A Historic Novel and A Ghost Story.
I listened to a couple of audiobooks lately. The first is Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her her other book March. The other is a Man Booker Prize finalist The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Both stories are told in the first person.
In Caleb's Crossing, the story is told from the point of a view of a young girl living on Martha's Vineyard during the 1660's colonial era. She befriends a Wampanoag Indian youth, Caleb, who in real life, became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College in 1665. The story brings to life early American colonial history, the lives of the settlers, and the forced indoctrination and domination of women, and of the native Americans by the overzealous Christian settlers. I feel as if I learned more about American colonial history from this book than from any history classes I've taken. I thoroughly enjoyed the book but came away with the sad and hopeless feeling that as a country, we have really done irrevocable wrong to the Native Americans who lived here long ago but lost their culture and way of life by virtue of coming into contact with the European settlers.
Next, I picked The Little Stranger a Man Booker Prize finalist to read (listen to). Billed as a "ghost story", I kept waiting for the spook to show up, but it never did. While I understand that the author is trying to keep the existence of ghosts ambiguous in the narrative, it took her 528 pages (some 25 hours of listening) to do so. I felt quite cheated. But, author Sarah Waters writes well, keeping my attention to the bitter end for very little pay back. Kudos for successfully wasting my time.
In Caleb's Crossing, the story is told from the point of a view of a young girl living on Martha's Vineyard during the 1660's colonial era. She befriends a Wampanoag Indian youth, Caleb, who in real life, became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College in 1665. The story brings to life early American colonial history, the lives of the settlers, and the forced indoctrination and domination of women, and of the native Americans by the overzealous Christian settlers. I feel as if I learned more about American colonial history from this book than from any history classes I've taken. I thoroughly enjoyed the book but came away with the sad and hopeless feeling that as a country, we have really done irrevocable wrong to the Native Americans who lived here long ago but lost their culture and way of life by virtue of coming into contact with the European settlers.
Next, I picked The Little Stranger a Man Booker Prize finalist to read (listen to). Billed as a "ghost story", I kept waiting for the spook to show up, but it never did. While I understand that the author is trying to keep the existence of ghosts ambiguous in the narrative, it took her 528 pages (some 25 hours of listening) to do so. I felt quite cheated. But, author Sarah Waters writes well, keeping my attention to the bitter end for very little pay back. Kudos for successfully wasting my time.
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