 |
REVIEWS
The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland
The Dial Press, a division of Random House, 2007 Hardcover, $23.00
Review by Joe Ponepinto
Cracking the barrier of the first novel – having that first book published – is perhaps a more difficult goal than ever for writers. Because publishing has become more business-oriented and less willing to take risks on new writers, agents and publishers tend to look for manuscripts that exhibit certain characteristics that appeal to readers. Travis Holland’s The Archivist’s Story is an excellent example of those writing traits, and it’s a darn good read too.
The story centers on Pavel Vasilievich, a former teacher of literature, living in Moscow in 1939, just prior to the start of World War II. He’s lost his position at the university and is now working at the Lubyanka, a secret arm of the Communist government. His position, ironically, is to archive and catalog manuscripts that have been confiscated from poets, novelists and other writers for being deemed critical of the administration, before they are ultimately destroyed.
Pavel sees the writer Isaac Babel incarcerated, and watches as torture and intimidation take their toll on the once proud man. He stands by helplessly as friends are hounded and arrested by government goons. He battles against a wall of red tape in his effort to discover the truth about his wife’s death. Finally, Pavel decides to fight back – in perhaps the only way he can. He takes a story of Babel’s from the archives and hides it under his clothes before he leaves the building one night. Later he takes another. If he can keep from being discovered, these stories may survive the purge and be delivered into more understanding hands in the future.
Holland has written a book that was a perfect piece for a first-time novelist, according to his agent, Amy Williams. The story contains fewer than 100,000 words and is divided into thirty-seven brief chapters, enticing readers to keep moving forward. The language is accessible. Details and description are beautifully done. It’s clear Holland did a tremendous job of research for this book, which makes this historical fiction quite believable.
The author provides the reader with three interwoven sub-plots, each of which is developed quickly and which moves rapidly to its climax: the first, of course, is Pavel’s dilemma over the Babel stories; second is his attempt to find out the truth about his wife’s death aboard a train that was mysteriously derailed in an isolated part of the country; third is the deterioration of his mother, who has contracted Alzheimer’s Disease and can no longer be left alone. These all come together seamlessly at the novel’s climax, yielding an ending that is ultimately satisfying.
Holland is a graduate of the University of Michigan’s Creative Writing MFA program who has received Hopwood Awards for the novel and for short fiction. His short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Five Points and The Quarterly .
In the Woods by Tana French
Penguin, New York.
ISBN: 978-0-670-03860-2.
Hardcover: $24.95It is the summer of 1984. Three children living in the small Dublin suburb of Knocknaree disappear into the woods. Two days later, only one is found, clinging to a tree, unable to remember what transpired, dried blood pooled in the bottom of his shoes. Twenty years later, the sole survivor, Adam Ryan, is working as a detective in the Murder squad and is assigned the case of a murdered twelve year old girl, found in the woods in the rural suburb of Knocknaree. Could the two cases be linked? Will the investigation spur the repressed memories of that terrible day years earlier? Who could possibly perpetrate such a heinous act and why?
Tana French's debut novel, In the Woods, is a goosebump-raising thriller that will keep the reader turning pages and sneaking reading time while waiting in line at the grocery store. Her characters, Adam Ryan, the boy who survived, and Cassie Maddox, his partner and best friend, are complex, flawed and realistic. The story is told by Adam Ryan via a retrospective, sometimes chronologically stepping through police procedures, some flashbacks to his own experience with personal commentary interspersed. This foreshadowing heightened the tension in parts but became intrusive toward the last third of the book. How many times are you going to say that you should have picked up on the clues earlier? If you did that, the book would be done already.
The actual murderer and motive provides a shocker of an ending, one that gave me that wonderful 'Aha!' moment that mystery fans so enjoy. I found the book a fast and enjoyable read. Ms. French writes beautifully and I would gladly shell out cold hard cash to purchase her next novel. One of the blurbs on the back cover of the book compares her storytelling to that of DuMaurier and Hitchcock, and I agree wholeheartedly. If you enjoy a creepy thriller with vivid characters and lots of suspense, this book will not disappoint.
44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
Anchor Books, Random House
Paperback, $13.95Review by Jo Meador
A master observer of the human comedy, Alexander McCall Smith delivers a jaunty stroll among the denizens of Edinburgh in 44 Scotland Street — to be exact, the Bohemian edge of Edinburgh “where lawyers and accountants were outnumbered — just — by others”. It is the “others” who interest us here. The author’s sharp eye and keen wit cut deeply into the quirks and bumps of several lives — the flat dwellers of the title’s address — to reveal a tender and optimistic slice of Edinburgh life.
Written as a daily serial for an Edinburgh newspaper, 44 Scotland Street introduces a memorable cast of characters. There is the rational and questioning Pat who sublets a flat from the narcissistic Bruce, to whom she is reluctantly attracted. The neighbor across the hall, Domenica — a middle-aged woman with some means — takes Pat under her wing to guide her interests away from the womanizing Bruce. Then there’s Bertie, a precocious five-year-old who plays the tenor sax like a pro, speaks fluent Italian, and yearns for the train sets and soccer so abhorrent to his mother Irene.
Pat selects Bruce’s flat to rent because of its proximity to her new job at the Something Special Gallery, a shop filled with obscure paintings by unknown or anonymous artists. Mathew, a wealthy dilettante, owns the shop. As Pat is attracted to Bruce, so Mathew develops an interest in Pat, although he spends most of his time at Big Lou’s coffee bar across the street trying to mingle with the regulars. Pat’s story leads into a mystery of sorts where she must recover a valuable gallery painting which has been stolen from her flat. Domenica introduces her to a portraitist, takes them on a journey through the Edinburgh underworld before they the mystery is solved.
Bruce’s life centers on his career — moving up or out of surveying — and finding female companions, which leads him to an uncomfortable dance with the boss’s daughter in full dress kilt. When Pat learns Bruce will go after any willing game, she also discovers that he is key to tracking down the lost painting.
Nearly a fourth of the episodes in the collection feature the adventures of the rebellious Bertie and his mother’s efforts to have the world recognize his genius. Irene’s ideas on child rearing come from her loose interpretation of the work of Melanie Klein, a noted British psychologist. When Bertie is suspended from school for writing graffiti in Italian on the bathroom wall, Irene seeks a sympathetic therapist who agrees with her opinions on Klein, all the while using Klein’s real theory to coerce her into allowing Bertie to be a five-year-old.
In spite of the disjointed subplot, this episodic novel moves. The characters engage even though they are lacking in the darker tones of human nature. Wacky and all too human, they never fail to surprise and entertain, which kept this reader turning pages far into the night.
Two elements of craft delighted the writer in me: first, the lucid and coherent style of a trained journalist with a sharp eye and keen wit. There was truth beneath every quirk and a lesson in every foible. The incidental reporting kept the story fresh and with the rhythm of an early morning trot on the racecourse.
The second admirable element of craft was the writer’s deft hand at shifting point of view. The reader flits from character to character like the journalist’s fly, only this creature sits on the character’s forehead instead of the wall. A shift in character can occur at the spur of the moment during a single action or dialogue. The shifts are not only easy to follow; they provide some of the upbeat pacing noted above. Thus even as one character might villainize another, there is the second character popping up with his own view, hero of his own story.
In his preface the author likens his work to Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, which he deliberately mimicked. The tone and pacing are as light as Oscar Wilde and as penetrating to human nature. And like Wilde, this author entertains and instructs in a single stroke of the pen.
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Alfred A. Knopf
Hardcover, $26.95Review by Joseph Ponepinto
One of the more ironic aspects of love is that the more one experiences it, the more difficult it can be to understand. We see that perfect person across the room and suddenly find ourselves unable to function. But sometimes we find the courage, and then we date, we marry, we share lives, we just begin to relax – and then it falls apart, who knows why, and we are left to examine the evidence of its undoing, alter our strategy, work on our appearance, and try again. Or not. Somewhere in all that activity, in that constant anxiety, are the answers, we are sure. But every time we think we've got one pinned down it's revealed to be nonsense, because the answer for me isn't the answer for you, at least not today.
Where does one begin to parse love? For Richard Russo it's back to upstate New York, this time to the small, failing town of Thomaston, just three quarters of an hour down the thruway from Mohawk, the setting for his first novel some twenty years ago. His writing has stayed largely in the New York-New England area. In an essay he wrote a few years ago, Russo explained that to him, the setting of a book was very much like a character, and when portrayed properly added to the development of the human characters. His first novel, Mohawk, was originally placed in Arizona, and under another title. It simply didn't work there, he said, because the descriptions and feel of the place were too much those of a tourist, rather than a native. It's interesting that in Bridge of Sighs several chapters take place in Venice, Italy, but except for dropping the names of a few restaurants, one might not know it. Of course the character who lives there is something of a tourist, having been transplanted from upstate.
Somehow we never tire of Russo's places, the characters' lives so intertwined with the fortunes of their hometown that they can never be separated, and he builds on these relationships to create spectacular depth. In Thomaston young Lou C. Lynch (Lucy, thanks to a teacher who said it too fast when taking attendance), is a child seeking to avoid the local bullies. He's kidnapped by them and dumped into a trunk at an abandoned mill. Lucy is too scared and too slow to realize he could have walked away at any time. Too scared also, to admit that one of the bullies is the boy he idolizes as his best friend, Bobby Marconi. The bullies try to scare him by pretending to saw the trunk in half, but it works too well – after that he's never quite right again. Lucy is plagued by spells, reliving the incident at he most inconvenient times.
Much of the book is written first-person, from Lucy's view. Russo, who can make anything work, paints Lucy in an as unfavorable light as an author dare make a central character. He is big and dopey, sentimental and all-too trusting, all aspects of character his mother, Tessa, tries throughout his adolescence to talk him out of. But her real-world logic didn't work on his father either, and the two of them remain loveable doofuses for many years.
Big Lou (Lucy's dad) is the cushy rock that holds the Lynch clan together, despite the fact he's oblivious to the snubs of neighbor Marconi (Bobby's dad), and the tension between Tessa and his brother, Dec, with whom Tessa had a torrid affair before she decided to get serious about life and marry Big Lou instead. And now they all work together in the family convenience store, struggling to make ends meet, rubbing elbows, rubbing each other the wrong way, but working it out like a 1960s version of the Waltons. It's a tough go at first, but eventually the store holds its own against the corporate-owned A&P, and provides a warmth that pulls in customers, as well as teens looking for a refuge from the cold of their broken home lives.
Lucy, stumbling his way through high school, still lacks friends. Bobby returns from military school and Lou (the grown-up Lucy) reattaches himself to his boyhood idol. Bobby thinks the big kid is a bit of an embarrassment to hang out with, but he's not as bad as he used to be. After all, Lou has somehow managed to get himself a girlfriend. She's just a shy, sweet artist, and from the day they got together they both realized it would be a lifelong affair. But although she's not really Bobby's type (he's dating Nan, the Barbie doll cutie whom all the boys want), there's something about Sarah he can't shake out of his system. She feels the same way about him. Their private talks have a depth that neither shares with their significant others. So here's where Russo gives us the showdown: which kind of love will win out? The long, slow, comfortable love of two people who have made their commitment and maintain it like a pot of soup over a low flame, or the passionate, full burn of a love that is just waiting for something to provide the spark? Is she too good of a girl to abandon Lou? For Bobby, does he love Sarah only because she's Lou's? With the constraints placed upon them, Sarah and Bobby may never know from where their love is born, and that's exactly why it will never go away, even after Sarah and Lou are married, with child, and take over the store from Big Lou and Tessa.
The questions never stop coming for us, and for Bobby, who leaves Thomaston after an explosive scene. He changes his name from dad's Marconi to mom's Noonan and directs his passions towards art. Following in Sarah's example he becomes a painter. Not just a painter like her, but a world-renowned artist. He leaves the states and wanders Europe, settling for the last decade in Venice, home of the infamous bridge (which both of them wind up painting at various points in their careers). He paints bestsellers, while Lou and Sarah mind the store. Love's not done with any of them, though. Even at sixty, Sarah and Bobby harbor unresolved feelings for each other, and the couple's planned trip to Italy encourages Sarah to put her thoughts in a letter to Bobby, which Lou discovers. For once, Lou angers. He hasn't had a spell for years, but now he zones out and the trip is cancelled. Sarah questions her life with him and leaves – for how long even she doesn't know. She heads to New York. Bobby's on his way to the city to show his latest work. Perhaps, if they meet, they could still be friends, or maybe more. But then there's Lou – big, sweet Lou – who loves them both, standing there like the big galoot he is, in between them. How could they do it to him?
It takes an author like the Pulitzer Prize winning Russo (who earned the prize for Empire Falls) to artfully track the lives of these characters and about half a dozen more over a period of more than fifty years. It's a seamless web of fiction that, like the best literary works, is more real than real life. There may be no other author today who so fully captures the feelings and motivations of people, and who does it without gimmick or melodrama, in easy, accessible language that mirrors the way his characters live. That his subjects think and react the way his readers do is Russo's genius – like many works of genius it seems so simple when it is presented on the page, but in analysis the scope and effort become awesome.
Does Bridge of Sighs hold any answers for us? Think about your loves – the love you have for your spouse, for your children and parents, for your friends when you were growing up, the friends you have now, for the people you dated before you made that big commitment and became who you are. In all that lovin' have you ever come up with any of the answers? Have you ever figured out why it happens like this? Or is it just as fulfilling to keep playing the game, to keep trying and winning, trying and losing, and to hold on to the memories? That, after all, may be all we can take out of it. For Russo, it is enough.
Keyhole Opera by Bruce Holland Rogers
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Wheatland Press (November 30, 2005)
ISBN: 0975590375Anyone who's run across Bruce Holland Rogers in the pages of The Sun or Good Housekeeping already knows this book is bound to be a See's Candy box full of chocolates; some of the stories are sweet, some a little nutty or chewy, but all are delicious and just the right size for a quick treat. Even when Rogers' sentiments turn dark, there is a hopeful, fairy-tale quality to his work. These short-short stories cover the gamut from parable to stories anchored in the everyday world around us, but always with a slant or twist that makes us see that world from a slightly skewed angle.
Perhaps more than most short fiction, the form of the short-short forces readers to become participants in the story world, supplying one's own experience to fill in the blanks necessary with such a brief word count. And—in the words of author Kate Wilhelm, stories "offer a glimpse through a keyhole, where even a brief description can be overwhelming, any digression the imposition of an intruder."
Though stories-in-miniature, each selection in Keyhole Opera leaves the reader with a feeling of story satisfaction, eliciting a sigh of appreciation or delight at the last word. Keep this book handy, and when you feel you deserve a little reward, dip into it instead of that candy box. Your heart, brain, and backside will thank you.