Promised Land (1976) by Robert Parker

1001 Novels: A Library of America

Promised Land (1976)

by Robert Parker

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 14/30

   This is the fourth book in the series of detective novels that spawned the famous Spenser for Hire television show.  It's amazing how ubiquitous prime-time television was in its heyday.  I never watched an episode but I still remembered that Robert Urich played Spencer.  I had no idea that the show was set in Boston.   I listened to the Audiobook, which was a pretty low rent affair, not that a detective novel from 1975 requires narrative fire-works.  Parker wrote 40 Spenser novels before he died in 2010.  If it is not clear already, a detective novel is a welcome change from the sad families and single women that have absolutely dominated the Massachusetts portion of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list.  Je-sus.

  Besides never watching the show, I'd never read a Robert Parker book before this Promised Land.  As the fourth book of forty, Spenser and his various attributes have already been set up- the weird relationship with his Jewish girlfriend is in place, and he's working as a private investigator.  It was actually this exact book that served as the pilot episode for the television show, and it also happens to be the first book with Hawk, who I think goes on to become his African-American sidekick- maybe I'm wrong about the relationship.  In Promised Land Hawk is a hired gun working for the bad guys, though with a code of honor that mirrors Spenser's own. 

  The character of Spenser is a private investigator for the 1970's- he cooks, he can talk intelligently about emotions and relationships, and he is actively anti-racist- calling out his employer when he uses the N-word to describe Hawk (who has just beaten him up a little bit).  The gig involves Spenser being hired by a Cape Cod area business man to track down his wayward wife- who has left because he loves her "too much".   She falls in with a nascent group of radical feminists who end up murdering a bank guard during a robbery(!).  Spenser then has to bail out both the wayward wife and his original client, the husband, who is in deep to a loan shark for a real estate deal gone south.

  I didn't love it as a detective novel but as a BOSTON detective novel it was great and like I said, it was a welcome relief from the parade of YA teen girl coming-of-age novels, sad single women and sad family women that have populated this part of the 1001 Novels List.   I'm sitting here looking at a stack of four more- including two that I tried as Audiobooks but couldn't bear in that form. 

Hangman (2023) by Maya Binyam

Author Maya Binyam

 

Book Review

Hangman (2023)

by Maya Binyam

  I checked the Audiobook version out of the library after seeing a couple of reviews of this book by Ethiopian-American author Maya Binyam- it's a debut novel, written by a woman and- surprise- it isn't about being a mom, not being a mom, being single, not being single etc.  That is pretty much an automatic read for me- a book written by a woman that isn't about motherhood or the travails of being an educated, upper-class white woman who lives in a city in NYC, LA, SF or London.  I'm looking for a breath of fresh air, in other words, and Hangman, an intriguing tale about an expatriate who returns to his unnamed country of origin because he believes his brother is dying, is precisely that, a book, written by a young, American author that isn't just about a stand in for the author complaining about her life for three hundred pages.

    Hangman was great- even though the country is unnamed I noticed similarities to Africa and Ethiopia.  The narrator of the Audiobook had such a distinct African accent that it seemed like a tacit admission that the book is set in Africa.  At times the writing reminded me of Kafka, Naipaul and Coetzee- a book filled with lower case p politics but also with intriguing narrative development and memorable supporting characters and locations.  Hangman has much to recommend it, and I recommend it highly!

The Vaster Wilds (2023) by Lauren Groff

 Book Review
The Vaster Wilds (2023)

by Lauren Groff

     I'm a big fan of American author Lauren Groff.  The first book I read by her was her short story collection, Florida (2018)-  I thought it was very interesting, particularly the texture she gave to the environment of Florida itself- which- you don't see portrayed much in literary fiction.  Most of the Florida books I've read have been detective fiction- namely Elmore Leonard's Florida era.  After Florida I went back and read Fates and Furies (2015)- which was nominated for the National Book Award.  I didn't love Fates and Furies, but it is impossible to argue with a National Book Award nomination.  I read Matrix- her very cool novel about life in a medieval Nunnery in England when it was released in 2021 and loved it.   I actually bought the hardback edition.  For The Vaster Wilds I checked out the Audiobook because the description, "girl escapes foundering American colony in the New World to fend for herself in pre-lapsarian North America"; sounded like a good Audiobook listen.

    Readers, I am here to say that The Vaster Wilds is a bit of a dud. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the listening experience, but Groff's minimalist attention to plot left me wanting more and less at the same time.  One of the issues here is that if you strand a pubescent, uneducated 17th century servant girl in the wilderness she isn't going to have many memories to reflect upon over the course of the book.  Groff keeps her isolated from the Native Americans, which cuts off another plausible path for narrative development.

   The narrator's flashbacks (she is unnamed in the book) to life in England don't feel revelatory or even particularly nuanced- life for a foundling servant child in 17th century London wasn't fun, we all know that and aside from the odd rape she seemed to have emerged from that portion of her experience with fewer scars than many other characters from the era.  We glimpse some true horror when the flashbacks take her through her life in the Virginia colony before her escape at the beginning of the books- some of the details there reminded me of the some of the grimmest moments of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.  Overall, her survival narrative is almost frighteningly dull- she escapes the colony, travels far enough to evade capture and then settles down for a decade.  Basically Groff gets her settled then presses fast forward to the end. 

  It make for an excellent Audiobook since it's a single voice adventure story- I enjoyed the experience, just didn't think it was Lauren Groff's best work.  Certainly a let down after the subtly nuanced Nuns of Matrix.