Review of "The Invention of Wings" by Sue Monk Kidd

Today I’m posting a review from my archives.  I read this book back in March of 2014.  It is currently on the Dublin Literary Award longlist.

4 Stars

 

Covering the 35 years from 1803 to 1838, Handful (a.k.a. Hetty), a house slave for a wealthy Charleston family, and Sarah Grimké, a daughter of that elite family, tell their stories in alternating first-person chapters. On her eleventh birthday, Sarah is given Hetty as a present as her own waiting maid; her immediate reaction is to reject the gift, but she is told that her “’guardianship is legal and binding [and] there is nothing to be done about it’” (16). Her attempt to set Handful free is thwarted as well. Slowly a type of friendship develops between the girls, Sarah even breaking the law by teaching Handful how to read. As the years pass, Handful becomes an expert seamstress under the tutelage of her mother, and Sarah very slowly develops into a prominent abolitionist and women’s rights pioneer. (This novel is a fictional imagining of the early life of a historical figure; Sarah Grimké was a pioneer in speaking not just for emancipation but for racial and gender equality. Her work inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe.)

The author must be applauded for not forcing a “best friends forever” relationship on the two girls. Considering their circumstances, that would have been unbelievable. Handful explains, “I didn’t know for sure whether Miss Sarah’s feelings came from love or guilt. I don’t know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It was never a simple thing” (54). As the novel’s title clearly suggests, what the two have in common is a desire for freedom. Obviously, Handful wants to be a free woman. Sarah, on the other hand, wants to be free of the constraints imposed on her by society; she wants to have a profession and to be able to speak her mind; Sarah describes herself as being “afflicted with the worst female curse on earth, the need to mold myself to expectations” (144). Over and over again, her aspirations are “laid to rest in the Graveyard of Failed Hopes, an all-female establishment” (88). Handful describes the role of a slave: “A slave was supposed to be like the Holy Ghost – don’t see it, don’t hear it, but it’s always hovering round on ready” (6). In many ways that is the way Sarah and all women of her class are expected to behave: to be quiet and subservient, hovering in the background until summoned by the men. Handful realizes that Sarah is as trapped as she is: “She was trapped same as me, but she was trapped by her mind, by the minds of people around her, not by the law. . . . I tried to tell her that. I said, ‘My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round’” (200 – 201).

Handful and Sarah are also similar in their character traits. Sarah describes her sister as having “a lively intellect and [showing] signs of being quite fearless” (88), but the same description could be given to both her and Handful. Perhaps the trait that most stands out is their determination. Handful risks severe punishment by engaging in acts of rebellion. When faced with such punishment, she responds by telling her “backside to brace up” (7). For Handful, blackbird wings, which she adopts from her mother’s stories and incorporates into her quilts, serve as a symbol for her desire for freedom. Her mantra becomes “’We gonna leave here or die trying’” (337). Sarah is equally defiant, rebelling against her parents and society even in the face of widespread approbation. Her speech impediment, a fitting symbol of her being silenced, does not stop her from expressing her beliefs: “I told myself the affliction in my voice wouldn’t stop me, it would compel me. It would make me strong, for I would have to be strong” (20). Sarah uses a sterling button, which she begins to wear prominently, to remind her of all her hopes and dreams. Her mantra is “If you must err, do so on the side of audacity” (8).

Of the two stories, it is Handful’s that is stronger, and it is for perhaps this reason that she has the first and last chapters. Perhaps Sarah’s story is less compelling because she is not usually in physical danger whereas Handful’s life is in imminent danger several times. Sarah says that, “Being an abolitionist could get you attacked right on the streets – heckled, flogged, stoned, killed” (305 – 306), but her safety doesn’t seem to be seriously threatened. She faces expulsion from a church and a city, and has a lot to lose in terms of social status, but she has money. At one point, Sarah realizes that her broken heart after a rejection is “merely unfortunate” when compared to a slave’s being apprehended by guards, a truly “tragic” event (141). That is perhaps the situation throughout; Sarah’s situation is much less dire than Handful’s. Handful endures loss and sorrow on several levels whereas Sarah experiences, according to the flyleaf, “crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism.” Of course, I do not mean to dismiss emotional suffering or to diminish what Sarah Grimké accomplished; I can only admire what she achieved and stand in awe of her courage in standing up to men: “’Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks” (334).

Despite her stronger story, it is not Handful who is the most memorable character but Charlotte, Handful’s mother. Handful learns to be shrewd, tough, and defiant from her mother whose understanding of the world “came from living on the scarce side of mercy” (3). It is Charlotte who instills the desire for freedom in her daughter by telling her that her shoulder blades are the remnants of wings which will one day grow back. Sarah recognizes Charlotte’s keen intellect: “Of all the slaves Father owned, she struck me as the most intelligent, and perhaps the most dangerous” (30). She is dangerous because she instills a pride in her daughter, telling her, “’I is a ‘markable woman, and you is a ‘markable girl, and we ain’t never gon bow and scrape’” (76) and “’Ain’t nobody can write down in a book what you worth’” (112). Charlotte wants to be remembered not as a slave but as someone who belonged “’to nobody but herself’” (304).

The use of two women from totally different backgrounds emphasizes that the lives of both slaves and wealthy white women were affected by “the peculiar institution” (144). Both the story based on a real person and that based on a fictional character can remind us that we all need to take wing.

New Fiction Releases in 2016

The beginning of a new year always has readers wondering about the books that will be published

and will make their way to their “To Read” piles.  Here are my baker's dozen titles which I will definitely be checking out in the first six months of 2016:

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (January 12)

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (February 2)

Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson (February 9)

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier (March 15)
The Naturalist by Alissa York (April 12)

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (April 19)
Nightfall by Richard B. Wright (May 3)

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes (May 10)

LaRose by Louise Erdrich (May 10)

The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon (May 10)
Principles to Live By by David Adams Richards (May 17)

Barkskins by Annie Proulx (June 14)

                                      Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (June 21)

And in the second half of the year, there are at least these four releases to anticipate:

Autumn by Ali Smith (August)

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (September)

Margaret Atwood’s retelling of The Tempest in a yet-unnamed novel (October)

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble (November)

Several newspapers have recently had articles about the new releases of 2016.  Here are some British, American and Canadian sites to check out for titles coming to your book store.

Canada:

http://www.cbc.ca/books/springbooks2016/index.html
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/the-books-well-read-in-2016/

http://49thshelf.com/Blog/2016/01/07/Most-Anticipated-Our-Spring-2016-Fiction-Preview

Britain:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/03/new-fiction-highlights-2016-don-delillo-julian-barnes-geoff-dyer-nicola-barker

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/01/books-literary-calendar-2016

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-best-books-to-read-in-2016-from-everyone-brave-is-forgiven-to-the-gustav-sonata-a6793116.html

United States:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-book-releases-2016_5684607ae4b0b958f65b3a65?n

cid=tweetlnkushpmg00000031

http://www.themillions.com/2016/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2016-book-preview.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-20-novels-we-cant-wait-to-read-in-2016-and-this-list-only-gets-us-to-june/2015/12/29/ae212d1a-ae62-11e5-9ab0-884d1cc4b33e_story.html
http://lithub.com/the-buzz-books-springsummer-preview/

Review of "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel

4 Stars

Strange as it may sound, I loved this post-apocalyptic novel.  I understand why it won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and was longlisted for the National Book Award.  It is currently on the longlist for Canada Reads 2016 and the 2016 Dublin Literary Award.

The novel begins in the present at a theatre in Toronto.  Arthur Leander, the lead actor, has a fatal heart attack during a performance of King Lear.  Shortly thereafter, a lethal flu pandemic spreads, kills almost all of the world’s population, and causes a collapse of civilization.  We learn about the fate of three survivors over the next twenty years.   Kirsten Raymonde, a child actor befriended by Arthur, ends up as part of the Traveling Symphony, a troupe of musicians and actors who travel around and entertain the people living in isolated settlements with concerts and theatrical performances.  We also follow Clark, Arthur’s best friend, and Jeevan, the paramedic-in-training who performed CPR on Arthur in the theatre.

The story moves back and forth through time and interweaves characters’ lives.  We have flashbacks to Arthur’s life – the progression of his acting career and his three marriages.  Though the focus is on Year 20, some events in the lives of Kirsten, Clark and Jeevan during the 20 years after the pandemic are also highlighted. 

The book is a mystery of sorts in that there are a number of questions to which the reader wants answers:  Who is the Prophet that the Traveling Symphony encounters and why does he have a dog with the same name as the dog in Kirsten’s prized comic books?  What is the meaning of the tattoo on Kirsten’s wrist?  What is the Museum of Civilization?    

The motto of the Traveling Symphony is “survival is insufficient” and that line of text indicates the theme of the novel which examines the importance of art and culture.  The author suggests that it is culture, whether a symphony, a Shakespearean play, a museum of artifacts, or a comic book, which binds us together and makes us human.  Art reminds us of our humanity. 

The book is not as bleak as one would expect a post-apocalyptic narrative to be.  It does not focus on the immediate aftermath of the global disaster, but on the new world that emerges after a few years.  As a result, the focus is not on the daily struggles for the basic necessities of life.  That is not to say that the world is a utopia.  There are repeated references to the savagery of the early years; Kirsten, for example, has chosen to block out the horrors of Year One from her memory.  There are still dangers; the Traveling Symphony takes precautions to be safe on the roads and avoids areas with which they are not familiar.  Nonetheless, the prevailing atmosphere is one of hope. 

The interconnectedness of characters is emphasized.  Clark, Jeevan, and Kirsten all had contact with Arthur to various degrees, but the actor proves to have connections with other survivors as well.  Events bring together some of these people who knew Arthur, yet the reader is not left feeling that there are too many coincidences.  Events unfold in a credible way, “pieces of a pattern drifting closer together.”  And these many characters are fully developed, round characters with clearly identifiable traits and emotional depth. 

One of the other messages of the book seems to be that we should appreciate the beauty around us.  Clark, for instance, wonders, “Why, in his life of frequent travel, had he never recognized the beauty of flight?”  The word beauty is used over a dozen times.  Kirsten thinks about “the moments of transcendent beauty and joy” the troupe achieves and realizes that there is even beauty in the abandoned cities through which they travel:  “In the morning light there was beauty in the decrepitude.” 

The use of the comic book entitled Station Eleven is a nice touch.  Kirsten’s prized possession is two issues of a comic book which features Captain Eleven, a physicist who lives on a space station the size of the moon.  He and a few hundred rebels commandeered the station and managed to escape Earth after aliens enslaved the planet’s population.  Unfortunately, the station’s artificial sky was damaged so Station Eleven’s surface never experiences full daylight.  The inhabitants live on a series of islands or in the Undersea, an interlinked network of fallout shelters under the station’s oceans.  Some of the inhabitants “long only to go home.”  Obviously, the situation on Station Eleven mirrors the situation on earth.

I highly recommend this book.  It does not have the drama of most post-apocalyptic novels.  Its tone could best be described as restrained, but it asks the reader to give some thought to both life as it currently exists and life as it could be after a world-wide disaster.

Schatje’s Reading Challenge for 2016

It’s the beginning of a new year, so it’s time for reading resolutions and reading challenges.  I like the idea of 12 resolutions, one for each month, though I’m listing 15 suggestions so you can omit some that don’t appeal.

Read a play by Shakespeare. (2016 is the 400^th anniversary of his death.)

Read a book you should have read in high school or university, but didn’t.  (It’s Moby Dick for me.)

Read a book that wins a major literary award during the year.

Read a book that you started but never finished; begin again and read it to the very end.

Read a classic children’s book.  (I’ve never read Alice in Wonderland.)

Read a book from a different genre than you normally read.

Read a classic from pre-1900.

Read a book that has always intimidated you.  (Finnegan’s Wake?)

Read a book that was banned at some time.  (http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top100 has a comprehensive list.)

Read a book originally written in a language other than English.

Read a book chosen for you by an adult close to you – spouse, partner, best friend, sibling.

Read a book which uses characters from a classic.  (Many authors have taken a beloved fictional work and written a sequel – or sometimes a prequel – based on their imaginings of what might have happened outside the pages of the original. See http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2012/0203/10-sequels-based-on-a-classic-book/Scarlett-by-Alexandra-Ripley or http://flavorwire.com/297039/10-contemporary-novels-based-on-classic-lit-that-are-actually-worth-your-time/ or http://www.readitforward.com/bookshelf/21-books-based-classics/ for some suggestions.)

Read a work of non-fiction by a favourite fiction author.

Read a novel that has a non-human main character or narrator.  (See my blog entry of November 25, 2015 for some suggestions.)

Read a novel written in the year in which you were born.

Reader's Resolution for 2016: Read a Shakespeare Play

A friend shared this graph with me the other day:

The article in which this graph appears states, "As accustomed as we are to thinking of contemporary entertainments like Game of Thrones as especially gratuitous, the whole of Shakespeare’s corpus . . . is more gory than even HBO’s squirm-worthy fantasy epic, featuring a total of 74 deaths in 37 plays to Game of Thrones’ 61 in 50 episodes" (http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/74-ways-characters-die-in-shakespeares-plays-shown-in-a-handy-infographic.html).   For a different graph that shows every death in the tragedies, see http://io9.gizmodo.com/an-infographic-that-keeps-track-of-all-of-shakespeares-1534516437.

2016 is the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.  One of the tributes to The Bard is a compendium play called The Complete Deaths being staged in England.  “The Complete Deaths will detail all of the Bard's 74 scripted deaths in one play, from early rapier thrusts to the more elaborate viper-breast-application adopted by Cleopatra. . . . Tim Crouch, who is directing the play . . . spent 'a lot of time going through each play' to find all 74 human deaths – he has excluded that of a fly that meets a sticky end in Titus Andronicus” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/shakespeares-74-death-scenes-in-a-single-play-more-gory-than-gam/).

Most of us may not be able to attend this play or The Complete Walk, a special event in London when 37 screens along a 2.5 mile route between Westminster and Tower Bridge will play a series of specially-made short films of scenes from each of Shakespeare's plays along the Thames riverbank (http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/theatre/whats-on/special-events/the-complete-walk).  

But we can all read one of his plays as a personal tribute to the playwright.  So in this anniversary year, why not choose a favourite to re-read or one you have never read?  In many of them, there is no lack of violence and death!

(And for a chuckle, check out these New Year's resolutions for some of Shakespeare's characters:  http://goodticklebrain.com/home/2015/12/29/shakespearean-new-years-resolutions-part-3).

Review of "Pretty Girls" by Karin Slaughter

3 Stars

I picked up this novel because it made a few of the Best of 2015 lists and because I had never read this author.  I was not as impressed as I had hoped to be from the comments of other reviewers.

Julia Carroll disappeared two decades ago and what happened to her has never been determined.  The members of her family, of course, have been dealing with her disappearance, each in their own way.  Julia’s two sisters, Lydia and Claire, have been estranged ever since Claire refused to believe that Paul Scott, Claire’s husband, had attempted to rape Lydia.  Things change when Paul is brutally killed and Claire discovers a stash of snuff porn on his computer.  Claire contacts Lydia and the two uncover several family secrets.

The novel is narrated in third person from the viewpoints of Lydia, Claire and their father.  The father kept journals after the disappearance of his eldest child, and entries are interspersed throughout.  It is these journal entries which I found most interesting.  His grief is palpable and his determination to uncover what happened to his eldest child is understandable.

The mother’s reaction is less convincing.  She emotionally absented herself from her family for a number of years so that even her curiosity is “restrained.”  To her mother, Claire implies that she is in danger, yet her mother asks no questions and agrees to help her daughter? 

The relationship between Claire and Paul also stretches credulity.  People in a committed relationship often have secrets from each other, but the nature and number of secrets between this husband and wife are incredible. 

The villain of the novel is portrayed as excessively evil.  He has no redeeming qualities.  As a result, he becomes a virtual stereotype.  The author made no attempt to humanize him.

The first part of the book is interesting.  The focus is on how everyone deals with loss and grief.  The latter half, however, with its cat-and-mouse chase and its over-the-top plot just irritated me.  This second section is very graphic; some of the gruesomeness is reminiscent of Criminal Minds.  The plot is also predictable; the ending is not a surprise in the least.  Actually, I had the feeling that this book was a script for a thriller film.

The title is weak.  At one point, Lydia says, that “’girls don’t like guys who are doormats.  Especially pretty girls.’”  The Carroll girls are pretty and they like men who fight “for the privilege of accommodating” them.  So the theme is that people are shallow?  That’s hardly profound!

This book will appeal to readers who enjoy thrills without expecting a realistic plot.  There’s little substance and much predictability.

Today's New Release: "The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend" by Katarina Bivald

3 Stars

Sara Lindqvist leaves Sweden to spend three months in Broken Wheel, Iowa, with Amy Harris, a woman with whom she has bonded over books.  Unfortunately, when Sara arrives, she discovers that Amy has died.  The people in the community take her under their care, and to pay them back, Amy starts a bookstore.  Her goal is to convert the locals into a community of readers.

I’m a bibliophile so I’m a sucker for books about books so this was one I couldn’t resist.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t as enthralled as I would have wished.  The book turns out to be more chick-lit romance, a genre that does not appeal to me.  It has been compared to 84, Charing Cross Road, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, but it does not match the quality of these.  The many literary allusions are interesting, but they alone cannot mask the flaws.

Characterization is not always strong.  Sara is a lonely young woman who likes books more than people, but she becomes someone whom everyone in Broken Wheel loves?  Many of the minor characters are not differentiated.  There are a number of small town eccentrics, but most are really stereotypes:  the tall, handsome eligible bachelor, a recovering alcoholic, a prim and proper churchgoer, the town busybody.  Other than George and Caroline, the minor characters lack depth.  Even the male love interest is bland.  And everyone in the town is so generous and big-hearted? 

                                                                                                                                                          

Early on, Sara argues that “’[Books are] meant to be better than reality . . . Bigger, funnier, more beautiful, more tragic, more romantic.’”  This seems to be the author’s view because the book is not really realistic.  In fact, some suspension of disbelief is required.  A woman has died and the community just lets a visitor from a foreign country live in the home of the deceased?  Then this visitor is allowed to take the books from the house and sell them in a bookstore?  After a death, there’s usually a will to be processed, a will which provides for the distribution of the property of the deceased.  In the book everything just seems to happen in a vacuum. 

Interspersed throughout the novel are Amy’s letters to Sara over the years.  These epistles develop Amy’s character.  She has the most memorable lines in the book:  “For me, terrorism is still the image of white men, people active in society, standing over the charcoaled, lynched body of a black man and looking pleased with their work.” 

But much is left unexplained.  It seems that the two women have been pen pals for years, but how they came to correspond is never detailed.  Would it really be necessary for Amy to send books all the way to Sweden?  Sara would have easy access to books online so she would hardly need to rely on an American to send her books.  And Sara is so perfectly fluent in English that English books present no difficulties? 

In terms of plot, the book dragged at times.  This feeling was intensified by the fact that the plot is predictable.  The reader knows that everything will work out in the end.  Sara comments on feel-good books:  “Feel-good books were ones you could put down with a smile on your face, books that made you think the world was a little crazier, stranger, and more beautiful when you looked up from them.”

Clearly the author intended this to be one of those books, but how can a reader feel good about the world if the world in the book is “better than reality”?

This book will be described as a charming, easy read.  And, yes, it is.  But I prefer books which have a bit more substance.  How about a bit less romance and a bit more illustration of the impact of books?  After all, Sara’s merely giving books to people hardly proves that these books have real influence on their lives.  In fact, the people (hardly readers) of Broken Wheel never recommend any books they’ve actually read, so I hesitate to recommend this book except as book candy:  sweet but lacking in nutrition.