Summer Reading Book Reviews

"Fahrenheit 451--the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns…" is from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Written in 1953, the book paints a bleak picture of the future where everything and everyone is cold, distant and numb. Life is void of expression, thought and meaning. Literature is banned and burned because it breeds these concepts and induces internal and external conflict.

In the age of which Bradbury writes, Guy Montag, the main character, is a fireman charged with burning books. Guy briefly has a few run-ins with his new, free-thinking neighbor, Clarisse McClellan, who disappears shortly after her thought-provoking encounters with Guy. She challenges Montag to think of the literature he is incinerating which catapults him into reading and thinking. Guy finds it hard to contain his enthusiasm, and with the help of Faber, an old English professor, he develops a plan to raise consciousness.

Bradbury's biography is impressive. His awards include the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Aviation-Space Writer's Association Award for best space article in an American Magazine, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award. His career paths include screenplay writer, consultant for the 1963 World's Fair, and helping to design the Space-ship Earth ride at Disney World's' EPCOT Center. Additionally, Mr. Bradbury has worked as a consultant' on city engineering and rapid transit."

Like The Odyssey, Cold Mountain depicts a man’s journey from war to his beloved who is struggling to hold life together on the home front. Frazier's use of modern language makes the story much easier to read and follow.

Inman, a deserter of the Confederate army, must face not only the wilderness, but men who will stop at nothing to catch a deserter. Inman's adventures are related as short, unconnected chapters and are part of folklore passed through Frazier’s family.

In a parallel story, Ada, his love, struggles to keep her father's farm from death. She must learn to fend for herself, until a homeless woman enters town. Brought together by necessity, Ada and Ruby forge a friendship and resolve to make the farm functional.

Cold Mountain is an entertaining novel. Critics have marveled at Frazier's mastery of the North Carolina countryside. His vivid details help readers delve into the atmosphere of the book.

Later in her life Woolf was commonly known to suffer from mental illness. She had breakdowns on three occasions, the deaths of her mother, step-sister, and father. In spite of her deep torment, she was able to complete a myriad of novels, essays, and diaries.

Mrs. Dalloway is the story of Clarissa's day. Told in stream-of-consciousness, this novel can be daunting yet interesting. As Clarissa, a socialite, goes about preparing for a party, she is drawn into memories of past events. The interesting, and sometimes difficult, twist is that Woolf follows the consciousness of several characters at once.

As a tribute to Virginia Woolf, Michael Cunningham wrote The Hours which later became a movie. The Hours parallels lives of three women living in different decades. The commonality in each life is Mrs. Dalloway. One storyline is the painstaking effort that Virginia Woolf put into writing the novel and maintaining sanity. The remaining characters use the novel as a guide in their own lives. In the final scene, we witness Virginia Woolf commit suicide.

William Faulkner is the Nobel Laureate, American author of As I Lay Dying. According to his Laureate biography, Faulkner's stories and novels collectively tell the story of the "decay of the old south." As I Lay dying is the tale of a mother's death and her family's journey to fulfill her wish to be buried in Jefferson,' where her "people" are from.

The book opens with Addie, the mother, lying in bed. She takes pleasure in watching her son, Cash, build her coffin. In the other room, Darl, another son, is trying to get his father to let himself and a brother deliver a "load" for $3. They all expect Addie not to make it through the night, but Darl insists. Jewel, the brother with Darl, is the closest sibling to the mother and is made to miss her death. There is speculation by characters and other reviewers that this is intentional.

The journey to Jefferson is long and hard and therefore, not made often. The execution of a dying wish also provides an opportunity for members of the family to carry out their own agendas. Along the way, they face a treacherous river and a fire. The mother's body is saved by an unrelenting Jewel each time.

As I Lay Dying is told through stream-of-conscious monologues. Faulkner's use of chapters to indicate whose conscious is being read makes the story easier to follow. This style allows the reader to experience the book's events through the characters' thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize and a nomination for the PEN/Faulkner Award, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler, is a critically acclaimed collection of short stories from the viewpoint of postwar Vietnamese characters. Each of the seventeen stories is told in first person and independent of one another, yet together they help form a unique perspective into the lives of refugees from Vietnam. Butler not only relates the tales of life in Louisiana, but uses flashbacks to help the reader understand the country they left behind. Steeped in history and traditions, this collection also takes on issues that transcend culture religious differences and coming of age.

Religion is a key component in Vietnamese identity. It is common for a story to start with the character introducing himself or herself as either Catholic or Buddhist. "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," is the translation of four religious symbols on a red cloth next to a dying man's bed. In the first story, a character commits suicide because of religious beliefs. When the character's religion is not explicitly stated, it is implied.

Another theme prevalent in Butler's stories is a coming of age. Some stories, such as "Open Arms," focus on a single man's evolution, while others depict relationships between characters. In "Letters from My Father," a girl finds a new understanding of her distant father, and resolves to speak with him. "Crickets" illustrates a father's yearning to share his past with his son. Butler uses both dynamic and static characters to create a sense of what life may have been like as Vietnamese immigrants.

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain will be well liked by history buffs as well as the sympathetic reader. The stories seem to draw the audience into the lives portrayed through them. Each does an excellent job of relating thoughts, feelings, and a sense of the times when they take place.

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, is another Pulitzer Prize winning book in our fiction collection. The tragedy, according to forwarding author Walker Percy, "is the tragedy of the author." Toole committed suicide in 1969, and it was Toole’s mother who pestered Percy into reading his manuscript seven years later. A reluctant Percy expected a disaster but found a comedy masterpiece.

As the book opens, Ignatius Reilly, an over-grown, spoiled child of 30 still living at home, is waiting outside of a department store for his mother. He is clad in a green hunting cap, voluminous tweed trousers, plaid flannel shirt, and muffler. The cap covers his bald head with the exception of the ear flaps that do not fully cover his ears, and his mustache is freckled with potato chip crumbs.

Ignatius's eccentric attire gains him the attention of the police as he waits a scene bordering on belligerence ensues, and the chaos that follows involves not only Ignatius, but his mother and a crowd of onlookers. As the officer is distracted, the crowd disperses. The two flee and take refuge in a bar. The catalyst occurs when, in a drunken state, the mother wrecks.

To pay for the damage, Mrs. Reilly puts her foot down and makes Ignatius get a job. As one can imagine, a man like Ignatius Reilly offers many opportunities for amusement as he enters the workforce. Throw into the mix Ignatius’s holier than thou attitude, a porn ring, an "anarchist" girlfriend and local dialect, and the resulting story is hilarious. It seems that grief and despair come to anyone in his wake, but in the end, all is triumphed.

In his forward, Percy refers to a sadness, "one never quite knows where the sadness comes from." Could Toole have felt like Ignatius, a character that clearly does not fit the norm? Or is this a satire, a commentary on conformity? Readers are left to their own interpretation.