San Miguel

San Miguel by T. C. Boyle
Penguin Group, 9/18/2012
Hardcover, 384 pages

ISBN-13: 9780670026241

Description:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women, a historical novel about three women’s lives on a California island.

On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new lives and pursue dreams of self-reliance and freedom. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of T. C. Boyle’s haunting new novel.
Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year’s Day 1888 to restore her failing health.  Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives  to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her.  Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted. And then in March 1930, Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy.  As the years go on they find a measure of fulfillment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts. But will the peace and beauty of the island see them through the impending war as it had seen them through the Depression?
Rendered in Boyle’s accomplished, assured voice, with great period detail and utterly memorable characters, this is a moving and dramatic work from one of America’s most talented and inventive storytellers.

 

My Thoughts:

 

Author T. C. Boyle said of San Miguel in the Wall Street Journal, “It’s something I’ve never done before. A straight historical narrative . . . without irony, without comedy. . . . Just to see if I can do it.” Personally, I don't think it was ever in doubt that he could do it. San Miguel  is a historical novel that takes place on San Miguel, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. This is historical fiction based on the lives of two real families who resided on San Miguel. As noted "In retelling the story of the Waters and Lester families during their time on San Miguel Island, I have tried to represent the historical record as accurately as possible, and yet this is a work of fiction, not history, and dialogue, characters and incidents have necessarily been invented." It is divided into three sections and follows three different women who live there.

 

In the 1880's, Marantha Waters, who suffers from tuberculosis, arrives at San Miguel for the cleansing air that will make her well. Her new husband, Will has spent the last of her money buying the sheep operation on the island - which will ostensibly benefit her health. Boyle's descriptions of Marantha's coughing, gasping for air, and suffering are very detailed as she fights for her every breath on the desolate wind and sand blasted island.  After she dies her daughter, Edith, is essentially turned into a servant by her stepfather and held captive on the island. She dreams of escape. Finally, Boyle introduces us to newlyweds Elise and Herbie Lester, who arrive on the island In 1930. They are decidedly in love and raise two daughters on San Miguel. Elise and Herbie establish a way of life, making peace with the island, although their story is bittersweet in the end.

 

My first thought after finishing San Miguel is that T. C. Boyle wrote these women characters very realistically. He has a natural insight into their thoughts and feelings. This is especially true with Marantha and Edith, less so with Elsie. I did want to learn more of what became of Edith, as her story on the island was truncated by her escape, although I understand that once she left the island,she was no longer part of this story. 

 

My second thought is that this is an atmospheric novel; there is not wildly active plot. Boyle relies on the mundane activities of everyday life as shaped by the island's isolation and location for the drama.  But, the limitations and challenges the island and weather impose on the characters makes the island a character in its own right. The characters have to react to the island. 

 

I thought this was a highly successful venture into historical fiction for a writer who is not known for this genre. Certainly the quality of the writing itself is exemplary.

 

Very Highly Recommended

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of the Penguin Group and Netgalley for review purposes.

 

Quotes:

 

She was coughing, always coughing, and sometimes she coughed up blood. The blood came in a fine spray, plucked from the fibers of her lungs and pumped full of air as if it were perfume in an atomizer. Or it rose in her mouth like a hot metallic syrup, burning with the heat inside her till she spat it into the porcelain pot and saw the bright red clot of it there like something she'd given birth to, like afterbirth, but then what would she know about it since she'd never conceived, not with James, her first husband, and not with Will either. She was thirty-eight years old and she'd resigned herself to the fact that she would never bear a child, not in this lifetime. When she felt weak, when she hemorrhaged and the pain in her chest was like a medieval torture, like the peine forte et dure in which the torturer laid one stone atop the other till your ribs cracked and your heart stalled, she sometimes felt she wouldn't even live to see the year out.

But that was gloomy thinking and she wasn't going to have it, not today. Today she was hopeful. Today was New Year's Day, the first day of her new life, and she was on an adventure, sailing in a schooner out of Santa Barbara with her second husband and her adopted daughter Edith and half the things she owned in this world, bound for San Miguel Island and the virginal air Will insisted would make her well again. And she believed him. She did. Believed everything he said, no matter the look on Carrie Abbott's face when she first gave her the news. Marantha, no — you're going where? Carrie had blurted before she could think, setting down her teacup on the low mahogany table in her parlor overlooking San Francisco Bay and the white-capped waves that jumped and ran in parallel streaks across the entire breadth of the window. To an island? And where is it again? And then she'd paused, her eyes retreating. I hear the air is very good down there, she said, very salubrious, and the little coal fire she had going in the grate flared up again. And it'll be warmer, certainly. Warmer than here, anyhow. opening 

She was coughing, always coughing, and sometimes she coughed up blood. The blood came in a fine spray, plucked from the fibers of her lungs and pumped full of air as if it were perfume in an atomizer. Or it rose in her mouth like a hot metallic syrup, burning with the heat inside her till she spat it into the porcelain pot and saw the bright red clot of it there like something she’d given birth to, like afterbirth, but then what would she know about it since she’d never conceived, not with James, her first husband, and not with Will either. She was thirty-eight years old and she’d resigned herself to the fact that she would never bear a child, not in this lifetime. Location 14-19

 

This couldn’t be it, could it? She looked to the boy, expecting that he’d let her in on the joke any second now—this was the barn or the servants’ quarters or bunkhouse or whatever they called it and in the next moment he’d be chucking the mule and leading her on to the house itself, of course he would . . . but then it occurred to her that there were no other structures in sight, no other structures possible even in all that empty expanse. Jimmie was watching her. A gust caught her like a slap in the face. The mule shuddered, lifted its tail and deposited its droppings on the barren ground. She pushed herself up from the chair, stepped down from the sled and strode across the yard. Her first impression was of nakedness, naked walls struck with penurious little windows, a yard of windblown sand giving onto an infinite vista of sheep-ravaged scrub that radiated out from it in every direction and not a tree or shrub or scrap of ivy in sight. There was nothing even remotely quaint or cozy about it. It might as well have been lifted up in a tornado and set down in the middle of the Arabian Desert. Location 175-182

 

It was anger—and despair, that too—that gave her the strength to strip the bedding and tear the bed curtains from their hooks, to ball them up and fling them on the floor for Ida, because what was he thinking, how could he ever imagine she’d regain her strength in a freezing hovel like this as if she were some sort of milkmaid in a bucolic romance? They could have gone to Italy and baked in the sun till her chest was clear, the lesions dried like figs on a tin sheet and the flesh come back to her limbs, her breasts, her hips and abdomen—or even Mexico. A tropical place. A desert. Anyplace but this. His own selfishness was at work here, she knew that in her heart. Even as she sat there on the stained mattress trying to fight down her feelings, coughing and coughing again till her throat was raw, she couldn’t help accusing him. But then she’d been guilty too. She was the one who’d given him the last of her savings, the last of the money left from James’ estate, to buy in here as equal partner with Mills because she knew if she didn’t she would lose him. He was an enthusiast, he wanted to better himself, saw his chance and took it, but he was her husband too and he’d loved her once, loved her still, though she knew she wasn’t much use to him anymore—not beyond what her money could bring, anyway. The thought—and it wasn’t the first time it had come to her—shrank her down till she was nothing, a husk like one of those papery things you saw clinging to the bark after the imago unfurls its wings to beat away on the air. Location 213-223