The Girls / Emma Cline

Emma Cline sets her first novel in southern California following the Summer of Love in 1967. In the late 1960s, the hippie ethos of peace, music, drugs, and free love was spreading like a wildfire across America. But there was also a dark side to this culture, the prime example being Charles Manson and his followers who descended into a drug fueled spiral of madness that culminated with the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969. The author chooses to fictionally recreate the Manson Family as seen through the eyes of a 14 year old girl who gets involved in a cult led by a charismatic leader. The girl is also the story’s narrator, looking back from her present middle-aged life.

Evie Boyd, the teen, is a ripe recruit for such a cult. She comes from a broken home, has inattentive parents, few friends, and is looking to escape the perceived drudgery of upper-class conformity. When she encounters a group of free-spirited, rebellious young women in a park, she is soon drawn into their circle. The women are living together on a sprawling ranch, under the sway of Russell Hadrick, an older aspiring singer/songwriter who believes in his own hype. While Evie is impressed with Russell, the person she is most drawn to is one of the young women in the group. Suzanne, at nineteen years old, represents all that Evie wishes for in her own life, though it is clear that Suzanne is another lost soul.

The 1960s and its lingering haze was long gone by the time Emma Cline was born in 1989. Nevertheless, she vividly captures its vibe of youthful rebellion, contrasted with the conservative mores of society as a whole. She also shows that what appears glamorous and caring to a young girl’s drug befuddled eyes is in actuality quite shabby and mean-spirited. This point is brought home when Evie brings a young man to the ranch and suddenly sees through his reaction how sordid the community has become. Through him she finally begins to recognize the evil overtones that have begun to infect the Family.

Without a doubt, The Girls is a page turner. That does not mean it is not without its fair share of flaws. A number of plot lines scattered throughout are left dangling. The major one for me is the portion of the story that focuses on Evie during the present day. It is a thread that adds nothing to the plot and could easily be cut. Despite this, it is a novel that should please most readers. For me, it resurrected memories of my youth, highlighting both the positive aspects as well as the numerous flaws of the Sixties. But while that time period plays a major role in the story, Evie Boyd represents an impressionable teen who will seem familiar to all generations. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle / Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson’s stories are usually dark and strange. However, in We Have Always Lived In The Castle, her final published work, she initially describes a slice of paradise. It features two sisters and an invalid uncle living on a family estate in Vermont. The house is large and located on extensive grounds, with a garden that produces a rich variety of flowers and vegetables. Located near a run-down town, the three members of the Blackwood family seem to be living harmonious lives.

The snake in their Eden is a tragedy that occurred before the opening events in the book. As the story unfolds, readers learn that the rest of the Blackwood family members were murdered, poisoned by arsenic. The narrator is Mary Katherine, called Merricat by her sister, who was twelve when her parents, aunt, and younger brother died by the poisoning.  Constance, the older sister, now twenty-eight, was the suspect arrested for the murders, although she was later acquitted of the crimes. Since that time, she has not gone outside of the house other than to tend to the garden. Their uncle, Justin, survived the poisoning but has been confined to a wheelchair ever since, spending his time obsessively writing about the day of the murder. It is an Eden after its fall from grace.

Things turn dark when Charles Blackwood, a cousin, arrives for a visit. Constance welcomes him, but Merricat immediately takes a dislike to him and begins to try to drive him away. This leads to a night when another tragedy strikes, resulting in a fire and the storming of their castle by angry neighbors who have long resented the rich Blackwood family and who believe that Constance has gotten away with her family’s murder.

Agoraphobia is clearly one of the book’s themes. But in its final section, I realized that this mystery story is actually a fairytale, one presented from the perspective of those living inside a house considered haunted. With the book’s conclusion, the sisters’ paradise persists in even more constrained circumstances. The two continue to live in harmony, despite the fact that a already know secret has been acknowledged by one of them. Even more surprising, they are supported by the surrounding community who feel guilty for having invaded their castle. It becomes a home the neighborhood children begin to feel is haunted, despite the fact that its inhabitants remain alive.

(Dis)Connected

Before bedtime,
parked before my computer screen,
visiting Favorites,
can I be blamed if I remain blind?
That my “likes”
only present me with my own beliefs?
Surely I cannot be
held responsible for algorithms that
steer me clear
of the day’s uncomfortable events.
After all, what
does my personal data have to do
with another’s misery?
Secure in the circling embrace of
family and friends,
I respond favorably to every post.
My only crime ––
clicking on the links presented me.
Is it my obligation
to vet every headline’s veracity?
Far removed from
a bomb’s blast and destruction,
am I responsible for
choosing entertainment instead?
In a blue-green hue,
remotely connected, incognizant,
I remain blameless.

The Tuba In The Orchestra

My three semesters of
German earned me an undeserved B
only because the TA and I
would talk (in English, naturally)
about New Wave bands or
nihilism over beers after class.
What drew me to German
were all those words a mile long.
Unfortunately, my tongue
usually got lost before I finished
the trek to pronunciation.
Decades on, only a few phrases
can still be summoned
from memory’s foggy morass.
Which is a shame in
such contentious times, since,
harshly penetrating,
it is a splendid language for
heated discourse.
If only I would have mastered
its lengthy vocabulary.
The tuba in the orchestra of
western vernacular, I’d
march at the back of the parade,
commanding every ear.

Conducting The Garden

A conductor in the spotlight
here at day’s demise,
my shadow, sun stretched,
thin and tensile,
wields a hose’s magic wand.
A gargantuan arm
orchestrates lethargic plants
to spring to attention
with the rhythmic sweep of
its commanding reach.
Tomatoes blush in response.
Cued by the splash,
bees rise from the squash,
as do mosquitoes,
amazed to find their stings
cannot penetrate
this black specter’s intrusion.
Long enough to
tap the aquifer’s depths,
its spigot dampens
without a cloud in the sky.
A shadow’s maestro,
I conduct hardened ground
into melody again
despite July’s blaring heat.

Witness

First redwing blackbird heard
since last October.
Infused by an afternoon sun,
a miraculous resurrection
of that fly thought to be dead.
Two coatless teens who
blush cardinal red after they
stop for a clumsy kiss.
The glitter of silver dust motes
sent airborne while
prepping the summer bedroom.
Though surrounded by
snowy patches, fresh weeds
already tenaciously
abloom in the compost pile.
Despite double panes,
penetrating winter’s cocoon
like a southern breeze,
the sound of children at play.
When asked Monday
about my weekend, I’ll take
the stand as a witness
to winter’s welcome demise.

I Want To Show You More / Jamie Quatro

This collection of fifteen stories was Jamie Quatro’s 2013 publishing debut. Her first novel is scheduled to be released this coming year. These short stories are set in and around Lookout Mountain, a community on the border of Georgia and Tennessee. She infuses them with a strong Southern ethos. Fearlessly addressed, her flawed protagonists deal with the entwined themes of religion, death, infidelity and God’s mercy.

Quatro’s stories are discomfortingly familiar as raw emotions are laid bare on the page. What keeps the book from seeming like “heavy” reading is the author’s comic and compassionate portrayals. Life’s complex and conflicted passions are the threads that join this collection together.

Jamie Quatro is a talent worth investigating. Be warned, however; beneath the placid, humorous surface of these stories, the cauldron of the human heart boils.

One Of Ours / Willa Cather

Following on the heels on My Antonia (1918), One Of Ours (1922) was Willa Cather’s fifth novel. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1923. It tells the story of Claude Wheeler, the son of a prosperous Nebraskan farmer. While his father expects him to remain on the farm, Claude dreams of escaping the drudgery of rural life to find his greater purpose. Not that he knows what that might be. In this pursuit and against his father’s wishes, he enrolls in the State University. Before Claude can complete this education, his father purchases another property and calls his son home to manage the family farm. Despite being disappointed and dissatisfied, Claude decides to put aside his dreams and marry a childhood friend. However, the marriage does not prove to be a happy one.

All of this takes place while the Great War is raging in Europe. And it is that war that rescues Claude from the cul-de-sac he finds himself in. With America’s entry into the conflict, he sees it as an avenue to escape. In spite of an influenza outbreak on the troop ship taking him across the Atlantic and the hardships and dangers encountered on the battlefield, Claude finds himself feeling reborn. He revels in the freedom of new experiences and responsibilities. Best of all, his world view expands as he is introduced to new cultures.

In reading this novel I was reminded of the World War I song, How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree?). Riffing on the same theme, Cather shows how Claude, and many young men at the time, used the War as an escape from the predictability and restrictions of rural life. One Of Ours is often classed as a war story. However, only the book’s final quarter focuses on Claude’s enlistment and army experiences. For the majority of the novel, Cather concentrates on what she did best as a writer – she captures the rhythm and majesty of farm life in Nebraska, vividly bringing to life its landscape and disparate cultures.

Throughout his failed marriage and his constant struggle to find his life’s purpose, Claude Wheeler remains an idealist and a romantic, even when confronted by the War’s devastation in Europe. He embodies the spirit of the time as its young adults began to rebel agains the strict regimentation imposed upon them by family and community. Thanks to the advent of the automobile, rural inhabitants were just beginning to venture into distant cities and countries. While I enjoyed the book as a whole, I thought the portion set in Nebraska to be the best part of the story.

Discovering The Pacific

A landlocked Midwesterner for
the entirety of my life,
it is introduced first by smell,
next by voice, and
then only seen come sunrise.

In the back of a pickup truck,
wearing a jacket too
thin to impede a mist’s damp
chill, what do I care
if it is colder than back home.

Hugging a backpack doubling
as a pillow, with a wallet
light on funds, transported by
thumb across America,
this view is my rich reward.

Hitchhikers rescued after me
remain fast asleep,
curled into oblivion despite
the dangerous curves
our sleepy driver traverses.

Confronted by such immensity,
at eighteen, seasoned
by a wind flavored with salt,
it is a breakfast feast
that I’ve never tasted before.

Hall Of Small Mammals / Thomas Pierce

This collection of stories often takes the reader into a future world just slightly ahead of our own. It is a place strangely familiar, where science has made great advances but human ordinariness persists. Pierce presents everyday life from a slightly skewed perspective. Extinct species are being resurrected, new infectious diseases defy scientific understanding, and the extraordinary has become commonplace. And yet, nonplussed, humankind deals with emotions and longings which have remained fresh for centuries.

And that is what makes these stories so interesting. The protagonists are people the reader instantly recognizes. They resemble neighbors, family members, and often ourselves. Though fantastical, the stories remain grounded in a world populated by familiars.

In these twelve stories, the author presents a cast of flawed individuals coping with situations that have veered into uncharted territory. While sometimes absurd, and almost always humorous, Pierce’s stories present characters who remain delightfully human…people who are simply trying to retain their dignity in astonishing situations.