Ponder: Eleanor Oliphant

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine ©2017 by Gail Honeyman is the author's first novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it and laughed out loud several times while reading it, even sharing real time some of the passages to my husband. Eleanor is a thirty year old single woman working in an office as a finance clerk. Reference is made early on to a mysterious scar on her face. She was raised in the foster child system. She is very much a loner with a quirky attitude about the world and a clueless view of social norms, doggedly dedicated to her Excel spreadsheets. As a reader I was amused by her foibles and attitudes while feeling sad for her lonely life – a loneliness she is aware of but considers inevitable and seems to take in stride as par for the course. Imagine going home from work on a Friday evening and having no human contact whatsoever until returning to work Monday morning. The novel is written in first person from her point of view, exposing the reader to the humor in her often sideways reasoning for her actions. In the office she is isolated, eats an unchanging lunch alone every day with her crossword puzzle, and has no-one with whom to share her feelings. Any nerds out there? Sound familiar? Can you identify to some degree? How can such a drab life spark so much chuckling in its telling? The author manages to achieve the seeming paradox with remarkable skill. This book is like A Man Called Ove (post dated 10/31/17) about a curmudgeon the reader learns to love in time. Eleanor is weird, but puzzlingly so, and my affection and empathy for her kept building. Hints accumulate, leading to understanding her better; there is an undercurrent of some childhood tragedy she'd endured.

I particularly enjoyed this passage, exemplifying her personality, where she is standing in line in front of Raymond, an IT guy from her office at branch of a café chain.

We queued, and I asked for a grande mochaccino with extra cream and hazelnut syrup. The young man asked my name."Why do you need to know my name?" I said puzzled. "We write it on your cup," he said, "so the drinks don't get mixed up." Ridiculous. "I haven't heard anyone else order and identical drink to mine, so far," I said firmly. "I'm sure I'm more than capable of identifying my chosen beverage when the time comes." He stared at me, the pen still poised in his hand. "I have to write your name on the cup," he repeated sounding firm but bored, as people in uniform are wont to do. "And I have to maintain a modicum of privacy by not sharing my given name with all and sundry in the middle of a cafeteria," I said, equally firmly. Someone further back in the queue tutted and I heard someone else mutter something that sounded like "for fuck's sake". It appeared that we had reached something of an impasse. "Fine, all right then," I said. "My name is Miss Eleanor Oliphant." He boggled at me. "I'll just put, eh, Ellie," he said, scribbling. Raymond was silent but I could feel his large shoulders and misshapen body quivering with laughter. It was his turn next. "Raoul," he said, and then spelled it out.

The book is in three parts: the first 25 chapters comprise Good Days, chapters 26 through 40 are labeled Bad Days, and the final 41st chapter is titled Better Days. When I started the Bad Days section I initially though,"Oh, no. This book was great up to now... what a bummer." In chapter 26 Eleanor muses to herself

The scalp massage at the hairdressers, the flu jab I had last winter – the only time I experience touch is from people whom I am paying, and they are almost always wearing disposable gloves at the time.

But I stuck with it. The mysteries of her scar and the background explaining the evolution of her personality are revealed. Life does improve for her, her acquaintance circle does expand, and I was glad I had persisted to envision the potential of a rosy future for Eleanor, for whom I had grown quite fond. If you loved Ove, you will love Eleanor. They both earned five stars from me.

Ponder: Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing ©2018 by author Delia Owens was five star winner for me. As with many modern day novels I have read recently, two storylines run in parallel or one storyline is segmented and told in two time periods.  I learned this writing technique is called dual timelines. Sometimes this two-in-one story approach annoys me, especially if I am engaged more in one plot than the other. But Delia Owens carried out this technique superbly and had me hooked to both stories from the very first pages.

In the prologue: 

On the morning of October 30, 1969, the body of Chase Andrews lay in the swamp, which would have absorbed it silently, routinely. Hiding it for good. A swamp knows all about death and doesn't necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin. But this morning two boys from the village rode their bikes out to the old fire tower and, from the third switchback, spotted his denim jacket.

The central character of When the Crawdads Sing is a young girl Kya the youngest of five children in a dreadfully poor family that lived in the marsh near the coast of North Carolina. The father is an erratic alcoholic who would beat the mother and lash out at the children. The family lives "squeezed together like penned rabbits", in a "rough-cut shack, its screened porch staring big-eyed from under the oaks". In an opening scene of Chapter 1, titled simply "Ma" and dated 1952, Kya, age six, is standing next to Jodie, her thirteen year old brother. They watch their mother leave the shack wearing her high heeled stubby-nosed fake alligator skin shoes and carrying a blue suitcase down the foot lane to the road. Their conversation goes:

"Ma'll be back", he said.
"I dunno. She's wearin' her gator shoes."
"A ma don't leave her kids. It ain't in 'em."
"You told me that fox left her babies."
"Yeah but that vixen got 'er leg all tore up. She'd've starved to death if she tried to feed herself 'n' her kits. She was better off to leave 'em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise 'em good. Ma ain't starvin', she'll be back." Jodie wasn't nearly as sure as he sounded, but said it for Kya.
Her throat tight, she whispered, "But Ma's carryin' that blue case like she's goin' somewhere big."

This book was going to be gooood! It has a murder mystery to test my mind and an abandoned, lonely child to test my heart, all rolled into one. The murder time line revealed clues at an energizing pace and a murder trial near the end of the book was well described step by step with the dogged purpose of pointing out areas of reasonable doubt. As a child, Kya grows up shouldering hardship after hardship while being ostracized by the surrounding town as being weird and degradingly sneered at as "The Marsh Girl". How these two well-paced timelines intersect is handled seamlessly.

The setting as well was awe-inspiring. The lilting descriptions of the marshes where Kya was to grow up were wonderous for me. My most recent marsh viewing was passing through the San Pablo Bay Wildlife Refuge on the way to Sonoma County to visit the Charles M. Schulz Museum (post dated July 31, 2019). Even then I was struck by the beauty of the grasses gently blowing in the wetlands with the smattering of birds lending life to the scene.

Owens makes a distinction between marshes and swamps... one of life versus one of death. 

Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a place of light, where grass grows in water and water flows into sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea... Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat. There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life.

Curious about this poetic distinction, I sought a scientific differentiation among the terms for wetlands. I found this chart at https://beachchairscientist.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/wetlands.jpg

I enlarged the quadrants for marsh and swamp and did indeed verify that the water in marshes in pH neutral and life and growth is more prevalent.

Subtle inclusion of these details in the novel is possible because of Delia Owens' background as a wildlife scientist. Although this is her first novel, she has three previous non-fiction publications based on her research and experiences in Africa and she holds a BS in Zoology and a PhD in Animal Behavior. I was drawn in by her dual ability to weave facts into poetic and mesmerizing language.

Chapter 10 is titled "Just Grass in the Wind". It forwards the forensics about the murder scene beneath the old fire tower. "Sand keep secrets better than mud," it begins. I liked this way of intimating there was evidence to be had – perhaps.

So I have addressed the flora but how about the fauna. Why the book title? What are crawdads and can they really sing? I located this pretty picture of crawdad on a pillow by Caroline's Treasures.

Per Wikipedia a crayfish (aka crawdad) is defined.

Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans resembling small lobsters (to which they are related). They are also known as crawfish, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, mountain lobsters, mudbugs, or yabbies. ... In the Eastern United States, "crayfish" is more common in the north, while "crawdad" is heard more in central and southwestern regions, and "crawfish" further south, although considerable overlaps exist.

This book takes place along the North Carolina Coast in the fictional town of Barkley Cove.

Can crawdads really sing? Yes they can! The site https://bernheim.org/you-say-crawfish-we-say-crayfish/ has an audio file of their singing and states

A little known fact about crayfish is that they can produce sound in and out of the water. Crayfish produce sounds through their scaphognathite, which is a thin appendage that draws water through the gill cavity. They move the scaphognathite and produce sound and air bubbles. They will produce a series of pulse trains that is believed to signal an individual’s presence to other crayfish. It is also believed that they produce sounds to alert other crayfish to predators, or to attract a second predator to prey upon the predator.

I highly recommend this book as a fascinating, fulfilling read for all audiences. It challenges your mind, softens your heart, stimulates your senses, and rewards your time spent reading. Five stars. Yes. Definitely five stars.

★★★★★