The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I just finished David Wroblewski’s debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Far and away, it was outstanding. Positively outstanding.

The novel is an intimate portrait of the Sawtelle family of Northern Wisconsin. The prose is lush and evocative. This alluring and compelling tome is the epic story of a mute boy, Edgar Sawtelle, and his family’s quest to produce their own breed of dogs:  selectively bred and trained to think for themselves. Wroblewski’s narrative is sweeping and evocative of rural America. The characters are well-drawn. The plot is artfully crafted, and the ending, although heartbreaking, is satisfying.

At 562 pages in hardcover, reading Edgar Sawtelle is a daunting task. However, the story draws you in from the first, the prologue seemingly detached from the story until the very end of the novel. The book follows Edgar’s family from the time it settled in Northern Wisconsin, through two generations, and ultimately through Edgar’s life until his teenage years. No spoilers here! We  watch Edgar, mute from birth but not deaf, grow and mature through the trials of his family life. We watch him as he trains his dogs and as they train him to become a better person.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is, without doubt, the best work of fiction I have read in years. This novel should be nominated for — and deserves to win — the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  If you won’t take my word for it, read what The New York Times and NPR had to say about this book. Pick up or  borrow a copy and read this book!

The Faith Club

I have been struggling with this post all week. My book club met a few nights ago to discuss The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew — Three Women Search for Understanding, by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner. My first draft of the post lauded the book and two of the authors but strongly criticized the third. At book club, I made a judgmental comment about children of intermarriage, and it greatly offended one of my friends. We tried to resolve our differences that evening, but I had to call her the next day to apologize. The thing is, I don’t feel like I should apologize for my convictions or censor myself in a close-knit group. So, I’m going to post what I really thought of The Faith Club. Anyone who takes umbrage with my opinion should contact me through the Phone The Zone tab above.

Our small group talked for hours and hours. It was a passionate dialogue about a terrific book. As I was the only Jew in the group, the other women were curious to hear my reaction to the book. While I learned a lot about Christianity and Islam, I curious to see whether any of the others — one devout Catholic and the others Christian — gained any insight into Judaism. Not much, and IMVHO, what they did learn was from me and not the book.

Why? Because of the three authors, the Jewish woman’s perspective was the weakest. Ranya Idliby, a Palestinian-American Muslim, was strong in both her faith and culture; she has strong knowledge of her faith’s scripture. Suzanne Oliver, who was raised Catholic but is now Episcopalian, was also strong in her faith and well-versed in New Testament scripture. Priscilla Warner, born and raised Jewish, has a strong Jewish cultural identity but has comparatively weak knowledge of the Torah and Old Testament Scriptures. My difficulty with Ms. Warner mirrors my struggle with Reform Judaism: too dismissive of Jewish law and too little emphasis on Torah and scriptural learning in religious school, to cite a couple of examples.

The bias is mine. The opinions are mine. The blog is mine. Compliments and comments and even constructive criticism are always welcome. Flames are not and will be deleted.

Not Alone With A Good Book

Last weekend I found myself complete unprepared for book club. It was Sunday afternoon, and I had read maybe 40/348 pages of Gabriel García Marquez’s Love In The Time Of Cholera for the following evening. WineGuy was watching football on TV. Wizard watched, too. Moose was off playing outside, and Wild Thing had homework to do. I coaxed WT into the playroom for him to work and for me to sit and read. After some stomping and fuming, WT sat down and did some work. Before I knew it, I was another 100 pages into the book.

By the time WT’s attention span gave out, Moose came in looking for some attention and something to do. I invited him to join me on the playroom couch, to read and bask in the late afternoon sun. Moose swiped one of WT’s library books and settled in next to me. We sat quietly together for over an hour reading. Occasionally, I looked up from my tome to find my little boy contorted into some comfy reading position, his attention rapt – and wrapped – in the adventures of Geronimo Stilton. It was a priceless moment of solitude.

Cholera is another tour-de-force of Latin American literature. GGM’s brutal yet beautiful love story is set against a ravaging plague at the end of the 19th Century. He equates love with sickness and examines the course of love over the lifetimes of the main characters. As usual, GGM named his characters with a sly, wry wit. There is the Urbino family, whose sons are named after Roman philosophers (Juvenal, Marco Aurelio). There is the Loayza family, whose pope-named sons (Leo XII) are anything but pious. The main character, Florentino Ariza, writes poems as flowery as his name. His lifelong love, Fermina Daza, has an iron will equivalent to her name. Florentino carries on affairs with various widows – Nazaret (Nazareth, the first), Ausencia (absence), Prudencia (Prudence) – all of whom are aptly named.

Reading the book is a brave undertaking because the prose is so dense. It’s not a long book, but GGM’s intricately braided story requires your full attention from beginning to end. I still wish I would have read it in original text; it would have taken me two months to do so because, even at its most fluent, my Spanish was never that lofty. If you have the time and the dedication, put Love In The Time Of Cholera on your reading list.

Special Topics In Calamity Physics

It’s the name of a novel I just read. Really, it is. I’ve had this one on my nightstand for a while, and I finally finished reading it last week. I desperately wanted to love this book. I didn’t. It was another tedious exercise in postmodern fiction, like The Emperor’s Children. I am not loving this genre.

Marisha Pessl’s debut novel is set out like a college course, a survey of world literature. Each chapter bears the name of a famous play or novel, and the ensuing prose is supposed to relate to the chapter title. This was a clever come-on that would have been better emphasized if the publisher printed the chapter title at the top of the page. I hated having to continually go back to see how the latest developments related to the chosen work of literature.

Pessl’s main character is Blue Van Meer, the teenage daughter of a college professor who flits from one obscure teaching position to another like the butterflies his late wife used to study. We encounter Blue as she and her father move to fictional Stockton, North Carolina. Prof. Van Meer enrolls his daugher in private school and immediately intervenes to have her named valedictorian. The book follows Blue’s interaction with the teachers and student body at a tony private school. She falls in with a “clique of eccentrics known as The Bluebloods,” who simultaneously welcome her into and shun her from their group. The clique become the favorites of Hannah Schneider, who teaches film to the masses and life-lessons to the clique. A suspicious drowning and a death draw Blue into the excessively complicated mystery of their circumstances and her life.

The plot was artful and intricate. There is an unexpected twist at the end. The artifice of the course syllabus and final exam are inventive. However, the prose is ponderous; the descriptions are tedious; and the overall novel is uneven. The whole effort feels forced and contrived. If you have STICP on your reading list, move it down a few notches.

This year, I’m paying someone else to fix it all.

Borgia Book Club

My book club recently read The Borgia Bride, by Jeanne Kalogridis. Set in 16th century Italy, it was a work of historical fiction, a chronicle of the Borgia family’s machinations and manipulations to unite the independent Italian city-states. The book was well-researched and competently written, more coherent than Philippa Gregory’s books. The novel bristled with rape, incest, murder, and intrigue of Machiavellian proportions. [pun intended]

What made the night a hit was the wisecracking, racy banter that flew around the table. Why? Because the book was suggested by the most prim and proper member of our book club, Kay. She’s a tiny thing and a devout Catholic. She suggested this book upon her sister’s recommendation. Kay had absolutely no idea how licentious this book was. From the minute Kay sat down at the table last night, she was apologizing for her choice. She nearly squeaked in mortification that she had asked us to read such a scandalous book. We were cracking jokes and gently ribbing her all night. The whole restaurant could hear us cackling in the private room. With our largest and liveliest turnout ever, we ate, drank, and talked – about the book and everything else – until 10:15 p.m.

As the group broke up last night, another member joked that we should call ourselves the “Borgia Book Club”. Brilliant! We didn’t really have a name before then, and now we do. The next meeting of the Borgia Book Club will take place in early December. I’ve reserved the private room at the same restaurant. Buona fortuna!

Let’s all go to the movies! 

Loving Frank

Hands down, this is the best work of fiction I have read in a long time. It’s intelligent, articulate, historically accurate, sentimental, and elegantly written. Loving Frank is a portrait of Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright. Mamah began as a client of Wright’s and eventually became his muse. This novel is the story of what lay between: betrayal of two families in the name of true love; the rise of  Modernism and feminism in Germany and Europe; how both movements affected Mamah and Frank; and, in turn how that shaped his vision and influenced his craft for the rest of his career

This novel is about Mamah and less so about Frank. Mamah is a woman at odds with the restrictions of the early 20th Century. She pursued her own intellectual interests and her love for Frank at great personal cost. The conclusion of the book is tragic and unnerving but a clear window into the sheer force that was Frank Lloyd Wright.

Finished!

It’s 4:15 a.m. in the The Zone. Not a creature is stirring but plenty are snoring. I have just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. No spoilers or discussion other than to say that the book’s ending had far more Christian overtones than I would have expected. And, J.K. Rowling has clearly left herself room to expand upon this series if she so chooses.

‘Nuff said.