Arto Paasilinna's short, entertaining novel, Year of the Hare, was written in 1975. But what better year to read it than 2011, the Year of the Hare in much of the Asian world? It need not matter that this charming novel was translated from the Finnish, not Chinese, Japanese or Korean, and that it all takes place in Finland, except for the main character's accidental trek across the border into Soviet-controlled Siberia.
The story opens with the main character, a journalist named Vatanen, riding in a car with a photographer through the Finnish countryside. I don't recall what story the two were pursuing. It's irrelevant to the story line anyway and, as it turns out, also irrelevant to Vatanen's life. Suddenly -- yes, suddenly -- the car strikes a hare (not those little rabbits hopping about many of our back yards, but a hare, mind you).
The not fully grown, injured creature flees, hopping into the forest. Vatanen, being the gentle soul that he is, gets out of the vehicle to check on the animal, eventually finds it and proceeds to nurse it -- leaving the impatient photographer wondering why his colleague is spending so much time with a hare.
Alas, the photographer gives up and leaves. He calls Vatanen's wife to tell her that her spouse -- indeed, her "better" half -- has apparently become lost in the woods with an injured hare. It's the middle of the night when she takes that call, and she's a bit perturbed, understandably wondering if the photographer is drunk. She hangs up on him and gives the reader an early glimpse into her and Vatanen's marital relationship (not the most romantic on the block).
Meantime, back in the forest, Vatanen realizes his photographer has left and he has no way to town other than walking or hitchhiking. So, with the little hare in his pocket, Vatanen begins a journey that ultimately takes him across Finland and into the lives of one quirky character after another. Suffice it to say, a hare in your pocket is usually a good conversation starter.
Ultimately, Vatanen decides he's fed up with his job, his wife and his general life and flees all -- with hare gently tucked in pocket, of course. The adventures of Vatanen and the hare yield a funny yet symbolic storyline, with the twosome's adventures ranging from a jail stint to near-death experiences with an animal sacrificer not to mention a mighty ferocious bear.
If you've ever thought, I'm sick of my life and I want to start over -- whether with a hare, your dog, a secret lover or just yourself -- (And who hasn't?), this novel will find a place in your heart. It's the kind of book you read and recommend to others. And now, I want to read more books by Arto Paasilinna.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch
I first heard of Nina Sankovitch more than a year ago when I read a feature in the New York Times about her blog, readallday.org. Sankovitch an Evanston, Ill., native and now a Connecticut resident, was reading and reviewing online a book a day for one year. I began checking her blog occasionally, found good reading tips and decided to start my own blog.
With a full-time job and a preteen daughter, I couldn't read a book a day, but I could read more and share my thoughts with others. Writing about literature forces us to think about what we have read. Does it relate to our lives? Does it teach us about others? Does it take us to places we have never been and may never go? Does it take us to places we may never want to go? Does it help us deal with the trials that we all face at one time or another? Yes to all.
In Sankovitch's case, someone else also obviously read that New York Times article. HarperCollins recently published her book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading.
I didn't realize until shortly before I read Sankovitch's book that she had begun her year-long adventure to help cope with one of her own life's trials -- death, specifically the premature death of a sister who, like Nina, also loved good books.
Sankovitch's book is not a mere series of reviews. She still puts those on her blog and on Huffington Post. Rather, her book successfully tells us how reading affected and effected her life both now and when she was a child listening to her immigrant father read to her and her sisters. She tells how reading helped her dying sister -- and herself -- in those final months. It gave them something other than death to talk about; it gave them something other than death to think about. But reading was more than a distraction. It became an adventure for both sisters to anticipate when they were both alone and together.
Sankovitch's resume includes a Harvard law degree. A former corporate lawyer, she was not working outside the home at the time of her year-long reading project. But with a husband and four children, she wasn't swimming in free time. She shares with readers the difficulties in finding the time to read and review a book a day, especially when it's a long one such as the one her son suggested, Watership Down. Sankovitch reads good books, literature. But she is anything but a reading snob. She can enjoy a bestselling mystery while also feasting on a centuries-old classic. Her reading is diverse, from Tolstoy to Laurie Colwin to graphic novels.
One leaves Sankovitch's book, realizing she won't continue to read a book a day, but she will always be a reader and a writer. Along the way, she has no doubt already helped plant a love of reading in the minds of many other people around the country and the world. In my own case, I was already a reader but now make time to read more good books. I hope to work with my 10-year-old daughter to start a book club for her and a few of her friends if she wants, and I've started talking with her about reviewing children's books for my blog. After all, only a child can fully appreciate whether children will love a book written for children.
If you've not heard of Sankovitch, please check out her unusually well-organized blog. After you're over being stunned at how she did so much so well in so little time, read her book. It is not, as some might suspect, a mere diary boasting of her reading exploits. It is a book sharing the joy of reading with others, including every single person who reads even a single chapter of her book. It's a good, informative read. It's also the kind of book that can be read a second time and enjoyed over and over.
Thank you, Nina Sankovitch, for sharing your experiences -- the joys and the heartaches -- with us and passing on this inspiring journal of your reading year. I look forward to reading about your future adventures with the written word.
With a full-time job and a preteen daughter, I couldn't read a book a day, but I could read more and share my thoughts with others. Writing about literature forces us to think about what we have read. Does it relate to our lives? Does it teach us about others? Does it take us to places we have never been and may never go? Does it take us to places we may never want to go? Does it help us deal with the trials that we all face at one time or another? Yes to all.
In Sankovitch's case, someone else also obviously read that New York Times article. HarperCollins recently published her book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading.
I didn't realize until shortly before I read Sankovitch's book that she had begun her year-long adventure to help cope with one of her own life's trials -- death, specifically the premature death of a sister who, like Nina, also loved good books.
Sankovitch's book is not a mere series of reviews. She still puts those on her blog and on Huffington Post. Rather, her book successfully tells us how reading affected and effected her life both now and when she was a child listening to her immigrant father read to her and her sisters. She tells how reading helped her dying sister -- and herself -- in those final months. It gave them something other than death to talk about; it gave them something other than death to think about. But reading was more than a distraction. It became an adventure for both sisters to anticipate when they were both alone and together.
Sankovitch's resume includes a Harvard law degree. A former corporate lawyer, she was not working outside the home at the time of her year-long reading project. But with a husband and four children, she wasn't swimming in free time. She shares with readers the difficulties in finding the time to read and review a book a day, especially when it's a long one such as the one her son suggested, Watership Down. Sankovitch reads good books, literature. But she is anything but a reading snob. She can enjoy a bestselling mystery while also feasting on a centuries-old classic. Her reading is diverse, from Tolstoy to Laurie Colwin to graphic novels.
One leaves Sankovitch's book, realizing she won't continue to read a book a day, but she will always be a reader and a writer. Along the way, she has no doubt already helped plant a love of reading in the minds of many other people around the country and the world. In my own case, I was already a reader but now make time to read more good books. I hope to work with my 10-year-old daughter to start a book club for her and a few of her friends if she wants, and I've started talking with her about reviewing children's books for my blog. After all, only a child can fully appreciate whether children will love a book written for children.
If you've not heard of Sankovitch, please check out her unusually well-organized blog. After you're over being stunned at how she did so much so well in so little time, read her book. It is not, as some might suspect, a mere diary boasting of her reading exploits. It is a book sharing the joy of reading with others, including every single person who reads even a single chapter of her book. It's a good, informative read. It's also the kind of book that can be read a second time and enjoyed over and over.
Thank you, Nina Sankovitch, for sharing your experiences -- the joys and the heartaches -- with us and passing on this inspiring journal of your reading year. I look forward to reading about your future adventures with the written word.
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
Allegra Goodman's novel, The Cookbook Collector, has been on bookshelves since 2010. Some of you many have already read it. Others may look at the title, think it's about cookbooks and skip it. Please don't. The novel, which takes place between the fall of 1999 and October 2001, is about people, life and loves -- whether tangible or not.
The cookbook aspect is one small portion of the novel, and it comes late. I would have liked to have seen it explored more thoroughly and earlier. But when Goodman does deal with it, she does so expertly and, to some degree, symbolically.
Rather than cookbooks, the novel is about people with imbalanced lives, about two very different sisters. Both are smart. The younger one, Jessamine Bach, is a doctoral student studying philosophy. She is content to work as an assistant in a used bookstore, doesn't worry about money or fashion, and for a time is controlled by a man with his own political agenda. Emily Bach is older, practical, a financially successful businesswoman in a fledgling Internet business. She, too, is in love with a colleague, Jonathan. Like her, work, decor and the stock market are paramount for him.
As different as the sisters are, I see parts of myself in both, as well as in other characters Goodman has created.
Like Tom McClintock, I collect cookbooks but don't cook much. When I do, I most enjoy stirring in the unexpected -- the herb, the spice, the Peruvian sea salt or the Syrian pepper flakes nowhere to be found on the recipe. I like to make it my own recipe.
Like the philosophical and tree-hugging Jessamine Bach, I hunger for books, old and new, even when I am surrounded by them. I have little money but find enough to plant trees and shrubs for the birds, gangly milkweed for the monarchs and bee balm for the honey bees and hummingbirds.
Like Jess, I'm not always practical. I write and sometimes reveal major financial problems at a public institution and wonder how could the bankers and the accountants not have recognized them before I did. After all, I've not balanced my checkbook since hippies were in style.
Like Jess' older sister, Emily Bach, I focused the first 25 years of my adult life on my career. Relationships came second, third, often not at all. I was single in the big city, Chicago. I lived a couple blocks from the Magnificent Mile and cabbed it to The Art Institute. So many opportunities, so many people. Yet, I could look out my high-rise apartment window and see my real home -- a tall, gorgeous black-and-gold building that housed The Associated Press offices where I worked.
Goodman's book has other subplots that will interest different readers. The sisters' mother, who died when they were young, was Jewish, a religion and culture they begin to explore during the book. The growth of Internet businesses and the speculation that went with them form another subplot as do the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their impact on people's lives and the economy.
Finally, readers may want to visit Allegra Goodman's website -- allegragoodman.com -- and look at the first question she poses for reading groups: "Who is the cookbook collector in this novel?" Maybe I'll talk about that another time.
The cookbook aspect is one small portion of the novel, and it comes late. I would have liked to have seen it explored more thoroughly and earlier. But when Goodman does deal with it, she does so expertly and, to some degree, symbolically.
Rather than cookbooks, the novel is about people with imbalanced lives, about two very different sisters. Both are smart. The younger one, Jessamine Bach, is a doctoral student studying philosophy. She is content to work as an assistant in a used bookstore, doesn't worry about money or fashion, and for a time is controlled by a man with his own political agenda. Emily Bach is older, practical, a financially successful businesswoman in a fledgling Internet business. She, too, is in love with a colleague, Jonathan. Like her, work, decor and the stock market are paramount for him.
As different as the sisters are, I see parts of myself in both, as well as in other characters Goodman has created.
Like Tom McClintock, I collect cookbooks but don't cook much. When I do, I most enjoy stirring in the unexpected -- the herb, the spice, the Peruvian sea salt or the Syrian pepper flakes nowhere to be found on the recipe. I like to make it my own recipe.
Like the philosophical and tree-hugging Jessamine Bach, I hunger for books, old and new, even when I am surrounded by them. I have little money but find enough to plant trees and shrubs for the birds, gangly milkweed for the monarchs and bee balm for the honey bees and hummingbirds.
Like Jess, I'm not always practical. I write and sometimes reveal major financial problems at a public institution and wonder how could the bankers and the accountants not have recognized them before I did. After all, I've not balanced my checkbook since hippies were in style.
Like Jess' older sister, Emily Bach, I focused the first 25 years of my adult life on my career. Relationships came second, third, often not at all. I was single in the big city, Chicago. I lived a couple blocks from the Magnificent Mile and cabbed it to The Art Institute. So many opportunities, so many people. Yet, I could look out my high-rise apartment window and see my real home -- a tall, gorgeous black-and-gold building that housed The Associated Press offices where I worked.
Goodman's book has other subplots that will interest different readers. The sisters' mother, who died when they were young, was Jewish, a religion and culture they begin to explore during the book. The growth of Internet businesses and the speculation that went with them form another subplot as do the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their impact on people's lives and the economy.
Finally, readers may want to visit Allegra Goodman's website -- allegragoodman.com -- and look at the first question she poses for reading groups: "Who is the cookbook collector in this novel?" Maybe I'll talk about that another time.
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Erica Bauermeister's debut novel, The School of Essential Ingredients, is the kind of book you read to relax, enjoy and feel better.
The book isn't what I had expected. It's not really food writing. Rather, it is a series of linked stories about the lives of Lillian, who teaches a cooking class, and her eight students. They range from a couple who survived a long-ago affair and a woman with early-stage Alzheimer's to a lonely widower and a young mother needing time for herself once again. Food is merely the force that unites the group and that symbolizes the diverse, unexpected ingredients that make up our lives.
Beauermeister's prose is simple and effective. She is particularly good at dialogue. The book's only flaw is that things seem to work out too conveniently for everyone. But maybe that's not a flaw in this kind of book. Maybe the hope that things, problems, will eventually work out is one of the "essential ingredients" we need in our own lives and occasionally in our reading as well.
The book isn't what I had expected. It's not really food writing. Rather, it is a series of linked stories about the lives of Lillian, who teaches a cooking class, and her eight students. They range from a couple who survived a long-ago affair and a woman with early-stage Alzheimer's to a lonely widower and a young mother needing time for herself once again. Food is merely the force that unites the group and that symbolizes the diverse, unexpected ingredients that make up our lives.
Beauermeister's prose is simple and effective. She is particularly good at dialogue. The book's only flaw is that things seem to work out too conveniently for everyone. But maybe that's not a flaw in this kind of book. Maybe the hope that things, problems, will eventually work out is one of the "essential ingredients" we need in our own lives and occasionally in our reading as well.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
I don't know why I waited so many years to read William Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness novel, As I Lay Daying. But it spoke to me in ways it likely would not have when I was in my 20s or 30s.
In my 30s, I had not been married, had no children and lived in Chicago even though I grew up in rural Arkansas. I worked in a job where I generally was surrounded by intelligent people. None of us seemed old -- not even those of us who were. We lived.
Now, though, I am married. Like many marriages, it's had good and bad times. I now have a 10-year-old daughter, adopted late in life during a trip to China. I now live in the South, in a town less rural and more educated than Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. I work alone, but just yesterday a man who might have easily been Anse Bundren walked into my office. He smelled, he hated, he was clearly the boss in his family -- one where a little girl's head was shaved rather than spend money on a good haircut and lice shampoo. For a time, he was Anse Bundren. I suspect he always will be.
I've seen Addie Bundren, too. She's in Chicago, Conway, everywhere. But I do think she's more common in the South, where women and children are quickly put down if they stand up too much to male authority, even when the man is of Anse Bundren's quality. She suffers; she endures; she seeks happiness but never finds it. She is married but neither loves nor is loved by her spouse. Never has been. She knows "that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead."
If you're young, read this book. But read it again in 20 or 40 years. It's as timely now as it was when Faulkner wrote it in 1930.
In my 30s, I had not been married, had no children and lived in Chicago even though I grew up in rural Arkansas. I worked in a job where I generally was surrounded by intelligent people. None of us seemed old -- not even those of us who were. We lived.
Now, though, I am married. Like many marriages, it's had good and bad times. I now have a 10-year-old daughter, adopted late in life during a trip to China. I now live in the South, in a town less rural and more educated than Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. I work alone, but just yesterday a man who might have easily been Anse Bundren walked into my office. He smelled, he hated, he was clearly the boss in his family -- one where a little girl's head was shaved rather than spend money on a good haircut and lice shampoo. For a time, he was Anse Bundren. I suspect he always will be.
I've seen Addie Bundren, too. She's in Chicago, Conway, everywhere. But I do think she's more common in the South, where women and children are quickly put down if they stand up too much to male authority, even when the man is of Anse Bundren's quality. She suffers; she endures; she seeks happiness but never finds it. She is married but neither loves nor is loved by her spouse. Never has been. She knows "that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead."
If you're young, read this book. But read it again in 20 or 40 years. It's as timely now as it was when Faulkner wrote it in 1930.
Monday, April 11, 2011
YOUR TURN
Now, it's your turn. Please make a comment and share the title of a book you've recently read and enjoyed. Just click on COMMENTS immediately below this post and type your thoughts in the space provided, then click on Post Comment. Thank you! dhs
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Patti Smith's memoir of her time with the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe is a love story. The book tells of the young couple's love and passion for each other and for art.
While the pair's love at first is a romantic, sexual one, the relationship changes as Maplethorpe becomes interested in other men and as Smith slowly accepts his homosexuality. Her acceptance is somewhat of a reluctant one, allowing for the pair's love to transcend sex and become a platonic one.
Smith's memoir also reflects the changes in Maplethorpe's art and photography, from religious works to what many would view as sacreligeous works. My own view is that Maplethorpe likely saw his art neither as religious nor sacreligeous; to him, the works, no matter how offensive to others, were just art, albeit often with a shock value and eventually a hefty price tag.
The book has plenty of name-dropping, from Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to Sam Shepard. In each case, Smith is remembering her time with the famous, whether for only a few moments or for much longer as with Shepard, already a successful playwright in the 70s. At the time, Smith was young and in awe of these talented, already-successful artists, so her memories of their encounters are vivid.
The edition I read includes some photographs of Smith and Maplethorpe as well as photographs by Maplethorpe. It also includes an addendum of sorts with a picture of Maplethorpe's desk and a summary of what happened to it after his death in 1989 from AIDS.
Smith is not only a talented musician and artist but also an excellent writer. Her words seem to flow freely, naturally -- at times seriously and at other times with a slight laugh at her and Robert's youth.
The book reminded me of my own college years during the Vietnam era. I didn't have the controversy in my life that Mapplethorpe and Smith did. But I did have the idealism and the view that, with others, I could effect political and social change. And we did.
If you like this book as much as I did, you may want to check out Smith's website.
While the pair's love at first is a romantic, sexual one, the relationship changes as Maplethorpe becomes interested in other men and as Smith slowly accepts his homosexuality. Her acceptance is somewhat of a reluctant one, allowing for the pair's love to transcend sex and become a platonic one.
Smith's memoir also reflects the changes in Maplethorpe's art and photography, from religious works to what many would view as sacreligeous works. My own view is that Maplethorpe likely saw his art neither as religious nor sacreligeous; to him, the works, no matter how offensive to others, were just art, albeit often with a shock value and eventually a hefty price tag.
The book has plenty of name-dropping, from Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to Sam Shepard. In each case, Smith is remembering her time with the famous, whether for only a few moments or for much longer as with Shepard, already a successful playwright in the 70s. At the time, Smith was young and in awe of these talented, already-successful artists, so her memories of their encounters are vivid.
The edition I read includes some photographs of Smith and Maplethorpe as well as photographs by Maplethorpe. It also includes an addendum of sorts with a picture of Maplethorpe's desk and a summary of what happened to it after his death in 1989 from AIDS.
Smith is not only a talented musician and artist but also an excellent writer. Her words seem to flow freely, naturally -- at times seriously and at other times with a slight laugh at her and Robert's youth.
The book reminded me of my own college years during the Vietnam era. I didn't have the controversy in my life that Mapplethorpe and Smith did. But I did have the idealism and the view that, with others, I could effect political and social change. And we did.
If you like this book as much as I did, you may want to check out Smith's website.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
This little book says more in its 197 pages than most of the 300- and 400-page books I have read. Set during Mao's Cultural Revolution, which was at its height in the 1960s and 70s, Dai Sijie's simply yet wonderfully written novel tells the story of two young men -- a violinist and a prominent dentist's son -- who are ordered to leave their comfortable and cultural lives in the city for a remote mountain community where they will be "re-educated." Their job there is to haul human and animal manure.
But while there, the two find a suitcase packed with books by Western authors from Balzac to Flaubert to Dickens. Because knowledge is power and a sign of rebellion against Mao, the boys must handle the books carefully, for the novels are not only treasures but also the equivalent of contraband in China.
While on Phoenix Mountain the boys also get to know a pretty young woman known simply as the little seamstress. They tell her and her aging father stories from the books they have read and re-read, The Count of Monte Crisco, Madame Bovary and more.
As a result, the little seamstress learns of Western ways and, hence, gains knowledge and power, too.
The author, a filmmaker, was born in China in 1954. He was "re-educated" between 1971 and 1974 and left China for France in 1984. He wrote this first novel in French. Ina Rilke translated it.
As I read this book, I realized two things. First, I shall save it for my daughter, who was born in China in 2001. I hope she will read this book when she is older to learn more about her homeland's history. I also realized more than ever how many Westerners, including myself, do not realize the treasure, the freedom we hold in our hands each time we read a novel, a poem or other works of literature.
But while there, the two find a suitcase packed with books by Western authors from Balzac to Flaubert to Dickens. Because knowledge is power and a sign of rebellion against Mao, the boys must handle the books carefully, for the novels are not only treasures but also the equivalent of contraband in China.
While on Phoenix Mountain the boys also get to know a pretty young woman known simply as the little seamstress. They tell her and her aging father stories from the books they have read and re-read, The Count of Monte Crisco, Madame Bovary and more.
As a result, the little seamstress learns of Western ways and, hence, gains knowledge and power, too.
The author, a filmmaker, was born in China in 1954. He was "re-educated" between 1971 and 1974 and left China for France in 1984. He wrote this first novel in French. Ina Rilke translated it.
As I read this book, I realized two things. First, I shall save it for my daughter, who was born in China in 2001. I hope she will read this book when she is older to learn more about her homeland's history. I also realized more than ever how many Westerners, including myself, do not realize the treasure, the freedom we hold in our hands each time we read a novel, a poem or other works of literature.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
Like the previous Maisie Dobbs mysteries, this one -- the third of the investigator/psychologist adventures -- again draws readers into World War I and its aftermath.
This book, set in about 1930 as Adolph Hitler was coming to power in Germany and as England and France were still recovering from The Great War, focuses on Dobbs' efforts to confirm that two of her clients' relatives were, in fact, killed during the war as the British government said they were. An unrelated subplot deals with the case of a 14-year-old girl accused of murder, unjustly so in Maisie Dobbs' view.
Author Jacqueline Winspear further develops Maisie's relationship with Dr. Andrew Dene in this novel and has Maisie amd readers wondering whether her trust in her longtime mentor, Maurice Blanche, has been misplaced. The book also delves into the world of those who claim to have a sixth sense and know what others do not. Winspear, through her characters, also explores the question of whether some lies are pardonable and suggests they, indeed, are.
This book, set in about 1930 as Adolph Hitler was coming to power in Germany and as England and France were still recovering from The Great War, focuses on Dobbs' efforts to confirm that two of her clients' relatives were, in fact, killed during the war as the British government said they were. An unrelated subplot deals with the case of a 14-year-old girl accused of murder, unjustly so in Maisie Dobbs' view.
Author Jacqueline Winspear further develops Maisie's relationship with Dr. Andrew Dene in this novel and has Maisie amd readers wondering whether her trust in her longtime mentor, Maurice Blanche, has been misplaced. The book also delves into the world of those who claim to have a sixth sense and know what others do not. Winspear, through her characters, also explores the question of whether some lies are pardonable and suggests they, indeed, are.
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone
If lightning strikes you, your first and correct impulse probably would be to call 911 -- or have someone call for you. And if you're a character in Michele Young-Stone's debut novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, your next impulse might be 1.) learning how to avoid another strike and 2.) how to live with life after lightning.
In Young-Stone's novel, two children of the South -- Becca Burke, who is stricken twice and who also witnesses a beloved dog's death by lightning, and Buckley Pitank, a boy who loses the only person who really loves him, his mother, to a bolt of lightning -- are forever changed emotionally by their experiences. Becca becomes an artist, leaves North Carolina for New York where her artworks reflect her encounters with lightning. Buckley, who grows up in a small, rural community of northwest Arkansas, ultimately flees his selfish grandmother and money-grubbing, preaching step-dad.
Like Becca, Buckley becomes obsessed with lightning, so much so that he tries to set himself up for a non-fatal strike. He writes a book, a manual to help lightning-strike survivors and, through it, has his first contact with Becca. It's not giving away much to say the two characters, who lead separate but similar and lonely lives, will eventually meet. What makes the book so interesting is the paths that lead them together and the paths they take afterward.
The novel is more about loneliness and dysfunctional families than lightning, which ultimately is just the medium that brings their despair to the forefront and that unites the book's main protagonists.
The book is fast-paced and an easy read. It's occasionally sad and full of good, bad and even clueless characters. Check it out; it's a different and enjoyable read.
In Young-Stone's novel, two children of the South -- Becca Burke, who is stricken twice and who also witnesses a beloved dog's death by lightning, and Buckley Pitank, a boy who loses the only person who really loves him, his mother, to a bolt of lightning -- are forever changed emotionally by their experiences. Becca becomes an artist, leaves North Carolina for New York where her artworks reflect her encounters with lightning. Buckley, who grows up in a small, rural community of northwest Arkansas, ultimately flees his selfish grandmother and money-grubbing, preaching step-dad.
Like Becca, Buckley becomes obsessed with lightning, so much so that he tries to set himself up for a non-fatal strike. He writes a book, a manual to help lightning-strike survivors and, through it, has his first contact with Becca. It's not giving away much to say the two characters, who lead separate but similar and lonely lives, will eventually meet. What makes the book so interesting is the paths that lead them together and the paths they take afterward.
The novel is more about loneliness and dysfunctional families than lightning, which ultimately is just the medium that brings their despair to the forefront and that unites the book's main protagonists.
The book is fast-paced and an easy read. It's occasionally sad and full of good, bad and even clueless characters. Check it out; it's a different and enjoyable read.
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