In this absorbing fictionalization of a real murder case from 1984, author Martin Clark, a Virginia circuit court judge, explores the increasingly fraught predicament of a rural Virginia Commonwealth’s attorney, Mason Hunt, who makes the only decision that makes sense to him as a naïve young man. He must then live with that decision and re-examine its consequences for the next twenty years. At a party one night long ago, Mason’s brother Gates got into an argument and killed a man, and Mason, the only witness, covered for him for years. Eventually, Mason must finally pay for his mistakes, and justice must be served. The book is a can’t-put-it-downer with characters who leap off the page. One of my favorites for 2008.
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Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison continues her powerful examination of slavery’s evil legacy, a focus of her long career, by creating an intense and involving novel set in the Atlantic colonies between 1682 and 1690, when the slave trade from the Portuguese colonies in Africa was a lucrative business for many colonists. Here Morrison examines slavery from its earliest days, concentrating on its short term and long-term effects on society as a whole and the people, especially the women, who were it greatest victims. Even in New York, where most of this action takes place, slaves were owned, and property laws governing their ownership were respected. The primary speaker is Florens, a young black girl, aged sixteen at the outset of the novel, who tells the reader that her narrative is a confession, “full of curiosities,” and that she has committed a violent, bloody, once-in-a-lifetime crime which she will never repeat. This is a novel of epic scope, filled with complex philosophical, Biblical, and feminist issues and symbols.
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With Ironweed, William Kennedy completes his three novels of Depression-era Albany, wrapping up this study of time, place, and people with an emotionally gripping Pulitzer Prize-winner (1984) that focuses on those who call themselves “bums,” all of them living apart from society because their dreams have died. Here Francis Phelan, long-absent father of Billy Phelan, returns to Albany for the first time in twenty-two years. A former pro ballplayer, Francis lost his career when he lost part of a finger in a fight. He abandoned his wife Annie and his family when he accidentally dropped and killed his 13-day-old son Gerald, an act for which he still atones. A book so good it will leave you reeling, Ironweed tears at the heart without showing a trace of sentimentality, depicting hard lives lived by down-and-out people, most of whom still possess the redeeming virtues of the more saintly who live “normal” lives. Hard-edged, sometimes violent, and even cruel, it also reveals human kindness, sweetness, and love. (On my list of All-Time Favorites.)
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Focusing on the life of Henry James, Colm Toibin’s The Master goes way beyond the usual “novelization” of someone’s biography. Toibin has done a tremendous amount of research and has obviously read everything James has written, but he has so completely distilled all of this information, that in writing this book, he actually recreates Henry James. James, an American by birth, is a lonely and solitary figure throughout the novel, a man unable to form a committed relationship with anyone, either male or female, sometimes wanting companionship but not closeness, and always needing solitude to work. Through flashbacks, Toibin shows how James’s early upbringing may have been partly responsible for his feelings of isolation. Toibin’s dual focus on James’s life and how it is embodied in his fiction, give a powerful immediacy and sense of verisimilitude to this novel, so strong that one cannot help but feel an emotional connection to James, no matter how remote he may seem otherwise. (On my Favorites List for 2004)
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Vivid and hard-edged, Dancer fuses fact and fiction seamlessly, successfully recreating the essence of a larger-than-life star like Rudolf Nureyev and illuminating the many secret worlds he inhabited. At the same time, Dancer also manages to capture the heart, making an unlikable egomaniac into an understandable human and his rise to stardom a goal the reader both shares and celebrates. His legs were the source of “more violence than grace,” and there was “more intuition in him than intellect, more spirit than knowledge.” In his first brief recital, he was filled with “kinetic fury,” and even when he reached the height of his powers, when much of the world regarded his dance partnership with famed ballerina Margot Fonteyn as both intimate and elegant, his style was also described by others as “ferocious.” Nureyev’s “wild and feral” style of dance meshes perfectly with McCann’s prose. Filled with intriguing characters, ranging from simple Russian peasants to Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, John Lennon, Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and the stars of ballet, the novel is a monument to the power of the creative spirit and a testament to the dangers inherent in a life from which all other controls have been removed. (My favorite novel of 2003)
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