many things about this story caught my attention and caused my inner critic to go on high alert.  First was the verbosity for which Montgomery is famous. The letter that Eric received from his friend Larry, whom Eric shortly replaces as master of the Lindsey school, is good example.  This seems like a small deal, and it is, really, but it led me to think about the characterization.  Before I go further, here’s a snippet from the letter: 

 ”Last week my landlady–who is a saint in spectacles and calico–looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said, very gently, ‘You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and see a doctor about yourself.’

“I went and did not stand upon the order of my going.  Mrs. Williamson is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.  She has an inconvenient habit of making you realize that she is exactly right, and that you would be all kinds of a fool if you didn’t take her advice.  You feel that what she thinks to-day you will think to-morrow.” (9)

To quote Gilbert in the movie Anne of Avonlea, “Anne, nob’dy speaks that way!”  I might add that no one of the (sexist statement alert warning!) male gender would write that way.  I can’t imagine it, can you?  However, and this is a big however, men in Montgomery’s world do speak (and write) this way, and I think that might be one reason why we women (who used to be adolescent girls, swooning over the aforementioned Gil) like them so much.  I do like that this statement sums up Mrs. Williamson very accurately (and sets up a little bit of what follows, too).  

Not only are the speakers in this story verbose, but Kilmeny, who communicates by writing, is just as loquacious.  Imagine, if you will, reading this off ”a little slate that hung at her belt”:

“No, I did not know [. . .] I have often read of the white narcissus and wondered what it was like.  I never thought of it being the same as my dear June lilies.  I am glad you told me.  I love flowers very much.  They are my very good friends.”  (49)

Montgomery does note that Kilmeny writes “in a small distinctive handwriting.”   Maybe it’s the influence of text messaging (of which I admittedly do very little), but I still can’t imagine it.  Honestly, though, it’s Montgomery’s way with words that I enjoy, at least when I’m in the mood to read them (and maybe not when I’m thinking about someone actually writing this way in a letter, etc.)  In this book it just seems a little unrealistic.

Another thing that really bothered me about this novel is the stereotyping of a particular character.  Neil Gordon, a sort-of adopted brother of Kilmeny’s, is described as being “Italyun, yes sir!  Rather too much so, I’m thinking, for decent folks’ taste” by the gossipy Mr. Williamson, but this sentiment carries through the novel.  I found this jarring to my twenty-first century sensibilities.  Of course, Neil turns out to be the bad guy in the story–of course!  I agree with Becky:  “Kilmeny of the Orchard doesn’t *need* Neil to be the villain.”  But she put him in, anyway, and all we really know about him is that he’s Italian, has a violent temper, and that he apparently loves Kilmeny.

Oh, I could go on.  Kilmeny is beautiful–beyond beautiful.  And innocent, to the point that Eric watches her “blossom into womanhood” before his very eyes, simply through his attentions to her.  This review mirrors my take on Kilmeny of the Orchard, only my opinions aren’t quite this forceful.  ;-)   (Be forewarned that this review is a tad bit vitriolic.  If you hold all things LMM dear, don’t read it.  The comments are interesting, though.)

I almost laughed when I got to the end of the novel. Eric says to his father,

“Kilmeny’s mouth is like a love-song made incarnate in sweet flesh [. . .] “

To which Mr. Marshall replies,

“Humph!  [. . .] Well [. . . ] I was  a poet, too, for six months in my life, when I was courting your mother.” (133)

I think maybe my six months of enjoying “silly school girl romances” (to once again quote Gil) have long since expired, and I really am Marilla. 

L. M. Montgomery Reading Challenge Obviously, this book will never be my number one pick of all LMM’s works, but I did get some enjoyment out of reading it (and, if you’ll forgive me, writing this post!).  This is my sixth book of LMM’s to revisit in the past three years, and it’s all thanks to Carrie’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge.  Come back on Friday for my wrap-up post!

Her Daughter’s Dream by Francine Rivers

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I read Her Daughter’s Dream in two or three days, an unheard of feat for me lately.  It helped that the DLM and I went on a short trip with Steady Eddie a few weeks ago, so I had more time than usual to read.  However, despite its almost 600 pages, this latest novel by Francine Rivers is a very easy read.  While I didn’t just love its prequel, Her Mother’s Hope (my review here), I was interested enough in the characters to want to read more. 

These books are about relationships, particularly those between mothers and daughters, and the hurt and misunderstanding that came come about, despite the good intentions of everyone involved.  This story begins where the last one left off.  It’s somewhat complicated, but to summarize the situation, Hildemara ignores her daughter, Carolyn, so Carolyn bonds with her gradmother, Marta.  For a variety of reasons, Carolyn runs away from home as a young adult, only to finally come back, repentant but with lots of baggage of all sorts.  Carolyn’s daughter, Dawn, follows in her mother’s footsteps by growing very attached to her grandmother, Hildemara.  It’s the old generational curse/problem/let’s all live out the problems we’ve inherited from our parents situation.  To be honest, I just don’t like the idea, although I do recognize that there probably is some truth to it.  Rivers does tie up almost all the loose ends in this story, and boy, there are a lot of them.  I also recognize that life rarely works out as neatly as it does for the characters in this story (although by neatly, I surely don’t mean easy–there’s abuse, disease, and death throughout this story).  The ending is akin to what one would find in most works of Christian fiction. 

My criticisms of this work are similar to the ones I had for its prequel.  While I think this story is a little easier to follow, there are some parts of it that just aren’t all that well written.  One thing I have a hard time with is the narration.  What I mean is it’s sometimes hard for me to buy that, for example, Hildemara didn’t really mean to be insensitive or unloving to Carolyn.  I think the problem is that Rivers switches point of view throughout the story somewhat.  It was hard for me to see things from Carolyn’s perspective in the beginning and then from Hildemara’s perspective in the end.  Rivers employed a device in the first story that helped a lot–the readers were privy to letters that Marta wrote to her best friend back in Switzerland.  Although we do get to continue to read some of Marta’s thoughts in this novel, we are not given insight into any of the other characters’ thoughts (unless the story is from their point of view).  All of this made the story unwieldy to me.  I enjoyed it, but I still don’t think it’s Francine Rivers’ best work–far from it.  Either my taste has changed, or she really does a better job writing Biblical and historical fiction. 

In the author note, Rivers explains that these books are somewhat autobiographical, and additionally, she says that her ”stories have begun with struggles [she's] having in [her] own faith walk.”   I get that–I think that writing is a powerful way to work through problems and get to the heart of a struggle.  I also understand that these two novels really deal with some difficult issues, ones that aren’t easy to cope with or solve.  I like the end of the author note:  “. . . I dream we will all one day be together with our Lord, having cast off the imperfection of human nature, transformed into Christlike children of the King of kings.”  Sometimes there is no easy solution; in the end, we just have to throw ourselves on the mercy of Christ. 

If you enjoy stories about relationships, you would enjoy these two novels.  If you’re new to Francine Rivers, may I suggest going back and reading some of her older works first?  I love the Mark of the Lion series, as well as all the novellas in the Lineage of Grace series.

No Dark Valley by Jamie Langston Turner

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No Dark Valley is the fifth book by Jamie Langston Turner that I’ve read, and by now I’ve begun to detect a pattern in her stories.  However, the fact that I find her plots rather predictable doesn’t mean that I’ve quit enjoying her books.  Actually, I don’t read her stories for the plots.  I read them because she creates such interesting characters.  I’ve enjoyed getting to know each protagonist in every novel I’ve read by her, even though with most of them there’s not much to love in the beginning.  I think the reason I enjoy her characters a lot, even if many of them aren’t too likeable, is that she completely gets inside their heads.  I like that. 

After five books, I’ve also finally caught on to the fact that each of Ms. Turner‘s books is related somehow to the others.  Turner explains in the FAQs on her website that her novels were “loosely conceived as a series,” although each story can stand alone.  In this particular installment of her larger, conglomerate story set in the small communities of Berea, Filbert, and Derby, South Carolina, a single woman named Celia, in her mid-thirties, finally faces the past she tried to put behind her when she fled her grandmother’s home in Georgia upon graduating from high school.  She tried to shake off everything about her teenage years as an orphan being raised by her strict Christian grandmother–everything from religious beliefs to morals to small town ways.  However, as her story unfolds, we see the beautiful orchestration of events that eventually lead to her spiritual re-awakening.  Celia has to confront a lot about her past, including her own rebellious actions.  Surprisingly, Turner writes the last half of this book from the perspective of Celia’s neighbor, a man with his own problematic past.  The inner lives of both characters are revealed, of course, and Celia’s neighbor, Bruce Healey, is a rather humorous guy.  Reading a novel by Jamie Langston Turner is both entertaining and thought-provoking.  I always end up inspecting my own inner mental landscape while reading a novel by her, and that’s mostly a useful exercise.  While her novels are long and the constant introspection can get a little tiresome, it’s still time well spent. 

I usually don’t give bookcover artwork much thought, but I have to say that the artwork for her novels (you can see all the covers here) is just about as bland as any I’ve seen.  None of the covers elicit any desire in me to read any of the stories.  I’m not sure what’s up with that.  Her novels are full of symbolism and literary allusions, so I’m sure that’s what the publisher is after, but I think there’s much more room for creativity than what these covers convey. 

Anyway, if you enjoy thoughtful Christian fiction, give Jamie Langston Turner a try.  The titles listed below are links to the other books by her that I’ve read and reviewed:

 A Garden to Keep

The Suncatchers

Winter Birds

Some Wildflower in My Heart

To Kill a Mockingbird Challenge Wrap-Up

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I’ve just about decided that hosting a challenges is a sure way to make sure that I don’t finish reading the book myself.  Yes, I am still reading To Kill a Mockingbird.  Between the Bible in 90 Days Challenge (which I am currently behind on), the huge amount of time I spend reading aloud to my girls and schooling them, and the addition of Wi-Fi here at home so that I am connected via my iPod Touch even while I’m nursing the DLM in his room, I am making very slow progress. 

Of course, I read this novel the first time in the eighth grade and have read it several times since then.  I am enjoying it this time through and have even noticed a few details that I had either never noticed before or had forgotten.  For instance, I don’t remember paying attention to Scout’s observation that Atticus liked to be alone during church–that he usually sat in a different pew than she and Jem.  I like that these little details all work together to create the character, and while I can see that Harper Lee’s writing might be considered unsophisticated by some, it is just this type of characterization that endears her characters to her readers.  Fifty years in print must mean that she did something right! 

You might have already guessed that Atticus is my favorite character.  This is the first time I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird since I became a parent six years ago, and I think that Atticus’ parenting style and skills are what I am noticing the most this time through.  Of course, this is a much-lauded part of Atticus’ character (as a google search for “Atticus Finch parenting” will attest), but I’m finding his relationship with his children both instructive and poignant, all the same.

I get the biggest kick out of Scout’s distaste for school at the beginning of the story.  I find it downright hilarious, actually. 

The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first.  Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.  What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around me:  Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything–at least what one didn’t know the other did.  Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticing that my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential to the development of Good Citizenship.  Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor example:  no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books.  As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something.  Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.

As a homeschool parent-teacher (and an Alabama public school teacher turned homeschool teacher at that!), of course I love this!  ;-)

I had larger plans than just to read the novel, folks.  I meant to read a book about the novel, and I did get started on it.  However, the library wanted the book back before I had even scratched the surface of it enough to write a review.  I tried to watch the movie this past Friday night, but I got a late start, we had trouble with the DVD, and I finally had to give up on it in order to get the DLM to sleep.  Such is life with three small children!  :-)   Just know that it truly is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I absolutely adore Gregory Peck as Atticus.  In my mind, he is Atticus.  I did remember after my initial TKM Challenge posts that last year I read a YA novel entitled In Search of Mockingbird that revolves around Harper Lee’s story.  I’m not giving up on finishing the novel myself this time through, though.  It’s just a slow process.

If you read the novel (or tried to!  or almost did!  or meant to!) or anything related to it or watched the movie, link up your blog post below.  I’ll leave this linky open for a few days, just in case any of you need a little extra time.  ;-)

Thanks for joining me, folks.  I hope you enjoyed it!

The Week in Words

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It has been too long since I’ve participated in The Week in Words at Stray Thoughts, so I thought I’d jump back in this week.  I’m still reading To Kill a Mockingbird for my own To Kill a Mockingbird Reading Challenge.  I find this book immensely quotable, but I ran across a quote in the book the other day that I didn’t remember.  I like it, so I’m sharing it here.  It comes compliments of Miss Maudie, a very wise woman:

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

Miss Maudie shares this with Jem and Scout after the “One Shot” Finch episode. 

Humility is a virtue that we can grasp only when we know from whence all our blessings come, right?