LitPicks - Aug '09 

Municipal Bonds: Communities bind us together, for better or worse. They form our identity—as distinct individuals and as part of some-thing larger than our solitary selves. Communites offer comfort and aid, but they can also stifle and exclude.

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works   



Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Jamie Ford, 2009
290 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Up to the early years of World War II, Seattle, Washington, had two distinct Asian-American communities—Japanese and Chinese. And ne'er the twain shall meet; except in this novel they do.

Henry Lee, when we first meet him in 1986, is a forlorn character—a lonely middle aged Chinese-American recently widowed. When an old hotel unearths a stash of Japanese-American belongings, stowed away since the war, Henry is sure that some part of his past is to be found there.

And so we travel back in time to 1942 when Henry, then 12, has as his only friends Sheldon, a black jazz musician, and Keiko, a lovely young Japanese-American girl. Keiko and Henry are thrown together as outcasts in an all-Caucasian school. But Keiko is also treated as an outcast by Henry's own family: Henry's Chinese-American father hates all things—and all persons—Japanese.

Henry and Keiko's friendship blossoms into love, but eventually the two are separated when Japanese-Americans are rounded up and sent to an internment camp. Forty years later, with his wife Edith gone, Henry embarks on a search for a treasured memento that could connect him with Keiko and Sheldon.

Hotel is Jamie Ford's first novel: it is charming, beautifully written, and offers a personal, albeit fictional, record of Japanese-American internment during the World War II years. This is a terrific book club read.

Do check out our Reading Guide for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

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Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout, 2009
286 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
It's hard to know what to make of Olive Kitteridge, the gruff, big-boned woman who dwells around the edges—and sometimes at the center—of the 13 stories in this gorgeous novel/story collection. Olive is hard to like—but she's impossible not to love.

Olive lives in Crosby, Maine, which author Elizabeth Strout has created as her "little postage stamp of native soil" (the term Faulkner used to describe his fictional home). We come to know Crosby intimately—the people who live there; the sea tides, the sky and landscape that define it. Olive is the connective tissue that links everyone, and everything, together.

In each story, we meet a set of characters who who face their sorrows and disappointments with stoic secretiveness. They sense acute aloneness even within the intimacy of relationship. And always Olive makes an entrance—perhaps viewed from the back of a concert, or helping out at a wake, or simply remembered as a math teacher who once offered a student an ear for listening. Only in a handful of stories does Olive takes center stage. But what we come to see is that, hard-shelled as she appears, Olives offers the people of Crosby a lifeline — even when in need of one herself. She's irritating, at times insufferable, but ultimately endearing.

The stories are interconnected, making a sort of novel, whose writing—with its attention to detail and moment—is excruciatingly beautiful. Elizabeth Stout is brilliant at conveying the texture of life—its despair and its transient joy. But warning: taken all at once ...these stories (except for the last) have an unremitting sadness to them. Yet every one is a polished, dazzling jewel. And never have I cared more about any characters than those in this book.

See our Reading Group Guide for Olive Kitteridge.

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The Hamlet
William Faulkner, 1940
432 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
For my money this is Faulkner's finest, certainly his most readable work. In the vein of a traditional 19th-century novel, The Hamlet showcases Faulkner's immense talent—for humor, storytelling, luscious prose, and characterization.

First in what is known as the Snopes Trilogy, the novel follows the fortunes of the Snopes Family, interlopers who gain a foothold in the hill-cradled hamlet of Frenchman's Bend. Flem, the son, is roundly disliked and distrusted—for good reason. During the course of the novel, we watch him gather power, through an intuitive combination of stealth and cleverness, and eventually carry off the community's prized "possession."

Although Flem Snopes propels the story forward, The Hamlet is populated by a large constellation of out-sized, near mythical characters. They fall in love, trick one another, protect one another, conduct business together—and gather on the porch of Will Varner's store to tell their stories. These men are masters in the tradition of the southern "tall tale"—the funniest, wildest stories anywhere east, or west, of the Mississippi.

V.K. Ratliff serves as the novel's moral center; Ratliff is Faulkner's most likeable character, not just in this work but in his entire oeuvre—and many consider him Faulkner's alter-ego. There is Eula, the hamlet's goddess of love, capable of driving men mad, but who remains aloof and untouchable. There is Ike, a severely retarded man, who falls in love with a cow—yes, right, a cow. But the episode should be read as an inverted medieval romance...and then you see its brilliance!

Don't neglect this stunning classic. The men and women who populate the hamlet of Frenchmen's Bend are not to be missed and never forgotten.

A Reading Guide for The Hamlet is in the works.

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