Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

The author of Wolf in White Van is back with another creeping, psychological novel.  Jeremy Heldt is a post-high school graduate working in the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa in the late 1990s. He knows his life is far from glamourous.  It’s just him and his dad since his mom passed away in a car accident six years ago.  He knows he should probably enroll in some classes at the local community college or at least look for a full-time job now that he’s out of school.   Things take an unusual turn when Stephanie Parsons returns a copy of a video and says “there’s something on this one.”  Jeremy forgets about it until the next day when another customer complains about a second tape being “taped over.”  After taking the second tape home to watch it, he decides it’s time to tell his boss, Sarah Jane about the strange tapes. She too takes one of the videos home and then forgets about it for weeks.  But once she watches it, she sees a familiar farm house that leads her to seek out the creator of the films. Stephanie and Jeremy begin their own investigations and the strange videos worm their way into each of their lives.

 John Darnielle claims that he is a man who loves loose ends.  This is true in that there are no nice neat answers in this book.  But the writing creates general feelings of unease and a drowning sense of memory to take the reader down paths of the past.  To a girl whose mother walked away when she five.  To a cultish church with vagrant followers.  To an old farmhouse where unsettling things were recorded and then expertly spliced into rental videos and then forgotten. Darnielle proves yet again that some of the creepiest stories aren’t really horrible at all.  They may only be vaguely menacing.  And that may be enough to make a book stick with you for a very long time. Check out Universal Harvester from the library today.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

The marriage of Lila Dahl and John Ames did not seem to be a match made in heaven, if heaven there be. The Reverend Ames, a minister with deep roots in Gilead, a small town in Iowa, was an elderly man who lived in the same house and preached in the same Congregationalist church that his father and grandfather had. Lila was a younger woman, a homeless vagrant laborer without religion, education, family, or even her own last name. However, when she stepped into Reverend Ames’ church during a service, seeking shelter from a rainstorm, she immediately caught his interest. Over the summer, they cultivated a relationship that eventually led to marriage and the birth of a child.  Lila had long been an independent woman and she did not easily accept anything the minister offered her, including security and, most particularly, his religion.

During the 1920’s, in the rural Midwest, a woman named Doll had snatched a very young Lila away from neglectful and possibly dangerous caretakers. They joined a small group of migrant workers, walking from farm to farm, seeking out a precarious existence by providing extra hands for the planting, weeding and harvesting that needed to be done. This life sustained them until the dust storms destroyed the farms, impoverished the farmers and eliminated any work for itinerant labor. But no matter how difficult their circumstances got, Doll always put Lila’s needs first, even ensuring that she received a small amount of education.

So, when in the early post-War years, an adult Lila wandered into Gilead and into Reverend Ames’ life, she resisted his theology or any theology at all. Quite a disadvantage for a friend, let alone a wife, of a small town minister. But Lila had her own ideas and looked at Christian teaching with a cool, analytical eye. Doll and her friends were uneducated in all matters except hard work. They were too busy surviving in a hard world to consider matters of religion or patriotism. Yet, they provided for and protected Lila for no other reason than their own human decency. Lila was not willing to abandon them or believe them to be in Hell for eternity because they were not baptized and did not know their prayers. They were “people no one would miss, who had done no special harm, who just lived and died as well as they could manage.”

John Ames was a patient and thoughtful man who did not insist that his wife adopt his religious beliefs. Lila was a thoughtful and introspective woman who eventually came to her own accommodation with Christian teaching. Their natures made their marriage possible.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson is a prequel to her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead although it can be read as a stand-alone book. (After reading this beautifully written book, some may be interested in reading [or rereading] Gilead. Definitely not action-packed, this is a book for readers interested in ideas and personalities.

Some Luck by Jame Smiley

Jane Smiley’s newest novel is the first in The Last Hundred Years trilogy.  The Pulitzer prize winning author intends to cover 100 years in the life of an Iowa farm family and the first novel, Some Luck, covers the years 1920-1953.  Smiley follows the Langdon family of Denby, Iowa through childbirth, death, the Great Depression and World War II in a unique fashion.  Not only does the author write from many of the different characters points of view, but each chapter itself represents one year. 

We begin with Walter, the 25 year-old father and owner of the farm.  His wife Rosanna is about to give birth to their first child, Frank, and he is ruminating on all of the things that farmers think about: which crops to plant this year, how many animals are there to take care of and can I really afford to farm all of this land? As the years move forward, Smiley introduces us to all of the Langdon children: Frank, Joe, Mary Elizabeth, Lillian, Henry and Claire and their unique personalities.  We see Walter struggle with changing technologies (horses vs. tractors) and Rosanna has her own challenges with loss and religion. 

Each of the Langdon children is different than the last, and we hear a lot from the point of view of Frank, the handsomest and, arguably, the most cunning Langdon child.  When the US gets involved in World War II, he joins the army and becomes a sniper while his sensitive younger brother Joe stays home on a II-A deferment and takes care of the family farm.  Lillian falls in love with a handsome stranger and Henry devours books as fast as he can get his hands on them.  The reader is quickly absorbed into the world that Smiley creates and is soon laughing and crying along with the family. 

Some Luck has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and is a profound family saga.