The Fall of Princes by Robert Goolrick

The Fall of Princes by Robert Goolrick
Published August 2015 by Algonquin Books at Chapel Hill
Source: my Netgalley copy courtesy of the publisher

Publisher's Summary:
1980s Manhattan shimmers like the mirage it was, as money, power, and invincibility seduce a group of young Wall Street turks. Together they reach the pinnacle, achieving the kind of wealth that grants them access to anything--and anyone. Until, one by one, they fall.


My Thoughts:

"When you strike a match, it burns brighter in the first nanosecond than it will ever burn again. That first incandescence. That instantaneous and brilliant flash. The year was 1980, and I was the match, and that was the year I struck into blinding flame."

This is my second book by Robert Goolrick. I own his second book, Heading Out To Wonderful, which I have yet to read. It has a lovely, bright cover and a lovely, bright title and would appear to be a book about lovely, bright people. But I doubt it. It's been my experience that Robert Goolrick writes books filled with exceedingly unlikeable characters. Which is alright because Goolrick is exceedingly good at creating unlikeable characters who suck readers in.

Micheal Douglas & Charlie Sheen
"Wall Street"

Rooney and his band of brothers are those guys they made the movie "Wall Street" about, young bucks who worked for The Firm (read Salomon Brothers) when rules were broken, morals were loose, and drugs were rampant.

"We were the people people wrote about when they wrote about the evils of contemporary society. We made too much money. We spent too much money. We didn't do a single thing to help the less fortunate, which included most of the people on the planet...We felt not one once of remorse."

Thirty years later, after his fall from glory, Rooney looks back with both regret and nostalgia. He is as honest about his sins as he is about how much he misses the lifestyle they afforded. The chapters read as short stories chronicle Rooney's life and those who impacted it: Louis Paterson Trotmeier whose fling with a Madonna-like diva irrevocably changed his life, Harrison Wheaton Seacroft IV who threw himself from a 17th story window when he got the call that meant the world was soon to find out he was a homosexual, and Guilia de Bosset who served as something of a mascot for the boys one summer before she committed suicide.

As much as this is a book about the excesses of the 80's, it's also a book about sexual orientation, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and the way that life changed in its wake and the fear the rippled out gay communities and across the United States. If you were of a certain age in the 1980's, you'll remember that fear and the way it changed so many things. Goolrick is eloquent in bringing the story back down to an individual level and to the communities who suffered the most.

Did I like the book? I'm still trying to decide. It sometimes seemed to wallow in itself. But there's no denying that the writing is otherwise beautifully done and that it's a book that will leave the reader thinking.


   

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

A Reliable Wife By Robert Goolrick
304 pages
Published April 2009 by Algonquin Press

Ralph Truitt has lead a hard life with a father who is more interested in raising an heir to his fortune than a son and a mother is a religious zealot who makes it clear that she does not love him. Nothing since then has served to make him a happier person. So, as this story begins, he is waiting for the arrive of a woman who has answered his ad for a reliable wife. He has long since given up on finding love in his life, but he needs a wife to help him bring his estranged son home. Catherine Land, who is responding to his ad, is a devious woman, motivated by greed and with a dark past. She is coming to Wisconsin to marry Ralph, slowly poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. But Ralph is a more compassionate man than Catherine was expecting and Catherine begins to bring out feelings in Ralph that he had thought he was incapable of having any longer.

The story is unique, Goolrick's writing terse but descriptive. As Ralph is waiting for Catherine's train, I could feel the cold wind stinging his cheeks. It's easy to envision the people of Truitt, WI, Catherine's clothing, Truitt's homes.

After reading several books recently that I didn't enjoy, in part because I didn't like any of the characters, Goolrick reminded me here that liking the characters is not a requisite for liking the book. Goolrick gives his characters fully fleshed out backgrounds that help the reader to understand their actions even as you are appalled by them. Because of this, the reader is able to hold onto a hope for the characters to become better people, to make better lives for themselves.

Despite the bitter winter setting, this is a story of lust and passions. As such, there is a great deal of description of the fulfillment of these passions that some readers may find uncomfortable to read. I wasn't uncomfortable with it, but I did feel like there was too much of it. Likewise, Goolrick could become repetitive and often ran on too long in his descriptions of motives, feelings and thoughts. All of that I was able to overlook because thought the story was wonderful. There were twists and turns I didn't see coming and I had no idea how this book was going to end until the final paragraph. I read this book as part of a book club and, honestly, was not sure that I would like it. Having lower expectations made my enjoyment of the book a very pleasant surprise.

For the book club's discussion of this book and an interview with Robert Goolrick, click here. You can read a review from Mari, from Bookworm With A View, as well as more answers from Goolrick here. Gayle, of Everyday I Write the Book, posted her review here.

Heading Out To Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

Heading Out To Wonderful by Robert Goolrick
Read by Norman Dietz
Published June 2012 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Source: my audiobook copy purchased at my library book sale

Publisher's Summary:
In 1948, a mysterious and charismatic man arrives in a small Virginia town carrying two suitcases - one contains his worldly possessions, the other is full of money. He soon inserts himself into the town's daily life, taking a job in the local butcher shop and befriending the owner and his wife and their son. But the passion that develops between the man and the wife of the town's wealthiest citizen sets in motion a series of events that not only upset the quiet town but threaten to destroy both him and the woman.

My Thoughts:
If I had kept track of my favorite reads of the year in 2009, Goolrick's A Reliable Wife (my review) would have been on it. Goolrick had the capability to make the bitter cold of rural Wisconsin cool a torrid Nebraska summer day and convince me to care about some very unlikable characters. When Heading Out To Wonderful was released, I didn't hesitate to pick up a copy. But when I began reading less than glowing reviews, I found Wonderful getting pushed aside again and again in favor of other books. Eventually it was the victim of a book cull.

Still, when I found an audiobook copy for $2 at my library book sale, I decided to give it a try. After all, not all of the reviews had been bad, including this fantastic review from Jill at Rhapsody In Books Weblog. If Jill likes a book, there's a good chance I'm going to like it, too. I'm glad I didn't give up on this one but even happier that I waited to "read" it until I could listen to it. Norman Dietz's reading is marvelous. His mellifluous voice reading me very much of listening to Garrison Keillor telling a story and perfectly suited the setting of the book.

In Heading Out To Wonderful, Goolrick lulls readers with the quiet, peaceful setting of small-town Virginia, the kind of town "where no crime had ever been committed,"  just after the second World War. The people of Brownsburg "believed in God and The Book." There is a real sense of community in Brownsburg. Still, it's not all as wonderful as it seems on the surface when Charlie Beale arrives in town. Surprisingly, the town quickly grows to love Charlie, a man who is kind and giving to everyone. So when word gets out that Charlie has taken up with the wife of the richest man in town, a man no one likes, they are happy for him. Until the scandal takes a new turn.

I liked the way Goolrick slowly built up the tension (you just know that this is not going to end well), the way that he called out racism and the hypocrisy of organized religions, and the way we got the back story on so many of the important characters. And that ending completely stunned me.

But, like A Reliable Wife, Heading Out To Wonderful, has its flaws.

We never get Charlie's back story. Where did he come from, why is he working so hard to find a permanent home, and where did all of that money come from? And, if the young boy that Charlie becomes so attached to is actually telling the story looking back 60 years, how does he know everything that happened in people's history or the things he was never privy to? As to that later point, it wasn't one that bothered me throughout because I was so into the book as I was listening.

Like Reliable Wife, there are also passages in this book where Goolrick drags things out too long, particularly when he's talking about Charlie's feelings about the woman with whom he's having the affair and their relationship. The beauty of listening to a book, when it comes to places like this in a book, is that I can sort of just tune out until things pick up again.

Would it make a good book club choice? Yes. There is certainly a lot to discuss, including religion, racism, small town ethics, adultery, parenting, the class divisions. It's not a perfect book; but, especially on audio, it's worth reading.

Top Ten Books Set In The U.S. Midwest

This week the ladies at The Broke and The Bookish challenged us to pick a setting and then chose our ten favorite books from that setting. I had a hard time narrowing this one down - the American South? Africa? New York City? I toyed with the idea of an island theme but would have had to leave England off because it would have overwhelmed the list and since I just had to do that recently, I didn't want to do it again. So I started looking at my books read on Goodreads and got to thinking that maybe books set in the U.S. Midwest don't get enough love.

In no particular order, here are actually eleven of my favorite books set in the U.S. Midwest:

1. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather - or any Cather for that matter; they're all great and so beautifully paint this part of the country as the pioneers settled in the Plains.

2. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick - dark, oh so dark. The isolation of rural turn-of-the-last-century Wisconsin and the decadence of big city Chicago all wrapped up in one novel. Plus, great characters and lots of surprises.

3. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell - Rowell's books all have a Midwest setting and she brilliantly portrays the people I'm surrounded by everyday and the cities I've lived in. This one is my favorite.

4. Some Luck by Jane Smiley - This one's the first of a trilogy I'm still on the fence about but I definitely appreciated Smiley's grasp of this part of the country and its people - the beauty and the minutiae of everyday life.

5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote - in the 1950's, unless you lived in a city, you felt safe enough in your own home to leave the doors unlocked at night. Until one night two men changed all of that. Capote, who was most definitely not a Midwesterner, buried himself in the story and really captured the feelings of the people most closely impacted.

6. The Man Who Ate The 747 by Ben Sherwood - quirky and fun and heartfelt and utterly unique.

7. The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett - this was my second book by Patchett (following on the heels of Bel Canto). So unexpected different and such a nice surprise to find an appreciation for small town middle America.

8. The Round House by Louise Erdrich - you could, of course, include all of Erdrich's books here. She shines a light on a place and people that the rest of the country is all to ready to turn their backs on. Erdrich makes readers remember those whose ancestors were here first.

9. Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert - Rotert is a local writer who set this book in Chicago. She catches that balance between big city life and midwest values.

10. The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert - Schaffert understands small town Nebraska, the good, the bad, and the hopeful.

11. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - twisty, dark, terrible people. Not everyone in the Midwest is midwest nice. Although, Amy is a New Yorker.

I'd include all of Kent Haruf's books except they're set in the plains of Colorado and I don't really consider any part of Colorado as midwestern. Likewise, I consider Mark Twain's books, although set in Missouri, to be more Southern than midwestern.

If I'd included children's books, of course you'd also see the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder and L. Frank Baum on this list.

Book Riot has put together a list of 100 Must-Read Books of the American Midwest you might like to check out if you'd like to learn more. Not all of the books they have included are set in the Midwest so I wouldn't have included them on my list. But there are a lot there that I need to get to someday.

Top Ten Tuesday - Best Books I've Read In 2018 (so far!)

After eight years, The Broke and The Bookish (the blog that has hosted Top Ten Tuesdays) has shut down. Fortunately for those of us who love our lists, Top Ten Tuesdays will still be carried on by one of TBTB's contributors, Jana of The Artsy Reader Girl. This week Jana's asking us to share our favorite books so far this year. This one's easy for me since I keep a running list on my favorites page. So far in 2018, this is what's grabbed me the most:

1. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones 
2. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
3. Circe by Madeline Miller 
4. Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy 
5. The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash 
6. A Short Guide To A Happy Life by Anna Quindlen 
7. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 
8. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
9. Heading Out To Wonderful by Robert Goolrick 
10. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

While I've really enjoyed all ten of these, at least one of them is coming off the top ten list as soon as I finish Macbeth by Jo Nesbo, baring a complete disaster of an ending. Given that it's a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth, I'm not anticipating anything too unexpected!

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Published February 2012 by Little, Brown and Company

386 pages

Publisher's Summary:

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart — he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone — but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. 

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

My Thoughts:

I think I may have owned this book since 2012 so when one of my book club's selections for 2021 was a fairy tale book, I opted to go with this fairy tale retelling. And why had I put it off for almost 10 years? Because it has "snow" in its title and in the winter I don't want to read about snow and cold and when summer arrives I don't want to read about snow and cold. Yeah, I know, a silly reason to put off a reading a book I clearly had wanted to read because I'd paid actually money for it. 

"It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed if you lived at all."

Now I'm finding myself wondering which other books on my shelves have I put off reading for equally silly reasons, depriving myself of enjoyable reading experiences. Because, despite my fears, especially when this book began, that this was going to be dreary, depressing book, it was very much an enjoyable reading experience. 

Author Robert Goolrick said of The Snow Child, "If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book, THE SNOW CHILD would be it. It is a remarkable accomplishment -- a combination of the most delicate, ethereal, fairytale magic and the harsh realities of homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness in 1918." It's a perfect description of this book but there is also so much more to The Snow Child. It's also a book about marriage, communication, friendship, love, what it means to be a parent, and what family means. 

Jack and Martha are both grieving the loss of their stillborn child but they have never talked to each other about their pain and it's the coldness that has developed in their marriage that I felt almost as much as the coldness of the setting. When winter, new friendships, and Faina arrive, things begin to change between them. When an injury sidelines Jack and Martha must step up to help save what they have built, they finally become a partnership that might be able to survive life in Alaska. I like them both and so wanted them to find each other and what they wanted so desperately. 

Here is another book where an element of magical realism is at play, a thing you know I've struggled with in the past, but again it was done just perfectly for me. Maybe because throughout the book we're never really sure whether magic is at play or if the truth of Faina lies in reality. 

"We never know what's going to happen, do we? Life is always thrown us this way and that. That's where the adventure is. Not knowing where you'll end up or how you'll fare. It's all a mystery and when we say any different, we're just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?"

And that is what this book is about at its core - the adventure, the mystery of knowing how things will end up for its characters. For me, this book ended up just perfectly. 

Life: It Goes On - September 13

It's been a blessedly quiet week around Casa Sheep. Nobody moving in, nobody moving out. The entertainment center piece of the puzzle was all settled on Monday so I got to watch the start of the NFL season on Mini-him's big, big television. Bliss!

Much cooler temps have moved in so even I have to concede that summer is over. I spent part of yesterday pulling out the fall decor and using some of my pins from Pinterest to add some fall color. My brother-in-law will be baffled, once again, to find out that food will be used as decor. He couldn't understand why my sister and I used it for Easter!

This Week I'm:

Listening To: I finished On Beauty last week and will start Jon Clinch's Finn. I've owned the book for years (and even loaned it to my dad who really enjoyed it) but have never gotten to it. Looking forward to it. I did squeeze in some podcasts last week including episodes from "Happier," "Stuff You Missed In History Class," and "NPR Books."

Watching: Football, of course - had people over to watch our Huskers last night. "Arthur and George" and PBS (thanks, Cheryl, for accidentally introducing us to this one). "Mean Girls" - because it's one of those movies I am legally required to watch every time it's on. "Arthur and George" is based on a book by Julian Barnes so you know I'll be adding that to my list.

Reading: I found a lot of time for reading last week and finished Julia Heaberlin's Black-Eyed Susans and will finish Nuala O'Connor's Miss Emily today. I'm not sure what I'll pick up next - something for Fall Feasting, another R.I.P. selection, or one of the books I've downloaded from Netgalley. I've got the newest Margaret Atwood, Robert Goolrick, and Geraldine Brooks books waiting for me there.

Making: Texas Trash dip, hot caprese dip, caramel apple cake, and caramel apple cocktails for our football party. BG made another batch of salsa with our garden bounty and all of those tomatoes mean we've had BLT's again this week and more pasta with tomato and basil.

Planning: Now that we'll need to make use of the basement again and some furniture's been moved down there, it's time to get back down there are reorganize this week.

Grateful for: On Grandparents' Day, I'm grateful for the wonderful grandparents my children are blessed with. There has never been any doubt in their lives that they are loved unconditionally by these special people. Missing the two that are gone every day, but especially today.

library garden

Enjoying: A trip to my local library book sale. The hunt is always fun and this time of year it's fun to see their gardens.

Feeling: Relaxed. Bet you were wondering if you'd ever hear me say that again! Although, even as I relax, I can't help but think of all of the things I should be doing.

Looking forward to: Book club this week. We'll be talking about Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven. I'm eager to hear what everyone thought of it - it's definitely outside of our usual reading.

What are you looking forward to this week? As the season changes, what changes do you make in your life?

My 2018 Reading Year

This has been a really weird reading year for me with a lot of reading slumps and a lot of times my reading time got cut into by time sucks, like games on my phones, Instagram, and Litsy. I've done a terrible job of keeping up with my blog reader, staying in touch with my reading community, and responding to comments on the blog. I've missed so many blogging events. I'm not sure that I can give ways that I'll make any of that change in the coming year; listing those kinds of things just seems to add another layer of stress to life and I'd rather move toward reading just for fun instead of the other way.

On the other hand, I've done really well in my reading in a lot of ways. Despite those slumps, I still read/listened to 74 books, which is a big increase over last year. Renewing my library card really helped with the audio piece as I'm finally able to listen when I'm not in my car. Here's how the year shook out:

Total Books Read: 73
Nonfiction: 15
Short Story Collections: 2
Mythology/Fairy Tales: 2
Written by Women: 53
Written by Men: 19
Classics: 6
Diversity: 9
Audiobooks: 23

I'm disappointed in the number of mythology/fairy tale books I read this year, as well as the number of classics. I'd also like to read more diversely than I did this year.

The Best of 2018 (some books may appear on more than one list):

Fiction:
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Circe by Madeline Miller
Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Lying In Wait by Liz Nugent
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
A Ladder To The Sky by John Boyne
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Nonfiction: 
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
A Short Guide To A Happy Life by Anna Quindlen
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End by Atul Gawande
Killers of The Flower Moon by David Grann
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Five Days At Memorial by Sheri Fink
Heirs of the Founders by H. W. Brand
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Audio:
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
Born With Teeth by Kate Mulgrew
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Heading Out To Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

What books were your favorites in 2018? Would you make any changes to the way you read this year?