Devourer of Books

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Wow.  Fantastic.

Ralph Truitt has been alone in the rural Wisconsin for some 20 years, since his wife and daughter died and his son left home.  Yes, he has his housekeepers, his immense wealth, and solicitous townspeople, essentially all of whom work for him.  Still, though, Ralph feels alone.  He feels so alone, in fact, that he decides to advertise in the papers in Chicago for “a reliable wife.”  When Catherine Land answers his advertisement, she seems perfect until she arrives in Wisconsin.   Ralph can see immediately that she is not the woman he expected – her lovely face does not match the plain picture she sent along with her response – but he has no idea just how different she is than his expectation, or just what she really is.  Ralph has secrets of his own, however, and his own reasons for looking for a wife at this point in his life.  Reasons Catherine could never have expected.

It is amazing the number of twists and turns that Goolrick was able to pack into his 290 page book.  Because of that, I don’t really feel comfortable sharing much more of the plot with you, as I don’t want to spoil anything (although the book jacket descriptions do actually give away a bit more than I have, so be warned if you don’t want to know more).  Ralph and Catherine are both spectacularly flawed individuals, but they each have a redeeming bit of humanity which takes them to deliciously wicked instead of just terrible, horrible characters.  I was mesmirized by both of them, particularly Catherine, who commands more of the attention in the story than does Ralph.

The story was perfect.  Goolrick added in the perfect amount of mystery and suspense without getting into ‘thriller’ category and without sacrificing the depth of his main characters.  I loved many of his little extras – such as the stories of all of the different people in this small, rural, 1907 Wisconsin town who would go crazy during the long winters – and many of his turns of phrase, particularly the “it was just a story of…” section at the end.  Primarily, though, his writing seemed effortless and I simply floated along on his story, captivated by the world he was presenting to me.   I know a book is good when I seem to be absorbing it more than actually reading it, which means that this book was very good.

This is a lovely piece of fiction that should appeal both to those who like mainstream fiction (‘literary’ fiction) and those who lean more towards mysteries and thrillers.  Definitely anyone who appreciates good writing with great characters should go straight out and get this book to read.

Buy this book on Amazon.

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Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I know a lot of people really love this book, but man was it SLOW!

The first, oh, half of the book was simply the life story of the elderly, near-death preacher John Ames of Gilead, IA as told in letters to his very young son.  His family history was somewhat interesting: grandfather was an ardent Kansas abolitionist who aided and abetted John Brown, his father a pacifist after seeing the reality of war, all of them pastors.

Don’t get me wrong, the book wasn’t badly written.  It was very believeable.  Nor was the storyline of the first half useless.  On the contrary, I would love to listen to my grandfather, or a great-uncle or someone tell me  a story like this about his life.  My problem was that I had not yet been convinced that I should care about John Ames’ life and what had happened in it, about his obscure family memories.

The second half of the book, once we got into the storyline that was taking place in the ‘present’ (John Ames’ present, which was in the 1950s) revolving around Jack Boughton, was great.  I found Jack’s character very compelling and loved watching the evolution of John’s feelings about him.  Honestly, though, if I hadn’t had this as an audiobook, I don’t know that I ever would have even made it to Jack’s part of the story, I probably would have set the book down in the first half (with good intentions of continuing later, of course), and simply failed to ever pick it up again.

This book is pretty slow at the beginning, but I think the second half of the book is worth getting to.  I suppose if you could pretend this actually IS a relative of yours telling his story the beginning might seem more interesting as well.  If you think you’ll have a hard time getting through this, make yourself a captive audience like I did (working on a big, boring mailing, it was the only book on my Ipod).

Buy this book on Amazon.
Buy this audiobook on Amazon.

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

I was SO EXCITED to read “American Rust.”  I was so looking forward to the story of the dying town in Pennsylvania and the boys dying to escape, only to have something go terribly, terribly wrong.  I suppose I thought it would be something like “America, America” (review here).  Sure, the plot line is very different, but both are set around blue collar towns that must transition or die.

I think it was much too-high expectations that killed “American Rust” for me.  I would have been better off coming at it as the interesting debut novel it is.  The story was interesting enough and the characters complex: moral dilemmas, loyalty, appearances in a small town.  It just didn’t quite all come together for me.  Although it was interesting seeing the story through a variety of eyes, the ever-shifting perspective made it difficult for me to feel empathy for any of the characters.  I also didn’t like the style, particularly in the sections from Isaac’s perspective.  During Isaac’s sections the narration occasionally switched from third person to second, and then Isaac would begin thinking of himself in third person.  It was a stylistic choice, one that many people might enjoy for what it shows them about the character (Isaac is a little unstable), but it drove me batty.

There may be some readers who will really enjoy “American Rust” – in fact, I know there are, I’ve read lots of great reviews, which probably contributed to my too-high expectations, my opinion seems to be the minority (although I’m not the only one to hold it).  This is not a bad book by any means, it just didn’t work for me.

Buy this book on Amazon.

The Tory Widow by Christine Blevins

Anne was married off by her father to a well-off older man, a printer, in New York City and now, in 1775, she finds herself Widow Merrick, a woman trying to eke out a living from her late Tory husband’s business in a turbulent time.  After her press is destroyed by the Sons of Liberty and Jack Hampton she reopens as the Liberty Coffeehouse and eventually begins to fall for Jack, her ever-present customer.

It was very interesting looking at the Revolutionary War through the eyes of a single woman trying make a living regardless of who was in control of the city.  I liked Anne as a character, she was strong and courageous, but didn’t seem out of place in her time period.  I had a bit of trouble at first believing she’d fall for Jack after a particularly bad stunt he pulled when Anne’s press was being raided, but eventually his rakish attitude won me over (I had one other bit of difficulty with him near the end, but I liked him apart from that).

Although Christine Blevins’ stories have more of a romance aspect than I generally like in my historical fiction it works for me in her books for some reason.  As much as I liked “Midwife of Blue Ridge,” I liked this one even better.  If you like historical fiction/historical romance, this is a book to look into.

Buy this book on Amazon.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

One night, a baby boy climbs out of his crib, down the stairs, and through the front door that has been left open, right into an old graveyard.  Good thing, too, because an evil man named Jack had just finished killing his parents and older sister and was on his way to kill the baby as well.  The man Jack follows the boy to the graveyard but, once there, the child is adopted by a ghost couple and the murderer is escorted out of the graveyard and away from the boy by a mysterious figure named Silas.

Named Nobody Owens, Bod for short, by the denizens of the graveyard, the boy spends his childhood playing among tombstones with ghosts as companions, warned never to leave the graveyard, as the man Jack is still out to kill him.

Man, this book is kind of scary for kids!  Of course, as Neil himself has said, there has always been a dark side to children’s stories (think original fairy tales).  The first half of the story was entertaining, but seemed to me to be sort of meandering, largely unconnected stories about Bod’s life growing up in the graveyard.  Sure, there were some exciting adventures he had, but I didn’t see how they could be cohesive.

I shouldn’t have doubted Neil Gaiman.  All of the pieces that seemed disparate came together at the climax of the story.  This turned out to be a very enjoyable story, and listening to the audiobook with Gaiman narrating was great.  I definitely wouldn’t give this to young kids to listen to, though.

Check out Neil on the Colbert Report talking about “The Graveyard Book”:

Buy this book on Amazon.
Buy this audiobook on Amazon.