Atonement, by Ian McEwan

It is beyond my talents to aptly praise this excellent novel. It begins in an English country house where the Tallis family lives, circa 1935. A sort of tragedy occurs, or at least is perceived to occur, which changes everyone's life, but only as World War II is about to change absolutely everyone's life.

I read this in about a day. What a great piece of work.

Labor Day, by Joyce Maynard

An escaped convict appeals for, and receives, help from a mentally-ill mother and her young son. A terrifically captivating read, very well done, very entertaining. Told from the point of view of the son.

Maynard is famous for having been the 19-year-old love interest of a much older J.D. Salinger.

The Lonely Polygamist, by Brady Udall

So, this has to have some kind of praise for a catchy title. Brady Udall is the author of  The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, which I read recently. Having enjoyed Edgar quite a bit, I was looking forward to another book by Udall, and this was not disappointing.

One one level, this is the story of a man with four wives and twenty-eight children. On another, it may be about what it's like to be human, imperfect, and unlucky. There are a lot of people here that want to be loved. Instead of being a work of propaganda in favor of or against the practice of polygamy, Udall uses this unusual life, however we feel about it, to describe how people get along, in whatever situation they find themselves.

New York Times Book Review

The House on Fortune Street, by Margot Livesey

Harper Collins 2008 311 pages. ISBN 978-0-06-145152-2.

Margot Livesey has written five other novels, according to the dust jacket on this book. Further information from that source tells us that while she is from Scotland, she is presently living near Boston, and is a writer in residence at Emerson College.

This novel is written in four major parts. Each part deals with a different point of view, but with the same story. Now, this is not simply a retelling of the story from four vantage points. That doesn't sound very interesting or original to me, and this book is both. As a matter of fact, this is easily one of the very best books of any type that I've read.

The principal characters are Sean, Abigail, Dara, and Dara's father Cameron. Sean is a scholar who gave up a business career to return to school and study Keats. Abigail is the woman who stole Sean away from his idealistic, nearly-idyllic marriage -- only to disappoint him with coldness and infidelity later on. Dara is Abigail's close friend from college, who lives in the flat downstairs from Sean and Abigail, in the house of the title, which is Abigail's by virtue of an unexpected inheritance.

Cameron is the older person in this group of four, and his part of the novel flashes back in time to when he was the age of the other characters, in order to tell the story of his uniquely problematic life. Cameron is the older of two boys, but his younger brother Lionel was killed in an accident at age fourteen.

There are many other people involved in this story, including Abigail's parents, who provided her with a great deal of uncertainty and insecurity, moving her all over Britain during her childhood. Dara has, of course, a mother -- divorced from her father when his secret becomes apparent to her. Sean has a brother to whom he turns when his life becomes a morass of betrayal and despair.

The characters in The House on Fortune Street are complicated. No one is excessively good, nor is anyone supremely bad. At times, Abigail seems to qualify as the Evil one of the cast -- but her story is more complex than that. We get a good background on all these people, who they are, and why they behave as they do. Character development is extremely complete and believable in this book.

The story itself is fascinating, and I won't reveal any more of it here. I encourage you to read this novel -- I think nearly anyone would enjoy it. The plot is neatly done, thoroughly fascinating, and perfectly wrapped up at the end. This is not a particularly happy story, dealing with some of the saddest aspects of human experience, but there is much about it that is attractive and warm -- it is not completely pessimistic about the resilience of human spirit.

This is the first book I've read by Livesey's, I'm glad there are others.

Thanks to William Lychack

My heartfelt thanks to Mr. William Lychack (author of The Wasp Eater, about which I wrote some inadequate words last year) for his very nice letter. He didn't even mention that I called him "John" in the title of that post. Please excuse the errors of the elderly, sir.

I am very gratified that what I wrote was pleasing to you, Mr. Lychack. Your book held me in its spell when I read it, and for that experience thanks are hard to express. When I find a book with characters that come alive in that way, that takes me into its atmosphere so completely and makes me care about what happens in its pages -- well, that is what I'm looking for when I read. The end of such a book always leaves me a little sad that I have to leave that paper world and search for another.

Furthermore I can't tell you how pleased I was that you actually read this little blog -- having been read by a "real writer" has gone irrevocably to my head and I shall be impossible to live with henceforth.

Please give us more, Mr. Lychack. And thank you, again.

EL

The Wasp Eater, by William Lychack

The Wasp Eater, by William Lychack. Houghton Mifflin 2004.

Principal Characters:

Daniel – son

Robert “Bob” Cussler -- Dad

Anna – Mom

Joelyn – cousin

Divorce ravages the “traditional family” in our culture today. Statistics are available to bear this out.

Once the stuff of scandal and whispers-behind-hands divorce is now commonplace. We are so used to being surrounded by broken families and broken promises that we forget that these phenomena have their consequences.

“She became a widow well before his father died.” Thus begins The Wasp Eater, by William Lychack. This little novel (164 pages in a 5” x 8” format) tells the story of a broken marriage in the later 20th Century, how the couple's one child understands his parents and their problems, and how he deals with all of it.

This book was a prize won browsing the “new books” display at the library. When I noticed that the author was a contributor to This American Life (Ira Glass, Public Radio International) I had to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

Daniel's father, “Bob,” is a strong yet unstable character; he's a window washer in a New England mill town. We hear Anna's complaint on page 7: “It wasn't the waitress in bed with him; it was the shit-eating grin that made her insane, the way he couldn't seem to wipe that smirk from his face.” As the story begins, Anna has thrown Bob out of the house, scattered his belongings on the front lawn, hung his clothes from tree branches. She is through with him, but he won't go away.

Daniel, ten years old, is visited at night by his father. Bob stands outside the boy's bedroom window, smoking, talking. He leaves money, and tries to convince Daniel to let him in.

Over time an uneasy truce between the separated partners develops. Daniel spends time during the day with Bob, helping him wash windows. He is taken along to bars with his father, given quarters to play pool, and returned home late.

Some of Anna's history is revealed. She is from New York, her family once well-to-do middle-class fallen on hard times (like the New England town in which she now lives), caught up in romantic love with Bob. Now her marriage is broken by his disloyalty and she seems profoundly depressed. She can hardly maintain her daily existence and care for her young son.

In the course of the story it is revealed that there was once a fight between Anna and her niece Joelyn regarding a ring, her mother's wedding ring, which has fallen into Joelyn's possession. This ring becomes the symbol of what once was Anna and Bob's marriage, and Daniel sees in its recovery the answer to fixing the breach in his family.

The story is so extremely well-written that it makes me despair trying to describe it with my own clumsy words. Lychack has a knack for a spare and precise turn of phrase. The portrayal of young Daniel and his parents is believable and heart-breaking, but Lychack ends his book with perspective and hope.