Recent Reviews
The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman’s award-winning 2013 novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane feels like a combination of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and The Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Using vivid imagery and rich allegories, Gaiman creates a story that is part parable, part fantasy, and part psychological portrait. This short engaging novel challenges readers to contemplate and interpret the events described.
On one level the book is straightforward: a nameless middle-aged man returns to his hometown of Sussex, England to speak at a funeral. After the funeral, he finds himself in the home of his only childhood friend, Lettie Hemstock. His initial memories are vague. “But standing in the hallway, it was all coming back to me. Memories were waiting on the edge of things beckoning to me. Had you told me I was seven again, I might have half-believed you, for a moment.”
His seven-year old self narrates the bulk of the book and many possible interpretations emerge. First, his beloved cat is killed and then the family’s boarder kills himself. Soon after, his mother return to work and a new boarder, Ursala Monkton, arrives to care for the young boy and his sister. The woman is cruel and mean. When the boy then shows disrespect toward Ursala, the boy’s father submerges the boy in the bathtub. Soon he sees his father and Ursula kissing in the living room. The culmination of these occurrences leads the boy to feel that an evil spell has been cast upon him. The innocence of this lonely, thoughtful child is shattered.
Scary and spooky phenomenon begin to occur and the seven-year old boy feels frightened. The story combines actual life incidents with supernatural battles between good and evil creatures. Is this precocious boy dreaming? Did all these events occur? Or is he creating narratives in his head to defend against his new knowledge of cruelty, adultery, and death?
As kids grow up, they make sense of confusing or traumatic incidents by creating narratives that mix fact and fiction. Fuzzy images and events from childhood can lurk within. The unconscious can repress memories until a child is ready to confront the event or feeling. As the narrator describes beautifully, “Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”
Lettie Hemstock tells the young boy, “Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
This realization illuminates and disappoints the boy as it suggests the judgment of adults is not to be trusted, but at least Lettie's comment corroborates his recent experiences. Gaiman’s perceptive novel penetrates this complex process of maturation and engenders empathy and understanding.
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
The House of Sand and Fog is probably best read in December when the darkness of the month matches the darkness of this gripping story. This novel by Andre Dubus III was a National Book Award finalist in 1999. Dubus captures the characteristics, values, and motivations of each of his three protagonists. He provides compelling back-stories and psychological nuance for each of these characters. I felt frustration and anger as well as understanding and empathy as each character made choices that I knew were not going to end well. As my grandmother used to say, “We are all prisoners of our personalities.”
Dubus’ book also illuminates the ongoing culture clashes between immigrants and those who (erroneously) perceive themselves as indigenous Americans. Massoud Behrani is a former colonel in the Iranian Imperial Air Force and was forced to leave Iran after the overthrow of the Shah. Once in California, he drives a fancy car and dresses in a suit when he leaves for work. But then he parks the car and changes his clothes to collect garbage by day and clerk at a convenience store by night. He must maintain the impression that he is still affluent to his fellow Iranian exiles. When he sees an ad for "Seized Property for Sale," he purchases a three-bedroom ranch house with his meager remaining funds. Filled with hope, he and his wife and teenage son move into the home. Behrani intends to improve the house and resell it for a profit. The house symbolizes the beginning of his new successful life in America.
Unfortunately, the house was improperly sold due to a bureaucratic error by the county. The rightful owner of the house is a troubled young woman named Kathy Nichols who works hard at being a waitresses and keeping away from drugs. For her, too, this little bungalow, with a distant view of the Pacific Ocean, represents stability. When Kathy Nichols drives to the house to confront Colonel Behrani, Sheriff Lester Burdon is called to the scene. Before long, Sherrif Burdon falls in love with Kathy and becomes obsessed with helping her to get her house back. (A little cliché, but it works.)
When the county offers to return the Colonel’s money, he refuses. He is a man who is accustomed to getting what he wants and he wants the house. As the days and weeks pass by, Kathy and Behrani think of little else. Neither will give in. Their thoughts and behaviors become focused and narrow. It is as if they are in a tunnel from which they cannot escape. Kathy and Behrani both perceive that ownership of this house will provide solidity and stability to their lives. Their rigidity prohibits them from understanding each other’s perspective. There is tenderness when Kathy Nichols and Mrs. Behrani interact, which made me feel hopeful that the conflict could be resolved. But, not surprisingly, the terms of engagement seem dictated by the men and my hope soon faded. The Colonel’s obstinacy sets the tone and is a catalyst for the tragic chaos that ensues. Like characters in a Shakespeare play, Dubus’ three characters pass a point of no return where they abandon rational thought and make choices that lead to dire consequences. As Colonel Behrani says, “For our excess we lost everything.”
The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church
Though not as groundbreaking as Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own, or The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Church’s debut historical novel The Atomic Weight of Love, published in 2016, beautifully captures the life of a woman seeking autonomy and agency over her personal and professional choices while living in the southwest in the 1940’s and 1950’s.
Meridian Wallace is a precocious only child whose curiosity about the natural world consumes her. Her parents indulge and engage with her as if she is an adult, ableit a small one. When Meridian's father dies of a heart attack at age 43, Meridian and her mother stagnate emotionally. But Meri perseveres and pursues a degree in physics at the University of Chicago with the hopes of becoming an ornithologist. The complex communication patterns of crows captivate her. Without really understanding all of her motivations, she marries her physics professor Alden Whetstone - a man that age of her father at his death - and moves to Los Alamos, New Mexico where her new husband is working on the government’s top-secret Manhattan Project.
Though Alden Whetstone is a kind and caring person, he directs and dominates the activities of his wife. When they first meet, he seems attracted to Meri’s brain. But by the time Meri moves with him to New Mexico, he has forgotten Meri’s impressive intellectual capabilities and is surprised that she is not finding fulfillment in cooking and sewing. Other academic wives with advanced degrees adapt to their limited roles, but Meri struggles to find any fulfillment in the suffocating social norms of this scientific community. When Meri defers an opportunity to pursue her Ph.D. at Cornell, Alden seems indifferent. Though Alden understands nuclear physics, he cannot understand the idea that Meridian is his equal. Even nice men can be sexist.
They are both victims of the times, but he has the power and she does not.
When Meri meets Clay, a Vietnam war veteran ten years younger, he exposes her to a new perspective on the world. Clay’s sense of freedom and empowerment embolden Meri and encourage her to think about her life in a different way. Clay symbolizes the generation that repudiated the prior cultural conventions and ushered in a new social order. Nonetheless, Meri loves both men and choosing between them weighs heavy.
I enjoyed this thought provoking book and it reminded me why the women’s movement of the 1960’s took hold with such ferocious energy. In addition, one can feel Elizabeth Church’s love of the topography of New Mexico and the birds that inhabit the landscape. At times the dialogue seems forced, but overall I recommend this engaging book about yearning for romantic love, intellectual engagement, and personal fulfillment in a world governed by policies and societal expectations that stifle the potential of women.
