Fall of Giants, or How to Fit an Entire War in 1000 Pages

One of the reasons that I love historical fiction is that, when well researched and written, it allows me to learn something without actually have to read a history book.  I guarantee that reading the Little House books by Laura Ingals Wilder in elementary school taught me more about pioneer life than anything in my social studies book.  Same with Tudor England-almost anything I know about Henry VIII, his wives, and the various Thomases in his life is the result of the many, many fictional narratives I have read through the years.  It may not be "hard, academic" fact, but then is any history hard academic fact?  After all, it tends to be written by the victors, as they say.

Ken Follet is the master of the sweeping historical novel.  In Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, he showed us the world of 12th and 13th century England in detail both large and small.  World events intermingle with the day to day lives of the people to create a rich tapestry of story and feeling.  As such, I picked up the audiobook of Fall of Giants knowing that I was going to get a great story with interesting characters, and that I would learn an awful lot in the process. (Plus, it is 30 hours long-30 HOURS!  Talk about getting your money's worth for an audiobook)

Fall of Giants tells the story of World War I through the eyes of characters from various places in the social and political hierarchies.  There is Lord Fitzherbert, a wealthy aristocrat and his sister Maud, a feminist and suffragist.  There is Ethel, Fitzherbert's maid, and her brother Billy, who enters the coal mines at age 13.  In Russia we have Grigori and Lev Peshkov, brothers who are trying to escape the tyranny of the czar and find a better life in America.  There is the German Walter Von Ulrich, a friend of Fitz's from school, and Gus Dewar, an American working in Wilson's White House.  As the characters wend their way through events great and small, connections are made and people are drawn into situations both triumphant and tragic.

Follett obviously researched his little heart out for this book, which comes in at a staggering 985 pages.  As in his other books, he related important world events through the eyes of his major characters, of whom there are many.  And as usual, he created compelling personal stories for each character, heroes and villains alike.  He uses Earl Fitzherbert to show the conservatism and entrenched sense of privilege in the English noble class.  He uses Maud and Ethel to showcase the cause of first wave feminism and the suffrage movement.  Grigori and Lev live in a Russia that is cruel and repressive-and about to change the course of the world through the Bolshevik Revolution.  Gus Dewar represents the rising power of the United States in world affairs.  And Walter Von Ulrich is anything but a villain, though he is the "enemy"-he is handled with the most nuanced care by Follett, representing a younger, more progressive Germany fighting against the old guard in the cause of peace, even as he fights as a soldier on the front lines.

If that sounds like a lot to keep up with, it is.  And this is supposed to be just the first in a trilogy!  There is enough information in this book to make a trilogy of its own.  And that length is my only complaint.  I am not afraid of lengthy books-Under the Dome by Stephen King was one of my favorites last year-but the sheer amount of detail in this novel is at times slightly overwhelming.  While the personal stories of the characters are fairly easy to keep straight, I sometimes found my mind drifting through the the pages and pages of minute detail about specific battles and political machinations.  In fact, listening to it rather than reading it is likely the main reason I finished it.  I suspect that fatigue would have set in, and I would have put it aside to read something else, sure I would get back to it-which is something I rarely manage to do.  That said, I am glad that I stuck with it on my daily commute.  I fell in love with some of the characters as much as I despise others, and I am looking forward to seeing where their lives go, and where the fate of the world goes, in the next (I'm sure, hefty) installment.

What is it About Islands?

I have always wanted to live in an island.  Maybe it's longing for the sea while living in the middle of the country, or wanting to be set apart from the rest of the world, but I have often thought with longing about a small house overlooking the sea, reached only by boat.  I've always thought Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard (I am a New England girl by temperament if not by birth), but after reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Anne Shaffer, I think that the Channel Islands might be a good choice as well.

The novel is told through letters and telegrams between Juliet Ashton and various residents of the island of Guernsey in the months after the end of World War II.  The Channel Islands were occupied by Germany during the war, and the residents were completely cut off from the rest of England.  For five years they had no news about what was happening in the rest of the world-no newspapers, no radios, no letters from family or from their children, who they sent to the mainland before the invasion.  One night, after dining on a forbidden pig with friends, a group of islanders was caught out after curfew.  On the spot, one brave young woman, Elizabeth, created a fictional literary society to explain why they were out together.  In order to put the truth to their lie, the small group of friends created an actual book club, and their meetings allowed many of the members to keep their sanity in the midst of war.  Years later, one of the members contacts Juliet Ashton, a journalist and author, to say how much he enjoyed a book that once belonged to her that he found in a used book shop.  Their correspondence leads Juliet to the island, and to a story both tragic and triumphant of love and friendship in a time of war.

I started out thinking that I was not going to love this book.  I am not that fond of epistolary novels, and the last one I read (check out my not-so glowing review of Between Friends) was so bad that I almost put this book back down once I'd picked it up.  But after resisting the pull of the story for 50 pages or so, I was drawn completely into the lives of the characters.  Juliet reminded me of a character from a period mystery I read recently (this time a glowing review of A Duty to the Dead)-a spunky, scrappy, snarky, but ultimately kind and loving young woman.  And I think that the reason that this worked where Between Friends did not is because each of the letter writers had such a distinctive voice.  Despite everything being told second hand, the novel felt very intimate and personal, and I felt like the character development was pretty good.  But what really made the novel work for me was the historical events it was based on.

I knew that the Channel Islands were occupied during WWII, and I already had some vague idea about their relation to France and England politically (which is to say, they "belong" to England but have their own government, a bit like Puerto Rico, I suppose).  But this novel filled in some details in my admittedly sketchy picture of that period in British history.  And like any good historical novel, it led me to do some more reading and research on the topic.  Rather than using lots of long exposition to provide background, the stories of the islanders comes out in dribs and drabs over the course of Juliet's relationship with them, and the novel feels light and easy to read, while at the same time having some substance-not an easy balance to maintain, but one that Burrows and Shaffer pull off rather well.

I Still Don't Like Hemingway, But...

...if The Paris Wife is an accurate historical portrayal of his early literary life, then I feel like I can forgive some of his macho, sexist writing.

In case you lived under a literary rock for the last 12 months, The Paris Wife is the fictionalized story of Hadley Hemingway ne Richardson, who was Ernest Hemingway's first wife (out of four total).  Based on extensive research into the Hemingways' time in Paris, the novel starts in Chicago, where a young Hadley meets an even younger Ernest at a party.  Instantly drawn to each other, the two start an affair that eventually leads to marriage.  Despite the disapproval of both families, Ernest and Hadley set off for Paris, the happening scene for writers and artists in the very early 20th century.  Surrounded by such literary giants and Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein, Ernest sets about the serious business of writing.  Hadley, left to her own devices most of the time, loses herself in his career.  Over time, their relationship cannot withstand the darkness in his own soul, or his affair with a young editor at Vogue.

I've managed to read one and a half Hemingway novels, and a few of his short stories.  The one I remember best is Hills Like White Elephants,  about a woman who wants to have a baby with her husband but he wants her to have an abortion so he doesn't have to change his rather selfish lifestyle.  Not exactly endearing.  I've always been put off by his very violent ideas about manhood, and his rather apparent disrespect for women.  Having read The Paris Wife, however, I am better able to put his ideas in not just a historical context, but a more personal, emotional one.

What I didn't know about him before reading this book was that he was injured in the first World War, and that he spent most of the rest of his life trying to stare down death, terrified by his own morality.  Constantly afraid of being seen as cowardly or weak, he actively sought out experiences, like the bullfights in Pamplona, to convince himself of his own strength.  His war experiences, coupled with his depressive nature and the history of mental illness in his family, suddenly I see his overly-macho definition of what it means to be a man in a new light.  And while I still don't like his fiction, and I still think that he was a philandering sexist, at least now I have a context to put it in.  I now have compassion where before was only contempt.

Reading Vonnegut for the First Time

As a science fiction fan, I have considered it a personal failing that I had never read any Kurt Vonnegut.  As a pacifist, the fact that I had never read Slaughterhouse Five made that failing sting a little more.  I wish I could say that reading this book was worth all of the years of self-recrimination.  I wish I could say that I finished it.  But the only thing I can say with any certainty is that I didn't get it.

I won't say that I don't understand why this book is considered a classic of science fiction specifically and literature generally.  Vonnegut's writing is by turns funny, poignant, frightening, or evocative.  Slaughterhouse Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an accidental soldier who is captured by the Germans in 1945 and taken to Dresden.  He is there during the Dresden bombings, when the Allies bombed the non-military city of Dresden and killed over 100,000 people.  Vonnegut himself was a German prisoner of war who lived through the Dresden bombing and its aftermath.  But this is not in fact the major event of Billy's life.  Billy becomes "unstuck in time", moving through his own lifeline from prisoner to wealthy optometrist to alien zoo exhibit...yes, I said alien exhibit.  Because the other major fact of Billy's life is that he was abducted by aliens on the night of this daughter's wedding.

OK, I only know the last part because I read the SparkNotes for the complete novel.  Because I couldn't finish the book.  Even with the excellent writing, I could not get into this story.  It wasn't the writing, or the war, or the time travel, or the alien abduction.  The only explanation I can come up with is that my brain just doesn't think the way that Vonnegut's does.  Even though I already knew the destination theme-wise, I just couldn't follow where Vonnegut was leading.  Despite my natural inclination to agree with the book's anti-war message, I wasn't sure how Billy Pilgrim traveling through time and being abducted by aliens was supposed to articulate that message.  Of course, had I finished it, maybe all would become clear.  And that's on me.  I guess I'll just have to continue living my life as a science fiction fan who hasn't read Vonnegut.  But this time I'll forgive myself.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I was born in 1970.  So while my life overlaps briefly with the Viet Nam War, I have no real memory of it.  What I do remember is going to downtown Chicago with my granny, and later with my parents, and seeing the faces of the homeless vets that were begging on the streets.  Wild-eyed, or blank-stared, the memories of their faces color everything that I have heard, read, or seen about the war since.  And I have heard, read, and seen a lot.  Stories from the fathers of friends who fought in the war, lessons from school, movies like Full Metal Jacket and Platoon-from these sources I have cobbled together a picture of that hot, wet, chaotic, horrific place and time.

But I am not sure that I have truly felt that I had even the faintest understanding of what it might actually have been like.  Not, that is, until I read Tim O'Brien's stunning book The Things They Carried.  Neither entirely fact nor entirely fiction, O'Brien uses a series of short stories and vignettes to tell the tale of Alpha Company, a group of soldiers based, in part, on the real men that O'Brien served with during the war.  The stories meander from stateside to the jungles of Viet Nam, from childhood to middle age, detailing how each experience prepares or informs or explains the person that Tim was or is or may yet become.

I will admit to having some difficulty at first with the non-linear narrative, and with the fact that I was never sure what was true and what was made-up.  But the genius of this work is that you soon realize that it doesn't matter.  In fact, the way that the book is put together and the inability to tell fact from fiction ends up doing a better job describing what living through that experience was like than any straight forward telling could.  O'Brien and his fellow soldiers lived a reality that most of us will never experience, and can never truly comprehend, where time was skewed, day and night traded places, where extraordinary circumstances became ordinary, and where the ordinary world as most of us know it became a dream that you couldn't let yourself believe in.

My favorite section of the book (if favorite is even the right word) is the story of how O'Brien almost ran away to Canada rather than go to war.  Part of O'Brien's extreme talent is an ability to use words to paint not just a visual but an emotional picture for the reader, and I was able to feel how deeply terrified he was at the prospect of war.  I felt his ambivalence about running away, about choosing the possibility of death over the certainty of shame and embarrassment.  But the thing I found most stunning, and the line I would consider the most "controversial" of the whole piece, is this, "I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Viet Nam, where I was a soldier, and then home again.  I survived, but it's not a happy ending.  I was a coward. I went to war."
Given the hyper-patriotism of the US since 9-11, and our unquestioning assumption that every soldier is brave and heroic,  this simple statement stopped me dead in my tracks.  It felt almost sacrilegious.  Are we allowed to say that not going to war is more courageous than going?  What does that say about us as a society, that we are find ourselves so often in armed conflicts?  Is it bravery and strength, or is it because we don't want to be judged as wanting by the rest of the world?  What would happen if our young men and women, en masse, simply refused to go the next time we try to send them into harm's way?  Would it be courageous or cowardly?  Regardless of where any one of us comes down on that particular idea, what O'Brien's work has done is illustrate for those of us that weren't there that nothing is as simple and straightforward in war as those of us sitting at home watching it on our televisions thinks it is.