A mixed bag

I recently sped through The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, after reading and liking the previous two books of the Millenium Series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. What can you say about the Stieg Larrson sensation? His plots are somewhat predictable, unrealistic (but who cares?) and convoluted, made even harder by the unfamiliar Swedish names and places. And although I really liked the Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist characters, I wouldn't really say that they are fully developed. But that's a quibble. The books are fast paced, fun to read (although some parts are pretty brutal), and hard to put down.

In contrast, I loved Earwig in the book Carry Me Home by Sandra Kring. As a character, Earwig ranks up there with Owen Meany, Oskar Schell, and Oscar Wao, although Kring's book (her debut novel) is not nearly as richly envisioned as those others. But Earwig makes this a very wonderful read.

In 1942, 16-year-old Earl Hedwig Gunderman (Earwig), self described as simpleminded from a fever when he was "a bitty bitty baby", is happy just to go fishing with his brother Jimmy and Jimmy's friends. But their happy life comes to an end when Jimmy and his buddies join the National Guard and are shipped off to the Pacific. After the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Jimmy's unit is "lost" by the army when they become prisoners of war; and when they return 4 years later they are all severely damaged by the experience of war and starvation that they endured in the Bataan Death March.

This story about what happens to a family when a son is sent off to war is all told from Earwig's clear-headed and innocent perspective. And when Jimmy comes home, it is Earwig that helps him heal (in more ways than one):

"That night, Jimmy gets them nightmares again. When I get in Jimmy's room, he's crying like a titsy baby, holding his side 'cause it hurts. He's got scars there, so I think maybe they do hurt. I go downstairs to the bathroom, and I get the Mercurochrome, and I bring it back upstairs. I paint Jimmy's side and back good with that red shit, and Jimmy, he just rocks back and forth while I do this.
I cover up Jimmy when I'm done, and he falls back to sleep. I go downstairs to put the Mercurochrome back in the medicine cabinet, and Ma comes to the door, squinting, on accounta the bathroom light is bright.
'Earl, what are you doing with the Mercurochrome?'
'I was putting it in on Jimmy's marks, 'cause he was hurting.'
'Oh Earl, those wounds don't hurt anymore. They're all healed now.'
I guess Ma don't know a thing about places hurting long after they look all healed up."

This book is so touching it made me cry, and it made me laugh too.