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.
