UNFAMILIAR FISHES

Sarah Vowell’s latest explores the history of Hawaii, about which I knew absolutely nothing (I’ve never even been there), so I can attest that it is definitely informative, at least for the newbie. It’s also, of course, entertaining—tongue-in-cheek but affectionate, funny but often poignant. It doesn’t have quite the offbeat passion and sharp focus of good old Assassination Vacation (a book I am apparently invoking often these days), but it’s less uneven and rambly than her previous effort, The Wordy Shipmates (which, despite some good wisecracks and a sound premise, I didn’t end up loving)—although in a lot of ways, it’s a natural extension of that book’s insights into American Christianity and imperialism. I think Vowell has pretty much guaranteed at this point that whatever she writes about, I will read.

MISS HARGREAVES

In this 1940 novel by Frank Baker (another of the awesome Bloomsbury Group reprints), after a young man invents an eccentric octogenarian friend named Miss Hargreaves as a joke, his world is turned upside down when she turns up on his doorstep, exactly as he described her. I’m a great fan of books where imagination becomes reality (Pamela Dean’s Secret Country trilogy, for instance), so this concept was right up my alley, and for the most part I loved the story, which is a nice blend of silly comedy-of-manners and darker musings on the godlike creator’s power over and responsibility toward his creation.

My only quibble is that I wanted more Miss Hargreaves! Norman finds her so mortifying that he spends a lot of time being quite rude to her and trying to change her or get rid of her entirely, even though he admits that deep down he likes her, and that frustrated me at times, because I thought she was pretty awesome. I found myself wishing Norman would just relax and enjoy himself—probably unfair, I know, because that’s not what the book is about, but it was just one of those cases where the protagonist’s awkward handling of the situation seemed to cause more trouble and embarrassment than the situation itself. I felt more sympathy for Miss Hargreaves than for Norman most of the time, which amplified the more tragic aspects of the plot and made it feel a bit less like pure madcap fun than some of the other books I’ve read in this genre. Still, it’s definitely a unique book, and highly recommended for those who like their charming WWII-era British fiction tinged with the surreal.

THE WILDER LIFE

This book is like Assassination Vacation, but with Laura Ingalls Wilder instead of dead presidents. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a compliment; Assassination Vacation is one of my favorite nonfiction books. The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie achieves a similar balance of nerdy personal obsession, entertaining travelogue, snarky commentary, and hard historical fact. I was suspicious when I first heard about it; it so easily might have been one of those trendy I-did-one-crazy-activity-for-a-year-and-then-got-a-book-deal gimmicks, or a shallow, remedial “Oh, hey, did you know you can visit the actual Little House sites?” play-by-play, the thought of which made me bristle—I feel a fairly strong sense of ownership toward Little House, having grown up in Ingalls country, read the books over and over as a kid, and visited both Pepin (Big Woods) and Walnut Grove (Plum Creek) multiple times. I even refused to watch the TV show when I was little because it was too unfaithful to the books (actually, I still refuse to watch it, although I have met Dean Butler). But The Wilder Life is written by Wendy McClure, author of the stellar bygone blog Pound and a famously hilarious online feature, Weight Watchers Recipe Cards circa 1974 (later published as a book, The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan, which I own), as well as a memoir called I’m Not the New Me, which I have read but rather embarrassingly don’t remember anything about. McClure won me over to The Wilder Life after revealing herself as the author of the HalfPintIngalls Twitter feed, which I had been enjoying for the past several years for its spot-on blend of clever humor and encyclopedic knowledge of Little House minutiae; e.g.:

Wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, mend on Wednesday, churn on Thursday, ROCK ON FRIDAY.

Why don't wise old Indians ever come to town to tell us we're going to have an FUN AWESOME winter?

You can always tell it'll be a long winter from the way the muskrats build their houses. And from their tiny hats and scarves.

McClure brings the same wit to The Wilder Life, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed it. Having read all the books and a LIW biography (Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder) I’d thought it would mostly be old hat, but either I didn’t retain very much information from the bio or McClure had some new insights to share, because I learned some stuff as well as being amused and, in parts, moved by McClure’s exploration of her obsession with the blurred line between the historical reality, the fictionalized book versions, and the pop-culture TV version: What exactly is it that we’re responding to when we love these books so deeply and yearn to be absorbed in that world—a world that is long gone and, in some ways, never existed? McClure delves more deeply into her emotional journey than Vowell does in Assassination Vacation, but both perfectly capture that wonderful feeling of being so enthusiastic about something that you can adore it and—well, not make fun of it, but make informed in-jokes about it—and the same time. I highly recommend this book to Little House fans, but it’s also got enough going for it to interest newbies as well. Here’s a sample (a passage I heartily nodded along with, given my feelings about the TV show):

More than once, a friend or acquaintance has gushed, “you mean you’re a Little House fan, too?” only to discover that we have two very different sets of memories. One of us is thinking of the time Laura taught a calf to drink from a bucket. The other is thinking about the Very Special Episode when some kid named Albert got hooked on morphine. The ensuing conversation often ends awkwardly, with one of us a bit disappointed that the real Laura Ingalls did not have an opiate-crazed adopted brother and the other feeling, well, just depressed.