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"The Rise and Reign of the Mammals" by Steve Brusatte

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Subtitled: A New History, From the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us



A few hundred thousand years after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, a tiny individual primate called Purgatorius died in the Purgatory Hill badlands of Montana. Its tiny fossilized teeth led scientists to conclude that it was the species that broke away from its insect-eating cousins and was the first primate. Much, much earlier, in the Carboniferous period of Paleozoic Era, about 330 million years ago, the first synapsids split apart from their reptilian contemporaries and started the lineage that led to mammals.

These are two salient points in Dr. Steve Brusatte’s
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals. Brusatte, PhD, is an American Paleontologist who teaches at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The book’s notes identify him as the author of the international bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. The paleontology advisor on the Jurassic World film franchise, Brusatte has named more than fifteen new species, including the tyrannosaur “Pinocchio rex” (Qianzhousaurus), the raptor Zhenyuanlong, and several ancient mammals.

This is a book by a scientist for the general public. It’s conversational, not overloaded with jargon, and personal: he declaims his own take on the state of the science, and peppers his insights with idiosyncratic anecdotes about the principal intrepid scientists whose discoveries preceded his own. His reverence for these pioneering specialists — his heroines and heroes — never flags.

If you have an interest in the evolution of mammals, I can’t imagine there is a better book or a better author with whom to start.

 


 



Q & A With Edward Hamlin, Author of "Sonata in Wax"

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I peppered Edward Hamlin, author of the soon to be released Sonata in Wax, with questions about his novel, and he was gracious enough to answer them. Below are his replies to my impertinent interrogation.

[WARNING: Some of the information that follows contains what might be construed as clues to outcomes, or broad hints, about plot, authorial intent, or sources, etc., pertaining to Sonata in Wax. If you definitely don’t want any information on the book, that probably means you intend to read it, which is certainly the best outcome. If that’s the case, you can give what follows a pass, and return to it after you’ve finished reading the book.]


Basso Profundo: In a piece of correspondence, you mentioned that I “got what you were trying to do" in the novel. What did you mean by that?

Edward Hamlin: When I said I thought you got what I was doing, that was mostly about the centrality of the actual music and the musicians’ interpretation of it—the fact that the music (not just the sonata) was in some ways an important character in the story. Also, you saw how the dual timelines each contribute to the unearthing of the mystery, with the reader having to pick up clues from both.

Let me extract your other questions one by one:

BP: I like how Jacques’s performance of the piece is handled so obliquely. And that you had Loeffler and Casals in the room for it. I doubt I would have had the sophistication or the know-how to handle it as low-key or as subtly as that. The sonata you describe is wildly ahead of its time, with its apparently free form and its jazz passages—I loved it. The presaging of jazz seems like a bold choice on your part. Did you ever have second thoughts about describing it that way?

EH: There were a couple of key plot events that I decided to handle somewhat off-stage—the first performance of the sonata in the Boston timeline, which we experience only through Elisabeth’s fond but fraught recollection, and Robin’s actual breakup with Ben, which we experience only through Ben’s painful memories. These pivotal events are not played out in scene. I could have gone either way with it, but in both those cases the central thing was the protagonist’s lived, emotional experience of the events; I wanted the reader to directly and empathetically experience that response, not so much the events themselves. The emotional gestalt of the events was what was most real for them, so I wanted it to be most real for the reader, too.

As far as the jazz elements in the sonata, no, I had no second thoughts about that. They were always part of the piece musically.

BP: You also did an amazing job of capturing the zeitgeist of the time—what horrors they went through, both the butchery in faraway places and plagues at home. Did you rely on any family lore for that theme, or was it more general, in the well known way a novelist uses his imagination to achieve verisimilitude?

EH: It was mostly research rather than family lore or pure imagination. The really minute details—Elisabeth walking out at night in her “Louis heels,” for example—came from research, but then I had to decide how to use them. Two helpful resources were my friend Ellen Knight, the Winchester town historian who helped me immensely by unearthing articles about the Sanborns all through the writing, and my firsthand familiarity with the Sanborn mansion, which I’ve visited twice. Aigremont has been reclaimed and restored and is now a cultural center. It’s where my grandmother, Helen Sanborn, grew up, as portrayed in the novel. And it’s where my great-grandfather, Oren, frittered away all the money, none of which made it to my generation.

Ellen Knight was very helpful in filling in the blanks in my knowledge of the house. For example, the layout of the basement morgue and the parking spot in back where the corpses were loaded onto trucks, or the back stairs where Westerlake and Elisabeth meet—these were things Ellen helped me fill in and visualize, sometimes with photos she went and took even though the pandemic was on. She was wonderful.

BP: You sure made economical use of your characters. Having Nikki and bringing back Robin as an ally was a very generous tack for your readers. I found it gratifying. Was it part of the plan from the get-go?
 

EH: No, I didn’t know about that until deep into the writing. I had the sense that Nikki would always be at Ben’s side, and I hoped Robin would reappear in his life, but it wasn’t until the big concert began to develop that all the details came to light. I like that element of surprise.

I actually wrote a coda, parallel to the Plum Island coda, to explore what happened with Ben and Robin after that night, but decided in the end not to go there. Better that we all wonder.

BP: Are any of your fictional world class musicians based on actual people? This would probably take a one-word answer, since you obviously can’t name names.

Only obliquely. I’m not immersed enough in the classical music world to set up a guessing game like that. Jérôme Assouline was at one point an actual musician instead, but I later fictionalized him because I wasn’t comfortable making up so much dialogue for the actual, living musician. Ana Clara has elements of several concert pianists of her generation, but she’s her own unique mix of brilliance and hubris. I had a lot of fun creating her, but I really don’t see us being friends anytime soon.

 

Many thanks to Edward Hamlin for his gracious candor. These answers are great, sir!

"Sonata in Wax" by Edward Hamlin

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Your cup will run over when you read Edward Hamlin’s thrilling Sonata in Wax. The author supplies two enthralling narratives which are linked by five frail pieces: Bell Graphophone wax cylinders of a sonata recorded in Massachusetts during the First World War. Both threads contain the dark stain of perfidy: the archaic story arc takes much of its color from the “Kaiser’s War,” which turned Europe into a charnel house; the more recent narrative features the more personal savagery of a revenge-minded  piano-playing diva whose gargantuan ego has been injured. This novel will sweep you up in its hundred-year timeframe, make you marvel at Hamlin’s deft balancing act as the two head to their dénouements. It’s a beautiful book.

The present-day narrative starts with world-renowned recording engineer, Ben Weil (our hero), receiving five wax recording cylinders, recorded 100 years prior at a private piano recital in Boston. An antiquarian from Maine has shipped them to Ben at his Chicago studio with the request that he identify the artist/composer if he can, and please report back to her. Ben immediately becomes intrigued, and he somehow fits his research into his already crazy-hectic schedule.  

The story from one hundred years earlier deals with Elisabeth Garnier, a pretty young Frenchwoman, who works for Alexander Graham Bell, presenting the company’s wares to Boston’s Brahmin elite. Her father Jaques is the virtuoso piano player who has composed the marvel of a sonata. Ben’s research turns up a few tidbits of arcana, but through a misunderstanding arising at a point when Ben is ill and vulnerable, Ana Clara Matta, Brazil’s prima piano virtuoso finds his attempt at scoring the piece and thinks it’s his own composition. The ‘2018 Chicago’ narrative consists of Ben trying in vain to contain the lie that’s not entirely his fault. In his insular world, in which he is a widely respected and sought-after world class professional, the exposure will sink his reputation and end his career in disgrace.

As a layman music lover, I am thrilled at Hamlin’s descriptions of not only lovely passages of music, but also his knowing touch with the subtle flourishes and emphases world-class players add to make them their very own. It is these touches of genius in the rarified air of the very best that make virtuosos rich and famous. He is equally strong when capturing the zeitgeist of World War I Boston; the war plows an entire generation of French men into their graves, and this horror is followed up by another equally ghastly scourge, the 1918 flu pandemic.

Hamlin alternates his timelines expertly, unfolding his two plots to build a terrific tension. His two protagonists are vivid, honestly drawn, and very sympathetic. His secondary characters are fully nuanced, and even his portrayal of historical characters rings true. The clever construction and unerring imagining of characters is the true draw here. This novel builds tension, ties several generations of a prominent American family together, celebrates brilliant music and its equally brilliant performance, and leaves the reader in awe. This is Hamlin’s first foray into full-length fiction; he already won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize in 2015. Take up this lively and imaginative work, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.






 

"Homo Deus" by Yuval Noah Harari

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Subtitled: A Brief History of Tomorrow

The ubiquitous public discourse about the moral, technical, and ethical implications of  artificial intelligence serves as a pivot point in, and may actually wake people up to, the baffling future that we are in fact facing today. Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and social philosopher, has done an excellent job recapping a broad range of the outré possibilities humankind faces today. The fact that he calls his book Homo Deus gives a broad hint about some of the things we may see in that future.

Harari briefly treats the prevalent fictions in earlier historical epochs, from our hunter-gatherer roots through to today to trace how these fictions grew and how completely they dominated human thought. First Nature, next God, and finally human beings themselves came to rule the world and to give meaning to the universe. But this historical era won’t last forever, he says. It will give way to a future which features much more extensive human-computer interchange, where machines will know us better than we know ourselves.

Consider: humans already have a broad range of artificial implants in their bodies. They regulate our heart rate, they help motor-compromised people use their limbs, blind people see shades of light, and formerly deaf people hear. Nanobots are currently being used in cancer detection and treatment. We can measure our pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and glucose level with something we simply wear—no implant required. Harari is not alone in thinking that medicine is trending even today toward upgrading the health of healthy people, in addition to its traditional role in treating disease.

Harari spends a significant portion of his book describing the relationship between brain activity and emotion. It’s an acknowledged fact neuroscientists have detected the relationship between areas of the brain and such functions as emotion, perception, language, and so on. Harari hangs his hat on the link between brain processes which we can observe and their corresponding emotions and states of consciousness, and the claim that these process are not free at all, but probabilistic. Here, however, is a quote from one third of the way through the book:
 

However, nobody has any idea how a congeries of biochemical reactions and electrical currents in the brain creates the subjective experience of pain, anger or love. Perhaps we will have a solid explanation in ten or fifty years. But as of 2016, we have no such explanation, and we had better be clear about that.”
 

Nevertheless, the author arrives very quickly at the conclusion that not only are deterministic neurochemical reactions responsible for your choices and outlook, but soon, a network of computers, or super computers, will compile all your Likes, hates, opinions, reviews, and arguments in cyberspace, and build an algorithm of you. You’ll be able to compare two job opportunities, alternative places to live, even choose between potential mates…you won’t have to do your own soul searching, the algorithm will do it for you.

And compilation of everything that I am encompasses and presupposes the most objectionable assertion in the book: that our experiences will mean nothing if we don’t upload them for the world to see. Keeping secrets from the network of information, or otherwise limiting the free exchange of it, becomes the worst crime you can commit. I’m sure I’m just being damned old fashioned when I find this concept a ghastly affront. I cannot see a future in which I agree that I don’t feel anything unless somebody else tells me I do.

Where are the medical advancements headed? Harari sees a possible future where humans who can afford it are given the ability to see in much broader range of the EM spectrum, or can comprehend what it’s like to be a bat, or a dolphin, or an ant. These are the superhumans of the title. One grand thematic contribution of his book: the belief that human life and emotion and freedom will eventually become obsolete (along with free elections and freely consumed goods and capital) in favor of the recognition that organisms are algorithms (already scientific dogma today), and that Earthly existence (or existence anywhere in the universe) will simply be the rapid, efficient, and free processing of information.

This is not a difficult book to read, although long sections of it require you to accept statements that cannot be verified. Harari even says this. This is a visionary piece which deals with human trends and possibilities. As such, it is a highly useful and thought-provoking document. Harari remains one of the more clear-sighted and accessible cultural seers currently available to us. Take this volume up, definitely, if current trends and their possible futures interest you.




 

"Offerings to the Blue God," stories by Shirani Rajapakse

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In her latest collection, Offerings to the Blue God, Shirani Rajapakse revisits themes on which she has expressed herself so forcefully in the past: the cheapness of non-combatant human life when bullies fight wars; the absolute terror many women must feel during life’s ordinary transactions; children forced into a lifetime of slavery, and the particular hopelessness when that child is a girl; and the self-defeating and sometimes infuriating steps one must take to follow pious rituals in supplication to gods whose representatives on Earth are only in it for the money. These themes recur with renewed focus and force in Offerings, plus we glimpse other tropes and new sophisticated structures which flare and flourish in her writing too.

For instance, Rajapakse shows terrific aptitude with stories that harbor surprise twists and “gotchas” at the end, and in each of the two cases here the door slams or the precipice disintegrates, and the results are indeed shocking, even ghastly.

The memorable character in a predicament, and the unadorned, straightforward language are both here in abundance, as we have come to expect from Rajapakse. Her decision to present her evidence in simple, forceful declaratives serves her purpose best, and she uses the tactic to good effect again. She lets her anger show without flash or authorial rant; she lets her readers’ natural vituperation well up from the stories.

But, like a couple of stories published here, this collection itself flies a silver lining, a final story that provides the “gotcha” of a young woman’s decision to turn her back on superstition, cynicism and greed. She makes an emphatic and highly symbolic gesture of discarding the old, which amounts after all to a scrap of paper scrawled with pious claptrap, into a drain in a gutter, flowing with mud and filth. 


Pick up Offerings to the Blue God for her fresh take, and for the promise of hope for a rational world in the future.




 

"The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer

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The Story of a Marriage is an intimate meditation on the unknowability of other people, even people we love, as in spouses, friends, or relatives. A housewife in mid-20th Century San Francisco assumes that she understands her husband, knows who he is, and knows he loves her. This challenging novel is an example and an exercise in finding out how wrong such assumptions are bound to be. As stiff a challenge as this piece was to write, Andrew Sean Greer handles all the structural and all the narrative-order issues with a sure hand, never missing a beat or a cue. The result is convincing and memorable, and satisfies the reader that the author’s powers were equal to the task. The result has satisfying twists and turns which make a gratifying whole.

The story weds Holland, a strikingly handsome man who effortlessly captivates everyone, and Pearl, a woman whom Holland finds beautiful, much to her surprise. They seem destined to be together: they were teen sweethearts in wartime Kentucky before Holland was conscripted; they meet again a few years later by utter chance at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. They embark on married life and have a son, but a few years into this son’s life, a man comes to Pearl’s home and introduces himself as someone who knew Holland during the war.

Thus begins the heart of the novel. It takes quite a bit of time for Pearl to learn why this man, himself handsome, well-dressed, and mannerly, visits their home. Once she does, however, she feels her life begin to spin away from her, her young family and her way of life in jeopardy of disintegrating. The novel consists of her reaction to this realization, the dear assumptions she must abandon, and a suspenseful discussion as she readies herself for wrenching change.

All this is, as I say, very competently handled by Greer. However, Holland remains a cipher throughout most of the book. He’s the fulcrum, the nucleus of the story, and without knowing his mind, or how to read the signs of how he feels, we are held in suspense. The ultimate reveal occurs very near the end of the narrative, but even after the result is made known, this character remains mysterious.

And perhaps that is Greer’s pièce de résistance, the fact that we as the readers remain just as much in the dark about this man as do the characters in the book.

This novel is disciplined, logical, and satisfying. We dwell for a long time in a woman’s mind, a woman who suddenly has a lot to lose, and she comes believably across in that role. It evokes the zeitgeist of the time (the U.S. just as the Korean War winds down, but the Cold War remains at its peak) to a T, and has twists and turns enough to surprise  and give us reason to appreciate the work as well-handled.

 


 

"Hamnet" by Maggie O'Farrell

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In Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell takes on the staggering task of imagining Shakespeare’s family life in the 1580s and ‘90s, and particularly, the devastating effect of the 1596 death of his son Hamnet, aged only eleven years. In the face of this forbiddingly risky enterprise she executes a stunning, bravura narrative of the Bard’s family milieu before and particularly after this tragic event. She sets this framework up and aligns it with events we sketchily know about; the result is a vivid, emotional, and utterly believable tale of the composition of Hamlet, the first—and perhaps most personal—of the immortal playwright’s great tragedies.

O’Farrell places us squarely in late 16th-Century Stratford, with vivid people and their fraught relationships; a muddy, smelly backwater town which includes the Shakespeare family and its company of glovers—dominated by John, the brilliant poet’s ostracized two-fisted abusing father. The story of Will and his sweetheart/wife, Agnes (which I, following hints in the text, pronounced with the Continental diphthong, An-yess), while speculation, provides charm, depth, and color. When pestilence strikes its devastating blow and takes their son and heir, Hamnet, the family splinters, and each member (father, mother, two sisters) suffers their own private isolating grief.

The father can turn this personal tragedy into an acclaimed, all-time triumph of art. O’Farrell imagines the immortal playwright doing his very utmost to right the tragic wrong; the production of the play, and an unexpected journey for Agnes form the captivating, gratifying climax.

 

As book-length speculation goes, this novel will stand the test of time. With exceedingly well-known protagonists and events, O’Farrell answers her self-challenge with a work of art of her own. She has fashioned an extraordinary novel: artistic and beautifully paced, she lays it out in a very gracious way that honors her readers; brilliantly does it meet and satisfy the flinty gaze of the expectant reader. So brilliantly that it exceeds any anticipation we might have of plot, result, personality, or setting. Fully, heartily, confidently recommended.

 




"The Cause" by Joseph J. Ellis

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Subtitled: The American Revolution and its Discontents

It was clear to me that in The Cause Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer-winning historian, who sets a high standard for himself, and has covered the American Revolution comprehensively, will go over much of the same ground in this entry. I didn’t expect to learn as much new material as I did, however.

We know George Washington struggled throughout the war to equip, pay, and feed the Continental Army, and really never succeeded in convincing Congress to spend the funds necessary. We know he waged a desperate war, a war in which he could never engage the British toe-to-toe; he led his army through force of charisma and loyalty, and benefited from an inordinate amount of pure good fortune. In this volume, though, we clearly see that Washington’s staff was far from unified in its admiration for their leader; we encounter Washington’s tardy realization that New York was no longer the key battleground at the end of the war; and that the dilatory system of information from and to England played a pivotal role in the outcome.

Some historical facts that I had not known before picking up this volume: I was not aware that George III had literally bought and paid for a majority in Parliament who owed their seats, their very careers, to His Majesty. I learned of the infighting at the top levels of the military on both sides (Horatio Gates and Arthur Lee both had it in for Washington; Sir Henry Clinton was despised, and his orders as commander in chief widely ignored, on the British side).

I finally comprehended the animus in the erstwhile colonies against forming a federal government—they had just succeeded in throwing off a remote, greedy, and tyrannical government. The last thing they wanted was to set up a new one to replace it. And finally, Ellis avers that the war the British wanted to fight was doomed to failure from the start. The only historical fact you need in support of that assertion is the savagery with which the militias in the Southern states treated the British regulars.

Other tidbits worthy of note: the Oneida tribe, alone among the Six Iroquois Nations, supported the Colonists’ cause; and the bulk strength of the French fleet, instrumental in the British Army’s final entrapment, was only off the coast of Virginia because of the approaching hurricane season in the Caribbean.

Needless to say my understanding of the Revolution and the politics surrounding it is more complete and nuanced than before reading The Cause. Yours will be too; if the American Revolution interests you, and you haven’t picked up this book, I urge you to do so right away.



 

"Nickel Mountain" by John Gardner

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At the outset of John Gardner’s Nickel Mountain, Henry Soames owns and runs a diner by the side of a Catskills highway. He does a better job of that than of controlling his own giving heart; because of his charitable nature, he ends up not only married to a young woman who is pregnant with someone else’s baby, but also opens his home to a Jehovah’s Witness no one likes or trusts, and who may be an arsonist. The novel’s events swirl around Henry, its enigmatically passive-active agent at the center, and through it all the locals for better or for ill, prove that in Gardner’s hands, human nature is endlessly fascinating.

Also as fascinating are the apparent machinations of the gods, or impersonal forces with which humans must contend. A young would-be car designer and racer throws his dreams away and attends Cornell Ag school, as coerced by his businessman father. Henry’s bride finds him impossible to live with part of the time, but also unalterably admires his good acts. Other regulars come to Henry’s roadside diner and complain or shake their heads about nature, or the follies of their fellow characters, and nothing apparently changes over time. The town’s doctor, who doubles as its justice of the peace, carries around and expresses the anger and confusion for everyone’s benefit.

The tides of fortune and folly pursue all; no one is immune. Some suffer more than others, as usual, but through all the health challenges and commercial difficulties Henry wrestles with, his surprising wife and child turn out to be improbable blessings, even to the point of a comprehensive upgrade of his business. Gardner prepares us for certain confrontations which end up occurring outside the narrative, and it’s hard to find the purpose in some of the conflict on offer.

But the direct, persuasive, effective passage is always within the author’s repertoire: early on (at p. 66 of 454), as Henry emphatically blubbers on on some subject or other:

“But was he saying anything at all? he wondered. All so hopelessly confused. And yet he knew. He couldn’t do it and maybe never could have, but he knew. He was a fat, blubbering Holy Jesus, or anyway one half of him was, loving hell out of truckers and drunks and Willards and Callies—ready to be nailed for them. Eager. More heart than he knew how to spend.”
A constitutional inarticulateness afflicts the hero Henry: his compelling ideas, in the midst of his trying to express them, become amorphous as he loses his way. In spite of the mental and emotional challenges, he blunders ahead anyway, and comes out somehow ahead of the game. This, and the plain, direct, and vivid descriptions the author gives the other characters and their misadventures, drive the narrative, and attract and reward the reader. It’s all a mystery, and the Henry Soameses of the world, for all their difficulty in expressing it, know it better than the rest of us.

 


 

 

"This Other Eden" by Paul Harding

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At a climactic moment in Paul Harding’s This Other Eden a naked, skin-and-bones old man walks off Apple Island and wades out into the Atlantic Ocean carrying a few motley belongings over his head. He struggles against the outgoing tide, just as all the characters in this brilliant, haunting book struggle against the bitter, inexorable tide of American racism. In this spare economical work, Harding reaffirms his penchant for yoking highly effective, beautiful language to serve his lofty goals. This is truly astonishing and gut-wrenching work; after his Tinkers won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, his current offering has been shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

Harding sets his tale in 1911 and 1912, to coincide with the real-life Maine legislation to evict a small group of settlers from Apple Island, a small, hardscrabble bit off the state’s coast. First settled in 1792 by a former slave and an Irish woman, Apple Island has been home for more than a century to abjectly poor people, some directly descended from Benjamin Honey, the original slave, and others whose forebears immigrated and stayed. Collectively they display an uncertain racial heritage; most are undernourished and only rudimentally educated, and barely eke out an existence.

The retired missionary Reverend Diamond tries to tend to their souls and to educate their young; this well-meaning soul doubts himself even to the very moment he brings destruction and diaspora. The only exception to the eviction plan is Ethan, a young and highly talented artist, who rates the consideration not only by virtue of his gift, but also his light-skinned, red-haired appearance. The preacher arranges for him to be sent the the home of his distinguished friend in Massachusetts. The boy Ethan,15-ish years old, meets Bridget, a lovely maidservant in the old gentleman’s mansion, and in a bright, golden chapter, they fall in love in their own Edenic time.

The state takes it upon itself to catalog the evils of the other residents, observed and checked off on a list, to be “epileptic, feeble-minded, insane, interbred…paralysis, migraine, neurotic, criminalistic, sexually immoral, self-abusive…” etc. etc., and proceeds to arrest and assign some of the squatters to state institutions for the insane. They consign the rest to the four winds. Thus is this other Eden cleansed.

There are levels of prejudice, levels of narrative nuance, reverberant images, and thought-provoking language here, enough to satisfy, and indeed to surfeit, the most demanding palette. Here is Esther Honey, direct descendant of the island’s original patriarch, musing over her offspring as they return from digging up clams about 33% through the book:  

Esther followed their progress and as they got closer she found herself overjoyed by them, each her own little modest person, each unself-consciously taking care of one another, even as they teased and screeched and laughed and complained.
There is the careful and minute observation of Ethan’s artist’s perception of color: how his sister’s skin changes color as daylight and evening proceed. The staggering sights and sounds of busy, crowded Massachusetts as Ethan tries to process it all after his arrival there:
Shock and aftershock struck and echoed and shaped the vastness of the world across the inside of his skull, or so it felt. It was no more than seeing his first automobile idling at a train stop, and so also seeing his first driver, in a mud-spattered long coat with a pair of goggles strapped to his face…It was no more than seeing brick mills that appeared to be larger than the whole island he came from, with smokestacks that appeared not just to reach the clouds but actually to be making them or possibly venting them from the insides of the earth…”
Such vivid passages draw the reader’s sight and capture the reader’s heart in this novel which pierces to the bone. Take this up and compare it to Harding’s prior triumphs, Tinkers and Enon. It has the same mastery of image and plot, and hits as deeply as either of these masterpieces on the higher thematic plane of faith and prejudice, and the higher artistic plane of language and image, rhythm, mood, and reflection. From Harding, another for the ages.