Go Set a Watchman

I loved To Kill a Mockingbird even when I "was forced" (not really) to read it in 6th grade (or maybe 7th?) and, to make a conservative guess, I'd say I've probably read it at least 10 times since then. Anyway, I was all kinds of excited about Go Set a Watchman coming out, despite the ethical implications of its publication. I will also immediately read the lost Salinger books if and when they ever come out.

There have been a lot of terrible reviews, which is really pretty ironic because apparently Harper Lee's hatred of the press kept her from further publishing ventures and some reviews have been vicious. Like this rather harsh tweet from Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker said the book was a "failure as a novel."

I'm not even sure 50 Shades of Grey was a "failure as a novel" despite being, you know, what it is.  

So, what's so terrible about this book? It has very little plot structure - basically, a 26 year old Scout returns to Maycomb, Alabama to find that her elderly father spouts racist nonsense about the NAACP and black people not being responsible enough to vote. The Onion summed it up nicely: "Atticus shocks readers as a white man who has become a conservative blowhard with age." Scout sits in the same courthouse where she watched her father defend Tom Robinson, only, now her father and erstwhile boyfriend sit idly by while a racist asshole eggs on the town's menfolk. Jean Louise is naturally distressed to find that her father hero is not the person she thought he was, and then the book becomes a series of conversations in which her boyfriend, uncle and father gently mansplain that their racism is necessary and beneficial.

"Look, honey. Have you ever considered that men, especially men, must conform to certain demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?" Scout's response to this is steady denial, but mostly heartbreak - that the town and people she held dear can hold opinions so different than her own. That's a sentiment that really hit home for me. It's not unusual for me to hear relatives I love saying stupid, racist things when I go home. It's not unusual for my small hometown to be in the news for some idiotic racist act. Those things hurt worse than the acts of casual racism they are, because I feel like I learned some of my core values there - compassion, respect, acceptance. Scout feelings mirror mine: "Everything I have ever taken for right and wrong these people have taught me - these same, these very people."

So while Go Set a Watchman isn't nearly the masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird is, it certainly doesn't fail as a novel - I think it fills a quite useful place as a novel in expressing this, yes, slightly juvenile idea that our heroes have flaws - and that discovering that can be part of growing older and growing wiser. I would have benefited from learning that when I was in 6th or 7th grade but I found it gratifying to read it now.

In The Country of Ice Cream Star

In the Country of Ice Cream Star is one of the best books I've read this year! Even though it's like so many post-apocalyptic novels right now - a young girl in the not-so-distant future battles adversity, etc, it's terribly inventive and original. A plague has wracked the United States, killing a huge majority of people. Little pockets of people remain in this area called "Massa" - all the survivors are black. No one lives for more than 20 or so years. The entire book is written in a kind of patois invented by the author, Sandra Newman. It reads like this:

Fat luck been the story of this year. Snares ever struggling full, and every arrow find a turkey. Any a sleeper street we did maraud, that street did give food. We war like twenty guns, but no one injure. Sling our hammocks in the crowns of sycamores like secret birds, and rest there, chattering and smoking, noses to the stars. Children forgot the taste of hunger and the touch of fear.

The language is beautiful. Sometimes she gets around to explaining what words mean and sometimes you have to just figure it out - I LOVE that. It took me about three times longer to read this book than it normally would have for a book this size, but I loved every minute.

Ice Cream is a girl of about 16 who lives in the woods with a bunch of other children. Nearby live some "Christings", also a group of people that live in an old factory called Lowells, and an army of boys.

Ice Cream's people are called Sengles and they're known for being amusing liars and brave soldiers. "We flee like a dragonfly over water, we fight like 10 guns, and we be bell to see.  Other children go deranged and unpredictable for our love."   Her brother gets sick with the illness that causes people to die at a young age and she is trying to save him.  They find a white "Roo" who claims his people have access to a cure.

I'm going to get slightly spoiler-y below, so stop reading if you don't like surprises.

I got a mad, irrational crush on the NewKing Mamadou, just like Ice Cream. They say hateful things to each other and fight, then have sex in his tent on animal hides kind of like Brad Pitt in Troy? (Or so I imagine.) As king of the armies, Mamadou takes part in this ritual they've created with the Christings where they take one of their women to be a "simper" - basically a harem of women at the mercy of the army boys.  After the ritual turns into a violent abduction, Ice Cream is furious with her sometimes-boyfriend.  Although he doesn't rape the simpers, he gives his tacit agreement to the army boys who do.  Controlling women through rape is a persistent theme in the book and Ice Cream is ever-aware of this threat.

Eventually Ice Cream and the roo, Pasha, make their way to the City of Marias where Ice Cream is convinced to play the role of Maria and Pasha, her white Christ. This part is pretty complicated but really fascinating, especially in terms of race, religion, and policing of virginity.  Based loosely on the tenants of Christianity, it really helped me recognize, in a way I oddly haven't before, how dramatically practices of religion change over time.  Because lifespans are so short, and generations are basically flipping on fast-forward, things change really quickly.

Coincidentally, my friend told me how she was reading Laura Ingall's books to her kids and Laura described a typical Sunday in which they wouldn't so much as ride their horses to church because that was considered breaking the practice of the church so they walked the whole way. That was just a little over 100 years ago but today the only people not flipping on their electricity on the Sabbath are orthodox Jews.

There are a few interesting articles out there on the book worth checking out - also a bit spoiler-y, so wait until you're done reading if you want.

From the NYTimes: a surprisingly negative review that I nevertheless enjoyed reading because of a couple of hilarious zingers, like "It’s not revealing too much to report that the readers most likely to enjoy this novel are those who can tolerate nearly 600 pages of pidgin English and those who are nostalgic for the Cold War." and "At times, this can sound a bit like Jar Jar Binks narrating an audiobook of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road." I really totally disagree with that, but it's still pretty funny.

A great interview with Sandra Newman in the WSJ and and another interview that touches upon her decisions regarding race and her invented patois and also some charming bits about how much she loves the book (she naturally very proud) and also reveals... there's a SEQUEL coming!