Fall Samhain Moon
Two novels in the last couple of weeks: The Circle by Dave Eggers and Lookaway, Lookaway by Winton Barnhardt. Both are of recent publication and different in content though not style. I would call them novels of manners, a description of a world and how it works, how it influences lives and fates. The Circle is a left-coast, uncanny Silicon Valley story which intends, I think, to show the hubris of technology companies as they reach for world changing ideas. Lookaway, Lookaway is a Tom Wolfe type story line of Down East North Carolingians in the new south financial mecca of Charlotte. It’s about three-quarters entertaining and one-quarter should have been edited out.
(Image from Guardian review)
Novels, as a great line from Tom Clancy noted, (thanks to Bill Schmidt) are different from real life. They have to make sense. In the Eggers book, which I enjoyed, young idealists, bright and ambitious, confuse their ideals of a transparent world, knowledge of the most intimate nature shared with all, with a positive reality instead of the Orwellian, faux-fascist society it would create. A body check to technological hubris it helps us step back from the hype, the Steve Jobs spin, the Google glass view of the world and see that technology is only a tool, a tool like any other, and one that needs to be evaluated on the basis of its results and effect as well as its gee whiz cool factor. A good read.
(NYT review image)
Lookaway, Lookaway probes the family of Duke Johnston and Jerene (Jarvis) Johnston, using a Game of Thrones one person, one chapter point of view. This allows for a close in look at the characters chosen for a chapter’s focus, but, as other reviews have pointed out, some of the characters just aren’t worth that much treatment. The first half of the book finds us at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill through the eyes of freshman Jerilyn Johnston, then back in Charlotte through the eyes of her mother, a steel magnolia sort, Jerene Johnston, and later the view point of Gaston Jarvis, famed author of a series of Civil War romances.
Barhhardt wrote a novel, the Bible, that I read about 30 years ago. It’s wonderful. This one is less so, but still worth a read.
