American Rust

 American Rust by Philipp Meyer is a gritty, affecting novel about Rust-Belt decay. Early in the text, two young men participate in a violent encounter, and the ramifications of that event resonate for the rest of the novel. Living in poverty, both men have an inchoate sense of future hope that then becomes derailed. The novel is told in close-third-person point of view--each chapter a different perspective--from the young men to their immediate, and intimate, periphery. I found American Rust to be fast-paced and engaging, with scenes (especially in a federal prison) of true suspense and terror.

I'd read another Meyer novel, 2013's The Son, which came after American Rust and is equally concerned with historic forces converging on powerless characters. Both novels are imperfect: The Son makes some narrative decisions (a epistolary character, for example) that don't always land, and American Rust is a bit too deterministic. Most characters spend great stretches of text ruminating on the economic or cultural forces pitted against them. Many a barroom conversation lands on mill closures, veteran's rights, Wall Street, opioids, etc. The thesis statement is a bit too surface-level in Meyer's work; the exposition drives home any ambiguity. And yet. Meyer is still a great writer. His characters become fully realized and sympathetic, and the persistent violence is believably visceral and distressing. I read The Son seven years ago, during the 2016 Election, and it's stuck with me more than most books in the intervening time. I have a feeling American Rust will do the same.

The Mirror & the Light

 The Mirror & the Light is the last, and best, of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy. It is the only one that did not win a Booker Prize, somehow. I found it a seamless transition from the previous two books, but one that got increasingly complicated and dark as it went on. The world--Tudor England during Henry VIII's cycling through wives--was as vivid as always, if a bit more explicitly violent. The strengths of the previous novels remained. There were short scenes peppered with lively dialogue. There were impressionistic tableaus of English life. There were fleshed-out, complex characters. There were beautiful vignettes and snippets of poems and song. And at the center, there was Henry VIII's most talented subject, Thomas Cromwell.

In the previous books, Cromwell was almost super-human. He was powerful, tender, learned, pragmatic, blunt, honest, and funny. The will of the king was often bent to Cromwell's. Despite his common birth and against great resistance, he could make things happen. Somewhere in The Mirror & the Light though, a few hundred pages in, things begin to slip. Whether  his advanced age or the impossibility of holding together a religious reformation with a flighty king, Cromwell's successes begin to unravel. Things move slowly, slowly, and then all at once (like Hemingway's bankruptcy line), and the conclusion is not surprising, but still weighty and affecting.