Salt Water

Considering how many books get devoured around here, it's surprising that I've never written a book review. Oh, unless you count swooning over YA fiction The Hunger Games, (more than once) yeah I guess that might count.

Then Armchair Squid started Cephalopod Coffeehouse, saying all you have to do is write a review of the best book you read in May and publish it on May 31. The details are here. The other participants are probably all super smart and very literate, so this could prove to be a daunting task. However, impressed by the the completely irrelevant tidbit that Mr. Squid's wife is a devoted fellow fan of Benedict Cumberbatch,  I am encouraged to jump in. 

Early this month I read Salt Water, by Charles Simmons,  a former editor of the New York Times Book Review. This little book-a mere 176 pages-was published in 1998, the year John and I both switched jobs and moved from Alabama to Oregon, a year when there was almost no time to read. What made me choose it a decade and a half later was:

1. It's a coming-of-age novel, told in the voice of a 15 year old boy, 35 years after the fact.
2. The author won a PEN Faulkner award for fiction.
3. The story is set in a time that's not-now.
4. Somewhere it was called "luminous." I should keep a list of the books that are described  with this adjective. It would surely number in the thousands.
5. At only $1.99 it wasn't a big risk.


Salt Water is a gem of a book. I didn't realize it was a re-telling of an old classic, although the opening quote was a clue that one should also read Turgenev's novella:

 "WELL, THAT'S AGREED THEN," HE SAID, SETTLING HIMSELF INTO AN ARMCHAIR AND LIGHTING A CIGAR. "EACH OF US IS TO TELL THE STORY OF HIS FIRST LOVE. IT'S YOUR TURN, SERGEY NIKOLAICH."
--Ivan Turgenev, "First Love," 1860

What I love about Charles Simmon's writing is its spareness. There isn't a single unnecessary word. The first sentence describes the skeleton of the entire book:

In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned.

You continue to read this sad tale, knowing the ending after just a few words at the start.  The book's languid atmosphere belies a tense undercurrent that keeps you going. The story contains a philanderer, and a mother-daughter set of femme fatales. There's a sailboat and a couple of dogs, the beach, cigarettes,  martinis, and a mother-father-son relationship under pressure. America hasn't lost its innocence to the assassination of a president, but it is very close, a summer vacation in 1963. The atmosphere is so thick that you can feel it closing in around you.

Whaa, now I feel like re-reading it. Why not? It's short!