I was intrigued by Redeployment when I heard that it was about the Iraq War. And then, when it won the National Book Award in 2014, my curiosity reached a fever pitch. How could a collection of short stories trump the magnificent Station Eleven or All the Light We Cannot See, both of which I read and LOVED before this book? As it turns out, the committee knew what it was about. To put it simply, Redeployment is haunting. It is gritty, hard-eyed, and unflinching […]
Charlie Brown Grows Up and Moves to Canada
This 1993 novel won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was turned into a movie. The Shipping News is the story of a man named Quoyle over the course of a few eventful, transformative years of his life. Proulx’s unique writing style combines poetry and humor to create characters who might be from a folk tale or might be your next door neighbor. Hive spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramps, he survived childhood….” Quoyle is a lot like Charlie Brown […]
20th Century Dalloways
This short novel, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, deals with a circle of women who married and had children in the ’50s somewhere in New England. Much of their story is told in flashbacks from a point in the 1990s, when they have aged and have lost many of those who had been close. As a result, we get nothing like a linear narrative, and that’s not terribly important. The relationships that these women form, the choices they have made, and how […]
On Passion
My hand is a human hand. My heart a human heart. My feet walk the earth to which our bones return. Directed by His voice, His hand, by the prompting and guidance of His spirit, what else was I to do? ~ Father Damien in a letter to the Pope The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. I’ve reviewed two of Erdrich’s other novels — The Plague of Doves, which won a […]