LitPicks - January '08

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works




A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith, 1943
512 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
It's been a year since my friend Nan suggested Marley and Me. This time she mentioned that she'd just given A Tree to her youngest daughter. Her older girls, now fully grown, oohed and aahed, recalling it as one of their all-time favorites. Really, I teared up.

That tender display of nostalgia got me to thinking about the book. Set in 1912-1918, the story follows 12-year-old Francie Nolan and her close-knit, loving family (a singular literary event right there) as they struggle to pull themselves up from poverty. Smith's prose is open and fluid, commencing with what is surely one of the most charming openings of any novel:

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.

What saves the book from reaching a saccharine tipping point is Smith's sharp-eyed perceptions that strike home with stunning regularity. There's also her humor—at times Dickensian: the librarian who detests children, a horse who practices exquisite revenge on his surly driver, and an aunt who convinces her husband to adopt a newborn by insisting she'd really been pregnant all along—and he believes her!

This is a coming of age story. But rather than a single traumatic event pushing a character over the threshold into adulthood, here is a gradual blossoming into maturity. More than anything the book is a celebration of life—the ability to find joy despite hardship and tragedy.

Book clubs might use A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to delve into childhood memories—including the books we read long ago and (like this one) still treasure.

Don't miss our Reading Group Guide for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

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The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
256 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
I know. This is sooo not cutting edge. Remains has been around for nearly 20 years and it's been discussed ad nauseam. In fact, I wanted to write about Ishiguro's more recent Never Let Me Go—but I just couldn't get past this one.

Remains is an English teacher's dream: there's so much going on beneath the surface—and it's so carefully pieced together—that it makes the sparks fly out of our chalk. It's a modern classic.

First, there's not a lot of plot. This is a character-driven novel—but what a character! Stevens is the butler of a once great English estate, and he tells us his story. In doing so, he becomes the poster child for Unreliable Narrator, matched for sheer cluelessness only by the narrator in The Good Soldier.

Stevens is on a journey, a tip-off for a "journey of self-discovery," and along the way we learn of his service for the late Lord Darlington. On the first day of his trip, a noxious odor emanates from the car, forcing him to stop. In a conversation with the man who repairs the car, we readers gain our first whiff of Lord Darlington's rather noxious past. Ishiguro is a subtle writer: he cleverly embeds the bad odor as a literary symbol as well as plot point. Lots of cool stuff like that throughout.

In fact, Ishiguro is like an agile angler who lets out his line, bit by bit, before he reels us in. He withholds then carefully releases information. Only gradually do we come to understand the true impact of Stevens's 30 years with Darlington.

In other words, Stevens just doesn't get it. He has been so consumed with maintaining his professional ideals that he's abjured his own humanity. It isn't until the end that self-revelation rolls over him (and us) in a powerful wave of self-disgust.

One particular episode concerns Stevens's father. I think a book group could have a wonderful discussion parsing the ethical choice, personal vs. professional, that Stevens had to make.

Also be sure to see our Reading Group Guide for The Remains of the Day. Oh, don't forget to catch the superb 1993 film adaptation with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson—after you read the book...uh, of course.

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Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy, 1874
512 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Hardy's rep as a writer is one who plumbs the depths—and what he finds beneath the surface is often pretty grim. Not so with Madding Crowd, an earlier novel and joyful celebration of England's pastoral life.

It's a great story, with two enduring...and endearing...heroes: Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak (you can have fun just sussing out the symbolic allusions of those names). Bathsheba, a headstrong beauty (and proto feminist), inherits her uncle's farm while Gabe, once her equal, is now her shepherd. He and two other men fall in love with Bathsheba—but she is in love with only one. Therein lies the story's central conflict.

Hardy celebrates the rustic simplicity of country life, its innocence and natural beauty. Though somewhat over-idealized, that innocence provides much of the comic relief in Madding Crowd. But, as in Hardy's other works, innocence can prove fatal: inevitably, cold and indifferent fate brings it to heel. This is true for poor Fanny Robin, Bathsheba's former servant, and nearly for Bathsheba herself.

Ultimately, the story is Bathsheba's, a sort of coming of age, wherein life's events temper her arrogance and engender a needed dose of humility. Importantly, Bathsheba comes to understand the value of true loyalty and goodness.

Like Faulkner, Hardy invented his own world—Wessex, the fictional settings of his novels. Tom Stoppard put this to clever use in Shakespeare in Love (1998), whose Colin Firth plays the nasty Lord Wessex (a sly bow to Hardy).

Also, Hardy was a lover of nature and fond of writing out of doors. Years ago Monty Python did a parody of Hardy at his writing, covering it as a sports event: a hushed voice narrates to a gathering crowd, Hardy puts his pen to paper, etches out his first word—"THE"—there's great excitement, then he crosses it out and tries again. It's hilarious.

Check out our LitLovers Reading Guide for Far from the Madding Crowd.

And, finally, there are two film versions of Madding Crowd. See LitLovers Great Film Adaptations for more info. Of course, you'll read the book first, right?


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