Queen Sugar/Natalie Baszile: Reflections

I meet this beautiful woman named Natalie Baszile. She's just published her first book—Queen Sugar—with Pamela Dorman of Viking. Its cover is almost as pretty as she is. I buy into Natalie's allure (now that was easy) and I happily buy her book (simple as snap).

Then, in bits and pieces (because that's my life right there, all bits and pieces), I read this book about a widow named Charley Bordelon and her daughter named Micah, who leave California for Louisiana to take on a late father's gift—eight hundred acres of sugarcane.

Eight hundred acres of sugarcane. No how-to book. No extra funds. Hardly any working machines. And nobody but Charley and Micah and some Louisiana family to turn to when the going gets tough.

The going will get tough.

Well-researched, lovingly imagined, Queen Sugar is a sweep-you-in story. Charley is a woman we understand, but also a woman we admire—for taking the unknown on, for being honest with herself, for staring out across an endless field and daring to believe not just in the land but (eventually) in herself. Baszile is a seamless storyteller. She takes her readers not just to the land, but into its depths. Her earth is not just topography, but taste:

Charley raised the dirt to her mouth again. She sniffed: wood smoke, grass, damp like a sidewalk after it rained. She tasted: grit, fine as ground glass, chocolate, and what? Maybe ash? She closed her eyes as the soil dissolved over her tongue, and slowly, slowly, almost like a good wine, the soil began to tell its story. She tasted the muck, and the peat, and the years of composted leaves, the branches and vines that had been recently plowed under, and the faint sweetness the cane left behind. She swallowed: a moldy aftertaste she knew would stay on her tongue for the rest of the afternoon.

Lovely, right? But look, too, at Baszile's ability to write of water, towboats, a wheelhouse. I respect the specificity here.

Amazing how quickly the barge moved. It was closer now. The engine rumble sent larger ripples, and across the water, Ralph Angel could see the captain high up in the towboat's wheelhouse, his small white face like a speck of white sugar behind the big glass window. As it approached, the barge sucked water into its enormous hull so that the current up where Ralph Angel sat seemed to flow in reverse and the water level actually dropped. Water hyacinths and lilies clumped together in the backwards flow and even up ahead, in the barge slip, the water seemed to be draining away. 

What's hard about writing? Everything. What takes time? Getting the details and every single sentence right. Though Queen Sugar is a debut novel, it is also a most-self-assured novel. The work of a writer who knows precisely what she's doing.

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The Impossible Knife of Memory/Laurie Halse Anderson: Reflections

I respect young adult authors who:

* take a stand
* remain engaged
* recognize the sublime intelligence of teens
* believe that stories written for younger readers have a responsibility to do more than simply pass the time
* understand that there are few things more powerful than books that intelligently address the real stuff that goes down in private corners of the world

All of which is to say that I respect Laurie Halse Anderson. She is versatile—writing historical novels and contemporary novels, sequels and stand-alone tales. She is, as well, there for her legions of readers—real, centered, and ever-vigilant. And she doesn't, from what I can tell, believe in easy. Her tales are many-layered, never squeamish, planfully raw.

The Impossible Knife of Memory, due out from Viking in January,  was sent to me by dear Jessica Shoffel, with whom I had worked on Small Damages. Jess's enthusiasm for this novel is tremendous, and I understand why, for at its heart lie concerns about post-traumatic stress disorder, child responsibilities for unwell parents, the impact of war on families, the impact of repressed memories, and the impact of kind, tall, skinny boys who actually do want to be what and whom they believe good men should be, which is to say protective, patient, and often selfless.

Hayley Kincain is spending her senior year in one run-down house (as opposed to the truck her dad has been driving around), in high school (as opposed to the independent study she's been used to), and in the company of a handful of newish friends (as opposed to essentially alone). It's a lot of new to deal with, and there's a backdrop of trouble—her dad's psychological trauma following a few turns of war duty, her missing mom, her seemingly unreliable almost step-mother, and her own eruptive memories of childhood traumas and losses. Hayley's unhappiness is palpable. It is relieved, in places, by this new boy named Finn. It returns as the world encroaches and threatens. It forces Hayley to finally look deep within herself.

Despite the dark material, there's humor here—the kind of sly, sarcastic rat-a-tat that goes on between bright kids in trying circumstances. Finn is about as perfect as a young man can be, and as Hayley warms to him she finds the brightest places within herself—puts to best use her intelligence and heart. The snapshots of war as presented through the father's italicized memories are shocking and also shockingly beautifully wrought. There, we say as we read, is what it must be like to go to war, to return from war, to find war inside one's dreams.

The Impossible Knife of Memory is searing, in its way. It is important, in Laurie Halse Anderson's inimitable way.

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