Lonesome Dove

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985) 857 pages

I was inspired to read this novel by a social media post of Peter Sagal, host of NPR's news quiz show. Sagal said he had detected some disapproval from a friend when the friend found out Sagal hadn't ever read the book. So he read it. As did I.

In this epic Old West tale set in the late 1800s, WF Call and Augustus McCrae decide to amass cattle and cowboys and horses and bring them from Lonesome Dove, their small border town, up to Montana, which is said to be wild, but which will situate them in the cattle business in that territory before others get there. The two men are longtime comrades, together in the Texas Rangers for a long time, with stellar reputations, but very different personalities.

The characterizations are golden, from the non-stop talker Gus and his more reticent partner Call, and to so many others. The story interweaves people from Texas to Arkansas to Nebraska and beyond. It's not just "Cowboys and Indians" kind of stereotypes, but much more nuanced. McMurtry integrates the reader into another world filled with adventure, hardship, kidnapping, and caring.

The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2020) 451 pages

Louise Erdrich's novel is based on her grandfather's preparation to testify at a Congressional hearing in 1954. Names have been changed, except for that of Arthur Watkins, a Republican senator from Utah who held strong feelings against American Indian tribes. Thomas Wazhashk, a member of the Chippewa, was a night watchman at a jewel bearing plant. In the off-time, when he was not making his rounds, he read up on tribal issues. He knew that the congressional plan to emancipate tribes was a ploy to further strip the Chippewa and other tribes of the little land that they still had in North Dakota, which would force the people from their homes, where they were already living in deprivation. He helped spread the word about the bill, rallied tribesmen to collect signatures against it, and gathered a contingent to go to the hearing in Washington, DC.

A related storyline shows Patrice, a nineteen-year old woman who also worked at the jewel bearing plant, and how her wages were necessary for her family's subsistence. She has complicated feelings dealing with women her own age, as well toward young men who are interested in her. The relationship between Patrice and her mother show tribal customs related to health and death. We learn that each has had dreams which made them certain that Patrice's sister, who left the reservation to marry, is in trouble. We see strong loving relationships as well as abusive ones throughout the novel. It's easy to understand why the book won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.

All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014) 530 pages

Marie-Laure, a blind girl in pre-WWII Paris, learns to get around her community after her father builds an intricate model of the neighborhood and teaches her to notice the landmarks and count her steps. He works at the Museum of Natural History. When the Germans begin to occupy France, they flee to the coast, to the walled town of Saint-Malo, where her father's uncle lives.

Werner, an orphaned German boy, dreads coming of age, when he'll be expected to work in the coal mines, where his father died. But the scientific and mathematical aptitude of him and his younger sister gets Werner involved with learning how to fix radios. One of their joys is to listen to music and podcast-like science lessons from far away. Werner's technical skills are noticed, and he is accepted into a training camp for boys, where in addition to Nazi indoctrination, he helps develop ways to locate the source of radio broadcasts.

The stories of Marie-Laure and Werner alternate. Food, fuel, and other necessities become scarce everywhere. People disappear, including Marie-Laure's father. Bombing occurs. An evil Nazi with cancer is looking for a gem with mystical healing power, which Marie-Laure's father may have been given for safekeeping. When Marie-Laure and Werner's lives finally begin to intersect, the story becomes even more riveting.

Less

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017) 261 pages

As with anyone that I've just met, it takes a little while for Arthur Less, a 49-year-old white gay guy, a bit of a second-tier writer, to grow on me. He's having a midlife crisis partly because of his upcoming 50th birthday and partly because Freddy, his lover for the past nine years, is going to be married to another guy very soon. Less is invited to the wedding, but rather than just declining the invitation, he ends up accepting every other invitation he can find to take him away from home in San Francisco for many weeks: These invitations include teaching a class in Germany, going on a writing retreat in India, doing a series of tastings for a magazine article in Japan, etc., seven stops in total, all in order to save face and to distract himself.

The writing tone seems just a tad clinical at first, but as Less follows his travel itinerary, the understated humor of the very strange situations that he finds himself in grows progressively funnier. I especially enjoyed the translations of the German which Less speaks while he's in Berlin. (Arthur has been insisting he's fluent in German, but we find otherwise!)

The conversations that Less has with others are often thought-provoking meaning-of-life-and-love kind of philosophies which differ widely. One mystery: the narrator. Little crumbs thrown out from time to time show that the narrator personally knows Less. Who is it??