Lost Boys (Card)
5/5. So I was sufficiently disappointed in The Bishop's Wife that I started reading bits and pieces of Lost Boys to compare, and I ended up snarfing almost the entire thing down - all the bits that referenced the LDS church, in any case.
This is a book I can't think rationally about at all, so, you know, I love it very very much and you'll just have to take that with all the grains of salt in the world. It's a formative book for me. I read it first in high school, when I had no idea about anything involving marriage and kids, and it has informed the way I think about relationships and families in a deep way. Like, there's a passage where Card - I mean, Step Fletcher, the narrator, although you can tell this is a book where the characters are deeply identified with Card and his family, where the pain of the characters is pain from Card's own life that has been transformed and transmuted (compare e.g. a lot of his early work, where he just enjoyed torturing characters just because) -
Anyway. For example, there is a passage where Step finds out his wife has lied to him by omission - a small, some would say trivial, betrayal, but it's a betrayal of a promise they made nonetheless. And there are a bunch of other stresses going on in their lives right now. And Step is very angry.
Is this how divorce begins? he wondered. A feeling of terrible rage, of betrayal, a sudden discovery that maybe the marriage isn't as real and honest and strong as you thought it was? Then it builds up and builds up and builds up and then you find yourself living in an apartment somewhere and seeing your kids on weekends.
No, he said to himself. No, I forbid it. I will not let it happen, and neither will she. I'll just have to work on being the kind of husband she doesn't think she has to manipulate. Lord, help me to be whatever it is she needs me to be so we can hold this thing together. Just get us through this summer.
And the way Step and his wife, DeAnne, deal with their kids' problems (mostly Stevie, their oldest, but they have other issues as well) - they don't always know what the right thing is to do, but they stick up for their kids and always try to do the best by them: "That was the way it had to be, when you had children. That was the contract you made with the kids when you chose to call their spirits from heaven into the world, that as long as they were young and needed you, you did whatever you could to meet their needs before you did anything else for anybody else." And they listen to their kids. They try to listen even when the things their kids are saying are scarcely believable. I want to always try to listen to my kids the way they try.
But I was talking about the LDS church. This book, more than any I've seen - and this is something that I totally didn't understand when I first read it as a teenager - gets at the heart of the community aspect, the interdependence, of an LDS ward: the extent to which the members are influenced by each other, depend on each other, even are annoyed by each other. There's much more here about how both Step and DeAnne interact with other LDS members, how they interact at church, how their callings lead them to interact in both good and bad ways with other members, how others help them and how they help others.
This was also written at the height of Card's power as a writer, in my opinion: after his early period when he was still finding his way, and before his Late Crazy period. And so in a short conversation, without ever saying anything directly, he can convey more than Mette Ivie Harrison could in a page of direct exposition:
"I had to get here first," said Jenny, "or your introduction to the Steuben First Ward would have been Dolores LeSueur, our ward prophetess."
"Your what?"
"She's in the vision business. She has revelations for everybody. She's been dying of cancer for fifteen years only she keeps getting healed, but with death breathing down her neck she has become so much closer to God than ever before - and I'm sure that she was so close to God before that they probably shared a toothbrush… But don't let me bias you against her."
DeAnne said what she always said, because she knew it was right to reject malice. "I'd rather form my own opinions."
…"Oh, I know this sounds like gossip. It is gossip. But I promise you, that's all I'll ever say about Dolores until you mention her again yourself. I just happen to know from experience that about six weeks from now, you'll be really glad to know that somebody else in the ward sees through her act. Nuff said."
So you have an idea what DeAnne is like, what Jenny is like, what Dolores LeSueur is like (these two are, of course, somewhat contingent on how Sister LeSueur actually does turn out, but the possibilities are narrowed), what LDS people think of random people setting themselves up as "prophetesses" of a ward (note: yes, we do have a prophet, but only one at a time), and various tension lines in the ward. In one conversation!
Also, you know, for this book: basically all the trigger warnings IN THE WORLD. Seriously, if you have any triggers (including bugs) I would not recommend reading this, at least not without talking to me first. And the whole thing makes me bawl. I mean, on rereads I can barely get through a chapter of it without bawling (partially because the themes of the ending are shot through the entire book).
But if you want a primer to LDS life, to what it's like to live as an LDS family in an LDS ward, I can think of no better, more heartfelt, or more true example than this book.
This is a book I can't think rationally about at all, so, you know, I love it very very much and you'll just have to take that with all the grains of salt in the world. It's a formative book for me. I read it first in high school, when I had no idea about anything involving marriage and kids, and it has informed the way I think about relationships and families in a deep way. Like, there's a passage where Card - I mean, Step Fletcher, the narrator, although you can tell this is a book where the characters are deeply identified with Card and his family, where the pain of the characters is pain from Card's own life that has been transformed and transmuted (compare e.g. a lot of his early work, where he just enjoyed torturing characters just because) -
Anyway. For example, there is a passage where Step finds out his wife has lied to him by omission - a small, some would say trivial, betrayal, but it's a betrayal of a promise they made nonetheless. And there are a bunch of other stresses going on in their lives right now. And Step is very angry.
Is this how divorce begins? he wondered. A feeling of terrible rage, of betrayal, a sudden discovery that maybe the marriage isn't as real and honest and strong as you thought it was? Then it builds up and builds up and builds up and then you find yourself living in an apartment somewhere and seeing your kids on weekends.
No, he said to himself. No, I forbid it. I will not let it happen, and neither will she. I'll just have to work on being the kind of husband she doesn't think she has to manipulate. Lord, help me to be whatever it is she needs me to be so we can hold this thing together. Just get us through this summer.
And the way Step and his wife, DeAnne, deal with their kids' problems (mostly Stevie, their oldest, but they have other issues as well) - they don't always know what the right thing is to do, but they stick up for their kids and always try to do the best by them: "That was the way it had to be, when you had children. That was the contract you made with the kids when you chose to call their spirits from heaven into the world, that as long as they were young and needed you, you did whatever you could to meet their needs before you did anything else for anybody else." And they listen to their kids. They try to listen even when the things their kids are saying are scarcely believable. I want to always try to listen to my kids the way they try.
But I was talking about the LDS church. This book, more than any I've seen - and this is something that I totally didn't understand when I first read it as a teenager - gets at the heart of the community aspect, the interdependence, of an LDS ward: the extent to which the members are influenced by each other, depend on each other, even are annoyed by each other. There's much more here about how both Step and DeAnne interact with other LDS members, how they interact at church, how their callings lead them to interact in both good and bad ways with other members, how others help them and how they help others.
This was also written at the height of Card's power as a writer, in my opinion: after his early period when he was still finding his way, and before his Late Crazy period. And so in a short conversation, without ever saying anything directly, he can convey more than Mette Ivie Harrison could in a page of direct exposition:
"I had to get here first," said Jenny, "or your introduction to the Steuben First Ward would have been Dolores LeSueur, our ward prophetess."
"Your what?"
"She's in the vision business. She has revelations for everybody. She's been dying of cancer for fifteen years only she keeps getting healed, but with death breathing down her neck she has become so much closer to God than ever before - and I'm sure that she was so close to God before that they probably shared a toothbrush… But don't let me bias you against her."
DeAnne said what she always said, because she knew it was right to reject malice. "I'd rather form my own opinions."
…"Oh, I know this sounds like gossip. It is gossip. But I promise you, that's all I'll ever say about Dolores until you mention her again yourself. I just happen to know from experience that about six weeks from now, you'll be really glad to know that somebody else in the ward sees through her act. Nuff said."
So you have an idea what DeAnne is like, what Jenny is like, what Dolores LeSueur is like (these two are, of course, somewhat contingent on how Sister LeSueur actually does turn out, but the possibilities are narrowed), what LDS people think of random people setting themselves up as "prophetesses" of a ward (note: yes, we do have a prophet, but only one at a time), and various tension lines in the ward. In one conversation!
Also, you know, for this book: basically all the trigger warnings IN THE WORLD. Seriously, if you have any triggers (including bugs) I would not recommend reading this, at least not without talking to me first. And the whole thing makes me bawl. I mean, on rereads I can barely get through a chapter of it without bawling (partially because the themes of the ending are shot through the entire book).
But if you want a primer to LDS life, to what it's like to live as an LDS family in an LDS ward, I can think of no better, more heartfelt, or more true example than this book.