Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis

I can't even begin to describe this novel. It was definitely not what I expected when I picked it up at the library last week. I thought it was about a woman's survival in the wild after a plane crash. Well, that's a big part of it, but there's a lot more, and most of that had me scratching my head. 

It's September, 1986 and  seventy-two year old Cloris Waldrip and her husband are flying to a small cabin in the Montana mountains for a weekend getaway. They've traveled from Texas and this is the first vacation they've really had in years. 

They never make it to the cabin. The small plane they are in crashes in the Bitterroot Range, a particularly brutal wilderness in Montana. Cloris is the only survivor. What follows is Cloris' struggle to find her way out of the wilderness and to safety. With minimal tools to help her survive, she is sure to die before help arrives. Yet somehow, Cloris finds help in the wilderness, and with her own will to survive, you know that Cloris is going to make it. Her tale, told twenty years later from ninety-two year old Cloris' apartment in a retirement home in Vermont, is astounding and shows the power of fighting to survive in the worst of circumstances. 

The other side of this story involves Ranger Debra Lewis, who lives and works in the Bitterroot Range. She's a mess--so much of a mess that I had a permanent wince on my face whenever the story turned to her. She's a divorced raging alcoholic. Lewis has bottles of merlot everywhere, and she spends her days drinking wine out of a thermos while working out of the ranger office and driving the mountain roads. It's a lonesome job, and she's got no one. She hears about the plane crash, and even though the pilot and Mr. Waldrip are found dead, Lewis is convinced Mrs. Waldrip has survived and is out in the wilderness somewhere. She decides to pull together a ragtag team of people to start a search for Mrs. Waldrip. It quickly becomes an obsession. 

I've got to say this wasn't at all the novel I expected it to be. I thought it would be a tale of one woman's survival--a woman vs. nature kind of tale. It was that, for sure, but the rest of it was just downright weird. Ranger Lewis and her motley rescue crew are all damaged people with no hope of rescue. And honestly, Lewis' consumption of merlot kind of made me queasy after awhile-and I love wine! So many lost souls. Mrs. Waldrip is one amazing lady, who looks back at her life and ponders decisions she made. She's got plenty of time to reflect, and her aloneness is so very different from Lewis and crew. 

I would love to discuss this novel and talk it out with someone else who has read it. It left me unsettled and uneasy; maybe because the theme of loneliness is overwhelming, and there isn't really a happy ending, or even a peaceful ending for any of the characters. 

Rating: 4/6 for a novel that is about human survival at the most basic level, and also survival when you are lost in the wilderness in your head. Very odd characters, but Mrs. Waldrip's epic adventure is amazing and keeps you reading. 

Available in hardcover, ebook, and audio. 

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Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis

Taking a Break from Holiday Novels: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

When someone hands you a book and asks you to read it so they can discuss it, you read the book so you can discuss it. This was a novel that had me at turns disturbed, disgusted, intrigued, and reluctantly cheering Eileen on towards a better life. 

Taking place in 1964, and told from a much older Eileen's lens, this is one weird ride. Even when I was completely grossed out, I kept reading--the writing is just that good. Tiny little details that keep you compulsively turning the pages. Are you intrigued yet?

Eileen is twenty-four, and living at home with her alcoholic father. The home is completely filthy; neither has cleaned the house since Eileen's mother died years before. Her father is such an alcoholic that he sits in front of the open oven for warmth, drinking bottles of gin all day, every day. He's a retired cop who still has some odd kind of respect from the hometown police force--a polite, turn your head away respect. He's gotten into so much trouble in his drunken wanderings that Eileen now keeps all his shoes locked in the trunk of her car so he can't leave the house. Eileen herself is a piece of work. A young woman who is so disgusted with her physical appearance, her life, and pretty much everything; she's such a wreck that it's a bit of a shock. She sleeps in an unheated attic on a fold out cot, and wears her dead mother's too big clothes to her job as an office worker in a boy's prison. Personal hygiene is out the window. As she says, she likes to "stew in her own filth." Ew. 

Christmas is just around the corner, and we know that Eileen's life is going to radically change on Christmas Eve. We know this because older, wiser Eileen keeps telling us, so the build up to what will happen starts pretty early in the novel. You are at times repulsed by Eileen, and equally intrigued, and see glimpses of who she could have been, if only her upbringing had been a little different; if only her parents had cared about their child. This is a study of a person profoundly damaged by their negligent parents--and for that, you can't help but hope Eileen finds a way out. 

You may wonder why the heck anyone would want to read this novel. I've got to say, it will grab you and you won't be able to put it down. Once you get past Eileen's very strong defenses, and start to see more of who she is, you become invested in her escape from her terrible, empty life. You see glimpses of an Eileen that is witty, sharp, and so desperately wants someone to love her. 

Read it. It's quite the change from my reads so far this month, but a good one. I recommend it as a great way to bust out of your routine book type--take a chance and read something really different. 

Rating:  4/6 for a fascinating novel about a young woman who aches to break out of her life and make something of herself, but had to overcome a lot of obstacles to get there. Brilliant writing. 

Available in paperback, ebook, and audio.

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Taking a Break from Holiday Novels: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh