Weekend Book Notes: Patchett, McBride & Kingsolver
[Before I begin, I’ve been playing with a new toy—AI generated VoiceOver—which I think I may have to bring into to the Wit & Wisdom toolbox. But before I invest the $11 per month, I wanted to run a “test” to see if anyone else is giddy over the possibilities. And not for nothing, but I really like “Lily’s” voice.]
As Ursula K. Le Guin offered: “We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
She went on to say that writers, “by using words well…strengthen their souls. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”
Each of the writers whose books are included in this installment of Weekend Book Notes have a knack for doing just that.
Tom Lake, Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett is one of the few writers whose books I can be guaranteed to read twice. Bel Canto, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, The Dutch House, are as powerful on the second reading as they were in the first. (Katy Waldman does an excellent job describing Patchett’s mastery of the craft in her New Yorker review: Ann Patchett’s Pandemic Novel)
Tom Lake, described as a “meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born,” is a lovely book—and one I gobbled up in a few, ease-filled sittings. But it is also a different book from the other Patchett’s I’ve read—softer, less gritty and angst-ridden…and also, more neatly resolved. But its reflective, quiet nature makes sense in that it was written during a time when we were all going inward and ruminating on our lives and relationships.
As in all of Patchett’s writing, her capacity for human insight, her deeply moving and often elegiac prose, shine throughout. And while I loved Tom Lake, I recognize that it is a book that may resonate more with women—especially mothers and daughters—than it does with Patchett’s legion of male fans.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
This was my first foray into McBride…and what I wonder is how on earth did I not discover him before this?
I came across a McBride quote in Marmalade and Mustardseed that is a perfect companion to the Le Guin quote above, and one that gets to the essence of what The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store allows its readers to do:
“The truth is if you want to see the world and you work at it, it makes you better, it makes you stronger, it makes you more tolerant, it makes you happier and it makes you less cynical.”
At first, I had no idea where McBride was taking me, and the culture clash was as confusing as if I had been given a Spotify playlist that started with Hava Nagila, and without any kind of reasonable segue, went into a Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis mix. For the first few chapters I was scratching my head in respectful befuddlement at McBride’s ease with Yiddish sayings and knowledge of Judaism, until I pulled a vague factoid from my memory banks that McBride’s mother was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland. (His 1995 memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother is now on the list.)
When McBride shines, oh Lordy me, does he shine. And when he makes you laugh, (as the chapter entitled Paper did me) you don’t just laugh, you guffaw to such an unflattering degree it makes you glad you’re reading the book far from the public’s, judgey eyes.
In The New York Times Book Review, Danez Smith described The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store as “A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.”
And I have to admit, (mild spoiler alert) I’m a sucker for books whose villains get their comeuppance in the end.
Two resources that will give you insight into McBride’s down-to-earth, “expect no apologies from me,” winning personality:
A funny, engaging interview conducted at the 2024 Rancho Mirage Writer’s Festival:
And Elizabeth A. Harris’, March 2024, New York Times piece:
His Novel Has Sold a Million Copies. James McBride Isn’t Sure How He Feels About That.
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
I’m pretty sure I’m one of the last “literati” alive who has never read a Kingsolver before last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead. (Her 1998 Poisonwood Bible was shortlisted for The Pulitzer and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.)
Demon Copperhead is Dickens’ David Copperfield set in Kingsolver’s home turf—Appalachia—and updates the themes of poverty and neglect with contemporary issues of drug addiction and pill mills (thank you, Purdue Pharma). And while it won accolades and devoted readers, it was also (apparently) panned by critics. A little insight perhaps comes from Molly Young’s Review in the New York Times.
“In ‘Demon Copperhead,’ Barbara Kingsolver offers a close retelling of Charles Dickens’s ‘David Copperfield,’ which is either a baffling choice or an ingenious maneuver from a novelist who has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and selected for Oprah’s Book Club and regularly — inevitably, even — appears on the best-seller list of this newspaper, all while reaping a surprising quantity of stinging pans from critics.
Kingsolver’s resurrection of Dickens’s most sentimental (though cherished by many, including me) novel might seem a bit strange — as if Harry Styles had released a song-for-song remake of the original cast recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘South Pacific.’”
(You gotta admit—Young’s last line is pure, comedic gold.)
My two cents is this: Demon Copperhead is not an easy book, (how could it be?) but it is a masterful one. And I have to say, I kinda had to bribe myself to get through the first 200 or so pages, because I KNEW where we were headed—and it was no place good. But once I steeled myself against the inevitable, I sailed through the last 300 pages focusing on Kingsolver’s ability to turn each of her sentences—and I mean nearly EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.—into an inimitable work of art.
I’ll leave you with two very different Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead quotes below:
The funny….
“And the lit up face of Donna Marie flirting so hard, her bangs were standing on end.”
(Does that not paint the perfect picture?)
And (spoiler alert) the devastatingly poignant….
“She said I didn't understand him. But I did. Fast Forward had a beautiful poison inside him that infected people and got them hooked. I told her it was bound to end this way because Fast Forward was a dangerous animal, and they aren't known to have long lives.
Rose didn't deny that. But she could have been the one to save him. She looked straight at me with her wrecked face full of tears and madness and swore that's what she believed. That the scar he put on her was his way of making sure Rose would belong to him for life.”
And finally…a question…do you have a favorite 2024 book so far? And what’s the consensus, is “Lily” worth the $11 per month?
Happy Reading…and Happy Saturday!
Diana