[.ca] Light Action in the Caribbean (ISBN 0679311262)

From Amazon.com:
A reader can never know for certain how Barry Lopez constructs his stories. But they read as though their author first came up with some utterly compelling image, and the story fit itself around the image. Fans of the author's nature writing in Crossing Open Ground and Arctic Dreams will be pleased to find that often these images express human devotion to the land. In a kind of fantasy piece titled "In the Great Bend of the Souris River," a horseman, adrift in the countryside in North Dakota, encounters two other riders who "could be Cree." The three men ride across the prairie together. "I knew these people no better than two deer I might have stumbled upon, but I was comfortable with them, and the way we fit against the prairie satisfied me. I felt I could ride a very long way like this, absorbed by whatever it was we now shared, a kind of residency." In "Remembering Orchards," a character recalls with regret his orchardist stepfather whom he wishes he'd known better and who died "contorted in his bed like a root mass." Lopez introduces other, more disturbing images here as well, perhaps most notably in the title story, wherein a woman travels with her boyfriend to a diving resort in the Caribbean. In a weird twist on J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the trip ends in brutal bloodshed, which Lopez describes in chillingly affectless prose. The story contains this stunner of a sentence: "The first bullet tore through his left triceps, the second, third, fourth, and fifth hit nothing, the sixth perforated his spleen, the seventh and eighth hit nothing, the ninth hit the console, sending electrical sparks up, the tenth went through his right palm, the next four went into the air, the fifteenth tore his left ear away, the sixteenth ricocheted off the sixth cervical vertebra and drove down through his heart, exiting through his abdomen and lodging in his foot." There's no escape from Lopez's images; they come after us. --Claire Dederer

fascinating, didactic, curious:
This collection of stories stretches the range of stories that Lopez has published, but that also means that he works outside the range of which he is a true master. Remembering Orchards is vintage Lopez - an excellent tale of a step father, a step son's growing to appreciate his step father, and a gently given didactic message regarding pesticides. Stolen Horses is another vintage Lopez - a young man, drifting in life, getting lured into crime - with a gentle didactic message regarding ranchers being priced out of their land. In the Garden of the Lords of War is a tale that consists of a single image of achieving/maintaining peace. The story is description and, while interesting, fails both as story and as entralling description. Ruben Mendoza Vega, Suzuki Professor of Early Caribbean History, University of Florida at Gainesville, Offers a History of the United States Based on Personal Experience has an interesting structure - a very short "story" with extensive footnotes which provides the real story - that of the colonial families' power in Cuba. Emory Bear Hands' Birds is a delightful indictment of our system of incarceration in the context of a story of Native American beliefs. The remaining stories have similar variety and message. These are good stories, worth reading, but far from the best of Barry Lopez.

eclectic and thought-provoking:
These stories are all over the map -- from 17th century love letters between Peruvian saints to a 20th century mappist who devotes his life to his practice. This is my first encounter with Lopez, but his excellent writing is evident throughout. Though I didn't like all the stories (the Lords one was the weakest I thought), I found his subject matter so interesting and the ideas so gripping that I couldn't put it down. Lopez has a knack for creating a sense of place from the land. These stories contain some beautiful slices of Americana and some memorable scenes and characters. I love the story about the 17th century saints. Many gems in this short collection.

Lopez...:
Beautiful stories...except for the title piece. This is a violent and subpar work for this very gifted writer.

Lopez "Light"?:
Although the title of this book promises "light action in the Caribbean," the stories you will encounter here are actually heavy with meaning. Barry Lopez's writing has the ability to change the way you perceive the world. For instance, his essay "Apologia" in ABOUT THIS LIFE (1998) forever changed the way I will think of animals killed by automobiles. "Light" is not a word I would use to describe the writing of Barry Lopez. These stories are challenging, but worth the effort if read slowly. In this collection, Lopez introduces us to a diverse assortment of subjects: horse thieves, prison inmates who dream of animals, a 54-year-old gardener who marries a 22-year-old girl, an itinerant who thinks about hoofprints, macaws imprisoned in a hotel, a historian, a restoration geographer, and a 12-year-old deaf girl, who was "hit in the head by a stray bullet . . . that . . . had eclipsed the hearing in both ears" (p. 64). In my favorite story of the collection, "Remembering Orchards," Lopez's first-person narrator stares at trees in an Oregon orchard, "like sparrows frozen in flight" (p. 5), to bring the stepfather he never knew back to him: "the work of his hands, his desire and aspiration, just above the surface of the earth, in the light embayed in their branches" (p. 8). In another story, Lopez's character (a lawyer?), dogged by the grief of a failed relationship, finds engagement in the world again by silently working for six months in a monastery's gardens, while also building a model ship. In the not-so-subtle title story, the revolting, conspicuous consumption of a yuppie couple ends in Caribbean bloodshed. Travelling these stories may not always be easy. But for anyone interested in taking an insightful journey with Barry Lopez, I recommend these rewarding stories. G. Merritt

A true pleasure to read!:
In this slim volume of short fiction, Barry Lopez quietly evokes landscapes: of the earth, of the mind, and of the heart. Some stories, such as "Stolen Horses," are simply told; others have a multi-layered richness. In "The Mappist" (my personal favorite), a man solves a mystery of pseudonymity as he tracks down a skilled mapmaker who alternately worked for the U.S. Geological Survey and secretly hand-drew elaborate, knowing maps accompanied by passionate text. Here, the reader glimpses the shape and color of the past, present, and future and what it means for two men who see them all in the lay of the land. "The Letters of Heaven" confronts the humanity of saints, and how one man reconciles passion and God. Not all stories are equally successful; in the title story the brutal conclusion seems oddly out of place, as though it belongs to another story. Still, these stories are artfully told, in language that sometimes startles with its simple beauty.