The Quickening -- Michelle Hoover.

See?  Told you.  Two posts in a row about books I have read.  Again, this is more for me than you, dear readers, but if you want to come along for the ride I figure why not?  

And yes, readership is hovering around 12 per piece on a book.  But you know who else had 12 followers?  Jesus.  I am not trying to invite comparisons, I'm not about to turn water into wine (though what a trick that would be!).  I'm just saying maybe having 12 readers isn't so bad.  

So anyway....The Quickening.  This is a book by Michelle Hoover that is based sort of on her own great grandmother's life.  It features two women and their families trying to eek out a living somewhere in the midwest prior to and during the Great Depression, Enidinia and Mary.  Enidinia and her stoic but kind husband Frank seem more suited to the life, being thankful for what they have and being willing to do without;  Mary by turns is restless and bored, her husband Jack a volatile man, the marriage off to a bad start when Jack realized that Mary wasn't a virgin due to what sounds like an assault she suffered from a local boy when she was younger.  

It is not a happy book.  Tragedy seems to be mostly what Enidina and Frank are able to harvest from the ground, what with the stillbirth of two children and a death of a third later.  They are left with one daughter who leaves the farm as soon as possible.  The climax of the book comes with the death of the third, a son, Donny, during a horse riding accident on Mary's farm;  the boy was trying to ride a horse he had no business riding, and that horse had been whipped into a frenzy by Mary's illegitimate son Kyle; whose father is the local preacher, the fruits of a one-time fling on the Pastor's cot in the Church basement.  Enidinia, crazed with grief, ends up cremating the body of her son in the fields, starting a massive fire that threatens to destroy her farm.  Oddly enough after that event Enidinia and Frank weather the last years of The Great Depression well, the fields yielding grand harvests.  Thus they are ostracized from the people of the town, thinking perhaps they made a pact with the Devil.  Meanwhile Mary tries to shift the blame of the accident to Enidina.  Later, when Enidina lays dying and is trying to write her recollections in a notebook, Mary re-surfaces as her nurse...

Yeah, you kind of guessed it, maybe:  it's a lot of book for a scant 214 pages.  Thus its kind of hard to find a message in the book, in the story.  Enidina is clearly the character we are to be sympathetic towards, but in the end you kind of feel bad for Mary - her life has been marked by shame in a way that isn't fair, and it seems her actions are in part to shift that weight off of her soul, and to avoid snaring Kyle's soul in it as well.  

But aside from that I really can't make heads or tails of the novel.  

But it is still a powerful book, emotionally.  The writing is sparse, the imagery is vivid.  It is like looking at good piece of contemporary art - it doesn't really mean anything, but it leaves you with a powerful emotion. That is what I've been trying to pay attention to.  It is unfortunate that that emotion is one of deep, impending doom, and of meaninglessness itself...

Fun.