Still More Mixed Reviews
And now, today’s installment of “books that I read last year that are not getting the full attention that they deserve.”
Let’s get things started with Ian McNulty’s A Season of Night: New Orleans Life After Katrina.
McNulty’s book is a first person account of what it is like to live in the midst of an environmental catastrophe. The author had nowhere to go after the storm and a job that needed him to show up. So he does what none of us would have done and returns to his partially destroyed home without electricity in a city that lay in ruins. He gutted the heavily damaged first floor, moved all of his ruined belongings to the curb, and lived with his dog in the relatively undamaged second floor (minus a few windows). Winter two-steps into town and McNulty still has neither electricity nor hot water. It’s not all grim. To keep spirits up, the author throws a “bring what you have” party that really gets going when teenage Mormon volunteers happen by with food that didn’t start in a can. McNulty’s story is a great tale of survival and determination. I’m adding it to my Katrina Canon.
I can hardly believe that I am relegating Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends to this type of review.
Michael Chabon is one of my favorite writers, without question. Maps and Legends is his first non-fiction book. The collection of essays provides the author’s take on writing and reading. The idea of exploring “the areas beyond the map” is a unifying theme that Chabon uses to describe his need to push beyond conventional ideas of genre and literary writing. The cover alone is worth the price of admission. The blue, green, and brown areas on the cover are each a separate intricately cut sheet that wrap around the book to form the dust jacket. Maps and Legends is published by McSweeney’s, and I am a huge fan of what they do with books.
And finally – Chris Adrian’s The Children’s Hospital rounds out this edition.
I’ll point out that The Children’s Hospital hard cover is also a McSweeney’s book. For a small independent press, they sure seem to crank out a lot of stuff that I like. Go, McSweeney’s, Go!
The novel is difficult to describe without making it sound ludicrous. It begins with a huge flood devastating the earth. The hospital along with the staff, patients, and visiting family are all that survive. The building, as it turns out, was designed to survive and accommodate those within indefinitely. An Arc. What follows for the next thousand pages of the story is an incredible exploration of Big Ideas, all of which I feel compelled to capitalize: Illness/Health, Truth, Beauty, Medicine, Motherhood, Theology, Life/Death, and Salvation. Adrian is a pediatrician, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and a student at the Harvard Divinity School. He has some big things to say and the skill to say them. I’m not sure that I understood all of what I was being told, but The Children’s Hospital is an incredible piece of work.
January 22, 2009 8:20 am 8 Comments
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By Kerry, January 22, 2009 @ 9:16 am
And now I have to buy Maps and Legends. I always thought the book was gorgeous but had no idea its content would so intrigue me. Thank you, though my attempts at curbing book buying are once again sqaundered.
By Dr J, January 22, 2009 @ 10:11 am
Is Chabon an REM fan from way back? If so, I like him even more.
He’s not to be reached / He is to be reached
By Tim, January 22, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Kerry: Curbing the book buying tends to a fruitless effort around here, too.
Dr J: No word on an R.E.M. connection, but… Called the fool and the company,
On his own where he’d rather be
Where he ought to be, he sees what you can’t see, can’t you see that?
By flavawheel1, January 22, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
Hmmm. I’m very intrigued by A Season of Night because I did, in fact, return to my partially destroyed home without electricity in a city that lay in ruins after Andrew in ‘92.
I’d like to see how his experience compared with mine. In my case, while it was frightening (very little police presence in your now dark, treeless, and utterly unfamiliar neighborhood, which is crawling with creepy, feral, ex-con “contractors”) and frustrating (sleeping in 90-degree heat with 100 generators screaming in the background and the stench of 1000 tons of moldy carpet and rotting plants in the air), but surprisingly rewarding in that you had hours with nothing to do but walk around, read, talk, and think.
And when all of the constants and comforts in your life are suddenly gone, think you do.
By Kerry, January 22, 2009 @ 10:03 pm
Book is bought. I work quickly. It was discounted though, and I don’t know whether to feel guilt or triumph about that.
By Tim, January 23, 2009 @ 12:17 am
Flava: It reads as though Katrina was the same… but different. There was no one around for months when he was in his house.
Kerry: Didja tell ‘em BGB sent ya?
By Bobby, January 23, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
I thought Children’s Hospital was fascinating, but was also left feeling like I missed so much of it. I’ve been forcing friends to read it for the past year, just so I can discuss it with someone. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to read it again someday, but it’s quite an undertaking.
By Collin Kelley, January 30, 2009 @ 2:59 pm
Thanks for giving Ian McNulty’s “A Season of Night” another push. I enjoyed the book and had the pleasure of meeting him last year when he read at Wordsmiths. It’s a well-written account of Katrina. I highly recommend it.