Honeyed Words: Fiction/ Literature

Tipperary by Frank Delaney · 29 August 2007

Tipperary by Frank Delaney follows the life of Charles O’Brien, an Irishman born in 1860. The reader learns about Charles through the study of memoirs he wrote as an adult and the focus of the memoirs is often the story of his wooing of April Burke. Charles grows to be equally persistent wooing the rights to participate in the restoration of a local estate called Tipperary Castle.

When Charles starts his memoirs, he has already met April, and his early passages are full of the impact of their meeting. Unfortunately, April rejected him outright and instead of being a man happily engaged to his beloved, Charles is a man bereft of the one woman he truly wants.

Even if this was the only theme that the book addressed, it would be an interesting one. April is an enigmatic character and there is some mystery about her family tree. Watching Charles and April dance around each other as the mystery unfolded would have been a strong story by itself.

But Delaney has intertwined a different kind of love story with the story of Charles and April, the story of the Irish people’s love of their land. It’s the land from which all the dualities in the book stem. Delaney relates the Irish outlook and Irish lives to their relationship with the land, and subtly illustrates how all decisions and directions have some tie to the Irish love of land. One of the very early scenes clearly illustrates that there are “haves” and “have nots” and which category people belong to is defined by whether they own their own land or not.

This book includes a few things that are sure to add to my enjoyment of any book. First of all, Charles is a man who approaches his life with the goal of examining it. There isn’t an action that Charles takes that he does not give a reason for or ask a question about. Hearing Charles puzzle out his own thoughts and reactions to events added to the understanding of Charles’ life as pieced together from brief snapshots of his own writing.

The book meanders in a pleasant fashion as Charles narrates the events of his life. He is an engaging storyteller and due to his traveling lifestyle he has plenty of opportunity to add to his repertoire of interesting tales. I really enjoyed yet another aspect of the duality in this book in that each selection from Charles' memoir is commented on by the narrator of the novel. Because of this second voice, throughout the book we see not only how Charles would choose to portray himself, but how others saw him.

Delaney did an excellent job with the setup of this structure. The first section of Charles’ writing introduces the main concepts of the book: history, love and land. In the introduction to his memoirs Charles warns us not to trust him as a narrator, because he speaks of history and of love and no true Irish person can refrain from embellishing the story for the sake of a story, especially when love is involved. Delaney then jumps immediately to commentary by the other narrator, who says that he has discovered Charles’ manuscript but remains unidentified.

The placement and lack of identification clearly cues the reader to question both narrators’ objectivity and commitment to the literal facts and to wonder as their interpretations play off each other, whose version is the truth. There’s a demand placed on the reader, which engages you immediately in the story. Should the reader believe Charles, who is so up front and amiable about his modifications of the story for the story’s sake, or should they believe the narrator, whose dry commentary and historical perspective seem disinterested, but who refuses to identify himself?

One final high point of the story was Delaney’s inclusion of the great Irish literary figures of the time. Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats made personal appearances, and others were spoken about. I love books that raise my awareness of other works and authors, and so this was a welcome inclusion.

I received an Advance Reader’s Edition of Tipperary through Library Thing’s Early Reviewers program and so I can’t quote some of the truly beautiful writing in this book. Delaney captures the essence of mystery and practicality that is my image of Ireland and the Irish people in his descriptions of the land. He paints beautiful character studies by creating a unique voice for each actor in the drama of the novel.

When reading passages written by Charles, one empathizes with his hopes and frustrations. When one reads a passage written about the same events by the narrator or other sources, Delaney makes their voice ring true as well, so that all sides of the interpretation of events are credible and full of depth.

Tipperary is a slow and steady examination of one life and the impact that being true to love and beauty can have on the lives of so many others around him. I read it slowly and steadily and was rewarded with the sense that my patient persistence with the story enabled me to take a bit of the magic that Delaney created into my own life.

Other reviews:

Ex Libris also recently reviewed the book and found the narrative shifts distracting rather than illuminating.

Grasping for the Wind acknowledged the book started slowly and picked up at the end, rating it 5/5.

RabbitReader knows far more about Ireland and Irish authors than I do and took issue with some of the historical liberties that Delaney took.

Random Wonder coined the phrase that resonated with me more than any other I read about this book, “Tipperary reads like a historical love poem to Ireland.” Beautiful thought.

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The All-True Travels and Adventures of Liddie Newton by Jane Smiley · 13 August 2007

Canning put me in the mood for some different reading. I've been perusing a lot of fantasy lately, and felt that I needed an old-fashioned fiction break. I decided to take this book off the shelf because it reminded me a bit of the spirit of the canning pioneers I'd met the week before.

When I read the cover blurbs I imagined this book as a gritty version of Little House on the Prairie, a grown-up's diary about her frontier adventure. Instead, what I read was more of a historical essay. The book is structured into two parts, but reads like it has a prologue and then two distinct sections, divided by an act that propels the main character into action.

We meet Liddie Newton, youngest of a gaggle of daughters, on the day of her father's funeral. At first, I thought Liddie was a young child, as the tone of her sisters in determining her future is in talking of a person who can't look after herself. However, as Liddie starts to narrate her own story, we learn that she is a grown young woman, albeit a willful and irresponsible one.

Faced with dim fortunes, when a kind stranger passes through Liddie's Illinois town on his way to the newly open Kansas Territory, Liddie does the only reasonable thing and marries him.

I thought that the title of the book was an interesting choice. I never got the feeling that Liddie had many adventures. Rather, she was a woman swept up in the times, more a piece of flotsam in history than someone who went out and made history.

There are several themes in this book, but the most obvious and prevalent is that of the abolitionist movement that was brewing during the time of the story. Smiley chose to set the story in the Kansas Territory, a new wild place that both the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties were attempting to control.

Liddie's husband is a New Englander, decidedly anti-slavery, and a man of quiet learning. He has joined up with the New England Emigrant Aid Company and is heading out to the city of Lawrence in the Kansas Territory in order to cast his vote that Kansas not be declared a slave-state. Throughout the book he is painted in sharp contrast to southerners, mostly from Missouri, often Border Ruffians.

The value of the book for me was in reading about history with a personalized lean to it. I wasn't very familiar with the specific events of Bleeding Kansas before reading this book. I'd of course heard of John Brown and the Pottawatomie Massacre, but I didn't know much else other than Kansas was part of the great western migration around the time of the Civil War.

From the history articles that I have skimmed after reading this book, it appears that Smiley depicted the major players in politics and the time line of events in Kansas accurately. While Liddie Newton and her “All-True Adventures” are fictional, Smiley presented great detail about the political factions and the series of events that sprung up around Lawrence Kansas in 1855 and 1856.

The other strength of this book was Smiley's use of inventive chapter titles, and her further sub-titling the chapters by providing a one sentence summary on each right hand page. It was amusing to see the plot reduced to a series of one-liners, and Smiley delivered these with wit.

Even so, I wouldn't recommend this book to people that aren't interested in the history. The story itself is one that's been told countless times, and in my opinion, often better. It's the story of a young woman, Liddie, alone in the world at a period in which single women had few options. She must make do the best she can, and hope that the fates grant her a good husband with a way to support her. As often happens life is cruel, and when it becomes more so Liddie must adjust to her new hardened circumstances.

I found the first section of the book slow paced. Liddie manages to leave her home, her family, and her scant security, and then travel to the rough and uncertain land of Kansas, surviving the harsh winter and the rough southern agitators, yet the story still drags. The narrative style was such that things happened to Liddie rather than having her act which made it seem as though Liddie was just the mouthpiece for the historical events that were unfolding around her.

I did find the second section of the book more engaging. It was here that Liddie was able to develop as a person, an actor rather than an observer of the political process. She was a likable character, a bit obstinate and unwomanly for her time, and quite the thinker. She internalized much of her dialogs, so that even though she was engaged in the action, we had a window into her thoughts, which often turned to her husband and her interpretation of what his outlook on a particular situation would be. Using this method, it was as if Liddie had a ready made conversational partner, available to prop-up the dialog whenever it dragged. Though this worked as a device for exploring the political ideas that Liddie was struggling with, it did contribute to the feeling that not much was happening.

And ultimately, it appeared that Liddie's trials and adventures amounted to nothing. At the end of the book, she neither profited from her experiences nor changed her circumstances through it. Even Liddie admits that the thing she took from Kansas was her inability to be surprised by anything ever again.

I felt as if Liddie came full circle, with only the memory of the tragedies that the witnessed as testaments to her time in Kansas. I suppose it's an accurate commentary on the times and the experiences of those who attempted to settle in Kansas, but after her extraordinary journey, it felt wrong that Smiley painted Liddie as living a very similar life to that she would have if the whole affair had never happened. As the reader, I also left the book knowing more, yet not being greatly affected by the story.

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The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy · 12 July 2007

If he touched her, he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her, he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.

I was originally drawn to this book for the same reason I’m drawn to many books, an intense curiosity about other people’s religious experiences. It’s not so much that I’m a religious person, I just like knowing what makes people tick, what motivates them, what and why they believe.

The similarity between this title and that of one of my favorite Discworld books, Small Gods, piqued my interest as well. I was half expecting this book to be a similar irreverent treatment of gods that have fallen out of power as their followers diminish in number. I couldn’t have been further off the mark.

The God of Small Things is a complex book that addresses personal loss and weighs it against a country’s politics and cultural traditions. It revolves around one day in the life of a pair of fraternal “egg-twins, ” Estha and Rahel, a day that changed their lives forever, and changed the world very little at all.

He explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside. ‘To understand history,’ Chacko said, ‘we have to go inside and listen to what they’re saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.’

‘But we can’t go in,’ Chacko explain, ‘because we’ve been locked out. And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.’

Roy writes in the tradition of magic realism. The plot is realistic but it sprinkled with beliefs and visions that one wouldn’t expect to encounter in our modern and eminently practical world. Roy uses mystical symbolism and creative description to create a lush world, a magical village that the twins occupied in their youth and becomes a swollen and sickly version of itself that the twins return to in adulthood.

What I found so impressive about this book is how it managed to juggle several concepts: love, death, rebellion, responsibility, tradition, family, loss, guilt and grief, and not shirk them. By looking at just one event, the death of the twin’s cousin Sophie Mol, the author was able to focus her thoughts through many different lenses, using the perspective of many different characters. Many of the main characters had a theme, a lesson to bring to this event that was reinforced by the other characters. One character would introduce a branch of the story and the others would respond to it and provide their own insight. Through repetition and refrain, the author gradually expanded her ideas.

One image I found particularly powerful was the Roy’s conception of death as leaving a physical presence. She refers to dead leaving a “hole in the world” shaped in the image of the living entity now gone. By the end of the book, the imagery surrounding this phenomenon had grown so strong that I imagined the twins navigating their adult lives through a world populated by gaping black holes left by death. The author makes subtle references to this symbolism throughout the book, such as contrasting Estha’s silence with the outside world that Rahel brings back into his life, forcing him to acknowledge both the light and the darkness in his life as a shadow thrown by the light.

The pivotal day in the twins’ history, the day that Sophie Mol dies, was a day the Gods of Small Things, the gods of personal and private affairs were trumped by the Gods of Big Things. As Roy weaves her story, we come to understand how individual feelings are powerful and yet ultimately powerless, are intensely personal and private, yet also up for public inspection, cataloguing, and judgment. Roy illustrates how the one event that determines the twins’ future is an event rooted in the politics of the Marxist movement and the caste system in India and challenges the reader to believe the actors in the event played out the only options history afforded them.

Every character pays a price, and at the end, the reader is left to judge the value of personal rewards against the price. Roy leaves us with the questions: Was it worth it? And if so, for whom? For me, this was an unsatisfying ending to an otherwise beautiful and engaging book, but I felt it accomplished the Roy’s goals. Ultimately, she presented the reader with a riddle. Who is the God of Small Things, and if he is as powerless as she presents him to be, why do we still worship him?

Picture of the Front Cover of The God of Small Things – With Poppet

As an aside, I felt this book was the perfect opportunity to introduce my very newest small thing. Yet another poppet by Lisa Snellings-Clark has found a good home. Little Red has been enjoying her new bookshelf since her arrival earlier this week.

This book was reviewed for the 2007 Book Awards Reading Challenge.