Listening to The Voice

If you hang out with writers or writer wannabes for any length of time, you'll hear them talk about Voice.  They mention the word with awe and respect, like the Voice is Gandhi's or Caruso's or God's (a Voice, according to the clergy and Kevin Smith, that would literally Blow. Your. Mind.) and every writer wants one.  A strong narrative voice.  A recognizable voice.  An exciting voice.  You might think that all these adjectives had made the word-nerds squishy-brained but the fact is Voice is often the hook that pulls a reader into a story.  For example:

 Listen my children and you will hear-
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

Hear those fourteen words again and suddenly you are a kid again, curled up with some pals by a wing chair  because the storyteller in the center has promised you tales of derring-do. Fourteen words and the narrator's in charge.   That, my friends, is Voice.

All of this is build-up for a novel I just finished called The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  My mentor, Javacia Harris Bowser (she of Writeous Babe fame) mentioned it as a topic for research but scanning it for data brought to light a fabulous tale graced by that starriest of gifts, a Great Voice.

Ninety percent of the Voice in this book belongs to Flavia de Luce, an eleven-year old chemist with a passion for poisons.  She lives in the kind of drafty English country house once favored by Dodi Smith and Agatha Christie near a small, English village.  Family and the villagers all interact with Flavia but few of them seem to realize they are sharing space with the female version of young Sherlock Holmes.  (Of course, that's a weapon in our heroine's arsenal and one she won't hesitate to use.)  Flavia is intelligent, acerbic, tenacious, and so emotionally detached that she should give most grown-ups pause. However, what our heroine lacks in sweetness, she makes up for in courage and a sense of fair play that extends to everyone except her own sisters.  One of the delights in "Sweetness" is the undeclared war between the de Luce sisters and it carries the ring of truth.  When you are growing up, no one can upset you faster or more than your own brother or sister, probably because they know you so well.  Flavia is the smartest de Luce daughter but Daphne and Ophelia are bigger and they can put their sister in her place.   Whenever they do, it stimulates Flavia's interest in revenge!

If you liked Agatha Christie novels or I Capture the Castle, if you doted on Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm or loved the arch humor in Jane Austen's books, (there's a Voice for you!) try  The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  You'll fall in love with Flavia de Luce or, more accurately, you'll fall in love with her voice.

The Nature of Obsession

How does an obsession begin?  Usually with something unknown, an experience or event outside our frame of reference with an overwhelming amount of detail.  We want to understand how it happened, to put it into context, but the matters that trigger obsessions usually resist easy categorization.   So, we dig deeper, thinking one more visit, one more review of the facts and we'll figure out the problem and finally lay it to rest.  Obsessions don't work like that: they're spirals into a black hole of nothingness, they're the itch we cannot scratch and that's why they're dangerous.  It's the rare person who conquers an obsession; most survivors have to stage an escape.

Obsession is the key beneath James Ellroy's Black Dahlia, the novel grounded in the infamous murder of Elizabeth Short, a crime that still shocks almost seven decades after it happened.  Ellroy's novel focuses on two (fictional) detectives assigned to investigate her murder. In the post-war world of Los Angeles, officers Bleichert and Blanchard both enjoy the minor celebrity perks of being former boxers and members of the L. A. P. D. and both are reasonably happy in their lives until coincidence places them in the neighborhood when Elizabeth's body was discovered. Although the city  becomes fixated by the case, the investigators are in danger of being consumed; Blanchard, because Elizabeth's runaway history reminds him of a runaway sister and Bleichart because her rootless life mirrors his own.  The men comb the remnants of Elizabeth's seedy existence for clues while reporters and politicians manipulate facts for their own gain.  As Blanchard begins to fall apart, Bleichart must unravel a maelstrom of corruption that hides Betty Short's killer before he falls apart himself. 

The story is told in the bold, electric prose that made James Ellroy famous but his subject stimulates this question: why, of all of the murders in history, is Elizabeth Short's one of the few that people continue to find so fascinating?  The case is still officially unsolved although you could fill a bookcase with the published tomes identifying different murderers.  Is it her beauty that draws us or her youth?  Lots of pretty girls ran to Hollywood like Elizabeth and learned the bitter difference between movies and movie-making, though few suffered as she did.  Are we drawn in by the lurid details of what was done to her body, is this what fascinates us?  This is certainly part of the part, but another part is Elizabeth herself.  Beyond a few facts we know very little of her, what she cared about, how she felt.  That cipher of a personality leaves us free to imagine what the world looked like for a young woman who liked to dress in black.  The only thing we can be sure of is that her story didn't end well.

Ellroy's book helps decipher her story and it helped pave the way for his strong literary career. Nevertheless, Ellroy admits that Short's murder haunts him still, along with his own mother's death, ten years later.  I hope he finds periods of peace in his life from time to time.  That's the most a person can hope for when he lives with an obsession.

When Fans Go Bad: Finders Keepers

Fans are the double-edged sword to creative people, everyone knows that.  Actors, artists and poets makes a living (occasionally a good one) because the fans like and purchase their work, which is great.  Develop a big enough fan base and an artist will encounter those who want to thank him or her personally.  A smaller group than that will mistake their enthusiasm as the basis of a personal relationship.  Gain enough popularity and the artist will face fans that expect to control his/her life and work.  Take this to the extreme and the artist will certainly die. 

Stephen King covered this in his novel, Misery but he gave Annie Wilkes a few bits of leavening humor.  What other professed lover of words would cut herself off from expressions of anger, so her profanity is limited to words like "cock-a-dooty"?  As destructive and strange as Annie is, at times she's also comical.  That endearing shade of grey is missing from King's newest novel about toxic fans, Finders Keepers.  It suggests admiration may be the most dangerous response in the world.



At odds are two readers of a twentieth-century novelist.  Both readers are young males when they find their author's most-lauded works, a series of novels reminiscent of John Updike's "Rabbit" series. The younger man loves the structure of the books, the style, and the weave of fiction and autobiography that pulls each individual tale.  The elder identifies with the series protagonist in the way Mark David Chapman glommed onto Holden Caulfield and judges the world by his internalized champion's standards.  Two young men from damaged backgrounds, years apart and unknown to each other, but both obsessed with a writer's unpublished stories but with a difference:  the elder man wants to keep the stories for himself; the younger man would share them with the world.   The world is safe when the first fan hides the manuscripts until the younger man inadvertently finds them. 

This problem falls into the hands of Bill Hodges, King's retired detective of Mr. Mercedes.  It falls to Bill and his friends to piece together the disjointed story, find the manuscripts, and rescue their custodian before the murdering maniac can tear them all limb from limb.  If King has improved one aspect of his writing over the years it is pacing and Finders Keepers is a genuine page-turner.

So look out for the book, if you are interested.  And you are especially moved by someone's work, politely tell them, and then move on.  Don't expect them to be pals or your Jedi Master.  They are artists with their own lives and work and besides, they've learned to be careful of fans.  Among the adoring who just want to shake some creator's hand, stands the maniac armed with a gun.

Sympathy for the Villain?

I was thinking about the concept of grace last week when I flashed on a scene from Streetcar Named Desire.  Blanche hears a declaration of sorts from Mitch and, recognizing the man provides a real lifeline to her, responds "Sometimes there's God so suddenly!"  I smiled at Blanche's recognition of Grace until I remembered what I think of her.  Friends and neighbors, I hate Blanche duBois and I don't care who knows it.  That aging, insecure, Southern Belle works my last nerve and I'd rather sympathize with the devil.

 Think about Blanche's role in the play - She's the fly in the ointment, the wrench in the machinery and the source of the play's conflict.   She shows up at her sister Stella's home uninvited and unannounced to sponge off her for the rest of the play.  Okay, everyone needs help now and then but does Blanche show an atom of gratitude?   No, that narcissist takes up the center of the stage, hogging the bathroom and the liquor, and expects her pregnant sister to wait on her hand and foot.  She never tries to get a job or her own place and when she's not demanding sympathy or the red-carpet treatment, Blanche runs down her brother-in-law, Stanley because she and Stella had "superior" childhoods. Even if this is true (and one of the things we learn about Blanche is her propensity to lie) Blanche's upbringing gives her only the veneer of gentility, not the substance.  She's a dishonest, lazy, manipulator who seeks out grown men for gain and teenaged boys for sex.  She can't be trusted around innocents of any age and her perpetual role of victim warps the people who would help her along with those who resist her game.  She almost deserves what she gets.

Mind you, I'm not fond of Blanche's adversary, Stanley, either.  The Id to Blanche's Ego, Stanley is a creature of drive who goes through life focused only on his own needs.  He expects prepared meals to nourish him, poker with the guys to entertain him and a wife to pleasure him once the poker boys go home.  He doesn't mind pleasing his wife but he doesn't mind hitting her either.  Stanley has the emotional development of a toddler but he dominates his world through brute, physical strength.   If someone threatens Stanley's world, or picks at Stanley too long, he retaliates, dismantling his enemies' defenses and grinding them under his heel.

So who, between these two, who is Streetcar's villain?  (The only other alternative is Stella, the sister/wife torn between Blanche and Stanley in the play's tug-of-war.)  Neither character is malevolent by nature, only incredibly self-centered and driven.  Given her background and lack of resources, Blanche's only developed survival skill involves manipulating the kindness of strangers.  Likewise, Stanley's defense mechanism is to smash anything that manipulates or threatens his spot in the world.  So, in some ways, the outcome of the Streetcar is set when Blanche boards the bus for New Orleans, well before the curtain rises.  This is the story of flawed people on a collision course driven by compulsions they can't sense enough to change.

Maybe that's why people are still interested in this play, almost seventy years after its first production.  Because of their flaws, Streetcar's characters are people, like the ones we see in the mirror.  None of us are Stanley or Stella or Blanche or Mitch but we share some of their weaknesses and strengths.  To one degree or another, we are all inadvertant bystanders, victims, and predators, still searching for a moment of Grace.

The Failure of Good Intentions: A Passage to India

It's a phrase they teach  that makes no sense on its face.  How can the road to Hell be paved with Good Intentions?  If someone starts a course of action with benevolent goal in mind, the results should be good as well.  Well, history and nature say otherwise.  Sometimes the failure comes from lack of imagination: rabbits were sent to Australia as pets and a possible food source about the same time Kudzu was introduced to the U. S. as an anti-erosion measure.  Both brought the disasters of an invasive species: Australia was forced into biological warfare to keep the rabbit population in check and Kudzu is known as "The Vine that Ate the South."  Sometimes the well-intentioned element fails because of lesser parts of human nature.  Prohibition was called "The Noble Experiment" with the idea that making booze illegal would make people stop drinking.  Instead, people bought and drank unregulated, untaxed hootch and created a market for organized crime.  Sometimes everyone starts out with the best of intentions and still end up in tragedy. Some people may look to Romeo and Juliet as their choice for this mess but for me, it's E. M. Forster's A Passage to India.

Forster was a student, a writer and something of a civil servant during the time he lived in India.  As an English citizen in a country controlled by Britain, he saw  how fellow Brits behaved o n a very different soil surrounded by people from very different cultures.  As the  private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas, he also got a glimpse of how the British were viewed by the native citizens of India.  Along with the growing issue of British sovereignty,  a monumental clash of language, values and culturescontinually threatened to destabilized Anglo-Indian relations and he put all of that into  A Passage to India.

Two English women, Miss Quested and Mrs. Moore are in India to see Ronny Heaslop, a British civil servant stationed in India.  Both women are progressive thinkers who are more interested in learning more about the authentic country and people who live there than socializing with the ex-patriot Brits in the colony.  They make the acquaintance of Dr. Aziz, a warmhearted, Muslim physician who wants to develop real friendships with as many British people as possible.  In an effort to be hospitable, Dr. Aziz takes the ladies to see the comples Marabar Caves.  That visit changes all of their lives.

The atmosphere in the cave distresses Mrs. Moore and she leaves quickly.  Miss Quested asks an unintentionally rude question and Dr. Aziz steps away until he can get his temper under control.  When he returns, Miss Quested is gone and the Doctor searches until he sees her with another British woman, far outside the caves.  Miss Quested runs away and a few house later Dr. Aziz is arrested for sexually assaulting her.

Now remember, these three central characters and Dr. Aziz's British friend, Mr. Fielding are basically, decent people.  The problem is, they don't understand each other and many people around them are idiots.  Miss Quested's initial inability to talk her experience in the caves make Ronnie Heaslop and the bigoted Brits assume something "too awful to talk about" happened there and that Dr. Aziz is the person to blame.  Mrs. Moore is sure of Dr. Aziz's innocence but the spiritual experience she craved overwhelms her and she doesn't become the champion he needs.  The remaining community divides by  racial lines with the British defending Miss Quested as a victim of Indian lust and Indian groups shouting that Dr. Aziz is the target of British prejudice.  Even after an act of bravery clears the doctor, the racial lines are drawn and Dr. Aziz realizes he and Mr. Fielding won't ever really be friends until India achieves her independence.  The problem is not differing ideas or values as much as the lack of parity.  Friendship demands an acceptance of each other as equals and as long as Dr. Aziz remains an lesser citizen in his own country, he can't enjoy the free exchange of equality available between British citizens.

Forster lived to see the India achieve her independence although he never returned to the country.   That's surprising because it's clear that Forster sympathized with the Indians who longed for self-government and predicted they would prevail.  I suppose he was far more "at home" in Britain and that is where he stayed, respectful and distant, for the rest of his life.

So, in the end, is it possible for people from different backgrounds to create a lasting friendship?  Perhaps, if it's based in equality and built with appreciation and respect. If not, it may be better to  respect someone from a distance than to blunder in with a wealth of good intentions.

The Great American Summer Novel

People argue about the Great American Novel.  Some folks say it was Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn since it captures the assets and liabilities in our national character.  Others suggest it is an epic of exploration like Lonesome Dove or (since we are a restless people, obsessed with reinvention) The Great Gatsby.  To me, the question is open because these and others are all brilliant, beloved works but I'm sure about one thing: Gatsby is a Great American Summer Novel.

As a nation, we honor the summer months.  It's the only season charted by three national holidays: Memorial Day opens the season, July 4th is near its mid-point and Labor Day waves summer good-bye.  Three times in (roughly) 90 days people traditionally take off work, recreate in the great outdoors, and, with luck, remember the sacrifices of others that gave us these freedoms.  Because we started as a rural nation, children missed school during the summer months, when they're needed the most on farms and that three month break is still a big part of our culture.  To us, summer is a season of work that's balanced by freedom.   It's also the season of Gatsby.

Take a look at your old copy of the novel.  (Everyone has a copy stashed somewhere, left over from a high school or college course.)  The story really kicks off when a stranger asks Nick Carraway for directions to West Egg Village.  Nick advises him and then walks on, pleased to be recognized as a resident.  How could this take place in winter?  People don't stop on a walk to exchange pleasantries with a stranger or meander when there's snow and ice all around.  The weather prohibits it.  No, this is a time of warm weather and Gatsby's fabulous weekend parties are the proof.  These are  held outdoors where girls shimmer in dresses and dance themselves out onto wooden platforms at night once they've swallowed the prerequisite cocktails.  It has to be a warm, summer night where the air is soft and the grass as green as the light on Daisy Buchanen's dock.

Daisy is, of course, a summer girl given to wearing white and watching for the longest day every year.  She floats in and out of scenes, charting her future with a pretty face and a voice full of possibilities, but odd or intuitive enough to weep over an abundance of beautiful, hand-stitched, silk shirts.  Does she weep for the beauty of the clothes or what that abundance means to the man who wears them, once a boy whose only asset was his love for her?

Gatsby's life is itself a metaphor for the summer season.  Good-looking and resourceful, he makes financial hay while the sun shines and has already harvested enough of it to fund a season of parties at the ultimate summer accessory: a mansion on the beach.  More than anything, success has taught Gatsby to believe in the art of the possible.  A decade of hard work and questionable deals have turned the poverty-stricken, mid-western boy, Jimmy Gatz, into Jay Gatsby, a veritable sultan of the East Coast. If he can create this kind of life for himself, what keeps him from adding Daisy Fay to it, the girl he always loved?

The thing is, the sun that ripens a crop also creates a murderous heat.  On the hottest day of the year, Gatsby's dreams come to a crisis and he learns how quickly a summer girl can leave.  He can love her, want her, woo her, but he can't keep her, not for long.  The girl he loved years ago has changed into a woman; one who knows where she's headed in life, and that place is not with him.  The rest of Gatsby's story slips by with the shortening days and leaves of autumn float beside him when his first/last swim has ended, during the first day of fall.

Yes, the story of Gatsby is a great novel and it does have valid things to say about the American character.  Like Fitzgerald's hero, we're a nation that believes in self-determination, about creating our own future.  We're resourceful, we have energy and for a long time, we've shared both the confidence and insecurity of youth but mainly, we aspire.   Like Jay Gatsby, American is a nation that dreams of big accomplishments and then sets out to attain them.  The cost or probability of failure doesn't deter us.  Every morning brings a new day and a new chance to see over the next horizon.  In our hearts we're still kids on the first day of summer, the swimming pool is open and the traffic light ahead just turned green.  The race is on.

Evidence of Miracles: Their Eyes Were Watching God

It's hard to write well about miracles.  They blindside you and because they're so unexpected, it's hard to frame lead ins for them.  With other stories, the author can add foreshadowing and clues to point the reader in a general direction but miracles come without warning.  Sometimes the miracle is such a surprise, that people refuse to believe it occurred.  I have my share of skepticism but I do believe in miracles and I love when they happen.  That's probably why I love the book  Their Eyes Were Watching God.  As far as I'm concerned, the story in the book, the story of the book and the story of the woman who wrote it are all walking proofs of providence.

Let me start out with the writer, Zora Neale Hurston.  She was one of eight children born to an African-American minister and his wife who lived in Alabama.  She was born with talent, strong will and a brain but luck rarely favored children in poor, black families in the 1890's.  It did when her father moved his family to Eatonville, Florida, one of the first incorporated, all-black, towns in America.  Zora's self-confidence grew in a society where a resident's destiny wasn't limited by their skin tone.  More good luck put her in the path of some gifted teachers.  With this background, Zora used her  own combination of hard work and resourcefulness to go to college and she studied anthropology at Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University.  Her studies made Zora realize that the Florida home she had known contained a rich, heretofore unstudied culture and she spent a large part of her life documenting this world before it disappeared.  When she wasn't writing writing books of folklore or studying other cultures, she created essays, plays, short stories and novels.  Her second novel was Their Eyes Were Watching God.

TEWWG is, more than anything, the story of Janie, a middle-aged woman who learns to trust her own instincts after surviving three husbands, and the extremes of life.  To hear Janie tell it, she has been "a delegate to the Big Association of Life" and her membership dues were paid through hard experience, often with the wrong man.  Janie's grandmother selected Logan Killicks to be Janie's first husband, hoping he would give his young wife security.  Instead, Janie found the emptiness of a loveless marriage.  Jody Starks promised Janie  excitement and change from the Killicks farm but Janie finds she is little more than a trophy to the ambitious Starks, who believes a wife is something to be exhibited, bullied and bossed.  Only with Tea Cake, the traveling laborer who captures her heart, does Janie find the relationship of mutual affection and respect she craves. Both Teacake and Janie make mistakes but with this loving, imperfect man Janie is content to face demanding work, a murderous hurricane and even death itself because she has the right companion.  Zora used her knowledge of Florida and the people she knew there to create a story built around a simple, profound idea: more than money or work or the approval of others, it takes Love to fill up a life.

Unfortunately, Their Eyes Were Watching God, didn't get the recognition or praise it deserved when it was first published.  It got mixed reviews from critics and few sales. All too soon, the novel was out of print and forgotten and it's author seemed doomed to suffer the same fate.  After a life of travel, love and accomplishment, Zora Neale Hurston died, penniless and alone in 1960 and was laid in an unmarked grave.

But remember, I promised you a miracle. The novelist Alice Walker discovered Their Eyes Were Watching God while she was still a student and she began to research Hurston's life.  A decade after Zora's death, Walker placed a stone on the unmarked grave and published the article, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston".  The article focused a light on this nearly vanished author and her novel and people started hunting for old copies of the book.  Three years later, the book was put back into print and now it is a part of college courses everywhere, recognized and taught not just as a great African-American tale or a great woman's story but a great novel.  That's a bona-fide, sure-enough miracle.

Like I said, it's not easy to describe a miracle but sometimes we recognize them when they happen. Miracles, like grace, are the good we don't always deserve and certainly never expect.  Yet, these surprise blessings give us hope for the future. They restore our faith in ourselves and the world and our belief in a  benevolent providence. Like Their Eyes Were Watching God, miracles are gifts of love, the love that fulfills our lives.

The Wright Stuff

There they are, pictured in American History books, looking like would-be models for a Grant Wood painting: Orville and Wilbur Wright, two men idolized for their achievement in flight but unknown and unknowable beyond that remarkable fact.  These tall, thin men appear in the history of mankind, one of them skimming over a sand dune in a contraption of wood struts and fabric while the other stands alongside.  Then they disappear again.  Most people can't tell you which brother is in the flying machine. Until recently, we've seen them as aviation's first pair of ciphers.

By contrast, David McCullough has devoted his life to creating a greater understanding of American individuals and events that shaped this country's history and his new book, The Wright Brothers goes a long way toward demystifying and humanizing this legendary pair.   In many ways, it takes someone like McCullough to point out the history of these remarkable brothers is a quintessential American tale. 

Born in the mid-west as the grandchildren of immigrants, Orville and Wilbur had the singular good fortune of having enlightened, loving parents.  Their father was a traveling minister who loved learning almost as much as he loved God.  Bishop Wright encouraged his children to read widely and develop their own opinions about life.  The boys were younger siblings in a brood of children and a bit shy but they probably would have developed unremarkably except two set-backs refocused their lives.  First, Wilbur was hit in the mouth with a baseball bat and lost most of his front teeth.  Instead of going to college, he spent the next three years in the house recovering, (cosmetic dentistry was in its infancy) caring for his terminally ill mother, and reading every book he could get his hands on.  The isolation made a shy man shyer but it also ignited his brain.  Then Orville developed an illness that kept him in bed for months and, to pass the time, Wilbur read aloud to him from books on science and nature.  By the time they recovered, the brothers were devoted to engineering and science.

McCullough tells their story in plain, good-humored prose that is easy on the eye and ear.  Reading The Wright Brothers is almost like listening to the narration of a Ken Burns film.  It's friendly and open, as if the speaker knows he has an intelligent audience with an interest in his reasonable story.  Dramatic language doesn't need to be manufactured to keep the reader turning pages; the events described are enough.

Another gift of McCullough's research is that he creates the context that make the accomplishments of the Wright brothers understandable.  Any story about the Wright Brothers mentions that the brothers originally made their living repairing, building and selling bicycles, a concern that seems fairly distant from controlled flight.  McCullough puts this in perspective by pointing out the safety bicycle sold by the Wrights (one with two wheels of similar size an chain drive) was a new phenomena that made self-propelled transport viable.  In other words, the Wrights were entrepreneurs interested in cutting-edge technology.   By repairing and then creating lightweight, dependable, and fast bicycles, Wilbur and Orville taught themselves elements of mechanical engineering that helped them develop the flight control system they later put into their planes.

Like Edison the Wright brothers were inventors, undismayed by failure, and as unskilled as businessmen as they were gifted in engineering but history is full of people whose focus allowed them to achieve in one area but hindered them in another.  If their work is substantial and documented, usually their achievements are remembered and cherished.   Thankfully, writers like David McCullough make sure the achievers are remembered as well.

When there's more to the Novel than a Story

Not every novel is a classic.  Visit any English class and you'll hear that a lot of novels are pulp or, as Capote said, "That's not writing; That's typing."  I won't argue that point (my mom didn't raise anyone that foolish) but I think some "popular" novels get less respect than they deserve.   These books, whose primary purpose is entertainment, often have insights into the human condition.  To ignore the good in these stories is to turn a blind eye to real gold.

Dick Francis's 24th novel is called Proof but it could have used one of his later titles, Come to Grief.  Here, Tony Beach is trying to live a reasonable life under the weight of a double burden.  His wife passed away six months before and he's still mourning her death.   The second is the shadow of a family legacy: Tony's father and grandfather were famous as brave men and riders but Tony fears the damage that comes from falling off a horse.  So he sells wine and spirits for a living, watches other people ride horses and remains convinced he's the family coward. 

It's Tony's connections to the horse world that have him catering drinks at a party where his own talents are called into play.  Some restaurants are selling inferior wines and whisky under the labels of superior spirits (Only oenophiles and single-malt scotch drinkers will grasp how heinous a crime this is) and Tony's knowledge and taste-memory skills are used to investigate the fraud.  Once the criminals learn he's involved, Tony discovers for himself whether not he deserves to be called a coward.

Between the story and some interesting background on spirits (each distillery can recognize it's own product not by taste but by a chemical analysis called a profile) are some spot-on observations of humanity.  How bereaved people are often expected to act as if they've accommodated their loss when their sorrow is painfully fresh; why forgiving a law-breaker may be sensible but removing the consequences of breaking the law is foolish and that while loss may be sudden and devastating, recovery is the process of years. These may be just observations to the casual reader but to someone grappling with grief or injury, these nuggets of sense can be touchstones to be remembered and used.  They make Proof so much more than just a Story.

As for the title, Proof may mean the measure of alcohol in this drinks-related tale or it may be the evidence required to establish the truth of the matter, whether that's a bottle of Scotch or the content of someone's character.  According to Tony, the proof of alcohol was once tested by mixing it with gunpowder and fire.  If the mixture burned with a steady blue flame, the drink held at least fifty percent alcohol.   Of course technology can determine the degrees of alcohol in a bottle these days but that won't work on people.  To gauge the content of their characters may still require a trial by fire.

The only constant in life is change

They don't teach us that when we're kids. When we're little, the routine is a big part of our existence and we rely on it as much as we chafe at its boundaries: on weekdays we wake up and get dressed for school, following a specific route from home to class and back; we meet who we're supposed to meet when we meet them and homework is done on the dot.  We have a prescribed dinner time, family time and bedtime and our birthdays arrive on schedule every year.  During adolescence we fight to tear up the schedule and we become adults when we realize how our parents fought to keep the reality of change from impinging on our routine.  Adults know the only constant in life is change and to survive they must learn to adapt.  Sometimes in the process they make mistakes but that's a part of learning to adapt.

This is the undercurrent of Elisabeth Egan's debut novel, A Window Opens, and her heroine, Alice Pearse, starts the story understanding the need.  As a veteran of the sandwich generation she's a mom to her children and a daughter of parents who all need her at the same time.  She's also a loving wife so when her husband's career takes a radical hit, Alice looks for a full-time job to keep the family income stable and give him the opportunity he needs to re-write his vocational future.  And since Alice believes in the future, she takes a position with one of the new, edgy conglomerates looking to revolutionize the retail experience.

Part of book is focused on the ever-shifting conflict between honoring and trashing the past and one of the comic highlights of A Window Opens captures it in the war between paper and e-books.  Alice's new employer (no surprise) wants to focus the majority of their product on e-books and comes up with nasty nicknames for the traditional paper-and-spine format  but one of the company perks is each new employee gets a first edition of his/her favorite book.  (I imagined someone offering me that job and then withdrawing the offer after I requested a first edition of Jane Eyre.)  Alice's choice is there when she starts her job but the book is never really hers.  She can't take it off the job-site or even read its pages.  The volume must stay wrapped in plastic and under lock and key.  Eventually, Alice has to ask herself: what's the point of having a book if you're not allowed to read it?

There are other questions for Alice and some of the answers aren't that easy but Egan's best point is about time.   Because of our growing culture people can become almost anything in life they want to be (a parent, an astronaut, a horticulturalist) but no one can be everything, certainly not all at once.  Each life has a limited amount of time and our choices determine how we'll spend it.  Egan's advise is to base those decisions on who and what we love, mindful that any choice closes some doors.  That's not as grim as it sounds, as my mom used to say.  Whenever circumstance closes a door, somewhere A Window Opens.



Elisabeth Egan's A Window Opens will go on sale in August of this year.  My thanks to NetGalley for sharing a copy of this with me for review purposes