fiction

A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler

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My book club rarely comes up with a unanimous verdict on a book, but we all loved this book by Anne Tyler, as we have loved other of her books we’ve read. It’s not just because she writes about Baltimore, and specifically the part of Baltimore we are most familiar with. No, it is something more.

In this, her 20th novel, Tyler introduces us to the Whitshank family. You know families like this one: while there are tensions and long-held grudges between Abby and Red and their four grown children, there is also love and concern and care, even if these emotions are sometimes tempered with frustration or incomprehension. They take for granted their connection with each other, just as they know that if asked to go for a walk on the beach, one is expected to agree.

Part of the glue holding them together is their belief that they, as a family, are special, though Tyler undercuts this assertion by telling us that it is based, among other things, on their ability to keep pets alive to a great age. There are also the stories that they tell about themselves. One has to do with the way Red’s father came to build and then own their house on Bouton Road. The house itself is a character, a vessel for all of their narratives: the wide, deep porch where Abby discovered her love for Red, the curving staircase that funnels sound up to someone hidden upstairs, the kitchen where the real heart-to-hearts take place.

Abby and Red, in their 70s, are starting to experience the effects of aging. Red has trouble hearing and has pulled back from the family construction business started by his father. Abby has begun to blank out for periods of time, finding herself in odd places when she comes to. Over their protests, their dutiful son Stem and his family move in with them, only to be joined unexpectedly by Denny, the black sheep son.

Abby’s baffled love for Denny, a rebel from a young age whom she has never understood, won my heart for this story. I know so many families where one child seems to absorb all the oxygen in the room, driving parents and teachers to distraction. In some ways I was that child, with my constant refrain: Leave me alone! Tyler’s portrait, not just of Abby, but of Denny himself subtly evolves through the book and is just so utterly true to life.

My book club had a long discussion over one critic’s remark that this was a “comic novel”. We agreed that Tyler’s humor is everywhere, but that it is subtle and witty rather than comic. One person, reading it a second time to remind herself of the story, suddenly noted all the little clues scattered in the text that would come to fruition later. Tyler’s craft is astonishing; she distracts us with a compelling story so that we do not notice her writer’s guile.

What we love about Tyler’s novels is her genuine compassion for her characters. She does not shy away from their faults and peculiarities, but she never mocks or criticises them; she instead treats them with respect and dignity. In a recent post on Writer Unboxed, literary agent, author, and writing teacher extraordinaire, Donald Maass suggests that readers are drawn to positive characters, those who have a hopeful outlook on life (though not the uniform optimism of a Pollyanna). These are the kind of characters we readers want to spend time with, whose spirit inspires us. Maass says in another post, “Generally speaking, we choose company that is pleasant. People who are warm, open, curious, compassionate and interesting are good to be around. We gravitate to people like ourselves, who share our outlooks, interests and values.”

In a story, characters encounter obstacles that try them to their limit (in a workshop with him, I started calling Maass The Don—thinking of The Godfather—because of the creative ways he kept pushing us to torment our protagonists). A positive character, confronted with barriers, does not wallow in helpless despair but pushes forward. As Maass says, “The human race is hopeful, yearning, seeking a more perfect world and full of faith that we can make it one.”

It is this quality that we love in Tyler’s novels: her ability to give us people who, with all their quirks and flaws, yearn for something better and have faith that they can get there, people whose stories play out in families so true that we recognise them immediately.

What do you look for in the protagonist of a novel?

Emily, Alone, by Stewart O’Nan

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O’Nan is one of my favorite writers, for his appreciation of and immersion in his characters, however humdrum or exciting their lives might be. Here, we inhabit Emily Maxwell, an elderly woman living out the tail end of her life in the modest home in a Pittsburgh suburb, the one she’d shared it with her husband Henry until his death. Her friends are also dying off, leaving her with her brash sister-in-law Arlene as her regular companion for breakfast buffets and conversations about the grown children. Alone at home besides her elderly dog, Emily makes an elaborate routine out of her regular chores.

Emily relies on Arlene’s driving which, if shaky, is better than her own. However, all of Emily’s arrangements are thrown into disarray when Arlene faints in a restaurant. Not only does she have to drive Arlene’s car, but she has to navigate the hospital and run errands for Arlene. As her confidence blossoms, she buys a small car and, little by little, begins to expand her world.

I love how O’Nan uses specific details to bring a memory to life and then submerges you in Emily’s reactions and emotions. Here, she is recalling a birthday dinner for her daughter, Margaret, at the country club Henry had introduced her to:

It must have been forty-five years ago, because Margaret was slim as a ballerina in her pinafore, curtseying to everyone for the fun of it. Emily’s own parents were there, a rare occasion, her father gawking in his cheap brown suit, impressed by the high windows and the murals on the ballroom’s ceiling, the white-gloved waiters circulating between tables to deliver iced pats of butter stamped with the club crest. Emily would have arranged for Margaret to have her favorite–yellow cake with chocolate icing–and Henry would have paid by signing his name. Forty-five years.

She could not stop these visitations, even if she wanted to. They plagued her like migraines, left her helpless and dissatisfied, as if her life and the lives of all those she’d loved had come to nothing, merely because that time was gone, receding even in her own memory, to be replaced by this diminished present . If it seemed another world, that was because it was, and all her wishing could not bring it back.

This 2011 novel is a sequel to Wish You Were Here which I read in 2007. I have to admit I don’t remember much of it beyond the characters’ names, the premise of the story and how much I liked it. Liked it? I was buried in it.

I came to this one with some apprehension. Though younger than Emily, I know what it is to live alone once children are grown and gone. I know what it is to have to create a life almost from scratch once work and family fall away, how to find new routines and habits. But once engaged in the story, I thought mostly of my mother, how she sat alone in her townhouse for years until, over her vociferous protests, we persuaded her to move to a comprehensive care facility. She bloomed there, making friends, taking up water-color and quilting.

As Emily blooms here. Although I’m not there myself yet, I believe O’Nan captures the inner life of an elderly woman, moving through her days accompanied by memories of the past, finding ways however unexpected to be in the present and look forward to the future. I enjoyed spending time with Emily. I saw much of myself in her and the potential for more. I especially loved her conversations with her dog, Rufus. She calls him Mr. Feisty, Mr. Excitable, Mr. Pork Pie, and Chubbers McBubbers. They share the same difficulties moving around, taking multiple medications. They remind me of my conversations with my little cat, the Love Bug.

I’m not exactly looking forward to aging, though of course it’s better than the alternative, but Emily’s story helps me prepare myself for times to come, and more patiently appreciate those who are there now.

What books about aging and loneliness have you read?

Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill

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This is one of those books that I appreciated rather than enjoyed. Sure, there are beautiful sentences and sentences whose intelligence, perception, and depth of emotion require no ornamentation. There are quick, deft depictions of character, such as this one of our narrator, Hans:

“Let me introduce myself properly,” Chuck said. “Chuck Ramkissoon.” We shook hands. “Van der Broek,” he said, trying out the name. “South African?”

“I’m from Holland,” I said, apologizing.

Boy, are there characters. Chuck hails from Trinidad but is 100% American, with his handful of shady businesses, his huge appetite for life, and his outsize dream of saving the world by establishing a cricket club in an abandoned field on the edge of the city. Through him, Hans meets and becomes a part of a subculture of cricket clubs, made up of émigrés, himself the only white one.

Much as I appreciated the writing—more about that later—I have to admit that I was bored. So much so that about halfway through I set the book aside for two weeks, and debated whether to finish it or not. First off, I don’t share the fascination those who live or have lived in New York seem to have for novels about what it’s like to live in that city. Surely they know already. I am more fascinated by The Hague and deeply enjoyed the brief flashbacks to Hans’s youth. I was also fascinated by his enigmatic mother, by far the most interesting character to me, though barely present.

Secondly, the plot is not an attention-grabber. We learn in the first few pages that Chuck’s body has been found in a canal and that Hans and his wife have been estranged but are now back together. The exploration of cricket and Chuck’s world are somewhat interesting, but the story of yet another middle-aged man, estranged from his life and feeling disconnected from his fellow humans doesn’t excite me. At least there are those beautiful and penetrating sentences.

Some people have no difficulty in identifying with their younger incarnations: Rachel, for example, will refer to episodes from her childhood or college days as if they’d happened to her that very morning. I, however, seem given to self-estrangement. I find it hard to muster oneness with those former selves whose accidents and endeavors have shaped who I am now.

A little background: Hans, who grew up in The Hague and lived in London before moving to New York, is a successful equities analyst for a large bank. In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, he and his wife and young son take up temporary abode in the Chelsea Hotel. The dislocation and the danger prompt Rachel to take the child and move back to London. Her refusal to let Hans come with them signals her intent to end the marriage.

If this almost casual use of the 2001 attacks is one of the successes of the novel—for once they are not used to ratchet up drama and sentiment—Rachel is one of its failures. Presented as active in contrast to Hans’s passivity, she is a mass of unexplained contradictions, secrets, and sometimes seemingly random decisions. While such a depiction makes sense given that we are being told the story by the mystified, miserable, and angry Hans, it turns Rachel into a chesspiece designed to move the story along rather than a person.

I liked the depiction of the fellowship Hans forms with his fellow cricketers, the way they watch out for each other even though their lives only intersect in this one area. I was not particularly charmed by Chuck, whom some reviewers have compared to Gatsby, and questioned why Hans became so involved with him. I derived some amusement from random oddball characters—no, I don’t want to give them away—but after living in Baltimore, they seemed mild to me.

I’m left with the beautiful and unexpected passages, such as this one:

The business world is densely margined by dreamers, men, almost invariably, whose longing selves willingly submit to the enchantment of projections and pie charts and crisply totted numbers, who toy and toy for years, like novelists, with the same sheaf of documents, who slip out of bed in the middle of the night to pitch to a pajama’d reflection in a windowpane.

I appreciate the transnational perspective brought by O’Neill, who is of Irish and Turkish descent, grew up in The Netherlands, and now lives in the U.S. His memoir, Blood-Dark Track, should prove interesting.

Have you ever set a book aside for a few weeks and then gone back to it? What did you end up thinking about it?

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, by Hermione Lee

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I like to read biographies of authors. When the biography is as good as this one, I like to stop and read the author’s books just before they are discussed. Yes, the works stand alone; you don’t need to know details of the author’s life to appreciate them. But as a writer, I am curious about how her experiences shaped the author’s perspective and choices.

I’ve been particularly curious about Penelope Fitzgerald for two reasons: I’ve loved her novels, and she was 60 years old when her first novel was published. She did publish two nonfiction books, one when she was 58 and the other the same year as her first novel. I wondered how her life story meshed with the stories described so vividly in Tillie Olsen’s Silences.

Indeed, it does. While working at the BBC during WWII, she married Desmond Fitzgerald, whom she’d met at Oxford. Within six months, he’d been sent to North Africa with the Irish Guards. Like so many soldiers, he returned damaged in ways less visible than a missing leg. His misadventures meant that the family lived in poverty, even being homeless for a while before gratefully moving into a council flat. Working to support the family and raise her children left Fitzgerald little time for writing, but she was storing up ideas and experiences that enabled her to produce nine novels and three biographies in just 20 years.

In this rich and readable biography, Hermione Lee gives us not just Fitzgerald’s story, but also a discerning evaluation of her work. Lee incorporates excerpts from Fitzgerald’s speeches and writings: letters, reviews, essays. Without being didactive, she suggests places in the novels where Fitzgerald made use of her experiences. Fitzgerald’s first five novels draw on her own past, but even the later novels reveal traces of past preoccupations and concerns.

Lee gives us the events and people that shaped and influenced Fitzgerald as a writer. For example, knowing that her beloved father, Edmund “Evoe” Knox, wrote for Punch, adds a new perspective to her brisk, humorous prose. Her father and his siblings provided a rich, if unusual, environment for the young writer.

In talking about the novels, Lee traces some common threads, such as, “Bourne-Jones attracted her, too, because she felt a strong imaginative pull towards characters at odds with their world: the depressives, the shy, the unworldly, the emotionally inarticulate.”

Her own experiences enabled her to sympathise with such characters. In an interview, Fitzgerald spoke of “the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?”

In her later works, she experimented with an impressionistic style, putting together fragments that push the reader to actively engage with the story. This style is most effectively used in The Blue Flower, her story based on the life of the German Romantic poet Friedrich von Hardenberg, known as Novalis. It is especially effective because it mirrors his own style. In an early notebook, Fitzgerald wrote, “Novalis wrote: One can imagine stories which have no coherence, but only association of events, like dreams, or poems which at most have single verses which can be understood, like fragments of the most various objects.”

Lee pins down another aspect of this novel, saying, “she has been thinking all her writing life about the relation between biography, history and fiction. Now she merges the genres to create a new kind of book.”

What most impressed me in this account of Fitzgerald’s life and work was the incredible amount of research she did for each book, not just for the biographies, but for each novel as well. For Beginning of Spring, for example, Lee says, “there is a great deal of homework in her notebooks on printing works, alongside notes on merchants, railway stations, ministries, churches, birch trees, dachas and mushrooms.” Some extensive reading may only be come a detail, such as the sandstone towers of a market in Moscow.

For me, this remarkable biography sheds new light on Fitzgerald’s novels. Plus I love that it sent me back to read all the novels again.

What biography have you read recently that gave you new insight?

The Normans: From Raiders to Kings, by Lars Brownworth

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I’ve recently taken a little detour into the Middle Ages, starting with Helen Hollick’s The Kingmaking, a well-researched novel about Arthur Pendragon’s rise to power in 5th century Britain. Then I jumped ahead to the 12th-15th centuries, viewing a four-part series hosted by historian Dan Jones called Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty: The Plantagenets.

I also read Judith Merkle Riley’s witty novel, The Master of All Desires, about a young woman who finds herself at the center of Queen Catherine de Medici’s intrigues at the French Court and looks to the Queen’s Astrologer, Nostradamus, for advice. The story is set in the 16th century, thus putting it over the historians’ line and into the Renaissance, although the reliance on seers and spells seems more apt for the Middle Ages.

Finally I tackled this book on the Normans, set in the 11th and 12th centuries. It is relatively short at a little over 200 pages and immensely readable. Maps, family trees, descriptive lists of people and places, and endnotes explaining possibly unfamiliar terms, make this history accessible for a reader with little or no foreknowledge while not boring one who knows quite a bit about the Normans already.

I knew that the Normans who invaded Britain came from—surprise!—Normandy and were descended from Viking raiders who’d settled there in the 9th and 10th centuries. I knew about the Battle of Hastings and have my list of English monarchs well situated in memory.

What I didn’t know was that the Normans played a huge role in the rest of Europe, creating kingdoms as far south as North Africa, going on crusades, and taking on the Papal States, the Holy Roman Empire (aka the German Empire) and the Byzantine Empire. And that much of that was accomplished by members of a single family, the de Hautevilles.

The question Brownworth sets out to answer is: “How did Western Europe, which was militarily, technologically, and socially far behind its immediate neighbors in the Middle East, manage not only to catch up with them, but to rise to global dominance?”

He finds much of the answer in the Normans. Without downplaying their ruthless suppression of local languages and customs, he does explain how they eventually assimilated with their conquered peoples. While some of the Normans he describes were warriors first and last, others actually found creative ways to govern, becoming respected and even beloved.

Still, the net result for me of all this reading and viewing was a sickening sense of the brevity of life in the Middle Ages, not only for the conquered peasantry and the waves of warriors thrown at various foes, but for the rulers themselves. Intrigue is too mild a word for the fostering of revolts in a brother’s country, the poisonings and outright murders. And then there were the frail, inbred children placed on thrones, controlled or fought over by power-hungry nobles.

None of this was new to me, but the span of this little detour of mine showed how prevalent it was. Yet another person murdering all of his brothers to gain a throne, in turn murdered by another claimant. Over and over.

In this season of the U.S. presidential election, a time I loathe, one that has me avoiding the saturated media, I actually found the slaughter of the Middle Ages comforting. Yes, the airwaves are dominated by amoral pretenders, each trying to stir up more hatred than the next, making the U.S. a laughingstock in the international arena where people cannot believe such clowns could even be considered for office. But at least they are not killing each other. At least they are not cooking up charges to have each other’s entrails dragged out or having their opponents beheaded or poisoned or burned at the stake. And this season, at least, there are a few who are refraining from even verbal attacks in favor of—shocking as it may be—a discussion of the issues.

I will take comfort where I can find it.

What do you know of the Normans’ involvement in the Crusades?

Harvest, by Jim Crace

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Two fires disrupt harvest time in an isolated village, one on a nearby hill where some outsiders have camped and the other at Master Kent’s dovecot, which rapidly spreads to a barn. The latter is a bit of mischief by a couple of village lads that got out of hand, while the former “says, New neighbors have arrived; they’ve built a place; they’ve laid a hearth; they know the custom and the law. This first smoke has given them the right to stay. We’ll see.”

The narrator, Walter Thirsk, arrived with Master Kent as his manservant, when Kent came to the village to marry the daughter of the Old Master. Since then Walter has immersed himself in village life, working in the common fields with his neighbours, dancing to the pipe and fiddle, observing the age-old traditions of harvest followed by gleaning and the choosing of the Gleaning Queen to pick the first grain.

The two fires are only a foretaste of the changes coming to Walter’s village, a place where nothing has changed for as long as anyone can remember. There is the presence of an oddly shaped man who draws maps of Master Kent’s property, followed more ominously by Edmund Jordan, cousin to the late Mrs. Kent, who is laying claim to the property with the intention of enclosing the fields for sheep.

This richly detailed story immerses us in village life. Although a time period is not specified, it is most likely the late 18th century. The appearance of the strangers, most likely thrown off their land when the fields were enclosed, and the remoteness of Walter’s village lead me to think it is towards the end of the period of wholesale enclosure. Although I’ve read and thought about the changes—both good and bad—that followed in the wake of enclosure, I’ve learned a great deal from this book. It brought home to me what could likely happen during the process itself, the building distrust, the blaming of others.

It is a beautiful and disturbing book. It gripped my entire attention, immersing me in a way of life that vanished centuries ago. The portrait of that life that emerges is different from the Merrie England stereotype of singing ploughboys, an idyll of pastoral life before the Industrial Revolution swept the ploughboys and everyone else into the factories. There has been little to counteract this nostalgic view until recently when historians have begun examining the meager scrapings left behind by ordinary people, those outside the halls of power.

There is much here that speaks to our own time: the fear of change, the scapegoating of foreigners, the origins of our increasingly itinerant culture and its hordes of displaced people. Most disturbing to me is, as always, how easy it is to sway people. Walter says, “We’ve been ashamed, I think. And bewildered, truth be told. Bewildered by ourselves. These are not the customary village ways.”

I find myself thinking about how you can spend years making a place for yourself and still be an outsider. Although Walter has lived now in the village for many years and married and buried one of its daughters, he is still considered a foreigner.

As my friend Laura, who gave me this book, observed, these are the effects of isolation. It is no surprise that, as Robert Reich said in a May 25 2014 Facebook post, “Liberalism thrives near oceans and major ports; conservatism is mainly inland (the same holds true for other nations and on other continents as well), because each depends on the amount of contact with others who are different. Lots of interaction with differing cultures, religions, and points of view – such as is typically the case in coastal regions with major ports – generates looser rules and greater tolerance; less interaction means tighter rules and less tolerance.”

I agree. But this is also why I've made reading and writing the core of my life because they open our lives to each other. Through literature we can directly experience another person's life, which helps us develop empathy.

What book has most disturbed you?

Eventide, by Kent Haruf

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I’ve been judging a novel contest lately, reading the first 20-30 pages of a slew of novels. They’ve been mostly historical fiction, a rather wide category but still surprisingly over-represented in this particular sample. Is the past somehow more romantic than the present? More urgent? I’ve certainly read and enjoyed my share of historical fiction, but generally look for novels written in the author’s present-day, expecting to get a more accurate flavor of the time. And anyway, whatever we write about today will soon enough become part of history. I’m occasionally surprised by how dated some novels written only ten years ago seem to me now.

Back to the contest, though. Some of the novels obviously came from the pens (or PCs) of writers still learning their craft, forcing me to find ways to offer advice without inflicting too much pain. Other entries were more accomplished. Much to my surprise, I could tell this was so within the first paragraph. Later, trying to pinpoint what tipped me off, I realised that I had relaxed. I felt comfortable falling into the story, able to trust that the author would not let me down.

As diverse as these novels were—good/bad, historical/present-day, thrillers, romances, mysteries, chick lit, humor—they had one thing in common: they started with a bang. Not literally, of course, but in media res, with action or strong emotion, some catalyst to set the story in motion. This is what writers these days are instructed to do.

Then we have Kent Haruf. Eventide starts slowly, gently. The aging McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond, come up from the horse barn and wipe their feet before going in for a breakfast prepared by Victoria, a nineteen-year-old single mom they’d taken in a few years earlier. The scenes are set with leisurely details, describing their boots, the screened porch, the kitchen, the men, their steady routine. This is the day that they are driving Victoria and her little daughter to Fort Collins where the young woman is starting college.

In the next chapter we meet Betty June, putting her two children on the schoolbus. Betty and her husband, Luther, are mentally challenged, struggling to care for their children in a world that seems to them both baffling and hostile. Their social worker, Rose, offers help and advice, but she herself is sometimes overwhelmed by the cumulative weight of the many difficult situations her various clients find themselves in.

In the third chapter, we meet DJ, an undersized fifth-grader living with and caring for his 75-year-old grandfather, a retired gandy dancer on the railroad. DJ accompanies his grandfather on his monthly visits to the tavern so he could walk him home safely after celebrating the arrival of his pension check. DJ works on his homework while his grandfather visits with the other old men, telling “stories that were not exaggerated so much as they were simply enlarged a little.”

We follow these plain, good people as they pursue their lives in and around the town of Holt, Colorado. They endure the disappointments, losses, and small joys of everyday life. They drift apart and come together. The prose, too, is plain and good, the dialogue hinting at the accents and speech patterns of rural Colorado.

After the first three or four pages, I thought I was going to be bored out of my mind by this quiet novel, but once I adjusted and learned how to read it, I treasured each chapter, each page. I was touched, recognising again the generosity most people demonstrate toward those around them, how gentle they can be with each other. This story about how we connect with each other and how painful it is when those connections are severed served for me as a good corrective for all the hateful politics filling the airwaves, fear-fueled rantings against some imagined “other”. It also served to remind me that there are no rules for writing novels that cannot be broken by a good writer.