The Topeka School takes on, at a minimum, three very important and interesting topics, but none of which I would have started off assuming would draw me into a novel - language's loss of meaning in the face of its recent debasement in its public form, socio-economically privileged white masculinity (dealt with in a nuanced and often sympathetic way), and the challenges of raising children (especially boys) well amidst that.
In fact, it's remarkably successful in how it brings them all together, also weaving in a meaningful account of the operation of history at both a personal (familial) and social level, with its multiple generations of damaged individuals, all themselves shaped by macro forces of war, economics and the unconscious, and events and perspectives knitted together out of order.
I haven't landed on how I feel about the Darren Eberheart thread; I guess it illustrates the violence enacted by those same systems on those at the margins, while also rendering them especially susceptible to magical thinking and likely to become enmeshed in a cycle of violence themselves. It also develops real tension by its end, so that the closing pages which follow Adam and his family - with Natalia, after all - have genuine stakes. A very impressive novel.
Previously: Leaving the Atocha Station, which has stayed with me - including literally, in surviving the severe culling I've done over the last few years - and not just for its memorable first scene in the art gallery.
In fact, it's remarkably successful in how it brings them all together, also weaving in a meaningful account of the operation of history at both a personal (familial) and social level, with its multiple generations of damaged individuals, all themselves shaped by macro forces of war, economics and the unconscious, and events and perspectives knitted together out of order.
I haven't landed on how I feel about the Darren Eberheart thread; I guess it illustrates the violence enacted by those same systems on those at the margins, while also rendering them especially susceptible to magical thinking and likely to become enmeshed in a cycle of violence themselves. It also develops real tension by its end, so that the closing pages which follow Adam and his family - with Natalia, after all - have genuine stakes. A very impressive novel.
Previously: Leaving the Atocha Station, which has stayed with me - including literally, in surviving the severe culling I've done over the last few years - and not just for its memorable first scene in the art gallery.
