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“After 100 years of heavy use, Hellems gets OK for major renovation,” reads a magazine article. Does this mean farewell to its wooden and glass doors, its non-plastic floors? |
A friend recommended a recent book by the writer Rebecca Makkai, but I wanted to work up to it. So, I read The Borrower,* the author’s first novel, and this week I finished Novel No. 2, The Hundred-Year House.
House is a story told in reverse chronological order. For those who like getting the ending out of the way before beginning a book in earnest — the narrator of The Borrower does this — it’s an especially satisfying reading experience. There’s no How will it end? anxiety; it’s already ended in the first pages. (I suppose this is how murder mysteries proceed, but I don’t read murder mysteries.)
It’s fun to guess what in the beginning of the book will become more important as time recedes. One senses, for example, that a painting carries a hidden significance, and then three-quarters of the way the significance is revealed. All kinds of pieces begin to fall into place. Novel as jigsaw puzzle.
Particularly keen is the book’s treatment of history, including people’s refusal to engage with it, their lack of particular strains of curiosity, their obliviousness to what it might offer. But of course several characters achieve something magnificent with it, and those transformations are very satisfying.
The book makes me think about the new Indiana Jones movie, which is essentially about desires to begin anew in various yesterdays.
The Hundred-Year House* is probably best read directly after The Borrower.
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Perhaps some campus buildings feature in these Arts and Science Faculty Oral History Project interviews. |
From Part II of Makkai’s second novel:
“Do you know the irony?” she said. “I’m the only one of my family who ever loved this place. I came here several times as a child. I remember the dog. Miss Mays, the director, had a wonderful sort of walrusy dog.”
Walrusy is the kind of word Winnie the Pooh might coin. It has gravitas, but also a tummy. It greets the eye with open arms, ready to be hugged. Ear-wise, it’s closer to parsley or pleurisy.
Another 2023 finalist, I wager.
* I loved The Borrower but must say that the most appropriate time to tackle Catcher in the Rye is sophomore year of college, not eighth, ninth, or tenth grade.
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