ISBN 978-1-55597-523-4 $14.00
I've been buried in books lately, as usual. As a librarian in charge of selecting all of the Fiction and Romance titles for my library system, I have to read a lot of book reviews from professional journals, as well as galleys of forthcoming books (a joy)! But I end up reading quickly for work, rather than slowly, for pleasure; and lately it has felt somewhat like a chore.
When I saw an article online from Publisher's Weekly a while back titled, "The Best Book You've Never Read is Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon," of course I was intrigued.
Described as "micro essays," what the author has actually done is create a series of vignettes which are told as the narrator is taking long walks around the town where he lives in upstate New York. Written in a conversational style, with a pace that feels almost ambulatory, the author enchants and surprises on almost every page - for the first half of the book.
I rarely dog-ear pages of books, but in this case I have many pages folded down that contain sentences or phrases that I knew I wanted to go back and read again. One of them I even used as my #SundaySentence on Twitter, and the longer version is this, in the essay titled "Leaves:"
"The one saving grace of all this is the spring, when the new leaves arrive. They've never failed to do so. They start out green, like mint candies, and for a short time they are ours alone. And then in summer, even when wind and sun and hail tear through them, even then they stay right on the trees and make a sound like applause, all summer long."
The essay is about when the tourists come to see the leaves change and sort of take over the town. But when I read the end of it which I quoted above, I was absolutely filled with hope about the changing of the seasons and new growth and the eternal nature of it all.
There are many other wonderful one to two page essays (rarely longer) that I just adored, some with surprising twists at the end, in an O. Henry-like fashion. And the beginning of most of the essays/vignettes just pulls you right along on the walk the narrator is taking, using phrases such as, "When I was young;" "A small town not far away;" "Our local university; "One [night, day, morning, year, week]" and the reader just comes alongside and listens to the story. It was such a pleasure to read the first half of this book.
The second half became something quite different, as the tone of the stories changed from a positive, mostly pleasurable experience to something darker, more depressing and hopeless, and even nihilistic at the very end. I struggled to finish it, and almost gave up a few times, but the writing was still incredible, and I'm glad I did finish it.
I would highly recommend the first part of this book, as I've never had a reading experience quite like it. I am sure the author had a reason for changing the tone of his essays, but for this reader the second half was a disappointment. It will not prevent me from reading further works by this author, and I actually read not long ago a story he wrote for The New Yorker called, "The Loop." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/the-loop which reminded me of a cross between The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and the existentialism of Albert Camus.
J. Robert Lennon is an immensely talented author, and I felt I had been in the hands of a master when I read this unique work.
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