Thomas Kohnstamm
Fiction 2025 | 388 pages
My local library has a wonderful program called A Novel Idea. Each year since 2004 the library has chosen a book for us to read as a community. The author comes to speak, and there are workshops that highlight salient aspects of the book. It's the largest community reading event in Oregon. I have enjoyed every single book, some more than others, over the last 20 plus years.
Until this one, that is.
How did a team of very well-meaning readers choose this book? Clearly they were remiss in rejecting me when I applied to be a member of the reading team. At that time, hey were looking for a young Hispanic person who lives in a small rural town in the county. Three strikes against me!
Anyway, the book is a series of stories, almost vignettes really. We had 1897, in which we learned about the Duwamish tribe who occupied the land that later became Seattle. This was the most interesting sub-plot. Unfortunately, it was also the shortest, only about 15-20 pages.
There was 1971, probably our most complex subplot, which consists of Ruth and her mother Masako, and Ruth's love interest Larry, who works on the supersonic jet in development that inspires the title.
Finally, there is 2014 where we see Sami trying to save her local elementary school, along with the grudging help of her sister-in-law and the bumbling antics of druggie Loose Bruce.
About 75% of the characters are somewhere between despicable and unlikeable. And they all seem to be mere caricatures and stereotypes of themselves. The wealthy and ostentatious sister-in-law with cooks and cleaners and paid staff. The drug-addled former hippie who can't get it together to open a cannabis business or make copies at a copy machine. The underdeveloped immature low-self-confident woman who still lives with her mother at 25 and allows her mother to control the hours she keeps, the people she sees, the clothes she wears, the music she listens to, and her education.
If this were not a community read, I would not have made it through. It is disjointed, not well written, at times confusing. What was the library thinking? I was glad to close the back cover.
April 2026