The Good Lord Bird (by James McBride)

This had been on my "to-read" list for a long time, since it won the 2014 Tournament of Books! I sometimes have to gear myself up to read something that tackles the subject of oppression, though -- even in a satirical way, as this one does.

This is the story of a boy named Henry Shakelford, who is freed from slavery (somewhat accidentally) by John Brown, who thinks he is a girl and nicknames him Onion and brings him along on his adventures. And I have to say that it was something I had to push myself to read all the way through -- not because it is grim in any way, but because it's a little discursive and does not always have a clear forward momentum. It's kind of biding time for 2/3 of it leading up to the raid on Harpers Ferry. We even lose track of John Brown for like 100 pages.

But again, it's not grim! The tone of it is humorous and relatively light, considering that it's about -- you know -- slavery. Historical characters and events are woven in but in a less-than reverential way. And in many places it's funny as hell:

"'Tell me. Which books in the Bible do you favor?'
'Oh, I favors 'em all,' Pa said. 'But I mostly like Hezekiel, Ahab, Trotter, and Pontiff the Emperor.'
The Old Man frowned. 'I don't recollect I have read those.'" 


"She wore a flowered blue dress of the type whores naturally favored, and that thing was so tight that when she moved, the daisies got all mixed up with the azaleas."

"I joined a choir in a Pentecostal church after taking a liking to a minister’s wife who slept around to save the wear and tear on her holy husband. I runned behind her several weeks till one morning the pastor gived a rousing sermon ’bout how the truth will set you free, and a feller stood up in the congregation and blurted out, 'Pastor! I got Jesus in my heart! I’m confessing! Three of us in here has porked your wife!'”

So it's funny and entertaining. But then McBride pulls a masterful bait and switch as the book nears its climax, the famous raid on Harpers Ferry. You aren't necessarily expecting it to pack such an emotional punch, and although Onion's narration doesn't lose its satirical tone, the emotion hits you anyway as the tragedy and import of the event starts to hit him, and us at the same time. McBride sticks the landing wonderfully.

The portrayal of John Brown in this novel reminded me forcefully of Don Quixote, and in fact the structure of the book reminded me of Don Quixote as well. It's about a religious lunatic on a crusade that's doomed to fail. He is skinny and looks older than his years, he wanders the desert, he inspires half-hearted adulation, he makes promises he can't keep, he barely eats. I mean, he's Don Quixote!  And at the end, you realize hat for all his insanity and all his failures, his raid on Harpers Ferry did ultimately kick off the civil war and John Brown did, ultimately, end slavery. The figure of amusement becomes a tragic hero.

“Some things in this world just ain't mean to be, not in the times we want 'em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that's to come. There's a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that's a heavy load to bear.”

Also, the title is a reference to a bird that makes you say "Good Lord!," the now-most-likely-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker. I loved that theme too.

The Signature of All Things (by Elizabeth Gilbert)

My friend Chris said he was reading and enjoying this, plus I was on the lookout for a book set before 1900 for the Read Harder Challenge, so I did my patented get-a-Kindle-sample-on-my-phone-and-start-reading maneuver. I was immediately hooked, and did the patented must-keep-reading-buy-now-click, as well as the patented tear-through-this-book-in-one-weekend speed read. All patents pending.

It's a sprawling novel that tells the story of Alma, born in 1800, unpretty and brilliant, a botanist with a searing curiosity about the world, who grows up in Philadelphia in the era between the Revolution and the Civil War. It tells the (very compelling) backstory of her father's history. Then some stuff happens -- I don't want to give away where the action takes us or what happens to her, but we follow her into old age and yes, along the way, a lot of stuff happens. 

I was surprised at the quality of the writing from Elizabeth Gilbert -- since she wrote Eat, Pray, Love,  I had preconceived notions of her as more of a "women's contemporary fiction" author rather than a writer of literary fiction. But this novel is really well done, captures the time period well, and if Alma's ambitions and confidence seem a bit anachronistic at times, well, it's not competely preposterous. 

However, one thing is preposterous, and I'm mentioning it in this paragraph so RSS readers avert your eyes, and browser readers highlight to read. Kurt Vonnegut's famous saying is that every character you write should want something, even if it's just a glass of water. Alma's "glass of water" is... frankly ludicrous. If this book had been written by a man, I would have thrown it across the room. Because her life's ambition is to give someone a blowjob. I am not even kidding.

Anyway. I went back to read the discussion during the Tournament of Books 2013, where this book competed. (It got knocked out fairly early. Americanah wasn't on the shortlist. The whole thing was a travesty.)  A lot of people loved it, a lot of people hated it, even on the sentence level -- maybe it was that I read it quickly or that my expectations were low, but none of that bothered me.  Overall, I found it to be a good read and it gets a thumbs up from me!

A Tale for the Time Being (by Ruth Ozeki)

I was immediately grabbed by this book, which is structured as two interlocking stories wit two protagonists. One protagonist, Ruth, finds a diary and some letters and a notebook washed ashore after its writer has (presumably) been lost in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Ruth's story is interwoven with that of Nao, the author of the diary, with some side ventures into the letters and notebook written by Nao's uncle, a kamikaze suicide bomber (or "sky soldier") in WWII.

If the entire story had been Nao's diary plus her uncle Haruki's letters and notebook, including Nao's tales of her great-grandmother the Zen Buddhist nun, I probably would have loved this book and sped through it. However, I kept getting stopped in Ruth's parts of the narrative, in which the most compelling story is that her cat goes missing. Another issue is that it switches from first to third person, immediately giving you more distance from the action. And then there's the fact that Ruth isn't overly sympathetic. (Neither is Nao at times, but she's a teenager, so you kind of forgive her. Ruth is ostensibly an adult woman.)

It gets worse: there is more than one section where we switch from Nao's story to Ruth's, and the scene is Ruth and her husband Oliver talking over the diary. I don't need to read someone else rehashing a story I literally have just finished reading. Ruth: "Did you understand the subtext? Such-and-such is what really was going on." Oliver: "Oh, I didn't catch that. But did you notice blah blah?" It felt like Cliff Notes embedded in the book itself.  Then there's a metaphysical twist at the end that really really did not work for me. At all.

It sounds like I really disliked this book, which made it to the semifinals of the Tournament of Books and everyone really loved. But I didn't. I loved this book, except I only loved half of it.

The Goldfinch (by Donna Tartt)

I haven't read The Secret History or anything else by Tartt, but I read too many great things about this novel not to give it a try. (Plus it's a Tournament of Books finalist, unlike basically every other book I predicted would be there.) Then I got hooked on the free sample from Kindle, and the rest is reading history! Or at least, a blog post's worth.

The novel is a bildungsroman centering around Theo, a boy who has a lifelong connection with the eponymous painting "The Goldfinch" after a childhood encounter that I won't spoil. (The first awesome thing about this for me is that I saw this painting on exhibit not long ago. I've never been to Den Haag, where the painting is, but the Mauritshuis was undergoing renovation last year, and sent out a traveling exhibit that I saw when I was unemployed. The main attraction was "The Girl with the Pearl Earring," but I was struck by a number of smaller pieces, among them "The Goldfinch." I love that not only did I see this painting, but I vividly remember standing in front of it, having a similar experience to Theo's. I could easily have breezed by it, but the subject matter of a little chained-up finch was very striking to me. Now we have a goldfinch feeder outside our window and see them all the time. Serendipity.)

The novel is a coming-of-age story told in a series of novella-length vignettes, covering different periods in Theo's life. (I loved the one set in Vegas the most, I think.)  The whole novel is 775 or so pages long, so there's a lot of meat there.The characters are rich, the description is wonderfully vivid ("When the wind blew, the umbrella by the pool snapped with a gunshot sound"), and Theo is a sympathetic antihero, which I always enjoy. I feel like she could have done better by the female characters, but I enjoyed Kitsey and Pippa throughout, in different ways.

This book is an investment of time, but I would say well worth it for a compelling and propulsive story, interesting characters, gorgeous writing, and a meditation on the nature of art and our relationship with art that will stay with you. Recommended.

Life After Life (by Kate Atkinson)

Oh my god, this book is amazing. I just want to write a review that says: "Read it. Read it now. Read it. Now. Read it. Yes. Now. Read it right now. Read it." (I will add the caveat that if you tend to dislike anything experimental or postmodern, it might not be the book for you. If you do like those things, read it. Read it now. Read it.)  I'm going to write about it as generally as I can manage, but if you are spoiler-averse, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs.

The premise of the book--that the main character, Ursula, gets to relive her life over and over, is executed perfectly. You would think that wiping the slate clean would make you care about the characters less, but in fact you learn more about them each time and care about them more. Events recur, there are seemingly inexorable chains of events, and several of the "lives" endings cut to the bone so that next time around, you are desperate for Ursula to change her fate. It's also so structurally interesting--you would again think that this conceit would make you feel very aware of the authorial presence and the events would feel false, but again, they seemingly never do. Atkinson is just that good.

The backdrop--including London during the Blitz--is historically fascinating and richly drawn. The characters, major and minor, are note perfect. I seriously loved this novel. It is only the first book I've read in 2014, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out to be the best.

[Note: I've started using the 2014 ToB tag for books on the long list. So far I've only tagged this and The Interestings, but I fully expect to see them both on the tournament shortlist. Eleanor & Park I'm less sure about, though I do feel it is deserving of a spot and will probably make it. Other sure things in my opinion that I haven't yet read: Tenth of December, The Goldfinch, Americanah.]

Eleanor & Park (by Rainbow Rowell)

A young adult novel that switches perspectives from Eleanor, our chubby (yay) heroine with a  horrifying home life, and Park, our half-Korean (yay) hero who meets Eleanor on the bus to school, and who eventually befriends her over comic books and music.

I think this book fits into the John Green category of YA with true depth and complexity, not just the fluffy stuff. (To be clear, I also enjoy the fluffy stuff. I am finishing up my novel which is pretty much all fluffy stuff.)  I loved the relationship between the two characters, even if it did seem to turn a corner slightly abruptly. I loved Eleanor and truly felt for her as layers of her family story were unearthed, each seemingly more horrible than the last.

I will definitely be saving and re-reading this one. It's super super good. And I cried at the end.