The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Every once in a while, a book comes along that challenges the way I see myself as a reader. I like to think that I'm a good reader, that I'm generous to authors and open to unusual scenarios or styles, and able to tease out allusions and images and all that "between the lines" stuff. I probably don't get everything (hence my continued joy of rereading), but I usually feel like I do okay, which means it's rare for me to have a complete turnaround on a novel when I'm more than halfway through. This is why I was so surprised by my experience reading Rachel Joyce's novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

It's possible that I got stuck on the simple-seeming premise: essentially, the novel is about Harold Fry, who one day receives a letter from a woman he used to work with who is dying. He's very upset, and when he leaves to walk to the post box to mail his reply, he decides to instead walk to see her in person. This doesn't sound like much, but Harold is in his 60s, has no history of taking long walks, and lives in the south of England. Queenie Hennessy, however, is in a hospice in the north of England, practically on the border with Scotland. Harold doesn't return home to equip himself, and instead just continues walking in his yachting shoes, wearing a shirt and tie, with a rain jacket slung over his arm.

A Complicated Kindness

Generally speaking, when I start reading a book, I keep going until I finish it. Lately, I've had the excellent luck to pick up one good book after another, but it doesn't always go like that. Like most avid readers, the sheer number of books I read means every once in a while I'm going to get a dud. For some reason, I don't like with the characters, I don't care about the plot, or whatever. It happens to everyone. For a lot of people I know, if they aren't hooked by a certain point, they stop reading; there are too many good books out there, they reason, to keep going with one that isn't keeping them up at night. Fair enough. I, though, usually stick it out. I have faith that something is going to happen (someone saw something in the book to make it worth publishing), so I plow on, and sometimes I'm rewarded and sometimes I'm disappointed, but very rarely are unfinished books left in my wake. Somehow, though, a really good one was. For the life of my, I cannot remember why I left Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness after only a dozen pages – I was probably distracted by something else – but I am so glad I picked it back up, because my goodness what a wrenching, funny, hoot of a book it is.

A Complicated Kindness is the story of Nomi Nickel, a teenage Mennonite living in East Village Manitoba in the late-'70s/early-'80s, I would guess. Half of Nomi's family – the better looking half, according to her – are gone, which leaves just her and her dad, Ray. Her mother, Trudie, has been gone for a while, and her older sister Tash left before that. Their whereabouts is a mystery, which leaves all possibilities open to Nomi's imagination. Ray is quiet, religious, and affectionate in a buttoned-up sort of way. He writes Nomi notes suggesting she go to school that day, he appreciates her system of cooking dinner based on an alphabet system (m-day might mean macaroni, or meat, or mushrooms, or whatever). Nomi runs wild.

Irma Voth

Not that long ago, it seemed I was unconsciously being drawn to books about Paris, now it seems the draw is to Mexico. This may be my subconscious telling me to take a holiday, but until that happens, I'm rather enjoying the different approaches authors take to writing about similar places. With Paris, I read a novel set in contemporary Paris and then one set in 1920s Paris. With Mexico, I did things the other way around, although I certainly didn't plan it that way. The strange thing, though, is that even if I hadn't started with Dr. Brinkley's Tower, I would have had a kind of window into early Mexico because Irma Voth by Miriam Toews is about a Mennonite family.

In particular, Toews follows her titular character, Irma, a Mennonite woman who rebels against her strict father and secretly marries a Mexican. As a result, she is simultaneously shunned and shackled. Her family is forbidden from making contact with her; however, she is forbidden from leaving, and her father gives her and her husband the house next door, in return for which they will milk the cows for free. Then her husband leaves, without offering much of an explanation, and Irma is alone in her dark house. Naturally, this is when everything in her life changes. A film crew moves into the house next to Irma's. They are making a movie about Mennonites in Mexico and need a translator; Irma speaks English (she was born in Canada and lived in Manitoba until her family abruptly moved when was 13), Spanish, and Low German, so she is hired to work with the film's female lead, a Mennonite from Germany who doesn't speak Spanish. For a society adamantly against photographs, a movie is extremely controversial, and Irma's father forbids her to work with the crew. 

Curiosity

When you pick up a novel, you're entering into a tacit agreement to suspend your disbelief – or at least try to. In science fiction, this is an implicit requirement of the genre: you agree to believe in whatever world the author has created provided what happens there is logical within that setting. In more realistic fiction, the suspension is more subtle, but it's still there – you have to at least sort of believe that story is possible in order to become invested in the characters – and I like to think I've become pretty good at immersing myself in the world of each book I read, not questioning the author's choices unless something really doesn't add up. In straight fiction this is pretty easy and I do it without thinking about it; in fiction based on real events and/or people, thought, I sometimes get tripped up. Would they really have thought that? I wonder to myself, and then find myself searching for historical inconsistencies. It's annoying, but it isn't something I can usually control. When I read Joan Thomas' Curiosity, though, I was so quickly pulled into the story that I didn't have time to nitpick – my disbelief nowhere to be found in the face of such a fascinating story.

Curiosity alternates between the lives and perspectives of two characters: Mary Anning, a poor girl living in Lyme Regis on the English coast, and Henry de la Beche, an upper-class boy expelled from military college. Both Mary and Henry are fairly young when the novel begins (9 and 14 perhaps) and over the course of the book their lives converge and they grow up. But this really isn't a coming of age novel in the traditional sense, and what intrigued me wasn't so much the suggestion of an impossible love story between Mary and Henry, but rather the emergence of the science behind fossil collecting and the discovery and attempts to understand the first dinosaur skeletons. 

Island of Wings

One theory behind why people enjoy spicy food so much  is that the pain of the spices creates a counter-response in your body that sends endorphins flying through your system. In a way, it's like being rewarded for deliberately hurting yourself, so naturally you go back for more. Personally, I never get that rush of endorphins when my mouth is on fire and my eyes are tearing up. Maybe I don't push myself far enough, I'm not sure. Books, though, are another matter. I love a sad story. I don't always enjoy every moment of reading them (sometimes the sorrow is just too acute), but there's something incredible about being allowed to see someone's inner life so clearly that, for the moments you're reading, their despair becomes yours. Obviously, I can't read a lot of these books at a time because it would make me miserable, but I do try to plan things out so that, every once in a while, I get to a sad and lovely story (typically book-ended by happier novels). Most recently, that book was Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg.

The easy set-up of Island of Wings goes like this: in 1830 Reverend Neil McKenzie and his new wife Lizzie move from mainland Scotland to the islands of St. Kilda, in the Hebrides, where Neil becomes the minister to the small and remote community. The islanders, though, only speak Gaelic. This is not a problem for Neil, as Gaelic is his first language, but Lizzie is immediately isolated by her inability to speak to anyone on the island besides her husband, whom she barely knows. She is pregnant when they arrive and that wide open possibility becomes a great source of private joy for her. When Lizzie falls down a hillside though, and loses the baby, it not only causes her to withdraw into herself again, but it etches the first crack in her fragile marriage. 

The island the McKenzie's live on is called Hirta and it's far enough north to not have any trees. It's windswept and remote, and everything about life there is a great shock to Lizzie. She and Neil live in the manse, which was built, along with the tiny church, in preparation for their arrival. The rest of the St. Kildans, though, live just the way their ancestors always had, in stone and earth houses with thatched roofs and no windows. The walls are seven-feet thick and entering means crawling through first through the area where the animals are kept before entering the main room (the beds are hollowed out of the walls). It's primitive and, as seen through the "civilized" eyes of Lizzie and Neil, disgusting. All the families' waste is spread over the floor throughout the year to act as fertilizer in the spring, and the smell, as Altenberg notes on several occasions, is vile. 

Up Up Up

I don't know why I don't read more short story collections. I always enjoy them, but I think I'm sometimes wary of starting a book that may be choppy; I'm not always willing to put in the work to start and stop as I go through a book – I'd rather just have a smooth read. But, that's ridiculous really, because I always enjoy short stories once I start them and often move through a collection quite quickly, marveling at all the interesting and distinct characters and situations I get to experience. When those experiences are somewhat linked, thematically, all the better, which is one of the reasons I enjoyed Julie Booker's Up Up Up so much.

The stories in Up Up Up take you all over the place – from kayaking in Alaska to jeeps touring in Tibet – and with very few words Booker's settings come alive without you even realizing it. That's perhaps one of the most incredible things about this collection, actually, that she is able to write vividly without telling spending pages on description. The result is stories that instantly take you from one place to another, across continents and down rivers, without leaving you muddled about where you and the characters are. Even read back to back, her stories are crisp and distinct.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Maybe it's because I didn't grow up going to church, but religion in books fascinates me. I especially like the retelling of Bible stories, but again, I'm not sure why. It may be that I enjoy the subversiveness of taking something that is so well known, and hold so much meaning for so many people, and changing the context. Messing with those stories that are a not insubstantial part of our society's foundation seems almost dangerous in a strange way. Dangerous and brave – and important. In A History of the World in 10½ Chapters Julian Barnes starts with Noah's Arc and then tries to move forward, but is almost inevitably sucked back into that defining motif of danger, death, and large passenger ships.

It's hard to know quite how to classify A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. On the one hand, it works quite well as a short story cycle, with stories that work independently of one another, but when read together have an added oomph. It's also sort of like a book of essays, filled with philosophy, literary criticism and discussions of art. I'm not sure it's even uniformly fictional. There are, however, 10 and a half chapters – the "half chapter" is inserted between Chapters 8 and 9 – as the title suggests, so if you read chapter by chapter, maybe it doesn't really matter how you define it.

The book opens up with "The Stowaway" a story about an impostor to Noah's Ark. The cheeky little narrator is quite critical of the choices Noah makes with regards to which animals will be saved. Rather like a primitive form a eugenics, Noah simply decides not to allow any undesirable or pesky creature aboard. And he's rather a brute about it. But he doesn't check quite carefully enough, and a family of woodworms – of which the narrator is proudly a part – manage to sneak on board to ride out the deluge in relative peace. The woodworm actually manages to make its way into most of the chapters, bringing with it a suggestion of hidden decay.

Barnes then moves on to a chapter about terrorists who take over a cruise ship. He is an author unafraid to shock his audience, and the tension he builds in this chapter is unreal. The stakes become so high, so quickly, that you don't even notice you've been placed on a modern-day ark. Here, though, everything is inverted. The stowaway is not a quiet, unassuming insect, but an imminently threatening and truly undesirably presence. Similarly, the person in charge is not the tyrannical Noah of the previous story, but a cruise director who is just as unsure as the passengers. History is doomed to repeat itself, Barnes seems to be saying, but see how it changes things up just slightly?

This sort of wink to the absurdity of things gives the book a kind of strange humour, or at least throws you off kilter just enough to appreciate that Barnes is arming you with perspectives that will help you later, when you reach New Heaven, or wherever else. But absurdity and irony, as fun as they are, are useless tools unless you can escape them. Enter the half chapter. Just when Barnes has you so completely confused as to his purpose, he interrupts his own history to tell you about love, about his sleeping wife. And it doesn't even matter, really, whether it's the real Julian Barnes or the fictional one talking, because what he is saying is that there's a reason all the rest of it matters. There's a reason we should examine past events and find the woodworms before their damage is irreparable, and that reason is love. Oh, it sounds ridiculous and cliché here, but that half chapter is perfectly timed for maximum effect, and it is stunning.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is strange and unexpected and the chronology of events it presents – it is "a history," after all – is very unlikely, but it is also a book that asks you to think about things. It doesn't force you to, though; if you want to simply read each chapter and not delve more deeply into what is going on, you can do that. But, if you want to think about it, Barnes has offered up a book that will reward you for it. Because as weird and, sometimes, disorienting as this book is, it has something really interesting to say. And, best of all, it has an interesting way to say it.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
by Julian Barnes
First published in 1989 (cover image shown from Vintage International edition)

The Year of the Flood

Typically, novels don't really begin at the beginning. I mean, yes, the stories they tell do tend to be mostly complete, but there is always more that could be told: why did the peripheral characters act the way the did? What happened before this part of the character's life? How did the world get to this point? I doubt there's a single novel that this doesn't apply to, but perhaps it most applies to novels set in the future – near or far. Even futuristic or sci-fi novels that offer an explanatory chapter leave out tremendous details, simply because including them would weigh everything else down. When Margaret Atwood wrote Oryx and Crake, I suppose she faced the same problems. So, rather than simply ignoring the how and why and previous, she wrote another novel. The Year of the Flood takes place in almost the same timeframe as Oryx and Crake, but it is set in the world outside of the sanitary compounds.

In The Year of the Flood, Atwood alternates perspectives between two women: Toby and Ren. Toby is the older of the two and grew up in what is now the pleeblands – major cities and subburbs that have degenerated into filthy, dangerous, rotting places. Her parents are dead and, after believing that she would be implicated in their deaths, she ran away. Toby has a rough time of it on her own and, after getting a job a SecretBurger (a place that serves food so disgusting it's difficult to contemplate) she falls victim to her sexually and physically abusive boss. When she realizes her life is in danger, she is taken in God's Gardeners, a religious sect that is strictly vegetarian and lives on the rooftops and in the abandoned of the pleeb. 

Ren is quite young when we meet her. Her mother, formerly the wife of a compound man, fell in love with Zeb, a Gardener, and ran away, taking her daughter with her. Ren grows up with the Gardeners, learning foraging techniques and running fairly wild with her friends. She is a Gardener – hardly able to remember her previous life – when her mother decides they are going to return to the compound, uprooting her life. Eventually, Ren returns to the pleeblands and becomes a dancer at the strip and sex club Scales and Tails. 

The novel alternates between these two perspectives and also back and forth in time, from present day to memories of the past. At the beginning of the story, the Waterless Flood predicted by the Gardeners has arrived – a virus that is highly contagious and quickly deadly – and both Ren and Toby, alone in their respective exiles, wonder if they are the only ones who have survived. Ren is in a decontamination chamber at the club (her protective layer was damaged and, luckily, she was in quarantine when the virus hit) and Toby is in hiding at a spa, where she managed to also be in isolation when the virus was spreading.

The near-future world that Atwood described in Oryx and Crake comes even more shockingly to life in The Year of the Flood. The incredible sexual violence and general commerce of sex is brought very much to life through the experiences of the two female protagonists, as is the violent reality of life in the pleebs and punishment under the CorpSeCorps men. One such punishment that becomes, in some ways, central to the narrative is PainBall, a kind of battle royal in which prisoners are assigned teams and then let loose inside a caged forest with the goal of killing each other. Making it through PainBall means becoming even more savage than you were when you went in, which means brutal and dangerous men being released back onto the streets to inflict more violence.

But, for all the ugliness and pain that is the world in The Year of the Flood, the stories of the two women, and the characterization of the Gardeners, with its songs and practices, is enthralling. This is a world so fully and vividly realized that in some places it doesn't even feel like you're reading. You don't need to have read Oryx and Crake to read this novel, either, because, although the two stories are connected, neither assumes readers have any prior knowledge. 

The Year of the Flood is successful because it is shocking, but also tender, and its setting is near enough to be familiar, but far enough to not feel imminently threatening. It is a seriously absorbing read, and not one you are likely to forget any time soon.

The Year of the Flood
by Margaret Atwood
First published in 2009 (cover image shown from McClelland & Stewart edition)

Little Women

I'm not sure what it is about cold weather that makes me want to read stories about families, but there you go. I suppose it could be related to fond memories of winter fun as a kid: board games after dinner, building snow houses with my dad and sisters, baking cookies with my mum, and, of course, reading in front of the wood stove. That is a very cosy feeling, and nothing quite brings it back like a dip into Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women. Perhaps I'm slightly biased because I have sisters, but Little Women has to be one of the best books on how the relationship between sisters works, at least based on my experience.

Alcott's story of the March sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, their Marmee, and their neighbour, Laurie. It's a coming-of-age story, really – a bildungsroman with a composite cast, although it focuses most on Jo, the second-eldest of the sisters. Jo is a dramatist, a writer, and a bit of a free spirit. The novel is set, as best as I can tell, during the American Civil War (not that war has much to do with the story, except to explain the father's absence for most of it as well as the March family's relative poverty); this kind of explains why the family, despite seeming modern in its sensibilities, remains staunchly conservative in many ways. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. A novel about the tension between propriety and impropriety, about women who are growing up in a world that is subtly changing, makes small details (such as the whereabouts of a glove) rather shocking and exciting.

Of course, Little Women hinges on the relationship between the sisters and Marmee. As in every family, there is jealousy and favouritism (Meg and Amy together, Jo and Beth together), but mostly their is camaraderie and love. There is no real mention of outside female friends, which leads the reader to the conclusion that the sisters really just have each other and Marmee to rely on and learn from. But, of course, there is also Laurie, their handsome scamp and kindred spirit from next door.

Laurie's name is actually Theodore Laurence. He lives with his grandfather and is tutored by Mr. Brooke so that one day he can take on the family business. Laurie, like Jo, has a great imagination and as an implied only child, he delights in the company of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. After gaining entry to the sisters' secret world of games and society, Laurie quickly becomes a focal point. His grandfather helps out when Beth falls ill, he creates some romantic tension, but mostly he is a wonderful friend, in on all the jokes and rather desperately in love with Jo. I must admit – and I'm sure I'm not alone here – that I had quite a crush on Laurie through most of the book, a feeling that would be inevitably dashed by the end, only to return with each subsequent read.

And that is the power of Alcott's story. She makes you believe that this time, for this one reread of the story, things will work out differently. Maybe this time you'll find out what would have happened if Jo had married Laurie (although, secretly, I was always glad she ended up with an intellectual); maybe this time Beth won't die, I mean, she makes it through her first illness, right? Little Women is such a rich and textural story that Alcott gets you all caught up in the detail and carefully woven fabric of her characters' lives – really, you don't stand a chance. Even though you know what will happen, you still hope it might not, or hold your breath until it does, squirming at the edge of your seat.

Little Women was originally published in two parts: Little Women and Good Wives, but most versions are sold as a combined story under the better-known title. Together, the story carries you from youth into adulthood. The March sisters grown and change, but don't let go of their childhood personalities completely. In many ways, Alcott's characters are real people in their habits and styles, and by allowing them to grow into, rather than out of, themselves, they become more like friends or family than names on a page – perfect for visiting on a cold and snowy day.

Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
First published in two parts in 1868 and 1869 (cover image shown from Signet Classics edition)

The Magician's Nephew

There's something about early August that makes me very nostalgic for my childhood pre-working summers, when this would have been just the mid-way point and not on the tail end. This is the time of year, more than any other (even Christmas), that makes me want to revisit kids' and YA novels. Last summer it was rereading the last two Harry Potter books over a three-day stretch; this year, I hunkered down and reread C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew in an afternoon (I could have sworn it was a longer read).

Despite what the movies would have you think, The Magician's Nephew (not The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) is the first book in Lewis' famous series. And it wasn't until rereading it that I finally saw how religious his books are. Certainly, I had heard about the religious aspects, but they didn't strike me as particularly extreme in the other stories. Generally speaking, religion was a much bigger deal during the time period the stories are set in (prior to WWI) so it always made sense to me that religious details would be incorporated.

Well, rereading The Magician's Nephew really casts a different light on the rest of the series. It isn't obviously more religious, I guess. The characters don't quote passages from the Bible or anything, and in some ways all the magic that Lewis conjures up is rather anti-Christian doctrine. But the last half of books makes it clear that The Magician's Nephew is decidedly Biblical, and is quite literally the Book of Genesis for the series. But I'll get to that in a minute.

The story is fairly simple. Digory and Polly are neighbours living in London. Digory has only recently arrived, though, and is staying with his aunt and uncle (brother and sister, not married couple) because his mother (their sister) is gravely ill and his father has gone to India to work. So, Digory is not at all happy with his situation, but he and Polly become friends and start exploring the attics of their rowhouses. Digory's Uncle Andrew fancies himself a magician, and at the first opportunity he gets, he tests out his magic on the two children. Uncle Andrew has created rings (yellow ones and green ones) that will take you to another world. He, of course, is too afraid to try them and instead tricks Polly into putting on a yellow one. She vanishes immediately, much to Uncle Andrew's delight and Digory's dismay, and Uncle Andrew persuades Digory to go after her because she doesn't have the green ring, which will supposedly bring her back. Digory heads off into the unknown and discovers the Wood Between Worlds. 

I love the structure Lewis constructed for his magical travel. The Wood Between Worlds is a beautiful forest, filled with little pools. Each pool is the entrance to another world, which is how the children discover that their green rings will take them to any world they desire (put them on, choose a pool and jump in) and the yellow rings will always return them to the Wood. Genius. Looking to have some fun before heading back to Uncle Andrew, they children go and explore a world that is dying. In it, they discover Charn, an ancient city filled with no one; that is, until Digory rings a bell and awakens the Emperess Jadis, who is also a witch and quite evil. By unhappy chance, the children accidentally bring Jadis back to London with them, where she wreaks havoc.

They decide they need to lose her somewhere, so they use their rings and take her back to the Wood and into a new pool. But this world is dark, and the children worry they've somehow stumbled upon a place that doesn't exist. Then they hear a song, low and lovely, and slowly light comes into the world, and then water and mountains and plants and trees and animals and all the other things that make up a world (sound familiar?). Of course, the singer is Aslan, the great lion, and he is creating Narnia. The story really becomes very Biblical at this point, and Digory even has to go pick an apple from a far-off and walled garden in a task that tests his faith and belief in Aslan. It's interesting to read, actually, because although it seems heavy-handed now, I'm sure I didn't notice any of the allusions as a child (of course, I was not a religious a child, but still).

The ending, which manages to explain The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, before that book has even come out, is perhaps the best example of foreshadowing I have ever read. Really, anyone looking to write a series should study Lewis' technique of subtly couching future details into otherwise relevant descriptions and explanations. In many ways, The Magician's Nephew is just an extended prologue to the rest of the stories; it works best when you know what's coming, which rewards rereaders who come back to books many years after first enjoying them. It's really a perfect little reread: it's quick, it's interesting, and it reminds you of just how wonderous and new stories felt when you were a kid – before images and ideas seemed familiar – and you could just get lost in the world of the story.

The Magician's Nephew
By C.S. Lewis
First published in 1955 (cover image shown from HarperTrophy edition)

The Sword in the Stone

Sometimes it just works out that you discover a great book because of a movie, and not the other way around. That is the case with T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, which first made itself known to me (and, I'm sure many other people) through the Disney movie of the same name. But as good as that movie is (I love it as a kid), the book far surpasses it.

Generally, the story goes like this. Wart lives in Sir Ector's castle in the very ancient times of England when there were still valiant knights and dragons to fight and wizards and witches and Robin Hood (excuse me, Robin Wood – White clears history's name fumble quite nicely). Wart is not Sir Ector's son, though, that honour falls to Kay who is a couple of years older and despite all of his advantages, at least eight times more insecure. Anyway, Wart goes into the Forest Sauvage (old England has some suspiciously French names in White, which I suspect is a nod to the original Morte d'Arthur) and, after spending a rather harrowing night in the wild trying to retrieve a lost hawk, he stumbles upon Merlyn.

Of course, Merlyn knew he was coming because he ages backwards and because he's a magician. Wart and Merlyn head back to the castle and Merlyn becomes the boys' tutor. And, sure, he teaches them both all sorts of important things, but really he saves the best – and most cryptic – lessons for Wart. Merlyn, of course, knows that Wart is going to become King Arthur (his real name being Arthur) and he goes about preparing him for the job by turning him into various animals and letting him learn indirect lessons about valour and bravery and history.

The lessons are one of my favourite parts of the book. I like the way White has imagined the the different social codes and ingrained memories of the various animals. I also like that Wart isn't a natural as any of them. He has to learn to swim like a fish; he has to be taught how to fly; he is conscious of the way the shape of his body changes and White describes it all in a way that makes you think of how weird it would be to suddenly become a snake (or whatever). 

My other favourite part are the anachronisms. The story is full of them – because Merlyn a) ages backwards, and b) is not always very good at his spells, which means sometimes bowler hats end up in the 12th century – and the characters' reactions are perfect. Usually, they don't even notice because whatever is being mentioned or conjured is so foreign that they can't even begin to understand it. Merlyn, though, goes into fits over it, which is hilarious. Additionally, because the book was written in the '30s (prior to the outbreak of WWII), a lot of the anachronisms now seem really old fashioned, which adds another level of humour to the references.

Of all this, though, I'm not sure how much younger readers pick up. There are certainly points that are obviously funny and meant to make kids laugh, but there's a lot going on that would be so far over their heads that it can only have been written for their parents. It's a pretty quick read – certainly as face-paced as any thriller – and it's the sort of perfectly engaging book to bring on a picnic or something, during which you'll chuckle about something and the person you're with will want to know what's going on, so you'll have to explain to them something about a giant, at which point you'll realize that White has cleverly inserted a Hitler-Mussolini figure into the story who gets defeated before he does any real damage, and you'll wish that were really the case. And that's when it will strike you that, for all the lightness and the adventure, White's retelling of King Arthur's coming-of-age is also about England itself.

It's quite ingenious, really, how he buries that metaphor. And it works perfectly, elevating a children's story into something much greater and, in some ways, much sadder – but always gripping and almost always hilarious.

The Sword in the Stone
by T.H. White
First published in 1938 (cover image shown from Laurel Leaf edition)

Persepolis

Graphic novels have gained a much more mainstream popularity lately, especially after some big ones (Watchmen, Sin City) were turned into movies. Graphic memoirs, though, are less common, even when they've also been adapted into successful films. Marjane Satrapi's memoir Persepolis: a story of childhood combines stark black-and-white drawings – arranged as comic panels – with conversational text: when the characters aren't speaking to each other, Satrapi speaks directly to the reader.

I first read Persepolis in a first-year university history class. I did not enjoy the course, but because it introduced me to Satrapi, I don't regret taking it. Satrapi is Iranian, and historically speaking, Persepolis is as much a personal history as it is a narrative take on how Iran has changed over the last 40-or-so years.

Satrapi was just a kid when the Islamic Revolution broke out, but because her parents were vehemently opposed to regime change that was taking place, her early teenage years were filled with history lessons and and anti-fundamentalist discussions. And those values and strong patriotism run deep in this portrait of a young girl in a changing Iran.

That angle, remembering how the Revolution interrupted her childhood, is one of the aspects of Persepolis (besides the graphics) that make it interesting to read. Besides being a generally entertaining story (there's conflict, coming-of-age, angst and other delightful memoir tropes), Satrapi's perspective is a fascinating one, in part because she was sent to school in France after the Islamic Revolution succeeded, which sealed her memories rather than letting them become clouded or confused by the ensuing social overhaul.

Her memories of being angry and confused by the introduction of the niqab and the ban on western culture come across as still raw, aided by the expressive drawings that illustrate a changing world more clearly than words could.

Satrapi's childhood is entwined with the Revolution and her ability to both describe things in very personal detail and also take a step back to give a more distanced viewpoint makes this a very compelling read. And, despite the heavy-ish nature of the subject matter, the graphic-nature of the memoir reminds you that some parts are funny; their simplicity work to both add lightness to the story and draw you into the truly devastating parts.

I always appreciate it when authors take a genre and then do something unexpected with it. Persepolis is such a success in this way that I'm almost surprised more authors/artists didn't try to follow in Satrapi's footsteps. But, if they were intimidated, I wouldn't be surprised. Satrapi is a literary triple-threat: writer, illustrator and historian. And she's got a sharp wit on top of all that, which adds a little edge to her memoir, keeping it fresh and relevant. Despite how often we seem to hear or read something about Iran, you're seriously missing out if you give Persepolis a pass.

Persepolis: a story of childhood
by Marjane Satrapi
First published in 2000 (cover image from Pantheon Books edition)

The Golden Compass

Novels with child protagonists that aren't specifically written for young children present a unique challenge. The child needs to be grown-up enough to capture the attention and interest of an older reader while simultaneously staying young enough to be believable. Lyra, in The Golden Compass certainly fits those parameters. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what age group The Golden Compass is aimed at, but I'd guess Philip Pullman was going for a YA book that adults would equally enjoy.

Perhaps the most important, found details of the novel are these: it is set in a world that resembles ours, but is not ours (it opens in Oxford, England, but in a strange hybrid of "the olden days" and the future); all the people in this world have a personal daemon, in the shape of an animal, that is both connected to them and separate - essentially, the daemon reflects a person's true nature, and often the person and daemon consider themselves a "we" or an "us," rather than an "I."

So, Lyra is brought up at Oxford by the Scholars. She's about 11 when the story begins and spends most of her time playing with the children of the servants of Jordan College. Although she's never shown much interest in school, when she overhears her uncle, Lord Asriel, telling the explorers about his travels to the far North, and the Dust he observes there, and the city that's visible in the sky through the Northern Lights, her curiosity is piqued. Of course, no one will answer her questions, but when children start disappearing in her city (taken by "the Gobblers" of unknown origin) and her best friend goes missing, she gets distracted. Especially when the beautiful and enchanting Mrs. Coulter (whose daemon is a golden monkey) comes to the college and offers to take Lyra to London.

Before she leaves the college, though, the Master takes Lyra aside and gives her an alethiometer (a truth teller, shaped a bit like a compass) and tells her to keep it safely hidden from Mrs. Coulter. And then off she goes, into the glitzy world of London. Soon, though, the shine wears off and Lyra discovers that Mrs. Coulter is actually in charge of the Gobblers and therefore the disappearance of all the children. Lyra, being rather headstrong and also afraid, runs away.

There is too much in this story to summarize with any kind of brevity, but Lyra ends up heading North with a boatload of gyptians (who live on river boats in England) to find the missing children and (from Lyra's side) rescure Lord Asriel, who is imprisoned in the land of the armoured bears. She has figured out how to read the alethiometer, which means she can ask it questions and get honest answers, which proves invaluable on the voyage. After several twists and turns - which involves saving an armoured bear from captivity - Lyra gets to the Gobblers' station and discovers what they're doing. At the order of the Magesterium (the church), children are having their daemons cut from them. Most children die from this procedure.

In the world of the novel, it's a completely barbaric procedure. In theory, it's done to protect the children from Dust, which attaches itself to adults but not pre-pubescent children. The church sees Dust as original sin, and if children can be protected from it, they need never grow up. Cutting the daemons from these children is kind of like castration, only worse.

There is a great side-narrative in Svalbard, wherein Lyra returns Iorek Byrnison (the armoured bear) to his rightful place as king of the bears. But it's so intricately written that it would take me ages to pull it apart. However, once in Svalbard, Lyra hurries to find Lord Asriel - who she has learned is actually her father, with the evil Mrs. Coulter being her mother - and then discovers that the man she idolized may not be as good as she thought. He's as concerned about Dust as Mrs. Coulter, but instead of simply "protecting" children from it, he wants to destroy it at its source, to the complete dismay of Lyra.

This is the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy, so it ends with a suitable cliffhanger to encourage readers to pick up the next book in the series.

When it was originally published, and then again when it was made into a truly awful movie, The Golden Compass created a huge amount of controversy. It is pretty anti-organized religion, and especially the church's way of making unilateral decisions. But in that way, the novel seems to be more against the kind of power we allow our authorities to wield, because in the story, the church is both religion and, essentially, the ruling power.

It isn't a preachy book, though. Rather, it's an adventure story in the tradition of great adventure. Sure there's a moralistic tint (although, not in the usual way, since this is against the usual bearers of morals) and a large, complex enemy, but there's also fantastic characters and well-developed sub-plots. It isn't a difficult read, but it's enjoyable and rewarding nonetheless.

The Golden Compass may be set, for the most part, in the Arctic, but it has all the best ingredients of a summer read. It's fast-paced, absorbing and intelligent. And when you're finished it, Pullman has already provided you with two more books to follow up with.

The Golden Compass

by Philip Pullman

First published in 1995 (cover image shown from Yearling edition)

Mister Pip

When I decided to start a book blog, I wanted to write about the books that worm their way into your everyday life. Of all the books I've read, Lloyd Jones novel Mister Pip might demonstrate that side of literature – the side that is all-encompassing, that draws you in and makes you feel like you know the characters as if you are a part of their world as much they've become a part of yours – better than anything I've ever read.

Mister Pip is set on a small island in the South Pacific in the early '90s. The island, which used to be home to a major mining operation, has fallen into a kind of civil war, with the "red skins" (an army from an undisclosed country) fighting the rebels. Jones focuses his story on one village on the island, which sounds pretty primitive in terms of its amenities (a collection of houses and a school building) but has enough to keep the residents happy.

When the story opens, the school has just been closed. Our narrator, Matilda (about 11 at the beginning of the story) is not lamenting this fact. In fact, she enjoys the freedom. So when her mum tells her that Mr. Watts - also known to the villagers as Pop Eye - the only white man in the town, is going to start teaching, she isn't sure what to expect. Mr. Watts isn't particularly qualified to be a teacher, so rather than try to give them lessons in math and science, he reads them Charles' Dickens Great Expectations. Because the story takes place in a world that the children have never experienced, Mr. Watts teaches them how to use their imagination. He asks them to close their eyes and say their name, just in their head. No one else can say your name like that, he tells them, explaining that Dickens (Mr. Dickens to all concerned here) did that until he could find Pip's voice and that they can do that to see England.

Mr. Watts doles out the novel one chapter each day. To fill in lesson time, he invites the mothers and grandmothers of the students to come in and tell them about things they know. One woman comes in to talk to the children about the colour blue; another recites recipes; Matilda's mother, who does not approve of Great Expectations, nor her daughter's infatuation with Pip, is a frequent visitor to the class. Dolores and Matilda have a strained relationship, and Dolores blames Mr. Watts for that. Matilda would rather hear about Pip than Jesus, and Dolores is a religious woman who resents Mr. Watts influence over her daughter.

After Mr. Watts reads the book to the class once, he goes back to the beginning and reads it to them again. The class reads it all the way through more than three times before disaster strikes.

The red skin army descend on the village. They make everyone line up and give their names. At first, they seem not so bad. But then a soldier discovers Matilda's shrine to Pip on the beach. Who is Pip, the army commander demands. Where are you hiding Pip? The children explain that Pip belongs to Mr. Dickens and Mr. Watts (who the army now think is Mr. Dickens) explains that Pip is a character in a book. But when Matilda runs to the school building to retrieve the book and clear up the confusion, it isn't there. So, in retaliation, the army ransacks all the homes in the village and burn everyone's possessions. Then they leave, saying they will be back and Pip had better be there.

In the meantime, Mr. Watts tries to keep moral up among the students. He tells them that if they can't read the book, they will have to recreate it through memory. He charges the children that they are responsible for making sure Dickens' masterpiece isn't forgotten. Of course, when the army returns, there is no Pip. So the army burns down their homes. And, without giving everything away, things go from bad to worse for the villagers.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mister Pip is how Jones puts you in exactly the same place as the villagers. Like them, and especially like Matilda and the other children, you know the situation on the island isn't good, but you have no concept of how bad it is. Like the children, you are shielded from reality by their fixation on Great Expectations. As the book moves farther and farther from their lives, your view on the violence occurring around them broadens. I don't want to give everything away, but the last 50 or so pages are shocking.

I thought I was reading Mister Pip because I needed a lighter book. I was wrong. Jones' story is incredibly compelling and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. The characters are wonderfully described and as a storyteller, Jones has serious guts. He isn't afraid to tell a story that might not be comfortable, but is nonetheless stunning. And, if you ever needed to be reminded of the power of literature, this book will do that for you.

Three Day Road

Usually, after I've finished a book, it only takes me a few hours to mentally move one so I can pick up another one. That's not to say I didn't enjoy whatever it was that I read, but generally speaking I don't get so emotionally involved with a book that I need to take a break. After I read Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road I couldn't read another book for a week. I didn't even try; I was too attached to the characters and involved in their story to admit that it was over and I needed to find another novel.

In some ways, my inability to move on mirrors the narrative of Boyden's characters. Three Day Road is, on the surface, a story about a Cree sniper coming home after the First World War. It is, of course, about much more than that, though. Xavier has come home wounded and addicted to morphine, a sly drug that helps him forget about the phantom pain that floats in his empty pant leg. He is met by Niska, his aunt, at the train station and together they head down the river on their journey home.

Xavier, though, is not at ease. Between the pain in what's left of his leg and the thick, soft release of the morphine he is unable to escape what he experienced on the battlefields of France and Belgium, where he served as a sniper with his childhood friend Elijah. In the canoe, Xavier sleeps in fits, reliving the battles at the Somme and Ypres and Vimy Ridge, and remembering Elijah's slip into addiction and madness and his own decline into depression as the bodies of his friends start to pile up around him.

From the stern of the canoe, Niska can see that Xavier is dying - wants to die. The morphine has cut his appetite so that he doesn't eat, his body feeding on his despair instead. To nourish him with something better, Niska begins to tell Xavier stories of her childhood. She tells him of his grandparents, of how she escaped Residential School to live in the bush. And she tells him stories of his own childhood, after she rescued him from the same school and took him to the bush to learn the arts of hunting and trapping and survival. Elijah came to join them later, and she tells Xavier how proud she was to watch him teach his friend the skills he had acquired.

The trip down river is slated to take about three days; the journey from death to the afterlife, according to the story, is also a three day road. For Xavier, though, the three day journey brings him back to life, rather than death. As Xavier's story alternates with the ones Niska tells, Boyden offers up a picture not only of the horrors of war and the tolls of warfare, but also of how there is healing through memory and storytelling. Much of what Niska tells Xavier is horribly sad - her many winters alone, how she was seduced and used by a French trapper, the Residential School, her father's imprisonment and death - but there is a sort of power in reliving those moments through story. In telling Xavier these things, she gains a kind of power over them. Similarly, by agonizing over his and Elijah's actions in the war, Xavier is able to rise above that reality and experience his memories in a different way.

The amount of research Boyden must have done for this book is staggering. The World War I battle scenes and the trench life he describes are so vivid in their details that you can almost feel the suck of the mud on your feet, even as you read. Similarly, the language he uses and the cadence of his sentences flow off the page so easily that it's easy to forget you're reading and not simply being told a story. This works to make the meticulously crafted scenes seem effortless, allowing the history of the Residential School system, the war, and the general treatment of Native Canadians to come together into a narrative that isn't trying to be educational or political. Rather, those are plot points in the lives of the characters, fully integral to who they are and where they've been - deliberate without feeling forced.

When I reread Three Day Road I wasn't sure how I was going to experience it. The first read completely took my breath away, but some books only manage to do that once. Not so with Boyden. I was enthralled all over again, carried back into the stories of Xavier and Niska with an ease that felt like going home to hear the same family stories that are always told. They're comforting in their familiarity, but they always hook you in because knowing the outcome doesn't determine how much you enjoy the experience of the telling.

Three Day Road

by Joseph Boyden

First published in 2005 (cover image shown from Penguin edition)

Dubliners

It took me a while to warm up to short fiction. Really, I never realized how powerful and well crafted good short story were until I read them in collections. In a great collection, each story stands out on its own and can be read alone, but when read as part of a whole becomes a piece in a larger narrative. In James Joyce's Dubliners the stories are of everyday people - children, men, women, families - but each illustrates another corner of the city until, by the end, you have a full and working illustration of Dublin. The streetscapes are crisp, the clothing and accents and hairstyles are meticulously detailed and you can walk around in your mind, enjoying the view.

My first encounter with Joyce was "Araby," the third story in the collection. The main character, a young boy, is unnamed, but desperately wants to go to Araby, a fair (like a world's fair, by the description, but Joyce isn't specific), which he told the girl down the street he was going to see. Of course, he has a complete and utter crush on this girl - the older sister of one of his friends - and he is desperate to impress her. Joyce doesn't have to say any of that though, because the emotions he evokes when describing the boy's excitement about the fair say it all.

Most of the story is about the boy's anticipation for the fair. Joyce builds up the grey little world the boy usually inhabits, subtly suggesting that Araby has the power to change this. The boy spends an afternoon anxiously awaiting his uncle (with whom he lives) who has promised to take him to Araby. Finally, finally, they head out. After a painstakingly detailed commute - details always stand out when a trip feels painfully slow - they arrive.

Joyce isn't the master of the epiphany for nothing. The boy's hopes are so high that they can't help but fall, which they do. Or, rather, they crash around him in brightly coloured shards that turn out to be backed with grey: The people working at this fair have an accent like his; their costumes aren't convincing; the backdrops are unconvincing. In short, the illusion is exposed as pure artifice, and just like that the boy grows up a little.

Many of Joyce's stories are like this. Their structure is pretty classic in its story arc, but it works again and again because Joyce's character are vividly distinct. And they move around. Joyce's stories don't take place in static locations; his characters walk around, spend time in the streets, visit cafes and bars and generally get out into the city. In many ways, Dubliners is a historical walking tour of the city, led by a well-known local who can not only show you the sights, but introduce you to the two men arguing on the street corner and the young boy playing in the gutter.

In that way, it's also a tour of life, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Joyce captures a lot of unnervingly familiar emotions and even events in his stories - private and personal conversations and moments of realization that you never told anyone about, yet everyone can relate to. As much as Dubliners proves that Joyce knows his city, it illustrates (through its very title) that he is also keenly familiar with its inhabitants. The people we writes about are both deeply rooted in where they're from (and products of that environment) and universal. Meeting Joyce's characters is unsettling in the best way and the tour of their lives and city may not always be a cheerful one, but it is one you won't forget in a hurry.

Dubliners

by James Joyce

First published in 1914 (cover image shown from Penguin edition)

Métaphysique des tubes

Every once in a while, I'm in the mood to read something really weird. Not weird in an implausible or completely outlandish way, although I do have those moments, too; rather, weird in the sense that the story takes place in this world, in more or less this time and yet what happens could never really happen (or, if it could, it couldn't happen to me), but doesn't come across as anything by realistic. In literature, sometimes an unusual perspective or style of narrative is weird enough to hook me, without turning me off. Belgian author Amélie Nothomb is a master of this. Métaphysique des tubes is her sort-of memoir about her childhood in Japan, and it is weird.

The story starts with God. It's a condensed retelling of the Bible's version of the beginning of the world and lays out in a very short space a lot of explanation of what's to come (of course, hindsight is 20-20 and when I first read this I had no idea what God was doing at the beginning of such a story). After she introduces the reader to God, though, and reminds them of His power and magnificence, Nothomb introduces us to baby Amélie, who her parents think is brain-damaged. Baby Amélie doesn't cry or fuss, she doesn't move, she just lies there like a small pink-ish cylinder. The doctor proclaims her a vegetable and her parents are devastated. But they soldier on, nicknaming her Plant hiring a nanny to look after her.

Baby Amélie is waited on hand and foot and although she's small, she does grow. But, even though there's really nothing wrong with her mind, she doesn't speak. Baby Amélie has fully developed language skills in her head, but she doesn't bother using them because she doesn't need to. She's like a little god, whose ever wish is fulfilled before she ever need ask for something. Then, one day at the beach, she nearly drowns. And, upon being rescued by a family friend, she thanks him in perfect French - to the shock and awe of her entire family. Of course, this ends the god-like phase of her life. As soon as she demonstrates an above-normal linguistic capacity, she is expected to behave like other toddlers, and in Japan that means no more nanny after age 2.

It's fairly unusual for a book to be narrated by a baby and not have it be a book for children, which Métaphysique des tubes certainly is not. Rather, baby Amélie has a very sophisticated perspective on the world. And, because she is a silent observer for the majority of the narrative, she is exposed to more than most babies would be.

As I said above, this is a weird book, not least because of the point of view of the narrator. But, through its weirdness is a really detailed look at what it means to be alive, and how that definition changes based on where you are (physically, mentally and spiritually). It's billed as an "autobiography from age 0 to 3 years old," but it's much more than a look at what it means to be a baby. Nothomb's other sort-of memoir Stupeur et tremblements (about her return to Japan as young woman) is more widely known and also hilarious. But reading Métaphysique des tubes first explains a lot about the woman she becomes, and her writing style in general.

Métaphysique des tubes is unlike pretty much every other memoir I've ever read. But if you can get past that and lose yourself in the story (which isn't that hard), you get the important reminder that the life of a baby is still a life (and not a mere existence). And, if you're really paying attention, you'll realize that what Nothomb is actually saying is that a baby's ability to continuously learn and adapt and observe is something we should try to hold on to, because in many ways that life is much more sophisticated than the day-to-day life of an adult.

Métaphysique des tubes

By Amélie Nothomb

First published in 2000 (cover image shown from Le Livre de Poche edition)

Not Wanted on the Voyage

Repurposing Biblical stories into complex and well imagined works of fiction is, I think, much harder than its sister-genre of retelling fairy tales. Harder because there are probably a lot more people who know the Bible story you're working with, and the backlash-potential is huge. But harder also because Bible stories are more about the moral than the story itself, so the characters exist simply to carry the reader (or listener) toward the moral. When scholars talk about the characters of the various Bible stories, they describe their lives through family trees, not personal details. This means that when someone, such as Timothy Findley, sets out to re-imagine a Bible story, they must remain true-ish to a story that has almost no details. Nonetheless, Not Wanted on the Voyage is a novel that speaks back to its source-material in every sentence.

And somehow, Findley does that while using a cat as his narrator. Mottyl belongs to Mrs. Noyes, wife of Dr. Noyes, who is more Biblically known as Noah. Biblical stories may not give the reteller much, but they do give them a story arc, which Findlay stays more or less true to: the is a novel about Noah, who builds the arc and then sails it for 40 days and 40 nights in the rain. Findlay cover the basic story elements - the animals going on two-by-two, Noah's family and their new role as populators of the Earth, etc. - but it's all the extra detail and background, and the world he creates that makes this book unforgettable.

Using a cat's perspective is kind of genius in this way, because a cat really can be omniscient (or close to it). Mottyl also has a life outside of the family compound, and is free to come and go as she pleases. She is also the confidant of Mrs. Noyes (it's amazing what people will tell their pets), so all the family gossip she misses is relayed to the reader that way.

Throughout the book, Findley kind of responds to pieces of the Genesis story, quoting short passages at the beginnings of chapters and then agreeing or disagreeing, based on the way his story unfolds. "Not wanted on the voyage" was a baggage label, used by the arc's human passengers (Dr. and Mrs. Noyes, their sons and their sons' wives) to indicate which articles they would like to still have after the flood. But it might just as well have been a label for all the people and animals not included on the arc's manifest. Mottyl was not wanted on the voyage (by Dr. Noyes, of course) but she slips in anyway, as cats are wont to do, so the story continues after the rain has picked up the ship.

Dr. Noyes is a tyrant - a fact that Findley reveals to the reader more and more plainly as the story progresses. He is also incredibly old, almost as old as Yaweh, and a drunk (possibly reasons for his brutishness, but not enough to excuse him of his actions). He abuses his wife (when he manages, she is quite a formidable woman) and his daughters in law. He murders his wife's singing sheep in a fit of rage and fire. He rapes his daughter in law with a foreign object in a scene I could hardly stand to read (if I'd held the book any farther away from my face, I would have dropped it). In short, Findley is not particularly kind to Noah (not that this iteration of the man deserves much kindness).

One of the most interesting details that Findley brings to the table, though, is why the flood happened at all. In a slight twist on the "real reason," Yaweh comes to visit (literally, visit) Noah and admits that he's horribly depressed. The people, he says, are not treating him well. To cheer him up, Noah shows him a magic trick: He places a penny under a bottle and fills the bottle with water; because of refraction the penny seems to have disappeared. Yaweh is delighted; all his problems can be solved with water because water makes things disappear.

It's small scenes such as this that make Not Wanted on the Voyage more than a retelling or recreation of a Bible story. Findley's attention to motives and consequences make the characters more than archetypes or simple names on the page. And even though you know the story line and how the tale will end, Findley's novel makes you doubt what you remember and forces you to re-experience the story through his, and Mottyl's, eyes.

Not Wanted on the Voyage

by Timothy Findley

First published in 1984 (cover image shown from Penguin Modern Classics edition)

The Poisonwood Bible

Some novels are so vivid that certain scenes haunt you long after you've finished the story. The Poisonwood Bible is one such novel. To tell the story of the Price family - American missionaries who move from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959 - Barbara Kingsolver writes each chapter from the perspective of one of the Price women. The result is a striking and layered story about the Congo's struggle out of colonization and a family's struggle for survival under the misogynistic rule of Nathan Price (husband and father) in a country they don't understand.

What is perhaps more remarkable about the novel is that Kingsolver was able to so fully embody each of the five women (mother Orleanna, Rachel, twins Leah and Adah and Ruth May, the youngest) that none of their perspectives ever seem out of character or in any way incongruent with something they may have said before. They all have difference perspectives on the Congo and what their father is doing there, and they bring their own personalities into their narratives. It's almost shocking that the family is entirely fictional, because for Kingsolver to have so fully realized so many characters seems like an exhausting amount of work.

Rachel is the oldest of the Price children. She is attractive and blonde and determined to stay that way despite living in the rural (and fictional) Congolese village of Kilanga. I think the scene I most clearly remember that featured Rachel was one in which there was a mass panic in the village and everyone mobbed together and ran for their lives. So, taking the advice of a magazine she had read, Rachel stuck out her elbows and lifted her feet, allowing the mob to pull her along with minimal effort on her part. It seems like an character-defining moment, but none of Kingsolver's characters are that one-dimensional.

Leah is essentially the antithesis of Rachel. Despite knowing little about the Congo before she arrives, she becomes fascinated by the country and its people. As the story builds, it is Leah who finds a place in Kilanga (a feat not to be discounted, her father is hated by the villagers ho have little interest in his fire and brimstone preaching) and within the Congolese culture. She becomes deeply involved in the Congo's move from colony to independent country and eventually marries Anatole Ngemba, a Congolese man and teacher. When her mother and sisters flee from the Congo during its move to independence, she remains behind.

Leah's twin Adah is quiet. She was born with a physical deformity and although she quite brilliant, she is shy and unassuming. Adah loves words and is an excellent observer. When the other characters get involved in their own lives, relating lots of character details but few linear plot-points, it is usually Adah who chimes in with an explanation of the event her siblings are fuming over. But she is more than a filler characters, and if anything is the most betrayed by her father's treatment of both the villagers and his own family. Unlike Leah, Adah trusted her father's Baptist drive to convert, so his subsequent violence and madness hits her hardest of all.

Ruth May is the youngest by quite a few years and her perspective is appropriately childish. But sometimes children make the most skilled observers because they notice things (or think to mention things) that others overlook. It is through Ruth May that Kingsolver is able to tackle the basic day-to-day difficulties of living as an under-informed expatriate. Ruth May decides to stop taking her quinine (anti-malarial drugs) because it tastes bad. The results are catastrophic, but do lead to Orleanna taking things into her own hands and finally leaving her tyrant of a husband to get her children out of the country before they all end up dead.

Orleanna we hear from less than the others. She opens each section of the book, but then fades a bit. Most of what we know about her comes from her children's observations (such as how her noisy treatment of the plates after a meal indicate that she has sided against her husband in some argument). For a while she plays the stoic wife who stands by her man. But as he devolves she becomes stronger, and it is her effort at keeping her family alive and protected that outshine any earlier missteps by the end of the book.

In many ways, The Poisonwood Bible is a scathing criticism of the evangelical missionary work that was inherent in colonization. Kingsolver's portrayal of the Congo emerging from colonization in many ways anticipates what happened to the country after Belgium gave it up, and because the Price family's saga in many ways paralleled that of the country they were transplanted to, that look to the future is pretty ominous.

What really makes this book for me, though, are the characters. I find it unbelievable that they aren't real people and the way Kingsolver moved between them, gathering multiple perspectives on events and moving the plot along is quite stunning. As is her understanding of family. The Prices are not a family I would ever wish to join, but they do move and breathe as a unit in different parts of the novel and the way the daughters reference similar memories without the details feeling forced speaks greatly to Kingsolvers understanding of how to build not only striking individuals, but also believable units.

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

First published in 1998 by HarperCollins (cover image shown from HarperPerennial edition)