We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
My rating: 4/5 cats
this one is also more of a 3.5.
for me.
i think it is very well-written and well-developed, and i know it is going to appeal to a broad range of folks, but my personal disposition is a little too cynical and cranky for its general tone. it’s one of those multi-perspective novels where disparate people’s lives intertwine and converge unexpectedly when horrible things happen. which i love.
it’s about all the small things that make up a life – the tiny moments that seem insignificant, but can have profound impacts,
…where something small changes everything. Where the tiniest act, the smallest space of time, the most inconsequential of decisions, changes a life. A split second separates the long-lost friends who either see or miss each other at an airport. And from that, a relationship does or does not develop, perhaps a lifetime partnership, perhaps even children. Human beings who might or might not have existed. Whole lives born out of the most fragile of happenstance.
And maybe that’s why our lives are beautiful; why they’re tragic. One perfect child can be born of an accidental encounter, and another lost to a split-second lapse in attention. If a motorist leans over to change a radio station at the same moment that it first occurs to a four-year-old that he can let go of his mother’s hand as easily as hang onto it, and that if he lets go he will be across the road first, before his mother, and that she will certainly laugh and say, “How fast you are, Johnny!” If the child does this, and the motorist does that, and if the world then changes forever and unbearably for everyone involved, then is that not life in its simplest form?
That so little matters so much and so much matters so little.
and that’s all lovely and true and well-articulated. but, despite the horrible things that happen to these characters, the realist in me balks at the general optimism and feel-gooderie. which the synopsis pretty much broadcasts:
When presented the opportunity to sink into despair, these characters rise. Through acts of remarkable charity and bravery, they rescue themselves.
and the title itself is taken from one of emily dickinson’s more upbeat verses:
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies —
i appreciate all the moral points about the idea of community, and how easily-performed acts of kindness and sacrifice can mean so much, and i love this:
It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing.
What is beautiful is the least acknowledged.
What is worth dying for is barely noticed.
this is a reminder of how necessary it is to contribute to the greater social good in order to exist without friction within the general run of humanity, and it is how i already try to live, just because i don’t think it benefits anyone to be an asshole. for example, all you gr trolls out there – why?? what’s the point? it’s just not necessary. so i am completely on board with that element of it, with the “how hard is it to hold an elevator door for someone?” attitude.
and i also love that it is set in las vegas, having adored the vegas interlude of The Goldfinch, and the reality that people actually live there, even though everything about vegas seems to be temporary, and unable to sustain a community. but it’s possible:
We created a community out of nothing. And we were proud of it. And maybe we didn’t look like a lot of other communities out there. We weren’t much alike. One of us had turned a trick in a casino before she finished high school. Others of us had gone to college. One of us had never been inside a church. Others of us prayed daily. One of us had never known a grandparent, an uncle, or a cousin. Others had grown up in families in which nobody had ever divorced. Some of us had relatives who were drug addicts, some of us had worked nights in casinos, some of us had grown up thinking darn was a curse word. Some of us were military families, some of us could barely stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
We weren’t a community anyone would predict.
so i love all that, and i love this lovely bleak line:
Sometimes it’s not that you don’t want help. It’s that you can’t bear to be offered help that just keeps turning out not to be enough after all.
so, those are all the things i love, and my problem is mainly with the ending. which is my fault entirely. even though i knew that the entire premise of the book was about this layering of cause-and-effect kindnesses and pay-it-forward small acts that would eventually result in people “rising” and “rescuing” themselves, it just felt… unrealistic.
i mean, wonderful and heartwarming, but ultimately… not the way things generally happen. i am coming out of a lifelong love of steinbeck and hardy, and this has probably ruined my ability to appreciate the concept of a happy ending in my literature. this just felt a little manipulative to me, like the way i imagine a nicholas sparks book must be at the end. sweet, and with swelling violins and relentless cheeky optimism, but just a little forced-feeling.
but that’s just me and my own personal outlook – very willing to do the small things to not inconvenience other people, but also knowing that people are generally self-involved and careless and my tiny anonymous kindnesses are just spitting into the wind.
so i guess i am too bitter for more than a 3.5.
but i will still move to the center of the subway car for you, because it is such an easy thing to do.
LGM
