In The Woods, by Tana French

Tana French’s debut novel, In the Woods, is fascinating, complex and ultimately leaves its different readers with many different impressions of how we are to view the main characters and what actually happens in the story.

In literary genre circles, this book is classified as a “police procedural.”  The story takes place in and around Dublin, Ireland, where the weather, the atmosphere, the ethos of the place are almost characters in the plot.  The book is narrated by Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan who, we discover early in the book, has an unsolved mystery at the heart of his life.  His memory of the incident is gone.  And he tells us, “Contrary to what you might assume, I did not become a detective on some quixotic quest to solve my childhood mystery.  I read the file once, that first day, late on my own in the squad room with my desk lamp the only pool of light….It was these arcana I craved, these near-invisible textures like a Braille legible only to the initiated.  They were like thoroughbreds, those two Murder detectives passing through Ballygobackwards; like trapeze artists honed to a sizzling shine.  They played for the highest stakes, and they were experts at their game.”

Rob and partner Cassie Maddox, the only person other than Rob’s parents who knows about his relationship to this old unsolved mystery, are assigned a murder case involving a 12-year-old girl from the same suburb where Rob grew up and where the old unsolved mystery took place.  Should he be investigating this new case?  His doing so is absolutely against department regulations, but he and Cassie proceed anyway.  Thus we begin a journey into the intertwining of these two stories.

We remember that Rob-the-narrator has also told us in the first line of the first chapter of the book:  “What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective.  Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass.  It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception.”  So, is everything that follows somehow “fundamental but cracked truth”?  Are we part of a web of deception?  Is Ryan himself part of that web?

This first book in French’s “Dublin Murder Series” is a highly satisfying read, open to interpretation and re-interpretation.  Are there clues we have missed?  What is the significance of the object found in the remnant of the woods, now an archeological dig, at the end of the story?  Can we add up the brief flashbacks that Rob experiences during the course of the current investigation?

Read it yourself and see what you think. — Jeanie Smith

Braving the Wilderness, by Brene Brown

It may be worth noting up front that our group read Braving the Wilderness in January of 2021, with our first of two discussions taking place just after an attack on the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the process of ratifying Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election. This made it a very timely and relevant read for many of us who were struggling to see these acts as anything other than “us versus them.” Having moved even deeper into the divisive and polarized culture that existed four years ago to acts of violence in 2021, Brené Brown’s words from 2017 now seem rather prophetic.

“The flags are flying from every porch and the social media memes are trending, all while fear is burrowing and metastasizing. What feels like a rallying movement is really a cover for fear, which can then start spreading over the landscape and seeping into the fault lines of our country. As fear hardens, it expands and becomes less of a protective barrier and more of a solidifying division. It forces its way down in the gaps and tears apart our social foundation, already weakened with those delicate cracks.”

 

In this short but powerful book, through her characteristic mode of vulnerable storytelling from her own emotionally raw experiences, Brown lets the reader know she’s seeking truths to help us all cope – not telling us she has all the answers. She challenges us to take a hard look at our responses in the face of fear and anger and whether, in our quest for belonging, we’re doing more than surrounding ourselves with like-minded others and pointing fingers for blame. While her suggestions for moving out of our own bunkers to find a greater sense of belonging absolutely make sense, they’re also no easy tasks: moving in and listening to people with whom we disagree, speaking truth to B.S. in a civil and non-dehumanizing way, and keeping a strong back, soft front and wild heart. 

 

A paradoxical quote by Dr. Maya Angelou, which Brown wrestles to understand throughout the book, is this: “You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.” If the key to belonging is feeling bold enough to live authentically in every place, it opens up a lot of questions about how we raise our kids, how we form our identities and relationships, and even how we act as a church. The idea transcends any notion that one way of thinking is “correct.” 

 

Braving the Wilderness sparked a lot of reflection and conversation in our group of like-minded friends, but I can also see it being used as a starting point for open discussion among people who disagree. At any rate, it’s worth reminding ourselves to stay open to that conversation, and that fear of the other must be confronted in order to heal.  — Julie Feirer

Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger

Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River is a delightful and discussable novel. The story of the Land family—
Jeremiah, Davy, Reuben, and Swede—is set in the early 60s in rural Minnesota and the North Dakota badlands.  

The narrator is Reuben as an adult, reflecting back on a childhood marred by severe and unpredictable asthma. Much of the tension of young Reuben’s story is his nervous, sometimes resentful, monitoring of his dad’s miracles—always hoping for the big one: that his dad will cure him. Reuben knows his dad can perform miracles because he has witnessed them—curing an undeserving school superintendent of a skin condition, healing a flaw in Swede’s saddle, rendering the Land’s Airstream rig invisible to the Law. And ultimately, Jeremiah does cure his son’s asthma, by miraculously gifting Rueben with his own lungs—the occasion for this miracle, by the way, compliments of the evil, murderous Jape Waltzer.

 

While young Reuben wrestles with his asthma, his little sister Swede—sidekick and foil—is pounding out a kind of parallel saga of Sunny Sundown and the wicked Valdez on a manual typewriter, often while riding a saddle on a sawhorse in an Airstream trailer heading West in search of fugitive Davy. Sunny Sundown’s saga is told in charmingly awful heroic verse. And significantly, Swede can’t kill Valdez—though if ever a fictional villain deserved death it is he.

 

The novel explores very serious and weighty matters: life and death, good and evil, crime and punishment—all the while making us laugh at the most unlikely moments. For example, the gruesome hunting scene near the beginning of the story, rendered hysterical by Swede’s unwise enthusiasm to retrieve the downed goose.

 

We see the transformative power of love in Roxanna who, when we meet her, is graceless and plain. But when she and Jeremiah marry, she is graceful and beautiful. And as she is transformed by them, so are they transformed by her: Jeremiah to health and the children from motherless to abundantly mothered.

 

Enger’s characters, which are both types and utterly singular, push the boundaries of realism. But because they are so original and engaging, and because the pacing of the story is quick and the stakes are high, the reader cheerfully goes along for the ride. The oversize characters are easy to love, easy to despise, and easy to equivocate about. Jeremiah is Good. Almost like Christ. Jape Waltzer is Evil. Almost like Satan. And Davy, Reuben’s outlaw brother, is Morally Ambiguous. Almost like us.

 

Enger’s poses a kind of Yin and Yang dualism. We can’t have life without death, or good without evil, or joy without sadness, or doubt without miracles. Perhaps the reason Swede can’t kill Valdez is because Sunny Sundown can’t live without him. Jape Waltzer needs to murder Jeremiah so Reuben can receive the miracle. And we can’t bear the grimness of it all without being able to laugh. — Sharelle Moranville

 

 

 

Climbing Lessons, by Tim Bascom

Members of St. Timothy’s Brew, Books and Banter book club had the great opportunity to visit again with author Tim Bascom, this time to discuss his new book, Climbing Lessons, via Zoom.  A couple of years ago we enjoyed his visit to discuss his first book, Chameleon Days, his memoir of growing up in Ethiopia, where his parents were missionaries during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the honor of his presence after his second book, Running to the Fire, about his return to his teenage life in Ethiopia, during the Marxist Revolution that overthrew the emperor.

Climbing Lessons is a collection of moving stories illustrating the bond between fathers and sons, a bond often nurtured through outdoor adventures, and how that changes with generational time. Beginning in small-town Kansas, these tales span three generations. The first part of the book focuses on his life as a son and grandson. Early on, he describes how his over-eager father, while trying to demonstrate how to climb a huge sycamore, ends up dropping 12 feet and landing on his back, unable to move. Stunned, he finally recovers, and gasps, “So that’s how it’s done.” In that moment, he becomes a symbol for all fathers, trying to lead, failing, but getting back up to continue showing the way.  This “climbing lesson” is just one of 40 stories, drawing on the experience of four generations of his Midwestern family.

I was struck by the fact that, during the book, there were so many comparisons between Tim’s and my lives, beginning with the fact that we both grew up in rural Kansas communities, graduated from the University of Kansas, taught in college, and authored books. In the indented sections below, I describe some of those similarities. 

While Tim had two sons, I had two daughters. In one of the stories in this first section Tim talks about spanking – some he got from his father, and those he gave to his sons.  I was reminded that, by contrast, I only got spanked once by my father, who was unhappy that I spilled mercurochrome on my parent’s new blanket. 

The book’s second part depicts stories about his life as a father where he experiences failures also. When Tim takes his own turn at fathering, he realizes that his previously devoted toddlers are turning into unimpressed teenagers. No longer their hero he had hoped to be, he must accept a new, flawed version of himself, not unlike his father before him. 

Tim and his wife Cathleen, an Episcopal priest, parent a couple of boys, the first one nearly dies of “failure to thrive." After three more years, another son is born, and Tim takes them on hikes and tells them stories. In one chapter, he goes hiking with his youngest son, his brother and nephew. He takes great pleasure in seeing the strong bond between his 16-year-old and the mischievous nephew. Several months later, the family moves through a terrible crisis as their nephew commits suicide. When Tim’s sons go off to college, charting their own courses, they both struggle to deal with the loss of their cousin. 

Tim talks about his sorrow that his first girlfriend left town with her family.  That happened to me too. Also, in Taking a Hit, he describes his initiation to football, where he got smeared, but didn’t quit.  By contrast, in my first game, I received the kickoff and ran down the field until I got smeared. Upon being tackled, my helmet fell off and rolled down the field. Several guys from the other team thought I fumbled the ball and jumped on it.  When I got to the sidelines, I found that our coach also thought I fumbled the ball and was livid, critically yelling at me.  At halftime, we were behind, and our coach went on a rant about how we should be doing better – for him. Not for the team, or the town, but just for HIM. It was such a bad environment, after the game I quit the team. Although I always felt guilty about quitting, but in retrospect, given all the current issues with brain trauma, I’m glad I didn’t spend a lot of time on the football field afterwards.

The last section mainly deals with the health problems of his father. After his father shatters a hip, Tim races home to Kansas.  Drawing on his father’s strength and experience to care for his boys, he realizes he must now assume a caretaking role.  When he later receives news that his father has had a massive heart attack, he races back to Kansas again. His father conveys to Tim that it will soon be time to take the role of showing his sons the way.  “You’ll get your turn.  Trust me, we all do.”

In the final section, Tim describes his two cats. The kitten is hyperactive, constantly leaping toward any distraction.  The older cat, by contrast, likes to snuggle.  We have two cats with identical tendencies. He also describes his grandfather Doc Bascom, as being extremely smart, productive and admired by all.  It reminded me of my grandfather, Hank Mayse, who was a lawyer, postmaster, editor of the county newspaper, and very much admired by all.

While many can tell family stories, few can tell them with such warm-hearted detail as Tim. He succeeds in creating something both intensely personal and irresistibly universal. Although the book’s primary focus is on the beauties and difficulties of father-son relationships, the stories in Climbing Lessons warm the reader’s heart. Bascom’s skillful prose style immediately draws one into these moving tales.  These brief inter-linked stories show that abiding affection can prevail, bringing fathers and sons closer, even as they tackle the steepest parts of the climb.

Bascom completed his MFA at the University of Iowa, taught at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, and now heads up the Kansas Book Festival in Topeka, Kansas, where his wife Cathleen is the Episcopal Bishop of Kansas. — Ken Johnson

The Overstory, by Richard Powers

This is a remarkable book, a feat of imagination, research, imagery, and character development. The winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, it can be a challenge to read—no cruise-control mindless scanning will get you through this one. But once you finish, your world will look different. You’ll sit in your backyard and wonder what the trees are saying to one another. You’ll take a special trip to check out one of the few remaining chestnuts in Iowa. You’ll start noticing trees on your daily walks—how one gingko loses its leaves all at once and another does so gradually. You’ll recognize trees as part of their own communities and as protectors of our own. This book will stay with you, and it is worth every minute you give to it.  

In The New York Times, Barbara Kingsolver wrote about how author Richard Powers, a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, created a work of art with significant scientific merit:

The Overstory accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility, while watching our own kind get whittled down to size. 

Powers told the Guardian that he read at least 120 books on trees and this research changed him. He talked about his motivation for the book and its effect on him:

When you look at the statistics of what’s happening to species, to rainforests, to forests of all kinds, it’s so overwhelming that it’s difficult to believe it. It’s utterly daunting. I wanted to tell a story about ordinary people who, for whatever reason, have that realisation about the irreversible destruction that’s happening right now and who get radicalised as a result. The book explores that question of how far is too far when it comes to defending this place, the only place we have to make a home. The act of writing this book has made me more radicalised, for sure.

In a PBS Interview with Jeffrey Brown, Powers explained the scientific backbone of the book:

Whatever I present in the book as scientific fact was, to the best of my ability at the time of publication, verifiable, consensually repeated and agreed upon. 

The book seems so real that, as Kingsolver wrote, readers Google characters to see if they actually exist. In some ways they do. One of the central characters, Patricia Westerford, is a scientist who discovers that trees communicate with one another, creating a community in which members help others in crisis, plan for the future, and guard against common threats. This is based on the ground-breaking work of real-life ecologist Suzanne Simard. In The Overstory, Westerford writes a book, The Secret Life of Trees. In reality, author Peter Wohlleben wrote  The Hidden Life of Trees in 2016, using Simard’s work as a central focus. 

Literary Hub writer Kevin Berger spent a day visiting Powers in his Appalachia home and was there at the poignant moment when the author read Kingsolver’s review for the first time. “I have found my people,” Powers said. And, for every writer who feels compelled to crank out words for the sake of words, Powers emphasized the importance of the contemplation he learned living near the forest, a truth for most of what we do in life:  

When I lived in cities, I wrote out of a tremendous work ethic. I felt if I were to be a serious writer, I needed to produce 1,000 words a day. When I didn’t, I was tremendously anxious. But since coming down here, and committing myself to communication with the plant world, I’ve been much more comfortable in letting an hour or two or more go by in a reverie state. I don’t feel compelled to have a word count at the end of the day, but rather to prepare myself as a ready receptacle for whatever might happen.

This is a book about trees, but it's also about us. Trees have natural resilience. Those we destroy today will provide roots and seeds for regrowth, which may take hundreds, even thousands of years. Whether humans will be around to see that resurgence is an open question.—Pat Prijatel

Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah

When a book begins with a nine-year-old getting pushed out of a moving bus by his mother and ends up twenty years later with him hosting The Daily Show, you want to see what mysteries unfold in the middle. 

Trevor Noah’s mother, who he calls a “force of nature,” is the one who shoved him out of the speeding minibus, jumping out with him—to protect both of them from a driver who showed serious intent to harm them both. And so begins the book about a young man who took after the mother he adored, refusing the rules intended to keep her, and him, in their proper places—whatever that was in South Africa’s system of apartheid that separated people by race to a degree that few understood. Chinese were colored, but Japanese were not, and Trevor, who had a white father and a Black mother, wasn't considered colored, but mixed, an entirely different category, with different rules. Their union was illegal, so he literally was born a crime.

 

Obviously a bright child, Trevor learned to master the many languages and accents of his complex and diverse neighborhoods, including English, Zulu, German, Afrikaans, and Sotho, which gave him an advantage when getting mugged, cheated, criticized, conned, or when just wanting to communicate with somebody different. 

 

Language, he writes, is part of a shared identity and “even more than color, defines who you are to people.” Language can unify and divide us, he says. This makes the story of his high school matric dance (prom) even more ironic.  He wooed a girl for a month, considering her the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. When she agreed to go to prom with him, he spent a fortune getting the right outfit and planning the perfect night. He was late picking her up, then got lost, and they were two hours late to the dance. Once there, she refused to get out of the car, and he had no idea why. It turned out she was terrified of the whole chaotic situation, something she could not communicate because she did not speak English and her language, Pedi, was one of the few he couldn't speak, a fact that somehow eluded him in his ill-fated courtship.

 

Much of the book is about how he tried to find his place as a light-skinned Black man, finally turning to comedy to try to make some sense of it. He was such a misfit, in fact, that at one point neighbors used him as a guidepost when giving directions: “The house on Makhalima Street. At the corner you’ll see a light-skinned boy. Take a right there.”

 

Noah’s mother, Patricia, had no interest in remaining a subjugated woman and living her life defined by White culture and Black men. She chose to have a child with a man of German-Swiss descent, with no plans of ever marrying him; she trained as a typist at a time when women were supposed to stay at home; and she moved into neighborhoods that were alternately dangerous or above her “station,” all to avoid staying in a small village or a small life.

 

Patricia was Trevor’s guiding light, foil to his escapades, greatest love and greatest challenge. His biological father remained in his life, even though that was not part of the original agreement and offered a touch of support from a distance. His stepfather Abel provided a model of the kind of man he did not want to be.

 

For her part, Patricia saw Jesus as her guide, and she and Trevor spent most of each Sunday going to three different churches—White church, Black church, and colored church, providing a framework for her faith, but demonstrating the divisive society in which they lived.

 

Trevor countered constant bullying with humor, which became his defense and led to a high- paying career. As a teenager, he was eating caterpillars to keep from starving, which he describes in appalling detail, while iiving in a garage or sleeping in cars every night and wearing clothes too big for him so they didn't have to replaced so often. Now, at the age of 36 he is making $8 million a year.

 

The book is essentially an interwoven series of monologues that are harrowing, insightful, terrifying, sad, and, because of the telling, often funny. But there is nothing funny about the system of apartheid under which Trevor was born and the racism and classism in which he lived. Perhaps there will be a sequel to this, explaining how he ended up where he now is. Better yet, maybe his remarkable mother will write a book. — Joe Kucera and Pat Prijatel

The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett

Patchett is a connoisseur of imperfect characters who are compelling mixes of the saintly, the clueless, the wise and loving, the selfish and manipulative—characters the reader can’t help but care about because they are just so human.

In The Dutch House, Patchett uses the grand VanHoebeek’s mansion that came on the market after World War II as the spine of the multi-generational story. When Cyril Conroy buys the Dutch house (with all the VanHoebeek’s personal possessions and three servants included) as a surprise for his wife Elna, it is a cruel gift to the quiet, would-be nun. 

The changes brought about by moving into the Dutch house eventually send Elna fleeing to Bombay to work with Mother Teresa (who is actually in Calcutta). After she leaves, the Conroy children, Maeve and Danny, are in the capable, loving hands of the housekeeper, the cook, and the nanny, Fiona (aka Fluffy), who is a warm, humorous presence from before the beginning of the story through the end, three generations later.

Danny, as the narrator, shows us life in the Dutch house. After their mother, who has been disappearing for increasingly long spells, seems perhaps not to be coming back ever, he and Maeve wonder if she is dead. Probably, their dad tells them. She probably died in India. Information which is neither comforting nor edifying. 

 

Then young and attractive Andrea begins to come and go in the Dutch house. The children are left on their own to figure out what this means. Maeve becomes suddenly and seriously ill with diabetes. Despite all this, young Danny still feels secure and loved by the servants and especially his sister, who has taken on a quasi-motherly role. 

 

When their dad marries Andrea, she brings two little girls, Norma and Bright, into the Dutch House. Maeve and Danny come to love the little girls, but Andrea—in a vein of casual cruelty, gives Maeve’s room to Norma when Maeve goes off to college. And when Cyril dies of a heart attack shortly after Maeve graduates, Andrea calls Maeve and says of Danny: “Come and get him.” Thus Danny and Maeve are summarily banished from the Dutch house and Norma and Bright.  Equally shocking, Maeve and Danny discover Andrea now owns everything: the Dutch house and all of Cyril’s real estate and investments. Danny and Maeve are left with Maeve’s car and a foundation established for the education of Cyril and Andrea’s four children.

 

Thus begins Danny and Maeve’s period of watching the Dutch house and plotting. In Maeve’s car, they take up posts, smoking and talking, with Maeve planning ways for Danny to use up the foundation money by the longest, most costly education imaginable. And from this revenge plot, Danny eventually and unwittingly becomes a doctor, when all he wants to do is get a little money together so he can start investing in real estate and follow in his dad’s footsteps.

 

Danny’s girlfriend, Celeste, in training to be the best doctor’s wife ever, discovers she has married a landlord instead of a doctor—repeating Elna’s pattern of discovering her husband was not who she thought he was. And Danny ironically repeats family history too by surprising Celeste with a beautifully restored brownstone in Manhattan not at all to her taste.

 

Over the years, through various bits of information, Danny and Maeve gradually come to understand their mother is still alive, living and doing good works among the homeless in the city. Danny struggles with how to feel about this, but Maeve embraces the woman she still calls Mommy. 

 

Near the end of the story, Elna convinces her children, as only she could, to go with her to visit the Dutch House.  This causes a tectonic shift among the characters. Now demented, Andrea is enormously comforted by Danny, who she believes is Cyril returned to her. Ever compassionate (except perhaps to her young children) Elna moves back into the Dutch house (unchanged all these years) and works with Norma (who actually did want to become a doctor) as Andrea’s caretakers. Maeve, who feels abandoned by her mother once again, dies of what is surely meant to be taken as a broken heart. 

 

As the story ends, Danny and Norma become siblings of sorts (“a half-sister from a second marriage,” as Danny cautiously puts it). Elna begins to disappear among the poor again. Danny finally gives up his rage at his mother and replaces it with “familiarity.” Danny and Celeste divorce. Fluffy visits the Dutch House now and then and sleeps in her old room above the garage. And May—Maeve’s namesake—gains fame and fortune as an actress and ultimately buys the Dutch house and brings back parties reminiscent of the VanHoebeek era. And the portrait of Maeve, originally painted to stare down the VanHoebeck’s portraits hanging across the room, looks to all the world like May. There’s a sense of rightness about this ending. Finally, the Dutch house has come into its own as the Conroy house.

 

The Dutch House is a rich and conversation-provoking story showing us the human condition in fascinating particulars. — Sharelle Moranville