by ELG Gray

Rabbit at Rest

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

Returning after a holiday hiatus: Rabbit at Rest. Once again, I feel that I have a missing category for ‘language’ or ‘vividness’ as John Updike is a master at both. I was sucked into Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom’s semi-retired world utterly. It just didn’t ‘wow’ me. But maybe I’m being harsh after a fun-in-the-sun vacation.

My edition of Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest is, I learned, the fourth novel in a series of books following the life of Harry Angstrom, a decade at a time. In ‘at Rest’ Rabbit is in his fifties, has heart troubles, and is facing mortality for the first time in his life. To be honest, Rabbit is a bit of an ass: a womanizer, an attention seeker. A not-so-hot father. But then, the people around him aren’t exactly ‘winners’ either, and so it is easy to empathize. And very easy to feel like Brewer, Pennsylvania is a real place.

Much of this book is an indulgence in nostalgia. Full of poignant memories of past affairs (both sexual and innocent), triggered by simply driving down the street. Rabbit faces them to the extent his character is able – his moral code is willowy at best. And, as the nickname perhaps belies, he does have something of a tendency to flee. And to hump – almost indeterminately. But he bends rather than breaks. And he does love, in his own way.

At some point I will read one of the earlier Rabbit books (I think Updike won more than one award for the series) at which point I will be clued in a bit more on the nickname. But apart from that, I can confirm that the novel stands on its own. In fact, I think I’m rather pleased I read it first.

What I like about Updike’s work (which I had never read before) is a rawness that feels so real. It does what it does SO well … but somehow I am left wanting a little bit more from him. From Rabbit. And *certainly* from his son, Nelson, and his wife, Janice, neither of whom win family-member-of-the-year awards.

Rabbit at Rest is an excellently constructed novel. I liked it. And I liked the window in the world of Harry Angstrom. For all his flaws, I liked him too. I LOVED the way Updike wrote the book. So if nothing else, I’m going to go in search of some more Updike work and see how I get on.

11.13.13

by ELG Gray

Gilead

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 8/10
Thought provoker: 7/10
Overall: 3 stars

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson is the warmest-and-fuzziest book I have read thus far in my great book quest. I would not go so far as to say it is Happy, but it is much more heart warming than the previous 8 I have read. The biggest difference is that the narrator of the book is a content, and his contentment sets the tone for the story.

The narrator is a 76-year-old man named John Ames, writing to his 6 year-old son about all the things Ames would like to be able to tell him as an adult, but can’t because of the very great age gap between them. Whilst there is something bittersweet in such an undertaking, Ames is so happy to have a son and a family at all that I was much more impressed with the warmth and love of the endeavor than the morbidity of it.

For all its warmth (perhaps because of it), Gilead is really the ramblings of an old man. It’s a journal. There are no chapters. The style and tone adds charm, but also makes it occasionally tedious. Especially given that the man is a Congregationalist Reverend (whose father and grandfather were also Reverends), prone to philosophical debates and conjectures. Refreshingly he isn’t one to proselytize, but it can get a bit heavy. Several times I had to stop myself from skim reading. Prepare yourself for the inevitable conflict about predestination. He doesn’t like it, either.

So the book is about religion, and love, and parenthood. It is about loss and friendship and family. It tells a story (or set of stories) about a small-town in the Midwest and its history. Gilead, by the way, is the name of the fictional Iowa town. Set between 1880 and 1957, it touches on the events of both World Wars, and recounts a great deal about its Civil War legacy and abolitionist heritage. It’s a nice book, and if nothing else a very interesting chronicle of a life that lived to see huge technical and social change. Plus, you cannot help but to like Reverend Ames, who is clearly a very, very nice man.

What makes it award-winning, I suspect, is that it tackles a really interesting concept: what a parent wants to teach a child. Knowing you are not going to be present for most of your child’s life – what do you say? Are you selfish? Philosophical? Instructional? Supportive? Robinson, I think, does a lovely job of exploring all of the above.

It’s just that Gilead just didn’t wow me. I got through the book pretty quickly, but mostly because I had 6 hours of train-time over the last several days. I liked reading it, but it didn’t really compel me to keep going. I didn’t Need to know. Throughout, the book inspired me, and touched me, but didn’t – quite – move me.

11.05.13

by ELG Gray

Olive Kitteridge

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 7/10
**Well crafted: 10/10**
Overall: 4 stars

**Making a special appearance for this book, is the ‘well crafted’ rating. When I originally decided on the different parts of the rating system I took the assumption that all of these books would be at least moderately well written and conceived. And a fifth means of rating a book seemed like a lot. But this book is so very much in a league of its own, I have temporarily introduced the metric so that everyone knows how much it excels. (The temporary rating is very clever colleague’s idea. Thank you.)**

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009. It really is the ‘American’ type of book that the Pulitzer Prize is looking for. Set in a small town on the coast of Maine in the years post 9/11, it resonates with all that is small-town Americana. But I think (hope) it would make it all the more appealing for an international audience as well.

Olive Kitteridge is the title and the central character of this story of the quietly intertwining lives of a town’s inhabitants. She is irritable, brooding, loving, passionate, and silent. She is the lynch pin of the book, tying together the narration as each chapter shifts to focus on the stories of other people’s lives. The execution is flawless. The story is tight – characters are never forgotten, or left hanging, or not somehow contributing to the progression of the novel. Whereas I often think of all of these pieces of fiction as books or stories, Strout has written a stunning novel.

A quick example: one of the characters describes her father having ‘sole custody’ of her. And for years she thought it was spelled with a u.

To the point. Pointed. But not labored or cocky.

There is little else I can say about this fantastic book. Read it. It is a book about the vastness of love, and anger, and death. Olive certainly feels these intensely. The book has a quietness about it – but the characters’ lives are not at all plodding or quaint. So it is a suppose about ‘quiet lives’ but makes the point that no life is quiet.

I do warn you of one thing: I read this a few years ago and remember not liking it all that much. I wasn’t hugely enthused about re-reading it. My turn-around, I hope, speaks in favor of the book. That said, for me it has very much been a book that displays is greatness through its prose and its craft. Don’t read it just to ‘see what happens next’. Read every word and let it sink in.

10.30.13

by ELG Gray

His Family

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

His Family, by Ernest Poole, was published in 1918 and was the first book to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I had never heard of it, and honestly I didn’t know what to expect, but I was intrigued to see what that first book, from that era of American history, was going to be about. So, in the age old tradition of saying cliches are bad but then doing precisely what they say – I judged the book by its cover.

My copy of His Family is a paperback, and the cover is mostly black and glossy. It is nearly perfectly square and unusually large at probably 7 by 7 inches. It’s not that thick (277 pages) and the font is a pretty good size. On the cover, the title is in white and there is a white rectangle cut-out that shows a sketchy drawing of a man (60ish-years-old) sitting at a dining table with a family, colored in with pastels. To my mind, all of this confirmed my prejudgment to think the book might be a bit antiquated, but looked quite sweet. Maybe a bit story-book-ish? Maybe just plain and unadorned.

The first few chapters only furthered my modern-prejudiced view. The book starts off quietly. The world it depicts is small: a 60ish year old man named Roger Gale (as depicted on the cover) is in fact a widower living in Manhattan, with 3 grown daughters and 4 grandchildren by the eldest. The younger two (aged 27 and 30 or so) are unmarried. And it takes place over a few years, around about 1913-1915. The writing is straightforward, and whilst I wasn’t particularly sucked into their lives I thought it was pleasant, even if I was a bit frustrated by Roger’s self-admitted distance from his bustling family of a mother, a debutante, and a teacher. I thought it might be an apt portrait of family life at that time. And it is. But I wrongfully misjudged what that should mean.

As the novel progresses, it deepens. Not nice (though not horrible) things happen to the family. And it very much takes on a Goldilocks and the Three Bears feel: where ‘Too big’, ‘Too small’, and ‘Just right’ are loosely equated to the three daughters being, ‘Too old-fashioned’, ‘Too fast and flippant’, and ‘forward thinking but respectful’. The parallels between their personal lives and the wider changes and growth of society is heavy handed, but intelligent and interesting.

The social commentary on the place of motherhood in women’s lives is blatantly the major theme. Nearly a century after the book was published the idea of the ‘modern mother’ – the balancing act that the author discusses – remains entirely relevant, if initially surprising. There is also a wider reflection on war and humanity and the book is a window into the mindset of Americans as it was feeling the pains of the First World War in Europe, but before the United States entered the conflict.

The book, also, has the surprisingly endearing feature of having the final two words of the book be, ‘…his family’. Which is a nice touch. Particularly if you read the first part of the sentence; but I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.

On reflection, the cover makes the book out to be more old-fashioned and simple than it is, though it definitely is not a book of great subtlety. I would not put it down as a forgotten classic because it can read what I think some might call ‘Dickens extra-light’. But I enjoyed it, and feel I have learned a lesson in so doing. I would recommend it to anyone who wonders what it might have been like to be born a hundred years earlier.

09.29.13

by ELG Gray

The Color Purple

Page turner: 7/10
Heart tugger: 8/10
Thought provoker: 7/10
Overall: 4 stars

I finished reading The Color Purple just as I got to the train station at work on a Monday morning. It is a very good thing I didn’t finish 90 seconds later, or I would have ended up somewhere terribly unhelpful. I remember, as I finished, an overwhelming sense of relief. And also of peace.

Celie, the main character, is a black woman in the American South whose story mostly takes part in the early decades of the twentieth century. If you can think of the variety of horrible things that, stereotypically, might happen to a black woman during that time period – they do. Her life is not, objectively, a happy one. And yet, somehow, the author does a stupendous job of documenting the steady transformation of Celie’s life as she finds empowerment and happiness. It is a journey towards (and through?) grace.

The book itself is written in a series of diary entries (well, sort of – they are notes to a higher being) and letters. Mostly from Celie’s perspective. So as a reader, you quickly pick up the nuances of language, pronunciation, and vocab of the poor African Americans in the South. When done well (this is) it is easily to get steeped in the culture of the book without really realizing that the writing is ‘beautiful’ in the traditional sense.

I remember very little about my 10 minute walk from the station to the office that Monday, but I do recall getting to the office and discovering that my fingers were a bit stiff as I had been clenching my hand in a fist for the entire walk. Upon reflection it was very much a triumphant fist-clench. Not an over-the-top-wild-celebration, but more of a pursed lips, elbow-pump, ‘HA.’ The main characters all demonstrate quite a lot of personal strength, growth, and love. So for all of its rather depressing episodes, I will say that it has a relatively happy ending.

It is a relatively short book – so no need to be intimidated by its size. As mentioned, it isn’t all happy but once you know setting (which is pretty well outlined on the back of the book) none of the bad incidents are particularly surprising. As such, it isn’t a big page-turner: you aren’t so sucked in you can’t put it down – but the characters themselves are obviously (given my reaction to the ending) very real and very believable. If nothing else, I wanted to know what happened to them.

I had always meant to read The Color Purple – and I can definitively say I am very pleased I did. And now I can finally allow myself to watch the movie! (Which I’m told is quite good.) Overall it is a beautiful book, which I would recommend to pretty much anyone. There are lessons about love and life, but it is also just a good read, and an eye-opening window into a time in the not-so-distant past. Read it when you are a bit stressed, and you can’t help but think, “if they can overcome those things in life … what on Earth am I so worried about”?