South of Broad (2009) by Pat Conroy

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

South of Broad (2009)

by Pat Conroy

Charleston, South Carolina

South Carolina: 4/14

   I will say that Charleston, South Carolina seems like the only globally interesting culture in this part of the United States (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina).  The whole idea of the southern aristocrat comes alive in Charleston, which is also a genuinely interesting city which I'd someday like to visit.  Pat Conroy, of course, is one of the most well-known authors in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  He achieved huge popular and limited critical acclaim for this novels, most (all?) of which were set in this part of the world.  Several of his books were adapted into big-budget Hollywood pictures that further cemented his place in the literary imagination of America.  

  South of Broad tracks the experiences of a group of friends from their time in high school in the late 60's to the present day- the book ends after Hurricane Hugo.  The narrator is Leo King, an obvious stand-in for the author.  The book traces back in forth in time from Leo's troubled childhood, marred by the suicide of hid older brother (this is the fourth or fifth older brother to commit suicide in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels project) and his own mistake of being caught holding the cocaine of a popular athlete at a high school party.  Leo's Mother is a lapsed nun turned high school principal.  She is also a scholar of James Joyce, a fact that King/Conroy bandies about without it ever impacting the writing style or plot of his book.

  

 South of Broad is a great pick within the parameters of the 1,001 Novels project because Conroy's narrator is a newspaper writer who is himself obssessed with the beauty of Charleston.  He also does a good job explaining the different cultural dynamics of this place, though he seems a bit treacly in his sentiments.  At 20 hours, the Audiobook was no walk in the park, particularly in the early going, but as the plot cranks into gear I found myself enjoying the dramatic third act.

Absolution (2024) by Jeff Vandermeer

 Audiobook Review

Absolution (2024)

by Jeff Vandermeer

   Reading the latest Southern Reach book from Jeff Vandermeer is an exercise in self-inflicted pain.  For those who aren't keep track, Annihilation and it's follow-ups were always referred to as the Southern Reach Trilogy up until this, the fourth book in the series, was published. The reach of Vandermeer's enterprise was expanded by the movie version by Alex Garland, which polarized audiences when it was released but has gone to enjoy a succesful life in the stream-o-verse- I think I've watched parts of it on three or four different streaming platforms at this point.

 So three books in what do we know about The Southern Reach- we know something is going on in there, that the something changes and transforms DNA- turning peaceful bunny rabbits into crab eating monsters and possessing the capacity to create human-like doppelgangers.  We know that the investigation is being run by a shadowy government agency, or maybe even a shadowy government agency secretly ensconced within another, larger, shadowy government agency.

   Beyond that I don't really know, and frankly, I'm kind of done caring after this, the latest episode which mostly tells the story of "Old Jim" a washed-up, alcoholic CIA agent obsessed with his missing daughter who is posted to Area X prior to the time period covered in Annihilation.   There is also a portion told from the perspective of two different members of the all-male expedition that preceded the all female expedition of Annihilation.   Like all the other books in the series, Vandermeer never makes anything explicit, leaving the reader to ponder what to make of it all.   To be fair there were some heart stopping set pieces, like the aforementioned crab eating rabbits and a late scene where the Area tricks one of the male expedition members into eating the flesh of a dead comrade- which is, contrary to the rest of the series, described in such intimate detail that I had to turn the Audiobook off a couple times to keep myself from potentially throwing up in my vehicle. 

The Children of Men (1992) by P.D. James

 Audiobook Review

The Children of Men (1992)

by PD James

  I love the movie version of this book- I've watched it several times over the years, and I finally got around to listening to the Audiobook of the original book by PD James.  James made her name as a writer of detective fiction and it's one of three non-detective fiction books she published before her death in 2014.   I believe there are multiple versions of the Audiobook- I would imagine one before the film and one after to capitalize on the revitalized interest.  Whichever version I heard I didn't like the narrator, who had a stuffy, pedantic English accent (as befits the character in the book).  

  As one might expect, the book tells a related but different story than the film, which was obviously diversified in the hands of director Alfonso Cuaron.  In the book, the harsh treatment of would-be immigrants is mentioned as a concern  but not something encountered by the characters.  In the film, the immigrants and their treatment are at the center of the plot.  I found myself wondering about James and her motivation- my thought is that she was inspired by Margaret Atwood and A Handmaid's Tale, which was published in 1985, so it very well could have been in her mind when she first imagined The Children of Men.  I don't see anything in her detective fiction that would have triggered this dark, dystopian tale of a childless future (and neither did the New York Times, both before and after the movie was released.)

Black Mountain Breakdown (1980) by Lee Smith

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Black Mountain Breakdown (1980)

by Lee Smith

Black Mountain, Virginia

Virginia: 10/17

  Geographically speaking, Black Mountain Breakdown is just down the road from the last book, Big Stone Gap, and the two books combined are the only representatives from far western Virginia.   Unlike the last book, Black Mountain Breakdown is another book which epitomizes the preferred POV of editor Susan Straight:  Adolescent girl protagonist character, can't get her act together for reasons which are hard to understand, spends her life between periods of normalcy where a man takes care of her and longer periods where she is neither barely functional or actually institutionalized.  Crystal Spengler is the lady in question and maybe the best thing I have to say about this book is that the writing style was sophisticated/modernist enough to give me trouble in actually comprehending the book.   Only the last portion, where Crystal becomes the wife of a rising Virginia politician, really stuck in my memory.  Published in 1980, Black Mountain Breakdown still belongs to the gauzy/hazy era of mental health where people were afflicted with nameless maladies and institutionalized for reasons that had more to do with the judgments of the people around them than any desire to help the sufferer get better. 

Big Stone Gap (2001) by Adriana Trigiani

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Big Stone Gap (2001)

by Adriana Trigiani

Big Stone Gap, Virginia

Virginia: 9/17

  Finally, a book from this part of the country that wasn't narrated by a sad, abused white girl or her African-American counterpart.  My overwhelming impression of the entire 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is that of the perspective of an adolescent or pre-adolescent woman living on the margins of American society.  Which is fine, but it's hard to distinguish the perspectives from each other since every protagonist has almost the exact same background: limited/poor education, extremely limited geographical horizons and challenging family.

   Big Stone Gap, on the other hand, has an interesting and relatively sophisticated narrator- Ave Maria, the 30 something "town spinster" of Big Stone Gap, which guards the entrance to the Appalachians.  She runs the town pharmacy, which she inherited from her Dad and she has recently buried her Mother, who died after a long illness.  Her mother, an Italian immigrant, throws Ave's well ordered world into chaos when she reveals, after her death, that the man Ave thought was her biological father is not, and that instead her mom emigrated to the US from Italy after getting knocked up by a married man in her Italian village.

   This startling revelation sets off a chain of activity and provides most of the plot.  Generally speaking, Big Stone Gap is Hallmark movie/rom-com territory but I actually enjoyed listening to Audiobook Ave Maria and hearing about her life.  Some of Ave's tropes made me roll my eyes- like her insistence that she was the town spinster in her mid 30's, and her refusal to see the love that has eluded her has, in fact, been in front of her the whole time, but those are the rules of the rom-com/Hallmark movie.  I also enjoyed listening to her country accent- the Audiobook was narrated by the Author, so that was a treat. I wouldn't recommend this book but I didn't mind listening to it as part of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.

Frederick Douglass (2018) by David W. Blight

 Audiobook Review

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018)

by David W. Blight

   Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight is another pick from the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Time (#86).  I'm also looking for non-fiction titles to round out my fiction heavy reading list, and the Times list has plenty of non fiction titles.  Even within the non fiction world, "great man" biographies aren't my favorite, but Frederick Douglass strikes me as a worthy candidate, since he is the first African-American, chronologically speaking, who would merit this treatment under any "great man" type theory of history. This is as compared to the "ordinary man"/annales school of history which focuses on normal folks, in which case there are many possible candidates for the honor.

   I knew nothing about Douglass beyond the bare biographical details of his life: Born a slave in Western Maryland, he learned to read and write at a young age and then fled slavery to the north as a young man, where he became known as a strong and urgent voice for the end of slavery. As the book reveals, he spent most of his life on lecture tours although in the post Civil War era he assumed several government positions, including being the US Marshall for Washington DC and as an envoy to Haiti- the only sinecure for African-American diplomats in the world at the time.  The Audiobook runs 36 hours, and it is easy to imagine the exact same story as a work of fiction- any individual who charts a career path as an "orator" as Douglass did- in an era before amplification of the human voice- is bound to have a flair for the dramatic in his personal and professional life.  

  For most of his life- and certainly the early pre-Civil War part, Douglass worked closely with white abolitionists, who were both his sponsors and his audience. These relationships were often fraught with issues of financial dependency, and it's hard to not to see Douglass' desire to emancipate both African-American slaves AND himself from white partners as a double theme of the book through the end of the civil war.  Beyond his work as an advocate, Douglass was one of the first (the first?) African-Americans to travel the world (American and Europe anyway) and his biography also does justice to those impressions.  For example, there are at least a dozen descriptions of Douglass encountering racial segregation on trains and boats- including the detail that when he was appointed as the American envoy to Haiti he had to find a new ship to take because the captain of the first ship refused to transport blacks and whites together. 

   After the Civil War, Douglass' legacy is a mixed bag: He was there when the Freedman's Bank- a post Civil War financial institution designed to help newly freed slaves obtain financial independence- collapsed, taking the savings of many of its (black) patrons.  He also advocated for the annexation of Haiti and other Caribbean and Central American polities and generally served as an apologist/advocate for American colonization. Finally, after his long suffering wife died, Douglass married a white lady. which, again, was close to being a unique circumstance at the time.

  His family doesn't come off particularly well. Douglass felt a strong obligation to support his children and their children, but none them amounted to anything, and a few were out and out failures.   

The Kitchen House (2010) by Katherine Grissom

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Kitchen House (2010)

by Katherine Grissom

Tidewater, Virginia

Virginia: 8/17

   The Kitchen House by Katherine Grissom resides squarely in the "white lady book club" category.  It has a cover quote from Alice Walker(!) comparing it to The Help and my paperback copy had one of those complicated, multi-flap covers that only come with "Recommended by Jenna" stickers added or the like. Grissom blends the stories of a white child who is brought to a Virginia plantation with the story of her African-American counter-part, Belle, slightly older and way wiser in the troubling ways of pre-emancipation Virginia.  To whit, the ability of any white man to force himself on any black woman with legal impunity, and indeed, the ability to sell his own child should the mood or need arise.

  This dynamic is at the heart of Grissom's tale, and perhaps it is why an author like Alice Walker would agree to blurb the book jacket of a white author telling a story involving narrators of both races.  Here, the dramatic tension is maintained by the white Irish servant girl's very naivete about such matters.   Compared to other characters in the same circumstances, her ignorance often seemed comical but I suppose that is book-club land for you. 

The Last Days of New Paris (1998) by China Miéville

 Audiobook Review

The Last Days of New Paris (1998)

by China Miéville

  I'm a big fan of science-fiction, less so of fantasy.  Sure, when I was a lad I played by fair share of Dungeons and Dragons and read all the fantasy classics.  As an adult I enjoyed the Game of Thrones television series, but beyond that, regular fantasy just seems so tedious with its magical creatures that recreate the cultural preoccupations of whichever author is behind the keyboard.  I am, however, intrigued by the writers of the "New Weird" movement a genre that lands somewhere in between fantasy, science fiction and literary fiction.

  Chief among these is English author China Miéville.  The Last Days of New Paris is an alternate-history/fantasy novella about a group of surrealists resistance fighters battling Nazi's and otherworldly demons conjured up by a detonation of an "S-Bomb."  The thin plot, which involves running around a ruined Paris and fighting Nazi's who are seeking to capture control of the free-ranging apparitions wandering around post-war Paris with the help of Demons they've conjured from hell, is also an opportunity for Miéville to write about the history of the surrealist movement and animate some of those characters.

  I found it all pretty incoherent as an Audiobook, and I couldn't even make it through the Appendix, where Miéville pedantically explains all the surrealist references among his characters and his monsters- which often take their shape from the psyche of their surroundings(!?!).   The thing about fantasy is that you always know where it's going to end up- there is going to be some kind of a quest and the protagonist either does the thing or fails heroically.  It's like, people never sit down for a meal and a chat in fantasy novels.  

The Known World (2003) by Edward P. Jones

 Book Review

The Known World (2003)

by Edward P. Jones

  Pulitzer Prize winner The Known World by Edward P. Jones was the highest ranked novel on the the recent Best Books of the 21st century book that I hadn't read(#4).  I can't believe that editor Susan Straight didn't include it in her Virginia chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, perhaps because she picked one of Jones' other titles for the Washington DC chapter.   Having now read The Known World, I found the exclusion baffling and I can't explain it except as an example of the firm one author/one book rule that seems to be operative within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Similarly, editor Straight left off Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, which is set in South Carolina and also seems to be a victim of the one author/one title.

  Surely the one novel in American literature that covers the experience of African American slave OWNERS in the upper south is worth including in a project that shows the different experiences of Americans?  Looking into Edward P. Jones and his legacy, I understand how I missed it the first time around- Jones has the lowest of low literary profiles and never wrote a second novel.  Having read The Known World, I can understand why.  If you totally nail such a huge subject and everyone agrees that you nailed it and it is the best book on the subject, why bother trying to top it?

Brown Girl Dreaming (2014) by Jacqueline Woodson

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Brown Girl Dreaming (2014)

by Jacqueline Woodson

Greenville, South Carolina

South Carolina: 3/13

   South Carolina is a geographically distinct state- the southern equivalent of Rhode Island on a bigger scale.  If you look at the map you can see that unlike Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland, South Carolina is cut off to the point where it basically looks like a city-state surrounding Charleston.  It's not hard to imagine some alternative history where South Carolina extends across what became Northern Georgia, but the Spanish and French presence in the South precluded expansionism early on, and then Georgia took that part of the US for itself. 

   Brown Girl Dreaming is one of only four South Carolina titles that takes place outside of the Charleston/low country area- Greenville is located in the northwest corner of the state and I had to look up its Wikipedia page to find out that it has a population of 1.5 million.   Brown Girl Dreaming was another easy target- a four hour long Audiobook which is "written in verse"- not poetry, exactly, but not prose- really a succession of very short chapters telling the story of the eponymous protagonist/narrator, the daughter of a single mom from Greenville, who is herself the child of Jehovah's Witnesses. Mom doesn't observe the faith, but the kids do, particularly after Mom decamps for New York City.  Her children eventually follow her up there, and this is another example of a 1,001 Novels title that could be placed on more than one location on the map.  Here, I thought the perspective of a Jehovah's Witness was interesting and I believe the first book which touched on that particular experience but this book didn't add much to my understanding of South Carolina or Greenville- basically all the narrator does in Greenville is hang out with her grandparents and go door to door with her fellow Jehovah's Witnesses. 

   Like many novels written from the perspective of pre-adolescent children, there is, simply put, a limit to how interesting a child under the age of ten can be in the pages of a book- and it's an even sharper limit if the author adheres to anything close to realism.