Recent Reviews
Prairie Fever by Michael Parker
What a remarkable book! I felt pulled into Michael Parker’s novel Prairie Fever after reading the first chapter. Parker’s literary capabilities stun in this compelling story about two sisters who are tested by the punishing life on the prairie and the complex emotions of their hearts.
At its most basic, this story is a love triangle. The Stewart sisters: Lorena 17 and Elise 15 who live in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma in 1917, both fall for the new school teacher. Gus McQueen, 18. Their father is a farmer who keeps his distance. Their mother is bereft after the death of their two brothers. Nonetheless, each morning she helps Lorena and Elise mount Sandy, their horse, for the 4-mile trek to school.
Parker’s writing is gorgeous and evocative. “Winter mornings, their mother kissed them both on the forehead, pinned the blanket around the two of them, and slapped the horse’s croup. Lorena held the reins. Elise wrapped her arms around her older sister’s waist and both girls shut their eyes against the icy wind of the prairie. Inside the blanket, they warmed themselves with words. Off they would go into the world, whispering things with and without words, protected from the cold by the heat of their bodies and the blanket of sky.”
Despite their different demeanors, Elise and Lorena have always completed each other. Lenore is precise, stubborn and severe, while Else is whimsical, impulsive and dreamy. The sisters’ connection is secure and their love for each other deep. But when the new teacher Gus McQueen arrives at their one-room schoolhouse, both Lenore and Elise eventually are attracted to him, causing friction in the sisters’ relationship. Their inner lives and external paths are changed forever.
Language, grammar and spelling delight all three characters. They understand the limitations of words to express the deepest of feelings. The narrator offers, “Thank goodness everyone was trying to tell you something else entirely, for if the world were made up only of what actually came out of people’s mouth, Elise would prefer the frozen eternity of heaven.” The book also addresses some existential issues. The sisters repeatedly ask each other, “ What do you think is the point of life” Lorena answers herself, “The point of life is to know your limitations.”
I won’t say which sister marries Gus, but two decades after the betrayal, some healing and forgiveness occurs between the sisters. Here is a quote from the end of the novel. “Dusk had come to her and Elise watched it and sang the buried songs to Lorena. Against the icy wind, Sandy struggled, but they were all safe and warm beneath the blanket of sky.”
If you are looking for a book with a lot of action, this is not the book for you. However, if you are interested in characters that struggle, think and change, you are in for a treat. Grace moves through this novel.
The Guest Book by Sarah Blake
I love Sarah Blake’s new novel, The Guest Book. It is an engaging and sweeping story about three generations of a New York WASP family struggling with changing social mores and a diminishing fortune. The novel explores how the secrets of one generation can permanently alter the dynamics of the next generation, even if current family members don’t quite understand why. The story’s vivid characters illustrate how WASP culture maintains power by perpetuating racism, sexism and anti-Semitism. Blake’s appreciation of history, both personal and societal, permeates the book. The themes of the novel are provocative, the characters well developed and the dialogue rings true.
In 1935, Ogden and Kitty Milton have everything they want: each other, plenty of money, status in Manhattan society and three beautiful children. Ogden’s traces his lineage back to the Mayflower, and like the Milton men before him, he graduated from Harvard. He runs a successful Wall Street investment firm started by his father. When Kitty and Ogden’s 5-year-old son Neddy falls from a window and dies, Kitty is devastated. Ogden and Kitty don’t speak of Neddy’s death to each other or their surviving children. In true WASP fashion, Ogden’s mother counsels, “Somethings are better off left unsaid.” To help “Kitty snap out of it,” Ogden buys an island off the coast of Maine. (WHAT?!) Each summer, this island becomes the emotional epicenter for the three remaining Milton offspring and eventually their collective five children. While on the island, Kitty reminds her family that “good manners are the foundation of civilization and noise is for the poorly bred.”
In the present, Kitty and Ogden and their progeny are deceased, their fortune spent. The five grandchildren, who are in their 50s, must decide the fate of the family’s island. For Evie, one of the granddaughters, the island cannot be sold as it holds the family’s history and identity. Decade after decade, the family still gathers each summer. Time seems to standstill. “Nothing will ever change. Sunlight. Starlight. Drinks on the dock. A single-sail outing in the bay. It will never change. You will not die. On and On. Like a painting. As long as the island stands, we stand.” And yet just three generations later, Kitty and Ogden’s grandchildren are wrestling with the implication of their grandparents’ depleted fortune.
Willful ignorance is a theme of the novel. At some level, the Milton family never questioned the source of Ogden Milton’s fortune. Years later Evie’s husband discovers Ogden profited from a Nazi affiliated company. More systemic is Kitty and Ogden’s racism, anti-Semitism and myopic perception of the world. Their son Moss knows that the end of WWII is bringing social change and greater inclusion. When he invites his Jewish friend Len Levy and his black friend Reg Pauling to the island, Kitty and Ogden warmly welcome them. Pleasant conversation and genial banter ensue. Though both these men are Harvard graduates, Kitty and Ogden view them as interlopers who can never be a part of the elite establishment. WASPS should be in power. People from other tribes should be guests. The Miltons want to believe the sole reason for their financial success is that Ogden works hard, rather than acknowledging the economic system advances WASPS while excludes others.
Another theme of the novel is how WASP culture values secrecy. The five grandchildren know almost nothing about the climactic night on the island when their Uncle Moss died. Evie says, “No one really talks about Uncle Moss. He was a little tragic, I think. He played the piano.” It is jarring how little his nieces and nephews know of their gregarious, kind and complicated uncle whose life dominated one generation of Miltons.
Kitty and Ogden hoped their island would permanently remain in the Milton family as a counterforce to the simple truth of human existence, “we vanish.” It is unclear what will happen. I wish the novel’s ending offered greater resolution about all the characters. But maybe that is Blake’s point. The older generation of Miltons took many secrets to the grave. It is up to the younger generation to sort through the detritus of their complicated family legacy and understand the implications for their lives.
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
This review appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on July 26, 2019
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/incendaries-a-gripping-tale-of-young-lost-souls/
R.O. Kwon’s gripping debut novel ‘The Incendiaries’ explores the psychic appeal of religious zealotry. With acute insight and imaginative structure, the book explores the emotional fragility of two college students as they stumble into adulthood.
Will Kendall and Phoebe Lin are California kids who meet at elite Edwards College in upstate New York. Both are burdened by prior personal crises that had altered the course of their lives. Soon after meeting, they start a relationship. By the story’s end, the police are interrogating Will about Phoebe’s involvement with a Christian cult responsible for bombing an abortion clinic. Five girls perished. Will narrates the story in a retrospective attempt to analyze his relationship with Phoebe and their harrowing first year at college. He writes to Phoebe, whose fate is unknown, “You once told me I hadn’t even tried to understand. So, here I am, trying.”
When Will was in junior high, his mother had descended into depression. He then became a Christian. Not just any Christian, but an evangelical Christian who proselytized for his faith at Fisherman’s Wharf. “I thought I was chosen by Christ. Hand-picked to preach His word.” But Will stopped believing, dropped out of his Bible College and transferred to Edwards. There, his life feels hollow.
Phoebe had been born in Korea, but had moved to Los Angeles with her mother. She became a piano prodigy. Despite rave reviews, she had quit. “I realized I’d rather have no talent than just enough to know how much I lacked.” She and her mother argued about her decision. One night Phoebe was driving and accidentally drifted into an oncoming truck. Her devoted mother died. It was a shattering loss for Phoebe; guilt compounded her anguish. At Edwards, she hides her suffering behind a cheerful façade.
Both Phoebe and Will had zealously pursued passions that had consumed their life energy and given them meaning. But the absence of those passionate pursuits, the loss of parents and the hiding of secrets haunt them. Phoebe moves in with Will and they experience both comfort and conflict. Later Phoebe drifts toward John Leal, a half-Korean Edwards College dropout and leader of a cult. Leal has a murky past. He brainwashes vulnerable students to become “radical for God.” The specific focus of his pathology is stopping abortions.
Phoebe and Will are flailing as they mourn the crumbled remnants of their young lives. They receive some solace from each other, but no adults are available to advise them. A grief counselor or family therapist might have comforted them and helped them find their way forward. Instead, that role is taken up by the cult. Phoebe fills her emptiness by joining Leal and his followers. With him, she receives both the punishment and absolution she seems to be seeking. Will doesn’t join but fills his void by obsessing about Phoebe and popping pills. Having just extricated himself from his evangelical past, he feels betrayed by Phoebe’s involvement with Leal and his radical Christian cult. But, Will reveals that he too is capable of violence.
Kwon’s bold prose, elliptical style and vivid characters make this novel engaging and provocative. Her language is evocative yet sparse. She clearly has empathy and compassion for those who are broken and damaged.
What gives this novel power is Will’s piecing together the factors he believes led to Phoebe’s participation in the abortion bombing. He reflects to the best of his ability. It would have been interesting if Kwon had set this story later. With the benefit of time and deeper psychological reflection, would Will have an even more in-depth view of Phoebe? Would he feel greater remorse for his role in the tragedy? The incendiaries in this novel are the lost and damaged students who take fateful steps down a violent path. We may not forgive them, but thanks to Kwon we better understand them.
