January’s column Yields Great Reads

By Linda Rood

I fell in love with a book this past spring. This is Happiness by Niall Williams (Bloomsbury, 2019) was recommended by Carrie Walker in my January 2022 Readers’ Choice column, and then again this year urged on me by another friend. Set in a small town in County Clare, Ireland in 1958, it’s a tale of grief, friendship, and romantic awakening, told in such wonderful prose that I would have to stop and read passages aloud to Roger because they had to be shared. When I finished the book, my impulse was to start again from the beginning because I loved being there so much. (I refrained.) I loved it for the beauty of its language, the charm of its characters, but especially the humor and wisdom in the storytelling.

Noel Crowe (who goes by Noe) narrates the tale. He is now 78, and remembering the summer when he was 17, and having dropped out of his seminary training for the priesthood after the death of his mother, has sought refuge in the home of his grandparents, Ganga and Doady, in the tiny village of Faha, which is on the verge of finally being hooked up to the electrical grid. This is a place that the modern world has not yet reached; there is only one phone in the village, and it happens to be in Noe’s grandparents’ house. Comically, villagers make appointments to use the phone; Doady keeps paper and pencil at the ready for notetaking, She also charges for the phone’s use, which provides some handy income.

Noe is grieving the loss of his mother and conflicted about his religious faith and vocation. Things look up with the arrival of Christy McMahon, a middle-aged fellow who has ostensibly arrived to work for the power company, but is actually there to make amends for a past wrong he has done to Annie Moody, now Mrs. Gaffney, widow of the village apothecary. Christy serves as a needed surrogate father/brother who introduces Noe to friendship, work, pub life, and fiddle music. Along the way, Noe experiences first love when he meets the three daughters of the local doctor. This is a slow, meandering book, full of eccentric individuals, philosophic asides, and poignant moments. Ron Charles of the Washington Post wrote, “If you’re in a hurry, hurry along to another book…Williams is engaged in the careful labor of teaching us to hear the subtler melodies drowned out by the din of modern life.” When the lights finally come on in Faha at the end of summer, we know that Williams has given us a loving but unsenti- mental and humorous view of a time and place now lost.

A recommendation from my January column of this year proved to be another great read. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 2022), suggested by Elizabeth Catlin, is a co-winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Long a Kingsolver fan, I think this is her best work since Poisonwood Bible. In this new book, Kingsolver takes on the opioid crisis. She sets her story in remote southwestern Virginia, the Appalachia where she herself now lives. The novel is a retelling of Dickens’ David Copperfield, and I had fun dipping in and out of the Dickens novel to see how remarkably closely Kingsolver re-imagined that story in contemporary terms.

The story is told in the voice of Demon, nickname for Damon, son of a young single mom with addiction problems. He soon becomes a ward of the state, and subject to the horrors of the foster care system of that region. Demon is a captivating narrator, sadly wise to the world before he should be, but at the same time sweet, funny, and lovable. I found myself comparing him to Huck Finn in the tone and effectiveness of his voice. There is, of course, a kind and generous neighbor couple, the Pegotts, who are raising their grandson, because his mother is in prison, and they give Demon some sense of a loving family, and are the counterparts to the Pegotty family for you Dickens aficionados.

This is a complicated saga, and a powerful depiction of the crisis that has seized this nation. There are some grim moments, and some very sad times, but also elements of goodness and redemption. There are moments of beautiful lyrical description of the natural environment of the mountain world. It’s a coming of age tale, a work of harsh and revealing social criticism, and a book I couldn’t put down.

Last of all, I’d like to mention another novel from the January column, News of the World by Paulette Jiles (William Morrow, 2016), recommended by Cami Eliot, and thoroughly enjoyed by me. A finalist for the National Book Award in 2016, it’s a historical novel, a road epic, and a western in the tradition of True Grit. It takes place in the wild and lawless post-Civil War Texas of 1870, and is based on true stories of children of white settlers who were abducted by Indian tribes.

The main character, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, based on the relative of a friend of the author, is an aging and irascible, but honorable, veteran of the Indian Wars and the Civil War, who earns his living traveling through Texas border towns, charging admission for reading newspapers aloud to the illiterate citizens. The main news, as the novel begins, is that the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to all men, has been passed. Confederate and Union tensions are still raw in Texas, and Captain Kidd has to be selective about the news he imparts to his audiences.

Along his way, Kidd agrees to transport Johanna, a ten-year-old girl who has been a Kiowa captive for four years, from Wichita Falls in the north all the way to Castroville, outside San Antonio, a very long journey by wagon through dangerous territory. Johanna, whose parents were killed by her captors, speaks no English and believes she is Kiowa. According to Jiles’ research, the children who experienced such abductions suffered a kind of PTSD, and were unwilling to return to their families, never fully able to adjust. So, the questions from the start are: can Captain Kidd forge a bond with this child? How will they survive the hazardous journey? Will Johanna accept her new life, and will her family treat her with kindness and understanding?

This is an eventful adventure tale, a fascinating description of frontier life with some issues that resonate with contemporary politics, and a heartwarming story of an unlikely friendship. Jiles is a poet first, and this comes clear in her narration. The natural world comes alive under her pen. The story, which is not long, moves along at a brisk speed, and is another one I couldn’t put down. I’d be interested in reading more from this author.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and good reading.