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The Night Journal (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Claudia Bass's house stood on the high part of a sloping acre under a large oak tree that had cast its shadows long before the..." (more)
Key Phrases: chipboard box, jewelry charm, film box, Las Vegas, New Mexico, Elliott Bass (more...)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At age 37, Meg Mabry, a single, overworked medical engineer, still hasn't found her place in the world, a predicament due in part to her rejection of her heritage. She's the great-granddaughter of Hannah Bass, a woman whose journals about frontier life in New Mexico (dating 1891 to 1902) have become famous thanks to Meg's grandmother Claudia Bass (Bassie), a historian who built her career promoting the diaries. But Meg resents the domineering Bassie (who raised her) and refuses to read the journals, acoping strategy Crook doesn't make entirely credible. Meg finally delves into Hannah's story when she reluctantly accompanies her grandmother from Austin, Tex., to Pecos, N. Mex. There, a discovery at the burial site of Hannah's dogs calls into question the veracity of Bassie's life work. Meg, meanwhile, falls for archeologist Jim Layton and embarks on a journey into her family's past that will confront her with some difficult truths about herself. Excerpts from the journals punctuate the layered but sometimes unconvincingly plotted narrative, and the historical detail depicts the uneasy late 19th-century melding of Anglo, Native American and Mexican cultures. Crook's third novel (after Promised Lands) blends mystery, chick-lit–style romance and historical fiction for a glimpse of the current and past American West. (Feb. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


Review

". . . You'll whisper the traditional reader's self-promise of "only one more chapter" again and again,…on into the early morning hours." -- --Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 3-12-2006

"Ms. Crook's prose is elegant, and her novel is a page-turner…. When I finished, I wished there were more." -- --Tom Pilkington, The Dallas Morning News, 2-19-06

"…full of plot twists and turns, mysteries, and unexpected developments…a book about history, land and people." -- Rita Giordano, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2-26-06

"…richly rendered… page-turning, late 20th-century mystery… with the satisfying level of clarity, imagination and historical authenticity such a story demands." -- --Gussie Fauntleroy, The Santa Fe New Mexican, 3-5-06

Bracing as desert night air. A vividly imagined and emotionally unsparing account of lives both damaged and redeemed by love. -- Geraldine Brooks, author of Year of Wonders and March

Rich and beguiling. The gradual revelation of characters' dreams and fears makes their story as moving as it is suspenseful. -- Julia Glass, author of Three Junes

Warmly drawn….A multilayered narrative of impressive historical perspicacity, enriched by the author’s loving attention to character." -- Kirkus Reviews
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 19, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0143038575
  • ISBN-13: 978-0143038573
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 4.8 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #163,249 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Elizabeth Crook
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Claudia Bass's house stood on the high part of a sloping acre under a large oak tree that had cast its shadows long before the house was built beneath it. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
chipboard box, jewelry charm, film box
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Las Vegas, New Mexico, Elliott Bass, Don Pedro, Dog Hill, Vicente Morales, Martin Estes, Phil Barker, Fred Harvey, Mountain Meadows, Jake Montoya, Saint Anthony, Jim Layton, Myrna Spitz, Claudia Bass, Mexico City, Señor Ruiz, Andrew Smith, Pecos Pueblo, United States, David Valdez, Manuel Medford, New York, Ciudad Juárez, Plaza Hotel
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (29 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Epic, intimate novel, February 7, 2006
This review is from: The Night Journal (Hardcover)
This novel of four generations of women is so intricately structured that they all seem to be living at one time, together, fighting, arguing, loving, digging deeply into what becomes a history shared by the living and the dead.

Hannah's journals from over a hundred years ago are astounding, so full of life and curiosity and sensual, doomed love that you think she's sitting there reading them to you herself. And that there hasn't been a more compelling character in literature for ages. ("I wanted nothing but to break the barriers," she writes--and does she!) Yet when her daughter, Bassie, starts to talk, and snarl, and argue, you feel she's worthy of Dickens. Bassie and Meg go at each other with a kind of vicious tenderness that only blood and family can bring to bear.

And the men...the men these women love. All are strong. All are deeply flawed. And each is worthy of the passion he inspires. Hannah's yearnings in particular are so intense that she finds them "despotic in the night" (lovely phrase, never mind how apt in terms of the novel's title) and must send herself literally into exile from her desire. Meg, who lives in, and must try to emerge from, the shadow of the women she was born from ("she felt a need to be rid of the past, unwillingly captured by it"), falls in love like the cerebral, conflicted character she is, hesitantly, confusedly, compellingly.

THE NIGHT JOURNAL combines the sweep of an epic with the intimacy of a love story. It has horrendous train wrecks (you want to turn your eyes away) and appalling massacres and monumental feats of engineering and intricate details of archeology and beautiful scenery in the midst of which its characters fall into forbidden, tragic love.

Elizabeth Crook has attempted, and accomplished, a vastly ambitious work of fiction. You will lose yourself in this book, and in the process find a precious, unforgettable work of narrative art.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating read!, February 11, 2007
By Jaizon (NH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Night Journal (Hardcover)
If you enjoy story lines that connect the contemporary world with its history, read this book. The characters, both modern and turn of the twentieth century, will engage you and move you. The history is well integrated into the story line, and I found myself completely swept up in the lives and events that unfold in this very well told story.
The author reveals so much of the pain and conflict that accompanied the growth of the American southwest and relates it to individuals as well as to politics, environment, and the study of the past through journals, letters, and archeology. A moving love story, family saga, political expose--a great read. If you like this one, you will also like A Map of Love, by Adhaf Soueif, which uses similar devices to explore these themes in the setting of Egypt.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly absorbing fiction......, August 9, 2006
This review is from: The Night Journal (Hardcover)
Meg Mabry is a 37-year-old biomedical engineer devoted to her work maintaining dialysis equipment. Her love life is less than spectacular. Meg suffers migraines and has dissociated herself from life in general in an attempt to maintain some sort of control. Over-shadowing everything Meg does is her domineering maternal grandmother, Claudia Bass, known as Bassie to her fans. Bassie is a respected author and historian, a once beautiful woman still trying to paint a fresh face over her wrinkled one. Documenting her mother Hannah's life from journals has always been Bassie's raison d'etre. Nina Witte is Meg's much-married mother. Being between husbands is a chronic condition for Nina. Bassie raised Meg because Nina's alcoholism and penchant for men interfered with child rearing.

Bassie is curmudgeonly, opinionated, and demanding. She resents her advanced age and failing health and focuses much of that resentment on Meg. Meg grudgingly juggles her job and Bassie's needs but stubbornly refuses to do the one thing that would please her grandmother - read Hannah Bass's journals about life in New Mexico. When Bassie is forced to travel to her birthplace in New Mexico, she asks Meg to accompany her.
Meg refuses at first but finally gives in. Bassie would drive a saint to drink, but despite her pretenses to the contrary, Meg loves her. What both women discover in New Mexico alters their world in stunning ways.

In New Mexico, voices from the past seem more real than those in the present. In fact, the present seems like a pale imitation of life when Meg finally starts reading Hannah Bass's journals. Hannah was a woman of sensuality and strength, a skilled chronicler of life in the Desert Southwest and Victorian era. Hannah's courtship and marriage to Elliott Bass and her friendship with Vicente Morales enthrall Meg. Elliott is intense and self-assured, a railway engineer and secretive man who loves Hannah with passion. Despite that love, and his devotion to their daughter Bassie, Elliott is gone from home for long periods of time. Hannah's journaling ends when she
dies at age 31 of consumption, but Meg and Bassie discover key parts of her story remain untold. Truths lie buried in the desert southwest. Shocking mysteries are revealed. And Meg finally learns the importance of genuine love and family ties.

I loved this book, every word of it. The past lives through Hannah's journals and melds itself inextricably with the present. If The Night Journal is an example of Elizabeth Crook's work, I want to read more.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting look at SW America circa 1900
Written in a journal format and cutting through time, this is a well researched book with some very vivid and bracing prose. Read more
Published 1 month ago by GrammyV

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved it!
This book pulled me along, and was very interesting. It was just a great read.
Published 8 months ago by N. Daley

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard to Put Down!
I enjoy historical fiction, and this story certainly fit the bill! Every generation of characters was interesting and the story line kept my attention to the very end.
Published 9 months ago by Maxibleu

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard Love
This book was hard to get into, but, in the end, worth the effort. After plowing through the first 75 pages over several nights, I ended up staying up most of one additional... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Jean Sullivan

5.0 out of 5 stars Small Book Club
We tried this book for our small club, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Well written...good character development...a good story.
Published 13 months ago by G. Starr

5.0 out of 5 stars Set aside a couple days...you will be reading this every moment you can spare!
This is an engrossing story within a story. You will be kept wondering and wanting to have all of your questions answered so that you will NOT want to stop reading until you... Read more
Published 13 months ago by LibraryGal

4.0 out of 5 stars Mixed feelings on this one
An older woman, Claudia Bass, has made her mother's journals famous by publishing them - Dr. Bass is a noted historian and scholar. And she is mean as a snake... Read more
Published 24 months ago by ellen

3.0 out of 5 stars History trumps romance
There are at least two stories here. One is that of Hannah Troy Bass, who came to New Mexico in the 1890s and left a series of journals which, as edited by her daughter Claudia... Read more
Published on July 27, 2007 by Roger Brunyate

1.0 out of 5 stars I must have missed something
This novel reads like a second rate mass market dimestore romance. The journal references are unbelievably contrived, and the thin plot is padded with uneccessary and... Read more
Published on July 25, 2007 by M. Nokleby

4.0 out of 5 stars rich characters, a lush landscape, an intriguing mystery and a possible romance...
In the recent film Notes on a Scandal, one of the characters remarks that "we are bound by the secrets that we keep. Read more
Published on May 29, 2007 by Bookreporter.com

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