MarysLibrary

Buff Orpington Winner - The Orchardist vs A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

 

 

Judge: Dave Irwin

Amanda Coplin: The Orchardist

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Anthony Marra: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“The Orchardist”by Amanda Coplin and “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” by Anthony Marra share certain similarities, but are vastly different works.  Both are debut novels by their respective authors.  Both focus on family, showcasing strong, vivid characters.  In their differences, however, “The Orchardist,” is a skillfully crafted, plain-spoken quilt of family history, while “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” is more a rich tapestry of struggle.

“The Orchardist” is a Bildungsroman, following Talmadge, its simple apple-growing protagonist, from childhood in mid 19^th Century Oregon to his death in old age.  It then extends slightly to close out the stories of his found family into the next generation.   Though not a traditional Western, there are cowboys and Indians, horses, and a celebration of pastoralism and rugged individualism.

A poster child for Stoicism, Talmadge endures the loss of his natural family, the serendipitous acquisition of a found family, and the tragedies that ensure, mostly in silence, with only small gestures to illuminate whatever inner turmoil he feels.   His found family includes a deeply damaged young woman, Della, and her niece, the innocent Angelene.

“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” blends elements of picaresque and historical novels.  It is set in Chechnya during the late 20^th Century and early 21^st Century and its wars between Muslim separatists and Russia. 

However, the brutal guerrilla conflict is merely the harsh, unyielding backdrop.  The story takes place mostly in a traditional village, its life poisoned by an informer, and the shell of a nearby hospital, struggling to survive the carnage while still fulfilling its mission.  Akhmed is a country doctor who would rather have been an artist; Sonja is a deeply flawed but highly skilled surgeon.  Between them is Havaa, an orphan wanted by the Russians for reasons that are only slowly revealed.

As the story progresses, we come to understand how Akhmed, Sonja and Havaa, seemingly thrown together, are actually intertwined in ways which they themselves do not understand.  Ultimately, we track Havaa from birth to death, through a decidedly non-linear narrative with frequent flashbacks and, interestingly, flash-forwards.

“The Orchardist” adopts an even-tempered, almost Hemingway-esque plainness in tone and language which it rigidly maintains.  Its few exceptions, notably a brief diatribe against the media, are jarring, and unfortunately take the reader out of the story.  Coplin frequently uses a form of negation, e.g. ‘Talmadge did not think this nor think that,’ then sums up what was actually felt or thought with a general noun.  This encourages a kind of non-specific empathy with the characters that on closer examination is somewhat frustrating, as the characters' inner lives consist of only primary colors with little shading or nuance.

“A Constellation” has a more florid tone, opening with an almost surreal scene and encompassing a range that includes tragedy, satire and a large dollop of absurdism.  It characters are richly detailed and emotionally engaging.

Between the two, “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” is the more interestingly constructed novel for how it interweaves the lives of its characters into a compelling narrative.   While a more straight-forward narrative for its uncomplicated and unlikely protagonist, the plot twists and turns of “The Orchardist” are sometimes so jarring as to reveal the guiding hand of its author.  

“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” has no such missteps.  Marra does an exceptional job of moving the story forward while doling out information in a way that continually forces the reader to reassess the story and its characters.  In particular, his use of the flash-forward, unambiguously revealing what will happen to a character in the future, is a brilliant way to create tension.  Used sparingly at first, then more frequently as the story progresses to its conclusion, the technique is enlightening, even when the information reveals heartbreaking outcomes. 

Ultimately, “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” is the more skillful, engaging and satisfying novel of the two contenders.  While acknowledging the strength and accomplishment of “The Orchardist,” Anthony Marra’s “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” is this year’s winner of the Buff Orpington Prize.

Buff Orpington - We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves vs A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

 

 

Judge: Charlotte Hegwer

Karen Joy Fowler: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

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Anthony Marra: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

The two books I actually and totally read are A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

Marra and Fowler are both located in California,  Marra in Palo Alto and Fowler in Santa Cruz, both in very liberal political areas.  This was Marra’s first published novel and Fowler’s published fifth novel  and third story.  Both books are realistic fiction and have a theme of rights: human and animal. 

A Constellation of Vital Phenomenais set in Chechnya during the 1990’s, a federal state of Russia and tells the story of a under-qualified village doctor (Akhmed) and Sonja a brilliant doctor who runs a hospital with no amenities or supplies during the war years.  The reader learns about the people in the village and hospital through Marra’s brilliant use of present, past and future in sentences and short paragraphs. Medical terminology is also incorporated.  Akhmed, a caring individual, is also a talented artist who is able to draw the individuals in the village and those whom he has treated.  Sonia is a skilled and resourceful ethnic Russian who tries unsuccessfully to be unfeeling.  Without giving the story away, this book leaves the reader with an uplifted feeling that all will work in the end.

We Are all Completely Beside Ourselves takes place during the 1970’s. The story is about the Cooke Family and is narrated by Rosie. This book is funny at times but profoundly sad. This is a heart retching book about a dysfunctional family and what happens when a family cross fosters a chimp.  Beware of reading this book as animal rights are heavily covered as well as the groups working to protect animal rights. 

Both books deal with terrible loss, but I found Marra’s book uplifting and Fowler’s book profoundly sad and depressing.

I choose A Constellation of Vital Phenomena because there can be a future even among suffering and turmoil.  I did not find these attributes in We are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

Buff Orpington - The Goldfinch vs The Orchardist

 

We have reached the semifinals. Today and tomorrow our judges will be choosing which of the final four will go on to the championship.

Judge: Bobby Lee Eason - Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch vs Amanda Coplin: The Orchardist

Criteria for Determining the Winning Book

As a reviewer/judge of the worthiness of either Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist or Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch to continue to the finals of the Buff Orpington 2013 excellence in literary fiction contest, a notion of what criteria should be used to determine a winner seems appropriate and necessary. In this regards, reading reviews of the worthy fowl from which we have drawn our name is helpful.

Firstly, the Buff Orpington (Buff) breed has the correct color, the color of pure gold. The winning book should be like that, a book of great value and high quality, a book for the ages. Secondly, the Buff is a large stately bird: “Easy to dress for the table, plump, and juicy.” Similarly, our finalist must be a book that brings joy to the reader, easy to digest, a treat for having read it. Thirdly, the Buff is said to be a “hearty, friendly bird,” the hen a good mother and layer, the rooster “good to his hens, protective, but not aggressive toward people.” Finally, the Buff hen is known for her beautiful and plentiful “brown eggs,” her art and her production.

Analysis and Declaration

Coplin’s The Orchardist and Tartt’s The Goldfinch will be reviewed in juxtaposition. Both deserve to be semifinalists. Each book provided multiple themes. Common to both were well developed themes of love and friendship. But the tones of the books were significantly different in that The Goldfinch focused on darker themes including despair, greed, and deception while The Orchardist focused on themes related to support, forgiveness, and hope. There were ample themes of darkness in The Orchardist as well (sorrow, catastrophe, despair, loneliness, jealousy, and panic), but the tone was one of hope as opposed to darkness.

The strength of Tartt’s The Goldfinch was the way she chronicled the condition of human life today. The lengthy book features rich authorial intrusions about the “rich and famous” and the underbelly of the “new world order” of the 21st century. The world is linked and Tartt captured its interconnectedness. Coplin’s strength in The Orchardist is in a story well told. She cleverly demonstrated how many of today’s social problems were 19th century problems also. Using the advantage of third person narrative, she drew powerful characterizations. Also, without maudlin emotionalism, The Orchardist was a celebration of humanity.

While Tartt’s first person narrative style was not as conducive for character development, she splendidly navigated the Russian character Boris’ clipped English accent without the reader’s clinched teeth that often comes with narrative accents. Boris, lifelong friend of the protagonist and narrator Theo, is a brilliant sociopathic murderer, liar, thief, and drug dealer; but, still we like him. Coplin’s strongest character was Caroline Middey, and the book’s moral center. Middey is a herbalist, a midwife, a nurse, a psychologist, and a best friend to most of the book’s main character. Yet, she made mistakes and owned them. Coplin’s other great character was the troubled Della, a child prostitute although rehabilitated, could never be freed from her childhood trauma.

Both Tartt and Coplin can challenge with sophisticated word usage. Also both employed a tricky structural style of time and space travel, of fast forwarding or backward as the plot dictated.
Both authors in terms of writing are relatively young and inexperienced, The Orchardist is Coplin’s first book, and The Goldfinch, Tartt’s third and first after an eleven year absence. And although both have received numerous writer awards for their respective books, there are weaknesses. Coplin’s time/space strategy while interesting, produced an uneven structure. Sometimes the reader wasn’t sure of the period of the year, or the place of the action being described. One important early character, the protagonist’s sister (Elsbeth), just dropped out of the narrative. Somehow she was either kidnapped, murdered, or became a run-a-way. Human trafficking is a modern problem but existed in the 19th century as well. Coplin hinted that Elsbeth might have been snared into the trap of human bondage; even that she might have become ‘Ellie’ a proprietor of one of the prostitution houses. The reader deserved to know more of her fate. And as readable and with her rich characterizations, the plot was a weakness. The Orchardist read as much like a memoir as a novel.
Tartt’s weaknesses were aggravated by the book’s heft and length. Her authorial intrusions while interesting were too frequent and too long; they were distracting and often irrelevant. Her pages on NYC art museums would have done a docent proud. In like manner we learned about the ins and outs of NYC high society; of the furniture/antique scams and glories; of the rampant sex and drug use in U.S. high schools; of insider gangster planning and sensibilities; and of the intricacies of drug and alcohol dependency.

Both books utilized what some might call post modern book endings—ambiguous, no neatly tied up conclusions. Of the two, Tartt’s book suffered most by her unrealistic ending. Her protagonist Theo is likable enough but he is a bad guy and was throughout. But in the end, Tartt gave his fate a “no decision.” He is not overtly punished. Like Job, his wealth is restored, his fiancé comes back, his friends forgive him; but inside he is still insecure, troubled, and a mental cripple.

And The Winner Is?

The Buff Orpington 2014 finalist by the thinnest of margins is the long shot, Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist. Coplin was the better storyteller, was able to hold interest without aggravation. Through her narrative’s Buff Orpington golden style, her characters stayed true to form. She had the right mixture of themes featuring both hope and despair. Thus, her book more fully advanced the humanity of people as well as the art of literature. And like a strutting Buff rooster, The Orchardist had greater fidelity, a book that could be unconditionally recommended to friend or family. And like a proud Buff hen, in the end her book had better and more creative golden brown eggs.

Buff Orpington - The Woman Upstairs vs A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

 

   

Judge: Kim Barton

Claire Messud: The Woman Upstairs

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Anthony Marra: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

I don’t normally read books about war.  I find they make me despair and feel hopeless about the human condition.  Plus, I dislike reading about the atrocities of war.

That being said, I thought A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was a brilliant book.  It takes place in Chechnya during the first and second wars and then afterward during the peace.  Somehow, in the midst of a story that does not end well for everyone, Marra still keeps me feeling hopeful.  The characters are survivors and life must go on.   

Marra did a masterful job of picking up the threads of the lives of seven people.  We meet each character individually and then he slowly reveals how they have all connected with each other, even if they never know the connection existed.  He does this by jumping from character to character and back and forth in time.  At times it could be a little confusing, but it was worth it in the end when all of the connections are revealed. 

He explores the relationship between sisters, father and son, father and daughter, husband and wife, and between friends—all put under extreme pressure because of the wars.  All of the characters can be seen as a constellation and their common star is a young girl who has to flee for her life at the beginning of the novel.  

The writing was beautiful as well, lyrical and moving.

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

I was disappointed in The Woman Upstairs.  Although Messud can turn a beautiful phrase, the book lacked a compelling plot or interesting characters.  The main character, Nora, is a middle-aged woman at the time she is narrating the story.  She feels herself to be a “woman upstairs”, which in her view is a woman who never does anything exciting or interesting.  The woman upstairs is the devoted wife, mother, and friend who subsumes herself in the lives of those around her.  Nora is a third grade school teacher and artist, although she does not show or sell her art, because she does not feel it is worthy.  The real story begins when a new boy shows up to her class and she falls in love with him, his mother Sirena, and his father, Skandar.  Nora feels like this family exemplifies what it means to be fully alive and she starts to feel more alive when she is with them. 

I found Nora to be an unlikable character.  The other characters were not very believable, or particularly likeable, either.  The only character even remotely sympathetic was the little boy, Reza.  Nora spends too much time bemoaning her existence as the woman upstairs, and projecting her unhappiness onto other women, most notably her deceased mother.  Nora remembers her mother as a woman trapped by her middle-class, homemaker existence, and lacking any control over her life.  But, according to Nora's mother, she was happy and living the life she wanted to lead.  Nora's father told her that her mother held all the control in the family.  Nora refuses to believe either of her parents and goes on to assign to her mother Nora's own unhappiness and feelings of being trapped in a life not of one's choosing.

If Nora had ever made an effort to step outside of that box she sees herself in, I would have liked her better.  But she doesn't.  All through the book she complains about the smallness of her life.  Even when coming into an inheritance and traveling to Europe, she still clings to her unhappiness and doesn't live the life she thinks she wants.

Nora places all of her hopes and dreams onto the Shahid family.  When they enter her life she feels they will shake it up, and they do, but only because she is completely obsessed by all three of them.  Nora thinks she is living a more full life, but in essence, she is living in the shadow of this family.  She cannot even recognize that while they cast enormous shadows on her world, she does not affect them much at all.  When they leave town and move back to their home in Paris, Nora continues to obsess over them for two years.  Even at the end, when Nora becomes aware of a betrayal, her rage is still all about the Shahids.  She can't even own her own rage.

I appreciated that Messud wanted to explore the role of women in this novel.  I like the idea of the “woman upstairs” as a kind of everywoman, all of the women who are voiceless in society.  I also like the use of art to show the difference between Nora and Sirena.  Sirena's art is big, taking up an entire studio, where Nora's art is confined to little boxes and miniatures.  Sirena's art is creative and personal, where Nora's art is creating replicas of the rooms of unhappy female writers and poets.

But all of this was not enough to be compelling.  There was entirely too much literary navel-gazing.  Nora went on and on about her unhappiness and feeling like she lived in a cage.  She never changed emotionally.  The big reveal and surprise at the end was completely unsatisfying.  It ends with Nora's rage, but the rage seems unjustified and out of proportion to her character.  The rage seems no different than her general malaise, and it remains all about the Shahid family.

I've always believed that it's acceptable to have a protagonist who is unlikeable.  However, she still has to be interesting.  Nora is neither likeable nor interesting.  I was glad when I finished the book and could get out of her head.   

The winner is A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.

Buff Orpington - We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves vs Ordinary Grace

 

Judge: Bronwyn DiPeri

Karen Joy Fowler: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

vs

William Kent Krueger: Ordinary Grace

In round 2 (Quarterfinals) of the 2014 Buff Orpington Book Tournament, I read Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. Both are stories about families devastated by loss; loss that is set in motion in large part by some very human naïveté. Both are told by compelling narrators; both utilize a powerful command of language and its rhythms.

Krueger’s has the breathy run-on sentences of a young teenager, lending the story a necessary ominousness. He rarely uses commas, yet many of his sentences are so perfectly executed they felt like a punch in the gut: “Redstone swung his dark eyes back to my face and there was in them at last something that I understood and that to this day makes me ashamed.” This book is a compelling read, and well worth the time.

Fowler’s book, however, takes family loss several levels deeper with an unusual twist of science. We learn how human children develop theory of mind, how all humans can work within several levels of embedded mental states – this is how socialization binds us. The science is, of course, fascinating to anyone interested in how humans work (and most of us fiction readers are), but at the center of it all is this one family: a mother, a father, a brother, and the twins Rosemary and Fern. It is Rosemary who tells the story, telescoping in and out of certain key moments from the past, the present, even the future. It is Rosemary and Fern who are badly wronged, from many directions. This story is extraordinary, not only for its twists, but for its beautiful exposure of the very human need for love and acceptance.

It is Fowler’s book, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, that wins this round and moves on to the Semi-Finals.

Enjoy the reading!

Bronwyn Jaya DiPeri, M.F.A.

Buff Orpington - The Golem and the Jinni vs The Orchardist

 

 

Judge: Ann Stetson

Helene  Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni

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Amanda Coplin: The Orchardist

We all read for different reasons. And for some people, the book I chose, “The Orchardist” is not going to be one that would usually make it onto their personal short list.

This is not the warm happy curl up on the sofa during a blizzard and enjoy easy goings sort of a book. Maeve Binchy, Debbie Macomber and Nicholas Sparks lovers may not enjoy this book. Amanda Coplin has created a world where child prostitutes are desperate to commit suicide, rather than return to their crazed and abusive pimp, and where there is no good resolution that in the end that will create a world of happily ever after. There’s only the land and tough decisions, and a girl who grow up to be a hard, enduring adult, flawed and not to be saved.

This is a long, tough, not easy to stomach novel. I suspect some people might pick it up, and not want to delve too deeply into it. There are two main characters in this novel: the land and the abuse that humans can endure in a life. American novelists have used the land as a character in the past, with Steinbeck instantly coming to my mind. But Steinbeck, for all that he could write about tough awful situations, did not get to the core of abuse in the way that Coplin does. Part of that may be that this is her first novel and she’s out there running wild, since she had nothing to lose. But part of that may be the times that the two of them are writing in. In the early 21^st century , women can take on ugly topics, and wrap them up in apple trees and apricot harvests, putting a thin veneer of beauty onto something that is at its root, the ugliest thing possible.

Now, why did I pick this book? Because it is one of the best descriptions of “Place” that I have read in a long time. Coplin harks back to a time where people didn’t have movies and television as their go-to for “what does the world look like”. She takes places and fully fleshes them out, so you feel like you could go to this world and make your way around like a native.

She also writes about something that is tough to stomach and that is often ignored, or hidden in over the top prose. Her writing is sparse, but to the point. You know what has happened to the two girls that Talmadge finds in his orchard, even if you are pulling together the pieces bit by bit.

It is an unusual book that way: people read for entertainment or to learn about something. Entertainment is often thought to mean at worse, that there is a chance that the protagonist might not get the man of her dreams. If a book is drama, there is still beauty in it, or something loved. The only beauty in this book is the land, and if you are not into Steinbeck or Falkneresque descriptions of place, this may not be for you…especially coupled as it is with so many damaged and abused people, leading limited and at times horrific lives.

I should have liked “The Golem and the Jinni” more perhaps. And it’s on my list of “books to go back and see if I change my mind about”.  I think one reason why I liked “The Orchardist” as much as I did is that it was a great example of, “I didn’t see THAT one coming”. It is so “other” and unexpected that it was a wonderful read.

But I will caution you: the abuse of young girls may be more than some readers want to think about, and given that this is an almost 500 page novel, you will be with them for quite some time. In that case, “The Golem and the Jinni” may be a more well received read, although that one clocks in at more than 800 pages…choose wisely my fellow readers!!

Buff Orpington - The Goldfinch vs Sparta

 

Judge: Nancy Vieira Couto

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

 vs

Roxanna Robinson, Sparta

 One was successful and one was flawed.  One delivered what it promised, and one promised more than it could deliver.  In the end the decision was easy.

What I liked about Roxana Robinson’s Sparta is that it accomplished what it set out to do, which was to make a quiet statement about the plight of war veterans dealing with PTSD and struggling to take back their normal lives.  The novel was well written, although it was not gracefully written and there was much I didn’t like about the writing style.  For starters, I didn’t like all the short, choppy sentences.  I realize that Robinson was probably trying to reproduce the disjointed thought patterns in the main character’s mind, and the sentences did get longer as the book progressed.  But sometimes I felt as if I were reading a hybrid of Hemingway and Fun With Dick and Jane.  I didn’t like the predictability of the book’s trajectory, chapters ending with flashbacks to the Iraq experiences, and later chapters ending with flare-ups and loss of control.  I wanted not to know how each chapter was going to end, but in fact almost every chapter started well and ended badly.  I was particularly annoyed with the way in which Robinson introduced new characters, almost always with a description of what the character was wearing.  That’s the stuff of bad genre fiction.

Strangely, as I was reading Sparta I kept thinking about a novel I had read a number of years earlier, Buffalo Afternoon, by Susan Fromberg Shaeffer.  Shaeffer’s 1989 novel tells a similar story, although it is set in the time of the Vietnam War, and I remember liking it and being impressed particularly with the Vietnam scenes.  Maybe I would read it differently today, but I liked it.  I admired aspects of Sparta, but I have to admit I didn’t like it.  As I approached the end of the novel, I knew it would either end well or end badly, and the truth was that I didn’t even care.

Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch was, in my opinion, flawed, and there was a lot I didn’t like about that one, too.  If Robinson’s novel was a mix of Hemingway, first-grade reader, and genre fiction, Tartt’s was leaning towards Dickens and Mozart (too many notes!).  I found the first chapter particularly irritating, although it did set in motion most of what happened later in the book.  But I didn’t come away with a feeling that the boy and his mother were particularly close.  In fact, I think she was a bad mother, because, since the first rule of motherhood is “Feed your kid,” she ought to have fed him on that fateful morning.  I also question Tartt’s decision to use a first-person narrator.  The narrative voice gets better as Theo gets older, but the thirteen-year-old voice came across, to me at least, as inauthentic.  Sometimes Theo seemed to think like a middle-aged woman.  I don’t think most young boys use terms like “lemon zesters” and “majolica” and most of them can’t tell a Staffordshire dog from a tree.  OK, he’s a New York kid, a sophisticated kid, and he might know “lemon zester" or “majolica,” but I don’t think he would know both.  Also, to get back to the Mozart comparison, I think The Goldfinch was way longer than it needed to be.  At times I felt I was reading somebody’s diary.  (Turns out I was, in a sense.)  Tartt ought to have cut her manuscript by about a third, I think.  On the other hand, she certainly has stamina.

I liked The Goldfinch best when it was most Dickensian—the scenes in the antique store, for example, and the characters of Hobie and Pippa and Welty, although we didn’t see much of Welty.  Even Boris could have been created by Dickens, although Dickens might have toned down his vocabulary a bit.  Xandra and the Barbours, particularly Mrs. Barbour, are also wonderful creations.  Whether she learned from Dickens or not, Tartt knows how to breathe life into her characters, and each one of them, even those that are larger than life, is unique, plausible, and unforgettable.  This is her strength as a writer.

Tartt has a graceful writing style, and the final section of the book is especially beautifully written.  I’m not convinced that the preceding sections, chapters, and parts really merited the meditative ending, but gee, it was really time to pull in all the loose ends and finish the book on a philosophic note. 

The Goldfinch is not a perfect book.  I wish it were, but it isn’t.  But its author gets points for ambition, character development, and writing style.  I did find the narrative tedious at times, but I never found it predictable.  I doubt that it is the best book published in 2013, but it easily outraces Sparta.

The winner:   Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

Buff Orpington - A Constellation of Vital Phenomena vs Someone

 

   

Judge: Pamela Thomas

Anthony Marra: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

vs

Alice McDermott: Someone

Someone by Alice McDermott

Someone is the scattered recollections of Marie, an unremarkable Brooklyn girl age 7 waiting on the doorstep for her father when the story opens.  She is keenly aware of being plain and wearing glasses.  Marie sabotages her mother’s efforts to teach her to cook by sneaking four times the specified amount of baking soda into the soda bread.  We assume it is because she doesn’t want to have to cook for the household, but later in life she reveals she thought if she learned to cook her mother would die. When as a young woman she is rejected by her first suitor she wonders who will love her. Her brother Gabe’s answer, “Someone. Someone will.” 

McDermott weaves this poignant story from the heart about ordinary people dealing with the great issues of ordinary life from childhood, sexual awakening, parenting, and the losses of death – the type of lives we all live. It is difficult to put the book down because Marie’s family and their gradually unfolding struggles and joys are so much like those of all of us and the someones in our lives.  She’s everyman’s Shakespeare of the human condition.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena  is the tragic and moving story of the war-torn lives of the Chechen people and their small Muslim village of Eldar. It’s a sort of primer of Chechen history as well as a tribute to the human spirit sprinkled with occasional bits of humor and joy.  The novel takes place over 11 years and time shifts back and forth through the destruction of the village and the disappearance of many of its inhabitants. There is no hope apparently.

The village informant Ramzan picks off his friends and neighbors one by one – to be carried away to the Land Pit, where they are tortured in barely imaginable ways.  And yet Marra shows us how torture can turn perhaps most of us into informants.  Ramzzan’s neigbor Dokka is arrested – his second arrest. The first time he was arrested all of his fingers were cut off. This time his house is burned, and he’s obviously not coming home.  Dokka’s eight-year-old daughter Haava escapes by following her father’s instructions – she flees with a previously packed small suitcase of treasures and hides in the woods. The village doctor, who claims to be the worst doctor in Chechnya (he wanted to be an artist), takes Haava to the hospital in a nearby town in hopes that the doctor there, Sonja, will hide her and care for her. He knows of Sonja because he saw some of her work – a seriously injured refugee stitched up meticulously with dental floss when there were no other supplies available. Sonja is hard and exhausted, running the hospital with virtually no help and constantly searching for her sister Natasha who reappears and disappears again.  

Sonja’s medical textbook defines life as “a constellation of vital phenomena – organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.” And that is the life of these heroic people who are determined to find meaning and ways to survive in a not survivable time. Constellation is a reverent tribute to the human spirit and a remarkable work by first-time author Marra.

THE WINNER

On the surface there doesn’t seem likely to be two books more dissimilar than Alice McDermott’s Someone and Anthony Marra’s  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.  Someone is a small book about ordinary lives where nothing much happens  day to day. Constellation  is a giant canvas depicting the bleak and desperate lives of war-torn Chechens.  And yet both focus with laser intensity and compassion on the human condition. Reviewer Roxanna Robinson said that McDermott “bears compassionate witness to what it is to be alive, in this place, this time.  We need to know about other lives: This kind of knowledge expands our understanding, it enlarges our souls.”   Marra too bears compassionate witness in the more painful environment of war and devastation. 

The winner: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by a hair. Both are important books, beautifully crafted, with lessons to teach us about our own lives. I chose Constellation because of its scope in opening up the history of Chechnya and because it is an amazing work by a first-time author. Read them both, you won’t regret it!

Buff Orpington - My Notorious Life vs The Woman Upstairs

 

       

Judge: Frandy Garrett

Kate Manning: My Notorious Life

vs

Claire Messud: The Woman Upstairs

My Notorious Life by Kate Manning

Having had time to ponder this work of historical fiction, its result is that this story resonates far beyond the page. Manning has an uncanny way of bringing the reader into the story and not letting them get out of her sight. The characters are well defined and solid, excellent in their development. She also is extremely talented in her ability to capture time and place, whether it be the squalor of Irish tenements and the elite hoi ploy of the late nineteenth century New York City or the frontier of the Midwest.

Our plucky heroine, Axie “Ann” Muldoon leads us through the many phases of her multi-faceted life with a genuine concern for her success in every situation she finds herself. The child of Irish immigrants in New York City, her father dies early in her childhood and leaves her ill-prepared mother to raise her three children alone. As luck would have it, the mother’s arm is severely wounded while doing laundress duties. Soon after the accident, a man appears on the scene claiming great concern for the children and their mother.  For their supposed welfare, the mother is coerced into signing over her parental rights to him as she is being hospitalized for the removal of her injured arm. The children soon find themselves in an orphanage and later on board a train bound for the farmland of rural Illinois. There, they are to be parceled off along with many other children to families destined for manual labor in some cases and in others as “longed-for” children. Axie is the oldest of the three, her sister, Dutch, younger and prettier, and the youngest, a toddler named Joe.  Being the eldest she has a tremendous sense of responsibility for her siblings’ well-being. She rebels at every turn, terrified the children will become separated. She will not be chosen.

Threading through this drama is someone named Charlie. He is also one of the unchosen children, who are then returned to New York.  Later he will play a pivotal role in Axie’s life, but for now he will remain in the shadows as she looks for, finds and loses her mother in short order back in New York. They find her now one armed mother has been taken in and impregnated by neighborhood widower. Her beloved mother soon dies in childbirth along with the infant. This incident leaves a deep impression on the young daughter, which will shape the rest of her life. With her dying breath, her mother elicits a promise from Axie that she will reunite her siblings. These two elements will become her life’s missions.

In what may seem a thankless job of servitude, our heroine soon finds refuge in the home of a doctor and his midwife spouse. After painstakingly winning the graces of Mrs. Evans, the midwife, Axie is entrusted to learn parts of her trade. She is first allowed to procure materials for the medicines Mrs. Evans administers. In the meantime, she is also allowed access to the books in the husband’s medical library and she is voracious.  This leads to hands on training and Axie becomes increasingly capable of handling all matters of midwifery.  It is during this time she becomes re-acquainted with Charlie, who has become a typesetter at a local respected newspaper.

Thus, the expanding story hits its stride! The thoughts reflect the ever present debate on abortion, women’s rights, chauvinism and reproductive health. Within this context is the quest to find and forge family.  It is a memorable read.

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

Why do many live their lives backwards? Nora Etheridge had to, to begin to see why she was the way she was and to learn something, at least enough to move forward. She is at a crossroads and slowly we are introduced into her world. Where did her frenzy start – where did she meet her denouement, so to speak? Edna is angry. She is so angry we begin to find her so totally infuriating we begin to give up on her. We dislike her character to the point we almost do give up on her: GO TO A SHRINK! Messud’s masterful take on the midlife crisis of a woman shines, though the reader will require a strong bit of patience to get to that point.

This tale is made all the more unbearable as her head talk increases. Nora is 37 and repeatedly refers to herself as middle aged. A mite early to dig the grave to most of us to think it would be all downhill from there! Why doesn’t she stop hit her head against that proverbial “brick wall?”

The novel is set in Cambridge, MA, where Nora teaches fourth grade. Her life seems full of disappointments – unrequited professionally and emotionally – she blames her circumstances on her past. This school year will be unlike any she has ever experienced with the introduction of a new student and his parents. Her life spirals almost out of control and the pity is how many times she is warned of her folly…but she must learn it for herself.

Many of us, particular women of her generation, can well relate to aspects of the tale. It is a stirring and painfully written missive.

Conclusion

 My Notorious Life and The Woman Upstairs are both extremely worthy reads. Initially, I would have read there was no question as to which should move forward in the competition. However, I am in a conundrum as I choose! How can one chapter so completely change one’s mind? As I read The Woman Upstairs, I disliked the main character so fiercely it was hands down not my first choice. Before I finished the book, I read others’ reviews – none with spoilers – I might add, because I felt I had to justify my distaste for Nora Etheridge. I read My Notorious Life first and was feeling fiercely loyal to Axie “Ann” Muldoon. I still find her and her story a more interesting and likeable read. Both books are remarkable. However, Claire Messud is such a fine writer judging from her ability to make the world spin on head of a pin, I feel compelled to choose The Woman Upstairs to move forward in the competition.

Buff Orpington - Americanah vs Ordinary Grace

 

                   

Judge: Phyllis Mitchell

Chimamanda Adichie: Americanah

 vs

William Kent Krueger: Ordinary Grace

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kruegar

It is the summer of 1961 in the small town of New Bremen, Minnesota, when thirteen-year-old Frank learns the price of  “wisdom through the awful grace of God”.  Frank narrates the story of this summer with the innocence, uncertainty and hope of youth.  Frank’s father is a Methodist minister. His Mother is a gifted musician, His older sister is planning on attending Julliard and his younger brother, wise beyond his years, is a stutterer, not an unusual family but one that will be strengthened by the tragedies that touch their lives this summer.

 The novel is simply and beautifully written. The characters are richly drawn. The plot, entangled with murder and choices, moves the summer along. The concepts of truth and courage run quietly beneath the surface of this story.  This is more than a mystery story. It is about an ordinary family that is forged by grief and survives with hope and the wisdom of ordinary grace, the free unmerited favor of God.

Forty-seven years later Frank understands that “The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.”

Americananah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It is modern day America. Ifemelu is leaving Princeton, New Jersey on her way to Trenton to a salon, which will braid her hair for her return to Nigeria. She emigrated from Nigeria to continue her studies in The United States. She writes a blog about her experiences.

Dissatisfied, Ifemelu decides to return to Nigeria and Obinize, her teenage love. The plot winds from a hair salon to parties to Nigeria. There are many storylines braided together.  The characters are not very likeable, not genuine. The book was rather long and uninteresting. This is a tale of love, racism, the politics of black hair and social values in the United States, England and Nigeria.

I chose Ordinary Grace because I became emotionally invested in New Bremen and its inhabitants.  I am still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of “ordinary grace”.