I think it is fair to say that this summer has been a bit of a washout for me in terms of blogging.

With just under a week to go of 20 Books of Summer, I am woefully behind on my reviews and finishing the 15 that I originally picked is looking unlikely. I knew this would be a bust summer and that the blog might take the hit, but I have been finding if very difficult to make the time to sit and write reviews. On the plus side, I am still reading loads, just not reading the books I said I would be reading!

Therefore, in an attempt to catch up a bit here are two short reviews of books from my summer reading challenge.

No 364 Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams

Breaking and Entering is an odd dream-like novel about a young couple, Willie and Liberty, who break into the houses of absent rich people on Florida’s gulf coast, live there for a time and then move on.  Not very much happens in the novel. The pair move around, engaging in strange meditative conversations with other characters who cross their paths.

This thing that was like an enchantment, this energy that kept them going, this adopted perverse skill of inhabiting the space others had made for themselves. For they themselves were not preparing for anything, they were not building anything, they were just moving along.

Willie is the driving force of the pair, literally saving people from choking, drowning or other various accidents. Liberty saves people in a different way, talking the lost and lonely under her wing including a dog she found in a post box, Little Dot, the brain-damaged child of junkies and Teddy, a precocious seven-year old who has been rejected by his white trash father. The ruminative nature of the novel is enlivened by Charlie, an alcoholic real-estate agent who is in love with Liberty and constantly begs her to leave Willy and run off with him.

This is a novel full of broken lives, featuring a range of characters who live in liminal spaces, all searching for somewhere to call home. When the reader learns of Willie and Liberty’s history and how they came to be together, the book takes on a darker tone as the pair seem destined to constantly try to outrun the shared guilt of their past.

Breaking and Entering is a somewhat frustrating novel – episodic and meandering for the first half, yet filled with incident in the second – it takes time to reveal itself. Williams’ prose is lucid and unsettling, relying on atmosphere over incident and with a great eye for detail when it comes to describing place and landscape. I am not convinced that it is successful in what it sets out to do, but it is certainly unlike anything else I’ve read.

No 363 The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf

The Tie That Binds is Kent Haruf’s debut novel, but is also the last Haruf that I had left to savour, having read everything else he has written and it is another quiet gem of a book.

Set in Colorado on the outskirts of the fictional town of Holt, where all Haruf’s books are set, the novel tells the story of the Goodnoughs – a family overshadowed by a bitter patriarch, Roy, whose controlling nature impacts the lives of his children Edith and Linus. The book focuses on Edith who, through accident and situation ends up spending her whole life on the farm – never leaving or getting married. The book opens with Edith, now an 80-year-old woman lying in a hospital bed, guarded by police officers and about to be charged with murder.

Edith’s story is told by her neighbour Sanders Roscoe and he excavates the history of the Goodnough’s to explore what brought Edith to this point of no return, who she is charged with murdering and why.

And sometimes, looking at this story, it seems to me like that’s about all it is: a series of independent ruts. Some of them lasted for four or five years and some lasted for twenty, but they were ruts just the same.

Edith’s story unfolds in simple, unadorned language and as he details the twists that her life has taken; Haruf explores larger truths about family, resilience, cruelty and love. The Ties that Bind is the story of families, be they coming together or falling apart. Within the understated description of everyday life, Haruf shows us the acts of violence and desperation that change those lives, for better or worse. He explores human relationships and love through sparse direct storytelling, the lack of embellishment that only adds to the authenticity of the tale. By telling the story of Edith’s life over the span of almost a century, he also depicts a changing landscape and country from the pioneer days when Edith’s father settled in Colorado to the 1970s.

Haruf’s prose style has been accused of being sentimental and this, his first novel, is definitely more sentimental than his later work, but he also depicts a darker side of family life. The hope and warmth of home life is eked away by the sheer economics of trying to survive, or the sheer drudgery of having to care for someone who cannot take care of themselves. There is little sentimentality in the relentless hardships of illness, cruelty or accident, and instead, Haruf gives us a counterpoint of small moments of comfort, routine and kindness, a very ordinary kind of love.

Kim at Reading Matters has written a lovely review of The Tie that Binds and if you haven’t read Haruf before, I would definitely recommend you check out his beautiful body of work.

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So, there we have books 13 and 14 of my 20 (15) Books of Summer. I still need to review the epic Lonesome Dove and with 2 ½ books out of my original 15 still to read, I don’t think I’ll be completing my challenge this year.

How are the rest of you doing with your summer reading?

20 Books of Summer The 746 #20booksofsummer22 20 Books of Summer joy williams kent haruf The 746