Originally published June 8, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Page modified June 8, 2007 at 2:00 AM
Book review
"The Maytrees" provides family, forgiveness and a few odd phrases
Annie Dillard, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," is admired as much for her prose as for her stories.
Special to The Seattle Times
"The Maytrees"
by Annie Dillard
HarperCollins, 207 pp., $24.95
Annie Dillard, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," is admired as much for her prose as for her stories. In "The Maytrees," her first novel since the Pacific Northwest pioneer historical saga "The Living," she tells an engaging, subtle tale, but one in which her sentences sometimes soar off into an empyrean so rarified that plot and characters are left behind.
In the mid-1940s, Toby Maytree, a young carpenter and poet, has spent the war at the San Francisco Office of War Information. He returns to his native Cape Cod, "that exposed and mineral sandspit," where artists and eccentrics front the wild Atlantic and resolutely turn their backs to the conventions of American life. In a beach shack, Toby reads and watches the stars, the tides, the seasons.
Lou Bigelow is a young woman of striking looks who has had a privileged life and now seems content to surrender her life to those same rhythms of nature. Inevitably, it seems, they fall in love. When he walks her to his home on the dunes, it seems to her that "the world of town vanished as if the wind tore it off." For his part, "without her he already felt like one of two pieces of electrical tape pulled apart."
They marry, have a son and live without a television or a car, no insurance or savings. If it sounds precarious, Dillard leaves no doubt that it is also idyllic: "After they married she learned to feel their skin as double-sided. They felt a pause. Theirs was too much feeling to push through the crack that led down to the dim world of time and stuff."
Lou's ecstatic sensuality is a mild example of the way Dillard's sentences can careen from literal to metaphorical in turns so sharp that the reader risks whiplash. The image of their "double-sided" skin beautifully echoes Toby's sense of himself as "one of two pieces of electrical tape." But then, "They felt a pause." Are we to understand that their life together proceeds in a parentheses, separate from "the dim world of time and stuff"? Perhaps. But what is "the crack"?
Whatever it might mean in the context of Lou's reverie, Toby will later fall through it — or is he pushed? In any case, he leaves Lou and their son, Petie, who has just suffered a broken leg, to move to Maine with their friend Deary. Their descent into the "world of time and stuff" comes fast, and Deary's business savvy and Toby's carpentry make them wealthy.
Meanwhile, Lou raises their son and learns to savor her independence. Decades later, more broken bones will bring Toby and Deary back to Lou. Anger, acceptance, forgiveness and love pulse through the narrative as forcefully as the tides.
Yet the tides can go still when Dillard offers another head-scratcher of a metaphor or an ellipsis as abrupt as a brick wall. Here is Petie, now a grown man, pondering his father's abandonment: "Years ago when he was a boy he tried to talk himself out of hating his father. It worked for a while, until the years' silences piled up." So far, so good. But then, "Now he was frying in crumbs. Helplessly he imagined those two there in Maine doing what." He is a fisherman, so maybe "frying in crumbs" figures the fisherman as his catch, breaded and fried. Maybe "doing what" suggests that his imagination won't dare elaborate on what they're doing.
As much as "The Maytrees" is about the Maytrees, it is also about language — language that is sometimes obtrusively showy, sometimes lyrically enthralling.
Richard Wakefield is the author of the poetry collection "East of Early Winters" (The University of Evansville Press/Richard Wilbur Poetry Series). He lives in Federal Way and teaches at Tacoma Community College.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
Book review: "Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life:" Fearless, funny and opinionated
Book review: 'Changing My Mind': Zadie Smith ponders the mad, mad world
Book review: Philip Roth's 'The Humbling': an aging actor quits the stage
Book review: 'The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped The Cold War'
John Grisham, Mitch Albom are hot sellers

LA Galaxy's David Beckham
Los Angeles Galaxy's David Beckham talks about the upcoming MLS Cup final during after a team practice.
nwjobs

Post a comment

Michelle Goodman blogs about work/life balance.
How to tell your office you're gravely ill
Post a comment
nwautos

Choosing a new sedan? Weigh the impact of your choice on your wallet and on the planet.
Post a comment
- Craigslist adoption ad: A plea by young mother-to-be? A scam?
- 'The Road' takes Viggo Mortensen to Mount St. Helen's and Astoria, Ore.
- Italian lead prosecutor argues Knox motive was hatred
- Italian prosecutors request life sentence for UW student
- Man shot in chest on E. Union Street in Capitol Hill
- Child-support error costs nearly $21,000
- Washington state wines make annual best-of list
- Tugboat sinks in Seattle's waterfront
- Mariners Blog | A Mariners-Tigers swap makes a whole lot of sense for both teams
- Lynnwood is reinventing itself — again
- Senate vote clears hurdle
234 - Mariners add six to 40-man roster
149 - Tight Senate vote launches health care over hurdle
119 - Child-support error costs nearly $21,000
112 - Palin excitement builds in Tri-Cities
105 - Vikings easily beat the Seahawks
101 - Prosecutor requests life in prison for Amanda Knox
86 - Cutting through breast-cancer confusion
82 - Game thread
68 - New York terror trials will restore faith in rule of law
47
- Washington state wines make annual best-of list
- Nonprofits get creative using Twitter and Facebook to make donation easier
- It's possible to recover a life lost to hoarding
- Lynnwood is reinventing itself — again
- Great places to cross-country ski for free (or almost) in the Methow
- Child-support error costs nearly $21,000
- 'The Road' takes Viggo Mortensen to Mount St. Helen's and Astoria, Ore.
- Recipes: Sesame Pork Roast, Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes, Gingerbread with Lemon Sauce and more
- Banff: powder, peaks & purity
- 175 foster kids in Washington get 'forever families'








