A Word About Awards

AUGUSTUS by John Williams   Award: National Book Winner 1973   Date Read: September 9, 2023   In the realm of historical fiction, Williams has clearly outdone himself and I can see why Augustus earned him a National Book Award. Created from fictionalized letters and memoirs of those who orbited in Emperor Augustus’ world, we slowly begin to see a portrait of a man who is trying to serve Rome and dodge the continuing threats that encroach on him from all sides.   Perhaps the greatest love of Augustus’ life is his daughter Julia. He dotes on her in her childhood and can deny her almost nothing. As she matures, her status serves the causes of Rome and she is married at a very young age in an advantageous match. After her husband dies in battle, she is married again for the benefit of Rome, her own preferences and desires irrelevant. And when her much older husband also passes away from a sudden illness, she is married again to a cruel man who she despises, Tiberius....

SISTER WOLF by Ann Arensberg   Award: National Book Winner 1981   Date Read: July 23, 2023   Marit is the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, Vladimir and Luba, who were well-off and left her a great inheritance. Marit has never married and allows only a few people close, namely her best friend Lola. With nothing but time and money on her hands, Marit decides to turn the land adjacent to her mansion into a wildlife preserve.   Initially, she has permission to house non-threatening indigenous wildlife that used to live in that area but were hunted off or otherwise removed. What the town does not know is that Marit has arranged to have four wolves on her property, a move she knows will get her into trouble if it were found out.   Next door to her property is a school for the blind and one of their teachers, Gabriel, becomes romantically entangled with Marit. As their relationship progresses, a picture emerges of Marit as incredibly jealous and very much unhinged. Sh...

A FROLIC OF HIS OWN by William Gaddis   Award: National Book Winner 1994   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 1996, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1994, NY Times Finalist 1994   Date Read: April 28, 2023   In A Frolic Of His Own, Gaddis plays with the idea of art vs. money, as well as the law vs. justice. Oscar, a buffoon and a recluse, believes the legal system is his recourse for a car accident he had where his own car ran him over. He has also written a play about the Civil War that he believes has been stolen to use as the basis for a Hollywood epic. He is suing about that as well. While the accident lawsuit isn’t successful because he’s the claimant and the defendant, his lawsuit against the Hollywood producer is successful. But at what cost?   Hobbling around in his Appellate Court Justice father’s dilapidated estate, Oscar goes on rants and drinking binges while bemoaning his lot in life. Christina, his stepsister, ping-pongs between assuaging Oscar’s ti...

THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy   Award: National Book Winner 1962   Date Read: April 17, 2023   The Moviegoer is defined by its central character’s existential angst and his search for meaning and a better understanding of his relationship with God. Jack Bolling (aka Binx) finds himself still in search of his purpose at the age of 30. Having lost several years in the war and many more years to making money at a brokerage, he still knows he hasn’t found his true path in life.   His ultimate enemy is the mendacity of everyday life or “the grind.” He attempts to escape this despair by frequenting movies in his spare time, enjoying a succession of women without committing to any of them, even trading up his car to a more fun and less practical MG. While Binx struggles with this particular demon, he doesn’t share his fear with anyone but his cousin Kate.   Kate has her own demons to fight. She has been mentally unwell for many years, is struggling with an addiction to...

THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE by John Cheever   Award: National Book Winner 1958   Date Read: December 22, 2022   Leander Wapshot is the pater familias of the Wapshot family and the chronicler of the tale told therein. A long line of Wapshots have decorated the landscape around St. Botolphs, Massachusetts since God was a boy. Their name is well-known throughout the town. His Aunt Honore lives in a bungalow on the same property as Leander and his family – wife Sarah and sons Moses and Coverly.    From the time Leander was a child through to his sons heading out on their own to find their fortunes, we experience the lives of this quirky family – sometimes sad, sometimes humorous, always real. The character of Coverly was largely informed by Cheever’s own experiences as he was growing up.   Moses is set out into the world at the behest of Honore, who caught him having sex with a house guest, and it pissed her off. She made connections for him in Washington DC so that ...

THE FIELD OF VISION by Wright Morris   Award: National Book Winner 1957   Date Read: September 15, 2022   The Field Of Vision was considered a high modernist style of writing when it debuted in 1956 and went on to win the National Book Award in 1957. The novel is character driven, rather than plot driven, digging deeper under the layers of each of the characters, their pasts, their motivations, their life choices and present desires.   Scanlon is the great-grandfather of the present clan who have all traveled, by car no less, to Mexico for vacation. We find them watching a bull fight, which is so objectionable today that it boggles my mind they used to actually do this. Nevertheless, the family are being entertained by killing bulls. Scanlon reminisces about his days on the wagon trail, pushing for westward expansion and how harrowing the journey was. Scanlon ultimately settled in Lone Tree, Texas and as modernism approached, he let it go on by, preferring the ways a...

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann   Awards: Dublin Winner 2011, National Book Winner 2009 Nominations: Dayton Literary Peace Longlist 2010   Date Read: May 12, 2011   From Kirkus Reviews: “The famous 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers is a central motif in this unwieldy paean to the adopted city of Dublin-born McCann (Zoli, 2007, etc.).   Told by a succession of narrators representing diverse social strata, the novel recalls Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), except that where Bonfire was deeply cynical about Reagan-era New York, McCann’s take on the grittier, 1970s city is deadly earnest. On the day that “the tightrope walker” (never named, but obviously modeled on Philippe Petit) strolls between the Twin Towers, other New Yorkers are performing quieter acts of courage. Ciaran has come from Dublin to the Bronx to rescue his brother Corrigan, a monk whose ministry involves providing shelter and respite to...

WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo   Award: National Book Winner 1985   Nomination: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1985   Dates Read: February 11, 2005 & September 15, 2021   Jack Gladney, the founder of Hitler studies at an unnamed college in the U.S., is in a blended family and feeling content. Kids from his previous marriages and his current-wife’s previous marriages swirl around them in chaos, plus one wee they share between them. In the midst of all this noise and animation, Jack and Babette seem happy.   The one haunting fear for them both is death. While death is a common fear among all humans, death is particularly haunting to both Jack and Babette. They have countless conversations about who should die first. Or who they hope will die first. But what Jack doesn’t realize is that Babette’s fear is so profound that she answered a questionable add in a tabloid to participate in a study about the fear of death. She even went so far as to take an unapprov...

THE HAIR OF HAROLD ROUX by Thomas Williams   Award: National Book Winner 1975   Date Read: August 20, 2021   The Hair of Harold Roux is a story within a story and, at times, within another couple of stories. Occasionally, the stories would switch and I would struggle to recall the storyline I’m supposed to be following. Overall, however, this was an engaging and entertaining novel. Any deep thoughts or epiphanies gained? Not so much.   The two main stories regard a college student named Allard Benson and a college professor, Aaron Benham. Are they essentially the same person at different stages of their lives? If you ask me, I would say yes. Both ride motorcycles, both are vets, both have had first loves with the first name of M.    Within Allard’s story is where we meet Harold Roux, a fellow collegian who has prematurely gone bald at the age of 22. He hides his baldness under a toupee that everyone knows is a toupee. This hair piece becomes a part of Harol...

SPARTINA by John Casey   Award: National Book Winner 1989   Nomination: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1989   Date Read: July 11, 2021   Dick Pierce is a fisherman. Before being a husband, father or long-standing member of his community, he is first and foremost a fisherman. Not able to hold down a job working for someone else, Dick knows his long-term financial survival depends on completing his own boat which lies half-finished in his backyard. He simply lacks the funds to finish it.   As hard as money is to come by for Dick, his corner of Rhode Island is flush with it as new money keeps washing in with every tide. A resort is being built on a point of land that was once owned by Dick’s family and a locally iconic building, the Wedding Cake, also once owned by Dick’s family, has also fallen into the hands of new money. These developments highlight the class resentment Dick carries deep. He still bristles at having to sell all that land to pay his dying ...

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN by Dalton Trumbo   Award: National Book Winner 1939   Date Read: May 7, 2021   If any book I have read described the actual physical costs of war like Johnny Got His Gun, this novel erased those from my mind. I have read of the POW experience continuously and the experiences of those on the battlefield, but this work describes the physical sacrifice soldiers experience through limbs and quality of life after the fighting stops.   Having been blasted from a trench by a mortar shell, Joe Bonham is literally trapped inside his body. He has lost both arms, both legs and his face, rendering him blind, deaf and mouthless. He requires constant care for toileting, feeding, changing his dressings and every single function of life. He cannot communicate and the routine of his caregivers and his own mind become his entire world.   Trumbo makes the valid argument that these boys are sacrificing life and limb for a word – “freedom.” While freedom is import...

THE ECHO MAKER by Richard Powers   Award: National Book Winner 2006   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2008, Pulitzer Finalist 2007   Date Read: May 4, 2021   The brain is a majestic and complicated instrument, completely ruling how we perceive ourselves, others and the world around us. In essence, the body is simply a life support for the brain. When that brain goes awry, every perception we believe to be valid and real can be called into question, absolutely disrupting our relationships and lives.   And so it goes with Mark, a man who one night gets into a serious accident and suffers brain trauma. He spends the better part of two years attempting to manage the fallout. His greatest support system is his sister, who he doesn’t believe is actually his real sister but an imposter part of a larger scheme to get Mark out of the way.   This intense look at the brain and its functioning clearly took a great deal of research and understanding on the part of Powers a...

ARARAT by Elgin Groseclose   Award: National Book Winner 1939   Read: April 19, 2021   Among the shadows of the mountain Ararat, most known for the supposed landing place of Noah’s ark, massacre, joy, suffering and compassion flow by through the sifting years. Always in the background is the immovable Ararat.   In a duplicitous slaughter, the Armenians living in Turkey who survive the genocide flee to a small village in Russia named Bartzan, in the shadow of Ararat. Though living there for 13 years, they are never provided formal permission to occupy the land. As the community feels rejected and still without roots, many depart in search of more permanent and welcoming lands.’   The one person that constantly remains is Amos Lyle, an American missionary who dedicates his life to caring for orphaned children, the byproduct of constant war and strife. He takes as his own daughter the orphan Sirani who works tirelessly beside Lyle as she grows to assume more and mo...

THE CITADEL by A.J. Cronin   Award: National Book Winner 1937   Date Read: April 2, 2021   Andrew Manson is young, idealistic and armed with a medical degree. His first post is in a small town in the Scottish countryside where he is essentially an indentured servant to a doctor whose health is failing. Yet, in this small community he learns the practicalities of his profession and falls in love with Christine, who he ultimately marries.   His passion is so intense that Andrew, along with lifelong friend Denny, determine to blow up a sewer they know is infected with typhoid. Since money is so scarce in this remote village, they know that only in destroying it entirely will the Ministry be forced to deal with it. This is just one of the small scenes throughout this captivating novel that will stay in my mind.   As with all youth, Manson is swept along to bigger and better things and, like youth, his idealism and passion are eventually supplanted by the necessities...

PARIS TROUT by Pete Dexter   Award: National Book Winner 1988   Nomination: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1988   Date Read: December 15, 2020   Paris Trout follows the lives of several characters living in a small town whose lives are turned upside down by the killing of a Black girl. Paris Trout, under the guise of collecting on a defaulted debt, hunts down and shoots a young girl in her own home, causing her death. He shoots her Aunt-like figure as well, although she survives her injuries.   Readers follow Paris Trout’s actions and influence as he becomes more and more unglued – threating people with his gun, installing glass on the floor of his rooms, saving his urine and fingernail clippings in case of him being poisoned. He is a ticking time bomb that does eventually go off. I couldn’t help but wonder if Paris was what results in a person being somewhat on the spectrum combined with violent and misogynistic tendencies. He believes he was justified i...

DALE LOVES SOPHIE TO DEATH by Robb Forman Dew   Award: National Book Winner 1982   Date Read: December 5, 2020   The title for this novel is incredibly misleading. I had thought it would be about a passionate love that either triumphed or failed. In reality, it is about a couple who spend their summers apart as the husband, Martin, maintains the house and his work schedule, while his wife, Dinah, spends the summer in her childhood hometown taking care of the children.   I didn’t relate to any of the characters here. I found Dinah to be self-absorbed and extremely bitter with not a lot of reason. I thought she was unsympathetic to her children, having overlooked her son, Toby’s illness until it was too much to ignore. She doesn’t seem to relate to her kids on an emotional level at all.   Meanwhile, Martin is left to his own devices and he (surprise, surprise) embarks on an affair that just seems to fill the time. The affair does not sprout over emotion or a lustf...

COLD MOUNTAIN by Charles Frazier   Award: National Book Winner 1997   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 1999, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1997   Date Read: November 21, 2020   Cold Mountain is essentially Homer’s Odyssey remade as a soldier’s long quest home after being injured in the Civil War. Throughout unimaginable injuries, escapes, near death, starving and weary, Inman makes his way homeward, his love for Ada sustaining him along the way. He meets people along the way both warm-hearted and some ill intended. His very survival is predicated on his determination, skill and heaping amount of luck.   During Inman’s journey, Ada, a once privileged princess with no workable skills to keep herself fed and the farm she inherits producing, is blessed by Ruby’s appearance in her life. Ruby is a neighbor who lives alone, her father having disappeared forever and again. Ruby has the skills Ada lacks and through their determination and grit are able to begin amass...

THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez   Award: National Book Winner 2018 Nomination: Dublin Finalist 2020   Date Read: October 20, 2020   I had anticipated loving this novel much more than I did. Having come to the end, with the tables being turned unexpectedly, I was reminded of Trust Exercise by Susan Choi. I had predicted being completely moved about a woman falling in love with a dog since my heart’s desire for quite a while is to have a dog. I just wasn’t affected, although the heavy topics of death and suicide are handled with dexterity.   I found this more of an analysis of the art of writing itself – the pretentiousness, the questioning voice, the frustration of it all. Nunez spends a majority of this novel discussing what it means to be a writer, the jealousy among fellow writers and the academic competition for advantage and student affection. None of this resonated with me.   Nunez presents an interesting argument that writing is an elitist profession, often onl...