January is almost over, and I’ve just started to feel as though I’ve recovered from the holidays. The process of getting here has left me with that special mid-winter variety of brain drain that makes me want to read a lot and do very little else. And now, with snowpocalypse 2.0 on the horizon, there is a very real chance that I’ll spend the next several days curled up with a book. Nothing to complain about there, but the growing pile of books to be reviewed makes me antsy. So here’s what I’ve been reading lately.
I read this for the LOST Books Challenge, and I have to say it was very interesting to revisit a story that I seem to have learned by heart without ever having read it. And the whole thing begins with Alice declaring that she is bored and uninterested in the book she’s been given to read because “What is the use of a book…without pictures or conversations?”
You know the story, too. Alice falls down the rabbit hole, finds a bottle marked “drink me,” and proceeds to grow and shrink and almost drown in a pool of her own tears, then she unlocks a little door and walks right into Wonderland. There’s the mad hatter whose clock is stuck at tea time and the caterpillar who makes her recite poems that she can’t seem to get right and the cheshire cat with his riddles and the queen whose response to just about everything is “Off with her head!”
Since I’m addicted to introductory material, notes, and bookish extras, the best part of revisiting this story was learning more about Lewis Carroll (whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) and the deeper themes of this work inspired by his relationship with ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters. Though the introduction to this Barnes & Noble classics edition describes Dodgson’s relationship with the girls as “by all accounts innocent and kindly,” it also notes that Dodgson was barred from the Liddell household before Alice’s story was even completed. Definitely makes you wonder if something dodgy were going on.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an allegory for growing up and a snapshot of the nineteenth-century tendency to “disregard disorder and chaos as problems to be tucked away in regressive moments of dreaming and remembering,” and I enjoyed the opportunity to read this story for what lies beneath its surface. And the LOST tie-in felt obvious: just as Alice stumbles through Wonderland trying to impose order on chaos and make sense of her encounters with nonsensical characters, so the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 struggle to do the same on their mysterious island. See Lostpedia for more of the direct literary tie-ins.
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
Blame it on Nathaniel Hawthorne and that fantastic Jonathan Edwards sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but I just can’t help loving the Puritans. That’s right. Loving them. I am fascinated by these people who were so convinced they were God’s chosen that they left their families and communities for what can only be described as a harrowing journey across the Atlantic to a new world of unknowns. Sure, they also believed this destiny entitled them to kill the natives, take the land, and impose their religious beliefs, but doesn’t that make them interesting?
This was my first time reading Sarah Vowell, and it was pretty much love from page one. Focusing on John Cotton, John Winthrop (author of the famous exhortation to be “as a city upon a hill”), and the social, political, and religious motivations of the people who founded America, Vowell brings to light the petty arguments, deeply felt convictions, complex relationships, and community values that, whether we acknowledge it or not, continue to form the basis of our society today. And yes, Vowell has her own political agenda here, occasionally pointing out that the things that make the Puritans sound crazy are not so different from the things that motivate members of other exremist religious groups to attack and criticize America today.
The post-9/11 context gives The Wordy Shipmates added depth, and Vowell presents her research and her just-subtle-enough jabs with a snappy pace and a hefty portion of snark. But the book is really all about the story behind the story, the seldom told history of the people who came after the Mayflower, and the complexities of their inner lives and their relationships with each other. The blurb on the back of The Wordy Shipmates calls Vowell’s Puritans “highly literatate, deeply principled, and surprisingly feisty,” and that sums it up nicely. The story is so interesting, in fact, that I didn’t even notice it is written as one long piece—no chapter divisions here—with just the occasional paragraph break.
I finished this book a week ago, and I’ve been trying to find a way to write about it ever since. My first experience with Amy Bloom has left me flummoxed and rendered me inarticulate. The stories in this collection are crafted so beautifully and packed with such emotional power that I am just in awe. But I’m going to try to talk about them because how else will I convince you to READ THIS BOOK NOW!
Where the God of Loves Hangs Out is comprised of twelve short stories, but it’s really more like two novellas plus four stand-alone stories. The first four stories of the collection present William and Clare, best friends who are married to other people but embark on a romantic relationship that will define the final chapter of their lives. Bloom alternates between Clare’s narrative voice in the first story “Your Borders, Your Rivers, Your Tiny Villages” and close third-person for the remaining three and paints a remarkably full picture of these two people and their families and the larger narrative of their lives at four distinct moments.
This section is followed by two stand-alone stories that I remember enjoying but that I didn’t find nearly as compelling as the William and Clare pieces. Then comes a four-story block about Julia and Lionel, a middle-aged woman and her stepson, who sleep together the day after Lionel’s father’s funeral and spend the rest of their lives trying to make amends for the mistake and repair their relationship. Bloom shows deft narrative skill in writing stories from Julia’s perspective, Lionel’s perspective, and close third-person, and I could not turn away from Julia and Lionel’s struggle to navigate the complex and long-lasting effects of one moment of confusing, desperate sadness.
What have you been reading lately?
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