Book Review: There, There

By Tommy Orange

• Pub Date: 2019

• Genre: Native American Fiction

• Where I bought this book: The Newsouth Bookstore, Montgomery, Ala. 

• Why I bought this book: I was pondering if I should buy his second novel, Wandering Stars, when my wife told me this one, his first, was much better  

 *****

 

  This debut novel, dealing with the urban lives of several Native Americans in Oakland, Calif., has a lot going for it, but in the end, it's a disappointment.

    Oh, the writing is vivid. The individual stories are well told and compelling. Orange gets into their heads, describing their fitful experiences living life on the edge. 

    This is not a tale for white people who see Indians as stoic and spiritual, as more natural and earthbound. These are urban Indians, with problems like trauma, addiction, boredom, loneliness, and isolation.

    The anger and resentment they live and express for the treatment of the Indigenous population -- and the continuing negative effects of that -- comes out loud and clear. I weep for them and for the abuse and scorn and hatred we heaped, and continue to heap, on them.

    But, much like the Gertrude Stein quotation that gives the book its title, the overriding theme gets lost in the details. The character studies are wonderful. But they never coalesce into a whole. They drift in and out of the tales, and their connections with each other get lost amid the confusion.

    Maybe that is the point. Maybe it's me who doesn't understand. But I can see what make the characters tick -- and what they are ticked about -- but feel lost trying to follow what the story is ticking about.

    The book explores the histories and biographies of the various Indian characters, most of whom have tribal or familial relationships. It does so in successive chapters, sometimes following the characters. showing new experiences or bonds. It leads up to, and climaxes during, something called the Big Oakland Powwow.

     Too many make it hard to keeps up with who is who, and if their memories collide with  their actual experiences. There's no single protagonist or antagonist. There is a cast of characters list at the beginning, and it's useful, but it often means having to flip back and forth to determine the changes in relationship. 

    And the ending is a mishmash of those experiences that, once again, tell individual stories well but miss the full picture of what happened,

Book Review: Learned By Heart

 By Emma Donoghue

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Point Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: Donoghue is one of my go-to writers

 ********

 

   Writing a work of historical fiction that closely hews to the truth about the time period and the people involved takes a lot of work and research, as well as imagination and writing skills. Donoghue nails it.

    Using letters from the protagonist, Eliza Raine, along with other explorations of her life, Donoghue puts together a story of young love, frustration, and gender non-conformity in a girls school in early 19th Century England. It's a story of melancholy, misunderstanding, and mischief.

    Eliza is the child of an English father and a mother from India. Her friend Lister is from Yorkshire, and is what was once called a tomboy -- daring, wild, and reluctant to conform to society's expectations and gender stereotypes. Both are orphans who live with male caretakers, and are shipped off to live in the Manor School for young ladies in York.

    There's a sadness in this novel, born of two girls trying to navigate a world that refuses to accept them, and in which they cannot live happily. The structures set for them ignore their wants, needs, and desires. For Eliza, there is the added nuance of race -- her Indian heritage is clear in the color of her skin, and it influences every facet of her young life. 

    She is seen as neither English nor Indian; every time she tries to assert her Englishness, she is rejected as a half-breed, a child of colonialists, a girl that belongs neither here nor there. Lister finds her own rejections sort of thrilling; she can fall back on her supposed high class and the wealth of her family's holding in York.

    We rarely know what is really happening. Some of the characters may be unreliable, or are holding back their reality. Situations change, and as the girls find love in each other, the world around them can be mystifying. 

    One metaphor comes from Mr. Tate, one of of the few male figures at the school, a  teacher and husband of one of the mothers of the dormitory. Despite his talents as a musician and instructor, he finds only sadness in his work, despite the joy he brings to others.

    Donoghue depends heavily on the time and place, the changing mores and structures of the Georgian period in Great Britain. Much in the tale is left to the reader's imagination, but it remains a thrilling and evocative read.

Book Review: City of Orange

 By David Yoon

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl and Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: A blurb describes it as a cross between Station Eleven and The Road

***

    The Unreliable Narrator style, which is used in this book, annoys me.

    It makes me angry and frustrated. I feel deceived and manipulated. It makes the novel seem pointless, like the author didn't understand where they were taking the story, so changed direction. Ultimately, it's a waste of time for the reader.

    Like this book.

    Is it the tale of a man beaten and dumped in a future world, perhaps on another planet? Is it a description of a wasteland after a cataclysmic event? We don't know, and neither does our hero, who can't even remember his own name. It unfolds slowly, as we see what he sees, with vivid descriptions of horror and loss in the world he believes himself to be in.

    Yet, hints abound that all is not as it appears. 

    I'm not going to say more about the plot, such as it is, so as not to reveal any spoilers. Suffice to say it goes in a lot of directions, several of which are predictable, some of which are cliches and tropes, and few of which are original. And yes, I get the extended metaphor, but it's weak.

    Still, it has strong points: A smart, well-drawn main character whom we get to know and can identify with. Sharp writing that drags you in. A setting that is both everywhere and nowhere.

    But deep flaws overcome those positives. A  sense of evil pervades that main character. (At one point in my notes, I write: Did something bad happen to him, or did he do something bad?) Secondary character are mere bit players. The story drags, and the detailed writing can be overdone. It's impossible to tell whether the setting is real or imagined.

Book Review: The Book Woman's Daughter

 

•  Author: Kim Michele Richardson

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington., Ky.

• Why I bought this book: It is a sequel to a book I greatly enjoyed

*********

    I always a fear a sequel will never match up to the original, especially when the original is a unique tale is by a relatively unknown author. That fear is heightened when it seems the second book may be forced, simply to ride on the coattails of the first book.

 

    But with The Book Woman's Daughter, none of those fears is realized. Indeed, it is possible to say the sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a stronger, better book that its predecessor. 

    This one has better, more memorable supporting characters, tension in the overall plot, and a powerfully young female mainstay who can carry the story while showing fear, grief, foolishness, and wonder at the world.

    The first Book Woman introduced us to the Eastern Kentucky mountains, its traditions -- good and bad -- and its people, including the Blue People of Kentucky. It also told us about the Pack Horse Library Project, a WPA program during World War II to have women on horseback delivery reading material in the hills of  Appalachia. 

    It turned out to be one of my favorite reads in a while.

    The sequel returns us to Troublesome Creek, and the story of the Blue People. 

    This time, it's the book woman's 16-year-old daughter, Honey Lovett, who's in trouble. Her parents are going to prison for breaking the state's anti-miscegenation laws (her mother, who is blue, married a white man. They had been warned.) Honey risks being sent to the state orphan home -- basically, a children's prison. She'll be forced to perform hard labor.

    In a sense, the way the town, and the legal and medical systems, treat Honey and her family is a stand-in for the discrimination often faced by people who are different from the majority, or from the way things have always been done. At one point, Honey cries when she realizes her parents are in prison because they love each other, and wonders why people think they should have a say in such affairs of the heart.

    But Honey isn't the only one with problems. Her soon to be friend, Pearl, 19-year-old woman who is hired as a fire watcher in the forest, is being pursued and harassed by the family of the man who thinks he should have gotten the job. A woman on her book route, Guyla Belle, is being beaten by her husband. Another woman on her route, Bonnie, a young widow who is one of the few female coal miners, is sexually assaulted daily by her co-workers. 

    There are a few good men in her town. Her lawyer, who is looking out for her. Her doctor, who helps her stay in touch with her parents. And Francis, a young shopkeeper who fancies and respects her.

    There's also the books she delivers, which save a few people, delight others, and teach everyone who reads them.

    But it's the women who stick together, watch out for, and help each others

    It's a wonderful tale of a hard, sometimes nasty and unfair life. But it also shows how women cope, survive, bond, and fight for their rights and dignity. They are the community.

Book Review: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

• Author: Heidi W. Durrow
• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky.

• Why I bought this book: The title caught my eye; the story description caught my fancy

******

    The thing about the title is it should be taken literally.

    We first meet our heroine and protagonist, Rachel, through the eyes of Brick -- then known as Jamie -- as she falls the nine floors from the roof of her Chicago tenament to the courtyard below. Jamie thinks she's a bird.

    Maybe she is. She survived the fall.

    How she came to fall -- was she pushed? did she jump? did she slip? was she thrown off? -- is the riddle of the tale. How she survives defines the story.

    Rachel is a young, mixed race girl, the daughter of a Danish mother and a Black, military father. She is light skinned, with her mother's blue eyes and her father's features. She doesn't define herself as Black or white. She allows others to do that for her.

    Who she is changes over time. Raised by her Danish mother, with a more-or-less absent father, Rachel looks, acts, and is treated white. She doesn't seem too concerned with that.

    But once her flight from the roof takes place, which kills her mother and siblings, Rachel is shuffled off to a new city and a new family. She is put in the care of her Black grandmother and aunt. In school, she is treated as an oddity, neither Black nor white, or perhaps both.

    The Black kids treated her as an interloper. The white kids see her as exotic.

    She sees herself as full of grief for her lost mother, and what may have been. She loves and admires her strict grandmother, but bristles against some of the changes in her life.

    Durrow is a compelling story teller and writer, but much like her character, Rachel, the tale doesn't reach any conclusion. The assumption is Rachel still has a long road ahead of her.