Weather – 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 FALLING TO EARTH by Kate Southwood /2014/falling-to-earth-by-kate-southwood/ Wed, 05 Mar 2014 12:45:03 +0000 /?p=24995 Book Quote:

“The children are frozen, too frightened to move closer to one of the women. The sound they heard while still in the house has advanced, roaring its way above them. There is a crash against the storm door, and they all scream, ducking with their arms held over their heads. Ellis drops his candle and, in the weak light left from the candle Mae is still holding, she sees his terrified face. Ruby is crying. Lavinia has Little Homer’s face pressed into the front of her dress as if she can shield him by blocking his sight. Mae reaches out her arms and Ruby and Ellis come to her immediately. She blows out her candle and drops it so she can hold both children tight against her. In the darkness, Lavinia cries, “Dear Lord! Oh, dear Lord!” Then the roaring moves on, like a train careering over their heads. The sound recedes and, eventually, even the wind seems to subside. When there is no longer any sound except rain on the cellar doors, the children hold utterly still, waiting to see what will come next.“

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 5, 2014)

Falling to Earth is the kind of novel that makes me want to grab the very next person I see and urgently say, ”You MUST read this.” I read this rabidly with increasing awe and respect that Kate Southwood had the chops to create a debut novel with this degree of psychological insight, restrained power, and heartbreaking beauty.

The story centers on a tragedy of unimaginable proportions – a tornado hits the small Illinois town of March in 1925, causing devastation and grievous loss in the homes of every single resident of the town.

Except one.

That one is Paul Graves, a man of dignity and integrity, who lives with his wife Mae, his three young children and his mother, Lavinia. Incredibly, nothing in Paul’s life is touched – not his family, not his home, and not his thriving lumber business…which, in fact, is even more in demand as townsfolk order coffins for the burials of their loved ones.

As the townspeople are forced to bear up under nearly unbearable grief, their envy of Paul’s “unfair” providence reaches a fever pitch and they begin to turn on him – and against him – in droves. Paul, meanwhile, labors under extreme survivor’s guilt as Mae increasingly falls into a dark depression.

Kate Southwood writes,

“A tornado is a ravenous thing, untroubled by the distinction in tearing one man apart and gently setting another down a little distance away. It is resolute and makes its unheeding progress until, bloated and replete, it dissipates. A tornado is a dead thing and cannot acknowledge blame.. If a tornado smashes your house or takes your child, it does no good to blame it…Even after you’ve yanked up another house in the place the old one stood and planted flowers in the dirt where you laid your child, your fury remains as well your desire to lay blame.”

A parable of sorts, this magnificent novel strives to answer questions that have haunted humankind since early times: how do we comprehend the forces of nature and our own fates? How do we manage the extreme hostility and envy that result from nature’s unfairness? How do we break the cycles of revenge, vengeance, retribution and reprisal? These questions transcend this book and can easily be asked of modern tragedies – Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy, for example.

The themes are universal: love and loss, family, jealousy and suspicion, guilt and survival. I will not spoil the ending but I will say this – it is masterly and seamlessly brought together all the themes of the book and literally let me gasping.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 44 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (March 5, 2013)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Kate Southwood
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another tornado-based story:

Bibliography:

]]> ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS by William Boyd /2010/ordinary-thunderstorms-by-william-boyd/ Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:29:31 +0000 /?p=8365 Book Quote:

“Clouds were his business – he was a cloud-man who made clouds in his giant laboratory and stimulated them to deliver their moisture in the form of raindrops or hailstones…So what was he doing lying, filthy and alone, in this small triangle of ground on the banks of the Thames? Not for the first time the life that he had once so recently led seemed some kind of taunting chimera – the contrasts between his two existences, before and after, appeared too acute to seem real – as if the Adam Kindred he had been was a fantasy figure, a vagrant’s dream, the fond imaginings of a desperate down-and-out.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (MAR 21, 2010)

In British author Boyd’s capable hands it’s actually believable that a slightly depressed, mild-mannered climatologist chooses to go underground in a strange city rather than report a murder.

Born in Britain, Adam Kindred has lived in America most of his life. Now, newly, devastatingly divorced, he’s left his U.S. university job and hopes for a new start with a fellowship in London. Fresh from the job interview, he treats himself to a meal, exchanges pleasantries with another solitary diner and afterwards discovers that the man – a research doctor – has left a file behind.

Good naturedly, Adam arranges to return it and goes to the man’s flat where he finds him fatally stabbed. “Philip Wang lay on top of his bed in a widening pool of blood. He was alive, very conscious, and a hand, flipper like, gestured Adam towards him.” His last words concern the file. “ ‘Whatever you do, don’t – ‘ Wang died then, with a short gasp of what seemed like exasperation.”

Going for the phone, Adam hears someone enter, and flees without calling the police, taking the murdered man’s file with him. Reaching for his cell he discovers blood on his hand, washes it in a fountain, then feels the need of a drink. “…he needed to calm down, give his thoughts some order…”

Incrementally time passes until it’s too late. The police naturally assume Adam is guilty, and the real murderer knows who he is. A vagrant on the banks of the Thames, he passes his first days assuming the situation will right itself, he will be cleared and the real murderer caught.

But things don’t work out that way.

Staying primarily with Adam, Boyd shares point of view among several characters: the mercenary who killed Wang and now has a contract on Adam; the hapless CEO of the pharmaceutical firm Wang worked for, whose new riches come at a hidden price; the CEO’s dissipated, aristocrat brother-in-law; and Rita Nashe, the cop who discovered Wang’s body.

The tension builds as Adam loses the trappings of normal life to blundering naivety, until he hits rock bottom and, starving, begins to exert himself. He has entered a world of muggers, prostitutes, hard-luck cases, and other opportunists, and the way back – if there is one – requires an education in street smarts.

It also requires detective work. The police are satisfied with him as their suspect and Wang’s file is his only hope. The file data mean nothing to him, but Adam begins to dig into the man’s work with pediatric asthma patients, determined to uncover the secret that killed him.

Winner of numerous awards, including the Whitbread, Boyd explores identity and the influence of social forces in this character-driven thriller. What happens when a man becomes unmoored from society? What will he do to preserve his life, his freedom, his dignity? What will he not do?

The prose is muscular and straightforward; the plot is compelling and tense, the secondary characters are well-fleshed. Boyd engages the reader in his quest and while not everyone will agree with his conclusions, fans of literary thrillers should enjoy the ride.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 78 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper; 1 edition (January 26, 2010)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia on William Boyd
EXTRAS:
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Short Stories:

Nonfiction:

]]> CHANGING HEAVEN by Jane Urquhart /2009/changing-heaven-by-jane-urquhart/ Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:49:10 +0000 /?p=12637 Book Quote:

“The hills beyond the window darken. Approaching night and receding snow. There is no need for Ann to speak, no need, in fact, for her to listen except in the way that one listens to music, allowing it to wash over the ear and the heart. The references to weather catch her attention, like a dragline hook in underwater weeds, pulling and then letting go. She has not need now for the complexities of content, the snares of meaning. Only his man’s voice, the music of it; the pure sound of the words, empty of narrative. The repetitious references to weather tugging and letting go, tugging and letting go . . .”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (OCT 4, 2010)

A brilliant riff on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, this highly original novel is as bracing and wild as the weather itself, impossible to pin down, virtually plotless, yet sweeping all before it. Just as one speaks of a novel of ideas, this is a novel of emotions — emotions in their purest form, taking possession like a natural force, and largely divorced from the normal ties of cause and effect. This is not a book for those who demand realism and logic rather than a novel organized by poetic association and contrast. But for those who approach it as the unique vision of a poet who just happens to be writing in prose — wondrous prose — it is something very special indeed.

I have now read all but two of Jane Urquhart’s novels, and know nothing quite like this one from 1990, which barely seems to touch the ground. True, Sanctuary Line, her latest, has also the structure of poetry, revisiting scraps of memory, probing and elucidating, but its basic story is down to earth; indeed that is its essence. The other three that I have read — Away (1993), The Stone Carvers (2001), and A Map of Glass (2005) — tell their stories in a more-or-less linear way, although all show Urquhart’s characteristic delight in juxtaposing different periods, and Away and A Map of Glass especially have traces of the otherworldly elements that are so strong here. All of her later novels are set largely in her native Ontario; although Toronto makes an appearance here (as does Venice), the primary setting is the wild Yorkshire moorland near Haworth, where the Brontë sisters grew up. And even here, her concern is less the heather and crags so much as the clouds scudding over them, driven by a restless wind.

“After four or five days, Ann is obsessed by the wind. It both pleases and perplexes her. It scatters the mail that the postman leaves at the door, dispersing her one link to her past, her real life. […] It rattles at the coal cellar door at night like a vigilante group demanding entrance. It blows into her dreams. When she walks over the moors, the wind causes a knife of pain, straight through her neck just below ear level. It makes all the bracken and bilberry and heather swell and undulate, as if some unknown substance beneath the earth’s surface had just reached boiling point.”

The novel brings together three women from different centuries. One is Emily Brontë herself, who appears as a rather personable ghost. The second is a turn-of-the-century balloonist, Arianna Ether, who performed for her manager and lover Jeremy Jacobs, the “Sindbad of the Skies.” The third is a Canadian, Ann Frear, who has developed her childhood passion for Wuthering Heights into an academic career in English. Shattered by an affair with a colleague named Arthur, an art historian who is living out a similar passion for the darker works of Tintoretto, she takes a sabbatical in Yorkshire to write a book on Brontë’s weather. But these are just the axes around which the elemental opposites of the novel revolve: passion and peace, wildness and domesticity, heath and hearth.

For most of the novel, the more dramatic elements predominate: the wild wind, the barren landscape, Tintoretto’s dark visions lit by flashes of lightning, the unbroken whiteness of the arctic wastes. But, despite what I said about the relative absence of plot, we do begin to care a lot for Ann as a person, and feel for her as she finds a different kind of love from an unexpected source. We know she will never be free of her wild side, but now the question of balance becomes important. Nothing in this novel is as impressive as the way in which Urquhart moves towards that resolution at the end, and the evocative simplicity of her final sentence is heart-stopping.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: David R. Godine Publisher; 1ST edition (February 1993)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Jane Urquhart
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Sanctuary Line

Bibliography:

]]>