It's
been a while since I gave Ploughshares a 5 star review. And really
that's unfair since it's the piece of mail I look most forward too. I
love Ploughshares. I love that it gets me out of my genre rut. I love
that it gives me short fiction to devour or savor depending on my
reading mood.
This edition was edited by Lauren Groff, whose
personal tastes she described thus, "Give me the short and the sharp,
like a slap; give me the long, slow immersion in an alien sea. I am
searching for work that is written with blood or bile or choler, not
necessarily sweat alone." And I have to say, after reading the
collection, I'd probably read anything she recommends. There are many
many good stories in this collection.
A couple I particularly
liked were In the Flesh, We Shone by Alex Shakar; An Arc Welder, a
Molotov Cocktail, a Bowie Knife by Kevin Wilson; and The Miracle Years
of Little Fork by Rebecca Makkai.
In the Flesh is a story of a
woman who falls in love with a dead man. As their relationship blooms,
his flesh, does not. It's a really interesting take on love and
futility. Little Fork follows the trials of a small town after the
circus comes to town and the star elephant dies. It is all told through
the eyes of a Reverend in the middle of a faith crisis. It's just a
really interesting mix of subject matters that somehow works. Arc Welder
is look into the lives of a man and his girlfriend following an
incident of domestic violence among the girlfriend's family. They must
take temporary custody of the sister's children. It's all very
dysfunctional and somehow hypnotic. The narrator has you agreeing that
he'd be a much better parent even as he criticizes how the children are
raised but does absolutely nothing to change anything in their lives.
I
even loved the Plan B essay this go round which I usually skip.
Instead, this time, Thomas Pruiksma describes how he was a magician as a
young child and how he managed to get back into magic but making it
somehow literary. It's a unique read that I really cherish because I
just can't imagine reading something like this anywhere else.
So yeah, I loved it. And I can't believe I let it sit on my nightstand for so long before getting to it.
5/5 Stars.
I'm not sure how I missed
Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men when I was slogging through required reading
in my High School and then Undergraduate years. But somehow, I'd never
read this short gem of a novel. The plot is relatively straight forward.
Lenny and George are ranch hands, traveling within California and going
from ranch to ranch to work the land.
George is a small dark
fellow with dreams of owning his own land and never having to work for
anyone again. Lenny, is a large lumbering blonde man who is dim witted
and essentially has the mind of a child. George looks out for Lenny and
has a lot of compassion and love for Lenny that goes beyond simple
companionship. Essentially, George has become Lenny's caretaker, his
parent-figure. And he takes his duties seriously, even if he may resent
it a little.
Lenny has a penchant for soft things he can pet. At
the beginning of the story, we are shown that Lenny has pocketed a
small mouse, but in the midst of his overzealous petting, Lenny has
killed the mouse. It doesn't keep him from wanting to keep petting it
however. George advises Lenny that when they buy their own land, he will
get Lenny some rabbits, which will be larger and therefore, harder to
kill.
Lenny obviously doesn't mean to kill the mouse, but he
really has no concept of his own strength and he is sad that the mouse
had to die, although there is a strange disconnect between Lenny's
knowledge of the death, and his knowledge of his own actions which
produced the death.
Lenny and George get hired on to a new ranch
at the beginning of the story. The old ranch they had to leave when
Lenny took a liking to a girl's red dress and wanted to pet it. Even
after being told to let go, he got confused and grabbed tighter, leading
the girl to run to the authorities, who then run Lenny (and by
association, George) out of town.
Lenny is joyous to learn that
the lead ranch hand on the property has a dog that has just given birth
to a litter of puppies. The lead ranch hand, Slim, is appreciative of
the care George has taken for Lenny and agrees to give Lenny one of the
puppies. The new jobs are complicated by the son of the ranch owner,
Curly, a small man with a Napoleon complex who decides Lenny is a good
target to pick on, and his wife, who shows up at odd times ostensibly to
"look for her husband" but really to flirt and talk with the men.
Steinbeck
does a great job of overlaying all scene's with Curly's wife with an
uneasiness bordering on foreboding. George tells us she is no good and
will only lead to trouble. In the end she does, but not in the way we'd
expect.
The unlikely friendship between Lenny and George is a
bright spot in the book. It's easy to see how Slim would be warmed by
it. Taking care of Lenny makes George more human. It gives him a reason
to want a better life, to remain connected to himself and his humanity.
This makes the ending that much more despairing. I won't write a spoiler
here in case you are like me and one of the probably 25 people who have
not read the book before. But if you have managed to miss it, you
should pick it up and give it a chance. The writing itself is fantastic
and the story really hits hard. It's no wonder it's withstood the test
of time and is considered great American fiction.
5/5 Stars.
I
really really wanted to like this book. The premise is interesting, a
slowing has started in the earth's rotation, having all kinds of effects
on gravity, plant growth, magnetic fields. This is all very
interesting. And the writing is very good. The actual words on paper and
the prose are well done.
But.... It's boring. The narrator is 11
years old at the beginning of the book, so events just kind of happen
around her and she comments on them. An 11 year old is a bit young to
have a lot of agency in a novel. She can't really make anything happen,
so she takes to commenting on things as she sees them. Things other
people are doing. It makes for very very slow progress. The book is also
written from Julia's perspective looking back. She's around 20 years
old as the narrator, talking about things that happened when she was 11.
So there is a lot of "that was the last time I ever saw (insert minor
character name) again."
The drama of the events don't quite
match up with the reactions recorded by Julia. All the world's food is
grown in greenhouses using artificial lights? Hmmm.... pretty sure this
wouldn't quite cut it. Perhaps after reading the really really well
researched, The Martian (read my review here), it's too much to expect a young adult novel to
have plausible scientific calculations, but I wanted the cause and
effect to at least make sense. Even those things that Julie should be
able to convey or have some kind of dominion over are not taken as
opportunities. She ends up eating alone in the library at lunch time.
The
slow plodding of the plot, coupled with the complete impotence of the
main character made for a very very slow and unexciting read.
2/5 Stars.
I
always enjoy an alphabet series book where we learn more about Kinsey.
I'm not sure if Grafton always had in mind that she would write 26 of
these things but she, like Kinsey, has been slow with the personal
details. So Kinsey's backstory has been slow to be revealed. Here we are
in book 15 and although we have always known that Kinsey was married
twice before we "met" her, we have never known the identity of her first
husband.
In this case, Kinsey is contacted by a storage picker
who has come across some of her personal items in a storage locker.
Kinsey buys the items off the picker and then tracks down the ex-husband
she left them with a decade earlier. Her ex-husband, Mickey Magruder,
has been shot and is in a coma. Kinsey sets out to find out what
happened to him. It leads us to Vietnam and a her old bar stomping
grounds from her cop days.
While this book is a solid outing in
the series, and it is nice to get more of Kinsey's backstory, it always
seems weird to get so much of a completely new history at once. If this
was really in Kinsey's past, why haven't we had ANY inkling regarding
this before? And, frankly the more Kinsey reveals of her personal life,
the more selfish and petty and unlike able she becomes. Maybe this was
meant to be a growth showing book but mostly I was annoyed with her. Why
is she so against telling the police anything? Why does she keep so
much information to herself?
I did appreciate the way the mystery unfolded and Grafton's writing is spot on. So this is again 3 stars.
