More of Sheila's Picks

Welcome back to the 1980s, small town USA, Owl, North Dakota to be exact. Klosterman disguises his social commentary as a novel set in a place and time that will seem familiar to us all—the town where nothing really ever changes. Indeed, one character notes that people toss around the phrase "nothing changes" in a small town meaning it figuratively, but when it comes to Owl, the meaning is literal. Nothing really changes. So how does Klosterman make a novel out of this snapshot of life?

The novel takes place over six months, during which the only thing that changes is the weather. He provides different chapters focusing on the sameness of life from different points-of-view: the retired farmer who has been in Downtown Owl forever, and seems to like and accept it all just fine, thank you very much, provided he makes he coffee-klatch with friends each day at 3 pm. The backup to the backup high school quarterback, Mitch, is having an existential crises about life, sports, and Owl; he’s the one who gets to provide the wry observations from high school. And apparently very little changes in high school, as Mitch’s thoughts wander from sports legends in Owl, to girls, to which of the two resident sociopaths is more likely to win a fight, to the near-religious attachment his friends have to 80s arena rock bands, and maddeningly on how the English teacher manages to seduce legions of 17 year olds and why no one will do anything about it. (One of the most interesting interludes is Mitch’s off-hand observation that it was likely that none of the kids in his English class were thinking about class, so Klosterman provides a quick and pithy snap of what each is thinking.)

The oddest Owl observer is the new teacher, a startlingly clueless college grad teaching history in Owl; why she’s teaching, what she’s teaching, and what she’s doing in Owl is a mystery to her, and certainly to the reader. She becomes the town’s newest and most darling barfly (how does she get to work?) but her outsider status allows her to tell the reader why it is that everyone has such a funny name, or two funny names. Turns out everyone has a nickname, and as is common in small towns, knowing the story of how you got the name marks you as an insider. She also gets to be the one person who offers the slightest of possibilities of something different to one local Owl legend. Her replay of conversation, complete with what he said (but what he meant) and what she said (but what she thought) in achingly and painfully accurate.

The novel reaches a quick and rather unhappy conclusion after the initial narratives, and the abruptness with which the story of same-old, same-old ends would make no sense were it not for the last words from one of the Owl observers—words that symbolize completely the lives of Owlets and, probably, most of us. He notes that "…we are remembered for the totality of our accomplishments, but we are defined by the singularity of our greatest failure. We are what we cannot do." Such is the way in Owl, and Klosterman nails it perfectly.

It’s rare to read a book so beautifully written that you get cold when the characters are looking at snow, but Goolrick’s writing brings alive the characters, story, and place—in this case, the wilderness of Wisconsin at the turn of the century. He sets his story carefully, attending to not only the physical features of the countryside, harsh particularly in winter, but also to the thoughts and psychological states of its inhabitants, many of whom simply snap and lose hope during the long winters, doing harm to themselves and others. It is against this backdrop—a beautiful setting which cannot obviate the evil in men’s hearts—that Goolrick sets his tale.

A wealthy and emotionally-closed man advertises for a reliable wife; he simply does not want to be alone for the remainder of his life. He had a wife, as it turns out, but she was untrustworthy and venal; he wants something fresh, simple, reliable, and unattractive. But that isn’t what he gets. Instead, his reliable wife (a con from the start, you can sense that from the opening scenes) has come to fleece him, not to pry open his cold heart or help him locate a lost child (not his, probably) from his first marriage. But in doing so the new wife thaws somewhat, although not to him per se; she continues with her plans (unveiled early on) to do harm to her new husband. Why she wishes to do that, how she came to be first the unreliable wife (and then the reliable one), and why he appears to let her even though he clearly knows what she is doing are three threads that together become the main part of the narrative. Only by attending carefully to the characters’ words and actions can you come to see that each is attempting to correct something unfixable, to atone for something that cannot be changed, to be persons they are not. As the novel progresses, we learn more and more (asking, always, how can this get worse?), making it impossible to predict the depth and complexity of the difficulties faced by Ralph and Catherine. At the same time, the prose is hypnotic and you truly move in the rhythms of their lives, making the story even more realistic.

"You buy your ticket, you take your chance," notes Benjamin Ford, protagonist of Dear American Airlines. While Benjamin’s observation is ostensibly about a 24-hour layover (delay?), caused by no discernible reason, Bennie’s time in the airport gives him an opportunity to reflect on his life, focusing on his mistakes, wrong turns, and bad luck. We learn of his deranged mother (of whom Bennie is jealous because she lives without the responsibility of actually getting anything accomplished in life), the vodka-soaked 20s that caused him to lose pretty much anything that might have been good, and his long-lost ability to write poetry. He drove away the poetry muse about the time his Stellas (girlfriend and daughter) left him awash in vodka and childishness because he wouldn’t get it together. At this point in his life, he’s living in NY and working as a translator of Polish novels.

Humor? Sure. And irony aplenty. The whole book is a letter to American Airlines, explaining Bennie’s current situation, none of which makes sense (to Bennie, anyhow) without knowing the whole story of how he ended up in O’Hare airport after a bus ride from Peoria during his NY to LA flight. Bennie was on the way to see his daughter, whom he has not seen since she was an infant after she was whisked away by her mom, Bennie’s first love and the one person who always had Bennie’s number and never failed to call him on it. He’s never really met his daughter, yet he’s supposed to be escorting her down the aisle at her wedding—er, commitment ceremony. It’s a drag missing the chunk of your kid’s life. Bennie’s narrative descriptions of the cranky children, cell-phone pecking strandees in O’Hare, sadistic plastic molded terminal chairs, and TSA’s constant wanding of his shoes and person as he makes continuous trips outside to smoke are spot-on descriptions of the misery of flight in America these days. Juxtaposed with the descriptions of the ridiculous situation Bennie is stuck in is his desultory intermittent work on a translation during the down times when he isn’t writing his screed to the airline. His translation focuses on real hell: war, loss of limbs, watching loved ones die, and realizing that there might not be a home to go home to after a war. Makes you feel like a missed wedding and 24 hours in O’Hare (where you are stuck eating Chipotle burritos) might not exactly be called a tragedy.

But Bennie’s life has been a tragedy, albeit a self-engineered one. But it doesn’t matter; playing the cards you dealt yourself and playing the hand the world gave you are not so terribly different. In the end it comes down to making sense of where you are, where you’ve been, and moving forward. "Which is the better fate?" Bennie asks. "Maybe the answer is that there are no better fates. You can’t escape what you are, be it possum or poet."

Anita Shreve never shies from difficult subjects, and her latest is no different in that regard. Testimony brings us head-on into a Vermont prep-school where one mistake (error in judgment? youthful indiscretion? life-changing transgression?) alters the course of the lives of a host of students, their parents, and school administrators. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different person (students, spouse, girlfriend, roommate), and so the story of how three boys—the rich prep, the spoiled athlete, the local-boy-makes-good—and one very troubled girl end up in a dorm room after a night of drinking is pieced together in such a way that more questions about the incident are uncovered even as many are being answered. Shreve adds layers to the story through each character, adds to the difficulty of making ethical judgments of each person’s responses by slowly providing small nuggets of mitigating information, and adds layers of characters until you get a full and satisfying conclusion. If you can get past the opening chapter (a somewhat explicit description of dorm-room sex) you will quickly become enmeshed in the story and you will also decide (perhaps in error) the proper price for very-human mistakes.

Berg fans will be happy with her latest, Home Safe, as this novel (like her others) presents a rich tapestry of complex characters, many of whom seem familiar because they may very well be your neighbors, your friends, or yourself. Berg has never shied away from writing from the perspective of persons of varying ages, and this time she gives us an enjoyable protagonist in Helen Ames, a recently-widowed (and definitely at loose ends) older woman who can’t figure out her next step, as her husband was always the one to lead the way while she was content to stay at home and become a successful (albeit not critically-acclaimed) novelist and mother. As the story opens, Helen has come to rely on her twenty-something daughter Tessa for nearly everything great and small, and she has stopped writing. Helen deals with her life like a thread at the bottom of a sweater: she gives it a tug, and it all comes unraveled. You’ll alternately cringe and cheer each time she takes a new step. Her first foray into teaching a basic writer’s course is a disaster, her attempts to determine what her husband was hiding from her (and which cost them nearly the entire nest egg) lead to little more than confusion and then great consternation, and her interactions with Tessa become so difficult that her daughter stops answering the phone. What finally helps Helen move forward is the realization that even in her new life—the one without the husband but with the dream house, the one without her daughter and also without the incessant desire to be there for Tessa—she is still needed. Like A Good House before it, Berg conjures up several remarkable friends in need for Helen, and each adds a dimension of interest to Helen’s life. Each counts on her to find for them or lead them to what they need or want, as only Helen can. Eventually Helen, too, finds her way in her new life, but not without several starts and stops.

It's not a book about the storm, not really--even though it starts with Betsy and with Katrina it ends-- because the spirit of New Orleans never really ends, does it? Maybe not, but maybe so. Nine Lives is nonfiction, but it reads like a novel with short chapters told from various perspectives. Nine people--the Parish coroner, a cop, a transexual, a thug, a rich krewe captain, a hs band director, a Mardi Gras Indian--tell the story of their lives in short pieces, starting in 1965, and skipping along over months and years as they move forward (and back, and around). Their lives are all defined by New Orleans and its customs, feel, food, people, speech, and ethos. All are remarkable in their own right for the complexity of their stories and the events of their lives. You have to wonder whether New Orleans affects everyone the same way, because everyone seems to have had such eventful times. The summer of 2005 arrives about 2/3 of the way through the book, bringing both a time for change as well as Katrina. Some left, some stayed; all narrate the post-Katrina city in its horror (it really was worse than I thought) and with a clear sense of outrage, sadness, and disbelief. You will come to love all of these people (even the street thug) as you see how they tried (and still try) to prevent the storm from defining their lives. Read this one with a map of the city at hand, and be prepared to stay up late because you won't want to put it down.

Three stories, three people, three lives–one cut short when one overlap among them occurs. A wealthy woman finds her husband has been cheating, and in her blinded fury and hurt drives over a lovely woman, Ruth Mitchell, whose husband adores her. The woman becomes further unhinged; the widower, Arthur, slides further and faster into his own world (writing to Ruth), and in the mean time he finds portions of a manuscript Ruth left behind. The story of Eva in the manuscript provides a touching counterpart to Ruth and Arthur’s marriage, and the doomed marriage of the wealthy doctor’s wife. After a time, Arthur believes Ruth has returned to him, as the doctor’s wife has tried to atone by constantly checking on the diminished Arthur. Her atonement–and the impossibility of it–means that Arthur must confront (over and over) life without Ruth–the impossibility of it. This book is not light, but the narrative is well-written and these characters will stay with you long after you finish reading.

When Willie Upton returns to her upstate NY home after a romance-turned-bad with her Stanford graduate school advisor, she sees her town of Templeton with new eyes. It turns out that the town history she knew (or thought she knew) like the back of her hand is a mere sanitized version, like the life stories of nearly everyone else she has ever known. Willie is the daughter of a former hippie, Vi, once the free-spirited gal in town but now eating non-organic sugar-filled foods and embracing religion. When Vi drops the bomb that Willie’s dad isn’t some guy from a commune out West but is in fact a man from town, Willie channels the energy she should be using to get her academic life back on track to finding him. Along the way, she discovers much, quite a bit of which was always there for her to see.

Given that Willie is related to nearly everyone in town (and she’s got the genealogy charts to prove it), it shouldn’t be too hard to find her dad, right? She is the descendant of several town bigwigs, all of whom came (legally and illicitly) from one Marmaduke Temple. Duke’s relations with his family, his sons from different women, his wife, his town, and even (to Willie’s utter surprise) a slave result in various lines, most of which are tangled with arson, poison, questionable habits, adultery, illegitimacy, and lunacy. As she digs deeper through letters between people dead over a hundred years, Willie becomes closer to the current residents of town, many of whom, like she, came about somewhere through the convolutions of Templeton lineage. The mystery is unraveled in documents, letters, and stories from people about whom Willie has never given much thought. What they think of Willie, and her mom, comes out during her summer crusade to find the truth, and Willie starts to see the town and even old high school friends with new and more sympathetic eyes. With Vi pushing her to return to Stanford, an ill friend who could stand some company, and a married lover trying to convince Willie to come back for one final semester sling, Willie works faster and harder, speed-reading in the town library genealogy stacks. Dry as much research like this is typically, it isn’t when Willie’s doing it. The entire history of Templeton is a parallel to the real deal of Cooperstown, NY. The town was saved when JF Temple (think James Fennimore Cooper) landed the Baseball Hall of Fame for the town (for love, not money). Natty Bummpo and Hawkeye make cameos, and tales of Indian settlement and abuse are interwoven, meshing the present day with the past, and Groff’s fiction with Cooper’s. And, strangely, underneath the lake a monster may actually exist or have existed, watching the town. Of course, as Willie uncovers the past she finds that there have been many monsters in Templeton, not just the one of unknown reptilian nature in the lake.

The Monsters of Templeton is irreverent and creative (some chapters are letters, some two pages long, some with dialogue from hundreds of years previous, some current, some with portraits), and it reminds the reader that what seems simple—people, genealogy, history—is actually multi-layered, richly textured, and more than straightforward…much like Groff’s ambitious novel.

Anything positive you’ve heard about Three Cups of Tea is probably understated: this is an inspiring story that will leave you in awe of the tenacity of one man to accomplish good for the world, and which will also have the collateral effect of helping you to understand the hows and whys of the modern-day geo-politics and culture in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Greg Mortenson’s failure to complete his climb of K2 led him to a needed recovery in the remotest portion of Afghanistan, where it became clear to him that the best use of his considerable energy would not be attempting to scale a mountain out of existential boredom, but would instead be directed to the needs of the villagers in mountainous and desolate Karakoram. Mortenson repaid his host village’s hospitality by returning to build a school for its girls...and then moved through the mountains, across villages, around crooked politicians, and through militants and the Taliban to build over 50 more. Mortenson doesn’t take no for an answer–unless there are guns pointed at him (and that certainly happened a few times), and he remains oh-so-human in his quest to bring books and education to the wildest portions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The book is highly readable considering the difficulty of recounting a story with so many difficult names and places, and in some spots it’s quite literary. Every sentence, however, is inspiring.

Two sisters—Clem and Louisa Jardine—could not be more unalike, and their differences have always served as the main force in their relationship. Louisa is jealous of Clem’s life, vitality, and relationship with their mother…and, yet, she would be lost without the ability to live through Clem, and Clem would be lost without Louisa’s stability. The book provides two strong and very interesting women characters, and sails through their life (past and present) in such a way that you can’t be quite sure whether ultimately the sisters adore each other or despise each other, because they spend half of their time adoring (and the other half despising) one another. Like other Glass novels, this one is well-written, employing alternating narrators, and shows careful attention to narrative that spans time and lifetimes. You can easily become lost in Clem and Louisa’s lives.