The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

There is no shortage of historical fiction that examines the relationship between slaveowners and their slaves in the 18th century.  The Kitchen House, by Kathleen Grissom, takes that theme and gives it a twist.  The novel is told by two narrators-Lavinia, an Irish indentured servant brought to the plantation as a small child, and Belle, the mulatto daughter of the owner, the Cap'n, who lives and works in the kitchen house.  Lavinia is raised with the slave children, but because she is white the Cap'n always had other plans for her.  Having lived in Ireland prior to coming to the plantation, Lavinia does not understand the complexities of the racial boundaries in 18th century America, and in her naivete she often unintentionally creates problems for her "family"-the black slaves that she lived with for most of her childhood.

When Lavinia becomes a teen, she is sent to live with the family of the captain's wife.  There, she is brought into the household as a young woman being groomed for a respectable marriage and the life of a white woman in plantation society.  Despite the kindness shown to her during this time, she longs to return home to her "family", never realizing how different their lives have become.  Through family tragedies, brutal abuse, and failed marriages, the characters of The Kitchen House demonstrate the corrosive nature of oppression and slavery on the men and women affected by it.

I read this novel with a sick sense of inevitability.  Having read many such stories in the past, I had more than enough background knowledge to know that things were not likely to turn out happily for the residents of Tall Oaks plantation.  But the unusual main characters and the seeming reasonableness of some of the white characters gave me a small hope that perhaps this time history would be different.  The fact is that in the end there was tragedy, but there was also hope and at least some peace for Lavinia, Belle, and the other slaves.  Grissom's treatment of the captain's wife, Miss Martha, and Lavinia herself, highlighted the similarities between the oppression of women and blacks in the antebellum south.  Miss Martha may have lived in the big house and been waited on by house slaves, but she had little more freedom than they when it came to making decisions about her life.  I think that Grissom did a good job in showing how the rigid social norms of the slave/slave-owner society negatively affected everyone in some way.  Sympathetic whites were forced to support and promote treatment of slaves that went against what reason and compassion would say was right; the oppressed minorities scrambled daily to forestall the anger and violence simmering just below the surface of the plantation; and other whites-especially white men tasked with "working" the slaves-became brutal and mean as a result of the culture of oppression that led to their unchecked power over others.

The book, while chock full of meaning, was also a page-turner. I had to keep reading to see if my sense of unease really did lead to the inevitable tragedy I imagined was coming..  I described it to some friends as soap opera in a historical context.  The misunderstandings and missed opportunities led to romantic entanglements right out of a Gothic romance.  But unlike historical romance books, which are basically love stories lightly dipped in history, the historical context of the relationships in this book are an integral part of the story.

A Surprise Michael Crichton

It all started with The Barber of Seville...I was taking my class to a local university to see a Lyric Opera special one-hour performance of the show, and when I got on the bus I realized that there was nowhere to sit!  This meant leaving my students in the care of the other teachers and following the bus in my car.  By the time I found parking and entered the theater, it was dark, the performance had started, and I couldn't find my class.  I was not too pleased at the thought of sitting in the lobby for an hour waiting, until I remembered that I had passed a used book sale in the student commons.  Suddenly, an hour of boredom turned into a stolen hour of reading.  Huzzah!

The book that I chose was a beat-up paperback copy of Airframe by Michael Crichton.  I had been fairly certain that I read all of Crichton's books, so reading this novel was a surprise in more ways than one.  Airframe is the story of TransPacific flight 545.  One a flight from Hong Kong to the US, something happened that caused the plane to rapidly climb and descend, called porpoising.  The incident left 3 people dead, 56 injured, and the cabin in shambles.  It also left Norton Aviation, makers of the aircraft, with a lot of questions, a rabid journalist on their tail, and a company-saving deal with China in jeopardy.  Casey Singleton, part of the quality assurance team and the public face of the investigation into the accident, must navigate not just the waters of public opinion and outrage, but also something shady going on in her own company, as she rushes to find answers.

Like many of Crichton's books, Airframe is full of interesting scientific and technical jargon presented in a way that the average reader can understand.  I now know more about airplane construction and instrumentation that I certainly ever expected to.  I don't know how he does it, but in Airframe Crichton takes a story with very little actual action and makes it exciting.  Sure, there is the occasional union action or airplane ride to liven things up, but a lot of this book is basically people talking about aircraft or business deals, and I still couldn't put it down.

I also found myself in the rather strange position for a liberal American of feeling sorry for a large corporation.  You know an author is good if they can make a large non-human institution sympathetic.  Crichton's chosen protagonist, Casey Singleton, is very easy to  like, and the interesting cast of characters that surround her make the company feel more like a rather dysfunctional extended family than a workplace.  When the unscrupulous producer from a prime-time news show takes her limited knowledge of airplanes and tries to turn it into a story about the Norton "deathtrap", I actually felt angry on behalf of the makers of the airplane.  Now, I'll be the first to say I think that some media outlets have gone way too far to create stories out of nothing that distort the truth, but I'm not usually feeling that way in defense of a major corporation.  While I've become increasingly sure over the years I have read his books that Michael Crichton and I probably disagreed about every major political issue in the last few decades, somehow I am sucked into his world in spite of myself.