Tag: General Fiction

Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson

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Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson – Pen/Faulkner Award Winner

Snow Falling on Cedars is kinda’ the type of books I read, but well not quite. While the basic storyline is the murder trial of Kabuo Miyamoto there’s a lot more that to it that sets this Pen/Faulkner Award winning novel apart from a typical book in the mystery genre. The novel provides not only a great trial mystery that keeps you guessing until the end of the book, but it provides a glimpse into the lives of Japanese-Americans during World War II and beyond.

The setting Snow Falling in Cedars is San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound in the state of Washington state. The island is the home of a large Japanese population Kabuo and his family arrived on the island in the early 1900s, working first in the mill and then in the island’s strawberry fields They worked hard and were prospering. In the early part of 1942, Kabuo’s father Zenhichi approached Carl Heine,Sr, owner of the farm where they worked to see if he could purchase seven acres of land. Heine agreed and Zenhichi started making payments. Then came December 7th and the lives of the Japanese-Americans on the island were turned upside down, Soon notice was a given that they immediately had to pack up their world. They were being sent to an interment camp called Manzanar.

Hatsue Imada’s life was altered also, for years she had been seeing the son of the publisher of the town’s paper Ishmael Chambers. They would meet each afternoon in the hollow of an old cedar tree. In December of 1942,  she had to make a choice between her Japanese heritage or her love, knowing that her mother could never accept Ishmael, she eventually chose her culture and married Kabuo. Now she was standing by his side at his murder trial, a trial that Ishmael has to cover for his newspaper!!

By 1954, Kabuo was a fisherman who ached to get back the land that his father wanted to buy from Carl Heine, Sr. But when Carl Heine, Jr.now also a fisherman is found dead Kabuo in the waters where Kabuo was fishing. Kabuo becomes a prime suspect for the murder. Snow Falling on Cedars is much more than a murder mystery, as it addresses beautifully the tragedy that befell the Japanese residents of San Piedro Island.

From the Los Angeles Times….

“Haunting… A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper.”  

As I was reading Snow Falling on Cedars, I thought about my own family. My father’s family was from Germany. His mother Charlotte Meyer was born in Dresden in 1903 and his father’s father came from Germany in 1882. Both Charlotte and her father Herman Meyer became  US citizens in the early 1940s, for obvious reasons. What struck me was that while Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to interment camps nothing similar happened to German-Americans! Again the reason is simple German-Americans look like everyone else!! What could have happened of my mother who was English/Irish wasn’t allowed to date a German boy!  Looking Japanese was one of the things that Kabuo had to fight, during his trial. He had to fight not only the evidence but also the jury’s prejudices!

Bottom Line: Snow Falling on Cedars is one of those remarkable books that works on so many levels as a mystery, a love story and a history lesson all wrapped up into one! I loved all of the characters and each level of the book. A few days after finishing the book I found Ed King another of David Gutterson’s books at the Dollar Tree and it now sits on my TBR shelves!! It is certainly a 4 to 5 star okay 4.5 star book for me!!

Book 43 for 2015!

The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes

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The Shining Girls Didn’t Shine for me! (Book 39 for 2015)

So – have you ever zipped through a book, enjoyed it, and yet felt that you never really connected with the book? That may be the best way to describe how I feel about The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. It obviously wasn’t how Tana French felt about the book, on the cover of the book French’s quote reads…..

“Utterly original, beautifully written, and I  must say, it creeped the holy bejesus out of me. This is something special” 

I originally discovered this book in a post titled 10 Novels That Will Scare The Hell Out Of You written by Julie Buntin for The Huffington Post. When I found the book in the library I read the last quote on the back cover of the book…..

Imagine Poe and Steinbeck in a knife fight where Poe wins and writes Jack the Ripper’s version of :The Grapes of Wrath Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls is even scarier than that” Richard Kadrey author of Sandman Slim

Ok so I was prepared to be scared – I wasn’t.! The novel follows the exploits of the “time-traveling serial killer Harper Curtis, who discovers a depression-era house that opens to other times. Within the house are the names of the five “shining girls” that Harper knows he is supposed to kill. Harper jumps in and out of the lives of these girls until he discovers the right time to kill them. He is successful until the last shining girl Kirby Mazrachi survives Harper’s brutal attack! Teaming with Chicago Sun-Times reporter Dan Velasquez, Kirby sets out to find and stop Harper!!

First things,first I read this book very quickly and enjoyed it, BUT I was never really scared! I also never figured out why Harper wanted to kill these women other than their names were written in his handwriting on the walls of “the house” In fact I never really connected with Harper i.e I didn’t like the character or sympathize with the character. For that matter I didn’t even sympathize with his victims. Throughout the book I kept waiting for something to happen that would connect all the killings, but that never happened!

I did kinda’ like the two other main characters in The Shining Girls Kirby and Dan. Kirby was a plucky survivor with her mind and heart set on finding and settling the score with Harper. While Dan has his heart and mind set on protecting Kirby!!

Bottomline:  I would give The Shining  Girls three stars- I found the book ok, but I certainly didn’t find it as compelling or scary as others have found the book. For me the book just lacked something – it may have been the depth of the characters – but for me The Shining Girls just didn’t shine!! Having said that I at some point try another book from Lauren Beukes like Moxyland or Zoo City

Ok so tell me why I should have loved this book!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014 Reads – How to Write Short has an impact on reading Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone!

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Winter's BoneLast night with music from the Hank Mobley Quintet playing in the background, I finished Daniel Woodrell’s great novel Winter’s Bone. While the book is not classified as a mystery, the plot of the novel centers around a big one. Where’s Jessup?  Jessup is the meth cooking father of the book’s central character, 16 year-old, Ree Dolly. Ree has a big problem, if her Pa doesn’t appear for a court date, Ree and her two brother’s, and Ma could lose their family home,  which Jessup posted as collateral to make his bail. So Ree sets out, braving the bitter Ozark winter, searching the hills for her father. But many of the tight-lipped inter-related folks, who live in the hills, live on the wrong side of the law, and would rather fight than give up their secrets. But Ree needs to push on, for her home and the ones who are in her care,  but will she be able to live with the answer??

Now I could go on and on about the wonderfully  drawn-out characters in the book, from Uncle Teardrop to Ree’s Mom, and the various themes, but I want to focus on another aspect of the book and that is Woodrell’s prose.

I started reading Winter’s Bone (Book 12 of 2014)the day after I had finished Roy Peter Clark’s book How to Write Short: Writing ShortWord Craft for Fast Times.(Book 11) Clark’s book focuses on the need to write short in today’s fast paced world, of Twitter, Facebook and the rest of social media. The book is filled with examples of short writing including; tattoos, advertising slogans, epitaphs and Tweets! The first Chapter is Collect Short Writing, which I had no problem doing while reading Winter’s Bone. Throughout the book, I marveled at how Woodrell packed so much punch, in so few words! My awe started with the book’s opening sentence….

Ree Dolly stood at the break of dawn on her cold front steps and smelled the coming flurries and saw meat.

So what did that sentence tell me. First, it’s morning, it’s cold, it’s going to snow and I’m somewhere meat hangs on trees, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more!!

Several of the examples of writing short that I noticed opened chapters….

She became ice as she walked.

The needed skill was silence.

Hillsides knit with ice came apart.

Then there were longer sentences that just blew me away….

A picnic of woods fell from Gail’s mouth to be gathered around and savored slowly

Ree waited kneeling for several minutes, kneeling as raised hopes fell to modest hopes,slight hopes, vague hopes, kneeling until any hope at all withered to none at all between her pressing hands.

I guess the question is would I have noticed these short gems, had not just read How to Write Short. probably not, so thank you Mr Clark!!

Summarizing, great book, full of unforgettable characters, and fine writing, read it!!  If you do read, it be on the lookout for those powerful short sentences

Book 4 of 2014 – Plainsong – Kent Haruf

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PlainsongAt the beginning of his novel Plainsong author Kent Haruf provides a definition of Plainsong

the unisonous vocal music used in Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody or air

And that is just what Haruf’s 2000 novel Plainsong (and Book 4 of 2014) is the simple unadorned story song of a period of time in the lives of seven main characters living in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. These characters are: the Guthrie’s, schoolteacher Tom Guthrie and his two boys, Ike Bobby who are nine and ten years old respectively, the pregnant seventeen year-old Victoria Roubideaux,Raymond and Harold McPheron, and Maggie Jones.

The story chronicles a time in their lives from the fall in the year the Victoria discovers that she is pregnant to the spring when the baby is due. During those months these characters and their lives intertwine in ways as they face problems and situations like one would find in any small town in America. Tom and his boys are dealing with a wife and mother who is so despondent that she spends her days in her room and eventually leaves their family. Victoria, after she discovers that she is pregnant is thrown out of her house by her mother. The McPherons are two elderly farmers who have spent their entire lives, alone together on their farm 17 miles away from town. Maggie Jones is a school teacher at the same school as Tom, is dealing with a father slowly sinking into dementia. Victoria after being thrown out by her mother turns to Maggie, Maggie takes her in,but things don’t work out because of her father she turns to the McPherons, who in turn take Victoria in. One of the treats of the book for me was the development of the relationship between the McPherons and Victoria,from the early days when they explained futures and pork bellies to her, to the buying of her crib and to their worry when she leaves.

Once again this is a book that I am reading as part of my attempts to read more deeply and get more out of a book than just a good story. As such I’ve read several of the available book club study questions, which I again struggled with, however, I did look at some study guides which spoke about the themes of the book. Two of them stood out to me one was the loss of innocence, which certainly applied to Ike and Bobby, Victoria and also the McPhesons, who were innocents when it came to having a woman around particularly one who was seventeen and pregnant! The other was family which I think is certainly a strong theme in the book! At Barnes and Noble’s website I found this quote in a piece about Kent Haruf!

In a 2000 interview about Plainsong. “What I want to suggest at the end [of the book] is that at this point, at least this day and this point in their lives, all these people have found a place in a small community — it may even be an extended family — in which they can connect with other people and find solace and communion.”

So I have to wrap this up now and get to work at Target. If you’ve read the book and would like to add a comment, please do, and if not give it a read while I move on to Eventide!