A Literary Life

All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)

As most people who have talked to me about books in the last year know, I love The Road. I’ve often said so with a sigh in my voice and a twinkle in my eye, because despite the seriousness of the subject matter, I fell in love. That novel made me feel as if I was discovering something for the first time: a talent, a voice, a world, an ever-present human story only now articulated.

But I’m self-aggrandizing, I know. The sharp, artful voice and aching melancholy of Cormac McCarthy has been there since he set pen to page, continued to be there as he won the National Book Award and wasn’t discovered when MY eyes met his words. All the Pretty Horses, written in 1992, proves that. However, I can’t help but feel again that I have stumbled upon something momentous, something meant just for me in a small way, something beautiful that will make my eyes twinkle and my voice sigh when I try to convey just how remarkable an accomplishment All the Pretty Horses is.

But McCarthy describes that startling feeling of discovery better than me in his stark, biting dialog.

“I never knowed there was such a place as this.
I guess there’s probably every kind of place you can think of.
Rawlins nodded. I wouldn’t have thought of this one, he said.”

In this case, the two main characters — teenagers from Texas ranches who travel into Mexico looking for work as cowboys — have found a level of pain and misery and degradation previously unimaginable. Their coming-of-age trek has been blown off course by the harsh desert wind, slapped about by the hand of fate, which knocks out of them the idea that they’re entitled success, happiness, even life. It all begins with a chance meeting with a younger stranger who claims his name is Blevins, and that one chance snowballs through love, talent, destiny, friendship, hope and crushing loss until we wind up in a place that’s brutal and bloody yet truthful.

And somehow beautiful:

“He picked out the smallest doe among them and shot her … The sky was dark and a cold wind ran through the bajada and in the dying light a cold blue cast had turned the doe’s eyes to but one thing more of the things she lay among in the darkening landscape. Grass and blood. Blood and stone. Stone and dark medallions that the first flat drops of rain caused upon them. He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he’d first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he’d presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he’d not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.”

Only McCarthy could explain to me this masculine strength and honor and adventure so deftly, me! Who usually shies away from Westerns and is allergic to horses. Even I can see how the stark lines (and again, stark prose) of the landscape and of these characters’ lives are somehow more telling, more primal than every flowery, curl-i-que tale. The latter rely on embellishment and literary trickery to establish depth. Whereas the pure, beautiful depth of McCarthy’s work aches in your bones and raises goosebumps on your skin.

I’m afraid to say there’s going to be lots more Cormac McCarthy on my plate and on my bookshelves in the future. Anyone know which one I should tackle next?

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)

It’s been a while since I liked a book this much, since a book actually made me feel as if I were discovering something never before touched by my eyes, a style never conceived of in my tiny little brain. It’s obvious when I really like a book from the beginning solely because I talk about it often — and in some detail — with my non-reader fiance, who listens attentively but will probably never pick up the novel I’m extolling. (I’m just being honest here, Love. I know you have your best intentions.) But I would probably talk about this book to anyone with earshot when I have it in my hands, about how irreverent yet honest the story is, how deep it digs into Dominican-American culture, how funny, how true to life, how simultaneously down to earth and moving.

It is the story — duh — of Oscar Wao, the first-generation son of a single mother from the Dominican Republic. While the Dominicans (especially the men) have a reputation for masculine prowess and womanizing (I don’t know Spanish that well, but the book must have at least six Spanish words for pussy vagina), Oscar is instead an overweight and over-vocabularied nerd of the highest degree. Sci Fi and fantasy novels, comic books, anime: You name it, Oscar loves it, and the narrator inserts these great nerd references whenever humanly possible. Check out the geek speak when describing the binding thread of the Oscar’s family’s story, a supposed curse or fuku placed on Oscar’s grandfather but common in many Dominican stories:

“It’s important to remember that fuku doesn’t always strike like lightning. Sometimes it works patiently, drowning a nigger by degrees, like with the Admiral or the U.S. in paddies outside Saigon. Sometimes it’s slow and sometimes it’s fast. It’s doomish in that way, makes it harder to put a finger on, to brace yourself against. But be assured: like Darkseid’s Omega Effect, the Morgoth’s bane, no matter how many turns and digressions this shit might take, it always — and I mean always — gets its man. “

Yes, this book won the Pulitzer Prize. And yes, it cusses like this on almost every page. And hell yes, I love what the world of literature is coming to. (No sarcasm here. I promise.) Diaz can be simultaneous crass and erudite. While cussing can often be juvenile, Diaz uses it like a cultural weapon and proves he’s doing it deftly, purposefully. The below, for instance, is a description of Oscar’s mother as a girl:

“I mean, what straight middle-aged brother had not attempted to regenerate himself through the alchemy of young pussy. And if what she often said to her daughter was true, Beli had some of the finest pussy around. The sexy isthmus of her waist alone could have launched a thousand yolas.”

An allusion to Helen of Troy and the word pussy on the same page? With vocab biggies like isthmus and alchemy? Wow, or rather Wao.

And while Oscar may be a lumbering, pitiful and heart-rendingly sweet geek, he’s still a Dominican, passionately interested in women, who thinks girls “were the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the DC and the Marvel. Homes had it bad.”

I loved joining Oscar on his quest for romance, in his depths of self pity and despair. I loved watching the present and the past of the story unfold, seeing the patterns but being left wanting more, wondering, my mind tripping back over the story to make connections. But perhaps above all, I loved this witty, bantering voice Diaz masters in the narrator. He’s part David Foster Wallace with his footnotes and educated allusions, and he’s part street-level shit talking at its finest, silver tongued and savvy. It’s simply excellent prose, even if you get a little confused at the Spanish sections — don’t worry, everything absolutely vital is translated. Much like Oscar’s life, the novel was wondrous, taking the nitty-gritty everyday and sprinkling some magic dust and cuss words to take it to the next level of meaning.

Can I put this on our wedding registry? Anyone?

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)

Meet two-egg (fraternal) twins Estha and Rahel, two kids growing up in the India state of Kerala in the turbulent 1960s. Welcome to the imaginative, confusing, flowing world of two connected siblings, who see the world through each others’ (vibrantly, innocently descriptive) eyes, yet understand only shallowly the events unfolding around around them. Join them as they discover — over the course of childhood and with the distance of adulthood — “the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.”

This Booker Prize-winning novel definitely deserved its accolades. Though it took me much, much longer than normal to get through the book (my fault, not the novel’s), I loved every little description, every meaningful encounter, every private thought. Though the story ostensibly revolves around a tragedy of youth where a young relative visiting from England dies, the tale encompasses so much more and paints a thoughtful portrait of India during that time period.

Communism and unions and the division of wealth are seen in the family’s ownership of Paradise Pickles and Preserves. Gender roles appear in the “men’s needs door” allowed in the uncles bedroom, contrasted against his sister who left her drunken husband, who is considered immoral. Westernization: Is everything foreign more valuable than what comes out of India, including people?

But yet, the overwhelming theme is loss, tragedy and guilt. Not an uncommon theme, I admit. But the talent of Roy, her offbeat yet poignant descriptive ability, brings the theme to a higher level. Take, for instance, her description of Estha, who retreats into silence in reaction to his cousin’s death:

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It send its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, emtombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.

I absolutely love the irreverence of Roy’s language. Random capitalization. Repetition. Her unique titling of people and things: Estha becomes Ambassador Pelvis with his special-occasion puff; Rahel is labeled a fountain in a Love in Tokyo due to her hairstyle. Roy reaches into the brain to pull out descriptions I would never have dreamed of, but that immediately bring images to mind. For example, the twins’ mother’s appearance is gauged in toothbrushes. As she stares in the mirror, she thinks she could definitely hold one under the fold of her bottom — several even — but her smaller breasts couldn’t support one.

And unlike heavier works by just-as-gifted authors, the words alone are not the only joy of the novel. The story itself will make you ache, both in its occasional sweetness and innocence as well as its tragedy. The guilt, whether deserved or not — in this world, tragedy almost seems inevitable — is palpable. But sometimes the best of books make you feel the worst, right? And despite it being the author’s first novel, this is definitely one of the best.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Let me come out and say it: This book was one of the most inspired, well crafted and brilliant books I’ve read in a while, perhaps since The Road. Easy to read and straight-forwardly told, this story of Stevens — the last of a generation of English butlers with dignity and gravitas — surprised me with its humor and depth.

Every thread, every thought is woven together so gracefully. There was a moment at the kitchen table when I read the last page where the art of the novel hit me full force, making me see how this narrator’s personality and world view effected not only way we are told the tale, but the tragedies and triumphs of the plot beneath. In a way, Stevens is the ultimate unreliable narrator: Without artifice or intentional deception, we nonetheless see that his story is not the WHOLE story. While he spends time documenting the philosophy of his profession and his absolute dedication to it (the persona is a suit one never removes except when utterly alone, he notes), the reader sees what the unperceptive, dutiful butler doesn’t: what is really happening in the world, who the people around him truly are, their emotions, their desires.

Take, for instance, Steven’s experience on the road trip the novel centers around. Having rarely traveled far from his employer’s estate and never for simple pleasure, he observes the “greatness” of the scenery in such a unique way, what becomes a very signature way of the character.

“And yet what precisely is this ‘greatness’? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of the beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of it own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and American, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.”

Demonstrative scenery? I say! Another great instance is how, because of the jovial character of his new American employer Mr. Farraday, Stevens attempts to master the art of making witty retorts, something too casual and unplanned to be easy for him.

A certain incident “is as good an illustration as any of the hazards of uttering witticisms. By the very nature of a witticism, one is given very little time to assess its various possible repercussions before one is called to give voice to it, and one gravely risks uttering all manner of unsuitable things if one has not first acquired the necessary skill and experience. There is no reason to suppose this is not an area in which I will become proficient given time and practice, but, such are the dangers, I have decided it best, for the time being at least, not to attempt to discharge this duty in respect to Mr. Farraday until I have practiced further.”

The personality of Stevens is so alive and real, despite the obvious typecasting as “the butler,” partially because he doesn’t see himself as a type. Where he is blind, we can see and we can ask. Has he really reached the peak of his profession? Has he really become the ultimate butler he so lovingly describes? Or has his whole life been subsumed within this duty? Is his success actually a failure? Can we not love this character wholly and completely anyway, even as we ache for him?

As I said, the poignancy of this device hit me hard on the last page, at which point I burst into satisfied tears, confounding The Boyfriend. “I thought you really liked the book,” he said. “Oh yes,” I sniffed and blew unattractively into a tissue, relishing the emotion the book released.

Ishiguro, like a star athlete, makes perfection seem so simple. A good author can take a pile of letters, a collection of words, a string of sentences, and create with these simple tools a unique and solid experience, something as real to a reader as a friend, a memory or a souvenir of an eventful vacation. Though I’m a library rat, this is one book I will consider buying, just so the sight of it on the shelf can renew that flood of emotion and amazement this talented author created in me. Just so the joy — and pain — will never leave me.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

My Name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok)

I closed this book with tears in my eyes and with gratitude in my heart for Maren McEuen of the Book Trail, though I’ve never met her and probably never will. Doesn’t matter: She introduced me to the achingly honest, painfully gifted and sharply *real* character of Asher Lev. Aches, pains and sharpness — it’s not a novel for those of who think Bridget Jones was heart-rending. But the finished book is a work of art as surely as the paintings produced by the main character are, a duality that, while obvious, strikes to the heart of the book’s … I won’t say “moral” or “message.” It reveals the book’s purpose for existence — it’s destiny — through the quest of Asher to find his.

You see, Asher is not an ordinary boy walking the well-worn rut of self-exploration. He’s an Orthodox Jew in a sheltered Brooklyn community who wears ear locks, eats kosher and believes that everyone has a purpose, a role to play in the world, a mission bestowed upon his by the “Master of the Universe.” And this purpose is communal, for the good of all. So when Asher exhibits a talent for drawing from the time he can hold a pen, this talent is seen as child’s play, something to dabble in, but also something that could grow to be dangerous, a manifestation of evil instead of good.

Asher doesn’t draw pretty pictures. “The world is not a pretty place,” says Asher. Eccentric to the point of near autism (did anyone else see that?), the boy is able to reveal emotion and meaning with the stroke of a pen or the swish of a brush. Unless he is able to release it, this meaning wells up inside of him and threatens to burst through the dam of his flesh. But when he releases that meaning, it can often hurt his mother and father and his community, the people he holds dearest to his heart.

Is art selfish? Can we thwart our destinies, the talents given us at birth? Is it better to be a great man or a great artist? Is it possible to be both? The words stream across the page like paint across Asher’s canvas, as if the writer is also battling these concepts in his head, reaching within himself for the story only he can tell, no matter how painful it is. Reaching inside for his truth as Asher finds his — a truth that may shock his community, wound his mother and turn his father against him forever.

A powerful tragedy, this book left me with an aching in my own intestines and an urge to search my own soul for my artistic destiny, my purpose, my art. It reminds me that creation is simultaneously an act of destruction, that we cannot have one without the other. And it makes me want to make that sacrifice, even while my tears for Asher are still on my cheeks.

I thank the “Master of the Universe” for this book, for giving us the raw material and raw talent in the human plane to create it in all its stark beauty, and I thank Chaim Potok for channeling this creative truth — this *art* — onto the page where I could devour it. Oh, and one more thanks, again, to Maren, who gave me a book that I spent an entire Sunday reading. I haven’t found one of those books in quite a while.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars — Buy the hardcover

Sin in the Second City (Karen Abbott)

I’m a sucker for sin. A relatively (ok, a VERY) vanilla person myself, I love delving into the social and literary history of sex and sin. Not “evil,” mind you, but “sin” — that delicious and glorious word that connotes rebellion, scandal and transgressions against buttoned up morality. I mean, I wrote my thesis on female sexuality in 18th century Britain, for sin’s sake, and I’ve reviewed many of the most controversial books about sexual liberation (Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Lolita, for instance) and even sexual subjugation (Story of O, anyone?) So when I picked up this excellent book of creative non-fiction about two of Chicago’s most infamous madams, I knew I was in for a deliciously sinful treat.

Chicago — the second largest American city at the turn of the 20^th century — full of marvels like horseless carriages, trolleys, skyscrapers and modern medicine. But also overflowing with immigrants, shysters, con men, crooked politicians, bribed policemen and, of course, prostitutes. By the tally of the 1911 Vice Commission, there were no less than 1,020 brothels in Chicago and 5,000 full-time prostitutes, and the Levee (the red-light district) raked in more than $16 million per year, which would amount to $328 million in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars.

Enter Minna and Ada Everleigh and the Everleigh resort. (Yes, yes, the ever-lay club. The pun is intended.) These two madams set out to elevate the profession, which they see as a necessary service to male society, a sex that they not-so-secretly disdain. Their harlots are fed gourmet meals, dressed opulently, cared for by a respectable physician, taught to recite Balzac and made never to drug, rob or otherwise con their clients. The Prince of Prussia drank champagne out of the slipper of a Butterfly, as the Everleigh’s harlots were known, and any visitor to Chicago (who had the money, of course) wanted to see the inside of the sisters’ carpeted, gold-plated, perfumed bordello.

But this was 20^th century America and the moral reform movement was already at hand, the same movement that would pass the Mann Act to prevent white slavery and make alcohol illegal for more than a decade. And so the free spirits of the Levee district and their bacchanalian attitudes clash with the street preachers, the stern lady do-gooders and the fiery spirit of moral uplift. I think we all know who wins.

Even if the reader knows that the brothel doors will one day be closed, Abbott is a masterful story teller. Never dry or dusty, she brings the lives of these ladies off of the page with sensory details, real dialog pulled from first-hand accounts and a burlesque sense of humor that it’s difficult not to share.

“Imagine yourself,” Bell (a Chicago-based preacher and reformer) wrote, “In this awful district with Satan and all his cohorts let loose, seemingly. The cursing of men and the screeching of dope-filled and half drunken women; the banging of electrical pianos; the honking of autos; the throngs of young men going like mad into these houses of horror, where the air is reeking with the fumes of dope and tobacco and millions of germs; where women are in their scanty attire with painted faces and colored and false hair, with their honeyed words and foolish prattling, calling and alluring men into their fearful clutches and then to awful sin and death perhaps!”

Ah yes, just imagine. How sordidly and wretchedly fun to read and imagine.

Then We Came to the End (Joshua Ferris)

I love a challenge, and obviously so does Joshua Ferris, who wrote this entire novel from the “we” point of view. An argument for brilliance in and of itself if it’s pulled off well. Add to that “we,” however, the perfect environment for a cohesive perspective: an office of people, specifically an advertising firm battling the post-dot-com economic slump with the weapons of lay offs and cut backs.

“Some days felt longer than other days. Some days felt like two whole days. Unfortunately those days were never the weekends. Our Saturdays and Sundays passed in the half the time of a normal workday. In other words, some weeks felt like we worked ten straight days and hand one one day off. We could hardly complain. Time was being added to our lives. But then it wasn’t easy to rejoice, exactly, realizing that time just wasn’t moving fat enough. We had any number of clocks surrounding us, and every one of them at one time or another exhibited a lively sense of humor. We found ourselves wanting to hurry tiem along, which was not in the long run good for our health. Everybody was trapped in this contradiction but nobody every dared articulate it. They just said, ‘Can you believe it’s only three-fifteen?’”

In addition to these darkly comic moments of perfectly understandable gloom, the book tackles the irresistibility of office gossip as well as it’s Schadenfreude (Jeez, I’ve always wanted to use that word!), our love/hate relationship with our jobs (we hate them until we have a chance of losing them) and how we spend more than 8 hours a day with people we will never really know. Yep, all those things and cancer, sexual trysts, office supply theft, antidepressants, mediocrity and success - or “so-called” success.

Is the book perfect? No. The “we” gets a little hard to carry at some points, and there are perhaps a few more pages that there needs to be to accomplish the same result. But I really, really liked this unique and experimental book. So much so that I now owe the local library $1.80 because I didn’t want to turn it in until I wrote this review (and I’m currently about 6 books behind on reviews. Freelance work is great, but drains your free time for sure). I hope to see more great books from this first time novelist.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hard cover

The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

    A lot of people have been struck with great ideas for books, wild notions about alternate universes or shifts of time that usually fit snugly in the sci-fi or fantasy genres. But not a lot of people actually are able to untangle these ideas, weave them together without gaping holes of plot or character, and create a touching and realistic piece of non-genre fiction. It is such a feat of unique vision and technical talent that Niffenegger has pulled of in The Time Traveler’s Wife, her incredible first novel.

Henry DeTamble is a handsome guy if somewhat thin, smart and well-read, multi-lingual, a librarian. He’s also an expert lock-picker, able to violently kick the ass of those that threaten him and turns up naked in public places quite often. These last three character traits stem from the fact that Henry is a time traveler. And no, not in a Jules Vern or Back to the Future flux capacitor kind of way. Henry involuntarily skips through time like an epileptic experiences seizures, traveling more when he’s tired or stressed and can’t seem to keep a grip on the present. He carries nothing with him (hence the frequent nakedness) and cannot control where he winds up. Despite this lack of control and helplessness in the face of time and space, Henry is also uncomfortably aware of past and future events: who will die and when, of the bad choices his future self will make despite his knowledge that the decision will be disastrous.

While this involuntary time travel, treated as a physical disorder, is unique on its own, the author adds depth with the character of Claire, Henry’s wife. Claire met Henry when she was six in a small clearing behind her childhood home. Henry, on the other hand, doesn’t meet Claire until he is 28 and all his childhood visits to Claire are still in his convoluted future. So do Henry and Claire’s lives intertwine over the course of their non-parallel lives, and so is the nature of unconditional, destined love revealed through Niffenegger’s beautiful and concrete — though not romantic or sappy — prose. Sometimes, Claire is faced with two husbands of various ages in one time period. Other times, she is left alone for days, unsure of where or when or in what danger her husband is.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is not an easy story, where all threads are tied off in perfect, little square knots. That’s a good thing, too, because I’m not really a fan of squared off, neat stories. Instead, the book is a rich and complex, incredibly human story, despite the supernatural subject matter. And it’s a book that breezes through the eye, a quick read that keeps you glued to the bus bench, bathtub or wherever else you happen to be reading. It’s the kind of book that proves that books will never die, will never be sacrificed on the altar of television and computers and Progress with a capital P. It’s a book that reminds me why I read — to find these stories and people that are so real, that now exist in my head, that maybe somehow existed all along.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars – Buy the hardcover

Time’s Arrow (Martin Amis)

So the story moves backward… It sounds like a simple enough, oft-tried concept in post-modern writing. Geez, I mean Pulp Fiction did that, right? is what many might ask. The same thought cropped into my mind when I read the premise (It seemed an artificial constraint, an experiment in style, which is always interesting but often badly done), so I don’t blame naysayers for their doubt of the premise’s value. However, this book — regardless of the fact that it was published in 1991 — is unrivaled (in my small experience), unique, insightful and uses the concept of time moving in reverse to establish a truly moving and intellectual premise.

We begin at death, of course, and it takes a while to grow into the mind and world of our main character — a doctor with an obvious secret, a palpable weight around his neck despite his newly acquired life. (Well, he does begin as dead.) We grow into that mind with the narrator, a separate character who is unnamed and unknown even to himself, who witnesses the world mute and impotent through the doctor’s eyes. Because the author takes the concept of the reverse flow of time so seriously and also thanks to the narrator’s innocent anonymity, we see the world in a whole new light. Relationships begin with fights, progress through sex and niceties, only to wind up with the participants slowing backing away from acquaintance. So does the thankful patient get worse as the doctor shoves part of a windshield through his face. The patient then walks out of the hospital angry and upset, waiting for a car accident to put him back together again — the doctor fucks him up, a car accident makes him whole again. So do dead ants heal themselves when they come in contact with a human boot.

“Never watching where they are going, the people move through something prearranged, armed with lies. They’re always looking forward to places they’ve just come back from, or regretting things they haven’t yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye. Lords of lies and trash — all kings of crap and trash. Signs say No Littering — but who to? We wouldn’t dream of it. Government does that, at night, with trucks, or uniformed men come sadly at morning with their trolleys, dispensing our rubbish, and shit for the dogs.”

Imagine the description of eating, of shitting. Or of money, which seems to be given to us wherever we go.

Now, imagine when back in time our main character will take us. I hate to be a spoiler, I really do, but I must hint that at some point, the world will again make sense to the narrator. At some major point in history, we will see our main character heal instead of hurt. We will see his secret and witness a point in time that is so vital, so visceral, that the clock of time maybe should have stopped and turned around on its axis.

Time’s Arrow was gripping, deep and artful. Sometimes the arrow hit the mark so hard that I was forced to stop reading for a moment, put the book down due to an overwhelming and revelatory emotion. It’s a wrench in the mental works I will never forget and also an example of literary artifice, some of which can be clunky and silly no matter how talented the author, pulled off brilliantly with wit, poise and insight.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars – Buy the hardcover

The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

I have heard of, but never read, McCarthy’s most famous book, All the Pretty Horses. Published in 1992, I suppose it was somewhat ahead of my reading abilities at the time (I was 12). But it was only after ten pages of The Road–The Boyfriend and I were sitting in the dentist office waiting room and I turned to him in happy surprise, my eyes shiny–that I knew I would not only devour this novel but attempt to get my hands on any other of the 10 novels he’d written, including Pretty Horses.

The Road begins in a post-apocalyptic America where soot and ash cover the world, blowing from place to place on the wind and falling down like rain, a world that is more vivid and believable because the author chooses not to tell us how it became so scarred. He removes the exposition and thereby allows the reader to suspend disbelief effortlessly, not dealing with niggling doubts about whether it could have “really” happened. Instead, we are all the sudden in that world, as stuck as the main characters of father and son in the bleak future, knowing that it does no good to ask why or how but only to soldier on.

For the father and son, this means trudging down the road in the direction of, well, hopefully something better. The father doesn’t know if it will be, the son only has vague ideas of what better even is, but both realize that without the motion of moving on, they will give up hope that “better” is possible. Yes, it is a dark vision. Take for instance the father’s thoughts on the purpose of continuing to struggle, the purpose of thought when it will never be known outside your own head:

No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reasonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.

Yet despite this darkness, and because of it, you are pulled along with these men and their love and dependence on one another. In their quest to remain human and yet still remain alive. As they attempt to find out why alive is better than dead.

(Son:) Can I ask you something? he said.
Yes. Of course.
Are we going to die?
Sometime. Not now.
And we’re still going south.
Yes.
So we’ll be warm.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay what?
Nothing. Just okay.
Go to sleep.
Okay.
I’m going to blow out the lamp. Is that okay?
Yes. That’s okay.
And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something?
Yes. Of course you can.
What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay.

I don’t want to ruin this sparse, powerful story or style with any more commentary. I want to keep its mystery with me and hope that many more readers will, like me, find a memorable jewel of words and ideas in this novel. Polish it up. Put it on a mental shelf.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover.