Passing Strange

As most of you know or have at least guessed by now, I am typically a fiction reader. I read non-fiction rarely and if I do it's usually memoirs, but after hearing a segment on NPR, I eagerly picked up Passing Strange by Martha Sandweiss.

Passing Strange tells the story of Clarence King who was a successful geologist at the end of the 19th century but who eventually began to pass as a black man and married Ada Copeland, a black woman. Clarence took on the name James Todd and the profession of a Pullman porter (who were only black men) when he married Ada. Clarence/James never told any of his friends or close confidants of his marriage and subsequent marriage. Everyone assumed Clarence was a lifelong bachelor.

Sandweiss does a good job of retelling Clarence King's story - his success as a geologist, his travels West, his financial troubles and surmising how he managed to live a double life. Ada Copeland Todd was harder to construct. Most likely a child born into slavery, there is no historical record of her until her early 20s. Once she married Clarence King, there is evidence of her children and various homes.

Sandweiss weaves the two stories together effectively and it's clear that she is a dedicated researcher. Like with most non-fiction, I was left wanting to know more about the why and what they felt, but without historical evidence, there is no way to know how Clarence and Ada lived when they were together.

Divisadero

Michael Ondaatje is a genius. The English Patient and Anil's Ghost left me giddy to read his latest novel, Divisadero.

The story begins at a farm in Santa Rosa, CA with three children - Claire and Anna, raised as sisters and motherless and Coop, a boy who was left an orphan after a tragedy on his neighboring farm. The three of them grow up together and yet in one moment the lives they know become ripped apart through love and violence.

We follow Coop through a future of gambling and drifting. We find Anna in France writing about the life of a French poet whose story mirrors the truth of her own.

Ondaatje is a master of prose. I wanted to climb into his words like a hammock in order to be enveloped by their beauty. Lines like "lightning lit up the river like a path through history and she grabbed the boy to stop him from leaping into its brief beauty" and "the three of them, she had always believed, made up a three-panelled Japanese screen, each one self-sufficient, but revealing different qualities or tones when placed beside the others" affirm Ondaatje's magic with words.

Yet, the story left me wanting something more. Some more resolution with Coop, Claire and Anna. I am left with the story of Lucien through which I am supposed to read more deeply into to find the essence of Anna, Coop and Claire's story.

Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls was our February book club selection. Now that we've had our meeting, I can post my review :)

I liked it. It was a quick read and interesting. It was one of those stories I found myself thinking of after it was finished. It is characterized as a "true-life novel" though I think of it more of a fictionalized memoir.

Walls writes the story of his grandmother, Lily, and her childhood growing up in the frontier west. She is a driven, tough as nails woman. Her story was compelling, yet there was something missing. I wanted a little more emotion, a little more feeling. Even though she had to be strong, there was still room for exploring some deeper thoughts, especially since Walls chose to write it in first person narrative and make it fiction.