1954 Photographer unknown
In 1954, my soon-to-be-married grandparents went out in search of an apartment, their first home together, and were daunted by the prohibitive twenty-one dollar a month going rate. The landlord, sympathetic to their plight, suggested instead a few rooms in the upstairs of his own home, and they accepted. A Murphy bed was quickly built so they could have a living room (we had to have a living room, my grandmother said, which tells you something of immigrant priorities – you don’t lounge around with your coffee in bed !) and therein they installed a tiny chesterfield, two chairs and a brand new coffee table. It all seemed an auspicious start until early October when their little abode shook and rain came pouring in through the rafters, dousing their precious few belongings. My grandfather, not a mild-mannered guy, went straight downstairs to see what kind of a second rate apartment he’d just signed onto. The poor landlord was beside himself, earnestly promising “we’ve never seen anything like this!” And the man was no liar. Adjusting for inflation, Hurricane Hazel caused over 1.2 billion dollars in damage in Canada, and billions more in the U.S and Caribbean. My grandparents, undaunted, helped clean up the wreckage and went on to experience sixty years of shelter and security together. This little anecdote came to mind this week as I savoured Barbara Kingsolver’s newest novel, “Unsheltered”, and reflected on what it means to seek safety and shelter in troubled times.
Read Goodreads’ excellent Blurb about the novel “Unsheltered” here
The novel begins with the protagonist Willa Knox discovering that the house she’s pinned her hopes for the future on is in shambles. As the story unfolds, the reader discovers it’s not just the home’s infrastructure that is collapsing, but a whole lot more. If this all sounds like too much doom and gloom for January (already gloomy), don’t despair. I’m a big fan of Kingsolver’s novels but I confess that when I started “The Poisonwood Bible” many years ago, I set it aside because I had too much foreboding it was all going to crash and burn. This book lays out what the characters are up against, and it all seems hopeless, except that I have a feeling the author feels a closer kinship to these characters living through a very modern crisis. In any case, I found them extremely lovable. I read an interview with Barbara Kingsolver where she discusses the kinds of characters she likes to write.
“I always enjoy the villains, like Nick [the elderly father-in-law]. The greatest challenge, I think, for the novelist is that we have to love every one of our characters, even those who behave horribly, because we have to understand them. Otherwise, they won’t be convincing. Even the worst bully believes he’s a good guy. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I’m going to be a bad guy today.” Well, maybe they do, but they mean it in a positive way, thinking, “I’m going to do this because the world needs this.”
Part of the problem in our modern polarized moment, when we’re finding it really difficult to converge across political and geographic divides, is that we’re so eager to reduce our enemies into cardboard stereotypes. And I’m really, really familiar with that because I live in Appalachia—my heritage, family, and culture are from here. Whenever I’ve left this region, I’ve encountered people who look at Appalachia and see cardboard stereotypes. So I’ve lived my whole life with an incentive to flesh out characters who people might see as not necessarily the enemy, but lesser than.
”
As a writer trying to write better, more believable characters, and as someone active in my church community following a humble vocation that feels like not much more than “trying to get along with others”, this advice was prescient: Love Your Characters. Full Stop. Barbara Kingsolver goes on in the interview to answer the question "How do people behave in moments of cultural crisis?"
“One of the things you can count on is that people will be very afraid, and they will cleave to leaders who reassure them, even if those leaders behave like tyrannical bullies. When we’re afraid, we look for protection. One of the things this book is about is how desperately we hold on to our old world views, even when they no longer serve us, and how we overlook a lot of things to find reassurance.”
So… who should read this book?
1.) Lovers of Barbara Kingsolvers’ other books. (Obviously! And even if you’re like me and you gave up on Poisonwood… try her again! I’m so glad I did.)
2.) Lovers of language and poetry. The words and the structure of the novel alone are a work of art.
3.) Lovers of politics who are exhausted with the state of the world and want to read a story and feel something other than hopelessness and despair.
4.) Lovers of family harmony. If you are one of the many peacemakers out there who held their tongue over the holidays because they didn’t have anything nice to say about religion, politics, climate change, capitalism and perhaps Armageddon, I salute you. This book is your reward.
5.) Lovers of January who want to curl up with something better than their Twitter/ Instagram feed/ next Netflix binge. Turn the page on social media and take a deep dive. I promise it will be worth it.
Happy New Year friends. Keep reading, writing and loving all the characters you meet every day.
Here’s a snippet from a scene I adored. The mother, Willa, wakes up one morning, to a disheveled young girl on her doorstep, who she quickly surmises is one of her husband’s students. Her daughter, Tig, who she’s been at odds with, joins the conversation with the intruder who insists she is just needs a ride to school. (Because who doesn’t carpool with their professor?)
Tjaltje Dykstra (nee Hilverda) April 1931-December 2018 Thanks for the stories, Gramma. I love you.