by ELG Gray

American Pastoral

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 9/10
Overall: 4 stars

You know the expression, ‘so good it hurts’? Well, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is sort-of the inverse of that. It hurts so much … it’s good. The story is so gut-wrenching. So over-the-top human, you get sucked in and hurt along with the main character’s hurt. It definitely isn’t a happy book, but it is compelling and thought provoking.

In American Pastoral, the narrator is Nathan Zuckerman, a Jewish man living in the 1990s (now in his 60s) recounting not only his own life, but the life of his childhood local hero – Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov. Needless to say, the Swede’s charmed existence of being the realisation of the American Dream in the heavily Jewish New Jersey of the mid-century doesn’t last him through his entire life, though it takes Nathan some digging to uncover what happened. Precisely what *does* happen, and how the Swede himself feels about it is never entirely clear, but Roth does a phenomenal job of showing us our options for interpretation, and getting me to ponder imponderable questions about social upheaval and personal trauma.

The focus of the work (there are lots of intricacies, and don’t want to over-indulge details) is Nathan uncovering the fact that in the 60s/70s the Swede’s daughter is somehow involved in a local Vietnam war protest which involves blowing up a pharmacy. It kills an innocent pharmacist. How can a ‘together’, charming, good-looking man have produced such a child? Who is this teenage horror? Are her beliefs justified? Did she do it, anyway? And how does this effect his relationship with his own parents, brother, and wife?

As we read more and more about the back-story and the ‘present’ day (the book does a lot of flashing back, reconstructing, and surmising) it becomes teeth-suckingly painful. I wanted to read more, but had to pace myself simply because of the intensity.

Like Roth’s other book I’ve reviewed, Portnoy’s Complaint, the title character certainly has the tendency to ramble and rant, but here it is more targeted, more focused. And I developed a real sense of empathy for a few of the main characters which I lacked in Portnoy. To be honest, I didn’t at all expect the drama/trauma of what I subsequently experienced in reading American Pastoral, but it was well worth it. A definite must-read.

11.18.14

by ELG Gray

The Town

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 6/10
Thought Provoker: 6/10
Overall: 3 stars

I have been so very delinquent. I probably finished reading The Town about 3 months ago. Once a week I think, ‘I REALLY should write the review’ and compose a summary in my head of what I want to say. And yet, clearly, procrastination has prevailed. Not to mention the other two reviews I’m sitting on. But anyway…

The Town is the third in Conrad Richter’s ‘The Awakening Land’ trilogy, recounting the later stages in the life of Sayward Wheeler, the quintessential American Pioneer, and her flock of children. And it actually was quite a fascinating read just after The Magnificent Ambersons. In many ways, though it is the third in Richter’s series it is an entirely apt prequel to Tarkington’s work. If I had known, I would have read them that way ‘round.

In any case, The Town follows the ‘progress’ of a small frontiersman’s town to a more bustling American mid-western town of the 19th Century. Sayward’s generation represents the heartiness, the pluckiness, the determination and grit of the Original Pioneers. Her youngest child (and really the book’s protagonist), Chancey, is the youthful embodiment of technological progress, pacifism, and gentleness. Though this is not the gentility that starts off the Ambersons, by any means. It’s a big deal that the Wheeler’s town house has more than 2 rooms, to put things in context. Chancey is the youngest of many kids, and is born with some unspecified illness making him an invalid, until suddenly he isn’t any more because he finally realizes that maybe there isn’t anything physically wrong with him any more. There is pampering and babying, but also a smidge of negligence and certainly an inability for anyone in his family to understand him, or his point of view. So at first you feel for him. But slowly (and I choose to believe this is Richter’s point) you start to find him pitiable, and a bit cloying. Somehow Sayward, seen by her son as an old stick-in-the-mud is in fact the more dynamic, the more able to continue to adapt to change than the supposedly modern son. That’s sort-of the whole book. The relationships, which are probably Richter’s focus, to me were OK. Interesting but OK. It’s a slim read, though, so I suppose there isn’t a huge amount of time for more.

What makes the book a great deal more interesting, was just the history. The insight into what life was like for the American Pioneers entering, taming, and building the so-called wilderness for the first time. (Native Americans feature briefly in the book in a highly stereotyped way, so make no mistake this is the white man’s view.) In fact, those three words really characterize Richter’s three books – (entering) The Trees, (taming) The Fields, and (building) The Town. I did read ‘The Trees’, the first in the triliogy, and enjoyed it immensely, again just from the detailed look at day-to-day life in the woods and the existence that families managed to scrape together. Try as I might, getting my hands on The Fields proved to be nearly impossible (for any price I deemed reasonable), but from the reviews and articles I’ve found I believe my characterization is fair.

So read this book to discovery more of the history of the American white-man moving westward. You’ll glean a bit about human relationships and progress, but read it to learn what life was like in an age that is very, very hard grasp in the 21st century. And maybe we’ll learn a bit about what real work is like. Or that’s what Richter would have wanted!

08.18.14

by ELG Gray

The Magnificent Ambersons

Page turner: 5/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 6/10
Overall: 3 stars

After a rather prolonged hiatus, I am pleased to return with a full report of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons. Which I liked. I found it a bit unoriginal, but that may be the result of a century of hindsight. Still, I liked it.

The Magnificent Ambersons is the second book in Tarkington’s ‘growth’ trilogy. Try as I might I could not get my hands on a copy of the third and final book in the series, I couldn’t find it. Which is both a testament to me liking the second book, and perhaps a reflection on the second also being the ‘best’ of the three. Anyway, the ‘growth’ that the title refers to is the changing dynamic of the American mid west … and how settlements grew to towns and cities as the turn of the twentieth century saw the huge boom in urban populations.

The Ambersons were the relative nobility of the small Midwestern town as it was originally settled. They owned vast swathes of land, the great house, and had the most beautiful and elaborate items brought over from the East. Georgie Amberson is the protagonist of the novel, and is the grandson of the founding father who amassed the fortune. And Georgie is a spoiled brat of the most spoiled type. His really only redeeming feature as a child is that he uses the term ‘riff raff’ which always made me chuckle. The story (predictably, to modern eyes) progresses as the town grows, the Ambersons’ wealth diminishes and new money comes to take their place. It is the story of the transition of a town to a city, and the way that young Georgie is forced to reconcile with changing circumstances. Tarkington does a good job of succinctly and believably narrating both parallels in the story. I won’t say whether or not Georgie shows himself of being of strong moral fiber in the end.

The trouble is – I feel I have read it all before. Perhaps it was one of the first of its kind to talk about that boom in Midwestern America, but it is awfully reminiscent of stories of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of New Money vs. aristocracy in Europe as well as on the East Coast of the U.S. Published in 1918 was The Magnificent Amberson’s a trailblazer? Or a very good example of this ‘genre’ of story? I don’t think my literary history is good enough to know the answer, but I do wonder. This shortcoming, however, is what made it a three for me, and not a higher rating.

Still, Tarkington’s book is a slim read, and definitely fulfilling. It’s about growth – both physical and personal, and as such is quite rewarding to follow along with!

06.08.14

by ELG Gray

The Orphan Master’s Son

Pager turner: 7/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought-provoker: 9/10
Overall: 4 stars

The Orphan Master’s Son is about North Korea. And it is brilliant.

What is so powerful about it is that it brings to mind other dystopian novels like Brave New World and 1984, only The Orphan Master’s Son is (essentially) real. Or based in a real place, where unspeakable things happen. Perhaps I should caveat that to say that of course unspeakable things happen everywhere in the world, but the particular ones that Adam Johnson narrates in TOMS were beyond anything that my little Western mind had ever even considered within the bounds of modern reality. Shows what I know.

The book is in two parts – the first tells the story of the protagonist Pak Jun Do’s young-young adult life and the second is the story of Commander Ga. It is difficult to explain how the two relate without giving the essential narrative ploy of the book away (have you seen ‘The Sixth Sense’?) but Johnson’s story-telling technique in breaking up the book this way is elegant, simple and very effective.

Pak Jun Do grew up in an orphanage, and being an orphan is apparently the worst thing to be in North Korea. Though never overtly explained, the implication is that if you have no parents to protect you, you are at the whim of the State to make use of you as it sees fit. So the first half of the book is really a series of horrible, entertaining, mind-boggling misadventures. Tunnelling, pain training, starvation, kidnapping, sailing, shark attacks and (of course) American Sneak Attacks! are all present. It starts a bit slowly but, given all that action, it is safe to say that it builds and becomes engrossing.

The best way to summarise the second half of the book is to say that Commader Ga’s world is a world-turned-upside-down. Imagine putting your whole reality under a microscope and questioning every-single-tiny assumption. It’s like that. It’s scary (but not hide in the corner scary – it’s blow-your-mind scary).

Throughout the book Johnson tells the story of the Orphan Master’s Son through a few different voices, including that of the omnipresent loudspeakers blasting ‘news’ to North Korean citizens. The technique works to force you to consider the different perspectives in the book, but there are a few chapters/characters that I think have more limited success simply when juxtaposed with the Greatness of the others. Similarly, I couldn’t wait to find out what happens and to explore the other-worldliness of North Korea, but the book is 575 pages long. I noticed.

For such an undertaking, I can totally see why Johnson won the 2013 Pulitzer for The Orphan Master’s Son. It’s astonishing – both in the setting/story and the way he manages to tell it. I heartily recommend.

05.15.14

by ELG Gray

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Pager turner: 8/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 9/10
Overall: 5 stars
Readability: 5 stars

A Visit from the Goon Squad is fab. It’s a good read. An award-winning book that I read that I would periodically would forget was award winning. Which (perversely?) is a good thing. I think.

Jennifer Egan’s writing style for Goon is just so solid. And unpretentious. The book doesn’t have any of that slightly nose-in-the-air *worthy* feeling that so many others on this list seem to. It was refreshing, as well as just awesome.

I could describe this book a being ‘about’ sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Or I could describe it (somewhat more loftily) as about time. Either would be accurate, and you can read the book on either level and enjoy it.

A Visit from the Good Squad is sort-of like Love Actually meets Sliding Doors meets six degrees of separation … in the fourth dimension. One chapter kicks off with a character from the last, but you don’t know which character and you don’t know at what point in his/her life. It bounces around. And it is interesting if you read each chapter on its own, but it Makes Sense if you read them together, and are paying a bit of attention. Of course the lives of the characters interweave in mundane and meaningful ways. And of course the characters themselves are flawed, human, loveable, and frustrating.

Did I mention there is a whole chapter told from the point of view of a 12-year-old who keeps a powerpoint diary? Amazing. Resonant. Fun.

Read it.