Ideas of Heaven

Idea of Heaven: A Ring of Stories
By Joan Silber (247 pages)
Published by W. W. Norton
Bookish rating: 4

This is a collection of six stories--some quite long (50+ pages) for being short stories. They're kind of sort of connected through various characters, though they cross continents and historical periods. They're more interestingly connected through theme, exploring how sex and religion are quite closely connected, even as they often combat each other. Or, as Silber more effectively portrays them, filling in where the other leaves off, these forms of love and devotion. It's all very interesting.

As is usually the case in novels-via-story-collections, some stories are stronger than others. "Ideas of Heaven," which is also the title of the book, was by far my favorite (and is the longest, I believe)--it's absolutely extraordinary, detailing the fictional life of a Christian missionary in China during the Boxer rebellion. It left me breathless.

Silber's work gives a top-notch opportunity to study the art of the short story in oodles of ways. I was entertained, sure, but I also learned a lot. Recommended. 

Unravelling

Unravelling
By Elizabeth Graver (298 pages)
Published by Hyperion
Bookish rating: 4.75

 I love it when I finish a book by an author I've never before read, utterly stoked to know there are OTHER books out there by this SAME author that will likely bring me reading joy. It's a happy feeling.

Unravelling has been around for awhile, so I'm late to the party on this one. Set in the 1800s in New Hampshire and Lowell, Massachusetts (the "City of Spindles" where so many young women worked in factories), Aimee is a complicated soul with complicated relationships. She wants to experience everything she can.

Graver's writing is amazing. She turns phrases just so, evokes moods, and gives Aimee an incredible voice. The richness of the language plus the various angles from which she gets to mother-daughter relationships, love, and grief.

Absolutely recommended.

The Bones of Plenty

The Bones of Plenty
By Lois Phillips Hudson (435 pages)
Published by Little, Brown
Bookish rating: 4.25

My copy of this novel has a disintegrating dust cover that I had to toss and the musty smell of a first-edition book published more than 50 years ago. I liked that about this book.

Set in what I believe is a mythical town (Eureka, North Dakota--the only Eureka I know of is in South Dakota, near the North Dakota border) during the 1930s, we follow the trials and tribulations of a family trying to keep the farm. Dust, family dynamics, WEATHER, and lack of money--this book has everything you'd expect from a Depression-era novel. But it's actually quite remarkable and so . . .  unknown. In a different book, I read a fleeting mention of The Bones of Plenty, which bemoaned its obscurity and argued that Hudson's work could stand up against, if not surpass, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. I think I agree.

Hudson focuses a lot of attention on the government mishandling of wheat prices, and tirades via the head-of-the-household farmer get a little long-winded and repetitive. And there is too much emphasis on italics for emphasis. But on the whole, these are minor issues.

Hudson expertly digs into what makes these people tick, their insecurities, their disappointments. The wife's juggling of babies with farm work is brilliant, and her frustration with her crankball husband even more so. The daughter is heartbreakingly real. And Dad? Well. He's something of a dick, but ultimately redeemable. The complexity of family during the context of Dakota, wheat-growing, and the Depression that Hudson portrays is astounding---I see bits and pieces of these people and their ways in my people, descended and descended and descended. As I've always said, a complex people who want nothing more than to be simple. Oh, who doesn't love a good paradox?

Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Where'd You Go, Bernadette
By Maria Semple (335 pages)
Published by Little, Brown and Company
Bookish rating: 4

My, what a darling little Seattle-centric book this was. Told from various perspectives, often including HILARIOUS emails, Semple skewers the Microsoft folk while also rather tenderly portraying mother-daughter relationships, loss of talent, the aimlessness that can follow motherhood, and even father-daughter relationships. And lots of other stuff, now that I think about it.

And it's an effing hoot. I laughed. Often.

The premise is a tad mish-mashed, but essentially Bernadette, the madre, disappears after the private school, mean-girls-all-grown-up mother hens push her over the mental edge. Semple's writing is subtly witty and just plain fun. After I finished the book, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was rather charmed by the novel. Recommended.

The Children's Blizzard

The Children's Blizzard
By David Laskin (288 pages)
Published by Harper Perrenial
Bookish rating: 4.25

I think it's safe to say that David Laskin loves weather nearly as much as my darling husband does. In this account of the 1888 blizzard on the Northern Plains, Laskin ingeniously meshes meteorological detail with high, high drama.

Often referred to as "the school children's blizzard" (or schoolhouse blizzard or children's blizzard) because of the number of children and teachers killed when walking home from school across the prairie, this blizzard is a fascinating piece of American history and a central part of history for Nebraska through the Dakotas.

Laskin writes with journalistic flair that makes the story utterly absorbing, but his writing does not exploit the tragedy. Brilliantly, Laskin sets the stage by describing the type of people living on this country's most unforgiving land. (Chris and I argued about this. "More unforgiving than Alaska?" he had asked. Yes. Because they had no timber or fish and wild life--except for pest and bugs--was far more scarce. Oh, and lack of water.)

Accurately, Laskin describes the (poor)  immigrants setting up homesteads and soddies, and gets at the core of who these people were and the kinds of lives they were leaving behind and pursuing. My people (the Germans from Russia)--their mentality, faith, habits, and lives--were very accurately depicted (I write this having done a large amount of research on these folks--plus I descend from the cranky lot of them), so I'm guessing the Swedes and others are also truthfully portrayed.

Laskin does so much right--describing in GREAT detail the meteorological forces, the people, the land, the types of lives homesteaders led, the role of children, being at the mercy--always--of weather and pests and fire and water (all of which are related, of course).

I'm glad this book was published by a big publisher, because it needs to be in the hands of millions. My Dakota peeps still talk about the schoolchildren's blizzard to this day. It really  made an imprint on and was a defining event for the people of the Northern Plains. I'm just so pleased it was covered so incredibly well by Laskin. Definitely recommended.

Up High in the Trees

Up High in the Trees
By Kiara Brinkman (326 pages)
Published by Grove Press
Bookish rating: 4

Lordy. You'll need to emotionally steel yourself for this one. Told from the voice of Sebby Lane, an 8-year-old boy with autism, this novel explores breaks your heart without being sappy, overwritten, or even remotely cheesy.

Poor Sebby's mother dies, so he must negotiate through his grief with a father who becomes increasingly distant. Sebby's voice is PITCH PERFECT, capturing the logic of children and articulating the way in which a child on the spectrum copes with sensory issues. It also defies the way we think of children with autism and their attachment to others---because Sebby is mighty attached to his mommy, and his struggle to hold onto her in his mind is just plain painful to read. And kind of remarkable.

Set in 1992, I particularly liked the kiddo point of view on this era, since I also was a kid then, and I remember some of the details Sebby picks up on.

As a mom, I just wanted to crawl under the bed or table or wherever Sebby is hiding and hug him.

Contented Among Strangers

Contented Among Strangers: Rural German-Speaking Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest
By Linda Schelbitzki Pickle (230 pages)
Published by University of Illinois Press
Bookish rating: 4

The fact that this book--nearly 20 years old--is still in print speaks to relevance in immigration history and women's studies. Probably based on Pickle's dissertation, this study explores rural 19th-century German immigrant women before leaving Germany (or Russia, in the case of the Germans from Russia), their process over, and the ways in which they made new lives, bearing and burying countless children, setting up homes often made of sod, and protecting their native culture and language.

I found the book fascinating, particularly when the women spoke for themselves (though they often did so while aware of an audience, either via letters or memoirs meant for posterity--and these voices are only from those educated to read and write, unless stories were later transcribed). I also loved Pickle's wise and sensible wariness of making broad generalizations about an entire group of people. She carefully dodged stereotypes of the homesick frontier foreigner; the "meek, self-effacing" minister's wife; the "ignorant and browbeaten peasant woman (who serves her husband only as a fertile beast of burden"; and the "exemplary farmer's wife (who sacrifices all for her family)" (p. 182). These women, says Pickle, "were much too complex to conform cop0letely to any of these immigrant types" (p. 182).

A very important contribution to immigrant studies, agricultural history, German studies, and women's studies. Recommended.