November in Review

My, but I was reading "smart" stuff last month! I polished off five books, including The Hemingses of Monticello, which was massive. I didn't finish it until November 16, and then after that it was like a dam broke, and the other four books quickly followed.

Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello was eye-opening, but I think in some ways, I came away with more questions about history than answers. If you asked me why we decided to cancel a trip to visit friends, there would be less likely to be one reason and more likely to be dozens of factors: the possibility of bad weather, the pile of laundry at home, a lingering cold, two extra-long days of work during the previous week, etc. For someone to assess that decision from the remote world of the future someday and to proclaim me a bad friend or in general poor health would be to leap a large chasm of my reasoning. I just came away by how tenuous history is, how fragile some of our assumptions and arguments are. That said, Gordon-Reed has written a fascinating biography of one of the most well-documented early African-Americana families, and she manages as best she can, considering how little we're able to know about their thoughts and motivations.

After that I chewed through Into the Wild, which I wrote about earlier, and was reminded again how much I enjoy Jon Krakauer's writing. It's a sad story, almost, oddly, like the story of the Hemingses - something that we can't explain and a position we find it difficult to put ourselves into as readers, but by the end, it's one that we can come a little closer to. It takes a great deal of compassion to make people capable of venturing closer to a position or act that they would reject completely upon initial examination.

Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates followed, and it was just what you'd expect - snarky, entertaining, filled with little oddments and insights. The Puritans were an odd bunch, and the discussion of their "city on a hill" and how we came to co-op that as an American vision, while neglecting the sense of responsibility they felt was fascinating. It's one of the basic elements of tragedy - good intentions that somehow result in abhorrent offshoots. I realize that history doesn't often come with nifty endings, tied up neatly in a timely fashion, but I did feel that things sort of fell of a cliff at the end. It was as if the contract was for 200 pages, and somewhere around page 197, there was a realization that things needed to be wrapped up. Leaping over three hundred years of history, the Puritans are linked to John F. Kennedy. I know 21st-century politics aren't really Vowell's bailiwick, but I still would have liked a little more analysis about how the path we set our feet on then got us to the path we're on now.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, we managed to sneak in listening to Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. I'm intrigued to see the movie, and all I can say is good for DiCamillo for avoid overly precious endings with everything too neatly tied up. (I know, I know - I'm nothing if not a walking contradiction.) Despereaux's big heart, bravery and commitment to doing the right thing were wonderful, and I look forward to seeing his big ears on the big screen.

Finally, I found Susan Fletcher's Eve Green. I made a note almost three years ago of the title after reading a pre-pub review in Library Journal, and it's stuck with me all this time. I was glad that it did. As someone who's so often homesick, not so much for family as just for a landscape and a way of life, Susan Fletcher nails down the desperate love of a place, and the beautiful part is that she doesn't even try to explain why she loves it. She just does. Love is like that. This was a gentle story that probably didn't fare well after being classified by many as a mystery. (Why, why, WHY do we have to overclassify everything?!) It's really the musings of a pregnant woman, looking back on her childhood, trying to make peace with the child she was before she brings her own child into the world. I loved it. Again, not a sledgehammer to the forehead, but a meandering story of memory and family and place. And confirmation that I really like Whitbread award winners, which I also made a note of. Let's hope it doesn't take me another three years to follow up on it!