Novels read in 2018 (better later than never)

 

As stated in the prologue, I've been working to "read harder."  This translated into fewer novels read by me than probably any time since I turned five and is definitely the fewest novels I've read in the handful of years I've been keeping track.  8 novels, only two of which you might easily categorize as science fiction or fantasy, my go-to genre for so long.  (I've already read "God Emperor of Dune" in 2019, so the sci-fi could be rising in this new[ish] year)  Holding with my credo of branching out, I managed to split it right down the middle as far as male to female authors:

 

                                                     Male Authors     Female Authors

                                                    Harlan Ellison     Sayaka Murata

                                                     Stephen King     Charlotte Bronte

                                                      Neil Gaiman     Banana Yoshimoto

                                             Colson Whitehead     Margaret Atwood

Being a Maine resident (tried and true, from birth to now), it's an unofficial law that we must read and regale our favored son, Mr. Stephen King, so having him on the list is unsurprising.  Too bad I didn't enjoy this year's offering, "Elevation," as much as many of his other works, but, hey, they can't all be grand slams.  

Neil Gaiman has been a favorite author of mine ever since I discovered his comic series, "The Sandman," one of the all-time best long-form series in the medium, in my opinion.  This year, I finally pulled down his "Norse Mythology," after my 11-year-old son read it for a second time.  Certainly, one could argue it's not a novel, but each short story builds toward the climax of the book with Ragnarok, so I include it here.  It was pretty great, by the way.

Harlan Ellison is, perhaps, my favorite author, ever...full stop.  He passed away last year, after suffering a stroke a few years prior, but one of his long-delayed books was finally published, shortly after his death:  "Blood's A Rover."  A hybrid-novel, consisting of previously published (and newly polished) short stories and a novella that comprised the story of Vic & Blood, to that point, woven with revised and retrofitted bits from a teleplay Ellison wrote in the eighties for an aborted TV-movie of the adventures of Vic & Blood, and Spike.  It was a tour-de-force that only solidified Ellison as an all-time great writer, and it was a wonderful exclamation point to a storied career.  [note: Ellison will show up later, with four or five more entries in other categories]

Colson Whitehead . . . damn.  "The Underground Railroad" was a tour-de-force book.  Amazing.  It felt so real, was so full of emotion, and just hit you in the gut.  I am so happy I read this book.  Now I need to hunt down more of his work.  Just effing brilliant!

 

Sayaka Murata & Banana Yoshimoto are Japanese authors whose work I found in the main reading room of Fogler Library at the University of Maine, where I work (library work has its privileges, like walking around on break and discovering new books to read).  Both of the books I read of theirs, "Convenience Store Woman" and "Moshi Moshi," respectively, were engaging, layered stories that offered me a chance to walk in another's shoes.  Murata's novel was breezy, but not shallow, following the life of a woman who found it difficult to interact socially, leading to her becoming a long-time convenience store worker, while the other followed a protagonist coming to grips with her father's death, a suicide pact with another woman, while trying to comfort her mother as she searches for her own identity.  Both of these novels were touching and heartfelt, beautifully written with distinct premises that kept me wanting to turn the page.  Highly recommended.

"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte.  Damn . . .
I have an aversion to Victorian literature, a direct result of High-School-Literaryitis, an affliction caused by your high school reading (or literature) teacher overwhelming you with minutiae and insignificant assignments meant to illuminate the work of Dickens, which, in the end, only makes his long, ponderous prose even more lugubrious.  For thirty years, I've steered clear of most novels from this era (surprisingly, the one exception that comes to mind is Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," which is a wonderfully amazing story), but after hearing an episode of the BBC Radio's In Our Time examining the novel, I was compelled to read it.  And it was a great experience.  I will definitely be seeking out more of Bronte's work.  Hopefully, it will treat me better than Dickens (apologies to my youngest sister).

With all the praise heaped upon the above novels, I have to say the best novel I read this year was Margaret Atwood's "Blind Assassin."  This was an amazing bit of writing wizardry, with an elderly woman in the present, the late 1990s, relating the story of her family throughout the late 19th century up through the end of the 20th, with particular attention paid to her scandalous sister, who died at a young age, an apparent suicide, after publishing a shocking roman a clef, that left all of those in their hometown, where their father was once a wealthy manufacturer of buttons, wagging their tongues.  And, as an added bonus, Atwood includes chapters of the fictional novel in questions, interweaving the various narrative threads with an ease and agility that was wonderful to experience.  Not unlike the works of Toni Morrison, Atwood's command of her story, with "The Blind Assassin," was laudable and impressive.  She never worried about whether her readers understood what was happening or how it all connected, because she was steering the boat and knew exactly where she was heading.  This is a novel you have to read!  Check it out.

-chris

The Call of the Sea: a bit about process

So, earlier I included the piece of flash fiction I had created based upon the following picture:


You can find that story here

That really was not a fully fleshed out piece of fiction. So, I've returned to it in order to expand it and make it ready for publication, hopefully. I did a second draft and let it sit on the hard drive for a few months. But recently, I finally pulled it up to get back to it.

This is the first short section of the new iteration:

The call of the sea was urgent in his ears. As long as he could remember, Jared had known that uneven sway beneath his feet, the rolling passage of the lobster boat over the Atlantic.

But Jared Ames was also a dreamer. How else to explain his going off to high school? That rarely happened on the “Ledge,” particularly for the boys. The one-room schoolhouse elicited visions of Laura Ingalls and Little House on the Prairie, attracting many first-year teachers from the mainland, the closest point to the island nearly twenty miles away. But there was little encouragement for children to go much beyond what was offered here. Ledge Island was a fishing island – every man either had his own boat and traps or was a sternman. Even the postman and the honorary mayor (at eighty-two, the oldest resident of the fifty who called the island home year-round) went lobstering on a regular basis. It was understood that the boys were just biding their time until they would become full-time lobstermen.

This was just the way things were. Which is why it had been a surprise to see Jared head to the mainland and Andrews Academy///, a private school in SOMEWHERE. It was his mother’s wish. And, with Jared’s father gone when he was six and his younger brother not yet one, there had been no counter-argument to be made.

Which did not mean that Jared gave up lobstering. Like most boys from Ledge Island, and the clusters of islands along Maine’s coast, he was a natural, which is to say that it was something he became familiar with at a young age. His father taught Jared about trapping lobsters before the boy even began school. And when Harold Ames left, others on the island took the place of teacher. They took young Jared, and his brother Eric, out on their boats most weekends and many afternoons. It was exciting, and every chance growing up Jared was hauling traps.

A month into his junior year at Andrews Academy///, Jared’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. She hadn’t been well for a while, though she’d hidden it well. But when she collapsed in the post office one afternoon, Susan Richmond (for she’d taken back her maiden name when Jared’s father left) had relented and flown to Fairhaven, the one island large enough and close enough to the mainland to have its own hospital. The doctor didn’t take long to view the x-rays before proclaiming that Susan only had a month to live.

Stephen King and Greg Rucka have both said that the first draft of any story - for them - is all about getting the ideas on the page. The first draft is the quick burn. And I've taken this to heart.

When writing that initial draft, I speed through as fast as I can, my fingers trying to keep up with the ideas and dialogue in my brain. If I can't find a word or come up with a name for a place or a person, I just fill it in with the closest thing I can come to. These I denote either with a few slashes (///) after the word, or by substituting the word with a simple descriptive placeholder in all caps. These are the places where the minutiae of the piece faltered, and I just needed to keep going or lose the ideas coming to me. You can see examples of this bolded in the above selection.

But these are just the parts I know I need to fix when coming back to revise. There's so much more that has to change when I'm editing subsequent drafts. I need to make sure I'm using the same tense throughout (something I never fully understood until I began writing seriously a few years back). I have to watch for continuity errors and internal consistency. I need to make sure the words flow and that I'm not repeating the same words over and over in a small space. And I need to make sure it's "good."


Below is the second (or third, if you like) draft of the previous section, by way of example.

The call of the sea was urgent in his ears.

As long as he could remember, Jared had known/// that uneven sway beneath his feet, the rolling passage of the lobster boat over the Atlantic.

Like most seaman, Jared Ames was a dreamer, but all his dreams did not reside on the water. He wanted something more and realized/// leaving the island for high school was necessary///. And so, when he graduated eighth grade, Jared set off for the mainland, to board with relatives he’d met once when he was seven. It was an occasion of note, something that rarely happened on the “Ledge”.

The one-room schoolhouse in the middle of the island elicited visions of Laura Ingalls and Little House on the Prairie, attracting a procession of first-year teachers from the mainland///. But despite the teachers’ best efforts, there was little encouragement for children to go much beyond what was offered in this tiny village twenty miles off the Maine coast. Ledge Island was a fishing island – every man either owned a boat or worked on one. Even the postman and the honorary mayor (at eighty-two, the oldest of the fifty year-round residents) went lobstering on a regular basis. There was a tacit understanding that the boys were just biding their time until they would become full-time lobstermen.

This was just the way things were. Which is why it had been a surprise for everyone to watch Jared head to the mainland and Andrews Academy///, a private school in SOMEWHERE. It was his mother’s wish, and with his father gone since Jared was six and his younger brother not yet one, there had been no counter-argument to be made.

This didn’t mean Jared gave up lobstering. Like most boys from Ledge Island – and the clusters of islands along Maine’s coast – he was a natural, which is to say it was something Jared became familiar with at a young age. His father introduced Jared to lobstering before the boy was four. And when Harold Ames left, others on the island took the place of teacher. Most weekends Jared, along with his brother Eric, could be seen racing across the Atlantic in one boat or another.

A month into his junior year at Andrews Academy/// Jared’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. She hadn’t been well for a while, though she’d been able to hide it. But when she collapsed in the post office one afternoon, Susan Richmond (for she’d taken back her maiden name when Jared’s father left) relented/// and was flown to Fairhaven, the one island large enough to have its own hospital. The doctor didn’t take long to view the x-rays before proclaiming that Susan only had a month to live.

It still has some unfinished bits and markers where I need to go back and really think about the phrasing or about a name or maybe do a bit of research, but it's starting to gel now. The next pass I do should include minor changes and amendments unlike this first overhaul. But, we'll see.

Which means, my later drafts often read very differently than the early ones. I've had my wife read a first draft, tell me that large sections DID NOT WORK, and then have her appreciate the new dialogue of a later draft. As Greg Rucka said, the writing isn't the first draft, the writing is the revising and polishing and working at making a story something to which others can relate. It's hard work, but it's one of the most fun things I get to do during my day. That's why I schedule, in my head, the late evenings for writing. And why I stay up past my bedtime to do it.

chris