Kate's Point of View

When All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr won a Pulitzer just a few days after I finished reading it and telling everyone how great it was, I felt like such a smarty pants. As if it wasn’t a total coincidence.

Then I started thinking, “These Pulitzer Awards… Maybe they’re on to something. Those could be some good books to read.” And that is how I went on a beach vacation with a bunch of books that were slightly higher brow than my normal beach reads. (I also threw in some Young Adult and Science Fiction books.)

My takeaway? Some of the books who have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction are excellent. Some maybe more of an acquired taste?

I still present All the Light We Cannot See as one of the better books I’ve read in a long time. I won’t say too much about it because it’s still new and I don’t want to give spoilers. But, the writing is beautiful and some of the images Doerr presents to detail the relationship between a father and his daughter are just wonderful.

Monday night I finished The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. Also excellent! I’ve not read much about North Korea and this was a doozy.

Published in 2012, The Orphan Master’s Son focuses on Jun Do. Most of his childhood was spent in an orphanage and from there he moves on to a tunnel expert who can fight in the dark, a kidnapper, a radio operator, a hero and then a foreign dignitary. Even when he does horrible things, it’s hard not to feel sympathy towards Jun Do, who is just trying to do his best and survive.

Johnson does a masterful job of creating a feeling about North Korea through dialogue and character experiences that speaks volumes more than descriptions ever could. At one point in the novel, which I was reading at the gym, I was visibly gagging at some of the stuff Jun Do was doing. And while that scene, which I will spare sharing with you, was gross, it helped create an image for me of North Korea.

That’s what good writing is all about, right?

Some other Pulitzer Winners I’ve checked out recently include Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, Tinkers by Paul Harding and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

If you want to try the same sourcing for new (to you) books to read, check out the list of past Pulitzer winners.

My house has all of the charm that comes with age. It can be expensive to maintain and the “charm” gets old after a while. I can’t deny the envy I feel when I walk into a new home and see the smooth drywalled walls or the poured cement foundation. But the reality is, I love my old house and all of its quirks. There are stories hidden within and I love that.

Built in 1900, I don’t think there is a single corner in my home that is square. In the kitchen, if I stand on one side and my husband on the other, I am several inches taller than him (versus shorter by one inch like everywhere else).

We’ve been told that our single family home was likely once a three family tenement home. The only way that could possible work is with shared bathrooms. Each renter probably had his or her own kitchen, though. I have chimneys in some rooms with thimbles on them – metal coverings near the ceilings that look like paper plates and which cover the hole where a stove pipe would have been vented out.

There are three inoperable fireplaces in the home, each surrounded by beautiful woodwork and Rookwood tiles and the opening covered in ornate metal plates. In the basement, I see where a coal chute would have like been. While out house has modern electrical wiring, there are inactive remnants of knob and tube strung through the basement rafters.

Wonder Boy and I have done some remodeling over the last nine years of living in our house. We’ve updated our kitchen, during which we found some very dated wallpaper behind the cupboards. (We left that exposed behind the new cabinets so that future homeowners can make the same discovery.) While updating bathrooms, we learned that there had once been a house fire and that at one point someone thought wallpaper the bathroom walls and ceiling was a fabulous idea!

Evidence of old fire damage in our home.

Wallpaper everywhere!

I don’t know specifics about the history and residents of my home, but I’m curious. I’d love to know who lived in my house before me and know more of their stories. What I know of my neighborhood’s history is sort of lovely. It’s right at the top of the old Bellevue Incline in Clifton Heights, just north of Cincinnati, Ohio.. There used to be the Bellevue House, where people went for dancing and leisure, and now there is Bellevue Park, where there are playgrounds, ball fields and great views. Just like my home still holds the remains of old fuel sources and past décor, nearby streets have the skeletons of the old incline.

The Bellevue Incline, running between Cincinnati and Clifton Heights.

Structure in Bellevue Hill Park on Clifton Heights. This is part of the park’s pavilion, which was designed by architect R. Carl Freund in 1955 to serve as an outdoor dancing venue.

View from Bellevue Hill Park in Clifton Heights.

This post was inspired by The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy, a novel about two women are connected by an Underground Railroad doll. Join From Left to Write Book Club. on May 19th as we discuss The Mapmaker’s Children. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”

It’s so rare that a passage of writing stops me. Makes me re-read it. Compels me to contemplate the author behind the words and the state of mind he or she must have had when sitting at the computer, typewriter, notepad. But in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, I stopped many times. My breath momentarily taken away by beautiful prose. And I wasn’t distracted by it, as I so normally am. I was taken in and caught up in a beautiful story.

I nearly finished the book over lunch this past Friday. I was so, so close to the end, but had to return to my desk at work. And so I set out down the streets of downtown Cincinnati with my nose still pressed between the pages, glancing up every now and then to make sure I didn’t run into anyone or anything. And that, I think, is the best sign of a good book. One you are willing to risk injury for all in the name of find out what happens next.