I remember reading one of Alice Hoffman's historical fiction novels (sadly, I don't remember which one), and really liking it. I also remember reading two of Hoffman's other books (sadly, I do remember them) and thinking they were overly sentimental Hallmark-channel worthy stories with no there there. But I couldn't get that first book out of my mind. I had to believe it wasn't just a fluke (though, I love the first Nicholas Sparks novel I read, The Notebook, and I definitely should have stopped there <gag>). I decided to give Hoffman one more try when I read the blurb for Faithful.

Anyone raised Catholic can tell you what a powerful force guilt can be (I hear Jewish mothers also have this concept down to an art form). Faithful explores the consequences of guilt, the ways that it can derail a person's life and completely change who they are. The story revolves around Shelby, whose life was thrown off track by a tragic accident she and her best friend were in as high scholers. Shelby holds herself accountable for the accident, and falls down a rabbit hole of shame and blame and sadness that makes her withdraw from everyone that she knows. When we first encounter her, she has just come out of a mental hospital after a suicide attempt, and is living in her parents' basement, smoking a lot of weed and watching a lot of reality TV. Eventually, her soft-hearted marijuana dealer, Ben, who for some inexplicable reason is actually falling in love with Shelby despite her morose behavior, convinces her to move to NYC with him to start a new life. It is in New York that Shelby begins to heal, and to fnd redemption for the bad things she thinks she's done.

It doesn't happen very often, but Hoffman managed to create a character that I was rooting for even though I didn't much like her. I started to like her more as the novel goes on, and I suppose that might have been the point-as Shelby began to like herself again, she became more likeable to the reader. It may also have something to do with the fact that she actually becomes a fully realized character once she gets to New York, rather than the deep black human-shaped pit of despair she was at the beginning of the novel; rescuing animals, finding human connection, and ultimately finding a way to love herself and accept someone else's love again.

Hoffman is known for magical realism, and there are some elements of it here. Her comatose former-friend is supposed to have healing powers, mysterious postcards appear just when she needs them, and even among the millions of people who live in New York she manages to cross paths with the one person she needs to the most. That last one sort of took it over the edge for me-it felt like one coincidental thing too many. But overall, I found this to be an enjoyable if not earth-shatteringly good read.

Forgive Me, by Amanda Eyre Ward

Nadine Morgan is a journalist.  She travels the world looking for dangerous assignments, living in exotic locales and covering wars, genocide, and crime rings.  When an assignment to report on the drug gangs in Mexico goes sideways, Nadine ends up back in her hometown on Cape Cod.  Desperate to escape, but still healing from wounds both physical and emotional, she passes up a chance for love with a local doctor to pursue a story in a part of the world she thought she would never see again, South Africa.  She goes back to report on a story about a young man from her own small town who was beaten to death while teaching in the black townships.  His killers were being brought before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose job it was to determine whether people convicted of political violence during the years leading up to Nelson
Mandela's release from prison should continue to serve their sentences.  She is forced to confront her own personal demons from her time in Cape Town, and the reasons that she will do anything, including putting herself in harm's way, to avoid making the kind of connections that would tie her to one person or place.

I really enjoyed the other book by Amanda Eyre Ward that I read, Sleep Toward Heaven.  Like that book, Forgive Me deals with forgiveness and redemption.  The book is told alternately from Nadine's perspective and the diary of a young boy who, like Nadine herself, is desperate to leave his small town life behind for fame and fortune in the wider world.  Nadine's story is told through a series of flashbacks to her first time in South Africa, and how it affected her in the present.  At times it was really hard to like Nadine.  She used her journalistic liberalness as a shield for her own selfishness.  After all, how angry can you be when you have offered a person your house on Nantucket Island as a refuge when they leave with no notice to pursue the story of bringing a young man's murderer to justice.  Being a journalist allowed Nadine a certain distance from being personally connected to the things that were happening to the people around her, including the people that she considered friends.

Some of the characters were pretty one dimensional, especially Nadine's stepmother, and both of her love interests.  To be honest, I'm not sure if this was lazy storytelling or purposeful.  After all, Nadine didn't really see other people except as they related to herself.  The boy whose journal we are privy to was much more real than any of the other characters in the book, but I spent most of the book wondering what connection his story had to the rest of the narrative, other than his intense desire to get out of his small Cape Cod town. Once I realized who he was, it made a little more sense, but I feel like Ward never really connected the dots between Nadine and the other mothers.

The strange thing is that despite all of the flaws I found in the writing, I still really enjoyed the book.  It was an easy read, and the story of what happened to the people during the struggle to end apartheid and the aftermath of Nelson Madela's election as president were engaging enough to keep me reading.  The story was billed as one about motherhood, which I didn't really get.  To me, it was more about gaining forgiveness, both from the people that you have wronged and yourself.  After years of running away, Nadine needed to stay somewhere long enough to see the ramifications of her own choices, and to fulfill commitments she made to people in order to help them find justice in an unjust world.

The Gargoyle

For our book club selection last month, a friend offered up the book The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson.  She had read it earlier this year, and she was curious to see what the ladies in my book club thought of this rather unusual story.  The narrator, who is never named in the book, is a fast living former porn star and current porn producer.  He's basically lived his entire adult life drinking heavily, driving fast, and having lots and lots of sex.  All of that changes one night when he starts having hallucinations (visions?) of archers shooting at him as he drives down a winding mountain road.  Before he knows it, he is trapped in his car at the bottom of a steep ravine, slowly burning to death.  When next he is conscious, he discovers he is in the burn unit at a local hospital, a place that will be his home for the better part of a year.  A couple of months into his recovery, a stray psych patient walks into the room and acts as though she knows him.  Her name is Marianne Engel, admitted for delusions related to schizophrenia.  An artist by trade, she carves large, menacing gargoyles.  And as she explains to our narrator, she's been in love with him for 700 years.

Davidson knows well how to use descriptive language-perhaps too well.  The entire first third of the book is a bit hard to get through-not because the story is bad, but because he describes, in great detail, the gruesome and violent acts perpetrated on the narrator's body, first by the fire itself and then by the seemingly barbaric but ultimately effective treatments he requires to heal.  The whole novel has a gloomy air, which suits the rather dark story perfectly.  Marianne believes herself to be a 14th century nun, who has lived for so many years because she must pay for sins she committed for and on the narrator's character.  Over the course of the book, as their modern day relationship progresses, we are treated to flashbacks told by Marianne that explain how she knew the narrator in a previous life.  Moral emptiness and redemption are ideas explored throughout the novel, both through the narrator's cynical views on his previous and future life (he has an especially elaborate and violent end at his own hand all planned out for himself) and through the contradiction that is Marianne's character.  She actually creates ugliness, in the form of the grotesques that adorn both her workspace and churches all over the world, in order to undo the evil she feels she has done.  Is she truly a 700 year old nun, or are the voices that she hears coming from the stone a function of mental illness?  Ultimately, the reader is left to decide.  Whether she is "saving" herself, or merely delusional, the impact she has on the narrator is profound, and he finds himself feeling more whole in his ruined body than he ever did when he was beautiful.

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

In this rather quirky novel, Krauss tells the story of love, loneliness, and loss as experienced by two very different people.  Leo Gursky is an octogenarian living in a crowded apartment in New York.  Growing up in Poland in the 1930s, he fell deeply in love with a girl from his village.  When she emigrated to American just before World War II, Leo lost touch with her.  After the war, when he was forced to hide or be sent to the concentration camps with the other Jews, he made his way to New York.  But nothing turned out as he'd thought.  In the present day, Leo feels invisible, and when he goes out he purposely does things to attract attention in order to prove to himself that he still exists.

Alma Singer is a young girl dealing with the loss of her father.  Her mother Charlotte is fading away, spending hours in her room translating old books and remembering her beloved husband.  Convinced that her mother needs to fall in love again to survive, Alma tries to find men for her mother to date.  When a mysterious man writes to Charlotte asking her to translate her father's favorite book, Alma tries to discover his identity, hopeful that he can help her mother re-enter the world.

What connects these two characters is a book, The History of Love.  The book, the main character of which Alma was named after, becomes central to the lives of both characters.  To Leo it represents his past, his love, and the son he never knew.  To Alma it represents her father, her mother's grief, and a possible future for her family.  As their connection to each other is slowly revealed through the course of the novel, we understand the triumph of the human spirit over fear, loneliness, and doubt.

Krauss' use of language in this novel is lyrical and moving.  Her treatment of her two rather eccentric characters is warm and kind, especially Leo's character.  He is a cantankerous old man, which would make him rather unlikeable if the main target of his frequent sarcasm wasn't himself.  Alma's character is very relateable, if a little less realistic.  She often reads older than her supposed age in the story, but it works well enough.  The story goes back and forth between Leo and Alma as narrators, which I some people find challenging to keep straight, but I did not find it distracting or off-putting in this book.   The story is heartbreaking-it highlights the way that forces outside of our control can cause our life to go in directions that we never expected.  The bottom line is that life is not fair-it certainly wasn't fair to either Alma or Leo.  But despite that, there are opportunities for love, tenderness, and redemption.

Sleep Toward Heaven

While I try not to get too political on this blog, I will state now that I am against the death penalty.  I don't see how the use of state-sanctioned killing makes us any safer or improves us as a society or a race.  I would like to think that if the worst happened and one of my loved ones was murdered, I would be able to stand up for what I believe is right and not give in to the anger or the need for revenge.  Why do I bring this up, you ask?  Because the death penalty and what it means to the condemned and the families of the victims plays a major role in Sleep Toward Heaven, by Amanda Eyre Ward.

Sleep Toward Heaven is the story of three women-Karen, convicted serial killer; Franny, prison doctor; and Celia, the widow of Karen's final victim.  Karen resists human connection, wanting nothing holding her in a world she desperately wants to leave.  Her life, from miserable beginning with a drug addicted, abusive mother to horrifying end, has been nothing but fear and pain and hopelessness.  Franny, recovering from the loss of a beloved patient and the uncle who raised her, is also afraid of making human connection.  Feeling that every human deserves comfort, how can she comfort Karen, knowing she can not save her?  Celia desperately wants human connection-but only with the husband that she can never be with.  She is stuck in place, unable to move on with her life.  It seems that forgiveness is what each is seeking-Karen, forgiveness for her crimes; and Franny, forgiveness for not being able to save her patients.  Celia's need is not for forgiveness for herself, but for the courage and strength to forgive Karen, who took so much from her. 

The women in this book are fairly well-drawn characters, and I found myself connecting to each of them in different ways.  Ward does an excellent job setting the mood with her descriptions of the prison, or the sweltering Texas summer, which adds to the overall feeling of oppression that exists in the book.  Each woman is being held back by something-guilt, illness, fear, anger-and their inability to move forward mimics the lethargy of a hot, humid afternoon, when you just want to be still because every movement is such an effort.

The one thing that bothered me about the book, which is pretty well paced and engaging, was the sub-plot of Karen from before she was in prison.  She was abused as a child, started prostituting herself at a young age, met a woman who she fell in love with.  They lived in a motel, and Karen would pick up johns at rest areas and truck stops to support them.  When she started killing, it was partly self-defense and partly to get things for her lover.  Does that sound familiar to anyone?  If you've seen the movie Monster, about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, then it should.  So many of the details were the same it felt a little less like mirroring contemporary culture and a little more like fictionalizing someone's life without so much as a passing reference.  Overall I would say this is a decent easy read.