tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10089546391756477142024-03-18T15:18:54.353-04:00reading avidly dot comreading avidly dot com: a casual and very random ordinary reader's journal, by a casual, very random ordinary reader. NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.comBlogger825125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-65957444227876398212024-03-12T14:05:00.000-04:002024-03-12T14:05:37.805-04:00The Birthday Party, by Laurent Mauvignier<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KjLqQtNvU_DdZsW_Hm_syV4rmnnn2HRslD_7kTwmYfMx0rGC13LjX2-MJCezmTTmthSeZws01iVgk6I-TkPXT6Kk5jgKmvVkq0RaAAzco71nT5r8exJMLbwyYFvncSM7sE3lFLOOU0JHzNWmnUuOGenR3osy3I2UBO_mWBqeTCP3n6b03NVAhDvq/s320/mauvignierbirthday.jpg" width="209" /></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781945492655</div><div style="text-align: left;">Transit Books, 2023</div><div style="text-align: left;">originally published 2020 as <i>Histoires de la nuit</i> </div><div style="text-align: left;">translated by Daniel Levin Becker</div><div style="text-align: left;">439 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I've described this book to friends as a demanding novel due to its style, but once you get used to the way it is written, it becomes unputdownable. It's also a story that eventually began to fry my nerves until the last page, and I have to admit that more than once I was beyond tempted to just take a peek to make sure everything came out okay. I didn't, of course, but I really, REALLY wanted to. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are three houses in the small hamlet of La Bassée, two of which are occupied and one of which is empty and on the market waiting to be sold. In one of these houses is the family Bergogne, consisting of Patrice, Marion and their daughter Ida; in the other is their older neighbor, Christine, who lives alone with her dog. Patrice has carried on the same life he grew up with and had kept the family farm "in the hands of Bergogne, as his father had wanted." Marion works in a print shop in the nearby town and Christine is an artist, having left behind "the Parisian life" to able to "do some real work." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The relationship between Marion and Patrice is somewhat strained; he is overweight, a meek and mild sort of man, holding in check the violence that he knows is inside of him, the same that he witnessed in his father. She is younger and more energetic, impulsive; she likes to go out dancing often with her friends, which makes him feel as though she "prefers their company to his." He never asks about her outings, while she never volunteers anything about them or much else, really. He does "everything in his power to be pleasant" with her, always worrying about things, especially that she could "leave on a whim" if he did say something. It's a lonely existence for the two, relieved mainly by the presence of Ida, whom they both love very much and who stays at Christine's house after school while her parents are working. Marion and Christine don't get along very well, with Christine making sarcastic digs at Marion which Marion answers with silence. But it's Marion's 40th birthday, and Christine, Ida, and Patrice are preparing for a party he's giving her. While Patrice's invitation to her two work friends is a surprise that Marion knows nothing about, what transpires that evening will be completely unexpected by everyone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The story covers two days in the lives of these people; in the first, the author allows his characters to go about their business of every day life while allowing the reader a glimpse into the tensions that exist among them, while in the second he moves them into full-on crisis mode. The action is slow and very controlled, with the narrative moving from character to character without wrecking the reading flow as the pressure intensifies from moment to moment. The back blurb notes that the story is a "deft unraveling of the stories we hide from others and from ourselves," which it is in part, but I see it more as an intense character study examining lives that are already on the edge as they become pushed into a situation well beyond their control. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Labeled as a "gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present," it's easy to understand why this book has been described by so many readers as a thriller -- it is definitely a nailbiter, and I have to say that the author does a fine job of leaving the answer to the key question of "why" all of this is happening until almost the very end, a factor that keeps the pages turning. <i>The Birthday Party</i> may be frustrating for some people who like swift action, or who don't particularly care for long, streaming paragraphs, but as I noted earlier, once I got the reading rhythm under my belt I did not want to put it down. I do think though, for reasons I won't get into here, that whoever decided on the title should have used the translated original, as it makes so much more sense and adds another layer of depth to the story as a whole. </div><div><br /></div><div>Recommended, for sure. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-9675213090193363762024-02-07T14:21:00.001-05:002024-02-07T16:20:45.720-05:00the book group read, January 2024: The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEXTM_UV1gEbf1OjiHF6OP-6uJotSOnGzilOvhO1aIPcrxBZSuuGRvV-HQxbtwIj0AmiLZHM7PN6EydEzfYI2QySsFtjloCFUNHNCmRvk5Jt3YerCC1SDndM-aIast2t3nEiQVFgn2IpeKaSHGIs0Lu5-CE_QceZatIfBV0tee4yZQxqnSQowpjwPD/s500/ishiguroremains.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEXTM_UV1gEbf1OjiHF6OP-6uJotSOnGzilOvhO1aIPcrxBZSuuGRvV-HQxbtwIj0AmiLZHM7PN6EydEzfYI2QySsFtjloCFUNHNCmRvk5Jt3YerCC1SDndM-aIast2t3nEiQVFgn2IpeKaSHGIs0Lu5-CE_QceZatIfBV0tee4yZQxqnSQowpjwPD/s320/ishiguroremains.jpg" width="192" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780307961440</div><div style="text-align: left;">Knopf/Everyman's Library, 2012</div><div style="text-align: left;">originally published 1989</div><div style="text-align: left;">230 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Remains of the Day</i> was the reading choice for my IRL book group for January 2024. We'd read a couple of Ishiguro's novels prior to this one, starting with <i>Never Let Me Go</i> and more recently, <i>Klara and the Sun</i>, but of the three, <i>The Remains of the Day</i> is one that that most fully captured my heart, although a couple of our members found it to be on the level of snoozefest or not interesting because they couldn't relate to any of the characters. To each his/her own and all of that, but I loved this book. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The story is revealed via Mr. Stevens, butler at Darlington Hall where he has served faithfully for decades. It's the 1950s and the house has had a change of ownership from the original Lord Darlington to an American millionaire by the name of Farraday, who offers Stevens time off and the use of his car while Farraday is off to America. Stevens decides to accept the offer, having in mind a visit to the former housekeeper, a Miss Kenton (who is now Mrs. Benn), whose recent letter implies a failing marriage. Stevens, who notes that there is a problem with the staff plan, believes that if he can convince Miss Kenton to return to service at Darlington Hall, her presence will fix the problem and everything will be righted again. At least that's what he tells himself. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Each day of his road trip is spent recollecting his career while revealing things about himself in the process. At the forefront of his mind are the concepts of "dignity" and "greatness" :</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"The great butlers are by great virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming or vexing. They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstances tear it off him in the public gaze; he will discard it when and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone. It is, as I say, a matter of 'dignity'." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">As the trip progresses, he also spends time reflecting on his former employer, who believed that "fair play had not been done at Versailles and that it was immoral to go on punishing a nation for a war that was now over." In 1923 Darlington had hosted an "unofficial international conference," examining ways in which "the harshest terms of the Versailles treaty could be revised." He brought together "a broad alliance of figures" who shared his beliefs as well as those who were concerned about the possibility of the "economic chaos" in Germany spreading worldwide. He continued his work on Germany's behalf throughout the interwar years, bringing Nazis to Darlington Hall, and at one point even ordering Stevens to dismiss two housemaids because they were Jewish, a "duty" which according to Stevens, "demanded to be carried out with dignity." As he at some later time notes, "A butler's duty is to provide good service. It is not to meddle in the great affairs of the nation." Through it all, Stevens believed that "Whatever complications arose in his lordship's course over subsequent years," he had acted out of a "desire to see justice in this world." In the postwar present, of course, Darlington had been outed as a dupe and a Nazi sympathizer, a fact reiterated to Stevens over the course of his travels; his reaction is that is is not his fault if "his lordship's life and work have turned out today to look, at best, a sad waste..." and that it is "quite illogical" for Stevens to "feel any regret or shame" on his own account. However, he makes a number of shifts in this thinking while on his journey. He has always taken great pride in, as noted above, conquering his feelings when "shaken" by "external events, however surprising, alarming or vexing," but as the book comes to its conclusion, he will end his journey with some painful realizations about his own life and exactly what price he has paid for his dutiful and faithful service over the decades. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I love the butler metaphor, and <i>The Remains of the Day</i> is one of those rare books that will stay with me always, largely due to Ishiguro's ability to make Stevens so incredibly human to the point where it's impossible not to find some measure of grief for the man. It reminds me more than a bit of his <i>Artist of the Floating World,</i> which is also set in a time frame of values shifts in which the main character takes a step back for reflection, a novel of both memory and tragedy. Both are beautifully written, but <i>Remains of the Day </i>edges out on top, although very slightly. Very highly, highly recommended.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">February's book group read: <i>Pyre</i>, by Perumal Murugan.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPl627y7DygOOmcw7bJ107Kdcg0Mk4qUXws_7OuFv2traf_SdXCwKnIkIr8n4LPfCJmXwqohYtDAchZl5BhyphenhyphenfXw9-Z5zmpnl8QmdROCjuX-FeW5gi8rR3bUVPwWfP0OmHXIiLXL7iJ_UYTuJn9jmlUNXYlCJAsRqnBU0zA2gyUC7Q0pUzRB1jnCi_N/s720/remainsofthedayfilm.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="479" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPl627y7DygOOmcw7bJ107Kdcg0Mk4qUXws_7OuFv2traf_SdXCwKnIkIr8n4LPfCJmXwqohYtDAchZl5BhyphenhyphenfXw9-Z5zmpnl8QmdROCjuX-FeW5gi8rR3bUVPwWfP0OmHXIiLXL7iJ_UYTuJn9jmlUNXYlCJAsRqnBU0zA2gyUC7Q0pUzRB1jnCi_N/w266-h400/remainsofthedayfilm.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">from <i><a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/639933428295188080/" target="_blank">Pinterest</a></i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I followed up my reading with the film from 1993. As always, it was a bit different from the novel (which I liked better) but so very nicely done, fleshing out much of Stevens' character and offering Miss Kenton more of a presence than the novel afforded her. When I asked my fellow book group members if they'd seen the movie, some of them had, years ago, and when I mentioned that I'd rented it for $4.00 on Amazon, I got the feeling from some of them that they felt maybe the $4.00 was not worth revisiting the novel as a film. Invisible, inner eyeroll -- their loss, not mine. I couldn't move away from my television while it was playing because it was so very, very good. I highly recommend it as well, but read the novel first, for sure.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 35px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></p><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-88699011450190800482023-09-28T11:09:00.003-04:002023-09-28T13:29:57.765-04:00Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nrOqzhIp1TcAH6Gz1JDrDoe-HZhx9GicLAwAl_JiVBoYp-q6jYL0haslFKKwf-RnuCEo4VFfRfSHB-e1MpeEYruWJZ9cajXfSOBXhi74IOuspSM9yc0TtOMK7IyN5Hj0ec1aVbe20wwiUhmdCcfntsn64qX864ed8OmQ5JMMvOEqGLxDsriX1gyI/s2139/lynchprophet.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2139" data-original-width="1400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nrOqzhIp1TcAH6Gz1JDrDoe-HZhx9GicLAwAl_JiVBoYp-q6jYL0haslFKKwf-RnuCEo4VFfRfSHB-e1MpeEYruWJZ9cajXfSOBXhi74IOuspSM9yc0TtOMK7IyN5Hj0ec1aVbe20wwiUhmdCcfntsn64qX864ed8OmQ5JMMvOEqGLxDsriX1gyI/s320/lynchprophet.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780861546459</div><div style="text-align: left;">Oneworld, 2023</div><div style="text-align: left;">308 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As with more than a few books I've read recently, <i>Prophet Song</i> drew my attention by way of this year's Booker Prize longlist, from which it has now moved on to the shortlist. This book was such a powerful read that it made me cry at the end, and that does not happen every day. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">With no back story to explain how it happened (and really, in my opinion, one is not needed -- the reader must accept that this is how things are for this story), a group known as the National Alliance Party has come to power in Ireland, and under the pretext of combatting the "ongoing crisis facing the state," it has issued the Emergency Powers Act. About a week later, the Party replaced the regular <a href="https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/our-departments/garda-national-crime-security-intelligence-service1/" target="_blank">Secret Detective Unit </a> (which, according to a bit of research on my end has the mission to investigate "threats to State security" and to "monitor persons who pose a threat to this on both national and international fronts") with the Garda National Services Board (GNSB), who are in control of the "maintenance of public order." One person here refers to them as a sort of "secret police," which he notes, does <i>not</i> exist in Ireland, but given everything that is to come, is very likely a more realistic description. As this story begins, it is two GNSB detectives to whom Eilish Stack opens her kitchen patio door one dark night, asking for her husband Larry, who is not home at the time. They ask her to have him call when he returns, telling her that "it is nothing to worry about." Eilish has no idea what this is all about, but she does have a feeling that "darkness has come into the house," something that she sees "skulking alongside her as she steps through the living room past the children." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Larry, a teacher who is also the deputy general secretary of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, a "senior trade unionist," makes his way to the station, where he is told that in the eyes of the GNSB, his behavior seems to them to be the "conduct of someone inciting hatred against the state, someone sowing discord and unrest." Evidently the party is not happy about an upcoming teachers' strike, and Larry, as it turns out, is working with Ireland's teachers "to negotiate for better conditions." Reminding the GNSB detectives that he has every legal right to do so, he leaves, but it's with an understanding that the familiar ground upon which he has been walking has most certainly shifted. Soon the Stacks begin to hear of friends being arrested, of constitutional rights being suspended and there are rumors of civil unrest and internment camps. Eilish believes her phone is tapped and later, Larry is suddenly disappeared and no one knows anything about his whereabouts. Eilish is warned to stay quiet, but refuses to do so, drawing the wrath of the government; little by little she finds herself becoming more isolated, especially at her work. With Larry gone, Eilish is left in sole charge of the family; she is also taking care of her widowed father, who lives alone and is sliding into dementia. It takes all she has sometimes just to keep herself together so that she can be strong for her four children as their normal lives crumble. She will soon discover that Larry's disappearance is only the beginning of her nightmare; as the government works to consolidate its hold on the people through whatever means necessary, she and her four children find themselves caught up in horrific events as they become part of a "society that is quickly unravelling." Yet, it is not only society which is "unravelling" here -- the most powerful moments of this novel focus on Eilish as the situation takes an immense and unspeakable toll on each member of her family, leaving her to make some extremely painful choices in order to protect them and above all, to ensure their survival. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">About plot I will say no more, and the above description doesn't begin to cover all of the twists and turns that make the reading of this novel such a powerful experience. While what happens here is set amid a "government turning toward tyranny," to think of <i>Prophet Song </i>as simply another work of "dystopian fiction" does not do this novel justice. That turn toward tyranny has happened, and more to the point <i>is </i>happening somewhere at sometime in our world, a reality with which we are all familiar, as well as a point strongly highlighted when the author writes</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"... the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report of on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore ..."</div></blockquote><p> Throughout the novel, the author uses the present tense to not only communicate the ongoing changes that occur in the process, but also the very <i>nowness</i> of the situation, which is one factor in making this book so harrowing, and his examination of the lack of freedom of agency, as he notes <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/paul-lynch-interview-prophet-song" target="_blank">here</a> "when caught within such an enormity of forces" is another. And while I will not divulge the ending, which actually flips the story back on the reader, by the time I got there I was absolutely in tears, thinking not just of Eilish but of real-world mothers who have experienced some of the same terrors and who have somehow summoned the courage it must have taken to make the same kind of unbearable decisions, and quite frankly, who have come to a point at which they feel they must gamble <i>everything</i> to protect their families under some of the same conditions. </p><div style="text-align: left;">I loved this book and cannot say enough good things about it; this story will haunt me for some time and it is one I most definitely recommend. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-11017519751754391982023-09-10T14:45:00.003-04:002023-09-15T14:58:15.171-04:00A Study for Obedience, by Sarah Bernstein<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7GrZp3R6zwIUbG04RdaUkHgL0uC8xZtobIxP5aehhGNl9M4zf0graskh3xm7QXLTicZKIF3_oA0pBl_VY4aaT8c7hgMM-Ov5-mA4X1WxMVIVeSypqyqTqB-fHhcbb9mlKL4JoZPDSmnBw8bYtPJ7k7vdIpwNZxDSLgiSTMZ7KS8cHU7cUJRVz2-1t/s425/bernsteinobed.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="275" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7GrZp3R6zwIUbG04RdaUkHgL0uC8xZtobIxP5aehhGNl9M4zf0graskh3xm7QXLTicZKIF3_oA0pBl_VY4aaT8c7hgMM-Ov5-mA4X1WxMVIVeSypqyqTqB-fHhcbb9mlKL4JoZPDSmnBw8bYtPJ7k7vdIpwNZxDSLgiSTMZ7KS8cHU7cUJRVz2-1t/s320/bernsteinobed.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781039009066</div><div style="text-align: left;">Knopf Canada</div><div style="text-align: left;">193 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I meant to get this post done much sooner, but sadly another death has darkened our doorway so it's been a few rough weeks around here for the two of us. But it's time to move forward.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The narrative in <i>Study for Obedience</i> is related by an unnamed narrator (whom we find out later is Jewish, which has more than a small amount of bearing on her story), who, as she reveals, was the youngest child in her family, and that since childhood, her role had been to provide her siblings </div><blockquote><div>"with the greatest possible succour, filling them up only so they could demand more, always more, demands to which I acceded with alacrity and discreet haste..." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">In other words, her life had been one of putting the needs of others ahead of her own, the consequences of which were her slide into a life of self denial and solitude, "pursuing silence to its ever-receding horizon." She has no sense of belonging, and her "pursuit" of offering "the most careful consideration to the other, to treat the other as the worthiest object of contemplation" has left her "reduced, diminished..." and in her words, ceasing to exist. It is not surprising then that when her brother calls her to come to his home because he needs someone to look after his house while he is away for long periods on business, that she accepts his request. His wife has left him, along with their children, and so for our narrator, it is a chance to live in seclusion and to "be quiet." His house is in a "remote northern country" which happens to be where her "family's ancestors" had lived before being "dogged across borders and put into pits," and indeed was once owned by those who had led the "historic crusades" against them. It is with her arrival that the story begins in earnest, especially once she decides to venture out into the town and discovers that the people, who seem to have no issues with her brother, want nothing at all to do with her. Perhaps, she thinks, it is because she can't speak the local dialect. Anyway, for whatever reason, she decides to volunteer for community service by putting her name on a rota sheet of chores the locals share. Despite her misgivings afterwards about doing that, her brother sorts things out for her long distance, on condition that she does her work quietly and alone. Not at all a problem for our narrator, but troubles begin just shortly after, when strange events alluded to at the beginning of this book start to happen, including a dog having a "phantom pregnancy," a sow who had "eradicated her piglets," and things that "were leaving one place and showing up in another." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Just when I was convinced that we're venturing into a sort of folk horror zone here, the brother returns home not quite himself and there is a major shift that occurs which moves <i> Study for Obedience</i> into different territory altogether, one which gets to the very heart of this book. While I won't discuss what that shift is or exactly or how it comes about, suffice it to say that the novel deals with the acquisition, uses and misuses of power; the complicity of silence and the weight of history, both personal and otherwise, are also key ideas that run throughout this novel. And while not the horror story I thought it was going to be, this is still quite a disturbing tale that I couldn't stop thinking about for days after I'd finished reading it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It wasn't until the second time through that the proverbial light went on in my head. While <i> Study for Obedience </i>is short, coming in at just about 200 pages, it is most certainly not your average plot-driven novel requiring more time on my part to get through it. Toward the end it becomes much more philosophical in nature than I had expected, making the reading a bit on the difficult side, and I'll be honest here -- it became a bit cumbersome languagewise for a while. However, the patient reader is definitely rewarded and quite frankly, once I cottoned onto what was going on here, I was completely in awe at this author's talent, making it a book I can certainly recommend. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-86719530688848149122023-08-24T14:19:00.001-04:002023-08-24T14:19:50.114-04:00This Other Eden, by Paul Harding<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJkzVJ4rqP6V3-QIvnJNWUed7jpwgUAHBNfldPi3kTvu2Nr9oe6c2yGjzMrwNfseNmcas_xp5AkLRfRwDm0Mt9Qb16UPyHakM5NhRUUzZK7TLYA6ECcIZddPWDRNFE1LfsSPHuu_Og2qGJd-kAcmrnuVeifJ40qXHI6TSJtGhAP3IUn5h3HNa2U6Se/s500/hardingother.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJkzVJ4rqP6V3-QIvnJNWUed7jpwgUAHBNfldPi3kTvu2Nr9oe6c2yGjzMrwNfseNmcas_xp5AkLRfRwDm0Mt9Qb16UPyHakM5NhRUUzZK7TLYA6ECcIZddPWDRNFE1LfsSPHuu_Og2qGJd-kAcmrnuVeifJ40qXHI6TSJtGhAP3IUn5h3HNa2U6Se/s320/hardingother.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781324036296</div><div style="text-align: left;">W.W. Norton, 2023</div><div style="text-align: left;">210 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"<i>Terrible how terribly good intentions turn out every time." </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I love finding novels that are based on, or in this case "inspired by," real events, especially when I am completely ignorant of the facts behind the fiction. The story found in Paul Harding's <i>This Other Eden</i>, now longlisted for the <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2023" target="_blank">2023 Booker Prize</a>, is one of these, with the action taking place in Maine on a small island, "hardly three hundred feet across the channel from the mainland." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Back in 1793, Benjamin Honey " -- <i>American, Bantu, Igbo -- born enslaved -- freed or fled at fifteen...</i>" and his wife Patience, "<i>nee Raferty, Galway Girl...</i>" arrived on what would later be called Apple Island, and after settling in planted the apple seeds he'd so carefully cherished and taken care of over the years. He had come there with a childhood memory of his mother and time spent in an orchard, also remembering the "fragrance of the trees and their fruit," as well as a "vision of the garden to which he meant to return." For Benjamin, that garden was Eden, "no mystery." Fast forward to 1911; Esther Honey, Benjamin and Patience's great-granddaughter, now has the role of family matriarch. Since Benjamin's time, other people outside of the Honey family had come to live on the island as well, with blood running "from every continent but Antarctica." The children help out with the chores and also roam freely, often with the island's three dogs which are fed from whatever scraps the families can muster. It is a small but close-knit, mixed-race community where the living is on the hardscrabble side, yet for the reader, there is every sense that Apple Island is some sort of haven, a refuge from the outside world for these people. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Also on the island during the summers is Matthew Diamond, a missionary who serves as teacher at the small school there. Esther finds herself with misgivings about the situation, certain that </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"there would not be a soul left on the island within five years. She'd heard it all before, threats and promises both, threats being far more common than promises, but either way no one had actually set foot on the island to see out their intentions, well-meaning or otherwise."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">She also believed that</div><blockquote><p> "no good ever came of being noticed by mainlanders, which always meant being noticed by white people -- plain white, her mother and aunts and cousins called them, to distinguish them from the lighter-skinned Apple islanders..."</p></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Diamond means well, and takes special interest in his students, including Tabitha Honey, who "took to Latin as if she were not learning it but remembering it," Emily Sockalexis, whose skill in mathematics has Diamond scrambling to "relearn" in order to keep up with her, and then there's Esther's grandson Ethan, who has a natural talent for drawing. At the same time, as Diamond writes to a friend, inasmuch as his faith tells him that "all men are his brothers, all women my sisters, all souls my family," he has a "visceral, involuntary repulsion" when he is in "the presence of a living Negro." But events begin to take a dark turn when, as noted in the dustjacket blurb, Diamond's "presence attracts the attention of authorities on the mainland," many of them who subscribe to the contemporarily-popular pseudoscience of eugenics; journalists' photos also draw negative attention to the islanders. Trying to help, Diamond begs a friend to sponsor Ethan, whose light skin allows him to pass for white and secures him a spot off the island where he can continue to grow his artistic abilities. Esther is on board with this idea, knowing that he has a chance in the outside world, and Ethan makes his way off the island and to a life Esther hopes will be filled with promise and reward. But Diamond's attempt at helping Ethan sparks tragedy; back on the island, this small community is rocked by events that unfold quickly, all of which will result in devastating consequences for each and every person who lives there. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfvPr-WVugPeaP45Nt_Mdkvg08GQH9tGEmSgvwoOFTGhcnc_I7gczSTYeRsSjINwF1WGEGQNq4O89MZS5p7q7zmjFRPRbNBbYoKzermumUbAofAIToxfObwbzdf1kbaMgDvvXrSkmuJ46lsjxTGhxHvkg-EvsOg4v630YyBALWVCsu89PEgLXGBju9/s720/malagachildren.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="720" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfvPr-WVugPeaP45Nt_Mdkvg08GQH9tGEmSgvwoOFTGhcnc_I7gczSTYeRsSjINwF1WGEGQNq4O89MZS5p7q7zmjFRPRbNBbYoKzermumUbAofAIToxfObwbzdf1kbaMgDvvXrSkmuJ46lsjxTGhxHvkg-EvsOg4v630YyBALWVCsu89PEgLXGBju9/w400-h272/malagachildren.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />children from the Malaga Island schoolhouse -- from</span> <i><a href="https://www.greenhutgalleries.com/discourse/sample-post-jbtpb-arbms-jjyyf" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Greenhut Galleries</span></a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;">I've read this book twice now, once before I'd researched the reality behind the novel and then after, and I have to admit that the second read with the knowledge I'd gained helped me to appreciate it more. The historical material is horrifying and yet fascinating.* The real and long-buried story belongs to the people of Malaga Island, who in 1912 were forcibly evicted by the state from their homes due to "a chain of tragic events," as explained in <i><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-dark-secrets-of-this-nowempty-island-in-maine" target="_blank">Atlas Obscura</a>,</i> "spurred by the racist 'science' of eugenics married with political corruption." It was also, in part, caused by ignorance and the contemporary abhorrence of miscegenation. Eviction of the living was bad enough, with some islanders being diagnosed as "mentally incompetent" and "remanded to" the Maine School for the Feeble Minded, but it got worse -- the small cemetery was dug up, the remains were combined and they were taken away from Malaga Island altogether. While these events feature in <i>This Other Eden</i>, Harding doesn't exactly rewrite the story, choosing instead to focus more on a handful of people on the fictional Apple Island. I haven't been there but his depiction of the island seems true to life, down to the old shell middens, and he's bestowed his characters with distinct and individual voices along with the quirks that make them human. I have to be honest here: while buzzing through different online interviews with the author, I gleaned a bit of understanding regarding the author's focus on art in this novel -- as he stated in an interview at <i><a href="https://lithub.com/this-other-eden-paul-harding-on-imagining-our-integrated-past/" target="_blank">Lit Hub</a>, </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote>"As I do with all my novels, everything I'm reading, all the paintings I see, all the music I'm listening to, everything somehow or another gets thrown into the manuscript, in its earliest stages"</blockquote><p>but in my own humble opinion, his time spent with Ethan's slowly-growing awareness of the beauty of the natural world and learning how to capture it in his art just went on too too long to the point where I actually lost interest, wanting to get back to the main throes of the story. I wasn't a huge fan of the biblical allusions/references either -- sometimes they felt a little strained as well as heavy handed. But those are my particular niggles, and to each his/her own. </p><p>I probably wouldn't have bought this book had it not appeared as part of the Booker dozen, but in the long run, and for many reasons, I'm glad I did. </p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">* Maine State Archivist Kate McBrien has an insightful and well-researched presentation on Malaga Island that is available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIeqJndS9zs" target="_blank">youtube</a>. I recommend it wholeheartedly. </div><p><br /></p></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-44274783591932213352023-05-30T14:28:00.000-04:002023-05-30T14:28:01.157-04:00Hungry Ghosts, by Kevin Jared Hosein<div style="text-align: left;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ7Q9IjFB1HTyn6EW6GrvLcEsYhuC2HuPqwcttYxZH4HqJYwMzsibk14QQur8NJ_YtPYyd2zTbM9cGshunBXcpWro_3apsEkn4gLkbXQ4xgRQ5jezxKZCbmCSEWudhm3bfKd_uNzCOcF3qjtTZTIhkAHUcs-SvI_6vrVRn43rDPXZ0Q1pK8vrWIQ/s400/hoseinhungry.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ7Q9IjFB1HTyn6EW6GrvLcEsYhuC2HuPqwcttYxZH4HqJYwMzsibk14QQur8NJ_YtPYyd2zTbM9cGshunBXcpWro_3apsEkn4gLkbXQ4xgRQ5jezxKZCbmCSEWudhm3bfKd_uNzCOcF3qjtTZTIhkAHUcs-SvI_6vrVRn43rDPXZ0Q1pK8vrWIQ/s320/hoseinhungry.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">"<i style="font-weight: bold;">Moths see light and fly to it... Always searching for the border between deep darkness and the billows of the moon. The moonlight to them is hope. But to a moth, there are many things that resemble moonlight. It is that hope that turns on them and gets them killed.</i>"</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780063213388</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ecco, 2023</div><div style="text-align: left;">327 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Trinidad is one of our favorite Caribbean island destinations so when I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. I also love Caribbean literature and I was not at all disappointed with this novel -- <i>Hungry Ghosts </i>is a dark yet phenomenal story and Trinidadian author Kevin Jared Hosein is a phenomenal writer. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The family at the center of this story lives in a small space known as "the Barrack." These structures, as we are told, were "sugarcane estate barrack(s)," and were </div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><div>"scattered like half-buried bones across the plain, strewn from their colonial corpse. In their marrow, the ghosts of the indentured. And the offspring of those ghosts."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915; font-size: 16px;"> </span>It's the 1940s, and in the rural countryside of Trinidad, the Saroop family, Hansraj (Hans), Shweta and their son Krishna, share the five-room, "tangle of wood and iron" barrack with four other families, each occupying a 10x10 foot room. Although there are partitions between the rooms, they do not allow for any sort of privacy; these impoverished families live with no running water, dress in clothes made of old flour sacks, and cook outside in a "communal yard," also the place for "drinking and fighting." Shweta is haunted by the loss of her baby girl Hema, about whom Hans will never speak and who has become, as one of the older women in the barrack revealed to Shweta, a "<i>preta -- </i>a hungry ghost" whose insatiable hunger must be appeased, as well as that of the other ghosts Hema brings with her. Shweta has a hunger as well: she dreams of getting out of the Barrack, escaping this "fossil embedded in quicksand" and buying a plot of land in Bell Village, </div><blockquote>"the dogma of a new world, howling and preaching steel and diesel and rayon and vinyl and gypsum and triple-glazed glass,"</blockquote><div>in hopes of securing for her family a better quality of life. The Barrack and its inhabitants fall at the lower echelon of a carefully-maintained social and class structure; while Krishna is the only barrack child enrolled at the school (which he despises) in Bell Village, the village children never let him forget where he lives or his barrack upbringing. Although there are other Hindus who attend the school, some are "Hindu at home but Presbyterian at school," at a time when identifying as Christian offered the promise of better opportunities. Towering over all of these people are the Changoors, Dalton and Marlee, who live uphill at Changoor Farm. Wealthy and powerful, no one really knows how Dalton came to have so much money, and no one really knows Marlee, who generally stays inside the walls of the house. She has no real friends and rarely interacts with people on the outside. Things change though when Dalton disappears with no warning, leaving Marlee a "cryptic note" on the kitchen table that says very little. She is now alone on the farm with the three hired workers (who by Dalton's orders were to "never set foot inside his house") one of which is Hans Saroop. Marlee makes up stories about Dalton's absence, reassuring the farmhands that he will be back, but when she receives a ransom note attached to a dead rat demanding money, she offers Hans a high-paying job staying at the farm as a guard until Dalton's return. Hans knows that with the money that Marlee is willing to pay he can make a down payment on the patch of land in Bell Village and improve his family's life; what he doesn't know is that his decision will launch a tidal wave of completely unforeseen consequences. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, there are any number of people in this novel whose choices will have a major impact not only on their own lives but those of others as well. </div><div><br /></div><div>While Hans believes in that "flicker of a daydream" that offers the the promise of escape, what he doesn't understand is just how quickly a dream can turn into a nightmare, especially as he tries to keep his feet planted in two different worlds in a system that is so entrenched. He doesn't know what others know, that he's "floatin' through <i>maya</i> ...Mistaking dreams for the real world." This notion of a better world as illusion is prevalent throughout this novel -- so much so that at one point somebody notes that </div><blockquote><div>"<span>Moths see light and fly to it... Always searching for the border between deep darkness and the billows of the moon. The moonlight to them is hope. But to a moth, there are many things that resemble moonlight. It is that hope that turns on them and gets them killed.</span>"</div></blockquote><p>Eventually it becomes very clear that Hema is not the only ghost that haunts these people; there are many others with their own unfulfilled and unfulfillable appetites that ultimately lead them into despair. In the bigger scheme of things though, it's the ghosts of Trinidad's colonial past that are the most haunting of all. "Behold hell" indeed. </p><p>Once again, just a barebones look at a fine novel; if I wasn't so behind lifewise I could talk about this book forever. I absolutely loved <i>Hungry Ghosts </i>mainly because of the author's original approach in exploring the history of his homeland and his heritage. While the novel is often brutally violent and emotionally difficult to read, the author's prose is just beautiful, offering readers the sensation that they are there in that time as a witness to a slice of Trinidad's past. Definitely highly recommended -- I will read whatever this author has to offer in the future. </p><p>Just wow. </p></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-14109698283329911522023-04-29T10:19:00.002-04:002023-04-29T10:28:22.838-04:00Cursed Bread, by Sophie Mackintosh <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYs1Tm0K5-Zb0VASpBYnwonXNHNqa6JlBky7TTDiz52W2Ioy_VlkANwx-TSZttgMfu_GIwZyfSLoA3cZgcvlxHTDYVrB-l4ltRQyKB3M2k7PBrpWVtjqYazo6yu4XxO5yC551qATqn1ZhvbcwPCYmYoBgN0lSJhU2RWeRTRiecaEUV3lq7MtSHJA/s477/mackintoshcursed.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYs1Tm0K5-Zb0VASpBYnwonXNHNqa6JlBky7TTDiz52W2Ioy_VlkANwx-TSZttgMfu_GIwZyfSLoA3cZgcvlxHTDYVrB-l4ltRQyKB3M2k7PBrpWVtjqYazo6yu4XxO5yC551qATqn1ZhvbcwPCYmYoBgN0lSJhU2RWeRTRiecaEUV3lq7MtSHJA/s320/mackintoshcursed.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">"<i>We are so often wrong about the ones we love, slowly debasing ourselves, so gradually we barely notice we're doing it</i>.<i>"</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780385548304</div><div style="text-align: left;">Doubleday, 2023</div><div style="text-align: left;">190 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The truth is that after the first thirty pages or so of reading this novel, I stopped and added to my goodreads status something to the effect that I hoped that it got better because I wasn't really enjoying it to that point. Well, never a quitter, I kept reading -- not only did it get better, but after that first stopping point I did not want to put this book down. Not at all. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Cursed Bread</i> begins with the arrival of a new couple in a small, unnamed town in postwar France. The Ambassador (no other name given) has (he says) been tasked with a "government project, a kind of survey" to "learn more about the real people of this country. To truly get to know them, the citizens who make it what is is." The women in the town are quite naturally curious about his wife Violet, but none more so than Elodie, the wife of the town baker, who narrates this story looking back on events that eventually led her to "a convalescent place by the sea" after some pretty horrific happenings in her town. At the outset she wonders about her memories, "holding them up to the light" and questioning whether "it really did happen like this." And, if it did, could she "tell it differently?" Our storyteller decides that "perhaps it's best to be honest," so we must place ourselves in her hands. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Elodie was a woman "starving for contact," desperately wanting to feel noticed, needed and desired, someone who sensed that there was something more out there for her than the proscribed, humdrum life she currently lives, and a woman whose appetites for passion and intimacy had gone unsated. Her initial meeting with Violet happened in the bakery, and although they hadn't exchanged any meaningful words, she notes that afterwards, Violet had "haunted" her thoughts. After a strange, voyeuristic encounter at a party given by the newcomers at their home, it was as if Elodie had been struck by lightning, leaving her with a heightened awareness of the dark, erotic electricity bouncing between the Ambassador and Violet. From then on, as she notes, even brief glimpses of Violet would create "a pulse of something" running through Elodie. As time goes on, Elodie takes every opportunity she can to insert herself into Violet's life, and Violet begins to pay more attention to Elodie, sharing some intimate details of her relationship with her husband while at the same time keeping other things shrouded in mystery. Eventually, Elodie finds herself obsessed with this woman, becoming fixated on her own fantasies to the point that her desperation and desire lead her down a dark path in hopes of appeasing her own hungers. As the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur, she fails to realize that her choices also leave her vulnerable to those who might take advantage for their own agendas. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Between chapters the novel also contains letters written by Elodie to Violet from her seaside safe space as she tries to sift though her memories, but it appears that perhaps Elodie has not been as "honest" as she earlier proclaimed she would be. And while the focus of this story centers on the relationship and dynamics between Elodie and Violet, as the dustjacket notes, "beneath the tranquil surface of village life, strange things are happening" leaving in their wake "a dark intoxication" that manifests itself in madness, hallucinatory experiences and for some people even worse fates. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> An extremely brief and barebones post here certainly, but <i>Cursed Bread</i> is a visceral read that must be experienced firsthand. At its heart, the novel examines the power of desire, which can be both destructive and self-destructive and in this case transformative; it is dark and claustrophobic, seasoned by an ongoing sense of danger that ratchets up the tension until the end. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> It is only at the end of <i>Cursed Bread </i>in a brief "Author's Note" that we learn that</div><blockquote><div>"In the summer of 1951, the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit succumbed to a mass poisoning. There are many theories regarding the source of this catastrophe. None have ever been proved."</div></blockquote><div>This event has been thought to have been caused by ergot poisoning -- <i><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-deadly-bread-bewitched-a-french-village-123126177/" target="_blank">le pain maudi</a>t </i>(cursed bread) -- but who knows -- there have been a number of theories floated about regarding this incident. I don't necessarily think that the author is trying to simply fictionalize that traumatic event here, but setting the novel against the backdrop of the Pont-Saint-Esprit worked for me, since the effects of the poisonous relationships in this story couldn't help but to seep through to the rest of the town. And while completely different, I couldn't help but to be reminded of Barbara Comyns' excellent <i>Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, </i>the blurb of which mentions a newspaper article with the headline wondering "Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?," which, given what happens in <i>Cursed Bread,</i> seems more than appropriate. </div><div><br /></div><div>Although a lot of professional critics and more than a few readers have given this novel rather tepid reviews, I loved it and definitely recommend it for those looking for something a bit different and something definitely on the darker side. </div><div><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-11181185318875290482022-10-11T15:34:00.001-04:002022-10-15T10:04:51.613-04:00Glory, by NoViolet Bulawayo<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp727rRWUpxjXPf2wp8c-n6TYFDy3Xe14juJiDLRDpigKSa0hyL2_zdUzRZ39YZDTKAOSHbAeJ9F_kLXEvZ6Rm8R53YyUrvH1nQyasCBj_b6Ce0O9BFYA9UW37-6B-Sr8RsqUx74MSiP8m-we6zYiZy3pHJqZIAXH8FWC3zIKR3V_dsqeFLWWpHg/s450/bulawayoglory.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="298" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp727rRWUpxjXPf2wp8c-n6TYFDy3Xe14juJiDLRDpigKSa0hyL2_zdUzRZ39YZDTKAOSHbAeJ9F_kLXEvZ6Rm8R53YyUrvH1nQyasCBj_b6Ce0O9BFYA9UW37-6B-Sr8RsqUx74MSiP8m-we6zYiZy3pHJqZIAXH8FWC3zIKR3V_dsqeFLWWpHg/s320/bulawayoglory.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div><br /></div><br /><div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780525561132</div><div style="text-align: left;">Viking, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">403 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"<b><i>Even the sticks and stones will tell you that an animal can't just preach change without embodying it themselves, and that that change has to begin at the top and then trickle down to the rest of the masses." </i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The setting of this novel is the fictional country of Jidada, which is actually a stand-in for Zimbabwe, the home country of author NoViolet Bulawayo. As she stated in an interview for the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-03-07/noviolet-bulawayo-glory-author-interview" target="_blank"><i>Los Angeles Times</i>,</a> on November 14th of 2017, she awoke to the news that Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe had been ousted in a coup:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><div>"There was so much celebration, just the joy of seeing the dictatorship come to an end the way it did. It was complicated, though, because we knew his deputy was going to take over. But we hoped against hope that we had a turned a corner." </div></blockquote><p>She decided that she would go back to Zimbabwe; she also wondered if it was time for her to write a "nonfiction book about this moment, 'too unbelievable to ignore.' " Once there though, she saw firsthand how "the sense of hope turned very quickly into disappointment and devastation," and thought perhaps the book she should write should be more along the lines of a "modern-day parable of Zimbabwe." This is <i>that </i>book, and the players are all animals. Before I actually bought this novel, I had decided to give it a pass, thinking that it seemed like it might be a case of <i>Animal Farm </i>redux. But my curiosity got the better of me, and as it happens, I was completely wrong. In fact, at some point close to the beginning of this story, author NoViolet Bulawayo reminds her readers that this is definitely <b><i>not</i> </b>that -- as Dr Sweet Mother, the wife of the president of Jidada says while addressing a crowd from the podium, </p><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">"This is not an animal farm but Jidada with a -da and another -da!"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i>A modern-day parable indeed, <i>Glory</i> takes as its subject the end of the long reign of Jidada's president, the "Father of the Nation" or "The Old Horse" (who actually <i>is </i>a horse here), and the rise to power and rule of his vice president, Tuvius Delight Shasha, aka Tuvy (also a horse) when The Old Horse is ousted. Knowing that his life is in danger after several attempts at killing him, Tuvy leaves the country after a meeting with the generals who fear that Dr. Sweet Mother will try to steal power for herself and want him to take his place in the Seat of Power. The Jidadans are also ready for something different -- as they said, they</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"...couldn't meet the dawn carrying the sad, terrible baggage of that awful past, no; it absolutely had to find us on a brand-new page and proper ready for a fresh start, best foot forward, no less."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> Upon his return once the Father of the Nation is gone, he promises the Jidadans a "New Dispensation," telling them that God has saved him to put him at the helm of a New Jidada</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"this country's long, long, long terribly dark night has indeed ended and we now perch on the wings of a brand new dawn..." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">However, as the Jidadans will discover, the New Jidada seems much like the old one, complete with oppression, corruption on a huge scale, disappearances and violence:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"...the children of the nation found themselves standing hungry and thirsty and hopeless and penniless in the queues, tholukuthi Tuvy's eyes watching them from old election posters that promised a new and better Jidada they now understood, with a heartbreaking knowledge, would never come, was never meant to come."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">As the Jidadans said, "... it was what, it was the worst of times, it was the worstest of times." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> The word "tholukuthi" appears numerous times throughout this book, translating into something like "I find that" or "it's the case that..." or something along those lines. The author also talks about the "sticks and stones" that "will tell you" something, and I'm thinking that these phrases reflect the storytelling traditions and folklore of her culture. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's in writing about the "daily lives of a population in upheaval" (as the dustjacket blurb notes) that the author shines here, capturing the hopes, the cynicism and the strong opinions of the people via their thoughts, their interactions, Tweets, WhatsApp posts etc. <i>Glory </i>expresses their frustrations and their fears, but also their resilience and their hopes. Her use of animals instead of people, she explains in that same <i>LA Times </i>interview mentioned earlier, afforded her "a sense of freedom" that she didn't believe would be "possible otherwise." I thought it was a bold move and a good one as well, and even without human actors, she manages to get a number of ideas across, most importantly, the need for political, government and social reforms as well as the need to document your history before someone changes it. On the downside it can be repetitive, it is a bit overlong, and there are times when it just gets a bit boggy, but looking at the bigger picture, <i>Glory </i>is a fine novel, one that is so very timely given what's happening in our world today. There's so much more to this book than I can capture in such a brief space, but truly, it's one very much worth your time, energy and attention. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Just as an FYI, you don't need to know about Mugabe or his successor Mnangagwa, but it is actually somewhat helpful if you can read about it ahead of time. Here's a link to an article from <i><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/09/robert-mugabe-dead-zimbabwe/597574/" target="_blank">The Atlantic </a></i>that might be useful (it's actually Mugabe's obituary but it tells you what you need to know). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It does take some patience, but I definitely and highly recommend this novel. </div></div><p></p></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-63814447217767325962022-09-29T14:43:00.001-04:002022-09-29T14:43:44.637-04:00The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczNHblq2Q4iSr9iLxHBtLQJdWgI8txMHrb3KOzfMUF--g3CGbbDemmXKdTo_NFsceWh1Nhqb-9xj_s6EFDY3sHKPcqxpPitEXPF63lSjzvl80SPYvOxQYjts2aDNcLxL3meEXCdsrSvko6DrtiQ1rbXZDhmahkZ4JUnN2OhsCNQQZJdv1PnhHMA/s475/sevenmoons.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="295" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczNHblq2Q4iSr9iLxHBtLQJdWgI8txMHrb3KOzfMUF--g3CGbbDemmXKdTo_NFsceWh1Nhqb-9xj_s6EFDY3sHKPcqxpPitEXPF63lSjzvl80SPYvOxQYjts2aDNcLxL3meEXCdsrSvko6DrtiQ1rbXZDhmahkZ4JUnN2OhsCNQQZJdv1PnhHMA/s320/sevenmoons.jpg" width="199" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781908745903</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sort of Books, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">385 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Not too far into the first chapter I realized that this book and I were going to get along just fine, and I was right. To put it bluntly, I effing loved this book and have been telling everyone about it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> The author sets his story in 1990, and as it opens, the main character Maali Almeida wakes up (as he believes) "hungover" to find himself in an "endless waiting room" not knowing how he got there. He is sure that he's hallucinating, having a "trippy dream" from the "silly pills" given to him by his friend Jaki, but he's actually awoken in the afterlife where he is standing in a queue. Evidently it is as completely disorganized as any typical earthly bureaucracy, with plenty of people complaining and the office "short-staffed and looking for volunteers." The woman who seems to be checking him in hands him a dried printed palm leaf, telling him that he needs to get his ears checked, his "deaths counted," his "sins coded" and his "moons registered," and that he (along with everyone else coming in that day) has "seven moons." Here seven moons equates to seven days, rather than the typically-understood idea of moons as months; Almeida is also handed a checklist of things to be taken care of before he can enter "The Light," which is, as the woman notes, "Whatever You Need It To Be." That is the short answer; later he will learn that all who come here to "wander the In Between" have his or her allotted moons "To recall past lives. And then, to forget." For some remaining in the In Between, however, "forgetting cures nothing," believing that "Wrongs must be remembered." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Very briefly, largely because I'm so behind here, in 1990, Sri Lankans were in the thick of that country's civil war which had begun in 1983 and didn't end until 2009. It was a violent, horrific time, with death squads everywhere and scores of people being murdered or disappeared, many never to surface again. Maali Almeida is a photographer who had a complicated life, as noted at the beginning when he talks about what his business card might have said about him: "Maali Almeida: Photographer. Gambler. Slut." He had lost lots of money at the casinos, was (as quoted in the dustjacket blurb) a sort of outcast "closet gay" in love with his friend DD (although he sleeps around on his many travels) and more importantly, he had been witness to the terror and the carnage through his work as a fixer for various groups including politicians, army officers, NGOs, the press, and other dubious clients. He figured that by working on all sides, he would be seen as favoring none of them, a strategy that in hindsight, obviously didn't work out well for him. He had also taken a number of photographs that as he had once told his friends, could "topple the government," now sitting in envelopes in a box under his bed. These photos are incriminating to the point that if seen, "this country will burn again," but he had hoped that by making them public they might bring some sort of accountability and judgment, especially against those who participated in the 1983 massacres and other atrocities, or quite possibly even end the conflict. Part of what Maali needs to accomplish during his seven-moon span is to somehow have his closest friends DD and Jaki take out and exhibit these photos publicly, but there are certain constraints in place that make it difficult for him to make contact directly with the living, so he has to learn to rely on the dead (and in one case, a creepy medium linking both worlds) to help him in his task. But that's not all -- he also wants to solve the mystery of his own death. As time starts to tick down, another mission is added to this lineup -- he will somehow need to protect his friends who, in the aftermath of Maali's photos, get caught up in a chain of events putting their lives in jeopardy.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is a book I just could not stop reading, and the way the author structured his story I thought was absolute genius. It is a mix of historical fiction, humor and political satire in which the author not only exposes the horrors of these dark years, but also through the many ghosts with whom Maali Almeida speaks, imagines what those who died during this conflict might say if only they had a voice, making me wish that the book's original title, <i>Chats With the Dead</i> would have been retained. It is also part ghost story and part whodunit, for me an unbeatable combination. As seen in both the afterlife and in earthly life, the novel also speaks to those in positions of power who put their own self interests ahead of everything else, making it a timely read for sure. It's one of the most original books I've had the pleasure to have read in a long while, and most certainly a book I can recommend. </div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-82972731668055122262022-09-01T17:05:00.002-04:002022-09-01T17:31:00.849-04:00Nightcrawling, by Leila Mottley<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhre3J9SbAQEjI2xVUsi2Fw_hYHf-Glxeqo9VjXBNIkVpbx_y95v9diTLyjTPh_b0HF-FbbVUpbfc6FapU5_w94BKkgbc8kb_UQiXOojQtJm-nJbZUiSW8-e0_Wa3p7MDIuawmg_49tjltp16PnKH1vpy-5xm19hWPuzyrxFwnhv-klPmxsxjJRVg/s400/mottleynight.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="269" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhre3J9SbAQEjI2xVUsi2Fw_hYHf-Glxeqo9VjXBNIkVpbx_y95v9diTLyjTPh_b0HF-FbbVUpbfc6FapU5_w94BKkgbc8kb_UQiXOojQtJm-nJbZUiSW8-e0_Wa3p7MDIuawmg_49tjltp16PnKH1vpy-5xm19hWPuzyrxFwnhv-klPmxsxjJRVg/s320/mottleynight.jpg" width="215" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780593318935</div><div style="text-align: left;">Knopf, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">271 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Nightcrawling </i>is author Leila Mottley's novel debut, a book she started writing in her teens, set in Oakland, California. At seventeen, she says in the Author's Note at the end of the novel, she was contemplating what it meant to be "vulnerable, unprotected, and unseen," and that she wanted to write a story that "would reflect the fear and danger that comes with black womanhood and the adultification of black girls..." Her main character is Kiara Johnson, and the novel begins with a rent hike, all too common these days. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD SO BEWARE. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> It was already difficult enough for Kiara to pay rent because she doesn't have a steady job; it's not as if she doesn't try to find one but potential employers are "so hung on the high school dropout shit" that nothing ever pans out for her. She grabs a couple of shifts here and there at a liquor store, which helps keep her family afloat, but with a double raise in the rent, what she makes is just not enough. She has a brother, Marcus, but he'd quit his job and now spends his time recording rap ("spitting rhymes in a studio") with the hope that someday he'll make it big like their Uncle Ty, who is now living in Los Angeles in a mansion and driving a Maserati, having left family behind. On hearing the news of the rent hike, Marcus asks for just one more month, but what Kiara sees is "half a dozen SoundCloud tracks and no paycheck," while he waits for things to change. Kiara's father, who had joined the Black Panthers, had been arrested, imprisoned and released, but sadly succumbed to cancer; her mother is also out of the picture. "Adultification" indeed -- it seems that the family's survival now depends on Kiara, who has also taken it upon herself to see to a neighbor's little boy since the mom is too whacked on drugs to care about him. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An encounter at a strip club where one of her friends works leaves Kiara with money in her pockets, and realizing that whether or not she consents, since her body is going to be used, she decides that maybe sex work could be a solution to her immediate problems. Another prostitute suggests she get someone to watch out for her, but first she tries to get on with a few escort agencies, frustrated when each time she is told to call back when she's legal. Finally, as she says, "I have a body and a family that needs me, so I resigned to what I have to do to keep us whole, back on this blue street," and "nightcrawling" becomes what she does. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One of her clients decides that he doesn't need a room or a car to do business, which Kiara doesn't like, but the sex happens anyway outside against a building. It's then that Kiara has her first encounter with the police, who shoo him off and put Kiara in their car, one of them telling her that prostitution is illegal and he has to take her in. As one cop begins driving, the other is on her in the back. This is only the first encounter she will have with the police, and she says nothing to anyone; soon she is pretty much on call with several members of the force, identified only by badge number, never a name. But when one of the cops later commits suicide, her involvement is about to become a huge story, especially since the cop left behind a letter saying what he had done. The pressure is on for Kiara at this point, as the policemen begin to hassle her about keeping quiet about the rest of them. The harassment escalates when a grand jury is formed to hear the case, and the fallout lands squarely on the people Kiara cares about the most. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It didn't take long at all for me to be sucked into this story; later I discovered that the author had been inspired by a real-life case of an (at first) underage sex worker that had the same sort of encounters with some policemen in Oakland in 2016. I have to give the author major points for not just rehashing that event but coming up with her own take, which gets into the life of this girl who has to grow up all too soon and take her family's survival on her shoulders. At some point though I started wondering why Kiara or her brother never applied for some sort of help from various agencies, from the state or even better, from organizations like People's Breakfast Oakland (especially since her dad was a former Black Panther!) or the East Oakland Collective, and that led me to question whether or not the author did enough research that might have made this story more realistic. As just another example of the inconsistencies that exist in the latter part of this novel, how in the heck would Kiara have known or even cared about Pinterest (as in the remark she made about her attorney's office space looking like it came "straight from Pinterest"), especially since she tells us early on that she has no access to internet? There were other things like this as well and after a while they just started to grate. And speaking of her attorney, she came across flat as a character here and not very believable as an advocate. For me, the book started strong, but as it progressed it just made me frustrated. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9QMoI2-1R2E2Vxo2K-Op4yP2zJKWDJ6OLVmzt_ytaTQhlGp5Fn0YrvRQqRd7yjIZPlH0HyQV4_-3CTLrn4YNj5tEDv1-mM0Ccp73-q1iKPy79o4ic4GzQRFCJ1_DlKAicQSZUv30r1mBzpuHxNcy3N6bnUtpK-MmZxzVoXy6qRnVTDO4FWNaYeg/s275/redfish.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9QMoI2-1R2E2Vxo2K-Op4yP2zJKWDJ6OLVmzt_ytaTQhlGp5Fn0YrvRQqRd7yjIZPlH0HyQV4_-3CTLrn4YNj5tEDv1-mM0Ccp73-q1iKPy79o4ic4GzQRFCJ1_DlKAicQSZUv30r1mBzpuHxNcy3N6bnUtpK-MmZxzVoXy6qRnVTDO4FWNaYeg/w400-h266/redfish.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I look at reviews all across the internet and everyone is just loving this book, so once again it's a case of maybe it's just me. I realize it's her first novel, that she's young and talented, but for me it's a case of not exhibiting enough real-world knowledge and the need for more consistency that would have better tightened things up throughout the story that soured my reading experience. Loved the story; it's the execution here that caused issues for me. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-3273287118189695092022-08-26T16:38:00.000-04:002022-08-26T16:38:34.528-04:00All The Rivers Flow Into The Sea, by Khanh Ha<p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI8dp7jdoGIOkWAVJf17X876fg64ZBh-acrZRjM3XDg868cwRRJS_ezaV3QPOqTlDAL_cRHDvCCoMI08tv_00SSDew7oR0kgrBcg7JV4BF6Kzla65dTIXJOSe-l6gIGax6LjZ6ea7VpPCPbn81cc8I6354XtaCKedPMpBLZrJpGYI-ieHYJhb4Ug/s648/khanhhaalltherivers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI8dp7jdoGIOkWAVJf17X876fg64ZBh-acrZRjM3XDg868cwRRJS_ezaV3QPOqTlDAL_cRHDvCCoMI08tv_00SSDew7oR0kgrBcg7JV4BF6Kzla65dTIXJOSe-l6gIGax6LjZ6ea7VpPCPbn81cc8I6354XtaCKedPMpBLZrJpGYI-ieHYJhb4Ug/s320/khanhhaalltherivers.jpg" width="198" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;">9781958094020</div><div style="text-align: left;">EastOver Press, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">197 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It is always such a pleasure to read Khanh Ha's work, and his latest, <i>All The Rivers Flow Into the Sea</i> is no exception. It is a collection of short stories which, as the back-cover blurb notes, "brings to readers a unique sense of love and passion alongside tragedy and darker themes of peril." Here the author examines a cast of various characters who somehow manage to retain a sense of humanity while surrounded by trauma. For some it is life lived during the Vietnam War; for others it is either some sort of a connection to that war that continues to remain long after the conflict ended or who are just trying to stay afloat on a daily basis, doing what they must to continue to survive or to help others in their time of need. In each story, life comes under siege in some fashion; the book as a whole highlights the sense of just how interconnected these lives and stories have come to be. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">These are not simply tales of war though; although the war and its aftermath are prominent here, the author also infuses the history and culture of Vietnam into each story, along with his beautiful rendering of the landscape and the environment itself. In "The <i>Yin-Yang</i> Market," for example, a young Vietnamese woman who had been adopted by an American woman as a child returns to the Mekong Delta and reveals some of her childhood memories to the innkeeper, centered around the orphanage where she stayed and the nuns who took care of her. One of these tales involves a visit to a market just past midnight on the fifth of the Lunar New Year, where all transactions are done in the dark, something she was told she would "never again see anything like" after leaving Vietnam. "The Girl on the Bridge" is harrowing in the telling, as a young man relates his family's story to a girl while waiting for help pinned underneath an iron brace on a bridge bombed by the Americans. It showcases the horrors of the Northern Land Reform, but on the flip side, it also reveals both the beauty and the sustenance that nature and the land can provide despite the politics and the pain. In some cases, encounters during wartime, as in the titular story at the end, come down to the risks involved in survival during the most difficult and most dangerous of situations. "All the Rivers Flow Into the Sea" is one of the most poignant stories in this book, one that left me thinking about what would come next in the life of the young girl who seems to finally find the answers to her hopes in an American man, only to have them suddenly taken away. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>All the Rivers Flow Into the Sea</i> is a gorgeous book that anyone even remotely interested in Vietnam should read; it is a fine addition to the small library of this author's books now sitting on my shelves, asking the question of what it truly means to be human and examining the very essence of humanity under great stress. It also seems to ask for reader empathy, and that I have plenty of for the people who populate this book. I am grateful to the author for my copy and I wish him all the best. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One more thing: I am grateful to Teddy Rose for being included on the tour of this book; if you would like to see what others thought of it the link is <a href="https://theteddyrosebookreviewsplusmore.com/2022/07/25/all-the-rivers-flow-into-the-sea-by-khanh-ha-guest-post-giveaway/#.YwkuqnbMIto" target="_blank">here</a>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-8673555180464712182022-08-11T12:48:00.003-04:002023-04-14T00:58:21.581-04:00The Trees, by Percival Everett<blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">"<b>History is a motherfucker." </b></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9hgjpXFXS6zHl0anOL_sIF7uuPMTS1GcjanSuuAE6nAI48xEK4y0jQiRpNvgvCOnIOhJ9rsaN-XT62kyNJQmuHUSJt09RUW2jStv0_9HUaYYCb-lfZ76OgCrZykCmEhOnEGQfdcbsVJGeHLMZtBRfaQkNiJcmIrPJxAcZqcjXkusjGeyFN3pfTg/s1054/everetttrees.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1054" data-original-width="703" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9hgjpXFXS6zHl0anOL_sIF7uuPMTS1GcjanSuuAE6nAI48xEK4y0jQiRpNvgvCOnIOhJ9rsaN-XT62kyNJQmuHUSJt09RUW2jStv0_9HUaYYCb-lfZ76OgCrZykCmEhOnEGQfdcbsVJGeHLMZtBRfaQkNiJcmIrPJxAcZqcjXkusjGeyFN3pfTg/s320/everetttrees.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781644450642</div><div style="text-align: left;">Graywolf Press, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">308 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Another novel from this year's Booker Prize longlist, but I first read it a year ago during my nothing-good-is-happening-in-my-life funk so once again, because of its inclusion on the longlist, it was a reminder that I owed it to myself to do a second read. Hell of a great book, for sure. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The novel begins in "what might have been loosely considered a suburb, perhaps even called a neighborhood" by the name of Small Change, just outside the town of Money, Mississippi. Wheat Bryant,his wife Charlene and their four children live in one of the "small collection of vinyl-sided, split-level ranch and shotgun houses," and at present there is a small family gathering going on. Wheat's widowed mother Carolyn (Granny C) lives there as well, tooling around the yard in her "wide-tired" electric buggy that had originally come from Sam's Club. Times are hard -- Wheat is sort of permanently in between jobs after having fallen asleep at the wheel and nearly driving his truck off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Rescue came, but so did the press, capturing "some forty empty cans of Falstaff beer spilling from the cab and raining into the current below." Also at this small gathering is Wheat's cousin Junior Junior Milam. Granny C is staring off into space, thinking about something that had happened in the past, a lie she'd told "all them years back." She had "wronged" someone, and knows that "like it say in the good book, what goes around comes around." She doesn't know the half of it, nor does she know how prophetic her words will turn out to be. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The troubles begin when Deputy Sheriff Delroy Digby takes a call directing him to the home of Junior Junior, where his wife Daisy had just returned from a "big swap meet" in the parking lot of Sam's Club. On her return she'd discovered a horrific sight -- her husband was dead, beaten to a pulp and left with barbed wire wrapped around his neck; pants undone and his scrotum missing. Digby and another cop also find a dead African-American man wearing a dark blue suit, face beaten, his neck scarred "seemingly stitched together," the missing body parts in his hand. Both bodies are taken to the morgue, but the body of the African-American man has gone missing. The story goes viral after the local paper ran a picture of the missing corpse's face; it was picked up by wire services, cable news and the internet, and the mayor is not happy. It seems that people in the capitol don't trust the local boys to take care of things, and have sent two detectives (both African-American) from the MBI to investigate. </div><div style="text-align: left;">As one of these men jokingly (but seriously, really) notes, they had joined the police ranks "so that Whitey wouldn't be the only one in the room with a gun." As one might suppose, their presence is unwelcome in Money both by the police and the racist locals. The body is eventually found, this time at Wheat's house, where Wheat has also been murdered in much the same way as Junior Junior with the same African-American man in the room. The detectives from the MBI are told that their help is no longer needed, since the locals have found the body, but it goes missing yet again only to be found at another murder scene. As the detectives start considering what the hell is going on, at first they make jokes about it, with one of the detectives positing that some of the local "peckerwoods" might be behind it, or that it might be "some kind of Black ninja ... like Bruce Lee or some shit. Jamal Lee swinging lengths of barbed wire in Money, Mississippi," but as the death toll rises and reports come in from across the country of the same sort of killings, they realize that there's a hell of lot more going on than meets the eye. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While all of this may seem like a lead up to a crime novel about a serial killer, that's not what's happening here at all. Anyone who is familiar with civil rights history should have glommed on to the fact that Money, Mississippi was the site of the horrific violence perpetrated on young Emmett Till who was killed for whistling at a white woman outside of Bryant's Store in 1955. In <i>The Trees </i>the past catches up with the present, and payment comes due for the horrors of the past, especially lynchings, which one character, a 105-year old root doctor named Mama Z, has spent her life recording and keeping archives beginning with the murder of her father. As she says at one point, "History is a motherfucker" and here she speaks truth. The question becomes one of how to tell this story which brings to the forefront our nation's inability to confront its racist, violent past so the author brings together a number of genres in doing so. He begins with humor, stereotyping the southern white characters as ignorant rednecks, "peckerwoods," etc., and while the laughs pile up, at the same time the crime story slowly moves into what seems to be a revenge thriller before taking a supernatural turn. It's one of those novels where the humor belies the seriousness of what the author is saying, and I think it's fair to say that even though I laughed out loud in parts, neither the tragedy nor the lesson were lost on me at all. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> The second reading with a clearer head made me love it even more than the first time; it is farcical and absurdist, at times slapsticky but deadly sincere in its seriousness. As one of the dead Black characters in the novel notes, "I'm gonna die now, for a while. But I'll be back. We'll all be back." And indeed they will -- to mete out punishment or justice where there was none before. This awesome satire flips the white narrative about race in America completely on its head, and it is a beyond-brilliant story told by a master of his craft, one I can and do recommend it to everyone. Sadly, the people who really <i>should </i> read it and glean something from it probably won't or will miss the point entirely. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">bottom line: READ THIS BOOK!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-9214685673767017002022-08-03T11:32:00.003-04:002022-08-03T18:01:34.362-04:00Case Study, by Graeme Macrae Burnet<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRCC4ueNss3ZTa7bWNdNNXof3EZvN1d8ZYdV99hBAhZqn0P5t2ifpEF-jl1-Kk7jWuH9jQ_VmjXkiaCVC-GEDf1AQRuvJY7FVPsRoH6omIHUz7Tx3fThQhqFqf2QMU0hcN8xFCsRKnSVZIMVcwLRc0mRDg7QriUGJ4dTc-w-_HZRqv3RkZ9yu5g/s500/burnetcasestudy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="318" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRCC4ueNss3ZTa7bWNdNNXof3EZvN1d8ZYdV99hBAhZqn0P5t2ifpEF-jl1-Kk7jWuH9jQ_VmjXkiaCVC-GEDf1AQRuvJY7FVPsRoH6omIHUz7Tx3fThQhqFqf2QMU0hcN8xFCsRKnSVZIMVcwLRc0mRDg7QriUGJ4dTc-w-_HZRqv3RkZ9yu5g/s320/burnetcasestudy.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>9781913393199<div>Saraband, 2021</div><div>278 pp</div><div><br /></div><div>hardcover</div><div><br /></div><div>I bought <i>Case Study</i> long before the announcement that it had been selected for this year's Booker Prize longlist, and like the vast majority of books that come into this house, I shelved it and promptly moved on to something else. That was October of last year; last week's above-mentioned announcement reminded me that it has just been sitting there and maybe it was time to read it, not because it landed on the longlist but because I've really enjoyed Graeme Macrae Burnet's previous novels. As was the case in those books, <i>Case Study</i> blurs the lines between fact and fiction, so much so this time around that I found myself spending way too much time doing google searches while reading. </div><div><br /></div><div>Set in 1960s England, <i>Case Study </i>unfolds in two parallel narratives, beginning with the author's ("GMB") receipt of an email from a Martin Grey in Clacton-on-Sea. As revealed in the Preface, in Glasgow's "notoriously chaotic Voltaire and Rousseau bookshop," "GMB" had run across a copy of a book written by Collins Braithwaite, who'd made an impression as "something of an <i>enfant terrible</i>" among those in the "so-called anti-psychiatry movement" of the 1960s. The book, <i>Untherapy</i>, described by GMB as "salacious, iconoclastic and compelling," collected case studies; Grey's email turned what was at first an interest in Braithwaite on GMB's part into a "properly aroused" curiosity. Grey explained that he had learned about GMB's interest in Braithwaite after reading a <a href="https://graememacraeburnet.com/tag/arthur-collins-braithwaite/" target="_blank">blog post</a> GMB had written; he then claimed to have come into possession of a series of notebooks written by his cousin containing "certain allegations about Braithwaite" that GMB might like to read. At first refusing, GMB ultimately accepted the offer and the notebooks were sent to him. He was still not convinced, but after expressing his skepticism to Grey, he decided that since the notebooks "dovetailed" with his own research "it seemed too apposite to resist." The result is <i>Case Study</i>, which alternates between the content of the notebooks and GMB's biography of Collins Braithwaite. </div><div><br /></div><div>The author of the notebooks, as GMB discovers, is a young, unnamed woman whose sister Veronica, she was convinced, committed suicide two years earlier after several sessions with Braithwaite. After having seen the psychologist on television and reading the newspapers the day after that were "filled with condemnation of Dr. Braithwaite's behavior," she bought and read a copy of his book <i>Untherapy. </i>Obviously the names of his patients had been changed, but she discovered more than one link between a particular "Dorothy" and her sister. After also reading Braithwaite's <i>Kill Your Self</i>, she said, the name of the book had "chilled" her, and by then her interest in this man and his connection to her sister's death had been fully piqued. She'd thought she might go to the police, but realizing she had nothing to offer them, she decided instead to go directly to Braithwaite himself. As she says at one point, "Suicides make Miss Marples of us all," and eager to learn more about Braithwaite, her sister and the method "in Dr. Braithwaite's apparent madness," she decided that the only way to find out more about this man was to make an appointment with him. Realizing she can't go in as Veronica's sister, she took on another persona, an alter-ego if you will -- Rebecca Smyth -- who is quite literally everything our unnamed notebook writer is not and has gone forth with her mission in a quite naïve fashion, not knowing quite what to expect. </div><div><br /></div><div>The biographical sections are done almost in documentary style; from the outset we know that GMB has done a lot of research about Braithwaite, and while he "cannot attest" to the truth of the notebooks' contents, which may be, as he says,</div><blockquote><div>"... no more than the flight of fancy of a young woman with self-confessed literary ambitions, and who, by the evidence of her own words, was in a troubled state of mind,"</div></blockquote><p>he takes no chances with his subject, going on to make a "more detailed study of Braithwaite's work" along with conducting interviews with people (some of them from real life) known to have some sort of connection with him. Arthur Collins Braithwaite grew up in a working-class family in the North, his mother having abandoned the family when he was still a young boy. His father, an ironmonger, had decided that his sons would follow him into the family business, but even at an early age Arthur had been determined to go his own way. After World War II he studied at Oxford, but was unable to fit in "among the Eton and Harrow boys" and was failing miserably at his studies in Philosophy. He moved on to France, but it was back in England while working at Netley at a place "accommodating psychologically scarred veterans," where he met R.D. Laing, a psychologist from Scotland, who "made a lasting impression" on Braithwaite. Back at Oxford to study psychology at the age of twenty-eight, he slowly began to find himself "at the centre of things" holding regular meetings in his room ("The Wagstaff Club") where he managed to gather "fawning acolytes" of both sexes; it is here, I think, where we begin to understand just what a narcissistic ass this guy has become, not only in terms of his inflated sense of his own intellectual prowess, but also in his relationships with women. After graduating with a Ph.D, and without going into any kind of great detail here, he eventually wrote his <i>Kill Your Self </i>, not a smash hit at the time of its publication but a book that would go on to "be soon found in the back pocket of every student and bar-room philosopher." Braithwaite also gained a measure of notoriety and a regular clientele after attending a party where actor Dirk Bogarde was a guest -- this "unqualified charlatan "was soon getting calls from actors and people connected to the movie and theater business, as well as "cavalcade of beautiful girls and bohemians." He rode this wave for a while, his ego and wallet being fed by these people and his rise to fame. </p><div style="text-align: left;">The notebooks detail Rebecca's sessions with Braithwaite and also delve into this woman's "real" backstory and current situation; the question eventually becomes one of how far we can trust what she's written. There is an ongoing sort of tension set up between her accounts and the biographical side of things and to be honest, the more I learned about Braithwaite the more I began to fear for Rebecca, with good reason. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I've left everything purposely vague here, since anything more would spoil the reading experience (and it <i>is </i>an experience, for sure) but alongside the story, as the dustjacket cover notes reveal, the author brings out themes dealing with "the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself." More importantly, the idea of what actually constitutes a self runs throughout the book, with ongoing references to topics including doppelgangers and the notion of private vs. public persona. Despite the seriousness of these ideas, there are also some wickedly funny moments to be found here, and the ending found in the postscript was for me one of those rare out-loud "wtf" moments. I had great fun with this book, especially in trying to figure out what was real and what was fiction, which wasn't always easy, but this is the sort of out-there novel I tend to enjoy. <i> </i>Confession time: I admit that it wasn't too long into the book that I started googling Collins Braithwaite, and from what other readers have to say about this book, I wasn't alone. <i>Case Study</i> is cleverly constructed, very well written, and for me, insightful, but above all it was highly entertaining. It's a book I can certainly recommend with no hesitation.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-49224595921152253062022-06-09T14:03:00.001-04:002022-06-09T14:12:55.421-04:00Tomb of Sand, by Geetanjali Shree<p style="text-align: center;"><b> "<i>A border, gentlemen, is for crossing." </i></b></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_oijgABEL0Wf9nWcwdV-8A3J2Mt_VDMrfW_7-eeD_clQUeYKiXeKGRvuF0NOZxO--C0n1Yw26NTgVC9rbSkc_MfUa0sZzF4_khgmfhRrtQD4NoWWnWXXt44EtL-WLcQSVLjD7QyQflcwZqZwwvGcUwilqEi4z08zUhskIYO4Ql1nvIzefexnA7w/s475/shreetomb.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_oijgABEL0Wf9nWcwdV-8A3J2Mt_VDMrfW_7-eeD_clQUeYKiXeKGRvuF0NOZxO--C0n1Yw26NTgVC9rbSkc_MfUa0sZzF4_khgmfhRrtQD4NoWWnWXXt44EtL-WLcQSVLjD7QyQflcwZqZwwvGcUwilqEi4z08zUhskIYO4Ql1nvIzefexnA7w/s320/shreetomb.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781911284611</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tilted Axis Press, 2021; originally published as <i>Ret Samadhi</i> (2018)</div><div style="text-align: left;">translated by Daisy Rockwell</div><div style="text-align: left;">739 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It was the first paragraph that sold me on this story, which is highly unusual but it's what happened. Here the author reveals that "this particular tale has a border and women who come and go as they please," but even more to the point, that </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"The story's path unfurls, not knowing where it will stop, tacking to the right and left, twisting and turning, allowing anything and everything to join in the narration. It will emerge from within a volcano, swelling silently as the past boils forth into the present, bringing steam, embers and smoke."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">I sat back, reread at that initial paragraph and guessed right away that I had here in my hands something completely and refreshingly different. Evidently I wasn't alone -- at the <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/tomb-of-sand" target="_blank">website for the International Booker Prize</a>, the blurb for this book states that the author's "light touch and exuberant wordplay ensures that <i>Tomb of Sand </i>remains constantly playful -- and utterly original." And while the word "playful" fits, this novel takes a rather serious and surprising turn in its last section, making this book a most welcome addition to the world of Partition literature, described <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/literature/partition-literature-hope-for-a-different-tomorrow/article65510791.ece" target="_blank">here </a>as having </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"helped generations to make sense of a period in the subcontinent's history that is quite difficult to fathom in its entirety." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Tomb of Sand </i>is, as translator Daisy Rockwell notes in her "Translator's Note," </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"a tale woven of many threads, encompassing modern urban life, ancient history, folklore, feminism, global warming, Buddhism and much more."</div></blockquote><p>It is all that and more; it is also hands down one of the best books of my reading year so far and sadly, I would not have known about it except that it was longlisted for the International Booker Prize which it would go on to win, deservedly so in my opinion. I can honestly say I've never read anything quite like it. </p><div style="text-align: left;">An older, eighty-year old woman (known mainly as Ma) who is a mother, grandmother and now a widow, becomes seriously depressed at the death of her husband and decides that she will not be getting up. Wrapping herself in a quilt, she remains in her room in her son's Bade's house, with her "back to the world, as though dead" ignoring the rest of the family's pleas for her to get up. She had, it seems,</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"grown tired of breathing for them, feeling their feelings, bearing their desires, carrying their animosities. She was tired of all of them and she wanted to glide into the wall with a tremor ..."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Things begin to change though first with the arrival of a cane brought by one of Bade's children, known as Overseas Son, a CEO of the overseas branch of the company for whom he works. At first, his grandmother remained unimpressed; but one day her other grandson Sid comes in to her room and sees her holding the cane "at a ninety-degree angle, eyes closed, still as a statue, looking every inch an otherworldly idol." On the verge of laughing at this sight, Sid hears his grandmother declare "I am the Wishing Tree," which, while she continues to remain in bed, has the effect of bringing into the house a host of people hoping that she'll grant their wishes. It isn't too long afterwards that "poof, she'd disappeared into thin air," and this is where the story truly takes off, as she is sought and found and returns not to her son's house, but to that of her daughter Beti. It isn't long until Beti notices the reversal in their roles wherein "Beti became the mother and made Ma the daughter," and while Ma's presence tends to upset Beti's independent lifestyle, Beti also sees that it's a good arrangement. As she notes, "When Ma came to my home she began to dream new dreams." </div><div><br /></div><div>One of the frequent guests at Beti's apartment is Rosie Bua, a <i>hijra </i>(often described as "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/style/india-third-gender-hijras-transgender.html" target="_blank">third gender</a>"), who is very close to Ma with whom she shares (unknown until further on in the story) a history. One of Rosie's plans was to someday travel to Pakistan; when tragedy strikes, Ma decides that she will go for Rosie, dragging Beti and an old Buddha statue that his been in her family for years along with her on a trip that is plagued by problems almost right away. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is a gorgeous book, not only brilliantly written by its author but also brilliantly and skillfully translated by Daisy Rockwell, who says in her "Translator's Notes" that "to the translator, <i>Tomb of Sand </i>is a love letter to the Hindi language." Noting that the author is fluent in English, she also says that Shree chose to write in her "mother tongue," relishing the "sound of words, and how they echo one another, frequently showcasing their <i>dhwani," </i>described as "an echo, a vibration a resonance." It can be</div><blockquote><div>"deliberate and playful, as in double entrendre and punning, an accidental mishmash of sameness, or a mythical reverberation."</div></blockquote><p>Admittedly I didn't get all of the references and spent much time with my tablet on my lap while reading, but really, it just didn't matter to me -- I absolutely loved this book. It is a great example of what a writer can do not just with story but also with language and storytelling; above all it is a book about borders, physical and otherwise. "A Border," as Ma says to a group of men in Pakistan, "is for crossing" and it is just a joy to read about how many borders this woman (and other people as well) refuses to be confined or defined by as she comes into her own. As the back-cover blurb notes, it is a "timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders." There is so much happening in this book that makes it pretty impossible to encompass in a brief post, but it is rare that I find something like this novel which, despite the tragedies here, is so very life affirming in so many different ways. If you need the quick story fix you won't find it here; I'd recommend it to those readers who are willing to take a chance on something very different than the norm. I feel so lucky having made my way through these pages; it's a novel I will never, ever forget. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">a quick BTW: I've recently read that <i>Tomb of Sand </i>will be available in the US as of 2023, but I bought my copies (yes, I made an error and ended up with two) from Tilted Axis Press and having forgotten I'd done that, I turned to Waterstones in the UK. I'm beyond happy I bought my book when I did. </div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-48613593265972034002022-05-19T13:08:00.000-04:002022-05-19T13:08:49.756-04:00Elena Knows, by Claudia Piñeiro<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdmOvpdVxQ7NsPS3_gb0qBuIZE9oQ0fw3DfUcUzHjGjk7nrns72POK3WWI5VAHIZSYn6Ct7QRnCRgLVRvneUrwI2DE_6mgzyQVyhpo9RefAldt8R9-gpPDYi-tJW7wTvAEacjJRO1_27aJLvIfdI09z7uKhl5VVIhsyo9OL2OuiRvR_wx4QMnoJg/s2560/pineiroelena.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1694" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdmOvpdVxQ7NsPS3_gb0qBuIZE9oQ0fw3DfUcUzHjGjk7nrns72POK3WWI5VAHIZSYn6Ct7QRnCRgLVRvneUrwI2DE_6mgzyQVyhpo9RefAldt8R9-gpPDYi-tJW7wTvAEacjJRO1_27aJLvIfdI09z7uKhl5VVIhsyo9OL2OuiRvR_wx4QMnoJg/s320/pineiroelena.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781999368432</div><div style="text-align: left;">Charco Press, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">originally published as <i>Elena sabe</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">translated by Frances Riddle</div><div style="text-align: left;">152 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;">(read earlier, in March)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> I bought <i>Elena Knows</i> last July, set it aside, and just recently took it off its shelf when I learned it is one of the books on this year's International Booker longlist. The fact that it went on to make the shortlist was no surprise to me -- I'm a huge fan of Claudia Piñeiro's novels; I think I've read each one that's been translated into English and they've all been excellent. I've also become a huge fan of Charco Press, a small publisher with a track record of great books, and <i>Elena Knows </i>is no exception. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Elena's daughter Rita died on a rainy afternoon, found by some boys sent by the priest to ring the bells ahead of the 7:00 mass. Her body was hanging by a rope in the belfry; her death declared a suicide. But Elena knows that her daughter would never take herself to the church while it was raining; if she was there, she thinks, it must be that someone had "dragged her there, dead or alive." No one will listen to her, not the coroner, not the police inspector, and not the priest, but she knows Rita would never have killed herself. After all, "No one knows as much about her daughter as she does." It had to be murder, but Elena knows she could never prove it on her own.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> The reason Elena can't do anything more about her murder theory is that she suffers from advanced Parkinson's, which she calls her "fucking whore illness," or "Herself," a disease that severely limits Elena's movements but not her mind, so </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"Even if she uses all the tricks in the book, she won't be able to uncover the truth unless she recruits another body to help her."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Believing that a woman named Isabel, whom she hasn't seen for twenty years but feels that she is someone who "feels the need to repay a debt" is the right person to help her discover the truth about Rita's death, Elena sets off across the city of Buenos Aires to find her. The novel is divided into three sections, each corresponding to the timing of Elena's meds; she only has a certain amount of time during which her pills allow her legs to function. Elena's life is measured in this way; not in hours but in intervals of medication. Beginning with her second pill of the day, the story captures Elena's difficult, painful but determined journey to find Isabel, while flashbacks reveal her somewhat conflicted relationship with her daughter as well as the burdens not only of the disease on Elena, but also those taken on by caregivers. As Elena faces the difficulties in navigating the streets of Buenos Aires (which are explained in detail), we also learn just how difficult it is to navigate those bureaucratic agencies meant to help someone in Elena's condition. While the going seems slow in spots, it's the final section that packs the major punch as Elena and Isabel finally meet and Elena comes to realize exactly what it is she doesn't know. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Throughout the story, of course, it's also impossible not to ponder the mystery of Rita's death in the back of your mind. As Dr. Fiona Mackintosh of University of Edinburgh notes in her Afterword to this book, Elena is presented as a very unlikely "elderly detective-heroine," an </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"objectionable and outspoken woman suffering advanced Parkinson's who stubbornly persists against the odds in investigating the death of her own daughter."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Yet as is the case in the other books I've read by Piñeiro, crime fiction is the vehicle by which the author makes astute observations on society, and in this book she raises, again quoting Mackintosh, issues that are "universal, timely and complex," including "the obstacles of a woman's right to control her own body, the myths and realities surrounding motherhood, the mental and physical constraints on women's daily routines, and the increasing challenges of an ill and ageing body." In point of fact, bodies loom large in this novel. There is much, much more of course, but I don't want to give anything away that might constitute a spoiler. Let's just say that in a very big way, this book is definitely timely, and I'll go out on a limb to say that it's a <i>necessary</i> read, especially given what's happening here in the US at the moment. An absolutely powerful story that overpowered me and made me cry (I'm sure because of the excellent translation by Frances Riddle), I would recommend this book to anyone. I do hope Charco Press will bring more of this author's books into translation -- she is absolutely one of my favorite writers and has been for a long time. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-55505041565861066982022-03-06T12:43:00.001-05:002022-03-06T12:45:22.305-05:00Dirty Bird Blues, by Clarence Major<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUqnAru4FZKR1s9kfAry8ciP6pO6tjA7ESM0PThoTqv2OdYDeNUKVbLKBkcIHgUW2AN2iIxxd1npW1Kwe-8NyBR96E3MI0Uw_hyvWJ2yzO1p9VPB9wdRdQqGAvgrvZUUJY4lxhf-iqlrofsKskpSXZCdn6D3kf6rGnDMz8y9RTjQd_3RJY-jMdtg=s400" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="261" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUqnAru4FZKR1s9kfAry8ciP6pO6tjA7ESM0PThoTqv2OdYDeNUKVbLKBkcIHgUW2AN2iIxxd1npW1Kwe-8NyBR96E3MI0Uw_hyvWJ2yzO1p9VPB9wdRdQqGAvgrvZUUJY4lxhf-iqlrofsKskpSXZCdn6D3kf6rGnDMz8y9RTjQd_3RJY-jMdtg=s320" width="209" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780143136590</div><div style="text-align: left;">Penguin, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">originally published 1996</div><div style="text-align: left;">376 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>"Blues done saved as many lives as church songs." </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm not exactly sure where I first heard about <i>Dirty Bird Blues, </i>but I think it was this year's inclusion in the long-established collection of Penguin Classics that sold me. According to Penguin's <a href="https://www.penguin.com/penguin-classics-overview/" target="_blank">website</a>, their classics collections</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines," </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">and are also meant to "guide you through a reader's odyssey." This latest addition to the series is by Clarence Major, about whom <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/165406/john-beckman/" target="_blank">John Beckman </a>has provided a brief biography as part of his introduction to <i>Dirty Bird Blues; </i> I also went to <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/major-clarence-1936/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">BlackPast</a> for more info about this author. He's published nine novels, two short fiction volumes and sixteen poetry collections; he is also "<a href="https://therumpus.net/2017/01/27/the-rumpus-interview-with-clarence-major/" target="_blank">an accomplished visual artist</a>." About this book, Beckman quotes Major as saying that it is "another kind of experiment, this time with the language of the blues," to which Beckman adds that the novel is "powered by realism, and its experiments only enhance the effect." It's also a novel I read twice; the second time through only boosted my admiration of this story in which a young, conflicted musician must reckon not only with balancing his artistic life with family responsibilities, but also must navigate a racist society while learning how to deal with problems of his own making. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Chicago, Christmas 1949, and twenty-five year old Manfred (Man) Banks is trying to climb into a window which gets stuck and then "Suddenly this big boom." He's been shot, but thanks to the "good liquor coating him" he feels nothing. Shot a second time, he makes his way to the black hospital where he's listed as a "charity case" before his treatment, after which he is then questioned and harassed by two black cops. The man who shot him is a preacher with whom Man's wife Cleo and their baby daughter Karina has been living for a while after Cleo left him. Cleo's leaving was apparently by mutual agreement -- they "couldn't keep food in the cupboard, couldn't feed the baby, refrigerator empty. " All of this, Cleo reminds him later, was too hard on their baby; Eddie, the man she's with now, "is good to her, she gets everything she needs." She and Man still love each other; she wants him to "grow up" and to put her and the baby before his drinking; <i>he</i> wants to make it as a musician, not an easy task in Chicago, where as his fellow musician/friend/drinking/carousing partner Solly Thigpen notes, "it's hard to get anybody to pay any tention to you in a big town." Realizing that he can't pull another stunt like he did, understanding that "I got to walk straight fore I can fly," and knowing that he wants Cleo back, Man decides to take his sister up on her offer for him to come to Omaha where he can stay with her family until he gets on his feet. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A new start? Certainly it's a new city; Man plays his music and sings at a local neighborhood joint called The Palace where he leaves the crowd "begging for more" and gets offered a part-time gig; he lands a day job and in anticipation of Cleo joining him, finds an apartment for his family. He's still hitting the Old Crow (the "Dirty Bird" of the title) pretty regularly, yet as happy as he is to be with Cleo when she comes to town, </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"already this new sense of responsibility he was feeling toward Cleo and Karina shook him. It felt like chains." </div></blockquote><p>Then, when his best bud follows him to Omaha from Chicago, she warns him against </p><blockquote><div style="text-align: le><blockquoteft;">"all that stuff with Solly again, all that drinking and staying out all hours and stuff, falling in drunk,"</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">and reminds him that she'd come out there because he'd "agreed to act right." But Man enjoys hanging out with the very irresponsible Solly with whom he feels no need to "grow up." He finds himself in a sort of inner conflict between the two; one would think that some compromise seems to be in order but it doesn't seem to be in the cards on Man's part. On top of his other ongoing problems (especially the racial issues that he finds himself falling victim to) and his troubled past, this conflict will (quoting the back cover blurb) soon lead him into a "nightmarish descent into his own troubled depths." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The story's a good one, and yet the joy of reading is found less in the plot than in the "language of the blues" the author employs throughout. "Singing," we are told at the beginning, was Man's "way of talking out this furious, crazy thing in him that made him glide, leap, holler, and scream as if over treetops without even moving," and the blues, as he says, "done saved as many lives as church songs." His lyrics and his often-surrealistic dreams offer not only a look into Man's troubled psyche, but also, as the book description notes, "keep bringing him back to face himself." As Yusef Komunyakaa notes so eloquently in the foreward he's written for <i>Dirty Bird Blues, </i> </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"Man isn't merely a bluesman, but he is an artist, always engaged, like a John Coltrane -- not satisfied with the mere fingering of the elemental strings of his existence but determined to see into the mystery of his being, as well as gaze up at the sky or seek out a woman's eyes."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">What is also really interesting and noteworthy is how the author sets up both Man and Solly as near-mirror images of each other -- I won't say more but it works so very nicely as the book moves toward its ending. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I read <i>Dirty Bird Blues</i> as part of Black History month, a fine choice and it's a novel that has stuck with me since finishing it both in terms of content and especially because of the writing. Clearly Major is a gifted, out-of-the-box writer, and it didn't take long before I was completely immersed and entranced. I can definitely recommend it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-8153266748994903962021-11-09T11:51:00.001-05:002021-11-09T11:55:51.770-05:00A Mother's Tale & Other Stories, by Khanh Ha<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kXLoTEnjKiI/YYp5wvLUIwI/AAAAAAAAWLg/bH48rMFDo0U7VX0GTc9vzgLYIOpj04qMwCLcBGAsYHQ/s605/hamotherstale.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="605" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kXLoTEnjKiI/YYp5wvLUIwI/AAAAAAAAWLg/bH48rMFDo0U7VX0GTc9vzgLYIOpj04qMwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/hamotherstale.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781949540239</div><div style="text-align: left;">C&R Press, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">141 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback (from the author, thank you!!)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Some time ago I stopped becoming active in book tours because of my own still-unread, Library of Congress-sized tbr pile, but for this author, whose books I've read before, I made an exception. Given that we're still in the midst of downstairs remodel hell where my day often lasts from 6:30 a.m. to like 7 pm, that's a big deal. Khanh Ha's work is well worth it -- his writing touches on human connections in the most horrific and challenging of times; here he has put together eleven short stories that, as the blurb notes, have to do with the Vietnam War in some fashion and the people involved who try to salvage "one's soul from living hells." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm particularly picky when reading a short story collection or anthology -- in my mind, the opening story should provide a guide to or at least whet the appetite for what will be coming next. No worries here: "Heartbreak Glass" is a great beginning. A young man who will soon be going into the army as a soldier in the Vietnam War befriends a lonely man he calls Uncle Chung, who, before he himself had gone to serve in the army fighting Americans, had been a foreman in a machine shop. Only thirty-one, Uncle Chung had lost all of his limbs and his sight as a result of the war, and now lives a somewhat marginal existence with his young wife, who is not as sympathetic and caring as one might imagine. The young man, who also brings him medicines from time to time, tries to absorb "the horror of the war" through Uncle Chung's stories of the battlefield, but there are other horrors Uncle Chung has had to face since his return home. As with the stories that follow this one, "Heartbreak Glass" makes for compelling reading, and offers a compassionate poignancy that crawls beneath the skin until the very last word. <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>A Mother's Tale and Other Stories</i> explores very personalized and individual experiences of the war, especially the lasting effects of the conflict that has taken its toll not only on the soldiers and ordinary people of the time, but also on those left behind. The titular story, for example, finds a mother who has come to Vietnam to hopefully locate the remains of her son; the characters from this tale have recurring roles in other connected stories in this collection as well. In "The River of White Lilies" (one of my personal favorites), an American soldier comes to see the people of a small village as the very human beings that they are, and in more than one story, the story is related from the point of view of the dead, now ghosts who recall their memories. The blurb notes that this book is "rich with a dreamlike quality," the stories sharing a "common theme of love and loneliness, longing and compassion," and much more to the point, the author reveals how "beauty is discovered in the moments of brutality, and agony is felt in esctasy." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Alongside the visible physical damage, these stories also offer insight into the often-hidden psychic trauma that lingers after any war, and I will warn potential readers that in both areas the reading can be tough to get through on an emotional level from the outset. At the same time, the quality of the writing in these stories sort of helps to mitigate the sadness, making it so you can't help but want to go on from story to story, facing whatever may come your way. Very nicely done, a book I can certainly recommend. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">**********</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WSuVPVdm6LM/YYqk9lqZcQI/AAAAAAAAWLo/6JyLVNy-zgsc_XZJGPCWnWVT1xfNZvdTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s600/motherstaletourblurb.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WSuVPVdm6LM/YYqk9lqZcQI/AAAAAAAAWLo/6JyLVNy-zgsc_XZJGPCWnWVT1xfNZvdTgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h200/motherstaletourblurb.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As I mentioned, I read <i>A Mother's Tale & Other Stories </i>as part of a book tour; my many thanks to Teddy Rose who put the tour together and especially to the author. You can follow the tour schedule, read more about the author and even sign up for a chance to win a free copy of this book at the Virtual Author Book Tours website <a href="https://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/mothers-tale-and-other-stories-by-khanh-ha-on-tour/" target="_blank">here</a>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">, </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-7038409803744225722021-09-23T14:16:00.000-04:002021-09-23T14:16:36.462-04:00The Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-keNNn6ruFI0/YUyFoj1h7lI/AAAAAAAAV6E/9qPTUdUMcjsry6cH9dxAl8BkCAgkXG6wQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/shipsteadgreatcricle.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-keNNn6ruFI0/YUyFoj1h7lI/AAAAAAAAV6E/9qPTUdUMcjsry6cH9dxAl8BkCAgkXG6wQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/shipsteadgreatcricle.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780525656975</div><div style="text-align: left;">Knopf, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">593 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I bought this book back in May and since then it was awarded a spot on the Booker Prize longlist; recently it moved on ahead to the shortlist. I had originally picked it up due to the dustjacket blurb, which promised an "unforgettable, mesmerizing new novel," along with the story of "an epic tale of two extraordinary women whose fates collide across geographies and centuries." I hadn't quite planned to get to the novel as quickly as I did but its placement on the shortlist moved up the reading timeframe. My thinking here was that "oh! It made the shortlist so it must be awesome." More on that later. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In 1950 a young woman by the name of Marian Graves disappears along with her navigator Eddie Bloom during her attempt to "circumnavigate the globe longitudinally," flying "by way of both the North and South Poles." After leaving Queen Maud Land, where they had last been seen, the plan was that they would fly over Antarctica, passing over the South Pole and then on to the Ross Ice Shelf to Little America where they would land and refill the plane with gasoline that had been previously cached. The last leg of their journey would take them to New Zealand, but something happened and the <i>Peregrine </i>was never seen again. Years later, during a scientific expedition to explore the remnants of Little America III, Marian's handwritten journal was discovered protected by a life preserver. Her journal was published, as was a novel based on her life; in the 21st century, young actress Hadley Baxter is handed a script for a movie called <i>Peregrine </i>based on that book. Hadley, whose career was looking pretty hopeless at this point due to her own recklessness, gets a second chance when she is asked to take on the role of Marian in the film. The stories of both of these women are presented in interwoven narratives that move back and forth through time as, according to the dustjacket notes, "the two women's destinies -- and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different places and times -- intersect in astonishing ways." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The description ticked many of my reader boxes, and with the judges' decision to forward this one on to the shortlist, I was eager to get to it. Not too long into the story I was already wanting to put it down and never pick it up again, but I perservered. First of all, I really disliked Hadley's story -- I could have cared less about her Hollywood experiences, her sex life and her stupid self-destructive behavior; that entire storyline could have been completely removed leaving only Marian's story and I wouldn't have minded at all. And even <i>that</i> took time to get rolling, beginning five years before Marian was born with a botched christening of a ship, a young woman's seduction of the captain of that ship (Marian's future parents), her memories of childhood incest, their subsequent marriage and the birth of twins leading to post-partum depression before a Lusitania-like explosion during which mom abandons the babies and dad saves them and then spends years in prison, leaving the twins with his brother in Montana. Moving on with the story from there, it's pretty much a continuation of the kitchen-sink approach where anything and everything happens, covering Marian's life from eight years old on to her decision to make the pole to pole flight in 1949, culminating of course in her disappearance in 1950 . Of course, by the time we discover what really happened, the book is almost over; in my humble reader's opinion, some solid editing and judicious paring would have tightened it all up to make the book a much better read. There's also the matter of the destinies of the two women intersecting -- all I will say is that there are a number of parallels between the two that seemed forced, as well as a number of coincidences in this story that defy the imagination. Finally, there is more than one instance where the novel just plods, testing my patience to its utmost. I have to say that the best part of this book is at the end with Marian and Eddie as they make their journey around the world; some of the best and most beautiful writing in the novel is found there. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7SRMLHMpcWM/YUzAAPIQcLI/AAAAAAAAV6k/98GFG4wWARgU5vBtX6YEGukC_ZHLHL00ACLcBGAsYHQ/s275/redfish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7SRMLHMpcWM/YUzAAPIQcLI/AAAAAAAAV6k/98GFG4wWARgU5vBtX6YEGukC_ZHLHL00ACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h266/redfish.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Current stats for this this book show that sixty-three percent of Amazon readers have given it a 5-star rating and forty-two percent of goodreads readers have done the same. For me, there was an over-the-top, melodramatic component to this novel that just left me cold and had me skimming pages. I really wanted to love this story, but I just didn't. I've read too many truly fine novels recently to count this one among them. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-73770920807640424802021-09-12T13:47:00.000-04:002021-09-12T13:47:03.000-04:00The Fortune Men, by Nadifa Mohamed<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6wdj_FpfdgI/YT4BdzGRh_I/AAAAAAAAV2s/rwgNGSOSFjsDYmtFw26FgrshkIVUGRWUwCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/mohamedfortune.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="295" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6wdj_FpfdgI/YT4BdzGRh_I/AAAAAAAAV2s/rwgNGSOSFjsDYmtFw26FgrshkIVUGRWUwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/mohamedfortune.jpg" width="199" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780241468940</div><div style="text-align: left;">Viking, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">372 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;">(read twice)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Fortune Men</i> focuses on a Somali immigrant, Mahmood Mattan, who in 1952 was accused of the murder of a shopkeeper in Tiger Bay, Cardiff. I had absolutely no idea going into this book that it was based on <a href="https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/mahmood-hussein-mattan.html" target="_blank">a true story</a>, one I'd never heard about but one which the author obviously believed needed retelling; in <a href="https://pan-african.net/interview-with-nadifa-mohamed-acclaimed-author-of-the-fortune-men/" target="_blank">this interview</a> she notes that she had a "feeling" that it was a story she "couldn't shake." By the way, clicking on that first link gives away the story, so don't go there unless you've read the book first. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The novel begins as the radio announces the news of the death of King George VI in Berlin's milk bar, a hangout for "many of Tiger Bay's Somali sailors." Mahmood had been to sea as well, but has spent the last three years doing "just foundry work and poky little boilers in prisons and hospitals." As we're told, "The sea still calls" to him, but his Welsh wife Laura and their three young boys "anchor him here." On that night, as "news of the King's death drifts from many of the low-slung wind-blown terraces," he walks down Bute Street and notes "a few lights still on" at some of the businesses he patronizes, including that of Volacki's, "where he used to buy seafaring kits but now just bags the occasional dress for Laura." It is a small shop left by her father to Violet Volacki, who lives there with her sister Diana and niece Grace. After the shop closes, and as they are having dinner and making plans for the upcoming Purim festival, the doorbell rings. Although Diana encourages Violet to let whoever it is wait until tomorrow, "that bell and the shop have a hold on her that she can't resist," and she goes out to answer the door. That will be the last moment that Diana and Grace see Violet alive; she is later found dead, murdered in her own shop. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Word quickly spreads that the killer was a Somali man, and Mattan is arrested, first on two minor charges for which he is put behind bars, while the inspector handling the case also knows Mattan will be going down for Violet's murder. There is absolutely no evidence pointing to Mahmood as the killer; Diana and Grace both say that he is not the "coloured" man they viewed from the dining room as Violet went to answer the doorbell. As the dustjacket blurb reveals, and as the author fully establishes here, Mattan is a </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"chancer, sometime petty thief... a smooth-talker with an eye for a good game. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">However, none of that matters -- as is made clear to Mahmood, "You'll hang, whether you did it or not." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This book, with its subject matter, should have been right up my reading alley, and the first time through I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me because I didn't really engage with it all that well. That fact really bothered me for a long time, leading me eventually to believe that I must have read it at the wrong time while grim happenings were going on in my own world and my attention was mentally elsewhere. That was three weeks ago, and I decided to give it another go this past week since the situation at home has drastically improved. The second time through (and this time with hindsight into the reality behind the fiction), I engaged with it much more, catching many things I'd missed the first time, and while certain parts of the novel still seemed to drag a bit in the telling, all and all it became a better book on this last reading. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I keep thinking about the epilogue, considering the fact that the real Mahmood Mattan had someone in his corner to try to right the egregious wrongs done to him (albeit posthumously); it makes me wonder how many people of that time and that place had been victims of the same racism, xenophobia, betrayal, and police complicity and have similar stories yet untold. <i>The Fortune Men </i>is not at all a feel-good novel, but it is a very human story, bringing forth from the past a sad truth that remains extremely relevant today. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-1865620147081758922021-08-29T12:10:00.002-04:002021-08-29T12:12:31.108-04:00An Island, by Karen Jennings<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2eyor4SQB64/YSkF7GJwSjI/AAAAAAAAVyE/_2PKpTA0ziEu9Om96v7SoViVcZ9aQW2kQCLcBGAsYHQ/s500/jenningsisland.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="313" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2eyor4SQB64/YSkF7GJwSjI/AAAAAAAAVyE/_2PKpTA0ziEu9Om96v7SoViVcZ9aQW2kQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jenningsisland.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781910668922</div><div style="text-align: left;">Holland House Books, 2019</div><div style="text-align: left;">179 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b>"... he would not leave; he would never leave. The land was his always." </b></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first time I read about this book after its placement on this year's Booker Prize longlist, I knew I had to have it, and I absolutely knew within the first few pages of reading it that this was a book that I was going to love, given its subject matter. The surprise was just how very much it crawled under my skin. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It was <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/books/island-by-karen-jennings" target="_blank">the blurb</a> that sold me on this book: </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"... A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history..."</div></blockquote><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">Samuel, in his seventies now, had been used to discovering bodies washing up on the island over the over the last twenty-three years he's been living there; this "young refugee" is the latest in a series of thirty-two "nameless, unclaimed others." At first, officials would come out to look for bodies, to "find all those who suffered under the Dictator" so that now the nation could "move forward," but as time went on and more bodies came to shore, officials brushed them off as possibly "another country's refugees," now unwanted. Samuel was told to do what he wanted with them; it was not the government's problem. This time around though, Samuel was surprised to find the man alive. Planning to send him back on the supply boat coming the next day, Samuel takes the man into his cottage, feeding him and giving him warm clothing, just waiting until "the island was his again." However, even though they don't speak the same language, the refugee panics at the sight of the supply boat before its arrival, and begs Samuel for help. Samuel recognizes something in that plea for help, and the other man is there, it seems, to stay. His presence there rekindles bits of Samuel's memory of his pre-island days; memories that were "things best forgotten now approaching as steadily as waves approach the shore." As more of his past is revealed, in the present he wavers between trust and paranoia toward the stranger, the latter growing steadily as he wonders about this man's true intentions. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To say too much more about this novel would be criminal; I will only reveal that even though this story is less than two hundred pages long, there is much to unpack here, including the upheavals in ordinary people's lives as they suffer through political strife and struggle, and the emotional and physical tolls that remain as a result. As the memories come back, so too does Samuel's awareness of the humiliation he'd suffered over the years, and he comes to the realization that this "land was his, always." Soon the presence of this outsider becomes untenable; this is Samuel's home, and no one will take it from him. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As bleak as this book is, as allegorical as it may be, it is a beautifully-written, insightful novel that begins rather quietly before readers are abruptly jolted back into the past, returned to the present, and jolted back again. I'm wondering if these interruptions are meant to somehow mirror Samuel's mind, as it is certain interactions between him and the stranger which cause these memories to come to him, something as simple as the sight of a flower that the other man has made from odd bits laying around Samuel's cottage. It can make for reading distraction, but Samuel's past has a direct connection to what will eventually happen in his present. I love the way the author set this all up, including the early foreshadowing that sets the atmosphere, and then the slowly-building drama that results from Samuel's somewhat broken memories of the past. And do pay attention to the red hen, although I won't say why. There's so much more, of course, but this is truly a novel to be experienced. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Don't let the short length of <i>An Island </i>fool you -- it is a powerhouse of a novel that even now, several days after finishing it, is still haunting me. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I am recommending it to everyone I know. </div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-32554097465806856982021-08-21T12:36:00.001-04:002021-08-21T12:42:43.236-04:00The Mermaid of Black Conch, by Monique Roffey<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FxcCyjKPqw4/YR_H2TCC5_I/AAAAAAAAVvE/VdsTx5RFZr8ODfgyGtFbA6UrmCJYZTUbgCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/roffeymermaid.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FxcCyjKPqw4/YR_H2TCC5_I/AAAAAAAAVvE/VdsTx5RFZr8ODfgyGtFbA6UrmCJYZTUbgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/roffeymermaid.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781845234577</div><div style="text-align: left;">Peepal Tree Press, 2020</div><div style="text-align: left;">188 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;">(read earlier this month)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I loved this book, and thank goodness that Peepal Tree Press had the smarts to publish it. In <a href="https://www.blackcreativesaotearoa.com/post/mermaid-dreaming-an-interview-with-monique-roffey" target="_blank">an interview</a> with author Monique Roffey, she states that she finished writing this novel in 2017, but "the reality was that nobody wanted to buy it," and that she was "turned down by every big mainstream publisher." Too bad for those big mainstream publishers -- in 2020 this book won the author the Costa Award, and I can only imagine the kicking of selves that went on among said mainstream publishers. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first time David Baptiste saw the mermaid was in 1976 while out fishing in the waters off Black Conch Island. He dropped anchor, and after lighting his spliff began to sing to himself while strumming his guitar. It was then that she made her appearance,</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"A red-skinned woman, not black, not African. Not yellow, not a Chinee woman, or a woman with golden hair from Amsterdam. Not a blue woman, either, blue like a damn fish. Red. She was a red woman, like an Amerinidian. Or anyway, her top half was red. He had seen her shoulders, her head, her breasts, and her long black hair like ropes, all sea mossy and jook up with anemone and conch shell. A merwoman."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">From that moment, he "ached to see her again," and five days later she returned, attracted to his music. She came back now and then, listening to his songs; unfortunately, during the annual fishing competition held in Black Conch in late April, she got too close to the <i>Dauntless, </i>a whaler on which two Americans, father and son, were fishing. She was caught by their hook and while she put up a great fight, she lost; when they realized what they had caught, the Americans were determined to take her back to shore, as "she's worth millions." The men on the boat from the island were stunned, "lost for words and for what to do" -- they had heard about mermen in their part of the ocean, but never a merwomen and at first, they realized that "this was wrong," as "she carried with her bad luck at best," but soon one of them also "began to see dollar signs." She is reeled in, captured and taken back to the docks where she is hung up like a fish, but later David cut her down and took her to his house. This is where the story actually begins, as he tries to keep her not only alive but hidden away from prying eyes as an all-out search begins for the mermaid; it isn't long though until he realizes that she's begun the transformation from mermaid to young woman. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If you're rolling your eyebrows at this juncture, wait. This isn't <i>Splash </i>or <i>The Little Mermaid</i>, but rather a powerful story of otherness, women and the assumptions men make about them as well as the destructive power of envy, a love story and a quick run through the history of the Caribbean, pre- and post-colonial. The mermaid, Aycayia, was much older than her newly-transformed self revealed -- she was once a woman of the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-became-of-the-taino-73824867/" target="_blank">Taino </a>, who had lived on an island "shaped like a lizard," and had been there long before Europeans found their way to the islands and prior to the arrival of enslaved Africans. She had become a mermaid due to a curse put upon her by jealous women, who through the goddess Jagua, "seal up my sex inside a tail, Good joke to seal up that part of me men like." Through Aycayia's narrative, which is interspersed throughout, she offers a look at pre-colonial history and indigenous myth and legend, while in the main story, the author examines slavery and its legacy in the descendants of the enslaved on Black Conch and in one woman, Arcadia Rain, who owns a large part of the island and can't quite escape her own family's history as slave owners. Here though, Roffey differs in the usual telling, as Arcadia understands her position on the island and what it represents; she has, along with her young son, isolated herself in the old family home "to keep away from this hatred. History. The great tragic past." And there's much, much more. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Mermaid of Black Conch </i>is an excellent novel, so beautifully told and so powerful, and I can't say I've ever read anything quite like it. It is one of those books with the originality I crave in terms of story and writing, it has its own special vibranc<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">y</span> that brings both place and people to life, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">and there are so many layers embedded within this tale waiting to be uncovered that it never has time to be anything but captivating. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Here's to Peepal Tree Press for taking a chance on this novel. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">I can't recommend this book highly enough. </span></span></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-41009895574767669532021-08-16T12:55:00.002-04:002021-08-16T13:18:19.364-04:00Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LPCHqOqw5E0/YQfwRTxGXdI/AAAAAAAAVoY/U9Y25aTKb_gW77bjGChrtkhlwyDCyR7tgCLcBGAsYHQ/s430/ishiguroklara.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="281" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LPCHqOqw5E0/YQfwRTxGXdI/AAAAAAAAVoY/U9Y25aTKb_gW77bjGChrtkhlwyDCyR7tgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/ishiguroklara.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780593318171</div><div style="text-align: left;">Knopf, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">303 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;">(read earlier)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Confession time: not too much into this novel I nearly put it down. I decided that if I still didn't like it after part two it would go into the donations box, so with that mindset I continued reading. Good decision. What started out feeling like a mix of children's story and YA novel definitely moved into a darker zone, leaving behind a number of unanswered yet intelligent questions worth pondering. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Just briefly, since I don't want to give away any spoilers, Klara is a "top-range B2" Artificial Friend (AF) who, as the novel begins, is on display in a store where people can purchase an AF as a companion, preventing their children/teens from becoming lonely and helping them with their school work. There are newer models, the B3s, but according to the manager, Klara has "the most sophisticated understanding" of any of the other AFs in the store, "B3s not excepted." As narrator of the events in <i>Klara and the Sun, </i>she has a somewhat limited view, but in affording her this role, Ishiguro allows the spotlight to shine more keenly on the human beings and the world around her, one which is obviously more technologically advanced than our present. For one thing, something has occurred leaving many important and talented people to have lost their jobs (having been "substituted"); for another, parents who can afford to do so have had their children somehow genetically enhanced or "lifted" via a process known as AGE so that they have the best chances in life. On the other hand, this world also seems familiar, with among other things, clear-cut economic and social inequality, people on the margins, city spaces falling to ruin. Klara is chosen by Josie, a young girl who with her mother lives a relatively isolated life. The only other human in the home is Melania the housekeeper, as Josie's parents no longer live together. Josie's learning is done via tutors online via the "oblong" (think tablet) rather than school; social engagement with other kids occurs via periodic get togethers called "interaction meetings." Josie has a friend nearby named Rick, who is clearly not in the same socioeconomic situation as Josie and her mother; he, unlike Josie, had not been lifted although he is definitely talented and worthy of any university. The two are close and have plans to stay together; the problem is that as a non-lifted student, he has only a very small shot at entering any college that Josie might attend setting him apart and lessening his chances for a bright future. Further complicating the situation, Josie is ill and if her now-deceased sister's case is any judge, there is a chance that Josie may not live to go to college at all. As her condition worsens, often leaving her bedridden, Klara hits on a plan to help her, while her mother questions her choice in having had Josie lifted (although at times she seems to resent that guilt, only wanting security for her daughter), and has her own back-up plan just in case. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Reader reviews are all over the map on this novel, with some people finding it "flat," others thinking that Ishiguro has basically rewritten his previous work, and others loving it. While I haven't gone into any detail here, in the last couple of chapters what happens seemed a bit too pat, too easy, and that made the read a bit on the frustrating side. Despite that, however, and getting past my initial reluctance, I found <i>Klara and the Sun</i> to be well done, although admittedly there were a number of spots that sort of bogged it down and made me impatient to move on. If you're looking for hardcore sci-fi, this isn't the book although it does have its moments, especially in one particularly sinister and unexpected scene. I left this novel feeling a bit unsettled, just thinking about what exactly might be in store for humankind in the future, precisely because the world inhabited by the characters in this novel doesn't feel too far off. The dustjacket blurb says that the novel poses a "fundamental question: what does it mean to love?" but there is so much more that gets unpacked in this book. Two particular issues came to mind almost immediately on finishing: what is it that makes us uniquely human and cannot be replicated in artifical intelligence, no matter how advanced the technology? Is it ever going to be possible to fully replicate human beings? There's more -- themes of faith, loneliness, isolation, grief; and of course the ethical dilemmas and social consequences of AI, -- all put to the reader in the author's usual understated prose style. It's a fine book -- perhaps not my favorite novel by this author, but still very much worth the time. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">recommended. </div><div><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-90468197539141662192021-07-14T12:06:00.001-04:002021-07-14T12:43:55.543-04:00Night Theater, by Vikram ParalkarWe'll call this one fiction from India. Although the author lives and works in Pennsylvania, he was born and raised in Mumbai, and the novel is set in his home country. <div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E7aB3i65Tk8/YO2SkCfISDI/AAAAAAAAViw/aNrvkXkkRKo8ZpuIDIUlIjbwniKYIiZCACLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/paralkarnight.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="684" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E7aB3i65Tk8/YO2SkCfISDI/AAAAAAAAViw/aNrvkXkkRKo8ZpuIDIUlIjbwniKYIiZCACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/paralkarnight.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div>9781948226547</div><div>Catapult, 2020</div><div>originally published in 2017 as <i>The Wounds of the Dead</i></div><div>206 pp</div><div><br /></div><div>paperback</div><div><br /></div><div>I can honestly say I've never read anything like this book, and that's a very good thing. I seriously get tired of same old same old, and <i>Night Theater</i> is anything but. I have no idea how the author came up with this idea (unless it was from reading a lot of Kafka) but it's pure genius. I'll caution anyone contemplating reading this novel that there are elements of, as the dustjacket blurb notes, "magically unreal drama," requiring a suspension of disbelief. Let yourself go with this "fabulist" novel in that regard, and you will be rewarded many times over. </div><div><br /></div><div>The first words of the book offer a clue as to the strangeness to come:</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">"<b>The day the dead visited the surgeon, the air in his clinic was laced with formaldehyde."</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The surgeon, who remains nameless throughout the story, has been running a four-room clinic in a small, rural village in India for the past three years, with neither the amenities of a modern practice nor a budget big enough to keep on hand what he needs to do a proper job. The walls have cracks in them, the windows have gaps, and he has been spending his own money just to keep the place "from turning into an archaeological ruin." There is no nurse to help him (his budget request for one remains in bureaucratic limbo); he relies on the pharmacist for assistance. After a visit from his supervisor, an official dropping off vaccines and angling for a payment to ignore nonexistent "irregularities," he decides that he'll give it two more months "at the most" before leaving, vowing "No more." Tired and desperately needing sleep, he'll have to wait as a teacher, his pregnant wife and her son walk into the clinic asking for help. They are strangers from another district, the victims of thieves who had taken their valuables, stabbed them and left them on the roadside just an hour or so earlier; they're also quite dead. If the doctor can operate on them and fix their wounds before sunrise, when the blood will flow again, they can remain in the world of the living; if he fails, they must return to the afterlife from whence they'd come. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To say that the surgeon is overcome is to wholly understate his situation; it's much more as if the floor just dropped out from beneath him and he is left trying to find something to hold on to before he falls through. It's the pregnant woman and her young son that convinces him, and enlisting the help of the pharmacist and her husband, he decides that he will do as they ask. For him, it is an "inescapable madness" that he "would have to get through;" he would have to </div><blockquote><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"pretend that the visitors had been wheeled in on gurneys, with lolling heads and frothing mouths, victims of some mysterious accident. He would just do his job, and let the pieces fall as they would."</div></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> Once he begins, the surgeon becomes locked into what is best described as a ticking time-bomb situation, and the tension builds as the clock slowly counts down the hours until sunrise. As he makes his way through this challenging night, he finds not only his medical knowledge tested in ways he could never imagine, but also his beliefs as he gleans from his patients, as the dustjacket notes, "knowledge no mortal should have." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I had to set aside time and put everything on hold once I started <i>Night Theater </i>because I couldn't tear myself away from it. I also had to jerk myself back to earth and reality once I'd finished as I was so caught up in the tension here as well as the off-kilter premise and the blurring of the lines between living and dead. It is definitely a high-stakes story, one that will have huge ramifications for everyone involved. Surprises abound, but what also kept me riveted was the way in which the author wove into his story important and relevant issues such as corruption, inequality and health care, especially the idea of bureaucrats having power over whether one lives or dies. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Very well done, and the more I've thought about this book since reading it the more it's grown on me. It was so good that now I'll look forward to reading anything Mr. Paralkar writes in the future. <i>Night Theater </i>likely won't appeal to readers who need straightforward realism, but for everyone else it's a no-miss. And no, there are no zombies here. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">very very highly recommended. </div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-72488365815246654182021-06-08T12:04:00.001-04:002021-06-09T08:57:58.014-04:00The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dg7D1-XiUTg/YLZwkoPUcgI/AAAAAAAAVWo/yAtpGCLc7YIrsTCb8hwkygsr0tvPrFBAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/emezivivek.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dg7D1-XiUTg/YLZwkoPUcgI/AAAAAAAAVWo/yAtpGCLc7YIrsTCb8hwkygsr0tvPrFBAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/emezivivek.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780525541608</div><div style="text-align: left;">Riverhead, 2020</div><div style="text-align: left;">256 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A terrific choice for Pride month, but <i>The Death of Vivek Oji </i>makes for good reading any time. I've been struggling over how to write about this novel without giving too much away, and it's become an impossible task. This story unfolds into something approaching the mystical, something tragic and yet something beautiful all at the same time, and to know ahead of time would just ruin the discovery. What came out of this novel was wholly unexpected. This will be a short post, because this is a book a person really needs to read and to experience and nothing I can say here will do it justice. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first page in the book tells us that "They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died." There is no information as to how or why; all we know is that Vivek Oji's father Chika was left "shattered," his mother Kavita "gone mad" and filled with </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"hungry questions bending her into a shape that was starving for answers." </div></blockquote><p>She is desperate, as any loving mother would be, to know how Vivek ended up on her doorstep, naked, covered in blood and missing the silver Ganesh charm he always wore around his neck. What she doesn't understand is that there are no easy answers; the questions surrounding how Vivek died must actually first yield to the questions surrounding how he lived. The story unfolds via three different and interweaving points of view belonging to a third-person narrator, Vivek's cousin Osita who probably knew Vivek better than anyone, and short but powerful interludes from the deceased Vivek speaking from beyond the grave, one of which that cuts straight to the heart of this novel when he says</p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"I'm not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn't have the mouth to put it into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. It didn't exist to them."</div></blockquote><p>He ends this brief utterance by asking the question </p><p style="text-align: center;">"If nobody sees you, are you still there?" </p><p>Set in the author's home country of Nigeria, the story of Vivek's life and eventual death unfolds like a "stack of photographs." He is loved by all but there are people in his life, including his biological family who mean well, but ultimately fail to understand who he really is. At school he doesn't fit in so is brought back home, he suffers from periodic blackouts, grows his hair long, and nobody knows what's going on with him. His mom believes he's going through a "phase," his aunt believes he can be "cured" by getting his demons exorcised. At one point he finds himself lonely, "drowning" and planning to give up; through all of this and more, however, he remains steadfastly true to himself. A measure of salvation in one form comes as he reconnects with a group of childhood friends, one of whom reaches out to him and offers to listen. This is his "chosen family," children of the Nigerwives, where despite all of the social/cultural forces and standards working against him, he finds a place to belong and a place where he can start to fully bloom -- that is, before his life is tragically cut short, as the dustjacket notes, "in a moment of exhilarating freedom." </p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Death of Vivek Oji</i> is, as the dustjacket blub also states, a novel of "family, friendship, and the self that challenges expectations." It also encompasses coming-of-age, grief, spirituality, and belief, but most importantly, I think, it is a book about belonging and not belonging, about finding or creating safe spaces or building communities and finding love and unquestioning support while locating oneself within them. And while the book starts with the physical death of Vivek Oji, after finishing it I came to the conclusion that there is a dual nature to this title, which I will leave for others to discover. It is hauntingly beautiful, ending on a positive and hopeful note, and it is a book I very highly recommend. It is also a book that everybody should read, so very pertinent to here and now. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008954639175647714.post-22354761824374293242021-05-14T17:08:00.006-04:002021-05-14T17:34:58.333-04:00The Lost Village, by Camilla Sten<div style="text-align: left;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Y63Od1J0us/YJ6v_yzn2sI/AAAAAAAAVKk/B__DoI17oxIi4Fekp7HF5K96tFjWB7NwQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/stenvillage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Y63Od1J0us/YJ6v_yzn2sI/AAAAAAAAVKk/B__DoI17oxIi4Fekp7HF5K96tFjWB7NwQCLcBGAsYHQ/w210-h320/stenvillage.jpg" width="210" /></a> read in March </div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781250249258</div><div style="text-align: left;">Minotaur, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">originally published 2019</div><div style="text-align: left;">translated by Alexandra Fleming</div><div style="text-align: left;">340 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first US edition of this novel came out earlier this year, and when it came to my door I was beyond excited to get into it. It was that blurb that got me, you know, the one that says that <i>The Lost Village </i>is a "disturbing thriller" in which "<i>The Blair Witch Project</i> meets <i>Midsommar</i><i style="font-weight: bold;">." </i>I've never actually watched <i>Midsommar</i> (horror movies just aren't my bailiwick) but I had read several synopses and read through a number of watcher reviews so I sort of had an idea of what I should look for; <i>The Blair Witch Project </i>I saw long ago. Oh, I thought, this sounds sooo good; the description inside the dustjacket cover made me feel like I had the perfect escape novel in my hands and I seriously needed that at the moment. Later that night it was off to bed, nightstand light off, booklight on, doggie curled up at my feet; ready to be simultaneously disturbed and thrilled. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first chapter sucked me right in. It's August, 1959, and two policemen are making their way through the streets of Silvertjärn, "a village in the middle of the forest." One of the two men noted that Silvertjärn seemed like a</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"pleasant, unassuming place, with dainty houses in even rows, a river meandering through the center and a white stuccco church spire that soared up over the rooftops, gleaming in the August sunshine,"</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> But something is off -- there are no people anywhere to be seen. At the village square, one of the men feels a "surge of relief" when he finally spots someone, but the relief is short lived when they discover a body tied to a pole, blood coagulating at its feet. Amid the silence that permeates the place, they hear the cries of a baby through an open window at the school. Flash forward to the present, and Alice Lindstedt has decided to put together a six-episode documentary about Silvertjärn. It seems that her grandmother had once lived there, and Alice had grown up hearing stories about the village. Her grandmother, as Alice notes, "had already left Silvertjärn when it happened, but her parents and younger sister were among the missing." Her documentary aims to answer the question of how the village could "just drop off the face of the earth." The plan is for Alice and her small crew to head to Silvertjärn to "explore the village and film some test shots," hoping to entice potential backers with what footage they get; she also hopes to "delve into" a number of possibilities, </div><blockquote><div>"everything from a gas leak that supposedly caused mass hysteria and delirium, to an ancient Sami curse."</div></blockquote><p>Arriving in the village, Alice and colleagues set up a base camp in the main square, and it isn't long (as the dustjacket cover blurb reveals) until strange things begin happening. One of the group sees a figure in the darkness. Another is badly injured. Alice starts hearing things that shouldn't be there, someone sabotages the equipment, the crew start to disappear. As all of this is going on, Silvertjärn's past is slowly being revealed in chapters labeled "Then." </p><p>All of this should have been right up my mystery/supernatural fiction-loving brain, but sadly, for me it wasn't. It wasn't too long in before I decided that what's going on in the present has been the stuff of any number of movies I've seen, so I had more than an inkling of where this all was headed. Honestly, what stopped me from throwing in the towel here was that I needed to know what had happened in 1959. There was no <i>Blair Witch </i>stuff going on here -- the little bit of film Alice had managed to shoot didn't amount to a hill of beans. And the <i>Midsommar </i>connection is absolutely tenuous at best but you have to squint through the 1959 story to find it; as she writes it, it had more of a NXIVM sort of feel. Even there though, my interest started waning, and I was neither thrilled nor disturbed. When the ending arrived, well, let's just say the eyerolls came out in full. I really wish I would give into my instincts and tell you why, but I won't. Let's also just say that it was so over the top as to be completely unbelievable. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7icX9AQ8qHc/YJ7iGD3IHvI/AAAAAAAAVKw/aLuGf5nvwicVGGw1kxA5a_vGtDHKm7QUwCLcBGAsYHQ/s275/redfish.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7icX9AQ8qHc/YJ7iGD3IHvI/AAAAAAAAVKw/aLuGf5nvwicVGGw1kxA5a_vGtDHKm7QUwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/redfish.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is another case in which the book and I did not get along. First of all, I'm not sure what the author was trying to do here. Is this meant to be a crime/thriller novel or is it a supernatural story? Either way it just didn't work. It's like she tried to combine the two, which can be done and can be done well, but not here. Second, that ending was just so far out there and raises a hell of a lot more questions than answers. Finally, as I was reading it, I just felt like the author wrote this with an eye to a film or a tv series (complete with tearful reconciliation scene in the midst of all of the mayhem) and lo and behold, after I finished <a href="http://www.nordinagency.se/camilla-stens-book-is-a-global-success-sold-to-15-countries-before-being-published/" target="_blank">I discovered </a>that pre-publication, "tv and film rights have already been sold." On the flip side, this is also another case in which the book seemed to have been well loved by everyone else, with a 4 average star rating on Amazon and high praise from readers at Goodreads and several reader blogs. I <i>really really</i> wanted to like it, but it's just not for me. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Maybe she should have gone with the ancient Sami curse...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0