Vacationland by Sarah Stonich (2013. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816687664)
Cautionary note: I consider the author, Ms. Stonich, to be a literary friend. Not a close personal friend, someone who has been to my house for dinner, but someone I’ve spent time with at Ely’s Blueberry Festival in my EZ-Up selling books to Minneapolitans. Anyway, that caveat aside, here’s the scoop on Sarah’s latest.
Vacationland is a contemporary novel of life in the northwoods (Ely or Tower, MN cleverly disguised as someplace not Ely or Tower) that reads more like a collection of linked short stories than linear reportage. I picked the book up about a year ago and it has been sitting, awaiting discovery, on my reading stack ever since I purchased it at the Bookstore at Fitger’s in Duluth. Last week, while on vacation in Orlando, I finally had time to read the book cover to cover. I am happy I did.
At the center of the inter-related lives revealed in the book is Meg, the grandchild of an immigrant, who inhabits what once was a family style resort, Naledi Lodge, the place her grandfather raised her during summers when Meg wasn’t in boarding school or away perfecting her art. Don’t let the first chapter throw you off: this isn’t a Kent Krueger murder mystery wanna-be. It’s a character driven piece of fine fiction that, despite some flaws (I wasn’t too keen on the ending; it seemed a bit of a stretch and not in keeping with the pulse of the book), has the feel of warm flannel and a roaring fire on a cold October night spent considering impending winter. There were a couple of times I had to go back and re-read a passage to understand which cottage or camp or cabin or character was being depicted to ensure I understood the flow of the tale, which, as I pointed out above, is distinctly non-linear in execution and connected by thinly woven strands of friendship, vacation visits, and family ties. But, in the end, it is the writing (Stonich is nothing if not an accomplished craftswoman) that overcomes any minor flaws one encounters in completing this wonderfully told tale:
Much of the resort is pocked with neglect: a sack of mortar left leaning near a wall has hardened to its own shape, with tatters of sack flapping; a tipped wheelbarrow has a maple sapling sprung through its rusted hole. Flat stones from a run of stairs have eroded to a jumble below, and high on the plateau old cabins lean like a trio of gossips, their eaves and sills lushly bumpered with moss.
If you want more out of your reading choice than cardboard characters driven by plot, if you want to understand the pull of the northland and the people that call this part of the world home, Stonich’s latest effort is a good place to begin your journey.
4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.
The Tattoo by Chris McKinney (2007. Soho Press (Kindle Version). ISBN 978156947450)
Last year, while vacationing in Hawai’i, I picked up one of Chris McKinney’s more recent crime fiction novels, Queen of Tears, on Kauai where we were staying. I enjoyed the read so much, I went on Amazon while still on the island and purchased the Kindle version of The Tattoo. Other books got in the way and this year, while vacationing in Florida, I was in need of something to read and remembered the book on my Kindle. My re-discovery of the lost manuscript on my eReader was indeed fortuitous.
An “as told to” story set in prison in Hawai’i, this novel chronicles the life of a small-time Japanese American gangster, Kenji, who is in prison for manslaughter. We suspect, but do not confirm until the end of the tale, who the victim of Ken’s outrage and anger might have been. In telling his life of crime, passion, drugs, familial disruption, and the Code of the Samurai, Ken speaks during tattooing sessions with Cal, a mainland haloe (white person) of his loves and losses, which, in essence, is the narrative of the book. Cal is mute from his own traumas (physical and emotional) but we learn a bit about him as well as Kenji’s life story unfolds. This is a simply told piece of genre fiction that McKinney manages to make it into a page turner. It’s a tale that would do well on the big screen. There’s romance, sex, action, and conflict (internal and external) enough for two books in The Tattoo. I’d highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn a bit more about race relations and crime on Hawai’i. You might, as I did, guess the identity of Kenji’s wrath part-way through the tale. But that doesn’t, in anyway, deter from a fine, fine ride through the Hawai’ian countryside.
4 stars out of 5.
