This week, books from Clarice Lispector, Adam Johnson, and Lucia Berlin.
The Incarnations by Susan Barker (S&S/Touchstone) - With her latest, Barker (Sayonara Bar) produces a page-turning reincarnation fantasy. In modern-day Beijing, Driver Wang receives anonymous letters from a source claiming to have known him in five previous lifetimes over the past 1,000 years. The letters narrate these lifetimes—set in the Tang Dynasty, 632 C.E.; the Jin Dynasty, 1213; the Ming Dynasty, 1542; the Qing Dynasty, 1836; and the People’s Republic of China, 1966—and paint them in lush historical detail, exhibiting Barker’s extensive research. These two “souls” have inhabited many rich characters (eunuch, prostitute, slave, concubine, pirate, Red Guard) and have been friends, enemies, parents, and lovers. Every new incarnation reverses their power dynamic, giving one the opportunity to betray the other. Not for the squeamish, these historical narratives contain graphic torture and sexual violence. Driving the narrative is the suspense over the identity of Wang’s stalker and whether the stories are indeed true. A very memorable read.
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (FSG) - Berlin, who may just be the best writer you’ve never heard of, has a gift for creating stories out of anything, often from events as apparently mundane as a trip to the laundromat. Imagine a less urban Grace Paley, with a similar talent for turning the net of resentments and affections among family members into stories that carry more weight than their casual, conversational tone might initially suggest. Many of the strongest stories here are autobiographical, featuring Berlin’s stand-in (sometimes called Lucille, sometimes Carlotta) and her sons, husbands and lovers; a range of jobs, mostly pink collar, but occasionally, as in the title story, blue; a complicated backstory across two continents; and a problem with booze. Berlin’s offbeat humor, get-on-with-it realism, and ability to layer details that echo across stories and decades give her book a tremendous staying power.
The Oregon Trail: An American Journey by Rinker Buck (S&S) - Despite growing up on the East Coast, Buck’s fondest childhood memories are of going on family trips with his eccentric father, who insisted on “seeing America slowly” by traveling and camping out in a covered wagon. These trips ignited a lust for travel and history that stuck with Buck, and that came roaring back when he found out that the Oregon Trail is meticulously preserved and traversable. Buck and his foul-mouthed handyman brother, Nick, set out to follow the 2,000-mile path, with only a covered wagon and mule team as their mode of transportation. The ensuing tale combines the brothers’ personal narrative with the remarkable history of the trail, including written accounts from the pioneers who braved it. What could have been a set of rote diary entries is anything but, as Buck’s enthusiasm for the often arduous trip, coupled with his honest assessment of poor judgments and mistakes along the way, makes for an entertaining and enlightening account of one of America’s most legendary migrations. Even readers who don’t know a horse from a mule will find themselves swept up in this inspiring and masterful tale of perseverance and the pioneer spirit.
The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt, illus. by Oliver Jeffers (Philomel) - How do you follow a hit like The Day the Crayons Quit? Stick with what works, and add a twist: instead of letters, Duncan receives a stack of postcards from crayons that have been misplaced or maligned, or are ready for adventure. A directionally challenged neon red crayon tries to get home after being abandoned at a motel; a trip through the dryer has left a turquoise crayon stuck to a sock; and a chunky toddler crayon can’t abide Duncan’s baby brother (“Picasso said every child is an artist, but I dunno”). Once again, Daywalt and Jeffers create rich emotional lives and personalities for their colorful cast, and it’s hard to imagine a reader who won’t be delighted.
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson (Random) - How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel? For Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son), the answer is a story collection, and the tales within are hefty and memorable. Johnson goes deep (and long—there are only six pieces in this 300 pager) into unknown worlds. In the title story, two North Korean criminals adjust to post-defection life in South Korea; in “Nirvana,” a man deals with his wife’s illness by creating an app that lets people talk to the (fictional) recently assassinated president. Johnson lets us spend time with an East German prison commander whose former office is a tour stop in a “museum of torture”; a man coping with hurricanes Katrina and Rita and an array of personal problems; and, in “Dark Meadow,” the highlight of a very strong collection, a pedophile trying to behave himself in the face of a variety of temptations. What these very different stories have in common is their assurance: the environments Johnson creates, along with the often problematic choices their inhabitants make, are totally believable. Often funny, even when they’re wrenchingly sad, the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sink into worlds we otherwise would know little or nothing about, ones we might even cross the street to avoid.
The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector, trans. from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson (New Directions) - Lispector—like Beckett, or, to a degree, Kafka—strips language to the bone, in search of some kind of metaphysical core or nucleus. The way she composes a sentence has more to do with subtracting layers from the world she observes than with adding commentary to it. In the devastating story "Love," for example, the protagonist notices people in the street: "Next to her was a lady in blue, with a face." Lispector's laconic, almost aphoristic syntax is, at times, full of a brutal sense of humor and at times disquieting. In the classic "A Chicken," a family chases a hen that, standing on a roof far from their reach, looks like "an out-of-place ornament, hesitating on one foot, then the other." In "Report of a Thing," about an alarm clock, the narrator notices "its infernal tranquil soul." In "Love," dried pits scattered on the ground, with their "circumvolutions," look like "little rotting brains." Lispector is the master of magnifying small, everyday details into epiphanies. The Complete Stories—more than 80 short stories, covering her entire writing life chronologically—seems to both restitute the form's most essential characteristics and open it up to boundless possibilities. Lispector writes, in the most simple and straightforward sense of the term, stories to be told.
Firefly Hollow by Alison McGhee, illus. by Christopher Denise (S&S/Atheneum) - McGhee (the Bink and Gollie series) introduces three tiny creatures with big dreams in a whimsical tale that examines how friendships change and the value of chasing one’s dreams. Firefly longs to fly to the moon, while her friend Cricket wants to be “the cricket version of Yogi Berra” (“Why shouldn’t crickets learn how to catch falling objects?” Cricket reasons. “Wouldn’t that make them all safer?”). Their respective clans think both notions are ridiculous. The two find kindred spirits in Vole, the last of his river-dwelling kind, and Peter, a “miniature giant” who is mourning the departure of a close friend. As Firefly and Cricket pursue their goals and explore new terrain, they come to understand their limits and the risks of being different. The book’s portrayal of the world as an exciting but dangerous place filled with huge human “artifacts” (all warmly evoked in Denise’s illustrations) will tickle readers’ fancies, and the poignant conclusion may cause a few tears to be shed.
I Was a Revolutionary by Andrew Malan Milward (Harper) - The eight stories in Milward’s second collection (after The Agriculture Hall of Fame) don’t just use history as a jumping-off point, they also raise questions about the nature of recorded history itself. Each one feels as complete and complex as a novel. Even better, each story is distinct, but benefits from its nearness to the others. The opening story, “The Burning of Lawrence,” examines Quantrill’s Raiders from conventional and meta perspectives, referencing a 1920s song about Quantrill, a 1912 photograph, and the 1999 Ang Lee film Ride with the Devil. The second story, “O Death,” picks up after the Civil War, with a set of characters facing an uncertain future. The time line moves forward into the 1920s (“The Americanist”) and the 1950s (“Hard Feelings”). The centerpiece of the book is “A Defense of History,” which follows the research of a historian called the Assistant, who gathers information about the Populists, a Kansas political party from a century ago, and is confronted with ethical questions when he comes across conflicting original sources. This collection is sharp, shrewd, and consistently thought provoking.
The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong by David Orr (Penguin Press) - New York Times poetry critic Orr, in his engaging follow-up to Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to American Poetry, narrows his scope to focus on one of America’s most beloved and most misunderstood poems. Even with poetry‘s diminished hold on the popular consciousness, many Americans can still recite the final lines of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” from memory (though most would probably misidentify it as “The Road Less Traveled”). Orr looks at how one poem could become so well-known among a generally poetry-allergic populace that it’s been used to launch a self-help revolution, provide titles for episodes of TV shows, and, further afield, sell cars in New Zealand. The book is divided into four sections, beginning with “The Poet,” a biographical sketch of Robert Frost the man and “Robert Frost” the myth. “The Poem” offers a close reading that disputes both popular readings of the poem as “a paean to triumphant self-assertion” and more critically accepted interpretations of it as a “joke (or trick).” “The Choice” probes American conceptions of choice from the days of the Founding Fathers to contemporary neuroscience. Finally, “The Chooser” synthesizes previously presented ideas into a nuanced discussion of modern selfhood. Orr blends theory, biography, psychology, science, and a healthy dose of pop culture into a frothy mix so fun, readers may forget they’re learning something.
Harriet the Invincible by Ursula Vernon (Dial) - This uproariously fun first entry in the Hamster Princess series begins when an uninvited evil fairy spoils Princess Harriet’s christening and curses the baby to a deathlike sleep at age 12. Sound familiar? Well, it is, but this future sleeping beauty is a rodent, and the curse involves not a spinning wheel but a hamster wheel. When Harriet Hamsterbone, no fan of standard princess stuff like deportment lessons and kissing princes, learns about the curse at age 10, she’s ecstatic—because she needs to be alive for the curse to work, she realizes that she’s essentially invincible. (Harriet celebrates by jumping off a tower, then “spent the next two years cliff-diving, dragon-slaying, and jousting on the professional circuit.”) When the curse magic gets twisted, Harriet demonstrates bravery, inventiveness, and a sword-sharp wit as she tries to save the kingdom. Shifting between prose passages and indigo-tinted cartoon sequences, Vernon (the Dragonbreath books) upends fairy-tale conventions and gender stereotypes left and right in a book with all the makings of a hit. Readers will be laughing themselves silly.
