Illumination Night

Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman  224 pp.

I've read a number of Hoffman's books and this one is my least favorite to date. It's the story of a family Vonny & Andre and their young son, Simon, a problem teenager sent to help her ailing grandmother, and a reclusive gentle giant. The couple has money issues and worries about their young son's lack of growth. The Elizabeth, elderly woman, is failing in health bit by bit. Jody, the teenager, is a wild one and her grandmother is hoping to turn her into a decent human being. There is an illicit attraction between Andre and Jody. All the family worries cause Vonny to have panic attacks and agoraphobia. The giant recluse doesn't appear until the last half of the book when he develops a crush on Jody. A horrible accident brings the giant out of hiding. There are a few too many twists for such a short book. It would have been better if either a few things were left out or the final product longer.

The stranger in the woods

The stranger in the woods: the extraordinary story of the last true hermit / Michael Finkel, 203 pgs. Read by Mark Bramhall

Christopher Knight was 20 years old, employed and had just bought a car when he wandered away.  I mean, he wandered out of civilization and went to live in the woods.  He continued to live in the woods for 27 years and only once had any contact with another human...a hiker to which he said "hi."  He survived the harsh Maine winters by stealing necessities from cabins and houses nearby.  He was legendary as the hermit...but no one knew who he was.  Eventually (27 years into this adventure!), he was caught.  The author wrote to him and visited him 9 times while Knight was held in jail.  This story is amazing, unreal, fabulous!  How did this man survive?  He never lit a fire even one time in the 27 years.  There were times when he wasn't sure he would survive.  Once discovered, even when he was out of jail, he seemed to long to return to the woods.  It was a lifestyle he chose and it is a lifestyle that enjoyed.  The audio version was great, Bramhall makes subtle distinctions between the voice of the author and of Knight and I was compelled to keep listening.

The Stranger in the Woods

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel, 203 pages

For nearly 30 years, the year-round and vacation residents of North Pond, Maine, were the victims of regular burglaries of everything from car batteries and propane tanks to books and boxes of macaroni and cheese. In 2013, after more than 1,000 separate burglaries, the culprit was caught: Christopher Knight, a man who had been living without human contact in the thick woods near their homes for 27 years.

Finkel's biography of the hermit is based on a series of hour-long interviews the journalist conducted during visits to Knight as he was awaiting trial after his capture, supplemented by Knight's sparse letters to Finkel and Finkel's research into hermits in general. The result of all these letters and interviews and research is a rough portrait of a man who willingly withdrew himself from people, though he didn't entirely leave civilization behind — he did steal books and the odd TV and radio, after all, on top of all that food. It's a fascinating account, and Finkel does an excellent job of telling Knight's story. I wonder if Knight — an voracious reader with a wonderful dry sense of humor — has read it, and what he thought of it, though I'm sure we'll never know.

Empty Mansions

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman, 456 pages

When Huguette Clark died in 2012 at age 104, she left behind an astounding art collection, a Stradivarius violin, an extensive collection of masterfully created dollhouses, two massive Fifth Avenue apartments, a mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, and a large oceanfront estate in Santa Barbara, California. But with the exception of a few close aides and medical staff, the reclusive multimillionaire had not been seen in almost 50 years and had not visited any of those beautiful residences in at least 20 years.

Empty Mansions details Huguette Clark's long life, from her world-traveling childhood as the daughter of copper king and land baron W.A. Clark (once estimated to be worth almost as much as Rockefeller and more than Carnegie) to her extremely short-lived marriage in the 1920s to her quiet adult life spent living with her mother in New York City. It's a fascinating story of the extremely wealthy, and Dedman does an excellent job of spinning out the tale in an engaging manner. As I listened to this book (wonderfully read by Kimberly Farr), my only concern was that the very private Huguette would have been furious that her life, which she had worked so hard to keep out of the public eye, was being laid out for all to see and hear. If you can get past that guilt nugget, however, you'll find this a fascinating tale.

A Reunion of Ghosts / Judith Claire Mitchell 382 pp.

I am enthusiastic about 90% of this book.  Lady, Vee, and Delph Alter, three sisters descended from the Nobel-prize winning chemist responsible for the development of chlorine gas used during WWI, are burdened by the weight of their family history.  The chlorine gas was bad enough; what's worse is that their ancestor's innovation was later used in the creation of Zyklon B.  On the last day of the 20th century, they decide to bring their family history to a permanent close in their claustrophobic Manhattan apartment.  What follows is their suicide letter, the long, tragic and hilarious story of the Alter family.

This is great dark comedy, told with beautifully developed characters and fresh voices.  It's great, that is, until the author decides to conclude with an event that, in life as in fiction, demonstrates the ultimate failure of the imagination.