Book Review of Dave Boling’s Guernica on Monday, January 18th @ 7:30pm

Jan 9, 2010 by Danielle

Please join us at former board member’s Angie Stewart’s home at 2437 61st Ave SE, Mercer Island for this insightful event.
Guernica: Dave Boling

Here it is: If you only read one book this year, make it this one.

Boling’s historical fiction follows three generations of Basques as they live, work, and love in the time of the turn of the twentieth century up through the ending days of World War II, including the cold and destructive bombing of their village by the Nazis at dictator Franco’s request. The story follows three brothers and their descendants while fishing, farming, and smuggling, keeping alive in the face of the Spanish Civil War. While this may sound like something akin to a family saga a la The Thorn Birds, what keeps Guernica out of the syrupy range is Boling’s writing: sparse, descriptive, never florid, but always meaningful. It’s a family drama without the overly expressive or descriptive words that make it into melodrama, but the writing fills you with the dust in the soil, the turbulent sea, the danger of the mountain passes. Make no mistake: this is definitely a book that could have gone the way of the melodrama. But Boling’s writing prevents this, and does so wonderfully.

Not that the sparse but beautiful prose does anything to keep the reader at arm’s length from the characters. The very situation that the people find themselves in make it damn near impossible to not feel an emotional bond with them, to not anguish over their possible fates. Let’s be honest: with a title (and a subject matter) like Guernica, you know that it can’t possibly have a happy ending for everyone. And I am not ashamed to admit that I was absolutely wracked with tears for at least a sixty-page stretch of the novel. The writing of the bombing was almost unbearable as characters scrambled for their loved ones and watched people die. Limbs littered the street and men and women and children burned alive in bomb shelters. The chaos, the panic, the length and desperation and inevitability of the scene paints the horror of the useless attack.
Eventually I am honor-bound to mention…do I think this is an all-time best book ever written ever? No. Honestly, no. There are problems, including the inclusion of Pablo Picasso as an occasional character. This sometimes seemed extraneous, even though it was done in a manner entirely consistent with Picasso, the historical character, and did add a layer that will be familiar to many people. The novel is also prevented from possible utter Greatness by a plot twist in the final quarter of the book that made even emotion-wrenched me say, “Hm…unlikely. Tenable, yes, even possible…but unlikely.” This twist smelled slightly of a need for some happiness or at least a not-wholly-tragic ending (Lord of the Flies, anyone?), but in light of a beautiful quote of learning what to do with the love spent after someone dies, the plot twist hangs in there just enough to not be entirely ludicrous. Besides, I’d spent so much time crying at that point that I was ready for some little ray of light. I put my face in it and accepted it. This book is as much about the endurance of love and joy as it is about needless destruction and death in the face of war, and in the persistance of love I can accept a bit of haggling on the plot.

Guernica is Boling’s first book, and as I’ve mentioned it’s not without its flaws. But the good in the book – the sparse writing, the ability to tell a large and tragic story with a strong voice – largely outweighs the bad. Plus I haven’t read anything in a long time that had the ability to not only make me cry, but to keep me crying, leaving me breathless and hopeless for page after page. I don’t say things like this all that often, and it’s not very frequent that I can recommend a book without qualm. This is it. Go forth and seek Guernica.