Literary Fiction

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

This spare, reflective novel is narrated by 76-year-old Reverend John Ames, who, dying of heart failure, shares lessons from his life in a letter to his seven-year-old son. The letter takes the form of a confessional journal that reveals a man who wonders at the choices he’s made, the paths not taken, an uneasy faith, and the near impossibility of living up to a father’s expectations.

There are deeply religious themes here as you would expect from a Reverend narrator (whose father and grandfather were also Reverends). The story is thick with Biblical allusions and symbolism that a Christian scholar would quickly grasp over this unchurched reader. Still, everyone would appreciate the humanistic undercurrent that marvels at the sheer joy of being alive, the mystery of it all, and the sadness of needing to leave it so soon. Again and again, this dying man implores his young son (and us) to witness and celebrate the incredible miracle of life.

…

Gilead by Marilynne RobinsonRead More »

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital + Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

What would happen if blindness became a contagious epidemic? That’s the premise of this highly allegorical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning José Saramago. We learn how fragile the underpinnings of civilization really are, how ugly humans can be to one another when hungry or when given power, how quickly we adapt to even the most inhuman conditions.

This is a bleak book with a bleak message: the government, the church, all of us are blind to the misery around us. We turn a blind eye to injustice, prejudice, cruelty, hypocrisy. We see, but we do not observe.

I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

Two unusual literary techniques reinforce the message of complicity: none of the characters are named, implying both anonymity and universality; and dialogue is presented in long run-on sentences without any attributions, as if it doesn’t matter who is speaking. It is all of us.

Despite the grim conditions of this dystopian novel, an underpinning of generosity and family allows the main characters to navigate this unthinkable world with their humanity intact. It’s this kindness in a miserable world that gives any meaning to an otherwise inhuman existence.

If there’s a moral here, it’s that our civilization hinges not on the resources of the government or the church, but on ourselves and how we take personal care of one another.

★★★☆☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I can’t decide what to make of this first novel by Paul Harding, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2010. Harding is a graduate of the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and there are similarities in style and tone to Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, though perhaps lacking that book’s substance and depth.

The book begins with the hallucinatory thoughts of a dying man surrounded by family, but soon widens to include his father and grandfather. Mental illness weaves through this family, and we observe in touching vignettes the pain and beauty that accompany a different way of seeing the world.

…

Tinkers by Paul HardingRead More »

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

This classic novel from Graham Greene explores the fine line between love and hate in post-war London. Short chapters and crisp writing make this book feel like a tight suspense novel, but one that surprises with its probing, deeply human themes: fate vs. individual responsibility, the problems with either atheism or blind faith, the angst of romantic longing, and the corrosiveness of jealousy. 

I have never known a woman before or since so able to alter a whole mood by simply speaking on the telephone, and when she came into a room or put her hand on my side she created at once the absolute trust I lost with every separation. 

This is one that raised questions that will stick with me for a long while. 

…

The End of the Affair by Graham GreeneRead More »

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

On the surface, this is a story about Ruth and Lucille, two young girls who are raised by a succession of relatives in an impoverished lakeside village in Idaho. The girls face a series of abandonments that create a tension throughout the book of when they might find themselves adrift and alone again.

Yet there are layers within layers in this one. This is a novel, yes, but also a ruminative memoir on grief, on loneliness, and on the power of memory to rekindle these losses again and again over time. I’ll be reading along and following the story, and in the middle of a paragraph, slip through a rift to find myself on a whole different level in the novel with deeply symbolic references, many of them Biblical, and all of them a lifetime away from Ruth’s first-person narrative. I might read a passage three or four times and not suss it at all. I understand the words, but not the meaning, at least on the intellectual level. But, at the same time, I do understand on a subconscious level. Like the best kind of poetry.

…

Housekeeping by Marilynne RobinsonRead More »

★★★☆☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

New York City may be the greatest city on earth, but it’s sure tough on marriages. That seems to be the theme that runs through The Good Life, book two of the Calloway saga. The Calloways are now in their forties, raising twins, and still struggling to keep up with the frenzied and moneyed lifestyle of Manhattan. 

The novel is set just before and a few months after September 11, 2001. That terrorists could so dramatically disrupt New York, and could do so again at any moment, serves as a midlife crisis accelerator for Corinne and Luke, who meet as volunteers at Ground Zero. They form a special, once-in-a-lifetime bond and must balance their own desires with the needs of their families in a war-torn city. 

I loved Brightness Falls, the predecessor to this one, which wrestled with such big themes that I felt it was one of the very best American novels of the past century. This one, with its modest scope and almost cliched theme, was merely good. 

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Julian Barnes’ latest book, Departure(s), is difficult to classify. It’s part memoir, part literary analysis, part diary, and part meditation on friendship, memory, and the finality of death, while still leaving room for the story of how the narrator (unreliable?) introduced two friends at Oxford, and how, after a 40-year gap, he brought those same friends together again with hopeful intentions. Unlike a novelist’s artistic godlike designs, we are soon reminded that there are few happy endings in life. Things happen for no reason. Or don’t. And death is cruel and final.

It seems to me that humans are often so busy living that they forget they are human – or at least forget what it is to be human, and what its consequences are – and therefore what it means to be dead.

Along the way, we are treated to glimpses of the author’s private life: his adoption of a dog, his insomniac writing in the middle of the night on his IBM Selectric typewriter, his eccentric journaling practice, the many vagaries of aging, his battle with cancer, and his grief of losing his wife of thirty years. There is a continual flow of dark wit, though melancholy lies just below the surface of almost every page.

Barnes turned eighty when this book came out. He says it will be his last, preferring to have the final word, and dreading the potential for dying in the saddle, mid-sentence. And yet, I can’t help wondering if he might still have more to give us. Earlier this year, he married his former publisher and long-time partner. This seems like an optimistic act. If not another book, we can at least hope he finds peace and love. We should all be as lucky.

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Claire Keegan is fast becoming my favorite living author. This latest book features three short stories, though just the title story is new. The others were reprinted from her earlier two collections of short stories (Antarctica and Walk The Blue Fields, both of which I now have on order).

A theme connects these stories, as hinted by the book’s subtitle: “Stories of Women and Men.” Indeed, each story depicts an unhappy encounter between the sexes with unsettling consequences.

My favorite was So Late in the Day, where a man reflects on his sad life on what should have been his wedding day. He treated his fiancée horribly, but can’t seem to accept responsibility for his deplorable behavior once she broke off the engagement. A flashback to a breakfast with his family when he returned home from college will haunt me for a long time.

…

So Late in the Day by Claire KeeganRead More »

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

Fast Eddie Felson is a hustler trying to make a living playing pool. He has the talent, but lacks the grit and endurance to prevail in a game that requires a gambler’s mental toughness. As someone who has spent way too much time circling a pool table in dive bars, who, in fact, met the love of his life playing pool in a dive bar, reading about Eddie’s love of the game put me in a fine reverie:

Eddie loved to play pool. There was a kind of power, a kind of brilliant coordination of mind and of skill, that could give him as much pleasure, as much delight in himself and in the things that he did, as anything else in the world. Some men never feel this way about anything; but Eddie had felt it, as long as he could remember, about pool.

There are parallels between Eddie Felson’s pool and Beth Harmon’s chess in The Queen’s Gambit (also written by Tevis). Both protagonists have a self-destructive side, both are alcoholics, and both find a way to overcome adversity with the help of a coach or a friend.

Unlike Beth Harmon, Eddie isn’t a likable person. He makes questionable decisions, treats people badly, and seems to care only for himself. This made it hard for me to root for him as he faced his demons later in the novel. Knowing more about his life before we meet him as an small time pool hustler could have deepened his character for the reader.

Still, if you have even a passing interest in pool or gambling or gritty city life, this is a great read.