The Good Lord Bird

With his latest novel, James McBride gives us a whole new take on famed abolitionist John Brown and his passionate fight to end slavery.  Additionally, McBride also gives us pause on what we may or may not understand about the cost of slavery in very human terms.

McBride goes about this renewed look not through a somber, serious take on a somber, serious topic, but with irreverence, humor and wisdom. I remember reading about John Brown and his attack on Harper's Ferry in elementary school, but this story is told from a  wildly different perspective: a young slave who is "released" from slavery and taken in by Brown.  Brown mistakes the boy Henry for a girl (long story; read the book : ) and renames him Onion after a lucky vegetable of the same name that Brown keeps in his pocket.  When Brown shows the onion to Henry, he grabs it and quickly consumes it which leads to Brown stating that henceforth Onion will be his/her name and she shall be his lucky charm.  Confused yet? Hang in there, it's worth the trip.

McBride weaves a multilayered story(told through the eyes of Onion; hmm...layers...onion) of Brown's ragtag group of followers who in what can only be described as a wildly chaotic, unorganized, poorly-equipped and lackluster way,  ride throughout the south releasing (sometime) reluctant slaves.  

While Brown is fiery in his zeal to visit freedom upon the slaves, he is also fiery in his delivery of half-baked, bible-quoting rants and raves that are also sprinkled throughout the story.  Brown's rants are definitely one source of McBride's wry observations.

Henry's odyssey from slave to free man is engaging, colorful and dotted with interactions amongst Harriet Tubman, Frederik Douglass,  and, of course, Ol' John Brown.

Recently named the National Book Award Winner for Fiction, The Good Lord Bird delivers a wholly consuming story and an imaginative look at a time and place with which we might mistakenly think we are familiar.

"He was like everybody in war.  He believed God was on his side.  Everybody got God on their side in a war.  Problem is, God ain't tellin' nobody who He's for."

Some things never change.

My Rating ****

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

This is novel that I shied away from reading for quite some time, despite the solid reviews it was garnering. The blurbs I would come upon centering on Karen Fowler's latest novel were along the lines of "a story of a girl and a chimp raised as sisters in a madcap family" and didn't move me to pick up the book.  But after stumbling across more and more positive reviews, I decided to go for it...and am very happy that I did.

This is the story of a family living an experiment.  It is told through the eyes of Rosemary, and moves back and forth in time, more or less starting in the middle.  Rosemary's father is a psychology professor at a university in Indiana.  Rosemary lives in a household that doubles as a lab filled with graduate students and witnesses to a closely watched experiment. When Rosemary is born, she is "twinned" with Fern, a chimpanzee.  Rosemary and Fern become inseparable until...something happens.  Rosemary is sent to stay at Grandma's house for a few weeks and upon her return home, discovers that Fern is gone.  The grad students are gone, her older brother is silent and grief-stricken, her mother is a mere shell of her former self, and her father has retreated into alcoholism.  No one has any answers for Rosemary's many questions; the house becomes a silent, grief-filled tomb and Rosemary does not know why.  Eventually, she is told Fern has been sent to a "farm" where she will be "much happier" living with other chimps and the young Rosemary eventually accepts this, until during her college years, she discovers the truth is very different.

The story is engaging, smart, sad, and witty.  Rosemary's journey towards the truth about Fern is a difficult one, made more complex by the shifting truths she must face about her family as well as herself.

"Maybe later, after Fern left, I saw how I should have felt and revised my memory accordingly.  People do that. People do that all the time." 

Indeed they do.

My rating ***

Ann Patchett/Lucy Grealy Binge

Autobiography of a Face

A few months ago,  I decided to go on an Ann Patchett binge, more or less. I had enjoyed Bel Canto, State of Wonder, and Run, but I had never read any of her nonfiction.  I wanted to read Truth and Beauty, but a friend said I should read the memoir of Lucy Grealy first: Autobiography of a Face.  Ann Patchett's friendship with Lucy Grealy forms the basis of Truth and Beauty so that seemed like an intriguing approach.

Grealy was born in Dublin, Ireland and migrated with her family to the U.S. when she was six. When she was nine years old, Lucy was diagnosed with a tremendously disfiguring jaw cancer.   Throughout the rest of her life, she underwent thirty-eight painful surgical attempts at facial reconfiguration, none of which was more than temporarily successful.  

Increasingly dependent on painkillers to cope with the surgical recoveries, Grealy became addicted to Oxycontin, and eventually heroin.  She died of a heroin overdose at the age of 39.

Autobiography of a Face is a memoir of a pain-filled life with, thankfully, interludes of happiness.  Lucy wanted very, very badly to be loved; she wanted to be beautiful, she wanted to be a successful writer; she struggled mightily with all three of these desires. She was frequently bitterly disappointed in people; certainly in society's interpretation of beauty and its discomfort with extreme disfigurement.  In the end, it was just too painful for Lucy Greaves to continue living. 

"This singularity of meaning--I was my face, I was ugliness--though sometimes unbearable, offered a possible point of escape.  It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life. Everything led to it, everything receded from it..."

My rating: **

Truth and Beauty

Attending the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop for one year, Lucy Grealy became the roommate and friend of similarly aspiring writer Ann Patchett. The two writers became lifelong friends and correspondents.  Patchett became intimately acquainted with Grealy's physical, emotional and mental suffering.  Ann was the person Lucy often turned to in times of her greatest suffering. Several years after Lucy's death, Patchett wrote Truth and Beauty.

In this work of nonfiction,  Patchett's love and fierce loyalty toward Grealy is undeniable.  Throughout their seventeen-year friendship, Patchett is Grealy's one true companion, nurse, therapist, financial support system, and all-around rescuer.  Very different from one another, their lives are lived in sharp juxtaposition to each other and at times, Grealy's behavior and demands for attention are a source of exasperation.  

In Autobiography of a Face, we see Lucy through Lucy's eyes; that's the point  of a memoir, after all; in Truth and Beauty Patchett does not hesitate to expose the flaws as well as the strengths in Lucy.  It makes for an interesting compare and contrast exercise. 

Patchett is horrified with Grealy's addiction to heroin and pleads with her many times to seek help for her addiction but she also knows Lucy:

"Lucy was having the great love affair she had always dreamed of. It was dangerous and rocky, violently depleting, but in the few minutes it was sweet it made her feel the all-encompassing heat of love."

My rating **and 1/2

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Ann Patchett's latest release is a collection of essays previously published in a variety of magazines.  I enjoyed her friendly style of writing; nothing overly dramatic or feverish, more akin to a story a friend might relay over a glass of wine. I have not read all of the essays in the collection at this point, but I have enjoyed the ones I have read.  The topics range from a classic "nun story" (a teacher Ann had in elementary school) to the desire to write to friendship, family, divorce (and the history of divorce in her family), and her current state of being happily married.  The collection of essays covers much more territory than the title suggests.

After reading several of the essays,  I  felt as though I'd just had a very satisfying conversation with an old friend  over a loooong lunch; I'm looking forward to more of those!

My Rating ***