expanding the spectrum of possibility

I was happy to learn that President Obama picked up a copy of All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr during his pre-Christmas shopping trip at Politics and Prose bookstore. I was also glad to hear that Doerr’s novel was a National Book Award finalist and among The New York Times top 10 list of books for 2014.

Doerr deserves every one of these accolades—and they are no surprise to me. All the Light We Cannot See is my favorite book of the year.

I meant to write about it when I first read it back in May. But honestly, I felt stymied. It is so dazzling, so beautiful, so heart-rending, I felt inadequate to write about it. Still do. But I will try, because this big book (510 pages), 10 years in the making, merits all the attention it can get.

What’s it about? In a tantalizing note on his website, Doerr says it’s about

Radio, propaganda, a cursed diamond, children in Nazi Germany, puzzles, snails, the Natural History Museum in Paris, courage, fear, bombs, the magical seaside town of St. Malo in France, and the ways in which people, against all odds, try to be kind to one another.

On a more mundane level, the basic story describes the experiences of two children who grow into adolescence during World War II.  Marie Laure is a blind girl who loses her beloved father, but gains the courage to participate in the French resistance in the small town of St. Malo. Werner is a German orphan whose brilliance in building and repairing radios saves him from a brutal life in the coal mines. Instead, he rockets through a special Nazi-supported school technical school and soon is deployed as a specialist in triangulating radio transmissions.

The novel is told mostly from the point of view of these two characters, and short chapters move back and forth between France and Germany. The narrative pulls the reader along as wartime developments inevitably bring Marie Laure and Werner closer together.

As readers, we care so much about both the main characters, who are fully realized and appealing. Besides creating memorable characters, Doerr gives us passages of breathtaking beauty and imbues descriptions of everything from radio mechanics to mollusks to miniature landscapes with clarity and power.

All the Light We Cannot See is dense and rich and accessible—altogether, a wonderful book. In fact, I’m planning to re-read it in 2015. I hope you will like it, too.

 P.S. The title has baffled many readers. Doerr explains: “It’s a reference to all the light we cannot see, that is, the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beyond the ability of human eyes to detect …it is also a metaphorical suggestion that there are countless invisible stories still buried within World War II…that stories of ordinary children, for example, are a kind of light we do not typically see. Ultimately, the title [suggests] that we spend too much time focused on a small slice of the spectrum of possibility.

One act changes everything

           I anticipated beginning Ian McEwan’s new novel, The Children Act, with some anxiety. I am a huge fan of much of McEwan’s work, especially Atonement and Saturday, both of which I’ve read twice, and some of his shorter novels, like Enduring Love.

            But some of his more recent novels have disappointed me: Sweet Tooth and On Chesil Beach didn’t seem worthy of his talent.

            So, the new book?

            Whew! Loud sigh of relief. Here is the McEwan I have admired, back in form, tackling an important social issue, rendering it compulsively readable through his inimitable style.

            The Children Act echoes a theme of Atonement and Saturday: one unintended act leads to a cascade of consequences, altering the lives of the players in a profound way. Like the protagonists in those earlier novels, Fiona Maye is a basically moral person; she is intelligent, well meaning, blessed with professional and creative gifts. As a British High Court judge overseeing complex family law cases, she dispenses judgment with care and compassion. Her peers admire her crisply written opinions, and she handles controversial cases with aplomb, not wavering in the face of pressure from the media or public. Her life seems perfectly orderly and serene.

            Except, except….An unexpected domestic crisis rattles her confidence and threatens to unravel her comfortable existence. At the same time, she is facing one of her most gut-wrenching cases ever: a dispute over the right of a young man to refuse a life-saving blood transfusion because of his deeply held faith as a Jehovah’s witness.  At 17, Adam Henry is not an adult, hence cannot legally choose to reject treatment. His case comes before the court, and Fiona must render a decision, keeping in mind the Children Act of 1989, which emphasizes the primacy of a child’s welfare. But what is in this child’s best interest? A chance of survival? Or honoring his religious beliefs?

Fiona visits Adam in hospital to try to gauge his true interests. What ensues affects both child and judge in unexpected ways. How their story plays out is a marvel of narrative suspense in a compact (221 pages) novel. The story is both expansive and compressed, as Fiona’s understanding of “the best interests of the child” changes over time.

McEwan has given us a gem of a tale, set in and among the venerable London Royal Courts of Law, and has given us an unforgettable character in Fiona—a judge and a woman who is, after all, only human.

Mutual admiration

Louise Penny stood on the stage, looking out at her audience of 500 + fans.

“Hold up your copies of the book,” she invited.

They did—and she snapped their pictures with her iPhone.

What must it have looked like to her? A sea of faces and people waving blue-jacketed copies of her latest crime novel, The Long Way Home, released just two days ago.

The Canadian author completely won over the audience crowded into The Barn, an event space at Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill, NC. McIntyre’s Books, Fearrington’s independent bookstore, sponsored the author talk and book-signing event, the first stop on Penny’s national book tour.  The fans were ready: people started lining up at 4:30 for the talk, which started at 6:30. Readers came from as far away as West Virginia, Georgia, Alabama. They clutched their copies of the new book, the purchase of which had entitled them to two tickets for the occasion. By 6:00 not a seat was available, and the conversational buzz was deafening.

Right on time, Louise Penny strode—she is tall and she definitely strides—onto the stage at the front of the vast room, preceded by her publisher, Andrew Martin of Minotaur Books. After the applause died down, they settled into plump upholstered chairs and started a spirited conversation. Sometimes, it was a comfortable question-and-answer format, sometimes witty repartee between the two, who are good friends, as well as having an author-and-publisher relationship.

Penny was funny, self-deprecating, smart, honest. She gave every question a thoughtful response. She speaks in articulate paragraphs, and she laughs often. She talked about her famous characters, Armand Gamache, in particular, and the way she shapes the shards of an idea into a fully realized story. She talked about her fears as a child, her insecurities as a writer.

The audience questions demonstrated that Penny has a committed band of followers who read every book and know the community of Three Pines well. They appreciate that Penny’s work “transcends the genre” (a cliché that many mystery writers and readers loathe). They know that she is a fine writer—period. Early reviews of the new novel agree. This morning’s review from The New York Times noted that her books “mix some classic elements of the police procedural with a deep-delving psychology, as well as a sorrowful sense of the precarious nature of human goodness, and the persistence of the opposite, even in rural Edens like Three Pines.”

Although Penny has real star power, she never plays the diva.  During her talk, she mused about the power of having a broad community of readers whose interest and support nourish her. After the standing ovation at the conclusion of her talk, Penny turned the tables—applauding the audience and snapping their picture.

(See also my May 1 post on appreciating Penny...)

Catching up...

Sorry I’ve been absent. The past month has been a jumble of personal and professional challenges, so the blog took an unplanned vacation of sorts.

But I’ve been reading—lots. Here’s a snapshot of what’s caught my attention:

·      Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. (Oddly, another novel with the same title appeared at about the same time last year.) This was a re-read for me, as it was my book group’s selection for July. I’d immersed myself in both the book and unabridged audio CD last year. I’m a huge fan of Atkinson’s work and loved this novel, which seemed more expansive and complex than her Jackson Brodie “mysteries.” (Quote marks because the Brodie books are more existential mysteries than the traditional genre fare.)

Life After Life, with its time shifts and multiple what-if scenarios, requires—and rewards—close reading. Not all books stand up to a second reading, but Life After Life did—in spades. More than ever, I admire Atkinson’s wit and vivid evocation of domestic dynamics. She is a marvel.

·      All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr deserves longer discussion, which I’ll tackle soon. For now, just to note that this is among my favorite books of 2014.

·      Love, Nina: A nanny writes home by Nina Stribbe was a library book, not a purchase—a good deal, as it was a fun, gossipy read, but ultimately forgettable.

And here are the top books in my to-be-read stack:

·      The Stories of Jane Gardam. I love Gardam’s novels (Old Filth, etc) and look forward to dipping into this collection of short stories.

·      Middlemarch by George Eliot. Delicious to anticipate re-reading (again, for my book group) this—perhaps my favorite novel of all time. I’m also planning to read, as a companion piece, My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead.

The New Yorker--towering issues

OK. Confess it: if you’re a New Yorker subscriber, how many unread copies of the magazine do you have piled up around the house?

I love that magazine and can’t imagine not reading it on a regular basis. Yet, yet…sometimes the back issues overwhelm and threaten to topple over the big basket I keep by my favorite reading chair. (On the other hand, the weight of all those issues does make the basket a handy doorstop to prop open the door to the deck.)

Periodically, I root through the basket to find copies to toss in the recycling bin. But of course, I have to dog-ear any articles or stories I’m interested in and might some day want to read. I’d estimate that the ratio of copies set aside to recycle and those set aside to read is about 1:3. And sometimes, I do pluck out an old copy of the magazine and read a short story or a movie review. But too often, the back copies languish, unread and instilling guilt The oldest copies on hand, with stories marked to read, I’m embarrassed to say, date from March 2005 (fiction by William Trevor) and October 2005 (fiction by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala).

There was one period in my life when I did read The New Yorker from cover to cover—I mean everything, from articles about horse racing to economic analyses. The setting for such diligent periodical reading was bizarre, but makes sense, really. We were living in a small rural village in the middle of Tanzania. We had none of the distractions that I take for granted today (television, Internet) and no electricity. At night, we played endless games of Scrabble and gin rummy by the light of our Tilley lamp. We’d glean the news from paper-thin, weeks-old copies of Time or The Economist, and managed to catch only an occasional newscast via our Peace Corps friends’ short-wave radio.

So, we subscribed to The New Yorker. As I said, bizarre. And yet, wonderfully rich and satisfying. No skimming, as I tend to do today, and marking articles to read later on. With so much time to read, I did read—almost everything and within days of receiving our copies. The experience was a luxury, a weird anomalous counterpoint to a pared down life.

I don’t remember when I started reading The New Yorker—probably in college. One of my college roommates, the uber-sophisticated Rebecca, had a theory about attracting guys during travel. She advised getting on a plane with a copy of The New Yorker prominently displayed. Her reasoning: urbane, promising men would recognize your sophistication and strike up a conversation. (That never exactly worked for me, but I avoided traveling with my copy of Glamour, just in case.)

Today, the next generation is falling under the spell of the magazine. My 10-year-old granddaughter Harper loves the cartoons and covers. The other day she commented about a particular social situation: “That would make a great New Yorker cover.” I imagine she’ll be reading movie reviews and Talk of the Town before long.

So, even as I sometimes grumble about how the magazines stack up and determine to cancel my subscription, I know I’ll remain a reader and fan. How could I not?

Sharing my enthusiasm

What a delicious—and intimidating—opportunity.

A friend who is new to mysteries asked me to suggest books that exemplify the best of the genre.

This request delighted me because I love good mysteries and enjoy “converting” readers who are either unfamiliar with the genre or who denigrate it as not “literary” enough to signify.

The request also intimidated me—well, a little—because my friend is Shannon Ravenel, co-founder of Algonquin Press. She recently retired as an editor there, shepherding her own imprint, working with authors like Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle. Over her long career, she has worked with a range of top Southern literary lights, and, for 12 years, was series editor for the Best American Short Stories anthologies. Her tastes are discerning and she sets the bar high.

We met when I interviewed Shannon for an article about Algonquin a couple of years ago; since then, we’ve met every month or so for lunch and book chat. She’s a wonderful reader and shares her enthusiasms, and, often, books, generously. We lock horns occasionally—two recent short story collections drew our ire, as she loved the one I hated, and vice-versa—but we generally share the similar taste in books.

After Shannon read and enjoyed a “page-turner” I’d passed on to her (mainly because it centered on the contentious New York publishing scene), she asked me to recommend a few books in the mystery/suspense/thriller category. Such a great assignment—but daunting. I’ve been reading mysteries for decades: how to choose “the best”?

Perfectionism is futile, as we know, so I decided to do my best and recommend half a dozen authors that I find outstanding. Each has a series (or several), so a new fan can go deep, if the first book appeals. Here’s the list:

John Harvey—British author of a couple of police procedural series, poet, jazz lover. Fun to start with the first of the Charles Resnick series featuring a shambling, charming detective: Lonely Hearts. Harvey’s blog, full of observations on art, travel, soccer, music, and writing, is fun to follow.

http://mellotone70up.wordpress.com

Susan Hill—Another Brit who writes intelligent, character-driven police procedurals set in a cathedral city and featuring an enigmatic detective and his complex family. I’d vote, again, to start with the first one: The Various Haunts of Men.

http://www.susanhill.org.uk

Deborah Crombie—American who writes police procedurals set in England. She’s created two wonderful characters, Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, partners in work and life, who grapple with family and domestic matters while they solve crimes. Her website is a great place to explore and gives a list of the books in order: http://www.deborahcrombie.com

Henning Mankell—A Swedish writer and human rights advocate whose series featuring Kurt Wallandar sets the bar for socially conscious detective stories. The first in the series is Faceless Killers. His website is terrific.

http://henningmankell.com

Margaret Maron—Closer to home, this North Carolina writer has written many mysteries, including the wonderful series featuring Judge Deborah Knott and her vast, entertaining family. The mysteries accent good plotting, humor, and a concern for social issues.

http://www.margaretmaron.com

Louise Penny—Canadian author who creates the atmospheric Quebec settings and honorable detective, Armand Gamache. (I recently wrote about Penny in my May 1 blog.)

http://www.louisepenny.com

Oh—it’s so hard to stop. How can I omit the classics—work by George Simenon, Janwillem Van De Wetering, Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh? And how can I leave P.D. James off the list?

But my goal is to inspire, not to overwhelm, so I’ll contain myself.

Readers: what mystery authors would you add to the “must read” list?

Family Feud

Louise Penny is threatening to divide our family.

My son-in-law Mike is a huge fan. He’s read everything she’s written, from the first novel (Still Life) to her latest, (How the Light Gets In), for which he stood in line at a recent reading to get her autograph.

My daughter Katherine, also a mystery fan, derides his preference for “teacup mysteries.”

Mike, I should add, is a scientist who relishes hard data, watches football, and builds things, like fences and decks. And he also admires Scandinavian noir writers like Jo Nesbo, hardly a cozy writer. He’s a guy’s guy with a soft side.

And, because I respect his taste in mysteries, I thought I’d give Penny another try. My previous readings of her novels had left me with mixed feelings: I admire her writing, and her complex characters and her way of evoking place, but sometimes have felt she took too long to get to the point.

But I’m changing my mind. After reading Mike’s autographed copy of How the Light Gets In, I decided it was time to start at the beginning. So, I read Still Life, published in 2005, the first of her nine novels featuring Armand Gamache, chief inspector with the Surete du Quebec, and a couple of her subsequent mysteries.

What I’m discovering is that Penny has created a place like no other and a protagonist like no other. Although Gamache lives in Quebec City, his investigations frequently take him to Three Pines, a tiny village in the woods, apparently not marked on any map. This place, a sort of rural Canadian Shangri-La, is home to an assortment of characters who are flawed, generous, mysterious, and occasionally amusing. The closed community setting often means that the term “cozy” is bestowed on a mystery. But Three Pines is not cozy in the usual sense. Although there are comforting sensory elements (especially the café au lait always available at the bistro), the village is too replete with dark secrets ever to be deemed cozy.

And Gamache, singular among all the protagonists in mysteries I can think of, is a good man. He’s complex, yes, and has his share of human failings, but he is essentially a good man. His integrity is the force behind all his investigations, and his compassion helps us see all the characters—even “the bad guys”—as fully formed human beings.

All is not sweetness and light in Gamache’s world: the stakes are high, with murder and corruption in high places a driving force. But the detective, channeling Penny’s views, tells us he believes that  “light would banish the shadows. That kindness was more powerful than cruelty, and that goodness existed, even in the most desperate places. He believed that evil had its limits.”

Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, observed that the formula for Penny’s series has evolved into “one part foul play, three parts morality play.” And no doubt about it—Gamache is the moral compass in his world.

Yesterday, How the Light Gets In was nominated for an Edgar, the Mystery Writers of America prestigious award for best novel. If Penny wins, the prize will be among dozens she has racked up over the years, deservedly so. Her assured storytelling and complex, mostly admirable, characters lift her work out of the genre category and well into the realm of literary fiction.

So, sorry, Katherine—I have to stand with Mike on this one. No teacup mystery here. Give Penny another chance. I did and I’m glad.

Where is my head?

Yikes. Obviously, I meant, book lover.

Oops!

Clearly this book (not bopk) didn't proofread the post below. Sorry 'bout that.

A bopk lover's treat

Booksellers love this book—for good reason. You will, too. That’s assuming that you love books and revere independent bookstores.

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry is set on an island (think:Nantucket or Martha’s Vinyard), where the sole independent bookstore is struggling. Maybe it’s because so many indys are struggling in our Amazon era. Or maybe it’s struggling because its owner, AJ Fikry, is often indifferent to customers and often drunk or hung over. A recent personal tragedy accounts for both. But Fikry is, in any case, by nature, cantankerous. He doesn’t take kindly to fools or customers who come looking for mass-market potboilers. And don’t get him started on e-readers or Amazon.

However, the arrival of an abandoned toddler begins to thaw this man’s frozen emotions. A note stuck in the baby’s basket says: "I want her to grow up to be a reader. I want her to grow up in a place with books and among people who care about those kinds of things."

Improbably, Fikry becomes a caring, if inexpert, parent, whose sense of responsibility for his daughter pushes him toward a more enthusiastic and successful role as bookseller to the island. No sentimental, goopy stuff here, though: Fikry remains mildly cranky. And, just as he begins to admit optimism, new obstacles rattle his happiness.

Musings on favorite books—in the style of the typical “staff notes”—preface each chapter. Each is intriguing in its own right, although the composite meaning of these notes isn’t revealed until the book’s end.

The author Gabrielle Zevin is better known for her young adult novels and screenwriting. This novel feels like a breakthrough for her, and the response in the industry and from reviewers has been uniformly enthusiastic. The Storied Life of AJ Fikry is a modest tale and wholly engaging. Especially if you love books. (And you wouldn’t be reading this blog if you didn’t!)

working in a bookstore--the fantasy and the reality

I’m taking a wild guess here—but I imagine that 90% of all writers have, at one time, fantasized about working in a bookstore.

You know the dream: getting to read all those ARCs and discovering the next great book, chatting up like-minded literary customers, leisurely wandering among all the stacks, deciding which book to take home to review. Ah, and if your dream store includes a café, sipping afternoon coffee or tea with a visiting author.

I hate to burst the bubble. But, as I found out during my one dip into retail bookselling, it is hard work. Hard physical work—hefting cartons of books up from the basement, breaking down cardboard boxes and carting them to the dumpster. Hard mental work—learning a new computer system for checkout and looking up obscure titles. And hard emotional work (at least for the introverts among us)—remaining unfailingly polite and helpful even when your feet ache from hours of standing and you’d really rather catch up on unpacking cartons than make small talk with yet one more customer who just wants to chat, not necessarily buy. (And let’s not even talk about the rats who snap photos of book covers with their smartphones so they can order on Amazon later.)

But those lessons were all ahead of me when I got the invitation to work part-time for a couple of months at my local bookstore, McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill. A valued employee was taking some family leave, and they needed someone to fill in over the Christmas holidays. Would I (a fan of the bookstore and frequent customer) be interested? Would I? You bet!

I started with enthusiasm, and appreciated the staff’s support and training, from the incredibly hard-working owner Keebe Fitch (she hoped to turn me into a bookselling Ninja—alas, I never lived up to that expectation); manager Pete Mock, mystery guru extraordinaire and, behind his grumpy persona, one of the kindest guys ever; and Katherine Pinard, who, with great patience and a sense of humor, showed me the ropes before she left for her brief Sabbatical.

To be fair to myself, I was pretty good at “hand selling”—encouraging customers to consider this or that favored book. And I had a good attitude, taking to heart the store’s mantra of positive customer service. But the computer system sometimes baffled me, and a couple of sales disappeared into cyberspace forever. The hard physical work, even for a part-timer, surprised me.

I came away from my experience with a renewed appreciation for what it takes to run a successful independent bookstore. The old cliché comes to mind: ducks appearing to sail serenely on a pond, while paddling madly under the surface of the water. Considerable work and nonstop attention to books and customers are critical to an indy’s success. Basically, you have to love what you do to make it worthwhile.

And the McIntyre’s team does. And it shows. This month, they celebrate 25 years of being in business—an impressive achievement for any small bookstore. Hats off to you, McIntyre’s, for working hard to make it look easy!

http://www.fearrington.com/village-shops/mcintyres-books/