. Spinning .

It’s hard to say why this book went from great to mediocre for me but I know that as I neared the ending I lost interest even in the characters that I felt Diamant had built up so well in the beginning of the novel.

The story held great promise, yet I believe that the rather mundane lives that are no better or worse than anyone else’s, the lack of tying in the metaphor of the wild dogs except in rather explicit and random methods, the lack of real depth of interaction within the more dramatic events, and the all-too-neat dying off of characters to enhance the effect of a desolate community that needed to come into the more modern and social world of the city was just too expected.

While I may try another of Diamant’s works at some point, I’m not overwhelmed by the writing style as anything more than proper form and at times, amateurish. It was a brief interesting enough encounter with the people of Dogtown but not an outstanding literary event.

Not what I’d expect to find in a bestseller:

Easter saw a fellow across the table roll his eyes and realized that she was making a fool of herself. She rushed off to get his tea, redfaced and flustered.  (p. 219)

Two sentences that follow an encounter and a dialogue between Easter, now working at a town tavern, and a handsome young stranger. The sentences tell us that Easter is tipped off to her own behavior–that is, making a fool of herself–by seeing another patron’s reaction. The second sentence, though it is action, is repetitive: She rushed off, redfaced and flustered. All this is unnecessary filler. Better might be: A fellow across the table rolled his eyes and Easter rushed off to get the stranger’s tea.

While it would seem that the pack of wild dogs that wander in and out of the story would be one of the obvious motifs in this story of Dogtown, I’d have to say that while Diamant has brought them in at the opening of the story and mentions them now and then in relation to the residents that take them in, they are not a huge force of any sort within the narrative.

Judy Rhines has a special relationship with her dog, Greyling, and eventually Oliver and Polly keep a pet, but there is little to indicate that the dogs have come to depend upon the people, have any special protective instincts towards them, and they are only brought up in this late chapter again as a ‘group’ of any meaning.

When Ruth first arrived in Dogtown, there were nearly twenty-five dogs in the hills, living like a nearby but separate neighborhood, at peace with the people next door–a little standoffish, perhaps, but friendly enough. By the time Easter moved to Gloucester, there were no more than eight of them left, and those few were bony and mangy.  (p. 216)

It’s true that as the characters of Dogtown age they move away from their desolation and into town where they are more easily able to survive and get around. Perhaps Diamant has mimicked their abandonment of their homes and way of life in the gradual dying out of the pack, but it’s as an afterthought, almost a contrivance that wasn’t established all that well anyway.

Metaphor, motif, and meaning are astounding tools when used correctly. It cannot be forced or obvious, and here again, Diamant disappoints.

Whether it’s the difference between reading with a pounding headache and reading with a clear head or some other quirk of time and space, I’m finding the writing quality of this novel going steadily downhill towards the end. It feels like Diamant has lost interest or is making up a word count. After building up some wonderful characters, she leaves them leading ordinary lives with little real drama or further insight into their minds except by telling us how they are doing.

This scenario takes place as Judy is called in to help treat the inflammed knee (I was going to type ‘joint’) of Cornelius whom Oliver and Polly have found and taken in. The problem here is that this could have been a huge emotional scene: Judy and Cornelius have not seen each other in a while, Judy does not know that her former lover has stayed away to protect her. In his semi-delirious state he calls her name and it tips the others off to a more intimate relationship than neighbors:

But Judy’s distress and Cornelius’s tone of voice signified something more than polite exchanges between neighbors. Polly wondered exactly what they had shared, how it might have started, why it had stopped, and how such a secret could have kept in such a small, gossipy place. “Poor things,” she said.

Oliver frowned. He had tried to forget his boyish dreams of winning Judy for himself, and thought of her only as his auntie–his and Polly’s, as well as Natty’s and David’s. It was unsettling to think of her in any man’s arms, and for it to have been Cornelius seemed even more out of the natural order of things. (p. 192)

Diamant tells us that Judy is in distress, Cornelius’ tone of voice indicated the relationship, Polly is wondering about it, and Oliver is as well, questioning his motives in thinking of his past crush on Judy versus the inter-racial aspect of the couple. Wouldn’t this have been better said in having the characters react rather than stand around and think? There’s also the reminders of the past–Oliver’s boyish dreams, Dogtown being a small, gossipy place–that I would think are unnecessary here since we’ve already been settled into the environment and comfortable with the characters.

Just seems like a lot of excess storytelling here and I’m a bit disappointed.

Not thrilled with the writing style the book has taken; it appears to be a lot of telling to inform the reader of the past and to make some progress in the timeline for the characters. There is little of import happening and it appears that life for the Dogtown residents just goes on. For example, the affair between Judy Rhines and Cornelius Finson has died because of warnings made to Cornelius, though Judy doesn’t know of them. He keeps an eye on her from afar, and Judy’s feelings for him eventually fade into the past. But Diamant merely tells us this, how her characters are feeling, how they’re getting on with their lives, whereas I would think a confrontation of sorts would intensify and reveal in a much more interesting way.

So it’s been a bit draggy, but here’s something that caught my interest:

Numbers were forthright, definite, and reassuring, entirely unlike words, which were slippery and sharp. To Cornelius, language had come to seem untrustworthy, double-edged as a plow that could just as easily sever a foot as cut through sod.”  (p. 175)

It is a bit surprising that Diamant chooses to have Cornelius think this way; no one has really been dishonest with him and I don’t feel that the solace he finds in numbers is as readily apparent in his behavior. Judy has been open with her love, and the racists in town have been just as honest in their feelings towards Cornelius. His withdrawal from human communication is of his own choice–aside from his protection of Judy Rhines.

He had quit reading some years back, dismayed by the half-truths and contradictions he found in print. One volume argued for the power of faith, another claimed that the works of man were ascendant. One newspaper article claimed the governor was a great man; another on the very next page called him a thief. The Bible was the worst of all, riddled with impossibilities, opposing accounts of the same story, and hideous acts of cruelty. If the Bible had been at all mathematical, he might have become a Christian.”  (p. 176)

Odd, to make a statement that had X been Y, then the character would have been an X-er (or a Y-er?). That is an improbable and unreasonable scenario since X is X and not Y. So why would a supposedly logical man make a claim that is based on illogical assumption?

At any rate, the characters are still interesting because Diamant has made them so in the beginning. While I understand that this novel is also to be considered a historical novel so that the passage of time and changes to the community would be vital details, it just doesn’t have the strong writing style and compelling events that Diamant had employed to pace the story to this point.

It’s a strange setup here where we had a central event in the opening of the narrative that introduced most of the characters and skillfully revealed their relationships and a bit of background as they gathered at Easter Carter’s to pay respects to the dead Abraham Wharf. From there, Diamant drifts into focusing upon one or another of the characters, starting with Judy Rhines and Cornelius and moving on to Oliver and Tammi Younger, Ruth, Stanford, Sammy Stanley, Mrs. Stanley with Molly and Sally, etc. But the timeline on each is somewhat simultaneous beginning about three to five years after the death of Wharf. While there is interaction between a focused few of the characters, the others may be mentioned within each chapter’s central drama.

In other words, this is almost hypertext fodder as the reader could easily choose the character/chapter to read in any order after the initial two or three chapters and I don’t think it would make a difference in the story. Or would it? As we read what’s brought Molly and Sally to Dogtown, was it necessary to know the story of Ruth, or the relationship between Judy Rhines and Cornelius Finson? Up to this point in the narrative, I would disagree with the back cover blurb that Judy Rhines is the protagonist. I would lean more towards suggesting that each character becomes the main one within the chapter focusing upon his particular story. Beyond that, I would say that Easter Carter is a more compelling and grounding figure for the stories that are indeed individual but related.

It seems a bit disjointed and reminds me of Jamestown though Jamestown was a much clearer timeline pattern and point of view of the same events brought the story into a more regulated linearity. In Dogtown, the passage of time for each may start at the approximate same time, but the span is a bit more vague, approximating anyplace from a few months focused on a single dramatic event to several years as a relationship may develop. Within all these simultaneous time spans there is often included backstory to bring the characters into the present with a purpose or reason.

So the plot is fairly static in time, even as it is fairly smoothly transitioned between characters; interaction with one will bring on the next. Not sure I really see this as pacing the story of Dogtown, though I understand that to give such indepth insight into each character it might be a bit more difficult to juggle their stories. In the meantime, it seems to act as a memory bank to get to know an individual member of the community well, and then leave him afterward to move on to the others.

Not really a typo but a switch from “his roost in the golden beech tree” to “Sammy’s autumn-gilded birch” that comes about a page later.

Diamant has placed eleven year-old Sammy Stanley up in a tree, fingering five dimes in his pocket. This leads into how Sammy has accumulated about a seventy-eight dollar stash, gained mainly from stealing from his mother’s whorehouse clients as they sleep.

The opening line of this chapter (after we’ve resolved Black Ruth’s history) is rife with sound:

Sammy Stanley perched on the branch of a beech tree and stared at the sea.”  (p. 87)

Which is why the beech tree sticks in the reader’s mind and is jarred when the offending birch tree is mentioned incorrectly later on. It also likely shows that Diamant may have either a knack for alliteration (some folks do or are trained for it, even in speech) or had particularly planned this sentence whilst tossing about the idea of birch versus beech. Then she may have forgotten which choice she’d made and without being a misspelling, it wasn’t easily caught.

I like alliteration. I tend to overdo on it myself sometimes, but I like the way it makes sentences sing. Sonorously. Seriously.

Diamant doesn’t do as smooth a job of transitioning at this point of the story, where we are about to learn something about the mysterious Black Ruth. A strange man appears on Easter’s doorstep seeking the Wharfs, and when she tells him they’re both dead, he heads off towards the old Wharf homestead. From upstairs in her room at Easter’s, Ruth sees him and for some reason decides to follow him. There is then a confrontation at an altar-like boulder and with a chisel at his neck, the stranger reveals the story of a young slave woman murdered there and a baby being brought to the Wharfs for care.

It’s all too convenient, particularly when Ruth realizes that she is that baby that was saved, and realizes at last who her mother was, and not only that, that this stranger’s father was the murderer–not the stranger himself, who legend had blamed.

It gets real close to infodump with Ruth’s background and reason for coming to Dogtown all revealed within this dramatic chance meeting (what if Ruth hadn’t noticed the stranger?) as well as a surprise for Ruth herself as to her real mother. We still don’t have an explanation for Ruth taking on the persona of a male, and that more than anything was the most intriguing part of her mystery. We are given some background as to her stonemason skills, and we do feel and understand her reticence at becoming any part of a community. Though not really.

It just wasn’t as skillfully done as Diamant has revealed the rest of the characters to us and perhaps a less contrived meeting and more gradual revelation of the character of Ruth would have been more to my expectations.

And, I suppose, imagery through language choice, or diction. Diamant seems to use a blend of plain talk with some lovely description:

When she first arrived in Gloucester, Ruth had asked a boy how to get to Brimfield farm. Following his directions, she’d taken an old walled road, past weedy fields and stunted trees and through a swamp that seemed to suck the color out of the sky and the song out of the birds. The air was so hot and thick, Ruth felt like she’d stepped into an oven. A parched, abandoned landscape where lightning or carelessness had scorched the trees and only the grasses seemed confident of the future, it was the most desolate place she’d ever seen.  (p. 61)

The simplicity of “old walled road” and the image of “weedy fields” rather than “field of weeds” are proof of the thought put into the word structure. I love the swamp, a muddy, mucky waterhole that we’ve all seen likened to the purity of a woodsy pond as a mirror image, yet instead of reflecting the beauty of the sky and nature, steals and dulls it. Who could doubt the fresh newness of the grass when described as “confident of the future.”

Diamant doesn’t overdo it. She understands her object, perhaps has studied and experienced it, and has decided what it is capable of being. All together, we get the whole picture of the scene.

Sailing right along in this engrossing story of a desolate town and its people. Very character-driven, and we are given good insight into them by their interaction with each other. It is a rough life, all on about the same social status level and yet very anxious to gossip and claw at each other while drinking their troubles into something more manageable.

Diamant has opened with a body on the floor of a local and the others coming in for a nip and a say before his family arrives to take him away. As has been done before in literature, Diamant well uses this opportunity of a death and the gathering afterward as a perfect time to get to know some of the characters. We get a certain feel about Judy Rhines just by the others’ reaction to her. We get some information about young Oliver and his coarse and rather mean Aunt Tammi. We see the openheartedness of our hostess, Easter, as she greets guests and we meet some of the minor characters of the story. Diamant introduces us to quite a few folk, which can often be mishandled as an info dump, but she handles it well by providing an interesting scene that offers a tidbit of each that is emphasized by repetition in some manner by the plotting structure of this single event.

For example, we hear briefly about Cornelius Finson, just enough to know who he is, what he does, and how some of the others feel about him. Then when we find him at Judy Rhimes’ house waiting for her and they go to bed together, it’s not a separate story. Diamant has control of all the members of the team.

There is humor in the story, as Diamant manages to find that moment in all things that human nature clings to in order to bring things back into alignment.

The writing is smooth and sparse but precise in painting an image of the town, the people, the individuals, and the types of lives they are living.

I usually put an image here of the current book I’ll be reading, taken from Amazon and linking back there for more information and possible purchases. However, since Amazon has thrown a monkey wrench into the process, they ain’t gonna get the link-back either I guess.

I haven’t read anything by Anita Diamant though it appears that her earlier The Red Tent was a bestseller. I’m looking forward to this even though I’m not big on historical novels as such, because it seems that it may be another character-driven narrative and this is what usually draws me in.