Books & Ideas
Even if you don’t call your brother by the name of a different vegetable every day (Broccoli, Turnip, or, whenever he’s being nice, Pea Pod), many readers know what the quirky, crazy-lovable third grader Clementine means when she says, “Spectacularful ideas are always sproinging up in my brain.”
This serialized, real-time Vineyard novel, Moby Rich, began in last Friday’s Gazette and will continue every Friday, here on page two-A, for a year. For those of you who, in the happy hubbub of Memorial Day weekend, missed chapter one of Moby Rich, here is a synopsis: Our narrator (“Call me Becca”), a 40-something Vineyard native, has just returned home after decades in Manhattan.
Why do some washashores to the Island stay ashore while others drift away?
Author Nicole Galland was tucked up in bed when it came to her all at once: she would write the new Moby Dick.
Chapter One
Dear P:
Call me Becca! That’s what everyone still calls me, back here on the rock. I love it; makes me feel like a kid again.
Getting here was a pain in the butt. There are now several ways of schlepping to the Vineyard from NYC without a car (or a private jet), but I don’t know that any of them are an improvement over the old standby: bus from Port Authority to Woods Hole, and then the ferry.
MYSTERY ON THE VINEYARD: Politics, Passion and Scandal on East Chop. The History Press, Charleston S.C. 2008. 160 pages. $19.99 softcover.