Book Report: Case Histories

4. Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (2004) (4/3/25)

This book is the first of six featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie. I had read Kate Atkinson before (Transcription and Life after Life) and enjoyed her lively style. This time, I confess, about halfway through I was growing rather weary of the liveliness. Maybe I just wanted a straightforward mystery, which this, featuring three separate cases spread over several decades, is not—though we do learn, in each case, what happened (it's not entirely clear whether Brodie himself did, though I presume so) and in several instances otherwise unrelated characters come to overlap in the present. Atkinson is nothing if not inventive.

I did enjoy Brodie and the father of a murdered girl, Theo, but the main female characters got a bit tedious, almost caricature-ish (as if written by a man). The chapters jump from one character, one case, to another, Brodie being the only thing holding them together. If I hadn't found him so sympathetic, I probably would have abandoned the book. As it is, I'm glad I finished—and I see no need to read any more of Atkinson. I noted in my earlier reviews that she is perhaps too clever. Maybe I just prefer simple intelligence to cleverness.

Poet Frank X. Gaspar

The final prompt poem for my six-session workshop with Mark Doty. Frank X. Gaspar is an Angeleno, and I feel the place in his poem, especially at the end.

The Lemons

Forget the sun and the dizzy moths.
Forget the pieces of mockingbird that the cats have left by the side gate.
Forget the hose running under the honeysuckle:
the lemons are offering us holiness again.
They are making us go down on our knees to smell them.
They are making us think of our old loves, to grieve over them.
They are singing every little song, they are conjuring every temptation.
They have having sex with the oranges and the tangerines, the yard
is rife with their pollens, they are sweeter than they even know.
They speak together. They are amazing me with their navels and nipples.
How they flaunt themselves on the spider-veined limbs all pained with thorn.
They are trying to make me lazy, to turn me against my simple work—
they do not want to be plucked from their own dreaming.
They are telling us again how they come each year. Bringing secrets
from their other world, and we are never able to decipher them.
How long now before we put up the aluminum ladder
and pull on the leather-palmed gloves? How long with the shape
and heft of lemon voluptuous in my hand? How long
with the summer in its steep track, and the low cars cruising
out on the avenues, and the drone of small airplanes
like bees over the far houses?

Ashland, Oregon

I got together with my wonderful sister-in-law Patty this weekend in Ashland, Oregon, to write—but also to hike, to dine, to gab, to attend the theater (Ashland is home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival). Here are some photos I took. And they are backwards, but you won't care, will you. 

Maple seeds

Moss

Madrone

Patty and a big boulder

Madrone woodleand

Madrone (oh how I love madrones)

Lower Wonder Trail

Madrone up close

We went to see a play, Fat Ham

It was a sendup of Hamlet—but only one person
died at the end, and then from natural causes...

Sulfur-water drinking fountains

Our final meal, of many wonderful meals,
ended with chocolate. Fittingly.

Book Report: The Salt Path

3. Raynor Winn, The Salt Path (2018) (3/18/25)

I'm not sure how I heard about this book—maybe in an article about books being made into movies, since this one is about to be released as such (end of April in the UK), starring Gillian Anderson. Maybe in an article about long-distance walking? As I say, I don't know, but I'm glad I did.

It's the true story of a couple, Ray and Moth Winn, 50 and 53, who, in 2013, through a series of unfortunate events, lose their home—a farm in Wales; and then, the same week they are compelled to move everything out, Moth is diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (CBD), signaling ongoing deterioration and, normally, only so long to live. Virtually penniless—they believe they can count on a bank deposit of £48 every week, but as the story goes on it seems they're lucky to see that much in a month—they cast about for options. Hoping against hope for affordable council housing is one possibility, but then what? Or: they can start walking, heading out on the 260-mile South West Path of England, which hugs the coast from Somerset, through Cornwall and Devon, to Dorset.  

They buy packs and stuff them full of what they think they might need, including the one and only guidebook of the path, and set off. And so this book takes off too, detailing an array of stunning geography, encounters with locals and with fellow walkers, and hardships galore. They struggle to find proper flat spaces to camp on; they are very often hungry, subsisting on noodles and tea; they must battle the elements, whether extreme heat or lashing rain. And there's Moth's illness to contend with, which sometimes flares up, but for the most part the walk, the exercise, the fresh air, the effort, seem to do him good. They are heading into the unknown—they don't even know how far they'll go, maybe Land's End, maybe farther—but they're together and they're alive, and that's enough, even if they are homeless. 

The fact that they are, in fact, homeless, and not by choice—they didn't just up and sell everything, bank the proceeds, and set off on a lark—lends weight to this account. They have nothing, and the future is uncertain—not just where they will end up, what they will do for income, but Moth's fate, and so Ray's as well. They must live in the moment, with inventiveness and resilience. 

Considering how tedious a simple "we walked the South West Path" tale could be, the adversity this couple faced adds a lot to the stew. And some rhythm is added by the fact that they break off partway along the trail (well along, actually) to go live for the winter in a small cottage provided by a friend, then resume the path from the opposite direction—and only after Moth has decided to return to university to study to become a teacher. Now they have an actual goal.

I thought the book could have been pared back some in the first 180 pages (by chapter 16 I was rather weary of the path), but chapters 17–20 move along at a brisk pace and I was re-enthralled. Even the three rather exquisite coincidences in the final few pages seemed somehow perfect. So much magic happened over their several months on the path. Can't we just believe?

(And apparently Moth is still with us. They've settled in Cornwall, where Ray continues to write and advocate for the homeless.) 

 

Silence

I've mentioned before, I believe, my weekly generative poetry group, six to ten or so of us (I'm not sure our exact number) who meet on Thursday afternoons, read a selection of poems based on a particular theme, then spend half an hour creating our own poems based on that theme, and share them. I feel very brave to participate in this group—though I am (very) slowly beginning not to tell myself that "I am not a poet." As a friend in another poetry group reminds me, if you write poems, you are a poet. And yeah, I guess I write poems... Pretty much every week, in fact, if not more often. It's becoming a life-affirming practice of mine.

This week's prompt was silence. The featured poets included Rilke (in both German and English), Amy Lowell, a couple I hadn't heard of. I especially liked this take on the theme, by Billy Collins:

Silence

There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a player not moving on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor,

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,

the silence of the moon

and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,

the silence of the window above us,

and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning

which I have broken with my pen,

a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—

the silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

If we are true to the spirit of the exercise, we do not read the prompt poems beforehand, but just soak them up as we read aloud by turn and discuss as a group. Then, when it's time to write our own, whatever comes, comes. 

What came for me this Thursday was insomnia. Interesting, because I don't generally suffer from insomnia—but it was an easy enough place to go when thinking about silence. Our next sharer also wrote about sleeplessness, and getting back to sleep. This led to a general free-for-all of sharing of ALL our best insomnia pieces by email. It was funny and fun, and uniting. 

That's what poetry is so good at, and for: reminding us of all that we share. Ninety percent of our humanity. The dirty nasty awful political stuff is really only a small aspect of who we are. And yet lately, it feels like 90 percent. 

Poetry is my antidote.

(The orchid above is a very rare one from Florida, the Bahamas, and Cuba, Dendrophylax lindenii, or ghost orchid. It is pollinated by only a few sphinx moths and hawkmoths, and is endangered in the wild, while cultivation has proven very difficult. It is the subject of Susan Orlean's wonderful book The Orchid Thief—and, arguably, the movie Adaptation.)

Book Mutterings

1. Philip Roth, The Plot against America (2004)
2. Martin Walker, The Patriarch (2015)

My first two books of the year—and it's almost March! I have not been able to concentrate—have been Philip Roth's The Plot against America and, for something a little lighter, Martin Walker's "Bruno: Chief of Police" mystery The Patriarch. I found the latter in a local Little Library, and jettisoned my usual rule of reading mystery series in order. (I'd already read the first and second Bruno books; this one was number 8.)

I think I'm just not a big fan of Martin Walker. Bruno, sure: I like Bruno, and I like wandering the Périgord, France, countryside with this pragmatic policeman, and I certainly like eating with him—yowza: truffles and pâté and cheesy potatoes and so much wine! But Walker insists on overcomplicating his stories. This one included French aviators with ties to Russian politics, an animal rights activist squared off against hunters, vintners, and a robotic auroch (which ends up playing a role in the final scene). As I neared the end and things just really weren't getting tied up, I feared the worst—and sure enough (this is something I remember from one of the first volumes), Walker cops out at the end, offering a Gallic shrug at all that's gone down. Oh well! C'est la vie!

The Plot against America, on the other hand, is a masterpiece. Published in 2004, the basic story is a rewrite of history, with Charles Lindbergh being elected president over FDR in 1940. Antisemitic, isolationist, authoritarian Lindbergh. Pearl Harbor doesn't happen. Instead the US curls into itself, seeking some sort of "purity" while, essentially, collaborating with the Nazis. Sound familiar? It was eerie—creepy eerie—to read it in the days after Trump was inaugurated president. How quickly we can shift from normalcy to insanity. 

I'm still grappling with what to say here. As I say, I've been having a hard time concentrating. Thank goodness for a couple of writing groups I'm participating in. Right now, I'm obsessively editing a poem I wrote last year at this time, which has to do with "legacy." And I'm scraping together three essays for another workshop. Continuing to think about the Japanese internment—which has taken on a new significance now that the "left" half of the country has been relegated to oblivion. 

And now, I need to find another book to read. Something that captivates me. I need to be swept away into a story very different from the current reality.

Tony Hogland, poet

George Bligere posts a daily poem, and this was the one from a couple of days ago. I adore it. It provides some solace from the ongoing awfulness... 

Keep looking for the good parts.

Field Guide

by Tony Hoagland

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.