I was hoping you could make me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, first published in 1999

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Interpreter of Maladies is a series of collected stories that center on Indian experiences across a multitude of geographies. The stories examine everything from love lost to the deep-rooted growing pains of moving across the world and trying to adjust. They are touching, poignant, and carry a kind of universal weight that leave you marked. 

Spoiler Over (but not really, and you know it ;) - Continue Here

Well hello, dear readers!

 I finished this story collection a little while ago, and have actually already started and finished A Passage to India, which was a fascinating book to read right after this one. More on that in the next blob! Here are my thoughts!

Jhumpa Lahiri has also published three books in Italian. WOW. Anyone who can not only be fluent in multiple languages, but PUBLISH NOVELS in more than one language, and write the way Lahiri writes, is just... chef's kiss! My hat is off to you. 

I enjoyed this collection of stories, though if you have read my blob, you know story collections are really not my favorite. I decided I would give you little snippets from each of the stories, as there are only nine total. 

A Temporary Matter, or when Shoba and Shukumar lose their son and try to find each other in the dark

In each of these, the bold is Lahiri's actual title, and the italics are my rendering of the plot. This first story is about a couple who have suffered the tragic loss of their child-to-be, and how they rekindle pieces of their relationship during a series of scheduled blackouts.  

• He looked now for something to put the birthday candles in and settled on the soil of a potted ivy that normally sat on the windowsill over the sink. Even though the plant was inches from the tap, the soil was so dry that he had to water it first before the candles would stand straight. Planting a candle in the pot made me think of one of my favorite short stories from when I was younger, The Heat Death of the Universe, by Pamela Zoline - Someone has planted a hot dog in the daffodil pot. 

• All day Shukumar had looked forward to the lights going out.

• He wondered would Shoba would tell him in the dark.

• Something happened when the house was dark. They were able to talk to each other again.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, or when East Pakistan (and Mr. Pirzada) ceases to be a part of India

In reading this, I was reminded again how little I know about the history of other countries, and I felt like I really need to do another round of World Studies and World History, so we'll just cue that up for somewhere down the road. This story is about Mr. Pirzada, who is away from home, and how he becomes an extended member of an Indian couple and their young daughter, during a time when things are explosively unsettled in India.

• In search of compatriots, they used to trail their fingers, at the start of each new semester, through the columns of the university directory, circling surnames familiar to their part of the world. This was such a beautiful line, and reminded me how privileged I am. Never have I felt so foreign in my home that I searched a phone book for familiar surnames. What a beautiful way to find community.

• Mr. Pirzada - Each evening he appeared in ensembles of plums, olives, and chocolate browns. He was a compact man, and though his feet were perpetually splayed, and his belly slightly wide, he nevertheless maintained an efficient posture, as if balancing in either hand two suitcases of equal weight. His ears were insulated by tufts of graying hair that seemed to block out the unpleasant traffic of life. God, I love that line about the ear hair blocking out the traffic of life. :)

• Mr. Pirzada brings candy to the young girl, and she always thanks him, to which he replies once: 'What is this thank-you? The lady at the bank thanks me, the cashier at the shop thanks me, the librarian thanks me when I return an overdue book, the overseas operator thanks me as she tries to connect me to Dacca and fails. If I am buried in this country I will be thanked, no doubt, at my funeral.' 

• Now that I had learned Mr. Pirzada was not an Indian, I began to study him with extra care, to try to figure out what made him different. This story was such an artful and thoughtful way to examine a historical event through the eyes of a child. Of course, nothing about Mr. Pirzada or the girl and her parents has actually changed, but the political world shifts and then poof! Just like that, he is no longer 'Indian'. 

Interpreter of Maladies, or the exoticization of a home country and love, unrequited

This one was beautiful but also made me so sad. It centers on a family, Mr. and Mrs. Das, and their three children, and Mr. Kapasi, a man who drives them on a tour to see famous places in a part of India. Mr. Kapasi, it turns out, does interpreting at a doctor's office for patients who speak other languages, and when Mrs. Das is alone with Mr. Kapasi, she tells him she's been feeling unwell, and asks for him to say something. When he has nothing to offer, she says:

• I was hoping you could make me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.

Mr. Kapasi falls in love with/becomes enamored with Mrs. Das during their little jaunt, and happily imagines a world where they become romantic pen pals, after he takes a photo with them and she offers to send it along to his address. Later, though, he takes them to another place and the monkeys are overwhelming to the Indian-but-no-longer-used-to-India family, and the address floats away in the wind.

A Real Durwan, or Boori Ma's wrongful expulsion from her only home by her supposed 'neighbors'

This story chronicles the sad tale of Boori Ma, a woman who has supposedly become homeless and attached herself to a small collection of apartments after partition. The neighbors claim to have her interests at heart, but when they get a communal cistern tap and it is stolen, they turn on Boori Ma and she is expelled from their midst. 

• Such comforts you cannot even dream them. This is a line Boori Ma says, allegedly about her life before. I love the line. 

• It was true that prickly heat was common during the rainy season. I had to look this up - apparently prickly heat is a kind of itchy heat rash. Boori Ma is told perhaps she has a bad case, but she's sure that she has little insects living in her bedding. (I FEEL YOU, Boori Ma! When I had bedbugs it was the PITS.)

Sexy, or Miranda's dalliances with Dev (and India) and eventual compassion for Laxmi's cousin

Sexy was interesting. In some ways it felt a little out of place to me, or like it was from a different collection. It was probably my least favorite, but that may also have been because I don't feel a lot of empathy or connection to a character who is sleeping with another woman's husband. It follows Miranda, a white British woman, during her affair with an Indian man, Dev, and at the same time Miranda is consoling a co-worker, Laxmi, whose cousin's husband has just left her for a woman he met on a plane. The worlds collide eventually when Laxmi's cousin comes to town and Miranda ends up watching Rohin, the cousin's son. He tells Miranda that she looks 'sexy', trying out a word he's heard his parents use, and this seems to break the spell of Miranda's affair.

Mrs. Sen's, or the intense growing pains and excruciating adjustment period of immigration

I think this might have been my favorite story. It follows Eliot, a young white boy, during a time when he is baby-sat by a recent Indian immigrant, Mrs. Sen. She is trying and struggling to adjust to life in New England, and her husband is attempting to get her to learn to drive independently so that she can do more things and move about more freely, but she is terrified. 

• Eliot, if I began to scream right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come? This reminded me of when my nephew's father first moved to the US from Senegal. He described the suburbs to me once as so lonely, and asked me why people would want to live so isolated from each other. I had never thought of them like that before, and most of the time in the city, I hate how many people are around. But I understand that as someone habituated to family compound living, being in places where you have relatives and old friends around every corner, the American 'dream' could feel so empty.

• Brimming bowls and colanders lined the countertop, spices and pastes were measured and blended, and eventually a collection of broths simmered over periwinkle flames on the stove. I wanted to eat everything that Mrs. Sen was cooking. 

Mrs. Sen, when she's trying to enter an intersection: 'Impossible, Eliot. How can I go there? 
'You need to wait until no one's coming.'
Why will not anybody slow down?'
'No one's coming now.'
'But what about the car from the right, do you see? And look, a truck is behind it. Anyway, I am not allowed on the main road without Mr. Sen.' I felt so deeply for Mrs. Sen here. When I first learned to drive, I was terrified. My sisters used to joke that I'd drive for half an hour before the auto-lock went off, because I'd be going less than 15mph that whole time. I still remember the first time I went on a highway. It was with the school's Driver's Ed instructor, and she had the perfect temperament for it, but it still stands out as one of the scariest moments of my life. And I know how many roundabouts there are in the Boston area, and entering those can be like a nasty game of Double Dutch (something I've never been skilled at).

• 'My sister has had a baby girl. By the time I see her, depending if Mr. Sen gets his tenure, she will be three years old. Her own aunt will be a stranger. If we sit side by side on a train she will not know my face.' This was such a beautiful and painful line. 

This Blessed House, or a young Hindu couple's fierce battle over Christian paraphernalia

This story was about Twinkle and Sanjeev, a young Indian couple who have recently moved into a home in Connecticut, and discover all kinds of Christian paraphernalia. Twinkle is endlessly amused by it, building a shrine to every surprising knickknack, and Sanjeev is (in my mind, quite understandably) confused about why she wants to honor things she doesn't hold any belief in. They compromise in the end. It was not my favorite story.

The Treatment of Bibi Haldar, or a desperate woman's non-traditional path to becoming whole

I liked this one - it was another one of my favorites. Somewhat similar to Boori Ma, Bibi Haldar is a kind of social pariah, living with her brother and his wife in an apartment building. She is prone to attacks and bizarre medical incidents like seizures, and this makes her generally deemed as unfit for marriage. She's stuck sort of pingballing around the building, desperate to advance to the traditional stages of womanhood.

• 'I will never dip my feet in milk,' she whimpered. 'My face will never be painted with sandalwood paste. Who will rub me with turmeric? My name will never be printed with scarlet ink on a card.'

• Her soliloquies mawkish, her sentiments maudlin, malaise dripped like a fever from her pores. God, this is a beautiful sentence.

• To get her to quiet down, Haldar placed a one-line advertisement in the town newspaper, in order to solicit a groom: 'GIRL, UNSTABLE, HEIGHT 152 CENTIMETRES, SEEKS HUSBAND.' LOLOL. Yes, Haldar, that will definitely bring the men in droves.

• It was rumored by many that Bibi conversed with herself in a fluent but totally incomprehensible language, and slept without dreams.

The Third and Final Continent, or a young man's journey from solo immigration to center of a family

This story was also one of my favorites. It centers on a man who is originally from India, goes to school in London, and then ends up at MIT in America. He wants to rent a room for a time before his wife is to arrive, and so he encounters Mrs. Croft. Here's one of their exchanges.

For a moment she was silent. Then suddenly she declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight as the night before, 'There's an American flag on the moon, boy!'

'Yes, madame.'

'A flag on the moon! Isn't that splendid?'

I nodded, dreading what I knew was coming. 'Yes, madame.'

'Say, splendid!'

This time I paused, looking to either side in case anyone were there to overhear me, though I knew perfectly well that the house was empty. I felt like an idiot. But it was a small enough thing to ask. 'Splendid!' I cried out. He knows Mrs. Croft is old, but it turns out she is 103. Her daughter comes and leaves her soup in the refrigerator, because Mrs. Croft can't open the cans herself. Mrs. Croft is spicy and for sure a bit demented, but the man grows to love her. 

• Mrs. Croft's was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.

Lines I Really Liked

• What resulted was a disproportionately large hole the size of a lemon, so that our jack-o'-lantern wore an expression of placid astonishment, the eyebrows no longer fierce, floating in frozen surprise above a vacant, geometric gaze.

• Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.

Words New to Me

durwan - a porter or doorkeeper; a person whose job is to guard the entrance of a large building

Well, blobbists, there you have it! I'm off to blob on another adventure centering on the experience of Indians, this time from a British white man's perspective. I'll leave you with a line I particularly liked from the man in the last story.

In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

Sending love to all of you, and hoping that you live lives beyond your own imagination. Good night!

But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and then you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham, first published in 1998

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Hours follows three women over the course of a single day: Virginia Woolf, the famous writer, Clarissa Vaughan (aka Clarissa Dalloway, but not the original fictional one), and Laura Brown, a housewife who is reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. If it sounds meta, that's because it is. Our women are in three different time periods, in three different geographies. Here's the breakdown:

Setting 1: Richmond, a suburb of London, 1941 - Virginia Woolf; we follow a day in her life, watching her write Mrs. Dalloway, hosting a tea party for her sister and her nieces and nephews, inhabiting her sense of suburban claustrophobia

Setting 2: Los Angeles, 1949 - Laura Brown; it is her husband's birthday, so she makes several cakes, runs away from her life briefly to a hotel to read Mrs. Dalloway, returns and feels intensely trapped

Setting 3: New York City, late 20th century - Clarissa (Dalloway) Vaughan; Clarissa is throwing a party for her close friend, Richard, who is a famous writer and living with advanced AIDs

Note: they are listed in chronological order by year, though they happen in various orders throughout the book.

Spoiler (Not Really) Over (But Let's Pretend): Continue Here

Hello, dear blobbists!

  If that seems like a rather sparing summary, well, there you have it. The book doesn't contain a lot in the way of plot (OK, there's a 'party' or a hosting of people happening for each woman, several cakes are baked, flowers are bought, a friend dying of AIDS throws himself out a window, and Virginia low key tries to run away to London proper) or rather I guess I should say it's not particularly driven by the plot, which, if you know me, is typically not my favorite kind of writing. 

  I will also say, quite frankly, that I did not care for this book. I thought I would like it, as I am a big Virginia Woolf fan, and I read Mrs. Dalloway earlier on the list. While I didn't like that book quite as much as I love To the Lighthouse, I would still say Woolf is one of my favorite authors. I think precisely because that's the case, I didn't like this literary exploration. It felt a bit like I was reading a creative writing prompt, like, "what if I extrapolated this 'one day' concept to three inter-related versions of a woman?" And maybe that's interesting to some people, but it didn't resonate with me. I'm honestly kind of surprised it got the fame and clout it did, and I wonder if he hadn't centered Woolf's work, if that still would have been the case.

 That said, I shall blob on it just the same. Here are my overall reflections, in no particular order. 

Writing as a (famous) person in a fictionalized way

I think my biggest issue with this book was that Cunningham decides to include Virginia Woolf as one of his three characters, and then writes from her point of view, which feels, to me, presumptive at best, and offensive at worst. Sure, he's claiming this is a 'fictionalized' version of her, but he also carefully made all the particulars around her true to her life, so does he honestly not think he's impact people's perception of her actual life? 

He references her migraines and hearing voices, as well as depression, and I know that he did research on and gathered notes from various journals and sources, but as a person who lives her own life with depression, anxiety, and OCD, I wouldn't want anyone else speaking for me. And the fact that he starts the book off with the day of her suicide just seems really icky to me, like how dare you assume you know or can imagine what may have been running through her head? He also uses a lot of her own work - pages from Mrs. Dalloway, parts of her suicide letter to her husband - and while it's clearly legal, it seems like freeloading to me.

A little too 'cutesy' for my taste

OK, nothing about this book is cutesy, but I couldn't think of a better word. What I'm referring to here is the way that Cunningham creates these symmetries and circular components by doing things like renaming characters with the same first letter of their names from Mrs. Dalloway, or introducing a side lesbian love interest to mirror the one in Mrs. Dalloway, or SPOILER - when we find out at the end of the novel that 'Richard', of Clarissa's world, is Laura Brown's toddler, Richie. It just fit together a bit too neatly for my taste, which also leans itself to that sort of 'writing a thesis'/'creative prompt' vibe.

Not just depressing, somehow much worse

I love reading literature by great female authors who also struggled with depression because I see reflections of myself in their work. Somehow, this book was not so much depressing as it was, overwhelmingly dark. At one point, Richard's cloistered apartment is described as 'having, more than anything, an underwater aspect'. I think that describes how this book made me feel. I suppose it's a special ability of a writer to make you feel so deeply uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but it wasn't an experience I enjoyed. Here are some examples of this murky darkness.

He will watch her forever. He will always know when something is wrong. (ok, that's nice, right?) He will always know precisely when and how much she has failed. oh, ok, that's where we were heading.

She herself is trapped here forever, posing as a wife. She must get through this night, and then tomorrow morning, and then another night here, in these rooms, with nowhere else to go. She must please, she must continue. Says who? I don't know that I fully bought this supposed trapped housewife claustrophobia. It felt like Cunningham was just writing based on a reading of "The Feminine Mystique".

For an instant, no more than that, she has imagined some sort of ghost self, a second version of her, standing immediately behind, watching. It's nothing. This. There was so much of this in the novel.

It would be as simple as checking into a hotel room. It would be as simple as that. Think how wonderful it might be to no longer matter. Think how wonderful it might be to no longer worry, or struggle, or fail. 

Hard to tease out what Cunningham's writing was actually like

Something else I struggled with, which was very apparent by the fact that I initially underlined some lines I liked, and then underlined almost nothing from the second half of the novel, was really teasing out Michael Cunningham's writing. I mean, sure, ostensibly, the whole novel is his 'creation', but if you take out the cutesy Mrs. Dalloway fan-fiction gimmicks, and you take out Virginia Woolf's actual (sacred) life, where is Michael Cunningham? And I think I just kept getting really caught up in the little tricks and twists and it really kept me from getting to know or really enjoy his personal writing style, which ended up feeling obfuscated.

The women, in a nutshell

Here's each woman encapsulated in one line.

Clarissa

Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too...Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?

Laura

In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading.

Virginia

I'm taking a walk. (Real talk, she's running away.) Does it seem mysterious?

The way we smell

Blobbists, do you think we have a particular and unique smell? There's a line where Clarissa reflects on Richard's personal smell, and a friend of mine mentioned that a boyfriend didn't like her natural smell, and I really just feel like I've never thought of a person and thought, yes, that's their SMELL. I mean, sure, if they wear perfumes, or use specific lotions or soaps, but do we really have an US smell?

She goes to him, kisses the curve of his forehead. Up close like this, she can smell his various humors. His pores exude not only his familiar sweat (which has always smelled good to her, starchy and fermented; sharp in the way of wine) but the smell of his medicines, a powdery, sweetish smell. He smells, too, of unfresh flannel (though the laundry is done once a week, or oftener) and slightly, horribly (it is his only repellent smell) of the chair in which he spends his days.

A bit of levity

So, don't read this book if you're looking for laughs. Here's the one time I laughed, which turns out to actually be quite morbid in the end. 

Clarissa: 'Good morning, my dear', Clarissa says again.

Richard: 'Look at all those flowers.'

Clarissa: 'They're for you.'

Richard: 'Have I died?'

Special people who make you feel special

Okay, so Clarissa ends up taking the parts of this that seem like a compliment and making it more about how Richard is egotistical, which is not at all true in my case, but the initial parts of these lines reminded me of my good friend, Mar:

Richard cannot imagine a life more interesting or worthwhile than those being lived by his acquaintances and himself, and for that reason one often feels exalted, expanded, in his presence. It is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and for a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through to your essence, weighs your true qualities...and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has. This is how I always feel after talking to her or spending time with her, and I loved that the line made me think of her. <3

Lines I liked

• Don't we love children, in part, because they live outside the realm of cynicism and irony?

• In the morning heat of June, with the robe whisked away, the chair in its bold new fabric seems surprised to find itself a chair at all.

• She is the animating principle, the life of the house. 

• The apartment has, more than anything, an underwater aspect.

• She has caught up with herself.

• Richie, on his mother: He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all. 

• He looks insane and exalted, both ancient and childish, astride the windowsill like some scarecrow equestrian, a park statue by Giacometti.

Referents and Reverberations

Certainly this book had some obvious referents, like Mrs. Dalloway. In addition, two lines stood out.

• I seem to have fallen out of time.  This line reminded me of a line from Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

• You don't need to charm or entertain. You don't need to put in a performance. This line reminded me of a line from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

Words I Learned

equipoise - noun - balance of forces or interests; verb - balance or counterbalance (something)

Well blob-friends, I'll leave you with a few lines from Richard, who I think was ultimately my favorite character. 

Richard smiles wistfully. 'Oh well, omens,' he says. 'Do you believe in omens? Do you think we're taken that much notice of? Do you think we're worried over like that? My, wouldn't that be wonderful? Well, maybe it's so.' 

'I took the Xanax and the Ritalin. They work wonderfully together. I feel wonderful. I opened all the blinds, but still, I found I wanted more air and light. I had a hard time getting up here, I don't mind telling you.' lollll

I'm afraid I can't make the party. <3

 I think I found the scene where Richard falls out of the window particularly resonant because of Hotel New Hampshire, and that book's line, 'Keep passing the open windows.' Here's my blob bit from that book, which was the first on this second list of hundred, so many books (and 8 years!) ago:

'Keep passing the open windows' is a reference to a sort of morbid but optimistic catchphrase the family passes on to each other from time to time -- it's an allusion to an artist who jumps out of an open window and commits suicide, but leaves a note proclaiming, "Life is serious but art is fun. It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious." I love the confusing poetry of these lines, and the idea that, even in times of great darkness, we can remind each other to simply 'Keep passing the open windows'. [2015 - Survive Alive!] Because Irving is a realist and not remotely bound to the perfect happy ending, one member of the family doesn't manage to keep passing the open windows. But the harmony in the novel's outcome and its ultimate triumph is not in the glamour of a simple and comfortable traditional happy ending, but the messy and raw, yet stunningly brilliant beauty of a complex and nuanced denouement.

So with that, I'll leave you, reminding you all to keep passing the open windows, and embark on Interpreter of Maladies, after which I'll be on my final ten books.

Behind him's the fawn. Before him's the buck.

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, first published in 1938

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Yearling is a tender tale of hearts being full to the brim, broken in two, and the intensities of affection and longing in the wilds of Florida in the early 1900s. Our cast of characters is listed below. 

The People:

The Baxters (Ezra/Penny/Pa, Ory/Ma, Jody)

The Forresters (Ma, Pa, Lem, Buck, Mill-wheel, Fodder-wing)

The Huttos (Grandma, Oliver)

The Creatures:

Flag (a deer/the yearling), Old Julia, Rip (hunting dogs), 

Old Slewfoot (a persnickety and mean-spirited bear)

The Florida Scrub:

A particular corner of the universe that includes Jody's home (Baxter's Island) and a few neighbors near the town of Volusia

This story is, I think, rather well known, so you may well know what happens, but I'll share a few pertinent details anyway. Jody is a young boy, about 12, I think, living a homesteading sort of life in Florida with his parents, Penny (Pa) and Ory (Ma). They are a happy trio, for the most part, though life is rough, and they largely live hand to mouth. They hunt for their meat, grow their own crops, keep their own livestock, and get water from a local sinkhole, as they don't have a well. They have one set of neighbors a few miles away, the Forresters, who are a rambunctious bunch, and are all men (or boys) except for Ma Forrester. The youngest Forrester, Fodder-wing, so named because of an ill-fated attempt at flying that left him crippled, is Jody's best friend. We follow Jody through a year or so of his adolescence, as he learns to hunt and track with his father, how to tend the crops, and the hardships and difficult choices that need to be made when living so close to nature. Jody longs for a companion, as an only child (his siblings all passed when they were young), so he eventually manages to get his parents to allow him to adopt a baby deer when it is stranded without a mother. He raises the fawn as his own, and eventually names it Flag. They are bosom friends, and Jody feels a joy he has been seeking his whole young life. As Flag ages, though, he becomes more and more like the buck he is growing into, and his shenanigans, once considered cute or annoying, become downright life-threatening to the family. Flag eats the seedlings of the family's crops not once, not twice, but three times, and when a six-foot fence fails to keep him out, Jody's father tells him he must kill the deer. They can't afford to lose another whole season of crops, Penny is ailing, a flood devastated the local game, and Flag is too attached to the family and to Jody to survive in the wild. Jody refuses, of course, and desperately looks for a way out. When he is unable to find one, he returns home with Flag, and his mother, frustrated and feeling like she's out of options, tries to shoot Flag herself. She's a poor shot, though, so she only injures the fawn, and in the end, Jody must race after his injured best friend and kill it. There's a clear symmetry between Jody coming of age and the fawn becoming a yearling, and the brutality that life hands us sometimes as we come into maturity.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well, blobbists, 

 I finished this book about a week ago, but I needed an emotional break before I could even consider blobbing about it. Real talk, I cried for about an hour after I finished the book. I made the smaller and cuddlier of my two cats, Pixie, sit with me for a long time, and I marinated on why it was hitting me so hard. I mean, the book is a work of art, imho. If you haven't read it, even knowing how it ends, I STRONGLY recommend you pick up a copy. It's one of the tenderest stories I've ever read. Finishing it felt a bit like having my heart and soul bared for all to see, and I felt so vulnerable and raw. 

I think part of what hit me was reflecting on the intensity of affection we can develop for pets or fur family, and I thought, well, at least I didn't have to kill my pet! But then I kind of did, because I had to make the difficult decision to put down my previous cat, Suzy Chubsters, after a serious illness and an extended period of her not eating or drinking. It wasn't as violent or graphic as Jody's situation, but he also only knew Flag for a year, and Suze was my girl for 10 years. 

Whew. Tearing up. Anyway, it's not a bad thing to be reminded of her, or of how much I loved her and still love her. It's just emotional, is all. That said, here are the rest of my thoughts on the book, in no particular order. This is another long one, and I won't apologize. (I will not apoloGize for what I have aWOken in you, Sookie!) The book deserves it. <3

The book of LOLS and aws

If you follow my blob, you likely know that I like to write in my books, a habit I started in emulating my cool next-door neighbor. ;) Some people find it distracting that I've written in my books, but I think every book I read is a conversation between me and the work, and I love knowing that I've left the mark of how a book made me feel along the way. Common margin notes of mine include "HMPH" or "BARF" when something is racist/misogynistic/icky, but if I had to summarize the notes of this book, it would be the book of "LOLs" and "awws". There are so many funny zingers and so many great characters, and there are even more moments of expected and then wholly unexpected tenderness in this harsh wilderness. 

The Florida scrub, an essential character in the novel

I read a bit about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings after I finished the book (I don't like to know much in advance), and it seems that she was writing for a long time, but really sort of came into her writerly self when she moved to a 72-acre orange grove in Florida. She got really deeply connected to the land and its natural flora and fauna, and developed close relationships with its human inhabitants. Some of the people she met were the inspiration for the novel. I have to say, I've never considered myself a big Florida girl, what with my exceedingly pale skin and my visceral dislike of heat, but this book made me want to frolic and ramble in the Florida wilds. Here are a few lines that I think capture the Florida scrub and the Baxters' homesteading lifestyle well. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge that the indigenous inhabitants of this present-day part of Florida have been wiped out, the Timucua and Mayaca peoples, and remind my readers that homesteading was not started on a blank slate of land uninhabited by others, as romantic as that notion may be. 

• The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence.

• The Baxter's smokehouse: The smoke-house was dark and cool, odorous with the smell of hams and bacons, dusty with the ash of hickory. The rafters, studded with square-headed nails for the hanging of meats, were now almost bare. Three shoulders of ham hung, lean and withered, and two bacon sides. A haunch of jerked venison swung beside the smoked alligator meat. Just in case you forgot we were in Florida, there's that GATOR MEAT!

• The clearing, the island of tall pines, made up the world. Life in other places was only a tale that was told, as Oliver Hutto told of Africa and China and Connecticut. This resonated with me, as I feel like my hometown felt like the whole world for a long time.

• Jody, to his Dad, on choosing the land to settle on: 'How come you to pick it, Pa?'

• Jody's dad: 'I jest craved peace, was all.'

• Human beings were a stranger sight in the lonely place of live oak islands and saw-grass ponds and prairies than the creatures.

• The sun came out. The clouds rolled together into great white billowing feather bolsters, and across the east a rainbow arched, so lovely and so various that Jody thought he would burst with looking at it. The earth was pale green, the air itself was all but visible, golden with the rain-washed sunlight, and all the trees and grass and bushes glittered, varnished with the rain-drops. Don't you just want to be there with Jody, and live in that day?

Jody Baxter, our protagonist, a tender-hearted, frolicsome boy

I think it's interesting that this book has been cast as a YA novel in today's world, though YA wasn't a genre when it was first published. I have a lot of complicated feelings about that. I guess my most prominent thoughts are: 

• I would be terribly sad to think that only young people would ever read this novel. I think people of all ages could have incredible reading experiences with it, and I read it at 37, and it was deeply powerful. 

• I don't want to underestimate what young people can process or handle, as I know that the reality is our young people are fierce, talented, incredible, multi-layered humans, and they have immense capacity for feeling and art. That said, this book is heavy. It wrecked me, and I'm not sure I would have been emotionally prepared for it when I was a typical YA reader's age.

That said, here are some of my favorite lines about Jody, to sketch out his character for you. 

• He would like anything that was his own. This motif is so poignantly painted, and it's underscored by the fact that Jody's siblings have all died when they were young, leaving him the only child, but also the only young thing, in his home, a fact which makes his heart ache with loneliness.

• He lay for a moment in torment between the luxury of his bed and the coming day. Ooh, that's me every day.

• His father was the core of safety. Jody's connection to and love for his father is another critical part of this story, and I think Rawlings does such an incredible job of showing how precarious this thread can be in a life as rough and wild as the one the Baxters were living. Penny survives the novel, but he has several extremely close calls, and as a reader, you wonder how Jody would learn the essential wilderness skills his father is teaching him were something to happen to Penny.

• Again Jody longed for something of his own. Fodder-wing would give him the fox squirrel, even, he believed, the baby 'coon. But past experience had taught him not to aggravate his mother with another mouth, no matter how small, to feed. 

• Jody, reflecting after hunting and killing a deer with his father - He wondered by what alchemy it was changed, so that what sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger the next. It seemed as though there were either two different animals or two different boys. This was one of my favorite passages in the book.

• Jody's exchanges with his mom are so great. Here's one of his first efforts: "Ma, we got milk a-plenty. Cain't I git me a leetle ol' fawn for a pet for me? A spotted fawn, Ma. Cain't I?'
• Ma: "I should just say not. What you mean, milk a-plenty? They ain't a extry drop left from sun to sun. Ma is painted perfectly; she's hard, and sometimes seems hard-hearted, but she is a practical woman living a hard kind of life, through and through.

• Jody does NOT like to be teased about girls, and he very adorably and hilariously gets annoyed when some of the older boys have big battles over women. Here's Jody just before he throws a potato at a girl he has been accused of liking. "Jody glowed with a sense of virtue. He longed to be good and noble. (throws potato) He was humiliated. Yet if he had to do it over again, he would throw another potato at her, a larger one. lololol. This was so well done. 

• Pa, to Jody, after throwing the potato: How on earth come you to do it? 
• Jody: I just hate her. She made a face at me. She's ugly.
• Pa: Well, son, you cain't go thru life chunkin' things at all the ugly women you meet. LOL.

• When Oliver asks Jody to get a message to Twink, his girl, and Jody initially says no. Oliver: I thought you were my friend. Being friends, Jody thought, was a nuisance. heheheheheh. Here's the note he writes back to Oliver:

Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor frend jody. He read it over. He decided in favor of a greater kindness. He crossed out 'im gladd' and wrote in its place 'im sorry'. He felt virtuous. I love this note so much.

• Without Penny, there was no earth. 

• But Flag lived in a secret place in his heart that had long been aching and vacant.

• Without Penny, there was no comfort anywhere.

Fodder-wing, Jody's bestie and youngest of the Forrester clan, tender and parent to many animals

Okay, so I know I've mentioned this elsewhere in the blob, but my spoiler alerts are not really a perfect system. In order to tell you how I felt about a book and share it's most beautiful nuggets with you, I am invariably going to spoil parts of the plot. So, #sorrynotsorry

• Fodder-wing dies in the book. It's painfully sad, and I cried for a solid half hour at this part, too. Jody comes to visit his friend, knowing he was sick, but not knowing he has died, and then he ends up helping the family grieve, though he has no idea how to go about it. Jody whispered 'Hey'. Fodder-wing's silence was intolerable. Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer. Fodder-wing would never speak to him again.

• Pa Forrester: 'The one we cain't spare was the one was takened. And him a swivveled, no-account thing, too.' The Forresters, a sturdy, boisterous, often troublesome brood, are broken by the loss of Fodder-wing, and it's absolutely heartbreaking to witness. 

• Ma Forrester, to Jody: 'You pore lamb.' She began to cry again. 'Wouldn't my boy of loved to seed your fawn. He talked about it and he talked about it. He said, 'Jody's got him a brother.' Jody has brought Flag with him (in fact, Fodder-wing is the one who ends up naming him, having thought of Flag before his death) and there's something so desperately poignant about these two boys connecting over their devotion to woodland creatures.

• Jody, reflecting on Fodder-wing's death after watching a family of raccoons: Suddenly it seemed that Fodder-wing had only now gone away with the raccoons. Something of him had been always where the wild creatures fed and played. Something of him would be always near them. Fodder-wing was like the trees. He was of the earth, as they were earthy, with his gnarled, frail roots deep in the sand. He was like the changing clouds and the setting sun and the rising moon. A part of him had always been outside his twisted body. It had come and gone like the wind. It came to Jody that he need not be lonely for his friend again. He could endure his going. Well, and just when I had stopped crying this set me going again. I think I'd like this line read at my funeral. It's just so cyclical and natural and moving. I would like to be where the wild creatures feed and play.

• Jody, on seeing Eulalie Boyle flirting with a ferry boy - Jody was swept with resentment, not of her, but of the ferry-boy. Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her. LOLOLOLOL. 

Penny Baxter, short and sturdy, sure-footed and star tracker and huntsman, humble and brave

I think the ending of the novel, where Penny tells Jody he has to kill Flag, is so gut-wrenching in part because we have spent the novel idolizing Penny with Jody. He is kind, he is so sweet to Jody, he humors his fancies, and he takes his side when Ma is being hard-hearted or overly practical. He doesn't make decisions lightly, and he loves the wilderness he shares breath with, and so when he is the one to make this proclamation, we know, deep in our hearts, that there must really be no other way. Here are some of my favorite Penny bits.

• 'Tell the truth, Jody,' he said, 'and shame the devil. Wa'n't the bee-tree a fine excuse to go a-ramblin'?' The opening scene is Jody having gone 'a-ramblin' as his dad puts it, aka basically ignoring his chores and frolicking in the woods. I think all children should get to go 'a-ramblin', and I would like to do more of it myself. :)

• But Penny's bowels yearned over his son. He gave him something more than his paternity. He found that the child stood wide-eyed and breathless before the miracle of bird and creature, of flower and tree, of wind and rain and sun and moon, as he had always stood.

• His father was stern about not taking more of anything, fish or game, than could be eaten or kept.

• Jody, to Penny, after a terrible snake bite: How you comin, Pa?
• Pa: 'Jest fine, son. Ol' Death gone thievin' elsewhere. But wa'n't it a close squeak!' I love this line so much. Death gone thievin' elsewhere. But a close squeak!

Ma Baxter, voice of reason, arbiter of the milk rations, maker of delicious pone and biscuits

Ma is definitely cast as the 'bad cop' of Jody's parents quite often, but I loved her character, and thought she was really artfully and thoughtfully fleshed out. 

• Jody's mother had accepted her youngest with something of detachment, as though she had given all she had of love and care and interest to those others. Like this - what an intricate detail to show the intensity of loss borne by a mother who buried so many of her previous children. 

• Her good nature rose and fell with the food supply. Let's be honest, so does mine, and mine is nowhere near as precarious as the Baxter's. I went camping with my sisters once on a road trip, and when it was suggested we share a can of lentils for a dinner one night, I went ballistic. I'm probably not the best candidate for wilderness living, at least not without the ability to stockpile crops, canned goods, etc. ;)

• Jody: Ma, Pa says I kin go bring back the fawn.
• She held the coffee-pot in mid-air. 
• 'What fawn?' Lololol. I love the image of the coffee-pot floating mid-air.

• Jody: 'Ain't his eyes purty, Ma?'
• Ma: 'They see a pan o' cornbread too fur.'
• Jody: 'Well, ain't he got a cute, foolish tail, Ma?'
• Ma: 'All deer's flags look the same.'
• Jody: 'But Ma, ain't it cute and foolish?'
• Ma: 'Hit's foolish, a'right.' lolololol.

• Jody waited eagerly for the rest of the tale, then understood that was all there was to it. It was like all his mother's tales. They were like hunts where nothing happened. LOL. I loved this line.

• She would not have gone empty-handed even to the house of an enemy.

Grandma Hutto, not actually Jody's Grandma, but kin nonetheless, and Ma Baxter's nemesis

It's not totally clear what the connection is between Penny and Grandma Hutto, but they have a deep affection for each other, and Ma Baxter does NOT share this warm and fuzzy feeling for her. Their interactions are hilariously spicy.

• She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water.

• Something about her was forever female and made all men virile.

• Jody: 'You'll love Flag, Grandma. He's so smart, you kin learn him like a dog.'
• Grandma Hutto: 'Course I'll love him. Will he git along with Fluff?'
• Jody: 'He likes dogs. He plays with ourn. When they go on a hunt, he slips off another way and meets up with 'em. He loves a bear hunt good as the dogs.'
• Penny: 'You tell her all them things, you'll leave nothin' good for her to find out about him. Then she mought find out some o' the bad.'
• Jody: 'They's nothin' bad about him,' he said passionately. 
• Ma: 'Only jumpin' on the table and knockin' the tops off the lard cans and buttin' oer the 'taters, and into ever'thing worse'n ten young uns. heh heh heh heh heh

• Penny asks after Grandma Hutto, to which she replies: 'You know I'm made outen whalebone and hell.'
• Penny: 'Ain't the whalebone gittin' a mite limber?'
• Grandma Hutto: 'Tis, but the hell's hot as ever.' God, I love this exchange. I would like to tell people I'm made out of whalebone and hell. Maybe I'll start. ;)

The crane dance - Magic birds were dancing in a mystic marsh.

If you read my blob, then you probably know that I've become an avid birder. If I'm not reading, I may well be out in the marshes, watching the birds. Since this is the case, I had a particular affection for this scene, when Jody and Penny come upon a crane dance.

The cranes were dancing a cotillion as surely as it was danced at Volusia. Two stood apart, erect and white, making a strange music that was part cry and part signing. The rhythm was irregular, like the dance. The other birds were in a circle. In the heart of the circle, several moved counter-clock-wise. The musicians made their music. The dancers raised their wings and lifted their feet, first one and then the other. They sunk their heads deep in their snowy breasts, lifted them and sunk again. They moved soundlessly, part awkwardness, part grace. The dance was solemn. The outer circle shuffled around and around. The group in the center attained a show frenzy. 

And then after: They had seen a thing that was unearthly. They were in a trance from the strong spell of its beauty. 

Flag, our titular yearling, Jody's bosom buddy, affectionate, mischievous, loving, and wild

• The fawn was alone in the night, as [Jody] had been alone. The catastrophe that might take his father had made it motherless. It had lain hungry and bewildered through the thunder and rain and lightning, close to the devastated body of its dam, waiting for the stiff form to arise and give it warmth and food and comfort. I'm only now realizing the symmetry here also, in that Jody worries he'll lose his crucial parent, just as Flag has lost his. 

• Suddenly Jody was unwilling to have Mill-wheel with him. If the fawn was dead, or could not be found, he could not have his disappointment seen. And if the fawn was there, the meeting would be so lovely and so secret that he could not endure to share it. 

• Jody, on getting the fawn to trust him: His heart thumped with the marvel of its acceptance of him. Haven't we all felt this as pet owners or parents? This marvel that a creature would trust us, accept us, love us?

• He remembered his father's saying that a fawn would follow that had been first carried. He started away slowly. The fawn stared after him. He came back to it and stroked it and walked away again. It took a few wobbling steps toward him and cried piteously. It was willing to follow him. It belonged to him. It was his own. He was light-headed with his joy.

• Jody: 'Look, Ma, I found him.'
• Ma: 'I see.' LOL.
• Jody: 'Ain't he purty, Ma? Lookit them spots all in rows. Lookit them big eyes. Ain't he purty?'
• Ma: 'He's powerful young. Hit'll take milk for him a long whiles. I don't know as I'd of give my consent, if I'd knowed he was so young.'
• Penny: 'Ory, I got one thing to say, and I'm sayin' it now, and then I'll have no more talk of it. The leetle fawn's as welcome in this house as Jody. It's hissen. We'll raise it without grudgment o' milk or meal. You got me to answer to, do I ever hear you quarrelin' about it. This is Jody's fawn jest like Julia's my dog.'

• When Jody first gives his milk to Flag: The fawn blew and sucked and snorted. It closed its eyes dreamily. It was ecstasy to feel its tongue against his hand.

• When Jody brings Flag inside the cabin after a bear attacks their livestock: Its sharp heels clicked on the wooden floor. Its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace.

• It had to be shut in the shed when the Baxters ate. It butted and bleated and knocked dishes out of their hands. 

• Jody, on his mother: She could not understand how clean the fawn was, and would not admit how sweet it smelled.

• He loved him more than ever, in his sin.

Referents and Reverberations

I suppose some of these aren't surprising, but some of them caught me unawares. The notes reminded me of Joe in Great Expectations (wot larks!), the parental relationships reminded me of the young boy in Winesburg, struggling to connect with his mother, the southern dialects and somewhat mischievous young boy antics reminded me of Huck, and the intensity of the relationship between Flag and Jody reminded me of how important the garden feels to Mary.

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson

Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

Lines I Loved

• The afternoon was alive with a soft stirring.

• He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring.

• A mark was on him from the day's delight.

• He stood now in the close odorous dusk of his store like a captain in the hold of his ship.

• Watchfulness lived sentinel in his brain.

• It was all the better for being secret.

• They had seen marvels, and the older they were, the more marvels they had seen. He felt himself moving into a mystic company.

• They sat smothered under the thick air of sorrow that only the winds of time could blow away.

• Dinner and supper had both been meager and indifferently cooked, as though she took her revenge from behind her own citadel, the cook-pot.

Words That Were New to Me:

clabber - noun - milk that has naturally clotted on souring. verb - curdle or cause to curdle.

feist - a small hunting dog, descended from the terriers brought over to the United States by British miners and other immigrants

fetter-bush - an evergreen shrub, Lyonia lucida, of the heath family, native to the southern U.S., having clusters of fragrant, white flowers

furbelow - noun - a gathered strip or pleated border of a skirt or petticoat. verb - adorn with trimmings.

mumbledepeg - a game in which the players try to flip a knife from various positions so that the blade will stick into the ground

tar-flower - (Bejaria racemosa) a woody evergreen shrub that produces fragrant and showy white to pinkish flowers

Well, blobbers, we've done it! I've cried at least two more times while crafting this, but I have MADE it to the end of this entry. I'll leave you with a few closing lines.

Pa to Jody, on wishing Grandma Hutto really was his grandmother. Folks that seems like kin-folks, is kin-folks. Yes. Folks that seem like kin-folks is kin-folks. Period. Friendfam, foundfam, bosom buds. Kinfolk, all.

He could go neither forward nor back. Something was ended. Nothing was begun. This is how Jody feels at the end of the book, and it feels so relatable.

It was unbelievable, Jody thought. He was wanted. Jody tries to run away after Flag's death, but he gets overwhelmed and frightened, and then begins to worry his parents actually aren't looking for his return. But he finds his father waiting with open arms, and he aches with warmth, knowing he is wanted. 

And so I'll leave you to your beds, dear readers, hoping that you have kin-folk of your own, whether real or imagined, and that you lay your heads on the pillow tonight knowing you are wanted, at least by me. Sweet dreams, keep each other safe, keep passing the open windows, and keep safe. Good night.