Frog Music, by Emma Donoghue

9780316324687
Little, Brown 2014
403 pp

hardcover

"Fish or cut bait, but don't gripe." 

Frog Music is a novel of historical fiction set in the streets of  San Francisco in 1876. It is a city, as the author notes, hit by "twin plagues" of smallpox and a terrible heat wave.  At its southern boundary is San Miguel Station, where as the novel opens,  two women are sharing a room. One of them, Blanche, bends down to untangle a knot on the gaiter clinging to her calf; the other, Jenny, has her head down on the pillow half asleep.  At that moment, someone decides to fire a gun into the room from outside and Jenny is dead.  This very real crime was never officially solved, but in Frog Music, Emma Donoghue offers her readers a possible and plausible solution, one that has it roots in the moment Blanche and Jenny met for the first time.  However, the who-may-have-done-it isn't the biggest mystery in this book by a long shot; in fact, for me, the crime aspect of this book just wasn't that  big  of a deal.  The central focus for me was on how Jenny's chance meeting and resulting friendship with Blanche had a major impact on both of their lives.

The main character in this book is definitely Blanche. Formerly a circus acrobat in France, now, a year and half later,  she's a dancer -- an  "expert tease, an allumeuse who lights the flame and snuffs it, lights and snuffs it," --  and "every dip, sway, pout wiggle, grind she converts into greenbacks in her head..." She's also a high-class prostitute. When Blanche and Jenny meet during a chance accident, Blanche is taken by this strange, secretive woman who sings little ditties, likes stories, dresses in men's clothing and catches frogs for her livelihood.  As she notes, she hasn't had as much fun with "a stranger" since before leaving France.  Jenny also has a "talent for putting her nose in other people's business. And her finger on sore points," one of which is Blanche's baby  P'tit Arthur, named after Blanche's lover. P'tit, now about a year old,  was sent out to a "farm, for his health," and Blanche's visits with him have become fewer and fewer. She's bored, the visits are routine, and she's waiting for a time "till  he's got some spark in him, till he could be said to be thriving."  Jenny's questions, however, prompt her to visit her baby at the farm, and what Blanche witnesses there causes her to take her baby with her, a decision that will lead Blanche to some pretty harsh realizations about herself, her trade and the people who supposedly care about her.  The story starts with Jenny's murder and part of it follows Blanche after that event; the other part focuses on what is happening in the characters' lives up to the moment of Jenny's death, most especially the major impact of  Blanche's friendship with Jenny. 
  

I loved all of the rich historical descriptions, even those relating the harsh realities facing women and children in those days, and I appreciated all of the research that went into this novel.  Throughout the book,  the author vividly immerses the reader in the historical setting -- beyond the blazing heat, she also includes the sordidness of life in parts of the city where the virginity of young girls is auctioned off, where baby farming (read warehousing)  is a perfect solution for unwanted babies and a great business for brothel owners, and where smallpox can run rampant due to unsanitary and crowded conditions. And, of course, there's the music of the time -- entertaining songs  which are given in small bursts throughout the book, then discussed  in an appendix at the back of the novel.  I love historical fiction that is well written, and Frog Music definitely falls into that category.   Having said all of that,  for me the novel succeeds less as a mystery/crime novel (which in retrospect seems kind of gimmicky now) and more as a look at  how a woman with  very little in the way of maternal instinct and very little understanding about the needs of others discovers exactly what she's capable of in the worst of circumstances -- and just what her discovery has cost her.  Blanche's quest to find both the killer and some amount of justice for Jenny seemed a little forced and frankly, I just wasn't that interested, although as I noted earlier that the author's solution is entirely plausible.  

 Some caveats for other casual readers: lots of graphic detail in terms of sex and smallpox,  the baby farm scene is just downright gutwrenching, and the callousness of people in this novel was just infuriating at times.  Overall, while I found the crime component to be a big "meh," there is a lot I  liked about this book.  I won't say I loved it because I didn't, but it was one I didn't want to put down.  I recommend it, maybe not so much to crime fiction fans or historical mystery fans, but as a work of historical fiction in general; I also predict that Frog Music, like Room, (which I wasn't gaga over either) will be a huge  bestseller.

The Madonna on the Moon, by Rolf Bauerdick

9780307594129
Knopf, 2013
originally published 2009, as Wei die Madonna auf den Mond kam
translated by David Dollenmayer
402 pp

hardcover

"The spaceflight of a dog opened up Pandora's box."


Nestled at the base of the Carpathian Mountains is a little village called Baia Luna. There's a small school, a church, and a little store that after hours becomes a taproom for the men. Close by there is also a chapel of  the village's patron saint The Virgin of  Eternal Consolation. The owner of the store is Ilja Botev, who lives there with his wife, his daughter, and his teen-aged grandson Pavel; Ilja's best friend is Dimitru Gabor, a gypsy.   As an older man looking back on previous events, Pavel provides the rather cryptic opening of this story, offering the reader a tantalizing hint as to what is to come:

"No one in Baia Luna had the slightest doubt that the source of Ilja Botev’s visions was not some luminous gift of prophetic insight, but the delusions of a wandering mind -- least of all me, Pavel, his grandson. When I was a little boy, I shrugged off my grandfather’s imaginings as foolish fancies, the result of the influence of the Gypsy Dimitru Gabor. Dimitru never gave much of a hoot about the laws of reason and logic. But later, as the solid ground of good common sense grew progressively thin and crumbly beneath Grandfather’s feet, I myself played no small part in the old man’s getting more and more hopelessly tangled up in the net of his fantasies. It was certainly not my intent to have Grandfather make himself the town idiot, the butt of everyone’s jokes, but what could you say about a tavern owner who sets off in a horse and cart on a secret mission to warn the president of the United States about the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a mysterious Fourth Power, and an impending international catastrophe? Armed, by the way, with a laughable top secret dossier, a treatise on the mystery of the corporeal Assumption of the Virgin Mary, handwritten and triple-sewn into the lining of his wool jacket."

If the author's purpose here was to provide the proverbial hook, it worked very well in my case. Sustaining the power of this opening was also successful, but then I got to the last one hundred or so pages and well, more on that later.

November 6, 1957 is a day that changes everything.  It's Ilja's birthday, and Sputnik II has successfully launched, carrying Laika the space dog along with it. While Ilja is less than impressed, noting that "The Russian beeping won't fill my belly, " the village priest Johannes Baptiste is greatly concerned, interpreting the Soviet interest in space flight not only as a search for the existence of God, but also for the Virgin Mary,  who, according to a declaration made by Pope Pius in 1950, "at the end of her earthly life was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory."  For him, it's the last straw, and he plans to speak about it the following Sunday as part of his sermon.  Pavel's worries are elsewhere, though. His teacher Angela Barbescu has disappeared.  The last time he'd seen her she'd made him hang a photo of party chief Dr. Stefan Stephanescu on a classroom wall, and as she's doing so, whispers to Pavel  "Send this man straight to hell. Exterminate him!"  When the priest ends up brutally murdered, questions over who did it and why begin to divide the village to the point where Ilja realizes "Baia Luna isn't Baia Luna any more," and that Sputnik "seems to have been a harbinger of the catastrophe that's now upon us."  Pavel sets out on a quest for answers and ultimately for justice,  putting him the middle of a  strange conspiracy that will follow him over the next three decades.  As Pavel is involved in finding out what really happened to Angela Barbescu and Johannes Baptiste, and as Ilja and Dimitru become partners in a "cuckoo idea of two crazy old men" trying to get the Americans involved in getting to the moon before the cosmonauts,  in the background this country (which is obviously Romania)  is changing,  and not all for the good.  There are corrupt party officials who will do whatever it takes to hang on to their power, and with the arrival of the regime of the "Great Conducator," things quickly go from bad to even worse. 

There's so much in this novel to love -- the craziness of two colorful old men whose antics often made me laugh out loud, the people of Baia Luna in general and their responses to what's going outside of their pretty-much isolated world in the modern one, and the historical backdrop of a totalitarian regime -- all of these components, along with Mr. Bauerdick's nearly magical-quality writing and story-telling ability  make the book a highly entertaining  read.  Then I got to about the last hundred pages, where things start to change very quickly.  It's almost as if having been so deeply involved with the people of Baia Luna and the mysteries that are left to Pavel to take care of, the author just got tired. Where the writing before this point was vibrant and the characters filled with life,  it's like in the last one hundred or so pages he rushed to finish the book so that the characters came off sort of hollow.  Toward the very end, it's obvious that the author felt compelled to make sure that this book had a happy ending where everything is tied up in a perfect bow, but it was too pat, overly contrived,  and in making it this way, it's like the author lost whatever spark he had up until then. When I hear myself speaking out loud to an author saying  "please don't do this," well, that's a problem.

While I realize that there are readers out there who will come unglued without a happy ending of some sort, the way this novel ends was just wrong and not in keeping with everything that came before.  Up until then, it was headed for a top place in the one-of-the-best-and-most-entertaining-novels-I've-read category but ultimately, the consistency just wasn't there.  Then again, this is Mr. Bauerdick's first novel, so maybe if he writes a second, he can iron things out.  And even though I had a hard time with the last parts of the book, up to then I was in reading heaven.  I'm just a little disappointed with this one, but it was a great ride while it lasted. 

The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel, by Magdalena Zyzak

9780805095104
Henry Holt, 2014 (January)
288 pp

arc -- my thanks to the publisher.

The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkel is one of those novels where I wasn't quite sure what I'd just read after I finished it.  I can absolutely guarantee that it's different from pretty much anything I've ever read. It took me a few days to think about it before even attempting to write anything, and only after I'd whirled it around in my head for a while did I come to appreciate this story. 

 The novel looks at the people and goings-on in an imaginary village in an imaginary European country, at a time when these people lived very simple but full lives.  Sadly, their rather carefree existence is about to bump up against modern history, beginning with the invasion of the Nazis.  The thing is though that Ms. Zyzak takes a different path than what you'd normally expect: she doesn't write about about how all of the villagers fared after the Nazis took over their homeland and the regime that followed which, in 1945 brought about the "country's final destruction;"   instead, she focuses on the last bastion of  simpler times. The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel, the "pigboy," is related by a "self-effacing bureaucrat" from this fictional country during the Communist era,  who'd traveled to the country, went through the archives, and interviewed "the survivors" to produce a work  that had been "copied out between the lines of a copy of "Concepts for Screw-Cutting Lathe Operators," and smuggled out of the country via a Polish friend.

Scalvusia is the name of this fictional country, a place where "the peaks on the eastern border were ... sleeping giant nights, said to rise to protect the people, were we ever in need," and where "for hundreds of years," the country "spread from the Black Sea to the Baltic."  The little village of Odolechka in the summer of 1939  is the scene of the action, and it is there that Barnabas Pierkiel, a young swineherd of 17, reader of such "national classics as The Eggcup of Countess Kurpuchnik,"  and a loner, falls for and pursues the gypsy girl Roosha Papusha.  She is already the mistress of Karl Von Grushka, whose family made a fortune in shoes and boots. He also has the only automobile in town, and Roosha is living in one of his homes.  Even though she's already spoken for, she doesn't exactly try to thwart Pierkiel's attentions, and the naïve boy continues to pursue her.  As he's involved in his quest, through which he must pass through several obstacles (none the least of which is the theft of a few gifts by an escaped inmate of a nearby asylum with his same last name),  the little village experiences a bit of upheaval: not long after a strange sermon by the local priest, he is found dead.  And within only a short amount of time, the blame settles on the gypsies after the overzealous, randy wife of the mayor has a talk with a man who turns out to be the escaped lunatic (who she sees as a reincarnation of Simeon the Holy Fool) who shows up wanting to marry his goat.

If that last sentence clues you in to the fact that there may be some absurdity going on in this book, you are right, in a way, but it's absurdity with a purpose. Or at least, this is my interpretation.  The author, I think, is trying to provide a look at the people living in Odalechka, perhaps representative of villagers throughout Europe, where they live traditional lives, share bawdy jokes, farm, go to church, and just generally lead simple lifestyles.  What is absurd will soon turn to the grotesque, however, with the coming of the Nazis and then eventually the Communists.  The turning point in this novel is the arrival by parachute of a German man, disguised as someone from the capital, who tries to gather as much info as he can, and who is helped somewhat by the bumbling mayor & police chief because of the language barrier.   We all know what comes next, but the author keeps things focused on the villagers and their uncomplicated, apolitical and much simpler way of living up until then.

Now here's the thing: I didn't get a lot of the humor, and the whole thing at first seemed wholly farcical to me, up until I got to the arrival of the German stranger, where the farce turned sort of sinister.   Then it sort of clicked, but it was really only after I'd finished the novel and spent time ruminating that I had my idea of what this book was about.   The point is, if you're not quite sure about what you're reading, don't give up! In the end, I decided that I liked this book -- different though it may be, there is a point to all of the silliness that goes on here.  My only niggle about this book is that while the author spends so much time on village life, the book seems to ramble for a while until it turns, and then it's pretty much over, so I wondered whether or not even she knew where she was taking this story.  But in the long run,  I ended up enjoying the book and would definitely try anything she writes in the future.

[this book has a new home!]

*Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent -- a definite yes!

9780316243919
Little, Brown and Company, 2013
314 pp

pre-release edition from Little, Brown/Hachette, thank you!

Funny thing about this incredible novel -- I preordered it eons ago, and was eagerly awaiting its arrival, and then out of the total blue, the mailman who hates me for getting so many books every day drops this one on my front porch  just last week.  Then, I wander over to Book Passage to see what the Signed First Editions Book Club entry is for this month, and it's (ta-da!) Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent.

The dustjacket description of this lovely novel of historical fiction doesn't quite do it justice. Burial Rites is based on true events that happened in Iceland in 1828, when  Natan Ketilsson and Petur Jónsson were both murdered at Ketilsson's farm in North Iceland.  Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Friðrik Sigurðsson were charged with the crimes and sentenced to be executed by Ketilsson's brother.  There was a third person involved, Sigríður Guðmundsdóttir, who was also arrested, sentenced to death but then had her sentence commuted to life in prison. Agnes was first held at Stóra-Borg, and then the authorities moved her to Kornsá, where she stayed with a family until she was taken to be executed in January of 1830.   According to the author's note, some of the historical accounts of Agnes Magnúsdóttir view her as "an inhumane witch, stirring up murder," but in Burial Rites, Kent sets out to provide Agnes with a more "ambiguous portrayal."  While the blurb inside the cover gives you a taste of the story to come, it doesn't begin to cover just how good a writer Hannah Kent really is.  She has filled this book with so much more than the story of a murder.  Through her excellent use of language,  she brings out  how nature, the seasons, and the Icelandic landscape not only defined the way that people lived and survived in this time and in this place,  but also how people were often left helpless, stranded and in the dark when nature was less than cooperative.  Above all, her writing brings out the psychological damage caused by isolation, loneliness and abandonment in an unforgiving environment.  If I had to describe this book in one word it would be this one:  haunting.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir, abandoned at an early age,  spent most of her life moving farm to farm, working as a servant. As the novel opens, she has been sentenced to die along with two others for her part in  killing two men at a farm along the sea in Northern Iceland. She'd been kept in irons and chains at the first place after her trial, but then the District Commissioner decided she should be moved to the farm of Kornsá to spend her last days, and the family will be compensated for taking her in.   The family at Kornsá is shaken by the news; Margrét, the farmer's wife, protests that she does not want to share her home with "the Devil's children."  As Agnes comes to her final home, it upsets the family dynamic, but Margrét puts her foot down, telling Agnes that she will be put to work, and if there is any "violence, lazing, cheek, idleness" or theft, Agnes is gone. A young assistant reverend, Thorvardur Jónsson  nicknamed Tóti, also receives official word --  he will be Agnes' spiritual advisor during her final days of life, and is urged to get Agnes to repent and confess before she dies.Tóti, who is inexperienced and counseled by his father not to take Agnes on, becomes the vehicle through which Agnes first starts to unspool her tale, and the rest of the book takes the reader through Agnes' story  from her childhood through the fateful day at the farm of Illugastadir, and on to Agnes' last day of life.  Each chapter begins with some form of real official document, or a poem, or in one case, an Icelandic saga, all of which have relevance to what's happening in that particular section.

Alternating voices, dreams and portents, superstitions, haunting imagery, and seasonal routines also help to shape this story.  It is filled with descriptions of the rhythms of farm life, from communal harvesting and slaughter to living in cramped quarters in a turf-walled croft.  But standing above everything that the author writes about is the way she writes it.  It's a book that didn't let go of  me until the very end, and even then I wasn't finished thinking about what I'd just read. You may be tempted to zip through it for the murder story, but don't.  Definitely recommended.  Considering that Burial Rites is the author's first novel, it is highly intelligent, sophisticated, and a novel that readers across the spectrum will enjoy.

 fiction from Australia

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, by Suzanne Joinson

9781608198115
Bloomsbury USA, 2012
370 pp

hardcover

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar  follows two very different narratives and several journeys taken by a number of characters who populate this novel. One storyline is composed of journal entries from 1923 and the other set in modern-day London.  The journal entries come from Evangeline English, who along with sister Lizzie and a woman named Millicent, a representative of the Missionary Order of the Steadfast Face, have arrived in Kashgar, a predominantly Muslim area in East Turkestan governed by the Chinese.   The second narrative follows a young woman, Frieda, who, while trying to sort things out with herself, inherits the contents of a stranger's flat and meets up with a Yemeni man who has come to England,   has a steady job and friends until his security is threatened and he has to go on the run.  While I enjoyed the book as a whole, the 1923-based narrative was much more engaging.  When I'd move back into the present-day action,  I had the same sort of residual "cliffhanger" feeling I get when a favorite TV show ends with the promise of answers the next week, and couldn't wait to get back to find out what was happening with the three women in Kashgar.  I read this book in one sitting, unable to move until the outcome of the historical narrative was revealed.

While Millicent and Lizzie have come to convert the locals,  Evangeline (Eva) English has accompanied them, bicycle in tow, to gather material for a cycling guide.  The three have put many miles behind them, and as the novel opens, their journey comes to a stop outside of the walled city of Kashgar. There, in the desert, a young girl is giving birth and the three stop to help. There are other people there, but it is Millicent who delivers the baby with forceps. While the baby lives through the birth, the young mom dies, and the group of bystanders immediately put the blame on the three women. They accuse them of killing the girl and stealing her heart to protect themselves from sandstorms, and of planning to eat the baby.  None of the onlookers wants the baby, and Millicent finds herself accused of murder and witchcraft.  Placed under "house arrest" at first at a Muslim inn and home of a Muslim man and his family, they are soon moved to another house outside the city walls to await funds  from the missionary society to pay off the authorities and escape their fate.  While Eva tends to the baby, Lizzie spends time taking photos; as time moves on, tensions begin to surface within the house. Millicent continues her proselytizing in spite of Eva, who disapproves given their situation; outside events also culminate in tension that will ultimately explode, putting the lives of the women in even greater danger.

Kashgar, along the Silk Road, from travelwestchina.com

Meanwhile, in the modern day, Frieda is a woman whose mother left at a young age and  who has been involved in an affair with a married man with children. Things had been working out for a while, but her lover is a needy sort and she doesn't want to be responsible for "three little boys' battered hearts." Frieda travels for work, lately finding that the cities she's visiting were

"blending into one... just yet another place that was no longer safe for her to be in, being English, being a woman."

While she's trying to sort things out, she meets Tayeb, a young man from Yemen who for political reasons, can't go home.  He shows up on her doorstep, where she hands him a blanket so he can sleep there; the next day she finds he's drawn a bird, a "swirl of peacock feathers," a drawing of seagulls that become a sunset, and some Arabic writing with an English translation:

"As the great poet says you're afflicted, like me, with a bird's journey."

Eventually the two become friends, and Tayeb's story is revealed along the way.  Frieda also receives a notice that she is the next of kin to a dead woman she doesn't know, and that she'd inherited the contents of  the deceased's apartment. She's given x number of days to clear everything out, and takes Tayeb with her to help her, offering him the apartment for a place to sleep until the authorities take back the keys. What she discovers will not only put her back on the road again, but will also help to piece together and connect both past and present.

The author does an incredible job with the past, and honestly, if the entire book had only focused on the story of Eva, Lizzie and Millicent, I wouldn't have minded at all, and it would have been a most excellent work of historical fiction. There's obviously quite a bit of research that's gone into the making of this novel and in capturing the upheaval of a time and place. Unlike some authors who tend toward information/detail overload in establishing and sustaining a sense of place and time, Ms. Joinson avoids that pitfall so that these sections flow naturally. I was less in love with Frieda's story, although the scenes of her childhood were compelling, as was the reunion between mother and daughter which for me, maybe more than anything else, brought home some of the parallels between the past and present, although in a kind of roundabout way I'm still thinking about. I also enjoyed her writing style and the wide use of bird imagery throughout.  On the flip side, I figured out the big "wow" moment out long before it was revealed, and much like when I read crime fiction and can guess what's going on, it was a bit disappointing.

Overall, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar is a good book for casual readers; there is a lot of bird imagery which is not too tough to ponder, and while the past narrative is much more engaging than the present, both come together quite well. My book group is discussing this novel on Tuesday, so it will be interesting to hear my friends' perspective.  Recommended, especially because the 1923 narrative is so very well done.

fiction from the UK

*Two from the land down under: The Daughters of Mars, by Thomas Keneally & The Asylum, by John Harwood

 The daughters of Mars, by Thomas Keneally

9781476734613
Atria Books, August 2013 US release date
544 pp

My thanks to both Bookbrowse.com's first impressions program and the publishers for my advance reading copy.


Longlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award, The Daughters of Mars didn't make it to the shortlist, but it's pretty good all the same, in that sweeping, summer-read sort of way.  It is a well-researched novel of historical fiction that plots the course of the Durance sisters, two Australian women who volunteer to serve as military nurses during World War I.  As a point of interest, according to an interview I read, the author used actual journals written by WWI nurses as part of his research, later reflecting  that "these women are too good not to write about." The story centers around the war and the effect it had not just on the soldiers, but on the Durance sisters and the other men and women with whom they work who have their own private battles to fight as well.

 Two sisters, Sally and Naomi Durance, both nurses, hail from the Macleay Valley. Naomi had left home while Sally stayed on the family farm, working only three miles away.  Their mother suffered from cervical cancer, and after months of suffering bad enough that she just wanted to die, Naomi came home to help out. During that visit, their mother dies; what may or may not have happened on that day leaves both with a burden of guilt hanging over them and bad feelings between the sisters.  It isn't long until Naomi writes home with the news that she's enlisting as a military nurse; Sally soon follows and in her own self-punishing way, hopes to engage herself in something bigger, and in another sense, to be rescued. Off first to Egypt, they're soon on board the hospital ship Archimedes taking them into the waters off the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, where hundreds of  casualties were ferried and put on its decks and small wards to be tended by the physicians, nurses and orderlies.  Later they are sent to France, where their patients now include victims of the new German weapon, gas.  From Gallipoli to the continent, the nurses find that by leaving their small Australian town, they've moved into the center of history -- yet also into lives that are much more complex than they could have ever previously realized. They must also suffer their own indignities and horrors on top of tending to the suffering of the physically and psychologically-damaged soldiers.  As they do so, the war provides a testing ground for individual mettle, resilience and spirit, and -- to paraphrase the author -- a venue for teaching these women about their weaknesses and at the same time educating them in the nature of the kind of women they are.

Australian nurses on board a hospital ship, 1915. From Gallipoli and the Anzacs, Australian Government Dept. of Veterans Affairs

For the most part, I liked Daughters of Mars.  While it's a wonderful tribute to some largely-unsung heroes, if you're looking for a happy story, this is definitely not it, and  it's not a tale for the easily queasy.  Injuries are described with no sugar coating, as are a number of the treatments the wounded had to undergo.  There  is also a large focus on death and life in this novel: there are soldiers who are aware they're going to die, there is much about mercy killing, and a rather disturbing scene where men are shot for attempting to commit suicide. It's a perfect book for a casual reader although I must say for me it was a bit too long -- and sometimes overly detailed.   I pretty much skimmed the love stories in this novel -- while I know that people fall in love in life, these episodes just went on too long for my taste.  As a warning, there are no quotation marks for conversations, and many reviewers have complained about the surprising ending (definitely a departure from the norm)  which I won't give away.   But overall, definitely recommended.   I will also be reading much more of Keneally's work over the rest of the year. 

  *****

  The Asylum, by John Harwood

 9780544003477

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

272 pp

hardcover

I have to be rather honest here. This is the third book I've read by John Harwood -- I loved his The Ghost Writer, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize in 2005, and I also enjoyed The Seance, his second book.  Compared to those two, this one is not as good, and for me, not so mysterious as I feel a gothic-style novel should be.  Having said that, let me just say that it's getting multi-star ratings so it's one you need to try on your own.  This is probably one of the ultimate beach reads this year.

I took The Asylum off my shelves to read just days after my book group had read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey -- you know, the one where young Catherine Morland has become so swept up in reading Gothic novels that it causes her a few problems down the road.  As is my usual habit, I first read the dust-cover blurb:

"Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in Tregannon House, a private asylum in a remote corner of England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton the day before, then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in London... Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary."

Oooh! oooh! I'm thinking, I can't wait to get into this one! I love Gothic novels and I like Gothic-style novels, and I'm a sucker for historical novels where people end up in an asylum, so this seemed right up my alley.  For a while it was. 

Related in three parts, the novel starts with Georgina/Lucy's arrival and her stay at Tregannon House. She can't help but wonder why she picked the name Lucy Ashton, and starts wondering if whether or not there was some "strain of madness" in her family. Telling herself  "not to think about it," she thinks instead about her childhood with her mother and great-aunt, another interesting story, set on a cottage about fifty yards from a cliff on the Isle of Wight.  An escape only leads to more questions, as she sees Georgina Ferrars in her uncle's home and then returned to Tregannon House.  As she's considering a second attempt, she stumbles upon her old writing case, leading to Part Two, which helps in some ways to clear up the mystery of what's going on, by going back in time to when her own mother was a young girl. 

While Part One held my interest completely; Part Two also intrigued for a while until the story started to become so obvious that I figured out most of what had happened and what was going to happen, so by Part Three, I just wanted to finish the book.  Certainly no mystery there -- and the transparency of it all sidelined my enjoyment. There were also so many implausible things happening here that it stopped being fun.  What I did like very much was the atmosphere the author created from the contemporary present in Tregannon House to a cottage on the Isle of Wight and even further back in time, to the realm of Victorian high society.  He sets up his story so that you don't know who you can trust in this book, which is a plus -- I love dubious characters and trying to sort them all out vis-a-vis their relationship with the main characters in this novel.   But overall, I wasn't that fond of this novel, and felt let down, which is a shame, since I liked his other two books so much. 

The Asylum is  getting really good reviews from several readers so maybe they see something in it that I didn't.  It just didn't do it for me.

fiction from Australia

Philida, by André Brink

9781846557040
Harvill Secker, 2012
310 pp

[also available in paperback:
9780345805034
Vintage]

"This whole land is built on our sweat and our blood."  

This novel was longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize, and I finally found it again after having lost it for months.  Don't ask...the lack of shelf space for my books is reaching critical mass so books tend to get buried around here. Anyway, I'm happy to have read it, and even happier to have discovered André Brink  as an author.  Philida is a work of historical fiction, based on a real person in his family's history who worked as a knitting girl on the Brink family farm Zandvliet from 1824 to 1832.  In the acknowledgments section of his novel, Brink notes that

"The discovery that her master Cornelis Brink was a brother of one of my own direct ancestors, and that he sold her at auction after his son Francois Gerhard Jacob Brink had made four children with her..."

was the catalyst for his story. This re-imagined Philida is no ordinary slave; as the novel opens she's on her way to lodge a complaint against Francois who, after fathering four children with her,  had promised to buy her freedom.  He, of course, has no power to free her, since Philida is the property of his father.  She makes the trek to see the Slave Protector to air her grievances, a journey that will ultimately have consequences not only for Philida, but for others in her life as well.  

Told via alternating perspectives with chapter headings that read like something from Dickens,  the story begins in1832; by now the rumors are rampant that the British will soon be freeing the South African slaves. Philida is well aware of this fact, as are the other slaves and their masters. Philida also has a very keen sense of what it is to be a slave, noting "I am never the one to decide where to go and when to go. It’s always they, it’s always somebody else. Never I," and realizes that she is a "piece of knitting that is knitted by somebody else." Throughout this story, she is looking to find out who she when the word "slave" is set aside, as well as where she really belongs.  The author returns repeatedly to this knitting motif, in terms of planning and patterning, unraveling and starting over again, important  in Philida's quest to "get to the right place," where you "pick up the wrong stitches and you knit them right," for a "beautiful piece of knitting that is perfect." It takes her some time, but ultimately she will come to understand that she first has to learn where she doesn't belong before finding the place where she does. How she comes to this realization makes up most of this novel.

The book makes for compelling reading, and while the horrors of slavery are certainly included in the narrative, they are there without the sensationalism that is usually present. And while this may sound a little weird, while I had absolutely zero sympathy for the key players in the Brink family (Cornelis, Francois and especially Mrs. Brink), the use of changing points of view helps to provide perspective from their side -- not just in terms of a lack of humanity but also in the bigger economic and cultural picture of an uncertain future.  The story also focuses on the power of stories, as well as connections to the land.  Sometimes I'll admit that Philida's philosophizing got tiring, and I also found that in some spots the way she spoke was more eloquent and refined than it probably should have been.  For me, the knitting analogy was just a wee bit overdone and a bit obvious, although I get that from Philida's point of view, it was a way for her to express herself.  However, I liked this book.  From a casual reader's perspective, it's an easy read, although for some readers there are certain scenes and depictions that may be tough going in an emotional sense. This is not your usual novel about slavery, by any means, and  I'd definitely urge you to give it a try. 

fiction from South Africa

*The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa

9780312420277
Picador, 2001
404 pp
originally published as La Fiesta del Chivo, 2000
translated by Edith Grossman

softcover
[#50 on the booklit.com list of 1001 books you must read]
 
"... that’s what politics is, you make your way over corpses.”

I absolutely love works by Latin American writers.  My favorite novel of 2012 was Tomas Eloy Martinez's Purgatory;  2011 found Kamchatka  by Marcelo Figueras at the top spot.  Now here I am with Feast of the Goat by Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, a story which takes place in the beautiful Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, and one that is definitely going on the favorites list for 2013.

The tropical beauty of the Dominican Republic belies a dark period during the regime of dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (r. 1930-61), called The Chief ("el jefe") or sometimes the "goat" in this novel, a man whose unchallenged control kept his military and government advisors in a complete stranglehold, leaving them in a state of veritable paralysis. It examines  "the spell that had kept so many Dominicans devoted, body and soul to Trujillo,"  for just over thirty years, and reveals how the structures put in place to maintain this paralyzing control didn't die off even with Trujillo’s assassination.  Not only does he control property, he controls people -- through strange tests of loyalty and other psychological measures that he employs. Everything people have -- property, wealth, position --  is theirs through the auspices of the "Benefactor;" a reality which has become so ingrained that no one dares do or say anything to screw it up. This relative peace and prosperity enjoyed by people in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo is countered with fast, brutal suppression of any form of dissidence; securing that peace cost untold thousands of innocent lives.  At the same time, in Mario Vargas Llosa's recounting, Trujillo's  control is under perceived attack: the US has placed a number of sanctions on the Dominican Republic, Catholic bishops are seen to be stirring up trouble and the situation is being monitored by American representatives there,  and if that isn't enough, Trujillo's own body is failing him. 

It is important to note that while The Feast of the Goat is based on actual events, it is not a blow-by-blow account of repackaged history,  but rather, as the author himself states in an interview with the New York Times,

''It's a novel, not a history book, so I took many, many liberties. The only limitation I imposed on myself was that I was not going to invent anything that couldn't have happened within the framework of life in the Dominican Republic. I have respected the basic facts, but I have changed and deformed many things in order to make the story more persuasive -- and I have not exaggerated.''

The author employs three narrative strands that weave through each other, or as he calls them, "trajectories," to tell his story. The first  is via the return of Urania Cabral, daughter of Agustin Cabral, once a powerful member of Trujillo's staff before his ultimate downfall.  After leaving for America at the age of 14 some 35 years earlier, Urania has finally returned to face the demons that drove her away;  in the meantime she has been spending her time studying law, taking a position with the World Bank, and reading everything she could get her hands on about the Trujillo regime. As she says to her father, to whom she hasn't spoken in all of those years,

"You're in some of those books, an important figure. Minister of Foreign Affairs, senator, president of the Dominican Party. Is there anything you weren't, Papa? I've become an expert on Trujillo. Instead of playing bridge or golf, or riding horses, or going to the opera, my hobby has been finding out what happened during those years."

"What happened" is at the core of Urania's  reasons for her self-imposed exile; while she was an unwitting victim herself, suffering a terrible fate that eventually sends her away from her homeland, most of her search for answers comes from research looking back on that time. Her father can't explain it to her; he has suffered a stroke which renders him unable to speak; flashbacks reveal what Agustin is unable to tell her.  Urania's own tragedy, eventually related to two incredulous female relatives,  underscores the monster that Trujillo has become, but at the same time, it also illustrates exactly  the sacrifices willing to be made by people who enjoy his good graces.

 A second narrative thread is taken up by the conspirators, including some of Trujillo's closest trusted military officers.While they lay in wait for Trujillo's car to pass by, the reasons behind their actions are revealed.  Everything has been carefully planned,  not only in terms of the assassination itself, but what is supposed to happen next -- a coup which will take out the existing Trujillistas, most notably Johnny Abbes Garcia, the sinister head of the SIM (military intelligence), and replace them with a junta with General "Pupo" Román at its head. Everyone in the group is on board, but when things go horribly wrong after the assassination, that above-mentioned paralysis kicks in as Román, himself one of the conspirators, balks and goes into his regular military general mode,  doing what is expected of him instead of stepping up and taking the reins of authority as planned.  

Trujillo

 Finally, the third voice is that of Trujillo on the last day of his life. He spends time in the past, recounting his disappointment in his sons,  his sexual conquests, and events which he's experienced during his reign --  for example the rounding up and slaughtering in 1937 of thousands of Haitians along the border with the Dominican Republic; the problems with Castro and the US; not to mention the June 14th movement and the assassination of the Mirabal sisters who dared speak out against him;, as well as his perceived enemies who've simply disappeared, many of them thrown to the sharks while still living -- all interspersed with his present.  As his body ages, he is plagued by problems with his prostate, which have made him both incontinent and impotent, a significant factor in not only his assassination, but in an earlier tragedy that brings the story full circle and highlights yet another theme of this novel in terms of the link between sex and power. 

It's difficult to talk about this book and some of its symbolism without giving away the show, hence only a sketchy discussion here, but it is an excellent novel.  Even though, as noted above, the author took some liberties in putting his story together, sometimes it's difficult to figure out exactly what is fictional here simply because it is all so realistic, all so "could have happened."  There are many wonderful scenes in this book, especially when the conspirators are waiting in the darkness for Trujillo's car to come by.  Even though they are there to kill someone, they spend time talking together about their families, their lives and what ultimately became the straw that broke the camel's back and brought them to this point.  In short,  they become real people who are looking forward to different lives and who deep down really love their country.   [As an aside, I knew Trujillo had been assassinated, but still, I only took my first reading break after the deed was done, getting in deeper and deeper, unable to put the book down until I knew that he was dead.]  Another fascinating sequence of scenes takes place in the jockeying for power after Trujillo is dead, involving Trujillo's son, his brothers, and most especially Trujillo's  puppet president Balaquer, who sees this time as his golden opportunity and manipulates the action most skillfully.  Actually, the power grabbing scenes and Balaquer's solutions verged  on the unbelievable, a little too nicely and quickly tied up so as to be unrealistic.   While the depictions of torture in this book are particularly grisly and gruesome, I can only surmise that the reality of the prisoners' treatment was not too far off the mark, highlighting even further the grotesque nature of this regime where savage revenge can be had for a price. My only other issue with this novel is that while the use of the three perspectives  is a good idea, sometimes as these narratives converge it is difficult to judge present from past -- I had a couple of sessions where I had to do a bit of rereading before I figured out what was going on and was able to continue. 

If you peruse the vast number of critical reviews of this novel, you will discover a wealth of symbolism lying beneath the action of this novel; if like me you're more of a casual reader and can't catch every single nuance, that's okay.  Feast of the Goat is not for the squeamish; if you're upset about yet another novel highlighting the evil that people do then pass on this one.  If, however, you are interested in circumstances that can create a person like Trujillo who can keep an entire nation paralyzed in the grip of his authority, this is a good place to start. Although helpful, even if you know nothing about the Dominican Republic or its history, it's definitely not a deal breaker -- the author makes everything extremely clear.  Most highly recommended for readers of historical fiction, and for readers of the so-called "Dictator novel" form, where writers have used their literary talents to respond to tyranny, an area I plan to further explore in the near future.

*Document Z, by Andrew Croome

9781741757439
Allen and Unwin, 2010
350 pp
softcover

There is a reason why I never skip the author's notes section in a book, and reading through them today just after having finished the story,  I came to discover that this novel is a fictional re-imagining of a real event that took place in Australia during the Cold War years of the 1950s.  I'd previously never heard of what ultimately became known as "the Petrov Affair," the defection of  two Soviets working at the Soviet embassy in Canberra that ultimately revealed clandestine Soviet activity in different areas of Australia's government.  Vladimir (Volodya) Petrov and his wife Evdokia held diplomatic posts at the embassy, but in reality they were also spies working for the MVD, the USSR's Ministry of Internal Affairs.  Further exploration led to an incredible photo which mirrors the action occurring as the novel opens, that of Evdokia being escorted through a crowd at Sydney's then Mascot Airport by a couple of big, brawny minders whose job is to get her on a flight that will eventually take her back to Moscow after her husband defected.  

from vrroom.naa.gov.au

The reason why Evdokia looks so panicked is not just that she's headed back to Moscow  to face an uncertain future where who knows what will happen to her or her family, but in those pre- 9/11 days,  the tarmac is actually surrounded by a mob of angry people who are trying to block her access to the airplane, trying to keep her off of it and free in Sydney, a scene also realistically depicted in the novel.

from watoday.com.au

 The question Andrew Croome asks is how did it come down to this?  The answer is laid out in this most excellent, intelligent and engaging novel as he reconstructs not only the events leading up to this particular day in 1954, but also as he imagines the inner turmoil of the Petrovs during their time at the Soviet embassy in Canberra, especially after the death of Stalin and the arrest of Beria become a major game changer. Added to the Petrovs, Croome brings in other players in the game, both Soviet and Australian, and also explores life for the Petrovs after their defections to some extent as well. 

The story begins three years earlier introducing the Petrovs, moving through their daily work routines and their home life in Canberra.  Coming to Australia from a post in Sweden,  Evdokia is secretly a captain in MVD intelligence decrypting coded messsages but openly works for the ambassador, while ironically, the job of  Vladimir  (also a spy) is to prevent defections.  But within the embassy it's all about power, political intrigue, and paranoia; the Petrovs often find themselves on the receiving end of trouble, with trumped-up charges that find their way back to Moscow in the ambassador's reports; no small worry for Evdokia who still has family back in the Soviet Union. They are also sure they are being watched constantly outside of the embassy, but they're not sure who is and is not an agent spying on them.  Then the ambassador receives word of Stalin's death and Beria's arrest -- and when Evdokia and Vladimir are told that they are being replaced and will be returning home shortly thereafter, Vladimir, who has been secretly courted as ripe for defection, decides the time is right to make his move but tells Evdokia nothing. 

Not only is the story behind the Petrov defections  intriguing and compelling on its own, the author's re-imagining of their personal lives is also credible. There is not a great deal of emotion shared by this couple; often they come across as rather flat together but all the same their inner lives are in turmoil. Evdokia cannot stop thinking of her dead daughter; Vladimir drinks, visits prostitutes and is faced with the life-changing experience of giving away his country's secrets.  Add in the author's excellent depiction of the political atmosphere of the time, as well as the workings of the fledgling Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), and  Document Z  jumps miles above the usual spy fare. In fact, after I finished the book and went on to read what I could about "The Petrov Affair," I was taken aback at the  realistic tone of the author's rendition of this story.  I couldn't put it down while reading it and most definitely recommend it. 

fiction from Australia

*The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman

9781451681734
Scribner, 2012
343 pp
hardcover ed.

Considering I chose for this month books you might want to take to the beach if you happen to be in Australia right now, enjoying a nice summer, I picked the perfect title in The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman.  For me, this book is the epitome of beach read for several reasons which I'll get to momentarily.  

Tom Sherbourne left Australia in 1915, setting out to serve his country in World War I.  The last he saw of Australia as he left was the five-second flash of light beaming out from the lighthouse at "his homeland's furthest reach," Janus Island.  That light became a memory that stayed with him during the war "through the years of hell that followed, like a farewell kiss."  Back in Australia at war's end, Tom first takes a six-month posting at Byron Bay, where he learned the "basics of life on the Lights." 

Byron Bay Lighthouse, Cape Byron, NSW, Australia

 (from Wikipedia)

In June, 1920, he gets wind of a vacancy at the lighthouse on Janus Island, a remote location that suits him perfectly, as does the island's isolation.  The supply boat comes on a very limited schedule; the chance to return to the mainland is even more limited.  At first Tom is there to relieve the current lighthouse keeper, but the situation eventually becomes permanent, and he eventually brings a young woman Isabel (Izzy) there as his wife.  Tom is a very principled, moral, by-the-book man, until one day when a small boat washes up on the beach that Izzy begs him not to report.  Because of multiple tragedies that Izzy has endured on Janus Island,  Tom acquiesces to her request, although his failure to report the boat incident constantly eats away at him inside.  But it will also have unforeseen consequences for both himself and Izzy, not to mention other innocent people when they return to the mainland.  It will also become a decision that will haunt both of them the rest of their life.  I won't say any more, not wanting to spoil it for anyone else who may want to read this book.

Stedman's evocation of a time and place is very realistic, and she is also skillful at developing  the moral/emotional dilemma so central to this novel and then bushwhacking the reader with a twist that adds even more intensity to Tom and Izzy's predicament.  It is pretty much impossible for anyone reading this book to not come to some sort of a judgment about what is right and what is wrong, and this novel will probably also make for some pretty intense book group discussions (my own group will be reading it later this year and I can already hear the thoughts of some of the people in my head right now).    Her depiction of people in a town who can't forgive or forget, in some large part the cause of all of the problems that follow, is also very well composed. The first part of the novel up until the return to the mainland really engaged my attention -- I was caught up in the descriptions of the lighthouse, Janus Island and the isolation of being cut off from other people as well as Tom's angst over his conflicting ideas of duty, all of which kept me reading and interested.   At the same time, The Light Between Oceans has the feel of what I'd consider a beach read, verging on the edge of chick lit.  Once the dilemma and the added jolt present themselves, the rest of the book became rather predictable and the outcome just sort of  fell flat.  When I figured out what was going on, I really didn't feel like I needed to read any longer because I knew just what was going to happen. I did finish it, though, and well, I was right. I figured it all out.  I also want to figure out my own emotional reaction to the books I read; this one is a guided tour with plenty of gut-twisting choices being made along the way,  pretty much guaranteeing a certain response.

To be extremely fair, readers everywhere are LOVING this book; as for me,  I'm not overly fond of pre-constructed emotional sentimentality and chick-lit material in the novels I read. So you might want to read the 5-star reviews from Amazon to see the glowing praise being heaped on this book to get more of a feel for why people loved it.  Once again, I'm swimming upstream from public opinion, but well, that's how it goes sometimes.

fiction from Australia

-

*City of Women, by David R. Gillham

9780399157769
Amy Einhorn/Penguin, 2012
392 pp

Wartime Berlin, 1943,  is the setting for City of Women, author David Gillham's first novel.  It paints a realistic portrait of a city where  people are "slowly suffocating on the gritty effluence of another year of war." It's a place where individuals have become "a number on a pay book, on a booklet of rationing coupons, a face on an identity card." Gillham's Berlin is a claustrophobic city of paranoia, fear, and constant propaganda, of regular night-time bombing raids and food shortages where people live day to day and try to get by the best they can under the watchful eyes of whoever might be looking.  And living in this city is Sigrid Schröder, whose husband Kaspar is away at the Eastern Front where, despite propaganda to the contrary,  the Nazis are being overpowered and defeated by the Soviet army.

Sigrid plods through her daily life working as a stenographer in the patent office then going home to her apartment building and her mother-in-law at night.  Her days rarely vary except for visits to the theater, not to see the movies, but to go and think in the balcony in "the seat of her memory," the one in the last row up against the wall.  It is there that she thinks about Egon, with whom she earlier had an affair, one that has to remain secret not only because Sigrid is married, but also because Egon is a Jew.  As the story opens, Sigrid's reverie is interrupted when a young woman sitting next to her begs her to say that the two of them had come to the theater together.  It isn't long before the Sicherhietspolizei (Sipo, or security police) enter the balcony and demand papers from the two women.  As it turns out, Sigrid does know who the other woman is -- a "duty-year girl" named Ericha who is currently assigned to a family in Sigrid's apartment building.  Able to convince the Sipo that they had been at the theater together, the two leave; Sigrid, figuring that she's just saved Ericha, wants to know what's going on, but Ericha's not talking.  Intrigued, Sigrid makes it her business to find out just what Ericha is up to, and makes a discovery that will not only change her life, but will lead her into making choices that reinvent it as well.  Throughout the novel, wartime Berlin provides a backdrop of time and place against which the main story of  Sigrid, Ericha, and Egon plays out.

That's the main story in barebones outline, and oh my gosh, readers are going crazy over this book!  The reviews are phenomenal, with readers praising this novel that they're giving 4 and 5 stars.  City of Women was even the selection of the month for Book Passage's signed first editions club, which is where I got my copy.  Gillham's depiction of the city is so well evoked as is his realistic wartime setting and atmosphere; he also has some wonderful characters who have interesting and tension-filled lives.  So why wasn't I as much in love with it as most other readers?

As the author notes in an interview, 

"I originally thought I might write a novel with a completely female cast of characters, because I wanted to explore wartime from a feminine point of view. But that fell flat after a while. I needed the dramatic tension of the love affairs to keep the plot moving and the suspense tightened."

Well, frankly, for me his decision is a pity, really, because as it happens, his original concept would have made this book multiple times stronger than it turned out to be.   The love-affairs angle does keep the suspense going once the plotline takes the reader into already-familiar territory about  the efforts to aid in the escape of  some of the remaining Jews in the city, trying to stay ahead of the authorities at all times.  Why go there? The original idea of "wartime from a feminine point of view" would have added something  new to the table in terms of  historical fiction based on this time period, something much more interesting than the story of a bored hausfrau who sleeps around, thinks she falls in love, decides to do something different and worthwhile with her life and makes choices that turn out to be incredibly dangerous for her.  Hanging everything on the "dramatic tension of the love affairs" actually detracts from the story, especially a) because the sex is unnecessarily repeated multiple times to the point of boring, and b) the " love affairs" leave Sigrid actually depending on the men she's slept with to help her out when she needs it. Truthfully, she doesn't sound like a woman who discovers her own inner strength as she figures out what she will do, and the book sometimes tends toward chick lit set against the background of the Holocaust. 

As far as suspense, it seems to me that a story from the points of view of women in this city should be able to provide plenty of drama and tension on its own.  At the very least, this is Berlin in 1943 where people are being watched, or are themselves agents of the watchers; the bombing raids create tension and a fear of nothing to go home to when the all clear sounds.  There are other female characters in this novel whose stories, had they been considered and more developed in terms of the original idea of "wartime from a feminine point of view," would have made for much better reading and may have offered more of a look at  what these women might have actually gone through during this time. 

As I said, this book is highly regarded by a huge number of readers, so once again, I find myself swimming upstream against public opinion, and that's okay.  I think I'd recommend City of Women to people who like their historical fiction on the lighter side; this one has more of a beachy feel rather than a serious examination of  lives where "regiments of husbands, uncles, and brothers have been mobilized and Berlin has become a city of women."

The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng

US release:
Weinstein, 2012
9781602861800
352 pp


First and foremost, I would like to thank Ed at Myrmidon for taking pity on me and sending me a copy of Garden of Evening Mists, and I'd like to thank Tan Twan Eng for emailing me and bucking up my spirits when all the pb shop nonsense was going on.   The edition pictured to the left is the US edition; I received the UK edition pictured below:

9781905802494, Myrmidon Books, 2012

I finished the book the week before last, but last week my house was in an uproar and just chaotic over the death of my best friend's mother, so I never got the chance to set down my thoughts about it. Life is starting to settle down again so here we go.

A few years back, Tan Twan Eng's novel The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and I remember thinking how very not cool it was  that it didn't go on to make the shortlist. That was the year that Anne Enright won for her The Gathering, which I didn't really care for; it was also the year I was introduced to the work of Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Lloyd Jones (Mister Pip), two authors whose novels I've really come to like.  When I read The Gift of Rain that year, I definitely hoped it wouldn't be the last I saw of its author, so this year I was happily surprised to see his newest on both the Booker longlist and then the shortlist. Frankly, I would have bought it anyway even if it had not made it as a judges' selection.

 As the story begins, Yun Ling Teoh has just retired as a judge on Kuala Lumpur's Supreme Court after serving for fourteen years.  The sole survivor of imprisonment in a Japanese camp at the age of nineteen, after the war was over she worked for a time with the War Crimes Tribunal, and she received her law degree before returning to Malaya to work as a Deputy Public Prosecutor.  Now she is making her way back to the mountain highlands after a long time away to the home bequeathed to her by a once former gardener to the Japanese emperor, Nakamura Aritomo.  The home and its surrounding gardens are called  Yugiri -- "Evening Mists."  She is there to meet with an historian who is interested in Aritomo's woodblock prints and other works of art, but she also has plans to fully restore the Garden of Evening Mists.  Yun Ling is suffering from oncoming aphasia, which will eventually wipe out her memories.  As she notes,

"I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrifies me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”

When she relays her fears to a long-time friend, he convinces her that she should write down everything, and so she begins to record all of her memories.  Her story begins in her twenties, when she makes her way to Aritomo, who lives next to the tea plantation owned by friends of Yun Ling's family.  She has come to ask Aritomo  to fulfill her now-dead sister's dream and create a garden dedicated to her memory, but Aritomo refuses. Instead, he  makes Yun Ling an unprecedented offer: he will take her on as apprentice until the return of the monsoon.  Despite her ongoing, intense hatred for the Japanese, the beauty of Aritomo's work at Yugiri leads her to accepts his offer.  While she works with Aritomo, they slowly begin to discover that despite their differences, they have a great deal  in common other than gardens.  Her account of the past winds its way through the Japanese occupation of Malaya which led to Yun Ling's imprisonment in a Japanese prison camp, the sister she left behind, the ongoing hope of nationalists for the country's independence from the British, and  the communists who are attacking plantation owners during the Malayan Emergency. It all adds up to an unforgettable story of  two very different people who have carried their ghosts around with them for years -- and what they discover about themselves and each other in the Garden of Evening Mists.  It is also a story about memory and forgetting, loss, guilt and survival.

There is so much to love about this book, especially  in Tan Twan Eng's descriptions.    As Yun Ling explores the garden, she discovers Aritomo's focus on the ancient art of "Shakkei," or "borrowed scenery," and the reader is right there along with her. Through the author's descriptions, the reader, like Yun Ling and other visitors to Yugiri, is invited to stop at different points of the garden to appreciate the perfect framing of the sea or the turning of a waterwheel, or even to ponder the distance between stones.

Kyoto garden which "borrows" Mt. Hiei in the background.

  But it's not just in Aritomo's garden where the richness of place comes alive -- the jungles, the tea plantations, the beautiful homes with their wide verandahs, the villages, even the  prison camp hidden somewhere in the mountains  -- the author makes them all real so that at times it's easy to imagine hearing the sound of birds or to feel the lush grass beneath your feet.

The characters are also carefully constructed.  The pasts surrounding Yun Ling and Aritomo are uncovered little by little, creating an aura of mystery around their characters. But there is also something to love about what is not in this story: there is never any sort of apology from Aritomo to Yun Ling regarding the abuses she and her sister suffered at the hands of the Japanese; and it is clear from the outset that there has never been any kind of forgiveness from Yun Ling.  There is also no perfection in the characters; instead they are shown to be human with their flaws and vulnerabilities, even as the reader follows them throughout their individual transformations.

There are many reviews of this novel that point to a number of formulaic similarities between this book and The Gift of Rain -- and there might be a little something to this idea, and there are places where the book gets fluffy in terms of writing style, but in the end it just doesn't matter. I'll leave the critiques of mechanics, style, and other elements to the experts, but from a casual reader's perspective,  Garden of Evening Mists is an elegant book with an incredible woman at its center. It is certainly the most emotionally powerful of the books (read so far) on this year's Booker Prize shortlist, but whether it wins or not, it is definitely one not to miss.