All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

 

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr just has so many good reviews, I had to read it.

Started: 11/7/2021
Completed: 11/14/2021
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: Pulitzer

Review:

The story of the stone is an odd red herring throughout the novel.  I don't really think it helps tell the story beyond an encounter toward the end of World War II.  I found it to be a non-innocent addition to the story as though it is much more meaningful then it is.

There is an odd repeated sense of decimation and loss (odd because it seems that there is no bottom).  It seems that horror and loss are components required for a Pulitzer prize.  I had not wanted to read this book partly for that reason.  There is little doubt that Doerr is gifted and builds characters, places, and addresses issues of large moment artfully.  It would be nice, however, if that could all be done without the fear of imminent death.  Maybe, also, I'm a little tired of coming of age stories.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra was on Obama's Reading list.

Started: 3/10/2020
Completed: 3/13/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: President Obama

Review:

This book wraps together the horrors of poverty and war with the richness of people who support one another.  The characters are generally rich and none are truly noble, but most carry a nugget of nobility.  The story is intricate and the ties between characters in many ways unexpected.  The brief vignettes that are used to tell the story feel disjoint as they arrive and, yet, knit together clearly in a subtle way.  When talking about one character slowly losing his wife and reflecting on how their combined lives are becoming an increasing collection of things that they no longer share "...just as a web is no more than holes woven together...."

Some of the descriptions are evocative, others distasteful, but all are striking.  My favorite was:  "The slender beard descending from his chin looked like the tail of a squirrel hibernating in his mouth."

Parts of some of the stories seemed like a reliving of an old wive's tale:  "If you want to keep a man, hide his shoes under the bed every night so that he cannot run away from you."  Others, seemed to be lifted from the very fabric of Chechnya.  "She was harder to pin down than the last pickle in the jar."  This is such a Slavic expression.  Americans would talk about the bottom of the barrel or the elusiveness of a greased pig.  How did a Landon boy get this expression?  He lived in Eastern Europe for several years and wove his experience into the novel.

"Latin is a problem with which I have no experience,"  is wishful thinking from a prep school boy.  To me, some of these expressions kept the novel alive with the voice of the author unexpectedly appearing from one of the characters.  This was well done, however, so it was not jarring to an American reader, but invited the reader into the book.

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt was a Pulitzer prize winner.

Started: 10/27/2019

Completed: 11/2/2019

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a pretty impressive book.  It captures a young life with way too many twists and turns.  It tries to explore the space between pure good and pure evil suggesting that nothing in life is really either.  It also argues that loving a thing can enrich one's life in a good and productive way.  It can also be bad.  It is really, in the end, neither one and a lot of the gray space in between.

The prose is good, the conversations are really good, and the exploration of the experience of taking drugs is appropriately off-putting.