John Pipkin’s debut novel, Woodsburner, is built on the intriguing historical event of Henry David Thoreau accidentally setting fire to 300 acres of Concord woods in 1844. Though one of the novel’s main characters is Thoreau, it is actually the lives of other townspeople who take center stage and really steal the show.
The novel circulates among a variety of third person perspectives, each linked together by their observations of the oncoming fire. In real time the novel spans less than a day, but with each new character Pipkin brings their history and back story to bear, allowing him to look at the big question of what role fate and chance plays in a man’s life.
When Thoreau reflects on his brother’s death, he says, “It is clear to him that one man’s death erases not only that man’s possibilities but all the possibilities that might have ensued from those, like the wake of a boat slicing through waves that might otherwise have reached the shore. Every man lives among the deaths of all who came before” (174).
It’s this interconnectedness that Pipkin shows, whether through bookseller Eliott Calvert selling pencils made by Thoreau’s father or selling books to Emma, Oddmund Hus’s secret love. Oddmund is the best character, one deserving of an entire book. He is Thoreau before Thoreau is, living alone in the woods before his love for Emma leads him to take work with her husband so he can be nearby. His arrival to America is stunning and tragic, and his story is what Pipkin is really about—the various people who came to America to start over and get away from some Old World, whether literal, internal, or figurative. In the end, Thoreau mistakenly calls him Young America, and Oddmund’s transformation, spurred by the fire, does give hope.
The novel also follows the creepy preacher man Caleb Dowdy, who sort of imitates Jonathan Edwards through a 21st century lens that tends to mock such views. His visitation by Anezka and Zalenka is haunting.
And Calvert’s story is also an American one—rather than religion he represents the tension between art and commerce as a struggling playwright and bookstore owner. It’s hard not read some of today’s bookselling woes into his plight, as Calvert eventually decides to add a coffeehouse to his business since books alone can’t keep his wife in the lifestyle she demands.
Thoreau himself is the least interesting, perhaps because Pipkin limited himself to historical events in that case. But he overthinks, sometimes arriving at pithy aphorisms in unrealistic ways. He is flawed and earnest, though, so somewhat forgivable.
The book was also recently nominated for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction.
- Boston Globe review
- CS Monitor review
- NYT review
Pipkin interview:
No comments:
Post a Comment