triumph and adversity

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: Alice doesn't fit in at home in England, for reasons that aren't entirely made clear, but also aren't terribly important.  So when Bennett Van Cleve and his father come through her town on their European tour, she's more than ready to be swept off her feet and taken away from her boring life and hyper-critical parents.  Unfortunately, she didn't look at a map to understand that Kentucky mining country is a far cry from cosmopolitan New York.  Nor did she have enough to have any sense of her husband's character, and things quickly go downhill for her in America.

Fortunately, the WPA's packhorse library's need for librarians comes along to save her.  The only things that anchors this book in the 20th century, the packhorse library really existed.  "Librarians" took books into the hills and remote areas of Kentucky (and other places), and, at least in this book, brought the light of literature out to the boonies.  Alice must contend with mistrust (not only is she not from the nearest small-town, she has an accent all the way from England), hazardous weather, and a bonehead husband.  Fortunately, the promise of new friendships and happier times is on the horizon, if Alice can tough it out.

This may sound like a lightweight book, but it's actually not.  Swirling around Alice are issues of poverty, illiteracy, prejudice, class injustice, and the unionization of coal miners.  On a personal level, she must also deal with the nature of marriage and her obligations to her family.  Moyes does an elegant job of illuminating all these issues while also writing realistic and relatable characters and situations.  As a librarian, I was, of course, particularly taken with her discussions of the packhorse librarians and their goals of spreading literacy throughout the countryside.  Her descriptions of how books changed the lives of the families in the hills serves as a timeless reminder of the importance of books and libraries to everyone.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

the story not told

The Road from Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: When we left Hank and Julie at the end of Gap Creek (published in 2000), they were leaving Gap Creek and heading back up the mountain to begin anew.  Having survived a very rough first year of marriage, they were full of hope and love and the future seemed bright.  And, indeed, the future does seem to have been good to them.  In this sequel, narrated by Annie, one of their daughters, some 25 years after the events in Gap Creek, Hank and Julie have created a family, are financially stable, and overall seem to have been doing well in the years since we last saw them.  How did they get there?  Don't ask me.

Here is what we learn about those years: after leaving Gap Creek, Hank and Julie at some point moved back there, and then left again, when Annie was about 5 years old; Hank was able to find steady work in the '20s by building summer cottages for rich people; with steady work, he gained confidence; and they have 4 children.  Why did they return to Gap Creek?  Why did they leave again?  Dunno.  I suppose the stories must not be very interesting, since the only family lore Annie seems to know are things that happened when her parents were newlyweds - in other words, stories we already know if we read Gap Creek.  A sequel doesn't have to describe every detail that we've missed in the lives of the characters, but it's almost as though Morgan's imagination just totally failed him and he just doesn't know what happened to his characters in those 25 years.  In which case, quite frankly, this book needed a different title, because the road from Gap Creek is not at all the story it tells.

That being said, the writing is, of course, beautiful and evocative of Appalachia in the late 1930s and into WWII.  As a stand-alone book, this would have been a lovely read.  As a sequel, it just doesn't hold up.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

did I miss something?

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Challenge: 100 Book Challenge 2011
Review: The action in this story, what there is of it, moves very slowly. For the first half of the book, nothing really happens at all. But then, suddenly, things start happening and connections start being made, and I couldn't help but feel that I missed some sort of catalyst in the narrative. It is entirely possible that I did miss some important bit, but since I'm pretty sure that I actually read every page, it seems more likely that Frazier decided that his readers would take a bit of the action on faith.  In something like the reverse of dramatic irony, characters are suddenly referring to conversations and relationships of which the reader is unaware.

This kind of storytelling leaves me scratching my head and flipping back through the book to see if I missed something. (It also has me wondering whether the author chose to relate action to the reader in this way because he couldn't figure out how to actually write the scene where the critical interactions occur.) Frazier is talented enough to pull off these sudden transitions in a way that's not as aggravating as it might be, but I did still feel cheated out of critical parts of an otherwise beautifully told story.

 FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.