Memorable Children in Novels

I have posted lists of memorable characters (3/6/11) and memorable settings (3/11/11); today I list some memorable child characters in novels for adults. Some of these are children throughout the novels in which they appear; some start as children and grow up during the course of the novels. Some of these child characters are memorable in a positive way, some in a frightening way. They are a very diverse group. But in all cases, the authors’ portrayals of these children are vivid, and stay in my mind even sometimes decades after reading the novels.

- Pip (in Great Expectations)
- Jane (in Jane Eyre)
- Jude, called “Little Father Time” (in Jude the Obscure)
- Maggie (in The Mill on the Floss)
- Susan, Rhoda, Jinny, Louis, Bernard, and Neville (in The Waves)
- Miles and Flora (in The Turn of the Screw)
- Antonia (in My Antonia)
- Ralph, Jack, Simon, and Piggy (in Lord of the Flies)
- Sandy and Rose (in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
- Frankie (in The Member of the Wedding)
- Scout (in To Kill a Mockingbird)
- Phineas (in A Separate Peace)
- Holden Caulfield (in The Catcher in the Rye)
- Owen Meany (in A Prayer for Owen Meany)

"The Year We Left Home"

I think Jean Thompson is a wonderful writer, and have enjoyed reading her books ever since I discovered her fiction in about 2007. So I was pleased to read her latest book, “The Year We Left Home” (Simon & Schuster, 2011). This novel portrays an Iowa family over a period of thirty years, from 1973 to 2003. The Ericksons -- father, mother, and four children, as well as their various relatives -- are rooted in Iowa, but some of the younger generation feel the eternal call of young people to go “away” –- somewhere bigger and better and different. Yet there is always the countervailing call of the place and community called “home.” This push-pull between home and away, between the old and the new, between the known and the unknown, is a major theme in the novel, as is the eternal theme of the deep, primeval connection with family. The family events take place against the backdrop of national events such as the Vietnam War and its aftermath for veterans, the women’s movement, and the vicissitudes of the economy. The characters are very believable, and the story is compelling.

"The Love of My Youth"

I remember discovering Mary Gordon’s work when she published her first novel, “Final Payments,” in 1978; what a jolt of originality that novel was, and all her succeeding novels, stories, and nonfiction have been! So of course when I saw she had a new novel out this year, I found and read it. “The Love of My Youth” (Pantheon, 2011) tells the story of Miranda and Adam, who were the loves of each other’s lives during high school and college, until a great betrayal took place. While they were together, they spent one glorious summer in Rome; they now meet in Rome again, by chance, some 35 years later. They are each happily married now, with children. Wary of but drawn to each other, they spend three weeks walking, seeing the sights, sitting at cafes, and –- most of all –- talking. Gradually they relearn about each other. The novel goes back and forth between Miranda’s and Adam’s past and present together. This novel is a love letter to young love, as well as to the city of Rome, whose light and beauty is described in gorgeous detail. But to me -- probably influenced by being about the same age as the protagonists -- this novel is most of all about our relationships with our pasts. How did we get to this stage in our lives? What is our relationship now with the people we were all those years ago -- years that seem long and at the same time fleeting? How would our lives be different now if we had done this instead of that, been with this person instead of that one, moved to this city instead of that one? What happens when our pasts and presents collide? Have we kept the intensity of feelings we had about those dramatic and intense times in our lives -- especially the years of late adolescence and young adulthood? Or have we mellowed, moved beyond them, even let them go, as we have gone on to live our adult lives in predictable and unpredictable ways? “The Love of My Youth” brings all these questions to the fore.

On E-Readers and Libraries: No Comment

The following two items are among those in the "Fresh Ink" column of the San Francisco Chronicle's "Books" section today (5/22/11, p. G8) -- a telling juxtaposition. As Ms. Magazine's last page of each issue, a compendium of outrageous ads and other affronts, is titled: "No Comment."

Item 1: "Amazon.com has reached a milestone: The company now sells more e-books than printed books. For every 100 printed books sold, the retailer said, it sells 105 e-books. The company introduced its e-reader, the Kindle, in 2007."

Item 2: "Charles Simic, the poet, has written a powerful piece on the importance of public libraries. 'I don't know of anything more disheartening than the sight of a shut down library,' he writes in the blog post at the new York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com). 'Their slow disappearance is a tragedy, not just for those impoverished towns and cities, but for everyone everywhere terrified at the thought of a country without libraries.'"

"Pulse"

"Pulse" (2011) is an apt title for a collection of short stories that has its finger on the pulse of the (mostly) contemporary, (mostly) English characters in these very readable stories by the esteemed English writer, Julian Barnes. Representative of these educated, liberal, witty, self-aware characters are those recurring in the four very enjoyable "At Phil & Joanna's" stories, which consist almost entirely of lively, entertaining dinner party conversations. But the stories that most appealed to me, and will linger in my mind, are contemporary but with roots in the characters' pasts. For example, the two aging female novelists in the story "Sleeping with John Updike" are both resilient and canny, and both support and are critical of each other; they help each other survive and prosper, in a modest, low-key way, with only a few regrets, bravely borne. The best and most touching story is the last one, "Pulse," with its portrayal of the narrators' parents and their long and loving marriage. Their undramatic but rock solid and tender love for each other is the narrator's inspiration, yet makes his own failed marriage a sad contrast. But also inspiring and lovely is his great regard and love for his parents, and all he learns from them about love, courage, and grace...truly the "pulse" of life at its best.

"The Easter Parade"

In 1999, Stewart O’Nan (author of “Emily, Alone,” which I posted about yesterday) wrote of his great admiration for the late author Richard Yates, and of his concern that Yates’ books were less and less read. I share O’Nan’s concern, and I hope that the 2008 movie version of Yates’ great novel, “Revolutionary Road,” has drawn some readers to further explore his novels. I have just listened to the CD version of another of his novels, “The Easter Parade” (originally published 1976; audio version BBC Audiobooks America, 2009), and found it a very sad but powerful and insightful story. It tells of two sisters, Sarah and Emily, over much of their lifetimes; we learn of the story from Emily’s perspective. The girls’ father is a sad character who loves the girls but is destroyed by alcohol and depression and dies young; their mother lives much longer but the girls soon have to take care of her as much as she does them, and she too is felled by alcoholism. The family curse continues in both the daughters. Sarah marries and has children; she stays with her husband even though he abuses her, and takes refuge in drinking. Emily is the “free spirit,” loving and living with a series of men but never “settling down”; she too drinks too much. She is independent, always working, but a combination of alcohol, being left by a lover, and losing a job leave her in a vulnerable and sad position in her late middle age. The story is often grim, yet somehow there are sporadic times of optimism and even happiness throughout as well. Although the two women have less than optimal lives, Sarah has her family, and Emily has her independence and her lovers, and although they are very different in some ways, and don’t see each other often as adults, they have each other as well. The two women have a family bond that lasts, that forms a lifelong underpinning to their lives. Yates has much to show us about the difficulties of life, about the reasons people turn to drink, and about the destruction caused by alcohol. But he also seems to be telling us that no matter how difficult life gets, the thing that can -- if we are lucky -- buoy us up and connect us to the world is family.

"Emily, Alone"

Who can resist a novel that begins with the following epigraph from Virginia Woolf (from “To the Lighthouse”): “Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life -- startling, unexpected, unknown?”? Not I, certainly. Actually, I chose to read this book, “Emily, Alone” (Viking, 2011), even before seeing this wonderful epigraph, when I heard the author, Stewart O’Nan, interviewed on the radio. I love the idea that the book is about an older woman, and that the author’s goal was to truly portray the texture and details of the day-to-day life of this woman. And he does so in a manner both realistic and engaging. Often writers writing about older people write condescendingly, but O'Nan does not. A person of a different age (fifty) and gender (male), O’Nan reminds us that literature springs from the imagination, and writers are not only capable of writing about those like themselves in the obvious forms of identity. Actually, this is not so much a book about an older woman as a book about an interesting and interested woman who happens to be aging, and figuring out what this phase of her life will be like. What is impressive is that she doesn’t allow herself to accept a smaller world, now that her husband has died and her grown children live far away. She enjoys the small pleasures of living alone and having fewer responsibilities, but she also rises to the challenge when her sister-in-law becomes ill, beginning to drive again (something that she had given up) and staying involved in the larger world. Nothing very dramatic happens in this novel, but there is great reading pleasure to be had in observing and savoring the events in Emily’s current life, what she thinks about them, and how she responds to them. I loved reading this novel, and the character of Emily will stay in my mind for a long time. Highly recommended.