"Songdogs" by Colum McCann

Colum McCann’s first person narrator in Songdogs, named Conor, goes on a quest to understand his parents and perhaps find his long-estranged mother. This trip is not trivial in terms of miles covered — it takes him from hot, dusty Mexican towns, to a forest ranger lookout above the tree line in Idaho, to his windswept native Ireland — nor is it lacking for vivid colors, diverting characters, or a discussion of the long-standing grievances between his parents. His trek is absorbing, at times frustrating, but finally touching as reunited father and son gently spar, one generation against the other, and come to easy terms with each other.

Conor, in his early 20s, travels with a monstrous backpack in a passive, desultory way, and finally arrives at his father’s home in a small town in western Ireland. He surprises him by showing up, and the main current-day narrative kicks off. This story, as Conor tells it, becomes the central thrust of the novel, almost as if by default. Conor vividly remembers his mother, a captivating señorita from a sun-blasted town in eastern Mexico. Michael, Conor’s father, cut a swath through the remote town after mustering our from the war, and settled down with 19 year-old Juanita.

The narrative thus follows two time lines, one current, and one in the past. In the present-day story Conor finds Michael, who now lives a diminished, alienated life — it’s squalid: he neglects his hygiene, doesn’t do laundry, or pay any attention to the keeping his house. Their reuniting doesn’t spark any dramatic changes, but reacquaintance results in a subtle evolution between the two, where hard truths are acknowledged, and new understandings bloom.

This novel contains the vividly personal language of the questing youth. It contrasts sharply with the received platitudinal wisdom spouted by the hermit-like father. Don’t conclude that this is a depressing read; it’s way too vivid and plotted far too cleverly. It has as its core a classic human story of a family splintered by strong personalties and faded dreams. To catch an early example of McCann’s undeniable gifts, Songdogs serves beautifully.

 

 
 

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"The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead

 

Colson Whitehead takes us on an unforgettable ride in The Underground Railroad. He displays the horrific cruelty endemic to the America's Peculiar Institution, and shows how it and violent oppression ruled the relationship between blacks and whites during the first half of the 19th Century. Never ending spirals of hope and defeat put these rails on a roller coaster; it’s a vivid, gritty, honest, and ultimately awe-inspiring travail.

We witness the life-and-death flight of Cora, a Georgia slave girl, who crosses the threshold of womanhood just as the story unfolds. Hers, of course, is a harrowing tale; she escapes her bonds and for a time believes herself free, only to fall into the clutches of the authorities again. This sequence holds our attention and dashes our hopes on multiple occasions. Through it all Whitehead keeps America’s violent, sneering racism  front and center.

The author surprised me by employing his title—a well-established term in American history—in a literal sense. But this playful (?) use allows him a series of episodes in which our fugitives struggle with hopelessness in utter darkness, unsure at times if they are even traveling in the right direction.

Whitehead draws out his climactic events superbly, while drawing in his readers. This is a fine adventure: we live and die with each twist of the plot. The author presents a textbook example of a suspenseful, harrowing chase while instructing us in the history of escaped slaves and the settlements in which they began their new lives. A rewarding read in more ways than one.

 

 

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"Loom in the Loft" by Jay Black

 

In his novella Loom in the Loft, Jay Black presents the bildungsroman of a young but precocious boy n the Canadian province of Ontario who comes under the spell of a beautiful neighbor woman. This calculating person takes advantage of his innocence and through no effort of her own, reaps a windfall far greater than she could ever have imagined—or deserved. It’s a spare but promising piece from a writer whose poems in English and French have won multiple awards.

Protagonist Drew is a pubescent lad, tall for his age and sophisticated beyond his years, whom a 30 year-old neighbor woman takes advantage of. In exchange for initiating him she works him hard, cooking, cleaning, doing the yardwork, helping with her weaving business, and running errands. (Please don’t expect anything explicit or pointedly titillating here; intimate events are handled very obliquely.) Another neighbor, a nonagenarian widow, adds tension in a surprising twist, and Drew’s life—and the novella—gain momentum and intrigue.

I’ve indicated the piece is spare; the prose is clean and serviceable—I appreciate Black’s straightforward approach. He adds depth and a bit of color to his main character, since his interests and actions are just what they should be. Or nearly so. I could have done with slightly more building-up of his sophistication and worldly wisdom, but this only counts as a quibble. Making him two or three years older would have done the trick, for me. The author also features a faint touch of metafiction, which is an ambitious stroke for this piece, and it feels unnecessary. Overall, though, Black paces his story well, withholds the right details when he needs to, and portrays his characters’ faults and virtues with a gifted writer’s instinct.

On balance, this is an enjoyable fiction that surprises with its well-built momentum; its virtues far outweigh its meager flaws and augur well for this writer’s future work.

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"The Rings of Saturn" by W.G. Sebald

 

Translated from the German by Michael Hulse.

W.G. Sebald eschews character and plot and barely has a unifying framework for his 1998 novel The Rings of Saturn. Instead of these orthodox fictional features, he spends his ten chapters describing his endless walks around Suffolk near the east coast of England. During his peregrinations he considers a range of intriguing topics in the most engaging and evocative language I have read in a very long time. The Rings of Saturn is inspired, wide-ranging, deep, surprising, and unpredictable. Not to mention superb.

Sebald leads off saying he traveled to the east of England to do a study of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), a unique and forward-looking scientist and philosopher. Sebald mentions Browne a few more times in the book, but we learn as we go that this will not be his principal focus. He traipses across the Suffolk heath in an exhausting walking tour: he tries to find Somerleyton, a great estate of the region, and recaps its many wondrous and excessive features. He gets lost in his wanderings, seemingly more than once, but manages to find a writer he was going to visit—Michael Hamburger, who, as a boy, fled Nazi Germany with his parents in 1933. He considers what it must have been like to experience that, and begins, oddly, to assume the man’s experiences and consciousness as his own.

And just as he rambles across Suffolk, the author’s mind takes trips far and wide. There is no subject beyond his scholar’s ambit: whole towns that once held important places in the regional and national economy have only one tower left before it too will surrender before the advancing sea; the tale of the Ashbury family estate, of some repute in the area, but which at the time of writing, Sebald finds the home is dilapidated, with only the ground floor habitable, and the family distracted and engaged in useless activities, like the building of a boat which the builder acknowledges will never sail, and the sewing together of bridal veils which will never be worn; and finally, the story of Reverend Ives who is visited in around 1800 by an exiled young French nobleman. This vicomte falls in love with the Reverend’s daughter during his stay, but returns to France, heartbroken, having confessed that he is already married. We learn at length that the young man is the world-renowned writer and memoirist, the Vicomte de Chateaubriand.

 

The somber palette of loss and decay pervades Rings of Saturn. But that does not make for an unpleasant book. On the contrary, Sebald’s treatment of his theme of the universality of change brings the reader constant surprise and wonder at his erudition. The author travels by foot as if in a dream—indeed, lengthy passages regale of remembered dreams, often going on for pages, in astonishing, impossible detail. This book will treat readers to the author’s erudition, his courtly prose, and his inventive format. Not to be missed!

 

 

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