Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Best Books Read in 2009

I liked Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner for its unusual setting in a remote part of Alaska and also the main character’s contemplation of his changing life. Another fiction book that I really liked was Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford for its interesting story of a Chinese American boy in Seattle during WWII.

In non-fiction The Assist by Neil Swidey really stuck with me – that means it must be good as I really do not like basketball. The author followed high school basketball players and their coach in Boston.

I also liked the delicately creepy short stories in The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa. A mystery author I first read this year was Stieg Larsson who wrote The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. His third and final book in the series is coming out in 2010. These mysteries are set in Sweden with a journalist and a computer hacker as the main characters – if you are squeamish they are not for you.

Happy reading in 2010!
Escape to Books

Saturday, December 19, 2009

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

I enjoyed reading this novel by Lorrie Moore. It is one of those books where you can tell the author has taken a great deal of care with the language. The main character, Tassie Keltjin, is living away from her Midwestern home in a college town. It is quite a transition to city life from living with her parents and a brother on a farm. For a twenty-year-old she is very observant as evidenced here:

“After a childhood of hungering to be an adult, my hunger had passed. Unexpected fates had begun to catch my notice. These middle-aged women seemed very tired to me, as if hope had been wrung out of them and replaced with a deathly, walking sort of sleep.”

Tassie makes this observation as she is interviewing to be a nanny. All the women she interviews with seem to be in their early forties. Tassie is eventually hired by Sarah Brink who is hoping with her husband, Edward, to adopt a baby. Tassie goes with them on their adoption interviews and meets the birth mothers along with them.

The Brinks end up adopting Mary-Emma, or Emmie as they call her. She’s a toddler who had been living in foster care. Tassie takes to her.

“I felt sorry for Mary-Emma and all she was going through, every day waking up to something new. Though maybe that was what childhood was. But I couldn’t quite recall that being the case for me. And perhaps she would grow up with a sense that incompetence was all around her, and it was entirely possible I would be instrumental in that. She would grow up with love, but no sense that the people who love her knew what they were doing – the opposite of my childhood – and so she would become suspicious of people, suspicious of love and the worth of it. Which in the end, well, would be a lot like me.”

The Brinks have some adjustments to make to being parents and also find it challenging to be the parents of a mixed race child. Sarah starts a support group. Tassie spends her days with Emmie. She is taking classes and meets a boyfriend – I think this side story is a distraction from the main story. Tassie’s world starts to come apart in more than one unexpected way and how she copes is the main focus of the novel.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner

Seth Kantner was an invited author at The Nature of Words this year. I finally got around to reading his novel Ordinary Wolves. This debut novel is set in Northern Alaska and follows Catuk Hawcly, an Alaskan-born white boy. Catuk lives with his father, brother, and sister, and they are a two-day dog sled ride from the nearest village. It was difficult at first for me to follow Catuk as a young boy.

Here’s a passage that made much more sense to me when I re-read it after finishing the book:
“It was hard to look at Enuk – or any traveler – in the eyes after seeing no people for weeks. It was hard to speak and not run and hide again. Enuk’s frost-scarred face betrayed mysteries and romantic hard times that drew a five-year-old boy with swollen dreams.” … “ The day I turned old I was going to be Enuk. Small discrepancies left footprints in my faith, such as the fact that he was Eskimo and I seemed to be staying naluaġmiu. But years lined up ahead, promising time for a cure.”

It is a coming-of- age story. When Catuk tries to live in Anchorage you really get more of a sense of him and how isolated he’s been. He physically fits in better in Anchorage, but is constantly trying to figure out people.

“I paused in coffee shops, eavesdropping, trying to emulate, acclimate, relate. I watched the caribou – the average people grazing through their days – men who griped about Tongass timber harvests while their engines idled; women with big dyed hair carrying Can’t-Grows with shaved haircuts; homeless men asking for spare change and apologizing for needing it.”

Catuk’s father is an interesting character as an artist raising three children. Catuk’s sister and brother also go through their own identity crises and adapt to where they want to be in the world. Stories of the nearby villagers and Catuk and his family are interspersed with chapters following the lives of wolves.

Here Catuk seems to hit on the main reason he’s having trouble adjusting to life anywhere:
“‘Every time I get a grip on what matters, then I’m all confused again. A white-person career, with insurance? And a Pension? Something is missing in me – that feels like being born a wolf and choosing a dog’s life.’”

It would have been interesting to hear this author speak. I’d love to hear from anyone who made it to his reading or workshop.

Escape to Books