Northern Lights a la Steve

It's about time I get first crack at reviewing one of these books. In the past, Monique has used up all the good words, leaving me few options except "cramhole." Now it's Steve's turn to shine!



Tim O'Brien made his bones as a writer with his works about the Vietnam war, producing the classics If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato. Northern Lights is O'Brien's second book, and his first attempt at fiction. I have read all of O'Brien's other books, with mixed feelings. I found that his writing on Vietnam is riveting, but his other material is not my cup of tea. Some of it feels dated, some is overly ruminative and frankly, some of his later books just bore me. None of his peace-time work excites me at all. So I was interested in Northern Lights, because I thought it might be a good mix of war stuff and civilian stuff.

The blurb on the back of our copy states that the:

"core [of the book] is the relationship between two brothers: one who went to Vietnam and one who stayed home. As the two brothers struggle against an unexpected blizzard in Minnesota's remote north woods, what they discover about themselves and each other will change both of them forever."

This led me to believe that the mass of the book would concern said blizzard. Interesting, no? Possibly crazed vet stuck with peacenik brother in a snowstorm. What's going to happen? Well, I enjoyed that part of the book, which lasted from page 165 to page 313. Roughly 150 pages of good, tense, nail-biting reading. Although the snowstorm didn't actually hit until about page 190. Still not bad.

But the blurb didn't mention the other 210 pages of relationships and love triangles and daddy issues, all of which were alluded to, written of obliquely and left to me to figure out. I generally like that kind of book, but I didn't find O'Brien's characters compelling, except for Harvey, the Vietnam brother, and Addie, Harvey's girlfriend.

Northern Lights focuses on Paul Perry, and much of the book is dedicated to Paul's murky relationship with his doughty wife, Grace. Paul is noncommittal about Grace. He seems satisfied with her, but not especially impressed. He acts as if he wants more, particularly upon Harvey's return from war, but is helpless to enact that change. Paul is often passive-aggressive toward Grace, and O'Brien makes a lot out of Paul's friendship with Addie, the young, exotic librarian/town whore, who falls into Harvey's arms while Paul hems and haws about his own attraction to her.

My recurring complaint about this book begins here. Paul's problems with Grace are never fully examined. They are vaguely alluded to, the results laid out without a reason. O'Brien mentions several times that Paul's father did not fully approve of Grace, but we're never told why. I don't mind reading between the lines; I'm not an idiot. But I looked between the lines, and found the writing to be Latin, or possibly Esperanto.

Paul is similarly apathetic about his government job in the small, dying town of Sawmill Landing. He fell into the job and doesn't enjoy it, but it's his now, and he does it well. He just doesn't really want it. A lot like his wife.

The book begins on the day of Harvey's return from Vietnam, where he lost an eye. We discover quickly that Harvey was the town hero before he went to war, and that he was also his father's hero. Known around the town as "Bull", Harvey was a star athlete and outdoorsman, and basically could no wrong in the small, cloistered community of Sawmill Landing.

Harvey is an intriguing character to me. Because he spent his youth in the limelight, he expects and is given accolades upon his homecoming. The only problem is that Harvey mainly wants to be by himself. He alternately keeps himself hermitted away in his bedroom and demands attention. At any rate, he sinks into alcoholism.

As mentioned above, Harvey sort of stumbles into Addie. Paul's do-nothing approach to the mutual attraction between him and Addie forced her away from him, but being the town whore is what made her take up with Paul's brother. Seriously, who does that? In high school, we had a name for girls who messed around with the brothers and friends of boys who didn't like them as much as they wanted. That word, as you may have guessed, was whore.

But I digress. While Paul balefully observes, Harvey forces his relationship with Addie to be serious. This leads to a lot of familial double-date nights, which nobody but Harvey really wants, but the Bull gets his way. Grace goes along with it gamefully, while Paul and Addie continue to jab and retreat, and Harvey drinks and rolls his dead eye around.

Without detailing every part of the book, let me just say that Addie does some more whoring around, then Harvey shows some chinks in his armor, and next thing you know, Paul and Harvey are lost in a blizzard while cross-country skiing. As I said, this is the good part of the book, tension-wise, and it does cause the brothers to discover things about themselves, as promised.

They do a lot of soul-searching and hashing out their daddy issues. Again, a lot of things are sort of left in the air to make up your own mind about, although not so much as with the Paul and Grace situation. Then Harvey dies. Whaaaaa?!?!?! Don't worry; against all odds, Paul saves the day, gets them out of trouble and Harvey is forced to acknowledge Paul's usefulness. After that, Paul becomes much more decisive about things, Addie takes off to the big city, and everybody is more or less happy. Except Harvey. Oh well.

I like Northern Lights mainly because the theme is easy to pin down. Paul is a wishy-washy nancy boy his entire life. Whenever he is confronted with a decision, he sits on his hands until the decision is made for him. When Paul is unhappy in his marriage and has Addie on his line, he just waits for resolution, hoping either Grace will let him off the hook, or Addie will tear him off the hook. Instead, Addie just drifts away, and rubs it in Paul's face to boot.

Paul's job is more of the same. He putts along at his stale work until he is informed that his office is being closed. Then, instead of being proactive in finding new work, Paul decides to take a little time off to think about it. He's pushed in multiple directions by his wife, brother, even passing acquaintances, so no decision is ever really made.

But after Paul gets a little self-worth, he suddenly works everything out for himself nice and neat. The best part is that Harvey, given circumstances that would knock most men down a few pegs, barely feels a draft. He doesn't really work anything out, but at least he has a grudging respect for his big brother, and he's not dating the town whore anymore, so that had to be some weight off his shoulders.

I'm not thrilled with an ending that presents Paul as completely transformed over a matter of a week or two, but I'm glad that nobody else is that squared off. Harvey is still an unrepentant alcoholic without direction, Grace is still a fearful little titmouse, and Addie's tramping around in St. Paul. That rings true to me, because, as we learned in Breathing Lessons, nobody ever really changes all that much. And I would have been perfectly happy with Paul changing a little, taking more control of himself, and showing the possibility of more change; I just didn't care for his total makeover because of a snowstorm.

I was probably more impressed with Harvey as a character than I would have been if another author had written it, because I feel like there must have been some of O'Brien himself in Harvey. It's a little window into the heart of a damaged veteran that I appreciate. But I think O'Brien comes up short in some of his characterization, particularly with Grace and Addie. Perhaps he just didn't have room to explain them as well as he might, or perhaps, like me, exploring the female mind is like making out with a cow's stomach full of lime Jell-O. Get it? No? Exactly!

All in all, I enjoyed Northern Lights; I may even read it again someday. But I've been spoiled by Tim O'Brien's Vietnam oeuvre, and was hoping for a little more from this, at least partially because I secretly hoped that his recent fiction is bad because he has aged. I think O'Brien is best when he writes close to home, and when he slips into fictionalization, he can get sometimes sort of go off the grid. I think Northern Lights is pretty close to home for him, but because it was mainly a work of fiction, O'Brien had to do a lot of guess work about characters and plot that hurt the book in the end. At the end of the day, I'll probably just re-read The Things They Carried.