These sprawling, Michener historical novels are really not novels. They’re a whole different form of literature. It’s like sixteen half-finished novellas strung together. None of the hundred plot lines finish in a way that gives any kind of satisfaction or sense of aesthetic wholeness.

Still, the set design and costumes and customs are pretty convincing. Michener is quite the scholar, and he draws the cultures realistically, at least at the surface level. There are only a couple of time periods he touches where I’ve read what they wrote about themselves, but for those periods, I can confirm that his characters do seem to believe the things about their lives and situations that people at that time would have. I appreciate that; too many historical fiction characters think like moderns.

I think I would have rather read a non-fiction book discussing the same times and places. I guess the idea is that the dramatization will give the book enough interest to keep you reading, in a way a non-fiction book wouldn’t. It didn’t seem to work for me.

It’s pretty cool to get an outline of the history of the people of that part of the Middle East. So many empires have conquered it, over and over and over, each overthrowing the last. It lends weight to the discussion at the end of the book of the Palestinian-Israeli problem. Which it is not the purpose of this book review to discuss, except to note that a non-fiction book would have had the same virtue, except more.

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Neverhome by Laird Hunt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Neverhome is a the story of a lady who becomes a soldier in the Civil War. It’s full of very beautiful language. Also, the sections of disorientation are good. When the vicissitudes of war render the protagonist confused, the prose reflects that. That’s well done.

The tenderness between the protagonist and her husband is wonderful. I enjoyed the false Odyssey ending. Won’t say more than that.

The novel is a bit short. The development of the protagonist from raw recruit to old war dog happens off-stage. And other plot points like that. So the ending felt less realistic and grounded than if there had been a bit more prior development. There could also have been more concrete detail to the backstory. Or it could have come in a different order. For instance, I thought at first that the husband back at the farm was her brother. The author already spreads the story of their romance out over several sections; if the first of those had come nearer to the beginning of the novel, I would have been less confused.

The character portraits are wonderful. There’s nobility and honor as well as cruelty and pettiness. Comedy and tragedy. The stock Civil War characters are there, as well as

The narrative passes through many different scenes, like paintings in a gallery. You sense the the world is a kaleidoscope that the war has shaken up. Nobody knows what the arrangement will be when it finally settles down. And we get these glimpses of the past order of things just before it passes away. Or are they glimpses of a new order only now emerging?



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