So here's yet another interesting addition to the Ender series from Orson Scott Card, only it fits in retrospectively after Ender wins the war againstSo here's yet another interesting addition to the Ender series from Orson Scott Card, only it fits in retrospectively after Ender wins the war against the Formics but well before he is introduced to superbeing Jane. It was a challenge to switch over to the forced dialogue of Orson Scott Card after reading the fluid Donna Tartt, but Card deserves tremendous credit for being one hell of a storyteller. I was surprised at how much I remembered from this series that I haven't read for about 10 years. This is a testament to the color and boldness of both his characters and his gift for narration....more
Enter Harriet Dufresne, a character caught between the dangerous world of Dickens, the Southern molasses of family tradition found in Faulkner, and HaEnter Harriet Dufresne, a character caught between the dangerous world of Dickens, the Southern molasses of family tradition found in Faulkner, and Harriet the Spy. Will you love this character? Yes, quite probablyas she is smart and luxuriously abandoned throughout the novel in a way that is necessary for a young adult book. A review from The New Yorker calls "The Little Friend" a young adult book for adults and this is an apt genre description.
The novel opens with a description of the death by hanging of Harriet's older brother Robin at the age of 9. No one knows who did it and the only witnesses were 4-year old sister Alison and less than one-year old Harriet. Neither remembers anything of the event.
At age 12, Harriet sets out to find the murderer which is the motivation behind a frightening summer of capturing deadly snakes, training to hold her breath underwater Houdini-style, and getting dangerously close to the Ratliff family who she believes is responsible for the murder.
But the murder here is not the important thing. Tartt immerses us in a familiar (and very well written) examination of 1970s Southern culture. The focus is on the continuation of racism and more interestingly (if only for its fresh inquiry) the implications and manifestation of poverty in a Southern town. As brutal as Tartt paints the Ratliff clan of brothers - all of them having served time for various crimes of varied criminality (with the exception of the mentally-impaired and lovable Curtis) - the reader cannot help but feel sympathetic for these men whose lives are predetermined paths toward destruction. Nothing in their life repertoire, the beatings from their father, the early death of their mother, their quicksand impoverished existence, the constant reinforcement from their grandmother that "they just plain folk", nothing allows them any exit from a life of petty crime and brutal dog-eat-dog existences. That they ache for something more out of life is the cruel heartbeat of the novel.
As is the parallelism to Harriet's own life. Descendant from the Cleve family, once great and aristocratic in MIssissippi, Harriet is at the bottom rung of a family history petering out. She is just as abandoned as the Ratliff boys and her unmonitored, solitary existence is the only emotional competition the Ratliff sadsack story has. There were times when the reader wants to shake every adult character in the book and beg them to please, for once, please take care of this young girl whose daily excursions into danger would be unbelievable were it not for Tartt's considerable talents as a writer.
In the end, the murder and its perpetrators are not the point, which is unsatisfying after a 600-page whodunit. And yet, the richness of life that brings you toward the end makes this a mostly worthy read. However, the reader cannot help but feel that important, structural threads to the story were abandoned and left to unravel. Perhaps this is an intentional metaform act on the part of the author meant to reflect the abandonment of many of the novel's main characters. If so, it is an unsuccessful one. ...more
I did that twisted thing where one sees the movie before reading the book which made the read an odd experience for the startling fact that the actorsI did that twisted thing where one sees the movie before reading the book which made the read an odd experience for the startling fact that the actors had contained much of the nuance of the book in their performances.
Still, the book, of course, was richer. Here's why: The book's four main characters - father, mother, son, daughter - are all ridiculously complicated, intelligent, mystical people, each in their own way. The omniscient narrator gives the reader an opportunity to walk inside those labyrinthian minds and feel smarter and more enlightened all the while.
Each character is a religious or spiritual prodigy in a way that is uniquely their own. Some might fault the novel for giving Eliza, the elementary school spelling bee prodigy, too much intelligence and awareness. But Goldberg sets up these characters in a way that is both convincing and compellingly believable. Of course Eliza has the wherewithal to reach "sheva" even at 11-years old. Of course Aaron is capable of moving past the soiled reputation of the Hare Krishna. Of course the parents, both Saul and Miriam, are in pursuit of spiritual heights most of us never consider. Goldberg is not presenting the typical family. These are a chosen few.
That having been said, this family is typical and grounded in all the ways that make unremarkable and remarkable at the same time. Saul's love for his family is only in competition with his self-absorbed spiritual pursuits, these two things lapping over each other in indefinable bonds. He is the center of the book holding it down even as he is the instigation and jumping board behind every family members' leap into the divine.
Letters are mystical. They can lead to the face of God. Those of us who write have always understood this. Goldberg just gave us a map, though it is unfortunately one that I am not gifted enough to traverse....more
When I finally got into this book, I consumed it heartily and yet, there was reason for the great hesitation. First, Myla Goldberg is a hard act to foWhen I finally got into this book, I consumed it heartily and yet, there was reason for the great hesitation. First, Myla Goldberg is a hard act to follow and as I had just finished "Bee Season," Margaret Lazarus Dean had some big shoes to hop into. The other objection to immersing myself in Dean's novel is the unmet expectations of the book's purpose. I had seen Dean read some months back and was moved by her premise that her generation (which happens to be my generation) is heavily influenced by the fact that our greatest tragedy was the Challenger Explosion disaster in 1986. While this is rightly called a tragedy and a great loss for both the families of those who died and to the direction of the Space Program, Dean suggests an innocence to a generation who falls between the Greatest Generation and the current one who lives under the real fear of a post-911 world.
At her reading, Dean read the last three pages of her novel, which may seem like an odd choice, but which is easily the best three pages of the book and which does not give away the narrative of the coming-of-age story before it. The last three pages are incredibly moving as Dean considers what it means for healthy men and women to have fallen two minutes and 45 seconds to their death, believing all the while that there was no way they would die. How could healthy people in the prime of their lives believe in their own imminent death? It is too impossible a possibility. Her imagining of the event is gorgeous and heartbreaking and SOME of the rest of her novel is as well, but finally, it felt more like a grown-up version of a Judy Blume novel - charming, moving, emotional, but not in any way life altering.
Ultimately, the Challenger Explosion backdrop felt more incidental and I wanted more. I expected more. The central character's story of growing up with a father who was responsible for the O-rings that were determined to responsible for the tragic explosion was interesting enough, but again, the O-ring seemed incidental and took too far a backseat to the central character's precocious sexual awakening and the other antics and shenanigans she gets into in the high school life of a young Floridian in the eighties....more
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