The Human Stain by Philip Roth

I bought this book at one of my favorite bookstores – Barbara’s Books in Hawley, PA. I admit that at the time, I bought it because it was one of those books I thought I should be reading, one that would make me look good even if I took it with me to the library to read while my kids scoured the shelves. So, for the very same reason, it took me over a year to take the leap and start reading it. It may have been the blurb on the back from the Chicago Tribune, “In American literature today, there’s Philip Roth, and then there’s everybody else.” Gee, I sort of like “everybody else”…

Once I started reading, I regretted taking so long to begin. This was not a book to be carried around, reading a page here and there. After finishing the Stieg Larsson series, I thought I was over the late night reading in my comfortable chair for a while. But, after several sleepless nights, I realized this was every bit as engrossing, albeit without the graphic violence, and only a fraction of the sex.

I feel like I may be preaching to the converted on this, as we are by now many books into Roth’s contribution to literature. When I began this book I was reminded of my first experience reading John Cheever, after which I went and read every other book he wrote. According to Roth, this book forms a loose trilogy with his other books, American Pastoral and I Married a Communist.

The story begins near the end of Coleman Silk’s life, narrated by his new friend and longtime neighbor, the author Nathan Zuckerman. Silk, in his 70s, does not walk quietly into Zuckerman’s life; he appears immediately following his wife’s funeral, demanding that the writer (who he barely knew up to that point) chronicle the story of what he describes as her murder. In fact, Coleman Silk has just resigned his post at the university where he taught for many years. When, by all accounts, he should have left with a building named after him, Silk has left in disgrace, following a petty misunderstanding. Silk, who has been raised to be precise in his language, used the word “spooks” to describe two mysterious students who had yet to show up for one of his lectures. Even in 1998, when the book takes place, the primary definition of spooks is “a ghost”. This does not deter the absent (African American) students from pursuing a case of racial bias against the professor they have never met.

As the story progresses, you wonder whether this can really be all there is – a career and a life ruined over semantics. Colleagues turn against him, and his wife dies of a stroke he believes was caused by the stress of the events. When Zuckerman refuses to write the book, Silk decides to do it himself, wasting two years of his life in his raging effort. Of course, Nathan Zuckerman does write the story of Silk’s life (he’s narrating it), but it is not the one we were expecting. Once the rage subsides, Silk begins a scandalous affair with a woman half his age, whose own life has its share of sorrow and disgrace. But Coleman Silk, renowned Jewish Classics Professor, has a secret even he cannot tell. Coleman, a child of East Orange, NJ, has spent the better part of his life “passing” as white. The first Black valedictorian of East Orange High renounced his loving tight-knit family to live what he thought would be a better life.

The story is told from many points of view, owing to the fact that Zuckerman discovers the secret after Silk dies, but the different viewpoints make for interesting perspective on the various events of his life. When I learned of his secret, I was reminded of another book on my shelf about the literary critic Anatole Boyard, whose true story of “passing” was written by his daughter in One Drop, My father’s Hidden Life. Some think that Roth was inspired by this story, but he claims it was a college girlfriend’s family that introduced him to the concept of relatives passing and being “lost to all their people”. I was not prepared for the deep sadness I felt for Coleman Silk’s family, especially his mother. After all, this is not the story of a scrappy kid from the projects – this was a kid raised with the highest expectations in a middle class neighborhood. He was not taking a stand for civil rights; he just wanted the best for himself. The irony of his fall would have been no consolation to his loyal mother who let him go.

There were some lighter moments in the book, contrary to the topic. It’s the middle of the Monica Lewinsky affair, and this provides some hilarious moments that do nothing to move the plot, but are priceless nonetheless. I had the sense that Roth was just dying to expound on his thoughts on the subject. Apparently Roth is not revered for his depictions of women. There is some offensive language (ok, about Monica Lewinsky), but overall I felt the women were portrayed sympathetically. I definitely recommend this book – and would love a recommendation if you’ve read any of his others.

The Heretics Daughter, by Kathleen Kent

I've always had a fascination/revulsion with the Salem witch trials. It may have begun when I was a teenager with one of my favorite books, Elizabeth Speare's Witch of Blackbird Pond. It probably started even earlier, as soon as I was old enough to hear my maternal grandfather talk about his painstaking research into my Massachusetts ancestors. Among them were a convicted witch (Rebecca Nurse, hanged in Salem in 1692), a witch accuser, a woman whose brother died "of a hideous witchcraft", and the sister of a convicted witch who is featured in Kathleen Kent's novel The Heretic's Daughter. My mother-in-law passed the book to me some months ago, but I put it on a shelf unopened. I wanted to read it, and I didn't want to read it. My mother read it and raved about it. Still it sat. Then, I saw Sarah Jessica Parker on a new TV series "discovering" her long-lost ancestor who had been accused of witchcraft in Salem, and I felt I could no longer ignore the signs to dive in.

I confess I dragged my feet through this book. After all, I knew how it was going to turn out, and it wasn't going to be good. I was right, of course, and then some. Kent reportedly did five years of research in order to capture in words this period of history in the area of Salem, Billerica, and Andover, MA, and boy, does it show. From the speech patterns right down to the minute details of everyday life, she paints it brutally and honestly. Those were tough times for people, to put it mildly. Under constant threat from Native American attacks and smallpox and hunger and harsh weather and damnation to hell, these early Americans scraped out a life filled with despair and fear and, yes, hatred. The story is told from the perspective of Martha Carrier's 9-year old daughter and succeeds in helping the reader to understand--never to justify, or excuse--but to understand how such a thing could happen in such a place at such a time, that the word of a handful of young girls could triumph over the reputations and integrity and word of the 30 adults who were put to death, and the hundreds who were arrested, tortured and imprisoned under horrific conditions.

Kent's character Martha Allen Carrier (one of a few real names used in the book) was the author's grandmother (x10) and the sister of my ancestor Hannah Allen Holt. I have to admit that, although I knew it was a fictional account, I scrutinized the character of Martha's sister Mary Toothaker for parallels to the scant biographical details I had about my ancestor. I didn't find any, but the experience of living in her world for a few days was enough. I loved reading about how the spirit of this ancestor has been kept alive in subsequent generations of Kent's family. My daughter Hannah was named for any number of Hannahs in my husband's and my family trees, and because we both liked the name, but I would like to bring the story of this long-ago Hannah and her brave, fiery sister into our family lore. To this end, I did email Kathleen Kent to see if her years of research had turned up any details about my ancestor or one generation back to her parents. I'll be interested to see if she responds. In any case, Martha Carrier was by all accounts a remarkable woman. She stood by herself, believing to the end that the truth would triumph. It did, just many years too late.

If you like beautifully-written historical fiction and can stomach descriptions of life at its worst, you'll want to read this book. It's no sweeping saga, but rather a very detailed account of a short period of time with a small cast of characters in a tiny corner of the world, but its lessons about human life, love, hate, religion--all the biggies--are universal.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

I didn't blame Sandy one darn bit for spotting "The Pact" in the front seat of my car and saying "Jodi Picoult!?" ... I sort of swore off her books after traveling through date rape, school shootings, capital punishment and having kids for their organs. Reading her stuff is like eating candy (in my case candy corn), once you start one you can't put it down and you feel really sort of sick to your stomach that you committed so much time and energy to the endeavor. This one is about the shooting death of a teenage girl, but was it a double suicide pact with her beloved boyfriend gone wrong because he wimped out before he could pull the trigger on himself or did he kill her? Like all of her books there is tension between parents and families, a huge trial with a prosecutor who is very cool and very flawed... she always has the surprise ending that never quite satisfies or wraps things up in the right way. Waste of a book reading week.. oh well, I only have about 40 weeks and 40 books to go!!

The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

I haven’t posted a review this month because I have been curled up in my chair reading the “Millenium Trilogy”. It hasn’t been easy finding the time to hide from my family; and, with my favorite reading spot right in the living room, I’ve been kind of conspicuous. But I managed. The third book was a paperback secreted from London, pre-American publication. The heft of this paperback is just astonishing. I was happy to have the final book, though, as a designer, I was a little miffed that now our set does not match, (see images). To be honest, we stole the first one from my mom, so I shouldn’t complain.

Which brings up my first point – these books are graphic and violent, so be warned. I still highly recommend them. For the most part, the speed of the drama helps you past this, especially in the first book. I did laugh to myself at several of the more uncomfortable parts, just imagining my 71-year-old mother, teacup in hand, discussing this with her book club. Not too dainty.

I cannot even begin to summarize the many plot points. I will say that the first and second books could stand alone, while the third is definitely dependent on the second. Personally, I loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, enjoyed The Girl Who Played with Fire, but my attention started to wane by The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I was almost halfway through the 600 page third book when the action finally picked up and I began to lose sleep again. My husband tells me the author planned for a series of seven books, but three was plenty for me, despite a few loose ends I would have liked cleaned up. Sadly, Stieg Larsson died soon after submitting these three manuscripts, so I guess we’ll never know what he planned.

For those of you who have not heard the hype or seen the new Swedish movie, there is a lot going on in this series. There are family dynasties being toppled by greed, journalists who get so involved in their story that they become players in it, criminals inside and outside the law, and everyday people who get caught in between. Governments may fall, civil rights are violated, and the perpetrators are the people we thought could be trusted. And if that’s not enough, there is also sex; pretty much all kinds of sex you can imagine, but nothing presented in an especially titillating way.

Since the book is translated, it’s difficult to know if there are instances where a better editor was needed, or if the translation is just off. Stieg Larsson was a journalist and this shows, most often in the third book. There were whole sections explaining Swedish law, which reminded me of the large chunks of political commentary I used to skip over as a teenager reading Ayn Rand. I understand he did his research, I just wanted back to the action. As an outsider, I also got tired of the many explicit street directions given in the books. My husband teased me that if I ever go to Sweden I will know my way around, but it was a little over the top for me. I kept wondering if this was tiresome for the Swedish readers, or if they were saying, “Hey, he’s on my street, cool!”

As a short woman who for most of her life has been considered younger than she is, I LOVED the eccentric heroine of these books. Because of Lisbeth Sanders, I am considering, among other things: taking up boxing, going to the airport with just a small computer and a purse and traveling to a foreign land for an unplanned vacation, and getting a beautiful dragon tattoo. Despite any flaws with the books I have mentioned, I still loved reading them. Think back to the last time you raced through a book, picked up the next one immediately after, and then did that again (pre-Kindle). When you forced yourself to bed at 3am because you knew you had to get up at 7. We make time in our lives to read, and that time is sometimes so scarce. When we’ve filled it in such a satisfying way we understand why we make the effort.

Artemus Fowl

Jimmy had a true bit of inner conflict last week. He wondered, when it was time for him to be chosen ‘star student’ for Mr Wyka’s 3rd grade class, which allows students to bring in one thing that is special to them, would he bring in the 6 book set of Artemus Fowl which he so proudly finished a few weeks ago or the silver medal he won in a wrestling tournament. We talked about it (a lot) and figured out that the books represent his reading/intellectual side and the medal a physical accomplishment that he had wrestled 3 matches to win. Thankfully his teacher said he could bring both things in (thank you Mr. Wyka) but I was so happy that he wanted to show both sides of himself... and that he LOVES to read!

So it was time for me to read "Artemus" .. it's a typical kids spy book but with trolls whose power comes from the farts they have (powerful stuff) and the 12 year old Artemus is always the smartest one (kid or grownup) in the room!

Fun stuff and esp fun to share it with my boy..

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Berry

I know that this book was already reviewed on this blog, but I wanted to add my ringing endorsement of it. It's the language and the mood that are lingering with me still. The two narrative voices alternate with each other throughout the book: one is "Roseanne's Testimony of Herself" (Patient, Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, 1957-) and the other is "Dr. Grene's Commonplace Book" (Senior Psychiatrist, Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital). These two central characters square off in the book as Dr. Grene sets out to discover why 100-year old Roseanne Clear was committed to the hospital to begin with, so he can decide whether to move or release her now that the facility is about to be demolished. He takes meticulous notes on his interviews with Roseanne and his research into her past, as well as his own experiences of love, loss and guilt. Roseanne's mission is to deflect Dr. Grene's questions until she can complete the secret writing of her life's story, which she keeps hidden under the floorboards. The two have an affectionate, respectful relationship and each seems to enjoy the other's company even while dancing around the truth of what happened in Roseanne's past. The two voices are so different from one another, yet both are so poetic and expressive of the English language as it is uniquely spoken by the Irish. Their writing reads like speech:

Roseanne: Sligo made me and Sligo undid me, but then I should have given up much sooner than I did being made or undone by human towns, and looked to myself alone. The terror and hurt in my story happened because when I was young I thought others were the authors of my fortune or misfortune; I did not know that a person could hold up a wall made of imaginary bricks and mortar against the horrors and cruel, dark tricks of time that assail us, and be the author therefore of themselves.

Dr. Grene: Second-hand cloth used to be called 'beyond redemption' or not. In the old days all the suits for males and the gowns for the dames in a place like this would be stitched from charity cloth, the first by a tailor, the second by a seamstress. I am sure even that technically 'beyond redemption' was thought good enough for the poor hearts residing here. But as time goes on, as I am slowly like everyone else worn out, finding a tatter here and a tear there in the cloth of myself, I need this place more and more. Maybe I should be more frustrated by the obvious cul-de-sac nature of psychiatry, the horrible depreciation in the states of those that linger here, the impossibility of it all. But God help me, I am not. In a few years I will reach retirement age, and what then? I will be like a sparrow without a garden.

The writing is just beautiful, and the story, as it unfolds, is full of tragedy and flawed characters and irredeemable choices made at the forks in the road of life. At times, the plot advanced very slowly, and if I let too much time lapse between reading sessions, I had to go back a chapter and reground myself in the narrative. The last third of the book was a page-turner, though, as Roseanne's life story is gradually revealed. This book is the opposite of a Dan Brown thriller, in that it's the voices of the storytellers that capture your imagination and there are no explicit history lessons given. There are references to politics and civil war, and characterizations of ruthless priests and the rigid catholic church, and commentary on Irish society in a particular time and place, but that all serves as rich background to the story and its two main characters. In fact, I found myself curious to know a bit more about the history of Ireland. But that was not the purpose of this book. It was a slice of life, or a remembered life, and I really enjoyed it.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Loved this book, easiest 530 pager I've ever read. The reason is that it's (literally) half text, half illustrations. The pencil drawings, woven throughout, give the book, a Caldecott Medal winner, a silent-movie like feel. This is the story of Hugo in 1931 Paris, an orphan and time keeper who lives behind the walls of a busy train station forced to hide from the world in order to keep both his job and a place to live.

He is fiercly protecting the automatron (mechanical man) that his father brought home years earlier. The automatron sits at a table, hand wrapped around a pen and Hugo's challenge is to get him to work so he can find out what the man will write (or draw). Is it a message from his dead father? With the help of his friend Isabelle, he is able to solve the mystery of where his mechanical man came from and what his messages mean.

The writing is sparse but beautifully crafted: Says Hugo to Isabelle from atop the train station on a starry night: "Sometimes I come up here at night just to look at the city. I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason tool"

Real life history is the background for this story which I can't wait for my kids to read. I was riveted... and want them to have as much following Hugo's adventures as I did.

Keeping up

I am following Lucy's advice to not get caught up with the blogging. In the past few weeks, I have read The Reliable Wife and Lift. Because both of these books have already been reviewed here and I agree with the reviews, I'm going to leave it at that. Wow! How's that for letting go of perfection!?

Lift by Kelly Corrigan

Ha! I'm finally reviewing a book and I'm doing it before any of you voracious readers.

I picked up Kelly Corrigan's new book, Lift, a few nights ago after I had spent my evening at my kids' science fair; sweating in a crush of parents and students, pelted at regular intervals with colored ping pong balls shot from the vacuum cannon at the end of my row of exhibits. We had started the evening with multiple threats to eat dinner, a few admonishments to "stop that whining or you can go to bed instead of the science fair" and my daughter's fall on the way into the school that resulted in a vigorous clean-up of the elbow wound from the school principal.

Needless to say, when I finally crawled into bed with Corrigan's disappointingly thin new book, I was spent. Thankfully, the size of her book was deceiving. The book has the same insight, humor and heart as The Middle Place, just in miniature.

Lift is written as a letter to her girls on the night before they start a new school year. Corrigan's description of the backpacks by the front door and the outfits picked out and waiting struck a chord. We do the same thing in my house.

She goes on to talk about her decision to have children and how it wasn't really a decision. How "in the years before I met your dad, when I was talking to a God I wasn't sure I really believed in, I whittled down all my requests to one: children. You." She also tells her children that if she had to pick a fate for them, cancer or infertility, she would pick cancer. Because that's how important being their mom is to her. This was one of the many passages that reduced me to a sniffling, sobbing mess. And all I could think was, "Yeah, me too."

This book is a beautiful gift to her children, but it is also the letter we should all be writing to our kids. So many times I nodded in agreement, or her words reminded me of a similar story from our own history. So maybe this is the best part of her book, maybe it will inspire all of us to write our own letter and share our own hearts.

I'm still holding out hope that she's got a full-length book in the works. But this book reminded me of why I'm a fan - and that's a good start.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

So we pretty much went through the good and bad of this one in our book group last night but, though it reads in some ways like a Gothic novel, I have to say I rather enjoyed it... after getting past all of the SEX.. good lord this writer had some issues to get through with this one.

Wisconsin in the winter of 1907 was not a desirable place to be, yet Catherine Land answered a 'wife wanted' ad placed by the rich Wisconsan Ralph Truitt in a Chicago newspaper. It seemed (though nothing is as it seems) she was done with whoring and drugs and drinking and wanted to take care of the 'middle' of her life and try to find love and/or money, not both and probably just the latter. Ralph has a past of his own, marrying an Italian 'heiress' after spending months in Europe sleeping with (literally) anything that moved (his insatiable sexual appetite is duly noted by the author on almost every page), eventually turning her out of their house when she had an affair with an Italian piano teacher, producing a child, Antonio. So, though he thought his mail bride wife was a virginal spinster looking for companionship, he hit the jackpot with scheming Catherine.. between her past and his they make quite the couple, until her real reasons for coming to his home are revealed.

Poisoning by arsenic, hands being cut off, death by consumption, all of this is included, making this book somewhat of a downer but at the same time keeping this reader interested to the very end. While I didn't really care what happened to these unhappy, loathsome people, I stuck with 'em until, finally, the winter of 1907 would come to a close.

Catching up with a multiple book review...

OK--new month, new leaf. I've been faithful in my reading, but not my blogging, so let me play catch up.
My last post was about The Hunger Games, which I ended up really liking--so much so, that the next week I read its sequel Catching Fire. Somewhat disturbing, but very compelling reads.
Then I read The Art of Racing in the Rain, which I had won in a blog giveaway. Several people had recommended it to me, and being a relatively new dog owner, I was interested in reading anything good about dogs. I enjoyed the use of the dog Enzo as narrator and entering into his way of looking at the world, but I ultimately couldn't buy it. He seemed too human in his way of reflecting on the past and planning for the future. I had been spoiled by reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, in which the dog's perspective is so sensitively and masterfully served up. I also did not find the plot believable in The Art...
For my bookgroup, I read When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, the Newberry Award Winner for 2009, which I really enjoyed. The thinness of the volume, the cartoonish design of the front cover and the large type led me to expect something pretty light. The plot line, character development and description was actually quite complex. It drew on one of my favorite books from childhood, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, which was fun.
I followed with The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, the first book in a tween/young adult series about the Greek Gods and their offspring--demigods or half-bloods--who are very much alive in the 21st century. Both of my daughters love this series, and they wanted to see the movie which was coming out during our school break with their cousins. Since I always try to "read the book before I see the movie," I had to scramble to get it finished in time. I couldn't help comparing the book to the Harry Potter series, and finding it wanting. This is one case in which I found the movie to be better than the book. The twists and turns seemed so implausible to me, and Riordan didn't do enough to create an alternate world that I could get caught up in. My daughters assure me that the later books in the series are better, and I'm willing to give them a try.
This week I read A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick's first novel, for my book group. It was an entertaining read, a story with a dark, gothic feel set in rural Wisconsin during the dead of winter. I found that, like the winter, the plot dragged on long after I was ready for it to be over. I never grew to believe in or care about the main characters: a rich, lonely man in the winter of his life, his beautiful younger mail-order bride who has more hidden than just the jewels in her skirt hem, a prodigal son, faithful servants, and a supporting cast of characters in the form of tragic news reports, casualties of the isolation and hardship of rural life. The author frequently repeated statements like "Such things happen," like a refrain, and while I agree that they do, I think they can be conveyed in a more believable way. Sex is a major theme in this novel, but it was not explored or portrayed in a way that I found appealing or authentic. I wouldn't put this book at the top of your list.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow

Introduction: From Publishers Weekly, “Durrow's debut draws from her own upbringing as the brown-skinned, blue-eyed daughter of a Danish woman and a black G.I. to create Rachel Morse, a young girl with an identical heritage growing up in the early 1980s. After a devastating family tragedy in Chicago with Rachel the only survivor, she goes to live with the paternal grandmother she's never met, in a decidedly black neighborhood in Portland, Ore. Suddenly, at 11, Rachel is in a world that demands her to be either white or black. As she struggles with her grief and the haunting, yet-to-be-revealed truth of the tragedy, her appearance and intelligence place her under constant scrutiny. Laronne, Rachel's deceased mother's employer, and Brick, a young boy who witnessed the tragedy and because of his personal misfortunes is drawn into Rachel's world, help piece together the puzzle of Rachel's family.”

Title & Author: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
Genre: Socially responsible fiction (2008 Bellwether winner)
Time Period: 1980s
Location: Chicago and Portland
Main Characters: Rachel, Nella, Roger, Laronne, Brick

Characters: strong, well developed, many different view points are addressed through these various characters; this makes the story very deep and meaningful. The characters draw you in.
Writing Style: simple yet consequential poetic and evocative prose.
Opening: a real heart-grabber draws you in immediately.
Plot/Story: thoughtful reflection on racism, racial identity, and coming of age. This is a very serious and endearing story of survival that evokes deep emotions in the reader.
Action: suspenseful and filled with heart-wrenching familial love, devotion and abandonment.
Dialogue: strong, complex and very well done.
Humor: this is a very earnest story; mostly it is a humorless novel.
Believability: the emotions and relationships feel very real. The author was interview this week on NPR and she said it was inspired by a true story of a mother in Chicago when she was growing up.
Relatable: I could not relate to the story line – I’m not bi-racial but I could relate to the emotional responses to loss, love and fear.
Originality: very unique in its perspective and plot line.
Enjoyable: YES – most definitely! This was a wonderful read I highly recommend it.
Ending: controversial ending.
Recommendation: ***** - Excellent read – you don’t want to miss this one!

Correcting the Landscape by Majorie Kowalski Cole

Introduction: This, first winner of the Bellwether Prize (2004), was very disappointing! I’ve loved all the other winners so this was a surprise. From Publishers Weekly, “The publisher of a Fairbanks, Alaska, weekly newspaper finds himself tested by matters of love and money in Cole's resolute first novel. Gus Traynor has run the Mercury for 15 years, aided by his fiery sister, Noreen, but these days costs are up and ad sales are down. The paper's difficulties come at a bad time for Gus, a likable and sometimes reluctant gadfly who, after many years of bachelorhood, finds a new reason to fight for his paper's longevity: part-time journalist Gayle Kenneally, a single mother from the native village of Allakeket whose thoughtful, unhurried self-possession capture Gus's attention and ultimately his heart.”

Title & Author: Correcting the Landscape by Majorie Kowalski Cole
Genre: Socially responsible fiction
Time Period: early 2000s
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Main Characters: Gus Traynor, Gayle Kenneally, Noreen, Felix and Tad

Characters: not very interesting, development was slow and not deep at all.
Writing Style: journalistic style, lots of colloquialisms and informal language.
Opening: intriguing at first but quickly lost my interest
Plot/Story: under-developed, lots of pieces that could mean something important but they never get built up enough to matter.
Action: the story plods along slowly with some action elements but they are not compelling.
Dialogue: average.
Humor: it broaches several serious topics with some humor but overall this is not a humorous novel.
Believability: the story itself is believable and has probably happened somewhere in Alaska, it’s a conservative place to live.
Relatable: as an activist, and someone who cares about the environment and liberal causes, I found this story very relatable.
Originality: the subject matter is not very original; however, the storyline and the mechanism for teaching the reader about Alaskan issues were unique.
Enjoyable: NO – I dragged through this book.
Ending: Honestly I can’t even remember it – other than the issues raised (which were not even well developed) this novel was a disappointment.
Recommendation: * - don’t waste your time.