Review: Frozen in Time

Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II
Mitchell Zuckoff
Harper
hardcover, 416 pages
a copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

What I look for in a non-fiction book is a strong narrative, an almost fictional storytelling style, and a narrator who puts it all together for me. I often enjoying getting some facts with my fiction, and I like to get some fiction techniques with my facts. So Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II really worked for me. Mitchell Zuckoff takes a compelling story about a historical event that is filled with natural drama and interest, and brings it all to a whole new level by interweaving the narrative with a contemporary story in which he is a participant.

Zuckoff, who is the author of another highly successful non-fiction book, Lost in Shangri-La, tells the story of  a harrowing arctic adventure. The historic narrative concerns a series of plane crashes in Greenland during World War II. It's a story of immense bad luck, difficult circumstances, and almost overwhelming odds. First, in November 1942, a U.S. cargo plane crashes into a Greenland ice cap. Then, four days later, a B-17 assigned to the search-and-rescue mission becomes lost in a storm and also crashes. Finally, in a dramatic, last-ditch effort, a Grumman Duck amphibious plane is sent out the find the survivors. After successfully picking up one of the B-17 survivors, the Grumman Duck vanishes, with three men inside.

Zuckoff offers a minutely detailed, absolutely gripping account of everything that is known about the three crashes, including the brutal conditions of the survivors of the B-17 crash. The nine men aboard the B-17 all survive, but some are badly injured. They are forced to camp in subzero temperatures in the tail section of their broken plane. Expecting to be rescued within days, the men instead must face the terrifying conditions, and constant threat of frostbite and death, for 148 days.

As I read Frozen in Time I was just stunned at the tenacity of the men depicted in the book. The pain and discomfort must have been unendurable, yet somehow the men retained hope. Several times the survivors attempt to reach help, sometimes finding themselves in worse trouble in the unforgiving environment of Greenland, a place that is basically uninhabitable, plagued with blizzards,subject to sudden storms, the threat of crevasses and frostbite ever present. The spirit of these men is truly heroic.

Interwoven with the story of the three crashes, and the repeated attempts at rescue, is the contemporary narrative, in which Zuckoff recounts the efforts of the Coast Guard and North South Polar, led by Lou Sapienza, to locate and recover the remains of the Grumman Duck and its crew. Zuckoff is an integral part of this mission; even as he is acting as a reporter and historical researcher in his account of the World War II era crashes, Zuckoff becomes another character in his own narrative as the modern-day mission deals with the same threatening conditions, weather threats, and time constraints (with much better equipment and supplies).

For fans of adventure, war stories, and tales of the triumph of the human spirit, Zuckoff delivers. His writing style is fluent, he makes the complex and sometimes confusing series of events easy to understand, and he keeps the reader in suspense. As I read Frozen in Time, I kept wondering how these men continued to hope, to fight their way through one disaster after another, and to persevere. I loved the World War II history, and learned quite a bit about Greenland (never go there) and the Coast Guard. Reading this book completely satisfied any desire for an arctic adventure: I'll take my frozen expeditions vicariously.

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope

Rhonda Riley

Ecco

paperback, 424 pages

a copy of the book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

There is a deep mystery at the heart of every relationship.  The question comes to most of us, inevitably, as we look at someone we know intimately--a parent, a child, a life partner....We look at that person and wonder: Who are you?

This is the central mystery at the heart of The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope. Who are you, and where did you come from? Evelyn Roe is living alone, working the land in North Carolina, in the last months of World War II, when she finds something mystifying in the red clay of the land. At first she takes it for a man, possibly a returning soldier who has been wounded and scarred. To her absolute wonder, the man she finds in the clay eventually is transformed into a woman, a woman who is Evelyn's near-twin. Evelyn and the reader learn to know and love Addie, who has a remarkable ability to heal, to transform herself, and to communicate with animals. Riley blends creation myth with the techniques of realistic fiction to create a world in which all this seems possible, and then she has Addie disappear and reappear as a man named Adam Hope. Riley is like a painter who creates luminous, light-filled paintings by using layer after layer of paint and varnish....only Riley uses the textures, light, and colors of the real world to create a luminous, light-filled fictional world in which such creatures are possible.

What I loved about The Enchanted World of Adam Hope was the way that the story unfolded, like one long enchanted dream. The story of Evelyn and Adam, and of the five daughters they have together, is not as strange as it should be because of Riley's absolutely believable world, and the way she anchors her story in the literal earth and rocks and clay of her landscapes. Addie/Adam (Evelyn refers to the person who is both as simply "A.") is both otherworldly and entirely ordinary, but Evelyn and A. seem to exist alone in a world of startling beauty and emotion, unable to share the entire truth of A. with the larger world.

Addie, and then Adam, has a gift for working with horses, and that work becomes the practical basis of the life that Adam and Evelyn build together as a seemingly normal married couple, parents of five daughters, rooted in their rural North Carolina community. But a tragedy tears open their world, and something of the strangeness that lies within Adam seeps out. Evelyn and Adam continue to live in their community, but they exist apart, estranged, set aside from others. Eventually there is real danger, as Adam's difference is revealed to an even more threatening element, the medical community. The family flees to Florida, and begin their life again.

I was surprised at this turn of the book, because Evelyn's love of her land, her family, and even of the community that rejects her husband, were so firmly established in the narrative. The story takes a turn toward grief, loss, fear, and pain, that seems devastatingly permanent, and I read through a hundred pages while holding my breath.

Rhonda Riley made me care so much for her characters that I feared for them, grieved for them, hurt for them. It is a tremendous thing to love fictional characters that way.

Riley's prose is exquisite and delicate, yet tensile. Her prose is crafted right down to the sentence level, and yet it flows along as naturally as a clear mountain spring. As caught up as I was in pure story, every once in a while I had to stop to admire a sentence. I'd like to read The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope a second time, just to admire the prose.

Rhonda Riley gets right to the deepest questions of our lives:  who are we? where do we come from? what is love? In this mysteriously powerful novel, Riley forces the reader to reexamine our assumptions about the borders and boundaries of love and otherness. If you like books that expand and catch you up in a beautiful, wonderful dream, you will love The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope.

Review: The Golem and the Jinni

The Golem and the Jinni
Helene Wecker
Harper
486 pages
a copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

Helene Wecker's debut novel is impressive on many levels. She tells her tale with the confidence of a born storyteller, and casts a mesmerizing dreamlike spell over her reader like a modern-day Scheherazade. Although she tells a fantastic tale of mythical creatures, but roots her story firmly in the historical details of New York in 1899. Finally, Wecker gives her primary characters, magical as they are, thoroughly believable, realistic, and consistent character traits.

The Golem is a creature created from clay, endowed with human appearance, and meant to obey a single master. Wecker's Golem is a woman created as a wife for a man who inconveniently dies during the voyage to America. The Golem lands in New York and, by chance, meets Rabbi Avram Meyer, who recognizes her for what she is, and tries to help her. Meyer teaches the Golem about her nature, how to mimic human behavior, and how to cope with her ability to intuit the wishes, desires, and worries of every human with whom she comes in contact.

The Jinni is a fiery creature, trapped in a human form, and transported to New York in (of course) a copper bottle. The Jinni becomes an apprentice to a Syrian tinsmith after being accidentally released from his bottle, but not from his bondage. An iron cuff binds the Jinni's wrist, and a spell binds him to his human form--and an unknown master. Bottled up for a thousand years, the Jinni is unable to remember anything about the events leading to his capture.

When the Golem and the Jinni meet on the streets of New York, an unlikely friendship is formed and a story both fantastic and enthralling unfolds. Despite their very different natures, the Golem and the Jinni are able to reach a level of understanding made possible by their shared outsider status. The genius of Helene Wecker's writing is that she captures the fabulous, imaginative nature of the Golem and the Jinni, while also making them seem sympathetic and realistic.

Thematically, this novel asks many questions...about the nature of creation and creator, and what allegiance the creator owes the creation (and what the creation owes the creator). There are questions of art and artistic creation, and free-will and fate. Of course, these questions will occur to the reader later, because while you are reading The Golem and the Jinni, you will be caught up in the danger, excitement, and suspense of the story. Can the Golem, named Chava by her Rabbi rescuer, ever really love? Can the Jinni find a way to be free? Can the two friends avoid the destructive and even terrifying powers that are part of their magic? And what will happen when they both come up against powerful malevolent forces?

Wecker obviously enjoys doing research....the streets of New York, particularly the Lower East Side and Little Syria, are lovingly and realistically portrayed. The Golem and the Jinni also takes the reader to the deserts of Syria, and to Danzig, Germany. Fantasy and realism are expertly blended in this tale of immigrants life. I would recommend The Golem and the Jinni to all readers, even those who don't ordinarily dabble in fantasy. A book this richly textured and beautifully written should appeal to a wide range of readers.

I loved The Golem and the Jinni on so many levels: the relentless pull of the narrative, the voice of the storyteller, the beauty of the prose, the very appealing characters, the rich historical backdrop. If you love being carried away by a story, this is your kind of novel. The Golem and the Jinni is an absolutely gorgeous dream of a book.

Helene Wecker has an exceptionally good website, beautifully designed and very informative.
www.helenewecker.com

Sunday Coffee: Wildacres and The Sun

Writing on the Mountaintop:  The Sun Magazine at Wildacres Retreat 

Last weekend my friend Carla and I drove up into the mountains of North Carolina for The Sun Magazine writers retreat at Wildacres Retreat in Little Switzerland. Carla and I are flatlanders from the Low Country....we live at sea level. So the climb up to the top of the mountain had me holding my breath. Once we got out of the car, I felt like kissing the earth, but restrained myself.

If you're not familiar with The Sun Magazine, you need to check it out. The Sun is an independent, ad-free monthly magazine that publishes beautiful writing, and writing on topics you won't see anywhere else. The magazine is published in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was started by Sy Safransky in 1974. I've been reading The Sun for many years, as has Carla, and we decided that this was the perfect writing retreat for us. I'm so happy we went; first of all, we had a blast together. Secondly, the retreat was better than I ever could have imagined. I simply drank in so much writerly nourishment, met so many kind and wonderful people, and best of all, got some actual writing done.

I wish I could have taken a workshop with each of the writers at the retreat, but I could only take three workshops, I attended a workshop with Joseph Bathanti on "Writing Nakedly." Bathanti is poet laureate of North Carolina and the author of novels and short stories; I bought his book of linked stories The High Heart while I was at the retreat, A story from the collection, "Fading Away," was what caused me to take the workshop, and I'm glad I did. Bathanti's class was about using your personal "storehouse" of story, and how to write "nakedly" and yet ethically about autobiographical events.

Next I took a workshop with the brilliant essayist Krista Bremer. Her essay "Blues for Allah" had brought me to tears, and I wanted to hear what she had to say about "Getting Intimate with Readers." As a teacher, I was impressed with Bremer's abilities as a writer and as a teacher. 

Finally, I attended Pat MacEnulty's workshop on "The Writer's Shadow." MacEnulty's story "Scarlett in Harlem" had left me gobsmacked, and I wanted to hear whatever she had to say about writing. MacEnulty frequently leads writer's workshops, and is the author of a memoir, three novels, a book of short stories, and a book about writing, Write for the Soul. Pat is a warm, authentic, genuine teacher and person....I would love to attend another of her workshops. I highly recommend her workshops if you ever get the opportunity; she also has a writing blog, The Art of Transformative Writing.

Spending time in the mountains, among like-minded folks, was exactly what I needed for my soul. The beauty and tranquility of Wildacres, and the opportunity to get away from the distractions of life (no television, radio, etc....and very little cell phone access) was just what I needed. I would definitely go back to Wildacres again.

The TBR Pile

One thing I didn't do much of while on the retreat was read. My reading life has been full of peaks and valleys that match the cycle of my teaching year. For my Classics Club list I have finished All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, and Lolita, but I have not yet reviewed any of these classics, This weekend I finished Mitchell Zuckoff's Frozen in Time, and I've started Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni (so far I love it).

Life

I almost hesitate to write about this, but it happened, it is important, and it would feel weird to ignore it. As some of my readers are probably aware, I'm a high school English teacher. I work in a great school. We have about 1,100 students in our building, and I have complete confidence in my administration and my colleagues. And what happened this week, in some ways, confirms my feelings of confidence, but my feeling of safety has been punctured. On Wednesday we went on lockdown. I was in the school media center with another teacher and her class; we were having some fun activities to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday (somewhat belatedly, due to testing). 

Since there were half a dozen police cars, then two fire engines, then an ambulance (all visible from the wall of windows in the media center) I was pretty sure we were not having a drill. My first concern was the safety of my students, and my second concern was keeping everyone calm. After about an hour in lockdown, an administrator, a guidance counselor, and our school resource officer came into the media center and searched every student's backpack. From the grim expressions of my colleagues, I guessed that there had been an incident, or a tip of a potential incident.

As it turned out, the actions of my colleagues averted a potentially grave situation. A student had brought multiple weapons into the school (including a loaded gun). Because a teacher was there to listen to that student, he was taken into custody without a struggle, 

I am sharing this without fully knowing what to think of it. This was a student I knew very well. I am still in shock over the near-catastrophe that was so narrowly escaped. And yet I think that my school could be any school. This truly could have happened anywhere.

The only thing I can say I know for sure is that teaching is above all about relationships. Relationships are the foundation of everything good that happens in a school (and perhaps in life as well).

Over the years, whenever I read or heard about a violent incident in a school, I had this feeling...a feeling that sooner or later my sense of safety would be shattered. I am just grateful that this week no one was hurt, and that everything that could go right did go right, mostly because of the phenomenal colleagues with whom I am blessed to work.

Review: Half as Happy

Half as Happy: Stories
by Gregory Spatz
182 pages
Engine Books
a copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

Driving to work this morning I had that very pleasing sensation that you have when you a remembering a mysteriously stirring dream. There are dreams that leave a residue, a reverberation, that follows you the rest of your day. That is the sensation I had after reading Half as Happy.

Gregory Spatz takes the eight stories in his collection, Half as Happy, right up to the edge of surrealism....but never over that edge. Every thing that happens in these stories could happen in life---but life sometimes has the quality of a dream, and Spatz moves into that space where our daily lives intersect with some deep, rarely acknowledged need or truth or desire.

In "Any Landlord's Dream" a young couple rents a house, bringing their separate and shared griefs with them. Their landlord is just on the periphery of the story, but in a sense he is an intruder on the marriage and the grief. Often the characters in Spatz's stories carry their griefs, their resentments, their losses---if not in their conscious thoughts, then in dreams or even fantasies. When two such characters collide (sometimes quite literally), that's when things get really interesting.

Each one of the stories in Half as Happy enters into the characters' lives just as trouble has torn a hole in the great fabric we construct that makes up the surface of our lives. It might be a surface of a happy marriage, or of sibling camaraderie, or of a perfect life. Spatz expertly explores these rifts and tears in the lives of his characters without offering up facile answers or easy epiphanies. His characters are often strangely unaware of their own motives and motivations---just like real people. But Spatz gives his characters' lives a precision and exactitude that is deeply satisfying to the reader--these are real people, they could be people you or I might know.

Spatz's writing is so good the reader barely sees it. There isn't a wrong note in these stories (many of which have at least a glancing reference to music). One of my favorite stories from the collection is "The Bowmaker's Cats." This story is weird, unsettling, and deeply pleasurable. It's a crazy story, told from the point of view of a musician....or a group of musicians, really. The story is told in the first person plural, and this disorienting narrative point of view dovetails perfectly with the story, a tale of invisible cats, an invisible wife, and a missing bow.

In Half as Happy, an ostensibly happy man, ostensibly happily married, goes home every day at lunch to watch his wife swim laps in their beautiful pool, then pull herself out of the pool to read a book, all the while ignoring him, a fact the happy man seems to ignore.

I think my favorite story in Half as Happy is the final story, "String." The more I think about this story, the more I love it, and all I can say is that the story is about how we are all connected, and includes a prank gone dreadfully wrong.

I think this is one of the best story collections I have read in a long, long time. Strange, wistful, sad, funny, and strangely affecting, Half as Happy is just like life....deep, inexplicable, moving.

Review: The Bequest of Big Daddy

The Bequest of Big Daddy

Jo-Ann Costa

koehlerbooks

247 pages

a copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

Jo-Ann Costa has a larger-than-life character in Big Daddy, also known as Horatio ("Ratio") Gage Jansen. Ratio's story, and the story of his Southern family, stretches from Antebellum Alabama to 1980's era Alabama and Georgia. Ratio Janson is a big character who needs a big canvas, and Costa gives him that. 

The novel opens with Ratio's great grand-daughter, Jo-Dee, visiting her great-grandfather, Big Daddy, just before his death. Big Daddy has an epic temper and an epic libido; he inspires fear and admiration, not necessarily in equal parts. When Big Daddy passes away, Jo-Dee is too young to understand why her great grandfather evokes such strong emotions from his family, but as an adult, she is compelled to uncover Big Daddy's stories and secrets.

Big Daddy's story begins with the story of his mother, Mina Satterley, an icy beauty with astonishing blue eyes. Mina and her son, Ratio, are forced to flee their home as the Civil War battles near their plantation in Georgia, and a picaresque adventure begins. Ratio finds himself in trouble again and again, and often it is his libido or his predilection for wandering or both that causes the trouble. In addition to wanderlust and plain old lust, Ratio is possessed of a violent temper and questionable morals. The Bequest of Big Daddy follows Ratio through forced labor, imprisonment, a disturbing incident with a circus performer and much more.

Jo-Ann Costa is a storyteller par-excellence. She has the Southern gift for telling a yarn, and The Bequest of Big Daddy is one long rolicking yarn. The strengths of Costa's novel are her storyteller's gift, and her completely enchanting characters.

There is a big secret at the heart of this book, and Jo-Dee's pursuit of Big Daddy's secret is what holds this tale together. For storytelling technique, this book is a fantastic, energetic romp. Costa's technical skill as a writer does not quite match her gift as a storyteller, but this reader became so attached to the characters, and so invested in discovering Big Daddy's secret, that I was willing to overlook the sometimes choppy quality of the writing. The Bequest of Big Daddy is sure to please lovers of Southern fiction, and anyone who loves a story filled with drama, secrets, and lies. If your idea of fun would be to attend a huge family reunion and soak up all the stories about some epic family character, then you will love The Bequest of Big Daddy.

Sunday Coffee: Still Reading Cormac McCarthy....and other readerly confessions

One of the greatest pleasures of my life is to simply become completely absorbed in a book--preferably a classic book, or a book that combines artistry and story and meaning in a way that completely engages every cell of my brain. My long slow read of Our Mutual Friend provided that perfect level of engagement, and I'm finding it with Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy too.

This is another slow read for me; while I finished All the Pretty Horses in little more than a day, The Crossing took me much longer to read, and Cities of the Plain is taking just as long. As I read I stop to underline sentences that leave me gobsmacked with admiration. If I can just get a stretch of uninterrupted reading time, I will finish this trilogy and review it. McCarthy is not a writer whose work lends itself to distracted reading. I really like to be able to give his books my undivided attention.

In other reading news, I'm just sort of jumping around from book to book, which is pretty uncharacteristic for me. I generally like to finish off one book at a time. But I've been dipping into several books at once, rather than focusing on any single book. For my creative writing classes I've been doing reading and research on the writing of fiction...here's a partial list of books I've looked into:  The Making of a Story by Alice La Plante, Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway, and The Lie That Tells a Truth by John Dufresne. And in between I've been reading The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood....

Also on my list is Lolita---two of my students have recently read Nabokov's novel, and I need to catch up with them! I want to be able to discuss the novel with these smart kids!