The Books I Can't Forget

By Sandra Parshall

The latest Facebook meme has people listing books that have made the greatest and most lasting impression on them throughout their lives. Because I tend to hang out mostly with avid readers (many of them also writers), I’ve seen a lot of these personal lists and found them all interesting.

But one vital element is missing: the explanation, the answer to why particular books had such a profound impact. I haven’t posted a list on Facebook because I would feel compelled to include the why and that isn’t part of the meme. But here I can explain what these books mean to me.

Considering the amount of reading I’ve done in my lifetime, the list is surprisingly short. I’ve finished a lot of books with the feeling that they would stay with me, only to realize a year or two later that I barely remember them. These are the books I’m sure I will never forget – the books I’ve read more than once and will probably read again in the future.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

For all the reasons that have made it the most memorable American novel of all time for many readers: unforgettable characters who touch us to the core, a nostalgic setting, and a story of human relationships and social injustice that is as relevant today as it was the year it was published. Lee’s only published novel, Mockingbird is still in print, still selling steadily all over the world, and has become a staple in U.S. classrooms. The movie is wonderful, but if you’ve never read the book, I urge you to find a copy and experience the full power of the writing.



Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass by Isak Dinesen

These stories of Karen Blixen’s life in British East Africa, written under a pseudonym after her return to Denmark in 1931, have an unbreakable hold on my imagination. Most younger people today know Out of Africa only as romantic movie, but the book is a loving and profoundly elegiac memoir of a time and a place that none of us will ever experience. The very thought of colonialism and the subjugation of native tribes is abhorrent, and Dinesen’s tales are certainly colored by the European views of the time and a sad longing for a perfect life that couldn’t be sustained under the pressure of change. But each word she wrote displays her deep love of the land and its wildlife, and her respect for the native people who were in every sense her friends. Dinesen introduced to me an idealized East Africa, and every time I reread the opening lines of Out of Africa I feel homesick for a place I’ve never been:

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.


Everything ever published by Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers

These two Georgians were the writers who most influenced me when I was young because, unlike the classic authors I was reading for English class, O’Connor and McCullers wrote about people I recognized from my own life. O’Connor’s style was sharper, utterly lacking in sentimentality, but both wrote about the essential solitude of the human soul that separates us from each other. Although McCullers traveled and had an international set of friends while O’Connor lived on a small Georgia farm with her mother, their lives had much in common. Both showed their genius early; McCullers published her stunning first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, at 23, and O’Connor published the classic morality tale Wise Blood at 27. O’Connor died of lupus at 39, leaving behind two published novels and 32 short stories, some published in her lifetime and the rest collected after her death. McCullers suffered a series of strokes in her twenties that paralyzed her left side by the time she was 31, but she produced eight novels before a final brain hemorrhage killed her at age 50.


A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)
 
This is the book that made me understand how much it’s possible to do with a mystery. Although I never miss a Rendell novel, I still consider this densely layered story of lies, love, and cruelty within a seemingly ordinary family to be her masterpiece. I still have my1987 paperback copy, but it’s so fragile from handling that when my book group discussed it a few years ago I bought a later edition that I could mark up and dog-ear without regret. A British TV adaptation totally failed to capture the novel’s complexity and the insight gained through time shifts and memories. You have to read the novel to full appreciate Rendell’s achievement.



Mortal Memory by Thomas H. Cook

Cook’s haunting story, narrated by the sole survivor of a family massacre, has drawn me back many times to reread passages, chapters, the whole book. Cook’s prose is beautiful, a pleasure to read, and he uses it to create an atmosphere of quiet terror that is far more powerful than a graphic picture painted with hard-edged language and ugly words. Like A Dark-Adapted Eye, this is a many-layered story of family life gone desperately wrong.







Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Lehane’s great novel about a neighborhood torn apart – and brought together – by crimes both distant and recent encompasses such a broad range of emotions and relationships that it’s difficult to describe in a few words. With equal skill and insight, he zooms out to portray a community in turmoil and zooms in to explore a single man or woman’s inner torment or a couple’s marriage. Murder and detection are part of the story, but this is far more than a simple crime novel. Mystic River is great fiction on every level – and again, if you’ve only seen the film, you need to read the book.

The Death of Posthumous Fame

Elizabeth Zelvin

I suspect that more and more libraries will refuse donations of papers, especially if the writer isn't unassailably famous. My guess is that thanks to the information explosion in the Internet age (not to mention the fact that more and more documents are electronic rather than actual paper), it will become uncreasingly unlikely for even the most talented and successful writer's reputation to outlive him or her. Margaret Mitchell died in 1949 (63 years), Hemingway in 1961 (50 years), Steinbeck in 1968 (44 years), Truman Capote in 1984 (27 years). What author under 50, if any, do you think will still be a household word, at least among the educated, that long after his or her death?

How much even of these memorable authors’ lasting fame is due not to their books, but to the movies made of their work? I know Gone with the Wind was based on Margaret Mitchell’s book and The Wizard of Oz on L. Frank Baum’s, To Kill A Mockingbird from Harper Lee’s, and The Help from Kathryn Stockett’s. How many movie adaptations of novels have you seen in the last twenty years for which you can name the novelist? How many of these will you be able to name twenty years from now? How many do your children know?

The first voluminous volume (760 pages) of Mark Twain’s autobiography came out in 2010. An author whose reputation has proven extremely durable, he deliberately stipulated that it would not be published until a hundred years after his death. so that he would be free to write whatever he wanted without fear of reproach or litigation. Having a sneaky taste for gossip served up cold, I went out and bought the book, making it a birthday present for my husband as a good excuse. Although the prose and some of the anecdotes were delightful, the hundred-years-cold tittle-tattle had gone tepid and congealed.

It’s not that Samuel Clemens did not have an interesting life. According to Biography.com, “When he was 9 years old he saw a local man murder a cattle rancher, and at 10 he watched a slave die after a white overseer struck him with a piece of iron.” He worked as a printer, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a prospector for gold and silver, the latter endeavor leaving him flat broke. So he became a writer—some things never change! He was a celebrated public speaker and humorist as well as an author for much of his career.

Twain chose to avoid the tedium of a chronological record (“Chapter One: I was born...”) and jumped in wherever his fancy took him. His style, both literate and anecdotal, is so good that I was moved to read some delicious passages out loud. But what even an iconoclast like Twain found shocking a hundred years ago produces no more than a yawn from today’s reader. It’s not a matter of sex or obscenity, with which it’s getting harder and harder to shock the 21st-century reader. It’s not even overt atheism. (You can find some lively debate by googling, “Was Mark Twain an atheist?”) Most of the so-called scandal consisted of his exercising his satiric wit on various popular preachers of the day whose names are otherwise long forgotten.

My prediction: In 2112, no one will remember a single writer who’s alive today. Will people still read? It’s anybody’s guess. Americans will be lucky if reality TV has not driven life to imitate the art of The Hunger Games and if entertainment doesn’t consist of teenagers fighting to the death on the 22nd-century equivalent of public television.

Durable Literature: The Great American Novel

Elizabeth Zelvin


When I was a kid, boys (not girls, in those prehistoric times) dreamed of being the first man on the moon. Once Neil Armstrong took that one small step in 1969, the dream became superfluous. Boys, again, used to talk about growing up to be President of the United States. That’s a dream that’s still available but has surely lost a great deal of its luster. With the paradigm shift in the book industry and the proliferation of electronic words, I doubt that young writers are dreaming about writing the Great American Novel. Besides, it’s already been written—more than once.


According to Wikipedia, “the phrase [Great American Novel] derives from the title of an essay by American Civil War novelist John William DeForest, published in The Nation on January 9, 1868.” As an old English major, I know that much of American literature, even in the early 20th century, looked to English literature for its role models and heroes. Henry James is probably the best example of an American novelist inspired by Europe. His settings, his vision of society, and his leisurely, tortuous sentences evoked the Old World, not the vigorous frontier.


The Great American Novel had to be set in America as seen by Americans, not through the filter of British or European attitudes. Its American characters had to demonstrate American values: individualism, social and economic mobility, a robust egalitarianism. They had to tell stories that could only happen in America in some version of the American language.


Here’s my list of the novels I think deserve the title:


1. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The least debatable and still delightfully readable Great American Novel. Set in the heartland, with the Mississippi River as its central metaphor, it’s a great example of the always popular coming of age novel. It tackles the core American issues of freedom vs slavery and independence vs conformity. Furthermore, Mark Twain made brilliant use of the American language—more than most modern readers realize—by rendering the subtleties of local dialect at each point along the river as Huck’s raft floated down it. I read the book aloud to my son when he was 8, and it held up marvelously as a masterpiece of storytelling with suspense, compassion, and humor.


2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The unreadable Great American Novel. It’s the mighty story of man against whale, in a ponderous poetry that some people might still tackle for pleasure, but tough going for most modern readers. I had to laugh when someone on DorothyL complained about mysteries that bore us by telling more than we want to know about fishing. Melville devoted hundreds of pages to how to catch, cut up, and cook the whale. He also gave us the ultimate vision of the New England whaler.


3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The 20th century Great American Novel. It’s about secrets and justice and childhood (a girl’s, this time, though a sturdy tomboy of a girl) and race relations and small town life—American as apple pie.


4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. The unsung Great American Novel, my personal pick and the only one on my list that Wikipedia doesn’t mention in its article on the topic. I believe it’s disregarded because it’s for and about and read by girls and women. Yet the language is as fresh and everyday today as it was in 1868. It’s probably never been out of print, it’s been adapted many times for stage and screen, and I’m one of many thousands, perhaps millions, of women who know this beloved book practically by heart, who return to it time and again for another visit with the March girls, who still cry when Beth dies, and whom Jo inspired to become writers.


It’s probably a shame that there will be no more Great American Novels. Kathryn Stockett’s The Help would be a grand contender, but who can tell if people will still be reading it even half a century from now? And what about graphic novels? Are they meant to be cherished and reread or scrolled through and deleted? Would the first Superman comic book or the first Spiderman be a candidate for Great American Graphic Novel?


True confession: I was crying over one of Louisa May Alcott’s books on my Kindle in the subway the other day. (Okay, I’ll tell you which one: Rose in Bloom, the sequel to Eight Cousins. When I was a kid, we used to call it “the Jewish Alcott book.” Rosenblum—get it?) When I reached my stop, I sat down on one of the benches in the station to finish the chapter (which I’d read umpteen times before) before I went out into the sunshine and had to put away the Kindle. I bet some women readers can guess which chapter, too. Now, that’s what I call durable literature!

Remembrance of Halloweens Past

by Julia Buckley

As Halloween approaches, I tend to feel nostalgic, not only for the Halloweens of my children's youth, but those of my own. I remember Halloween being a very family-oriented event, and my mother, always one to note the changing seasons, made much of helping us find costumes (often lending her talents as a seamstress to the cause) and to do fun Halloween things. One year she wrote a play that she encouraged us to perform with our friends for a gathering of parents. Another year she made homemade deep-fried donuts filled with jam and offered them, with hot cider, to all of the children who tramped through the house.

In the photo above, I am wearing a giant witch's hat--a costume my mother saw in a magazine and felt confident she could make herself. I thought it seemed interesting, so I gave her the go-ahead and ended up looking like an extra from Macbeth. I'm amazed, looking back, that my mother didn't settle for sweatpants and a T-shirt under that cardboard hat; no, it was the full blouse and skirt with festive red hose and shiny black shoes. I am a far lazier mother than she, I must admit. :)

You might wonder how difficult it was to Trick-or-Treat while wearing a giant cardboard cone. The answer is: very. I also recall being pretty sweaty under there. I think I had much in common with Scout Finch--remember the scene in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD when Scout was dressed as a giant ham, and therefore couldn't see much of anything around her? She only heard things and saw tiny bits of scenery through her eye holes.

Luckily, I did not face any of the dangers Scout faced; I merely lost out on some candy opportunities because I didn't want to walk as far in my huge hat.

What I recall most, though, is that I felt special in the big hat because my mother had made it for me, and it had required a great deal of time, energy, and woman power. So I knew that I was loved while I sweated in my hat, and my parents photographed my strange costume for posterity.

Do you have a favorite Halloween costume? And did anyone EVER dress as a giant hat?

:) (photo circa 1972)

Characters Who Haunt Us

Sandra Parshall

I can’t get the girl out of my mind. I worry about her. I want to know what happened to her after the book ended.

Throughout most of Elizabeth George’s Missing Joseph, I found the 13-year-old character Maggie Spence exasperating in the way a lot of teens are. Lying to her mother, sneaking out to rendezvous with a boy she was forbidden to see, engaging in sex long before she was capable of dealing with it emotionally. I wanted to shake some sense into her.

As the story threads came together, though, and I saw the full horror of this girl’s situation, I began to fear for her. How on earth could she emerge whole and healthy from the tangle of deceit created by the adults in her life? She couldn’t. My last glimpse of her in the book was one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read. George made the girl so real, her predicament so disastrous and her emotional response so raw that I will never forget her.

I want Elizabeth George to bring her back in another book and tell me what has happened to her. I suspect the news wouldn’t be good, but I still want to know. This character will haunt me until I learn her ultimate fate.

It may be a form of torture, but I have to applaud writers who can make me care so much about their fictional characters that I worry about them after the books end or mourn the loss when they’re killed off. I can’t help contrasting my feelings for the girl with my reaction when Helen, wife of George’s detective Tommy Lynley, was shot and killed. For some reason, Helen never seemed quite real to me, and I never liked her. I was, frankly, glad to see her go. Helen’s ghost, in designer shoes, does not haunt me.

Another character who won’t let go of my imagination is also a teenager, but several years older than the girl in Missing Joseph. Her name is Reggie, she’s an orphan who pretends her mother is still alive so she can maintain her freedom and self-reliance, and she is the emotional center of Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? Reggie’s stoic perseverance in the face of catastrophe, and her determination to find out what has become of the woman doctor she’s been working for as a child-minder, drive the story, and Reggie all by herself kept me turning the pages. At the end, her fate is uncertain. I know what I want to see in her future, but even if I’m guessing wrong I hope Atkinson will bring Reggie back and let readers share her life.

I’ve wondered many times what became of Boo Radley after he broke out of his sad, self-imposed isolation to save Scout’s life in To Kill a Mockingbird, but I have no hope at all that Harper Lee will write another book.

I’ve created one character of my own who haunts me: Rachel’s mother, Judith Goddard, in The Heat of the Moon. I gave her a terrible background and more pain than anyone should have to bear. A lot of readers have told me they hated her, and my impulse every time has been to defend her. I’m grateful when someone says they felt sympathy for her and understood why she clung so fiercely to Rachel and her sister and tried so hard to remain in control. Her awful childhood, and the heartbreak she endured as an adult, are very real to me and so is her emotional distress. Although I wouldn’t have had a story without all those events, I find myself wishing I could have made life a little easier for her.

The legacy of a haunting character is something I take away from very few novels, but every book offers the possibility of encountering memorable characters. That’s the reason I read fiction. The characters, not the plot details and certainly not the blood and gore of murder, make a book memorable.

What characters have continued to haunt you long after you finished reading the books? Do you want the authors to produce sequels that will show you what has become of those characters -- even if the news is bad -- or would you rather go on wondering?

The Great American Novel

Elizabeth Zelvin

Do young writers still talk about writing the Great American Novel? I suspect it’s one of those concepts that persists even after it’s already happened. I think we’ve already got more than enough contenders. When I was a kid, boys (not girls, in those prehistoric times) dreamed of being the first man on the moon. Once Neil Armstrong took that one small step in 1969, the dream became superfluous. Boys, again, used to talk about growing up to be President of the United States. That’s a dream that’s still available but has surely lost a great deal of its luster.

I knew I could find the origin of the term Great American Novel, and the Internet did not let me down. According to Wikipedia, “the phrase derives from the title of an essay by American Civil War novelist John William DeForest, published in The Nation on January 9, 1868.” As an old English major, I know that much of American literature looked to English literature for its models and heroes. Henry James is probably the best example of an American novelist inspired by Europe. His settings, his vision of society, and his leisurely, tortuous sentences evoked the Old World, not the vigorous frontier. I confess I enjoyed and even studied Henry James without having a clue what his stories were about until, decades later, I saw them as movies.

The Great American Novel has to be set in America as seen by Americans, not through the filter of British or European attitudes. Its American characters have to demonstrate American values: individualism, social and economic mobility, a robust egalitarianism. They have to tell stories that could only happen in America in some version of the American language.

Gosh, I do sound like an old English major, don’t I! Let me just give you my candidates:

1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The unreadable Great American Novel. It's the mighty story of man against whale, in a ponderous poetry that some people might still tackle for pleasure, but tough going for most modern readers. I had to laugh when someone on DorothyL complained about mysteries that bore us by telling more than we want to know about fishing. Melville devoted hundreds of pages to how to catch, cut up, and cook the whale. He also gave us the ultimate vision of the New England whaler.

2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The still delightfully readable Great American Novel. Set in the heartland, with the Mississippi River as its central metaphor, it’s a great example of the always popular coming of age novel. It tackles the core American issues of freedom vs slavery and independence vs conformity. Furthermore, Mark Twain made brilliant use of the American language—more than most modern readers realize—by rendering the subtleties of local dialect at each point along the river as Huck’s raft floated down it. I read the book aloud to my son when he was 8, and it held up marvelously as a masterpiece of storytelling with suspense, compassion, and humor.

3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Another great book that made a great movie (with Gregory Peck, who also starred as Ahab in Moby Dick), this seems to be practically everybody’s 20th century favorite, from literate DorothyLers (who of course point out it’s a mystery) to MySpacers who admit they hardly read anything. It’s about secrets and justice and childhood (a girl’s, this time, though a sturdy tomboy of a girl) and race relations and small town life—American as apple pie.

4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. The unsung Great American Novel, my personal pick and the only one on my list that Wikipedia doesn’t mention as a candidate. I believe it’s disregarded because it’s for and about and read by girls and women. Yet the language is as fresh and everyday today as it was in 1868. It’s probably never been out of print, it’s been adapted many times for stage and screen, and I’m one of many thousands, perhaps millions, of women who know this beloved book practically by heart, who return to it time and again for another visit with the March girls, who still cry when Beth dies, and whom Jo inspired to become writers.

So how about the Great American Mystery? I admit the traditional mystery has English origins. My blog sisters and I are Poe’s Deadly Daughters because Edgar Allan Poe, an American, invented the detective story, but it could be argued that as literature, Poe's work was as European as that of Henry James. We’re also daughters of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, both quintessentially English writers. But how about their New World heirs? What could be more American than Laura Lippman’s Baltimore, Margaret Maron’s North Carolina, Dana Stabenow’s Alaska, or Nevada Barr’s National Parks? And few dispute that the private eye novel is an American form of the genre, from its roots in the work of Hammett and Chandler to its many modern practitioners, both male and female.

So what’s your pick for Great American Mystery? The Maltese Falcon? The Bootlegger’s Daughter? The polls are open! Click on Comments to name your candidate.