Novels Now

“Raven is the patron saint of the Tlingit. He’s responsible for bringing the sun and the moon and water and almost everything else, to the earth.” – from Raven Stole the Moon, page 24 of the ARC -

“Do you understand, Ferguson? Raven didn’t just give us the sun, moon, and stars. He had to steal them from someone else.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Stealing is an act of evil. But giving is an act of good. So was Raven good or evil?”
Ferguson felt a little dumb for having to be led to the answer.
“Both.”
“Both. Exactly. You now have a complete understanding of the Tlingit religion.” – from Raven Stole the Moon, page 46 of the ARC -

Jenna Rosen used to have a wonderful life – married to a man she loved, raising a little boy who meant the world to her. But a fateful trip to Thunder Bay, a lavish resort in Alaska, steals away everything. Bobby, Jenna’s five year old son dies in a drowning accident and Jenna feels responsible for his death. Her way of dealing with the guilt is to turn to alcohol and prescription drugs. Her husband, Robert, turns his grief to anger and directs it mostly at Jenna. Two years after Bobby’s death, Jenna  impulsively leaves Robert and boards a ferry from Seattle to a tiny town in Alaska where her grandmother once lived…looking for answers in  the cold and remote wilderness of Alaska.

Jenna’s journey for closure quickly becomes a terrifying ordeal where Jenna must not only sift through the legends and beliefs of her ancestors, but must face the devastation of her marriage.

On its surface, Raven Stole the Moon is a supernatural thriller which brings to life the Tlingit (pronounced Klink-it) legend of the Kushtaka – otter people who steal the souls of the dead. The Kushtaka are shape-shifters who can appear in whatever guise they desire to trick people into going with them. Jenna almost immediately encounters the Kushtaka upon her arrival in Alaska … and Stein amps up the tension and fear, successfully driving the story forward.

But to classify Raven Stole the Moon as just a thriller would be wrong. There are deeper issues embedded in the novel: how does a parent survive the loss of a child? And how does a marriage evolve or devolve in the aftermath of such an event? What role does religious faith play in recovery? How does someone forgive themselves for a tragedy for which they feel responsible? These questions resonate through the story. Jenna appears to have no religious faith until she discovers the religion of the Tlingit which puts her on a pathway to self-discovery and provides closure for the loss of her son. Her journey is not just a physical journey, it is a spiritual one.

As the sky regained its color and the birds awoke, Jenna stood naked before the world, wondering what was real and what was imagined, trying to fathom an absolute truth, a set of values assigned by some kind of higher being that she could live by, a belief system that would give her the answers she wanted and that she could depend on to survive more than a few thousand years. – from Raven Stole the Moon, page 227 of the ARC -

I read this novel in just under three days. The story pulled me in and made me want to continue reading to find the answers. I loved the German Shepherd who makes an appearance as Jenna’s spirit guide. I admit to being terrified at some of the scenes when Jenna was being pursued by the Kushtaka. That said, the writing is not perfect. At times the dialogue felt stilted and I longed for more development of some of the supporting characters. I did not always understand Jenna or her motivations.

Raven Stole the Moon is Garth Stein’s debut novel – released initially 13 years ago, it is now being re-released by Harper Collins after the success of his bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain. I loved The Art of Racing in the Rain which I read last year (read my review). There are many differences between the two novels – perhaps most obvious the level of the writing. Stein has certainly grown as a writer in the 13 years between books. Despite some of the flaws in the prose, Raven Stole the Moon is still a worthwhile read, especially for those interested in Native American legend. The strengths of the book are its engaging storyline and the theme of recovery through spiritual awareness.

California was infinitely far away. California was gone. Even her dreams were shaped by this land – rice paddies stretched flat to the horizon, mountains and jungles, fields of green rice shoots and golden rice harvests like rippling fields of wheat, lead curtains of monsoon rain, bald gaunt hides of water buffalo, and, too, Saigon’s clotted alleyways, the destroyed tree-lined avenues, the bombed-out, flaking, pastel villas, even their small crooked apartment with the peacocks and Buddhas painted on the door. The battered, loving, treacherous people. Her heart’s center, Linh. An undeniable rightness in ending here. - from the ARC of The Lotus Eaters, page 30 -

Helen Adams is an American photojournalist who arrives in Vietnam in 1967 as a scared, inexperienced freelance photographer. A woman reporter in Vietnam is not met with enthusiasm, especially from the men who make up the news corp and the soldiers in the field. Helen is expected to cover the human interest aspects of the Vietnam War, but instead she connects with Sam Darrow – a veteran reporter with a Pulitzer prize under his belt – and convinces him to take her into the field. She continues to position herself for combat coverage even when Darrow no longer seems willing to help her. Eventually, Helen overcomes the doubts of others and secures her place among the men…but there is a price to pay which Helen never anticipated.

The Lotus Eaters is part action-thriller, and part love story as Helen finds herself torn between two men – Sam Darrow (who is most at home in the middle of a war), and Linh (a Vietnamese poet who mourns the loss of his country). It is also a story about identity and love of country, about the horror of war and about what makes us human.

The novel begins in 1975 in Saigon as frightened South Vietnamese citizens and Americans attempt to flee the city in front of the North Vietnamese takeover. Fast-paced, tense and graphic…the first forty pages had me glued to my seat. Soli takes no time to develop a sense of place and history with her characters driving the narrative. I was immediately hooked, and I wanted some back story on Helen and Linh. Soli did not disappoint. She sets the stage, then takes the reader back to the mid-sixties when Helen first arrives in Vietnam. From there, the story moves forward.

Soli writes with authority and takes the reader inside the minds and hearts of her tightly drawn characters. The war scenes, including devastated villages and patrols through the jungle, capture the emotion of war. But, what is remarkable about Soli’s writing in The Lotus Eaters is not the story of war but the story of a country and its people, and the definition of “home.” Despite the burned out fields, Soli manages to also capture the beauty of Vietnam as Helen grows to love the country.

This is what happened when one left one’s home – pieces of oneself scattered all over the world, no one place ever completely satisfied, always a nostalgia for the place left behind. – from the ARC of The Lotus Eaters, page 277 -

This is a mesmerizing novel on all levels. The Lotus Eaters is haunting, evocative and marvelously written. Helen’s growth as a character found me empathizing with her and fearing for her safety. But it was the character of Linh who really captured my heart – a man who loses family and country, and yet still finds the poetry in life.

In case you have not yet figured it out, this is a novel which I can highly recommend…especially for readers interested in the Vietnam War era. Unlike many novels which cover this unpopular war, Soli focuses not on the politics, but on the people most impacted…and it is that which makes The Lotus Eaters unique.

Read a guest post by the author.

I wake up earlier than the others, usually around 5 a.m., to perform the one household duty I have mastered. After posting the morning’s word, emptying the dishwasher, setting the table for the children’s breakfasts, and pouring the MultiGrain Cheerios or Froot Loops or Apple Jacks or Special K or Fruity  Pebbles, I prepare toast. I take out he butter to allow it to soften, and put three slices of Pepperidge Farm Hearty White in the toaster oven. Bubbies and I like plain buttered toast; Sammy prefers it with cinnamon, with the crusts cut off. When the bell rings, I shift the slices from the toaster to plates, and butter them.

Harris usually spends half the night in Bubbie’s little bed. When I go upstairs, around 6 a.m., Bubbies hesitates, but I give him a knowing look and he opens his arms to me. “Toast?” he says. - from Making Toast, page 17 of the ARC -

Roger Rosenblatt’s 38 year old daughter Amy – a pediatrician, wife and mother of three very young children – had a heart defect which went undiagnosed until it took her life, suddenly and unexpectedly, just weeks before Christmas in 2007. Rosenblatt and his wife Ginny responded in the only way they knew how – they packed up their things and rushed to Maryland to help their son-in-law Harris raise their grandchildren. Making Toast is Rosenblatt’s memoir of the weeks and months following Amy’s death as the family struggles to make sense of their loss while moving steadily through the daily events of a life which continues without her.

Written in a series of vignettes rather than a straight forward narration, the book is non-linear in nature. At first, I didn’t like this scattershot approach which seemed to keep emotion slightly distant. It felt disconnected to me. But, as I continued to read, the style began to make sense. For what is grief but memories of the brief slices of a life lived? What is recovery if not the simple act of getting up each day and sharing another person’s life? How do we see hope for the future except through the eyes of our children or grandchildren? For Rosenblatt, who clung to his anger against God and the fact that his only daughter had died from something which affects ‘less than two thousandths of one percent of the population,’ his one consolation was that he was doing what Amy would have him do – caring for her family.

Making Toast is heartbreaking, and yet its sadness is fleeting. I found myself laughing at the simple, every day moments which Rosenblatt shares. I found myself marveling at the depth of love that he and his wife had for not only their grandchildren, but Amy’s husband Harris. The human spirit is nothing but resilient in the face of tragedy – and yet it is still amazing to see it in practice.

Rosenblatt shares his grief without telling us outright that he is grieving. Time after time he declines to listen to Amy’s voice on a telephone answering machine, so when her recorded words show up in the narration toward the end of the book, we feel Rosenblatt’s pain. This is Rosenblatt’s style – to show us moments which transcend words.

Making Toast is about patience, love, faith (and the lack of it), grief, and the slow, torturous process of recovery. But perhaps it is mostly about what it means to be a family. Rosenblatt’s simple prose and his matter-of-fact presentation is surprisingly moving in the context of the story. It is a beautiful tribute to a daughter.

Highly recommended.

Amazon info

He first came to the Iris one day just before the beginning of the summer season.

I was really excited when I received Hotel Iris from Picador in the mail. I hadn’t requested it, but because I loved The Housekeeper and the Professor so much last year, I knew I would want to read this one. The problem was, though, that I didn’t know what it was about. It has a very different ‘love story’ — one that didn’t appeal to me at all.

Mari is a seventeen year old girl working at the front desk of her mother’s hotel when she meets a middle aged man whose voice and manner intrigue her. As they get to know each other, it leads to a sexual relationship involving SM. It wasn’t extremely graphic, but still just not my cup of tea nonetheless.

I still enjoy Ogawa’s writing style and the translation was great, but I just didn’t like the subject matter so unfortunately I was extremely disappointed. However, I’d still read another Ogawa novel — I just would learn more about the storyline first.

1996, 2010 for the English translation; 164 pp.