About six months ago, at a fundraising event for the nonprofit I founded, Project H, a six-year-old girl handed me a pickle jar full of pennies....
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In the opening scene of Ron Rash’s excellent new novel Serena, George Pemberton, ruthless and land-hungry timber baron, returns by train to his holdings near Asheville, NC in 1929, with Serena, his wife of two days, in tow. There to meet them at the station are Rachel Harmon—a former camp employee who is carrying Pemberton’s unborn child—and her angry father, bent on revenge. At Serena’s urging, Pemberton quickly settles the score, leaving his opponent disemboweled, the young girl fatherless, and the witnesses at the depot speechless.
Upon returning to camp, the first thing Serena does to establish her own ruthless authority is to size up a nearby cane ash and make a public bet with the skeptical cutting-crew foreman as to the total board feet the tree will yield. Unfortunately for the foreman, he takes Serena’s bet. When the tree is cut and timbered and the results publicly revealed, his fateful bet loses him not only two weeks’ pay, but also his job—leaving no doubt among his fellow timber men as to who is in charge.
From that day forward, woe to any partners, employees, lawmen, or doctors who dare to desert, mislead, or challenge the rising Pemberton dynasty. Serena, as a sideline to her day job of overseeing the cutting and transport of timber, proceeds to import and tame a wild eagle, teaching it to hunt and destroy the area’s deadly timber rattlers, launching its aerial attacks from an imposing perch atop Serena’s forearm, while she sits astride her white Arabian stallion. When the eagle drops one of its victims, and a six-foot venomous snake falls from the sky, landing at the feet of the camp’s preacher, the man goes mad and is removed from his position, attracting unsavory interest and speculation from his fellow workers for months to follow.
The story of the Pembertons’ rise to power takes an even more violent turn when Serena—who wears jodhpurs and boots like a man—becomes pregnant, carries to term, then tragically loses the child, as well as her ability to conceive any future children; on the surface she copes, but underneath it all her vengeful and vindictive tendencies thrive.
When Serena’s quick tourniquet saves the life of a loner/worker whose hand is accidentally severed, she wins the blind loyalty of both him and his mantic mother, gaining a devoted henchman to do her diabolical bidding. Twenty-six months after the honeymoon train ride from Boston, Serena sets out to kill the child her husband fathered before they met. Her first foray into the surrounding hills fails to reveal the child’s whereabouts, but Serena manages to carry out her first longed-for murder: the innocent Widow Jenkins who had been caretaker of the boy. “We’ve both killed now,” Serena tells her husband urgently. “What you felt at the depot, I’ve felt, too. We’re closer, Pemberton, closer than we’ve ever been before.” And for the first time, we get a glimpse of the Lady Macbeth she has become, and the latent tendency that had been there all along. After her sinister pronouncement, her husband muses thusly:
"Madness, Pemberton thought, and remembered the first evening back in Boston, the walk down the cobbled streets to Serena’s lodging, the hollow sound of their footsteps. He remembered the moment he’d stood on the icy step as Serena unlocked the door and went inside, pressed the front room light on. Even when Serena had turned and smiled, Pemberton had lingered. Some dim troubling, almost visceral, keeping him there on the step, in the cold, outside the door. He remembered how he’d pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his overcoat pocket, brushed some snow flurries off his shoulders as he delayed his entrance a few more moments. Then he’d stepped inside, stepping toward this room as well, into this moment."
When her latest obsession reveals itself (“just us” she says, passionately kissing Pemberton before setting out under cover of darkness) her husband’s own desire to save the child who already bears such a striking resemblance to his father, initiates the slow unraveling of their marriage leading, ultimately and cataclysmically, to a conclusion so shocking that even though we sense it coming we think “no!” as we read—“no, surely not.” But readers can rest assured, under Ron Rash’s masterful pen and meticulous unfolding narrative, the dramatic conclusion is both thematically and cinematically right for the story. We arrive there breathless, incredulous, but strangely and supremely satisfied.
This is a finely crafted, beautifully rendered, and classically tragic tale of human ambition run amok. I have been a fan of Rash’s work for years, but this surely is his best, most artful novel yet.
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In his new memoir, Something for the Pain: One Doctor's Account of Life and Death in the ER, Paul Austin takes a clear-eyed look at the profession he has chosen---that of a doctor in a metropolitan Emergency Room, who frequently works what other (less superstitious) professionals might term "the Graveyard Shift."
Within the covers of this thoughtful and moving debut, Austin graciously allows us an insider's look at the struggles and rewards of his job, as well as the toll it can take on a growing family, especially when the detrimental effects of persistent sleep-deprivation fray nerves and breed frustration. (When the author finds an innovative way around these struggles, we silently cheer for his ingenuity and for the sake of his patient, empathetic wife, herself a former nurse.)
Unlike many of our nation's first responders (and ER doctors are definitely first responders), Austin and his ilk often don't get the respect that a fireman (which Austin has also been) or a paramedic might, and they certainly don't receive the full measure of respect they're due. (Have you ever tried staying up all night, on constant alert, dealing with bleeding, vomiting, angry people---many of them drunk and violent---or patients with chest pains and grisly car crash wounds that need immediate attention and split-second medical decisions? All this, while frequent understaffing creates delays that in turn create patients so angry that once they are finally seen it can complicate the process of diagnosis? ...I thought not.)
With equal measures of honesty and empathy, Paul Austin has created a timeless memoir that deserves a wide readership. As Richard Selzer's "Letters to a Young Doctor" helped to open the public's eyes to the general practitioner, so can "Something for the Pain" give us important insights into the working conditions for an ER physician. I do know that without a doubt, the next time I visit an ER, no matter my circumstances, I plan to extend a measure of empathy to the doctor on duty and not just expect it. And I plan to be thoroughly grateful--and definitely sober.
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(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Youssef El-Mekki grew up in Casablanca, in the slums of Hay An Najat where houseflies "grazed on piles of trash, competing with cows and sheep for tea grounds, vegetable peels, and empty containers of yogurt." One young man by circumstance, another by birthright, at nineteen Youssef learns shocking details about his real father that thrust him into a world of sudden luxuries, luxuries that at once elevate his circumstances and separate him from the places and people he loves.
Amal Amrani, by contrast, grew up a daughter of privilege and means. When she moves to the States and defies her wealthy parents' wishes, she is cut off both emotionally and financially. Later, in a gesture of reconciliation and renewed support, her parents cross the ocean to witness her graduation. Amal holds the door open for them at the end of a visit, "forgetting that Moroccans do not open doors for departing guests for fear of giving the impression that the guests are unwelcome." It is a striking symbol of how much her new life has changed her.
Exhibiting two very different approaches to filial duty, Amal reluctantly returns to Casablanca to reestablish her position in the family, leaving her new love behind in the States; Youssef embraces his newfound father's world of wealth and status, leaving his mother behind in the slums. Repercussions from the secret that Amal and Youssef have both borne for years---each without knowing it---ultimately cause them to question the very foundations of duty, loyalty, and love. In the end, both must choose. Both must declare their allegiance. Unfortunately for Youssef, his choice (which is no choice at all) hastens his descent into a shadowy religious underworld where faith is a weapon and all believers must be tested.
At its heart, Secret Son is a gorgeously rendered and heartbreaking tale of longing and belonging, of finding---and also leaving behind---the people and places we call home.
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(6 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
Wayne Benson is tired of living a complicated life. His needs are pretty simple—quiet time to write, three square meals a day (preferably prepaid and prepared for him), and comfortable surroundings. But where to find all of these things in one place? Enter The Sunset—a retirement community he once toured with his parents, prior to their move to Florida. The only problem? He’s thirty-two years too young. Enter Wayne Senior, his alter ego and aged doppelganger, courtesy of a grey wig and stage makeup, complete with cane and a stooped, halting gait (he’ll learn not to run for the bus when late).
For a time, Wayne’s plan works great. But what he hadn’t planned on was the complications of falling for a sexy fellow resident (yes, sixty can be sexy!) and becoming friends with his cranky next-door neighbor. Add a suspicious landlady and a blackmailing security guard, and things soon get way more complicated than Wayne’s former young life had ever been.
Perhaps the best part of the book for me (and so much of it was great fun) was moving through Wayne’s emotional maturation as he goes from viewing his fellow residents as obstacles to insightful, interesting people. His initial, skeptical view is evidenced by this passage:
“Eventually, the van would arrive in front of the supermarket and park. The driver would stay inside with the engine running and the A/C downgraded from arctic blast to cold front. Slowly the seniors would stir and with the help of a couple of Sunset staffers begin to vacate the vehicle. The legs of walkers and the tips of canes would emerge first, like the tentacles of some strange space creatures trying to blend in with humanity, they would descend on the store, sporting wraparound sunglasses, shawls, light-weight summer sweaters, and fistfuls of double coupons. Aisles would be congested, workers berated, and cashiers interrogated.”
Into the Sunset is a lively, engaging, romp-of-a-read, and by the end of the book, Wayne’s attitude and understanding have greatly softened—a truly older, wiser and more sanguine Wayne has emerged for us, his readers, and we welcome his rebirth into old age.
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Jack Gorse is a complicated man. The particularity of his nature is revealed in the book?s opening paragraph as he describes an episode of curdled cream in his self-serve coffee?an episode that led him forever after to drink his coffee black and obsessively double check each time he fills his cup.
We soon learn that he is also facing eviction from a rent-controlled apartment in New York City, an apartment he has illegally inhabited for years following the death of a similarly named uncle. The slow, cold war of attrition that ensues leaves Jack the only remaining tenant, and the architect hired to oversee the project his only human contact.
The ever unfolding layers of Jack?s personality reveal a man both intelligent and oddly naﶥ, shy and slyly voyeuristic, cunning and emotionally guileless. He is a fascinating man. He is also a quiet man, but even though this story is a first-person narrative, I would hesitate to label it a quiet book. The Understory crackles with the energy of compulsion and unrequited obsession that is slowly and meticulously revealed in a way that could be called meditative (for its gradually deepening understanding), except for the fact that Jack fails miserably at meditation. No, the true genius in the storytelling here is that Jack reveals his deepest self, without actually revealing his deepest self. He simply recounts, while we see what he cannot.
In fact, it?s this continual dichotomous tendency that serves up the book?s delicious tension. Gorse is beset by a stubborn ennui that plays against a dramatic narrative backdrop of eviction notices, narrowly escaped fires, and a culminating scene of violence that is as sudden and unexpected as it is dramatically right.
The Understory is a book that relentlessly and incrementally pulls you forward on intelligent tenterhooks till you slap against a conclusion that resonates long after the turning of the final page.
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(3 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
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Serena by Ron Rash
Mary Akers, May 9, 2009
In the opening scene of Ron Rash’s excellent new novel Serena, George Pemberton, ruthless and land-hungry timber baron, returns by train to his holdings near Asheville, NC in 1929, with Serena, his wife of two days, in tow. There to meet them at the station are Rachel Harmon—a former camp employee who is carrying Pemberton’s unborn child—and her angry father, bent on revenge. At Serena’s urging, Pemberton quickly settles the score, leaving his opponent disemboweled, the young girl fatherless, and the witnesses at the depot speechless.Upon returning to camp, the first thing Serena does to establish her own ruthless authority is to size up a nearby cane ash and make a public bet with the skeptical cutting-crew foreman as to the total board feet the tree will yield. Unfortunately for the foreman, he takes Serena’s bet. When the tree is cut and timbered and the results publicly revealed, his fateful bet loses him not only two weeks’ pay, but also his job—leaving no doubt among his fellow timber men as to who is in charge.
From that day forward, woe to any partners, employees, lawmen, or doctors who dare to desert, mislead, or challenge the rising Pemberton dynasty. Serena, as a sideline to her day job of overseeing the cutting and transport of timber, proceeds to import and tame a wild eagle, teaching it to hunt and destroy the area’s deadly timber rattlers, launching its aerial attacks from an imposing perch atop Serena’s forearm, while she sits astride her white Arabian stallion. When the eagle drops one of its victims, and a six-foot venomous snake falls from the sky, landing at the feet of the camp’s preacher, the man goes mad and is removed from his position, attracting unsavory interest and speculation from his fellow workers for months to follow.
The story of the Pembertons’ rise to power takes an even more violent turn when Serena—who wears jodhpurs and boots like a man—becomes pregnant, carries to term, then tragically loses the child, as well as her ability to conceive any future children; on the surface she copes, but underneath it all her vengeful and vindictive tendencies thrive.
When Serena’s quick tourniquet saves the life of a loner/worker whose hand is accidentally severed, she wins the blind loyalty of both him and his mantic mother, gaining a devoted henchman to do her diabolical bidding. Twenty-six months after the honeymoon train ride from Boston, Serena sets out to kill the child her husband fathered before they met. Her first foray into the surrounding hills fails to reveal the child’s whereabouts, but Serena manages to carry out her first longed-for murder: the innocent Widow Jenkins who had been caretaker of the boy. “We’ve both killed now,” Serena tells her husband urgently. “What you felt at the depot, I’ve felt, too. We’re closer, Pemberton, closer than we’ve ever been before.” And for the first time, we get a glimpse of the Lady Macbeth she has become, and the latent tendency that had been there all along. After her sinister pronouncement, her husband muses thusly:
"Madness, Pemberton thought, and remembered the first evening back in Boston, the walk down the cobbled streets to Serena’s lodging, the hollow sound of their footsteps. He remembered the moment he’d stood on the icy step as Serena unlocked the door and went inside, pressed the front room light on. Even when Serena had turned and smiled, Pemberton had lingered. Some dim troubling, almost visceral, keeping him there on the step, in the cold, outside the door. He remembered how he’d pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his overcoat pocket, brushed some snow flurries off his shoulders as he delayed his entrance a few more moments. Then he’d stepped inside, stepping toward this room as well, into this moment."
When her latest obsession reveals itself (“just us” she says, passionately kissing Pemberton before setting out under cover of darkness) her husband’s own desire to save the child who already bears such a striking resemblance to his father, initiates the slow unraveling of their marriage leading, ultimately and cataclysmically, to a conclusion so shocking that even though we sense it coming we think “no!” as we read—“no, surely not.” But readers can rest assured, under Ron Rash’s masterful pen and meticulous unfolding narrative, the dramatic conclusion is both thematically and cinematically right for the story. We arrive there breathless, incredulous, but strangely and supremely satisfied.
This is a finely crafted, beautifully rendered, and classically tragic tale of human ambition run amok. I have been a fan of Rash’s work for years, but this surely is his best, most artful novel yet.
(2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
Something for the Pain: Compassion and Burnout in the ER by Paul Austin
Mary Akers, May 9, 2009
In his new memoir, Something for the Pain: One Doctor's Account of Life and Death in the ER, Paul Austin takes a clear-eyed look at the profession he has chosen---that of a doctor in a metropolitan Emergency Room, who frequently works what other (less superstitious) professionals might term "the Graveyard Shift."Within the covers of this thoughtful and moving debut, Austin graciously allows us an insider's look at the struggles and rewards of his job, as well as the toll it can take on a growing family, especially when the detrimental effects of persistent sleep-deprivation fray nerves and breed frustration. (When the author finds an innovative way around these struggles, we silently cheer for his ingenuity and for the sake of his patient, empathetic wife, herself a former nurse.)
Unlike many of our nation's first responders (and ER doctors are definitely first responders), Austin and his ilk often don't get the respect that a fireman (which Austin has also been) or a paramedic might, and they certainly don't receive the full measure of respect they're due. (Have you ever tried staying up all night, on constant alert, dealing with bleeding, vomiting, angry people---many of them drunk and violent---or patients with chest pains and grisly car crash wounds that need immediate attention and split-second medical decisions? All this, while frequent understaffing creates delays that in turn create patients so angry that once they are finally seen it can complicate the process of diagnosis? ...I thought not.)
With equal measures of honesty and empathy, Paul Austin has created a timeless memoir that deserves a wide readership. As Richard Selzer's "Letters to a Young Doctor" helped to open the public's eyes to the general practitioner, so can "Something for the Pain" give us important insights into the working conditions for an ER physician. I do know that without a doubt, the next time I visit an ER, no matter my circumstances, I plan to extend a measure of empathy to the doctor on duty and not just expect it. And I plan to be thoroughly grateful--and definitely sober.
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Secret Son by Laila Lalami
Mary Akers, May 9, 2009
Youssef El-Mekki grew up in Casablanca, in the slums of Hay An Najat where houseflies "grazed on piles of trash, competing with cows and sheep for tea grounds, vegetable peels, and empty containers of yogurt." One young man by circumstance, another by birthright, at nineteen Youssef learns shocking details about his real father that thrust him into a world of sudden luxuries, luxuries that at once elevate his circumstances and separate him from the places and people he loves.Amal Amrani, by contrast, grew up a daughter of privilege and means. When she moves to the States and defies her wealthy parents' wishes, she is cut off both emotionally and financially. Later, in a gesture of reconciliation and renewed support, her parents cross the ocean to witness her graduation. Amal holds the door open for them at the end of a visit, "forgetting that Moroccans do not open doors for departing guests for fear of giving the impression that the guests are unwelcome." It is a striking symbol of how much her new life has changed her.
Exhibiting two very different approaches to filial duty, Amal reluctantly returns to Casablanca to reestablish her position in the family, leaving her new love behind in the States; Youssef embraces his newfound father's world of wealth and status, leaving his mother behind in the slums. Repercussions from the secret that Amal and Youssef have both borne for years---each without knowing it---ultimately cause them to question the very foundations of duty, loyalty, and love. In the end, both must choose. Both must declare their allegiance. Unfortunately for Youssef, his choice (which is no choice at all) hastens his descent into a shadowy religious underworld where faith is a weapon and all believers must be tested.
At its heart, Secret Son is a gorgeously rendered and heartbreaking tale of longing and belonging, of finding---and also leaving behind---the people and places we call home.
(6 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
Into the Sunset by Donald Capone
Mary Akers, April 2, 2008
Wayne Benson is tired of living a complicated life. His needs are pretty simple—quiet time to write, three square meals a day (preferably prepaid and prepared for him), and comfortable surroundings. But where to find all of these things in one place? Enter The Sunset—a retirement community he once toured with his parents, prior to their move to Florida. The only problem? He’s thirty-two years too young. Enter Wayne Senior, his alter ego and aged doppelganger, courtesy of a grey wig and stage makeup, complete with cane and a stooped, halting gait (he’ll learn not to run for the bus when late).For a time, Wayne’s plan works great. But what he hadn’t planned on was the complications of falling for a sexy fellow resident (yes, sixty can be sexy!) and becoming friends with his cranky next-door neighbor. Add a suspicious landlady and a blackmailing security guard, and things soon get way more complicated than Wayne’s former young life had ever been.
Perhaps the best part of the book for me (and so much of it was great fun) was moving through Wayne’s emotional maturation as he goes from viewing his fellow residents as obstacles to insightful, interesting people. His initial, skeptical view is evidenced by this passage:
“Eventually, the van would arrive in front of the supermarket and park. The driver would stay inside with the engine running and the A/C downgraded from arctic blast to cold front. Slowly the seniors would stir and with the help of a couple of Sunset staffers begin to vacate the vehicle. The legs of walkers and the tips of canes would emerge first, like the tentacles of some strange space creatures trying to blend in with humanity, they would descend on the store, sporting wraparound sunglasses, shawls, light-weight summer sweaters, and fistfuls of double coupons. Aisles would be congested, workers berated, and cashiers interrogated.”
Into the Sunset is a lively, engaging, romp-of-a-read, and by the end of the book, Wayne’s attitude and understanding have greatly softened—a truly older, wiser and more sanguine Wayne has emerged for us, his readers, and we welcome his rebirth into old age.
(4 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Understory (07 Edition) by Pamela Erens
Mary Akers, December 6, 2007
Jack Gorse is a complicated man. The particularity of his nature is revealed in the book?s opening paragraph as he describes an episode of curdled cream in his self-serve coffee?an episode that led him forever after to drink his coffee black and obsessively double check each time he fills his cup.We soon learn that he is also facing eviction from a rent-controlled apartment in New York City, an apartment he has illegally inhabited for years following the death of a similarly named uncle. The slow, cold war of attrition that ensues leaves Jack the only remaining tenant, and the architect hired to oversee the project his only human contact.
The ever unfolding layers of Jack?s personality reveal a man both intelligent and oddly naﶥ, shy and slyly voyeuristic, cunning and emotionally guileless. He is a fascinating man. He is also a quiet man, but even though this story is a first-person narrative, I would hesitate to label it a quiet book. The Understory crackles with the energy of compulsion and unrequited obsession that is slowly and meticulously revealed in a way that could be called meditative (for its gradually deepening understanding), except for the fact that Jack fails miserably at meditation. No, the true genius in the storytelling here is that Jack reveals his deepest self, without actually revealing his deepest self. He simply recounts, while we see what he cannot.
In fact, it?s this continual dichotomous tendency that serves up the book?s delicious tension. Gorse is beset by a stubborn ennui that plays against a dramatic narrative backdrop of eviction notices, narrowly escaped fires, and a culminating scene of violence that is as sudden and unexpected as it is dramatically right.
The Understory is a book that relentlessly and incrementally pulls you forward on intelligent tenterhooks till you slap against a conclusion that resonates long after the turning of the final page.
(3 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
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