Ms. Hen reviews Stoner

Stoner

John Williams

The New York Review of Books

1965

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel on a recommendation from one of her acquaintances, whose opinion she respects. She had read a similar novel recently, BLUE ANGEL, and this novel is also about an English professor. This novel is different because it is about the entire character’s life.

William Stoner grows up on a farm in the Midwest, and when he gets older, his parents decide to send him to college to study agriculture to assist with the operations of the farm. But when he goes to college, he becomes enchanted by his English literature class, and he changes his major, unbeknownst to his parents, and studies English in order to become a teacher.

Stoner meets a beautiful young woman, Edith, and falls in love with her, and they get married. Their marriage is unhappy because Edith suffers from depression and nerves. They have a child, and at first Stoner takes care of the child, because Edith isn’t interested in being a mother or taking care of her daughter. Stoner teaches at the college where he was a student, and grows into teaching. He has an affair with a student, and they fall in love, but they realize they could never run away together. He gets into a dispute with the director of the department, which becomes a long-term battle.

STONER is exquisitely written. The writing is simple, but the reader gets drawn into it. It’s about an ordinary man’s life, who never does anything amazing, and is unhappy in his world, but Ms. Hen couldn’t help but be fascinated by this story of a man who keeps plodding along. Some people might think this is depressing, but Ms. Hen thinks it is realistic. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” is what Thoreau said about this subject of normal people leading their lives without questioning, and simply keep going on and on until we die. Ms. Hen thinks about this when she is on the subway going to work; she sees people sitting on the train, staring at their phones, and wonders if they are troubled by their lives and ever imagine there could be more than this.

STONER reminds Ms. Hen of a lot of other books she has read. The setting and the time period remind her of  a lot of Steinbeck’s work. The part about Edith when she was troubled and alone in her room reminds Ms. Hen of a short story called, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” because it’s about a woman in almost the same era who goes crazy and peels the wallpaper off the walls in the house where she is staying. Parts of the novel are also reminiscent of Albert Camus’ THE STRANGER, in the way that at times the character didn’t seem to know or care what he was doing, similar to the existential outlook of Camus' character.

Ms. Hen thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It’s sad, but it’s realistic. Life can be terrible, and all we can do is keep going day by day. Ms. Hen admires a book that tells the truth about life, that it can truly suck sometimes, maybe all the time. Ms. Hen thinks the best thing to do is to pretend life doesn’t suck, and bury ourselves in art that portrays other people’s problems, which can be worse than ours.

Ms. Hen reviews Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach

Jennifer Egan

Scribner

2017

Ms. Hen found this novel at the Little Free Library near where she lives recently, and since she had read another novel by the author and liked it, she picked this up. She immediately got swept away into another time and place, but one that seemed familiar to her.

This novel is different from the last few novels Ms. Hen has read in the way that it is long and winding, with lengthy chapters and complex characters. This is a novel that is meant to be chewed slowly and digested fully before the reader can fully understand what occurs.

MANHATTAN BEACH is about Anna, a young woman during the Depression and World War II in New York. Her father disappears when she is young, and nobody knows where he went. Her family suspects that he ran off, and hopes he has not be killed. When the war starts, she gets a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and eventually works as the first female diver working underwater on the ships. She meets Dexter Styles at a nightclub he owns, who she had met as a child when her father took her to his house. She discovers what happened to her father, but the plot twists and other events are discovered.

Ms. Hen thinks this novel captures the psychology of a time that does not exist anymore. The way women were treated by the men was despicable, and even though Ms. Hen knows that this is true to the past, she can’t help being disgusted by it. The world used to be much worse than it is now, especially for women and minorities. Anna works hard to prove herself to the men who are her coworkers, but she gets in trouble, and has to deal with her problem. She is crafty in the way that she handles her difficulty, which proves she is a person with intelligence and wiles.

Ms. Hen thought this novel was personally appealing to her, because it reminds her of her family history. During World War II, her grandfather worked in the Navy Yard in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and she imagines that world was similar to the one in the novel. Her grandfather didn’t go to war because by then, he had too many children. Her father was also in the Navy, so she has a connection to this sphere. The women who worked in the Navy Yard in the novel were waiting for the men to come home, but at the same time, they enjoyed themselves, and they made decent money. War changed things for the people back then, because they all had the same goal, and they admired the men who went off to fight.

This is not the type of novel that Ms. Hen usually reads. It’s long and winding, and is a type of mystery or noir thriller. Even so, she enjoyed it, and it’s a good book to read as the days are getting darker, and filled with promise of a new life, or at least a different life.

Ms. Hen reviews Angels of Destruction

Angels of Destruction

Keith Donohue

Three Rivers Press

2009

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she considered it a Halloween book, and she has read several by this author, always during the All Hallow's Eve season. She has enjoyed every book that she has read by Keith Donohue, and this novel was no exception.

A little girl named Norah appears on the doorstep of Margaret Quinn, and tells the woman she is lost. Mrs. Quinn lets the girl stay with her, and they decide to inform everyone in the town that she is Margaret’s granddaughter, whose mother is Erica, who ran away ten years before. Margaret has grieved for her daughter the entire time, and Norah helps by pointing Margaret’s attention on her. Margaret starts to believe that Norah is Erica’s daughter, because she wants to cling to the hope Erica is alive and will come back some day.

Norah and Mrs. Quinn try to trick everyone in the town into thinking she's Erica's daughter, including Margaret sister Diane, who comes to visit from Washington. People think Mrs. Quinn is strange because she is still at a loss over her daughter.  Erica ran off with her boyfriend because they wanted to join a revolutionary group, The Angels of Destruction, to help bring about change in the country. They did this shortly after Patty Hearst was arrested. Norah tells the children at school she is an angel, and performs miracles in the school to their amazement. Some of them don’t believe her, and the parents think she is dangerous.

This novel contains two books in one. The first section takes place in 1985, and is about Norah and Mrs. Quinn and what happens in Pennsylvania. The second section talks about 1975, and tells the story of Erica and Wiley when they run away to join the revolutionaries in California, and also Mrs. Quinn worrying about her at home. Ms. Hen admired that there were two books in one, and they were about characters in different times in their lives. The last section goes back to 1985, in Pennsylvania with Norah in school, and Mrs. Quinn.

Another aspect that Ms. Hen liked about this novel was the fact that the characters never knew the truth about Norah, whether or not she was an angel. That adds mystery to the story. It’s similar to the last novel Ms. Hen read, THE GRIP OF IT: in the entire book, the readers do not know if we should believe the events unfolding with the characters.

Ms. Hen thought ANGELS OF DESTRUCTION was spooky, but not too spooky. It’s more of a story of grief and sadness, and trying to recover from the devastation of life. Ms. Hen knows that life is full of sadness, and by reading novels like this, she reaffirms her idea that the sadness in the world belongs to practically everyone, and not just the unlucky few.