Move Over Lady MacBeth....

Calculating, Ambitious, Ruthless...oh, and mesmerizing.  Sounds intriguing, right?  Ron Rash's new novel, "Serena", is sure to pack a powerful punch in more ways than one. Set in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina during the Great Depression, “Serena” begins with lumber baron George Pemberton bringing his new wife, Serena, back to town. The opening scene is just too good to paraphrase:

“When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.”

From that moment on, the reader is thrown into a world unlike any I have ever visited.  Knowing virtually nothing about Appalachia or the people that hail from that region, simply meeting the characters and their culture was interesting enough. Add the element of environmental destruction via The Boston Lumber Co. and innocent lives in danger and what you end up with is a novel wracked with one startling event after another.

It is clear early on that Serena and Pemberton are to be viewed as the ultimate power-couple. He is the one in charge but it doesn't take long to see that she is calling all the shots.While he seems to believe that he has ingratiated himself by getting down and working with them a time or two, his inability to even recall the name of the girl he has impregnated illustrates his overall carelessness of the people who work for him.

And work they do....filled with harrowing descriptions of the dangers and perils of the logging industry, Rash describes an environment filled with a multitude of fears; snapping cables, wayward axes, frostbite and snakebites. These weary workers endure hellish conditions six days a week in all types of weather. Accident upon accident ensures that employees are constantly killed or mangled.  "If you could gather up all the severed body parts and sew them together, you'd gain an extra worker every month.", the doctor morbidly proclaims.  But as the Depression soldiers on, the camp is never lacking in willing bodies to work.

The book progresses as Serena and her husband work diligently to make sure plans for a  National Park do not come to fruition, knocking off anyone who stands in their way. As the bodies pile up, Rash manages to keep the tone terrifying without ever being overly graphic...most of the murders take place off the page and are simply talked about later.  But when Serena sets her sights on Rachel (the mother of Pemberton's child) and her son Jacob, it all takes a bone-chilling turn.  By the time Rachel and her son begin fleeing for their lives, the cold-blooded ways of the ironically named Serena had me so bewildered and flabbergasted that I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Serena quickly establishes herself as a disturbing and intense villain, though even at her worst I was captivated. Unlike Lady Macbeth, however, blood stained hands are not a cause for guilt and certainly no reason for pause....a conscience, Serena does not have.

I think the best part of this novel was the way it was set up.  It seemed odd to me at first the character for which the book was named, is not front and center at all times....or that the story was not told from her perspective. We never really get to know Pemberton although a few short glimpses of human decency do flicker through right before being snuffed out by an unsettling loyalty to his wife. For me, it seemed that the unifier of the many plot lines came via the lunchtime conversations of the lead logging crew. Their simple and yet often profound discussions served to offer comic relief along with sage wisdom. Additionally, these conversation gave depth to characters that were no more than bystanders to the mayhem around them. They simultaneously lent a hand to the characterization not only of the people of the area but of the time.  As they quietly go about their daily business, they are all too aware of the underlying danger that Serena represents and they keenly understand what she is capable of. As one sagely states, “I’d no more strut up and tangle with that eagle than I’d tangle with the one what can tame such a critter”, referring to the eagle that Serena has managed to tame and is rarely seen without."

If all the mayhem, murders and chaos sounds like alot, trust me it is. The final culmination of it all is as riveting as the rest of the ride and leaves nothing left to question. Ron Rash's use of elegant language and graceful descriptions weave together themes of greed, lust, and conservation in a story sure to stay with you once the final page has been turned.

Getting It Done in the Twenty One One......

The above statement is my new mantra.  Notice I used the word 'mantra' and not resolution.  I am feeling more optimistic and hopeful about this phrase and somewhat less than resolute. I am ok with this.  Therefore, I will not feel like such a failure should something be left undone.  I am embracing my erratic and infrequent bouts of blogging and hope that you will simply bear with me.  So, here we go...no more whining about goals or messy houses or unemployment (largely because I am now employed, no longer attempting to goal set and have just come to terms with the domestic skills I so desperately lack). Without further ado.....

"The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen

Prior to this summer, I had never heard of this author.  But the release of his much-acclaimed novel, "Freedom" garnered so much attention, I knew I had to read it.  I ran out, bought Freedom, put it on my nightstand and proceeded with my summer.  I completely forgot all about it until September when I realized that he was going to be a guest author at the Library of Congress Book Festival.  Simultaneously, I recognized that he would be speaking at the same time as Suzanne Collins and we can all guess whose tent I was happily occupying. I never thought about this author again until I stumbled across a used copy of "The Corrections" and decided to read it first.  I have been composing this entry in my head ever since I started this novel and can say with certainty that the thoughts I would have expressed during this novel, differ vastly from what I have to say upon completion.  This almost never happens to me...I either like it, or I don't.  In this case, I spent 500 some odd pages in complete loathing of a family with whom I did not like or care to befriend.  Upon reflection, I realize that my dislike was so intense because Franzen so thoroughly delves into the lives and relationships of this fictional family, that you can't help but fidget uncomfortably and/or laugh while also falling for them regardless.

The novel follows the Lamberts, a mid-western family of five through events leading up to the possible occurrence of one, final Christmas together.  The three children have all grown and gone their separate ways, one of them with a family of his own. The elderly parents, Alfred and Enid, are struggling to come to terms with Alfred's increasingly difficult "affliction", Parkinson's.  It is Enid's one and only wish that the family spend one Christmas together, as a whole, in the house they grew up in.  With their own lives moving at rapid and dramatic paces and familial relationships in a constant state of bend and fray, this wish is harder to grant than it would seem .  Franzen chose to break the book down into segments with each segment focusing on a particular family member.  I felt that this was an integral part in the understanding and empathy (or initial disgust, in my case) the reader ultimately develops for the characters. 

As the novel progresses through a year of cruise-ship mishaps, psychedelic drugs, bouts of depression, illegal Internet fraud and illicit sexual affairs, I gradually found myself warming up to this dysfunctional family and falling in love with Franzen for the subtleties he felt compelled to include in his narrative.  From the contents of a laundry room cupboard to the character traits of consumers who frequent medical supply stores, Franzen creates a world that is morbidly comedic and all too closely related to our own. Both a fictional narrative and a wry  societal commentary, I was constantly in awe of the nuances he refused to omit as well as the breadth of knowledge he appears to possess about everything. Additionally, it is the relationships this family has with one another and the possibility that they could eventually parallel my own, that kept me going to the finish.

I have to wonder, though, if my age has something to do with my perception of this family. This family has long ago dispersed, each member molded into their lives, for the most part. Because my family is still in a state of flux, with siblings still in school and those yet to be married, the stagnation and boredom these characters were experiencing were altogether unfamiliar. Enid's focus on Christmas and her tangible excitement of the holiday was one of the few traits with which I could relate. Christmas tradition is the one topic on which my family unilaterally agrees. My parents and siblings, along with my spouse and my children always spend Christmas together at my Grandmother's. It has always been this way. Christmas tradition is the one element that I will not ever be willing to sacrifice.  The idea that we may never all be together on Christmas, or that my children will not want to be with me on Christmas, is one that makes my stomach tighten.  Enid and her devotion to the the way things were and the hope that they can be re-created was heart wrenching to read. No parent wants to envision a future with children who merely tolerate them.

Also, my parents are not anywhere close to the physical and mental deterioration of Albert and Enid. By most standards, they are still considerably young. Although I was unable to connect with the characters in this regard, the knowledge that day may actually arrive is painful enough. You can't help but wonder how you will react when the parent-child dynamic begins to shift. Alfred's deterioration amid his children's claims that "he is fine" is yet another example of the astute observations that have made me a Franzen fan. It is these observations, these nuances and questions, these relationships and these emotions that made "The Corrections" a novel not only worth reading but Jonathan Franzen worth remembering.