Review: The Namesake

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a book that allows the reader to gain an understanding of what it is like to immigrate from one culture to another that is dramatically different. As the father-in-law of an Indian-born naturalized citizen, I feel this book has given me a much better grasp of the large community people that have become related, through marriage, to my daughter.
In all honesty, I should give this book five stars. Lahiri is a masterful writer with a unique voice that pours her character’s conflicted emotions directly into the reader’s consciousness and makes it easy to view their life as each of those characters see it. Though a work of fiction, this story feels real and challenges the reader to examine his or her own life through just such a clear and honest lens. I did not give it a five because I found the book depressing. I’m too much of a romantic to accept that love is so easily gained and lost; that a real connection between two people can be cut completely and irretrievably. The main character finds and loses love many times and I could feel myself losing empathy for him–I didn’t want to be in position to feel the pain that is obviously coming. In many ways, it appears that this is what Gogol himself does.
In terms of the clarity of the writing, I count this among the novels that set the standard to which I aspire.

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Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself becoming hyper-critical of books I’ve been reading, even while I enjoyed the stories and admired the talent of the author. As a result of the editing process I’ve undergone with my own book, I have found it hard to “lose myself” in the narrative of a story. Early in “The Hunger Games” I struggled with the author’s habit of contracting “is” with a variety of nouns; I was searching for flaws. Thankfully, that didn’t last.

By the seventh chapter I was hooked and whatever quibbles I may have had disappeared as a fascinating, troubled future formed from the words in my Kindle. While the seeds of this story may have come from television’s “Survivor” and “American Idol”, combined with a variety of apocalyptic movies including “Thunderdome”, the real and gritty humanity that Collins draws from her characters makes any comparison worthless. The first book leaves me eager to get into the second and see how Kat, Gale, Peetna and the rest of the engrossing cast fare in a country that seems primed for revolution.

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Review: Claiming Ground

Claiming Ground by Laura Bell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is flea market in Laramie south of Interstate 80. Much of it is a warren of eight by eight cubicles some of which are filled with little more than yard sale cast-offs while others contain what would be considered treasure vaults by collectors of one type or another.

Meandering through this motley, colorful, bizarre microcosm of life where the strange and familiar sit side-by-side is similar to reading “Claiming Ground”, a memoir by Laurel Bell. Almost every page contains some trinket that draws your eye and forces you to pick it up and turn it over and over in your hands to discover what manner of treasure you have found.

And, every so often, you find so wondrous a gem that you cannot bear to set it back on the shelf.

“I want to stand in the moonlit shadow of Heart Mountain and claim something solid and enduring. I want to be this mountain, but my life feels more like a hall of trick mirrors with a different view in each one.”

At 242 pages, “Claiming Ground” is not a long book, but it took me a week to finish it, despite the fact that I enjoyed it immensely. As with a flea market, I found myself tarrying too long in one place.

My only small criticism of the book is that much of it, although full of captivating prose, felt disjointed, like a collection of wonderful knickknacks which seem unrelated one to another. You are not drawn forward through the book.

That is until the final sixty pages. Throughout the book, Bell’s honesty impresses. At the end, it transfixes and impales; moving one’s heart in ways both painful and comforting.

I have found yet another writer who challenges me to grow in my craft. Christmas was yesterday and it is too late to wish for another gift. At the top of my list for next year is a wish to learn the crafting of a sentence as strong and lyrical as the hundreds that Bell has spread through “Claiming Ground”.

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