Customer Reviews

Compass Rose (Vintage Contemporaries)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In rugged South County, off the coast of Rhode Island, the rustic beauty of the salt marshes, creeks, rivers, and ocean provides the substance and domain of Casey's follow-up/sequel to his 1989 National Book Award winner, Spartina. This book begins roughly where the other left off, circa 1989, and then segues to fourteen years later midway through the novel. It is the story of love and family, and the vicissitudes of six or less degrees of separation.

Middle-aged Dick had an affair with nubile Elsie (in Spartina), which resulted in baby Rose. Dick, the boat-builder and sea-lover, lives primarily out on the ocean. When he is landlocked, Dick stays in the house with his wife, May, and their two sons, Charlie and Tom. Dick and May have not quite resolved the pink elephant in the boat's deck. May wants Rose to be part of their lives, and she hasn't fully forgiven Dick. She is tormented about seeing Rose, and about not seeing Rose. How to accommodate the X-factor, Elsie? And the why oh Y-factor, Dick.

"May wondered how long she'd have to go on pulling thoughts out of her head. It seemed as endless as pulling rocks out of a field."

Elsie is free-spirited and nature loving. A Natural Resources officer, she is euphemistically called "the warden of the Great Swamp." Despite her affair with Dick, she is a sympathetic, strong, and enchanting character. She is feisty and warm, as seen through her nurturing devotion to the island's aging doyenne, Miss Perry. And she still loves Dick.

"She [Elsie] looked at Dick's face. She'd wanted him for the certainty of his fierce instincts; she'd put herself in the way of them. Now he was uncertain. Perhaps he was undone by seeing his daughter--perhaps he was undone by the trouble he was in."

This tight-knit, incestuous Irish community, where almost everyone is related by blood or marriage, is a roaring and clattering collection of individuals that form an uneasy alliance of entanglements and estrangements. As Rose grows up, she bickers hotly with her mother; while Elsie is the butterfly, Rose is the butterfly out of the chrysalis.

But Rose is also the compass, or the "compass rose." Casey uses this nautical term as a superb extended metaphor, whereby there are two rings--the outside ring denoting cardinal directions and the inner ring referring to magnetic cardinal directions. Rose's positioning in the two families exemplifies the symbolic and directional purview of their bonds--to each other, to the island, and to the trajectory of their hearts.

I had to start this book twice. The stylized beginning has staccato sentences and bulleted names, initially confusing me and turning me off. However, it is short-lived, and Casey's prose soon opens into a poetic and lyrical rhythm. The cadence is occasionally offbeat, but is uniquely exhilarating and provides a salty mood and atmosphere. The story is spicy, unpredictable and mouth-wateringly messy. The wily characters sizzle--from the dedication of Rose's protectors, such as Mary Scanlon, the town's chef and songbird, to Jack Aldrich, the town's land-grabbing, acquisitive swine.

"...it was part of the same thing over and over, the sun heating the surface of the ocean, vapor rising into clouds and fog, blowing over the land, turning back into water and running back into the sea, carrying bits of earth, the earth made of cracked and crumbled rock and the dead matter of everything else once so busily alive."

I felt like one of the residents of South County. John Casey is an assured storyteller whose spiky, nervy characters fly off the pages with pluck and spunk and longing. I highly recommend this for readers who love resonant, character-driven stories. This is not chick-lit.

When I saw "Compass Rose" pop up as a book I could review through Vine, I was interested. When I saw that it was a sequel, I decided that I should first read "Spartina." Which I did, and I loved it. I was immediately sucked into Dick's world - his quest to build his boat and make a living doing something he loved. I understood his desire to stay on his family's land and his bitterness towards all the rich people who were buying up the land for vacation homes and squeezing him - and people like him, working class people - out. The point of view of the novel was singular, not only from one man but from one particular point in time. While I certainly don't agree with all of Dick's choices or attitudes, he was compelling, and I read through "Spartina" quickly and often breathlessly.

So I was looking forward to "Compass Rose." And then I started reading it. Maybe I should say I started *forcing* myself to read it, because it was an effort.

Gone is that singular, compelling point of view. Instead, the point of view shifts every chapter from one *female* character to another. By the halfway point, we get to see things the points of view of Elsie, May, Miss Perry, and Mary. I specify from the halfway point because that's how far I am, and I don't think I'm going any further.

I emphasized female in the above paragraph for a reason. A man can certainly write female characters and a woman can certainly write male characters. I am not questioning that at all. But this book seems to be over-reaching, what with having so many female points of view: each woman comes from a different social class and has different life experiences. It just didn't work for me. I didn't believe it.

On top of that, I had a problem with the portrayal of Elsie in "Compass Rose." In "Spartina," she certainly likes Dick, but "Compass Rose" proclaims that Dick is "the love of her life." I guess I missed that part. In "Spartina" I saw Elsie as a strong woman who knows what she wants and goes for it: a baby, and she got that. When the affair ended, she didn't try to hold onto Dick. She knew what their relationship was and she was okay with it being that way and then being over. I remember at the end of "Spartina" - the last scene in fact - when Dick goes over to see her and tries to get something sexual started with her, but Elsie stops him because she doesn't want to do anymore damage to his marriage. Elsie is certainly not morally superior (she did have an affair with a married man and get pregnant by him) but she does seem to have a moral code of sorts that keeps her from crossing that line again. This is in sharp contrast to the Elsie we meet in "Compass Rose" who is now the one making sexual advances on Dick and he must stop her. She does an awful lot of moping around in the first half of "Compass Rose" too. She just was not the Elsie I had gotten to know in "Spartina."

But really, the thing that disappoints me the most about "Compass Rose" is that the books sprawls and meanders, and I find that I really don't care, and I hardly recognize the characters anyway. "Spartina" was so sharp whereas "Compass Rose" is, um... not. As much as I wanted to, I haven't been able to get into this book, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. "Spartina," though, that's a good book. If you haven't read anything by John Casey, read that one.

A group of families living on a promontory of the Rhode Island coast deals with a potential shared trauma by integrating it into their history and community lives. It's a problem to say much more than that about the plot of the novel because the trauma is revealed only bit by bit, and indeed one of the strengths of the narrative is the deft way in which the author brings the reader to the shared knowledge that the characters have of the recent events that precede the novel and drive its plot, not by telling us things, but by integrating our knowledge of events by means of having us learn the way the characters learn: by context, intuition, and integration of signs into our growing background awareness of the community. I really didn't realize it was possible for a novel to narrate a story in this way: that the reader almost becomes a character or watcher in the community because of acquiring knowledge about it in the same way the characters do. It's am amazing strategy.

If U.S. literature has anything to offer the world, I think it's terms of the novel's sense of place. There's a sense in which we think of Americans as detached from place, radically mobile individuals, but the emotional strength of this novel comes from the characters' sense of location, which is why the property dispute with which the novel ends turns out to be such a motor both for introspection and action in the novel itself. You really get a sense of the Rhode Island coast here, but without show: in the matter of fact way that the characters (like most Americans) live their lives.

The novel is a lot like the garden that one of its main characters grows. It's beautiful, it repays investment, and it bears a ripe harvest.

More than twenty years after writing award-winning Spartina, John Casey has returned to the fictional place and people he created in that novel and presents another book titled, Compass Rose. The protagonist of Spartina, fisherman Dick Pierce, returns in a background role, while the foreground contains three women who love him: his wife, May, his mistress, Elsie, and his daughter with Elsie, Rose. Casey excels at creating a setting that readers can see, smell and touch. His characters are bound to the setting in deep ways, and the place and the people merge and meld as their lives become interconnected. The characters are people that most readers can see as fully formed complex individuals, making choices that any of us would consider complicated. Casey's writing is superb, and any reader who enjoys literary fiction is likely to appreciate this fine work.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

Please read Sonja's review. It is accurate. I really liked (and I own) Spartina and was excited to read Compass Rose. I am sorry to say, that the writer had only one good book in him. The characters were not fleshed out and would change themselves from paragraph to paragraph. It got tiring and boring "hearing" the author espouse his own personal beliefs, thoughts, and ideas. That is the way it came across. I would find myself thinking, "here we go again, more personal BS". It did not come from the character because the words/etc. were out of character. The book rambled, as there did not seem to be any cohesiveness. And the use of the "F" word was totally unnecessary. Was this for shock value? Or because the author felt he could do it in the name of literature? I forced myself to finish the book so I could, in all honesty, write this review. If this is Mr. Casey's idea of "literature", or even a "good read", then I would caution anyone taking his literature class. Go to the library, read a couple of chapters, and if you like, then buy the book. I made the mistake of "assuming" this was an author who would be true to his previous style and characters. We all know what happens when we "assume". I have a personal library of over 3,000 books, but this one is going into the yard sale. I feel cheated and would like the author or publishing company to buy it back from me.

If you read and enjoyed Spartina (and you should definitely do that first), this book is no less compelling and enjoyable for the change of primary "voice." Back in the day RI's South County was my summer stomping ground, and John Casey gets it so right in both these books that I swear I knew some of these people!

Readers who enjoy beautifully crafted prose, exploring the complicated motivations of ordinary people making extraordinary choices, and the strange ways in which fate shapes us all, will enjoy both Spartina and Compass Rose as works by a master of literature.

A caveat: If you can't handle Melville, you probably can't handle this. Enjoy!

Jacket description: A spunky teenager with artistic aspirations, struggles to fit in at her new school, partly because her being a illegitimate child is known to most of the community. But that has advantages, too.

More accurate description: A group of adults squabble over land, have extramarital affairs,
and have run-ins with Mother Nature. The teenager, Rose, is a character, but doesn't get much "screen time." Her circumstances do play a role in the plot and she lends her name to the title, but it's about a hundred pages before she does anything besides be a cute little kid. And the whole issue of unpopularity with her peers is minor, mentioned a few times but not developed.

Setting: South County, Rhode Island; places like Brown and URI, are referenced
Time period: I'm going to say anywhere from mid-eighties to early nineties, as everyone is getting an answering machine, but no one seems to have a cell phone. Also a character who uses the computer a lot is considered noteworthy.

Author's favorite words: "Undone," followed by "Spartina," which is the name of a character's ship, and also the title of another book by the author, which I hadn't read but is apparently a prequel to "Compass Rose." Characters frequently come undone, but because they are mostly gutsy, they tend to put themselves back together with humor and even charm.

Plots I thought would be developed but weren't: One character is injured and there's talk of a big lawsuit, but that's dropped. Also, another is injured and needs intensive physical therapy, but we never really hear how successful it was.

Also, it was a bit confusing having characters named "Mary" and "May." It wouldn't have been a problem, except they usually appeared together.

But the book does have moments of genius. One character's manner of speaking is described as "like being hugged by someone you don't know." Another character when asked to imagine what another must have felt without a safety suit aboard a sinking ship quips, "He felt underdressed for the occasion."

My eyes watered and my throat got tight as I read the last few pages.

Mostly because I don't often get to read so powerful a novel.

Partly because it might be the last novel I'll ever read by this amazing man, John Casey. Not because I expect to die before he finishes another, but because I imagine we both will, so slowly and painstakingly does he write. Exquisitely wrought fiction for which the reader can only be deeply grateful.

Most novels, even including some literary novels, are like a Breugel painting--large emotions broadly depicted.

Compass Rose is like a Morandi still life--subtle, exquisite, the nuanced rendering of human emotion in all of us, just all too seldom focused on.

This novel is not about great events, nor about great people. What happens in this novel is not unlike what happens to all of us . . . I almost said "to the least of us," except that Casey shows that none of us are least. What is felt in this novel is what we all feel in the course of our ordinary lives, but in an instant it's gone, never recorded but long remembered, albeit inarticulately. John Casey's fiction is like a portrait by a painter--precise, detailed, showing rather than telling, providing the emotional records we can't keep for ourselves.

John Casey's fiction is exhilarating, not because he tells magnificent stories, but because he magnifies the great beauty of ordinary people so we, at last, can see it, and thereby see ourselves. John Casey practices the very highest form of art.

Compass Rose etches the richly felt lives of three ordinary women, just as Spartina did for one ordinary fisherman, with whom those three women were directly or indirectly involved. It is often mentioned that Compass Rose is a sequel to Spartina, but could be read independently. What ought to be said is that Compass Rose is a monumental novel, and that later reading Spartina would illuminate it but could hardly eclipse it--Compass Rose is THAT good!

So disappointed in this sequel to Spartina. Every character was selfish and oversensitive. Dick Pierce was completely wooden. What Dick did in Spartina to build Spartina was intense. The boat sinks in Compass Rose and his attitude is "Oh, well, it's insured." That alone made the book bad. Made the people of South County RI (which I am a member of) sound like that can't exist without people of money to toss jobs their way and they rollover on their backs for a contract. Wish Casey had never written this since I enjoyed Spartina so much. He won't be winning any prizes for this one.

Compass Rose is in one sense an aftermath story, but like all stories of aftermath it is also a story of beginnings: Elsie and Rose begin a life together, Elsie reconfigures her life in relation to the small community of South County. This book explores the compromises, challenges and joys of living in a close-knit community.

The characters seem familiar, not because they are archetypal (or because we met them years ago in Spartina), but by virtue of their honest insight and their informality with the reader. The women narrating Compass Rose are alive with emotion, with feelings that move through them as sensations. There is the idea that occurs to May in the first chapter, "an idea that was so barbed and tangled that she pulled it inside her and covered it", and then Elsie's physically charged moments of empathy, "imagin[ing] that May's short, practical sentences weren't an attack--they were May's trying to shift the weight she carried, not that it would be lighter but that there would be some relief if she could carry it differently", and the characters' barbs pricking one another, as in Elsie's opinion of a would-be nature poet: "Hearing...prettiness from this large man was like watching a bear crochet. People shouldn't write about nature until they'd been bitten by something larger than a tick."

The clear, steady and swift narration in Compass Rose suggests that author John Casey has, indeed, been bitten many times and has come away with a profound understanding of the natural world and how we might live together in it.