Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks -- A Book Review

Photo: cover of the paperback book, from its Google.com page.

Very, very well-written account of a young girl's life on Martha's Vineyard and in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1660s. Though the book is more known to be about the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College, it is really about this girl and her Puritan family. Narrated by Bethia, the book is a comparison between her life as an Other, and that of a native Wampanoag named Cheeshahteaumauk, called Caleb by Bethia's family after his Indian family dies of disease, probably smallpox. (He dies of disease, too, of consumption, not long after he became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College.) This is a book, like all her others, to read and enjoy, and to learn from and emulate if you want to be a writer. I can someday hope to become nearly as good--though that is doubtful--but I cannot become better.

Bethia loves life on the island, despite its hardships. Let me rephrase: She loves the island more than she loves her life on it. Her chores and responsibilities are endless. She loses her parents and her younger sibling, all three in horrible ways. She can read and write and she has intelligence and opinions--all bad in 1660s Puritan Massachusetts, especially on the island. Her daily life, with and without her best friend Caleb, and her family, are equally interesting and distressing to read about.

She follows Caleb and her older brother to Harvard. Her brother is next in line to lead the family and to become a preacher like their father. Except, he's not intelligent, not good in the ways of leadership or human nature. He can't read as well as she, and he can't learn the Bible's languages as well as she. In fact, she's a helluva lot smarter than he is, and they both know it. In fact, Caleb, the "salvage," the other and the lesser in that time, is also smarter than he is in all of these things, and he knows that, too. Despite all this, Bethia goes to Harvard with them because it is her indentured servitude that will pay for her brother's education there, so that he can become more in their society than she can, though everyone knows she deserves it more. She steals a bit of an education while she can, eavesdropping on lessons, learning from the other students, etc., but it is not a life she is destined to overtly benefit from.

In lesser hands, Bethia would fall in love with Caleb, and run away with him, and such, but these are not ordinary hands, and she does not do this. Bethia as a child was confused about her true feelings for Caleb, and maybe she did have what we would call a crush on him for a few years, but overall she outgrows that, and they become perhaps even closer, a brother and sister that would have continued had he not died. She leaves with another man, rather happily, from that Harvard disaster, and lives in Italy for a time, before she comes back and sees Caleb in his final days. The book is told in three parts, the last of which is a bit more sad than perhaps it needed to be, but who am I to judge? It's all enthralling. You'll feel like you're there, and you'll care about everyone.

Brooks clearly is painting a parallel between Bethia's life in 1660s Puritan Massachusetts and that of women in 2000s America. She does this in every work, and continues to do so here. As usual, it is not overt, or heavily done, and you don't feel preached to. This outlook, again as usual, enhances the story and does not detract from it. In fact, that cultural comment is not the story. As always, her story is her story. Bethia and Caleb, two others in a career-long character list of strong others, are her vehicles to tell this story. They themselves are not the story, per se. This is a distinction that all writers trying to say something should understand: your characters tell the story, but your characters are not the story. They drive it, of course; the story is not a river and they the mere floaters. But the story is the tide, and the characters either swim with it, or they swim against it. Brooks is excellent--here, and especially in March, her Pulitzer-winner--at showing the tides of the times she sets her stories in. It is one of the many things she does masterfully.

So this book is a story of the time, but also of our time. There is an other of every time, as we see today. I suspect maybe a female of African-American or Mexican descent is writing a good book about that as I type this.

The Wonder of Different Cultures and Religions -- People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Photo: from the book's Wikipedia page

This is a book of historical fiction about a real Jewish book, saved, during the real bombing of a real museum in World War II, by a real Muslim. The real Muslim was a real librarian in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and he really saved the Sarajevo Haggadah, twice, from the Nazis.

If you've read my blog before, you undoubtedly see where I'm going with this. I'm not very subtle when I'm angry. (Or, when I'm not.) 

People of the Book is a novel in many parts, in many POVs. Normally that irks me, but it's handled very well here, as you'd expect it to be, since Brooks wrote it. The story starts in 1996 Sarajevo and ends in 2002 Sarajevo, but it also jumps around to other countries and continents, in other times, as far back as 500 years ago. It's a book also of many cultures, including those of Sarajevo (Bosnia), Africa, Spain, Italy, Austria (Vienna) and Australia, to name a few. It's also a book of many religions, including Catholic and Muslim. In the end, an Aussie falls in love with a Bosnian. I don't know if Europeans move around a lot more in Europe than Americans do in America, or if I've just seen too many James Bond and Jason Bourne (notice the similar initials) movies and read too many books. But it sure seems that way. There seems to be less fear and more acceptance because of this.

You're probably seeing where I'm going with that. I apologize for my lack of subtlety.

Turns out, most people of most faiths and cultures are peace-loving people, running from wars and oppression and ignorance. That includes Catholics, Hebrews and Muslims. But people of most faiths also start wars of oppression and ignorance. In this book, those people are also Catholics, Hebrews and Muslims. These faiths have works that go back millennia. The Sarajevo Haggadah, the book of the title, is one of those. It was created with love and honor and faith by someone (actually at least two someones, as one drew and another wrote) who tried to create a masterpiece to honor the faith.

Brooks's book has one overall message: culture and books should prevail over wars and ignorance. And the first sign of oppression and evil is the suppression, and burning, of books. Keep a watchful eye out for that. Nazi Germany wasn't the first killing tyranny to burn books, but doing so is the first sign of an ignorance and an oppression. That, and shutting down the press and universities.

Keep your eyes open for that, no matter where you are.

Many hands have undoubtedly touched the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is a very real book, as many hands undoubtedly have created it. This is the case of all old books.

Yes, all of them. Many hands will create many errors, especially in print, especially if the words have been created and put together over many centuries. If you've read my blog, you probably know where I'm going with that. If not, read the book, and you may.

Of all the sections of Brooks's book, she is at her best in those of historical fiction. The most memorable to me is the section of the book's travels out of World War II. There's a scene on a frozen lake that you won't soon forget. The part about the writing of the Haggadah is also great. So is the section about the real signature and inscription, and the fictional wine and blood stains.

Less great are the parts of the main character, Hanna, necessary to set the outline of the novel. She is asked to restore the book, as it's many hundreds of years' old. While doing so, she notices missing silver clasps, a butterfly's wing, a white (cat's) hair, a drop of wine, and another drop of what turns out to be blood. There's also a signature and inscription by a censor of the Inquisition--a real guy named Giovanni Domenico Vistorini. All that is known about this real man is his signature and inscription; other books from the Inquisition also have his name and notice. He had surely not signed hundreds of other books, many of them old even by 1609, thereby fating them to the flames. This one he let live--a strange book for an Inquisitor to pass. You'll have to read Brooks's book to see why.

So this is a great, literate book, about a real book, and the message is that books and cultures are cool. It's got a Travelling Pants kind of frame--Remember the movie with different segments about characters who all come across the same pair of pants? (Well, I didn't read the book or see the two movies, either, but I'm aware of the writing frame.) If not, how about Cat's Eye?--that really works here, even if Brooks is obviously more at home with the historical fiction parts, and less proficient with Hanna's modern day. She tries to hard, IMHO, to portray a sassy and independent Aussie. I found what she did for a living more cool than her character. That's just me--though she does have a memorably Lady Macbeth-like surgeon mother, who admits a whopper at the end.

Ultimately I prefer Brooks's March and Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, but this--her third book--is also a wonder of a sort, and well worth your time. Though I think it's her third best at the time of its writing, it's still better than the best of most, including your humble reviewer. Actually, a piece of this gave me inspiration for a book I'm writing, that also takes place over many generations, with many characters, nations and problems. My book didn't have a MacGuffin--which is essentially what the Haggadah is here--nor did it have a Citizen Kane-type narrative frame, which is what Brooks's book is. The stains, the inscription and signature, the hair and the butterfly wing--they're all Rosebud, get it?

Knowing different cultures and religions makes you smart. They are not to be hated, oppressed or expelled. See where I'm going with this?!?

For Belgium

                                                                    When will it end?

March

A book so well-written, it causes envy and jealousy within me. How could I possibly expect to write as well as this? If all published works had to be this well-written, few authors would stand a chance.

I realized while reading this that most of Geraldine Brooks's sentences were detail-in-action. (And certainly not the other way around, which mars many works of good writers.) Her sentences are doing one of two things: they're either description, or they are action. Too much of either one would be boring, even if it's well-written and boring. Therefore most of her sentences are a combination of the two, detail-in-action.

In this, she takes a mostly-absent character from Alcott's Little Women (which, embarrassingly, I have never read, though I have it around here somewhere) and fills in his gaps. Where did March go when he enlisted? What did he do? Well, he did these things.

This book is a masterpiece (and therefore worthy of its Pulitzer) of its time, and of its rendition of the people of its time. Yet like all good works, it makes the reader understand that the people of its time are also the people of this time, and vice-versa. Here you have racism among the Northerners and the Southerners, and neither is treated like a stereotype. And so it is today. March comes home a bitter soldier who has seen and done too much, and who has brought with him a PTSD and a Blakian Experience that will never be undone. And so it is with returning soldiers today.

This is a book of all times, of all wars, of all soldiers and of all victims. Wars in Iraq, Syria, and anywhere else of any time will be similar to Brooks's Civil War rendition here.

The sudden POV shift jarred a little, and the shift back to March disoriented a little (I had to go back  to be sure that it was his turn again), but the reader will see the necessity of the shifts. Brooks could have superficially prepared the reader, perhaps by placing character names at the beginning of each chapter--a la George R. R. Martin in his Song of Ice and Fire books--but such is not her way. You'll be able to bear it and move on.

She does an interesting thing with Grace, who seems to turn up a little bit more coincidentally than maybe she should--but the reader will see the necessity for this as well. Brooks gets away with these two things that would have torpedoed lesser writers (such as myself).

This was a quick, intelligent and gripping read that sounds all too true, and will perhaps leave you a little emotional throughout, and certainly at its end. But you owe it to yourself to read it, if not for the great writing and experience, then perhaps to better understand a returning soldier you happen to know today.

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

Extremely well-written book by the Pulitzer-prize winning Brooks. Very evocative and very clear, you will get a you-are-there feel while reading it.

Unlike other books that gave me the same feeling, I also got an oddly detached feeling while reading this, even though I was immersed in it and felt like I was there.

The only explanation I had for this--which I felt while reading--is that the book was oddly too well-written, if that's possible. I think it is, because I've felt like that before, while reading James Joyce, who, to be fair, intentionally writes his books with himself in mind. I don't think Brooks purposely does that here, but her book was still so sparsely well-written that it drew attention to itself and lightly loosened my otherwise solid suspension-of-disbelief while reading it. I can only say that this must be a good problem to have. It will not shock you out of the book, and despite the good writing, it'll still land a punch or too, and it covers some grotesque scenes without losing the grossness of it all, as glossed writing sometimes does.

The plot is pretty simple, though a lot happens. In fact, an awful lot happens in this, a book about a small town that quarantines itself during the last Great Plague in England, in 1666. I'd read that plague towns not only quarantined themselves as a town, but as individual dwellings in that town, as well. In other words, not only could people not go in and out of the town, but they couldn't go in and out of individual homes, either. I'd read that homes were shut up--with the sick and not sick of that family together, so that the sick would definitely die, and the well would almost definitely get sick. And if everyone survived the plague, they still might starve--and that guards would be posted outside. Sometimes these people would hang a noose towards an unwary guard and hang him so they could escape. Only certain physicians and healers, and the town carters and gravediggers, and maybe the town's clergy, could still walk around and go in and out of infected homes.

Well, that doesn't happen here at all. The main character is in THE infected home--the one where the London cloth merchant resided, thereby bringing the Plague to Eyam (according to tradition). Then her children die of it as well, so she is definitely in an infected house. Nothing is ever mentioned in the book about homes themselves being quarantined--just that people would naturally stay away from them. That doesn't happen with the narrator's home, either, though she is definitely the town healer after the town's real healers get killed by the townspeople, who feared they were witches. Of course.

I make this sound much more questionable here then the book ever is. Geraldine Brooks, an award-winning reporter and world traveller, who wrote some very important pieces from some very harrowing places, certainly does her research for this historical fiction novel, which is why you'll feel like you're there. And certainly she cannot be blamed for maybe taking a creative license about the home quarantines--after all, how much can happen in a story if the main narrator can't see anything or go anywhere? I'm keeping that in mind, as Eyam plays a part in one of my WIPs, too.

Anyway, this is a deservedly popular novel by an author who I haven't heard too much of since, for some reason. I have March, which I'll read soon, by her, and reading this book has made me want to read Anita Diamant's Last Days of Dogtown again, and maybe start her Red Tent, too. So if historical fiction is your bag, or if you like good writing with believable female narrators, or if the Plague or the time interests you, you should read this book, as a great many have.

Notes from A Stephen King Interview, Part 1

Photo: Stephen King's house in Bangor, Maine.  From his Wikipedia page.

Stephen King gave this sort of loose interview to The Atlantic on April 12, 2011.  (I don't know why I'm reading it now, four years after the fact.  And...It's not called The Atlantic Monthly anymore?  Was I napping when that happened?)  The interview was in conjunction with a new-at-the-time short story, "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive," which you can read here.  (You should read the story first before continuing on with this blog entry.)

King said a couple of things I thought were interesting, things I didn't always agree with.  So, without further ado...

James Parker: Would you mind filling our readers in just a little bit on the back story to "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive"?

Stephen King: Every year my son Owen and I have a bet on the NCAA March Madness Tournament, and last year the stakes were that the loser would have to write a story [with a title] the winner gave to him. And I lost. Except I really won, because I got this story that I really like. The title that he gave me for the story was "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive," because he'd just a read a piece saying that the guy was still alive and he's still writing even though he's 95 or 96 years old.
So I thought about it a lot--believe me, I thought about it a lot. The tournament was over by the first of April that year, and I mulled that over in my mind until about July. So there was a period of about four months when I thought, "What am I gonna write, what am I gonna write?" Usually you get an idea yourself and then you write a story -- you don't think of a title and then write a story to go with it. So it was kind of an ass-backwards kind of thing. And my first thought was to write a story about a guy in a mental asylum who believed that he was keeping certain writers alive by brainpower. And it was going to be kind of a funny story, and there was going to be a list of writers that he'd gotten tired of and that he had allowed to die.

Belanger: These are the minds of writers.  He started with a title and no story (99.9% of the time it's the other way around) and then had a thought about a mentally unbalanced guy who thought he was keeping writers alive out of his own will.  And when he tires of the writer's stuff--boom, the writer's gone.  Now, that's not normal thinking--on the part of the character and on King himself.  But that is how the minds of writers work.

Stephen King offers another moment of how he gets ideas for his writing:

The other day I went out to the mailbox at the end of the road and there was a flyer in there, one of these things where they give you coupons and you get a dollar off mouthwash or makeup or whatever, and on the back there's a number of pictures of children, missing children. It says: "Have you seen me?" It's just a sort of throwaway -- you get it and you don't really look at it. And I was looking at it on the walk back from the mailbox, and I thought: "What if there was a guy who got one of these and one of the pictures started to talk to him and say 'I was killed and I'm buried here in this location or that location, in a gravel pit or stuffed into a culvert ...'"? And I thought: "You know, a guy like that, who could find bodies, would be under a lot of suspicion from the police. And there's a story there.

Now, that's messed up.  But, interesting, right?  I mean, that's not a bad story idea, right there.  But it's still messed up.  King always calls such moments his "What If?" moments.

I've had these moments.  Not to the same degree, of course.  (Or to the same benefit.)  But these are indeed very cool moments.

Writers speak differently, too, because they think differently--and, hopefully, we've all learned to think before we speak.  Here's what he said about having too many good story ideas at once:

In the old days, it would seem like ideas were crammed in like people in an elevator. And my head was sometimes a very noisy place to be.

Now that's a great comparison!  I'm going to bet that your average intelligent person (the question of whether the average person is intelligent is a different conversation) wouldn't be able to have that thought or explain it in quite that way.  And, by the way, he's right: This is exactly how that feels.  To this I would add the extended metaphor that, when the small elevator gets too crowded with ideas, the elevator gets stuck between floors.  At least, mine does.  They're all so busy pushing and jostling everyone aside to get to the front, closer to the doors, that nobody ever presses any buttons, and the damn elevator can't move.

And what happens when all these ideas come at you, but you're busy working on something that's going very well?

The other thing that happens with that is, say you're working on something and it's going along pretty well, and two or three ideas occur, and they're all yelling "You should write this! You should write this!" It's almost like being married and all of a sudden your life is full of beautiful women. You have to stay faithful to what you're working on. But it can be uncomfortable.

Again, just not a thought, comparison, or verbal explanation that most people would have.  And, again, he's perfectly right.  My problem is that I've "cheated" and, sometimes, I've just run away from all of them, because there was just too many.  This is why novels take years and years...

To be continued, in another blog entry, in a couple of days...

Short Story Sale--"Everything's Connected" to Over My Dead Body! The Mystery Magazine Online

Just a quick self-serving note:

The rights to my short story, "Everything's Connected"--about a detective who catches a cheating spouse in the act, solves a kid's disappearance, and proves a little theoretical quantum physics--all in fewer than 2,000 words!--has been purchased by Over My Dead Body! The Mystery Magazine Online.  There are some pretty cool stories there now--lots and lots of them, in fact.  And they're all free!  So if you like quick and easy (and short) mystery stories, or stories of murder and mayhem, check them out at overmydeadbody.com.

This is awesome for me personally for two reasons.  The first thing is that Brad Foster, the main character of this story, is also the main character of a novel manuscript, Cursing the Darkness (Working Title), that is maybe 90% completed.  So Brad Foster will see the light of day.  Though it should be noted that the short story is very light, while the novel is very, very, very (many more veries) dark, gritty and brutal.  But his character is essentially the same.

The second reason this sale is awesome is because it's a mystery story in a mystery magazine: yet another different genre for me to be published in.  So far, the stories I've published, their location (and link), and their genre:

--"Everything's Connected," in Over My Dead Body! The Mystery Magazine Online.  Mystery.  Publication date TBA.
--"The Zombie's Lament" by Big Pulp.  Anthology due April 2015.  Horror.
--"So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season," in onthepremises.com.  March 2012.  Contemporary / literary.
--"An Old Man."  Poem.
--"Someone To Come Home To."  Short nonfiction article about the benefits of adopting a greyhound.
--"Hide the Weird," in Space and Time Magazine, Issue #116 of Fall 2012.

It ain't Stephen King, but it ain't nuthin', either, I guess.

Look for a publication date soon for "Everything's Connected."

Click on the Published Work link above for more details.

As always, thanks for reading my blog, my stories, everything.  I always appreciate (and need) your support. 

With All Due Respect--My JOYLAND Book Review, Out Now

Photo: Magazine cover of All Due Respect, where you'll find my review of Stephen King's Joyland.

The good people at With All Due Respect Magazine have published my review of Stephen King's Joyland.  It's available right now at this link, and soon in print as well.

126 pages of original hard-boiled crime noir, it's only $2.99 on Kindle.

From its Amazon page:

All Due Respect is back with thriller author Owen Laukkanen, whose latest book, Kill Fee, is due out in March. We've got some seriously dark stories from CS DeWildt, David Siddall, Joseph Rubas, Eric Beetner, Liam Sweeny, and Scott Adlerberg. And we continue our quest to review every Hard Case Crime book. If you like your fiction hardboiled/noir, this is your magazine.

Praise for All Due Respect:

"All Due Respect... is full of bars and beatings, guns and grifters, not necessarily the kind of crime to cozy up with by the fire, unless it's one of those burning cars on the side of the road." -- David James Keaton, author of Fish Bites Cop

"This is perhaps the best collection of noir and crime short stories I’ve come across." -- Big Al's Books and Pals.

So there you are.  This is good stuff.  For just $2.99, please give it a shot.  Leave a comment, let me know what you thought.   

Comments for "So Many Reasons," now published in On the Premises

Photo: Norman Rockwell's "Merry Christmas, Grandma!" at addictinginfo.org (Not my kinda site, but it had a good photo of this painting).  Is Christmas ever this old-fashioned and homey?

"So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season," my most recently-purchased story, about how a best-selling author deals with a collapsing marriage on Christmas Eve, was published by On the Premises (Link: www.onthepremises.com) on March 10th, in Issue #19. Use the link above, then click on "Latest Issue (March 2013)" and then click on "So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season," four stories down on the page. Check out other good stories in that publication as well. It's all free. When you're done, please go to this blog entry and leave a comment. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

For those who care about such things, this story is especially important to me because it is the first non-genre piece I've sold.  This means that it's not science fiction, or horror, or mystery, or speculative fiction, or a specific genre like that.  It's a more everyday story, very contemporary, very today.  And it's about relationships, about how they end, and about not lying to yourself about them.  It's a tough lesson to learn that your life is crappy, and that you're full of crap as well, but that's what happens here.  But I digress: this is especially rewarding because there aren't any tropes of a genre that the writer can fall back on.  For example, in a horror story, you expect some blood, some terror, some fear.  In a mystery, you expect a puzzle, a whodunit.  In both cases, the writing itself doesn't have to be all that good, in a way, as long as the blood and terror keep coming, or as long as the reader is hooked so much on the whodunit that he doesn't notice how terrible the writing is.

In a non-genre story, it isn't that easy.  There are no bloodletting scenes, no whodunit, no YA romance, nothing that a genre writer can fall back on when nothing else is working.  It's just a real-life guy and his real-life problems.  Characterization is more important here, and so is the conflict and the reality.  So when something like this sells, the writer feels a little more confident because this type of writing can be much harder to create than a genre piece.

So if you've taken the time to read it, thank you; if you haven't, please do.  And please comment below.  Let me know what you think, good or bad.  Let's have a discussion about it.  As long as your comments are politely stated (and a specific example from the story would help), I promise to publish them.  Please, and thank you.

As usual, thanks for reading my stuff.  I appreciate and respect the time you sacrifice to do so.

On the Premises--So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season

Just a quick note to say that On the Premises (OTP) has purchased my short story, "So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season" and will publish it in its next issue, #19, online at www.onthepremises.com.  I think it's available in .pdf as well.  And it's free to read (I think)!  It'll be available starting March 10th, or thereabouts, so look for it at that site every now and then.  And while, with breathless anticipation, you're waiting for my story (fourth in the issue, I think), why not click the links of other issues and read some good, free stuff?  I just did.  I read the third and fourth stories of Issue #18, an unusual ghost story and a good time-travel piece.  I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't like it myself.

I'll soon set up another blog entry with more concrete information about this publication and about my piece.  After reading that next entry, please feel free to comment about my story once it becomes available.

As always, thank you for reading this blog, and for reading my other pieces.  I appreciate your support.

P.S.--I actually received notification in February from the magazine that they would publish my story, but I wanted to go through the process of seeing edits, and proof sheets, and signing the contract, before I announced it here.  Since I sold the poem, "An Old Man," in January, that means I've been fortunate enough to sell two pieces within four or five weeks of each other.  I'm on a little bit of a roll.  (I just knocked on the wooden table my laptop rests upon, after hoping I also sell something in March.)  I really do believe that this recent wave of good luck is due in part to the support I get from my friends, colleagues, and people like you, my blog readers, who are nice enough to congratulate me, or to pick me up, when I need it.  So, again, thanks very much for doing that, and I mean that sincerely.