Literary Fiction | Book Chatter

Damnation Spring
By Ash Davidson
Scribner, 9781982144401, August 2021, 464pp.

The Short of It:

Slow build, but worth it in the end.

The Rest of It:

Colleen and Rich Gundersen are raising their young son, Chub, on the rugged California coast. It’s 1977, and life in this Pacific Northwest logging town isn’t what it used to be. For generations, the community has lived and breathed timber; now that way of life is threatened. ~ Indiebound

Damnation Spring is about a lot of things. That is why the story is sticking with me even though I finished it a few days ago. Colleen and Rich don’t have the perfect marriage but there’s love there, especially for their young son Chub. But after eight miscarriages, Colleen wants nothing more than to carry a baby to term but there’s a problem. The spray used to control the growth in their logging community is poisoning their water. Colleen, an amateur midwife to the other women in the community has seen the proof of it more than she cares to admit. Babies, born with half a brain, and now her own sister is pregnant.

Colleen’s determination at finding the cause for her miscarriages creates problems for Rich and his logging team. He wants to ignore it but when he looks at his son Chub, he also doesn’t want to endanger his life or Colleen’s. Plus, he has a financial stake in all of this because he purchased a large part of the land, with the hopes to sell the timber but there are challenges there too. Roads, not owned by him. You might own the timber but you can’t get it out if the roads aren’t available to you.

This was a rich, complicated story about people trying to survive. I loved the complexity of the characters. There is a rawness to the story too. The beauty of the timber, the destruction of the forest, the poisoning of the water and everything around it trying so hard to survive. It was very good and I didn’t notice its length at nearly 500 pages.

Recommend.

Source: Review copy provide by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Hamnet
By Maggie O’Farrell
Vintage, 9781984898876, May 2021, 320pp.

The Short of It:

Did you know that Hamnet and Hamlet are one in the same?

The Rest of It:

Maggie O’Farrell wanted to give a voice to the boy we knew so little about. Hamnet, the son of William Shakespeare, who died at the age of eleven. The thing is, there is no record of Hamnet’s cause of death, anywhere. His death is believed to be caused by the plague, but no where is this confirmed. In O’Farrell’s novel, the way Hamnet dies is quite different from what you’d expect. Cracking open that first page of a book titled HAMNET, and especially since the author wanted nothing more than to give a voice to this boy, you’d expect the story to be all about Hamnet, but instead, it’s about his mother, Agnes and really motherhood in general.

As I was reading this book, I fell into the flow of the writing. It seemed poetic to me. I lingered here and there because of how melodious the words were as they rolled off the page. This was, dare I say it, a pleasant read even though it’s about death, the plague, and grief.

Telling us about Hamnet, through the grief of his mother was an interesting choice. Powerful at times, but there was a tiny touch of magical realism (in my opinion) that took me out of the narrative for a minute and I was left reading that section over and over again to make sense of it and to consider why the author chose to go that route.

We discussed this for my book club. I’d say that most liked it a lot, some loved it, a couple weren’t impressed. I loved the writing but honestly, I expected more of Hamnet and his famous father. William Shakespeare is never named in the story. He’s the boy’s father, the Latin tutor, and eventually the playwright. It’s not until the very end that you are even introduced to his craft. I will say that the ending was quite thoughtful and a touch sad.

This is a book that will stay with me, even though it left me wanting more.

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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