Like gentle flower
Unfurling in the morning,
Slowly waits the sun.
2007 Pulitzer: The Road is realistic rendition of a common nightmare
McCarthy, Cormac.(2006). The Road. New York: Knopf.
2007 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction
Everything in The Road is reduced to the minimum; the language and writing style are stripped along with the lives of the characters. No linguistic decoration or extraneous description, luxury or sense of comfort. No neat tidy chapters or markers to tell us where we are in the book. No names for the characters.
What happens because of this is that we, like the characters, are forced with an immediacy, an identification with the events and the people. This immediacy creates a strong identification with the characters, and of all the apocalyptic and disaster novels and books in recent memory, this one comes closest to revealing the core of the human spirit. The essence of why life is worth living. Cormac McCarthy creates a poetic rhythm that shows how beautiful language can be used for unbeautiful experiences. W.B. Yeats phrase ” a terrible beauty” comes to mind. And yet the book leaves the reader with an oddly positive view of human nature.
Brian’s Chicken Salad
5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sour cream (or omit and make it ¾ cup mayo)
2 stalks celery, diced small
½ red or green bell pepper, diced small
1 small carrot, diced small
1 cup seedless grapes, cut in half
¼ cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
1 Tablespoon chopped parsley
¼ teaspoon paprika
- Cook Chicken: Preheat oven to 400. Place chicken breasts on a sheet pan, coat both sides with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until chicken is cooked through but not dried out (165 degrees), about 20-25 minutes.
- Cool breasts. The chicken can be cooked a day ahead and refrigerated.
- Cut cooled/chilled chicken into ¾ inch dice, or shred.
- Place chicken in a large bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix Well.
- Refrigerate mixed salad for at least 1 hour (up to 24 hours) before serving to allow the flavors to combine.
- Serve on rolls or bread with salad greens and thin cucumber slices.
The Piano Teacher Shows Reality of War, Human Nature
Lee, Janice, Y.K. (2009). The Piano Teacher: a novel. Viking Adult. ISBN: 9780670020485
A story about Hong Kong during World War II and after, it blends historical fiction, mystery and extreme realism as easily and successfully as it blends time and cultures. The contrasts of privileged society and the too painful realities of war– both experienced by the same characters– makes this a novel that is difficult to put down and painful to read at the same time. Everyone (Chinese, British, American, Japanese) and everything (circumstances, relationships, intentions) is clouded and nothing is truly clear until the very end. A well-crafted story by a writer who, in her first novel, has mastered contemporary narrative structure and who also has conveyed a sense of human nature.
This is done by telling a story in a place that is a collusion of cultures and traditions, in a time when that place is upset by the extreme unrest of wartime. This brilliant combination enhances and strengthens the real nature of the characters.
2009 Pulitzer: Olive Kitteridge a study in loneliness and humanity
Strout, Elizabeth (2008). Olive Kitteridge: Fiction. New York: Random House. ISBN: 9781400062089 - 2009 Pulitzer Prize, Fiction
- The most striking this about this novel is its structure: it is a landscape novel with the title character as a running theme or motif as a constant among thirteen stories. This landscape is lonely; each character essentially lives life within him or herself, despite living in a close, small Maine community. The narrative voice is strangely detached, heightening the sense that the characters are separate from one another. The reader is therefore kept at an emotional distance. Death is a frequent visitor to the characters, and marriages are presented as mostly contentious and negative.
- A nonlinear, nonchronological narrative structure must be built with extra care so as not to confuse the reader. Strout reveals this as the greatest strength of this work: by keeping the narrative voice simple and clear, she avoids the complexity trap that has befallen so many experimental storytellers. Jumps in time are kept to a manageable number, and are cleverly elucidated.
- Of all of the different interpretations of loss and pain that are portrayed, it its Olive Kitteridge herself that, surprisingly, emerges as the most whole. The reader encounters different views of her from various perspectives as other characters give their views of her. We see her argue with her husband, son, and commit childish acts. But it is the revelation of who she is that adds depth and push to stories that otherwise would have a tendency to get sleepy. Olive is the type of character that leaves an impact far greater than her personality or actions might suggest.
- The mature, embittered woman encountered early on becomes more so by the end, only the reader comes to understand Olive better by seeing different angles of who she is. Elizabeth Strout achieves the coveted feat of making us like an unlikable character , mainly by showing that Olive Kitteridge is human just like we are.
All the Living a Haunting, Melancholy Novel
Morgan, C.E. (2009). All the Living, a novel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN: 9780374103620
A young woman from poverty in the rural south goes to live with her lover on his farm after his entire family is killed in an accident. A story rich with details of people acting, living and thinking by themselves and yet forced to relate to one another.
Much has been made about this being C.E. Morgan’s first novel, and rightly so, because their is a depth of feeling, a wealth of human experience captured just so in the language. The author has a special gift for crafting a story; she reveals the exposition cautiously but with just the right intriguing pace. She doesn’t overstate, she lets the images do much of the work in telling the story.
One of those recurring images is sex, presenting here in a raw form. Aloma and Orren’s sexual relationship shows the powerful human need for sex and also the ways sex can be used as a tool. It is refreshing to see a female character honestly, directly face her sexual nature, but it comes off as sort of passively accepting what he world brings instead of taking ownership of the experience. The choices the characters make, not just sexually, affect not only themselves but others, and yet the characters seem so often pulled along by fate.
As beautifully written as the book is, it is a heartbreaking tale of people who do not know how to relate to one another. Aloma, the lead female character, blindly accepts conventional female roles, puts her own dreams of accomplishment last, and seems to value her partner primarily through sex. It sin’t that this isn’t realistically portrayed, but that it is profoundly sad. Again, though, it is a magnificently constructed novel in that it shows this sadness, these situations the characters are in, and it doesn’t try to judge or make tidy solutions. The reader can think about the story, and this is one story that promises to stay with the reader long after the book has been put down.