Ursula Under by Ingrid Hill

I am astonished to discover that Ursula Under is Ingrid Hill’s first novel, although she has published a number of short stories and one full-length collection. This book is confident and charming and lyrical, the latter being a word that is, perhaps, overused by book critics, but that I find fully applies to Ms. Hill’s writing.

“…the year rolls downhill into the drear purgatory of winter solstice…”
“…as if life were much like a brief transit across a wee stretch of land…”

Her paragraphs propel you forward with the rhythm of poetry:

The beds in the dormitory were like short gravel driveways, the food something out of a dour Victorian novel she’d never read and did not ever want to. She was forced to wear uniforms, green-and-brown plaid. Each day she got demerits for breaking the uniform code: she wore knee socks, a neck scarf, costume jewelry, purple eye shadow…. She did these things one at a time or together.

Rarely does a book grab me from the very first line. Usually, I find myself thinking, I’m sure it will get better, and sometimes it does. No need to worry about that here. “On a crystalline, perfectly blue morning in June, after a day of angry pewter skies and of sheeting, driving rain, we enter our story.”

In the first chapter, we meet little Ursula, two-and-a-half year old daughter of Justin and Annie Wong. She is part Chinese and part Finnish, and her birth has been something of a miracle. Annie is disabled and was not expected to be able to carry a baby to term or survive the birth. We enter the lives of the Wong family on that lovely June morning just as Ursula falls down a forgotten mine shaft in Michigan’s UP. And then the real stories begin.

Chapters alternate between the drama of Ursula in the mine shaft and stories of her ancestors – ancient China, 17th century Sweden, turn-of-the century Michigan.

A traveler might today drive the roads of Michigan – or Illinois or Wisconsin or Minnesota or beyond – and see again and again shapes of land that called up palpitations in the hearts of Scandinavian immigrants of Marjatta’s day: There! That incurve of the field there, where the land moves like hair in the wind, that is just like my grandfather’s land! And there! I can imagine the church of my childhood nestling into that grassy gold slope!

We meet alchemists and silk traders and Finnish witches. We travel from the old world to the new with orphaned girls and freed Ethiopian slaves. Grow mustard with Chinese emigrants and debate church catechism with Jesuit missionaries. This novel is epic in every sense, crossing continents and dynasties and cultures.

As I completed each chapter, I was certain that the next story could not possibly be as wonderful as the one I had just read. But it was. Part of the book’s charm lies in Hill’s choice to act as omniscient narrator, referencing past and future events and people throughout the story. The sense that each person’s life is connected, that each individual’s history is part of our larger history, is conveyed beautifully without being heavy-handed.

He cannot know that this child will be a boy and will grow to be a soldier in Qin Shi Huang-ti’s army, that a terra-cotta statue of this soldier will be buried in that tomb in Qin Shi Huang-ti’s imperial capital of Ch’angan -later Xi’an – that the features on the terra-cotta statue will be uncannily like his own as a young man.

The novel is thick – almost 500 pages in the trade paperback edition – but I barely noticed. I read long into the night, unwilling to go to bed without reading one more chapter, and happy to pay the caffeine price next morning.

I was astonished that this was a first novel, but also delighted. I await Ms. Hill’s next outing with eagerness.

The Bible: A Very Short Introduction

John Riches gives us an interesting introduction and overview of the world’s most important book.

Art History: A Very Short Introduction

Rare is the book that, upon completion, sends the reader right back to the beginning. Usually books that do this are either of such stellar quality that you want to get right back into the story. Sometimes they require another read to figure out what went wrong.

Dana Arnold’s contribution to the Very Short Introduction series (Art History, #102) is, unfortunately, the latter. However, upon giving it a second read, things do begin to become clearer. The books is intended, according to Arnold, “as an introduction to the issues and debates that make up the discipline of art history and that arise from art history’s central concerns – identifying, categorizing, interpreting, describing, and thinking about works of art.” Ultimately it does work as an introduction. Through the pages, Arnold introduces us to the difference between art appreciation, criticism and connoisseurship, opines that “art history is a separate discipline from history,” and offers up interesting chapters on writing art history, thinking about art history and reading art.But somehow the book disappoints and I have to believe there are better books out there to give a brief overview of art history.Three things really pushed this into the negative:

1. Arnold refers to other chapters, forward and back, often. I lost track at 14 such references. The first is on page two! I am not sure if you blame the writer, the editor or both but if you cannot organize the flow and sequence in something this short, I would hate to see what she (they) would do with a longer assignment.  In a book with only six chapters and only about 112 pages of real text this should be unnecessary.
   
2. Following on from that, Arnold says things like, “here, I want to discuss,” or “I want to address here,” far too often for such a short book. Why not just say it? Why not just tell it? It reads like a bad PowerPoint presentation.
   
3. The first person perspective seems odd. It seems like this could be the transcript from a series of class lectures. Another thought is that Oxford University Press made her write it this way so as to distance themselves from the book. If it is shite it doesn’t tarnish the OUP brand. It is something I had not noticed in previous VSI volumes but will look for this next time.  

On the buy it, borrow it or burn it scale, I give this book a borrow it. In fact, I would suggest just reading this at your local Borders, Barnes & Noble or Books-a-Million. Of course, according to the 2/3/2008 Washington Post Book World podcast, the Internet is a book buyers best friend.