Stories of sadness: Olive Kitteridge

There was a certain point in Olive Kitteridge when I was mentally adding it to my best-books-ever list. While it’s still a contender, it’s not quite lingering with me in the way those books do. But I don’t want to give the impression that Olive Kitteridge (henceforth OK) is disappointing or lacking in some way. It’s really brilliant, but also unrelentingly sad.

OK has an interesting construction. Is it a novel or a collection of short stories? Each chapter is a unique stand-alone story, but all the stories are about people in the same small Maine town. Olive herself appears in every story, but sometimes only as a mention. Other times, she is the main character of the chapter/story. To me the book reads more like a novel mainly because the stories begin in the past, but move forward in time. Also, there is progression and change in the characters, including Olive herself.

The first story introduces Olive through a story about her husband, Henry, and his unrequited love for one of his employees. By the end of the book, we have learned from various stories that Henry has had a stroke and has been left completely incapacitated in nursing home. Finally, in another story we learn that he has passed away. The book is a bit like being privy to all the best (and saddest) small town gossip.

Lincoln in the Bardo

I’ve never read a book quite like Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. It’s unique in both content and construction, so I’ll talk about them both, because I think one informs the other.

Content: Willie Lincoln, one of Abraham Lincoln’s four sons, died of typhoid fever at age 11 in 1862. By all accounts of the day and historical scholarship, his death was devastating to the president and Mrs. Lincoln. He died on a night when the president and Mrs. Lincoln were hosting a long-planned and politically important party at the White House, and during the early years of the Civil War. For several nights after Willie’s funeral, witnesses saw Mr. Lincoln visit the cemetery, enter the mausoleum where Willie was interred, and stay for a long time. This is all historical fact, and we learn about these facts and their historical implications and interpretations in chapters composed of quotes from history books, old letters, first person accounts, and so on, cited by Saunders.

The Snow Leopard eats, prays, loves

It’s only after a few days finishing The Snow Leopard that I have started to think of its similarities to Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. But whereas I found Eat, Pray Love largely insufferable, I enjoyed The Snow Leopard, even if Matthiessen’s journey is, in many ways, just as an earlier and more rugged version of Gilbert’s.

In the early 1970s, Peter Matthiessen lost his wife to cancer. About six months later, he joined his friend, the celebrated wildlife biologist and conservationist George Schaller (referred to in the book as simply GS), on a trek through the Nepali Himalaya to the border of Tibet. Schaller, a fit, driven, and taciturn man, was off to study the Himalayan bharal, a goatish mountain sheep or sheepish mountain goat. That was the point — the animals had not been studied enough to understand where they fit in the evolutionary tree. GS wanted to watch the rut, which takes place late in the fall or very early Himalayan winter, to help understand if the animals rutted more like goats or sheep. Matthiessen, a long-time student of Zen Buddhism, joined GS for the chance to visit a place of significance to Buddhists: the Crystal Mountain and its monastery, Shey Gompa. If GS and Matthiessen were lucky, they might also catch a glimpse of the elusive and rare snow leopard.

It’s all about the punctuation: Burial Rites

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent was one of last year’s darlings in the book blogosphere. Based on real events that occurred in early nineteenth-century Iceland, the story thrusts us into the head of a condemned murderess while she lives out her final days. Agnes, a destitute servant, has been found guilty along with two others in the murder of an eccentric local man — a healer, womanizer, and partial outcast — who is both respected and hated in his rural community. The book opens as Agnes is taken from the wretched conditions of her holding cell to a farm where she will help out the owners until her execution is arranged.

Hawks, Cats, & Grief

Is there anything more frustrating than losing a draft? I had just finished a long post, inserted images and was set to hit “Publish” when some kind of demon overtook my computer and all seems to be lost. Oh the frustration! So here I go again…

I snagged the last copy of H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald from a local bookstore and began reading it immediately and had a hard time putting it down. Part memoir, part liteary analysis, part history, Macdonald writes about a period of intense grief after her father dies unexpectedly. During this period and as a way to process her emotions, she decides to train and fly a female goshawk that she names Mabel.