My book club loved this book. I was less enthusiastic, I think in part because there are so many characters to keep track of and it felt like there weMy book club loved this book. I was less enthusiastic, I think in part because there are so many characters to keep track of and it felt like there were so many different stories to follow that I lost the thread of the narrative once too often. But great characters, as always with a novel by Louise Erdrich, and the thing that stuck out by a mile is the instinctive distrust her Native American characters have of almost everyone, including family and tribal members. They've been screwed over so many times, from their parents all the way up to the federal government, that they have come to expect the abuse and the betrayal. Erdrich's genius is that she makes the reader feel just that suspicious, too. One of us said she was so happy when Patrice's father died because as a reader she just didn't want to have to deal with him again, but Erdrich makes even his absence into a threat, and that feeling of being threatened extends to other characters, too. The first time Barnes showed up I was sure he was a pedofile--while else would he be coaching all those young boys on the boxing team?--and I remained wary of him all the way to the end. I think I still am.
But this novel is all Thomas', and I was so glad someone gave him a new lamp for his desk when he got back from D.C., having saved his tribe from "termination," just another word for extinction in this context. All Erdrich's characters manage to retain a robust sense of humor, too, one of the most attractive things about them and what keeps me reading her books. This whole book is worth reading for the paragraph on Millie correcting a typo. I'm typing this review on a laptop and all I need is the backspace key....more
The coming-of-age story of a 69-year old widower, who discovers a charm bracelet hidden in the toe of his wife's boot that leads to the discovery of hThe coming-of-age story of a 69-year old widower, who discovers a charm bracelet hidden in the toe of his wife's boot that leads to the discovery of her hidden (from him) past, and to unsuspected depths in himself. Sweet....more
Told in the first-person by biologist Caroline, this is the story of the six-month journey undertaken by her and her husband Patrick, who travel from Told in the first-person by biologist Caroline, this is the story of the six-month journey undertaken by her and her husband Patrick, who travel from Bellingham, Washington, to Kotzebue, Alaska, via rowboat, ski, inflatable raft, a borrowed canoe, and plain old shoe leather. It's a personal journey, an effort for the two of them to spend time together alone in the wilderness where they are most comfortable and where, they believe, they are most themselves. They meet with great kindness along their trail from everyone they meet, including the childless First Nations woman in BC whose husband brings them home for lunch to the expat Italian caretaker at one of those grandfathered-in private cabins a national park was created around. They bear witness to great changes being forced by climate change, felt especially at Herschel Island, which (like the northwest shore of Alaska) is crumbling into the sea. There are other changes, too.
Watch. Listen. Learn. These were the tenets of the earliest naturalist, the instincts of indigenous people around the globe whose survival depended on knowledge gained from the land...Observation can guide us to wonder. It's also the foundation of all scientific inquiry...
But
...for most contemporary scientists, including myself, this is no longer enough. Innovative technologies have made classical scientific techniques--many of which relied on an observer's eyes--obsolete. It's not necessary to spend hundreds of hours peering through binoculars to determine what a bird eats; a genetic test of its feces provides the same information.
I am immensely admiring of the forethought and the stamina and even the desire it took to plan and make this trip but I have zero envy. The storms of the Inside Passage, the mosquitoes on the MacKenzie River delta, the days of rain through the Gates of the Arctic, being stalked with intent by a black bear thirty miles from Takahula Lake, out of food and waiting for a resupply by an airplane that's five days late (they didn't bring a fishing pole?)--yeah, no. But there is this, too, as Caroline writes of their arrival in Kotzebue
I know we may never do anything quite this grand again. But I will also never forget what is possible.
A good read, especially from a comfortable chair in front of a wood stove with a fire burning in it. And Caroline would appreciate the mug of chocolate at my right hand....more
Very well written and excruciating read. I will never forget women as cuerpatomaticos (ATM machines) and "If you can't trust a librarian, who can you Very well written and excruciating read. I will never forget women as cuerpatomaticos (ATM machines) and "If you can't trust a librarian, who can you trust?"...more
Reading this book prompted a long and heartfelt discussion in my book club. I found it revelatory in that we've all heard about Jefferson and Sally HeReading this book prompted a long and heartfelt discussion in my book club. I found it revelatory in that we've all heard about Jefferson and Sally Hemings but no one talks about how the other slaveholding FFs had every opportunity to rape their slaves, too. As a white woman, I am privileged enough to be able not to think about it. This book made me think about it, and about time, too.
On the level of craft, Kearse transforms the oral history of her family that has been handed down from voice to voice and generation to generation, from its beginnings in Africa through their lives in America today with a mastery that makes every character and every event absolutely real. Although I confess I found Mandy's voice so compelling that during the first read I skipped through to complete her story to its end.
We cannot as a nation even begin to repair and redress race relations in this country until we truly understand what has happened in the past. This family memoir is one step in that direction. May there be many more....more
Well-written and extensively researched bio not only of the eponymous Kate Carmack but of the Tagish culture in whose backyard the Klondike gold rush Well-written and extensively researched bio not only of the eponymous Kate Carmack but of the Tagish culture in whose backyard the Klondike gold rush erupted. Vanesse writes
...like an incantation of magic, the very word Klondike invokes abundance, the vindication of the American dream and the triumph of the individual in its most measurable manifestation: wealth.
Not so magical for Kate, a Tagish woman whose white husband abandons her Outside. Her brother brings her home, and Vanesse writes
[Kate] knew where her wealth was--not in Seattle or California, not in George Carmack's bank accounts, or his hotel, or his Microbane Medical stock. It was right there in the Yukon, with Jim and Graphie and Mary and all of her family. Among Animal Mother's mountains, she knew the right ways to act, surrounded by those who loved her always, the Dakl'aweidi and the Deisheetaan.
I'd heard that story that Kate, not her husband, had been the first to find the gold that started the rush, and I am choosing to believe it even if we do get it only secondhand. What could be more mundane than finding a handful of gold nuggets in the soapy water of your dishpan? It sounds more likely than any of the many stories George told about it.
In these covid-19 times it is interesting that Kate died of the Spanish flu, the post World War I influenza pandemic that took at least 50 million lives worldwide. What is sobering is is that the Spanish flu's existence was first recorded in March 1918. Kate died in March 1920, two full years later.
One thing I especially wanted to mention: I really liked the way the story of Kohklux and Seward foreshadowed the story of the Nantuck Boys. The first story is well known to even the most cursory reader of Alaskan history; the second, not so much but every bit as worthwhile and illustrative of the clash of cultures wrought by the Gold Rush. ....more
Author Anthony Doerr receives an invitation to be a fellow at the American Academy in Rome on the same day his twins are born and three months later hAuthor Anthony Doerr receives an invitation to be a fellow at the American Academy in Rome on the same day his twins are born and three months later he, his wife Shauna, and the twins are off to Italy. This is a travelogue
[at the grocery store asking for tomato sauce]"Sugo di pompelmo," I say. "Con basilico."...It's not until I'm back on via Carina, halfway home, that I realize I was hollering for grapefruit sauce. Grapefruit sauce with basil.
a partial history of Rome
[on Trajan's column] It is [Trajan's] ratified history, his political billboard, his public memoir. Earthquakes, windstorms, a half dozen military occupations--in 1,893 years, nothing has toppled it.
a partial history of Roman art
Four years of work, eight-hour days, lying on his back. In the quiet we imagine him, big-eared, broken-nosed, left-handed Michelangelo, young when he did the ceiling, old when he did the back wall, walking here on a drizzly morning like this one, limping down the halls in his dogskin boots, the day's plaster wet and waiting, the vault silent...I will remember, more than anything else, the feet of Jonah, fifty feet up, muscular and arched, dangling above the Last Judgement, his torso contorted in his throne, his expression seemingly in awe both of the miracle of his own existence and of the ceiling laid out above him.
a front-row-center seat to the death of a pope
It's as if I've wandered into the biggest tailgate party in history, three days too long, the enthusiasm faded to a raw-throated, glassy fatigue--some people are crying; many are asleep.
the writer's daily agony in scratching out just one sentence fragment of usable prose
I spend a half hour changing a character's name across four pages of text, then finish out the hour by changing it back to the original name.
but above all it's a parenting book. I cringed every time they put the twins into the stroller and took them out into Roman traffic. Doerr is at his best when he's writing about his children.
All Henry and Owen want to do is walk, and all they do when they walk is wipe out.
His wife Shauna is nearly invisible, as we never learn anything about her other than she likes to play "bus golf" and that she's so wonderful a mother that at one point she's hospitalized for dehydration and exhaustion.
To enter a hospital in Italy, we learn, is to relinquish all sovereignty over time.
Doerr is determined to be present, to be in the moment, to suck the marrow from this experience and to absorb as much as he can about Rome, Italy, and Italians.
"Italians," our friend George Stoll says, "will stop anything for pleasure." And the longer we're here, the more we feel he's right. Espresso, silk pajamas, a five-minute kiss; the sleekest, thinnest cell phone; extremely smooth leather. Truffles. Yachts. Four-hour dinners.
A good book to read if you're planning a visit to Rome, if only so you'll know to visit Mt. Testaccio, the mountain made of amphorae. Yep, gonna make you look it up....more
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