Too Hot for Wesker
Wesker lately has a very specific routine that she follows whenever she gets outside. She takes her time, walking slowly down the stone path that leads to the back gate. Then she demands to be let through the back gate and into the front yard so that she can finally be let in through the front door. Sometimes she takes a peek under some pallets we’re using to store soil in order to see if maybe she can glimpse a bunny. Wesker likes looking at the wildlife, but she clearly has no interest in pursuing any of it.
However with the heat wave this week, she has truncated her routine to a straight jogging walk through the gate before going back inside. I can’t blame her. I’ve been trying to spend as much time in the air conditioning as possible and timing any outdoor exercise very carefully.
Hot Climates
I decided that a heat wave warranted a book set in a hot climate so I decided to review Nancy Lemann’s Lives of the Saints in which most of the action takes place in 1980s New Orleans. Lemann’s descriptions of the tropical climate, vegetation, and the relaxed pace of Louisiana high society are lush and palpable without being wordy. In fact, Lemann uses repetition of words and phrases in a unique way that I have never seen be effective before. Instead of being overwhelming, instead it emphasizes concepts and events, linking them back to overall themes.
If you think of the themes of a novel like a complex spiderweb, most of the time an overzealous use of repetition is akin to the author shoving the reader into the centre of it. A sticky, annoying mess, and unwieldy to put it kindly. Here, Lemann has managed to show the reader that same web touched with dew, so that all of the art of the design is highlighted beautifully.
Lost and Wandering Youth
The narrator of the novel, Louise Brown, is a young woman that has come to one of life’s great turning points. What is she going to make of her youth and where is she going? While trying to figure this out she falls in with Claude Collier and his family whom she’s been close to since childhood. Claude Collier is a rascal and an occasional scoundrel and is just as lost as Brown. But somehow, he has a softer place to fall and a constant stream of vistas to mysteriously disappear into.
I will give Lemann credit for making the narrator a young woman instead of the quite typical lost young man. However, the character of Collier overshadows Brown as the narrative goes on. That’s part of the point but is admittedly a bit disappointing from a feminist perspective.
Uncertain Endings
Another thing that Lemann does well? The uncertain ending. We aren’t treated to any answers here. We don’t know for sure what happens to Louise Brown or if she ever disentangles herself from the Colliers, who similarly disappear into New Orleans’ social scenery and dissipate along with their fortunes. Even Claude has a hazy exit. But unlike in other novels, I was not left craving more or feeling like it had been taken from me. Instead, there is the exquisite and maudlin feeling of this being the only way that things could have ended and the only conclusion that could ever be drawn.
More Baby Bunnies
We have now noticed an unprecedented third batch of baby bunnies in our backyard, each small rabbit the size of a fluffy handful. My lovely spouse is so excited to watch them eat the clover and hop around the porch steps. They’re so cute. Much cuter than the groundhog that is newly arrived and is dangerously eyeing up our tomato plants.
