Kidd's The Invention of Wings soars

Book Read - February

14.       Kings of the Road, Cameron Stracher

15.       Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather

16.       Andrew’s Brain, E.L. Doctorow

17.       This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett

18.       The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd

19.       March (Book One), John Lewis and Andrew Aydin,

            illustrated by Nate Powell

20.       The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, Alan Bradley

21.       The Pagan Lord, Bernard Cornwell

22.       Catch and Release, Lawrence Block

23.       A Compendium of Collective Nouns, Woop Studios

24.       Orfeo, Richard Powers

25.       Tom’s Town, William M. Reddig

26.       The Kept, James Scott

27.       This Dark Road to Mercy, Wiley Cash

28.       The Free, Willy Vlautin

29.       Granta #124 Travel

Books Bought – February

B.B. King's Lucille and the Loves Before Her by Eric Dahl

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

The Free by Willy Vlautin

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings is an early entry for the best book of 2014. This fictional account of the Grimke sisters, daughters of the confederacy who became leading voices in the movement to abolish slavery, and of a slave, who valued freedom more than life, is a powerful and moving novel.

Kidd’s prose is crisp and clean with impressive flights of lyricism.

Reading Wings and John Lewis’s autobiographical March during African American History Month was unintentional on my part. But whether serendipity or the subconscious at work, the timing brought a depth to my reading in February.

March Book One (I eagerly await Book Two) demonstrates how the graphic novel – or in this instance a graphic autobiography – can tell a story simply, yet powerfully. Nate Powell’s illustrations are the perfect complement to Lewis’s voice.

The Kept, This Dark Road to Mercy and The Free all fall into the same nebulous category of books that elude easy categorization. The Free, the newest novel by Willy Vlautin, is the best of these three books.  You may have passed the books protagonists on the street today, as you checked out at the supermarket or visited a friend in the hospital.

Not literally, of course, but Vlautin draws an affecting portrait of everyday people – a kind-hearted nurse, a dying soldier, a man holding down multiple jobs yet still schuffling to survive.

Vlautin is largely unknown as a novelist. Those who have read his books, such as Lean On Pete, know that he writes simply, yet powerfully. Perhaps, he’s little read because we see ourselves too clearly in his characters.

After reading This Dark Road to Mercy I rushed out and bought Cash’s first book. Dark Road is the story of two sisters who have been kidnapped by their father. Dad has stolen some money and is being followed a murderous fellow intent on reclaiming the money and taking revenge for an eye injury suffered years before in a baseball game.

Events converge in St. Louis with the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase as a backdrop. It’s not great literature, but entertaining as hell. Cash is a writer to watch.

Revenge also figures in The Kept, which follows a mother and son, the only survivors of a family mysteriously slaughtered by three men. In uncovering the motive for the murders, the son learns a disturbing truth about his mother.

Death Comes For the Archbishop by Willa Cather continues my 2014 plans of re-reading one great book each month. I don’t think this is Cather’s best book -- that status is held by My Antonia – but it’s close. Cather’s respect for the archbishop, his work and faith, for the people of New Mexico and for the country’s landscape, infuses the book with a palpable grandeur.

New books by Alan Bradley and Bernard Cornwell are each part of a series that I recommend without reservation.  Both characters – a 12-year-old sleuth with a disturbing knowledge of poisons and a Saxon warlord who wields a mean sword – are vivid  characters. I am always, always, ready to read their next adventures.

E.L. Doctorow’s new book, Andrew’s Brain, was hugely disappointing for a work by a major American author. The same was true of Orfeo by Richard Powers.

Catch and Release, a collection of short works by Lawrence Block is uneven.

Ann Patchett’s collection of essays and articles, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, illustrates Patchett’s range as a writer. Frankly, I’m a fanboy. She’s funny and insightful in equal measure. Plus she owns a bookstore. No wonder I’m crushing on her.

Tom’s Town, a history of Kansas City and boss Tom Pendergast, is a product of its time. Despite showing its age, it remains a fascinating read and told me a lot about the town I now live in.

I enjoyed Kings of the Road, about Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar, but was left wanting more.

No such disappointment with A Compendium of Collective Nouns. If you’re a word person, this is a delightful book, best enjoyed a few pages at a time.

Hadley takes the reader on a rewarding trip on The London Train

Book 87: The London Train by Tessa Hadley

Two people meet on a train to London. Improbably, their chance meeting leads to a love affair. It is intense, but brief.  Both are married; the man has children and makes clear that they are what's important to him.

Tessa Hadley charts the course of this affair and its effects upon the man and woman in the beautifully told, closely observed The London Train. The novel is really two novellas, one belonging to the man and one to the woman.

The woman is only mentioned in passing in the first novella, The London Train. Paul, her erstwhile lover, is reeling. His mother has just died and now he learns that his oldest daughter, from his first marriage, is missing.  He later finds her living with a Polish man, safe, but pregnant.

Paul flees his rural home, leaving his current wife and two young daughters.  He lives for a spell with his daughter and her lover, entertaining thoughts of an affair with a woman his daughter's age.  

In the second novella, Only Children, Cora has fled London and her husband for the consolation of her childhood home. It soon becomes clear that the affair has had a more lasting, unsettling effect upon Cora than Paul. 

The affair fulfilled the needs of both Paul and Cora.  Paul is a sexual predator, blithely unconcerned with the impact of his cheating on his wife or Cora.  Cora is unaware of her needs until Paul stirs something deep within her. Now -- hurt, confused, angry -- she withdraws from life.

Hadley has given the reader a subtle, powerful study of how one event effects two people so differently. It is honest and true and disquieting.  The London Train is a challenging journey with a rewarding destination.

Book 88: All The Time In The World by E.L. Doctorow

Readers of The New Yorker will recognize many of the stories in this collection by celebrated novelist E.L. Doctorow. Seven of the 12 stories were originally published in that magazine.

It is an uneven collection.  Some of the stories are superb, yet others fail to meet a reader's expectation.  Liner Notes: The Songs of Billy Bathgate feels incomplete. It is as if Doctorow couldn't fit these pieces into a novel, hated to see them go unused and so here they appear.

The solution is to skip this book -- there are far better story collections on the bookstore shelves just now -- and subscribe to The New Yorker.