RollnSmoke Reviews: By NIghtfall by Michael Cunningham

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

Unlike his heady, popular novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s sixth book offers his readers the chance to eavesdrop on contemporary urbanites entrenched in the daily grind of New York City living. Chelsea Gallery owner and art dealer, Peter Harris, is married, with an uneasy, “diminishing” and grown child living in Boston, and is caught in the throes of angsty middle life. When his much younger, drug addicted brother-in-law – who somehow comes to embody beauty itself – moves in with him and his wife in their Soho loft, Peter’s life is suddenly charged with a deep homo-eroticism that threatens to unfurl the professional and marital life he has so carefully wrought. While the reader may not be convinced of this sudden change in his sexuality, Peter is, and ultimately he feels “stupid and sad and pathetic” for being seduced by a shameless, beautiful boy (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: Tinkers by Paul Harding

Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press, 2009)

The 2009 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Literature and Harding’s debut novel features an old man, George – a collector of old clocks -- who is dying at home, among his family, slipping in and out of consciousness. In the final eight days of his life, his hallucinations fix on memories of his early childhood, especially on his “mad father whom he loved and pitied and adored” who tinkers about New England in a wagon loaded with household goods, who suffers from grand mal epileptic seizures and who disappears one day when George is still a boy. Finally, George’s memories – a respite from his dying -- somehow meld with his father’s memories of his own mentally ill father, and family truths are revealed in the final moments of George’s life. The diction is precise and poetic and the New England landscape is itself a character, the writing like Robert Frost in novel form. The pace is quiet and plodding, requiring a reader’s patience and keen attention (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: FINDING THE CENTER by V.S. Naipaul

Finding the Center: Two Narratives by V.S. Naipaul (Knopf, 1984)

In these two contemplative narratives, Naipual reveals the process of writing as personal exploration. The first and more interesting narrative is an account of his literary beginnings, filled as they were with anxiety and ambition, as the son of a journalist growing up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. The second narrative – regarding a visit to Ivory Coast motivated by its being an “African Success” and influenced by the French -- forwards the notion of Naipaul’s wanderlust as a means of discovering “other states of mind” to further his knowledge of people and the world (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LET'S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME by Gail Caldwell

Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell (Random House, 2010)

Gail Caldwell, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, has written a near-worshipful memoir of her friendship with Caroline Knapp that begins “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.” In a short amount of time, these two well-matched women, each single writers and recovered alcoholics – “the merry recluse and the cheery depressive”-- who live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and love to swim and row on The Charles River and walk their dogs together, develop a deep and trusting bond of need. While contemplative in tone and simple in diction, Caldwell’s narrative at times verges on self-help and ultimately, she doesn’t bring anything truly new to the “old, old story” of loss and grief where, in the wake of Caroline’s tragic death from lung cancer, Caldwell emerges “sober, heartsore and still alive” (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LIT by Mary Karr

Lit by Mary Karr (Harper, 2009)

The third memoir in a fascinating autobiographical trifecta and voted one of last year’s 10 Best Books by the NYT, Lit connects the dots among Mary Karr’s dysfunctional childhood, her struggle with alcoholism and a feral depression, her eventual divorce and her path to prayer and survival. Karr firmly establishes her genius at the genre of memoir by presenting real and self-effacing anecdotes wherein the reader is privy to her reliance on various academic and spiritual mentors, to the essential relationships she builds through therapy and group sessions and to how she copes with the devastating deaths of her eccentric her parents. While the ending is a bit fractured, through self-nurture Karr finally learns to sustain a sober life through prayer. Inspired by her young son, Dev, she finally stops intellectualizing God and jumps into life without self-deceit and with faith entire (9/10).