Hard-to-put-down-no-matter-what-is-going-on-nearby reads
A beautiful late summer afternoon, and as I look out over goldenrod and purple loosestrife (I know, I know it’s on the Vermont Noxious Weed Quarantine list, but I think it’s pretty.), out toward trees tinged ever so slightly with bronze, I am thinking, what books should I tell about this week?
I know I’ve mentioned Kristin Hannah before. She’s a big favorite with historical fiction lovers. I recently read one of her lesser-known novels: “Magic Hour,” published in 2006. I’d never heard of it, but the other day my friend Cindie handed it to me on the tennis court and said, “Here. You’ve got to read this. It’s so good. I couldn’t put it down.” And how could I refuse? I tossed it in my tennis bag with my sneakers and started it that night.
Hannah is a prolific writer, with 22 novels to her name. You may remember me writing about “The Women” (about a combat nurse in Vietnam) and “Winter Garden” (two sisters unraveling the mystery of their Russian-born mother). I find her work is dependable; it guarantees a good yarn. I haven’t been disappointed yet.
Born in 1960 in California, Hannah graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in communication. Then, after working at an advertising agency in Seattle, she attended the University of Puget Sound law school. She practiced law in Seattle for a few years, then became a full-time writer. Her first novel was written with her mother, who was dying of cancer at the time, but this book was never published. Hannah now lives with her husband and son on Bainbridge Island, a city-island in Puget Sound.
“Magic Hour” takes place in the author’s own stomping ground, in a town called Rain Valley, “tucked between the wilds of the Olympic National Forest and the roaring gray surf of the Pacific Ocean … the last bastion of civilization before the start of the deep woods,” and centers around the surprising discovery of a little girl in a tree, right outside of Swain’s drugstore, in front of Lulu’s hair salon.
“It was Mrs. Grimm who noticed the girl,” Earl Huff, one of the town’s older cops, tells police chief Ellie Barton. “I was getting my hair cut — and don’t say ‘What hair?’ He turned slowly and pointed. ‘When she climbed up that there tree, we called you.’”
So begins the gripping story of the mystery of the origins and identity of this speechless, dirt-encrusted, beautiful (underneath all the grime), extraordinary 6-year-old feral child — a story that involves numerous interlacing lives and relationships, and that highlights the ingrown, close-knit complexities of growing up, staying in and returning to a small town. Besides the strange story of the wild child herself is the story of two semi-estranged sisters: Ellie, police chief, and Julia, a prominent child psychologist returning to Rain Valley after a bizarre, career-upending scandal.
“Magic Hour” begins with a frontispiece from a nursery favorite, Margery Williams’ “The Velveteen Rabbit, which beautifully conveys and auguries the deepening warmth and trust that wavers and builds between its principal characters.
Cindie was right. This was a hard book to put down. I recommend it if you want a good, hard-to-put-down-no-matter-what-is-going-on-around-you read.
Though two people have told me they struggled with this book, I adored “Tell Me Everything,” Elizabeth Strout’s newest novel, which, like much of her recent work, takes place in Maine. In it we meet some familiar Strout characters, such as Olive Kitteridge, who is now 90 years old and living in the retirement community called the Maple Tree Apartments. This is one of my favorites by Strout, and I am an ardent fan of all her books, which tend to be as slow-moving, unflowery and restrained as the Yankees she writes about. Like many of her other novels, “Tell Me Everything” is spare, moving and oddly poetic.
But this novel had a bit more excitement folded into it than some of her others. A murder investigation, actually — which involves town lawyer Bob Burgess, an old friend of Olive, when he agrees to defend Matthew Beach, “a fellow who could not remotely organize himself,” accused of murdering his mother.
“This is the story of Bob Burgess,” the novel begins, “a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is 65 years old at the time that we are speaking of him. Bob has a big heart, but he does not know that about himself; like many of us, he does not know himself as well as he assumes to, and he would never believe he had anything worthy in his life to document. But he does; we all do.”
I love the way this author writes. I want to save it, savor it, sink into it, swim in it, bask in it, reread it over and over. So uneffusive, spacious and thoughtful, filled with silences … New England-y and deep as the sea.
But this story is about more than Bob Burgess. It’s also about Olive Kitteredge and her friend Isabelle, who almost moves, and Bob’s brother Jim and his wife who is dying, and their son Larry and his wife, and Mrs. Hasselbeck, to whom Bob takes groceries, and Matthew Beach, who either did or did not murder his mother, and his sister Diana, who was a peculiar child who later became a high school guidance counselor, and Bob’s wife Margaret, a Unitarian Universalist minister who Olive doesn’t particularly care for, and more.
An important and recurring thread is the relationship that develops between the rather curmudgeonly Olive Kitteridge and the writer Lucy Barton, which commences one day after a thought takes hold of the former “on one of those days in October, and she pondered it for almost a week before she called Bob Burgess. ‘I have a story to tell that writer Lucy Barton. I wish you would have her come visit me.”
The two cautiously share stories about people and things that have happened. Simple stories. Yet stories hinting of mystery, hidden depth and human eccentricity. The unusual friendship between the two is artfully developed: tender, testy, testing and true.
Also beautifully rendered is the friendship between Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess, both of whom are married (to other people) but who have a surprising affinity for one another. They find acceptance and nourishment on their walks along the river. Achingly tender.
Though not a page-turner in the usual sense of the word, I couldn’t put this book down. The New York Times Book Review puts it well: “Strout works in the realm of everyday speech, conjuring repetitions, gaps and awkwardness with plain language and forthright diction, yet at the same time unleashing a tidal urgency that seems to come out of nowhere even as it operates in plain sight.”
So true. Highly, highly recommend. Along with all Strout’s other books.
Happy reading, everyone.