Author Study #2: Geraldine Brooks

When I've done something that I feel particularly proud of, but in an embarrassing sort of way, I fall into Bridget Jones Diary speak: Have accomplished great thing. Will be remembered forever. Suspect am something of a genius.

Which is ridiculous, but that's the point. I am not a genius, for simply reading two wonderful books in a row. In fact, I'm the lucky beneficiary of Geraldine Brooks' genius. This is truly an author to study and emulate.

From the (actually three) books I've read, it is apparent that Brooks has some personal themes she prefers to write on, and that she is a stunningly detailed researcher. Still, her books are more different than they are similar. The first one I read, The Secret Chord, demonstrated her aptitude for deep characterization, the long arc of a family narrative, and careful research about one point in history. Since then, I've seen her investigate not two, but six other time periods, and tell stories from a dizzying number of perspectives and voices. No wonder she won the Pulitzer. (Also, she was in college when I was born. So, I've got time.)

People of the Book (2008)
Historical Fiction

Reading a review of this book on Goodreads is what piqued my interest in Brooks to begin with. A book about a book, and all the people who were involved in its making and survival through the centuries? Yes please. Hanna, an Australian conservator of ancient manuscripts is called to consult on a famous haggadah, a Jewish book of Passover, when it emerges from the rubble of war in Sarajevo in the 1990s. The book and its rescue, by the way, is real, but the rest of the story is the fiction part. Using tiny artifacts from within its binding, she traces the journey of the book through that war, World War II, Vienna in 1890s, Venice during the Inquisition, Spain and Africa in the time of Columbus. While Hanna has an amazing knowledge of these varied times and places, and learns a great deal about the book through her investigation, the people of the book appear to tell us their own stories, giving the reader more details than Hanna could possibly know. The way the book traveled between the people it touched is often left a tantalizing mystery, though, to us and to Hannah.

One difference I noted in the writing of these three books is that this is the only one with multiple points of view and I think the characterization suffers a little for it. Perhaps it is harder for her to get into the mind of the characters as she switches back and forth, but they take a few pages to find their voice. It's a sacrifice that is worth making, though, to tell this story and immerse us so richly in the surroundings of the characters, as only that manner of story telling could do.

From this book as well as The Secret Chord, it's obvious that Jewish history is important to Brooks. She seems to endow the Jewish characters, the biblical and the historical and the fictional, with the most admirable and honorable qualities. However, she also gives them vices, and presents some honorable Christians and Muslims, despite the atrocities that most of the different religions commit against each other through the ages. That is a lasting impression, the ageless ability of humans to devalue each other, which is apparent in TSC and the next book I read as well.


Year of Wonders (2002)
Historical Fiction

This one is only set in one time period. I know, so lazy of her. This one time and place, though, is fascinating and repulsive and wondrous enough. Just as the haggadah is a real book in The People of the Book, the year 1668 and the village of Eyam in England really existed, and really did fall victim to a horrifying plague. The wonder, though, is that the village decided to close its borders so as to protect their neighbors from the plague. You can imagine the microcosm of humanity that occurred in that year and that place, from the very best of people to the very worst, including murder, witchcraft, love, learning, innocence, forgiveness, revenge, greed, and so many more facets of our intricate natures.

The narrator, Anna, is complicated and wonderful all on her own. A miner's widow who supports herself as a servant to the vicar and his wife, she learns from them as well as from the town herbalist. She is at times loyal, jealous, generous, courageous, and selfish, as we all are. The personal journey that Anna takes in one year, all while staying in the confining borders of her own tiny village, is the wonder of the book. And just as you think you know what the culmination of her journey will be, she surprises us again. This is the depth of character I expected after reading TSC and felt was missing in POTB. Perhaps it's because she had only one time period to study (and study she did, in amazingly specific detail), and only one cadence of speech to enter, and only one delicate psyche to enter into, that Brooks was able to develop a character of such depth.

Her Jewish theme was left behind in this one, but the glimpse of humanity's worst tendencies was present, tempered by slightly more emphasis on our saving graces. Anna points out in one instance that neighbors are more likely to help those they know than to help strangers, and possibly this is the main point of all Brooks' stories, that of extravagant grace for those we love and even more extravagant love required to save a stranger from the violence inherent in all of us.

By the way, I've advocated lately for quitting books that you're not engrossed in. Life is too short to read bad books. But I've been told that I quit one of Brooks' books, March, too quickly.  So after I finish the stack on my bedside table, I'll try it again.

Here's the stack. (I'm rich. Mwahahaha.)

Author Study #1 Plus some other stuff

In a library check out spree long long ago, I set out to read several books by the same authors. I had it on high authority that Timothy Egan is a great historian and worth my time, with at least two of his books being must reads. So I found those two plus his debut novel. At the same time, I found two books by Geraldine Brooks, whose newest novel I really enjoyed, but her fan fiction of the March family in Little Women left me utterly bored. 

I wondered, as I looked at my armloads of library books (which are now severely overdue, sorry NCRL), how would these authors stack up against, not each other, but themselves? What made me love The Secret Chord but hate March? Would I like Egan's nonfiction as much as fiction, since it's by the same guy, even though fiction is my first love? In other words, it was time for the ultimate literature teacher geek out: an author study.

I can now tell you, like with most things in my life right, my intentions were purer than the result. I am less than half way done, and I've detoured in the middle. 

First, the Egan. I read The Winemaker's Daughter  what now seems like eons ago. It's his debut novel after writing prize winning journalism. I love that it's set, like most of his work, in the Pacific Northwest. I could picture each bend in the road as the main character, a thirty something single woman with a vague career as an architectural consultant, travels back and forth between Seattle and her family's vineyard in north central Washington (ie Chelan). She also travels to Italy and Montana, which presents the stretch of my imagination I crave as well. I found the plot to be a little meandering; though there are several climactic moments, deaths even, they get lost in the well researched but overly detailed prose about the geographies of both regions and the concepts of wine making, sociological preservation, forestry and wildfires, salmon fishing, and of course, familial obligation. It's a rich and nuanced book, though it took me too long to finish because I wasn't enthralled. I was interested to see how it compared to Egan's nonfiction.

I started with The Big Burn, even though The Worst Hard

Time was higher recommended, because it also happens to be the Columbia River Reads book for this spring. It feels kind of fancy to be reading the same book as all the smart people at the library. Last time I read one of these, it was The Boys in the Boat and I felt pretty smart for reading it. I don't know why. I've heard that some people don't like reading on e-readers because others can't see what smart books they're reading. I would be that person, if I liked e-readers. However, I was not smart enough to enjoy this book. It was a slog. Egan used the same level of detail and intricacy to paint an elaborate picture of the lead up and fall out from a huge wildfire that burned parts of three states in 1910. About a third of the way through, I was still learning about Teddy Roosevelt's favorite sports, as a set up to his development of the National Forest Service, and therefore fire fighting, and so on. The part about the actual fire was more interesting to me, probably because it was more narrative, but still overly explained. I felt relieved at the end, though confused to not hear more about how this fire affected fire fighting policy today. I thought that's why Wenatchee was so interested in this particular story. 

As far as author study, I found that the parts I enjoyed least about Egan's fiction carried over into his non-fiction. He is a master of research and brings so many elements into his story, but I think it's too much for me, a character-driven reader. I still plan to read The Worst Hard Time but I needed an Egan break. I was watching too much TV because I was unmotivated to read. 

Thinking that I'd start with the Brooks, I was instead derailed by a recommendation by my nephew. There is just something exciting about reading the same books as the younger generation in my family. Whenever they want to share a book with me, I am eager to find out what they see in it and get to know them a little better through it. So instead of Brooks, I read the young adult book This is Where it Ends. I actual read with some nervousness because this is exactly not my type of book. Children die. It's about a school shooting, told from the point of view of four main characters and several social media accounts. In that way, and in the problems and personalities of the characters, it is clearly directed at a modern generation of young adults. The kids struggle with weighty things like abuse, sexuality, and family health problems, as well as with the more expected problems like grades, crushes, and college decisions. This layering of issues is very real for our kids and books like this make me long to be a support for the kids in my life. It's also obvious how this book appeals to the young adults reading it. One line at the end has a character wondering if we can every really know another person, even in a crisis situation like a shooting. I think it's at the heart of the issue, in the book and in kids--the need to be known. 

So I read Egan's books in over a month and Nijkamp in just a few days. We'll see how long it takes me with the two Brooks novels I want to read before I post again. Meanwhile, maybe I'll have some more of my own novel to share. And if you didn't catch the last post, the second excerpt of my manuscript, scroll on down. 

Novel Excerpt #2

August 1952

She bent to close the low windows in the sitting room as the wind picked up, pushing aside white curtains worn thin and soft from washing. The parching daytime heat of late summer was giving way to an evening storm. Hopefully the rain would be light; they didn’t need any damage to the fruit, nearly ripe on the trees.

William coughed in the boys’ room down the hall. He’d caught a cold and was having trouble shaking it. She was trying to keep him inside during the preparations for harvest so he didn’t get worse. Small luck of that, she sighed. The five-year-old’s adventurous spirit would be the death of her. Last month he’d tumbled off his uncle’s tractor; thank God he hadn’t been crushed under the wheels. When he was only three he’d fallen asleep in the barn behind a row of apple bins and they hadn’t found him until long after dinner hour. She loved every hair on his blond little head, but she didn’t know how much more she could take.

And now this. This new worry, pressing on her from the inside out.

As she went about the evening chores, her thoughts circled around like a dog chasing its tail. She washed, dried, and put away the dinner dishes and thought about it. She swept the wide planked wood floors of the back hall and tidied the pile of shoes and thought about it. Checking on each of her children in their beds, she couldn’t help but think about it.

She pulled the thin summer coverlet over James and Michael, who at eight and twelve still slept as actively as they had at Willy’s age, throwing the quilts back in their boyish dreams of running and climbing. It was early in the evening for them to be asleep, but they’d had a long hard day of helping in the orchard. It sometimes seemed too much to ask of them, especially since school had started before Labor Day this year; going to school on weekdays like boys and working in the orchard on weekends like men had to be hard, but it couldn’t be helped. Willy was curled up in his cot on the floor, nestled in a circle of sheets and blankets like a puppy. One door down, Mary was sleeping on her side in the big bed with her hands folded under her cheek, looked like an angel compared to her big brothers. She’d outgrown her crib, but didn’t have a bed of her own to sleep in yet. It worked right now for her to sleep in their bed but when John returned they’d all have to shuffle around again.

And the dog in her mind continued his ceaseless circling, coming back around again to her one big worry, constant and palpable.

Finally at leisure to sit in the front room, she reached over and turned on a lamp. Night fell quickly in the upper valley. She tore a sheet of paper out of James’s school notebook and leaned over the small table next to her chair.

What to say? How to write him? Her face, so carefully composed and even a little hard during the day, had begun to crack in places. The exhaustion, the worry, the loneliness began to show in the droop of her eyes and the lines around her mouth. She wanted to do right by her family, but it was becoming harder and harder to know what that was. When she was a little girl, it had been easy to know what was right. She would watch her mother and father work hard in their orchard, attend Meeting on Wednesdays and Sundays, share with neighbors and Friends what little they had during Depression years. Things were scarce but sureness, of faith and family and simple living, abounded. Even as her parents followed the Friends way of letting her learn about their faith through observation, depending on God’s guidance rather than their instruction, she’d found her way. She’d chosen a spouse from in Meeting, stood up to proclaim their vows together, felt the Spirit of the Lord move within her.

Now, though, the Spirit had been silent at Meeting for so long. She still believed that God was within her, as in every person, but He was hard to feel. Other emotions had taken over, more desperate and immediate and demanding. She tried so hard to practice peace and love to those around her. Life just wouldn’t be peaceful to her in return. The blank paper in front her was an unknowable future, shadowed by storm clouds at the window and her own doubts.

“Dear John,” she began.