Little – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 THE MAID’S VERSION by Daniel Woodrell /2013/the-maids-version-by-daniel-woodrell/ Sat, 21 Dec 2013 17:45:34 +0000 /?p=23615 Book Quote:

“She frightened me at every dawn the summer I stayed with her. She’d sit on the edge of her bed, long hair down, down to the floor and shaking as she brushed and brushed, shadows ebbing from the room and early light flowing in through both windows. Her hair was as long as her story and she couldn’t walk when her hair was not woven into dense braids and pinned around and atop her head. Otherwise her hair dragged the floor like the train of a medieval gown and she had to gather it into a sheaf and coil it about her forearm several times to walk the floor without stepping on herself. She’d been born a farm girl, then served as a maid for half a century, so she couldn’t sleep past dawn to win a bet…”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 21, 2013)

The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell is a small book but reads like a tome, with such literate and beautiful imagery that I was enthralled. The book centers around the mystery of the explosion at Arbor Dance Hall in 1929. The explosion killed 42 people, many unrecognizable in death with their bodies broken up or burned beyond recognition. Alma Dunahew lost her sister Ruby in the explosion and for years has been trying to discover the answer to what happened. Those years have been hard on her with several of them spent at the Work Farm in West Table, Missouri, due to her psychic breakdown caused by rage and grief. Many of the town’s most wealthy citizens want to put the truth of the explosion to the side and no one has ever been apprehended for the crime. They look at Alma’s ramblings about the explosion as words from a crazy person. The magnitude of the explosion was enormous.

“Just as full darkness fell those happy sounds heard in the surviving house suddenly became a nightmare chorus of pleas, cries of terror, screams as the flames neared crackling and bricks returned tumbling from the heavens and stout beams crushed those souls knocked to the ground. Walls shook and shuddered for a mile around and the boom was heard faintly in the next county south and painfully by everyone in the town limits.”

One summer in 1965, Alma’s young grandson Alec comes to visit her. It is to him that she spills the story of the dance hall and her theory about what happened that night. Going back and forth in time, the novel gives the reader vignettes about those who were killed in the dance hall explosion along with the story of Ruby, Alma’s sister. Ruby was a great flirt and what was called in those days a loose woman. She would love them and leave them until she found a real love with the banker, Arthur Glencross. Glencross was married and Alma worked as a maid for the Glencross family. She worked very hard to hide Arthur’s affair from his wife Corrine by carefully washing his clothing to get out smells and stains that would serve as evidence of his affair with Ruby. After Ruby’s death, Alma hated Arthur and this was evident in her actions.

Was Arthur responsible for the explosion? Or, could it have been the preacher Isaiah Willard who spoke of death and damnation to those who danced? He believed that “the easiest portals to the soul through which demons might enter was that opened by dancing feet. Evil music, evil feet, salacious sliding and the disgusting embraces dancing excused provided an avenue of damnation that could readily be seen and blockaded” He was heard to say of the Arbor Dance Hall during that summer, “I’ll blow this place to Kingdom soon and drop those sinners into the boiling patch – see how they dance then.” What about the hobos hanging around town? Those passing through with bad intentions? Someone with a grudge against one of the dancers? Who was it? Alma thinks she knows and tells her story to Alec.

Of the forty-two killed in the explosion, only twenty-eight were whole enough so that graves could be made for them. Most of them were not identified. The rest were parts buried in a pit. Alma’s grief was such that she “touched all twenty-eight and kissed them each, kneeling to kiss the fresh black paint between her spread aching fingers, said the same words to accompany every kiss because there was no way to know which box of wood held Ruby, or if she rested in only one, had not been separated into parts by crushing or flames and interred in two or three, so she treated every box as though her sister was inside in parts or whole and cried to the last.”

Woodrell’s style of writing is unique, sounding like I’d imagine the tenor of speech spoken in the Ozarks. At times it’s a difficult book because of the writing style and the subject matter. It is, however, stunning and has left me with a deep and abiding appreciation for this author’s work. I thank him for sharing his talent and vision with readers.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 117 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company (September 3, 2013)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS: Interview  and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

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]]> ROOM by Emma Donoghue /2010/room-by-emma-donoghue/ Sat, 18 Sep 2010 22:37:32 +0000 /?p=12221 Book Quote:

“Lots of TV is made-up pictures – like Dora’s, just a drawing – but the people, the ones with faces that look like you and me, they’re real.”

“Actual humans?”

She nods. “And the places are real too, like farms and forests and airplanes and cities…”

“Nah.” Why is she tricking me? “Where would they fit?”

“Out there,” says Ma. “Outside. ” She jerks her head back.

“Outside Bed Wall?” I stare at it.

“Outside Room.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (SEP 18, 2010)

Emma Donoghue is not afraid of making bold choices. Her first is the narrative voice she adapts in this novel: that of five-year-old Jack, a young boy who was born and has lived his entire life in an 11-foot by 11-foot room. One might think the voice would eventually become cloying or overly precious or manipulative or downright tiring. But it never does.

Jack is an innocent, an imaginative child, whose mother was spirited away by an abductor (called Old Nick) when she was returning home from her college library. She has lived in Room ever since – for seven long years – and gave birth to Jack, the son of her abductor, within Room (a sound-proofed, lead-lined backyard shed).  And she has tried her best to fashion a life for him there, creating innovative games — from the Scream (done once a day), to Labyrinth and Fort and Bouncy Bunny. Together, Ma and Jack have created characters out of all aspects of Room – Rug, Plant, Wardrobe, Stove – watch the world on their small T.V. set, and devote every ounce of energy to each other.

The horror of this confinement is racheted up through Jack’s simplistic view of the Room, which to him, constitutes the world. He hides in Wardrobe at night and times Old Nick’s visits by counting the number of creaks in the bed. He senses when Ma is “Gone”–depressed and withdrawn — and yet can’t quite reason out why. But Ma is more attuned to the threats: she knows that as Jack ages, he is in increasing danger and that his budding curiosity will eventually cause him fatal harm.

Eventually choices are made and freedom comes, but at a cost. And when it does, Ms. Donoghue develops some bold and powerful themes: is the Room we know safer than the World Outside? Is it better to have multiple choices or just a restrictive few? Are we all confined in a Room of our making – even when we choose freedom or have it thrust upon us – or will we eventually find the strength to break out?

As Jack yearns for the security and predictability of Room, Ma tells him, “I keep messing up. I know you need me to be your ma but I’m having to remember how to be me as well at the same time…” The scariest thing for Ma is the fear that Room has obliterated who she really is. And for Jack? The scariest thing is a world without being the core of Ma’s universe.

This riveting book – a book I easily place in my Top Five of the year – goes far beyond the victim-and-survivor tale. It’s an amazing and sensitive look about a mother’s love, a study of a “stranger in a strange land,” a tale that displays the power of survival, and an indictment of a society that has lost the ability to empathize with those who are hurting (Ms. Donoghue’s wickedly humorous look at the media and its over-the-top rhetoric is reason enough to buy Room.) Most of all, it’s a careful examination of how we can take the most heinous circumstances and painstakingly extract something of beauty and value.

I cannot praise Room enough. It’s a triumph of story-telling filled with crackling dialogue, thought-provoking themes, and a page-turning quality that won’t let you stop until you reach the last page.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 2.179 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company (September 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Emma Donoghue
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another unique narrative:

Bibliography:

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