Victor Hugo is best known for two novels: the ponderous and earnest Les Miserables (which I read when I was an earnest high schooler) and the swashbuckling, silly The Three Musketeers. I’d missed this one up until now, and am glad to have finally made the time to read it.

The Three Musketeers follows the adventures of a young member of the King’s Guards, d’Artagnan, and his friends Athos, Porthos and Aramis – members of the King’s Musketeers. When the novel opens, d’Artagnan is making his way to Paris on a bright yellow horse, carrying a letter of introduction to the commander of the Musketeers, who hails from the same part of France. D’Artagnan is a fiery-tempered, quick-to-anger (but not exactly quick-witted) young man, and he immediately finds himself in a fight when a mysterious man insults the color of his buttercup-yellow horse. This is something of a theme with d’Artagnan – he duels first and asks questions later. In the fight, he loses his letter of introduction – but no worry, he proceeds to Paris anyway and gets the attention and patronage of the leader of the Musketeers, then promptly insults the three Musketeers and gets himself challenged to three duels in three hours. Whoops!

It’s no spoiler to tell you that d’Artagnan survives these first encounters with the Musketeers – since it happens right at the beginning of the very long book, he’d have to – unless this was a ghost story, which it isn’t. More than survives, he winds up their particular friend, and spends the rest of the book having swashbuckling adventures and engaging in romance and court intrigue with them. D’Artagnan falls in love with his landlord’s wife – a seamstress at the Louvre, who has the confidence of Anne d’Autriche, the Queen, and her lover the Duke of Buckingham. D’Artagnan’s lady love is kidnapped several times, at the machinations of Milady de Winter, a femme fatale and ally of the treacherous Cardinal Richelieu – but no fear, the Three Musketeers stand ready and willing to help their friend rescue his paramour. And to get falling-down drunk along the way, as much as humanly possible.

“Are you wounded?” he asked.

“Me? Not in the least. I’m dead drunk, that’s all, and never has a man done better at it. Good God, mine host, I must have drunk at least a hundred and fifty bottles on my own!”

“Mercy!” cried the host. “If the valet drank only half what the master did, I’m ruined.”

“Grimaud is a well-born lackey, who would never allow himself the same fare as I. He drank only from the kegs. Wait, I think he forgot to turn off the spigot. You hear? It’s running.”

D’Artagnan let out a burst of laughter that turned the host’s shivering into a hot fever.

At the same time, Grimaud appeared in turn behind the master, the musketoon on his shoulders, his head wagging, like the drunken satrys in Rubens’s paintings. He was soaked front and back in a thick liquid that the host recognized as his best olive oil.

The Three Musketeers is a fun, silly, page-turner of a book. D’Artagnan is always getting himself into and out of duels and love affairs, and the Musketeers are always getting themselves into and out of barrels of wine. (One of my favorite scenes takes place when d’Artagnan, the Musketeers, and their servants engage in a picnic on a battlefield, holding off English soldiers and stealing the weapons of hordes of the Cardinal’s men – while drinking a whole lot and having a generally noisy and raucous time.) But there are also some surprisingly thought-provoking moments among the carousing.

The center of the narrative revolves around the love affair between Anne d’Autriche and the Duke of Buckingham, and the machinations of Cardinal Richelieu. The Three Musketeers, and especially d’Artagnan, are really just pawns in these luminaries’ high-stakes games. But they risk death – and become killers themselves – for a queen and her lover and a Cardinal’s political gamesmanship. Which, when you cut through the swashbuckling silliness and the barrels upon barrels of French wine – is deeply distressing and wrong. So wrong that event d’Artagnan, leaving a would-be assassin with a sword through his chest as he makes his way to London to warn the Duke of Buckingham about Cardinal Richelieu’s latest plot, reflects on the unfairness of it all.

Then, casting a last glance at the handsome young man, who was barely twenty-five years old and whom he left lying there, insensible and perhaps dead, he heaved a sigh over the strange destiny that leads men to destroy each other for the interests of people who are strangers to them and who often do not even know that they exist.

The Three Musketeers and d’Artagnan are soldiers, trained to follow orders without questioning them, but even they stop to think – but why? Why am I expected to lay down my life for these people who don’t even know I’m alive? Not for a concept, like the freedom to be oneself and live without fear of persecution. Not for the protection of innocent lives. But for a Queen and her lover, or for a political puppetmaster’s power-grabbing games. And the injustice of that – that’s Hugo’s message.

That and also this: wine is delicieux.

Have you read The Three Musketeers? What did you think?

A review I read on Goodreads of John Steinbeck’s classic East of Eden assured the reader that they need look no farther: this is the Great American Novel. No doubt. Well – I don’t know if we can proclaim that status completely unequivocally, but it’s certainly a fair statement, arguably true and definitely defensible.

I’ve been a fan of Steinbeck’s work for a long time – I have read and loved both The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row multiple times, among his other novels and novellas – but somehow never made it to East of Eden. This is a multi-generational saga about two families that are doomed to repeat the Cain and Abel story in every generation. It’s gorgeous, epic, bruising, and true.

“It’ll be – who knows? maybe in our lifetime,” they said.

And people found happiness in the future according to their present lack. Thus a man might bring his family down from a hill ranch in a drag – a big box nailed on oaken runners which pulled bumping down the broken hills. In the straw of the box, his wife would brace the children against the tooth-shattering, tongue-biting crash of the runners against stone and ground. And the father would set his heels and think, When the roads come in – then will be the time. Why, we’ll sit high and happy in a surrey and get clear into King City in three hours – and what more in the world could you want than that?

What in the world, indeed.

The main plot focuses on Adam Trask. Adam grows up on the East Coast, but after a terrifying fight with his brother Charles and a stint in the Army, he marries a mysterious woman named Cathy and brings his bride to California. Cathy – now pregnant – schemes to get back East; she’s more than capable of getting her way and has no qualms about drawing blood and ruining lives, literally. When she gives birth to twin sons she immediately leaves Adam (and leaves him with a remembrance of her that I won’t spoil here, in case you want to read the book) and runs away to a house of women pursuing… the oldest profession. Adam pines for Cathy (who has renamed herself Kate and is giving way to all of her vilest, most murderous plans) but after a year of this pointless grieving, a local friend stages an intervention and forces Adam back to reality.

Adam chooses the names Caleb and Aaron – soon shortened to Cal and Aron – for his sons (rejecting his neighbor, Samuel’s, suggestion that he name them after Biblical brothers Cain and Abel). The generations of brothers with names beginning with C and A is maybe the one area where Steinbeck gets a bit heavy-handed. He makes it abundantly clear that his narrative is the Cain and Abel story repeated over and over (in slightly different ways) – but perhaps to the point where the reader gets a bit exasperated. We get it, we get it.

“Two stories have haunted us and followed us from our beginning,” Samuel said. “We carry them like invisible tails – the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel. And I don’t understand either of them. I don’t understand them at all but I feel them. Liza gets angry with me. She says I should not try to understand them. She says why should we try to explain a verity. Maybe she’s right – maybe she’s right. Lee, Liza says you’re a Presbyterian – do you understand the Garden of Eden and Cain and Abel?”

“She thought I should be something, and I went to Sunday School long ago in San Francisco. People like you to be something, preferably what they are.”

Adam said, “He asked you if you understood.”

Steinbeck’s point, of course, is that none of us really understand Cain and Abel. Some may think they do, but they don’t. (I am only vaguely familiar with the Old Testament, so I definitely don’t – other than a passing knowledge that Cain and Abel were two of Adam and Eve’s sons and Cain killed Abel.) But in any event, it’s here that the story really picks up: with the entry of Cal and Aron. While Adam is consumed with mourning the end of his relationship with Cathy, the boys remain vague shadows. After Samuel and family servant Lee stage their intervention, Adam begins to take an interest in his sons – and the reader gets to know them for the first time.

Maybe the difference between the two boys can be described in this way. If Aron should come upon an anthill in a little clearing in the brush, he would lie on his stomach and watch the complications of ant life – he would see some of them bringing food in the ant roads and others carrying the white eggs. He would see how two members of the hill on meeting put their antennas together and talked. For hours he would lie absorbed in the economy of the ground.

If, on the other hand, Cal came upon the same anthill, he would kick it to pieces and watch while the frantic ants took care of their disaster. Aron was content to be a part of his world, but Cal must change it.

Adam’s business does well and the boys grow up with every advantage that money can buy. And as they do, these differences become apparent. Aron is blonde, cherubic, adored by everyone around him. Cal is dark-haired, brooding, viewed with distrust and even dislike, while his father is respected and Aron is loved. It’s only too easy for Cal to feel the injustice of this and to grow up resentful.

This is where the story gets really interesting, and where Steinbeck turns the Cain and Abel story on its head. The reader starts out feeling an affinity for sweet Aron. You see shades of Adam’s violent brother Charles in Cal, and you dislike Cal for it. But when Adam makes the decision to leave his ranch and move his family – the boys and Lee, who has transcended the status of servant and is basically a member of the family at this point – to Salinas (where the reader knows Cathy is still living – a decision you know can’t possibly end well) you gradually start to feel more compassion for Cal. He desperately wants his father’s approval; he adores his brother; he is torn apart by grief at having been labeled as the bad one. Everything Cal does goes wrong in some way – even when he goes successfully into business for himself as a young man with the goal of presenting Adam with his earnings, Adam angrily rejects the money Cal has honestly earned, crushing Cal’s spirit. (That part broke my heart. I just wanted to hug Cal.)

I won’t tell you what happens between Cal and Aron, because you should definitely read it for yourself if you haven’t already. But if you have read it – or when you do – you’ll understand what I mean when I say that it’s all much more complicated than the Bible tale. And this is the genius of East of Eden – you begin the book thinking, “Of course, Aron is the good brother and Cal is the bad brother, and Cal is going to do something terrible to Aron.” But as you gradually begin to love Cal and cool on Aron, even knowing they’re going to repeat this Biblical story somehow, you start to ask so many questions. Who in my life am I labeling, wrongly? What has that done to them? Who has labeled me, and how did that change my behavior? Why was I originally drawn to Aron, why did I prefer him? When did that change? What would change in this story if the characters were more clear-eyed about both Cal and Aron? Where should I try to be more clear-eyed in my own life? They’re not comforting questions.

Adam sighed deeply. “It’s not a comforting story, is it?”

Lee poured a tumbler full of dark liquor from his round stone bottle and sipped it and opened his mouth to get the double taste on the back of his tongue. “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!”

This is certainly a story with truth and power. (To press home the point, Steinbeck even has himself appear as a minor character in the narrative. That might be the book’s only weakness: Steinbeck definitely doesn’t let you forget that this is the story of Cain and Abel, and that it’s one of humanity’s great truths. If you forget it’s a Cain and Abel tale, the characters will drink whiskey and discuss Cain and Abel. If you forget it’s true, the characters will go visit Olive Steinbeck so that young John can answer the door and remind you.) But it does what great literature – and maybe the Great American Novel – does; it pulls you into the narrative, makes you love and grieve for the characters, and gives you questions to ask about your own life. I adored it, couldn’t stop turning the pages, cried for Cal, and wished I’d read it a long time ago.

What is your favorite John Steinbeck novel?

Alice Walker’s acclaimed novel, The Color Purple, has been on my to-read list for years. A classic of the epistolary format – one of my favorite reading formats – it should have cycled to the top long before now; in any event, I’ve finally read it and found it as absolutely brilliant and jaw-droppingly beautiful as expected.

The novel follows two sisters with very different lives: Celie, who grows up poor before becoming a downtrodden child bride, and Nettie, who moves to Africa with missionaries and spends most of her adult life there. Celie’s husband, a widower, had originally wanted to marry Nettie, but their father insisted he take Celie instead, so she begins her married life as an unwanted consolation prize, destined to be a household drudge and free childcare for her new husband’s children from his first marriage. Celie finds some comfort in writing letters to God, in the sympathy of her new sisters-in-law, and in her dreams of meeting famous local singer Shug Avery. Celie’s sister-in-law, Kate, takes her shopping for a new dress – the first time anyone has shown Celie any love or care since her marriage.

He look at me. It like he looking at the earth. It need somethin? his eyes say.

She go with me in the store. I think what color Shug Avery would wear. She like a queen to me so I say to Kate, Somethin purple, maybe little red in it too. But us look an look and no purple. Plenty red but she say, Naw, he won’t want to pay for red. Too happy lookin. We got choice of brown, maroon or navy blue. I say blue.

I can’t remember being the first one in my own dress. Now I have one made just for me. I try to tell Kate what it mean. I get hot in the face and stutter.

She say, It’s all right, Celie. You deserve more than this.

Maybe so, I think.

While Celie tries to navigate her new marriage and household responsibilities, Nettie falls into the company of a missionary family preparing to travel to Africa. (I won’t tell you how Nettie meets the missionaries or what her connection is to them, since that would reveal an important plot point.) As Nettie’s world expands beyond the tiny circle of her poor hometown, she makes sense of her new experiences by writing long, newsy and thoughtful letters to Celie – unaware that Celie’s husband is preventing Celie from receiving any of them. (Vindictively, he had told Nettie that she would never speak or write to Celie again – but Nettie still holds out hope that her letters might get through.) In her missives to Celie, Nettie reflects on the culture shock she experiences in Africa, and especially on her horror at discovering practices like facial mutilation and female circumcision among the people she is trying to convert to Christianity (and, by extension, to a Western worldview).

The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.

Our women are respected here, said the father. We would never let them tramp the world as American women do. There is always someone to look after the Olinka woman. A father. An uncle. A brother or nephew. Do not be offended, Sister Nettie, but our people pity women such as you who are cast out, we know not from where, into a world unknown to you, where you must struggle all alone, for yourself.

So I am an object of pity and contempt, I thought, to men and women alike.

Meanwhile, back home, Celie has realized her dream of meeting the singer Shug Avery – who, it turns out, is an old flame of her husband’s. Shug turns up on their doorstep one day, sick and mean, and Celie patiently nurses her back to health – falling in love with her in the process. Shug, for her part, falls in love with Celie too – as much as she can, at least. Shug isn’t meant for one man or one woman, but Celie becomes the love of her life. Together, they explore each other’s bodies and minds, talking through their doubts and fears and joys and beliefs.

I is a sinner, say Shug. Cause I was born. I don’t deny it. But once you find out what’s out there waiting for us, what else can you be?

Sinners have more good times, I say.

You know why? she ast.

Cause you ain’t all the time worrying bout God, I say.

Naw, that ain’t it, she say. Us worry bout God a lot. But once us feel loved by God, us do the best we can to please him with what us like.

You telling me God love you, and you ain’t never done nothing for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that?

But if God love me, Celie, I don’t have to do all that. Unless I want to. There’s a lot of other things I can do that I speck God likes.

Like what? I ast.

Oh, she say. I can lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time.

Well, this sound like blasphemy sure nuff.

Alice Walker famously said that The Color Purple is a book about religion. There’s certainly plenty of material to chew on, between Nettie’s experiences with the missionaries and Celie’s homespun reflections. But the story that captivated me was a story of community, more so than religion. Nettie, surrounded by community – both her small community with the missionary family and her experience of a larger, and very different, community in the African village where they live – is, for all intents and purposes, alone. As a Western woman come to spread Christianity, she cannot be truly a part of the community in the village. But neither does she belong to the missionaries; indeed, she starts to fall apart from them when the missionary wife becomes jealous and suspicious of Nettie’s relationship to her husband. Nettie’s only solace is the community she creates for herself in the letters to Celie – letters she knows are almost certainly not even being delivered.

Celie, meanwhile, starts out the book virtually alone – married off at a young age to a man who does not love her and has only taken her on to be his drudge. Called ugly, forced to watch children who do not respect her, Celie could easily fall into loneliness and despair. But she seems to attract community – it grows up around her almost organically. First, there are her husband’s sisters, who seem to recognize that Celie is downtrodden but deserving of far more than her husband believes. Then Celie’s stepson grows up and marries a fiery woman, Sofia, who brings her own community to their home. And there’s Mary Agnes – called Mouse – who starts as an intruder to the family but becomes an important part of the community, and – above all others – there’s Shug. Celie, poor and at first unloved by any but Nettie, builds herself a life in which she is surrounded by community, and especially by female community. It’s a compelling story of the power of female friendship, support, and love.

It has taken me weeks to find the words to write this review, because this book was just so wonderful it left me astonished. I do need to give a trigger warning if you’re planning to read it, as part of the plot hinges on an act of abuse and incest. (This is crucial to the story and not gratuitous, is treated sensitively, and is over quickly – but it’s important to note.) And there really are no words to express how very special this book is, and all of these characters. I just adored them all – even the characters who began their story arcs as unpleasant people have their redemptions. I can see myself returning to The Color Purple again and again and taking some new treasure with me each time.

Have you read The Color Purple? What did you take from it?