What We Forgive Ourselves

Title: Dear Life
Author: Alice Munro
Host: Shirley at Liz's

From the publisher: "In story after story....Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate. Her characters are flawed and fully human: a soldier returning from war and avoiding his fiancee, a wealthy woman deciding whether to confront a blackmailer, an adulterous mother and her neglected children, a guilt-ridden father, a young teacher jilted by her employer." In addition, "four autobiographical tales offer an unprecedented glimpse into Munro's own childhood."

This book is a multi-award-winner, and Munro herself won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.

Insights and Opinions

+ Our conversation opened with this question from Shirley: "Which of these stories do you remember most?" Now, this may seem an odd start to a book club discussion about a story collection, but we asked because we all admitted to having a hard time remembering any. Yet all of us had a strong memory of the book itself -- not the stories, not the plots, but the mood, the color, Munro's writing. When pressed, we flipped through our pages, calling out specific stories. "Oh yes, Train!" "Oh, of course, Amundson!" Munro takes you deeper than the story. How is that possible? It's Alice Munro magic.

+ Munro's characters are layered and often inscrutable. Their behavior is often surprising and sometimes inexplicable, but completely right for the story. We wondered if the motivation of Munro's characters was era-specific -- is it that the people in her stories are uncaring? Or, are they a reflection of a time in which reflection just wasn't done, where passion was kept in check?

+ Munro tells us herself, in the final line of her final semi-autobiographical essay, when she is explaining why she did not go home for her mother's last illness or funeral: "We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do -- we do it all the time."

+ From her warm-weather hideaway, Vickie sent us these notes:

"I was reminded of hearing Charles Baxter discuss "counterpointed characterization" when I was a student in the Warren Wilson MFA program. HIs lecture later became a chapter in his collection of essays on writing, Burning Down the House. (Here) is a quick summary...as described by writer Lee Martin in his blog:

'"In this chapter ("Counterpointed Characterization"), Baxter takes to task the conflict model for the structure of a short story. That is to say, the protagonist pitted against an antagonist; one person wants something, another person wants something else. Voila. Conflict. Baxter argues that stories often don't work that way. He says the conflict can actually be very slight in a short story, and that often counterpointed characterization creates the tension.

By counterpointed characterization, he means the pairing of characters who 'bring out a crucial response to each other.'"

+ Vickie pointed to "In Sight of the Lake" as one example which seems to place the man who meets Nancy in his private garden and leads her to the "home" as a counterpointed character to Nancy. This man has come to his home after a friend died. He is kind, but he does lead her to a very different kind of home -- one from which she will not have the ability to come and go as she pleases. The ending of this story is stunning and shows why Munro is such a master storyteller.

+ The last four autobiographical stories are an amazing group. It is so clear in these how she has used the themes of her life in her fiction, but these are looser and less tidy that her other short stories. Even in these, she can't avoid those mysterious people who appear in our past. As Vickie pointed out, "this story has another amazing ending, which shows me Alice Munro's honest but strangely ambiguous reaction to those things we do in this 'dear life'."

+ Linda, who had to miss our conversation, said by email: "There is a lot to commend Dear Life, especially the marvelous, interesting characters. I underlined several passages in the collection, but …. I loved this quote from "Dolly" -- 'Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry? And not too much or not too little, just enough."

+ In the final analysis, we agree: These are wonderful stories. All of them.

Other Details

+ Next month, we read The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, at Joanne's house.

+ For April, we will be reading a classic. After some names were batted around, we settled on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The motion carried.

A Work of Fiction that Mirrors A Frightening Reality

Title: Flight Behavior
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Host:  Gail

Barbara Kingsolver's latest work of fiction, Flight Behavior opens with young Dellarobia Turnbow's desperate climb from her narrow life in rural Appalachia up the mountain behind her home and toward an illicit affair sure to ruin her life. Instead, she is brought to her knees by an astounding sight -- "The forest blazed with its own internal light." She has no explanation for what she sees. "The burning trees were put here to save her. It was the strangest conviction she'd ever known, and still she was sure of it."

Monarchs clustered in trees near Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico. 

What Dellarobia sees as a forest fire is, in fact, something more terrible. The entire population of East Coast monarch butterflies is wintering on an Appalachian hilltop instead of their natural winter haven in Mexico. Shifting weather patterns have upset the natural order, and the monarchs are in the wrong place, where the continued annual migration from Canada to Mexico and back is now in jeopardy. Soon, Dellabrobia's community is overrun with scientists, reporters, and sightseers, and her life spins forward on an unpredictable trajectory.

Insights and Opinions

+ Kingsolver is a gifted writer whose works we all look forward to reading. But while she has imagined an ingenious plot here, we found ourselves feeling the book veers too close to a polemic against anti-science boobs, with some characters who are more caricatures than fully rounded people we could believe. The female TV reporter represents more of a type than an individual, as do the graduate students. Even Ovid, who is a central character, reads flat and only comes fully to life toward the end of the book in the scenes that take place after his wife joins him on Dellarobia's land.

+ Through most of the book, Ovid exists only in Dellarobia's head. We see him entirely through her eyes and her imagination. But he never gets to be on stage, unless he's making a speech that supports the author's position.

+ Shirley observed that Kingsolver's women characters are the most fully realized. Dellarobia's husband  Cub seems so stunted -- and certainly that is Kingsolver's intention -- but his diminished self renders him more of a cardboard cutout on the page than the living, breathing, understandably limited man we wanted him to be. His limitations are so profound, it's difficult to believe that Dellarobia's friend Crystal finds him fascinating and attractive. There are writers who are weak at getting deeply into the opposite sex, and it doesn't hurt the book. But in this case, it does.

Female monarch butterfly in May

+ Kingsolver clearly has an agenda, and we get it. But she is preaching to the choir here.

+ Having said all that, the more we discussed the book, the more we found to like about it. Kingsolver's prose is a pleasure to read. Her small descriptions of life are sometimes stunning and profound, as when Dellarobia discovers that her mother-in-law Hester has always expected her to leave. "It was an earthquake, an upheaval of buried surfaces in which nothing was added or taken away. Her family was still her family, an alliance of people at odds, surviving like any other by turning the everyday blind eye." Kingsolver is a wonderful storyteller and an important voice. We just want her to write the people, not the cause.

Articles worth reading

Migration of Monarch Butterflies Shrinks Again Under Inhospitable Conditions

Migrating Monarch Butterflies in "Grave Danger," Hit New Low

Oddments and Telling Details

+ Our conversation kicked off with a round robin on each person's methods for maintaining physical balance, which mostly involved things to do while brushing one's teeth.

+ Joanne had actually been to the monarch over-wintering spot in Mexico, and brought pictures to share with us. Really quite wonderful.

+ If you have a yard or garden, do the butterflies a favor and plant some milkweed!

+ We chose a book for March: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

January's Read: Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Title: Flight Behavior
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Date: January 20, 2014
Host: Gail
Location: Open Book

From the publisher: "Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in or particular chosen truths. Kingsolver's riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions -- religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians -- trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world."

"If I'm kneeling, I must be praying."

Title:  Tumbledown

Author:  Robert Boswell

Host:  Faith

A full ten years after the publication of his last novel and nearly thirty years after leaving a job in counseling to pursue writing full time, prose master Robert Boswell is back with Tumbledown, a complex and compelling novel published by our own Graywolf Press.  Populated by a large cast of offbeat characters, the story's lynchpin is James Candler, a therapist at Onyx Springs Rehabilitation Center. Candler is on track to become the facility's youngest director, a promotion he knows he doesn't deserve.  His "clients" -- the beautiful but damaged Karly, the serial masterbator Alonso, schizophrenic Mick, angry Vex, bitter Maura -- assemble elaborately complicated boxes in the sheltered workshop that is his signature therapeutic program.  Boswell's novel is no less intricate or satisfying to piece together.  

Insights and Opinions

+ Faith began the discussion by admitting that she hadn't read the last half of the novel carefully and was confused.  Did James quit his job or was he fired?  Did Mick die or survive his suicide attempt?  But even if you read the book closely -- and many of us couldn't put it down -- there are no simple answers to these questions. A straightforward and compulsively readable narrative until late in the second half, Tumbledown takes a stylistic turn when the author addresses the reader directly and offers two alternative endings. "Human behavior is no simple matter," he tells us, "and the unfolding of a single act can paper a house. This book is that house." We were undecided about whether the dual endings worked or were, in Lois' opinion, a "cop-out."  Comparisons were made to our August book, Jewelweed, with its similarly large ensemble of misfits. But unlike David Rhodes, Boswell doesn't provide a tidy resolution. English professor Shirley commented on the tendency towards indeterminate endings in recent fiction.

Still life with Valentine wine.

+ Tumbledown also features a large cast of secondary, "normal" characters who are dealing with their own personal demons -- James' recently widowed sister Violet and sexy fiancee Lolly (British slang for money), his stalking mistress Lise Rae and hapless best friend Billy Atlas. They all gather in Candler's sprawling suburban house for the novel's climactic scene. Despite -- or possibly because of -- Billy's questionable judgment and unprofessional behavior,  he ultimately finds the personal happiness and career satisfaction that alludes his smarter, more successful friend. We all loved Billy for following his heart rather than the rules.

+ We are a group who take words very seriously. Faith had a few quibbles with the odd choice of words in phrases like, "he trammeled down the stairs" and found the characters' names curious, i.e. James Candler (a person who examines eggs for fertility). Even the title is an unusual use of tumbledown, which commonly refers to dilapidated buildings rather than lives that are falling apart. But we all agreed that Boswell's writing is exquisite and original. As Lois put it, "the way he describes things is quite slant," and we appreciated the off-kilter wit of his wordplay.  

+ Perhaps not surprisingly, we took a particular interest in Candler's sister and her work as an editor. "I should have warned you," her husband tells her after a particularly disappointing evening with an author. "Meeting a writer is always a letdown. They're never as interesting as their work. If they were, then they would have failed their books. They write to be better than themselves." This led to a freewheeling conversation filled with interesting anecdotes about writers and a particularly funny story about Linda's meeting with a famous (and surprisingly humorless) Minnesota author. Afterwards, Joan Drury gave her this memorable piece of advice: "Just because you like pate' doesn't mean you should invite a goose to dinner."  

+ Two of our group had the opportunity to meet Robert Boswell while he was in town this fall and assured us that it definitely was not a letdown.  Among other things, he discussed his experiences working as a counselor (for more, see the interview with Boswell below).  Tumbledown is dedicated to "all the clients who survived my tenure as a counselor and to the one who didn't." Joann felt this experience contributed to his empathy towards his characters and suggested that the dual endings reflected his attempt to come to terms with past mistakes.

+ And with that, we were off on tangents ranging from the impact of aging on IQ and fiction's ability to teach empathy, to school guidance counselors' power to stifle a child's interest in reading for life.  It must have been the delicious Valentine wine.

Tumbledown: An Interview with Robert Boswell

Other Bits

+  Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel (our roundly criticized June selection) was named one of The New York Times Notable Books of 2013 and included on several "best of" lists including Book Riot's 7 funniest (!) novels of the year. Hmmmmmmm.

A lovely reminder to keep on working.

+ We missed several members of our group who were off traveling because of work or winter, and circulated a card for Blanche, who was recovering from a bad fall. Since then, we've received this update: "I'm doing quite well -- the lack of balance is something I've dealt with for years and they're finally taking seriously now that I've broken my neck! I'm going to a center which deals with it not far from our Florida place. The sooner I get off the ice the better!  I really appreciate your concern and good wishes and hope to be back at book group soon."  

+ We choose Dear Life by Alice Munro for our February book and added Someone by Alice McDermott to the list for future consideration.  Gail will host the January discussion of Flight Behavior at Open Book but we still need a host and location for our February meeting.

November's Read: Tumbledown by Robert Boswell

Title: Tumbledown
Author: Robert Boswell
Date: November 17
Host: Faith

 From the publisher, Graywolf Press: At age thirty-three, James Candler seems to be well on the road to success. He's in line for a big promotion at Onyx Springs, the treatment facility where he's a therapist. He has a fiancee, sizable house, and a Porsche.

But...he's falling in love with another woman, he's underwater on his mortgage, and he's put his hapless best friend in charge of his signature therapeutic program. Even the GPS on his car can't seem to predict where he should turn next. And his clients are struggling in their own hilarious, heartbreaking ways to keep their lives on track. How can he help them if he can't help himself?

In Tumbledown, Robert Boswell presents a large, unforgettable cast of characters who are all failing and succeeding in various degrees to make sense of our often irrational world. In a moving narrative twist, he boldly reckons with the extent to which tragedy can be undone, the impossible accommodated.

Almost Too Much Excitement for Our Small Group

Title: On Sal Mal Lane
Author: Ru Freeman
Special Guest via Skype: Ru Freeman
Special Guest in the Flesh: Jocelyn Hale, Executive Director of The Loft Literary Center
Host: Chris

Well, where to begin in describing a wonderful night filled with luminaries, stimulating conversation, shrimp cocktail, and Open Book? At the beginning.

Joining us via Skype from Collegeville, Minnesota, where she was guest-lecturing at the College of St. Benedict, Ru Freeman -- the author of our discussion topic On Sal Mal Lane -- was generous with her one spare half-hour, and with her willingness to answer our questions.

Author Ru Freeman joined the conversation via Skype from
the College of St. Benedict.

Our one cardinal book club rule is this: No one gets to start the discussion with "I loved (or hated) this book "because it closes down nuanced conversation right from the get-go. But with the author in the room (at least on screen), we threw that rule out the window. This is an astounding work by a wise writer. It will break your heart and leave you with a first-hand understanding that war happens to real people, even those who live on a quiet street like Sal Mal Lane.

Insights and Opinions

+ The book's pace at the beginning is slow and dreamy. We need to meet each of the families on this small dead-end street in Sri Lanka. It takes some doing to master the names and remember which characters are Tamil and which are Sinhalese. There is a new history to learn, and most of us here in the U.S. know nothing about cricket. Very slowly, the story builds. Joanne started the book, and put it down. Then she picked it up again at the urging of a friend and never looked back. Lois stuck with it and "when I got to a certain point, Joe asked 'what happened to my wife?'" As Margy so aptly put it, "I don't think you could do it any other way, and still have it end so powerfully."
+ This is not a book to read episodically. Read it in just a few sittings, and allow it to build and build. Freeman uses a wide-angle lens, and then narrows it tighter and tighter until it reaches its final focus on a stunning end-point. It is tough going at the start, but stay with it. You will fall in love.
+ Chris felt like she grew up on that lane -- that it was a street like any other in the world, with children playing and knowing each other despite their parents' opinions, religions, or political leanings. And this is the author's intent. "The point of the book is to make people feel like that place is their place, and that those children could have been their children, and to make war personal to you even though you weren’t born there," Freeman said. "People’s ethnic backgrounds and skin color may be different, but that story is not particular to one place."
+ Linda loved the representation of so many groups on one small lane. "I could picture every one of those families. It is a microcosm of the world, and the situations that so many people face."
+ Unfolding the story through the eyes of the children is a brilliant device. There are hints about unhappy marriages, and child abuse, but you see it only through the children.
+ There are also lessons to be learned about grieving in this book. Each child finds a different way to grieve, and the reader sees ways to grieve healthily and give something back.
+ Ru closed her call with us by reading the unpublished epilogue, which will be included in the upcoming paperback.
+ The rest of our conversation involved plot points that would spoil the book for anyone reading this who hasn't already read the book, so we'll stop here.

Other Interesting Bits

+ Jocey Hale brought us up to speed on exciting changes at The Loft Literary Center and at Open Book, and we are so grateful to her for joining us for this session. The Loft will be 40 years old in 2015 and exciting plans are afoot. What she pointed out -- and what we all already know -- is that involvement with the Loft is transformational. We see daily evidence of this in the lives of so many that we know.
+ Faith sent a letter, asking that our next meeting be at her house, even though she says the house "looks like the Hesperus after it was wrecked." We will bring all of the snacks and wine and she is NOT to lift a finger.

Ru Freeman loves her publisher! Here, she plants a big
one on Fiona McCrae, Graywolf Press

+ Some of our number were lucky enough to be included at a Graywolf Press luncheon a few days after book club at which Ru Freeman was an honored guest. At the luncheon, Freeman offered even more insight into the writing of On Sal Mal Lane. She grew up on a multi-ethnic dead-end lane in Sri Lanka, went to a convent school but was more interested in play than study, and had two very protective older brothers who are the models for Suren and Nihil (including his ability to recite poetry and sing backwards). The book is dedicated to them: "For my brothers, Arjuna and Malinda: Loka, who provided the music of our childhood, and Puncha, who kept me as safe as he could.

October's Read: On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman

Meeting date: Monday, October 20
Location: Open Book, Mahai Book Club Room
Special guest: Jocelyn Hale, Executive Director, The Loft Literary Center
Host: Chris

From the publisher, our own Graywolf Press: On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries.

But the tremors of civil war are mounting, and the conflict threatens to engulf them all. In a heart-rending novel poised between the past and the future, the innocence of the children -- a beloved sister and her over-protective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very different brothers -- contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults charged with their care. In Ru Freeman's masterful hands, On Sal Mal Lane, a story of what was lost to a country and her people, becomes a resounding cry for reconciliation.

A big welcome to the evening's special guest

Jocelyn Hale, executive director of The Loft Literary Center, will join us for conversation and discussion. She's reading the book now!

The Human Legacy of a Failed Utopia

Title: In Times of Fading Light
Author: Eugen Ruge translated by Anthea Bell
Host: Lois

Winner of the German Book Prize, In Times of Fading Light is the multigenerational story of an East German family before and after the fall of Communism. The novel begins and ends in September 2001, first with the ailing Alexander Umnitzer visiting his once academically brilliant and now demented father before traveling to Mexico to search for answers to his family's mysteries, and ending in Mexico.

In between, we spend 1952 with ardent Communists Wilhelm and Charlotte, who are repatriating from Mexico to post-war East Berlin before construction of the wall, 1961 with a young Kurt and his Russian wife Irina, 1973 for Alexander's stint in the East German army, and then to 1989, by which time Alexander is in West Germany working in theater, having left behind his son Markus. The story's touchstone is Wilhelm's 90th birthday party celebration, which is told and retold from the perspective of several characters, to an effect that is both heart-breaking and hilarious.

Insights and Opinions

+ Having lost some of our membership to travel and one to injury, ours was a smaller but still enthusiastic group. Being in Open Book, our literary haven, primed the conversational pump. And so did the wine.

+ Ruge is a master at fully inhabiting his characters. From the ancient Russian Baba Nadya to 12-year-old Markus to Charlotte and Wilhelm who share only a fervor for Communism but nothing else, to Irina the Russian emigrant whose roast goose is three parts tradition and two parts alcoholism, these characters each have a distinct voice that is entirely believable.

Lois' incredibly indulgent peanut thingies

+ On the other hand, there is a flatness to Ruge's characters -- a profound lack of empathy. As Lois put it, "I didn't like any of these characters much when reading them through someone else's eyes, but once inside their heads, I liked them much better." Each of these characters is sensitive to the hurts and slights they suffer at each others hands, but the harm each of them wreaks on their family members is wholly invisible to them. Perhaps a society that stomps out the individual kills the soul, and one generation passes this deadness of spirit on to the next.

+ We come back to Wilhelm's 90th birthday celebration several times. Each time, a different character describes the event, noticing different details, objects and smells, interpreting what people say and do in a different way. With every telling, the party grows more fractured, absurd, sad and funny. Since every character's point of view is different and paints the facts in a different light, it's almost as if the reader becomes another character.

+ Ruge defines his characters by their obsessions -- Irina and her roast goose, Charlotte's incessant remodeling, Wilhelm's grossly inflated sense of his own importance to the Communist machine. Maybe all of us are defined by our obsessions.

+ Lurching back and forth between characters and time periods made the book hard going for some. The reader needs to be alert to stay on track. Note-taking helps, and Shirley (our academic) would have loved some footnotes, especially to deliver details about locations and historical events that may not be familiar to an American audience.

+ There is a note of underground feminism in this book. Both Irina and Charlotte have greater credentials than their husbands, but their husbands are lionized while they labor alongside, unrecognized.

+ Most of the group loved the book, but not all. Joanne felt a connection to all of the characters because they were all so absolutely human. Steve, on the other hand, wanted to see some kind of progression in the characters, not just a deeper desperation. Liz felt the writing was wonderful, but could not relate to the characters, feeling they lacked empathy and learned nothing about themselves by the end of the novel. But as Kurt's character says, "they were all eternal exiles" and then later points out "how cheerful pure despair can make you." Perhaps their essential human flaws are enough.

+ Definitely worth your time.

A Welcome Journey Back to the Driftless Region

Title: Jewelweed
Author: David Rhodes
Host: Gail

In his latest novel, David Rhodes reunites readers with some of the characters Rhodes' fans met and embraced in Driftless. After a long stint in a hellish prison for profit for a crime committed out of youthful foolishness, Blake Bookchester is paroled into the sponsorship of Winnie, the earnest local pastor. As he works to adjust, he reconnects with Danielle Workhouse, who is clawing her way up out of a hardscrabble existence by taking a job in the mansion of the Roebucks, caring for the family and their dying son. Her son Ivan and his best friend August explore the woods and the adults' mysteries, accompanied by Milton the pet bat, a hermit who lives in a melon patch, and a feral boy.

Geographical detail of the driftless region in Wisconsin

As their lives entwine, old hurts surface, secrets are uncovered, and risks taken jeopardize the tenuous hold these character have on the futures they so desperately desire.

Insights and Opinions

+ Who knows if it was because we were all excited about discussing this book, but we had a very full house with Gail, Vicky, Lois, Shirley, Blanche, Steve, Faith, Joanne, Margy and Liz. This, of course, makes for lots of loud talking all at once.

+ Rhodes is courageous in what he is trying to do with this book, and Milkweed Editions is courageous in allowing him his freedom to do so. He steps over the edge into the supernatural and then draws back into realism. He takes the reader to a new realm. Does Pastor Winnie really levitate? Or is this a state of mind? A metaphor? Ultimately, we decided that everyone has other-worldly moments, and we all call them different things. But they exist. It doesn't matter if they are "real" to anyone else. And isn't his writing a form of levitation?

+ In some places, the dialogue seems artificial and speech-y, but Rhodes is doing this by design. Brooke's initial conversation with Winnie in prison about Spinoza and books, and Brooke's later break-in into Flo's room for a long conversation about Spinoza with a woman who, earlier in the book, could barely speak, are two examples. But there is another layer here, in which you suspend judgment and just go with the magic of it all. This is perhaps not intended to be a realistic novel.

+ Rhodes delivers a superb balance between extraordinary realism and the allegorical. When he describes drought conditions and writes of "trees clenched" into "leaf fists," you feel the parched landscape in your gut. He has a deep understanding of nature to be able to write like this.

+ This is a satisfying novel, with deeply felt characters, page-turning plot points, and beautiful prose. There was some disagreement among us about the ending, and whether it was a bit too pat -- Blanche felt it tied up perhaps too neatly with a big bow. Margy thought the ending was "blue-collar Jane Austen." Vicky felt it was more similar to a Shakespearean comedy ending, where everyone gets together. But ultimately we decided we didn't care, and that we loved the book.

+ All of Jewelweed's major characters are outsiders in their own way -- Ivan being held back a grade, August too intellectual for his own good, Danielle damaged and holding so tight she can't recognize friendship when it's offered, Blake teetering on the edge of recidivism, Winnie as the fish out of water in her congregation.

+ At this point, we drifted into a rolling conversation about God, spirituality, pantheism, agnosticism, atheism, and Native American perspectives, being lovers of tangents. But Rhodes' book is conducive to tangential thinking. And some of our best discussions happen when we rove.

+ Rhodes believes in the goodness of human nature. Every character has an underside of goodness, even the villains.

+ Although this book has a few flaws (very few), it's a work of art. We loved it.

Oddments and Telling Details

+ There is a groundswell of opinion that every third or fourth book should be on the lighter side -- a bit of relief from the heavy, sad, or significant. As one participant put it: "In this great pudding of intellectuality, we need a few raisins." So, at least three times per year, we will read something that is NOT about the lost boys of Africa, NOT about the slums of anywhere, NOT about women sold into sex slavery, and does NOT have so many characters that you have to keep a notebook while reading.

Journeys Back and Forth Through Characters and Chronology

Title: Transatlantic
Author: Colum McCann
Host: Margy

National Book Award-winner Colum McCann spins a masterful web of interlaced novellas in this loosely bound novel of connection between Ireland and America. Moving gracefully between present time and three transatlantic crossings at key moments in history, Transatlantic woos the reader with beautiful prose and fully realized characters.

Alcock and Brown, the first aviators to fly nonstop
across the Atlantic Ocean.

After a brief present-day prologue, we move to a gripping account of Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown's attempt at the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. Then, it's on to Dublin for Frederick Douglass' lecture tour among the sympathetic Irish. Finally, we join U.S. Senator George Mitchell on his 1998 work at mediating peace in strife-torn Northern Ireland. In each of these stories, we meet women who play a minor role, but are deeply affected by their connections to these three events. These women are the focus of the second half of the novel.

Frederick Douglass

Insights and Opinions

• All agreed that the way the stories overlap and intertwine is powerful, frustrating, rewarding, and heartfelt. The question was posed "is this a new trend?" More and more frequently, we find novels that do not follow the traditional novel arc, with a beginning, middle, and end. Rather, more of today's authors are playing with structure in fiction, knitting together short stories or novellas that share characters, or unplugging stories from their chronology, and stitching them together in a new order.

• At least one of us found the work frustrating for exactly this reason. McCann creates such engaging characters -- people who live and breathe and in whom we are completely invested -- that it's jarring to leave them and move on to somebody else. Any one of these characters could have been the book. We all wanted more time with each of them.

• The Alcock/Brown transatlantic flight chapter is astonishing. Joanne felt this chapter held more energy and commitment from the author than any other chapter in the book. On the other hand, she found the George Mitchell section less engaging.

• McCann's prose is masterful. Powerful sentence fragments. Images that transport. A rhythm to the words that is nearly music. This is beautiful writing -- the perfect gathering of words.

• Vicky pointed out (via email) McCann's ability to clothe historical events in an urgency that makes them seem as if they are happening as we read them. She characterizes him as "a smooth and generous writer."

• At least one of us was hopelessly confused about the letter and why Hannah thought it had anything to do with Frederick Douglass. But since this same person spent one sleepless night trying to reconstruct the chronology of the women and to figure out who was related to whom while flopping about sleeplessly, she should just be ignored as she should have taken notes while reading.

• Hannah is the only voice in the first person. Why is this?

• We spent some time trying to decide what was at the center of the book. Crossings? The women? Certainly not the big events or the great men. Maybe there is no center. Maybe that's fine.

• As a related follow-up, try this article provided by Margy, which seems to confirm our observations about the emergence of a hybrid form of literature, and traces its literary history:

The Rise of the Fragmented Novel

Oddments and Telling Details

• He-man Steve gets a major award for riding his bike to book club in the stifling humidity. Most likely his enthusiasm was due to meeting his August 1 book deadline for Mastering the Craft of Writing: How to Write with Clarity, Emphasis, and Style to be published next spring. Buy it, please.

• We are out of books to read for future meetings, so please come prepared to our next meeting with your suggestions, or feel free to send them ahead of time. The current list of possibles is listed in Under Consideration.

• Mmmm. Cucumber sandwiches.

Call for Book Club Selections

Desperate Times

Due to low attendance, humidity, a bum hearing aid battery, and inability to remember the name of "oh, you know, that book," our July meeting did not generate the usual long list of possible future reads. This is where you come in.

We are so confused

Please submit your suggestions for what we should be reading from September until we run out of ideas. You can submit your ideas as a comment here, or send them by email, or bring them with you to our next session on August 19, 2013.

Thank you for your kind and studious attention.

August's Read: Jewelweed by David Rhodes

From the publisher, Milkweed Editions: "When David Rhodes burst onto the American literary scene in the '70s, he was hailed as a brilliant visionary. In Driftless, his "most accomplished work yet (Joseph Kanon), Rhodes made Words, Wisconsin, resonate with readers across the country. Now with Jewelweed, this beloved author returns to the same out-of-the-way community and introduces a cast of characters who must overcome the burdens left by the past.

After serving time for a dubious conviction, Blake Bookchester is paroled. As Blake attempts to adjust, he reconnects with Danielle Workhouse, a single mother whose son Ivan explores the woods with his precocious friend August. While Danielle goes to work for Buck and Amy Roebuck in their mansion, Ivan and August befriend Lester Mortal, a recluse who lives in a melon field; a wild boy; and a bat, Milton. These characters -- each flawed, deeply human, and ultimately universal -- approach the future with a combination of hope and trepidation. Jewelweed offers a vision in which the ordinary becomes mythical, the seemingly mundane transformed into revelatory beauty.





David Rhodes on life and writing.