Book Review: The Half Brother by Holly LeCraw

I've got to stop doing this to myself!  I read Holly LeCraw's novel The Half Brother on vacation last November, and it pubbed in February, and I'm only now sitting down to try reviewing it.  Now it's necessarily going to be vague, thanks to the distance of time, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed this book quite a bit, as it hit some of my literary preferences.

First up, it's a boarding school book, something that I've been enthralled with since a young age, reinforced by reading A Separate Peace and later by reading Harry Potter and Never Let Me Go. I spent my earliest childhood in a dying central Wisconsin mill town, and later in a tiny suburb in southern Mississippi.  There probably were boarding schools in Wisconsin but I was too young to be aware of them, and there were some in Mississippi, but they were mostly white-flight schools, and even if my parents had had the money to send me to one, they would never have had the inclination.

Reading about New England (or better yet, England!) boarding schools put me in a world that was impossibly exotic to my grade school self, and I've loved the setting and all of its expected memes ever since. It will probably come as no great surprise to you that my favorite movie in high school, revered above all others, was Dead Poets Society.  I, too, wanted to suck out all of the marrow of life and walk through ivy-walled courtyards, and I can't tell you how much I longed to have a quad.  I didn't really know what a quad was, but I was certain that life would be better if only my school had one.

When I was 16, I actually did go away to boarding school, but not the kind I had been dreaming of. In a bright spot in the state's otherwise lamentable track record on education, Mississippi had created a magnet school for the entire state for bright children, particularly those who showed aptitude in mathematics and the sciences.  It wasn't called boarding school, it was a residential high school, and to the state's enormous credit, it was publicly funded.  The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS) changed my life in much the same way that I expected boarding school would, and, to my surprise, in many ways that I never would have expected.

But that's quite enough about my childhood. In getting back to Holly LeCraw's book, the second thing that resonated with me about The Half Brother is the fact that Charlie, the protagonist, is a transplanted Southerner.  Born in Georgia to a working class single mom, Charlie is a natural observer who has always felt a bit out of place.  When his mother marries the scion of an old Southern family, Charlie feels even more of an outsider, despite the fact that his new stepfather only wants to do right by him.

Through his stepfather's money and influence, Charlie escapes north to attend Harvard.  His degree in English literature nabs him a teaching position at a second-tier boarding school in western Massachusetts, not far from where I now live, as a matter of fact. Charlie is old school -- he fiercely believes in the power of literature to change a person's life -- and so, despite the fact that's never taught before, and that he's only a few years older than his students, he becomes an immediate favorite among the students. In other words, he's exactly the kind of teacher who would inspire his students to stand up on their desks, chanting "O Captain, My Captain."

At Abbotsford, Charlie falls in love with the rolling foothills of western New England, academia, and, eventually, the chaplain's daughter. May has returned a few years after graduation and is no longer Charlie's student, so there's nothing untoward in their relationship.  Or is there? Charlie's life is upended when first his mother, and then his much-younger half brother, Nick, rain family secrets down upon him.

LeCraw is a solid stylist, and the structure of The Half Brother works well for her story: Charlie narrates the book, but past and present intertwine as his story unfolds.  In the same way that Charlie cannot seem to choose one persona for himself, he cannot decide where to lead the reader, which story to settle on.  When Nick joins the faculty at Abbotsford and eventually becomes involved with May, who now teaches French there, Charlie no longer has the luxury of re-inventing himself with every incoming class of students, and this is where the story takes on more nuance.

It is one thing, I think, to write a good book, and another thing entirely to be able to end it well, but LeCraw mostly succeeds on both counts. I won't get into anything too spoilery here, but I will say that I am apparently a depraved enough reader that I would have preferred for Charlie and May to find happiness together without the benefit of the final plot twist. I'm sure that most other readers would not agree, though.

NB: Doubleday published The Half Brother in February and I read an advance reading copy that was provided upon my request by my sales rep. 

Howard Norman, folks. He's amazing!

Howard Norman’s new novel, What is Left the Daughter, was actually the Odyssey Bookshop’s July selection for our signed first editions club. He was originally scheduled to come to our store for an event but he had to cancel due to a family emergency. So Joan Grenier (the co-owner) and I had made a little trek to Saratoga Springs, NY, to meet Norman and to get our books signed for the club. He was as sweet and unassuming as can be and we enjoyed our time with him very much. Here's hoping he'll be able to make an Odyssey appearance on the next go-round!

There are some authors out there who, when you hear they have a new book coming out, just make you sit up and take notice, and Howard Norman is one of them. This is the story of a man named Wyatt, whose tragedy-marked early life seems to start a trajectory of doomed events over which he has no control. In the opening sequence, we learn that his mother and father commit suicide on the same day, each jumping off a bridge in Halifax, Nova Scotia, because they are both in love with the same neighbor woman. Wyatt is then taken in by his aunt and uncle, where he apprentices with his uncle to build world-class toboggans and not incidentally, falls in love with his adopted cousin, Tilda. Meanwhile tensions are building over World War II, and when Tilda falls in love with a German student at her university, it sets yet another tragedy in motion. This quiet novel is really about the provinciality of small towns, particularly economically depressed ones, and all of the attendant yearnings, prejudices, and dreams of escape associated therein. Norman’s deceptively simple prose is poignant and fitting, reminding us that life doesn’t usually come with Hollywood endings.

Close encounter with another favorite author!

April 15 is a date most Americans dread, but 2010 is a year that I, for one, will have happy memories of Tax Day. I was fortunate enough to meet Yann Martel at the NEIBA (New England Independent Booksellers Association) offices in Arlington, MA, who was in town doing an event at a Boston-area bookstore. Michael Kindness, one of our sales reps from Random House, arranged for the opportunity for us to get books signed, so while the Odyssey Bookshop wasn't able to book Martel for an event of our own, we could still get signed books for our customers, particularly those in our First Editions Club. (Give us a call or visit our website at www.odysseybks.com to order a signed one--limited quantities!)

Yann Martel signs his new book. To the tune of about 350 copies!

I eagerly devoured Beatrice and Virgil a couple of months ago in the Advance Reader's Editionformat, having loved Martel's previous novel. As with Life of Pi, Martel puts animal allegory to good use again, layered over a postmodern meta-fiction structure. Ostensibly about a writer named Henry who has lost his creativity after hitting it big with a critically-acclaimed AND commercially successful novel, the book is actually an exploration of how inadequate words are to describe the Holocaust. In fact, Martel suggests, the only way one can convey the true horrors of this world is by coming at them obliquely, not directly. This novel is so haunting and provocative that I could not stop thinking of it for days.

You know how it feels impossible to describe the look, feel, and taste of a food another person has never encountered? There is a seven page passage of this novel that will serve as the ruler against which all future food descriptions will be measured and found wanting, in which Virgil (a Howler monkey) describes to Beatrice (a donkey) *exactly* the various aspects that give a pear its "pearness." This passage alone stands out, but there are dozens more, scattered throughout, that highlight Martel's facility with prose that is beautiful, concise, and often cutting.

By the time I got to the epilogue, the Games for Gustav section, I felt utterly sucker-punched. I read the Games section hurriedly straight through the first time. The second time I paused and considered the implications of each game through Virgil's & Beatrice's eyes. The third time I read it, tears coursed down my cheeks, as the utter impossibility of answering each question of the games really began to sink in. This book is as serious, agonizing, visceral, and immediate an encounter with the Holocaust as I've ever experienced, in book or film format.

Here's a shot of Martel and me after most of the books had been signed.

Books, Books, Books, & Books

I've suspected it for some time now but my recent reading confirms it: Nick Hornby is one of my favorite authors.  I've read a few of his novels, which I would recommend to just about anyone, but it's his collections of essays written for Believer magazine that have won my undying devotion.  I'll confess straightaway that I've never picked up an issue of the magazine to read; rather, these essays came to me already in book form.  The first collection that I read, The Polysyllabic Spree, I stumbled upon in my bookstore.  The price was right (it was second hand) and I had an upcoming trip to visit my family in Wisconsin and thus would need plane reading, so reader, I bought it.  Each essay begins with two lists--books he bought that month and books he read that month (a format which I might adopt from time to time in homage)--and then meanders through his book adventures, all the while making this reader laugh with his witty cultural observations and wry self-effacements.

The second installation of essays collected from Believer is even better.  Housekeeping vs. The Dirt is funnier than anything I've read in a long time.  Possibly even funnier than the Stephen Fry book I'm currently reading.  I've also enjoyed it more because this time around he's been buying and/or reading more of the books that I've bought and/or read and he's got periodic shout-outs to indie bookstores.  He's currently my book hero, even if the stuff I'm reading is woefully out of date (Feb 2005 through June/July 2006).  Here's an excerpt: "I bought A Complicated Kindness at the Powell's bookstore in the Portland, Oregon, airport, after several fervent recommendations by the Powell's staff who looked after me at my signing.  Did you know that you [Americans] have the best bookshops in the world?  I hope so.  Over here in England, the home of literature ha-ha, we have only chain bookstores, staffed by people who for the most part come across as though they'd rather be selling anything else anywhere else; meanwhile you have access to booksellers who would regard their failure to sell you novels about Mennonites as a cause of deep, personal shame.  Please spend every last penny you have on books from independent bookstores."

Nick Hornby, folks.  Go read him now.  If you don't have any pennies left in this economy to buy the book at your favorite indie bookstore, go get his books from the library.  Or you could just ask to borrow my collection.  

In other book news, I wonder if anybody else has paired up Cormac McCarthy with the tv show Northern Exposure to write a book review.  If not, then you heard it here first, y'all.  Jim Lynch's forthcoming book from Knopf, Border Songs, is the most bizarre love child of Cormac McCarthy's westerns and the quirky characters from Northern Exposure.  Honestly, I can think of no higher praise!  There's a hint of menace lying under the surface of nearly every page but that menace is perfectly counterbalanced by one Brandon Vanderkool, a behemoth of a man who has recently joined the Border Patrol but who would much rather stay at home with his dairy cows and make shadow sculptures of birds.  His bumbling, awkward ways, which once made him the object of local ridicule, have freakishly come together to make him the best damn BP man on duty.  Brandon is infinitely endearing in his happenstances, whether he's making a bust on a would-be terrorist or discovering a hidden tunnel used for transporting drugs across the border from Canada to the US.  Mr. Lynch has delivered a book that is both warm & wary.  His sense of the ridiculous is tempered by the generosity he shows his characters, and I look forward to reading more from him.  The readers at The Odyssey Bookshop liked the book so much that we've picked it for our July FEC selection. 

Smitten. Or, How the Mountain Went to Muhammad

The title about sums it up.  I met a literary hero of mine today, the man who wrote the best book out of the last couple hundred or so that I've read.  I am in deep smit, as a friend of mine says.  My colleagues, Joan and Emily, and I traveled with about 300 books to Boston today so that we could get them signed for our First Editions Club (FEC).  Abraham Verghese wrote an amazing first novel (he's written two previous memoirs), but beg and plead as we did, we weren't able to schedule a reading at our store.  His book is a big to-do this season and every major bookstore was clamoring for him.  Being off the beaten Boston-NYC-Washington, DC path as we are, we didn't really stand a chance.

Well, if Muhammad can't come to the mountain, the mountain must find a way to go to Muhammad.  Hence packing up the car and making the roadtrip today, meeting up with two sales reps from Random House, and getting Commonwealth Hotel security to help us maneuver two flatbeds' worth of books up to Verghese's hotel room.  The day was just about perfect as far as I'm concerned: a few hours of booktalk, a nice lunch, a visit to a really nice bookstore for the first time (the Wellesley Booksmith), and, of course, going all fangirl over meeting Mr. Verghese.  He was as lovely as can be, gracious and engaging, soft-spokenly charming.  In a word, delightful.  He also happened to mention that somebody at Knopf had shown him my earlier blog post in which I gushed about his book, and he even joked that he had taken extra care getting a close shave this morning before meeting his fan.  

You know how every once in a while you read a book that you want to tell everybody about? Cutting for Stone is like that for me.  It's really everything that a great epic novel should be, with incredibly sharp observations on the human condition, realistic and complicated characters and their inter-personal relationships, all set against the wider background of important world events, with nuanced social commentary as a constant undercurrent.  I loved it.  And I have the feeling that it's a book I may turn to again & again.  

 Here's the photo of us after the books were signed.  L-R: me, Verghese, Emily RM, Joan.  Hotel security has just come in to help us get the 30 boxes back down to the loading dock.