The Way We Live Now - Wally Lamb's THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED

I'm not sure where I came up with the idea to take a break from a 700+ page book (THE PASSAGE) by taking up another 700+ page book (THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVE) but that's what's happened. One of my book clubs chose this title; it had been on my list since it was published in 2008 but that list is as long as the A's in a phone book.

Making my way through THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED (which begins with the Columbine school shootings, moves through 9/11 and the Iraq war, flashes back to the Civil War and includes a couple of characters who survived Katrina), I began to think about trends in contemporary fiction. I've always been curious about what we'll remember in fifty years about the novels written in this first decade of the 21st century. Looking back, the Lost Generation (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck among others), writing in the first third of the 20th century, took on the decline of optimism in America and Europe following a terrible war and struggling through a Great Depression. Later, in the 1950's, Cheever, Updike, Yates and even Roth wrote about the spiritual dangers of the post-WWII life; many of these novels took place in America's suburbs and painted a disheartening picture of middle-class conventions. And in the 1990's, Oprah's influence made stars of authors exploring the nature of dysfunctional families and declaring that families are not made of love, not blood.

What's the current trend? I believe it's survival, resilience, . In a time of chaos -- political, environmental, social or otherwise — we all question how we'll make it through to the other side. I think of LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN (my favorite novel published in 2009), this year's THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE, Jonathan Safran Foer's magical EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, and I recognize the same question being asked over and over. And now, with Wally Lamb's THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED, we revisit the issue. Caelum Quirk suffers from "emotional amnesia," the result of a difficult childhood, two failed marriages and a current wife suffering from PTSD brought on by the Columbine tragedy (a school nurse, Maureen Quirk, survived by hiding in a cabinet). Cae's life is falling apart and he finds refuge in alcohol, self-pity and fits of anger. But when he begins to piece together the secrets of his family (reaching back to the 1850's), Cae discovers his forebears struggled with the same difficult issues (Columbine = Civil War, etc.). By recognizing the resiliency of those who came before, accepting and dealing with his own painful emotions, reaching out to those around him, and hanging on to faith and hope, Cae manages to find peace, love and strength.

And that's how we get through.

When Soap Opera Meets History - Kathleen Grissom's THE KITCHEN HOUSE

As one of the characters in Kathleen Grissom's THE KITCHEN HOUSE says, "What the color is, who the daddy be, who the mama is don't mean nothing'. We a family, carin' for each other. Family make us strong in time of trouble. We all stick together, help each other out. That the real meanin' of family."The dynamics of family has been the subject of many a novel since....well, since the birth of the novel. In the 1990's, Oprah made the dysfunctional family novel a bestselling genre. In THE KITCHEN HOUSE, a slavery narrative set at the turn of the 19th century, the author provides a twist on the theme by focusing of the kitchen house, the place in which meals were made for the plantation owner and his family. The slaves who worked the kitchen house sat above the field slaves in the hierarchy of the plantation but below the favored status of the house slaves. Lavinia, an Irish girl orphaned on a voyage to America, becomes an indentured servant for the Pyke and is put up in the kitchen house. She comes of age feeling a part of the family of the slaves who work catering to the appetites of the white family who live in the big house.  slew of events—murder, betrayal, illegitimate births, rape, torture, hidden freedom papers—occur in the novel but the heart of the story is the choice Lavinia makes regarding family. At times, soap opera takes ahold of the story; plot flies by the reader, creating a superficial narrative. But, thankfully, the author takes time to explore the issues of identity, freedom and resiliency. When Mama Mae, the matriarch of the slave family, says to Lavina near the end of the novel, "Sometimes we got to live it out before we learn," I knew this book was more than just a potboiler.