Harper

The Lacuna

admin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

A Barbara Kingsolver novel can often be defined in just one word: captivating. In her first work of fiction in nearly a decade, The Lacuna delivers (in true Kingsolver style) with intricate characters, potent settings, and a sturdy construction built on extensive research. The end result seems so effortless, but Kingsolver’s strength in The Lacuna lies in her use of an unassuming main character by the name of Harrison William Shepherd to viscerally guide the reader through pivotal historical events in Mexico and the United States beginning in the late 1920s through the early 1940s.

The story of Shepherd’s life is that he belongs nowhere and to nobody. Born in Virginia to a small-time federal employee and a Mexican flapper, Shepherd’s entire life experience is shaped by always feeling like a foreigner no matter where he lives. Matters aren’t helped by having parents who show little interest in him (Shepherd’s friend Leandro comments, “Mi’jo…your mother can’t even remember the day she gave you birth.”), and he exists perpetually on the periphery due to his reclusiveness and homosexuality.

Yet in Shepherd, who is naturally drawn to and gifted at writing, the reader has the perfect observer in the tumultuous events that surround his life. Although he tries his best to live an unassuming life, his talents lead him to fascinating interactions with historical figures like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky. Later in his life, he becomes part of history as a famous American writer.

What’s incredible about Shepherd is that he never has an agenda. While he does care deeply for Kahlo, Trotsky, and Rivera, he never becomes immersed in any ideology to the same degree as his friends. In fact, when he eventually moves to the United States, Shepherd always seems to give his birth country the benefit of the doubt. For instance, Shepherd responds to a letter from Kahlo regarding the Japanese internment by writing, “Don’t listen to nonsense, Frida. The idea of putting American Japanese in concentration camps is fantastical…Have faith in our Mr. Roosevelt…he is our own kind of Lenin, charting the new American Revolution.”

But despite Shepherd’s faith in the American government and his struggle against celebrity once he becomes a famous author, the sweeping effect of senator Joseph McCarthy anti-communist witch hunts eventually set their sights on Shepherd. It starts small with an article about Shepherd containing false information about his political beliefs and then snowballs until his fans nationwide have joined the crusade against him. The scene is reminiscent of recent history where campaigns were led against musicians who voiced anti-war sentiments, and events like bulldozing a pile of Dixie Chicks CDs became a threatening way to silence artists unless they wanted to risk their careers. Even one of the few close friends Shepherd has completely severs their relationship after learning of Shepherd’s supposed political leanings without asking for Shepherd’s side of the story.

Shepherd’s story is a telling reminder of how easily some become swept up in a political ideology without really knowing any of its substance. Kingsolver summarizes this beautifully through Shepherd’s friend and legal advisor, Artie Gold. Gold says, “What these men are doing could become permanent…You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what’s broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it’s broken, you are automatically disqualified.”

Although the story is mainly told through diary entries and letters written by Shepherd, Kingsolver illuminates this time in history. Despite much of the novel being politically oriented, it does not sway toward becoming preachy. Instead, the reader is left with a beautifully written story and many questions to ponder.

Written by: Beverly Jenkins-Crockett, April 24th 2010

Not That Kind of Girl

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Carlene Bauer

Harper

Carlene Bauer was a seven-year-old child when her mother became a born-again Christian, catapulting the family into a regimen that put avoiding devilish distraction front and center. Fear of imminent doom led to a morass of rules governing the Bauer sisters’ every move, rules that touched on modesty, piety, and propriety.

Bauer was born in 1973 and Not That Kind of Girl takes the reader from her early childhood, to her coming of age in 1980s New Jersey, to the present. Along the way she describes the implicit and explicit messages she received about what type of girl she was not to become. As she does this she reveals profound confusion about womanhood, autonomy, and integrity, the unraveling of which forms the crux of this intellectually stimulating, and often funny, memoir.

Not surprisingly, there are many questions. Is premarital sex really sinful? What about drinking and smoking pot? Is doubt always destructive? Can someone love language, literature, and rock music alongside the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? If so, how?

Four years at a Catholic college provide few answers, so not knowing what else to do, Bauer and a few friends move to Brooklyn, NY, post graduation. They’re hoping the city’s grit will help resolve these dilemmas, but distractions intrude—there’s the club scene, literary readings, parties, and a publishing job that gives Bauer a chance to hone her editing skills and wit, albeit for a pittance.

The years following the move are full of ups and downs, but it is Bauer’s continual search for meaning that keeps her from settling for less than she wants in relationships and employment. Still, confusion and guilt dominate.

“Christianity had taught me that reaching out your hand for what you wanted, since it might entail pushing someone else out of the way, was selfish and impolite,” she writes. “I could not reconcile my faith with my ambition—I could not stop thinking that one had to be suppressed for the other—and this left me too muddled to be shrewd.”

For a while, Bauer thinks that converting to Catholicism will provide clarity; it doesn’t. And then 9/11 happened. “I would be a fool if I opened my mouth to ask God to watch over us or give us peace after he had taken it away from thousands of people and might be preparing to end the happiness of everyone within the church and without. I could not seek consolation from him,” she admits.

Just like that, Bauer’s faith crumbles, at least temporarily; on the other hand, her quest for life’s purpose never waivers. It’s liberating, if hard, to shift gears into a more secular worldview, but the subtle change allows Bauer to find a satisfying job as a magazine fact checker, begin writing, and pursue a relationship that seems sustainable. As for God, who knows? Bauer’s odyssey is likely to be lifelong, and as her quest for divinity has broadened, she has begun to see, and write about, evidence of the spirit in music, poetry, nature, and city life.

Not That Kind of Girl is a revelatory and provocative work, a personal story that goes far beyond the boundaries of autobiography. Witty and deeply introspective, it shines a personal light on evangelism that proves 1960s feminists correct: The personal really is political.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, November 12th 2009

The Hidden Life of Deer: Lessons from the Natural World

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:15:00 +0000

By Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Harper

“Poor deer,” quoth he, “thou makest a testament/As worldlings do…” - As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1

Oak trees plan ahead. In any given area, in any given year, they produce shrunken acorns by design not disease. Such meagre bounty keeps in check acorn-eating animals. Deprived of autumn calories, many of these animals starve to death come winter. Thus fewer ravenous mouths eat healthy acorns in years following; thus more acorns survive; thus more new oaks sprout and thrive.

In fall 2007, the oaks around Peterborough, New Hampshire, resorted to shrunken acorns. This occurrence would have drastically thinned the local deer population. Enter Liz Thomas, who lives in Peterborough. She helped the deer that inhabit the woods around her family farm by feeding them dried corn every day that winter and into early spring.

The deer were lucky to have a benefactor; so are we to have the resultant book. Thomas is an anthropologist whose working life positions her to observe animals closely. She has worked with wild elephants in Africa. She has written books on dogs and cats. The fields in which she scattered small piles of corn lie outside her farmhouse office windows. This proximity allowed her to watch deer behaviour daily and take notes.

Twenty to twenty-five deer, plus an amazing flock of wild turkeys, showed up to eat the corn. Deer, we learn, divide into families of three or four fauns and yearlings with an older doe as matriarch of each bunch. Bucks, being exceedingly wary, live in deep woods. They show only in rut, when they need space to joust with other males. Thomas named the doe-led families (alpha, beta, delta, tau) and came to recognize and appreciate the individuals in them. We readers do, too.

As well as the deer, Thomas introduces us to a bear with history; a strategizing fungus; a brave elephant whose sad end will make you angry; and the habits and characteristics of numerous wild New Hampshire fauna, including the complex meanings of their scats.

The humans whom the writer encounters during her deer study make for interesting research as well. In one anecdote, remembering that brave elephant, she stares down two determined men, a cop and a neighbour, to prevent them from killing an injured animal. The author strongly disagrees on such killing and on other received wisdom concerning animals. This brings her into conflict not just with individuals but with New Hampshire Fish and Game. Whether humans should be feeding wild animals at all, for example, is a question Thomas faces squarely. Her decision—which is to feed if necessary—is reasoned with great interest. So, too, is her take on the anthropomorphizing of animals and her participation in a deer hunt.

Throughout her narrative, Thomas cites what she calls the Old Way, that time before humans were industrialized, mass produced, and virtualized. That time when we lived close to the real. That time when we could hear and read the communications around us made by many another of Earth’s elements and life forms aside from us. She also cites “Gaia” frequently. Referencing our planet as a single organism cycles us continually to the big picture, even as we witness tiny, local New Hampshire. This cosmic zooming insists on deer, humans, and all living beings as members of one family. Thomas accomplishes this purpose with the eye of a scientist and documentarian, and in poetic prose as clear as a limpid stream in the British Columbia backwoods. Come to think of it, poetry and science have similar methods and goals. Each observes acutely the particular while drawing large lessons. And so it is with this graceful, tough-minded book.

Written by: Neil Flowers, November 3rd 2009

Pretty Little Mistakes

admin — Tue, 08 May 2007 17:45:00 +0000

By Heather McElhatton

Harper

Apparently back in the day, there was such a thing as a chose your own ending book. Until I picked up Heather McElhatton’s Pretty Little Mistakes, I had never read one. After reading the book, I am glad I hadn’t. I am fairly certain there was never the option to become a drug dealer in Europe or marry the abusive crystal meth addict doctor in Berkeley. I know there were none that gave the option of sleeping with the wealthy, lesbian, Dean of an art school or living with the Indian transsexual in New York City.

Pretty Little Mistakes was born of the choices of author Heather McElhatton. The self-taught, multitalented McElhatton had sacrificed six years of her life to write the Great American Novel only to have it fail. From that failure came anger, which she describes as one of the greatest emotions. She took her anger and frustration about her life choices and started writing. Utilizing a 10 x 10 canvas and a marker, she took the choices and the situations in her life and wrote every possible ending she could think of. What came out of it is an intricate, racy and very well written novel that is ready to take the literary world by storm.

The novel intertwines GLBT issues, sex, abortion, love, life and choice into every page. Do you join the burlesque circus or become a phone sex operator? Take a job at the youth hostel in Greece or study volcanoes in Italy? The choices in McElhatton’s novel are limitless, but the point remains the same: Life is about choice. “Decisions,” she told me, “are not run by an external locust of control. You can do everything right and still end up with a pile of dog shit.” The novel’s publication has perfect timing in light of recent Supreme Court rulings.

As in every life, all the threads end in death. Your choices up until that point determine the matter in which you die and where you end up in the afterlife. Sometimes you meet God and She is an angry Black woman. Your perfect life may end in your death by a terrorist attack or .38 millimeter to the face. Either way, it is up to you to decide how to arrive at your ultimate fate.

Written by: Nina J. Davidson, May 8th 2007