Staff Review: The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

I was living in Maine in 2013 when the North Pond Hermit was apprehended. He was caught 29 miles from my house. His arrest was a big deal because Christopher Knight, the hermit, had subsisted in the wilds of Maine, undetected, for 27 years largely by burgling empty vacation cabins. For decades the home owners had no idea who was taking their stuff. According to Knight himself, he broke into about 40 cabins per year for 27 years for a grand total of 1,080 break-ins. He did no damage, took only what he needed to survive (food, tarps, books, etc.), and always felt remorse.

How Knight wound up in the woods -- and survived 27 Maine winters without once building a fire -- is the subject of journalist Michael Finkel's book The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. I couldn't put the book down.

Knight grew up in Maine, the son of quiet, self-sufficient, live-off-the-land Mainers. Chris took the family's characteristic reticence to an extreme and after finishing school and quitting a dead-end job, he drove up to Moosehead Lake, abandoned his car, and began trudging south through the dense Maine woods. He eventually found a spot near North Pond (within earshot of civilization) -- a small clearing ringed by thick foliage and huge boulders -- and here he hunkered down for the next 27 years.

Knight's arrest and the incredible unfolding story of his life in the wild caught Finkel's attention, and, through sheer determination and persistence, Finkel was able to launch a correspondence with the man. He also visited Knight in jail several times, never expecting or receiving a warm welcome. His resulting book sheds as much light as can be shed on Christopher Knight.

Some reviewers have dinged the book because they find Knight to be a cipher with nothing deep or interesting to say about his strange existence or his motivations. I disagree. While the hermit is not the most likable guy in the world, I actually grew to like him. He's smart, droll, nuts about books, and eccentric, which is not such a bad thing. He often struck me as insightful and profound. Above all, I found his outdoor survival abilities astounding. He maneuvered through the woods, and in and out of area camps, for decades without being found, and he survived 27 bitter winters through a carefully-honed schedule of meticulous practices (never sleeping past 2 AM on the coldest nights, for instance, so he wouldn't succumb to hypothermia in his sleep). So, Hermit of North Pond: hero or villain? Read this riveting book and decide for yourself.

~Ann, Adult Services

Staff Review: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

Christina Baker Kline, author of the runaway bestseller Orphan Train, is back with a fine new novel, A Piece of the World. The impetus for this new work was Kline's interest in painter Andrew Wyeth's relationship with a considerably older woman, a native Mainer named Anna Christina Olson. Christina, as she was known, is the subject of Wyeth's most famous painting, 1948's Christina's World, and in her new novel, Kline brings the enigmatic Christina to life.

She does a bang-up job of it too, alternating chapters that propel us through Christina's young adulthood with chapters narrating her initial introduction to Wyeth (when she is 46 and he just 22) and their ensuing friendship. At age 46, Christina's life is solitary and hard. She lives without electricity or running water and has suffered since childhood from an undiagnosed condition that eventually reduces her to crawling on her arms, dragging her legs behind her.

Crushed by a huge romantic disappointment in her youth, Christina spends the bulk of her days caring for her crumbling old farmhouse and her brother Alvaro, who works their farm. Their days are not often visited by joy. Enter the energetic and idealistic Andy Wyeth, who is artistically intrigued by the Olson house, its occupants, and the surrounding landscape. Soon he is painting there every day, which he continues to do for the next thirty years, often painting Christina and Alvaro. Not included in the book but adding to its poignancy is the fact that upon his death at age 91, the famous and wealthy Andrew Wyeth, happily married with his own large family, chose to be buried beside Christina and Alvaro in their humble family plot.

Kline paints her characters with the same magical precision Wyeth's paintings are known for. She paints the landscape uncommonly well too, vividly evoking the sometimes-harsh, always beautiful Maine coast. Most touching of all, Kline imbues the physically disabled Christina with dignity and grace, the very qualities Wyeth ascribes to the awkward woman in his paintings. Christina's life was difficult, her days filled with pain, but she enjoyed 30 years of friendship with a remarkable man and was immortalized in one of the world's most famous works of art.

~Ann, Adult Services

Staff Review: A Trio of Recent(ish) Novels

I am woefully behind in my fiction reading, an unfortunate situation caused, in part, by a long detour into Nonfictionland. In an attempt to catch up, I just blew through a trio of novels I missed over the past two or three years.

My favorite was The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout (of Olive Kitteridge fame), which tells the story of three adult siblings from a Maine family racked by a tragic childhood event (one of the three accidentally killed their father in an incident relayed in the novel's first pages). Oldest son Jim Burgess is a hot-shot corporate lawyer heading for a fall, Bob Burgess works for Legal Aid and seems rather spineless, and Susan Burgess is a frumpy, jilted wife whose only son is in a world of legal trouble.

The author seeds a rich plot woven of dramatic family interactions with real-life, local-to-Maine hot topics, like the unlikely presence of a large Somali community within economically-depressed and homogeneous Lewiston, Maine (the old mill town upon which the novel’s fictional setting is based). The story moves at a fast clip and resolves so satisfactorily (a real accomplishment in a time of often-disappointing conclusions), with a big truth revealed, certain characters getting their comeuppance, and others finding redemption or peace.  

My second favorite was Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, a novel that tackles climate change in a compelling but not story-clobbering way. Set in present-day Appalachia, Kingsolver’s novel serves up a strong female lead in the person of Dellarobia Turnbow, who finds herself trapped in a way-too-small life with a sweet but slow hulk of a husband. 

Monarch butterflies by the millions suddenly appear in her small mountain town, a cohort of scientists moves in, and over the course of events Dellarobbia blossoms into the sort of capable and confident woman who’s bound to land a bigger life.

The third novel on my catch-up fast-track was the fine debut novel The Wild Child by Eowyn Ivey, a book that has garnered glowing reviews and that I figured would pull me into different territory with its quasi-fantastical elements. Set in the homesteaders’ Alaska of the early twentieth century, the novel’s main characters are an older couple, left bereft by the stillbirth of their only child, who leave Pennsylvania to set up in the rugged outback of Alaska, where they encounter (or do they conjure?) a young child named Faina who seems to live, and even thrlve, all alone in the frigid, wolf-haunted wilderness. 

The author’s depiction of Alaska’s pristine landscape bowled me over (wolves, wolverines, bears, moose, icy waters, looming peaks, killing cold), but I was less compelled by the elusive Faina (I admit I am fantasy-resistant), whose pale presence nevertheless constitutes the novel's central question: is she real flesh-and-blood or the fairy-tale snow child of the book's title?     

~Ann, Adult Services