Closing the Year with Thirteen Moons
December 10th 2006 03:31
Image:guardian.co
As 2006 comes to a rather rapid close, I can honestly say it’s been a good reading year. I’ve managed to include some great books in my reading list, among them Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker, A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, Black Swan Green by David Mitchell and Khaled Hosseini’s wonderful Kite Runner. And it looks as though I’ll be closing the year with what could turn out to be a strong contender for my favourite.
Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier is shaping up to be the highly clichéd ‘last but not least’ or ‘saving the best for last’ in my growing list of books you must read. If you liked Cold Mountain, you’re going to love this one. Frazier once again ploughs through his beloved Appalachian Mountains, this time with the young Will Cooper, an orphan who becomes a bound boy to a trading post on the outskirts of white civilization. With no other choice than to move forward, Will eventually connects with his rugged surroundings and his young life becomes entwined with that of the local Cherokees and their Chief, Bear.
Thus, we learn of the Cherokee Nation that, unlawfully or not, are forced off their spiritual land to make way for the white man and their demand for ownership. Resulting in the famed ‘Trail of Tears’. A haunting reality that still lives within those mountains today.
Same old story, you say. Maybe, but I just love the way Frazier tells it. His research is impeccable, his characters believable and his narrative beautiful in a most quiet and unassuming way. This seems to describe the man himself. I listened to the Kate Evans interview with him on ABC Radio National and he seems a modest, quietly spoken man who does not waste his words on anything meaningless. His books read much the same way. And he knows his stuff. The storytelling tradition of the Cherokees is strong and it breaks through in the narrative of Thirteen Moons repeatedly.
This time in American history has without doubt been romanticised to death, but Frazier treads carefully here. As with Cold Mountain, we only receive it in small doses. Just enough to keep the most sentimental of us interested. And it exists side by side with the crueler aspects of the story. Something I feel this author does brilliantly.
In the ABC interview, Evans asked Frazier if Thirteen Moons contains a political message for its readers. His reply was … ‘with fiction, you are on shaky ground if you have an agenda that comes ahead of the story-telling and characters …’ How true. Any moral message that you find in Thirteen Moons is captured in a collective narrative so poignant that you would truly have to be made of stone not to feel it. So if you’re looking for a gutsy book to absorb yourself in this summer, do it with Thirteen Moons. It may be awhile before one of this calibre comes again.
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