I keep trying to read new books, but the last few sentences of The Son, by Phillip Meyer (see earlier post) keep haunting me.  Fortunately I've got Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell's book of short stories.  I keep going back to my favorite stories and now have read them several times.  They are mysteriously satisfying, better with each reading.  The New Veterans is one of my favorites -- a down to earth woman delivers healing body work to a veteran.  His tattoo, a portrait of a terrible moment in time is an unfixed world into which she enters.  The title story, told by an ancient and lonely vampire who looks like an Italian grandfather, is a melancholy love story, a suspense narrative, and a meditation on absurdity and time.  Russell's writing is always deliciously physical -- when the vampires sink their fangs into the wonderful lemons of Sorrento the mournful throbbing of their fangs subsides enough to quiet their spirits.  When I read that paragraph my teeth hurt.  The vampire falls off the wagon -- into miserable lemon rampage, then worse.  And his graceful bat wife . . . but you'll have to read it yourself.  

 Perhaps the most powerfully visceral of these stories is Reeling for the Empire.  Young Japanese women are lured away from their families and changed into silkworms -- their bodies continually bloating with thread, relief found only by having the thread drawn out.  Unbearable slavish appetites, unbearable enslaved relief -- what I love about Russell's work is her deadpan delivery of the most outrageously imaginative psychological truth.  Her humor is brilliant, her language strangely sweet, the most fantastic of her characters utterly believable. 

Reeling for the Empire pretty much describes a writer's life except instead of mulberry leaves I'm eating my healthy standby snack -- baby carrots and Ranch dressing.  Actually, the mulberry leaves sound better . . . 

 Yours,

 Louise         

Sometimes a busy woman has a ecstatic but sinking feeling as she reads the first chapter of a book -- a sort of Can't Quit You Baby knowledge -- no matter what the cost to others in the household I will be reading this wonderful book for the duration.  I will be lost in the book, stay up late for this book, pick it up first thing in the morning, let my own work go or be late for work.  Such is the power of certain books.  The Son, by Philipp Meyer got me right away and then nearly lost me with a rape and pillage scene of violence so viscerally brutal I tried to push away the book -- but then picked it up again and was hooked. 

Comanches, who later have a complex utterly authentic, even funny, starring role in this book, raid a settler family early on and kidnap two brothers.  One survives.  Eli McCoullough goes on to deliver one of the most absorbing, fully realized, captivity narratives I've ever read.  Meyer is a tough minded, hard working, graceful writer.  Much as John Tanner recounts in the narrative of his captivity, Eli becomes fully immersed, a Comanche, which was the point of captivity.  He becomes part of his new family and defends it ferociously.  His story, researched with obsessive zest and crackling with furious attention to detail, drives this book.  This is a family history told through diaries, WPA recordings, and omniscient observation.  Jeanne Anne McCullough's merciless femininity is thoroughly satisfying.  Peter McCullough's diaries tell a wrenching story of murderous white neighbors and the massacre of the Garcias, girls and men.  The violence is equally shared among the various cast members as the family history charges along, taking no prisoners. 

I read over and over the pages of workmanlike description that give this book such admirable depth -- "A fancy or unusually good bow was worth two or three horses.  They were all about a yard in length . . . and backed with the spine sinews from a deer or buffalo . . . if times were good -- if our warriors were not being killed and their equipment not being lost on raids -- the bowyers would take their time and their bows would be the stuff of legend.  Arrows were no different.  It could take half a day to make one just right."  Through Eli's compelling character, Meyer is able to narrate what we know will happen -- the last years of Comanche power, the horror of smallpox, the fact that Indians helped hunt each other down -- solidarity did not reach past tribal boundaries.  Adventure, history, cruelty, love -- it is all here and Meyer has the passionate discipline to tell it this big but never sprawling, ambitious, well crafted novel. 

As long as we're in Texas, I just finished The Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez.  Again, once I was in this book it was goodbye family, I am reading.  Domingo narrates his vivid, moving memoir with rueful wit and surprisingly, given the many betrayals in this family, no spite.  Some hatred, okay.  But no spite.  Oh the familiar craziness of it all.  The callings out, the vicious fights, the family brutalities, the helpless and overwhelming love of drunken men expressing drunken love.  There is a reason that English has colonized the words macho, macha, and machismo -- there isn't anything quite like it anywhere except on reservations and urban Indian worlds where an insult can drive family members to such rage they will gladly kill for honor.  (Okay -- I'll have to think this through more thoroughly)  Reading through this tempestuous struggle of a life I rooted for Domingo.  I feared he would not get out.  I thought he'd always live in Brownsville prey to raging uncles, a devilish Grandma, and yeasty Budweiser.  I worried about this even though I'd just met Domingo.  We were at Concordia College, in Minnesota.  We talked with classes and were jointly interviewed.  He was very well dressed, but not for Minnesota.  I wanted to put a parka on him but he looked too nice -- his jacket matched his gloves and his gloves matched each other.  (I only buy black gloves and socks so I don't have to really match accessories anymore.)  I recommend this book to everybody who has known the heart of a little boy shucked clean during the rapid onslaught of beer-fueled manhood.  And just to mention again -- this book is frequently very funny.

May I also mention Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles.  A terrific novel about a WOMAN.  And as I'm running out of space Maki has grabbed Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell in a bid to review it in his column -- the dog. 

Yours for books,

 Louise

First the birthday post:  It was like getting an invitation from the most popular girl in the fifth grade, only it was Philip Roth.  So I went to his birthday (wonderful) party.  I had promised to wear my Indian clothes, so I did.  My daughter had given me a resplendent outfit bought during her recent trip to New Delhi.  Asked to speak, I toasted Philip and gave him a nickname -- stating positively that I am NOT a sacred person, and could only give a secular Ojibwe nickname.  He was 80 years old that day and surrounded by thrilled, loving people, including the very great Edna O'Brien. 

Her latest collection of stories, Saints and Sinners, has within it a story that I reread every few months.  That story is titled Old Wounds. 

The worse the news gets regarding publishing, the better the books are -- I don't get it.  You'd think writers would be fleeing the profession.  Instead, I've had an avalanche of tremendous new nonfiction:  Katherine Boo's magnificent "Behind the Beautiful Forevers", Gretel Ehrlich's harrowing account of the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, "Facing the Wave, A Journey in the Wake or the Tsunami", and classic Tom King.  "The Inconvenient Indian."  Biting, mordant, enlightening -- yet somehow addictive reading.  Tom has taken on a difficult subject: us.  He's made it the kind of book you reach for when, you know, you want a good book.  Also there is "Westhope, Life as a Former Farm Boy", by Dean Hulse.  He's from North Dakota and he feels the same way I do about industrialized farming.  And now I'm reading "The Boy Kings of Texas" by Domingo Martinez and trying not to laugh and cry at the same time because it makes it hard to eat chocolate.

Wait, I've got to go. There's so much light out.  Daylight!  More time to read.  "The Absolutist," by John Boyne.  I have two other books to tell you about but they aren't published yet.  Watch for "The Son" by outrageously talented Phillip Meyer and "Children of the Days", by scorchingly brilliant Eduardo Galeano.  More about these two books -- to come.

Louise