Book Review: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

So many people have asked me for my take on Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman: A Novel that I figured I'd just write about it.

The short version:  I really, really enjoyed it. I started it almost as soon as it arrived Tuesday a week ago and finished it about 48 hours later.

The long version:  To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book. Ever. When that is where the bar is set, everything else falls short of it. GSW is not TKM. But, it's a story that helped me feel satisfied, for the most part, about how characters turned out (GSW is set about 20 years after TKM in the 1950s). The best part about getting to revisit some of American literature's most memorable characters is that we get to see what tomboyish, precocious Scout is like as an adult. The best parts about her haven't changed. She's still sassy and she's still thinking for herself.

Scout's heart is still the same, but when she returns home for a long visit to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City, she's aghast that it's not the same place she remembers from growing up there (Thomas Wolfe, anyone?). That's something I can relate to. After almost three decades in one county in North Carolina, I relocated to suburban Atlanta. My visits back were often at first, but since the first couple of years, the time between visits has increased. Now I go back once or twice a year. Something amazes me each time. Downtown Raleigh has become a place with great restaurants and other places to go after work and on the weekends instead of the ghost town it was after 5:00 15 years ago. The nearby town where I went to elementary, middle and high school has changed dramatically. Young families actually move there from Raleigh because it's a great place that's tripled in population size since I was in high school. I could go on.

What some readers and critics have focused on is the difference we see in Atticus, who is, in GSW an elderly man who has passed the torch on to another, younger lawyer but still shows up to his law firm most days. He's still a pillar in the community. Just as Scout sneaked up to the courthouse balcony to watch her father defend Tom Robinson, she finds her same spot one afternoon to see where all the men in town have gone. As it turns out, it's a meeting that has a pro-segregation bent to it.

Don't many of us have an idealized notion of who are parents are and what they stand for when we're kids? At some point, for most of us, that changes. Suddenly, we find out that our parents are real people. And most of the time, real people are complicated. Discovering who are parents actually are as people is a big part of what it means to grow up.

Seeing Scout as a grown up is my favorite thing about GSW.      

Another visit to the Little Free Library

Over Thanksgiving break I was with my family again at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, where I once again stopped by the Little Free Library on the Loop to see what there. I donated my most recent review book, Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel: A Graphic Novel by Anya Ulinich. It's fun to think about who might read it next.

Little Free Library is a wonderful thing. Is there one in your neighborhood?

A Little Free Library Discovery

Last week I vacationed with my family in Wrightsville Beach, NC, which is my favorite place to read a book. It rained all week so I got a lot of reading in. Between showers one afternoon I was out for a bike ride. There's an adorable house just off the main road and for the first time I noticed a Little Free Library had been installed in front.

If you're not familiar, Little Free Libraries are bigger than a birdhouse and smaller than a dollhouse. They open and inside people leave books for others to borrow and enjoy. I first heard of them a few years ago but hadn't yet found one to visit.

This particular Little Free Library is just off "the loop," a two-and-a-half-mile sidewalk for running, walking and biking. Therefore, this Little Free Library boasts the clever name "Little Free Library on the Loop." Inside it are a guest book and information on the Little Free Library program.

I went back the next day and donated my extra copy of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

When I went back again the following day, my book had already been borrowed. I love this, and I want one!

Two Fictional Takes on Zelda Fitzgerald

I liked the window in on Zelda Fitzgerald and her tumultuous marriage to writer F. Scott Fitzgerald by fictional psychiatric nurse Anna Howard in Call Me Zelda: A Novel by Erika Robuck. Anna becomes a Fitzgerald family employee, leaving her job at a Baltimore residential psychiatric clinic. She has a way with Zelda as much as anyone else does, and Zelda and Scott come to depend upon Anna for help. Soon she is spending most of her time at their home, caring for their daughter and completing other household tasks that fall outside the scope of her original agreement with the Fitzgeralds. As those interested in the Fitzgeralds' personal lives already know, their marriage, home life and finances were in a constant up-and-down motion, and good moods could shift at any moment.

What I liked about this book is that we got to know Anna both during and away from her work with the Fitzgeralds. We had a window into her world too, and it was one I was very interested in reading about. Anna has experienced tremendous loss in her personal life before the novel begins but remains very close to her extended family. Not only is she a gifted and devoted nurse, but she is a caregiver for her aging parents and close to her brother, a priest. At the risk of giving the book away, I like that Anna got her happy ending.

The book pulls away some from the Fitzgeralds in the second half of the book when Anna remains in Baltimore and Zelda Fitzgerald goes to stay at Highland Hospital, Asheville's psychiatric hospital. Though Anna thinks of Scott and Zelda often, she has not been in their employ for over a decade when a letter from Zelda causes Anna to make another journey for her former patient. This trip ends in Asheville the day before a fire destroyed the main building of the hospital, killing several patients who were not able to escape from their locked rooms. Zelda was one of these patients.

Directly after finishing Call Me Zelda, I dove right into Guests on Earth by Lee Smith. I had the pleasure of hearing Smith read from this novel a few months ago, which really makes a story come alive for me. I liked Guests on Earth for many of the same reasons I liked Call Me Zelda: it's an observer's description of the Fitzgeralds, except this time mostly Zelda. I thought Guests on Earth was a good one. I enjoyed reading it (I've never met a Lee Smith novel I didn't like), but it had less Zelda in it than I envisioned before I started reading the book.

Using a similar technique, Smith writes her novel using Highland Hospital as the setting and the narrator is a fellow patient, a girl named Evalina. Evalina's life at Highland, including her encounters with Zelda, is what makes up the plot of this novel. Evalina Toussaint is a misplaced young girl in need of a caring environment in which to grow up, and ends up at Asheville's Highland Hospital where Zelda is also a patient. The two get to know each other during Zelda's early days at the hospital, but in later years the two don't have a close relationship, though each of the women is still a Highland Hospital resident.

This book really is about Evalina's life, most of which happened at Highland Hospital. Evalina befriends many fellow residents, takes a leave of absence to see the world with a man she doesn't end up marrying as planned, and winds up back at Highland as a part-time staff member. Like Call Me Zelda, Guests on Earth ends with the hospital's tragic fire but the getting there (even though I knew it was coming) seemed rushed at the end.

Both books paint Zelda as troubled but extremely talented at writing (Call Me Zelda) and dancing (Guests on Earth). I'm just fascinated by the Fitzgeralds.

Book Review: The Storycatcher by Ann Hite

The Storycatcher by Ann Hite

Published by: Gallery Books

Published on: September 10, 2013

Page Count: 352

Genre: Southern fiction

My Reading Format: ARC provided by NetGalley

Available Formats: Paperback, Kindle, Audible and audiobook CD editions

My Review:

Ann Hite has woven the voices of several female narrators together in a spooky, don't-turn-your-back-for-one-second tale about the past, the people in it and how it can all come back to haunt. The stories of several women, alive and dead, are steeped in mystery. Pastor Dobbins' wife and daughter, Lydia and Faith, respectively, live on Black Mountain, North Carolina, with their servant Amanda and her children Will and Shelly. The women and their teenaged children steer clear of Pastor Dobbins whenever they can - his temper is fierce and he's hiding something. Nearby is Miss Maude, an older woman who is teaching Faith and Shelly how to garden. When the ghost of a woman who died in childbirth five years before shows up, Pastor Dobbins starts acting even more squirrelly and the women in his household and employ are on edge, particularly after Will makes a hasty departure without saying goodbye. Will ends up in coastal Georgia serendipitously finding family member Ada Lee who has some stories of her own. The ghost has a story to tell too, and she can do it most easily by inhabiting Faith's body to communicate, warning the women about what might be coming their way. Shelly and Faith, who have for years tried to stay out of each other's way, find their stories intertwining in a way they never thought possible. The tensions between Pastor Dobbins and the women continue to build and something has to give, and does.

I enjoyed Hite's ability to create so many distinct voices - it must have been difficult to keep it all straight in her head while writing. There were times though that I had difficulty remembering which voices were living women and which were the spirits. I'd find myself having to flip back and forth more times than I would have liked to keep it straight. For this reason alone, I'd recommend a physical copy of this book rather than the Kindle or audio versions. Still, I very much enjoyed seeing how all of the characters' stories played out and how difficult situations resolved themselves by the end of the novel. There were times where as the reader, I knew more than the characters, so I could tell what they were probably about to walk into. This didn't spoil it for me though. It was fun to see if my predictions were correct and how characters handled sticky situations or the delivery of bad news. The characters are memorable and resilient. I'd like to reread it one more time to soak them all in.

Three and a half out of five stars

If you liked this book, you’ll like Flannery O'Connor (for the voices she gives her characters), The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and Nightwoods by Charles Frazier (western North Carolina mountain setting and more good characters).

Book Review: A Different Sun by Elaine Neil Orr

A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa by Elaine Neil Orr

Published by: Berkley Books

Published on: April 2, 2013

Page Count: 388

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: Paperback

Available Formats: Paperback and Amazon Kindle e-book

My Review:

Emma Davis knows she is called for something special. It's something different from the life her sister Catherine is sure to lead, and different from what her father expects of her. As a young girl growing up on a Middle Georgia plantation, her closest confidant, a slave named Uncle Eli, encourages her to follow her heart. Emma knows to do her life's work she must leave her comfortable life, and she's able to do that when she meets and marries a handsome missionary on leave from his work in Nigeria. Emma and Henry Bowman's married life begins with a journey across the ocean to a Yoruba village.

During her young married life, Emma is constantly out of her comfort zone but leans on her faith to navigate a new culture, household, language and customs. Emma learns the differences between the antebellum South of her girlhood and her womanhood in Africa. Perhaps her biggest challenge is learning to let her husband operate as the head of their household, even when she believes she knows other, better ways to live their missionary life. Through challenges, heartbreak, love and success, Emma learns much about herself as an individual and a wife, and how she can manage to be both.

With beautiful imagery, Orr paints a vivid, complicated picture of Africa and its people, with Africa being a mysterious character in the novel. Orr skillfully creates mounting tension between Emma and Henry, and Emma and Jacob, an native and Henry's missionary helper. And, the author conveys the deep pain and emotional struggle with Emma that she must bear alone. Emma's journey is both an interior and an exterior one, and both are defined by her life as a missionary in a place where she will always be an outsider. Emma's faith, though it waivers at times, sees her through it all.

This is a novel that will give readers reason to consider what freedom is and what one's religion means, timeless ideas that will always resonate with us. 

**Note: Elaine Neil Orr was one of my professors at NC State University when I was working toward my masters degree. Her workshop course in creative nonfiction and thesis direction were of great importance for writing my thesis and the writing coaching and editing work I've done since. I'm grateful to her and honored to review her first work of fiction.

Four out of five stars

If you like A Different Sun, you'll probably like State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and O Pioneers! and My Antonia, both by Willa Cather.

Author Appearance: Jill McCorkle

Tuesday night I visited the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta to hear Jill McCorkle, who is on a book tour to promote her most recent novel, Life After Life. In case you missed my review, I absolutely loved the book. I'm always fascinated when an author can skillfully create so many voices in one book. I don't think I could ever keep all that straight.

I think books really come alive when they're read by their authors. McCorkle read from several passages, covering three or four voices at various places in the novel, giving those in the audience who haven't yet read the novel some background information and then intimate looks at several characters.

She took questions after she read her selections. That's also something I think is very brave. Opening up the floor to questions from strangers who love your work has to be a little nerve-racking. I remember a couple years ago I went to hear Frances Mayes talk. When she took questions, a woman went off on a tangent and practically invited herself to vacation with Mayes at her Italian home. Mayes graciously deflected by diverting our attention to other related topic. She was poised and handled it very well.

McCorkle didn't have any weird questions like that, but it was still fascinating to hear the questions she was asked and how she answered them. Some of those questions, like what inspired her to write the book and what her writing process is like, she's probably gotten a million times before, but other unusual questions still got an interesting answer.

I chatted it up with the woman sitting next to me who had not yet read the book. For all of you like her who haven't read it yet, do. It's wonderful.

Book Review: Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

Published by: Algonquin Books

Published on: March 26, 2013

Page Count: 352

Genre: fiction

My Reading Format: Advanced reading copy, Kindle edition from Netgalley

Available Formats: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle and Audible audio editions

My review:

Family secrets, disappearing acts, quirky old folks, memories, dark pasts, small town life, oral history, a beloved dog, those who are crazy and those who just pretend to be: ingredients needed to write a proper Southern novel. Jill McCorkle has included all these things and more in her first book in 17 years, Life After Life. In the spirit of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and the more recent A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (Joshilyn Jackson), McCorkle beautifully and convincingly captures the voices of a myriad of characters - all ages, both genders and those who will do good and the world and those who won't.

Life After Life takes place mostly in a small North Carolina town. A young girl named Abby feels more comfortable spending time next door at Pine Haven, the town's retirement home, than she does with her mother or her peers at school. Nearly every character has trouble fitting in to the world around them because of something: too many marriages, too many tattoos, too many affairs or too many inappropriate comments. At Pine Haven, the residents remember their life before they moved in: what they did for a living, how they raised their children, how they fit in in Fulton, North Carolina. What they can't remember or don't want to, they make up. Resident Sadie has made a business out of putting two old photographs together to create a new reality and make a new memory for its owner.

Though some residents appear to have moved to Pine Haven simply to wait around for the end of their lives, quite a lot of living is to be done here. It's their life after life, and so are their stories preserved by hospice volunteer Joanna. For one resident named Rachel, her reasons for moving south from Massachusetts are kept quiet, and she keeps much of the life she led before to herself.   

There are secrets and sadness for the characters like Abby who live outside the retirement home as well. McCorkle brings the two worlds in Fulton, North Carolina, together in beautiful ways as the story comes to a surprising, shocking, saddening close. 

4.5 out of 5 stars

*If you think you'll like Life After Life, you'll probably also like Lunch at the Picadilly by Clyde Edgerton and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson. 

Recent Read: Isaac's Storm

I've just finished reading the fascinating Erik Larson book Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. Having, along with the rest of the country, just recently taken in all the Hurricane Sandy news coverage, it was really interesting to read this book now. Plus, I'm just interested in hurricanes and how they impact people, having done some post-Katrina cleanup in Mississippi in 2005 and 2006, and experiencing Fran (1996) and Floyd (1999) while I lived in North Carolina.

Larson, as he always does, re-creates dialogue and description that amazes me, since most of the time his subject matter deals with the past far enough back that interviews with those who experienced these things first hand is impossible. The descriptions of the water surge during the Galveston hurricane of 1900 were what I'm still thinking about a few days after finishing reading the book. The vivid descriptions of homeowners chopping holes in their beautiful wood floors to give the water somewhere to go in the Galveston hurricane seemed eerily like see footage from Katrina homeowners who'd had to punch out through their roofs to wait for help to come.

Also, in light of Sandy's recent devastation, it's interesting to consider how people in New York and New Jersey faired when they had a week or so of preparation time versus those who faced the 1900 hurricane with little to no warning. Those in Sandy's path could make the choice to evacuate and access to some resources (cell phones, proximity to emergency services, FEMA, organizations like the Baptist North American Mission Board to provide things like laundry services, hot meals, chainsaw teams and crisis counseling). And it was still was (and still is I'm sure) a frustrating experience for homeowners to not be able to get what they needed exactly when they needed it. Those affected by the Galveston hurricane didn't have appropriate weather information, the ability to communicate easily with their loved ones after the storm, a proper and dignified way to handle the bodies of those who did not survive the storm.

Reading Isaac's Storm also made me think back to books I've read fairly recently about Katrina: Zeitoun and Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans. It's a lot to think about.

Recent Read: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

I've just finished reading a book on Berlin I've been wanting to read forever: In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson (you can see my German reading lists here and here). I've been a fan of Larson ever since I visited Chicago for the first time and read his Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. I still have to say that I think his book about Chicago is a bit more compelling, but Garden of Beasts still fascinated me due to my recent visit to Berlin. I could picture some of the places he mentions which is always fun.

From the title of the book I thought the main characters would be William Dodd, American ambassador to Germany, his wife Mattie and their adult children Martha and Bill. Perhaps the more interesting of the foursome were William and daughter Martha, and most of the book centered around the two of them. William had the impossible task of being American liaison and diplomat starting in 1933 in Germany and ending in 1940. He was overworked and underpaid, had difficulty with German government officials and experienced a host of other problems. Besides the work he did while there, his socialite daughter's love life and infatuation with communism is explored (I thought this part was very interesting).

I love when something I read in one book coincides with something I've read previously. There were several such occurrences during this read. First, before departing Chicago for Berlin with her family, Martha had an affair with author Carl Sandburg whose home I visited in Flat Rock, North Carolina, a couple of years ago. Sandburg was later a pallbearer at William's funeral. In chapter seven, Larson says that on William's first day as American ambassador, a new law took effect, "the Law for Hereditary Diseases, which authorized the sterilization of individuals suffering various physical and mental handicaps." We learned about this is at the Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin, and particularly disturbing was the medical experimentation performed on children with disabilities, since they were deemed "unfit" to have families of their own one day. Unfortunately, government-mandated sterilization happened in the early and middle parts of the 20th century in the United States as well. In graduate school for a gender and medicine elective I studied forced and coerced hysterectomies primarily in North Carolina. Today, a state-run foundation in North Carolina is waiting for government funding to award reparations to living victims and their families (here's a recent article from Raleigh's CBS affiliate, WRAL). Martha also had an affair with author Thomas Wolfe when he was visiting Berlin (another North Carolina connection. I visited Wolfe's house a few years ago on the same trip as Sandburg's Connemara).

Martha and a friend were invited on a weekend getaway with one of the few authors who did not leave Germany during Hitler's regime, Hans Fallada, who wrote Alone in Berlin, which I absolutely loved. In chapter 40, Larson says,

"In the months following Hitler's ascension to chancellor, the German writers who were not outright Nazis had quickly divided into two camps - those who believed it was immoral to remain in Germany and those who felt the best strategy was to stay put, recede as much as possible from the world, and wait for the collapse of the Hitler regime. The latter approach became known as 'inner emigration,' and was the path Fallada had chosen."

Finally, in the Sources and Acknowledgements section, Larson mentions that he relied heavily on Christopher Isherwood's books in writing Garden of Beasts (I recently read The Berlin Stories after returning from Germany).

I really enjoyed Garden of Beasts and would recommend it for anyone wanting to know more about the American presence in Berlin from 1933 to the start of World War II.

Celebrating Andy Griffith

Due to the fact that I'm a native North Carolinian, can appreciate old television shows, and have a father and grandfather who were/are obsessed with The Andy Griffith Show, I'm convinced I've seen every episode ever filmed (though sometimes the channel got changed if an episode in color and without Deputy Barney Fife came on). My husband is amazed if we catch the beginning credits that I can name that episode within the first few seconds of the first scene (I can also do this with The Cosby Show). In my family there's no need to call the show by it's full name; it's just simply "Andy."

My favorite episode is the one where Aunt Bee makes the kerosene pickles, but I have several runners-up too. There have been many times (particularly in Atlanta traffic) that I've wanted to "citizens arrest" someone Gomer-style. Raleigh is my hometown, the place Barney went to party and stayed in "the corner room at the Y." When someone in my family is being an extreme rule-follower, someone will usually start by saying, "Here at the rock..." and the rest of us will chime in with the rest. And how many times has my dad told me to "nip it, nip it, nip it?"

So Tuesday when I saw that Andy Griffith had passed away, I just couldn't believe it. Isn't it kind of like we've all lost someone important, like a family member, like someone we knew really well? We should all be so lucky as to be treated as kindly, and loved and cared for as much as Sheriff Andy Taylor did his son and aunt, his deputy, his neighbors and fellows residents of Mayberry.

In the spirit of this blog, I found a clip that I particularly like, where Andy explains Romeo and Juliet to Opie.

We'll miss you, Sheriff Taylor.

Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains

For my birthday in November, my best friend got me a great gift, a book called, Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook. Lucky for me, I'll get to use it this week as I head to Asheville with my family to celebrate my parents' 35th wedding anniversary.

Back in September, I visited the Thomas Wolfe Memorial House and Carl Sandburg's home, Connemara. There is much more in the way of literary sites still to see in the Asheville area.

Check back at the end of the week for more!

Carl Sandburg's Connemara

I like to think of myself as an organized person. I’m an obsessive list maker. I plan things so far ahead that my husband, who prefers the “fly by the seat of your pants” method most of the time, can’t help but shake his head. I always have Plan A, but Plans B and C are ready to go in case A falls through.

I have my own way of organizing things. To me, it’s more important that a particular thing has a specific place where it lives, so I can always find it when it’s needed. It’s less important to me what the thing and all the things with it look like together in their place. If it happens to look orderly, that’s a bonus. If it looks like a jumbled mess to the untrained eye (anyone who’s not me), that’s OK too. The bookshelf at our house looks atrocious (99.9 percent of them are mine). My husband questions me all the time about the state of the bulletin board in our office (“Do you really need that hotel receipt from a wedding we went to three years ago?” YES!).

There are books I bought years ago, newspaper clippings and magazines all over the upstairs of our house that I need to look at. My intentions are always good, but sometimes the clippings get recycled or the National Geographic gets passed on down the line before I’ve read it.

Over Labor Day weekend, I visited Connemara, Carl Sandburg’s home in Flat Rock, N.C. When Sandburg and his family moved there in 1945, he had already published poetry, nonfiction, and six volumes of his Abraham Lincoln biography, and won the Pulitzer Prize for history and various other awards. Yet, Sandburg chose to live simply in this old house with his family. His wife, Lilian established her own successful goat dairy on the property as well.

With the tour group, I entered the house’s living room first. To my amazement and delight there were books everywhere! Then, we moved into Sandburg’s business office where there were – gasp – piles of National Geographics! There were bookshelves on every wall filled completely with volumes and other knick-knacks. Then, upstairs in Sandburg’s bedroom was perhaps the best part: newspaper clippings were tacked directly to the wall! No need for a bulletin board there. Room after room contained books, magazines and newspaper clippings. Our tour guide told us that when the Sandburgs moved here, they brought with them 17,000 books. Today 13,000 remain. They subscribed to 50 magazines, and the issues were all over the house. I don’t mean for it to sound messy. Though reading material was everywhere, it was in an orderly fashion (just as it is at my house).

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the home and peaceful grounds where Sandburg penned a third of his writings. Here are a few photos from my visit.