ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is a Gulag prisoner in Siberia in 1951.  The day in which this book takes place is actually one of his better days, despite the frigid cold, meager gruel, endless body searches, and back-breaking work.  Shukhov has figured out a few tricks to survival, including hiding tools and bread, but what he’d really like is a sick day.  I thought at first that he must be a political prisoner, but actually he was released from a German WWII POW camp and then arrested in his homeland on suspicion of being a German spy.  If this misconception isn’t ludicrous enough, consider the state of the prison camp.  Incomplete buildings and broken machinery abound.  One of the reasons that everything is in disrepair is because the work reports, in which productivity is always exaggerated, are apparently more important than the quality of the work.  The convicts break off a railing to use as firewood, thus giving us another glimpse as to why the camp is in disarray.  Shukhov periodically has to reassess the value of his dignity, as he considers how low he is willing to stoop to survive.  This dysfunctional prison camp is perhaps a microcosm of the USSR in many ways—unable to feed itself with a workforce unmotivated to build an infrastructure.  This novel may be a standout as social commentary, but as literature, it underwhelmed me somewhat.

THE NORTH WATER by Ian McGuire

This novel struck me as a cross between Moby Dick and The Revenant.  Patrick Sumner is a surgeon whose dishonorable turn with the English army in India has left him unable to find a job except on a whaling ship.  The crew is a maelstrom of violent and unspeakably distasteful characters, among whom Sumner is by far the brightest.  Harpooner Henry Drax is the epitome of evil combined with physical strength—a deadly sociopathic barbarian at best.  This is mostly Sumner’s story, and you can bet that he and Drax will be at odds.  Plus, the captain of the ship has a corrupt purpose and doesn’t want to be bothered with solving a murder while at sea in the Arctic.  In the hands of a less skilled writer, this would just be a gory, gruesome story of depravity and survival, but it happens to be riveting, especially in the second half.  In a way, it’s even refreshing to read something so purely masculine for a change.  However, if the slaughter of animals bothers you, or if vivid descriptions of blood and guts make you squeamish, this is not the book for you.  Besides the whales, the crew mercilessly butchers seals and bears as well, and not always with a mercenary purpose.  This is not really a mystery; it’s more of a brutal adventure novel with a bit of foreshadowing of things to come.  I also found it to be a fast read, and that was a good thing, because these characters are not men that I particularly wanted to spend a lot of time with, in frigid temperatures or otherwise.

NEWS OF THE WORLD by Paulette Jiles

Captain Jefferson Kidd is over seventy years old and travels post-Civil War Texas reading news articles to small-town residents willing to spend a dime to hear him.  He’s bored and lonely, but he reluctantly takes on the task of delivering a 10-year-old girl, Johanna, held captive by the Kiowa since she was 6, to her aunt and uncle 400 miles away.  The Kiowa killed her parents and younger sister during the raid in which Johanna was abducted.  Having been uprooted a second time, Johanna is not a happy camper.  This novel is a rollicking ride as this unlikely pair become acquainted, thanks to endless patience and understanding on the Captain’s part.  A good old-fashioned shootout along the way is the highlight of their journey, but there are several adventures, shady characters, and downright cruel people.  At just over 200 pages, this book is a very fast read and left me wanting more from this author, but, alas, I’ve read three others of hers already.  Although the plot is somewhat formulaic, this may be my favorite Jiles novel so far.  Johanna is a noble savage of sorts, and the Captain shares his wise musings throughout:

“The boys all grow up together and then they become young men and they fight, at first in play, and then somebody gets hurt, and before you know it the revenge drama is on.”

My favorite conflict in the novel, though, is between the Captain and audience members in every town who bait him to take sides in a heated political debate.  He demurs time and time again, but he can’t prevent the ensuing mayhem.  When it’s time to skedaddle in the dead of night, Johanna rolls with it, more accustomed to a night on the road than a night in a hotel.  She may be a handful, but she’s plucky and has some tricks up her sleeve, proving to the Captain that he can be both student and teacher.

STORMY WEATHER by Paulette Jiles

Jeanine Stoddard is a daddy’s girl, but her father has a drinking problem, then a gambling problem, and finally a statutory rape problem.  He moves his family all over Texas, chasing work in the oil business during the Depression.  Eventually, Jeanine, her three sisters, and their mother move back to the old Tolliver farm, which has been in her family for generations.  However, the farm is in disrepair and has no electricity or indoor plumbing.  Jeanine takes it upon herself to make the place livable, while her older sister gets a job to bring in some much needed cash.  Meanwhile, their mother Elizabeth recklessly invests their meager savings in an oil venture, and at the same time the youngest daughter Bea suffers a terrible accident, requiring very expensive surgery.  This may sound like your typical hard luck story, but it really isn’t.  By the time she is 21, Jeanine finds herself with two suitors who couldn’t be more different.  Milton Brown is a stuttering journalist who aspires to a radio career.  His side of any conversation is hysterical, and I’m not talking about the stuttering.  He has an overblown speaking style that injects some lightheartedness into a world of poverty and struggle.  The other man in her life is Ross Everett, a rancher raising his son alone after his wife died from complications brought on by the last dust storm.  Jeanine is no shrinking violet and handles both men with aplomb.  She is a compelling character, and her life doesn’t lack for adventures—tractor accidents, oil wells, horse races, and yes, another terrifying dust storm.  I admire her and all the women in her family who are plucky and ever optimistic, despite the difficult circumstances in which they find themselves.

HOMEGOING by Yaa Gyasi

Again, we have a story that deserves to be told, but I did not care for the manner in which it was told.  This novel is multi-generational in the extreme, and each character gets basically one chapter of coverage.  The cascade of characters all descend from two half-sisters, but I found it very hard to keep track of them all, although each successive generation’s story provides some followup on the lives of his or her mother and/or father.  The book begins with one of the sisters, an African woman, becoming the second wife (unbeknownst to the first wife) of a white slavetrader.  Her progeny stay in Africa until the 20^th century, but her half-sister is sold into slavery and sent to the U.S.  Each chapter jumps at least a decade, so that we follow slaves being held in a dungeon in western Africa, slaves in the American South, escaped slaves, freed slaves, post-Civil War migration to the North, Harlem during the Jazz Age, black junkies in the Civil Rights era, and ultimately life in the 21^st century.  Interleaved with these stories, many of which are brutally tragic, are the chapters about the lives of the first sister’s offspring in Africa.  I found the format to be choppy and confusing.  I especially found it difficult to bond with characters that I knew I would be leaving at the end of the chapter.  The author had a lot of ground to cover, and I can see how this format allowed her to hurtle through history, but I didn’t look forward to picking this book up to resume reading when I knew that the characters I had just gotten acquainted with were no longer going to receive any attention.

MRS. LINCOLN'S DRESSMAKER by Jennifer Chiaverini

Elizabeth Keckley is a former slave who worked hard to buy freedom for herself and her son.  Now she’s an accomplished seamstress in the nation’s capital as the country teeters toward civil war.  Her beautiful work brings her to the attention of Mary Todd Lincoln, and soon she is dressing the First Lady and occasionally trying to tame the President’s unruly hair.  As frivolous as this premise may sound, the story is really quite serious, as Elizabeth becomes Mrs. Lincoln’s confidante and helps soothe her grief when the Lincolns lose their beloved son Willie.  Elizabeth’s friendship becomes even more important after the President’s assassination, as Mrs. Lincoln is devastated and almost destitute.  Elizabeth goes too far in her efforts to assist Mrs. Lincoln, at the expense of her own welfare.  Elizabeth generally gives Mrs. Lincoln excellent advice, which Mrs. Lincoln often fails to follow, but Elizabeth makes some monumentally poor decisions for her own life, one of which costs her almost everything but makes this book possible.  Elizabeth’s story is one worth telling, deserving of better treatment, but this novel reads like very dry non-fiction.  The history covered here is mostly familiar, and the author doesn’t bring any suspense to Elizabeth’s story, either, which is relatively unknown.  Plus, the prose is pretty basic and uninspired.  Gore Vidal’s Lincoln is a better read, although longer and denser.  And, yes, Elizabeth Keckley appears in that novel as well.