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October 16, 2020

George Ernsberger - Columnist
Posted 10/15/20

JACK by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The column has been talking about “straight” fiction, deeply felt, carefully characterized novels. Marilynne Robinson is that and then …

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October 16, 2020

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JACK by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The column has been talking about “straight” fiction, deeply felt, carefully characterized novels. Marilynne Robinson is that and then some, that readable, but deeper still. Of course she, like you, doesn't need to hear that from me, so: Any reader here who hasn't read GILEAD and HOME and LIFE over the past 36 years should go get GILEAD at once. This is the fourth of that series, and just her fifth novel. She also writes brilliant literary essays and the like; this is one of the wisest and plain smartest of American humans. Her novels give us much of America, from there in Iowa; here, a troubled, vivid minor character in GILEAD (you'll remember him, certainly) returns to town in middle age, and Gilead remains Gilead and also becomes even more American.

SLEEP DONATION by Karen Russell (Vintage). This person, one of the few American writers who can be thought of as on the same level of importance as Robinson, is so young she could actually be Marilynne Robinson's daughter. This startlingly original novella from a couple of years ago is so different from anything you'd see from her great peer that the comparison must strike us as absurd. But then, it's also just that unlike a lot of other Karen Russell, except for the calm fearlessness of her originality—that's on her every page, from her first novel, the powerful and sweet SWAMPLANDIA of 2011 (she wasn't even 30!), to now. This is, well, deeply moving science fiction. So, start with her here or anywhere else; she'll never merely surprise you, but so far, she's never failed at that.

LON CHANEY SPEAKS by Pat Dorian (Pantheon). A charming “graphic biographical novel,” let's call it, of the great star of silent cinema. Graphic in the telling, and part of an impressive series of such books from this house—comic book style, but of course more sophisticated in content, design, and layout. But a novel, rather than pure biography, because of the limited scope of what's known of that colorful and sometimes troubled life. Beautifully humanizes a brilliant man who is known to us chiefly in the grotesque makeup he's hidden by in old film posters and stills.

BLACK SPARTACUS: THE EPIC LIFE OF TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE by Sudhir Hazareesingh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Toussaint was a key figure in the history of our continent and nation—immortal, even though not all that famous. A brilliant general and national leader whose driving France from Haiti and this hemisphere had the side effect of prompting, and enabling, our acquisition of that enormous swath of America, the Louisiana Purchase. This overdue, definitive but free-flowing biography makes all of that not just clear but dramatic.

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