Review: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

All the King's Men is definitely one of "those books." The books you always find on best of lists and must read lists, especially if you are from Louisiana (the state that brought you both Robert Penn Warren and Huey Long). I've heard about this book practically my entire reading life and while I never fully dismissed it, I often judged it as being too Southern or too political for my tastes. I will admit to you now - I was way off base.

The story centers around Willie Stark (sometimes Talos) and his right hand man, narrator, Jack Burden. Everyone knows that Stark is a depiction of Louisiana governor Huey Long, but that fact becomes irrelevant once you enter the story. Personally, I know little about Long's career, but I think this served to enhance my appreciation of the novel. I wasn't constantly questioning which actions were historical and which were fictional. I was absorbed in the world of the characters, which is exactly what a good novel should do for you.

The novel is driven by a cast of characters that evolve continually until all are virtually unrecognizable as the people encountered in the beginning of the story, and that is not to say that the changes are not believable. The absolute best thing about this book is how true it is to the characters and the pressures they have. You cannot say that these are black and white / good or bad people as most of the characters come in varying shades of grey.

Most fascinating is Stark himself, who begins as an idealistic young man that grew up on a small family farm and is virtually without vices. He moves from idealistic dupe to charismatic leader to political slime in short order. The beginning of this transformation, and one of my favorite parts of the novel, comes when Stark is being pushed to change his speeches. His staff has to explain that no one wants to hear about his plans for tax reform; they just want to feel something:

They don't give a damn about that. Hell, make 'em cry, or make 'em laugh, make 'em think you're their weak and erring pal, or make 'em think you're God-a-Mighty. Or make 'em mad. Even mad at you. Just stir 'em up.

And soon there after the Stark we know was born. I think it's poignant, especially in today's political climate, to note that politics has most assuredly always been theater. This is the theater of a well oiled machine that churns people out and eats them up and very often its leavings are dead or broken. In Warren's novel absolutely everyone is broken, either they were from the start or they fell prey to the machine.

All the King's Men is a great novel and it is not too Southern or too political. It is without place or time, a novel about people and humanity, our follies and foibles.

Review: Safekeeping by Karen Hesse

Karen Hesse’s new novel Safekeeping is called “a novel of tomorrow” and the future is bleak. Hesse imagines a world in which the suspicion and distrust roiling in the United States today boils over into a chaotic state of martial law and suppression. Her novel follows a young girl making her way to safety as she traverses this new world.

Radley Parker-Hughes has travelled to Haiti to volunteer in an orphanage in a disaster ridden area. Shortly after her arrival the president of the United States is assassinated. After days of worry and no communication with her parents, she makes it home to Vermont only to find that her parents are not there waiting for her. Radley quickly realizes that staying alone in her own home is no longer safe, as the government has authorized roving bands of looters as their muscle in a battle to terrify and subdue the populous. Radley makes the decision to head north to Canada so that she may live there in exile until peace and normalcy are restored and she can reach her parents.

Radley’s story is told in very short chapters, each with its own photograph to illustrate the bleakness that has become her life. The story is a sad one, but ultimately it is full of hope and will give its teenage audience plenty to think about. Even young people, who often tend to not be very politically aware, are feeling the dissent and divisiveness currently manifest in our nation. Books like Hesse’s can provide a way to work through those feelings and help the youth decide where they stand. This is an important type of story to tell in a disheartening time in the history of our nation. The ultimate message of Safekeeping is one that bears repeating: we need only to be good to one another and understanding, happiness, and prosperity will come.

Review: Red Thread Sisters by Carol Antoinette Peacock

I am not a crier, but I must tell you Red Thread Sisters by Carol Antoinette Peacock made me cry. I read this wonderful middle grade novel in one sitting, one late night actually, because no matter how late it got I could not put it down to go to sleep. This is a very sweet novel about adoption; it is never trite, often both sad and inspiring, and it tells the truth about adoption, especially adoption of older children.

Wen is an eleven year old girl who has spent most of her life in a Chinese orphanage. She has waited for years to be adopted and when it finally happens she is overcome with ambivalence. The idea of leaving her home, the younger children she provides care and much needed affection for, and most of all her best friend Shu Ling, terrifies her. Shu Ling is not only an unwanted daughter, she is crippled. It is a simple and terrible truth to both girls that Shu Ling will not be adopted due to her physical disabilities.

What makes this book so special is the devotion the girls have to one another. When Wen makes it to America, she vows to get Shu Ling a family. As Wen struggles for her friend, she and her family are working to understand each other. The awkwardness, confusion, and missteps on both sides is described wonderfully by Peacock. As a reader, you ache for this family, but you also believe in their ability to meld into a loving family unit.

This is a fantastic book for middle readers. It is honest about the difficulties of adoption and the problems people often have relating to and communicating with one another. Peacock has written a novel about resiliency and hope, but even more importantly, about the undying strength that comes from the bonds of friendship.

Books at the Movies

I am smack in the middle of Anna Karenina, which is the best novel of all time. It is wonderful, beautiful, so sad, and utterly timeless. Lemme tell ya, in the 100+ years since Tolstoy wrote the novel, people have not changed. Relationships and emotional depths have been as turbulent as they are today since the dawn of time. Couple that with all of the discussion of the difficulties amongst the lower classes and you have a modern drama to please the 99%.

All of this is to say that I am ready to talk about the books that I am looking forward to reading before seeing their cinematic versions this fall. I wrote a few weeks ago about some of my old favorites that are being released as movies, but now it’s time to talk about the TBR list of movie-books.

Wuthering Heights

Life of Pi

Anna Karenina

Les Miserables

Cloud Atlas (a bit of a cheat because I actually did read this one a few weeks ago. Spoiler: it’s amazing)

Review: The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

I typically do not read crime novels. I have covered this before, but in a nutshell – I’m a neurotic who is afraid of crime. Prior to receiving a copy of Louise Penny’s The Beautiful Mystery, I was not aware of her fifteen book Inspector Gamache series. We have had Penny’s books in the store, but they were as foreign to me as most other mystery novels. I was encouraged to pick this novel up based on the strength of its setting; The Beautiful Mystery takes place within a cloistered monastery in Quebec. Then I found out that the title refers to ancient chants believed to be the literal voice of God on Earth and I was hooked.

The story centers around an aging police inspector, Gamache, and his young protege, Jean Guy. As I said, this is the fifteenth book in the series, so the two men have a long history, but it was not difficult to suss out their feelings for one another as a newcomer to the series. The admiration they feel is palpable and, when coupled with the fact that Jean Guy is engaged to Gamache’s daughter, the father-son dynamic is there without the necessity of fourteen books worth of character development.

The two men are called in to investigate a murder within a monastery. Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups happens to be a world famous monastery. After releasing a recording of its divine chants, the world has taken notice of the small group of monks studying ancient music in the Canadian wilderness. It quickly comes to light that the murder has to do with this sudden fame. There is a rift amongst the monks between those who wish to be more open to the world and share their music and those that believe they should remain cloistered, serving in solitude. The turmoil amongst the monks is wonderfully countered by Jean Guy’s jaded religious views.

Things become very tense near the end of the novel when Gamache’s superior, with whom Gamache has a difficult relationship, shows up at the monastery in order to cause friction between our dynamic duo. The mystery itself begins to play second fiddle to the characters, as is likely to happen in a series that is propelled by its characters, but like all good detectives Gamache gets his man. Everything wraps up satisfactorily if a little quickly with just the right amount of strings left dangling for the next installment.

As I read more mystery novels, I am beginning to realize patterns within them. There are certain techniques that authors employ and audiences expect – it is a whole new way of looking at the material I am reading. I’ve been enjoying getting to know the genre and definitely look forward to more forays into other authors as well as more of Penny’s Gamache series. As long as we can maintain a low body count and keep the violence to a minimum, I should be okay.

Also, completely irrelevant, but is Armand Gamache not a fantastic name for a detective? For that, I commend you, Louise Penny.

Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I wrote recently about rereading some of my old favorites and seeing how they stack up against my memories. One of my favorite books from my early teens (and here I must admit that at this time in my life I was mostly reading Edgar Rice Burroughs) is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. When I read this novel all those years ago it stood in my mind as a testament against censorship and the people that were fighting to stop my questioning and cease the spread of knowledge. A funny thing happened when I reread the novel; I realized that it is not about censorship at all.

Bradbury wasn't writing about how the state is trying to keep us down. He wasn't arguing against "the Man." He was warning us about what we are in danger of doing to ourselves. Fahrenheit 451 is the story of Guy Montag, a firefighter whose job it is to set fires, specifically to set fire to books. Guy doesn't have a problem with burning books; in fact, he's never really thought about it. He's just doing his job. Then he meets someone for whom life is more than just coming and going. Someone who questions and experiences life. Suddenly, Guy becomes curious about what is in those books. The trouble with books, Guy is told, is that they make people sad. Thinking is difficult, questioning leads to unanswerable conundrums. It is far easier to ignore problems and disappear into what Bradbury perceives as the ultimate enemy of intelligence - television.

I feel like now is the time for me to tell you that this novel begins with an attempted suicide. Guy's wife, Mildred, almost kills herself. She is neither happy nor unhappy. She is so complacent, so bored, that she takes one sleeping pill after another until she falls into sleep or a coma, whichever comes first. Mildred lives in such a hyper aware state that she is aware of nothing; in fact, she cannot even recall her near death experience the next morning. She is fed a steady diet of television and headlines, thus has never had to be bothered to think for herself or ask any questions. Consequently, she has never felt the unhappiness that can be caused by searching for answers that cannot be found.

As Guy begins to question the life he shares with Mildred, he becomes increasingly bemused by her behavior. At one point he is questioning her, demanding that she provide him answers to questions she cannot fathom. Finally, Mildred shouts "leave me alone" to which Guy replies, "that's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be left alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?" And there it is. What Bradbury was saying, what I've been trying to say. The questioning, the bothering, the thinking, that gadfly upon us that Socrates so insisted we need - that is the way of life.

So no, Fahrenheit 451 is not about censorship. It is a story about willful ignorance. It warns of the dangers of not doing things because they are hard or ignoring the things that make us feel sad or confused. When I first read this book I loved it because it fought against censorship and some grand idea I held about "the Man." Now, I love this book because it reminds me why I am alive. To be alive is to be struggling. Books are the purveyors of ideas - our great weapon in this struggle.

PseudoReview: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is the first in my grand effort to reread some of my all time favorite books this year. I have long referred to Gatsby as my favorite book despite the fact that, until very recently, I had not picked this slim volume up in over ten years. It was pure joy to be reacquainted with the novel and to find that it is still as wonderful as it was then. I am always so surprised when people confess that they do not enjoy this novel. The Great Gatsby is so good that it plays on your terms, whatever they may be. It never feels as complex as it is; the many metaphors are never overbearing. You may come to Gatsby as someone who studies literature or someone who simply enjoys it and the novel will deliver its ample gifts to you either way.

There are so many ways to read F. Scott Fitzgerald's master work that I am hesitant to review it. I am afraid I may alienate potential readers as many an English teacher has before. I feel that one of the reason I loved Gatsby so much in high school is that I read it without a guiding hand. I was allowed to take from it what I would and leave the read for discovering later. Going into the novel with such an attitude basically allowed the book to blow my mind. Finding the layers of meaning with each phrase and action on my own taught me that literature is a game played between reader and author. That game, that conversation, achieved between authors both living and dead is why I am a reader. Individuals that I have never met (or who have been dead for decades - centuries) are pushing at my mental boundaries with every new book I encounter.

Reading The Great Gatsby I realized for the first time how much books had to teach me - about history, life, myself. The experience is one that I value absolutely. So, I could tell you that the novel is a work of perfection, that every word was chosen with the utmost care, and I could explain that it is the embodiment of the diligence of the writing craft. But, I'd rather tell you that The Great Gatsby is my favorite book and F. Scott Fitzgerald moves me. I think that in this case those are the words you need to hear.