All the Little Live Things, by Wallace Stegner

I have only a few minutes to revive a practice I kind of like which is to put in a word about the book that will shortly be under discussion at tonight's book group. Still let's give it a go.

Wallace Stegner published this book in 1967, and the story of Joe and Ruth Allston, in supposed retreat in what is presumably the Santa Cruz Mountains is a perfect picture of that historical moment, and of that geographical locality. Reminiscent of Andre Dubus II's The House of Sand and Fog, though strictly speaking, chronologically the reverse is true, as a portrait of a small cast of characters engaged in a conflict of types in a very individuated setting, it left me very nostalgic for an era close to me in time but which I was too late to participate in. As in Dubus' book, the conflict between different types of people escalates to logical if possibly greater than life conclusions.

Stegner taught a prestigious writing program at Stanford until shortly before he died, and his son Page taught at my own UC Santa Cruz; and his wife has had some success as a novelist in her own right. It is tempting to search for autobiographical elements, but the book is none the worse if you don't have any of these more personal connections.

To be continued...


...I'd hoped to post the group's responses a little earlier than this, while they were still fresh in my memory, but time has gotten away from me. I'm happy to report that this was the rare book that all our members seemed to enjoy, and probably for roughly the same reasons. The craftsmanship of the novel is very evident without calling attention to itself, and this appealed particularly for whom technical skill is one of the primary considerations. Stegner's gift for rendering setting and making it part of the plot itself was probably the thing we most appreciated as a group, and that is largely because we live in the area just south of where Stegner places it, and its natural elements are second nature to us. In other words, it made us savor our place in time and geography.

We are all old enough to have lived during the sixties, and some to have actually participated in that turbulent era. The fact is that the sixties are very much still alive in Santa Cruz, where we live, and the conflict between the hardened older man and the naive but somewhat arrogant younger one who worms his way into the narrator's life is something we face as a community as much as individually. Many Jim Pecks of our own day have made the downtown streets of Santa Cruz their home, and pose a similar problem for the upstanding citizenry as Jim Peck did for Joe Allston. Collectively, we find them an affront and yet no one quite has the heart or the good enough excuse to kick them off the land, which was Allston's dilemma as well. If I sometimes sense that one 'incident' would be all it would take to send them all packing, this also parallels the novel.

I tried out the point that none of us would probably like the saintly Marian much if we actually had to live with her, but the group didn't really buy that. I'm not sure I buy it myself. In some ways she is a model of what we should be. But it's interesting to note that she was certainly as naive as Jim Peck was, though all her faults are excused and all of his are excoriated. To me she remains to some extent a person whose philosophy not only won out over her own common sense but bent other people to her will as well, against their own best and probably better judgement.

No, I must stand by my own view of things.I probably wouldn't have liked her.

Ravens, by George Dawes Green

It took me awhile to track down the title of the classic suspense film that this book got me thinking about, but I finally did. I saw The Desperate Hours more than once on television when I was a kid, and it freaked me out every time. A movie that talks about a suburban family being held hostage in their home in the quiet suburbs is going to have a special existential relevance for a kid growing up in a house in the, well, quiet suburbs. I'm kind of surprised my parents let me watch this, as I apparently wasn't even old enough to recognize Humphrey Bogart as one of the convicts.

George Dawes Green's recent suspense novel Ravens is perhaps more closely related to any number of home invasion movies since then. But I wouldn't know about that, as I still don't gravitate toward movies about hostage families to this day. However,Ravens sucked me right in.

Green's twist on what has now become almost a thriller sub-genre is decidedly his own, though. The villains of this tale, Shaw and Romeo, aren't convicts, but from the start you feel that it's only luck that's kept them out of trouble so far. As they head south on a Florida vacation, an opportunity to change all that is looming up before them.

"Winning the lottery" is usually trumpeted as a piece of great fortune, even though we've all read stories of how the lucky winners have frittered it all away, lost friends, or made false ones due to their changed circumstances. We don't usually think about how that very trumpeting makes them targets, though. And let's just say that after reading Ravens, you will never quite look at Facebook in the same way.

One difference I find between the "Desperate Hours" scenario and that of Ravens is that the Boatwrights are far from the generic, innocents of that 1950s setup. There's plenty of strife in this family before their ill-timed visitors ever cross the over the Georgia state line, and let's just say that winning the lottery was never destined to solve all their problems in the best of circumstances.

The dynamic between the hostage-takers--the charismatic Shaw and the baffled Romeo-- is in some ways the most interesting part of the book. Why does Romeo go along with Shaw in his scheme? Why do any of us ever "just go along" with the plans of those who, bitter experience has shown us, make poorer choices than we ourselves do? And what will happen to Tara, the daughter of the family and the most resourceful of them, who is also drawn by Shaw's charisma (and then some)?

The premise is, of course, in some ways far-fetched. It's not that simple holding a family hostage, especially when you are hiding the fact that you are holding them hostage. The Boatwrights are free to come and go, but psychologically, Shaw keeps everyone on one sort of leash or other. In fact, figuring out how to get others to comply may be as much why he's in it as the money.

It's certainly one of the reasons even someone generally averse to this kind of suspense--like me--is willing to go along for the ride.

Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich

As I began this fourteenth tale of the adventures of Stephanie Plum, inadvertent New Jersey bounty hunter, I wondered a little at my own perseverance through a series that is in some ways all too predictable. But then I realized that the element of predictability in a Stephanie Plum novel is not a fault but one of its charms.

Evanovich sets up what might be called an eternal situation--The Burg, Lula, Ranger vs. Morelli, Grandma Mazur, and so on. Out of this stock context, she elaborates new themes. In this one, we've got griefers, we've got an aging celebrity, we've got a psychic stalker, and we've got a kid who goes by the name of Zook and who really likes to advertise himself.

I don't mean to write a dissertation on what Evanovich does, but I did really pay attention this time rather than just speeding on through, easy though it would have been to do so, because I wondered why her novels continue to jump to the top of my reading pile. Isn't it basically the same story told over and over again?

Yes, in some ways it is, and frankly I do get tired of some of the shtick. Ranger or Morelli--who cares? But Evanovich seems infinitely capable of finding comedy in every new thing that comes along, and if you read individual sentences instead just being swept along in the easy flow of the thing, you will be impressed by her comic perception of life, as well as the way she makes dialogue a servant of her humor.

Comedy looks easy, it almost has to to succeed, but it's not. There are not many people who could have gotten fifteen books worth of humor out of Trenton, New Jersey. (Yeah, there's one I haven't gotten to yet, close reader.)It seems obvious now that Trenton was rife with material. Let's just say that it didn't seem so much so before Evanovich came along. One of the most touching tributes that I ever read about Evanovich was when some on-line friends, I think visiting from another country, shared with wonder their glimpses of Trenton. This is not a conversation you would likely have heard before the advent of Stephanie Plum. Let's hope she's around for a long time to come.

Jar City, by Arnaldur Indridason

In a basement apartment in Reykjavik, an elderly man is found dead. He didn't die in his sleep, and it quickly becomes apparent that he was not nearly as good a person as he might have been. A cryptic note has been left with his body. For quite awhile, we only know that this short note ends with the word 'him'.

The detective in charge, Erlendur, is as mystified by this as we are. Of course, he's got other problems. He's got chest pains that he's not dealing with, and a drug-addicted daughter who shows up at his door. And you wouldn't be wrong to say that he has "anger management" issues, either.

In some ways, Indridason fits very neatly into the incredibly strong wave of Scandinavian writers who've crossed the Atlantic in translation these last few years. The writing is good, the detective is, shall we say, "gloomy", and the plotting very solid. But there are aspects of this story, and indeed of the mystery plot itself that have a definitely Icelandic tincture. I like a mystery that could only be set in one place and nowhere else. It adds to the air of inevitability.

This book was written before Iceland's economic meltdown. I read during that golden era that Reykjavik was supposed to be one of the most desirable cities in the world to live in. (I remember this because it came as something of a surprise.) Indridason didn't paint the city or the country in such glowing terms even then. I can't wait to see what fictional capital he'll make out of the current much more downbeat situation.

Persepolis, Cuban Style

I suppose this is more a follow-up to the last post than a new post proper, but in the midst of the Iran crisis, it has struck me more than once that Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis critique of Iran and Yoani Sanchez's Generation Y dissenting blog from within Cuba are sisters under the skin. Turns out Yoani thinks much the same thing. Check both out if you haven't yet.

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi

I've had this on my bookshelf forever, having read and enjoyed Satrapi's Persepolis books ages ago, but for some reason, didn't get around to this one. However, Iran is in the news once again and after reading Adrian McKinty's blog posts here and here, which are a form of literary solidarity with the protesters' position, I noticed a copy of Embroideries in the store and had a sudden impulse to read it.

Let me start out by saying that I love graphic novels. I am so happy to have been reintroduced to the form again after many, many years, as I was never a comic book collector. And lord knows, I've never been hip enough to have caught on to all the great things people were doing with comics until, what, maybe ten years ago?, when everyone else had the same blinding insight.

I know a lot of people who get frustrated with the form--for them, it's over too quickly. But I really just love the marriage of word and image. I think it's one of the great sins of modern publishing that the divorce of these two has been so complete in all 'serious' modern fiction. Illustration is suspect. But for godssake, why? The most we can hope for these days is a decent cover.

I think one of the reasons I was slow to check out this particular Satrapi was that, in some half-conscious way, I thought of it as 'slight'. After the political work of Persepolis, I suppose I thought she was coasting when writing and illustrating this shorter tale of a group of women coming together to 'ventilate their hearts'--ie, gossip and tell tales. And of course, in this I betray my own subtle indoctrination into the idea of the importance of men's business, and the triviality of women's business.

As we read about what to all intents and purposes is an Iranian women's consciousness raising session, it's true that it's possible to feel that the subject matter is a little bit dated. Haven't we all been through this already? Well, yes and no. Perhaps women's predicaments are universal, but the way they are articulated are particular and local. The position of educated Iranian women must be one of the most delicate and excruciating of all. And let me just say that you will never view the word 'embroidery' in exactly the same way again.

Satrapi is sometimes criticized for the apparent artlessness of her images. There is a lot that is very, very simple in her drawing. But her use of the possibilities of the form are far from naive. She uses the space quite dramatically and effectively.

Check it out.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

In keeping with my, well, not tradition, since I've only done it once or twice before and then missed last month entirely, but let's just say premise, I am going to post about our latest book club selection before going to the meeting tonight. Sadly, I have not actually gotten very far with this one, but why let ignominy be an excuse for not writing? Maybe I haven't used the time so wisely, but hey, it's been a busy month.

The Sparrow is what I suppose might be called literary science fiction, maybe more in terms of its apparent aspiration rather than anything inherent in the story itself. We enter the tale after a space mission to reach another form of possibly humanlike life has somehow gone horribly wrong, and its sole survivor, a Jesuit priest named Emilio Sandoz, has now returned to earth, and Rome, both scarred by and judged for the experience. As the book unfolds, we are taken into the backstory of this fateful mission, in which a small handful of people are driven by a seeming destiny to set forth together on it. Whether the hand of God is in it is an open question.

This book was published in 1996 and it made a big splash in certain circles at the time. A lot of our staff members read and recommended it, so I have been interested in its appeal for awhile now. I confess to being a little surprised that such a seemingly God-driven book, though hardly pious and definitely not orthodox, would have captured the interest of what by and large is a pretty secular demographic. I also find the date of the space launch, which involves light speed, a bit disconcerting, because by 2021, it has apparently been figured out and is available for use. The world has moved a long distance since 1996, but not, so far as I know, in this direction. There's no real harm done, but since all the chapters are dated, you can't help contrasting our reality to the book's a lot. It's a bit jarring.

So far, I am finding the story interesting enough, but perhaps a bit too leisurely. There is this foreboding about what really happened out there, but it hasn't yet become my foreboding, if you see the difference. I'm on about page 143 and they are only just now launching off into space. This is what I mean by sci-fi aspiring to be literary. In real genre fiction, the author would feel an obligation to get on with it.

Unfortunately for me, there will undoubtedly be some spoilers tonight about all that goes wrong, and though I'm planning to keep on with it, it will be interesting to see if in fact I still want to after what others say.

I should emphasize that this is not as far as I can tell any kind of Christian tract. Of course, I suppose a lot depends on the outcome...