Books—LaRose, by Louise Erdrich

I was lucky enough to hit one of those holiday weekend/good book jackpots—a few days off, plus Louise Erdrich's latest novel, LaRose. 

The title character is a boy of 5 whose father, Landreau, "gives" him to the family of a same-aged boy of his closest friend Peter; Landreau shoots the child by accident. (Their wives, Emmaline and Nora, are half-sisters.) The unthinkably generous act is a reparation tradition in Ojibwe culture. Set in North Dakota, the story occasionally jumps back in time to unravel some of the complicated relationships between the family and community members. As can sometimes happen in life, the children poignantly become protectors of the parents.

LaRose is also name borne by four progenitors of the boy, all women. This legacy is given to the final child of a family, and so apparently inherited are his gifts of sensitivity and vision, in addition to being a good and loyal kid. Even when he's footballed between the two families—the Irons and the Raviches—he offers emotional salve and a raison d'etre in both homes for parents and siblings alike. The most extreme case is his foster mother, mentally imbalanced and suicidal. He and his sister Maggie share a "watching stone;" whichever sibling has it must try to make sure their mother doesn't try to kill herself. They systematically cleanse the house of bullets, rope, knives, even a chair used to try to hang herself.

This setting sounds gloomy, if profound, but the rewards of the novel come in Erdrich's plainspoken yet probing descriptions of quotidian life. The richest emanate, somewhat unexpectedly, from the doings of tough kid Maggie—how she schemes to be wicked to her new little brother, stabbing him with a pencil so the lead breaks off (he turns it into a badge of honor by calling the remnant blue mark a "tattoo", and she in turn stabs herself so they match); how she beats up a brutish gang of boys as revenge for their cruelty to LaRose; how she doggedly learns to make "kills" in volleyball despite being short and scrawny. 

Childhood bonds and teenage crushes among the parents' generation are also explored. Romeo, a wounded scavenger and leech, finds surprising sanity and physical redemption after failing in an attempt to build a CSI-like case against Landreau, only to be foiled by the childrens' "mother-guarding" the rifles. He even makes belated amends of sorts with his son, adopted by Landreau to raise after the boy's mother (whose name the child never knew) bolted.

While there's less traditional Indian folklore in LaRose than there was in Erdrich's wonderful novel The Round House, it illuminates daily modern life and coping in Native Americans' lives, showing how tragedy, redemption, and small successes happen all the time, just like in the rest of the country. 

Purity, by Jonathan Franzen

Purity, the title of Jonathan Franzen’s novel, is the name of one of the protagonists. It is also an adjective the he uses several times to describe an aspirational aspect of some of his charismatic, treacherous, and staid characters. Purity, who chooses to go by Pip, is impoverished character who is immediately annoying after the first chapter describes her ineptitude and self-absorption; this soon gives way to her resolute love for her mother, shading her a bit rosier. This engrossing epic novel focuses on several main character plotlines that grow like a dense, intertwined (and sometimes suffocating) ball of roots.

There’s a hall-of-mirrors quality to the novel. The characters’ stories are told in first and third person, signaling a change in perspectives and tone; in other chapters, further definition of the same person may emerge from other points of view or actions. Time scrolls forward and backward, revealing many a-ha moments as we’re able to eventually tag the same person as a daughter, mother, or love interest. Impetuous youthful actions intersect with major geopolitical events to carve the life paths of the protagonists, but intent and an overarching scheme shadow everything, ominously. Agribusiness, Wikileaks, and online-only respected publications provide the backdrop. The fall of the Berlin wall actually becomes a threat rather than a benevolent event on a personal level. Power, both economic and interpersonal, is wielded and withheld in numerous ways. Franzen zooms out and in, macro to micro, making the trivial momentous and vice versa.  

Many of the main characters’ names begin with “an,” which can mean a lack or nonexistence of something. Annegret, Anabel (and NOT Annabelle!), Andreas, Annelie. The accumulation of these A names play with the mind; I flipped back continually to check that I hadn’t mistaken one name for another. Then I subtracted the prefix to get Egret, Abel, Dreas, Elie. Meaningless, perhaps, but certainly as much as Franzen’s deliberate play on names and shifting identities. At first it feels weird, like how pitcher Roger Clemens gave his kids names all starting with K (as in, strikeout), but then accrues and feels more subconsciously significant than anything else.

Franzen's language is mostly straightforward, but once in awhile he drops in a lovely poetic bomblet. His concise yet profound manner of describing people, things, and places is also impressive. His last novel, Freedom, felt more affected and closer to satire. In Purity, we meet complicated, unlikable people who have done reproachable, sometimes horrific things, but we sympathize. And with Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, it does feel like one of the most significant novels of the past couple of years. I was fortunate to read it over the extended weekend; it took me over like an extended dream—one I was sorry to see end.

Books on Planes

I didn't intentionally read the fascinating historical account of The Wright Brothers (David McCullough) and the novel In the Unlikely Event (Judy Blume) back to back; it was chance. But it was also kismet—these two books revolving around flight couldn't be more different, and yet a part of a continuous arc. 

McCullough's book, about the Wrights' development of the airplane, sounds pretty dry, what with its charmless title and treatment of a subject that has received a lot of coverage over the last century. But the author alights on just enough facts and tidbits of physics to move things along, rather than bog them down, which can happen in inventor biographies. He gets at the Ohio natives' curiosity, creativity, courage, and ability to work tirelessly, and without saying these traits defined some ideal American spirit, does just that. 

He follows their lives from their Dayton bicycle shop, where they designed and built bikes and then flying machines, to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where much of the testing and development took place in relatively inhospitable conditions. A considerable time was spent abroad, primarily in France after being spurned by the US authorities, testing machines to seal a government purchase. There, Wilbur in particular evolved into an international figure, developing a taste for bespoke suits. Finally the US government came to appreciate their inventions, and they won the success they deserved. Apparently their dogged pursuit of copyright infringements helped them claim due credit for their work, and allowed them to be known widely as the inventors of flight. This litigiousness seems as much a part of American business as good old invention. Nonetheless, the book is a reminder of the incorrigible spirit of mechanical invention of a century ago.  


Blume's novel, on the other hand, is based around a series of plane crashes at Newark Airport in Elizabeth, NJ, in the early 1950s. Despite the Korean War, which loomed in the distant background, she paints a time of relative innocence in the northeast, primarily by noting lyrics of pop songs of the first half of the century. Into the midst of this typical middle to upper class suburban enclave crash three planes within a span of a few years. 

Blume structures the book by leading chapters with quotes from newspaper articles; one of the main characters is a journalist who, by default, became the chronicler of the strange time. Another organizing device Blume used is to title anecdotal sections by their subjects' names. While a bit rudimentary, it helps keep the list of players straight for the reader.

The crashes couldn't help but affect the people in the surrounding area. One young woman, an anorexic, channels one of the crash victim's thoughts and actions. A young man becomes a hero for rescuing several people. Whether by coincidence or cause and effect, the events shake up complacent relationships and induce life changes. The wide-ranging trauma seemed to catalyze the development of nascent personality traits. It explores the experience of flying from a consumer's point of view at a time when flight was becoming commonplace. And without directly stating it, the book questions the entire act of these giant metal machines defying gravity and launching into the air, carrying us. It was a comedown of sorts from the dizzying effect of the Wright brothers' story, which is nonetheless one of the great tales in American history. 

Recent Novels of Note

It's pretty quiet in the dance world now, so thought I'd share some notes on books of interest that I've read recently.

In the historical novel vein, I was quietly won over by Michel Déon's The Foundling Boy, originally published in 1975 in French, but recently translated into English by Julian Evans. It follows twists and turns in the life of Jean, a foundling, in France during WWI. Despite some gender chauvinism, which winds through the narrative, Déon paints an absorbing portrait of Provence, Paris, London, broaches the topic of nature vs. nurture, and brings to life some all-too human characters. This fall, the translated second volume in the Foundling series is being published; I look forward to it with relish.


California, by Edan Lepucki, made headlines as the first of Hachette's titles to be touted by Stephen Colbert after Amazon began its campaign to punish the mega-publisher. This post-near-apocalyptic story focusing on a couple surviving in what they thought was solitude resonated with me far more than I expected. Some plot changes were at times predictable, at other times shocking, and some settings fantastical to the point of disbelief. Lepucki treats the lasting significance of institutions on impressionable youth, the enduring bonds and resentments of family, and the terrifying mindset of survivors.



Haruki Marukami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, currently being über marketed, is strange, as the author's settings and conceits can be. The book itself is highly designed, from its Mondrianesque hard cover cloaked by a perforated surcover, to the graphic treatment of its page numbers, to the precious size and look of the volume. It reflects in part Marukami's smooth, almost glib language to describe complicated emotional states. The novel follows the title character in the aftermath of being banished from a clique of five friends, and his efforts to come to terms with it. Marukami makes even the most difficult of topics emerge in casually forced pitter patter. There's a supernatural streak that runs through his novels—less so in this than his epic previous work, 1Q84—that makes you wonder if the events in dreams can possibly be real. At times it can feel lightweight, but his writing style is distinctive. Still, all the hype feels misplaced.

Book Rec: The 40s—Anthology of a Turbulent Decade

One confession no doubt common to many New Yorkers: I always have between one and seven issues of The New Yorker sitting bedside, waiting patiently for me to find the time to read through them. I never regret doing so, but depending on the height of the stack, they do at times take on the affect of an impatient teacher checking her watch for my tardy arrival.

So it was with trepidation that I took up reading The 40s, a newly published, nearly 700-page anthology of pieces from The New Yorker from that decade. Like the magazine, it's a mix of journalism, profile, criticism, poetry, fiction. The 1940s hold great fascination for me, post-war, pre-modern, a time of great transition in the world, and in New York, and this book delves into the historical global context of that pivotal decade.

The volume contains gem after gem, leading with a section on the war, which sets the table for the remainder of the book. Some favorite pieces: John Hersey on Lieutenant John F. Kennedy and Hiroshima, Janet Flanner on the Monuments Men, Niccolò Tucci on a visit with Albert Einstein, the poem "Barroom Matins" by Louis Macneice, and stories by EB White, Carson McCullers, and VS Pritchett, among many others. 

I do wish it contained a sampling of cartoons from that era, assuming they were included back then. I also would have liked to see some stand-alone dance criticism (also providing it was featured at the time), although it does refer to Agnes De Mille's Rodeo in Robert A. Simons' review of Copland and Shostakovich. There is also a hefty sampling of writings on "Feminine Fashions" by Lois Long, which are sprightly reading, but it's an overly generous dedication of space relative to the other cultural genres. 

Those quibbles aside, it's a fascinating overview of a pivotal time. I consumed the book while its younger, slimmer brethren sat watching, waiting for their turn to be read and perhaps graduate to an anthology of this decade in years to come.

Book Rec: The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

I was just sitting down to put fingers to keys about James McBride's The Good Lord Bird, took a moment to read the newspaper, and saw that he won the National Book Award for it. Hallelujah! A well-deserved award for a captivating historical novel about the abolitionist John Brown as witnessed through the eyes of a young man impersonating a female who gains the nickname Little Onion (referred to humorously as "the Onion").

The Good Lord Bird, named for the near-extinct woodpecker so beautiful that a sighting elicits, "Good Lord!," not only recounts the historical events of Brown's Sisyphean battle, a white man trying to "hive the bees," or rally blacks to overturn slavery when even they weren't so inclined.

Every page contains McBride's whimsical and hilarious observations on human nature and physical impressions. Calm as an egg or a blade of grass. Cool as smoke and all business. Endless ways of describing insanity, such as: his cheese finally slid off his biscuit. Sheer joy in juggling words: fluffling, trickeration, sirring and missying one another.

Even if you think reading about abolition doesn't sound like much fun (although it most definitely is), read The Good Lord Bird for its sheer linguistic pleasures. You'll be swept up in the fascinating (award-winning!) story as well.

While I was away, I read

Summer vacation was pretty unproductive (not counting sweat), but I did get some reading done. A few fiction recs:

The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer
This novel's title refers to sibling friends of the protagonist, Jules. She is one of a lifelong group of pals who meet at summer camp, an idyll which late in the book morphs into a darker iteration of rural. Jules struggles to define her own modest life as successful and fulfilling by societal norms despite being the shoulder on which all her friends lean. Wolitzer explores the lasting bonds, and sometimes devil's bargain, of close relationships, as well as infatuation, fate, and the seduction of wealth. Wolitzer is a Smith-then-Brown alum, once a guest editor at the old Mademoiselle magazine (which stopped publishing in 2001!?). Engrossing, but takes a bit of investment.




Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell
This borderline YA novel is a binge read that may seem sweet, but the main character's family situation is heartbreaking and keeps the story grounded. Two unconventional high school kids bond over the power of music in a kind of 1980s Romeo & Juliet. And the ending is not neat, which adds to the book's intrigue. Quirky and quick. 

The Engagements, by J. Courtney Sullivan
Several storylines that seem to connect only through the symbol of marriage—diamonds—stealthily weave together in the closing chapters. The introductory story about the copywriter who came up with the tagline "A Diamond Is Forever" binds everything together. The other individual stories are largely bittersweet, lest you think it's treacly romance. Sullivan's witty and her characters are snarky enough to get frequent chuckles, and I'm still marvelling at how she brings it all together. Another Smith grad. 




And don't forget:

The Son, by Phillipp Meyer
A sprawling history of Texas through several generations of a family. Includes good old-fashioned Native American anecdotes about the practical skills of life (like scalping and hunting) that give the book some exotic grit. 

The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller
Life after an apocalypse of sorts. Spare, succinct prose with finely etched characters, but the most gut-wrenching relationship is between a man and his dog.

Books: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

The Dog Stars' protagonist, Hig, has survived a terrible epidemic that has left just a handful of sparsely scattered survivors, all wary of contamination, poaching, and murder, and therefore fully armed and on the defensive. He lives with his dog, Jasper, and another man, Bangley, skilled in battle strategy and armaments, in a makeshift family compound; they banter like an old married couple. Hig has a plane and access to fuel, which gives them knowledge about the fates of nearby survivors and, most importantly, access to an abandoned soft drink truck with a stash of Coke. Eventually, tempted by a stray radio transmission, Hig needs to explore beyond their comfort zone and discovers another pair, a daughter and father, with whom he bonds after nearly getting offed by them.

In this novel, Heller expresses the profound loneliness that comes with the End, but he also elucidates the gifts of surviving, simply, amidst the beauty of nature. Sleeping under the stars, running streams and their habitats of fish, the delightful behavior of baby lambs. And most of all, Hig's inexpressably deep bond with his dog, Jasper, that goes beyond his human relationships. Heller sometimes writes in a clipped style, free of punctuation, but suitably uses language on an as-needed basis, in survival mode. He's also hilarious on occasion. It's hard not to compare this to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but with The Dog Stars you come away with indelible compassion for Heller's characters, and an appreciation for what life hands you. Riveting, compelling, memorable, and highly recommended.

Book rec: The Burgess Boys

I  was quite unexpectedly swept up by Elizabeth Strout's The Burgess Boys, zipping through it. I very much liked her previous novel, Olive Kittredge, but like it, the new novel's title is pretty uninspiring and makes it sound a bit oldey timey, which it isn't. It's also misleading as there is a "girl"—a sister—as well, but her detachment from her brothers is a core plot point.

The boys of the title are Bob and Jim Burgess, both Brooklyn residents—respectively a legal aid lawyer who lives relatively modestly, and a high-profile criminal defense lawyer with a more lavish lifestyle. Their sister Susan (Bob's twin) lives in the family's hometown in Maine and is the single mother of a teen, Zach. The father of the three Burgess siblings was killed in a freak accident; he left the young kids in the car and was then run over by it. The blame, accused and true, is the elusive, resurfacing and many tentacled monster throughout the book. 

In the intervening decades, Jim had always played the role of the father figure, handling family crises, or lending a shoulder or advice to his siblings, who were considered sort of losers. Jim was the only one to foster a conventionally respectable way of life, sustaining a marriage and raising kids; the other two are divorced and single. Zach tosses a pig's head into the door of the local mosque, frequented by the many Somalis who settled in town. The act is interpreted as a hate crime, but he apparently did it to impress his father, who moved to Sweden with a new girlfriend. The pig's head becomes fodder for the tabloids and local grandstanding politicians, and Uncle Jim takes it upon himself to appear at a tolerance rally and make a typically golden-tongued speech to try to sway public perception of the family and help his nephew avoid being charged. It backfires, showing up the governor who spoke directly after Jim, who didn't even stay for the governor's speech. Hate crime charges are filed, kicked up to the federal level. 

The plotline involving xenophobia and hate crimes cruises along the surface, but the public and private perceptions of the Burgess siblings become the spine of the story. Turns out a lie about Bob has been perpetuated their entire lives, dictating their relationships with one another and their families. When that lie is revealed, the equation shifts, and in a sense, dues are paid as far as they can be. It also comments on perceived success, the status quo, and how happiness comes in various forms. Strout's writing flows elegantly, and it's punctuated with funny dialogue and amusing observations, in the end deflating the myth of conventional success. Just don't let the title fool you.

Book recommendation—Kate Atkinson's Life After Life

Kate Atkinson's Life After Life is an engrossing novel tracing protagonist Ursula's life in stages, beginning from the moment of her birth. The hook is that Atkinson resets the stage at various points and carries the story with one thread changed so the outcomes vary. Her relationships with her siblings and relatives remain fairly constant, it's the chance happenstance or meeting with a stranger that pivots her life. That or the war, which is treated surprisingly graphically for a novel not specifically about war, particularly London during the siege. Ursula even falls into Hitler's inner circle, offering a fascinating inside view of the lure and repellance of the dictator.

A fairly sturdy doorstop (and a good case for e-readers), Life After Life is paced nicely with numerous chapters and sections, some quite short. Atkinson's prose is smart but practical, not overly British to American ears (though set largely in the UK). The one shortfall for me is the cover, which tends to place it improperly among bodice rippers. Highly recommended.

Books: Gone Girl

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn has been on lots of 2012 best of lists, and I finally got to it. It's about a woman, Amy, who disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, and the time leading up to and after that event. Chapters alternate in the voices of Amy and her husband Nick (both writers struggling with careers in magazine publishing) and their shifting self-perception, thought processes, and shocking actions. 

It casts a domestic veil on the depths of depravity of which humans are capable; it also sheds light on the light and dark complexities of love. The dual points of view keep it lively, as do Flynn's characters, whose sinister potential is a bottomless abyss.

Apparently a movie adaptation is in the works, with Reese Witherspoon producing and presumably starring, but its conversion to the screen will lack much of the essential bizarre thought process of the protagonists. Their self-delusion is part of the book's fascination, demanding the reader to reconcile internal and external perceptions. 

Books—Louise Erdrich, The Round House

Louise Erdrich is easy to take for granted: she's pigeonholed as the author who writes fiction about contemporary Native Americans, with the privilege of regular pieces in The New Yorker. But The Round House shows why she's nominated for awards and is perpetually on "best of" lists (mine included). 

The protagonist in her new novel is the 13-year-old Joe whose life, while very different than, say, a New Yorker's, has a similar banal rhythm, even if it involves finding "grandfathers" (ideal stones) for a sweat lodge or overhearing an elder spin spooky tales in his sleep. The exotic in time becomes familiar, perhaps analogous to being a Native, and an outsider, in the US. 

His mother undergoes a traumatic event that he seeks to avenge. It's not just the suspenseful outcome that hooks you, but the casual conversations between friends and family,  the hilarious observations of character. For Joe, the son of a judge and studying catechism with a bodybuilding priest, moral questions become murkier rather than more clear.

Here, a passage where his father cooks dinner:

My father divided the pie into three equal pieces and laid a slab of Blue Bunny vanilla on top of each piece. I got to finish my mother's. She started teasing my father about the stew.
   Exactly how old were those turnips?
   Older than Joe.
   And where did you get that onion?
   That's my little secret.
   And the meat, roadkill?
   Oh god, no. It died in the backyard.

So simple and clean, yet so profound and free of sickly sentiment that can bog down such topics. She treats serious and light subject matter alike with a masterful touch, and discards quotation marks to streamline things further. These small innovations compounded with each page and left me in awe, sad that it was finished.

Books—Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and In Shadow

Mark Helprin's In Sunlight and In Shadow is perfect end of the year reading, especially if you have a vacation ahead of you. It's an unfettered ode to New York City—its architecture, its post-WWII freedoms, its dog-eat-dog capitalistic machine, its potential for romance. Unlike so many contemporary novelists, the book is written without a trace of irony or cynicism. At 700+ pages, it's a commitment, but well worth it, with indelible stories and descriptions throughout. 

The novel follows Harry Copeland, fresh from war duty and back running the family leather goods business, as he falls in love again with the city he grew up in, as well as with Catherine, a burgeoning Broadway actress whom he spies on the ferry. What begins as a straight-forward love story blossoms into a thriller, and builds to a daring parallel escapades  orchestrated to regain Harry's and Catherine's honor. He details class differences, focusing mainly on the 1%, and the everlasting bonds forged between soldiers in the trenches. Helprin cunningly adapts many skills honed in military training to life in the big apple, but he also recounts the simple, daily pleasures of that life as well.

Helprin tends to use five words where one would do. If you pulled out the passages that pay homage to New York's architecture and light, and of Catherine's beauty and gifts, you'd have a substantial tome. But his prose is so lush and pictorial that he's forgiven, and if you live in New York, or visit, you'll appreciate it all the more.

Book snapshot—Adam Johson's The Orphan Master's Son

They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and this has never been more true than in Adam Johnson's recent novel, The Orphan Master's Son.

It's mostly set in North Korea, where the Party is represented by the Dear Leader—everyone's father figure, deity, Obi Wan Kenobe, big brother, tormentor, and assassin, all rolled into one. America is, naturally, the great evil state, where famine is rampant and people feed their dogs out of cans, rather than farm them on rooftops and roast them up for protein.

Nothing is what it appears to be. Identities shift as people take on different roles, altering their lives permanently. Politically correct lines are memorized and hopefully recited successfully, and there's always a parallel train of thought that weighs dire punishment—labor camps, coal mines—and bittersweet rewards.

Survival techniques are taught in a land with no food. Fish farms count the inventory each night and if any are missing, punishment is pervasive, so they learn to squeeze eggs from pregnant females, and dig up vegetables whose roots wrap around buried human bones. Electricity rationing means sometimes walking up 22 flights of stairs.

Johnson mixes these horrors with a wry tone, the most viable tactic when faced with the incomprehensible. His characters maintain a heartening spirit and strength in the face of unspeakable torment and operatic absurdity. Completely fascinating from start to finish.
 
—Susan Yung