Book Review: Jump at the Sun by Kim McLarin

Bold writers tackle difficult topics; brave writers tackle taboo topics. Kim McLarin is a brave writer.

Too many writers today delve into the darker sides of human nature, fascinated by what goes on in the mind of a serial killer, a run-of-the-mill murderer, a pedophile, without giving the reader a sense that the writer actually has been there. In Jump at the Sun, McLarin gives the impression that she, her close family and friends have been where she is.

A black female author, who writes in this book about black women who break one of the most enduring stereotypes, that of mother, challenges readers to rethink those same stereotypes.

Grace Jefferson is the latest in a family of black women who go back to slavery. She struggles with a lack of motherly feelings about her children. In searching to understand why she is not fulfilled with motherhood, she revisits other women in her family. Her grandmother left the share cropper farm where they lived after the end of the Civil War, left her daughter, followed a local man to the big city where life was supposed to be better. The man returned to the country; the woman stayed. Years later, the woman sends for her oldest daughter to help with new babies she's had since leaving.

In a near rebellion against her own mother, the daughter sacrifices everything, including her dreams and her sense of self, when her own children come along. And Grace, with her PhD and an upwardly middle class lifestyle, isn't satisfied with being a stay-at-home mother. She seeks answers from her mother and grandmother, only to realize she is the only one who can resolve her feeling about her children.

Powerful, rich in language, dangerous in daring to challenge stereotypes, this literary novel begs to be enjoyed slowly, savoring each page, each paragraph. You won't be disappointed.

For those of us women who consciously chose not to have children, this book helps validate our decision. Too many times well-meaning snoops have asked me why I never had my own children. Other than I don't relate to babies and young children, it's none of their business. I answer gently that I am pro-choice is a way they might understand. No, I didn't have an abortion. I just made sure I never needed one by not getting pregnant. For McLarin to write so powerfully about choices women make resonated deeply inside me.

Book Review: A Dictionary of Maqiao

Several times a year, I seek out translated literary fiction. It's like taking a vacation from genre fiction. Other cultures have different rules about writing than we do. This time, my girlfriend shared a book I'd never heard of and would never have looked for. A Dictionary of Maqiao is an artifact novel. By that, I mean the author, Han Shaogong, pretends to write a linguistic dictionary of a small village in rural China and in so doing tells the history of the village and its people.

A Dictionary tells us a story of this village. It doesn't show us the story. Right there, it violates what we writers have pounded into our heads. The Western reader wants dialogue and action to forward the plot. Han Shaogong has little dialogue, perhaps as little plot, and very little action, yet the work is compelling.

There is no hook, no conflict. Nothing to compel the reader to continue, except what is told, how it is told. I was "hooked" because I didn't think anyone could pull of writing a novel and pretending it was a dictionary. Like, get totally real.

Each "chapter" sets up as a word in English, followed by the Chinese characters, and a passage that relates the word to the village or to its people. Along the way, the author muses on all sorts of philosophical subjects. On writing he says, "Anything left out of traditional fiction is normally something of 'no significance.' But when religious authority is all-important, science has no significance. When politics is all-important, love has no significance...I suspect the myriad things in this world are in fact all of equal importance; the only reason why sometimes one set of things seems to have 'no significance' is because they've been filtered out by the writer's view of what has significance."

Think about your own work. If you had a deeply philosophical character, could you get away with such a monologue? My guess is, an editor would want it removed. Maybe not, but more than likely.

Throughout the novel, Han Shaogong introduces to character after character, from the People's cadre leader to an Enlightened Youth to the peasant who has no dragon (you'll have to read the book to get the reference) to Three Ears to Yanzao's wife. Word play translates well into English, for one term in the Maqiao dialect can have multiple, contradictory meanings in English and in Chinese.

Winner of the China Times Prize for best novel, the Shanghai Literary Prize and one of the top 100 works of Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction from Asia Weekly, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a tour de force. If you want a different reading experience, check this out.

Book Review: Church of the Dog

Some books bring tears to your eyes when you finish them. Some bring tears because you finish them. The rare books bring tears for both reasons. Church of the Dog by Kaya McLaren is one of the rare books.

Told from multiple perspectives, this is a story of wonder and mystery, wonder over the events of life, mystery because events have a way of producing unintended consequences. Deep in Oregon ranch country lies a spread owned by Earl and Edith. Cattle and sadness are the two main "crops." Earl and Edith face another sad anniversary when a young art teacher Mara shows up and asks if she can rent one of their outbuildings. They agree, and vegetarian Mara moves in with a pig she's rescued from a local fair. Mara agrees to help around the ranch in return for a place to live and a pen for her pig.

Earl and Edith become friendly with this free spirit who creates art from metal junk, who paints a stained glass window on the side of the outbuilding and who dances in the moonlight. When Earl and Edith's grandson, also broken in spirit, comes for a visit, Mara realizes she needs to heal him too.

This literary novel reads with a fluency of language unusual in a debut writer. It's beautiful, lyrical and painfully true.

What is interesting about this novel is the use of multiple perspectives to tell the story. McLaren breaks many of the "rules" of writing with these multiple narrators. Without them, the book would have been all right, but it wouldn't have been great. One hopes her second novel is as good or better than her first.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

If you haven't read Little Bee by Chris Cleave, you're missing a terrific experience. A New York Times best seller, this novel was short-listed for the 2008 Costa Award for Best Novel. It breaks most of the rules agents list on their sites for what makes a novel worthy of representation.

Little Bee is the story of two women whose lives become intertwined through a single act of violence in Nigeria. Sarah, a white English woman, and her husband Andrew try to repair a damaged marriage on a vacation to Nigeria. On a walk along the beach, they meet Little Bee, a girl who was being chased by dogs and armed men.

Two years later, Sarah is back in England, raising her four-year-old son, Charlie, who decides he's Batman. He won't take off his Batman costume, because the "baddies" will win. Little Bee has just been released from a detention center for refugees seeking asylum and makes her way to Sarah's home. Let's just say, the situation becomes complicated when the reunion of the two women opens deep wounds and forces them to confront the blackness within each.

Cleave breaks several "rules" agents insiston: he uses two narrators, both speaking in first person; much of his dialogue is in dialect. Sarah, of course, speaks perfect English. Little Bee sometimes speaks with a Nigerian dialect, sometimes she speaks like Queen Elizabeth, particularly when she feels threatened by authorities.

And Charlie speaks his own language, always to be corrected by his mother. When Little Bee asks Charlie to take off his Batman costume, Charlie replies, "...if I is not in mine costume then I is not Batman."

Cleave maintains unique voices for each of the three main characters. Charlie never speaks correct English; Little Bee sometimes thinks in a Nigerian dialect. All are unique characters, fully rounded and completely sympathetic.

So, why does this novel meet the requirements posted on many agents' web sites? Because it is a literary novel, and most agents do not want to represent literary novels. Thank goodness one did. Little Bee is a book club favorite. It's easy to see why.

The Well and the Mine

Disclaimer: I do not seek out Southern fiction, but sometimes it finds me.

A few weeks ago I read a glowing review in Publishers Weekly about a debut Southern writer. Gin Phillips chose to write about a coal mining town in Alabama in 1931. Pre-teen Tess watches a woman throw a baby into her family's well. In her child's mind, this becomes a mystery that plays out against rural America during the Depression, against racism, potential mine disasters, company towns, and poverty. Yet the family is strong and supportive, and the climax is subtle and profound. From her opening sentence, "After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time." Now, THAT'S a hook.

Phillips has a fine ear for idiom, but doesn't bog down dialogue with regionalisms. Enough for the reader to get the point, but no more. Her characters are as down to earth as the coal dust in work-hardened hands. Her language soars and dips, spare and lush, and always drives the story forward.

I loved the experience of reading this book. I didn't put it on a Kindle. This demands the reader enjoy it in analog format -- a page-turning book.