false<![CDATA[Baker Towers]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170819449m/72876.jpg7287612Jennifer Haigh's first novel, <I>Mrs. Kimble</I>, was an auspicious debut about three women who marry the same man--consecutively--and their ability to kid themselves about who he is, and, more to the point, who they are. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award, given annually for best first fiction. Haigh has beaten the sophomore slump with another page-turner: <I>Baker Towers</I>. The action, such as it is, takes place in post-World War II Bakerton, a Pennsylvania mining town. "...[T]he town's most famous landmark, known locally as the Towers, two looming piles of mine waste. They are forty feet high and growing... The mines were not named for Bakerton; Bakerton was named for the mines. This is an important distinction. It explains the order of things. Haigh lets us know this on page two, setting the backdrop for the family drama of the Novaks.
The story begins with the death of Stanley Novak, wife of Rose and father of Georgie, Dorothy, Joyce, Lucy, and Sandy. This is an Italian-Polish marriage, tolerated, but a break with the town's tradition. The personality, temperament and needs of all five Novaks are made clear to us by their choices--although they are not always clear to the Novaks. Their interaction, with each other and their community, is the stuff of the novel. Life revolves around the mines, the Church, gossip, and sports. Many times throughout the book it seems that Haigh is using a camera rather than a pen, so perfectly does she create a scene for the reader.
Georgie struggles to get away from Bakerton after his military service by going to Philadelphia and marrying the boss's daughter, a decision he lives to regret. Dorothy gets a job in D.C., but never really fits into the scene. A breakdown brings her home for good. Joyce joins the military, is appalled by the way she is treated, and hastens home to care for her ailing mother. Lucy, overweight and unwelcome with the "in" crowd, longs to be Fire Queen, the pinnacle of acceptance in Bakerton. Sandy, handsome and unreliable, leaves for big city life, finds it, and comes home periodically to hide out.
Haigh has captured these people's lives as they play out, more acted upon than acting. None of the Novaks is self-reflective; the girls accept the status quo, the boys escape and find that they have taken themselves with them. A foreshadowing of the changes that will take place is symbolized by a horrific mine explosion at the end of the book. This life that Haigh has so carefully described will soon disappear forever, for good or ill, but she has illuminated its current reality with a sure hand. <I>--Valerie Ryan</I>17014832005Baker Towerstotal:575|5:73|4:214|3:234|2:48|1:6|575202580910743falsefalseSun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007Wed Jul 18 12:25:15 -0700 2007Wed Jul 18 12:25:15 -0700 2007
more...]]>
41falsefalseSun Jun 08 00:00:00 -0700 2008Tue Jul 15 12:25:26 -0700 2008Tue Jul 15 12:26:16 -0700 2008
more...]]>
41falsefalseSat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008Sat Nov 01 14:48:29 -0700 2008Mon Jan 05 18:03:05 -0800 2009
more...]]>
41falsefalseFri May 16 10:31:02 -0700 2008Sat Mar 07 10:05:40 -0800 2009
more...]]>
10falsefalseThu Mar 05 00:00:00 -0800 2009Wed Mar 04 18:38:08 -0800 2009Thu Mar 05 14:43:38 -0800 2009 A friend asked me wh...more...]]>
51falsefalseThu Jul 24 14:46:01 -0700 2008Thu Jul 24 14:48:34 -0700 2008
more...]]>
41falsefalseWed Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006Sat Jan 26 07:09:57 -0800 2008Sat Jan 26 07:13:48 -0800 2008 Haigh is completely absent from the book--the characters are real people, and the book makes me want to live back then for just...more...]]>
00falsefalseThu Feb 05 09:28:55 -0800 2009Thu Feb 05 09:28:55 -0800 2009
Haigh, author of the award-winning Mrs. Kimble (*** May/June 2003) and the granddaughter of coal miners, grew up in a Pennsylvania mining town. She introduces an unsentimental, harsh beauty into her fictional rendering of one family's lives in a town that "wore away like a bar of soap" as ...more...]]>
30falsefalseMon Oct 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009Mon Oct 05 13:55:05 -0700 2009Mon Oct 05 14:09:34 -0700 2009 Life in a small industrial town isn't heaven as novelists have told us before. Haigh tells an interesting story involving the members of a Italian/Polish family from the WWII years into the 1960's. Her characters, particularly...more...]]>
40falsefalseThu Oct 15 09:06:11 -0700 2009Wed Oct 21 08:21:57 -0700 2009
more...]]>
50falsefalseTue Jun 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009Thu Jun 11 16:53:18 -0700 2009Tue Jun 23 15:25:32 -0700 2009
more...]]>
30falsefalseTue Aug 05 07:27:54 -0700 2008Tue Jan 15 16:06:13 -0800 2008Tue Aug 05 07:27:54 -0700 2008 It is an extremely easy read, I probably could have read it faster than I did, but instead took my t...more...]]>
20falsefalseFri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009Wed Sep 02 04:43:50 -0700 2009Wed Sep 02 04:50:00 -0700 2009
more...]]>
40falsefalseFri Jul 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009Thu Jul 16 05:24:30 -0700 2009Fri Jul 24 06:23:30 -0700 20091
Baker Towers describes life in a Pennsylvania coal town in the 1940s through the eyes of the Novak family and their five children. Even though each character initially describes how much they want to leave Bakerton, eventually circumstance dictates their inev...more...]]>
30falsefalseMon Oct 06 21:24:38 -0700 2008Mon Oct 06 21:25:51 -0700 2008
more...]]>
40falsefalseSat Jun 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009Sat Jun 20 07:03:24 -0700 2009Sat Jun 20 07:07:18 -0700 2009
more...]]>
50falsefalseWed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009Tue Jul 07 16:15:06 -0700 2009Tue Jul 07 16:24:56 -0700 2009 Follows a family in a coal-mining town and how they each 'escape'...dea...more...]]>
30falsefalseTue Feb 24 19:46:00 -0800 2009Tue Feb 24 19:48:03 -0800 200940truefalseWed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008Sun Dec 16 08:39:11 -0800 2007Thu Oct 23 09:52:28 -0700 2008
more...]]>
40falsefalseSun Dec 07 00:00:00 -0800 2008Tue Dec 09 06:18:51 -0800 2008Thu Dec 11 06:07:21 -0800 2008
http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=72876