Book Review: THIS IS NOT AN ACCIDENT

This Is Not an Accident: Stories and a Novella, by April Wilder

NY: Viking, 2014

Hardcover, $26.95

What would you do if you were stood up for a date after driving from Wisconsin to Iowa City to meet someone you’d met through an online service? Would you get blotto and not remember the drive home the next day? Would you then begin to obsess over the possibility that you could have killed someone on the road and not remembered the event? And would you then begin compulsively repeating the Wisconsin-Iowa round trip, searching along the way for signs that would tell you what might have happened on the drive home you don’t remember? What about the speeding tickets, the driving class, the traffic court? How would you handle these situations?

Whatever answers you came up with to those questions, you can throw them in the wastebasket, because you are not Kat, the protagonist in the title story of Wilder’s collection.

Wilder’s cast of characters forms an almost coherent group of incoherent lives. Kat, a cartoonist, by virtue of her work, exhibits some direction and drive; it’s just that her on/off switch is triggered more by chance than decision. But Kat is likable. Characters in the other stories are not always as sympathetic. That is, I liked Kat and found her sympathetic, but in part because she reminded me of a dear friend, whose responses are never like those of anyone else I know. More generally, one of the things that kept me going with this book was the varied and even wild responses of the characters in the stories and the bizarre situations they created by responding in surprising ways to earlier unexpected situations they encountered.

What’s around the next corner? What will the new day bring? Is everything an accident?

Another standout feature of Wilder’s fiction is her gift for original simile and generalization to capture perfectly the feel of a moment, a gesture, or an appearance. Of the young man named Odd (I couldn’t help thinking, weren’t they all?), Wilder writes “He was one of those guys who can’t grow a real beard and so shaves every day to hide the places where no hair grows.”  In another story, Lauren thinks of her friend Wahl, trying to decide if he is attractive,

The veganism figured in. He burped like an opera singer holding a note, as if to brag that his weren’t regular burps but special vegan ones.

There are also flashes of commonsense wisdom when you least expect it, as when Kat’s sister, who works as a mermaid, performing underwater moves in a tank for the drinkers on the other side of the bar, tries once again to set her straight:

... Around Angel’s eyes the skin gathered, a look similar to the one she got when Kat explained how someone had wronged her, and Angel would cut her off and say, “Okay, wait a minute: so you seem to be proceeding under the assumption that other people are telling the truth. Is that right? Is that your plan for getting through life?” And Kat would be left making minnowy gaping motions with her mouth.

The last story before the closing novella takes an unusual form. By the third item on the questionnaire that is titled “Creative Writing Instructor Evaluation Form,” we know it’s headed down a strange road. Will there be a crash?

Then comes the novella. In “You’re That Guy,” we meet Eckhart at 3 a.m. in a car in Utah with a friend. Gradually, in bits and pieces, we learn what preceded their drive across the desert, and eventually we find ourselves with Eckhart more or less settled down, and more or less falling in love with a Mormon girl (or at least a former Mormon, a girl who was raised Mormon), but by that point any connection to the malaise into which Eckhart had fallen before Russ rescued him seems tangential at best. Then comes an accidental encounter with a mentally ill man in a 7-Eleven, changing the story’s trajectory once more.

As Eckhart crouched to chain up Clyde, he noticed the people in line inside the store drop their eyes as the guy passed, making exaggerated room like you would for someone carrying a live marlin.

It isn’t a marlin. The guy is carrying a doll, dressed in child’s clothes, a doll he treats as a live baby and that other people around him, so as not to disturb whatever delicate equilibrium the doll allows him, also treat and speak of as a child.

I had a hard time with “You’re That Guy.” As the vegetative claustrophobia of the early parts of the novella gave way to an almost equally pointless, claustrophobic Utah social scene, all I wanted for page after page was to escape the main character’s life. Another friend of mine often recommends to me depressing or violent serious movies that she describes as “hard to watch.” If “You’re That Guy” were a movie, I’m sure I would find it hard to watch. But when I reached the last sentence – what can I say? – I was glad I’d stuck with it. Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards, as Kierkegaard noted. That’s pretty much how I felt in retrospect about this novella.

“She didn’t make an active, conscious decision as far as she could recall.” That was Kat, trying to chart after the fact her unplanned replay of the Wisconsin-Iowa expressway drive, but it could just as well be said of all the characters in This Is Not an Accident at one point or another. Oh, these people plan to a certain extent, of course. They decide some things. Lauren plans a European vacation with Wahl and agrees to three days in Denmark. She even agrees to staying in hostels, although she would prefer more privacy, because that’s the way Wahl can afford the trip, and she will be dependent on his language skills and travel confidence. They’re not lovers, so how much can go wrong? The unplanned, the unexpected, default mode in place of decision, or a decision made under pressure affect the course of even the conservative and successful lives.

My guess is that the main audience for Wilder’s fiction will be the 25-50 crowd, old enough to be sophisticated, young enough to be hip, postmodern enough to be patient when the fictional lives get “hard to watch.” Wilder is a gifted writer. This is her first book. Who knows where she’ll go next? I would not dare to hazard a guess!

And now a surprise: the publisher is offering a giveaway of April Wilder’s This Is Not An Accident, and all you have to do is leave a comment here to say why you’re interested in reading the book, and the winner’s name will be drawn at random. Thank you – and good luck!

Who Doesn't Love a Free NEW BOOK?

First, here’s a little about the book to be given away, followed by conversation with the storyteller and the writer, and then I’ll tell you how you can win a free copy.

* * * 

The Honey Thief  is a unique book of stories told by native Afghani Najaf Mazari to writer Robert Hillman. It is a portrait of the Hazara people – an ethnic group in the hills between Kabul and Kandahar. Man Booker Prize winner Thomas Keneally praised it as:

[A] dazzling narrative is full of wonders and unfamiliar magic, shadows and lightnings. The tales it tells are fascinating in their ordinariness and their strangeness. The Honey Thief is simply delightful to read on its own terms, but it also illuminates the real Afghanistan, that country many great powers have proved keen to invade but rarely to understand.

Filled with both fascinating facts and tall tales, The Honey Thief preserves the intimacy and beauty of the Hazara tradition of oral storytelling.

In “The Behsudi Dowry,” the character of Hameed is thought to be foolish and absentminded for his love of books. His parents can see no value in reading fiction. How was reading literature for pleasure viewed in your household and community growing up?

Najaf:  In Afghanistan, only a few very educated people read books other than the holy books. If my brothers or my father or my mother had seen me reading a novel, they would have thought I was insane and would have called a doctor or a mullah to fix me.

How did you become interested in the narrative of the refugee?

Robert:  At the time I first met Najaf, the Muslim refugees who were arriving in Australia on ramshackle boats were being characterised as criminals and terrorists in the press. This demonisation suited the politics of Australia just after 9/11 (or “11/9” as it is known here). It struck me that something vile was happening in my country—something that I might look back on in years to come and think, “Why didn’t you say something?” I wrote Najaf’s story as a way of saying something. The friendship we formed led to Najaf telling me more and more about the culture of the Hazara. The stories in The Honey Thief are, in a way, the backstory of Najaf’s life told in The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The themes discussed throughout The Honey Thief—the importance of love, work, hope—are universal, crossing all kinds of boundaries of culture, faith, geography, and socioeconomic status. What is your hope for this book? More broadly, what role do you believe literature can play in uniting people across borders?

Najaf & Robert: Stories like those in The Honey Thief make a small difference here and there to the sympathy for people who are struggling through life. Literature cannot change people’s hearts completely. Just a little. A little is okay. We must remember that if stories that honour courage and enjoyment of life could suddenly change everything, then another book that teaches distrust and hatred might also change everything back. People don’t read stories like those in The Honey Thief in order to have their eyes opened. They read them for enjoyment; for pleasure. If it happens that some readers feel that they have gained more than enjoyment, that’s a good thing. We hope that readers will enjoy this book in the same way that they enjoy fresh food cooked by someone who loves good food. We hope that people will smile as they finish each story and say, “Well, that was wonderful!”

* * * 

Was that enough to pique your interest and whet your appetite? I’m sorry that (1) only readers with U.S. addresses (p.o. boxes okay) are eligible for the giveaway and (2) only comments, not e-mails, make for eligibility. So, to enter please leave a comment (that is the challenge!) saying what aspect of the information above interests you in reading this book. An assistant and I will put slips in a hat and draw out the winning name. We will then need your mailing address to send to the publisher.

Give it a try! Good luck!

First-Ever "Books in Northport" Book Giveaway!

I've never done this before on my blog. It's the first time. Two people will receive free copies of the new novel Caleb's Crossing, by noted author Geraldine Brooks, and you can be one of those people by reading the Q&A below, leaving a comment demonstrating your interest in the book and sending an e-mail to dogears at netonecom dot net to alert me to your comment. Fun! Of course, I welcome comments from more than two people, also--the more, the merrier. Who knows? If it's lively enough, there may be a "next time" in future.

Q&A with Geraldine Brooks, author of CALEB’S CROSSING:

Caleb Cheeshahteamauk is an extraordinary figure in Native American history. How did you first discover him? What was involved in learning more about his life?

The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah are proud custodians of their history, and it was in materials prepared by the Tribe that I first learned of its illustrious young scholar. To find out more about him I talked with tribal members, read translations of early documents in the Wopanaak language, then delved into the archives of Harvard and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially the correspondence between colonial leaders and benefactors in England who donated substantial funds for the education and conversion to Christianity of Indians in the 17th century. There are also writings by members of the Mayhew family, who were prominent missionaries and magistrates on the island, and John Cotton, Jr., who came here as a missionary and kept a detailed journal.

There is little documentation on Caleb’s actual life. What parts of his life did you imagine? Do you feel you know him better after writing this book, or is he still a mystery?

The facts about Caleb are sadly scant. We know he was the son of a minor sachem from the part of the Vineyard now known as West Chop, and that he left the island to attend prep school, successfully completed the rigorous course of study at Harvard and was living with Thomas Danforth, a noted jurist and colonial leader, when disease claimed his life. Everything else about him in my novel is imagined. The real young man—what he thought and felt—remains an enigma.

Bethia Mayfield is truly a woman ahead of her time. If she were alive today, what would she be doing? What would her life be like with no restrictions?

There were more than a few 17th century women like Bethia, who thirsted for education and for a voice in a society that demanded their silence. You can find some of them being dragged to the meeting house to confess their “sins” or defending their unconventional views in court. If Bethia was alive today she would probably be president of Harvard or Brown, Princeton or UPenn.

The novel is told through Bethia’s point of view. What is the advantage to telling this story through her eyes? How would the book be different if Caleb were the narrator?

I wanted the novel to be about crossings between cultures. So as Caleb is drawn into the English world, I wanted to create an English character who would be equally drawn to and compelled by his world. I prefer to write with a female narrator when I can, and I wanted to explore issues of marginalization in gender as well as race.

Much of the book is set on Martha’s Vineyard, which is also your home. Did you already know about the island’s early history, or did you do additional research?

I was always intrigued by what brought English settlers to the island so early in the colonial period...they settled here in the 1640s. Living on an island is inconvenient enough even today; what prompted the Mayhews and their followers to put seven miles of treacherous ocean currents between them and the other English—to choose to live in a tiny settlement surrounded by some three thousand Wampanoags? The answer was unexpected and led me into a deeper exploration of island history.

You bring Harvard College to life in vivid, often unpleasant detail. What surprised you most about this prestigious university’s beginnings?

For one thing, I hadn't been aware Harvard was founded so early. The English had barely landed before they started building a college. And the Indian College—a substantial building—went up not long after, signifying an attitude of mind that alas did not prevail for very long. It was fun to learn how very different early Harvard was from the well endowed institution of today. Life was hand to mouth, all conversation was in Latin, the boys (only boys) were often quite young when they matriculated. But the course of study was surprisingly broad and rigorous—a true exploration of liberal arts, languages, and literature that went far beyond my stereotype of what Puritans might have considered fit subjects for scholarship.

As with your previous books, you’ve managed to capture the voice of the period. You get the idiom, dialect, and cadence of the language of the day on paper. How did you do your research?

I find the best way to get a feel for language and period is to read first person accounts—journals, letters, court transcripts. Eventually you start to hear voices in your head: patterns of speech, a different manner of thinking. My son once said, Mom talks to ghosts. And in a way I do.

May 2011, Tiffany Smalley will follow in Caleb’s footsteps and become only the second Vineyard Wampanoag to graduate from Harvard. Do you know if this will be celebrated?

In May Tiffany Smalley will become the first Vineyard Wampanoag since Caleb to receive an undergrad degree from Harvard College. (Others have received advanced degrees from the university’s Kennedy school etc.) I’m not sure what Harvard has decided to do at this year's commencement, but I am hoping they will use the occasion to honor Caleb’s fellow Wampanoag classmate, Joel Iacoomis, who completed the work for his degree but was murdered before he could attended the 1665 commencement ceremony.