The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips

I so desperately wish that I had taken the time to write the review of Gin Phillips' The Well and the Mine the moment I finished it. My first impulse upon finishing it was simply to thank Phillips for writing such a fine book, which is odd, because that sort of thing is never something that is at the forefront of my mind. It's a brilliant debut and the sort of book that makes reading other more mediocre books oh-so-difficult, and I wish that I'd reviewed it when it was fresher in my mind. Nonetheless, I'm going to give the review my best shot and hope that it conveys just how much I fell in love with this book despite the fact that many have probably already done it and done it better.


Set in a 1930s Alabama coal town, The Well and the Mine is the story of the Moore family. They are neither very well off nor especially destitute relative to their neighbors. Supported by the father, Albert's, work in the coal mines, the Moores have enough to get by and are content with what they have. Albert has an enviable certainty about what is right and wrong that anchors the whole family as well as a before-his-time conviction that there shouldn't be anything wrong with having his black co-worker over to dinner in an era when such an action couldn't have been more scandalous.

To Papa, good was something you could hold in your hand. Hard and solid like coal rock. You could weigh it, measure it, see its beginning and end.... There was something comforting to that, knowing what he wanted, what he expected, and knowing what would disappoint him. But it meant lots of times there was no point in talking to him, because he knew his own mind so well that he didn't need to know yours.

When Albert met his wife, Leta, he was enchanted first by her hair, but then also by an uncanny foreknowledge that she would be the perfect wife and mother. Leta cares for her family with hard work, love, and self-sacrifice so elusive that her husband and children are hard-pressed to notice that she passed up that biscuit so one of them could have seconds. Albert and Leta have three children: Virgie, who is coming into her teenage years grounded, practical, and so pretty that she's nearly inapproachable, not that that keeps the boys from trying; precocious, imaginative Tess; and the youngest, Jack. They are a better than average family living an average life until the summer night when an unknown woman drops a baby into their well. Soon all five members of the Moore family are taking a second look at the world beyond their front door, looking beneath the mostly tranquil surface of their community, and questioning all their assumptions about their neighbors and the world in which they live.

I wondered how I really saw her that first night and how much was me shaping that memory, patting it down until it was tidy. For years I thought of her sweetness as written there in the darkness of her eyes, the softness of her mouth. Remembered - imagined? - that from that first night, I knew her small hands would mend a pain in my neck as sure as a swig of whiskey, that the crook of her elbow would fit a baby like God had carved it purely for that purpose.

Phillips is a great writer in the vein of Andrea Levy (Small Island) and Ann Patchett (Bel Canto) whose plots may not race along with an insane fervor but whose characters leap off the page, each with their own unique voice, and whose writing is so crisp and vivid that readers can't help but savor every word and the scenes those words bring to life. Each member of the Moore family narrates this pivotal time in their lives so distinctly that readers will hardly need indicators of which character is narrating. Each finds him or herself mulling over the big issues in the wake of the incident with the baby, contemplating wealth and poverty, whiteness and blackness, and even how much one can truly know and understand another person and their reasons for doing what they do. All of this is done with such vulnerability and subtlety that it never seems preachy but makes readers consider some of the same big questions that come with being human and interacting with people who are each going through their struggles that we might not understand but might hope to sympathize with nonetheless.

There was ugliness to it, too, I didn't miss that, but church was full of ugly things - blood and crucifixion and thorns and swords and ears lopped off - that were part of God's perfect plan.

The Well and the Mine is a beautiful To Kill a Mockingbird-esque book about salt of the earth decent sorts of people whose love for each other and respect for their neighbors is tangible, if unspoken, dealing with hard times and learning a lot about themselves and their neighbors in the process. A real gem of a book paved with so many perfect moments that I can do no justice, so you'll just have to read it yourself. And I hope you do.

Papa wouldn't complain to the brick company. He said what's done is done. (His eyes were red, which the mines brung about sometimes, but instead of making them look uglier, it made the blue seem brighter.) He squatted down next to me and told me Jack had been hurt real bad, and for a while all I could think was that his eyes were like sky and roses.


Oh, and Gin Phillips, if you happen to read this....thanks. =)

Read other reviews at...

The Magic Lasso
Books and Cooks
Semicolon
Thoughts of Joy
Five Borough Book Review
Many a Quaint and Curious Volume

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

"Fine," he repeated, and I wondered why it was I kept coming back to this, again and again, a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.

Macy Queen is fine. Just fine. She's been fine ever since her dad died the day after Christmas as she looked on. Ever since she and her mom ordered and organized grief out of their lives in favor of silent and predictable days, she has been fine. Ever since Macy started dating Jason, a brainiac who seems to know all the answers but is a little lacking in the love department, she has been fine.

As she sinks into another long summer at home, taking over Jason's job at the library info desk while he heads off to "Brain Camp," Macy is determined to be fine even though her co-workers treat her as something less than human, her mother has entirely lost herself in a townhouse project at work, and her dead father's obsession with infomercial inventions continues to haunt her. Alas, when she makes the mistake of professing her love to Jason via e-mail and not taking her library job seriously enough, Jason declares a break for their relationship. That's when Macy takes up with the chaotic but full of heart Wish catering crew and everything starts to change, most of all Macy herself. As the summer wears on, her friends from Wish teach Macy how to start living life again, and handsome, artistic Wes who seems to understand her in ways she could never have imagined has a lot to teach her about love.

"It's hard to do," I said.

Wes looked at me. "What is?"

I swallowed, not sure why I'd said this out loud. "Get it right."

The Truth About Forever is an excellent book which is targeted at a young adult audience but can be appreciated by anyone looking for a great story populated with entirely lovable, believable characters. Macy is an incredibly realistic teen narrator, someone who, while not a social outcast, is struggling with many problems and laboring under the weight of the facade she relies on to get through the day. It's impossible not to root for her, wishing that she'd dump her terrible library job not to mention Jason whose loveless cerebral approach to their relationship and total lack of emotional warmth make readers loath him as much Macy loves him. Each of the members of the Wish crew is a fully fleshed out character and each has a part to play in Macy's story.

What's best about this book, though, is Dessen's grasp on Macy's many conflicting emotions and her brilliant ability to pace events just right, so that we can really feel the emotional punch her story is packing. If you're anything like me, this is not a book that you'll want to read too much of in public. I found myself crying repeatedly as Macy finally finds the understanding she's been looking for, works through the grief she had bottled inside, and learns that real friends don't want an act, they want her.

But then, I couldn't imagine, after everything that had happened, how you could live and not constantly be worrying about the dangers all around you. Especially when you'd already gotten the scare of your life.

"It's the same thing," I told her.

"What is?"

"Being afraid and being alive."

"No," she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. "Macy, no. It's not."

This is my first Sarah Dessen but definitely won't be my last. Everything about this story just seems so right, and I can't recommend it heartily enough. (You must reeeeaaaad it...now!)

Booking Through Thursday: Sticky Books

No, not really sticky. That would be gross.

Speaking of gross, I'm taking a sick day today, and despite feeling like a pile of crap, it occurred to me that I haven't done a Booking Through Thursday in a while. Luckily, this week's is pretty easy and right up my alley.

I saw this over at Shelley’s, and thought it sounded like a great question for all of you:

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”

Well, I think I managed it in 15 minutes, but they weren't consecutive minutes because I was trying to reschedule my day's appointments, somewhat unsuccessfully. =(

In the order that I thought of them...

1. The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
2. After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
3. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
4. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
5. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
6. The Lord of the Rings (particularly The Return of the King) by J.R.R. Tolkien
7. The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty
8. White Fang by Jack London
9. Little House on the Prairie (is it fair for me to include a series or two?) by Laura Ingalls Wilder
10. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
11. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
12. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
13. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
14. The Bible (well, that counts, right? Actually, I'm surprised it took me until #14 to think of it...it's gotta be one of my stickiest!)
15. The Other Side of You by Salley Vickers

There you have it. 15 books in 15 minutes. And I have no idea if the authors are correct because I was doing it off the top of my head, so if I totally bungled one, feel free to make fun of me in the comments.

The China Garden by Liz Berry

Wow. What a month. I think I'm through being a vagrant for at least the next few minutes. My car is littered with old MapQuest directions, my odometer is cruising toward the 200,000 mile mark with unprecedented speed, and I am a happy camper. A happy camper with a growing pile of books to review, but a happy camper nonetheless. I knew this month was going to be crazy, and it has been. Perhaps even crazier than I had anticipated. The end of the month has been littered with a slew of weddings and holiday barbecues and other such social occasions that have had me driving all over the state. Ever crazier is that June, which was supposed to be a slower month has already filled up, too. I might not have to be away from home as much, but that doesn't mean that I haven't booked up every free minute. Anywho, I'm having good times, have extremely few regrets (except for maybe going slightly overboard on wedding gift purchasing...perhaps buying *both* exorbitantly priced throw pillows was a bit over the top), so I'm going to try to avoid making apologies for my persistent absence from here lately. Next month, people are moving (and I'll help!), used books are being sold from a variety of libraries (and I'll buy!), fathers are having their day (must find pretty fishing lure!), and I'm trying to cobble together a getaway to Baltimore's Inner Harbor (but will those vacation days be approved?), so next month isn't looking all too promising for my increased presence here.

But, in good news, I have been reading books at about the same slow rate as I always do, even despite my packed schedule, which means, of course, when I do manage to drop by here, I will have books to tell you about.

So on today's episode of "Books I Read a Long Time Ago" I'll be featuring Liz Berry's The China Garden.


Clare has just finished with her exams and is finally preparing to go to college when her mother drops the bombshell that she's planning to leave her London nursing job to be a private nurse for the Earl of Ravensmere, an English country estate veiled in even more layers of mystery than Clare could hope to imagine. Though she could spend the summer in London with friends, Clare feels an irresistable pull to accompany her mother to Ravensmere, where, it turns out, things are more than a little strange. For one thing, everyone in the neighboring village seems to know her and all seem unusually happy to have her "back" at Ravensmere. Then the hallucinations of the would-be future start, and did I mention that irresistably handsome guy in motorcycle leathers that keeps turning up when Clare least expects him?

It doesn't take long for Clare to realize that she is already more wrapped up in Ravensemere's story than she can imagine and so, it happens, is that guy, Mark. As the summer unfolds, Clare learns that her mother has some deep, dark secrets in her past, and that the mystical powers of Ravensmere may well have claim on her own future.

And that's all I'll say in the way of plot summary, lest I give away one of The China Garden's many mysteries.

I found The China Garden to be an enjoyable, if not particularly memorable, read. Berry easily paces her novel with just the right amount of suspense to keep readers hungry for the answer to the next question. She also captures the darkly mysterious nature of what, on the surface, seems to be a beautiful but otherwise unremarkable estate. The back story and the current story are skillfully woven together, but older readers will probably catch on to much of the mystery before it's been revealed, which, I suppose is half the fun anyway. The only complaint I have has to do with the relationship between Clare and Mark, which, to me, always seemed a bit hollow and shallow for all the forces pushing them together and their own mutual attraction. Their relationship is an important premise for the story, and that it never seemed to go much deeper than lust had a bit of a negative effect on the story. But, then, this book's intended audience might not read into it is much as I'm doing which would make this all a moot point. All in all, a good read and one I would recommend to somebody looking for a good pageturner for the summer months.

This Was Supposed To Be a Book Review...

...and maybe it will be once I get to the end of the post. Wait for it...wait for it...

You know, I'm beginning to find my blog ironic. You see, I feel like I'm posting less and less. I review fewer and fewer books and yet more people are following me and subscribing to my feed on Google Reader than ever before - not vastly more, but more nonetheless. I'm pretty sure this is not how it's supposed to work, unless, you people, like me, enjoy the merits of an infrequently updated blog. Some days, I tell you, I do. For one, then my Google Reader doesn't explode with like 50 zillion posts I don't have time to read...like it kind of is exploding now. But then the book blogosphere would be a mighty boring, lame place if everybody blogged like me. What I mean to say is, of course, hello new people and old people, it's a pleasure to have you here reading and commenting and generally being awesome despite my distinct lack of awesomeness.

Today I am contemplating the difficulty, yet again, of reviewing a book that I feel kind of ambivalent about. I pretty much need to review every book I read here because I read like a turtle (and turtles can't even read!) and therefore don't get many books read and therefore don't have many to review. Ah, but it's so hard to be really enthusiastic about reviewing those books that don't naturally create a great feeling of enthusiasm, which is not to say that they're bad, just that they're not super awesometastic enough to jolt me from my general book reviewing laziness.

Also, it's helpful when reviewing books to, um, actually have understood them. This brings me to an informal discussion (but if you're running a challenge that I'm taking part in, we're calling it a book review!) of a book that I barely remember! (This is the part where I attempt to create enthusiasm on both your and my parts with the use of exclamation points!!! Is it working?!?!?)

Anyhow, The Glister by John Burnside. I read it in March, somewhat hungrily devouring its mildly overblown prose thinking that once I reached the end I would understand what it was all about. Like pretty much everyone else whose reviews I have read, I didn't really get it. I thought for a time that maybe I was getting it, but I was fooling myself. I then came upon a sort of problem because I find it hard to frame a review for a book that I didn't understand. Upon reaching the end and trying to formulate some sort of review in my mind, I realized that without at least a basic understanding of what exactly the book was getting at, I don't really have a way to organize or give any sort of theme to my review (imagine that!). Then I realized how important it is to me to have my reviews be cohesive and revolve around some sort of main point, and I don't even know if people or if I even realize I do that. So, this book that would count for two challenges has languished (and languished and languished) on the to be reviewed pile because I'm just...stumped. Ah, but wait, I think I may have something after all...

The Glister is more the story of a town than it is of any one person. Innertown has been decimated by its chemical plant. With the demise of the once successful chemical plant, the town seems to deteriorate and fall in on itself. The plant leaves behind a town populated with ineffectual adults unable to recover from chemical induced ailments or trapped with the grief of losing loved ones and a generation of disaffected children who haunt the abandoned and disintegrating chemical plant property in search of meaning or maybe just a way out of their dismal futures. While the adults seem to be caught up in their own lowgrade misfortune, young boys are disappearing. Instead of seeing this for the problem that it is, all choose to believe that the young teenage boys have simply found a way to escape their fates in Innertown.

I can't tell you much more, except that there's quite a bit of violence, a few teenagers that are actually even h-rnier than you would expect of teenagers, and a good deal of bad language. And this wouldn't have bothered me if it had all added up to something in the end. Instead the book just seems to trail off in yet one more mystery that doesn't seem to make any sense. As it so happens, so much of this book would be promising if only it had all come to something.

If there is indeed a main character for this book, it is Leonard, a teenage boy whose father is dying and whose mother has walked out on them. Leonard's narration crackles and pops with teenage cynicism and wit. He's a good character with a unique and consistent voice. And the atmosphere. The atmosphere in the book is stunning. Burnside manages to create an impression in the reader that Innertown is a place where the sun never shines, where the town's misfortunes cover it like blanket. Even though there are scenes where the sun is actually shining, one can't shake the feeling that this is a place where it is perpetually overcast, and no light shines in. All these things kept me reading in hopes of a fascinating resolution despite my intense dislike of Leonard's freakishly h-rny girlfriend and the various and sundry gratuitous things you would find in an R-rated movie. As you may have guessed, I was ultimately disappointed. The end just doesn't quite come together satisfactorily. It's a little like being led into a maze by someone who knows where they're going and being left halfway through to find your own way out. While I can handle an ambiguous ending, The Glister ultimately leaves too many questions unanswered without so much as a clue to lead its readers to any real resolution.


Hey, wait - I think it is a book review after all! Yay! That was hard. I have to wander off and look at shiny things now. K, bye.

Okay, wait. I've got an ARC of this book that I'd love to unload on the unsuspecting public in hopes that, perhaps, said member of the unsuspecting public could read it and explain it to me. Well, you don't really have to do that if you don't want to, but I'm still giving away the copy. So if you want to have a try at it (now that I've gone to all this trouble convincing you to read it....hardee har har), leave me a comment with your e-mail address. International is okay. I'll draw the name next Saturday, May 16th, so uh, enter before then.