Mr Moore
Well-Known Member
May 2023
A few days late because I'm just back from a holiday. I started the month with The Shipping News and realised part way through from the other reading thread that it was Pulitzer award month so, I continued with two more Pulitzer winners that I had in my to-read list for the year.
Book 22: The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Hard to believe this is 30 years old. A beauty of a story that was all the rage on release but somehow I never got around to. Following his parents' suicides and his philandering wife's death in a car crash, Quoyle starts a new beginning with his two daughters and his aunt in Newfoundland. Proulx's style here is really unique, sometimes difficult with one or two word statements frequently stopping any reading flow in its tracks. I never really got used to the style but I actually really liked it, it just took me a little longer to digest than a novel of this size usually does. I read Proulx's outstanding Accordion Crimes 25 years ago so it's been a long time coming picking up another of her books but, I'll be sure to delve deeper without letting another quarter of a century pass.
Book 23: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Another good one that I know I'm late to the game with. While I have to say that I preferred Tartt's The Secret History which I read last year, this was nontheless a very pleasurable read. My only gripe was that I found the (very long) Las Vegas based second act really tiresome with seemingly little purpose outside of introducing a character and hidden plot twist that would re-emerge later. Undoubtedly important to the overall arc but bloody long-winded in getting there.
Book 24: The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich
I found this one fascinating. Based on Erdrich's grandfather and how he and the rest of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indian community banded together to try and prevent a Republican Mormon Senator passing a bill that would remove all previous agreements between them and the U.S. government. Set in 1953, the bill was part of a wider effort to take back Indian territory for government use while forcing Indians to integrate into the nearest cities. The fact that the Indians were largely jobless, living hand-to-mouth, often in shacks with little more than enough to feed themselves and most importantly, with no desire to be relocated, didn't seem to matter. The group organise a trip to D.C. to put forward their case for maintaining the status quo.
A sub-plot details how many of the Indian women who took up government initiatives to move to the cities frequently ended up being trafficked into the sex trade. Erdrich's prose is magnificent and does immense justice to the continuing line of injustices the Indian people have suffered. Her afterword notes how even as recently as Trump's presidency, a bill was put forward to terminate the Wampanoag tribe's historic rights to reservation status.
A few days late because I'm just back from a holiday. I started the month with The Shipping News and realised part way through from the other reading thread that it was Pulitzer award month so, I continued with two more Pulitzer winners that I had in my to-read list for the year.
Book 22: The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Hard to believe this is 30 years old. A beauty of a story that was all the rage on release but somehow I never got around to. Following his parents' suicides and his philandering wife's death in a car crash, Quoyle starts a new beginning with his two daughters and his aunt in Newfoundland. Proulx's style here is really unique, sometimes difficult with one or two word statements frequently stopping any reading flow in its tracks. I never really got used to the style but I actually really liked it, it just took me a little longer to digest than a novel of this size usually does. I read Proulx's outstanding Accordion Crimes 25 years ago so it's been a long time coming picking up another of her books but, I'll be sure to delve deeper without letting another quarter of a century pass.
Book 23: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Another good one that I know I'm late to the game with. While I have to say that I preferred Tartt's The Secret History which I read last year, this was nontheless a very pleasurable read. My only gripe was that I found the (very long) Las Vegas based second act really tiresome with seemingly little purpose outside of introducing a character and hidden plot twist that would re-emerge later. Undoubtedly important to the overall arc but bloody long-winded in getting there.
Book 24: The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich
I found this one fascinating. Based on Erdrich's grandfather and how he and the rest of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indian community banded together to try and prevent a Republican Mormon Senator passing a bill that would remove all previous agreements between them and the U.S. government. Set in 1953, the bill was part of a wider effort to take back Indian territory for government use while forcing Indians to integrate into the nearest cities. The fact that the Indians were largely jobless, living hand-to-mouth, often in shacks with little more than enough to feed themselves and most importantly, with no desire to be relocated, didn't seem to matter. The group organise a trip to D.C. to put forward their case for maintaining the status quo.
A sub-plot details how many of the Indian women who took up government initiatives to move to the cities frequently ended up being trafficked into the sex trade. Erdrich's prose is magnificent and does immense justice to the continuing line of injustices the Indian people have suffered. Her afterword notes how even as recently as Trump's presidency, a bill was put forward to terminate the Wampanoag tribe's historic rights to reservation status.
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