A Sabbatical on Duma Key

It's easy to get lost in a good book.  Not every book has this power but some stories can pull you in like the undertow and as long as the book continues, your consciousness is split between your familiar world and the narrative of the story, where you live fully and completely in its pages.  I love getting sucked into a story but, between you and me, it's painful when it happens because I always finish these books with a sense of bereavement.  The consciousness I've been tuned into since the early pages slips away with the ending and leaves me back in this existence, a bit breathless and diminished by the loss.  It takes a while to get used to this life again.  So, be warned if you pick up a copy of Duma Key: despite the loss, evil and horror in its pages, you won't want this story to end.

It's the confession of Edgar Freemantle, a man learning some Americans have more than one act in their lives.  The first act of his ended when a work accident stole his arm, the ability to communicate and, in the end, his marriage.  Stuck and unhappy, Edgar decides to spend a year in the warmer world of Florida, "land of the newly wed and nearly dead" and either create a new life for himself or a suicide plan that his daughters won't detect.  Nothing surprises him more when Florida begins to deliver the recovery he needs with Duma Key's relatively undeveloped blocks of beachfront, a good friend and a developing gift for drawing.  Unfortunately, every gift has its price.

There was a point in my life when I never expected to praise Duma's author, Stephen King, but that time has long since passed.  The caricatures of villains that populated Christine and Carrie left long ago and his novels are filled with pacing and focus.  The pop-culture jokes and references still exist along with lyrical passages and meditations on the nature of loss, recovery and the creative life.  Most of all, there is an emotional honestly in Edgar Freemantle's story that makes him one of King's most likeable imperfect heroes.  Freemantle is never so warm-hearted that the reader can't see his relentless drive and how it alienated his ex-wife.  On the other hand, Pam is never so negative that you wonder why he wanted her in the first place. Duma Key is, among other things, the story of when a good relationship between decent people goes bad, a far more interesting (and subtle) subject than the cliche of an abusive marriage.  In Duma Key, most of the damage is created by decent people through a series of unconscious choices, turning a thriller into a tragedy.  It is eloquent in regret and grief.

But those are the emotions of survivors and Duma shows that life goes on, whether we like it or not.  Past war, past sorrow, past the death of their nearest and dearest, survivors continue on with their scars and knowledge of the past.  Like the readers of an "undertow" book they emerge on the far shore of experience, breathless and uncertain about what happens next.  And the readers turn the last page and blink in the remembered sunlight, their faces still turned toward the sea.

The Night We'll Never Forget

My ex-boss and I used to have the same discussion every year on this date.  April the fifteenth was a historic day for both of us for different reasons, neither of which had to do with taxes.  Both were watershed events with long-term ramifications and my boss and I would debate which one had the greater historical impact.  I wish I agreed with my boss: Jackie Robinson's debut as the first African-American player on a Major League Baseball team is a thing worth celebrating because it marked progress toward real democracy in America.  Unfortunately, thirty-five years before Mr. Robinson walked onto the field, April fifteenth dawned over a flat, cold Atlantic and a handful of huddled lifeboats where a magnificent ocean liner should have been.  Taxes and baseball are national but the world changed with the sinking of the Titanic.

Titanic's tragedy was a world-wide event.  Although almost half of the souls on her board were either American or British, the rest came from every corner of the globe. Citizens from every inhabited continent set sail in Titanic and when she went down families in twenty-seven countries lost loved ones. (Japan's sole passenger, Masabumi Hosono, survived the wreck but was ostracized ever after because he did not die).  People of all faiths, walks of life and backgrounds went to sea, trusting their lives to this fabled ship that was supposed to be the acme of beauty and technology.  When she sank, travel regulations around the world changed as well.

After Titanic, every vessel maintained radio operations, 24 hours a day.  Too much can go wrong when communications are shut down.  Afterwards, lifeboats were apportioned by the number of souls on board instead of the ship's displacement weight and drills became part of each voyage.  When I went on a cruise a few years ago, they gathered us for a life boat drill before we had reached the open ocean.  I watched the holiday makers in their vacation shirts and shorts looking for their boat line assignments and knew this was because of Titanic.  Never again would passengers and crew set sail ignorant of  where to go in case of a disaster.  It was a terrible lesson, but we learned.

For my money, the best book on Titanic (and there have been hundreds) is still Walter Lord's A Night to Remember.  In simple, plain language Lord recounts the tragedy, capturing the phrases that haunted survivors' memories.  Guggenheim's "We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.";  Ida Straus's refusal to desert her husband and take to a lifeboat saying, "Where you go, I will go."  There is the unknown porter saying, "There's talk of an iceberg, madam." and the assertion that,"God, himself could not sink this ship."  It's a masterpiece of reporting and for many, the first, best account of what happened on that incredible night.  No film with fictional characters can surpass this retelling of what actually happened.  The only drawback to Lord's book is that it was written long before the wreck was discovered and that is a story to be reckoned with.

In the seventy years between her sinking and discovery, a great many theories about Titanic were proposed.  Only a handful of the survivors insisted that the ship broke before she completely submerged and their words were largely discounted.  People preferred to hope that Titanic was still intact and recoverable somewhere on the ocean's floor or suspended between layers of water, gliding on an endless voyage with her dead.  Bob Ballard's discovery finally put the theories to rest and earned him a spot in the history as well as changing the focus of his own life (despite his other accomplishments, Ballard will always be recognized first as the man who found the Titanic).  His accomplishment, along with the story of the sinking is captured beautifully in Titanic: An Illustrated History.  Here is the story of Titanic's discovery, introduced by Mr. Ballard, along with a series of photos and illustrations that help the ordinary reader grasp the beauty of the liner during her short life and what was discovered by Ballard and his team.  It's a fascinating resource and the illustrations of Ken Marschall are beautiful and moving if sometimes terrible to look at.  Without gore or extra artifice, he brings the horror of that night home.

Perhaps the true measure of history is when it continues to touch people long after the world has moved on.  If so, I hope people remember the achievement and joy that must have been part of Jackie Robinson's April 15th.  It was another step in a good march that the country need to take.  Mr. Robinson made the 15th of April a good day.   It just came after a long, cold night.


   

To Make an Elegant Monster

Not all monsters are hideous or born to evil.  From no less  an authority than Wikipedia, the term monster comes from a Latin word that means an aberrant occurrence or creature.  Well, a significant number of people have defied society's expectations and as a result, were judged as monstrous by their peers and brave by later generations.  One example is Beryl Markham, the subject of Paula McLain's Circling the Sun.  Beryl Markham is usually remembered as the first aviatrix to fly from Europe to America alone.  Her dramatic crash-landing on the bare edge of the Nova Scotia coast and her tremendous good looks made her accomplishment extraordinarily good copy for 1930's magazines and newspapers.The interesting point is that Ms. McLain's story doesn't dwell on the flying accomplishments that put Markham on the pages of aviation and gender studies textbooks; instead she looks at the events that led to this woman creating history.

McLain's novel focuses on the Kenyan upbringing that shaped so much of Markham's character.  As the daughter of a British horse-trainer in Africa, Markham witnessed the European land-grab/colonization drive of the late 1800's and early 1900's.  She knew both the native African tribes-people trying to maintain their culture and the European settlers who transferred some of their civilization's values while changing others to meet the circumstances.  This meant that when Beryl's mother left Africa with a man other than her husband and her father brought in another woman as a substitute, gossip ensued but no one explained matters to the daughter who would feel abandoned.  Those feelings would only increase around the end of World War I, when her father lost the family home to bankruptcy and left, encouraging his 15 year old daughter to stay and marry a neighbor almost twice her age.  Given these circumstances and socializing with the "Happy Valley Set" (a collection of settlers known for their spouse-swapping and drug use) it isn't surprising Beryl's first marriage collapsed.  Instead, this set the pattern for Markham who left husbands and lovers in her wake and a newborn  in the midst of a scandal for a life of flying and horses, her other great love.  Along with her flying records, Beryl Markham left her mark as the first licensed female horse-trainer in Africa who racked up 46 wins in a single racing season.  McLain portrays Markham as someone who is capable of great devotion but limited in her attention span as she throws herself into training and then leaves behind her livelihood and the African friend who depends on her whenever a new man beckons. 

Beryl's speeches in Circling the Sun about sexual freedom seem a bit anachronistic but then Markham's entire history is that of a woman out of her time.  Modern society could tolerate this woman's ambition more easily than the world of the 1920's and Ritalin would have been available for her ADD but then she might not have entered the annals of history.  Instead we have a woman of scandal whose flaws are as deep as her charm and that is, perhaps her purpose.  If Wikipedia is to be believed, monsters are a sign something is wrong with the natural order.  As the Europeans upset the natural order with a rigid behavioral code, Markham upset those Europeans and gave restless women everywhere a role model to emulate.  Not every beautiful woman is cut out to be a devoted wife or mother and it's better to accept that fact.  Forcing the unconventional few into uniform molds will only create elegant monsters.


Circling the Sun will go on sale  July 28, 2015.  My thanks to Net Galley for releasing this review copy to me.

The Intellectual Heavyweight of Stage Musicals

I love stage musicals.  We were raised on a collection of cast albums from classic Broadway shows and my sister and I learned every song by heart.  We've  continued the tradition, to the present and both of us admire this form that combines the best aspects of art and entertainment. While we both love being entertained (who doesn't?) it is the experimental side of this form that really draws me, how directors and playwrights and composers alter or recombine the elements of a musical to tell a new story or get the audience to view an known one from a new perspective.  That's probably why I admire Stephen Sondheim's work so much and why I'm glad Meryle Secrest's biography, Stephen Sondheim: A Life is a discerning review of his life and accomplishments.  This composer of cerebral entertainment  deserves an intelligent biography, even if he makes a living in show business.

Some would believe Mr. Sondheim was pre-ordained for a life in theatre, given his New York background, a talent for music and the teacher-student relationship he developed with Oscar Hammerstein II. Ms. Secrest's well-researched biography suggests otherwise.  Rather than developing a relationship with Mr. Hammerstein because of his interest in music, it appears that the opposite is true: a lonely boy is welcomed by the lyricist's family as a friend of their son and the boy begins writing music to please the surrogate father who provides the kindness and stability lacking in his own home. Young Stephen benefits both from his exposure to a stable, loving family and from lessons with one of the great experimentalists in the American musical form.

This drive to expand and improve the format of the stage musical by taking artistic risks and the willingness to risk commercial failure were passed from mentor to student; Mr. Sondheim's built a career on these concepts.  From non-linear storytelling (Company, Sunday in the Park with George) and songs that muddle the barriers between show tunes and opera (Pacific Overtures, Passion) to subjects previously considered unsuitable for the musical stage (Assassins, Company), Sondheim has pushed musical boundaries and redefined the genre but often at great cost.  Follies was misunderstood for years and the failures of Some Can Whistle and Merrily We Role Along cost the composer more than income.  The musical is a combination of high and low art and by appealing to the audience's intelligence, Mr. Sondheim has often overestimated it.  Yet he remains the surest link between the "great" book musicals of the mid-twentieth century (his first shows were West Side Story, Gypsy and A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum) and the experimentation that continues today.  And, as he was mentored, Mr. Sondheim reaches out to the generation of composers who grew up listening to his music.  The late Jonathan Larson, the creator of Rent, had the benefit of Sondheim's teaching and referenced his teacher by name in the score.

Ms. Secrest follows the story of Mr. Sondheim's life with great sensitivity, creating a portrait that is knowledgeable and intimate without being gossipy.  An analysis is applied to Mr. Sondheim's works through 1999 (covering most of the shows and revues except Bounce (aka Road Show) tracing the autobiographical elements in the composer's life.  The result is a biography that highlights Sondheim without glorifying the man or glossing over his flaws. The only problem is, of course, the book is too short.  Mr. Sondheim continues to work and as long as that is true, this book ends prematurely.

It's true that Stephen Sondheim has passed the age when most men have put aside their labors.  But, as the book points out, Mr. Sondheim is not most men.  He was a wunderkind, achieving goals before 30 that most of us never attain and he's come back from failure too many times to count.  So, don't count him or his biographer out until the fat lady sings.  As long as they both breathe, they may continue to work showing us new ways to think and understand what we see.  Because of this, we are blessed.

Time to start thinking about a Beach Read?

It's started getting warmer here.  Oh, my poor sister is still in the land of ice and snow but I saw my first bumblebee yesterday, hovering around the forsythia and ready to go into business.  It's time to start thinking of sandals and sunscreen, vacations and fireworks.  It's time to start thinking about summer and books to read at the beach.  Beach Lit is, from what I've seen , a well-known but under-appreciated genre.  Yes, the book must be light enough in tone and weight to fit with life by the surf and it needs to be entertaining but, most of all, it needs to remind the reader why life and living are precious.  There should be some lessons learned, some perspectives changed and, to be perfect, it should have something to do with the natural world.   Do you want to stretch out on your towel and imagine yourself in the stock exchange?  Of course not!  At any rate, a novel is coming out next month that will fit perfectly into this category.  If  you are looking for a new take on some traditional escapist fare, tuck a copy of Karen White's The Sound of Glass into your beach tote, next to the sun screen.

Ms. White is one of the host of Southern Women led by Anne Rivers Siddons and Dorothea Benton Franks who write, well...beach books.   The lead characters are women who are casually connected to homes of antiquity or artistic merit (in the South, many women  want to look young and live in a house that's Older than Dirt) and they have a Challenge to Meet.  There's usually an upheaval in the woman's life, a choice that is Wrong and a good-looking man that is Right.  Pure escapism.  Karen White folds a layer of mysticism to her stories which goes awfully well with old houses.  In The Sound of Glass, the mysticism is how damaged women connect through space and time.

Merritt's Heyward is a widow on the run from Maine and her past when she takes the reins of an old house in Beaufort, South Carolina.  Like Garbo, she  insists she"Just Wants to Be Alone" but none of her new southern friends are listening, from the zealous neighbors who trade casseroles for an inside gawk at her house to the Alabama step-mother who appears, without warning, to visit...well, stay.  Merritt's tenure in the house unearths evidence of some ugly family secrets and Merritt has to free them (and her own fears) before she can re-engage with the life she lost so many years ago. 

There are a few problems with the plot.    Merritt's South Carolina home belonged to her late husband's grandmother who willed it to Merritt's husband, her dead grandson.  Problem is, the grandson pre-deceased his grandmother which would make the house, in probate lingo, a lapsed gift.  Since grandma didn't know or make provision for Merritt, a relation only by marriage, it's unlikely our heroine would inherit that real estate, especially when there's a blood grandson in the picture.  But the story is built on Merritt needing the house (and vice versa) so forgive the writer her trespasses.  Forgiveness is a lot of what The Sound of Glass is about anyway, the need to forgive ourselves and our pasts so we can go forward and live.  Ms. White is right on that  point as well as the sea glass she uses as a metaphor for the women who live in the house.  Sometimes glass falls into the ocean and bounces around there for years.  The pieces that make it to the shore have been tossed, tumbled, bumped and pounded for years and they are sometimes rough-edged and cloudy.  But they're strong and beautiful in wind chimes when flowing breezes make them ring.  Merritt Heyward and the other women in her life have endured a long age of pounding and they are like the sea glass.  They may look brittle and cloudy but they're strong and beautiful, when you see them in the right light.

This story won't be on the short-list for the Pulitzer this year (although it could work in a Lifetime movie) but that's not what's required in Beach books.  Beach books are for fun, for entertainment and most of all to remind us why we work all year for just a few days in the sun.  Because life slips away from us when we're focused on the job and our vacations remind us how precious and fleeting time is.  So we enjoy our moments reconnecting with life, ourselves and those we love.  Those themes are also part of The Sound of Glass.  That's why it's a perfect book for the Beach.

The Sound of Glass will be available on May 12, 2015.  Thanks to NetGalley for giving me an early look at the manuscript.

Living at the Edge of Disaster.

Life on the Gulf is hard.  Follow your nose past the shiny hotels and condos that block up the view and look at the rest of the world.  The ground is flat, the air is heavy and the heat will knock you stupid two-thirds of the year.  The highways are lined with billboards advertising pain doctors, tourist traps and attorneys promising high settlements and cheap divorces.  The scrub grows high and thick here.  The trees you see are either young matchsticks with impossibly high trunks or  old, gnarled things that have survived too many hurricanes to die. The people aren't much different.  For generations, they've lived by the Gulf, a few in financial comfort but most of them eaking out a living on hard work, low wages and luck that runs thin on the ground.  They hold jobs without benefits, without paid vacation and without too much of a future.  The life here already made these folks resourceful, tenacious, colorful and tough but right now life's even harder than usual.  The BP oil spill took a look at Gulf life and punched it right in the gut.

Tom Cooper knows this and put the story of these folks in his first novel, The Marauders.  Like Cannery Row these characters are people on the edge of disaster, living not from paycheck to paycheck but shrimp haul to shrimp haul when no one's interested in buying their catch.  Like other folks on the edge, many are working just to survive but in every disaster a few still have faith in quick wealth.  A one-armed man trolls the small growing islands, looking for the treasure of Jean Lafitte.  A metal detector and some textbooks are his only tools but this is a man with belief.  Two idiots serving sentences of community service decide to quit saving the wildlife and  make a better living with theft.  Stealing TVs and jewelry is just practice until they can go after a high-dollar item: the local drug lords' money crop of high-grade marijuana.

Between the dreamers and schemers are other characters to love: the boy who wants to save the family shrimping business using social media to drum up customers.  The father who wants to turn back the clock to a time before the shrimping took his health and the hurricane, his wife.  Most of all, there are the locals who are dirt-poor and proud enough to spit in the eye of a BP lawyer, no matter how many times he comes to call.  They may give in eventually, but in then meantime they'll make his life a hell.

Cooper's smart enough to show Gulf folks are as tough as they come because they have to be.  Still, something in the air-soup there feeds them and no place else will do.  So they stay, through hurricanes and oil spills, working the jobs they can find and scheming for something better.  A life with enough money for bills and bones that stay in place.  A good education for the kids.  A dress that isn't from Goodwill or Wal-Mart.  But these dreams are pie-in-the-sky fancies, like drawing to an inside straight.  If they can continue to live here, even on the edge of disaster, that life still looks pretty good.  Cooper's real gift is that he presents these people as people, not clowns or mannequins on a Cajun hayride.  (However, the book is laugh-out loud funny in places, especially to someone who has been there.  The scene on a New Orleans highway belongs on a movie screen.)

Tom Cooper's written a fine book about the folks on the edge of existence, funny and sad and wise.  If your heart runs with the tide or against it, if you care for the vrai chose, The Marauders will give you a treat.  Just remember, this isn't a story for the tourists.  This one's for the real folks back home.





The Marauders was published in February of this year.  Thank you to Blogging for Books for access to this fine novel

The Power of Two

You're not supposed to re-read classics for pleasure, but I do.  To me, that's the real definition of classic: when something's so good it transcends the first or second wave of popularity so people return to it year after year, seeing new ties and ideas with each re-reading. so their depth of appreciation grows with age.  Anyone can read a book once and pronounce a judgment, good or bad.  On the other hand, it takes an age to appreciate the depth in John Steinbeck's East of Eden.  At least it requires an understanding of the Power of Two.

In many ways, East of Eden is the story of two families, the Hamilton and the Trasks.  The Hamiltons are the author's own family, the maternal relatives he knew and heard about in family gatherings.  The accounts of his grandfather's gentleness, his grandmother's fortitude and the bravery and sadness of their children were the first tales that stirred Steinbeck's imagination and he wanted these stories immortalized.  The Hamilton family tales are mixed in an earlier family saga, already known to most of the world.  The Trasks are the first first family of all, and two sets of Trask brothers follow the biblical story of Cain and Able.  The youngest generation of Trasks live close to the Hamiltons and through their association or the author's talent, seem more understandable than their biblical counterparts.

 The Genesis story is a bald recounting of sibling rivalry, how only one brother's gift received praise and the other brother slew him in a fit of jealousy.  However, the Trask brothers, first Charles and Adam and then Cal and Aaron both have a longstanding relationships with their emotionally distant fathers and all of the Trasks experience the confusion and regret that comes when a beloved sibling is also a hated rival.  Even better, the second generation of Trasks experiences comedy and joy along with the drama, making the characters more believable and identifiable than their Biblical counterparts.  Here the boys form a warm relationship with Lee, the family housekeeper, and memorize the series of steps for driving an early automobile before emotion and circumstance pull them apart. 

Lee reveals the central question and dichotomy in East of Eden with the Hebrew word, Timshel, which means "thou mayest".   According to this passage, the Hebrew verse of Genesis relates that God recognizes the jealousy in Cain's heart, calls it a sin and assures the boy he still has choice about his future.  Cain can submit to these feelings and do something evil or he can choose to do the work necessary to transcend them.   Lee states that our ability to choose, even in the most extreme circumstances, is what ennobles the human race.  And it the end, this choice is the greatest blessing a wounded father can give his sorrowing son.

To laugh or to cry, to forgive or hold a grudge, to surrender or fight on is the choice humanity faces every minute in every day and our stories grow from the decisions we make.  And it is the attraction of the choice that pulls us into each new chapter.  No matter how many times the hero or villain has declared an allegiance, there is always a chance he or she will change and we read to find those undeclared decisions.  It's what pulls me back into the classics: the endless power of two.

Living alongside eternity

We move through life so quickly. Children cram play-dates and lessons between study for entrance exams. Letters gave way to phone calls, then email and disappeared with video-chats and tweets. We create five-year, ten-year and twenty-year goals, power-walking our way through life and all we see is what's before us. But is that all there is? Aislinn Hunter suggests in The World Before Us that what we sense in this accelerated life is the narrowest universe of all.

 Jane Standen is the fulcrum of this story, a quiet woman with a disquieting past.  Years ago, she took a little girl into the forest and the child disappeared in the woods.  Nothing has brought Jane to terms with this loss and now she's in a career that uncovers lost detail.  As an archivist, Jane works in a Victorian museum, cataloging the data and detail of an earlier age.   The museum's closure and an encounter with the child's father occupy her conscious mind.  It does not fill the conscious of the spirits that follow Jane, ghosts vitalized by her search of the past.

These spirits narrate The World Before Us as they watch the present and Jane.  Disembodied but kind, they study parts of the modern world, aware that their mortal lives' knowledge is useless.  The artifacts Jane cares for act as beacons for the ghosts, tying them to this current age and linking them to the past, because things have memory as well.

The World Before Us is an ambitious book, containing the stories of different time-spans and varying planes of existence. It is a tale that cannot be hurried but observed like a walk through the forest.  There are mysteries here: the child disappears as does a woman from the previous century.  Nevertheless, the ghosts' presence hints that no one is ever completely lost.  Like energy, souls transform from one state to another and some stay around the living who remember the lives that have gone.

That may be a disturbing thought to a generation invested in speed but it may be comforting as well.  In our self-conscious view of reality, it is history that gives us perspective.  As members of the race we are part of a whole, not a thread left to blow in the wind.   And with that idea, every flower, every bug, and all the matter of our world becomes part of the grand design.

The Essence of a Southern Spring

The flowering dogwood is blooming.  Spring is taking time showing the rest of her sweet face but the dogwood branches are in blossom and their branches look like suspended wedding lace at twilight.  This condition will last about a week until the apple-green leaves take their place and the petals will drift to the gutters.   The temp is still nowhere near 80 but it's warm enough in the sun.   It's time to read Fitzgerald again.

If a writer can be tied to the weather, F. Scott Fitzgerald is Summer and Spring.  There's an exuberance and energy in his early stories match the hope and joy of Spring and the redolence of summer is the setting for Gatsby. Clothes are loose in Fitzgerald stories, smiles are warmer and many characters are on holiday.  Even sad stories, like Babylon Revisited contain memories of warm weather but since we're talking about a Southern Spring, the the Fitzgerald du jour is "The Ice-Palace."

 Fitzgerald first saw the South in 1918, while he was serving in the Army.  First Kentucky, then Georgia and finally Alabama in summer where he met his wife, Zelda Sayre.  By the time Ice Palace is published, Scott Fitzgerald has noted a lot about this place and how different it is from the North.  Here, the sunlight drips "like gold paint" and the girls are brought up on memories instead of money.  People move more slowly and so does time so it's almost possible to die from laziness.  Still, you couldn't describe this as a "laid-back" place because that suggests a choice can be made to relax.  Southerners before the days of central air lived life by the temperature gauge and that meant a slower pace that many of them never changed.

Still, there always have been a subset of Southerners interested in a different life.   These are often ex-patriots who either run from the restrictions they enounter here or they're attracted to a different perspective and Sally Carroll Happer seems to be one of those.  Much as she loves the South, she has too much energy to relax there permanently.  Instead, she takes to Harry Bellamy, a Northerner with ambition, and energy in his corner, and decides she'll make the obligatory visit to her fiance's parents in land of ice and snow.

The conflict of the story is culture clash between the "poor but genteel" environment Sally comes from and the industrious, nouveau-riche world that claims Harry.  Each culture remarks on the good and bad they see in each other (mainly bad) but Sally marks the difference by categorizing most Northerners as "canine" (open and engaging) while recognizing her childhood friends as "feline" (languid, subtle).  Perhaps this difference disturbs her or the North-South antagonism that grows but in the end it comes down to the cold.  Harry's culture celebrates the winter with palaces of ice and sports in an environment that would kill an unprotected human.  Sally finds the frozen heart at the center of Harry's world and decides if she can survive in the North.

In the end, there's no superior choice to be made, in this story or in life.  A lot of the South's history is written in blood and on some days, I don't think much of the North.    And Fitzgerald, for all of his talent and youth, created great pain in his life.  At his best, what he was able to do was capture a mood or a moment that others recognize when they read his stories.  This is the magic of "The Ice Palace" for me.  It invokes the essence of a Southern Spring.

Listen to the Band...

When I hear someone say, "I Love the sound of an Irish Band" I make a few assumptions.   If the person is significantly older than me and/or playing an acoustic instrument I figure they mean one of the Irish Folk groups like The Chieftains, the Clancy Brothers or the Irish Rovers.  If the person is around my age and/or playing an electric guitar, I guess they're probably talking about U2 and Thin Lizzy.  If the person talking shows no sense of humor, they're probably talking about  Sinead O'Connor.   Me, I've got an ear for it all (almost all!) but my favorite Irish  Band today exists only in fiction.  If you want a fast read  that keeps you grinning for days (or a film with a killer sound), let me introduce you to The Commitments.

The time is the late 1980's and Jimmy Rabbitte has a reputation around Dublin as a man who knows his music.  He buys every record that comes out, reads every trade paper and never misses a pop music show, even the ones he despises.  So when his buddies, Outspan Foster and Derek Scully think their three day old band needs a new direction, it's Jimmy's advice they go after.  "Dump the synthesizer, the name and the extra guy in your group" says Jimmy and concentrate on why you want a band in the first place.  Are you looking for money or girls?"  Well, no, though either of those would be nice.   "Are you looking to do more with your life?"  Yes definately.   "Well, be more" says Jimmy. "Be The Commitments: the Irish Band that plays Dublin Soul."

Off they go, learning the breaks in James Brown and Wilson Pickett records and wondering occasionally what Jimmy means by "Dublin Soul."  Almost all of the story is told in dialogue with Jimmy looking for the right kind of side men (and women) and lecturing his novice musicians on the kind of pop music trivia (why art school was a decent background for the Beatles but the kiss of death to Depeche Mode) that brings out the music expert in many guys.  Think of him as an Irish cousin of the three guys in High Fidelity.  Jimmy's mission is helped along by an old horn player named "Joey the Lips" and jerk named Declan who (unfortunately) sings like the late Joe Cocker.  The band becomes a powder keg of talent, egos, swearing, silliness and lust and it's a hard race to guess which will fuse will light first.

The book is a delight, partly because each of the proto-musicians takes themselves so seriously (for example the synth player announces he's planning to "go out on his own" after he's been dumped.  Like he had a choice.) and partly because no one else does.  The Irish accents are audible in the novel's prose and the novel overflows with swear words so people with tender eyesight should look elsewhere but the humor is constant as well as the affection.  The book became a hit.

The movie adaptation did too and spawned a killer soundtrack and stage show, although it's hard to find the film online.  (I read somewhere that some conflict with the rights has kept the film off of streaming services.)  I finally had to buy the DVD for myself.  As it is, "The Commitments" is one of the few properties I've enjoyed on the screen as much as I did on the page.  It's the tale of every working-class kid who thought music might be the answer when he wasn't too sure of the  questions.  It's not your average Irish story.  But it has some brilliant music.