Review 634: Whale Fall

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Taking place in 1938 on a small island 5 miles off the coast of Wales, a whale washes up on the shore. The villagers try to get it back to the sea, but it does not work. The story is told from Manod’s point of view. She is 18 this summer and expected to get married, but there are only one or two boys. Manod says she needs to take care of her sister, who is 7 years younger, they are motherless, but really Manod is not sure she wants to be a wife.

Two researchers come to the island to record their way of life. They take photographs, write down the stories and record their songs on a phonograph. Manod is hired as an assistant since her English is good and can help translate from Welsh. She wants to go back with them when they leave, they even lead her to believe they will take her.

The book highlights the diminishing population of the small islands around the British Isles. The younger ones may not want to continue the traditional way of life, mostly fishing. Then the researchers who portray this life don’t get it quite right either, sometimes purposefully. It’s a short book, could be read in just a few hours.

Review 633: Fortune's Rocks

Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lately (past year or so) I've been reaching deep into my shelves of unread books that have been sitting there for decades. This book was one of them. Despite the length of the book it was a fairly quick read, and I suspect I would have enjoyed this book more back when I got it.

This is a fictional book very slightly based on historical fact. It takes place in the early 1900s when social mores were different than today. The main character, Olympia Biddeford is 15 and comes from a wealthy family who are summering at the seaside coast of Fortune’s Rocks. This summer Olympia turns quickly from a girl to a woman and falls in love with a much older man. Unfortunately, he is married and has several children, and very unfortunately he also falls for this teenager. Thus a love affair begins.

The age difference is more astonishing for today’s standards, and although it was an issue then it wasn't the main cause for scandal and ruin, which was being an unmarried woman and a married man. Of course, their secret love affair gets found out and ends in disaster.

The result of this is a baby born out of wedlock. Later in the book a court case is over the custody of this baby. This section is what is pulled from history, or at least the basis, as the case where a ruling was decided based on “the best interests of the child”.

The writing style was good, although the sections of the court case were a little stiff.

Review 632: Neither Here nor There

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Bryson goes to many different countries across Europe, mostly revisiting places he had been to before with a friend of his several decades earlier.

He tries for humor, it mostly doesn't work with me. The exaggeration for comedic effect was overdone. All that is okay. My main gripe with his writing is how the exaggeration was often done as a way to denigrate the place, or generalize the people. Of course, there is also the suffering of Bryson.

As I was nearing the end of the book I was starting to wonder if I will ever read another of his books. Maybe. The last couple places he visits had tipped in his favor. So often he was describing his everyday experiences, mostly complaining, but with the last couple of places he visited, there is a small amount of history.

These locations were part of the USSR that broke up when the soviet communism collapsed. When Bryson was in Sofia, a city in Bulgaria, the people were struggling; inflation was rampant and there was practically no food to be found, except for the few tourists in the only hotel in the city. This chapter he treated with a bit more humanity than I would have expected based the previous 90% or so of the book. But it did take him a minute to get there. It’s hard to be a comedian when faced with such dire circumstances.

I’m not unhappy I read the book. Bryson visited many countries I visited while on a brief European tour of my own a couple decades ago and this book reminded me of my own experiences, which does improve my impression.

Review 631: What We Can Know

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What started very slow for me, a book I nearly gave up on, ended up being something else.

The book starts about 100 years in the future, after many catastrophic events. Tom Metcalfe, along with his sometimes partner, Robin try to teach literature to college kids who have much better things to do and hardly care about the past, let alone literature. Still for Metcalfe, the poetry of Francis Blundy and his wife Vivien, also a writer, are what he studies to endless pursuit. They lived in our times of today. Metcalfe desperately wants to be the one who finds the missing corona poem, the birthday poem Blundy wrote for Vivien.

Certainly the book bogs down with the minutia of Metcalfe’s life, his character is not very appealing. I nearly bailed on the book, but continued on.

Then we get to part two and have a different point of view – it’s Vivien’s diary from the past. Here we learn of her life first hand. She had a curated past for the future researchers, but this diary was the real Vivien, and different than what we knew before.

This is a book that one could have multiple reads and get more out of on each reading. I don’t have that kind of time, too many other books I’d like to get to. But I can appreciate the quality of writing here, despite not really enjoying the main character.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 630: Picket Line

Picket Line: The Lost Novella by Elmore Leonard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have not read any of Elmore Leonard’s books before, so this may be an odd place to start. He has an extensive bibliography mostly in a genre I don’t read, so maybe this is a good place to start. The introduction covers how this novella came to be published, and a bit of history of the piece, which was first written for the screen.

What appealed to me was the labor aspect. I tend towards work fiction in a way, and this one covers that, with a union and a strike. The workplace here is a melon field in Texas, the workers Spanish speaking maybe migrants. Since there is a strike some of the pickers have different people in the field, such as a young white college kid. The story opens with three guys driving in from California.

Even though the book is short, there lacks depth of character, not much development. Perhaps there were too many characters. I’ve read shorter pieces with better understanding of a character. In any case, this did feel too short. There was some action, but it ended too soon. The story felt like a moment in a larger story.


Thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book. However, I listened to a published audiobook copy of the book.