Review: The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Candlewick Press, 2009

Peter Augustus Duchene, a boy orphaned by war and the dangers of childbirth, does not expect to find a fortune-teller’s tent in the marketplace.  No one (except the fortune teller) expects an elephant to come through the roof of the opera house.  The characters of this story have grown past expectation, and in some cases past hope.  When the tent, and then the elephant appear, an impossible flicker of hope is ignited within Peter.  “Peter had a terrible feeling that the whole of his life had been nothing but standing and knocking, asking to be let into someplace that he was not even certain existed.”  He knocks, and the response touches an unlikely cast of characters he meets along his way. 

An ailing old soldier ashamed by a choice.  A frustrated magician ambitious to do something great.  A noblewoman unable to forgive.  An open-minded police-officer willing to hope.  A woman with a hearty stew and a loving heart.  A sculptor with a broken back and a broken humor.  A town wrapped in a bleak winter.  All stuck in a series of moments.  

Peter lives in a stark world, but DiCamillo renders it gently, and every word feels chosen with care.  As with  novels such as The Tale of Despereaux, Tiger Rising, and Because of Winn-Dixie, DiCamillo captures the essential and communicates it simply without being simplistic or condescending.  Yoko Tanaka’s drawings accentuate this gentle simplicity, adding their own touch of magic to the story.  

I had planned to include a discussion of this book with the recent post on Julia Child and Laura Esquivel because of a lovely scene in which Gloria, Peter’s neighbor and Leo’s wife, feeds Peter some stew.  Tanaka said in an interview about the book, “Peter’s frozen mind is melted by his conversation with Leo and Gloria—and by Gloria’s stew.”  The book left me feeling so warm and hopeful though, that I knew I had to give it more attention.  

Read The Magician’s Elephant.  Read it to someone else.  And encourage others to read it.

My favorite lines:

Leo, the police officer, asks, “What if?  Why not?  Could it be?”

“…an elephant was a ridiculous answer to any question—but a particularly ridiculous answer to a question posed by the human heart.”

“the truth is forever changing”

“‘Magic is always impossible,’ said the magician.  ‘It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between.  That is why it is magic.’”

Something Gifty

A crafty acquaintance recently got married.  We wanted to give her something thoughtful and yet affordable.  I hoped to think of something homemade to tuck in.  We thought about a gift-basket of some sort.  Then we had a brain wave. 

We took a new terra cotta pot, and tucked in a square table-cloth (I whipped it up with some canvassy fabric in a country print I thought would appeal to Bride).  Partner made two loaves of French bread, and we found some fancy salt, a funky bottle of olive oil, and a pot of jam.  We tucked in a card with a note about wishing them a life full of happiness and good flavor.  We had hoped to include a packet of seeds or a potted herb or something for some symbolism about growth, but our seasonal timing is off there.  We liked the idea of a gift for now (the bread, cloth, some condiments) and later (the pot, plant, cloth, some of the condiments).  It sort of reminded me of that scene from It’s a Wonderful Life where the Baileys give the families bread, salt, and wine when they move into their new homes.  

Flower pot, homemade French bread, table cloth, and sundry condiments recently composed and wedding-giftedBride and Groom loved this gift.  It is one we’ll remember next time someone we know gets married.  It can be dressed up or down with a different cloth or pot (though there is something very comforting about that big terra cotta pot), could include a bottle of wine or champagne and glasses, the aforementioned growing thing, or other items to suit the personalities of the recipients.  We could decorate the pot.  It could include homemade food and objects or nice store-bought items.  It strikes me as a good gift for a couple that already has an established household and isn’t in need of more practical objects.    

Book Randomness: Generosity, An Enhancement by Richard Powers

Generosity: An Enhancement

by Richard Powers

Ferrar, Straus and Giroux

(ARC from Twitter giveaway @FSG_Books) 

Nobody wants to write a dumb review of a smart book.  I finished reading this book several weeks ago, and have been pondering it off and on between other novels, trying to figure out how to talk about it.  To be sure, I really liked it.  It is a richly layered story, dripping with allusion, reaching out through science, literature, philosophy, and pop culture.  It is a book begging to be talked over with clever friends or peers or colleagues, and I have no doubt that it will be.  

Unfortunately, I’ve had neither the time nor the focus to put my thoughts together into a coherent communication about this book.  What follows are some of the ideas that wandered through my brain as I read and then pondered the book (as collected in margins and a notebook).  All of this will likely make more sense after you’ve read the book, which will be released on September 29.  Let me know what you think after you’ve read it.  

I’ve grouped Spoilery comments after some space at the end, for those who’d prefer to avoid hints at the ending. 

I wrote all of these things before I found Oprah’s Reading Questions for the book, but if you read those, you’ll see some overlap.

As an aside, I came across an article about genetic enhancement last week that points to the relevance of the discussion about what we can and should do to ourselves in this genetic age.  

Begin pondering:

My first try at a review

I’m stuck on the word ‘enhancement.’  This book isn’t tagged as a ‘novel’ or ‘allegory,’ though it could certainly bear either of those tags.  No, it is ‘An Enhancement’ right there on the cover.  National Book Award Winner Richard Powers builds a rich, realistic, and complicated world in which enhancements or the search for them pop out around every corner.   Aside from the sexually suggestive use of the term, the implication here is to make something appear bigger or better, or perhaps to make it more attractive.  Revision for improvement by augmenting or trussing.  Here Powers ponders the evolutionary necessity for misery, giving us a story in which he explores an outlier for happiness, a woman who experiences the world with extreme joy and generosity and who is unaffected by even minor malaise.  This Miss Generosity is juxtaposed to a writer who’s own struggle with depression has made him unable to write.  

Devolving into lists

Definitions

—What is Creative Nonfiction?

—Unlike other novels that bear the stamp of “Novel” on the cover, this one is branded “An enhancement.”  What’s the difference?  

 Themes  

—The inside and the outside, the public and the private, the popular and the academic, the phenotype vs. the genotype.

—Fiction is redemptive.  In fiction we can fantasize and revise and enhance.  This is iterated in the genomics of the novel, wherein DNA can be revised.  If the standard story tropes can be fiddled with and recombined, so can the DNA.  Evolution forgets the unviable.

—According to one character in the book, the secret of psychological survival is forgetting but this is a book of remembrance and revision.  

—Russell is a writer frozen by the destruction he has wrought with his pen.

—Human beings? Americans? can’t accept things for what they are.  We must understand what they are and how they work, to dissect and thereby destroy.  

 Complications and Observations

—Provocative, yes; playful, no.

—People self-medicate in many ways: drugs, sex, video games, food.

—We are constantly seeking drugs to heal our misery, but how viable is a life without misery? And what type of life would that be?

—Thassa is like The Giving Tree.  She is referenced in so many different ways, nicknames, first name, last name, full name, epithet. 

—Thassa or Candace are revisions of Grace, givers instead of takers.

—Allegory: Miss Generosity/Happiness (Thassa), Teacherman/Writer (Russell), Counselor/Psychology (Candace), Genetics (Kurton—Curtain?), Popular Media (Oona), Science Media (Tanya), Public, etc. 

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SPOILER comments:

—Thassa tries to kill herself with the drugs that many people need in order to live.

—From the outset, the narrator seems to be conjuring the characters, but at the end it comes across as a revised remembrance. 

—Russell is able to write again, this time not destroying his subject with the words, but rather trying to restore her after she has been otherwise destroyed.  

—Russell struggles with his own misery, but also unwilling to let it go and unable to trust someone without misery.

—Or… Spock tries to rape Thassa, but the narrator does rape her, and only then can Russell accept and love her, when she is broken like he is. 

Sometimes Food Feeds More Than Your Stomach

“…there is no such thing as wasted time in the kitchen—rather that is where we are able to recover lost time.”  —Laura Esquivel

“Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.” —Julia Child

I love food and I love to cook, especially when I have the time to really ponder and concentrate on each slice, each stir, each taste and smell.  I have not yet seen Julie and Julia, but I happened to see the movie trailer a few weeks ago, just before I headed to the library.  Inspired, perhaps, by the preview, I came home with these three books.  

Between Two Fires: Intimate Writings on Life, Love, Food, and Flavor by Laura Esquivel

Esquivel’s little book reflects some of the values and conflict recognizable from Like Water for Chocolate.  This small volume collects a handful of speeches and book prefaces written by Esquivel at different times and purposes that nevertheless cohere around themes of the kitchen and of food and love.  Feminism and cultural identity figure prominently.  She even throws in a few recipes written for Vogue Mexico.  I read it quickly but the flavors of the book stayed with me, gently prodding my own internal conflict between the love of my ‘woman’s work’ and the potential oppressiveness of that work.  Esquivel’s tidbits evoke a cozy kitchen where anything can happen, good or bad, and yet we always feel at home.  

Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking by Julia Child

Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, a cookbook, is the odd-book-out here.  I admit to not spending much time over this book.  I browsed through the recipes, hoping something would jump out at me, begging to be made.  As I turned each page, I realized that I could make many of the dishes without a recipe.  In that way it was affirming of my knowledge in the kitchen, but also disappointing because I wanted something new and inspiring.  It felt like Mastering the Art-Lite.  I do love that even in providing the description of a dish or a suggestion on technique, Julia Child’s particular idiom shines through.  So though I did not cook anything from the little book, I did feel good about the art of cooking and of savoring every bite.  

My Life in France by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’Homme

Created with her nephew, Alex Prud’Homme, Julia Child died before this book was finished.  My Life in France represents Julia Child’s final reflections on how she became an icon without the sense that she herself changed along the way.  This book begins the day Julia and Paul Child, newlyweds, move to France for a diplomatic assignment, and ends when Julia closes up their seasonal house in Provence many years later, when Paul is unable to travel there anymore.  The Childs did not live continuously in France during that entire period, but their life in the United States and elsewhere is glossed over in favor of providing detail about the settings, friendships, and experiences of France.  Child seems to want to communicate to us just exactly why and how she loved France in spite of attitudes toward the French in America at the time.  Her own father provides the (oft-painful) counterpoint to her love of France at many turns.  This book tells part of the story of the Paul and Julia’s life together, the story of how Julia came to cooking, and the story of how Mastering the Art of French Cooking was created.  Child is neither boastful nor self-deprecating, and readily points out differences in the way she was viewed in the United States and elsewhere as she experienced it.  

Julia Child changed the way Americans viewed the kitchen and paved the way for many television chefs to come.  She had many opportunities and made the best of each one while they lasted, then let them go when they were done.  She is often blunt in her assessments of people and situations, but the book is without bitterness or complaint, and communicates a sense of strident pragmatism characteristic of Child.  

2 x 2 x 3 x 3

Yep, I did it.  I went and had a birthday yesterday.  Apparently I’m six-years-old.  Or maybe that’s six squared?Don’t let the melty-looking cake fool you.  It was the best mocha-chocolate cake ever.  

Eglentyne X36 (sporting a brand-new Cibola High School t-shirt) and Sonar X9 (worried that the cake is going to slide off the table)