Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)

Jane Austin fans will likely find themselves reminded of Mrs. Bennett from Pride and Prejudice when they read about Mrs. Adams from this 1922 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Both are foolish social climbers, riding roughshod over their more principled but relatively weak=willed husbands. But Alice Adams, the one daughter in this novel, is no Elizabeth Bennett. Though Austin's Lizzie makes mistakes, from the very beginning of the novel it is obvious that she has a strong sense of self and has gained common sense and principles from her father. In contrast, at the beginning of this novel Alice is almost totally under the sway of her mother, and it takes the entire novel for her to break free to become her own person.

Bad things happen in Pride and Prejudice, but the overall tone is fondly satiric, with many bits that are laugh=out=loud funny. Tarkington writes in a more somber tone, although a few parts of this novel could be considered humorous in a different context. His account of a dinner party gone wrong==with sweltering weather, heavy and unappetizing food, and a surly maid==would be funny if it were not so pathetic. A reader feels Mrs. Bennett to be a subject for ridicule, but I guarantee that the same reader will end up despising Mrs. Adams. I often wished I could step into the book and tell her off and maybe even slap her selfish face.

This is a perceptive novel of middle=class America between the World Wars. It seems a bit dated, maybe because climbing from one social class to another is no longer as easy as it once was and most people cease trying.

Tarkington is one of only three writers who have twice won the Pulitzer. He first won in 1919 for The Magnificent Ambersons. The other two=time winners are William Faulkner and John Updike.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (2016)

WOW! This mystery thriller is a certified page turner. It starts with a bang, literally. A private jet crashes over the ocean leaving only two survivors: Scott, a middle-aged failed artist, and a four--year-old boy. Scott heroically swims for hours towing the boy to bring them to safety. The mystery then becomes who or what caused the crash.

As federal investigators from several agencies assemble, various theories emerge. Was it a simple matter of pilot error or aircraft malfunction? Was the right-wing media mogul on board targeted by extremist liberals? Was the financier aboard who was about to be arrested for money laundering targeted by a foreign government that wanted to be sure its secrets were kept? Was the Israeli bodyguard with a mysterious past the target of an assassination for former deeds?

Then in jumps the right-wing media, with its own conspiracy theories, including insinuations about Scott, the "hero" of the tragedy. This is my favorite part of the book, actually. The cable news channel portrayed is Fox News, clearly, though Hawley gives it another name, and the hate--mongering on-air personality is obviously patterned on Bill O'Reilly. This social commentary makes an interesting addition to an already intriguing mystery plot, although it will undoubtedly be a turn-off for right wing readers. As a certified lefty, I found it chillingly probable.

Hawley took a page from the pattern of Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, spending a great portion of the book in brief background sketches of the characters, living and dead. He does it so skillfully that in only a few pages the reader understands them and can view them as real people. Not many writers accomplish so much with so few words.

The solution to the mystery, which comes at the very end of the book, is in a way anticlimactic, but it is very appropriate. Sometimes the simple answer is the right one.

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For those who have already read this book: Did you notice on the sketches of the deceased that the birth and death dates were given and that the death date of the bodyguard was three days later than the rest? Interesting.

Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves (2016)

Work Like Any Other has been long listed for the Booker Prize. Its back cover is filled with glowing reviews from fellow writers. (Two are graduates, along with Reeves, of the Michener Center for Writers at UT.) Either I am incredibly perceptive, discerning that the emperor has no clothes, or I an incredibly dense, failing to perceive genius when it is placed in front of me, because I didn't find this novel outstanding at all. In fact, I thought it had several major flaws. It's not terrible, but I would not recommend it.

I actually wrote a lengthy and specific review here before erasing it all and starting over. I realized that in detailing my criticisms of the plot, I had revealed the whole story, and that's not fair to someone who might want to read the book. Here, then, in my second effort.

This reads like two short stories or novellas cobbled together. The most lengthy part, the account of the protagonist's time in prison, is well done and sometimes even riveting. Framing this central portion is the story of the man's family life and crime (stealing electricity from a power company, discovered when a company employee is accidentally electrocuted) and the continuance of his life when he is released. This is the weak part. The events are unlikely. The characters behave irrationally and their motivations are never clearly explained. They are entirely unsympathetic. The sketchy subplot about the difference between how black and white prisoners are treated seems thrown in for politically correct relevance.

I really dislike it when my opinion seemingly differs so drastically from the majority. It makes me doubt my discernment. But what can I say? I really cannot see this as a prize winner.

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (2016)

What strikes me most about this novel is that Strout tells her story not so much by what she says but by what she leaves out. The truth is in the spaces. I understand the book to be an example of sustained dramatic irony--the reader understands what the narrator never realizes or admits to knowing. I have read several reviews of the novel, and they don't mention this aspect. Perhaps I misunderstand, but this interpretation makes perfect sense to me.

On the surface nothing much happens. Lucy's mother comes to sit with her for a few days during her extended hospital stay. Although they have not seen each other for years, they talk only of trivial matters, gossip about the people Lucy had known in her youth, usually about marriages that have failed. Here's where the spaces come into play. As narrator, Lucy tells us that she never asks about her father, and that she and her mother never mention what Lucy thinks of as "the Thing," some traumatic event of her childhood, which is never explained.

Interspersed with Lucy's narration of her mother's visit are almost stream-of-consciousness accounts of her early and subsequent life. We hear of her attachments to her neighbor, her doctor, and even random strangers--to any who show her a speck of kindness. We learn--in the spaces--that she never feels worthy of love. We sense how broken she is, even though she never expresses it and perhaps does not even realize it.

This is a story about love, but it more a story of love withheld and the damage that can inflict. Unfortunately, a pattern of parental abuse and neglect can pass from generation to generation, as in this novel, although the adult child may not realize that she or he is repeating aspects of parental behavior.

This is subtle novel, beautiful in its depth of feeling. It has been longlisted for England's Booker Prize for this year's best novel written in English.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon (1988)

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is Michael Chabon's first novel, written when he was just 24 years old, in fulfillment of the requirements for his master's degree at the University of California, Irvine. As is frequently the case of early efforts by young writers, it is a coming-of-age novel, telling of a young man's loves and misadventures as he attempts to "find himself."

Chabon's protagonist narrates the events of the summer following his graduation from college. He finds love, in more than one place and of both the male and female variety. He joins a friend in a criminal escapade. He attempts to deal with the love-hate relationship he has with his father. Just the normal things that one does before settling down to the adult world.

This very much reads like a first novel--a bit amateurish--but Chabon's writing style proves to be most engaging, even at this beginning of his career. He went on, of course, to write the Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and several other lauded novels in diverse genres. He started out good and has moved on to excellent.

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue (2006)

William Butler Yeats wrote: "Come away O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand,/For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand." He pictured a child saved from the sorrows of life by beneficent fey creatures. His poem, "The Stolen Child," inspired the writer Keith Donohue to write this tale of the lives of both the child who enters the wood to become one of the fairies and of the creature who assumes the likeness of the child and takes his place in the world of humanity. As it turns out, neither one escapes sorrows.

Donogue tells his twin stories in alternating chapters. We discover that fairies (they prefer the term "hobgoblins") live a hardscrabble life, hiding in the dwindling woodlands, scavenging for food and stealing from humans to supply their needs. They don't die, unless they are killed, but they don't age either, and so are perpetually trapped in children's bodies. Christened Aniday by his captors, the newest fairy recruit can't stop longing for his former life.

Meanwhile, the fairy who has become the boy Henry Day lives in fear that he will be found out as a changeling. His father, at least, instinctively feels that something is amiss. As Henry grows to adulthood, falls in love, and is married, he continues to be tormented by his feeling of inauthenticity.

Donohue has written an engaging and very readable story, but he has aimed at something more. This is also an allegory about accepting ourselves as we are. Henry Day's mother gives us a clue when she says, "You are who you are, for good or ill...." Interestingly, both protagonists help themselves achieve wholeness through the arts, Aniday through writing his life story and Henry Day through composing a symphony, which he titles "The Stolen Child."

This is not a novel destined to become a classic, but it is an enjoyable read.

Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon (1931)

I chose to read this because I read somewhere on the Internet that it is a neglected science fiction classic, praised by Arthur C. Clark and other sci-fi luminaries. I was disappointed; I was bored; I slogged on through it because I very rarely give up on a book until the bitter end. I do not recommend it.

First, this is not really what is conventionally called a novel. It is an overview of history, with only broad events covered and no specific characters mentioned. It is even less specific than what you might find in a typical World History textbook in a middle school. But this is a different kind of history--it's the future history of the human species, from 1931 to 5 billion years in the future. Yes, it does mention a myriad of intriguing situations which could be appropriated by science fiction writers to create conventional novels. Perhaps that is why Clark and others appreciated it. No, it is not interesting or even believably predictive for the average reader. (His predictions for the years from 1931 to the present are totally inaccurate, to start with.)

What Stapledon does tell us that has been shown to be true is that history is cyclical and tends to repeat itself. But then we already knew that.