Month: June 2014

We Are Called to Rise: A Novel, by Laura McBride (Simon & Schuster), 320 pages

I love We Are Called to Rise for multiple reasons: for the varied first-person narrators who allow readers to see from multiple perspective simultaneously; for its unflinching look at difficult subject matter; for the sense of hope it leaves the reader with. If I could, I would buy a copy for every single person I know who worries about the state of the world and her/his ability to make a difference.

We Are Called to Rise looks at the violence our world is filled with, particularly at state-sanctioned violence, whether that is out-and-out warfare; seen-but-not-seen domestic violence and bad policing decisions; or the structural violence of under-funded schools and family services. It seeks neither to rail against nor to justify this violence, but to understand it in a way that makes moving beyond the violence possible.

The author, Laura McBride, was inspired to write after reading a news piece about a police shooting. In the author’s note she acknowledges

The one thing that almost kept me from writing my story was that it was so unbearably sad…. So the challenge I set for myself was this: could I write a story that accepted the full unbearableness, and still left one wanting to wake up in the morning? Could I do it without being trite, without relying on mere wishfulness? Is it possible to live past the unthinkable with beauty? Can a coffee spoon counter calamity?

The book’s four narrators start out living what seem to be very separate lives. Avis is a middle aged woman whose husband has announced he wants a divorce. Roberta volunteers as a Court Appointed Special Advocate, representing the interests of children in the foster care system. Luis is a badly injured soldier just returned from the war in Iraq. Bashkim is a third-grader, a member of a family that has immigrated from Albania after receiving political asylum. Of course, each of the characters is much more than this. Each struggles to find meaning, to choose the right path. And as they engage in this struggle their lives are pulled closer and closer together, like orbiting planets all being pulled in by the gravity of the same sun.

This is McBride’s first novel. I dearly hope we don’t have to wait long for another one.

What is Visible: A Novel, by Kimberly Elkins (Grand Central Publishing), 320 pages.

Kimberly Elkin’s What Is Visible is one of those wonderful historical novels that recaptures a bit of history that’s been lost to us. The novel focuses on Laura Bridgman, who lost all her senses except touch after a life-threatening fever when she was two years old, who then was educated at the Perkins Institute, learned to communicate by finger spelling and to read and write, becoming an international celebrity who crossed paths with Longfellow and Dickens, among others. Sound familiar?

In our era, we remember Hellen Keller as breaking boundaries for the deaf-mute, but Laura Bridgman came before her—and, in fact, was one of Annie Sullivan’s teachers, preparing Sullivan for her work with Keller.

Elkins has written a historical novel in the best sense—a novel that attempts to recreate the undocumented parts of Bridgman’s life without deviating from the narrative available in the historical record. The novel begins with an author’s note and ends with an afterward, both of which carefully discuss the sources for Elkins’ novel and her reasoning in adding to this narrative. Elkins’ “inventions” are clearly grounded in the story of the historical Bridgman.

The book moves among first-person, third-person and epistolary sections. Most often, events are presented in first-person from Bridgman’s perspective, but other chapters, written in third person, examine the lives of some of those around her: Dr. “Chev” Howe, director of the Perkins Institute; his wife, Julia Ward Howe (yes, that Julia Ward Howe); and Sarah Wight, one of Bridgman’s teachers.

Elkins’ novel captures the uneasy footing of Bridgman’s life. A woman of considerable intelligence and will, she is regarded by those around her with varying degrees of humanity. Some, like Dorothea Dix and Longfellow, treat her as a respected friend. Others view her as childlike or less than competent. And Howe—at least in Elkins’ rendering—views her more as his own creation than as a human being in her own right.

Howe, a Unitarian, intended to raise Bridgman without formal religious instruction in an attempt to prove the Unitarian ideal of “natural” religiosity. In an exchange (invented by Elkins so far as I can tell) between Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, and Howe, Mann reminds Howe that “I must be assured that you are safekeeping [Laura as] our living proof that children learn morality and reverence by example and inference, not indoctrination.”  She is, Mann says “our best and brightest philosophical weapon.” However, Howe’s plans were undone by others around Bridgman who felt a moral duty to instruct her in the precepts of their particular Christian denominations. Ultimately, and despite Howe’s objections, Bridgman became a Baptist.

Because it is the one sense remaining to her, touch drives Bridgman’s interactions with the outside world. She is hungry for physical contact and is not necessarily gentle in seeking it. Interestingly, Elkins chooses to depict Bridgman as a lesbian, and a rather sadomasochistic one at that. She explains her depiction of Bridgman’s sexual orientation by citing “Dr. Howe’s edict that Laura not be allowed into the other girls’ beds [as] true and quite telling at a time when adolescents, and even adults, of the same sex routinely slept together.” And as for Bridgman’s sadomasochistic leanings, Elikins notes, “it seemed natural to me that if one has only the sense of touch, the desire would be to push it to its extremes.”

For similar reasons, and based on references in the historical record to Bridgman’s self-inflicted injuries, Elkins depicts her as self-mutilating. In one of the first-person sections, Elkins has Bridgman reflect that:

I have also written many letters that I have never sent, letters that were secret, only for me and for God. Those I wrote in blood, though I was never sure if there was enough blood to write out all the words, so I had to keep making more little cuts with the metal label along my inner arm and thigh. I actually like it because it is the sharpest feeling I know. I push beyond the barriers of myself, and I am bigger for a moment, flowing out into the world. For me, it is not mutilation, but experience [emphasis in the original].

As the quotation above suggests, this is book that rewards careful reading—and rereading. Elkins’ depiction of Bridgman’s wrestling with God, who she’s told is benevolent, but who also has condemned her to her life of limited sensation, and of her search for purpose and meaning offers not just an insight into a historical character, but interesting lenses through which to examine our own experiences.

My Salinger Year, by Joanna Rakoff (Random House), memoir, 272 pages

Joanna Rakoff’s My Salinger Year isn’t one of those memoirs that will change your life: no great catastrophes overcome, no revelations about life’s true purpose. It is, however, a lot of fun.

Rakoff worked for a year in the late 90s as an assistant to Salinger’s agent. The agent, and the agency itself were quirky in ways that seem strangely appropriate, given the focus on the notoriously difficult and quixotic writer. The Agency uses Dictaphones and typewriters. By the end of the book one—yes, exactly one—computer has been added to that pre-digital technology.

Rakoff spends her days typing letters, reviewing contracts, and protecting Salinger’s contact information from fans, press, and publishers alike. She is also responsible for handling Salinger’s correspondence—the incoming correspondence, that is. The Agency has a standard response that Rakoff is told to use: thank you for writing, but Mr. Salinger prefers not to receive correspondence, so we will not be forwarding your message to him, sincerely, & c. & c.

But Rakoff starts reading the letters, which come from lonely adolescents, war veterans, and the more or less crazy. The form letter comes to seem inadequate, so Rakoff begins modifying it: adding a kind word, a note of appreciation, or a bit of hard-nosed advice.

Nothing much else happens. Well, Rakoff misses her college boyfriend, grows less enchanted with the new boyfriend she’s sharing an apartment with, and bemoans her college friends’ gradual shift from free-spirited adventurers to solid citizens.

The fun of all of this is the way Rakoff tells her stories. Her voice is bell-clear. She writes with a self-deprecating perceptiveness that makes her a delightful companion. If you’re looking for a summer read that’s a bit more interesting—and literary—than the latest romance or thriller, this book will suit you nicely.