A Gentleman in Moscow Is Waiting to Meet You.

Many years ago I learned from John Irving that if you want to convert readers into avid fans who will slog through hundreds of pages with you, arrange to have something horrible happen to the principal protagonist early on—something that's no fault of his own. Despite character flaws, that inciting incident gives us, the reader, a stake in the story. It makes us care because our hero is obviously innocent. But why? I think it's because we detect grace, or at least the potential for grace, even if it comes only thanks to a writer's cruelest plot-turn. John Irving had a penchant for having characters lose body parts through no fault of their own. Charles Dickens, long before him, preferred treating, well-meaning, smart children cruelly. And then there was Barbara Kingsolver's recent reworking of David Copperfield, entitled, Demon Copperhead, demonstrating that today's opioid-addicted times are no less cruel than those of the Victorian era. Her novel also proves that our modern-day zeal for social justice is no less intense.

In A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles, on the first page of his novel has a Bolshevik tribunal in Moscow on June 21, 1922 sentence one Count Alexander Rostov, a refined, educated, and truly gentle man, who has never worked a day in his life, to house arrest in the same elegant, upper-crust hotel in which he's been a resident-guest for many years.

The hotel in the novel is called The Metropol. It exists in real life. Just as in the novel, it's located a short walk from Red Square and The Kremlin.

Rostov's crime? Being an "unrepentant aristocrat." Well, as we meet the Count in the novel's opening pages, he's being escorted across the Red Square back to his hotel by two Russian soldiers. Only he's wholly unrepentant. He refuses to play the role of a just-sentenced prisoner who is now beginning to serve out his sentence.

"Drawing his shoulders back without breaking stride, the Count inhaled the [glorious, cool] air like one fresh from a swim."

We learn Rostov is descended from ten generations of Russian aristocrats, all of whom stood over six feet tall. As he walks along "his waxed mustaches spread like the wings of a gull."

"'Hello, my good man,' the Count called to Fyodor, the fruit merchant at the edge of the square. 'I see the blackberries have come in early this year.'"

And when the Count and the two Russian soldiers arrive back at the hotel, the count has the temerity to dismiss them saying, "Thank you, gentlemen for delivering me safely. I shall no longer be in need of your assistance."

It goes without saying, the two soldiers refuse to be dismissed.

This, in microcosm, is the delight of reading A Gentleman in Moscow, a novel that reverberates with chords of joy and freedom, almost as if the Count, through no fault of his own, consigned to living out his prison sentence in the most elegant of settings, is reborn, a person freed of sin, who is now free to serve others in every meaning of the word.

As with every Towles' novel, the narrative insists on being vibrant, energetic, and intensely observant, readable and celebratory.

If you ever need living proof that a great novelist can take on a subject most novelists would never touch because they'd find it pitifully boring… Or that a great novelist can breathe life into a story no others would touch so that it opens up into a fascinating love story of a gentleman and a Russian movie star; along with the story of a father and his young daughter; and also into the story of a writer exiled to Siberia who loses his soul but who connects with the true meaning of life through bread; and also—never to be forgotten—the story of a man who's never worked a day in his life but who displays such intelligence, competence, verve and wit; he inspires so much love and respect on the part of his associates that he's appointed head waiter of The Metropol's finest restaurant, so that, in the end, Count Rostov truly becomes a person of service to others above all else, so that, in the end, he works every day of his life.

I think it's high time you met A Gentleman in Moscow, don't you?

All thumbs with portraying emotions conventionally, Hernan Diaz's Innovative Workarounds Win Him the Pulitzer.

I felt fearful when I opened Diaz's newest novel Trust for the first time. Right after the title page there's a page called, "Contents" under which are four listings and the actual page numbers in the novel where each of those four sections begin.

The first is "BONDS" with a name under it, "Harold Vanner." We're told it starts on page 3, and in the actual novel that's where it begins, on the very next page.

Why is part of a novel called "BONDS?" Who is Harold Vanner? Those are questions the author expects us to ask.

Directly under that is a second all-caps listing, "MY LIFE" with another name,  "Andrew Bevel." That section begins on page 127. Sure enough that's where MY LIFE begins in Diaz's novel.

You might ask, "Why should that cause you to feel fearful. That's nothing more than a table of contents."

Ah, but novels never have "a table of contents." Never.

I was fearful because I immediately sensed Hernan Diaz was up to something revolutionary, experimental, innovative and very difficult to pull off. If somehow he were able to pull it off, I instinctively doubted if I could fully appreciate the implications and effects he was creating with his innovative story-telling methods.

This opening item called "BONDS" isn't a chapter—it's a mini-novel in its own right, except I think it's more helpful to call it a "proto-novel," sort-of-a-make-believe novel which is written in a specific style that differs from the writing styles used in the other sections. All four employ radically different styles. Somehow, mysteriously, as one reads all four proto-fictions, a story of intrigue and cruel, powerful psychological force takes form in our minds. We wonder if a perfectly sane character is being kept against her will in a sanatorium in a drugged state.  Make no mistake: The "author" of BONDS, "Harold Vanner" is discussed at length in the other three sections of Trust. So are the "authors" of the other three parts, especially Andrew Bevel.

MY LIFE by Andrew Bevel is supposedly comprised of the notes that an extremely wealthy individual, a bond trader on Wall Street, jots down about what he wishes a ghostwriter to cover in his memoir. The ghostwriter who Andrew Bevel hires for that ghostwriting job is Ida Portenza.

The fourth section is titled, "FUTURES" by Mildred Bevel. It's supposedly a diary kept by the wife of the bond trader, who may be keeping his wife at a sanitarium in a drugged state. We're not sure, but we're suspicious.

Every element in Diaz's novel is fiction, a product of the author's towering, soaring imagination.

I sense what he's up to: Diaz isn't able to portray emotions directly in his fictions. I could detect that by reading his proto-novels, and proto-memoirs. So how does he work around his deficiency? I think he invents a fresh, alternative method to induce you and me, the readers, to become involved in the story without him ever having to portray character emotions in a head-on, conventional way.

The characters aren't overly involved with their emotions, but I felt strong emotions as I read Trust when it came to what the characters were going through, the immense pressures being placed on their psyches, especially in the case of Ida Partenza, the proto-author of the third section which we're told is Ida's "found memoir." It might sound hokey, but it pulled me in. It worked like gangbusters. I became concerned for Ida's personal safety as a father might be concerned for the safety of his daughter, as I'll bet you will become, too, if you choose to read Trust.

Early on I stopped reading Trust for its conventional story; Diaz teaches us to read looking for and finding morsels of story, or links between and among the four proto-sections. Diaz creates tremendous intrigue and suspense in Trust by controlling these (for lack of a better descriptor) "story evidences."

I know this sounds strange, but when you read this novel—and in my opinion, although it takes a lot of energy to read, its lovely and elegant. It's worth reading. But, you'll see: Instead of reading a novel, as you delve into Trust, you'll find yourself examining, investigating, and scouring documents for clues. Diaz turns us into detectives who are way too emotionally close to a case, detectives who have long ago surrendered their objectivity.

Finally, for me, it all comes down to the title of the novel. So I ask you: What is the single thing a finely written novel has in common with a 30-year bond or a relatively safe currency like the U.S. dollar? It's the emotion of trust, the feeling that the bond, currency and novel will all pay off. (Thank God, after last weekend, we can continue to call the U.S. currency "safe" and "universally trusted." Well, sort of.)

As readers, we're always putting ourselves in the hands of novelists. We trust them to deliver a unique experience. You won't be disappointed when you read Trust. Just don't look for a conventional story told in a conventional manner. You won't find it. What you will find is a wonder to behold. For I do believe that Hernan Diaz, recognizing his severe artistic limitations (in regards to his writing about emotions head-on) discovered innovative workarounds which directly account for why, only weeks ago, his novel, Trust, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Trust by Hernan Diaz: The Novel That Can't Resist Rewriting Itself.

I read someplace: Great novels aren’t written; they’re rewritten. Well, there are four parts to Trust, and each part seems to want to revise the other three. Although the impulse to revise makes Trust a far better novel than it would otherwise be,I don't think they make Trust great.

The opening, entitled Bonds, purports to be a novel-within-a-novel written by a fictional novelist by the name of Harold Vanner. It tells the life story of a New York financier by the name of Benjamin Rask in the 1920s, and it reads like an excised version of The Great Gatsby without the stylistic flourishes and the obsessive pursuit of a woman’s love that’s at the heart of Fitzgerald’s novel, and what made it great.In addition, its won a number of awards and been a New York Times bestseller.

Rask is presented as almost the opposite of Gatsby, a Wall Street financier void of addictions, obsessions or pleasure-drives of any kind, which, as far as I’m concerned, means Rask isn’t a human being. Likewise, in keeping with his character's personality, Diaz’s writing style is surgical yet precise in how it makes cuts and revisions to the strong emotions one finds in Fitzgerald’s work. That does not make Trust sound so appealing, does it? And yet this novel never failed to keep my interest; I always wanted to know what would happen next.

The second part of Trust purports to be the memoir of an extremely wealthy entrepreneur, one Andrew Bevel, who’s assembled notes and fully-written portions of a memoir of his life. Like Vanner’s novel, it’s fiction. The second part comes across almost as if Diaz is saying, “Hey, if you weren’t wild about Bonds, try this memoir on for size.” It’s kind of dry. After all, it was supposedly written by a Wall Street financier who seems as void of addictions as Rask is in the first part.

Bevel’s memoir are left purposely incomplete. Could it be that Bevel doesn’t wish to bore us with all the details? Or has Bevel put all of us, his readers, on a need-to-know basis? There’s a good deal of ambiguity throughout which I have no doubt is intended.

Fact: in a novel entitled Trust, I don’t always trust the narrator. Yet in today’s world replete with fake news, conspiracy theories and failing California banks, how surprising is that?

I’ll leave out the spoilers and just say, from beginning to end, Trust is an always changing yet always fascinating conundrum.

Here’s a biographical fact about Trust’s author Hernan Diaz: Before turning to novels, he wrote a literary study of Jorge Luis Borges, his fellow Argentinian. Back in the 1970s when I used to binge on Borges’ stories, I was always engaged with the writing; yet, they often left me feeling I had been put through an intellectual exercise that ultimately went nowhere. Still I couldn’t put those stories down, not at first. Like a literary “trick of the eye,” they left me fascinated yet oddly unsure what I was looking at, or where I, the reader, fit into their larger scheme.

In the end, I decided Borges’ stories were a literary curiosity. I moved on.

I’m not ready to do the same with Diaz, even though the cold, clinical nature of his writing reminds me of Borges’ style. Trust left me wondering if Diaz was doing anything beyond spinning intellectual yarns designed to titillate? Or, as we say in the Lingua Franca of today: With this novel, was there ever any there there? Your guess is as good as mine.

When Does Drama Become Melodrama? And Why Should We Care?

Once upon a time, drama was good and melodrama wasn't. Plays by Tennessee Williams were good. Soap operas like General Hospital, going strong since 1963, were bad.

Then along came teenagers, who muddied the issue by inventing their own drama. If you've ever had a teenager, you know what I'm talking about.

The word "drama" was always meant to convey life as we knew it, or at least related to it. Dramas were stories that pulled us in, that turned books into page-turners.

Melodramas were dramas given to "extravagant theatricality," works where "plot and action predominate over characterization." (Webster.)

It started out simple, and I insist it's still simple: Dramas are meaningful to us as stories. Melodramas aren't. In the end, we get to decide which is which. It's all a matter of taste.

This question came up for me as I was reading a novel entitled Illuminations by one Mary Sharratt, published in 2012.

It tells the story of a real person, Hildegard von Bingen, who lived in what is today Germany in the 1100s, Medieval times. Even as a little girl, Hildegard had visions. Her family thought her visions were causing them bad luck, so naturally her parents arranged for her to be sent away to a remote monastery where she was walled in with another child who was thought to be insane. Yes, bricked in.

So, as you're reading this beautifully written book—I hope I'm not giving you the impression that I think anything otherwise—on one level you may read Illuminations as a historically accurate commentary on how they "disposed" of special children back then.

Both these children (both about seven years of age) who were walled into a two-room living quarters directly off the main sanctuary of a monastery with a chain-link fence (a Middle-Ages version of chicken wire?) were of noble birth. The one called Gutta, who was considered insane came from a wealthy family. Why would the monastery take care of these two children for a lifetime? Along with her child, Gutta's mother gave a sizable "dowry" to the male leaders of the monastery.

It's no spoiler if I report both girls grew up to eventually be canonized by the Catholic Church as saints. The servant girl—the one with the visions—is the real-life story of Hildegard von Bilgen who first was walled-in as a servant-prisoner, then was freed and became a nun, then was made leader of her own monastery, and was finally canonized. Books that she wrote during her lifetime, all based on her visions, still exist today.

It should come as no surprise: Hildegard came close to being burned at the stake for having the temerity to write books about her visions.

As I read the novel, I was amazed at how the novel sometimes veered wildly from drama to melodrama and back to drama again.

The early parts where Gutta and Hildegard are both walled in work best; we uniformly and roundly hate both families for treating their special children in this inhumane way. We read it as social commentary, and it has strong appeal.

As soon as Hildegard frees herself from imprisonment immediately after the noble woman she served dies of starvation, (I believe she had OCD and an eating disorder) many events ensue. I read some of them as melodrama.

Here's the challenge: Mary Sharratt is writing a novel that took place during The Age of Faith.You might say a novel written today that depicts current times is written during The Age of Tik-Tok.

I think the drama-melodrama extremes in the second half of the novel are based on where you believe God has intervened at each turn to keep Hildegard from being burned at the stake as a witch.

The Passover Holiday will soon be upon us. Do you read Moses parting the Red Sea so the Israelites could escape and then causing the waters to come rushing back together and drown Pharaoh's army as melodrama or drama? I guess that depends on whether you believe it or not. Well, to its credit, The Bible is written in third person.

This is important. It accounts for the development and acceptance of magical realism as a writing style worthy of winning its literary practitioners Nobel Prizes for Literature. No itty-bitty thing.

In the case of Illuminations, matters are made worse because the entire novel is written in first-person; that is, in the voice of Hildegard herself. In my view, the entire narrative becomes unhinged when Hildegard has no choice but to describe astounding events in her own voice, for example, how she freed herself from the head of the monastery, Cuno. He is her nemesis, and when Hildegard and her nuns sing a song composed and lyrics written by Hildegard, a visiting, higher-llevel church official overrules Cuno and declares her poetry and music to be God-inspired. He blesses it, in other words. Hildegard is saved and freed from being under the thumb of that horrid man. But all we have is Hildegard's plain "voice" or writing style to tell us very matter-of-factly that this has happened. All the potential tools a writer writing in third-person has at her disposal--poetry, image, metaphore, etc.--are short-circuited, rendered null-and-void. As a result of that, its plain style at major plot turning points, the novel starts feeling to me at that moment like the hero who unties the damsel in distress from the tracks (the villain has just tied her to) moments before the train happens to come along. I read it and the word "melodrama" comes to mind. Another reader—-someone who might vervently wish to believe this is what happened--might take the bait hook, line and sinker, and believe it.

In summation, perhaps my experience of the novel might be wholly different if throughout Illuminations we had a third-person narrator who we could trust to be reporting, as they said on the TV show, Dragnet, "The Facts, M'mam. Just the facts!" In this case, the reader's belief in the narrative would be enhanced, I would argue. What do you think?

Of Sharp Objects and Saints Banished for Seeing Visions.

As children we are often told stories we accept as truth until we "grow up" and "adjust" our understandings. My thesis is that a similar "growing up" process can happen as we read through a novel or watch a film or a streaming series: if it's any good, our understandings of what's going on in a story will "mature" and become more nuanced as we progress through the work.

Mary Sharratt's novel Illuminations takes place in Germany during Medieval times, in the 1100s. It fictionally recounts the life of Hildegard von Bingen who grows up in a German monastery and was canonized a saint in the Roman Catholic Church toward the end of her life.

As Illuminations opens, we read about a young woman, Jutta, daughter of a wealthy German family who has been banished by her family at an early age and sent into solitary confinement (able to speak to only one other person) due to her insanity.

Early on we see Hildegard's mother actively "selling" the full-time caregiver services of her tenth and youngest daughter to care for that same wealthy family's insane daughter, Jutta, for the rest of Hildegard's life. Her mother is essentially selling Hildegard into slavery for no cost to Jutta's mother. Why is she selling so hard to send her daughter into what was called at the time "anchorage" in a monastery—to totally be done with her? To never see her child ever again?

Hildegard has been having visions since she was a very young child. Everyone in her family, her parents and her nine other siblings, are convinced Hildegard's visions are bringing ill fortune on their family.

That is not what Hildegard is told, of course. She's told she should feel honored because as the tenth child in her family she is being "tithed" to the Catholic Church. The term indicates the family is giving up one-tenth of its wealth to the church, but of course that's just a cover story.

We know the very visions that caused the family to banish their daughter are the ones that many years later inspires a Pope to nominate Hildegard for sainthood.

If Hildegard's mother had not been such an effective salesperson, Hildegard might never have been canonized.

In Sharp Objects, starring Amy Adams, an HBO Limited Series directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, we see children being told a great many stories about why two teens were murdered in the fictional town of Wind Gap, MO. The series is based on a novel of the same name written by Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl, who we can always depend on to take us to very dark places.

Adams plays Camille Preaker an emotionally scarred, troubled big-city journalist who happens to come from Wind Gap. Her editor sends her back to her home town to cover the unsolved murders.

With Camille, the scars are both emotional and very real. As a younger woman she used to cut herself with razor blades—not just making cuts, but spelling out hateful words on her body, e.g., "whore." The wounds might be healed, but as our story opens, the words are spelled out in shocking scars. You will be driven to ask yourself how any young woman could be driven to such extreme acts of self-harm. You will not be given any pat answers.

As for who committed those two unsolved murders of teenagers? We, the viewers of the series, have our suspicions.

Camille's overbearing mother is played brilliantly by the great Patricia Clarkson. She counters every suspicion of culpability with plausible denial worthy of the finest CIA agent. Never mind that everyone in the community of Wind Gap knows her to be a perfect mother in every way. Years before, she presided over the loss of an older sister of Camille's. The child died of a freak child poisoning. That gives us pause.

The work is tantalizing. We wonder: Could this be a case of death by perfect mothering? Also the carving of words on Camille's skin? What's behind that? Let's say the story snakes into some pretty dark places. Yet, the actress Patricia Clarkson prances around all the lawmen in town and doesn't raise the slightest suspicion.

  

Her only stated concern with her journalist-daughter who's living with her and her strange husband and younger daughter in their house while Camille is covering the unsolved murders? Camille's writing must in no way embarrass her, nor in any way jeopardize her standing in the community. Now isn't that the sure sign of a perfect mother who selflessly puts the needs of the Wind Gap community ahead her own?

For those who haven't seen the series, I don't want to spoil it for you… completely. All I'll say: The real culprit is not who you think it is—and that's after the mother everyone thinks is the perfect mom is convicted of the crimes and sent to prison.

At every twist and turn in this demented tale, you think you're seeing things from a more mature point of view—closer to the story that will hold up under adult scrutiny—until you realize author Gillian Flynn has fooled you again.

And they say writers have a heart!

What Makes Hunger Games So Appetizing For So Many?

Food insecurity—given the effects of global climate change and inflation—is such a widespread challenge today, it's my contention if you wanted to achieve best-selling status among young adult ("YA") readers—you could not do better than have your novel star a 15-year-old young woman character who faces hunger every day of her life, and who acts illegally every day to feed her family by hunting small game in a forbidden forest. Why? Because being an illegal hunter so her family won't starve, when combined with her tremendous self-reliance and determination, garners Katniss, the star of The Hunger Games, instant hero status.

Notice, Suzanne Collins, named her novel The Hunger Games. She could have named her book The Fight-to-the-Finish Games or The Gladiator Games, but she didn't. She featured hunger first and foremost on the title page. Why?

My thesis is that by choosing to call her novel The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins had a bestseller on her hands from the title page on, because food—from eating disorders to food security—is on the minds of so many young people. Even those who never have to give a second thought as to where their next meal is coming from, instantly admire a person like Katniss who provides for her family by hunting every day even though she's only fifteen years old. I certainly would. Wouldn't you?

It's important to say, in Collins' fantasy country of Panem, there are a dozen districts, yet only one of the districts is filled with abjectly poor, truly hungry people—District 12, the one in which Katniss lives. It's the poorest district of them all. So, it's not exactly The Hunger Games for the other twenty-four participants, but it is for Katniss. The young man who becomes her partner, whose first name is Peeta, also comes from District 12, but happens to be the son of a baker, so he's never been truly hungry in his life. Plus, the other twenty-two players (two from each district) don't know every-day hunger the way our heroine does.

My point? For Katniss it's truly The Hunger Games far more than it is for any other participant, although it's true that withholding food is one of the strategies the "game makers" use to get the participants to want to fight and kill one another.

The second part of my thesis is that our hard-scrabble, hunt-to-feed heroine is only where Katniss' journey begins. What makes her so appealing is that she's an emotional chameleon, rapidly adapting to changing game requirements in order to win the advantage over her opponents. She shows tremendous resilience.

She makes a unbelievably rapid adjustment to consuming what to her just one week earlier would have seemed like a glutinous amount of food. She also adjusts to being noticed by everyone for having earned the highest score when she is interviewed by the judges. She adjusts rapidly as the other players begin to begrudgingly respect her cleverness. For example, she adjusts to her mentor, Heymitch's fall-down-drunk antics, and in the process actually persuades him to be her mentor. He helps her succeed.

In her little bubble, as part of "The Games" she "goes viral," but she adjusts to her hero status at the speed of light. I think that's one of the things about her that makes her so appealing to so many young readers. Of course she's largely a fantasy, but how could you not admire her for her curt, witty observations, and her spirit as she starts to come into her own.

When she allies herself with the clever Rue, she and Katniss are faced with having too much food other players could steal from them. When Rue asks, "…how would you get rid of it?" Katniss answers, "Burn it. Dump it in the lake. Soak it in fuel." I poke Rue in the belly just like I would Pym (Katniss's younger sister) "Eat it!" She giggles.  "Don't  worry, I'll think of something. Destroying things is so much easier than making them."

What wisdom from a 15-year-old!

I think what happens to us, the readers of this book, is that we change. We want Katniss to win so badly; as new aspects of her personality emerge and come into focus, we accept them as part and parcel of Katniss. We become seduced into believing that young lady, the lean and hungry one, as she was described as being in chapter one can be so much more. We lose sight of that Kitniss and accept her as we see her now, because that's how we want to see her. In other words, we fall in love, and our judgment becomes blurred.

Perhaps that's Katniss's formula for success in winning The Hunger Games, and it's also Suzanne Collins success formula for winning with her novel. We never once question how Katniss can possess a personality and an intelligence that absolutely flowers over the course of a mere two-hundred-seventy pages and a passage of time that extends no longer than two weeks. Because we want her to win that badly. Such is the magic of fiction when twenty-four people are all running for their lives, and you already know the two you want to be victorious. Why, Katniss and Peeta, of course! You start rooting for them, and the next thing you know, they win! And—get this!—they're hungry no more. What a happy ending.

Devouring "The Hunger Games."

Long-time readers of my EWAs will remember the time when I was a bit late to a literary luncheon, and, as a result, was horrified to be seated at the fantasy-adventure table because there was no room at the literary-fiction table.

On that occasion I bravely wrapped myself in the cloak of a vampire yearning for a blood-fix, and discovered for myself the illicit joys of genre, which at the time I would have told you was akin to an upper-crust intellectual (like me) being arrested for literary dumpster diving.

I believe there is much to be learned about telling a story by dwelling in the land of genre which, by the way, is just East of Eden.

Hell, I spent years living a dystopian story; why shouldn't I spend hours reading one?

Really now, time-traveling back and forth between the U.S. in the 1950s and Scotland in the 1740s can get kind of boring, or, from a story-telling point of view much too easy to turn into a gimmick. That's a reference to The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon, by the way.

As I often say, "All fiction is about family—either the formation of a family or its disillusion, or both." It's all about love, in other words, that urge many of us have to spend our lives in company of some special person.

You'll never go wrong if each time you open a novel to page one—regardless of what genre it is—you ask yourself, "What is the family that is being formed or destroyed in this story—or the family that is being formed and then destroyed."

This time, instead of lateness to a literary luncheon, it was a book club I belong to that caused me take a literary sojourn into YA, i.e., young-adult fiction, by reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and to open it to page one.

There we see a family, such as it is, being described. A young girl named Katnisss writing in the "first-person-I," , describing waking up in her bed to find that her younger sister, Prim, with whom she usually sleeps, has crawled in with their mother during the night. The fact that both the mother and her two children all sleep in one room—that's just the first of many hardships Katniss and her family endure. Food insecurity is another.

Later on in Chapter One we will once again see Prim protected, shielded if you will, only this time by her sister, Katniss.

We soon realize Katniss' family is floundering, barely getting by. The father was killed in a mining accident and this same mother, whose bed Pym has crawled into, recently returned to her two children after a considerable absence (she abandoned her family—no reason given). Now she's back. Katniss isn't very trusting her mother will remain with her and her sister.

Readers of the wonderful, weird, unsettling, and gripping short story by Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery" published in The New Yorker in 1948 will recognize the basic conceit of The Hunger Games. The day that's being described on page one of the novel is known as "the day of the reaping" when a boy and a girl from each District of the fictional and highly repressive police state, a country called Pym is selected to partake in a fight-to-the finish. There are 12 districts; thus, 24 young people fight until a single victor is left alive.

Without giving away any spoilers, let me set forth a few thoughts I had as I read the opening chapters:

The author, Suzanne Collins, wrote children's TV shows for many years; it shows in her writing, which is highly visual.

The book reads almost as though a movie is being described. The words we read are what the "camera" would see if it were a movie. It's possible the novel was written after the screenplay was written; not the other way around.

The story moves extremely fast. Collins has a marvelous way of having the point-of-view character quickly become the trusted narrator, as she describes her world. That kind of writing is called "exposition." If a writer gets bogged down in it—explaining too many details—it's a killer. It kills the story. It kills creativity. A novel burdened by exposition quickly turns deadly dull.

Collins escapes those drawbacks by telling her story fast using extremely easy-to-read language. She starts building narrative momentum on page one. Beginning writers have a terrible time doing this and also moving their characters around on a dramatic stage that is, after all, composed entirely of words. Collins is brilliant in both departments. One example: "I swing my legs off the bed and slide into my hunting boots. Supple leather that has molded to my feet." You immediately trust her. She's done this a million times. Another example: "I flatten out on my belly and slide under a two-foot stretch [of fence] that's been loose for years." She's a pro.

Katniss describes her family: Prim, the essence of young, untouched beauty, her "face as a raindrop, as lovely as a primrose for which she was named." And her mother: "In sleep my mother looks younger, still warn, but not so beaten-down," an extremely effective description. And notice—there's not even a trace of sentimentalism. Collins is using Katniss to build her character and earn your trust as your narrator at the same time. You sense Katniss is a reliable narrator; she's holding nothing back.

Next month: More about The Hunger Games: Its strengths and weaknesses.