Here’s one of my crazy ideas about books. Some books grab you by the throat and say “Read me NOW!” But other books simply eye you and say, “I would be the perfect read for June.” Or October. Or January.

January — that was Bleak House, although it wasn’t wholly accurate. Lots of the book takes place in summer, on sunny country estates. But then, Arizona Januarys aren’t known for being dark or frigid, and at any rate, Dickens can be counted on to plunge back into the London fog sooner or later.

On Agate Hill gave me a lazy glance and said “August.” I can’t really explain why, to be honest.

Regardless, it’s August now, and the book is fantastic. If you like Civil War-era history, or historical fiction about strong women, or stories told in letters and diary entries, I recommend On Agate Hill.

The book follows the life of Molly Petree, an observant, stubborn, spitfire kind of woman. We meet her as an orphan living on a dying plantation in the middle of Reconstruction. In her young memory, as many of the estate’s inhabitants have died or left Agate Hill as are still living there, and, feeling that she doesn’t really belong anywhere in the picture, she thinks of herself as a sort of ghost, too.

One of the things that comes across in Molly’s diary of this period is how severely the old social system of the South has gotten shaken up. It isn’t something she talks about directly, it’s there all the same. As one example, the marriage of convenience between a working class tenant woman and her Uncle Junius, who owns the plantation, is developed at length and illustrates the point nicely.

When she gets a little older, Molly becomes determined not to be a ghost during her own lifetime, an idea that she carries for the rest of the book. She remains vibrant, a force for life, despite the prevalence of death throughout the book.

Lee Smith is an author I hadn’t been familiar with, but she’s one I’ll look for in future. Her writing is beautiful, and none of her handful of narrators could possibly be mistaken for any of the others. That always impresses me.

Her neatest trick, though, is to present the story as found history, and she’s very deliberate about including only documents that can be accounted for through her frame story. It’s very minimal, as frame stories go, only a handful of short letters, but they account for everything else.

Except, that is, for when they don’t: Lee Smith deliberately leaves holes. What ever happened to Mary White? What darkness lurked in Mariah Snow’s past? What did she write on the page she tore out of her journal? What happened to the Snow children, and who shot the first bullet? The reader learns enough to make guesses, but as with real historical records, some things can’t be proved. Perhaps we don’t have any more letters from Mary White because she died, but perhaps those letters just weren’t saved, or burnt up in the fire, or perhaps, they’re waiting: still hidden in someone’s attic.

Categories: books, desert living
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By the time I saw the latest Harry Potter flick last weekend, I had already heard mutters of disappointment from various friends and other reviewers, so I went in forewarned and had a good time. But the mutters were right: Like the previous Potter movies, this one moved retained the least possible amount of detail in order to tell the story. Not only were some favorite scenes cut, but it was only several days later before I remembered that yes, some of those moments were from this book.

What I’m really referring to is Harry’s chat with new Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour, in which he calmly gets to the heart of what Scrimgeour is slyly asking for, responding that he is “Dumbledore’s man, through and through.” (It’s a very adult moment, especially compared to the throes of teenage angst we see in the previous book.)

The gradual development of wizard politics throughout the book is a strength of Rowling’s storytelling. The reader’s understanding of what’s going on outside Hogwarts follows that of Harry and his friends as they begin to pay closer attention to politics — which I think is an honest depiction of being a teenager. But like many subplots, wizard politics don’t show up on the big screen.

Half-Blood Prince sticks to the bare bones of the Dumbledore plot, the Draco acting suspiciously plot, and the romance plot; one we see pretty much in full, one is severely cut, and one is actually expanded past what we get in the book.

Not surprisingly (since it involves a great deal of exposition), Harry and Dumbledore’s exploration of Voldemort’s past gets chopped down to two memories: the one at the orphanage that was in all the previews, and the vital but edited memory of Slughorn’s. I also say “not surprisingly” because many of their other excursions down memory lane serve not to further the plot of this book so much as to set up the next one: what sort of objects would Voldemort turn into Horcruxes? Presumably this knowledge will be hand-wavingly imparted to our protagonists in the next movie.

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Categories: Harry Potter, movies
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