Recent Reviews
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
Paulette Jiles' impressive novel, News of the World, was a 2016 National Book Award finalist and I can see why. Set in 1870 in North Texas, Jiles’ precise prose captivated me with her tale of emotional endurance and human connection. Captain Jefferson Kidd of Georgia is a veteran of two wars. He travels town to town to read the news of the world to assembled crowds. It is a meager living, but in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Captain lost both his print shop and his faith in humanity. He has witnessed both the noble and savage impulses of his fellow human beings and he now hopes, “If people had true knowledge of the world perhaps they would not take up arms and so perhaps he could be an aggregator of information from distant places and then the world would be a more peaceful place."
In Wichita Falls, Texas, he is offered a fifty-dollar gold piece to return a ten-year-old girl to her relatives 400 miles south in San Antonio. The Kiowa tribe raised the girl, named Johanna Leonberger, after they murdered her parents and sister. She now embodies the culture and language of the tribe. Yet four years later, to the dismay of her adopted Kiowa mother, the tribe returns Johanna to the US Army. She has been abandoned twice now and has learned to behave with courage and resiliency. Jiles bases this piece of the story on first hand accounts of children captured and raised by Native American tribes. She specifically notes Scott Zesch’s book, Captured.
The Captain and Johanna embark on a grueling and emotional journey. They initially view each other with alarm and caution. Captain Kidd is no child psychologist, but he is a kind and honest man who seeks to comprehend this young girl whose only language is Kiowa. As they travel together, the weary old man and the wary young girl endure outlaws, hostile tribes, and a corrupt Reconstructionist government. And they begin to communicate and appreciate one another. Toward the end of the novel Jiles writes, “The Captain never did understand what had caused such a total change in a little girl from a German household and adopted into a Kiowa one. In a mere four years she completely forgot her birth language and her parents, her people, her religion, her alphabet. She forgot how to use a knife and a fork and how to sing in European scales. And once she was returned to her own people, nothing came back. She remained at heart a Kiowa to the end of her days.”
Though Captain Kidd may not understand Johanna, he accepts her and attempts to put himself in her shoes. Johanna refuses to be “civilized” into the customs and habits of the white world, though on occasion acquiesces in deference to the Captain. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say it is gratifying. Given our country’s current callousness and cruelty toward those who are different, I thoroughly enjoyed being with Captain Jefferson Kidd. Though he could have taken advantage of the anarchy and chaos around him, he lived his days with compassion, decency, and honor.
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
Throughout his life, my beloved Uncle Warren reflected on the factors and events that contributed to the choices he made. And with each passing year, his understanding of those choices expanded in scope and depth. Reading this 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Peter Taylor reminded me of my uncle Warren who passed away in 2012.
Phillip Carver is forty-nine years old and lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his much younger girlfriend, Holly Kaplan. It is the early 1970’s. Phillip’s two older unmarried sisters, Betsy and Jo, have summoned him back to Memphis (the town of his adolescence) to dissuade their 80-year-old father, George Carver, from remarrying.
By today’s standards, not much happens when Phillip return to Memphis. There is no murder or mayhem, no adultery, no affairs. His sisters have simply scared away their father’s octogenarian bride. There will be no wedding. But, the trip is dramatic because Phillip begins to acquire a new perspective on the family dynamics that resulted in so many incidents of passive aggressive rage. Beneath the saccharin show of Southern manners, George Carver’s four grown children and deceased wife have suffered under George’s single-minded narcissism.
Phillip’s older brother volunteered and died in WWII. And neither Phillip nor his sisters have married or had children. When each of the three surviving siblings falls in love, their father intervenes to stop them from marrying. It is after Phillip receives his summons to Memphis that he understands the actions his father took to sabotage Phillip’s love affair when Phillip was in his early twenties. It is as if a bank of fog blocked Phillip’s view of what transpired and Phillip never wanted to see what was on the other side.
After the initial summons, Phillip Carver returns to Memphis for another visit. He says, “I was discovering that all I cared about now was how I had been treated by my family in the long-ago affair of Clara Prince.” And yet, even as Phillip puts the pieces together of his father’s sabotage, he resolves, “Forgetting the injustices and seeming injustices which one suffered from one’s parents during childhood and youth must be the major part of any maturing process."
Phillip Carver has not forgotten the injustices of his youth, but he arrives at a clearer understanding of the dysfunction of his family and how the rigid Southern social structures reinforced the oppression he and his siblings experienced. Unfortunately, Phillip’s two sisters never forgive their father even as their lives continue to revolve around him. As he ages, they love him while simultaneously seeking revenge, all the while their emotional growth is stunted and they are unable to mature. Phillip escapes, but his sisters are trapped in a world of convivial conversations and inauthentic relationships.
At its core, A Summons to Memphis is Phillip Carver’s understated and methodical reflection on the factors that shaped and stalled his life. With the evolved understanding he acquires by the end of the novel, I hope he is able to live his last thirty years without the ghosts of Memphis tormenting him.
small great things by Jodi Picoult
I thoroughly enjoyed Jodi Picoult’s powerful and important novel small great things. The book provides a critical contribution to our country’s current discussions on race relations. Atticus Finch states in To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” Picoult’s novel attempts to understand American race relations in 2015 by considering three points of view.
After Turk and Brittany Bauer’s baby is born in a small hospital outside of New Haven, they name him Davis after the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. The Bauers are proud white supremacists. When Ruth Jefferson, a Black woman with more than 20 years of nursing experience, introduces herself to the young couple and begins to tend to their newborn, Turk and Brittany ask to speak to Ruth’s supervisor. Soon there is a post-it note on Davis Bauer’s file: No African American personnel to care for this patient. Their baby then dies while Ruth is in the room and the white supremacists sue Ruth for murder. Kennedy McQuerrie, a white woman, becomes Ruth’s public defender and a trial ensues.
Picoult knew that people might question the legitimacy of a white woman writing a book about racism. Yes, it is true that Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, Colin Whitehead. Ta-Nahisi Coates and others offer a more authoritative depiction of discrimination. But Picoult is seeking to reach white readers who have not yet acknowledged their white privilege. Picoult states, “It’s about who has institutional power. Just as racism created disadvantages for people of color that make success harder to achieve, it also gives advantages to white people that make success easier to achieve." During the trial when Ruth Jefferson wants to object to a statement being made by her lawyer, Kennedy McQuarrie, she catches herself and thinks, “Well, better for the jury to hear it from one of their own.” That I believe is Picoult’s intent.
The book depicts plenty of intense scenes involving race. The police arrest and drag Ruth from her middle class neighborhood and place her in jail. Turk Bauer describes the joy he feels when he beats up random Black or gay people. But the incidents Picoult captures so well are the daily indignities that Ruth endures. For instance, after shopping together at TJ Maxx, a security guard stops Ruth to inspect her receipt while waving white Kennedy through the door.
Ruth Jefferson works hard to succeed. She knows how to keep a low profile. She graduates from college and then Yale School of Nursing. For twenty years, she earns excellent performance reviews from the hospital. She tells her son that if you play by the rules, you can get ahead in life. As she awaits her trial, she asks Kennedy, “How can I say with a straight face to my son, ‘You can be anything you want in this world’ – when I struggled, studied, and excelled and still wound up on trial for something I did not do.”
Picoult brings to light the ways in which African-Americans are asked to repress their cultural customs and traditions in order to fit into the white dominant culture. Ruth’s sister, Adisa, who has changed her name from Rachel to embrace her African heritage, says to Ruth, “It’s their world Ruth. We just live in it.”
Kennedy McQuarrie initially believes she does not participate in any kind of systemic racism. She sees people like the Bauers and believes that they are the racists. Since Kennedy works as a public defencer with many African Americans, she thinks, how could I possibly be racist? But part of what Picoult is pointing out is that the institutions of power give white people advantages. Picoult says, “Like ghosts, white people move effortlessly through boundaries and borders. Like ghosts, we can be anywhere we want to be.”
After Kennedy has spent time attempting to understand the world through Ruth’s perspective, she says to the jury, “It’s about systems that have been in place for about four hundred years, systems meant to make sure that people like Turk can make a heinous request as a patient, and have it granted. Systems meant to make sure that people like Ruth are kept in their place.” She also says, “I’ve gotten a boost from the color of my skin, just like Ruth Jefferson suffered a setback because of hers.”
Small great things is an ambitious and engaging novel. It helps us to experience and understand other people’s perspectives. Though Picoult does not offer a deep psychoanalysis, she does offer a general explanation of the forces and dynamics that shape the actions and views of her characters.
“Small great things” is a reference to a sentence in a Martin Luther King’s speech, when King exhorts people to do small things in great ways to combat racism. And that is exactly what Jodi Picoult is asking us to do.
