Kingdom of the Blind

Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

I find myself these days looking for a book to get lost in. So I went looking for a mystery/detective stories. I haven't had great luck with these in the past, so was pleasantly surprised when I had trouble putting this one down. I basically read it cover-to-cover over the long MLK-day weekend.

This book is one of a series about Armand Gamache, a detective with something called the Surete du Quebec -- which has several accent marks I've left out -- that I assume is what they call the police force in our French-speaking neighbor to the north. In this one, there are three plot lines to follow. The first is a will for which Gamache, a neighbor friend, and an unknown third party are inexplicably named liquidators responsible for carrying out the deceased's wishes. Who was this person? Why did they put strangers in charge of the will? And why did it lead to a murder? Second is an investigation into Gamache himself that stems from actions he must have taken in a previous book. He is on suspension from his job as head of the Surete. Gamache seems fine with this, but his son-in-law, who also happens to work for him, is less comfortable with the situation. Higher-ups want him to sign some paperwork indicating that Gamache acted alone. Will he sign? How might this impact Gamache's future? Finally, the action for which Gamache is under investigation allowed a new powerful, and deadly, opioid into Quebec, and could hit the streets any day. Will Gamache stop it?

I appreciated how the author wove these narrative lines together so that they all stayed in the forefront of the reader's mind. I also was taken with the way she brought the characters to life. It is no mystery why she would serialize Gamache. It was also fun to be tricked a bit in the end. Throughout the book, you think you know what the characters know, even though the author tries to make it clear that you don't. Still, it is surprising to find out that Gamache was hiding something from the reader as well as his fellow characters. What might have really drawn me in, though, was the descriptions of rural Quebec in winter time. It seems like an idyllic place, albeit a cold one. I'll have to return to Gamache soon!

The Lightning Thief

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

I took up this book as an investigation into a possible unit I'd like to do with my students on heroes based on an inquiry I found from EL Education. The book imagines a world in which the Greek Gods are still around -- just not in Greece. Riordan explains that they live where the heart of "Western" civilization lives, which, at this moment in time, is, in his mind, in the United States. As they always have, the Gods continue to cavort with humans, creating demigods, some of whom are destined to become heroes in the vein of Hercules. One of these is Percy Jackson, who, spoiler alert, is the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea. His heritage, however, is unknown to Percy until he begins to be attacked by monsters ostensibly sent by the god of the underworld, Hades. No sooner does he find refuge in a summer camp for similar demigods than Percy is sent on a quest to resolve a spat between Poseidon and his brothers, Zeus and Hades.

I will say that this book lived up to its reputation as a page turner. It was pretty impossible to put it down. Though it can some times be a bit heavy handed, I also enjoyed for the most part the way Riordan wove Greek myths into a modern-day adventure. I'm not yet sure about its use in the classroom, though. The book is pretty much all plot -- I'm not sure there is much underlying the storyline that is ripe for discussion. But a good start to reading in 2020!

Wandering Home

Wandering Home by Bill McKibben

Another in my Wilderness Studies reading list. I have to say, I enjoyed this much more than I anticipated. It is McKibben's account of a walk he took from his home outside of Middlebury, Vt., to his home in the Adirondacks of New York. So it's a rich guy going for a walk.

But McKibben has some interesting things to say on this walk, particularly about wilderness and its definition. After a rumination on snow geese, for example, he writes, "If we're going to talk about wilderness...we ahve to face the truth that it's a little hard to separate out the natural and the artificial, a little hard to figure out exactly where we're planting our feet" (68). Exactly. I appreciate an author who is more about questions than answers.

Part of what keeps the book interesting is the cast of characters with whom McKibben makes his march. One portion of the hike he completes with the founder of the magazine Earth First!, a militant pro-wilderness publication. After years out west, this individual found his wilderness in the east: "I'd been in Tuscon five years. I was starting to really miss fresh water..I have the Eastern forst in my bones...wilderness [is] not just a Western thing" (79).

So maybe that struck me because I am in the midst of the eastern forest and often find myself pining for Western wildlands. But it strikes me, too, because I think it strikes to the fact that this elusive thing we call wilderness is really just a construction of our own minds. Wilderness is where we find it.

Case and point: In early August of this year, I was out on a pre-dawn jog on the dirt roads above our house. I was preoccupied and before I knew it I had stumbled on a steepish downslope, my shoulder had connected rather perfectly (or imperfectly) on a rock, and I was screaming in pain. In the suburban neighborhood where I'd grown up, my howls surely would have elicited some response from someone. But not here. I was in the woods. And they weren't woods that would fit the definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act of 1964, But that didn't bring anyone to my rescue. So I started to walk out, every step sending a jolt of very strange pain up my arm.

To me, wilderness has always had a tinge of danger to it; it was a place where I wasn't in complete control. And it turned out, that place was far closer to my home than I thought.

The Solace of Open Spaces

 

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich

This slim volume is a continuation of the Wilderness theme that has been dominating my reading for the past few months. It contains a series of essays, more or less chronological, from a New York City transplant to the western side of the Bighorn Mountains.

I was drawn to the book because of its title. That solace mentioned is certainly something I have felt many times during my wanderings out west. That the book was set in one of those stomping grounds was a happy accident I discovered in its first pages. It was pretty great to be reading about familiar places -- Shell and Sheridan, for example -- that I'm hoping to visit next year.

But knowing those places also made it hard to read. There is always some discomfort in reading someone else's description of a place you love. In this book, that was compounded by the author's citified background and with the authoritative way she writes about the place. She seems to insist that her truths are the truths of the land, which makes me suspicious. For example, after complaining of the way culture has romanticized cowboys, she writes, "Because these me work with animals, not machines or numbers, because they live outside in landscapes of torrential beauty, because they are confined to a place and a routine embellished with awesome variables, because calves die in the arms that pulled others into life, because they go to the mountains as if on a pilgrimage to find out what makes a herd of elk tick, their strength is also a softness, their toughness, a rare delicacy" (53). Seems to me she's replacing one romantic vision with another -- and no romantic vision can be particularly accurate.

In the end, though, it was a passage near the end of the book that wound up coloring the whole experience for me. It came as the author was describing a sacred Native ceremony she had been invited to attend. After being approached by some young males, she writes, "...they flirted with me, then undercut the dares with cruelty. "My grandmother hates white tourists," the one who had been eyeing my chest said. "You're missing the point of this ceremony," I told him. "And racism isn't a good thing anywhere" (114). Her response to this situation strikes me as incredibly tone deaf and ignorant. First, she was a white tourist. But more importantly, the author participates in the Great American Myth of Racism, which is that it consists of actions and words. It's not. Racism is a system, one that creates institutions that privileged one group of people over all others. It's pretty clear that Native peoples are not the beneficiaries of American institutions. There is a reason that Ehrlich can easy move from New York City to Shell, WY, where she is free to write about a culture she barely knows, but Native populations have a hard time making the transition from the Spokane Indian Reservation to Spokane proper. Erhlich's comment in this situation demonstrates how unaware she is of her own privilege, how little she understands the role of race in our country, and how much she is willing to ignore about the past to celebrate the present moment in which she finds herself. How can we trust someone so willfully ignorant about such a fundamental fact of American life?

The Monkey Wrench Gang

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

This year I'm launching a new elective at my school called Wilderness Studies. In addition to helping students deepen their thinking about wilderness, I'd like to connect them with literature about the outdoors. So many students read Hatchet and love it -- but never find another outdoorsy book they connect with as much. I read this one back in college, and thought it might be a good option for students.

The best part of the book, in my mind, is its opportunity for catharsis. It tells the story of three New Mexico strangers who meet on a raft trip down the Grand Canyon and who are drawn together for their disdain for modern encroachments into wild lands. So they decide to take action. They topple billboards, sabotage road-building equipment, and blow up bridges, all the while brilliantly evading their hapless pursuers. Their dream -- and I won't reveal whether they reach it -- is to topple the Hoover Dam, thus restoring Glen Canyon to its original beauty and rewilding the Colorado River. It is wonderful to see people fighting against modern consumerism and laziness and thoughtlessness and arrogance in such a brazen, successful way. I myself would love to blow up Rte. 107/12 between Pittsfield and Bethel and return the White River Valley to its wild state. What fly fishing it would be! Hayduke lives!

But I will say Ed Abbey has some strange ideas about wilderness. For the characters, and one can only assume Abbey himself, wilderness seems to be a place of unbound recreation for them. After all, they declare their love for littering roadsides with beer cans. Why? They don't like the road. And yet they love roads, as long as they are rough enough to keep their pursuers at bay but not so rough as to prevent their passage. It seems like a pretty selfish view of the wilderness.

The nail in the coffin for the book, at least for its inclusion in the course, though, is the way Abbey writes about the lone female character, Bonnie. She is, throughout the book, treated as an object. Abbey mentions her looks nearly every time she mentions her: "She looked lovely that morning: fresh as a primrose, the large violet eyes bright with exuberance and good humor, her mane of hair fragrant and rich, brushed to the gloss of burnished chestnut, glowing with glints of Scots copper" (165). Right. There is even a moment in the book when Hayduke rebuffs Bonnie's advances because he wants to ask Doc his permission to begin a relationship with her. As if Doc owned her. And all the while Bonnie knows these men are more or less bumbling idiots, she just can't resist them. She is definitely a figment of Abbey's imagination, his dream of a woman irresistibly and unquestionably drawn to his curmudgeonly self. I couldn't put the book in front of students without lots of discussion of this serious flaw in the book. And since these book clubs are meant to be more or less self run, that wasn't happening.

The Poet X

 

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

This coming-of-age novel-in-verse tells the story of Xiomara, who is struggling to find her voice in a home and a world that doesn't seem to want to hear it. Her notebook becomes her outlet as she turns her feelings and frustrations -- at the way men seem to think her body is theirs and at the way her mother's  religious devotion leaves so little room for doubt or questions -- which she turns into poems. Eventually, Xiomara's relationship with her mother comes to a head. On the one hand, the conflict numbs Xiomara and causes her to shrink away from her world; on the other, it gives her a kind of what-have-I-got-to-lose freedom that allows her to open up about her writing.

I remain conflicted about the trend in YA literature to write novels in verse. It seems too...easy? It would be more compelling, I think, to mix poetry in with other forms of writing, which might help better mirror the moods and experiences of the characters. Maybe that's just me. That said, this is quite a compelling novel. It brings up important issues and has a plot that keeps the reader deeply engaged. If only things didn't wrap up so neatly at the end...

Piecing Me Together

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

Like The Hate U Give, this book explores the perspective of a young black woman in contemporary America. Also like that more famous book, this novel features a ripped-from-the-headlines assault by police upon a young black person.

Of course, the comparison is, at the outset, unfair, a sign that the perspective provided in Piecing Me Together is too rare; it is the same impulse that compels reviewers to compare any novel by a Native American to a work by Sherman Alexie or Louise Erdrich.

Then again, the parallels between the books are real. Piecing Me Together tells the story of Jade, a young black woman who lives in an underprivileged section of Portland, Oregon. Like the main character of The Hate U Give, Jade is straddling two worlds: She has a scholarship to a fancy Portland private school but lives in North Portland, where she maintains her only true friendships.

But there is something I found more compelling about this book. Where the inner turmoil in The Hate U Give is precipitated by the main character witnessing police brutality, the racism Jade encounters is  much more "subtle" -- that is, easier for the white characters in the book, and perhaps the reader, to overlook. The rage Jade feels at the racism around her is simmering long before a police beating of an unarmed black woman boils it over. In this sense, the story is more universal, just like Jade's response. She does not, like the main character of The Hate U Give, face a high-stakes moment of truth in which she must choose to stand up for what is right. Instead, Jade faces the choice most of us face. She can easily do nothing. No one would fault her for it or even notice. Or she can try something. Of course, she chooses the latter. And she does it through art. In this way, Piecing Me Together sends the message that we all can do something to stand up for the rights of all people.