Nomadland is Deeply Moving

 

NOMADLAND (2020)

Directed by Chloé Zhao

Searchlight Pictures, 108 minutes, R (brief nudity, mild language)

★★★★★

 

 

 

Nomadland manages to be two seemingly incompatible things: a love letter to America and a middle digit amidst its amber waves. It may not win much come Oscar time—it is decidedly not usual Hollywood fare—but it has already carried off a fistful of prizes in every critics’ circle and film festival that have thus far weighed in.

 

Nomadland is cinéma vérité with a twist; much of the film is a pure documentary that is unmediated by director Chloé Zhao. We meet a lot of colorful and interesting people, most of them from the walks of life in which they actually stride. Or, perhaps, drive would be a better word. It is about real-life nomads, those individuals who, as Fern (Frances McDormand) puts it, are not homeless but houseless. They live in vans and follow both jobs and bliss. In essence, they are migrant workers.

 

McDormand doesn’t just play a nomad, she inhabits the role to the extent that she can’t even sleep in an actual bed. She is on the road because her husband has died and, though she’s tough as nails, she’s grieving. There’s also the fact that her town has gone out of business-—literally. She and her late husband Bo lived in Empire, Nevada. When the housing industry cratered in 2008, the demand for drywall dropped and U.S. Gypsum closed the entire company town. Imagine a scenario in which the place you lived, worked, loved, and socialized for decades becomes a ghost town overnight.

 

Even nomads need community and here is where the film becomes a masterful slice of cinéma vérité. We are taken to the Arizona desert where we encounter Bob Wills, who operates an actual network for nomads. Wills is equal parts motivational speaker, swap meet coordinator, support service facilitator, anti-corporation evangelist, and bear-like shoulder to lean on. Fern also befriends the grandmotherly Linda May and late-in-life Swankie, a lover of rocks and all things natural. They are both mavericks addicted to freedom of the swim-against-conformity variety. The burly 75-year-old Swankie speaks of being resigned to dying because of the wonders she has seen.

 

Life on the road sounds romantic, but the flip side is something Wills rails against: the nomads are poor. They work hard, mostly in jobs most of us never see. We observe Fern on the frenetically paced floor of an Amazon warehouse, shoveling mountains of beets in Nebraska, cleaning filthy bathrooms in South Dakota, and performing other menial tasks. McDormand is 63 now and we see etched on her weathered face both grit and weariness. Another friend, David (David Strathairn), is also aging—he’s 72 in life—and pathos abounds when we see him in a soda jerker paper hat flipping burgers. Linda May speaks of having worked since she was 12, but finding she was eligible for a mere $550/month in Social Security benefits. In other words,  these nomads are not the Wally Byam Club.

 

In The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien’s namesake tale is about what soldiers chose to heft in their field packs. Muse upon your possessions. If you lived in an Amazon-sized van, what would you actually need and what else would you try to find room to take? For sure you’d need warm sleeping gear, a cook stove, pans, clothing for all seasons, water jugs, and a large plastic bucket into which to do your business. You’d probably pack other things that you’d find you didn’t need and swap them at one of Bob’s desert gatherings. (They are akin to Burning Man for the non-moneyed set.)

 

Chloé Zhao’s light directorial touch hits the target better than an arsenal of big production movies. Usually there is no musical soundtrack beyond occasional mood-setting transitions. When needed, Ludovico Einaudi provides gorgeous and deeply moving filler. Joshua James Richards’ cinematography is equally evocative. He allows the camera to dwell upon the vastness of the West, the sweep of an empty road, the otherworldly jaggedness of the Badlands, the glowing beauty of a desert sunset, the sheer majesty of tall, snow-covered peaks, and the absurdity of human-built “attractions.”

 

And let us again praise the fearless Frances McDormand. She has already won two Academy Awards and it would be a major injustice if she doesn’t win a third this year. She is indeed fearless. There are very few actresses with the moxie to appear as unglamorous as she, to float naked in a mountain creek, to sport unkempt hair, and wear nothing more elegant than a cheap loose shift and sandals. Were it up to me, this movie would sweep the Oscars. Nomadland is a stunning film that will both exhilarate and make you hug your Kleenex box. Call it down but not yet out in America.

 

Rob Weir  

 

Postscript: Some critics have compared the nomads to Dust Bowl refugees. I disagree. The latter had no choice whereas most of the first I find more analogous to the Roma. 

 

Blacktop Wasteland a Propulsive Novel

 

BLACKTOP WASTELAND (2020)

By S. A. Crosby

Flatiron Books, 304 pages.

★★★★★

 

Blacktop Wasteland is a propulsive novel on several levels. First, it is about race and social class, two subjects that spark. Second, its protagonist, Beauregard Montage, is addicted to fast cars. And third, because Crosby treats Beau as neither a victim nor a hero. 

 

Beau has three kids, 18-year-old Ariel from a youthful dalliance, and two sons, Darren and Javon with his long-term partner Kia. He has not always been a good man and on that we can blame poor parenting and racism Southern-style, the latter of which sent his 14-year-old self to five years in juvenile detention for a crime he did not commit. Nonetheless, Beau bears responsibility for subsequent forays into thievery and violence. He’s really trying to stay out of trouble because he loves Kia and his kids, but his make-it-in-America plan has a built-in limitation. Beau is really only good at one thing: cars. His Plymouth Duster, the only thing left behind when his petty criminal father fled, supplements the family income via illegal drag racing money. No one drives or fixes cars as well as Beau, who also owns a garage.

 

How, though, does a black man compete and pay his garage rent when some good ole’ boys open a fancier garage nearby with amenities and prices Beau can’t match? Or when his son needs braces and his mother is in a nursing home and about to be kicked out because Medicare has cut off payments because of an asset snafu? What can he do about Ariel, who doesn’t live with him, but is probably hooking and dealing drugs–not that her alcoholic mother cares one way or the other? Beau and Kia live in a trailer, so it’s not like there are piles of cash floating about, nor are there that many opportunities for a black man in a backwater Virginia town. The skinny is that if “Bug,” as his black friends call him, doesn’t come up with a windfall pretty quickly, his crumbling foundations will give way. As it is, one of his sons is drawn into the household financial crisis and not in a good way.

 

Despite Kia’s pleading, Beau is sorely tempted to take part in a heist–an insider job in a jewelry store–being orchestrated by white hood Ronnie Sessions. Beau doesn’t trust Ronnie, his dim-witted brother, or his partner Quan, but it can be done with Beau at the wheel of the getaway car. Rule number one in pulling a job: Don’t place your fate in the hands of people you don’t like and think are inept. Rule number two: If something is sold as dead simple, it’s usually only one of those. Blacktop Wasteland morphs from one man’s struggle to make ends meet to a crime thriller, and a very good one. To say that unexpected wrinkles occur scarcely does justice to the novel’s various folds and creases. This novel has quite a few bad guys, not to mention a few good guys who get in the way. As it has been for most of his life, Beau must ultimately depend upon himself to survive.

 

Crosby deftly juggles a lot of things in Blacktop Wasteland. He gives us a slice of black life set in 2012, but feels like it could have taken place 60 years earlier. It’s also about fatherhood, black support networks (shaky and legit), haunting memories, and self-awareness. Beau may wish to go straight, but deep inside suspects he may be cursed with a “propensity for violent conflict resolution,” just as his counselor in juvenile detention once proclaimed. He has good intentions, but he has killed before and has an “if necessary” view of murder, not guiding moral principles on the subject. Add the question of whether biology is destiny to Crosby’s bag of tricks, not to mention the old philosophical mindbender of whether the end justifies the means.

 

Blacktop Wasteland is a terrific novel, from its multivalent title to a conclusion evocative of I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.” It will leave you shattered.

 

Rob Weir

The Assistant Needs a New Job

 

 

 

THE ASSISTANT  (2019)

Directed by Kitty Green

Bleecker Street, 87 minutes, R (language)

★★

 

The Assistant splashed down in the post-Harvey Weinstein Zeitgeist Sea. Because of that, it has gotten praise from MeToo and other such movements. I understand the desire to embrace such a film, but The Assistant is both dishwater dull and slow–in a geological sense. 

 

It follows one day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner), a novice junior assistant in a New York City film production company. Her job is unabated drudgery. She arises before the sun to make her way from Astoria to Manhattan. Don’t think of her duties have anything much to do with movies. At best she’s a concierge who books flights, makes sure that her boss’s limo shows up in time, or that the actress du jour is on the schedule. Most of the time she’s a factotum who makes coffee and copies, cleans the break room, and is expected to kowtow to the two male assistants (Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins), who dutifully ignore her–unless she makes a mistake. Mostly, Jane is invisible. Actors and actresses pass through the doors and dump their coats and coffee cups on her while making as little eye contact as humanly possible.

 

Jane gets a jolt when Sienna (Kristine Froseth) shows up from Idaho. She’s a new junior assistant and Jane senses that she’s a replacement-in-waiting. She’s pretty to Jane’s plainness and the boss has ensconced Sienna in a posh Midtown hotel. Jane musters enough courage to take her concerns to Wilcock (Matthew Macfayden), the HR director, but she can’t quite say that she thinks Sienna is there because she is the boss’s latest sexual conquest. Wilcock essentially belittles Jane and offers only the solace that she need not worry because, “You’re not his type.” When she arrives back at her desk a few minutes later, she finds that Wilcock has told everyone about her complaint.

 

Jane’s day ends as it began–in darkness. She’s so wiped she nearly falls asleep at a coffee shop and she doesn’t have the energy to take more than a few nibbles from a muffin. We sense that she’s on borrowed time, but I will confess that I wondered why she was in her job in the first place. Jane has the courage of a timid little mouse. Everything about her seems wrong–her belief that within five years she’d be a producer, her clothing, and for sure her low-key personality. It’s as if she never got the memo that, even were your boss not a monster, New York is a tough town. The boss never actually appears on screen–we hear only his voice on the telephone dropping a few F-bombs–and see his silhouette in a window as he and Sienna are presumably having it off. His physical absence is a nice touch that enhances the existential dread hovering over Jane. Beyond this, however, The Assistant plays like a rejected script for The Office.

 

Garner’s affect is so flat that we want to hug her and tell her it’s okay to back home–presumably the Midwest as she’s a Northwestern grad–to her loving and supportive parents. Or maybe take a job in a library that’s more befitting for quiet people such as she. After all, it’s not as if New York will magically become more accommodating with a better boss and coworkers.

 

Make no mistake, those coworkers are complete jerks. They are the sort who smirk at Jane and inwardly revel when she is called on the carpet for doing tasks that they dumped on her. But here is where The Assistant falls apart. Much more needs to happen for this to fit the profile of now labeled the Weinstein effect. This film is not really about sexual predation. We only know that Jane suspects that Sienna is a victim. Why? Because she’s from Idaho? Because the boss cheats on his wife? All we know for certain is that nearly everyone who comes through the door is quisquous and self-absorbed. This makes the production office a toxic workplace for all underlings. It’s what we get because we knee-capped labor unions that mediated against abuses of power.

 

The Assistant is thus a drab office drama sans any actual drama. The few outside shots have Hopperesque qualities that convey Jane’s anomie more effectively than the claustrophobia of the office. But none of this changes the fact that the creepiness of The Assistant is too mannered to pack a wallop. We need a good film about the Weinstein effect, but this isn’t it.

 

Rob Weir  

 

 

  

Battle for the Big Top: When Circuses Ruled

 

 

BATTLE FOR THE BIG TOP (2021)

By Les Standiford

Hachette Book Group, 272 pages.

 

If you are under the age of 40 and have never lived in New York City, you may have never seen the “Greatest Show on Earth,” as the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus was dubbed. It folded its tents in 2017, and that’s a misnomer. You’d have to be pushing 70 to have seen it under canvas, a practice that ended in 1956.

 

These days, the only mammals in most circuses are homo sapiens the likes of the aerial artists, clowns, contortionists, jugglers, musicians, and power track antics associated with Cirque du Soleil. Once, a circus meant most of those things plus lions, tigers, and bears, oh my—and elephants. It simply wasn’t a circus without elephants and hadn’t been since 1816, when Hechaliah Bailey first displayed one in conjunction with horseback riders.

 

There are many good circus histories, thus Les Standiford fashioned his a bit differently. His approach is encapsulated in the book’s subtitle: “P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling, and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus.” Those three rivals whose shows eventually merged made the circus into an iconic part of American popular culture. To sharpen that statement, until the early 20^th century, circuses, minstrelsy shows, professional baseball, and vaudeville were among the only forms of popular culture, if we mean spectacles shared in the same way by Americans in all parts of the country.

 

Circuses took initial inspiration from the admiration of skilled horseback riding, a logical outgrowth of pre-mechanical travel. Trick riding remained a circus staple and was joined by other acts that could be performed in a ring such as clowning, juggling, and tumbling. Standiford observes, “three other elements added color and vitality: the menagerie, the sideshow, and the parade.” (loc. 289 or 4588) Thus, the one-ring circus begat three rings, a dizzying sensory display. Money and a love of showmanship attracted Standiford’s principals. “The Greatest Show on Earth” evolved from cutthroat competition and trial and error. By the 1890s, the seven biggest circuses moved from town to town by rail—it took 65 cars to move Bailey’s show-­­–and were models of logistical efficiency. Overnight, tents arose, and a massed parade lured ticket-buyers to witness everything from caged wild animals and “freak shows” to recreations of Roman chariot races and the Great Chicago Fire. As the cost of such elaborate exhibitions soared, it invariably caused contraction and mergers.

 

When the ante upped, so too did the dangers. Death wasn’t always defied. Fire was a constant threat, which is why Standiford engages in the unorthodox organization of devoting his opening chapter to the July 6, 1944 big top fire in Hartford, Connecticut, that killed 167 patrons and scores of animals. Add lawsuits and liability insurance to the cost of doing business. Other challenges faced the circus, including competition from movies and later, activists who drew attention to mistreatment of circus animals, not to mention the moral implications involved in trapping and removing them from native habitats. Standiford recounts many such heartbreaking tales.  

 

Readers may be surprised by the portraits he paints of Bailey, Barnum, and Ringling. Bailey, an orphan adopted by the nephew of Hechaliah Bailey, was akin to a top-hatted version of Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick. Nor does he buy completely into the view that Barnum was a huckster. As he notes, chicanery was but a small part of a bag of tricks that in many ways was more educational. (Who, after all, had seen lions or bearded ladies in the hinterlands?) John Ringling outlasted both, but he and his brothers struggled as often as they prospered.

 

Standiford presents circus figures who admit that the circus was a product of a different age. It’s wrong to say that all good things must come to an end. Often, American circuses were little better than their blood-soaked ancient Roman progenitors. But Stanford also quotes Barnum biographer Robert Wilson who cautions we live in “an ahistorical age, one that is quick to condemn historical figures using the standards of the present.” (loc. 2055) Whatever its faults, Ringling was correct to note that “the circus appealed to children as well as the child in every person. (loc 3977)

 

There are still several old-style circuses around, but most are desultory affairs that often compare poorly with what might be seen at a county fair. They are a far cry from the days in which performers such as animal trainer Clyde Beatty, clown nonpareil Emmett Kelly, trapeze daredevil Lillian Leitzel, equestrienne Ella Bradna, diminutive Tom Thumb, and the high wire Flying Wallendas were household names. Not to mention elephants such as Babe, Jumbo, Old Bet, Romeo, and Juliette.

 

Rob Weir

 

February 2021 Album of the Month : The Rheingans Sisters

 

THE RHEINGANS SISTERS

Receiver

bendigedig [sic]

 

The Rheingans Sisters–Rowan and Anna–have been turning heads in the United Kingdom for a few years now. Receiver, their fourth album, shows why. Give it time before you draw any conclusions. In an age in which way too many musicians opt for artifice-driven theatrics, The Rheingans are the polar opposite. Theirs is the kind of music in which nothing much happens–just everything.

 

I was shattered by “TheYellow of the Flowers.” It has a drone fiddle, brief adornments from the lead fiddle, and voices. The sisters are from Derbyshire, England, though Anna now lives in Toulouse, where she studied French music. She was struck by the mundanity of things viewed from her city window, but the yellow of the flowers seemed to “shout life and vitality.” This is a song about hope amidst despair and, if you’d like, is also evocative of spring. What is indisputable is that it is eye-moistening beautiful.

 

The Rheingans feature a pan-European style of folk music. It often sounds minimalist, but that is deceptive. In addition to fiddles, they also play banjo and viola, as well as several unorthodox instruments. “After the Bell Rang” might sound as if there is a Hindi beat to it, but the percussion is actually a Basque txun txun, a stringed instrument that looks a bit like a dulcimer but is plucked or beaten with a mallet. That leaves a hand free to blow a three-holed flute. This song also has a tomorrow-will-be-brighter message. Here and elsewhere on the album you will hear what sounds like vibes. It’s actually a bell tree, a conical stack of chimes played with either a soft or hard mallet.

 

You’ll also hear Scandinavian music the likes of which one might expect from Norway’s Annbjørg Lien. “Orogen” evokes halling tunes–energetic dances–but the Rheingans give it a gathering pace treatment, adding dollops of background lilting for texture. If you’d prefer something icy and forlorn, try Östbjörka.” Or maybe you’d prefer something French, such as “Moustiques dans les mûres” or “Insomnia,” the latter of which is anything but. It’s actually a set of bourrées, double-time dances that migrated from France to the UK. You can cool down with “Waltz from Lozère” a slow tempo sashay.

 

At times, The Rheingans drift into experimental territory. “From Up Here” has gorgeous fiddle passages, but its unhurried tempo and droning atmospherics skirt the borders of trance. “Lament for Lost Sleep” uses piercing flute as counterpoint to drone, which serves to lay the composition in the seam between sleepy and melancholy. But make no mistake, whatever The Rheingans Sisters do, they want to hold your hold your attention so that you can focus on subtle and sublime small shifts. “The Photograph” is banjo and voice and “One More Banjo” is good picking, but just as advertised. I am tempted to say that the album’s summative track is the almost-languid “The Bones of the World.” As noted in the lede, it’s seemingly about little–just the spiny structure that holds up the entire planet.

 

Rob Weir

 

Postscript: My version of Receiver came as an MP3. You might wish to get–in the jargony parlance of the day–physical product. The CD comes with a 48-page booklet that includes pinhole solargraph photos from Pierre-Olivier Boulant. I’ve seen some of his work online and it’s both enigmatic and impressive.

Rocket Man a Decent but Middling Look at Elton John

 

 

ROCKET MAN (2019)

Directed by Dexter Fletcher

Paramount, 122 minutes, R (language, sexual situations, disco dancing)

★★★

 

I didn’t see Rocket Man in the theater, so I might as well get my confession out of the way: I’ve never been a fan of Elton John’s music. He hit it big when acid rock gave way to soft rock and then yielded to disco. I hated disco and was not a fan of glam either, a genre think of as musical cosplay. I didn’t even know many of the film’s songs that were apparently big hits. In short, Rocket Man was pretty low on my must-see list.

 

I recently caught it on video and enjoyed it more than I thought I would, though the film has some issues, which is why I’ve assigned a middling three stars. Those who adore his music will probably overlook these and rate it a star higher. First off, though, credit goes to John for acting as executive producer for a biopic that presents him as a talented performer, but flawed individual. We all are, of course, but John admits he has an addictive personality. The film probes quite a few of them: egoism, booze, pills, cocaine, psychedelics, sex, shopping….

 

Like most biopics, Rocket Man’s attempt to cram a life into two hours is difficult. But my first beef with the film is that it squanders exposition time with too many big production numbers. At times it’s difficult to know if this is Elton’s story or Fame-Meets-La La Land. It’s one of those films in which instead of outbursts of anger or pain, we get a close-up, a song, and a pull-back to club or concert scenes. I suppose this makes sense for a performer as flamboyant as John, but it seemed overdone.  

 

Speaking of flamboyance, though, Rocket Man sure has a flashy opening. We see Elton (Tayron Egerton) walking down a hallway. He is backlit and dressed in an orange-sequined devil suit that’s straight of Dante (except for the sequins). There’s a scowl of disgust on his face and we learn why: he’s on his way to day one of group therapy for his various substance addictions. This provides the springboard for telling his story via short montage-style flashbacks.

 

We meet Elton –born Reginald Dwight­– as a boy in 1950s Middlesex. Postwar England was a dire place, so we can well imagine the appeal of American rock n’ roll, which he discovered through his father’s record collection. That is, when his old man Stanley (Stephen Mackintosh) allowed him to touch them. (Some within the LGBTQ community have taken umbrage with the cliché of distant father = misunderstood gay son. Elton’s step-sons also dispute the film’s depiction of Stanley.) But young Reg was a star pupil at the Royal Academy of Music, where talent is a must for entrance. At age 15 he began playing clubs and the song “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” is used to show him catching fire in that scene. Soon, he was backing visiting American acts such as Patti LaBelle and the Isley Brothers. (The name “Elton” was lifted from the nickname given to the saxophone in the Isleys’ band.) He also met lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), his longtime musical partner and best friend.

 

Rocket Man follows familiar arcs. There is the initial signing and recording –with DJM Records in this case– followed by a tour to America that makes Elton too big to keep down on the small record farm. The real devil comes in the guise of studio executive John Reid (Richard Madden), who has sex with Elton, signs him, is his entrée into LA debauchery, and then screws him in non-sexual ways. Hits follow, but Elton descends into bad decision-making, a brief marriage to Renate Blauel, drugs, an LA mansion, male lovers, burning bridges until no one stands on the other side, and then rehab, comeback, and belated happiness. (Yeah, I too have seen this before.)

 

This is another film in which women barely appear. The actress playing Blauel isn’t even credited and those depicting Elton’s mother and grandmother (Bryce Dallas Howard and Gemma Jones) are reoccurring cameos. On the relationship side of things, the central one is Elton’s friendship with Bernie, and Jamie Bell is endearing in the role. Rocket Man is mainly filled with Elton John’s songs and Egerton is up to the task of singing them. (“I’m Gonna Love Me Again” won the film’s only Oscar.) I suppose that’s what Elton fans would want but, if so, why attempt a total sweep of a life few would care about without the hits? For the record, though (pun intended), my favorite has always been “Your Song,” a melodic and sweet offering that needs no pyrotechnics.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The Exiles: Good but Not Transcedent

 

THE EXILES (2020)

By Cristina Baker Kline

HarperCollins, 384 pages.

★★★

 

In her latest work, Christina Baker Kline returns to a subject that has interested her in the past: orphans. It is set in the 1840s, the height of British imperialism and a time in which the slightest infraction led draconian judges to impose exile sentences to ill-begotten colonies. Said judges were seldom moved by the age or circumstances of the accused.

 

Evangeline is an intelligent preacher’s daughter who became a governess when her father died when she was still a minor. How many Victorian novels involve rakish sons of privilege ruining a trusting female? So too this one, whose only twist is that a stepson is the culprit. In the eyes of English law, Evangeline’s word is no good when leveled against a prominent family, so it’s exile to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania).  

 

Aboard the transport ship she meets pickpocket Hazel Ferguson, the daughter of an absent alcoholic mother. Her skills as an herbalist and midwife also make her suspicious in the eyes of the ship’s crew, though physician Dr. Caleb Dunne is impressed by her. Also on board is salty-tongued Olive, who is with child. It is implied that she was a prostitute. Post for present status scarcely matters; all the women are viewed as disposable trash. Moreover, a long ocean journey exposed females to danger of physical assault.

 

On the other side of the world, an Aborigine named Matthinna, is taken from her homeland on Flanders Island for no good reason other than that Sir John Franklin of Arctic exploration infamy and his wife wish to undertake a social experiment they believe will fail. They seize a child to see if they can civilize it. The lighter-skinned Matthinna is chosen because she’s not “too” black as to be irredeemable. She too is bound for Van Diemen’s Land, where Franklin is governor.

 

One of the more fascinating details of the novel involves the little-known aftermath for those exiled from England. Did you know exiles were jailed when they went ashore? They had to earn their way to freedom (of a sort) in a place where European men vastly outnumbered women. And remember the time period. The idea of a woman earning her own bread was not impossible, just mostly so.

 

For a time, Matthinna fares better. She lives amidst luxury, though she’d rather be with her own people. She is smart enough to know that her ticket home is compliance. Rechristened as Mary, she excels in her studies and deportment. But she still a “black,” as Europeans reference Aboriginals– when they’re being semi-polite. The Franklins use Mary as a French-speaking trained monkey at parties. For Mary, the calculus is simple: Will she play out the game or succumb to hubris?

 

As you might anticipate, the worlds of the ship’s European white girls and that of Matthinna, will collide. The Exiles is a test of the reach of women’s networks under unusual circumstances. The immigrant story is often told in triumphant tones. The usual arc is that the first generation struggles but works hard to leave a solid bequest for their children. Kline knows it’s messier than that. What do words such as success, acceptance, and freedom mean?

 

Kline does her homework but it’s not quite enough to push this novel over the fence that divides good from extraordinary. Several slips mar an otherwise noble effort. First, she builds sympathy for her characters by placing them in her peril’s way. That’s effective, but she often resorts to melodramatic moments of double Kleenex sentimentality. Kline also breaks historical character in places. This introduces anachronistic contaminants in which characters act as if they are plucked from the 21^st century not the 19^th.

 

This is related to another picked nit. Exiles is an odd mix of imagination and convention. The central protagonists are so compelling that we come to expect much of them. Their flights, though, sometimes thud where they should soar and vice versa. I wonder if Kline realized this as well. Is this why she introduces a vendetta coda set 20 years in the future? It fleshes out several characters, but the device isn’t done with enough nuance to make readers unaware of the author’s intervention.  

 

If these critiques suggest that I lamented reading Exiles, that’s not so. I admire Kline’s work and you will find a glowing review of A Piece of the World in this blog’s archives. It is merely the case that Exiles never surmounted the aforementioned fence. Kline tells her story well, which is a good reason to read it. That it could have been more is a reason not to re-read it.

 

Rob Weir