Pulitzer Prize for the Novel Challenge

2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz — April 2012

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won in 2008, and while I enjoyed it for the most part, it was not my favorite. 

The book is about a Dominican super-nerd and his family and their curse, or fuku. But the most annoying person in the book is Oscar. I enjoyed the chapters about his sister and his mother more, but Oscar is really too nerdy and forever alone for me. I appreciated all the references to Fantasy/SciFi and comics in his chapters, but Oscar as a character was annoying…it took me a lot longer to make it through his chapters.

Another thing that slowed down my reading was the amount of Spanish in this book. I liked the tone of the book, like the narrator was actually telling you this story as if you were sitting at his table or something, there’s a lot of enjoyable slang, and the Spanish did add to that feel. If I knew Spanish, I would have liked it better of course, but a few times I had to have Google Translate help me out. 

The ending was kind of disappointing too. It wasn’t a surprise or anything, given the title of the book, but I felt like it was just kind of pathetic…which I guess when you look at Oscar through the rest of the book, it’s kind of a fitting end.

I got this one in hardback through my local library.

***½

2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout —Feb 2012

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is the sixth book that I’ve read for my challenge, and thus far it has been my favorite. 

The book is a collection of short stories, all told by people connected to a small town in Maine. In addition to this this all the stories are linked by being related in some way to Olive Kitteridge.She’s not the main focus of all of the stories, but I think she makes an appearance (even if it’s for the characters to note that they don’t really care much for her) in all of them. 

Olive herself is kind of a bitch, though I grew to like her more and more. I never cared much for her son, but I thought her husband’s story “Pharmacy” was my favorite. Henry’s character isn’t as complex as Olive, but he’s more likable. My next favorite story was probably “The Piano Player”, though I’m not really sure why except that it definitely brought to mind the Billy Joel song “Piano Man”. 

The stories all feel like snapshots into peoples’ lives at one particular moment — and while they’re all short (13 in the 270 page hardback for an average of ~21 pages each), you still have time to develop feeling about each new (or returning) set of characters. I feel like this book would be a good choice for a book club or something similar. I find myself wanting to discuss the stories with someone, and find out what other people thought about the way this book handles the characters and emotions.

I definitely recommend this one.

I checked this book out in hardback from my local library.

*****

1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton — Feb 2012

There was no award given in 1920, so my next book was The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, who won the prize in 1921, making her the first woman to win. 

This book is about upper class New York City society during the 1870s. The story centers around Newland Archer, who is getting engaged to his fiancee May when May’s cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, shows up and shakes things up. Newland falls in love with Ellen, but goes ahead and enters into a boring marriage with May and things go from there.

I felt like this book was mostly mocking the outrageous rules and rituals and closeness of society at the time, but at times it really drug on. The only interesting character is the Countess Olenska, and she’s kind of sad. I guess it’s slightly entertaining that Newland *thinks* he’s different and interesting, but that he’s really just another creature of his dull world. I would have liked for it to have ended differently, but that would have ruined the point. 

I couldn’t make myself really care about all the worry about scandal and proper rules for most of the novel. The story itself isn’t bad, but I felt like it could have been done with less words. However, it was an interesting portrayal of how rigid and unforgiving society was at the time. 

The Age of Innocence is free in eBook form from Amazon.

***

2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding — Jan 2012

I read this one directly after reading The Magnificent Ambersons last month, so again I’m going to be pretty vague in my review.

Tinkers is about a man, George, on his deathbed, and the thoughts and memories and hallucinations that he experiences. A good portion of the book (and the better half, in my opinion) is told from the point of view of his father, Howard, who is a traveling salesman in the middle of nowhere Maine. Howard suffers from epilepsy, which is one of the major conflicts in the novel.

The story is told in a broken format, switching back and forth between the past and present as George lies dying in a room filled with clocks he’s collected over the years. There’s even odd things thrown in here and there, such as a pamphlet on how to make a bird’s nest from scratch. 

The prose in this book is beautiful, but I feel like the author spent more time thinking about pretty words than about the story as a whole, because despite the fact that the book is less than 200 pages, it really seems to drag on in places. This combined with the fragmented story telling and the frequent references to clocks made me feel very aware of time: both in the novel and in the real world as I read it. 

Again, not a bad book but not one that I would care to read again. 

I checked this book out in paperback form from my local library. 

***

1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington — Jan 2012

So, my third book was again from older side of the list. I read it last month and forgot to write anything down about it, so I’m going to be kind of short and vague about this one. 

The Magnificent Ambersons is about a Midwestern town and the fall of the affluent family who helped originally build the town. The novel centers around George Amberson Minafer, who is an ass. George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, who is the daughter of a man who is growing incredibly wealthy because of the increasing popularity of automobiles. 

However, George’s mother falls in love with Lucy’s father and George has to go be an ass and sabotage the whole thing and make everyone miserable, and the world as he knows it starts to fall apart. I really didn’t feel terribly sorry for George —just for the other people who he screwed up too.

That’s not to say that I disliked the book. It was actually pretty funny in some places — like when George crashes his sled, or some of his views on “riffraff”….and the views on a changing society and social order are interesting. 

Overall, it was a pretty quick read, though I wouldn’t want to do it again. I might watch the movie though.

The Magnificent Ambersons is free in eBook form through Amazon. 

***½

2011: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan — Jan 2012

Since I’m alternating between counting up from 1918 and down from 2011 (I’ll throw 2012 in there when it’s announced), Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad was next on my list. 

This book had a really interesting setup. It follows a few different people through the past, present and future. If I had to pick a main character I would say that it’s Bennie or Sasha, but they’re all so interconnected that I’d say that it’s just almost more of a story about music.

Though at times I had difficulty remembering who was who, for the most part I really enjoyed the format. We start with a character and their story arc eventually plays out through the eyes of multiple other characters. This lead to quite a few kind of “Ahh” moments when puzzle pieces clicked into place. 

I have one main complaint about this novel: the future. The book was so good up until page 176, where it breaks out into a 75 page POWERPOINT PRESENTATION. On one of the slides there are five “slide slogans” promoting the use of slides, and I can only assume that the author thinks that kids in the year 202- (so between 8-17 years from now) will have no interest (or ability or attention span long enough) to actually write a diary. While I’m not sure that I can argue that, I feel like there is a strong argument about them using the slides available in Office’s PowerPoint 2007. I’m sure Microsoft will update PowerPoint some time in the next decade. 

The last chapter is also set in the future and although it has a normal format (thankfully) it does have this awful text-speak, which while it’s easy to sound out out loud, is super annoying to read. There’s not a lot of it though, so there’s a plus.

Despite my PowerPoint rage, I still enjoyed this book. It was a great change of pace after His Family, and I liked how the mishmash of little stories eventually made up a clever larger picture. 

I read this one in hardback (from my local library <3 ) and I am definitely pleased that I didn’t have to put up with that PowerPoint nonsense on my Kindle. 

Also, Wikipedia says that HBO is going to make a series out of this. I’ll definitely be looking forward to that!

TL;DR - PowerPoint rage. Otherwise fun. ****

1918: His Family by Ernest Poole — Jan 2012

So, of course I had to start my Pulitzer Challenge off with the first winner of the prize: Ernest Poole’s His Family which won in 1918. 

The book is about Roger Gale, a widower living in New York City, and his three daughters and the extended family that he makes through them. Before she died, Roger’s wife tells him that “he will live on in his childrens’ lives” (a theme that is repeated an almost annoying number of times throughout the novel). 

Each of his three daughters represent something different: Edith, the oldest, has five children and is only concerned with her immediate family. Deborah, the middle daughter, is all about an extended family of tenement dwellers and immigrants, and works on reforming living conditions and education. The youngest daughter, Laura, is concerned with a glamorous and modern way of life.

The book is definitely not action packed of eventful, but it lives up to its title in that you feel like you are peeking through at Roger’s family and his way of life over the course of a few years.

Even though it wasn’t particularly exciting, I enjoyed it. It’s a laid back, mellow sort of read and I enjoyed most of the characters. I say most of the characters, because there came a point where I wanted to strangle Edith for being so near-sighted, but other than that most everyone else was likable.Though she’s every bit as passionate as her sister (though in opposite ways), I found Deborah’s focus to be much more enjoyable to read about, and it offered an interesting glimpse into city life at that time. 

As far as any other complaints go, I felt like the ending drug out much longer than it should have. The last line of the novel sums it up nicely, but in my opinion it could have been said and finished about ten pages earlier. 

Overall, I liked it and would recommend it, though I can’t say that I enjoyed it enough to read again. 

I read this on my Kindle — His Family ebook is free on Amazon. 

TL;DR — Mellow. ***½