Seeing characters see their parents again after a somewhat or very long time can be interesting for novel readers. There’s a lot of emotion involved, whether the reunion is joyful or reluctant. And anyone who has parents (that’s quite a few people 🙂 ) can relate.

It so happened that I just coincidentally read three consecutive novels containing parent/child meet-ups as strong elements — Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park, and Philippa Gregory’s Earthly Joys. All very different books, all excellent books.

Mearsault’s mother has just passed away as The Stranger begins, but the “reunion” of dead mom and living son is still fraught — and will have a huge impact on Mearsault’s fate in the second half of Camus’ famous absurdist novel.

In the riveting Gorky Park, there’s a pivotal scene between Russian investigator Arkady Renko and his father — a famous World War II general who Arkady hadn’t visited in years. The meeting is uncomfortable — the dad is seemingly near death and far from friendly, and the long-ago suicide of the father’s wife/Arkady’s mother hangs between the two men. But the meeting is an important part of Smith’s intricate plot.

The absorbing historical-fiction book Earthly Joys includes an awkward encounter between 17th-century royal gardener John Tradescant and the mother and stepfather of Elizabeth — the woman John promised to marry six years earlier and hadn’t seen during that time because he was to return only when able to financially support a wife. John’s willingness to accept delayed gratification and the patient way he talks to the mom and stepdad say a lot about his personality. Then, as the novel goes on, John’s months-long trips in the service of the masters he serves so devotedly (too devotedly?) make for resentment from John Jr. whenever dad returns.

Belated parent/child meet-ups are also in various novels I read in years past rather than this winter. For instance, there’s a very dramatic meeting between the title character of George Eliot’s masterful Daniel Deronda and the mother Daniel never knew while raised in another household.

Fanny Burney’s entertaining 18th-century novel Evelina includes the scenarios of the raised-in-the-country title character meeting her not-nice biological father Sir John Belmont after many years and then, following Evelina’s long stays in places like London, her again seeing the kind Rev. Arthur Villars who raised her.

Then there’s Jhumpa Lahiri’s excellent The Lowland, in which Bela has a very resentful reunion with the mother (Gauri) who abandoned her years earlier. (A scene that commenter bebe mentioned under my previous post.)

In Geraldine Brooks’ intense March, the family from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women sees their father again when he returns home traumatized by his harrowing Civil War experiences.

And L.M. Montgomery’s superb The Blue Castle has Valancy Stirling reluctantly coming back to the house of her mother after Valancy’s wonderful relationship with Barney Snaith hits an eye-opening snag. The narrow-minded mom soon treats her daughter with more respect for all the wrong reasons.

Novels you remember in which children see their parents again after a period of time?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about topics such as March 14’s national student walkout to protest loose gun laws — is here.

There are plenty of novels out there with characters seemingly born to be heroes and heroines. Brave. Perhaps big and strong. Perhaps with lots of training in the defensive and attacking arts.

Then there are novels starring unlikely heroines and heroes. Unlikely because the protagonists are very young, very old, not physically powerful, etc. Those books can make for riveting reading as they take us by surprise, allow us to relate to characters who don’t seem superhuman, etc.

My most recently read example of this phenomenom was Ray Bradbury’s deliciously creepy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. A scary carnival has arrived in town, endangering the live of several people — including the boys Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway. To the rescue comes…a brooding, bookish, middle-aged janitor: Will’s father Charles.

There’s also Lisbeth Salander of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels. She’s a young, abused, antisocial computer hacker — not your typical literary heroine. But very courageous in a nothing-to-lose way.

Or how about Mary Minor Haristeen, who solves crimes with the help of her pets in the engaging mystery series by Rita Mae Brown. Mary’s training for her heroics? Running a small-town post office.

Another amateur detective, the elderly Miss Marple of various Agatha Christie mysteries, is also not a typical heroine.

Then there’s Neville Longbottom of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In the early books, Neville is a timid and socially awkward student. By the seventh and final book, Harry and friends may not have survived without the grown-bold Neville.

Speaking of popular fantasy works, J.R.R. Tolkien has Frodo Baggins find heroism the diminutive character barely thought possible during the dangerous adventures of he and his cohorts in The Lord of the Rings.

In the dystopian-novels-set-in-the-near-future realm, the resourceful/precocious teens Laura and Willing coolly keep family and friends together in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and (Ms.) Lionel Shriver’s The Mandibles. Heck, Laura in Butler’s book even manages to found a new religion of sorts.

Historical fiction? There’s the unlikely visionary teen heroine who’s martyred in Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. And the courageous sisters who, in a very patriarchal/macho society, take the huge risk of opposing brutal Dominican Republican dictator Rafael Trujillo in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies.

Who are your favorite unlikely heroines and heroes in literature?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about America’s gun violence and more — is here.

After discussing great debut novels in last week’s post, I naturally thought about so-so debut novels by authors who eventually became great writers. In some cases, they made the leap to excellence with their second novel. In other cases, it was more of a slow build.

One author who immediately sprang to mind was Jack London. In 1902, he came out with what’s considered his first novel: A Daughter of the Snows. I love the fact that it stars a strong woman, but the book’s clunky dialogue doesn’t sound like how people really talk, and London’s narration is also not very good. Then The Call of the Wild was published a year later, and it was brilliant. I don’t know what happened during those 12 months, but someone please bottle it!

Around the same time, Edith Wharton wrote the novellas The Touchstone (1900) and Sanctuary (1903). Mildly interesting books. Then came the quantum leap to The House of Mirth (1905), a justly iconic novel with an enormous emotional wallop.

Let’s move on a few years and look at Willa Cather. Her debut novel Alexander’s Bridge (1912) is good but not that distinctive. A year later, Cather found her “prairie” voice with O Pioneers! — uneven, but with many great moments. Then she knocked things out of the park with The Song of the Lark (1915) and My Antonia (1918).

F. Scott Fitzgerald? His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), has terrific writing in some places, mediocre writing in others. Five years later…The Great Gatsby, about as close to prose perfection as an author can get.

Terry McMillan made her novel debut with the good Mama in 1987, and, five years later, wrote the superb Waiting to Exhale.

And Barbara Kingsolver started with 1988’s excellent The Bean Trees. A decade later, she took a humungous leap with her amazing fourth novel, The Poisonwood Bible.

But enough about American authors.

When Sir Walter Scott turned from poetry to novel writing, the first result was 1814’s Waverley — and one could tell he was still trying to master the new format. But it was not long before he wrote several top-notch novels, including Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Midlothian (1818), and Ivanhoe (1820).

Anne Bronte’s debut novel Agnes Grey (1847) is absorbing, but several steps below her superb second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

I haven’t read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s not-that-well-known novels from the 1840s and 1850s, but they surely didn’t approach his 1866 masterwork Crime and Punishment. Same for the Leo Tolstoy novels that preceded 1869’s epic War and Peace!

Emile Zola wrote quite a few novels before everything came together with The Drinking Den (1877), after which he penned several other excellent fiction books — most notably Germinal. Prior to The Drinking Den, Zola’s best novel was perhaps 1867’s Therese Raquin, but that potboiler was not great literature.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) was Erich Maria Remarque’s riveting third novel — kick-starting a run of a half-dozen other powerful fiction books through 1962’s The Night in Lisbon.

Some of your favorite authors who wrote non-stellar first novels?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about my town’s schools superintendent search and a nasty comment aimed at a fellow Board of Education member — is here.