1,001 Novels: A Library of America - Maine, New Hampshire & Vermont
I could not wait to consolidate these reviews- half these books were borderline embarrassing to read and I gotta say if this is what American fiction has to offer I'm not that impressed. I did think the top 10 were great and then the next 20 were interesting. All the books at 35 and below were not good/enjoyable. The books I liked from Northern New England were about the hardscrabble locals- the books involving vacation folks were pretty insufferable, I mean, who gives a shit.
1. Affliction (1989) by Russell Banks
2. Tinkers (2009) by Paul Harding
3. The Lottery and Other Stories (1948) by Shirley Jackson
4. The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985) by Carolyn Chute
5. The Night of the Living Rez (2022)by Morgan Talty
6. Empire Falls (2001) by Richard Russo
7. Unlikely Animals (2022) by Annie Hartnett
8. Edinburgh (2001) by Alexander Chee
9. Olive Kitteridge(2008) by Elizabeth Strout
10. October Light (1976) by John Gardner
11. We Took to the Woods (1942) by Louise Dickinson Rich
12. The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) by Sarah Orne Jewett
13. Peyton Place (1956) by Grace Metalious
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) by John Irving
15. A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972) by Robert Newton Peck
16. The Dearly Departed (2001) by Elinor Lipman
17. Evenings (1998) by Susan Minot
18. A Piece of the World (2017) by Christine Baker Kline
19. Baby Love by (1980) Joyce Maynard
20. Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (1929) by Rachel Field
21. Carrie (1974) by Stephen King
22. A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles
23. Chenoo (2016) by Joseph Bruchac
24. Lake People (2013) by Abi Maxwell
25. The Lowering Days (2021) by Gregory Brown
26. The Northern Reach (2021)by W.S. Winslow
27. Songs in Ordinary Times (1995) by Mary McGary Morris
28. Live Free Or Die (1990) by Ernest Hebert
29. Lungfish (2022) by Megan Gilliss
30. Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object (1975) by Laurie Colwin
31. Fortune's Rock (2001) by Anita Shreve
32. Stern Men (2000) by Elizabeth Gilbert
33. Midwives (1997) by Chris Bohjalian
34. Cost (2008) by Roxana Robinson
35. Winter People (2014) by Jennifer McMahon
36. The Prayer of the Bone (1998) by Paul Bryers
37. Red Hook Road (2010) by Ayelet Waldman
38. Before and After (1992) by Rosellen Brown
39. Oslo, Maine (2021)by Marcia Butler
40. Salem Falls (2001) by Jodi Picoult
41. Project x (2004) by Jim Shepard
42. The Poachers Son (2011) by Paul Doiron
43. Boar Island (2016) by Nevada Barr
Vermont
1. The Lottery and Other Stories (1948) by Shirley Jackson
2. October Light (1976) by John Gardner
3. A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972) by Robert Newton Peck
4. Songs in Ordinary Times (1995) by Mary McGary Morris
5. Midwives (1997) by Chris Bohjalian
6. Winter People (2014) by Jennifer McMahon
7. Project x (2004) by Jim Shepard
New Hampshire
1. Affliction (1989) by Russell Banks
2. Unlikely Animals (2022) by Annie Hartnett
3. Peyton Place (1956) by Grace Metalious
4. A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) by John Irving
5. The Dearly Departed (2001) by Elinor Lipman
6. Baby Love by (1980) Joyce Maynard
7. A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles
8. Leah, New Hampshire: The Collected Stories of Thomas Williams (1992) by Thomas Williams
9. Lake People (2013) by Abi Maxwell
10. Live Free Or Die (1990) by Ernest Hebert
11. Fortune's Rock (2001) by Anita Shreve
12. Before and After (1992) by Rosellen Brown
13. Salem Falls (2001) by Jodi Picoult
Maine
1. Tinkers (2009) by Paul Harding
2. The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985) by Carolyn Chute
3. The Night of the Living Rez (2022)by Morgan Talty
4. Empire Falls (2001) by Richard Russo
5.Edinburgh (2001) by Alexander Chee
6. Olive Kitteridge(2008) by Elizabeth Strout
7. We Took to the Woods (1942) by Louise Dickinson Rich
8. The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) by Sarah Orne Jewett
9. A Piece of the World (2017) by Christine Baker Kline
10. Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (1929) by Rachel Field
11. Carrie (1974) by Stephen King
12. Chenoo (2016) by Joseph Bruchac #
13. The Lowering Days (2021) by Gregory Brown
14. The Northern Reach (2021)by W.S. Winslow
15. Lungfish (2022) by Megan Gilliss
16. Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object (1975) by Laurie Colwin
17. Stern Men (2000) by Elizabeth Gilbert
18. Cost (2008) by Roxana Robinson
19. The Prayer of the Bone (1998) by Paul Bryers
20. Red Hook Road (2010) by Ayelet Waldman
21. Oslo, Maine (2021)by Marcia Butler
22. The Poachers Son (2011) by Paul Doiron
23. Boar Island (2016) by Nevada Barr
Published 6/2/23
Oslo, Maine (2021)
by Marcia Butler
Location: Pleasant Mountain North Park, Denmark, Maine
Here we go! First out of the gate is Oslo, Maine (2021) by Marcia Butler. This book represents a huge swatch of American Geography- most of southwestern Maine- and then there isn't another 1001 Novels title for fifty or so miles in any direction. The only town of significant size mentioned is Portland, Maine- which- somewhat preposterously is unrepresented in the 23 novels Susan Straight selected to represent Maine in the 1001 Novels: A Library of America project. It's possible that Oslo, Maine is the most geographically isolated of all 1001 Novels (excluding Alaska).
It's also worth noting the 1) recency- Oslo, Maine was published in 2021, 2) that an independent press, Central Avenue Publishing, put it out- this is the first book I've ever read published by Central Avenue Publishing 3) Oslo, Maine, isn't a great novel- it makes feints at literary status but an hopes for that achievement are dashed by an Epilogue that solves all the problems the novel creates in the lives of its characters.
The plot- and I'm hardly alone in making these observations- the Portland Maine newspaper panned it in its review opining, in the sub header no less, that "Neither the characters nor the town are believably drawn." I would agree- I was actively looking for passages about PLACE- since this whole project is arguably an epic experiment in psychogeography. This is what I came up with for the whole book: "Daylight suddenly vacated the sky, the way it seemed only to do in Maine."
Instead what you get is a very trad work of contemporary fiction: Two families, one a childless couple who are eeking out an existence as classical musicians on their "off the grid" property, the second, a pair of "fourth generation" Mainers of French-Canadian ancestry, though that fact is simply inferable via their names- the husband is Claude and the son is Pierre.
When you are talking about Maine there are basically three relevant areas- the bit down at the bottom where people like George Bush hang out; the Mid Coast/Downeast which is more or less a colony of Boston and has a population split between local fishermen types and summer house owners with a healthy influx of short time tourists in the summer and basically nothing in the winter; and the great interior which has basically nothing except rivers, trees, mountains, game, papermills and Native Americans. So, while Oslo, Maine does represent the interior- which you would expect to be underrepresented, it doesn't do this particularly well.
Published 6/2/23
The Lowering Days (2021)
by Gregory Brown
Maine 2/23
Location: Marsh Island, Penobscot County, Maine
Ok, so one of the things that maybe doesn't come across in this blog is that I am interested in Native Americans and their issues, history, culture, etc. Not like in a crazy culturally appropriating way, as in, I don't pretend to be Native American. I worked for California Indian Legal Services in Oakland, CA during law school, clerked for a Native American professor and I generally keep up on legal issues related to Native Americans. Anyway, I mention this because Maine has a solid Native American history that goes back centuries BEFORE the United States existed, thus they have a relationship with "us" that started hundreds of years before "we" even existed.
Furthermore, The Lowering Days is set in Penobscot County, Maine, which is named for the Penobscot tribe and this is the first title in 1001 Novels: A Library of America, to grapple with Native American issues and to contain Native American characters, though the author is as white as they come. Other notes about this book are that it is the first novel for the author and it was published by HarperCollins, which as major as it comes. The press for the book trumpets Brown as a "promising literary star" and it is clearly presented as a work of literary fiction- no happily ever ending epilogue in this book, unlike the one stitched on to Oslo, Maine.
Although I'll admit I had troubling pinning down the exact time- much of Maine still lacks cell phone reception, cable tv and hard wired internet, so even when you are there in 2023 you can feel like you are in decades past. The publisher says it takes place in the 80's, which I kinda sort a guessed based on some of the reference points of current events, but none of these characters are much concerned with the outside world, including one of the main characters who runs an in-town weekly newspaper that lends the book it's title.
Narrated from the present perspective of David Almerin Ames, the plot concerns his family and their relationship with the family "next door" and the history and entanglements of the two. There's also a heavy subplot of Native Americana vis a plot line involving the burning down of an abandoned mill by a precious Native American activist. This is, in other words, what you would call a "town novel."
His Native American characters are, of course, sensitively and discretely drawn, unlike the white characters who suffer from different afflictions of despair. I doubt an alcoholic Native American father character would not have made it past the sensitivity reader at HarperCollins- those subjects presumably are reserved for Native American authors themselves- which is fine- I have no issue with that. It does, however make that plot thread ring a bit false compared to the dramatic psychological issues of the white characters who are not, after all, arsonists on the run from the law.
Unlike the author in Oslo, Maine, Brown does successfully evoke the geography of his assigned place- which is a huge swath of central Maine:
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| Penobscot County Maine |
This is another part of "the rest" of Maine- inland Maine. Brown only got a capsule review in the New York Times. That reviewer also sensed the weakness in the Native American portions of the narrative but commends the author's good intentions. I join in that response. I would, perhaps, read another novel by this Author.
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| Native American (Penobscot Nation) author Morgan Talty |
Published 6/3/23
1001 Novels USAThe Night of the Living Rez (2022)
by Morgan Talty
Maine 3/23
Location: Penobscot Nation, Maine
I didn't want to post my review of The Lowering Days by Gregory Brown, which is set in the heart of Maine Indian Country and deals with Native American issues, without writing about the other book in the 1001 Novels USA project from the inland Penobscot Maine region, The Night of the Living Rez by Native American author Morgan Talty. I read, or rather, listened to the Audiobook when The Night of the Living Rez was released back in July 2022, unfortunately that was directly after my COVID experience and my zest for reading was at a low point- a state which lasted essentially one year, lifting only last week or so.
I listened to the Audiobook, but I didn't feel like writing about it, or writing about anything at that time, so it's good fortune that Susan Straight included it in her 1001 American Novels project. I heard about Night from the New York Times book review, which posted a favorable review of this short story collection the week it was released calling it "brash and irreverent." I was already interested in the history of the Penobscot Nation from my visits to the Midcoast region of Maine, which is firmly within their ancestral territory- they migrated back and forth from the ocean to the forest well into the post-contact area but eventually got pushed inland.
The Night of the Living Rez is a collection of 12 short stories all set in and around the Penobscot Reservation. Most of them (all of them- I forget) revolve around David, a young man dealing with the familiar dysfunctions of Native American life in the late 20th century. As a writer, Talty is firmly in the school of realism- there are superstitions and spirituality but no magical realism here- to a fault- because the presence of intergenerational trauma in the pages is ubiquitous. At the time I actually regretted listening to the Audiobook instead of reading the stories because of the emotional intensity of the situations.
I'm interested to see what Talty writes next- although I would admit that I have my fingers crossed for a work of historical fiction that revisits the colonial period from Native eyes.
Published 6/3/23
1001 Novels: A Library of America
Lungfish (2022)
by Megan Gilliss
Location: Darmariscove Island, Maine
Maine: 4/23
Lungfish is another debut novel set in Maine published last year- September to be precise. This was another New York Times Review find- debut work of fiction set off the coast of Maine by an independent press (Catapault Press), that is an automatic yes for me. Unfortunately I was still well within my post-COVID malaise period and it's hard to say this but I found the protagonist, Tuck, who is squatting with her drug addict husband and young child on an island on the outskirts of Booth Bay harbor, to be totally insufferable. All she has to do is leave this deadbeat husband of hers and go apply for benefits, but instead she stays out on the island and eats moss and nearly dies. The whole experience is difficult to endure and the choices that Tuck makes were, to my mind, indefensible. It's not like SHE is a drug addict, just her husband.
Published 6/5/23
1001 Novels: A Library of America
The Northern Reach (2021)
by W.S. Winslow
Location: Waldoboro, Maine
Maine: 5/23
If you are driving north from Portland (Maine) to a destination on the Mid Coast or further along Downeast, you are likely to take the Atlantic Highway which is like a spine for the region and then the different fingers extend into the Atlantic ocean. The towns along the spine- Waldoboro is one of these- about halfway up the Midcoast region after you pass through Damariscotta- are in various stages of revival/decline ranging from some that are thriving, some that are just hanging on and some that are downright tatty. Waldoboro, for whatever reason, is at the "tatty" end of the spectrum, a situation reflected by the loosely associated families of The Northern Reach- who live in and around a fictionalized version of the Waldoboro town area.
The New York Times- in a capsule review- called The Northern Reach a "composite" novel meaning it is stitched together over time with a series of 12 loosely connected short stories about members of four different families in the area. It is, to be nice about it, a white, working class milieu where the only outsiders are French Canadians or French immigrants. Only one of the characters manages to escapes, and her contribution is a short story where she freaks out after her father's funeral and assaults the local sheriff. The last few stories are explicitly about ghosts and spirits haunting the living.
I listened to the Audiobook, which made keeping the characters straight even more difficult than it would have been in a book format BUT I did get the benefit of the strong regional accents which were captured authentically by the narrators. The stories though were so very dark, like gothic dark, which I actually enjoyed but the New York Times capsule reviewer did not.
20 percent of the way through the Maine portion of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America and the dominant themes are first time authors writing about dark family secrets. Of the five books, only Lungfish strays from the family trauma narrative viewpoint, and only The Night of the Living Rez is outside the experience of white Maine residents. Par for the course, in other words.
Published 6/7/23
1001 Novels: A Library of America
Cost (2008)
by Roxana Robinson
Location: Blue Hill, Maine
Maine: 6/23
Cost, a family addiction narrative set in the environs of Blue Hill, Maine, is the first genuine miss in the Maine section of 1001 Novels: A Library of America. It received a favorable review in the New York Times book review when it was released in 2008, although it was one of those favorable reviews that doesn't particularly motivate the reader to act- and the reviewer hints at the relatability issues when she says that author Roxana Robinson is often referred to as solely a chronicler of "WASP Life" in a "somewhat reductive," fashion. Only somewhat reductive?
I found Cost insufferable on a number of levels, and the central narrative, about a divorced Mom (an untenured Art professor at Columbia University) who learns that her son, a hipster Brooklynite type, is addicted to heroin. The family stages an impromptu intervention at her house in the Blue Hill area- which I guess is enough to get the nod from 1001 Novels, but there is almost nothing about the environment even though one of the major protagonists is an artist who paints Maine landscapes.
Robinson writes about heroin addiction like a writer who went to a rehab place to interview addicts and then read some books about the subject. Some moments are simply wrong- like when a "friend of a friend" describes the horror of her still teenage daughter "shooting up crack cocaine," when everyone knows that you smoke crack cocaine and you can't shoot it.
In the context of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America itself, this selection is disappointing because the writer E.B. White (Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web). Charlotte's Web takes place in Maine, at a farm that resembles the one he owned in the Blue Hill area. Seems like a pretty significant omission.
Published 6/9/23
Published 7/10/23
Stern Men (2000)
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Location: Fort Niles, Maine
Maine: 7/23
Before journalist Elizabeth Gilbert struck gold with her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love she published Stern Men set off the coast of Maine on one of many small islands. This one happens to support a semi-vibrant lobster fishing colony and a no-longer functional granite quarry. Gilbert uses a third person narrator but the protagonist is Ruth, the daughter of a local lobsterman and the his wife, who is a sister-servant of the wealthy Ellis family, who owned the defunct granite quarry.
Ruth is a woman torn between the mainland, where she is expected to attend college, and the island, the place where she feels she belongs. Gilbert rather awkwardly pairs what is essentially a bildungsroman which takes place almost entirely on this tiny island (with a brief road trip to Concord New Hampshire) with a slightly fictionalized version of the "lobster wars" which were endemic to the region until recent times. I know plenty about these wars since my partner has actually brought works of non-fiction on the "Lobster gangs" of Maine. It's not quite organized crime but there are some resemblances and people definitely got killed along the way.
Stern Men was dusted off and reissued after Eat, Pray, Love blew up- the edition I listened to- the Audiobook- came out in 2009, three years after Eat, Pray, Love. I didn't love it- especially the "Happily Ever After" ending which marks it as not quite literary fiction, but she does engagingly portray the people and geography of this particular piece of America, so count it a success from the perspective of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America project.
Published 6/12/23
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)
by Sarah Orne Jewett
Location: South Berwick, Maine
Maine: 8/23
One aspect of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America that has surprised me 8 books in is the recency of all the picks. Before The Country of the Pointed Firs popped up the oldest book was Cost (2008) by Roxana Robinson. The other six books were published either in 2021 or 2022. I guess the other surprise is that the novels selected are strictly a literary bunch- right now I'm reading two books that can best be described as genre detective fiction that happens to be set in Maine.
What's interesting is that Jewett is one of the first- or maybe- the first- American regionalist, which was an important development in American literary culture in the early part of the 20th century. As you can see, The Country of the Pointed Furs was published in the 19th century, which certainly puts her in contention for first place. Unfortunately, one thing Jewett was not was a modernist. If you look at Wikipedia's list of American literary regionalism the names that stand out are Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor- both hailed as early modernists and both writing out of the south.
Thus, my library copy of this book was a 1950's reprint of the 1926 edition. It contained a preface from Willa Cather claiming that this book is a "top 3" American novel alongside The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. The story, such as it is, follows the adventures of a Boston based writer in summers among the small towns of the coast of Southern Maine. Jewett was a noted resident of South Berwick, Maine which is literally on the border of Maine and New Hampshire. I've driven through there several times- I think- driving between Dover New Hampshire and Maine, and there is literally nothing there. It says that her old house is a landmark, so I'm going to try to check it out next time I'm there during the summer.
Generally speaking, I'd like to see older books, particularly a place like Maine where there is history that extends back hundreds of years before America itself existed- before Maine existed. Finally, this is the first potential overlap between the 1001 Books project itself and the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. Specifically, The Country of the Pointed Firs fits firmly into the category of 19th century American Literature which has only three women: Kate Chopin, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Alcott. Seems like you could Ben Hur by Lew Wallace (1880) and sub in Jewett. Hawthorne and Poe both have three picks, they could both be trimmed in favor of Jewett.
Published 6/13/23
A Piece of the World (2017)
by Christine Baker Kline
Location: Cushing, Maine
Maine: 9/23
A Piece of the World by Christine Baker Kline takes us to genuine best-seller land- this novel has over 10,000 Amazon reviews which is a bunch for ANY book let alone one that takes a real shot at the world of literary fiction. True, Kline uses a truly high concept devise that sounds like something Merchant-Ivory would have cooked up in the 1980's: What if someone wrote a novel at the Christina in Andrew Wyeth's painting, Christina's World, 1948, which depicts a young woman, likely suffering from sort of mobility related disorder, half sitting, half crawling in a field.
Wyeth actually did vacation at the address listed within the 1001 Novels project: 384 Hathorne Point, Cushing Maine. This is the first book in the 1001 Novels project to list an actual address as the location. Baker-Kline keeps a pretty low profile for an author with two genuine hits (the other was Orphan Train (2013) and a half dozen other novels, with the last published in 2020. Her wikipedia entry is almost comically brief.
Although the high concept origin is almost enough to knock A Piece of the World out of the realm of "serious" literature, Kline redeems herself with a story that certainly lacks a happy ending and frequently lacks plot of any kind. The protagonist rejects an early childhood attempt remedy her mobility issues and that is that- she doesn't see another doctor for 20 years and in the course of the book she only leaves her family home twice for more than a day trip.
A Piece of the World switches between Christina's youth in the late 1910's and the period where she was interacting with Wyeth in the 1940's. She does not get running water or electricity in her picturesque house- ever and the house remains heated by wood till the end of the book. Orphan Train- Kline-Baker's really big hit (78,000 Amazon reviews) is also set in and about Maine- but I guess only partially- you think that would have made the list as well. So far I haven't come across any novelists with two books on the list and you think Kline-Baker alongside Stephen King would make good candidates for repeat appearances. Maybe Stephen King is in Colorado for The Shining- which is his 1001 Books representative.
Published 6/15/23
The Prayer of the Bone (1998)
by Paul Bryers
Location: Machiasport, Maine
Maine: 10/23
Here we are at book ten which is the EASTERN MOST novel in the 1001 Novels: A Library of America collection assembled by author/professor Susan Straight. It holds that status by a wide margin- it's fifty miles to Egypt, Maine, the site of the second easternmost title in 1001 Novels. 1001 Novels does a better job covering the far downeast then it does covering the far north inside Maine. The northernmost novel in Maine (Tinkers by Paul Harding) is some 200 miles from the northern Maine/Canadian border, whereas The Prayer of the Bone is only 20 miles from the easternmost crossing into Canada.
Geographically speaking, the location of The Prayer of the Bone truly is the end of the earth. The nearest city one would call civilization is, essentially, Bar Harbor and that is a ninety mile drive. Montreal is the same distance as Boston from Machiasport. I imagine, were I to ask Susan Straight as to why this book was selected she would say something like that was all there is, and I believe her. The Prayer of the Bone is a decent effort at a mystery novel with touches of professional historian and literary fiction elevating what is basically a Scooby-Doo level mystery plot.
Of course, as an exercise of psycho-geography The Prayer of the Bone has value in that it is located in this totally isolated place AND in the back story he provides via a plot that revolves around the excavation of an ancient French-English colony location- like WAY old- that has been rediscovered by a Boston area archeologist who is employing a mixed team of students and locals for her summer excavation season. One of those is Madison, call her Maddie, the free spirited daughter of a world-famous economist and his dead wife, a hippie-trail free spirit who he met while stationed with the world bank in Pakistan during the 1960's. When Maddie turns up dead near the dig site, it falls to her sister, Jessica, an Oxford educated expert on historical buildings (I know) to pick up the pieces in Maine, including Maddie's young daughter.
You can tell that Bryers is "from away" as the locals say. The local elements are roughly sketched in- Bryers authorial skill rests more in the way he is able to pull together the quasi-historical backstory through the use of old texts then in telling the backstory of Detective Calhoun, a local who has returned to the local constabulary after serving in the army and as a cop in Boston. The Native American element of Maine life is well represented by a fictious Micmac reservation- the Micmac's are essentially a Canadian nation at this point due to the vagaries of 16th-18th century international politics, but the whole northern tier of Maine lies well within their historical lands.
Bryers skill with historical materials and light touch with his depiction of Native characters prevents The Prayer of the Bone from crossing into cringe territory but it's also easy to see why it failed to draw much of an audience. The high point was a capsule review in the crime column of the Sunday New York Times book review. The library edition I checked out was the hardback first edition (only edition) and the spine was broken. I doubt anyone has read it in years. At the same time, from a geographical perspective The Prayer of the Bone probably covers the largest geographic territory of a single book until you get out to the west. From that perspective it is quite a significant work in the 1001 Novels project.
Published 6/16/23
Red Hook Road (2010)
by Ayelet Waldman
Location: Red Hook, Maine *
*Brooklin, Maine
Maine 11/23
Exciting news! I've found the first actual mistake in the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. This book is assigned to "Red Hook, Maine," which does not exist. Author Ayelet Waldman, wife of author Michael Chabon, owns a house in Brooklin, Maine, which is a couple fingers north of where Susan Straight placed the non-existent Red Hook, but it's basically the same place.
In terms of the "Maine-ness" of the book its not very- the plot concerns the intersection of a summer family from away (Jewish family from NYC with violin playing grandfather who survived the holocaust) and a local family (not exactly white trash but way lower than the NYC folks on the socio-economic white trash). The plot is set in motion when the underachieving daughter of the Jewish family and her husband, first born of the Maine family are killed in a limousine accident on their way out of town after the wedding.
I thought it was pretty tedious reading- truth be told I am not particularly interested in reading books about rich summer people from away and their problems...in Maine. Waldman's biographical details aren't that dissimilar to mine- she worked as a Federal Public Defender in LA for three years before she got married, she lives in Berkeley near where I lived in law school and attended high school, and she vacations in Maine. I also gather from her Wikipedia that she has written about her struggles with bi-polar disorder which is an issue I've dealt with inside my own family.
There's no mental illness subplot explicit in this book, except for the mother of an adopted Cambodian girl with a talent for playing the violin, who is housed at the Maine crazy-house for unclear reasons related to the untimely death of her husband. This is the last book set on the Midcoast, joining The Northern Reach, Lungfish and A Piece of the World. Left out of the 1001 Novels project was Charlotte's Web, which maybe was too obvious for the project? Also missing is Paul Harding's latest, This Other Eden (2023), which was likely published too late to be considered.
It's also again worth noting that Portland, Maine which is the most populous (68k) and coolest (by far) city in Maine- is totally unrepresented in the 1001 Novels project except as a city the people in the other novels drive to for cultural events and doctors appointments.
Published 6/18/23
Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (1929)
by Rachel Field
Location: Great Cranberry Island, Maine
Maine: 12/23
Half way through Maine, the first state in the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. I was hoping to complete the Maine portion before I leave for there on vacation this month but it's looking unlikely. Hitty: Her First Hundred Years is a children's book of course, well known in its time and winner of the Newberry Medal when it was released. Field herself was very well known in her time- her novel Time Out of Mind won the first National Book Award in 1935. Today, Field is mostly forgotten- her adult fiction seems to be entirely out of print for decades.
Including Hitty as the representative for Great Cranberry Island seems a tad disingenuous since only the first couple chapters take place there. After that Hitty is whisked off aboard a whaling vessel with her family and has adventures in the South Seas and India before returning to the United States. There is some archaic language involved- specifically Hitty's sojourn with an African American family in the South where the family speaks in a way that wouldn't be acceptable in literature set in the same time period today. There was actually a "clean" version that a couple authors put out in the 90's.
I'm still baffled by the omission of Charlotte's Web from the 1001 Novels list. Here, I can see the argument that Hitty is a book that has been forgotten and deserves a revival- I get that. But Charlotte's Web is a stone cold classic and the whole book takes place in Maine.
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| Sissey Spacek in the original film version of Carrie, directed by Brian DePalma |
Published 6/18/23
Carrie (1974)
by Stephen King
Location: Lisbon Falls, Maine
Maine: 13/23
For me, Stephen King is the primary contemporary example of an artist who is considered low-brow when he is writing only to be elevated to the canon after his death. King appears on the 1001 Books list through The Shining which has always seemed to be to have been more about the excellent movie version by Stanley Kubrick- in the original 1001 Books hardcover the image used for The Shining is from the film. He's widely acknowledged as the master of modern horror-fiction and often credited with the mid 1970's revival of the entire genre. He's achieved commercial success outside of the horror genre: The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption were popular hits both as books and films. His horror classics continue to be revived and recycled, It, for example, has been redone in the past couple years.
Carrie, however will always have a place as King's famous first book- written before he was a professional writer and before he had a contract with a publisher (though he did have an agent). I'd never read Carrie before and I haven't seen the film, but I know, as, I feel, does everyone, that Carrie is about a telekinetic outcast who murders her whole school after she is humiliated at her senior prom by a mean girl. Actually though that is the entire book. It's almost shocking the lack of plot and character development, it's impossible to contemplate Carrie as a canon level work of literature but man oh man was it a hit.
King is a famous resident of Bangor Maine- inland, no coast for him. Many of his books are set in the declining mill towns inland along the rivers of Maine- his people are the working class people of the interior, not the migratory coastal elites of the midcoast. King is, at heart, a great populist and entertainer and you sense that he draws strength from his insistence at remaining put in Bangor. Anyway, I could talk about King for paragraphs and paragraphs. My sense is that when he does finally pass he is gong to be see as a canonical figure because of his sheer popularity, his contribution to the revival of the entire genre of horror fiction AND because his characters are largely working class and residents of small towns in unromantic places, so he kind of functions as a provider of socioeconomic diversity in any American literary canon.
Published 6/18/23
Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object (1975)
by Laurie Colwin
Location: Kennebunk, Maine
Maine: 14/23
Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object is a pretty good novel, about a young widow coming to terms with her loss in 1970's New York, but this book has fuck-all to do with Kennebunk, Maine. The only part of the entire book that takes place in Kennebunk is the death of the husband at the beginning of the book. After the action is divided between Boston, New York City and upstate New Hampshire but Kennebunk doesn't come back- in fact- the protagonist/narrator specifically AVOIDS Maine because it reminds her of her husbands death. Also, it's the husband's family vacation home- the narrator has no connection to Maine at all outside of her husband.
There's a stronger argument to include it in the 1001 Books list as an example of 1970's feminist fiction then there is as a representative of Kennebunk, Maine. This and The Country of Pointed Firs are the only two books from Maine from Portland all the way to the New Hampshire border- that is basically the inhabited territory of Maine, you would think it would represent over half of the Maine continent if you were going by population density- which the 1001 Novels project clearly is not- the goal seems to be covering the geography of each state, not necessarily representing the population. Also worth noting that 9 of the 14 books so far have been authored by women. Good work on that end.
Published 6/19/23
Boar Island (2016)
by Nevada Barr
Location: Bear Island Lighthouse, Acadia National Park, Maine
Maine: 15/23
This is #19/20 of the Anna Pigeon detective fiction series. Pigeon is a National Park Ranger and the series is based around her being deployed to different National Parks and solving a murder or two in every book. I listened to the Audiobook which was not only a total waste of time but featured every single character mis-pronouncing Mount Desert island as Mount Dessert island- it's pronounced Sahara desert not ice cream dessert. This includes character who live and work in Acadia National Park where Mount Desert and this book are putatively located. It's hard to imagine that it got past proofing without anyone hearing the mistake, or that the reader didn't recognize the proper pronunciation tracks with the spelling.
I very much regretted checking out the Audiobook instead of an Ebook- I felt like it went on forever, and half the book was about a continuing plot from the earlier books involving a girl who was rescued from a Mormon cult by her not-a-lesbian Aunt who is paraplegic and travels around with an retired pediatrician, also a retirement age woman. The characters even talk about how they are not gay, just good friends, which seemed genuinely strange for a work of genre fiction written in 2016. Not whether they or gay or not but that a character would bring it up as an issue.
The other book representing Acadia National Park is the doll book, Hitty, and so far I've found the Maine books from the far downeast, west and north to be misses more than hits. It's also now clear to me that Kenneth Roberts, who wrote the great saga of far northern Maine, Arundel(1930), about Benedict Arnold and his ill-fated attempt to capture Fort Quebec in the pre-revolutionary war period, has been left off the list.
Published 6/19/23
Edinburgh (2001)
by Alexander Chee
Location: Waterville, Maine
Maine 16/23
This the first of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America titles I would call a genuine revelation, mostly because the searing nature of the material: The impact on the lives of the narrator/protagonist and his young friends by a serial child molester who was the leader of a youth choir. Chee presents a far more nuanced picture of what society typically considers a monstrous crime. Specifically, the mixed role that a groomer can have on an LGBT youth trying to find themselves in a world without much guidance. If you take away the, you know, child molestation, a lot of the grooming process can seem like mentoring, which is what makes it such a tricky subject.
Geographically, I feel like this book would be better assigned to Portland, South Portland or Cape Elizabeth, all unrepresented communities in the 1001 Novels project. Most of the action takes place in Portland and it's environs, the title refers to the name of town inland where the narrator goes to teach after graduating college. You can't really get too deep into the plot without risking spoilers, but I did really like this novel- probably the best of those I've read so far for this project. I would recommend it. It's also the first avowedly LGBT title out of the 16 I've read thus far. Hopefully we will get one more before leaving Maine.
It's a shame Chee hasn't been more prolific- this book was his debut novel and he's only written one novel since.
Published 6/21/23
The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985)
by Carolyn Chute
Location: Egypt, Maine
Maine: 17/23
This is hands down the most interesting of any of the Maine books in 1001 Novels: A Library of America, and I say that with confidence even though there are six books left. It's a Mike Leigh style piece of regional fiction about an extended clan of impoverished, violent and probably inbred Mainers called the Beans and the intertwining of their clan with the life of the proverbial "girl next door" who emerges as the main protagonist in a book with a cast of characters and an episodic approach to advancing the narrative.
The version I read is the "finished version" which was published in 1995 and contains an afterword where the author, Carolyn Chute, denounces the audience, which interpreted several relationships in the book to outright incestuous. As it turns out, only one relationship was supposed to be incestuous, the others were only perceived to be that way by the audience. I can't remember a canon level work of fiction where the author went back 10 years later and changed the book and wrote an afterword that denounced what, to me, was an extremely plausible if not intended interpretation of the action in the book.
That afterword caused me to check out author Carolyn Chute further- turns out she lives in the backwoods in a shack with limited electricity and plumbing etc, and that her other books was this series about a charismatic militia leader. And that Carolyn Chute herself led a militia.
Stylistically the book is the vein of Faulkner in the sense that Chute maintains the aggressively regional diction in her prose style- it also reminded me of regional fiction the British isles- writers from the north, Scotland and Ireland, who maintained non-standard English in the words of their working-class characters. One gathers from the author afterword that people were Judgey about her characters to a degree Chute felt unjustified.
They all seem like a pretty irredeemable bunch of what one would call "white trash" in the sense that only one character "gets out" of the life of despair and hardship. But at least, you can say, they are free, and considering the socio-economic roots of their ancestors, freedom means something even at the expense of poverty. After all, their people have always been poor and downtrodden since before the arrived in Maine centuries ago.
Published 6/22/23
The Poachers Son (2011)
by Paul Doiron
Location: Spencer Lake, Maine
Maine: 18/23
Well, I'm leaving this weekend, so I don't think I'm going to close out the Maine chapter of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America project before departure. I do have time for one last book- The Poachers Son, a 2011 detective novel about a Maine game warden (which is like a police officer for the forest, as the protagonist explains) who gets involved in a back-woods man hunt for his father, who is accused of killing a local police officer.
Couple observations about the listing: First, this book was published in 2011, not 2017. Straight has it listed with a publication date of 2017. I think it must have been picked up by a larger publisher in 2017 but it's pretty clear if you go to the Amazon page. Second, like Boar Island, this is one of nineteen in a series of detective novels starring the same dude. Unlike Boar Island this is the first book in the series, not the last. Third, Paul Doiron used to be the editor of Down East Magazine which is, imo, the best regional magazine and certainly the best magazine in Maine. I can understand why Doiron's series of Mike Bowditch detective stories are succesful- Doiron has an obviously in depth knowledge of the places he is writing about and it comes across. This book, set largely in the far north of Maine, makes that area come alive in the most traditional sense of that phrase.
As for the novel itself, I really, really, don't love detective fiction, and listening to Audiobooks of detective fiction is downright exasperating. It takes so long to get to the end, and most of the time I either don't care who dunnit anyway.
Looking ahead, I'm going to move onto New Hampshire next, then Vermont, the Connecticut and Rhode Island and I'll finish up with Massachusetts's, ending with the Boston area. Past that I should be spending most of the rest of the year trying to finish all the books set in New York City.
Published 7/7/23
Empire Falls (2001)
by Richard Russo
Empire Falls, Maine (Skowhegan, Maine)
Maine: 19/23
I believe that Empire Falls is the first Pulitzer Prize winner on the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list. I'm not a big Pulitzer Prize winner- they really showed their colors when they declined to award a prize after the recommendation committee put forward Gravity's Rainbow in 1974. I think that tells you all you need to know about the Pulitzer Prize- middle of the road, not courageous, arguably without particularly good taste. However, within the confines of this 1001 Novels project, Empire Falls was really good, certainly a top five pick for Maine. Susan Straight has Empire Falls listed as "Empire Falls, Maine" on their map but the actual location is a town called Skowhegan. Empire Falls/Skowhegan is meant to stand in for a particular type of mill-town along the Kennebec River- which runs from Bath, Maine, on the coast through Gardiner, state capital Augusta, Waterville and Skowhegan and continues onward all the up to Quebec.
Because of this, the Kennebec was an early highway for what be explorers, traders and military men, including Benedict Arnold, who led a pre-Revolutionary war gambit to seize Quebec City. Empire Falls scores an absolute zero on the diversity meter- the most ethnic diversity is present in French-American surnames and there are no non cis characters period the end. Which, to be fair, is pretty true to the milieu circa the late 1990's. Unlike many of the books so far on this list, Russo does a solid job actually describing the location. It goes beyond just naming the book after the town- which I imagine Russo saw as a sly homage to the gee whiz optimism of early 20th century boosterism turned sour and decayed.
Spoiler alert, Russo throws in a late book school shooting that puts some oomph into what was previously a fairly mundane "woe is me" type narrative about a white guy with failed dreams and a compromised life in a small American town.
Published 7/9/23
Lake People (2013)
by Abi Maxwell
Bear Island, Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire:
New Hampshire 1/13
I haven't quite finished up Maine yet- I've got one review to write and three books left to read, but I decided to get going on the rest of New England minus Massachusetts, which has many titles as the rest of New England put together. New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island all have fewer than 15 titles each. I've actually spent a good deal of time in New Hampshire but only in the civilized part- like Maine, New Hampshire has a southern/eastern corner that is basically the northern edge of the Boston-megapolis which extends from Providence in the south, through Boston, up through Eastern Massachusetts's, through Portsmouth and west to Dover, New Hampshire and ending in Kittery, Maine, on the other side of the river from Portsmouth.
The first novel from New Hampshire is Lake People, which was the debut novel by author Abi Maxwell, about the intertwined lives of two families living in central/northern New Hampshire, one well off, one less so, and the life of a woman who is the product of an illicit affair between the son of the well-off family and the daughter of the less well-off family. As such, it scores extremely high in terms of "New Hampshire-ness" since you get characters from the immigrant generation all the way up to the present day who are from different socio-economic spheres.
It's not a bad book, of course, the fact that it was published by Penguin will tell you that. If it wasn't good a book about small-town New Hampshire wouldn't even get read by Penguin. At the same time, it's not so great that the characters or story stays fixed in your mind. Like many books that deal with characters from less advantaged situations, the reader finds themselves questioning some of the more feckless choices the characters make.
New Hampshire promises to be a grim slog.
Published 7/10/23
Leah, New Hampshire: The Collected Stories of Thomas Williams (1992)
by Thomas Williams
Lebanon, New Hampshire
New Hampshire: 2/13
Heading into a swath of New Hampshire novels from the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. As I was saying in my review of Lake People by Abi Maxwell (New Hampshire: 1/13), New Hampshire has a swath of territory in the southeast corner that is basically part of the Boston megapolis and the rest of it is just a decrepit, snowy wasteland filled with white trash and rich weirdos who don't want to work or pay taxes. I'm sure that one of the take-aways from the 1001 Novels: A Library of America is that huge swaths of America have produced little or nothing in the way of unusually interesting literature.
Two of the books from New Hampshire aren't novels at all, but are short story collections, The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson and this book- a posthumous collection by Thomas Williams, a writer who was well known in literary circles back in his day (70s/80s) but has been largely forgotten and was actually out of print up until 2011 when The Hair of Harold Roux was reprinted by Bloomsbury. Along with Lake People, Leah, New Hampshire is one of the northernmost titles out of the 13 New Hampshire books. Like Maine there is a huge swath of New Hampshire- basically the northern half which has zero titles in the 1001 Novels project. What is odd about that is both Maine and Vermont have equal numbers of titles below and above an imaginary halfway line running through all three states, but all New Hampshire's books are in the southern half.
All of Williams' short-stories are immediately recognizable as New Yorker/Esquire type short fiction from the time before diversity was a concern: White men from working class backgrounds (or their children) struggling with various issues surrounding the ethics of hunting or the difficulties of growing up. Williams does an excellent job of portraying the bleakness of mid-state New Hampshire- a common theme for all the New Hampshire titles thus far.
Published 7/10/23
Fortune's Rock (2001)
by Anita Shreve
North Hampton, New Hampshire:
New Hampshire (3/13)
I genuinely disliked Fortune's Rock, a winsome tale about a wealthy 15 year old summering on the New Hampshire seacoast circa 1900 with her brilliant father, who has educated her himself and her mother who is one of those Victorian wraiths who populate the pages of turn of the century fiction. Of course, Olympia Biddleford, for that is her name, bangs the first guy she comes across, a married doctor. Of course she gets pregnant, of course she is caught red handed, banging said doctor at the turn of the century equivalent of a pool party. Of course she is shamed and forced to give up her baby, setting in motion the rest of the plot which is about as predictable as one can imagine.
Anita Shreve (d. 2018) was a generally well regarded and prolific novelist who occupied a slot a couple rungs below a major literary prize winner/critical/academic darling but a couple rungs above your typical best seller of chick-lit. This book, for example, is the first of four set around the same beach house, which Ms. Biddleford ends up converting into a home for unwed mothers at the end. As I mentioned, I groaned through this whole book since it was not hard to figure out where she was headed with the story.
The best moments took place in an industrial town that I believe was modeled on Dover, New Hampshire, where Olympia pursues her son among a community of French-Canadian factory workers. It was the first taste of New England factory life, which I would have expected to a major theme in the New England novels of this project, but that hasn't been the case. Genuinely unpleasant to read.
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| Nick Nolte as Wade Whitehouse in Affliction. |
Affliction (1989)
by Russell Banks
Lawford, New Hampshire
New Hampshire (4/13)
I really enjoyed the movie version of Affliction, directed by Paul Schrader and starring a memorable Nick Nolte as Wade Whitehouse, the protagonist but not the narrator. The book was just as good- I actually really enjoy reading the book after seeing the movie but never the other way around for some reason. I actually remembered specific lines from the film, which I saw when it came out in 1997 and not since.
Whitehouse, with his harrowing tooth ache and unresolved issues with his father and ex-wife is a memorable literary character in the pantheon of broken American masculinity. By using his college educated younger brother as the narrator, Banks creates some metafictional moments and adds some distance which makes reading the book more pleasant than a book narrated by Wade himself would have been. Banks also does a great job of describing the terrain/psychogeography of mid-state New Hampshire in a way that few of the authors in this project have accomplished. I actually saw the town as a character in this book, and I haven't had that feeling about any of the other books so far except for Empire Falls by Richard Russo, which is literally named for the town in question.
I'm sure Affliction would be in my top 3 from New Hampshire within the confines of the books selected for 1001 Novels: A Library of America
Published 7/11/23
We Took to the Woods (1942)
by Louise Dickinson Rich
Middle Dam, Lake Umabagog, Maine
Maine: 20/23
The end is in sight for the Maine chapter of 1001 Novels: A Library of America. Only three books left to go after this one, Olive Kitteridge, 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning Tinkers by Paul Harding and an interesting Native American authored detective novel. We Took to the Woods, however, is not a novel at all, calling into question the entire premise of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. After all, editor Susan Straight didn't call it "1001 Books" and there are no non-fiction books besides this one thus far. Perhaps Straight is categorizing We Took to the Woods as "auto fiction" rather than auto-biography- since auto fiction wasn't a thing in 1942.
I read a 1970 reprint from Down East books- the second novel from Maine that was published as a reprint by Down East. I really enjoyed We Took to the Woods, which takes the form of a series of "answers to readers questions" about what it is really like to live down in the ass-end of nowhere. Home for Rich and her husband is a cabin located between two rivers in a tract of logging land. Her writing is very much in the style of 40s/50s aw-shucks "lady journalism" of the period, with lots of self-diminution and appeals to common sense but that doesn't detract from the sheer awe inspiring nature of her surroundings.
If you actually read We Took to the Woods it's impossible to miss the gothic coda not contained in the book: Rich's loving husband died in the same woods not two years after this book was published. It lends an edge to the text that would otherwise be absent.
Published 7/12/23
Baby Love
by Joyce Maynard (1981)
Hillsboro, New Hampshire
New Hampshire: 5/13
Really, really disliked Baby Love by pre-Me Too era icon Joyce Maynard. She famously dated reclusive author JD Salinger as a young lass, only to turn around and call him a predator in the memoir she published after he died. The combination of her Salinger-related notoriety and actual talent as a early example of a "youth issues" specialist in the national press lead her to publish Baby Love, her first novel, in 1981. She followed that up with To Die For, her fictionalized version of the Pamela Smart murder story that would later be adapted by Gus Van Sant as a film of the same name.
Baby Love starts out as an example of an "After School Special" style novel about a group of young mothers- none of whom is older than 16. It's exactly the sort of teen pregnancy that has been a focus at major efforts of eradication in the years since 1980. For example, between 1991 and 2021 the birthrate of women between 15 and 19 went from 61.8 per thousand to... 15. That is quite a decline and Baby Love represents the "before" shot of a before and after comparison.
After a quiet, sad opening half Baby Love goes badly off the rails in the final third, as Maynard introduces a virtual cavalcade of secondary characters, including an insane murderer and a jaded teen from New York City who decides on a whim to hitchhike up to the small town in New Hampshire where the books takes place. There's also a woman who kidnaps here daughter and then tries to set fire to an abortion clinic where one of the other characters is attempting to have an abortion. It's insane. Is it supposed to be funny? I'm guessing not.
On the other hand, it was a best-seller and Maynard was a literary celebrity for years, so you have to give her credit for a good first novel even though I straight up did not like Baby Love. Oh also, in case I've never mentioned this, I really don't like books that deal with the issues confronting young mothers. Every baby is the same. Seriously. They aren't interesting characters and only bad things ever happens to them within the precincts of literary fiction. Like the Chekov's gun appearing on the wall in the first act that must be used by the end of the play, the birth of a child or presence of an infant in the opening pages of a work of contemporary literary fiction essentially ensures that the child will die, be handicapped or turn out to be a real piece of shit through no fault of the narrator parent.
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| Frances McDormand won an Emmy for her performance in the HBO Oliver Kitteridge mini-series |
Published 7/12/23
Olive Kitteridge (2008)
by Elizabeth Strout
Crosby, Maine (Brooklin, Maine)
Maine: 21/23
Oliver Kitteridge is a double hit- it won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize AND the HBO four episode miniseries won eight prime time Emmy's in 2015. So two of the last three books out of Maine are Pulitzer winners. The Maine books are weighted towards women authors, 60% of the books from Maine are written by women. Two books written by Native American authors. One LGBT author who is also Asian-American. The selection seems in line with modern sensibilities. If something is missing it's the late 19th century/early-mid 20th century adventure/historical genre, like Arundel (1930) by Kenneth Roberts. The Maine picks are also weighted towards more recent releases- 12 of the 23 books came out after the turn of the millennium.
I kind of had the impression that this books was dull and mainstream based on the popular success, but over the pandemic I read Oh William! (2021)which seems like a work of auto-fiction and the follow-up novel, Lucy by the Sea (2022). I thought both books were really sharp, and that Strout was an extraordinary writer, so I actually ended up looking forward to tacking Olive Kitteridge. Strout uses a format of interlinked short-stories which all circle around Olive, a cantankerous mother of one who has retired after teaching at the local elementary school.
The 1001 Novels: A Library of America places the imaginary town of Crosby, Maine near Sedgwick, on the way to Deer Isle past Blue Hill. I actually stayed in an Airbnb almost exactly where they've placed the marker and it seems like they missed the mark for this book- or Straight did, or the mapping company. It sounds more like Booth Bay, the next peninsula over then it does the area where the marker resides. I mean there is nothing where the marker is located on the 1001 Novels map, and it sounds like they live in a small town- Darmascotta or Wiscaset are two other possibilities.
Published 7/14/23
Before and After (1992)
by Rosellen Brown
New Hampshire: 6/13
Hyland, New Hampshire
Before and After is the westernmost book, geographically speaking, from New Hampshire, narrowly beating out Leah, New Hampshire by Thomas Williams. Author Rosellen Brown is one of the lowest profile authors encountered in the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. This book was adapted into a poorly received film starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson, but Brown has been active for close to a half century (first book of poems published 1970, most recent novel, 2016) and she never had a hit. As a criminal defense attorney, I found the story: About the consequences for a family of New Yorkers who move up to small-town New Hampshire only to have their teen son allegedly murder his white trash girlfriend with a tire iron in the first five pages, extremely tedious. I'm not alone. Roger Ebert, in reviewing the movie version called it a "grim slog."
Before and After is very much one of those books that tries to take a tv movie level plot and dress it up/out as literary fiction by making every character unlikeable and ending the tale on a sour note. Perhaps, if it wasn't so directly related to my profession I might have enjoyed bits and pieces, but there is no denying that the entire family seem like assholes, except maybe for the younger sister. Seriously, I couldn't stand any of them. Mom, dad, sister, brother. The son/accused murderer at the center of the plot was particularly unlikeable, but Mom, with her holier than thou attitude, and Dad with his self-centered analysis of the proceedings are hardly better.
Published 7/14/23
Chenoo (2016)
by Joseph Bruchac
Abenaki Island, Maine
Maine: 22/23
Almost done with Maine you guys! Just waiting for my copy of Tinkers by Paul Harding to make it the Atwater Village Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library (after failing to locate the paperback that is somewhere in my house). Chenoo was an interesting read on a number of levels. First, it is a work of detective fiction published by the University of Oklahoma, which is not known for its fiction, Native American or otherwise. Second, the main character is a member of an unrecognized Native American tribe- which is a particular minority within the greater number of Native Americans who are tribally enrolled and the much, much greater number of Americans who "identify" as Native Americans either within the census or on a personal level.
Members of federal unrecognized tribes experience discrimination from both sides but they pose a particular threat to members of federally recognized tribes who are often quite nasty to their unrecognized brethren. It's a deep, complicated subject but undoubtably a unique perspective in American Literature. Bruchac is the second Native American author in the Maine segment of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. The other is Morgan Talley and his Night of the Living Rez- which takes place on the other side of Maine. Bruchac's martial arts loving, ex-US Special Forces detective Joseph Neptune is a member of the Pennaook, the western most members of the of Wabnaki Confederacy who were chased out of their territory: present day southern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, in the historic period as a result of the conflict between French and British fighting. Their members were absorbed by other tribes, both related and former enemies, and that has led to their present status as an unrecognized people.
Bruchac does a great job explaining this complicated history within the context of a Scooby-Doo type detective story. There isn't much there besides the character building and frequent insertions of Native American folklore-myths as Neptune reflects in quiet moments. But I'm not complaining, I'd rather read a million Joseph Neptune books then one more detective story about a white guy with daddy issues.
Published 7/17/23
Tinkers (2008)
by Paul Harding
West Cove, Maine
Maine: 23/23
Tinkers, the debut novel by Paul Harding is extraordinary by several measures. First, it won the Pulitzer Prize- which is rare but not unheard of (16 times, the first time back in 1924). Second, it was published by an independent/small press, which is less frequent than first time novelists winning, and if you take FSG out of the category, may be as few as three of four books over the history of the Pulitzer Prize. Third, and finally, Tinkers was not reviewed by the New York Times- that's the most astonishing fact about the history of Tinkers. The New York Times seemingly reviews every "serious" work of literary fiction in the United States with special attention to debut novels AND independent presses - the fact that no review appeared until after the Pulitzer Prize was awarded is breath-taking within the context of the precincts of literary fiction.
Tinkers also represents the northernmost title in the New England portion of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America- A Poacher's Son is close but Tinkers takes it. Both books are still about 175 miles south of the border so that whole part of Maine doesn't merit a single book.
Harding's Pulitzer Winner/first novel is about the death of an elderly clock repairman, George Washington Crosby and his father, Howard. Much of Howard's bit recalls his days as a traveling salesman and his struggles with epilepsy whereas George's recollections are focused on his experiences as a child. Like Harding's recent book, This Other Eden, the role of the state mental hospital and the pre-occupation of 20th century Maine public health officials with "impurities" and "genetic weakness" bites hard. You could call it a favorite theme of Harding, and Harding you can call a major American writer at this point- three books in. Another Pulitzer wouldn't be surprising since he seems to land in a Colson Whitehead level sweet spot of regionalism, a meaningful social message, memorable characters and brevity.
Published 7/19/23
Peyton Place (1956)
by Grace Metalious
Gilmanton, New Hampshire
New Hampshire 7/13
Peyton Place was a genuine smash number one hit that spawned a TV show, a TV show spin-off and sequels written by other authors (Grace Metalious drank herself to death in her mid 30's). It continues to influence pop-culture today- Twin Peaks was heavily influenced by the Peyton Place vibe, and any plotline about dark secrets in small town America has something of Peyton Place in its DNA. Famously based on events from a real small town in New Hampshire, Peyton Place has it all: tons of illegitimate sex, alcohol abuse, illegal abortions and tons and tons and tons of small town gossip.
There can be no doubt that Peyton Place is a real highlight for the 1001 Novels: A Library of America, Chapter 2: New England, it's almost like America itself turned into Peyton Place- like it somehow presaged the future of pop culture. It's also an interesting example of the melodrama, which is typically used in a pejorative sense these days, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I honestly was shocked by the racy subject matter- there weren't a lot of books openly tackling incest and abortion on the best-seller list back in the mid 1950's in the United States. You could also make a case that this is a 1001 Books level title as a representative of popular American fiction from the 1950's.
Published 7/23/23
A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972)
by Robert Newton Peck
Sunderland, Vermont
Vermont: 2/7
It's interesting to see so many YA titles in the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list. There were a few children's books in the 1001 Books list, but no YA titles. A Day No Pigs Would Die, in fact, was one of the very first books to be called "YA" as supposed to "Children's." This is the literary equivalent of the PG-13 film rating, and I think that it is interesting that, whatever it's intent, the Young Adult category is not, in fact, for young adults (18-22?) but rather for teens who are, by definition, children.
My sense is that A Day No Pigs Would Die has gone out of fashion for a couple different reasons, first as a trailblazer in the YA field it has attracted a disproportionate number of complaints from the "save the children" crowd. On the other side, there are obvious authenticity issues stemming from the "semi-autobiographical" marketing (Peck was not raised by or near Shakers) and issues of location: There are no Shaker villages in Vermont. Caught between the two forces, I can see A Day No Pigs Would Die being "weeded" out of existence- it looks like the last edition was published in 1994.
Mostly I was grateful that A Day No Pigs Would Die was brief- maybe 150 pages? That fits the subject matter which is a straight forward narrative about a young boy growing up with Shaker-farmer parents on a farm in rural Vermont. I can see where the controversy comes from- a major plot point is this pig that the protagonist receives as a gift. In an attempt to breed the cow he watches a boar mount her and its all described very matter-of-factly. Farm life, depicted for a literary audience, often strikes me as abysmally cruel, such was the case here.
Published 7/23/23
Live Free or Die (1990)
by Ernest Herbert
Keene, New Hampshire
New Hampshire: 8/13
Lot of multi-generational small town conflict between classes in the literature of New England. I'd imagine that these sort of books make up a substantial minority of the all the books in the 1001 Novels project. This book is the fifth of seventh in the Darby Chronicles, about the fictional, class obsessed world of Darby. The first book, published in 1980, made an impression as Herbert's debut novel and in 2021 Weselyan Press brought the entire series back into print.
At first, I couldn't believe that Live Free or Die was a book published in 1990. Herbert writes like an author from the 1950's and the cover illustration of the hardback edition from the library has a very 1970's vibe. Live Free of Die had me checking my proverbial watch every fifty pages. I often found myself asking why anyone would give a hoot about the people of Darby and their problems- though it was interesting to notice the overlapping themes of other books from the area: specifically, the issue of the purchase and use of land for ski resorts to attract tourism to a town in need of revitalization (see Affliction (1989) which has almost the same plot point. There's also discussion of the Horned Pout fish, which seems to be a popular metaphor for class relations in New Hampshire literature.
Lillith Salmon is the major protagonist- the youngest member of the patrician Salmon family, who figure in each of the five volumes. She returns home from college in what can only be described as a poorly understood malaise and takes up with Freddy Elman, the son of the local trash collector. Freddy knocks Lillith up, she struggles with her family decline in the aftermath of the death of her father, who killed himself, it turns out, it all seems pretty rote and there was a nary a surprise in all 450 pages. The idea that Lillith could command any kind of respect either from Freddy or anyone in the town of Darby, as far as I could tell she didn't seem to have a single idea in her head and almost every choice she makes in the book is irritating. She is very much a female character written by a male author with little or no insight into that type of human being. Hard Pass on the Darby Chronicles!
Published 7/26/23
The Lottery and Other Stories (1948)
by Shirley Jackson
Bennington, Vermont
Vermont: 3/7
Not for the first time I have been reminded that Shirley Jackson was omitted from all three versions of the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die list. I've never actually read the full book of short-stories, though like every school child in American I read The Lottery in junior high- The Lottery has to be one of the most heavily taught short-stories in the United States due to the combination of length(super short) and impact on young readers (heavy). I read one of her novels, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, during the pandemic after hearing about it on Marlon James' podcast. I enjoyed that book. Back then I wrote that Jackson- who died back in 1965, was perhaps due for a Charles Dickens/Jane Austen level canon upgrade.
1001 Novels editor Susan Straight assigned this book to Bennington, Vermont, where Jackson was living when she wrote The Lottery- the town is meant to resemble Bennington. Bennington is located in the southwest of the state, it's geographically contiguous with the Massachusetts's Berkshires region- I actually drove from Bennington down to North Adams. The whole Bennington/North Adams/Pittsfield corridor is closer to Albany, New York than Boston.
Jackson is a fabulous writer and her stories really do pack a punch- not a one is over twenty pages and almost all of them manage to conjure a level of disquiet that sticks with you. As far as the identification with Vermont goes, it seems kind of random since most of the stories, or a the largest minority take place in New York City in the 1930's. The Lottery is the only story that takes place in Vermont and even then it isn't explicit, it's just a "known fact" about it.
Still, I'm pretty sure this is going to be the top of the list for the Vermont chapter of 1001 Novels: A Library of America, and again, it's a little embarrassing that this is my first read.
Published 7/31/23
Project x (2004)
by Jim Shepard
Mill River, Vermont
Vermont: 4/7
Vermont will be the next state I close out in the 1001 Books project. Only three more titles to go, and I've got them all out of the library, lined up. First off is this dour book about two school-shooter types who happen to live in the far north of Vermont. Given the geographical nature of the 1001 Novels Project, I couldn't help but notice an utter lack of indicia that this book was taking place in Vermont. I went online and tracked down some reviews from when it was published that said where it took place (Vermont) but I'm still not sure why reviewers said that. Shepard, the author, is based in Massachusetts and the thank you's are to school districts in Massachusetts.
As to the plot... This book was published in the aftermath of the Columbine school shooting, which I think many would agree inaugurated the modern era of the mass school shooting. Columbine happened in 1999, and Project X was published in 2004, before the reality of school shootings being a permanent phenomenon of the American experience, so give him the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway, in 2023 the formula of a school shooter is sadly familiar. The only false note here is that there are two of them- that appeared to be an important part of the Columbine massacre- two losers egging each other forward, but in later years the solo shooter became the established pattern. I found Project X excruciating. I've heard enough about the psychology of school shooters and I don't find them interesting.
Published 8/21/23
October Light (1976)
by John Gardner
Bennington, Vermont
Vermont: 5/7
Man! So much domestic fiction about single moms in this 1001 Novels: A Library of America list. Not this book, but generally speaking. October Light is an interesting pick for a couple reasons. First, it was published in 1976 making it one of the oldest books on the list thus far (I'm about 50 books in at this point). Second, although it scores a zero on the diversity index it is actually a challenging work of literary fiction which hasn't been the case for any other book on this list thus far. We've still got a long way to though, but thus far most of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America are coming-of-age stories, domestic fiction (single moms, dads and their kids) and "books about towns," with a central family drama and a case of supporting characters.
Gardner is an interesting writer for a couple reasons- first, he was part of the wave of late 60's/early 1970's awakening of challenging literary fiction in the United States. Second, he renounced that trend and published a book called On Moral Fiction where he denounced Pynchon et all basically for being dirty-minded, if I understand the argument he made in 1978.
I mention this in the context of a review of October Light because there is a very interesting book-within-a-book, read by the elderly sister of the family while she is locked inside her room by her cantankerous brother. This book closely resembled Pynchon- specifically The Crying of Lot Forty Nine, which made me wonder if Gardner and Pynchon had a literary beef. And they did, as the New York Times interview accompanying On Moral Fiction demonstrated:
Gardner believes there are no major American writers working now. In his opinion, John Barth, William Gass, Vladimir Nabokov (now dead, of course), Donald Barthelme and Stanley Elkin are more interested in “newfangledness” or in playing games with words or with literature itself than in concentrating on the moral and emotional problems of their characters; Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, John Updike and Robert Coover, among others, don't even seem to care about their characters — a fatal flaw in any writer, according to Gardner — while other novelists are self‐indulgent philosophizers (Saul Bellow) or full of “winking mugging despair” (Thomas Pynchon). (NEW YORK TIMES)
So I suspect the book within a book in October Light does, indeed, parody Pynchon.
Published 8/7/23
Midwives (1997)
by Chris Bohjalian
Reddington, Vermont
Vermont: 6/7
OK! Almost done with Vermont although one of the two remaining books is 732 pages long! Yikes! I'm reading that title (Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary Morris) on my Kindle because I can't face reading a 732 page book that looks a boring as Songs in Ordinary Time looks. Midwives was genuinely excruciating for me to finish because it is about a midwife in Vermont who is charged with a felony after one of her clients dies during childbirth (and she delivers the child by caesarean section). Like other books on this list from New England, Midwives is the story of a court case, told from the perspective of the child of the accused, with a cast of characters that involves a local criminal defense attorney, and takes place over the course of time it take the case to come to trial (about a year).
Most of the books fitting this description on the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list are, first and foremost, hits. Midwives was a hit- an Oprah pick back in 1997. All of his books have close to a thousand reviews on Amazon, which is respectable but not great. He's not a favorite of litterateurs, but he's tolerated- the New York Times has kept track of him for years though he tends to be written about as a high-end, best-selling genre guy- the recent reviews call him a writer of "thrillers". His most recent hit is the Flight Attendant, which got make into a prestige tv show on HBO.
Bohjalian has several different modes: the issue novel, the thriller and historical fiction are all evident in his bibliography. Within the context of the 1001 Novels project, Midwives does get high marks for representing a part of Vermont called "the Kingdom," basically the far northeast of the state. It's the only book on the list set there. It's also worth noting that Bohjalian is the first Armenian-American author on the list.
Published 8/21/23
Songs in Ordinary Times (1995)
by Mary McGary Morris
Atkinson, Vermont
Vermont: 7/7
Vermont is the third state I've closed out from the 1001 Novels: A Library of America. I'm not going to lie, it's been a bit of a slog. I'm not sure what kind of literary fireworks one can expect from the literature of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont but there have been very many single moms and alcoholic dad's in the first fifty titles. Which, I guess, if that is the authentic character of New England, as I sometimes suspect it might be, then kudos, Susan Straight. But all three states have featured a surfeit of single moms with alcoholic, absent fathers- sometimes multiple generations or families in the same title, so we will see if that persists (because it does in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and I'm assuming the trend will hold in Massachusetts.
Songs in Ordinary Times is the most tedious of the lot, so far, at 750 pages. Songs was an early example of the Oprah Book Club elevating a title to best seller status and a certain kind of literary immortality. Certainly, not all critics were impressed- The New York Times review was borderline cruel and called the characters ridiculous- and I agree. Every character was shrill, maudlin and unsympathetic at the very same time. There wasn't a single person to root for and Morris didn't even have the decency to writer an unhappy ending.
Her attempt to bridge the story of a single family to that of a whole town left multiple characters sidelined by the end of the book- a child psychiatrist who also abuses his children who gets one scene, the local insurance salesman who ends up trying to rob the town bank and ends up getting shot by the blind guy who finds out he can see after he is mugged. Every plotline is like that.
Published 7/26/23
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
by John Irving
Gravesend, New Hampshire (Exeter, New Hampshire)
New Hampshire: 9/13
This book is the first 1001 Novels/1001 Books cross-over. That's not surprising, John Irving is present three times on the 1001 Books list- and only once on the 1001 Novels list, meaning the editors of the 1001 Books list thought he was 3x more relevant. Straight appears thus far to be adhering to a "one book per author policy". I actually used Google Bard to generate a list of locations for Irving's books- he lived and taught in Exeter New Hampshire for many years: Cider House Rules is in Maine. Hotel New Hampshire is split between New Hampshire in Maine. I think World According to Garp is also set in New Hampshire.
I've gained an appreciation for Irving based on my physical presence in Exeter, New Hampshire over the past decade. It strikes me as a deeply appealing place- as a book nerd. The Phillips Exeter Academy is the east-coast version of the very SF Bay Area prep school I went to- I believe our headmaster during my tenure had come from Exeter (it didn't work out for him in the Bay Area.)
There was no way that I am going to slog through the 656 pages of Owen Meany again. I am 100% not going to listen to the 27 hour and 19 minute Audiobook version of Owen Meany. I am considering *attempting* to watch the execrable (44% Rotten Tomatoes) film version, Simon Birch. I cut and pasted my 2017 1001 Books to Read Before You Die review below. My opinions haven't changed since 2017. I think the best criterion for picking ONE John Irving novel for a canonical length would be "which novel is shortest?"
1001 Books to Read Before You Die Project
Published 5/30/17
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of those "popular, critically acclaimed artist at the top of their game" releases that is well received upon release, but ages badly. The aging process was not helped by a movie version that was so bad that Irving forced the makers to rename (Simon Birch). In 2017, reading A Prayer for Owen Meany was a tedious experience. First of all, it's something like 650 pages long- well over a thousand pages in the large print edition I accidentally checked out from the library. Despite being 650 pages long, Owen Meany doesn't cover a whole lot of territory- basically it discusses the friendship between John Wheelwright, the mini-scion of a regionally important Maine family, and his dwarf-like best friend, Owen Meany.
A Prayer for Owen Meany is about a lot of things: friendship, religion, family tragedy, New England private school education, the Vietnam War and the Reagan era Iran Contra shenanigans. Narrated from a present where Wheelwright is teaching girls school in Canada, a forty year old version, he recounts the shared life of himself and Meany through Meany's untimely demise (not a spoiler, Wheelwright makes clear in the first chapter that Meany has been deceased for some time).
Irving is nothing if not consistent, if you wanted to change the names around you could almost put The World According to Garp, Cider House Rules and this book in order and call it one book. Personally, I don't think that Irving is going to a canonical author a century for now. His books just aren't arty enough and they are long, long, long. His milieu, that of straight white men from New England coming of age in the mid 20th century, are highly unlikely to evoke the kind of revival interest among academics of the kind sparked by representatives of less familiar groups, none of the movie versions have made it to "classic" status. No one is ever going to that John Irving is "cool" ever again.
The main argument for Irving's canonical inclusion is his continued popularity with a mass audience. As I'm writing this, the most recent edition of this book is a top 5000 Amazon title, followed closely by Cider House and Garp. John Irving is still being read, in other words, and an author who combines critical and popular acclaim is likely to stay canonical as long as said works continue to be purchased by a large audience.
by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of those "popular, critically acclaimed artist at the top of their game" releases that is well received upon release, but ages badly. The aging process was not helped by a movie version that was so bad that Irving forced the makers to rename (Simon Birch). In 2017, reading A Prayer for Owen Meany was a tedious experience. First of all, it's something like 650 pages long- well over a thousand pages in the large print edition I accidentally checked out from the library. Despite being 650 pages long, Owen Meany doesn't cover a whole lot of territory- basically it discusses the friendship between John Wheelwright, the mini-scion of a regionally important Maine family, and his dwarf-like best friend, Owen Meany.
A Prayer for Owen Meany is about a lot of things: friendship, religion, family tragedy, New England private school education, the Vietnam War and the Reagan era Iran Contra shenanigans. Narrated from a present where Wheelwright is teaching girls school in Canada, a forty year old version, he recounts the shared life of himself and Meany through Meany's untimely demise (not a spoiler, Wheelwright makes clear in the first chapter that Meany has been deceased for some time).
Irving is nothing if not consistent, if you wanted to change the names around you could almost put The World According to Garp, Cider House Rules and this book in order and call it one book. Personally, I don't think that Irving is going to a canonical author a century for now. His books just aren't arty enough and they are long, long, long. His milieu, that of straight white men from New England coming of age in the mid 20th century, are highly unlikely to evoke the kind of revival interest among academics of the kind sparked by representatives of less familiar groups, none of the movie versions have made it to "classic" status. No one is ever going to that John Irving is "cool" ever again.
The main argument for Irving's canonical inclusion is his continued popularity with a mass audience. As I'm writing this, the most recent edition of this book is a top 5000 Amazon title, followed closely by Cider House and Garp. John Irving is still being read, in other words, and an author who combines critical and popular acclaim is likely to stay canonical as long as said works continue to be purchased by a large audience.
Published 7/29/23
Unlikely Animals (2022)
by Annie Hartnett
Newport, New Hampshire
New Hampshire: 10/13
OK! I got the end of New Hampshire in sight. Three more books. Unlikely Animals was a real delight- Hatnett borrows the device of using the inhabitants (spirits) of the local town graveyard as a kind of chorus for the plot, about a young woman who returns home to her small hometown in New Hampshire where her family is experiencing issues. If it sounds familiar, it is, but Hartnett really animates the proceedings with her writing skill- this was my favorite of the mini-genre of young women returning to their New England hometown to deal with family issues.
Of course, George Saunders won the Booker Prize in 2017 for his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo and that book featured narration by the inhabitants of a graveyard as well. I didn't find it derivative- because-if you've ever been to New England you know there are a ton of graveyards and they are very often right in the middle of the town. It really makes sense to make use of the graveyard in the manner of Saunders and Hartnett, so I don't dock her any review points for borrowing the device.
I was very glad that I didn't have an Audiobook to deal with- I'm sure I would have found the voice of the narrator annoying over the course of ten hours, but reading this book was an enjoyable experience. Recommended! Maybe my second favorite book from New Hampshire on the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list behind Affliction.
Published 7/30/23
Salem Falls (2001)
by Jodi Picoult
Salem Falls, New Hampshire (West Franklin. New Hampshire)
New Hampshire: 11/13
Confession time! I only made it half way through Salem Falls, a four hundred and fifty page Lifetime movie of a book about an ex-offender who re-locates to a small New Hampshire town after being released from prison after serving his sentence for a child sex offense (high school student, he was her teacher, she had a crush and made up the story, I think). No sooner does he relocate and find love with the owner of a local diner (who is herself the "moved back to her small town after losing it in the big city" type beloved of New England lit), when he is- surprise! Arrested and AGAIN accused of raping a local high school student. Look, I tried a child sex offense in Federal court last August- spent a lot of time and a lot of energy on the case and while they aren't exactly the same it is close enough to trigger emotions that I don't really want to deal with while reading my way through 1001 Novels: A Library of America.
So while I couldn't cope with Salem Falls, I did look into author Jodi Picoult (45 million copies sold!) who has never been mentioned before in 15 years of blogging and is unlikely to ever be mentioned again on these pages unless I move this review to a collected page. Who is Jodi Picoult? First and foremost, she is a seller of books. Getting beyond that fact- that she has written 28 novels and every one is a best seller, that her Amazon product pages have tens of thousands of reviews, that she has forty million copies in print right now and her books have been translated into 34 languages- is likely to provoke controversy.
Is Jodi Picoult "chick-lit"? That is what I had always assumed. However I looked into it before composing this post, and it appears not, since chick lit is often in the comic vein, is frequently set in "the big city", and involves a will-she-or-won't-she romance plot line. None of those things describe Salem Falls or Picoult's other books, which often take the form of procedurals of one form or another or straight-forward family melodrama. The most Jodi Picoult fact I could dig up on her Wikipedia page in terms of insight is that six films have been made from her 28 books and four of them were made by the Lifetime network. Jodi Picoult is the Lifetime Network of popular fiction.
Published 7/30/23
A Separate Peace (1959)
by John Knowles
Andover, New Hampshire
New Hampshire: 12/13
State number two is almost in the books. New Hampshire takes its place beside Maine in the New England chapter of the 1001 Novels: An American Library. I think probably I'll end up grouping Maine/New Hampshire/Vermont in one collected page and Massachusetts/Connecticut/Rhode Island in the other. The last book from New Hampshire is A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles, putatively a "YA classic" about a man struggling with the events from twenty years ago at his New England prep school. I can see why it might have fallen out of favor- the diversity index is a solid zero and the copy I read even included an interview with the author where he strenuously denies a same sex relationship between the narrator and his buddy at prep school. It's hard, as a contemporary reader, to NOT read such a subtext into this book, so that provide another reasons why it has fallen out of favor with, one presumes, high school lit professors.
Knowles does an excellent job of evoking the prep school milieu. And that is it for New Hampshire! Bye New Hampshire!
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