Lori Eshleman's Blog, page 8

Review of Leaf by Niggle, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read Leaf by Niggle in preparation for teaching a course on J.R.R. Tolkien. Originally written in 1938-39 and 1st published in 1945, this short story speaks to our own time, particularly to the devaluation of the arts and humanities in our society. In the story, Niggle spends all his time painting a huge canvas of trees and their leaves, neglecting his house and interrupted only by the need to help his neighbors. Perhaps a bit like Tolkien himself in his creation of an elaborate new mythology, the picture just keeps growing, and Niggle is not sure when it will be done. In Kafka-esque manner, various administrators pass judgement on him, much like university administrators and politicians judge the humanities today: the town councillor says Niggle is "a silly little man...no use to Society at all...No practical or economic use," and dismisses his art as "private day-dreaming." Yet Niggle creates a marvelous world, full of the beauty of nature, a world that in the end gives him and his neighbors great pleasure. This story speaks to us in the voice of one of the great creative minds of the 20th century, reminding us that there is more to life than business and economic production. The arts and humanities enhance our world, free us to see things from different perspectives, and give us hope.



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Review of A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Review of A Spool of Blue Thread: A Novel. This novel by Pulitzer-Prize winning American writer Anne Tyler is about a family and about a house: the house in Baltimore where several generations of the Whitshank family have lived. As a University instructor who teaches a seminar on Understanding Place, I have read many student papers on family homes. The houses we grow up in, the houses where we visit grandparents, and where we raise our own families have a profound effect on our memories, our sense of identity and belonging. Picture Grandma and you will imagine her in her kitchen baking or in her living room playing the piano or in her yard gardening. In her novel, Tyler has tapped into this near universal sense of connectedness to the place that is home. Against this backdrop she shows us the frustrations, disappointments and joys that are so common to family life. In contrast to the forward progression of many novels, she leads us from the present back to earlier generations of the same family, so that we see the story unfold through time, complete with changes to the house: from its construction, when it is up-to-date and modern, to its weathering and aging, just as generations weather and age. We get to know Abby, the aging hippy mother who senses that she has never really grown up; Denny, her son, whose feelings of resentment stunt his life; Red, her husband, whose father built the house; Linnie Mae, her mother-in-law, who makes a life for herself with the man she loves, against all odds. This is an ordinary middle class family, tugged at by rivalry and misunderstanding; and by the sense of falling short, of never quite fitting in. The house is what it is to many middle class families: a symbol of having arrived, of success and material comfort. And also a symbol of the passage of time. Houses are built, houses age and pass on; as people, too, age and die--and families move on to the next generation. I was struck by what one of Abby’s daughters says at the end of Part 1, looking at the chaos of moving day: “It makes you wonder why we bother accumulating, accumulating, when we know from earliest childhood how it’s all going to end”(217). Despite this downward tug of dissolution, the novel offers us a kind of answer to “why we bother,” in small and poignant moments of revelation, connection, and forgiveness.



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Review of Lila: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Review of Lila: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson. Set during the Dust Bowl and its aftermath, this novel follows the life of Lila, a stolen child who grows up in the company of a band of vagrants who live outside and find work when they can. It reminds me of my own mother’s stories of the dust clouds that reached as far as her home town in Illinois, and of the travelers who sometimes came to my grandmother’s door and were given a meal. Lila is a bit of a wild child, barely lettered, with little concept of abstract thought, the Bible, or the rooted ways of small towns in the Midwest. What she knows is the smell of hay, the sound of rivers, the dampness of rain, and the cycles of the seasons. Fear, shame and suspicion are rooted in her, along with a fierce loyalty to her small band of vagrants, especially her protector Doll. Comforts are rare and treasured: a loaned shawl, a rag doll, a free meal at a revival camp. Hers has been a hardscrabble life. She is unprepared, then, for her encounter with a widowed preacher in Gilead, his comfortable home, and all the restrictions of life in a town. Lila teeters between the safety of this new life and the lure of the wild, calling her back to her wandering ways. Ever on edge, the reader is never quite sure which path Lila will take. Reading the Bible and talking with the minister raises burning questions in her about heaven and hell, good and evil, the saved and the damned. Surely her band of vagrants, outside the boundaries of acceptable society and the law, would be among the damned, Doll included?…Yet they are the only society she has known, the only comfort and belonging. This is a question she ponders almost obsessively--and forces on both the reader and the minister. The confrontation between Lila and the minister is not just about theology, but about apprehending the world through words and concepts versus knowing it through primal existence. Lila thinks: “That old man had no idea. Let us pray, and they all did pray…There was no need for any of it. The days came and went on their own, without any praying about it.” Lila’s knowledge of life takes a different form: “She thought she could unravel the sounds the river made…the soft rush of the eddy. Now and then there were noises, some small thing happened and disappeared, no one would ever know what it was.” This unsocialized, unlettered knowledge is profound, searing, and lonely. Yet it is this knowledge--and not the other--that makes this novel shake and sing.



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Review of Suspended Sentences, by Patrick Modiano

Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas by Patrick Modiano

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I was curious to read Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas, by French writer Patrick Modiano (translated by Mark Polizzotti, 2014), because the author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014. First, let me say that if you like German writer W.G. Sebald, you will also like Modiano. Had Sebald lived, I suspect he, too, would have won the Nobel Prize. Both writers have a sadness to them, of places and people lost to time, and a strong sense of their remnants in the present: buildings, streets, villages, place-names, letters, photographs, objects, fragmented memories. Both, too, write with the awareness of World War II imprinted on their narratives. Modiano seems preoccupied with people who are on the margins of society: petty criminals, vagrants, prostitutes, absent fathers, and collaborators during the German occupation of France. His narrator in the novellas speaks from the perspective of a boy or young man, or as an adult looking back at his former self. These narrators capture the impermanence of relationships, the transience of time, and the malleability of identity. What we know of others is tentative and fragmentary. What we know of ourselves, too. We could easily be someone else. This sense of doubt is heightened by the limited perspectives of young people, who are often “in the dark,” both because they don’t understand the activities and words of adults and because they are kept “in the dark” by those adults. In the book’s first novella, Afterimage, a young admirer painstakingly catalogs the work of a famous photographer because he “refused to accept that people and things could disappear without a trace” (15); ironically, the photographer himself wishes to vanish, “blending into the surroundings once and for all” (55). In all three novellas, there is an almost obsessive attention to names of people and place names, in Paris, its suburbs, and other French towns. The author catalogs these names and places much like the young man in Afterimage catalogs photographs: in an effort to grasp hold of people, meanings, and events that blur and vanish like ghosts. In an effort to find evidence of our own and other people’s lives. Like the relationship between memory and present perceptions, Modiano’s writing does not follow a clear path, but digresses, takes unforeseen turns, and shifts topic abruptly, much like a walker wandering at will down streets that are familiar and yet strange. Although the three novellas were originally published separately, between 1988 and 1993, places, characters, and themes intersect in tantalizing and mysterious ways, creating a sense of fragmented unity. In these novellas, perhaps one could say, along with the photographer in Afterimage, that Modiano has come close to “managing to create silence with words” (8). Perhaps. But nothing is certain. Rien est certain.



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Review of The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton

I was initially drawn to The Miniaturist (Jessie Burton) by its cover: a city contained in a woman’s figure. Then, from the first page to the last, I was caught by the dynamic writing style, which delineates characters and actions in a tumbling synesthesia of motion, shape, color, sound, smell, and taste. Finally, as an art lover, I was drawn to the description of 17th century interiors laden with the contents of Dutch still life and genre paintings--Turkish carpets, polished pewter, maps, sugar-crusted pastries, lobster claws and suckling pigs. I felt I could be wandering through Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, or Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, or Willem Kalf’s Still Life with Nautilus Cup. The characters are interesting: the harsh sister-in-law Marin, the charming and mysterious husband Johannes, the African servant Otto, Cornelia the pastry-baking cook. And Nella, the young bride from whose viewpoint the story is told. Thrust by an arranged marriage into an Amsterdam household of wealth and secrets, she seems alternately naïve and passive, or willful and independent--a child struggling into womanhood with little help from her surroundings. Then there is the elusive Miniaturist, who holds a surprising power over Nella and others, with her miniature creations. Part Gothic romance with overtones of the supernatural, part morality-tale and coming-of-age story, The Miniaturist entertains and holds the reader’s interest. But despite its riches of language, arts, and setting, I felt some distance from the characters--and I found myself moved only at the very end.

Review of Stars Go Blue, by Laura Pritchett

I raced through Stars Go Blue by Laura Pritchett in two days, because I could hardly put it down. One of the best novels I've read recently, it's the story of a ranching couple in old age, their personal history and family. Like all families there are skeletons in the closet, which keep popping out, and conflict between people who basically love each other. The novel highlights the challenges we all face when growing old and approaching death and leaving the places and people we love. Particularly challenging is the "first death" of Alzheimer's, which has clouded the memory of Renny's husband, Ben. Renny herself is a hard-bitten and tough woman whose sharp ways conceal strong emotions. Neither Ben nor her family are quite the way Renny would like--and a terrible family event has driven the husband and wife apart. But Ben has something important to do before he dies, if only he can remember it. He tracks this goal with the tenacity of a rancher who has killed and saved many animals in his life. What follows changes everyone's lives. Written in rhythmic and powerful prose, the novel not only captures the inner thoughts and emotions of Ben and Renny, but also the harsh and beautiful world of the Colorado plains--the fierce snow, the orange willows, the spring greening, and the stars that turn blue. If you read no other novel this year, read this one.Stars Go Blue

Review of Tapestry of Queens, by Carol Milkuhn

A Tapestry of Queens: A Story of Scotland's Struggle for Independence by Carol Milkuhn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A Tapestry of Queens by Carol Milkuhn (Bagwyn Books, 2014) follows the story of a dressmaker to queens in the English court, as she makes her way to Scotland in service of Marie de Guise, and back to England to the house of Catherine Parr. The novel is enriched with descriptions of jeweled and embroidered gowns, cuffs, and headdresses. There are rivalries with other court dressmakers and tailors, as well as encounters with various nefarious characters such as a priest, a spy, and a corrupt Scottish lord. The main character, the mercer Cordelia, often turns up in the right place at the right time--or in the wrong place at the wrong time--overhearing key conversations and witnessing pivotal moments in British history. She plays both the role of an unseen servant and of someone whom the powerful use for their own schemes. Emblematic of the court of this unpredictable monarch, she is trailed by an entourage of characters intent on either ruining her reputation or taking her life. While I enjoyed the setting and the portraits through Cordelia’s eyes of some of the celebrated men and women of Henry VIII’s time, I found the storyline somewhat incohesive, with the sense that Cordelia was being moved like a chess piece across the playing-board of Tudor England.



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Review of The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel

I began reading Hilary Mantel’s recent collection of short stories, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, with high expectations after loving her historical novels, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. These stories are far removed from the court intrigues of the 16th century. Most are set in bleak and trapped surroundings in 20th century England: dingy hotel rooms with brown, stained carpets; walk-up flats; middle class homes; and anonymous train stations. The narrators and those they observe seem trapped in a crabbed and jaundiced world, riven with pent-up want, isolation,and mundane misery. These are people whose ability to connect with others--whether family, friend or coworker--falls painfully short. Yet there are unexpected gestures of intimacy, for example when a daughter wordlessly attempts to repair a shattered dish, a symbol of her parents’ broken marriage. Or when a sister leaves small packets of foil-wrapped food for her hopelessly anorexic sibling. At times, these stories reminded me of Victorian ghost tales such as those penned by the wonderful Sheridan Le Fanu. Stories with a tinge of the supernatural and the awful. Stories with a twist at the end, that causes a sudden chill of recognition. The imprint of these stories is sharp, like the "blade of bone" that indents the palm of one of Mantel's characters: "When she had woken up next morning, the shape of it was still there in her mind."(189) Just so, the shape of these unsettling stories will remain with the reader.

Review of A Treacherous Paradise, by Henning Mankell

A Treacherous Paradise by Henning Mankell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



In the opening chapters of A Treacherous Paradise, by Henning Mankell, a young woman leaves a life of desperate poverty in rural Sweden in 1904 to seek her fortune aboard a sailing ship set for Australia. The beginning took me back to my own grandmother’s flight from Sweden a few years later, in 1908. After reading this book, I felt more strongly the hardships and dislocation she must have faced, sent out as a servant at the age of twelve and then boarding a ship for a strange land at the age of 18. While my grandmother ended up in America, Hanna, the heroine of this novel, embarks on a picaresque adventure that drops her serendipitously in a hot and segregated town on the coast of Portuguese East Africa, where she becomes the owner of a bordello. The story of Hanna’s time in East Africa reminded me of Gulliver’s Travels--and indeed Mankell refers to this work in the novel. His heroine sees many sights that amaze her, from a long tapeworm that inhabits a human body, to a magical potion that allows the owner to fly away unseen, to a chimpanzee that acts like a human. Mankell returns here to a favorite theme in his novels: the injustices of colonialism and the effects of racism on society. The author’s use of symbolism is at times heavy-handed: for example, the white dogs bred to attack black bodies. Hanna herself plays the role of an unwitting observer of the racism and injustice around her and seems as trapped by her circumstances as the African prostitutes in the bordello. The motives behind her decisions remain opaque, leading from one lucky or unlucky result to another and leaving the reader bemused. And Hanna, whose name changes several times in the course of the novel, like a butterfly in metamorphosis, seems equally bemused by the motives of those around her. In this hothouse of a colonial past, the behavior of Africans and of European colonists is itself the mystery, one that I suspect even Detective Wallander could not unravel.



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Review of The Children Act, by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan's new novel, The Children Act, revisits one of his favorite themes: how a messy encounter with a stranger can crack open and reshape the lives of privileged people. In this case the protagonist is a highly successful female judge who is in a long, but childless, marriage. The novel opens with her husband threatening an affair. McEwan's rhythmic prose captures the patterns in the judge's life, from her morning preparations and processes of walking to and from work, to the intimate rituals in a long marriage, to the details of the judge's cases in family court. McEwan enlivens the narrative with surprising references, such as "she turned right toward her broad landing onto which the doors of many High Court judges faced--like an advent calendar, she sometimes thought" (50). The cases themselves are interesting, underscoring the judge's reasoned judgements as well as the emotional scarring caused by certain cases. Her newest case concerns a precocious young man who is refusing a blood transfusion because of religious beliefs. The scenes between Fiona and the young man are poignant, intense and unscripted, in contrast to her usual life. Throughout the novel, belief and disbelief, reason and emotion, alternate. Music forms an underlying theme, whether Fiona's love of classical music and piano, her husband of jazz, or the young man who is just learning the violin. And at critical moments, the words and laments of a ballad. In the course of this very readable book, both Fiona and the reader learn that there are no choices without consequences--and redemption itself comes with a cost.