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Guests | December 7, 2009

The Cornucopia of Home Science

1 comment By Theodore Gray

Reading old books of science experiments for children, it's easy to become nostalgic for the days when you could buy jugs of sulfur and mercury at... Continue »

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1. 
   $20.96 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe

   Theodore Gray

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OneMansView, January 30, 2009

Which predominates: overwritten tedium or brilliance? (3.5 *s)

This is a book that is flooded with descriptions, imagery, and contemplation that can, from sentence to sentence, seem odd, difficult, and overwritten and then insightful, lyrical, and poetic. The central character is Sylvie, a thirty-something female, who has returned to Fingerbone, an obscure western town set on a large lake, to care for her two nieces who have lost both their grandmother and mother. The story is told from the standpoint of Ruthie, one of the girls.

A heavy cloud hands over the entire book as death, impermanence, the power of water and the wind, cold weather, forests, mud, deprivation, and the like are constants in this rather gloomy story. It is a formidable environment that Sylvie and Ruthie, largely unsuccessfully, attempt to navigate, including social expectations and illusions. Despite an unspecified life of trouble, there is a strength and resoluteness to Sylvie that resonates.

The plot is minimal. The characters serve as a means for the author to develop her themes. The book is difficult and tedious with digressions interlaced throughout, not to mention getting past the author’s obscure word choices, yet there is brilliance on most every page.

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