I'm not going to read this book -- does anyone want it?

The title of the book is The Listeners, by Leni Zumas. It's autographed, from Powell's Indiespensable collection, and I'm not going to read it. Not my thing, but it might be yours. First comment with contact info takes it.

It didn't come with a dustjacket (it's a special hardcover edition) and I've never read it...it's brand spankin' new. 

Waiting for Sunrise, by William Boyd

9780061876769
Harper, 2012
originally published in the UK, Bloomsbury, 2012
353 pp
Hardcover ed.

"Everything is unbelievably complicated.  Everything."

Lysander Rief arrives in Vienna in 1913 to receive psychological help for a sexual problem.  His closest friend in England had convinced him to try psychoanalysis; taking his advice, Lysander took out all of his savings and moved to Austria.  At his first session with Dr. Bensimon, he is advised to keep a journal, which Lysander calls his "Autobiographical Investigations," which Bensimon says will hopefully yield a direct insight into Lysander's unconscious mind during the course of his treatment.  Lysander's first entry details the event at age 14 that led simultaneously to his burden of guilt and his sexual issue.  Bensimon believes the answer is to be found in his theory of "parallelism," scoffed at by Freud,  which is  "basically about using your imagination."   The idea is this:

"If the everyday world, everyday reality, is a fiction we create then the same can be said of our past -- the past is an aggregate of fictive realities we have already experienced -- our memories."

Bensimon's job, as he sees it, is to try to change "those old fictions" Lysander's been living with.  The doctor's brief use of hypnotic therapy plants an altogether-different version of that traumatic day in  a "parallel world" within Lysander's subconscious that Lysander can develop in place of the real one.  This technique aligns with Lysander's profession as an actor, where he is both himself and not himself, where he is always performing, and where it's "just an act, after all..., his métier, his talent, his calling."  But as Lysander is about to discover, he's not the only one who is an actor.  And so begins this tale of deceptions, of shifting identities in a world of duplicity and performance in some fashion or another.  It's a book where efforts to discern what is real and not real and who to trust follow on the heels of the fictions created by Boyd's characters, and really, what better venue can there be for such ideas than a spy story? 

The story moves from Lysander's psychological treatment to his infatuation with another one of Bensimon's patients, Hettie.  She is a sculptor, living a rather bohemian life with her artist-significant other Udo.  Hettie and Lysander enjoy a torrid affair, but out of nowhere, Hettie accuses him of rape; he is placed under arrest and "escapes" with help from fellow countrymen at the British Embassy, leaving him in a lot of debt.  Leaving  Vienna and returning to England, he joins the army as World War I erupts, but his days in Vienna come back to haunt him when he is called upon to perform some secret-agent type work that will take him across enemy lines into Switzerland.  Once home in England again,  he must penetrate the  closed-ranks bureaucracy within the military war machine  to root out who is leaking secrets to the enemy, but some bizarre and unforeseen complications arise along the way.   Lysander notes in his journal at one point that his " life seems to be running on a track I have nothing to do with,” -- he feels like a  "passenger on a train" with no idea of where he's going and the route he's taking.   He makes several references to waiting for sunrise, when "he might know what to do next," or when he has hopes that its arrival will bring  understanding and clarity or "at least clearer vision,"  but the actor who once loved the limelight  learns that it may be safer to remain in the world of shadows. 

Obviously there's much more to talking about this book than space will allow.  I liked this novel immensely.  This book has so many positives, including Boyd's awesome portrayal of a world in flux, a world that was "spinning, faster than ever ...," with time "on the move in this modern world" where the old was "going fast, disappearing and something different, something new, was inevitably taking its place." In 1913 Vienna Boyd's sense of place and time captures the atmosphere of this city on the cusp of an uneasy modernity, and reflect the same in wartime England and on the battlefields of France. There's a fair amount of wry humor that runs throughout, and the character of Lysander's gay uncle  and his African lover brought out the occasional chuckle.  On the down side, readers might be put off by the sometimes-meandering action or the pointless sidelines, for example, with Lysander's off-again, on-again relationship with his girlfriend Blanche.  And if you're looking for a straight-up, full-on novel of high espionage, this really isn't it -- this is much more of a character-driven story than a tale of adventure.

So maybe this isn't the best book William Boyd's ever written, but it's still damn good,  and it will capture your imagination for a few hours as you're transported back in time.  I don't think you can ask for much more than that.

Highly recommended.

book picks for down the road

the road near my house, leading to the beach

Every Sunday I sit with my New York Times Book Review and try to find books I might want to read. Drinking strong black coffee, listening to XM radio's real jazz station,  reading the NYT Book Review and finishing the NYT Sunday crossword are all parts of a ritual I go through each week.  I know -- sounds dull, and well, it probably is for most people, but whatever. I like it.

Anyway, this week a book called People Who Eat Darkness, written by Richard Lloyd Parry, caught my eye.  It's a kind of true-crime sort of thing, which normally I don't read unless the crime is historical in nature. When I saw the article I realized that I had seen a show some time ago called "Crimes that Shook the World" that profiled this case.  I remember when I watched that show I was appalled at how the Japanese police handled this case and frankly what idiots they seemed to be at the time.  Susan Chira, the author of the review of this book, notes that

"...Richard Lloyd Parry's remarkable examination of that crime, what it revealed about Japanese society and how it unsettled conventional notions of bereavement, elevates his book far above the genre."

Cool. It doesn't sound like your standard sensational, titillating-details type of true crime. It's mine.

Another one I saw in "Editors' Choice" is A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, by Suzanne Johnson.  That little blurb says the following:

"Freedom and dislocation are this novel's themes; its narrators are a woman who has brought her bicycle to Central Asia in 1923 and a researcher in present-day London."

I'm hoping this one isn't going to turn out to be some schlocky chick-litish sort of thing that I'm going to regret, but if it does, I'll give it away to someone who may appreciate it.

===

Of the books actually reviewed this week, I've read only one: The Last Hundred Days, by Patrick McGuinness, which I recommend to readers who like historical fiction. It's set at the end of the Ceaucescu regime in Romania and it's really good.

On the Proper Use of Stars, by Dominique Fortier

originally published as Du bon usage des etoiles, 2008
translated by Sheila Fischman
269 pp
hardcover - Canada
(and Ancient Forest Friendly!)



 "Perlerorneq. That is the word the Esquimaux use for the feeling that eats away at the hearts of men during the winter that stretches out endlessly, when the sun seldom appears. Perlerorneq. Hoarse as the lament of an animal that senses the approach of death."

Captain John Franklin's final mission of 1845 sets the frame for this novel, as he sets sail to navigate the two ships  Erebus and Terror through  unexplored stretches of the Northwest Passage.  However, On the Proper Use of Stars  is not just another account of that expedition; instead, it is a very cleverly-constructed novel that moves back and forth between the Arctic and Victorian London, focusing on the lives of the men stuck in the ice while life goes on with Franklin's wife Jane and her niece Sophia back at home.  The story is punctuated throughout with various documents from both fronts: pieces of plays, menus, science books , fictional diary excerpts and other fragments of historical texts that help to simultaneously contrast and bring together the two alternating strands depicting these respective worlds. 

Despite some ominously-depicted foreshadowings of doom at the beginning of the novel, at first  morale seems to be very high about the Erebus and the Terror.  Francis Crozier, captain of the Terror, notes that aboard the Erebus, "laughter can be heard from morning to night."  Food is plentiful, good progress is being made, and even when the long winter night sets in, the men put on plays, have intellectual discussions  and set up classes.  Franklin, in the meantime, writes in his journal, which he will leave to his wife for adding the "finishing touches," to make his account of the expedition "worthy of the events."  But there are some issues: Franklin and Crozier do not see eye to eye --  Franklin, who enjoys contemporary recognition as a hero, treats Crozier with scorn when he makes suggestions that embody "plain common sense," such as leaving behind the message cylinders as per orders of the Admiralty.  Crozier does what he's told but questions Franklin's leadership.   Meanwhile, back in London, Lady Jane Franklin with her sister, niece and stepdaughter set off for their own explorations -- first in France, then off to Portugal, Madeira, the West Indies and then the United States, carefully documenting every bit of information about the world she's exploring; while at home, she not only has a busy social life, but spends a great deal of time examining maps of the Arctic, charting various explorers' routes with different colors.  

The rest of the novel continues in the same manner, contrasting the two separate worlds of London and the Arctic, reflecting  life in both settings and how each group attempts to stave off their respective anxieties as it becomes apparent that there is little hope of a return to England.  Crozier dreams of becoming a hero so that on his return he can court and marry Sophia, for whom he had once drawn her initial in a field of Tasmanian stars;  Sophia, on the other hand, spends her days attending house parties or other events to escape her boredom, and wonders if she should even marry at all, hardly even remembering Crozier.   Lady Jane Franklin, who was ridiculed by other wives while with her husband in Tasmania, now finds that she is quite popular with the same women now that Sir John is leading the expedition. She  refuses most invitations, but makes sure her weekly soireés show off the wonders she's discovered in her own travels.    Her own worries about the failure of the expedition to return fall on deaf ears as Franklin's contemporaries, namely Barrow, Parry, and Ross are certain that "the man who ate his boots" is in no danger, and that "one does not set out to rescue heroes."  But unwilling to give up, and refusing to let them "get rid of her like that," she exhausts herself looking for help. Her despondency turns into "will, animated first by anger, which grows from day to day and is gradually being steeped in a muted hatred."   While Sophia is busy with the day's appointment schedule, Crozier, getting ready to leave the ship with two dinghies in hopes of rescue for what's left of the ships' companies,  is examining the objects that the remaining men have brought out onto the ice -- the "household trinkets" that are "all of England that they will pull behind them, the weight of their country, even if it should lead them directly to their death."

Beyond the two very different worlds, Fortier also includes the Arctic natives, the "Esquimaux," who come across the trapped ships, greeted as a welcome sight by the crew. These "savages" wondered whether the ships had been made their way across the ice or if they'd come from the sky. The Esquimaux were also convinced to come aboard and to take a look inside the ships, and do so expressing a great deal of wonder and surprise.  This action follows the script of a play that was staged by the crew, "Journey to the Moon," which underscores a visit to the moon where the customs, society and differences between cultures dumbfound the traveler.  And while they are referred to as  "savages who live like animals" and are seen as uncivilized among some of the officers, it doesn't take long for Crozier to realize that the Esquimaux likely have the upper hand by taking advantage of the "meager resources offered by this environment."

On the Proper Use of Stars is very different, but very well written. It reveals a unique way of fictionally presenting a well-known moment in history without having to resort to lengthy exposition or  unnecessary dialogue to bring the reader back to that point in time.   The construction and ongoing juxtaposition of the two different worlds that these people inhabit never allows the story to become dull or boring.  The same is true for the characterization as well as the vividly-evoked Arctic settings that start out beautiful and soon lapse into dreadful monotony. 

Not everyone will like this book, especially those who prefer a traditional narrative style, and those who like a lot of action in their historical fiction. But if you are up for something new,  you might want to give this one a try.  The story is familiar yet becomes something entirely different at the same time.

Yay! Shehan Karunatilaka wins the Commonweath book prize!!!

Shehan Karunatilaka has won the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize for his excellent novel Chinaman: the Legend of Pradeep Mathew.  I read this book way back at the beginning of this year and absolutely loved it - it's currently living on this year's favorite book shelf. 

Not that he'll see this, but Congratulations!!!!

totally OT, sort of : Requiescat in pace, Ray Bradbury

I just read in the New York Times that Ray Bradbury died today at the age of 91.  I can't think of anyone who isn't at least familiar with some of his works: The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, or The Illustrated Man, to name a few. His excellent Martian Chronicles was the book that started me reading science fiction many years ago; and I know that he was a huge influence on many authors in the genre.

 To someone who provided me with hours of thought-provoking reading, rest in peace.

June: historical fiction

I'm not even going to speculate on the possibilities for my reading this month because I probably have more historically-based fiction than anything else in my library, well wait -- that's if you don't count the crime fiction.  There are crossovers -- literary historical fiction, historical crime fiction, yada yada yada; but to me if it's set in the past, it's a work of historical fiction.  Should be a good month.