The Mona Lisa Vanishes
By Nicholas Day
Peace Like a River
By Leif Enger
It was quite the departure from the last novel I picked up, Martyr!. That one was wonderful, but also frenetic and chaotic and anxious. This one was, in contrast, quite peaceful -- despite the air of violence that envelops it.
The book tells the story of the Land family. They are nothing if tight-knit, turning their hardscrabble, rented house in western Minnesota into a veritable home. They would be the typical "all-American" family if not for two facts. First, the mother of the family has abandoned them, too disappointed in her husband's decision, made after taking a ride in a twister and emerging unscathed, to cease his studies to become a doctor in favor of janitoring. And second, this little sojourn in the tornado has somehow bestowed upon the elder Land some mystical, if not God-like qualities. He can, in fact, occasionally and, it seems, accidentally perform miracles. One day, he wanders off the edge of a porch and continues walking into midair. On another, his touch heals the face of the man in the act of firing him.
The cozy domestic scene, however, is disrupted one evening when the eldest boy, Davy, lying in wait for two ne'er-do-well teen aged enemies, kills them when they enter the children's bedroom brandishing a bat. It would seem like self-defense, except he walks up to one of the boys writhing in pain on the floor and shoots him in the head like an injured horse.
Davy is hauled off to jail, charged with manslaughter, and put on trial. Which doesn't go all too well. So Davy decides to up and leave. When the police can't find him for days, the rest of his family does the same, using a recently-inherited Airstream trailer to try to track Davy down. Somehow, they end up at a farmhouse gas station run by a woman named Roxanne in the badlands of North Dakota. There they -- well, only the book's 11-year-old narrator Reuben -- find Davy, and Jeremiah Land finds a beau. Rube takes several midnight rides to Davy's hideout, which he shares with a shadowy, dangerous-seeming fellow named Jape. Rube is happy to keep these rendezvous secret until he learns that the policeman pursuing Davy, to whom Rube and the family had eventually taken a liking, has located the hideout and plans to try take Davy there. Rube knows Jape won't like that, and will probably kill the policeman. So he blabs, and leads a posse of local ranchers there.
They are too late. The cabin is empty, save for the lawman's hat, which is not a good sign. Davy is gone. The family, however, is newly buoyed by the fact that Roxanne will be joining them -- permanently. They had back to Minnesota, where there is a wedding and a move into a new home. Things are looking up. Then Davy returns. Unbeknownst to him, Jape has followed. And when Davy goes to leave, there is violence. Rube is shot. So is Jeremiah. The former's wound appears more serious. But Jeremiah is a miracle worker, and trades his life for his sons's.
Reading this book was like wearing a warm blanket on a cold day. Its prose, even in the tensest of moments, was just so earnest. It had me returning in my head to my Grandparent's house, to my own childhood when I was unencumbered by responsibilities. I read it in almost a dreamlike haze. I think I happened upon it at just the right moment.
Long Island
By Colm Toibin
She isn't. She draws a line in the sand with her husband, but it isn't Tony that she has to deal with. The life they have carved out for themselves on Long Island includes a small compound with homes for Tony's parents and siblings all on the same plot of land. At the beginning of the novel, Eilish had made a sort of peace with this somewhat stifling environment. But her mother-in-laws' control over the family, including the fate of the unborn child, is too much for Eilish to take. She has made it clear to Tony: the baby or me. But Tony, it turns out, is more afraid of his mother than his wife.
Eilish flees to Ireland, using her mother's 80th birthday as an excuse. She hasn't, in fact, seen her mother in decades, though she has been sure to send monthly updates on her family. Their reunion isn't exactly a happy one. Eilish's mother refuses to ask her about her life in America, and is as rude and controlling as her mother-in-law. But things begin to thaw when Eilish's children arrive. Her mother softens, taken with her daughter Rosella, and Eilish begins to see that she could have a life separate from Tony.
It is then that Eilish rekindles a romance with Jim Farwell, a local pub owner with whom Eilish had something of a fling many years before, when she had come home for her sister's funeral a secretly-married woman. She never told Jim of her elopement, and he was sure they would marry. Then she abruptly left for the US, and had no correspondence since. Complicating matters was that Jim is on the cusp of something like a new life. He, after years of bachelorhood, has found a partner in Nancy, Eilish's once-best friend, and they have decided to marry.
But Jim cannot resist Eilish, who knows nothing of his relationship with Nancy. It is something like a reversal of Eilish's previous visit. Except that Jim is eager to leave Nancy and start a new life with Eilish. It is not to be. Nancy finds out about the affair and, without letting anyone know she knows, ends it by revealing to the whole town that she and Jim are engaged. He will have to stay after all.
The back of the book describes it as "quiet", but I didn't find it that way. Perhaps it is because of my own life stage that I found it excruciatingly intense. To me, Eilish's return totally upended the lives of the people of Enniscorthy just as they were about to find some sort of peace -- just as she had done before. I wonder if the whole series is some sort of meditation on the disruption that mass emigration played on Ireland and its villages. It seems as though, in this case, it threatens to tear them apart, both because of the loss of people but also because the people who remained can't help but wonder whether they made the right decision. Just like the people who left.
