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62nd out of 405 books
—
247 voters
Solar Storms
by
Linda Hogan,
Honi Werner , Gary Issacs , Songhee Kim
Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Fiction, "Solar Storms" is at once a Native American coming-of-age story and a moving depiction of the ties that bind people to their roots and their land.
Paperback, 352 pages
Published
February 26th 1997
by Scribner
(first published 1995)
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I'm a novel writer who recently found Solar Storms (published in '95) through the local Copperfield Bookstore Club's backlisted picks in Sebastopol, CA where I live.
I was overwhelmed, amazed and entranced as I read Solar Storms especially so since it was written some time ago. I felt a horror of recognition. To my mind, the terrible hydroelectric dam project created in the novel that was challenged by the Native American women echoed the destruction and tragedy that has just recently befallen J...more
I was overwhelmed, amazed and entranced as I read Solar Storms especially so since it was written some time ago. I felt a horror of recognition. To my mind, the terrible hydroelectric dam project created in the novel that was challenged by the Native American women echoed the destruction and tragedy that has just recently befallen J...more
I grew up in the California Bay Area, and while I am very familiar with Mexican-American culture until I move to the Northwest I was very unfamiliar with Native American culture. I read this book for a class titled “American Nature Writing” and while it has a lot to do with nature it has much more to do with Native American culture. The book is told through a variety of characters encompassing five generations of Native American women. The setting is the Boundary Waters between Canada and Minnes...more
This is one of those books I'm going to have to go back and read again. Not because I didn't understand the story, but because there is so much packed into the language and writing, another reading will reveal things I didn't see before. I'm a member of the Chinook Indian Nation, so this book did touch my heart. And broke it. The changes to the land it discusses, the disconnect so many people have, and the roughness that those disconnected have toward people and the earth is truly heartbreaking....more
This book started very slowly for me. The prologue was unbearably confusing, although the language was beautiful, and if I hadn't been reading this for class I probably would've put it down. It does make sense later, but I hate wading through things like that, in any case. If I had put it down, it would have been a mistake. There are so many strong, female characters who are all complex and different, but who work together and create a community. Every character is flawed in his or her own way,...more
I think I gave this book 5 stars partly because I read it in the middle of the woods off the grid in northwest Ontario (a very good venue). I had not read anything by Linda Hogan before, but I loved the characters she painted with her gift of poetry. I totally fell in love with the elder natives, and the protagonist as she bloomed into herself and the traditions she had missed as a child. There is just so much love in this book, and hope that we can write a new story to handle the pain of the wo...more
Seventeen year old Angela, fleeing yet another foster home, makes her way to her family's ancestral Chickasaw lands in the boundary waters of Minnesota, where she is reunited with her grandmother, great-grandmother, and another woman who had temporarily raised her. She is not sure what she hopes to find, perhaps an answer to how her face became so badly scarred, and why her mother abandoned her, but the acceptance she finds, and the attachment to the land that she forges surprise her. Joined by...more
A beautiful novel about history, identity, nature and the mysteries of life. I feel at times it's a bit unnecessarily lyrical and some things can be stated in a simpler, more clear-cut manner. Having that said, I recall only two instances when I felt that way. Overall, it's a brilliant novel that is brilliantly written. I love the deep, meditative quality of the story, and I love the occasional stillness, the quiet, and the gentle currents of the novel until the activists movements near the end....more
so fucken well written. a bday present from the cynical stag, i just put it down. cried throughout, breathtaking, just so goddam breathtaking.
2 likes · like · see review
This wasn't a book I could read in one sitting and devour. It was a book that required time; time to imagine, time to think, and time to reflect.
Solar Storms is absolutely beautifully written. Hogan's descriptions are unique, clear, and unbelievably right-on. I would finish reading passages, pages really, of her descriptions of nature and find myself simultaneously thinking, "Of course, why haven't I thought it say it like that?" and "I could NEVER find the words to say it like that." As many o...more
Solar Storms is absolutely beautifully written. Hogan's descriptions are unique, clear, and unbelievably right-on. I would finish reading passages, pages really, of her descriptions of nature and find myself simultaneously thinking, "Of course, why haven't I thought it say it like that?" and "I could NEVER find the words to say it like that." As many o...more
My Review: Another Linda Hogan novel. I can’t put them down- they’re entrancing. Solar Storms is a story of tragedy, loss, and rebuilding - but it’s so much more than that. It’s a story about wholeness and human existence; about love and the meaning of family; about vast interconnectedness. Hogan draws you in with adventurous, romantic tales and wonderfully addicting characters, but she somehow leaves you with more than you initially expected- a rearranged sense of life and being, perhaps. The m...more
Beautiful, dense writing (at times, too dense, I found it somewhat suffocating to imagine in world in which every single thing has so many layered meanings). But what keeps me from fully loving this book is the one-dimensional main character. Her life before she returned to her family - nearly all of her childhood - is almost entirely absent from this story. Though I found her strong hunger to reconnect with her mother and grandmothers plausible, the absence of any detail of all her years in fos...more
Started our really slow, almost abonded it. But the last 1/4 was great and worth the slow start. Angel Jensen goes back to the remote region where she was borh looking for her birth family. She ends up on a jourey her ancestral homeland in the far norht were a hydrolectic dam project is underway and drowning the land, causing the people to fight for their homes and eventually loose all that they had. It makes a strong point of what human invervention does to the planet and how what is good for s...more
This book is difficult to write about. It was an incredible story, and Hogan's writing style is richly layered. It took me a while to get into it, though, I think because the writing was so stylized.
The first problem I had was with the first chapter--it started with about three sentences in normal type, and then went on for about twelve pages in italics.
When I see italics for a long block of text, I assume that it's a side-story, a breakaway from the main story, an alternate perspective or a dif...more
The first problem I had was with the first chapter--it started with about three sentences in normal type, and then went on for about twelve pages in italics.
When I see italics for a long block of text, I assume that it's a side-story, a breakaway from the main story, an alternate perspective or a dif...more
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Well, this is definitely not a thrilling read but it has some beautiful ideas about the earth, getting to know oneself, and overcoming abuse. The writing imitates the Native American culture in the way it is very, very vague and has many ideologies blended into the narrative. Of course the writer is Native American so that makes sense, but I found the repetitive descriptions of mankind raping the earth an overkill and the purposeful holes in the plot very annoying. I had way too many unsatisfied...more
This was more up my alley in terms of language. However, I'm giving it a lower rating because of the "ecological Indian" element and romanticized feel. I get how this language could be used as a tool to broadcast the stereotype to the reader... but I don't know, it still didn't settle well with me. It ended on too happy of a note given the environmental destruction. I loved many of the themes (mapping, rebirth, journey, etc.) but there were just parts I did not enjoy.
Jul 27, 2011
Abby
added it
This is an environmentalist novel and a woman's novel and an Indian novel and a political novel, and it's also just a plain old good book. Had my doubts at the beginning, right up until the snarky great-grandmother appeared, and after that I couldn't put it down. Got to see Linda Hogan at a reading, and was mildly surprised to find what a tiny little person is spouting all these big words and ideas. In my mind she was about ten feet tall.
Linda Hogan is a Native author who has written several great novels and some really good poetry. This book is a multigenerational history of strong women in a Native family. It reads like Gabriel Garcia Marquez- in the way that reality is blended with the fantastic. If you have never read much about the legacy left by and for the first Americans, this would be one to read- with some tissue handy. Also recommended by Hogan is Mean Spirit.
This tops my list as an all-time favorite book. Hogan's storytelling is good, but it's her characters who are the driving force behind this book.
We follow a young girl, Angel, as she returns to her mother's family and re-discovers her Native American culture. But this is not a cliched story about spirits and dreams (though that does play a part). There is a gritty realism that elevates the story beyond the popular archetypal representation of Native Americans.
Angel, along with her grandmother,...more
We follow a young girl, Angel, as she returns to her mother's family and re-discovers her Native American culture. But this is not a cliched story about spirits and dreams (though that does play a part). There is a gritty realism that elevates the story beyond the popular archetypal representation of Native Americans.
Angel, along with her grandmother,...more
Read this book over the plane rides involved with Spring Break, a wonderful story, different from what I expected (but what did I expect? not sure). I literally just finished it and the immediate, largest impression I'm left with is of the book's unassuming style that builds small piece by small piece into a large story of the Native American experience of trying to keep tradition (and the natural world, really) alive. All this told through the eyes of a young Native woman rediscovering her past...more
A story about a Native American girl who goes back to her ancestors after a very tough life. Many strong and accepting women feature in the book. I felt the story got bogged down at the end when describing a prolonged struggle over the creation of a dam and how it changed land use. However, it was interesting to learn more about the Native American view of living with integrity.
When Angel writes to her great-grandmother in an attempt to find her roots, she is welcomed into the Native American world that clings to existence in Canada. She gradually comes to feel the connection to nature and its rhythms that is so alien to the white men who seek to totally change the waterways and the land in the name of progress. A strong 3 or a light 4.
I love Linda Hogan's work! Having just finished Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge, I see many parallels between these two books, that I never noticed before. I've read both books before, but their use of symbol and metaphor is done in many similar ways. Women's strength, faith, hope, and the healing power of the land tie these books together.
another wonderful novel that tells the tale of a 17 year old girl who returns to the north, to the waterways of her people. She had been sent away after her mother violently attacked her. Settling into her home and relationships with her Aunt Bush, grandmother Dora-Rouge, and Aunt Agnes, she is soon caught up in a canoe trip with them to the land of the Fat Eaters, whose land and life are threatened by the schemes of the government/corporate engineers--the death culture of the whites. The engine...more
Multi-leveled story that goes so deep into the setting and culture and yet leaves you feeling like you never got to know the main character. Sticks with you. After reading it twice, I think I'll have to take a half a dozen more looks at it before I descend into all the levels on which this book thinks and works.
More like a 2.5. There are flashes of beauty within the language and the striving toward a dying past is prolific with lush longing. However, the narrative reaches a point of tautology where the central desire is so redundantly pounded into the narrative that the mystery of finding this past in the language becomes an exhibition of "what I want" and "How I wish things were like this."
Awesome!!! Simply a delight to read. It touches on so many themes: nature/ ecology, Native American rights and history, spirituality, feminism, and community. It is deeply lyrical and thought-provoking in a quiet, rumbling way like a distant thunderstorm approaching over the horizon.
A really deep book, just what I needed. About a woman who finds her way back to herself, who learns to see her scars as evidence of healing and not as wounds, who reconnects with her grandmother, great grandmother, and nature to discover her authentic self. So poetic and resonant.
This is one of those books just reached into the inner passages of my heart and rang all the walls. Truly wonderful. There are elements of magical realism inside a story that reads like biography. The writing is so lyrical and so spot-on, you gasp with the truth and beauty of it.
May 10, 2010
Mbarron
added it
As a writer I saw in Hogan's writing ways of representing a relationship between humans and nature based on respect and reverence. Of course in this book that relationship is occurring alongside dominative relationships between nature and humanity...and that's the drama.
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Linda Hogan, Writer in Residence for The Chickasaw Nation, is an internationally recognized public speaker and writer of poetry, fiction, and essays.
Linda Hogan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Mean Spirit. Her other honors include an American Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A former Professor at the University of Colorado she now lives and works in Oklahoma.
More about Linda Hogan...
Linda Hogan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Mean Spirit. Her other honors include an American Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A former Professor at the University of Colorado she now lives and works in Oklahoma.
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“tears have a purpose. they are what we carry of the ocean, and perhaps we must become the sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to be transformed.”
—
8 people liked it
“Perhaps it was the word "God" that was inviting to me, a word I thought I knew too much about. The one who had tortured Job, who had Abraham lift the ax to his son, who, disguised as a whale, had swallowed Jonah. I know now that the name does not refer to any deity, but means simply to call out and pray, to summon.”
—
4 people liked it
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Mar 31, 2013 03:18pm