Novels this Weekend

I managed to read two small novels this weekend. I have not done that in a long time, and it felt good. Most of my reading is consumed by philosophy and teaching essays, and student’s essays.

The first novel I had has been sitting on my shelf for a very long time: Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs. I have read a few books by McEwan: Atonement, Amsterdam, and Saturday. All of them were excellent. Black Dogs did not disappoint. It is narrated by a man who, at the beginning of his life, found himself addicted to becoming friends with his friends’ parents, because his own parents had died when he was 8. Also, he finds himself caught between the one side of believing too much, or not enough. The book is mostly set when he is in his forties, after he had finally met a woman whom he married in his thirties. The focus of the story, however, is not about him or his wife, but about his wife’s parents, Bernard and June. June believes too much, Bernard doesn’t believe enough. The narrator (Jeremy?) is exploring the lives of his parents-in-law, who had split a very long time ago but were nevertheless addicted to the memory of one another. Throughout the entire story, an episode of their youth is hinted at: June’s encounter with a pair of black dogs, whom June sees as the embodiment of evil or a manifestation of the devil (sort of). Bernard doesn’t understand what she sees, and the split begins from there.

The other book I read was Paul Harding’s Tinkers. Harding is a brand new novelist, but his book managed to pickup a Pulitzer Prize nonetheless. Tinkers focuses on a retired clock-repairman who is about to die, surrounded by his wife, children and grand-children, and the man’s father, who was an Appalachian traveling salesman.  The book moves back and forth between the two lives, and it is very well written.

I recommend both if you feel the urge for a good, well-written, thought-provoking story that is nonetheless not too heavy.