("The Wooden Nickle", "A Very Long Engagement")

[fiefoe]

Am finding it difficult to find novels I can stick with, though Sebastien Japrisot's "A Very Long Engagement" would have been a trial under the best circumstances. Even the boredom of a transpacific flight couldn't get me through "Cold Mountain" - another justly acclaimed novel about the aftermath of war. Maybe their movie adaptations is the way to go, which allows the expediency of shielding one's eyes when it gets too bad.

(Good books one can't bring oneself to finish are a bit like bad break-ups. One holds a grudge and tends to harp on them.)
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"The Wooden Nickle" offers interesting comparison with another 'lobster novel', Elizabeth Gilbert's "Stern Men". It is almost Dicksonian in tone, an impressive yarn full of picturesque characters. William Carpenter's style is more photorealistic, with a level of technical details usually found in hardcore science fictions. ('He switches the PTO to neutral, then goes forward up on the high prow, pulls the heavy eye splice off the bitt and steps back to the wheel, backs off a bit so he won't catch the pennant, and in a moment he's clocking fifteen knots on the loran, stern down and throwing a rooster tail behind the prop with a nice wake forking off astern.')

The salty bits are fun - '...Like his old man used to quote out of the Bible, a man's not supposed to mix fish and flesh. The day Ellis Seavey took that Tarratine girl with the bikini top out to show her his trapline, Lucky shouted, "Going after crabs today?" and Ellis didn't speak to him for a month,' so it is the country music that turned me off? Dunno. ('On High Country 104 Wynonna's singing "Heaven Help My Heart," which reminds him to take it easy on the engine.';  'He turns the radio up at first for Deana Carter's "If This Is Love," then turns it off. It's hard to swallow the word love out here in the fog: cold sea wind, no sound, no color, like one of those dreams where the earth is all water like it was at the beginning and you're the only person alive.')