FEBRUARY
1999 REVIEWS
Amy & Isabelle
Almost Heaven
Amsterdam
The Evolution of Jane
Ruby
AMY
& ISABELLE
by
Elizabeth Strout
ALMOST
HEAVEN
by Marianne Wiggins
This brilliant and disturbing
book deals with the role memory plays in human life and behavior.
Holden Garfield is a famous foreign correspondent, who after spending years
in Sarajevo and Bosnia, has finally seen enough. Jaded, fatigued,
and haunted by horrible images of the carnage he has witnessed, he returns
to America, where he realizes he is facing mental collapse. We are
told little of his past, but Wiggins' skill as a writer is that she conveys
so much emotional weight in the concisely portrayed scenes in Holden's
memory.
What happens next is
unlikely but brings together the explosive elements of the story .
Holden's career has been mentored by his friend and colleague Noah, who,
for political reasons, is underground. Suddenly, he is contacted
by a psychiatrist who is treating Noah's sister for hysterical amnesia,
brought on by witnessing the violent death of her family. She remembers
nothing but her brother Noah, and the doctor hopes Holden can help.
Holden goes to visit her, and becomes completely obsessed with her. Although
he sees that part of his obsession comes from the fact that she has what
he needs, i.e., the loss of memory, he can't separate from it. Against
the advice of her doctor, he takes matters into his own hands, and they
set off to find her brother. Only calamity can ensue, and tragically,
it does..
The style of this novel
is what makes it remarkable. The writer trusts the intelligence of
the reader, and in this way enhances the participation of the reader in
the books's heart-wrenching events.
AMSTERDAM
by Ian McEwan
This novel, actually termed a "novella" by
its author, is a brilliantly constructed black comedy. Two lifelong
friends, Clive Linley, a famous composer, and Vernon Halliday, editor of
a prestigious London newspaper, make a solemn promise to each other after
seeing their friend Molly Lane, a former lover of both, succumb to a quick
and dreadful disease. Because the euthanasia laws are looser
in Amsterdam, they each vow to expedite the other's demise should it become
tragically necessary.
After making this affirmation of friendship,
however, circumstances conspire to push them apart, both politically and
morally. George Lane, Molly's husband, offers Vernon compromising
photographs of Julian Garmony, a cabinet member loathed by both of them.
It seems that Molly also had an affair with Garmony, and took the explosive
pictures. Vernon chooses to publish the photos over the misgivings
of his newspaper's conservative staff, and the moral condemnation of Clive.
Meanwhile Clive, trying to finish a commissioned "end of century" symphony,
retreats to the Lake District where he witnesses a man violently attacking
a woman and decides to run rather than come to her aid, fearful that
he will ruin his creative process. The way in which their mutual
betrayals and hypocrisies play out, and the fate of each is determined,
is so perfectly orchestrated that it brings to mind the creation of a piece
of music that comes off better than poor Clive's ill-fated symphony.
Richly deserving of the Booker Prize that
it won, Amsterdam brings to mind one of Clive's thoughts to himself:
"As far as the welfare of every other living form on earth was concerned,
the human project was not just a failure, it was a mistake from the very
beginning."
Top
THE
EVOLUTION OF JANE
by Cathleen Schine
This delightful book by the author of the
equally delightful The Love Letter , finds its heroine, Jane Barlow
Schwartz being packed off to the Galapagos Islands by her mother, in order
to recuperate from the fact that her husband of six months has left her.
Jane is adrift in life, having been first cut off from her moorings by
losing her lifelong best friend Martha, for reasons that have never been
clear. Martha is her cousin, and they spent all their childhood summers
in adjoining family houses in Maine. There is an underlying family
feud and secret, however that they never know about, and that may have
contributed to Martha's abandonment.
Much to Jane's chagrin, upon landing
in the Galapagos, she finds that her tour guide is going to be none other
than Martha herself. Herein starts the story, told in present time
and in flashbacks, and in parallel to what they are discovering about the
path of Charles Darwin and the development of his theories of evolution.
Self-obsessed Jane can't help but compare her own growth, heartache, and
need for change to the evolution of the species they are examining, and
what emerges is often profound, and usually amusing. Her ultimate
confrontation with Martha, and the understanding she reaches about the
past, her family, and her relationship with her cousin, brings her to some
surprising conclusions about herself and the nature of friendship,
and she emerges a much happier and wiser specimen.
Top
RUBY:
a novel
by Ann Hood
Olivia
Henderson, a New York milliner, sent her husband out jogging one morning
when she was too tired to have sex. Unfortunately, her husband David
was killed by a young motorist that morning, and Olivia is mired in grief.
Through flashbacks we get a picture of their marriage and their individual
characters, and feel Olivia's profound loss as she tries to keep going.
One
day, as she is supposed to be preparing their Rhode Island beach house
for sale, while in reality sinking deeper into her pain, she finds a young,
pregnant, teenage trespasser in her kitchen. Ruby has been thrown
out of her parents' house because of her pregnancy, and has no place to
go. Olivia agrees to keep her until the baby is born, while harboring
a growing obsession with taking the baby as her own.
The progress of
Ruby's pregnancy, and the relationship between Olivia and Ruby, unfold
together in a roller coaster of human emotion and experience that is deftly
and humorously described. From day to day neither the novel's two
main characters nor the reader knows where this will end, while Olivia
works slowly and painfully back to life.
Top
Duane's Depressed
Evening News
The Mourner's Bench
While I was gone
by Larry McMurtry
Those familiar with Larry McMurtry's cast of contemporary Texans will be happy to revisit them in his third and probably final novelistic homage to Thalia, Texas. At the novel's start, we find Duane Moore, one of the main characters of both The Last Picture Show and Texasville , realizing that he has spent his entire life in one pick-up truck or another. He puts his keys in a coffee cup, and decides he is going to walk everywhere. His wife Karla and all those around him conclude that if he's not crazy,Duane's depressed. Actually, what is occuring is Duane's awakening. Suddenly he is looking at his world in a more conscious way that is completely unfamiliar to him. Duane, with his wife, his many employees, his dysfunctional children and his live-in grandchildren, has lived the proverbial "unexamined" life, and wants that to change. He moves into an isolated cabin on his own land, and begins to consider therapy.
Soon, however,
events conspire to re-engage him in his life in a new and completely different
way, partly inspired by his psychotherapist Hope, who encourages him to
buy a bike and to come back after a year of reading Proust. It is
interesting to note that Larry McMurtry also had Aurora, the heroine of
Terms
of Endearment and Evening Star, reading Proust at the
end of her life. I guess it is reasonable to assume that Mr. McMurtry
has done this and found it valuable. At any rate, in this book we
find out the fates of all of Thalia's denizens from the other novels, like
Sonny Crawford and Ruth Popper, the May-December lovers from The Last
Picture Show, and it is satisfying to return to these old friends.
While this book may lack the energy or vitality of the others, it is both
comfortable and true.
Top
EVENING
NEWS
by Marly Swick
This novel begins with an unspeakable tragedy. Many readers may find it hard to read beyond the first traumatic chapter, but if they do they will find a compassionate and unsparing look at a family torn apart by grief. Nine-year-old Teddy lives with his mom, Giselle, his 18-month old half sister Trina, and his stepdad Dan. When he does something that both he and his stepfather deem unforgivable, his mother must struggle to hold on to both of them and the new family she thought was created when she fled Nebraska for California.
What is
most significant about this book, and Marly Swick's other writing, is how
clear and true her depiction of each character's humanity is. No
one is given easy answers or convenient escape routes or resolutions.
Giselle, while in the midst of perhaps the worst crisis a wife and mother
can face, does not behave particularly well. She floats aimlessly, grasping
at straws, until her lesbian sister Vonnie literally commands her to come
to Lincoln, the place she had fled. She seems about to lose everything,
but in the ultimate irony, it is Teddy's real father, Ed, whom she had
thought the antithesis of her beloved new husband, who exercises the most
healing power on both Teddy and Giselle. These are all real people,
and it is this reality that makes the tragic situation worth reading about.
Top
THE
MOURNER'S BENCH
by Susan Dodd
Leandra is a woman in her thirties, living quietly in the hills of North Carolina, making her living repairing dolls. She takes great solace in restoring these dolls, with their missing limbs, clothes, and pieces, to a new life, and of course these dolls play a symbolic role in the theme of the story. Wim, her brother-in-law, is more than 20 years older than Leandra, and as the novel begins he is on his way to spend his last days with her. Dying of cancer, his only hope is to spend some time with the woman he has loved from a distance for many years. Ten years earlier, a very young Leandra was summoned to Massachusetts to help care for her beautiful, difficult, and distant sister Pamela, who had fled their country background and re-fashioned herself as the sophisticated wife of Wim, a college professor many years her senior.
Pamela was cold and often cruel to both her husband and sister, and bitter about her pregnancy. Leandra and Wim were drawn together in the face of Pamela's rejection of them, and as the pregnancy came to a tragic end, the young Leandra found herself preoccupied with Wim, who paced the floor outside her room each night. Soon, Pamela's behavior became more and more irrational and violent, and while Wim and Leandra were out one night, she ended her life. The chasm of grief and shock was too difficult for either Wim or Leandra to cross and they separated, until the time of the novel's opening.
The novel
is told from both Wim and Leandra's point of view, Wim's sophisticated
and intellectual, Leandra's quiet, wise, and spiritual. Ultimately
it is Wim's illness and death that heals both of them. This is a
beautifully rendered story.
Top
The
Music Lesson
South
of the Border, West of the Sun
The
handyman
A
sight for sore eyes
THE
TRAVELLING HORN PLAYER
by Barbara Trapido
Occasionally
I start to read a book that is so good, from the first pages, that it creates
almost a physical thrill of joy. The Travelling Horn Player
is one of those books. I felt almost as though someone like P. G.
Wodehouse had been incarnated in the body of a 90's woman, so droll and
sly is the humor and intelligence of the main characters, even as they
deal with all of the traditional and contemporary tragedies -- accidental
death, AIDS, crib death, suicide, dyslexia, adultery. The story revolves
around the death of a young girl, 17-year old Lydia Dent, and how each
of the book's characters are involved or altered by her death, without
realizing it or knowing each other until the lovely tapestry of this plot
brings them together. We meet her sister Ellen, their schoolmaster
father, and Jonathan Goldman, the middle-aged writer Lydia was visiting
when she was hit by a car. We also meet Jonathan's strange daughter
Stella, self-described idiot savant, dubbed Nuisance Chip by her father,
and are told her life story, leading up to her becoming one of the unlikely
roommates of Ellen Dent at Edinburgh University.
Paths
cross and re-cross in this story, and the chapters and the book itself
are titled after a cycle of romantic German poems by Wilhelm Muller that
was adapted as an opera by Schubert. When all the truths are finally
known, there can be no perfect ending to this story, but the telling is
so wonderful that we are happy to be allowed to hear it.
Back
Patricia Dolan, a successful
art historian in New York, is 41 years old and floating numbly through
life after the death of her young daughter and her subsequent divorce.
Of Irish heritage, and from a long line of Irish Republicans, she has been
sympathetic to the Irish cause but never seriously active. Enter
her third cousin Mickey Driscoll, visiting from Ireland. He looks
her up and she falls for him immediately. Her beloved father seems
to take to him, and she is so sexually enthralled that after a few weeks
she falls easily in with his plot to steal a priceless Vermeer painting,
"The Music Lesson" from the Hague. The painting, only 6" X 7" belongs
to Queen Elizabeth, and Mickey and his "associates" plan to ransom it to
finance their cause. They take advantage of Patricia's expertise
and knowledge of the world of art and art museums to plan the theft, and
she agrees to go to Ireland to receive the painting.
We learn all this from
Patricia's journal as she sits with the painting on the Irish coast, waiting
to rendezvous with Mickey. This small book, actually the same size
as the painting at the center of the plot, is both inspiring and disturbing.
Needless to say, all is not as it seems, and ultimately Patricia has to
literally choose between life and art. This is an exceptional book
for many reasons, including its deep insights into the artistic process,
its description of Irish country life, and the perfect construction of
its plot.
Top
South
of the Border, West of the Sun
by Haruki Murakami
This is
the story of Hajime, a successful Japanese businessman, who all his life
has been afflicted with a level of angst that only successful people can
afford. He narrates his story and his emotional turmoil in a linear
and almost monotonal way, but underneath he is constantly struggling to
find meaning in his life. As an only child in 1950's conformist Japan,
he felt isolated and different from others, until he met Shimamoto, another
only child, with whom he formed an extremely close bond. After she
moves away, he grows up and matures normally, finally fitting in, but he
is never able to fall in love and never able to forget Shimamoto. Most
importantly, he is never happy.
As in
everything else, Hajime gets lucky in marriage, and is able to use his
father-in-law's considerable financial resources to open a successful and
chic jazz club. He has two daughters, nice cars, and a country house.
Of course, it is still not enough for Hajime. What is significant
is that while his life unfolds with such ease, he is never at peace with
himself, and one feels that Murakami is exaggerating Hajime's good luck
to bring home some basic message about the barrenness of material existence.
It is Hajime's soul that is barren, and he knows it.
Suddenly
one evening Shimamoto shows up in his club, mysterious, grown-up and extremely
beautiful, and his obsession to be with her makes him willing to completely
sacrifice his peaceful life, good marriage and financial position.
He spins out of control, and, not for the first time, his selfishness hurts
both himself and others.
Haruki
Murakami is getting a lot of attention in the West, first for The Wind-up
Bird Chronicle, and now for this book. He is considered to be
in the vanguard of the "hip" Westernized Japanese culture, but what I find
interesting about this and other contemporary Japanese fiction is that
although life for these characters is externally so similar to life in
America, internally they are completely different. Like the Japanese
art of painting a landscape on a grain of rice, there is such attention
to detail that it is often excruciating. Every feeling, every emotion,
every action and thought is examined so completely that we feel we are
looking through a microscope. I find myself wondering whether it
is the result of living in such small spaces. At any rate, while
this level of navel-gazing can be aggravating, it is also extremely fascinating.
Top
THE
HANDYMAN
by Carolyn See
Bob Hampton, aspiring
artist, goes to Paris with $10,000, hoping to discover his artistic soul.
Having been only a "B" art student at UC LA, he things perhaps something
will ignite on foreign soil. Unfortunately, within 48 hours he realizes
that there are more computer salesmen than artists in Paris, and the food
isn't that good either. It's not for him, and he returns to L.A.
Since he cannot see his artistic future, he decides to spend the summer
working as a handyman, and then enroll at Otis School of Design in the
fall, lowering his sights to a career in some kind of graphics.
As readers,
however, we already know that Bob does become a famous and serious artist
because the first section of the book is in the form of an application
letter, written in 2027 by a student who wants a Guggenheim grant to study
the works of one Robert Hampton. We realize that what we are witnessing
then is the pivotal summer of Bob's life, the summer of 1996, where the
people whose path he crosses, and whose problems he fixes as "handyman"
take him through the final steps toward the discovery of his own distinct
artistic vision.
As "handyman",
Bob is called upon to do many things -- rescue a drowning toddler, play
nurse to a young AIDS patient, restore a young mother's will to live, and
plan jungle-themed party for a disillusioned matron and her ADD-afflicted
kids. But through it all he comes again and again to the healing
power of color, water, and kindness to transform the quality of life, until
it all coalesces into a single vision for his future.
Carolyn
See could well be classified as an expert on Southern California and she
gets the lifestyles of these various inhabitants just right. While
her understanding of art may fall a little short of that exhibited by Katharine
Weber in The Music Lesson, Bob is a great guy,
LA is a cool place, and we enjoy visiting both.
Top
A
SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
by Ruth Rendell
Any fan
of Ruth Rendell (and I am a big one) gladly welcomes any new addition to
her oeuvre, regardless of the name she's using to write it. In addition
to her masterful mysteries, her specialty is portraying characters who
bring disfigured psyches to bear upon the circumstances that befall them.
This book is no exception, and it is the psychological disfigurement of
every character that really creates the plot of this one.
Francine
Hill was only 9 years old when she witnessed the brutal murder of her mother,
and lost her voice for some time after. Her well-meaning father hires
a therapist for Francine, who finally recovers her voice, but then he makes
the therapist his wife, and we discover that she has a few psychological
problems of her own. She is convinced that Francine will become a
murder victim herself, and as a result, Francine is so sheltered and overprotected
that even as she reaches college age she is not allowed to leave the house
alone or to be at home alone.
Meanwhile,
in a considerably less posh neighborhood, Teddy Brex is being brought up
in an atmosphere of filth and extreme neglect. Teddy has no recognizable
human feelings, and it is not clear whether this is the result of nature
or nurture. What he is passionate about, however, is beauty -- the
beauty of art and design, and his own, and he develops considerable talent
in this area. Later on in life, when his path crosses Francine's,
he decides that she is the beautiful one for him, and he goes to great
extremes to obtain and possess her.
Add to
this an aging beauty who searches the yellow pages for handymen to lure
into her home and bed, and we have a cast ready for the catastrophes that
ensue. This novel is brilliantly and intricately plotted, bringing
all these characters together from points so far apart that it is hard
to imagine at first how they will be connected. But when they do,
the results are suspenseful and satisfying.
Top
The House of Sand and Fog
The Sound of Trumpets
Tree Surgery for Beginners
Other People's Children
White Bird in a Blizzard
The
House of Sand and Fog
By Andre Dubus III
This novel
is about a clash of cultures so extreme that it becomes a head-on collision.
Colonel Genob Sarhana Massoud Amir Behrani and his family are refugees
from the Shah's Iran. The colonel, who procured aircraft for the
Iran military forces, was a man of importance in his homeland, and is even
now on a "hit" list by the new government. Nonetheless, his former
stature has done nothing to help him in his new homeland, and his money
is almost gone. Living in an expensive San Francisco apartment so
that his daughter Soroya can obtain a suitably rich Iranian husband, the
colonel wears a suit out of the house and then changes into his garbage-picking
or convenience store clerk's uniform, so that his children will not know
how far he has fallen.
Hearing
about the possibility of buying real estate at county auction, Colonel
Behrani decides to take his last $50,000 and invest in a house, fix it
up, and sell it. Sadly, the house he buys has been taken by the county
from its owner, Kathy Niccolo, a recovering addict who has just been deserted
by her husband. To complicate matters, the house has been taken from
her wrongfully. She becomes homeless and begins to lose the last
of her moorings. The Colonel moves into her house with his family
and refuses to give it up with a vengeance born out of his belief that
this is his last chance to salvage his dignity and restore himself in his
wife's eyes. Kathy wants desperately to keep the house because her
father left it to her and it represents the last thing she must hang on
to in order to survive. One of the policemen who evicted her tries
to help her but instead she falls into a liquor-fueled affair with him
that accelerates her collapse.
The results
of these events are tragic for all concerned, none of whom initially deserve
to be victimized by the social forces working on their lives, but whose
personal lives exacerbate an already terrible situation. Andre Dubus
III writes beautifully, telling the story believably from first the Colonel's,
and then Kathy's point of view, and creating the Northern California coastal
atmosphere perfectly.
Top
The
Sound of Trumpets
by John Mortimer
This novel
by the author of the Rumpole series is a semi-comic political romp.
I say semi-comic because the truth about politics, in England where this
book is set, or anywhere else, is actually anything but humorous.
But John Mortimer, who clearly understands British politics, has constructed
a fast-paced and very entertaining story about a modern age Faust named
Terry Flitton, the Labour candidate in a district that has been a Conservative
bastion for years. Terry is a modern Labourite a la Nicky Blair,
intent on winning, telegenic, possessed of a beautiful wife. While
he truly believes in Socialist principles, he is all too willing to compromise
them in order to win. (Sound familiar?)
Lord Leslie
Titmus, retired cabinet minister who served faithfully under Margaret Thatcher
(whom he deifies), owns this district, and decides that the Conservative
candidate needs to learn a lesson for voting against the great lady and
trying to take the Conservatives into a "kinder, gentler" modern age.
He begins to secretly advise Flitton, and while his advice virtually guarantees
Terry's election and he does win, he does not readily recognize what has
been lost. Along the way, he sacrifices friends, principles, and
his mistress, and he ultimately realizes that his pact with the devil,
rationalized with the idea that once elected he could actually do some
good, has instead made him a puppet of the Machiavellian Titmuss.
John Mortimer,
a writer of great accomplishment has written more books than many of us
read in a lifetime, and it shows. This book both informs and entertains,
and makes us want to read the other novels in the Rapstone Chronicles that
also star Leslie Titmuss.
Top
Tree
Surgery for Beginners
by Patrick Gale
Lawrence
Frost, tree surgeon, wakes up in his truck in the forest one moring with
the horrible realization that he has violently abused his wife Bonnie.
When he returns home, she and their daughter Lucy are gone, without a trace.
Strangely, a bloody chain saw is found in his truck, and he becomes a notorious
murder suspect, on all the front pages. This fame also brings the
complication that he learns for the first time that he is illegitimate,
something his mother had never told him. His life careens out of
control. Soon, however, Bonnie resurfaces and he is cleared, and we realize
that all of this has only been preamble to the strange events that befall
Lawrence for the rest of the story.
Lawrence
has always been taciturn and withdrawn, and his lively mother Dora worries
about him now that he is alone. She persuades her twin brother Darius,
Lawrence's surrogate father, to take Lawrence with him on a Caribbean cruise.
Lawrence agrees to go, thinking that he can leave the boat in America and
find his wife and child with the architect with whom Bonnie has taken off.
While he is not the "cruise ship" type of guy, Lawrence becomes involved
in a ship-board fling with Lala, the torch singer on board who has nothing
less than a cult following. Rumored to be a transsexual, Lala nevertheless
transfixes Lawrence, and his life veers in yet another direction, still
not the last of many in Lawrence's lively and improbable odyssey.
The plot
of this book has so many unlikely but interesting twists that it is impossible
to summarize, yet we accept what might seem preposterous because we sense
that some of it is almost symbolic. What is really taking place is
a man being forced to search for and ultimately find himself. It
takes the force of explosive and extreme events to make Lawrence move from
his chosen spot in life, and he does, finding the peace and happiness that
he has never known in his isolated life in the forest.
Top
Other
People's Children
by Joanna Trollope
Joanna
Trollope writes beautifully about families and human relationships, and
in this book she takes on the subject of step-families. Although
her novels are all very British, they resonate just as well with contemporary
life in America.
The novel
begins with Josie and Michael are getting married, with Josie's 8-year
old son Rufus, and Michael's three children, aged 15, 12, and 10, looking
on unhappily. Michael's destructive ex-wife Nadine refuses to allow
her children or her ex-husband any peace, and the children act out her
hostility toward their new stepmother with a vengeance. Meanwhile
Josie's ex-husband Tom is falling in love with the never-married Elizabeth
who is daunted by the pathological refusal of his 25-year old daughter
Dale to allow him to be happy with anyone but her. Dale's brother
Lucas loses his fiance Amy, for the same reason -- Dale's ubiquitous and
needy presence in his life. Dale's mother, Tom's first wife, died
when she was very young, and Tom's guilt and Dale's obsessive nature have
combined toxically, casting a pall on any chance of lasting happiness.
Most of
us know first-hand that there are no easy answers in these situations,
and Trollope doesn't provide them, but we care about all the characters,
and the end results for all of these step-relatives provide us with a sometimes
surprising, always satisfying, read.
Top
White
Bird in a Blizzard
by Laura Kasischke
This disturbing
novel has a quiet poetic mystery and air of dread that sneaks up on the
reader just as it does on the main character. Kat Connors is just 16 years
old when her mother disappears. Her father informs her the day after
she leaves that her mother has called and said she will never come back.
Kat accepts this because she knows her pretty mother has always been unhappy
with her and her father. Kat's handsome father, a respected school
administrator, had always been more in love with his wife than she
with him. But Kat has only been peripherally aware of her mother's
state of mind, having been otherwise occupied at the time, busily having
sex with her boyfriend Phil. Strangely, after her mother is gone,
Phil, while remaining her loyal boyfriend, doesn't want to have sex any
more.
It is
indicative of Kat's low self-esteem that she never questions any of this.
She doesn't really miss her mother, but she is subject to recurring nightmares
about her mother in cold, white places. She goes into therapy, has
an affair with the detective investigating her mother's case, and leaves
for college, while Phil remains steadfastly at her side. On the surface,
things are smooth, but it is her subconscious from which she cannot escape.
We gradually come to consciousness just as Kat does, when the smooth surface
is finally so disturbed that she is given no rest, and she makes a terrible
discovery that changes everything.
Laura
Kasischke, a poet, has created a chatty and precocious character in Kat,
and we enjoy her company as this strange novel unfolds. This novel
is beautifully written, although the subject matter may be a little strange
for some.
Top
In the Empire
of Dreams
Ashes to
Ashes
Nine below
zero
The Empress
of the Splendid Season
Carter Clay
Another
World
by Pat Barker
This brilliant
novel by the author of the award-winning Regeneration trilogy that
explored the ramifications of World War I on its veterans, continues the
exploration of these memories into a novel set very much in the 1990's.
Ostensibly it is the story of the end of Geordie's life. He is 101
years old and very close to death, but he has begun to experience all of
the nightmares, horror, and hallucinations about WWI that plagued him for
years after he returned from the war. Today we call this Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder; then it was unidentified except as "shell shock."
As he lays dying, he gets up again and again, screaming and wandering into
the night, actually experiencing life in the trenches, and most of all
the death of his brother Harry, the one most mourned by his mother, who
told him at the time, "It should have been you."
All this is observed through the eyes of his grandson Nick, a middle-aged
academic with troubles that are very contemporary. To whit:
Nick is married to Fran. They have a 2-year old son Jasper, and a
baby whose arrival is imminent. Fran has an 11-year old son Gareth
who doesn't know his father but angrily refuses to allow Nick to perform
that role in his life. Nick has a 13-year old daughter Miranda from
a former marriage to Barbara, who is now in a mental hospital, necessitating
that Miranda stay with her father. Besides Nick, Gareth hates Miranda,
Jasper, and usually his mother, He lives his days in an orgy of violent
video games and watching "Terminator II" over and over. Fran, hugely
pregnant and constantly tired doesn't like Nick very much at all any more,
especially since Nick is forced to be away with his grandfather so much.
With all of these ingredients in place against a backdrop of a sweltering
summer in Newcastle, and the family moving house into an old Victorian
estate called Lob Hill, disaster is waiting to happen as surely as Geordie's
upcoming demise. The incredible skill of Pat Barker as a writer brings
all of these events to us with the deeper message of the role of memory
in human life, how the past comes to bear on the present and future, and
what makes change possible. Thus she has written a contemporary novel,
full of the dysfunction and problems of the present day, while showing
us how directly these events are related to both recent and not-so-recent
history.
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IN
THE EMPIRE OF DREAMS
by Dianne Highbridge
On the
list of interesting titles I compiled in April, I placed the book, South
of the Border, West of the Sun,(click
here for review) by Haruke Murakami, the acclaimed new Japanese writer
considered "hot'" in the West. In that book, it seemed as though
Mr. Murakami concentrated so much on the similarities between Japanese
and Western yuppies that there wouldn't seem to be much difference in their
miserable dysfunction.. In the Empire of Dreams presents us
with quite a different story. Dianne Highbridge, herself an Australian
ex-patriate living in Japan, has written a set of interwoven stories about
a group of people, primarily women from different cultures, trying
to live in Japan.
Elaine and Claudine are from America; Cathy is from Australia, and Liz
is from England. They are all in Japan for different reasons, and
the stories depict events in their lives there as they interact with other
ex-patriates, and most of all with the Japanese. We also meet contemporary
Japanese men and women, dealing with the clash of the headlong rush into
modernity with the rigid tradition still binding the Japanese culture.
One Japanese woman, a successful intellectual who has been having a long-term
affair with her married mentor, is forced into arranged marriage because
it is no longer proper to remain unmarried because she might bring shame
to the family. An American executive, in mourning over the death
of his beloved wife, finds solace as he is transported by the strange hypnotic
beauty of the kabuki.
The primary interest of this beautiful book to me was the way in which
it revealed that although we may perceive the Japanese culture to be extremely
Westernized, it is when these people from the Western cultures attempt
to move within it that the profound differences are boldly and dramatically
apparent. Things such as the commuter trains, packed so tight that
there are people employed to push as many as possible in the door, courtship
marriage rituals strictly proscribed by family position and status, "love
hotels" for convenient one-hour adultery on almost every street, Sumo wrestlers
as pop icons, kabuki, and even the ceremonial aspects of pottery making
and selling, when seen through the eyes of the ex-pats, become very exotic
indeed .
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ASHES
TO ASHES
by Tami Hoag
Until
now I have avoided including the popular genre of serial killer/wise-cracking
detective novels on my page because there are so few writers in this genre
who have not either lost their touch because their success makes them produce
one book a year , inspired or not, leaving little time to be creative,
or their imaginations and respect for their readers have gone missing,
a la Patricia Cornwell. Tami Hoag is the exception to this.
She is still writing exciting and entertaining page-turners. I can't
help but find myself hoping Ms. Hoag doesn't get a big bucks deal for multiple
novels and sell out like so many others. (Kellermans, are you listening?)
Kate Conlan is a victim/witness advocate in Minneapolis, after leaving
the FBI under a cloud created in the aftermath of her young daughter's
death. John Quinn, serial killer profiler from the FBI, is said cloud,
and after not seeing him for five years, she is shocked when he comes to
Minneapolis to investigate after the third charred body appears in a series
of prostitute murders. He is called in because Peter Bondurant, local
billionaire, has brought his influence to bear upon the FBI. The
third girl, though burned, was also beheaded, and had Bondurant's daughter
Jillian's ID next to her body.
Kate's consternation at Quinn's arrival is compounded by the fact that
the only witness in the case, Angie DiMarco, a dysfunctional teenager in
the grand style, has been assigned to her care. Kate does not suffer
fools or anyone else gladly, and her misery, along with that of the tormented
fed, John Quinn, is compounded again and again, as another body appears
and she finds her own life threatened and the mystery is solved.
What makes
a mystery satisfying is the care taken by the writer to develop believable
characters, to avoid a quick-fix solution that leaves threads of the story
hanging, and a deep knowledge of procedure and tactics. This novel
does all of these things. A great summer read.
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NINE BELOW ZERO , by Kevin Canty
This
dysfunctional contemporary Romeo and Juliet story involves the meeting
and pairing of two people who are superficially very different, although
spiritually identical. Set in the coldest part of Montana in the
coldest part of winter in rural Montana, the weather itself becomes like
a character in the story, because its extremity plays a part in every aspect
of the unfolding story, from the accident which starts it to the inevitable
tragedy that unfolds later.
The story's two
main characters are Marvin Deernose, a Native American, former paramedic,
and recovering addict, and Justine Niehart, the thirty-something granddaughter
of Henry Niehart , wealthy and powerful senator from Montana. One
cold morning Henry suffers a stroke at the wheel of his Cadillac and is
rescued from freezing to death by Marvin, also out driving around in his
pickup truck after a drunken evening. Henry is left blind and disabled,
and Justine arrives to help take care of him, being the only family member
who still speaks to him.
Justine herself is grief-stricken
over the death of her son Will, and moves in something like a fog.
Her grief has rendered her largely catatonic, and her husband and psychoanalyst
watch over her obsessively. Hearing of Henry's accident and stroke,
she welcomes the chance to escape to Montana, and leaves recklessly, driving
fast, drinking in the car, and picking up hitchhikers. When Henry
tells her to invite Marvin for dinner, perhaps by way of thanks, they recognize
in each other the same displaced restlessness, unfathomed emptiness, and
search for something that remains unnamed. Marvin has been living
with meaninglessness for a long time, as a Native American who lost his
father, failed in his marriage, saw too much carnage as a paramedic, and
turned to heroin. He is permanently on the fringes of society, while
Justine is seeking this state as a way to escape from the sheltered but
shattered world she inhabits. Marvin who has never had anything,
and Justine who has lost everything, share a bond that remains powerful
even though un-articulated.
Their affair begins with
an aura of mutual self-destruction, and while sympathetic, both characters
behave with gross disregard for the feelings of those around them.
Conducted under the nose of her grandfather while they wait for him to
die, their alcohol-fueled and impuslive actions take them both into territory
they seem to welcome despite the tragedy surrounding it.
Kevin Canty has a gift
for describing the state of anomie in the displaced or disoriented characters
that inhabit his stories and novels. This is not a fun story, but
it is told profoundly and well.
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EMPRESS
OF THE SPLENDID SEASON
by Oscar Hijuelos
Every day in Malibu, where
I live, and in affluent areas everywhere, busloads of Hispanic maids, housekeepers,
and day laborers arrive, often traveling long distances on crowded public
transportation to be paid meagerly and often illegally in order to stay
in America and/or help their relatives at home. Each of these people
undoubtedly has an individual story that is far more interesting than any
of us, who hire them, would credit. In this novel, Oscar Hijuelos
has taken one of these busriders and brought her vividly and completely,
to life.
Lydia Espana, a Cuban
immigrant, has worked as a cleaning lady in New York City for over 50 years.
From a very good family in Cuba (her father was the town's mayor), she
was sent away at age 17 for wanton behavior with a traveling bandleader.
She arrives in New York City alone, penniless, and with no ability to speak
English, and though she could have never foreseen her days filled with
scrubbing floors and polishing silver, she always sees herself as she was,
a queen. Very attractive and intensely proud, she dresses well and
soon meets Raul Espana, a Cuban waiter, whose florid marriage proposal
gives the novel its title. Her days spent scrubbing floors soon becomes
her life sentence, however, when Raul is stricken with a heart condition
at a very young age, forcing her to work even harder to provide the clothing
and education she craves for her children.
We see her various clients
through Lydia's eyes, and she is especially fortunate to remain employed
by one very rich family for the entire 50 years, exposing her to the wealth
and privilege she desires, perhaps too strongly, to show her children.
This is not a romance
novel. Miracles do not happen. Lydia does not get rich, she
is often difficult, bad-tempered, gossipy, and tired. But she goes
on, retaining her dignity and pride, providing for her family, making friends
with the other women on the subways and buses, enjoying a few beers, and
remaining married to and in love with Raul for 50 years, and watching her
children succeed where she has not. There are millions of Lydias
in our society, and this novel does justice to the humanity and beauty
in them all.
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CARTER
CLAY
by E. Evans
This is the story of Carter
Clay, one of the too-large population of homeless Vietnam Veterans in America.
Carter, from a rough background in Washington state complete with an abusive
alcoholic father and a mother who commited suicide, went from there
to the horrors of Vietnam, to the drugs and street life of America.
After almost being killed in a stabbing attack, Carter has now been sober
for a year and is living and working in Florida, when he re-encounters
another homeless vet who he wrongly thinks saved his life. Not wanting
to hurt his old friend, he agrees to go drinking with him and falls off
the wagon, with truly horrifying results.
On an isolated back road,
a drunk Carter plows his van into three tourists, a family from Arizona.
Paleontologists, Joe Alitz, his wife Katherine Milhause, and their daughter
Jersey are visiting Katherine's mother M.B. at the time of the accident.
After the accident Joe is dead, Jersey is confined to a wheelchair, and
Katherine is brain-damaged to such a devastating degree that she remembers
nothing and has the mentality of a retarded child.
M.B., an ungenerous rube
who watches television all day and is in the thrall of an unctuous evangelical
minister, is forced to take Jersey in, but will not let Katherine stay
with her because she requires too much care. Instead, against Jersey's
pleas that her mother could possibly be rehabilitated faster if kept at
home, M.B. warehouses Katherine in a decrepit board and care home.
Meanwhile, Carter has
escaped the accident, but not his demons. Tortured by unimaginable
guilt, and a fugitive from justice in this high-profile hit and run, he
shaves his head and moves to the town where M.B., Jersey, and Katherine
live. He gets a job as a caretaker at the home where Katherine has
been placed, and joins M.B.'s church, trying to ingratiate himself into
their lives. Carter vows to God and to himself that he will take care of
Katherine and Jersey forever. Suspicious Jersey has bad feelings about
him, but M.B. welcomes this big man who seems willing to take the responsibility
for Katherine off her shoulders. Event after event unfolds in horrible
inevitability, as Carter's religious conversion becomes more and more irrational
and he kidnaps Jersey and Katherine and takes them to Washington state.
This novel has many subplots,
all of which are well developed. Carter's relationship with his father,
his friendhip with the homeless man who Carter thinks is his friend but
who is really someone following him to settle an imagined score,
and Jersey's efforts to cope with her and her mother's conditions are all
delineated in rich detail. What is most striking however, is that
this book captures the thought process of Carter so believably as he descends
into madness. It is amazing that this book was written by a woman.
It's a sad story, but one which clearly illuminates many different issues
and difficult circumstances.
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Turn of the Century
White Oleander
Trumpet
The Breaker
The Stones Cry Out
Turn
of the Century
by Kurt Andersen
This is a novel that his its
ear so close to the pulse of our Information Age that you can almost hear
its shriveled heart beating. Kurt Andersen incorporates all the elements
that characterize our society at the very end of the 20th century -- information
overload, the addiction to technology for business, family life, and entertainment,
and the overwhelming speed at which change takes place. We witness
and experience more change in a year's time than our parents did in a generation,
even as our parents witnessed more change in 20 years than their forebears
did in a century. No one is sure what this means, because we are
too immersed in the process to have a legitimate perspective.
Having said that, this
novel could not be more entertaining or insightful about this, our predicament
as participants in the roller coaster of the upcoming millennium.
George Mactier and Lizzy Zimbalist are a married couple in New York City
who could not be more "cutting edge." George, a former political
journalist, now produces a very successful "reality-based" television show
called "Narcs", wherein actors work with real cops to arrest real criminals,
who then become celebrities themselves. Lizzie also works in the
nether region between fiction and truth. A successful computer game
and systems designer, she is set to release the most sophisicated virtual
reality game yet, in which players can seem to change history by the decisions
they make as they are playing. The cyber-world is one that they have
helped create, even as they strive to muddle through it with their three
children, maintaining a somewhat "normal" family life.
Harold Mose, a billionaire
a la Rupert Murdoch, owns the network that employs George, and begins to
court Lizzie, not for her body, but for her mind. Ben Gould, George's
best friend, is a former reporter turned online trading giant who has opened
a new casino called "Barbie World" in Las Vegas. This is a
world of multiple cell phones, computer screens, computer hackers, sound
bytes, and "ships passing in the night" relationships.
The many subplots and layers
of satire, humorous takes on entertainment, media, the stock market, and
everything else that is part of our time are too many to describe, but
the strength of the book lies in the fact that George and Lizzie are real.
They have hearts, even though it may seem that the world has lost its own,
so they anchor the story even as everything swirls madly around them.
It would be truly impossible
to summarize this book. I would say that if you read no other book
this year, read this one, and read it all the way to the end, which is
the best part. It invites comparison to the tour de force that "Bonfire
of the Vanities" was in the 80's and that Tom Wolfe's latest book, "A Man
in Full", was not. This is "fin de siecle" at its finest.
Back
White
Oleander
by Janet Fitch
Even though
I am somewhat terrified and appalled by Oprah Winfrey's seemingly vast
cultural influence, she does pick some good books for her book club.
This is one of them, a best-seller that truly deserves to be one.
Astrid
Magnussen, daughter of Ingrid Magnussen, poet and magical presence, spends
the first 13 years of her life flowing around the world along with her
mother's whims, listening to her mother's pronouncements on everything
in life, and admiring her mother's perfect blonde beauty. When we
meet them they are living in Hollywood, Ingrid has been reduced to a job
doing paste-up for a vapid celebrity magazine.
She
writes her poetry in the evening, forever reminding her daughter of their
superiority to the rest of the mere mortals who surround them.
Things
go awry, however, when Ingrid breaks one of her own cardinal rules, i.e.,
"never let a man stay overnight". It is Barry Kolker that Inrid
allows to stay over, an ugly, goat-like man who nonetheless charms both
Ingrid and Astrid and soon causes Ingrid to break another, more important
of her cardinal rules, "never fall in love." Astrid is ecstatic because
she has always wanted a father, but when Barry breaks off the relationship,
she sees her mother's innate madness emerge. In truth, the beautiful
and talented Ingrid is a cruel narcissist who lives inside her own internal
universe with herself as its only law. Isabel murders Robert with
what can only be described as New Age panache -- she boils poison plants
like jimson weed and white oleander with DMSO and applies it to all of
Barry's doors and windows. The
DMSO causes the poison to absorb into his body and kill him.
Thus begins
Astrid's struggle to survive in a series of foster home misadventures that
are both terrifying and educational. What makes this novel so special,
however, is Janet Fitch's ability to render each painfully learned lesson
so profoundly in Astrid's precocious yet naive adolescent voice.
Astrid is saved by her artistic nature, her ability turn into art her surroundings
and the often monstrous people inhabiting them. Through this series
of foster homes and catastrophes, Astrid goes from the age of 13 to 18,
and becomes herself, paying a very high price. Her relationship with
Ingrid remains difficult and turbulent, and it is easy to see that if Astrid
hadn't been separated from her mother she may never have been able to recognize
her own individuality. Ingrid remains unrepentant and cold, and becomes
something of a cult figure, complete with groupies, a publishing deal,
and a Gloria Allred-like attorney.
This is
more of a "coming into being" than a "coming of age". Janet
Fitch, a first-time novelist has written a poetic, engrossing, disturbing
and inspiring tale about unique and artistic people, and their relationship
to a world which most often is not.
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This beautiful book won the Guardian
Fiction prize in the UK in 1998, and it's easy to see why. Joss Moody,
famous and revered jazz trumpet player dies, leaving a widow and a 30-year
old son. The coroner arrives and makes an unsettling discovery --
Joss is really a woman. Most likely based on the true story of an
American trumpet player who died a few years ago in Michigan in precisely
these circumstances, this book takes what could be lurid and sensational
and makes it touching, humorous and beautiful.
Jackie Kay has clearly taken the time to imagine how this situation could
actually and realistically have taken place.
As the scandal roils around
them, Joss's story, told alternately by his widow Millie, his adopted son
Colman (who never knew), and Sophie Strongs who is intent on cashing in
on the tell-all book about him, is actually most profound as it reveals
that he led a happy and productive life that was not about what his gender,
but about music and love.
Colman, who first learns the
news from the undertaker, is so shocked and devastated that he refuses
to speak to his mother, and almost eagerly takes up with Sophie. He's a
bit of a ne-er do well and is of mixed race himself, and his moorings,
not too deeply rooted to begin with, come very loose. They decide to go
to Scotland to find Joss's mother, who knew him as her daughter Josephine
Moore. Joss's mother had been something of a non-conformist herself,
marrying Joss's father, a black man, when such a thing was unheard of.
Millie meanwhile hides out at
their seaside summer home, so devastated by grief over the loss of her
beloved husband, and so besieged by the press, that she fears leaving her
house. To make matters worse, Colman has given her address to Sophie,
who bombards her with letters. Her memories as she goes through these
difficult days tell us how naturally their love unfolded, with she herself
unaware that Joss was a woman until just before they married,, and by then
so in love she couldn't back out of it.
Additional brief narratives,
by the Moody's housekeeper, Josephine's school friend, Joss's bandmate,
and even the coroner who must issue the death certificate, show how touched
everyone was by both Joss and his music.
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Minette Walters is an English
mystery writer who mines the deepest and darkest psychological secrets
of her characters to create both victims and perpetrators. All have
both positive and negative qualities, and as the story and mystery unfolds,
so does the psychological portrayal. In this regard, her stories
resemble those of Ruth Rendell, the undisputed master of this kind of mystery.
This novel takes place on the
shoreline of Dorset in southwest England. Kate Sumner, beautiful
blonde, wife to William and mother to strange and almost autistic toddler
Hannah, is raped and murdered. Her naked body washes up on the shore
near the small village of Lymington, and is discovered by two young boys
and a handsome actor who helps them. Meanwhile, her young daughter
Hannah is found wandering the streets of the nearby village. The
actor, Steve Harding, is later discovered to have known Kate Sumner, and
the local policeman who is first on the scene notices that Steve seems
to be sexually aroused by the sight of her body.
Kate's husband William
is also a very strange bird, and does not have a credible alibi for the
time of the murder, making him a likely suspect as well. Much of
the hidden life of the local village is revealed as the case is investigated
by Nick Ingram, the local policeman, and Detectives Galbraith and Carpenter,
from Scotland Yard. Both victim and suspects seem to have much that
is unsavory hiding beneath the surface, and the reader avidly follows the
twists and turns as first one, and then another solution seems possible.
A great summer read.
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This novel
won Japan's most prestigious literary award, which fascinates me now that
I have read it. The book takes its title from the New Testament book
of Luke: "He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very
stones would cry out." It is the memory imbedded in stones that preoccupies
the novel's main character.
Tsuyoshi
Manase is a veteran of World War II who went through almost unspeakable
suffering, first hiding in a cave from the enemy, and then as a prisoner
in the Phillipines. In the cave, men hid among rotting corpses,
while even the living were covered with maggots and plagued by hunger,
thirst and disease. What Manase remembers most, however, is the voice
of a dying lance corporal who talks to him at length about geology, telling
him finally that "Even the smallest stone in a riverbed has the entire
history of the universe inscribed in it." Manase also remembers the
captain in the cave, whose strong will to maintain discipline inspired
them all. It was the captain who ordered them to kill the weakest
of their numbers when necessary.
After
the war, Manase's life seems to progress peacefully, although he takes
up geology as a hobby, obsessively collecting, organizing, and polishing
specimens. His wife and children play little part in his life until
his oldest son Hiraoki exhibits interest in and precocious knowledge of
his hobby. He takes the boy with him on collecting expeditions,
and even builds a small desk for him alongside his own in the attic.
One day they come upon the same cave in which Manase had spent so much
time hiding and listening to the lance corporal's voice during the war.
Manase promises his son that they will come back and explore the cave later.
However,
the events in Manase's life which follow suddenly take an unspeakably tragic
turn. His eldest son is brutally murdered, his wife goes mad, and
his younger son grows up to be a violent criminal. Manase becomes
a recluse, haunted by the voices of his past and suffering from nightmares,
until he is visited by his younger son, now wanted for murder, and the
horrible truth about the events of his life become manifest once again.
This story
is told in a deceptively simple and direct manner, almost like a parable.
The symbolism of the stones and the way they carry Manase's particular
memories, as well as the memories of the universe itself, is woven into
the narrative in a way that causes the reader to think, long after the
book is finished.
The reason
I find it fascinating that this novel would be so highly honored is the
same reason I find it interesting that the other popular Japanese novelist
of the moment, Haruki Murakami, is so well-received. These books
are unrelentingly depressing, with characters suffering from profound angst,
hopelessness and unhappiness. Do the extreme emotions displayed in
these books and in some Japanese movies, for example, reveal clues about
the Japanese character? This novel, while very short, is extremely
complex, almost like the proverbial painting on a grain of rice.
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August
titles: (click titles for review)
Timbuktu
Holy Smoke
Keeping Faith
A Dangerous Friend
The Ladies' Man
TIMBUKTU I love dogs. My favorite shows
on television are on Animal Planet. Even though I'm a sucker for
pet stories, I'm sure that it is this same regard for dogs that motivated
Paul Auster to write the story of Mr. Bones, surely the most intelligent,
articulate, and spiritual canine ever to have his own novel.
We meet Mr. Bones on the streets
of Baltimore, loyally following his dying master Willie G. Christmas as
he searches for the home of his high school English teacher, Mrs. Bea Swanson.
Willie, originally a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, adopted his name in honor
of Santa Claus, who appeared to him in a vision and convinced him that
not only was Santa real, but that Willie's mission in life was to accomplish
the work of Father Christmas. From then on, Willie has had nothing
but good intentions and of course they have paved the way straight to hell
for him as they are always said to do. Thus for many years Willie
has roamed the streets and highways of America trying to do good deeds
and writing his legacy in his many notebooks, now stored in a locker whose
key will be given to Mrs. Swanson along with custody of Mr. Bones. Willie's
logorrhea also extends to speech-making, and thus Mr. Bones has a very
good understanding of "Ingloosh", in which he would communicate if his
mouth was only fashioned a little differently.
It is Willie's profound love
for Mr. Bones as his partner and equal that has gone into creating the
wise dog that he is, and Mr. Bones understands what Willie has told him
about dying -- that he will be going to Timbuktu, the happy world beyond
this one. Because Mr. Bones has been with Willie every day of his life,
he can't imagine his own life going on without Willie, even though Willie
has told him that he must search for a new home.
Willie's plan, as has every
one before, does not quite work out. Unable to find Claremont Street
where Mrs. Swanson lives, the dying Willie collapses on the street and
commands Mr. Bones to run for it as a police car comes to collect him.
Thus begins the odyssey of Mr. Bones, and his quest for a new master, as
he encounters humans who have life styles very different from the homeless
and wandering Willie.
I loved this book, and even
if there are some problems with its structure, I love that Paul Auster
has taken so much time to contemplate the smell-erific life of a dog, even
if he has put his own intelligence into the pooch, making him sort of a
doggy "philosopher king".
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HOLY
SMOKE
By Anna and Jane Campion
On the
flyleaf of this novel we are told that this book was written as the background
for a movie of the same name to be directed by Jane Campion, the academy-award
winning director of "The Piano", and that said movie will star Kate Winslett
and Harvey Keitel. So, having some of the work of the imagination
taken care of before starting to read this book, we can then see the story
unfolding as more of a movie script, with these two actors as the lead
characters. While I would usually prefer to let my imagination do
its own work while reading a novel, I nonetheless enjoyed this book very
much and now can't wait to see the movie.
That said,
here is something of the plot. The American P. J. Waters (presumably
the Harvey Keitel role) makes his living as a de-programmer, conducting
intensive psychological warfare against the mind control he feels cults
and their leaders exercise over their members. He's a "have
gun, will travel" kind of guy, packing up and travelling to wherever his
services are needed. Ruth Baron (the Kate Winslett role), his current
assignment, is a twenty-year-old Australian who has joined the followers
of one Chidaatma Baba in Rishikesh, India. Her dysfunctional and
quintessentially rough-neck Australian family has hired him to get these
silly ideas out of her head.
After
Ruth is persuaded through the use of an elaborate ruse to come home to
Australia, she is then taken by force to an isolated farmhouse and P.J.
begins his patented de-programming handiwork, basically an elaborate psychological
game. He is confident that at the end of his usual three-day intensive
session, he can compromise Ruth's faith and break her will, thus rendering
her "normal" for her family. In the battle of will, intellect, and
sexuality that ensues, however, P. J. finds that for once he is horribly
wrong, and what transpires could not be further from his original expectations.
The Campion
sisters have obviously done a lot of research into this subject and it
shows on the page. I have more than a nodding acquaintance with this
subject matter, and they do a very good job of capturing the thoughts and
feelings of someone like Ruth. The subject of cults, religious faith,
spirituality and de-programmers is very complex, and few have been able
to depict it realistically. This book, while not perfect, comes close.
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Mariah White is in an unimaginable
and impossible situation. Coming home unexpectedly, she and her daughter
Faith have caught her husband and another woman coming out of the shower
in the master bedroom. Mariah, who tried to commit suicide the first
time this happened seven years before, struggles now to keep her sanity
for the sake of her young daughter Faith. Things only get more complicated
when Faith begins having visions of someone she calls her "guard".
This is something a little more than the classic "imaginary friend", however.
Faith's psychiatrist soon determines that Faith, who has had no religious
training, is actually talking to "God". Mariah, a secular Jew, and
Colin, a non-practicing Christian, have never even mentioned God to Faith,
and there is no Bible or religious material of any kind in their home.
When miracles begin to happen
around Faith and word leaks out, their quiet home in New Hampshire becomes
the headquarters for hordes of curiosity-seekers, believers, and de-bunkers.
Ian Fletcher, the foremost of the de-bunkers, is a professional atheist
with a television show to promote his beliefs, and he thinks Mariah and
Faith are the ticket to a Nielsen bonanza. Camping out in front of
their house in a Winnebago, he watches their every move to see when and
how the hoax can be exposed and the truth about Mariah as a manipulative
mother will be told. When Faith begins to exhibit stigmata, Catholic
and Jewish clergy alike converge on New Canaan, and Mariah is suspected
of Munchausen's by proxy, while her ex-husband sues for custody.
Jodi Picoult is a writer who
is very good at taking familar characters and placing them in extreme and
melodramatic situations while still rendering them believable. In
her novel The Pact, two teenage sweethearts enter into a suicide
pact from which one survives and is charged with murder. In this
novel so many complex subjects are addressed that it is like a laundry
list of life's issues: marriage, divorce, motherhood, religion, miracles,
the media, depression, insanity, childhoold and love. The amazing
things is that Picoult keeps all these balls are in the air simultaneously
and doesn't drop any of them.
Back
This novel takes place on the
eve of the full-scale U.S. involvement in Vietnam, when American policy
wonks and politicians arrogantly believed that not only were we going to
stop the oncoming threat of communism, we were going to "civilize" this
little underdeveloped country by building roads and schools, and importing
medicine and culture.
Sydney Parade, an upper-class
American, is seduced into becoming a part of the civilian side of the escalating
American operations in Vietnam, in part because he has a vague feeling
that he wants to be where history is being made at some time in his life.
When he announces his plan to go there for a year, his Czech-born wife,
who sees the American involvement as the cultural imperialism it really
represents, divorces him. Daniel Rostok, his new boss, pressures him to
use his family connections to get to know the French owner of a rubber
plantation and his American wife, who have widespread connections on both
sides of the conflict in Vietnam. While seemingly holdovers from
the now-absent French colonialists, this couple is tied to the beauty and
mystery of Vietnam, and do not want to become involved with the Americans.
When an American soldier, the nephew of a U.S. Senator is captured, however,
Sydney prevails upon this couple for help in finding the "big, dumb, blonde"
boy. In doing so, they become exposed and betrayed by the American
military, as is Sydney, who had promised them secrecy and safety.
He has become their "dangerous friend", just as America has become Vietnam's.
Sydney leaves Vietnam, looking over his shoulder at Rostok, just beginning
to consolidate his little bureacratic empire there.
Ward
Just, a former political reporter, now writes political novels with perfect
pitch. Each of the details of this novel implies layers of meaning.
Things are not stated overtly, but sketched in with expert brush strokes.
Bureaucratic jargon used to describe unspeakable realities, the way in
which the Americans resolutely refuse to recognize the Vietnamese as actual
people, and the worldy-wise resignation of the French as they watch the
Americans blunder their way into disaster, are all portrayed with economy
and precision, as is Sydney's gradual awakening to the ugly reality of
American military might and arrogance.
Reading this, I was reminded
of reading "The Ugly American" as a child. This is a very sad book,
because we all know the outcome. The debacle of American foreign
policy in that era, and the resulting prolonged nightmare of the Vietnam
War and its aftermath, is something any of us who were alive at that time
still live with.
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Nash Harvey,
the devastatingly handsome composer of a few commercial jingles that can
be recognized by all, used to be named Harvey Nash. Thirty years
ago, Harvey failed to show up at his own engagement party at a posh Boston
hotel, instead leaving for California with nary a word. The beautiful and
red-headed Adele Dobbin, his fiancee, and her two younger and also red-headed
sisters, Lois and Kate, somehow never married successfully after this devastating
event. Now, thirty years later, they share a Boston apartment in
an uneasy peace. Imagine their surprise, then, when Harvey, nee Nash,
shows up at their door to apologize, 'lo these many years.
But Nash
is one of those men we have all known in one way or another, a man usually
detested by men and loved, at least for a time, by many women, most of
them realizing their mistake even as they fall for him and start paying
his bills, later regretting ever having met him. So while Nash, handsome
and charming as ever, says he wants to make amends, his real agenda is
to find succor with other than his current California blonde and breast-implanted
live-in, Dina Dorsey-Harvey.
Elinor
Lipman does a masterful job of getting inside the head of the despicable
ladies' man here, always on the hunt, utterly lacking in principles.
Even as he proceeds toward meeting one woman, he is assessing the possibilities
of the one next to him.
This is
a thoroughly entertaining novel. It is easy to enjoy the exploits
and foibles of these characters, who are wholly recognizable and fun.
Harvey/Nash does get something of a comeuppance, but then we all know that
this type never really changes, don't we?
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The
Wonders of the Invisible World
by David Gates
Preston
Falls, (click for review) which was David Gates' last book, was
on my "must-read" list for 1998, and this book falls into the same category
for 1999. This book of short stories contains a number of voices,
from a gay male to a pregnant woman orr an elderly male, and in each case
Gates' ear is flawless. What all of the characters has in common,
however, is that each is virtually drenched in irony, and in most cases,
quiet desperation and painful self-awareness. In a strange way, I identify
with every one of his characters and with his sensibility. An adulterous
young wife fears for her sanity every time her yuppie husband wants her
to smoke pot, while her husband refuses to get rid of his dead mother's
wheelchair. A gay man who has moved back into his dead parents' home
in Albany inherits custody of his sister's son while she is in drug rehab,
and finds meaning in his life for the first time, much against his will.
Doug Willis, the protagonist of Preston Falls, shows up in a short
story, post-divorce, still totally self-destructive.
One of the common threads in Gates' fiction is
music. He is the music editor for Newsweek, and his characters
display what must be his own encyclopedic knowledge of all genres.
While these stories could not be classified as hopeful, or cheerful, by
any means, they are nonetheless masterful and absorbing. This guy,
and most of his characters, are too cool for school.
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Sonny
Liston was a Friend of Mine
by Thom Jones
I think of Thom Jones as a sort
of Dennis Rodman for the short story, and I mean that in the best possible
way. (That would be Rodman with the Bulls). While Mr. Jones is obviously
possessed of much more self-control, there is considerable shock value
to his stories, and even more underlying brilliance. His stories
are masculine, fast-paced, drug-fueled, and often hilarious, in the manner
of a Hunter S. Thompson. In this set of stories, many of the heroes
are boxers, wannabe boxers, or former wannabe boxers, and what heroines
there are are survivors of violent men or mental patients. They are
tough and crazy, often horrifying people, usually on drugs and/or medication,
nearly all highly intelligent while extremely dysfuctional. These
characters are capable of absorbing and inflicting incredible amounts of
pain, while quoting poetry or literature to narrate their own life
stories. They get themselves into unbelievable and impossible situations
and yet live to tell about them. The funniest story of the bunch,
however is about a midget. After being fired from his job, he fixates
on the mice in his apartment and begins to do his own brand of genetic
research on them, varying their diets, interbreeding them, and coming to
his own scientific conclusions. Truly hilarious.
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The
Things we do to Make it Home
by Beverly Gologorsky
This story collection contains in poignancy and
pain what the Thom Jones stories have in free-wheeling fun. This
extremely powerful set of interconnected stories revolves around the subject
of Vietnam Veterans, and more specifically, their wives and families, a
subject that I believe is not broached enough. It is a painful truth in
our society that more Vietnam Veterans have committed suicide than were
killed in the entire war. This book attempts to describe the state
of mind of such veterans, and the impact of this on the women and children
who love them. Six vets and their wives are introduced to us first
in 1973, when most of the men had recently returned from Vietnam, and then
in 1993, when the full damage of their war experiences is still being played
out. We see them through their own thoughts, and then in the reactions
of their wives to their behavior. It would be hard for anyone to
render more powerfully the tragedy of these mens' and womens' lives, but
what also comes through in these stories is the humanity of the men and
the love and loyalty of the women, who even when they have to turn away
from their husbands, still feel compassion for them.
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The
Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
by
Melissa Bank
On a much lighter note, we find this entertaining
collection of stories which is one of those rare books that is both well-written
and on the best-seller list. These stories are also interwoven, and
all but one of them deals with the love life of Jane Rosenal, taking her
from a precocious adolescent spying on her brother and his girlfriend,
to her later participation in a May-December relationship with a much older
write and publisher. Jane is highly entertaining and observant, her
voice wry and humorous, but she does not sell short the serious issues
of her life. She realistically portrays what it is like to live with
an alcoholic, and then realize it is impossible to live with an alcoholic.
She has problems with her boss, and suffers greatly the loss of her father.
She fails. She changes jobs. She learns. She doesn't learn.
We enjoy.
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Interpreter
of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri
This collection of stories deals
with East Indians -- immigrants, children of immigrants, and those still
living in India. A small Indian girl in America, the child of college
professors, watches her parents with another professor. The professor,
a Pakistani man whose wife and four daughters are living in Pakistan, comes
for dinner every night. Then the war between India and Pakistan breaks
out. They follow the coverage on television and radio, waiting for
word of the man's wife and children. Finally the war is over, but
the girl is shocked when one day her father admonishes her to remember
that while the other man visits their house here in America, he is not
Indian like they are, he is Pakistani. An Indian college student
travels to India for his arranged marriage and then paves the way for his
wife to join him in Boston. He is embarrassed by her old-fashioned
behavior, and watches her struggle to cope, finding himself unable to help
her. The character in the title story is an Indian tour guide who
takes tourists to visit ancient sites and temples. He has another
job working for a clinic, at which he interprets the maladies of the sick
for an English-speaking doctor. In this story he takes a dysfuctional
family of Indians visiting from America on a long tour, marveling at the
emptiness of their relationships and the brazen sexuality of the wife,
finding himself first attracted and ultimately repelled by her and her
life. Each of these stories is beautifully written, portraying the
clash of cultures, the problems of assimilation, and the difficulty of
change within this particular cultural group. The lessons and the
humanity, however, are universal.
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For
Relief of Unbearable Urges
by Nathan Englander
Hailed as a prodigious new talent,
Nathan Englander has written a collection of stories that illuminates almost
every area of Jewish life, from victims of the Holocaust and rabbis under
Stalin, to Orthodox wigmakers in contemporary New York City and residents
of present-day Jerusalem. He is both satirical and sympathetic toward
his characters, and displays an understanding of the Jewish faith,
life, and traditions that is truly encyclopedic. I for one find the
Orthodox and Hasidic Jews fascinating anyway, but even for one whois not
interested in this subject, the stories are entertaining and imaginative
enough on their own.
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The
Prayer of the Bone
by Paul Bryers
This
novel combines Abenaki Indian folklore, New England history, archaeology,
murder, and a little romance into an extremely absorbing mystery.
Jessica and Madeleine Ross, brought up first in Kashmir and the Himalayas,
and then sent out to boarding schools in England, have taken very different
paths in life. Maddie, the younger, rebelled from the very beginning,
being thrown out of schools, becoming a single mother, and joining unpopular
radical causes. But now she is in Northern Maine, working on an archaeological
dig and searching for their Abenaki mother's roots.
Jessica, the "normal" sister is studying the origins of witchcraft and
the occult at Oxford when she gets the terrible news that Maddie has been
murdered by what seems to be a bear. When she goes to Maine to find
Maddie's young daughter Freya, she walks into a web of Indian superstition,
scholarly lies, and a centuries-old mystery about an early colonial massacre.
The local population, made up of residents of the Indian reservation, archaeologists,
forest rangers, old-timers and the summer rich, is fraught with undercurrents
and old grudges. Freya has been taken into thrall by her Abenaki
great-aunt, and appears to be acting out and drawing some kinds Indian
witchcraft rituals and totems. Michael Calhuon, the detective on the case,
is a local boy who has just returned to the area after a bad spell in Boston.
He doesn't believe that the murderer is a bear, even though the Indians
believe the bear has been conjured to wreak havoc and revenge on their
oppressors. His suspicions are proven when the head archaeologist
also turns up dead.
Bryers spins
a good yarn here, using fully-developed characters, something not always
found in mysteries. He also includes lots of fascinating historical
information about the Abenaki, the early French and English settlers in
the area, Northern Maine climate and fishing, and occult practices.
If some of the plot's many threads seem a little loose at the end, we are
nonetheless happy to have read about them.
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Desire
Lines
by Christina Baker Kline
"Desire lines" are the trails that those who go on treks in the wilderness
leave behind them to find their way home, and it is a fitting title for
this novel. Kathryn Campbell's best friend Jennifer disappeared without
a trace after walking away from a party celebrating their high school graduation
in Bangor, Maine. Since that time, Kathryn has drifted through life,
never quite completing anything, letting herself fall into a marriage she
didn't necessarily want, avoiding real commitment to education or her writing
career. Now her marriage is over and she is returning to Bangor on
the even of her ten-year reunion. Depressed, disconnected, and determined
to avoid the reunion and everything connected with it, Kathryn vegetates
for days before her mother decides to confront her. Having been left
by Kathryn's father for his secretary years before, her mother has found
her "second wind" in life, working successfully in real estate and dating,
and she refuses to let her daughter hide. She points out to Kathryn
that until she deals with the issue of losing Jennifer, her closest friend,
she will never succeed at anything.
Soon another of her old high school chums, Jack Ledbetter, now an editor
at the Bangor newspaper, asks her to write an article revisiting Jennifer's
strange disappearance before the reunion, giving it another perspective.
Kathryn resists, but can't seem to escape her thoughts about Jennifer,
their friendship, and the profound devastation that not knowing what happened
has wrought on her life. As she starts investigating, more and more
disturbing evidence comes to light, and she realizes that there was much
about Jennifer that she did not know. She is compelled to follow
the trail to its shocking end.
This is another good mystery, because it is actually a novel about character.
The character is the mystery here, and Kathryn finds herself by learning
about the person that she lost on that strange night.
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Midnight
Champagne
by
A. Manette Ansay
The kitschy Hideaway Lodge, on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan,
is a popular spot for local weddings. On the eve of a blizzard, April
Liesgang and Caleb Shannon have traveled to this cozy spot from Minneapolis
to get married, partially to appease April's parents, who want their daughter
to have a proper ceremony. Against this backdrop we meet all the
vivid and eccentric members of April's family and a couple of Caleb's,
along with the lodge's owner and a few other guests.
Everyone has brought their problems with them to this wedding, including
April's father Elmer who is furious that she is getting married outside
of the church and has lived in adultery before marriage. April's
mother Mary Fran doesn't mind this so much because she is totally
preoccupied with the fact that she and Elmer haven't had sex in over three
years. Add to that Mary Fran's sister-in-law Libbie who has been
deserted by her husband for a pregnant 24-year old, and finds that they
have also been invited to the wedding. Elmer's mother, a Viking titan
of a woman, is distressed because she hasn't found her lucky penny yet
on this, April's wedding day, and she's not sure who is going to die.
Seems she finds a lucky penny every day, and on the days she doesn't someone
dies. And, if things aren't complicated enough, April's high school
and college boyfriend Barney Lohr shows up, just before the blizzard causes
the power to go out.
With such quirky and eccentric characters, this novel could be in danger
of becoming cartoonish, but to the writer's credit, it doesn't. Each
of the characters has an experience that is in some way transforming or
enriching. Cultural barriers are crossed, old wounds are opened and
closed without tragedy, and the subject of marriage is explored from a
variety of interesting angles.
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Hitler's Niece
My Russian
Cinnamon Gardens
The Honey Thief
The Healer
HEADLONG
by Michael Frayne
This remarkably
entertaining book creates comedy from the unlikely subjects of philosophy
and art iconography and iconology, while at the same time informing us
about exactly what these terms mean. Martin Clay, a philosopher,
and his wife Kate, an art historian, are looking forward to a three-month
sabbatical at their small summer cottage in the English countryside with
their newborn daughter Tilda. Martin and Kate are both hopeful that
Martin's roving attention span will settle down and focus on the book he
is supposed to be finishing.
As soon
as they arrive, however, they are ambushed by their very tweedy and countrified
neighbor Tony Churt, the owner of Upwood, the large, rapidly degenerating
estate next to their tiny property. Tony wants them to come to dinner
at Upwood, and soon they realize that he wants their advice about selling
off the estate's remaining valuable artworks. Selling these paintings will
hopefully allow him to keep the estate while trying to devise a way to
make money from it. Tony is also possessed of a nubile young wife, Laura,
and as this hilarious plot unfolds, she and the artworks both become instrumental
in Martin's undoing.
You see,
at the first bizarre dinner party, Martin believes that Tony has shown
him a painting of inestimable value, and that Tony is too thick to realize
what he has. Thus begins Martin's obsessive search to validate and
obtain what he thinks he has discovered, i.e., a lost Breugel, one of a
series that has been called the Four Seasons, but which Martin now seeks
to prove is a series consisting of more paintings, this being one of the
lost. While scheming to both authenticate and purchase the painting
for himself, Martin also tries to keep his enterprise secret, arousing
his wife's suspicion and causing the lovely Laura to believe he is pursuing
her.
Throughout
this process, Martin's obsession becomes our entertainment. We move
with him through a fascinating whirlwind of research, history, art scholarship,
and philosophical hairsplitting. I found this novel nothing less
than thrilling.
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HITLER'S
NIECE
By Ron Hansen
The
1931 suicide of Hitler's 23-year old niece while she lived in his home
has long been part of Hitler lore and speculation, but here Ron Hansen
has gone deeper into her history, producing this novel about their long
and strange relationship. Angelika Raubal, known as Geli, was the
daughter of Hitler's half-sister Angela, and from the time of her adolescence,
Hitler was fascinated by her and contrived to keep her by his side.
After her death, he always referred to her as the only woman he ever truly
loved.
The book
begins in 1908, with a young Hitler and friend coming to Angela's home
in Austria for Geli's christening. The strange youth that Hitler
was, full of self-importance and pontification, refusing to work for a
living,classifying himself as an artist, convinced of his superiority,
foreshadows the megalomaniac who still casts a shadow over the world and
its history. Ron Hansen does a remarkable job here, both in bringing
Hitler's personality and rise to power to life, and in revealing the historical
conditions that allowed the Nazi party to thrive. We meet Hitler's
closest associates, including Hess, Goerring, and all the rest, and see
how their loyalty developed even as they protected his most bizarre behavior.
But the
most poignant part of the novel is his portrayal of Geli's change over
the years, from an innocent, starstruck young niece, to a jaded and spoiled
companion, and finally an abused and desperate captive. Even her
own mother and brother refuse to believe that Hitler is less than perfect,
and insist that she must stay where she is.
This novel,
while disturbing, goes a long way in bringing to life Hitler's strange
and frightening relationships with women, his obsessions, and his daily
life.
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MY
RUSSIAN
by Dierdre McNamer
Francesca
Wood is doing something very strange. Traveling in disguise and under
an assumed name, she has returned from her 'vacation' in Greece and registered
in a motel near her own home in Northern California. Wearing bad
wigs, glasses, and unfashionable clothes, she begins to surreptitiously
watch her own life. As she watches, we find out what has happened
in the life of her family to make her do such a thing.
Months
before, Francesca's husband Ren was the victim of a crippling shooting
in their home. Because the alarm system had been working, the perpetrator
had to be someone who knew the alarm codes. Police have been unable
to determine who could have done this, and suspicion has fallen on a young
former friend of their son Mack, a boy who had been almost a foster child
to Francesca and Ren.
What really
led up to this shooting, and Francesca's planned disappearance, is a set
of circumstances and events far darker and more complex. All of this
is slowly revealed in Francesca's thoughts and words as she ponders her
home and family from afar. We learn of her early relationship and
marriage to Ren, the birth and life of their quirky son Mack, Ren's abandonment
of his leftist principles to work for a shark-like lawyer he had always
despised, and finally, Francesca's brief affair with her Russian gardener,
a survivor of Chernobyl. Francesca's desire to become a stranger has as
its source the fact that she already felt like a stranger in her own life.
Dierdre
McNamer has a writing style that is provocative, layered, and extremely
insightful, and Francesca reveals truths that are ultimately shocking,
coming from a depth that prompts self-examination in the reader.
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This interesting novel is set
in 1920's Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and traces the activities of an upper-caste
Ceylonese family in a time when the struggle for independence from Britain
was just beginning. The extreme complexity of this society at that
time is illustrated and brought to life through Selvadurai's main characters
and their predicaments in a very effective way. Before this book
I had only read Michael Ondaatje's family memoir, Running in the Family,
about Sri Lanka, and I was fascinated by all the description and information
contained in this new novel.
Annalukshmi is the oldest daughter
of one branch of the family, attending a Christian girls' academy and hoping
to become a teacher. Her father and mother are estranged from each
other because her father has re-embraced the Hindu religion and practices
of his family, but the idea of Annalukshmi becoming a teacher is anathema
to all. Women working, or even desiring the right to vote, is considered
disgraceful in their society. It is decided that Annalukshmi should
marry immediately, as her father is planning on marrying her to her Hindu
cousin. Besides, if she doesn't marry she will ruin the prospects
for her two younger sisters.
In another branch of the family,
Annalukshmi's uncle Balendran is the son of the local Mulidyar, who governs
the Ceylonese and Tamil people for the British. Balendran, educated
in England, believes in equality and democracy, but feels bound to obey
his father, because his older brother has been disowned for marrying a
lower caste servant, and because his father discovered his own homosexual
proclivities when he was at Oxford. Since that discovery, Balendran,
now married with a son, has dutifully run his father's estates with no
protest.
This peaceful flow is disrupted
by a number of events, both historical and personal. First, Balendran's
former lover from Oxford arrives from England to observe the hearings over
Ceylonese independence. To complicate matters, the Mulyidar wants
Balendran to use his influence over the Englishman to promote his own political
positions. Balendran is mortified, and when he sees his old friend,
things do not progress as planned. Next, Balendran receives word
that his older brother in Bombay is about to die. Forbidden to speak
to his brother, Balendran must nonetheless disobey and go and see him.
What transpires in the lives of Balendran and his family, and Annalukshmi
and hers, works both as a character-driven novel, and as a mirror of historical
events. This is an intriguing look at something we seldom have the
opportunity to see.
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THE
HONEY THIEF
by Elizabeth
Graver
Eleven-year
old Eva Baruch and her mother Miriam have moved to the country because
of Eva's shoplifting problem. Eva's father Francis died when she
was six years old, and Eva has always believed that he died of heart attack.
The truth is that Francis was schizophrenic and died of a drug overdose,
but Miriam has been unable tell Eva about this. Miriam did not know
about Francis's condition until after Eva was born, and still harbors bitter
and painful memories about the way her life has unfolded. Now that
Eva is exhibiting disturbing behaviors of her own, Miriam is terrified
that her problems could be evidence of the same disorder.
Eva starts her first summer
in the country by stealing three jars of honey from a local beekeeping
farm. Burl, the beekeeper, realizes that she is the thief, but never
mentions it, as he allows this strange little girl to visit his farm every
day. Through their developing friendship, we learn about Burl's history
and about the importance of the bees themselves. Both the reader
and Eva, get an education about this important topic as they each play
out their own emotional dramas.
Eva and Miriam do not reach
a happy ending in this story, nor does Burl. Loneliness, isolation,
and the need for love exist in each of them, and they make progress towards
wholeness. The important thing is that they all grow and change,
and we enjoy reading about it.
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THE
HEALER
by Greg
Hollingshead
Tim Wakelin, a magazine writer,
heads to the town of Grant in the Canadian Shield to interview Caroline
Troyer, rumored to be a healer. When he arrives in her hometown,
however, the scene is far more complex and disturbing than he could have
ever imagined. Caroline has given up healing, he hears, and everyone
is suspicious of anyone even resembling a reporter. Tim poses as
a potential buyer of real estate, since her father, Ross Troyer, sells
local land and homes. When he first meets Caroline, she agrees to
take him on a tour of available homes in the area.
Tim has some baggage of his
own. He really is entertaining thoughts of buying land in the wilderness,
to try and get away from the noise in his head he associates with the city
and his wife's suicide. He is plagued with nightmares and tormenting
memories. When he meets Caroline, he is utterly confused by her,
and afraid to ask her any questions. A girl with this much gravity
and steadiness couldn't be a fake, could she? Caroline is a most unlikely
candidate for this. A high school dropout with no discernible ambitions,
the only thing clear about her is that there has been severe abuse
in the Troyer home. Her mother thinks that by returning to healing,
Caroline could finally make something out of her worthless life.
What is most interesting about
this strange novel is the glimpses we have into Caroline's inner life.
Greg Hollingshead has an arresting way of describing how such a psychic
phenomenon could possess someone, and the physical experiences that might
be attached to it. Caroline's mind and body go through incredible
changes as she has these visions, if that's what they are, and Tim is scared.
As her father nearly murders her mother and then comes after Caroline,
Tim and Caroline find themselves linked in a way that neither would have
wanted.
This is a beautiful, strange,
and esoteric look at some of the unpredictable thoughts and behaviors that
can befall the most ordinary of beings.
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Before You Sleep
The Pleasing Hour
In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner
My Father, Dancing
The Dangerous Husband
THE
SUN KING,
by David Ignatius
This novel, about journalism
and politics in Washington, D. C., or more specifically, about the politics
of journalism in Washington, D. C., is very knowing about its subject.
This is because the author David Ignatius is a creature of this milieu
himself. A columnist, author and resident of Washington, he strikes
exactly the right note, balancing humor, satire, and some actual human
emotion in his characters.
David Cantor, Harvard man and
editor of a small-time society "puff" magazine in Washington, needs a cover
story. One of his "sources" a local real estate agent who feels you
can tell the political and financial currents by who is buying and selling
homes, tells him about a new man in town, Sandy Galvin, who has purchased
two
mansions, one in Georgetown and one in Virginia. David requests an
interview, and ends up getting much more than he bargained for when the
billionaire enlists him in a scheme to take over the Washington Sun
and Tribune, an old, respected, and family-owned newspaper. David
agrees, mostly because he is so enthralled with Galvin, his charisma, his
confidence, his handsome ease, and the mysterious way he seems to have
made his money, but also because his own paper is on its last legs and
he's looking for the main chance. David agrees to become Sandy's
"assistant", playing whatever part he is asked, while Sandy seems
rolls easily into ownership of the paper he seeks and into the cream of
Washington's society.
What shocks David however, is
that Galvin seems to have had a romantic relationship with Candace Ridgway,
the Sun's foreign affairs editor, a beautiful ice queen journalist who
is the only woman for whom David has harbored secret romantic feelings
of his own. Soon it appears that although Sandy Galvin takes to the
business of journalism like a duck to water, he is intending to take the
paper in a surprisingly unjournalistic direction, creating something of
a multi-media entertainment company. Candace, the foreign affairs
editor, and David, the new Life Styles editor, along with the paper's old
guard, are all shocked and a battle ensues.
The story's end, and the truth
behind the motivations and behavior of both Sandy and Candace, are not
what we or David expects, but the book remains nonetheless contemporary,
compelling, and entertaining.
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BEFORE
YOU SLEEP
by
Linn Ullmann
What if Ingmar Bergman and Liv
Ullmann had a daughter? And what if this daughter wrote a novel?
What would its sensibility be, and how would she meld her own vision into
the incredible artistic, genetic pool that she must surely have inherited?
I was very excited to read this book, and I was by no means disappointed.
This novel, ostensibly about
three generations of Norwegian women, is also a study in imagination.
Karin, the novel's primary narrator, is the plain younger sister of the
beautiful, disturbed Julie, and daughter of the exquisite, unstable Anni,
a woman whom no man can resist, except of course Julie and Karin's father
who leaves them. The novel begins as Karin is caring for Julie's
young son Sander, trying to stay up long enough to get a call from his
mother and father in Italy, where they have traveled to try and save their
marriage. Karin's musings begin on Julie's wedding day, but move
freely in time and eventually include her grandmother June's marriage to
Rikard in America, Rikard's mysterious death, and June's return to Norway
with Anni and her sister Else.
Interspersed with this we are
treated to numerous stories about Karin's avid sexual adventuring and her
ideas about truth and lies. We never know if her version of the incident
being related is true, but in all cases she makes and justifies her point.
Whether it's the story of a beloved boyfriend with magic cowboy boots who
turns into a fish when she finally makes him take them off, or her seduction
of a handsome young man by singing Gershwin tunes across a crowded restaurant,
somehow we believe her because Ullmann makes her spirit so apparent.
We know what she is really telling us.
Karin, termed a "survivor" by
her father, is the observer of all of these women. Her suicidal sister,
her erratic mother Anni, and her grandmother's sister Selma (chain-smoking
and spewing hatred toward all, since her sister June took Rikard away from
her) -- all find their memories retained and cherished in Karin's narrative
and imagination. This book employs magical realism in the best possible
way, because it makes the "real" more obvious. Karin has retained the child's
imagination, translating it through an adult's perspective.
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THE
PLEASING HOUR
by Lily King
This beautiful first novel perfectly
combines so many different elements that it impossible to summarize or
categorize.
At the age of 19, Rosie arrives
in Paris to become a "fille" of a Parisian family, one of the thousands
of young girls who come to work for a year in a French family, cooking,
taking care of children, and studying the language. Rosie's trip
is different, however, because she has just given up her own newborn baby
to her childless sister, and coming to Paris instead of staying in America
and beginning college is her attempt to recover from her profound loss.
It seems she actually intended to have the baby for her sister,
who had been like a mother to her since the death of their own mother,
but signing the adoption papers was far more devastating than she had expected.
So Rosie, lumpish, depressed, and nervous about her French, arrives at
the houseboat which is the home of Nicole, her husband Marc, and their
three beautiful children.
Nicole is beautiful, thin, chic,
and scornful in the best Parisienne fashion. Anyone who has ever been on
the receiving end of this cultivated (and not always justified) French
scorn for Americans ( I had a Parisienne mother-in-law once upon a time)
will understand Lily's mortification as she is scolded, corrected, and
eventually accepted by Nicole, albeit grudgingly. Marc, the physician
husband, is far easier on Lily, and as the year progresses, their bond
grows ever and dangerously closer. When Lily hears about the need
for someone to go to Provencal to care for Nicole's aging relative, she
impulsively volunteers in order to escape her feelings for Marc, but when
she arrives in Provencal she makes yet another discovery. The polished
Nicole, who never spoke of family or relatives, has come from extremely
humble beginnings, and her history is far more complext than her polished
exterior would indicate. In the end, surprisingly, it is Lily and
Nicole who develop the strongest bond.
I loved this book, for its beautiful
descriptions of contemporary French life and its language and food, but
more than anything I loved these characters.
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IN
PURSUIT OF THE PROPER SINNER
by Elizabeth George
While this latest mystery by
Elizabeth George may not provide the same sublime reading experience of
most of her previous novels, this book is still far and away superior to
most mysteries out there today. Again we are glad to greet Lord Thomas
Lynley of Scotland Yard, and his erstwhile partner, the acerbic and decidedly
working class Barbara Havers. At the story's beginning Havers and
Lynley are no longer partnered because she is in hot water for taking the
last investigation (the one in Deception on His Mind) into her own
hands. Not only has she been demoted, Lynley is very angry at her
and not taking her part, something which renders Havers almost inconsolable.
His stubborn refusal to support Havers in this matter has even alienated
his new bride, Lady Helen Lynley, because his allegiance to procedure has
blinded him to what she sees as necessary loyalty.
When two bodies are found on
bleak Calder Moor, one of whom is the daughter of Andrew Maiden, Lynley's
former and esteemed associate at Scotland Yard, Mr. Maiden requests that
Lynley be the investigator on the case. Lynley refuses to let Havers
work with him on the case, and she is relegated to fact-finding on the
computer in London.
As usual, Ms. George brings
contemporary social issues and pathologies into the plot. As the
investigation unfolds, it seems that Mr. Maiden's beautiful daughter had
not exactly been a paragon of virtue, and had indeed lived an extremely
unsavory life in England, while ostensibly studying law. Layers upon
layers are uncovered about her life, as well as that of the young punk-like
artist killed at the same time, mostly by Havers in London. Lynley, out
of loyalty and respect to Andrew Maiden's Scotland Yard history, hesitates
to accept or even relay this information to the Maidens.
Ultimately, of course, truth
and justice prevail, and we have either enjoyed or become exasperated by
the many myriad plots and characters in this weighty tome. I enjoy
Elizabeth George's novelistic mysteries because of the depth of character
she provides. Others may prefer the plop-plop-fizz-fizz of Sue Grafton's
throwaways. To each his own.
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My
Father, Dancing
by Bliss
Broyard
Bliss Broyard, like Linn Ullmann
(see review of Before You
Sleep ) is also the daughter of the famous. Her father, Anton
Broyard, was an esteemed critic, and, as was discovered after his death,
the product of an African-American heritage. Recently I read that
Bliss Broyard had signed a deal to write about the fact that she was raised
in a Wasp-y environment without knowing this about her father. In
light of this, this collection of short stories, almost all of which focus
on the relationships between fathers and daughters, becomes even more interesting.
Whether intimate or dysfunctional,
each story, in its small or large events, subtlely reveals just how important
the father-daughter bond is, and how its effects radiate out and through
the rest of the daughter's life. If it is true that our father is
our first man, each of these women seems to reflect upon the importance
of understanding how this bond works.
In one story a woman named Lucy
tries to refurbish and restore the cabin on an isolated lake where her
family spent its summers before her father left them to marry the sophisticated
Victoria. Now, years later, Lucy has invited her father and Victoria
to come for a weekend with her and her boyfriend Sam, hoping to re-capture
something by showing him just how hard she has tried to preserve the past.
Victoria's drunkenness, and her father's reserve, keep her hopes from being
fulfilled, but she does receive his acknowledgement before he departs,
and receives consolation from the love that Sam feels for her.
Bliss Broyard has the gift of
conveying much with spare, carefully chosen words and dialogue. Most
of all, the poignancy and mystery of the father-daughter, and later the
male-female, relationship are sharply outlined in each situation.
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THE
DANGEROUS HUSBAND
by Jane Shapiro
This entertaining novel details
what would happen if you finally found the seemingly perfect mate and found
that even the perfect one was not going to work. The unnamed heroine
of this story is a forty-ish photographer, broke and disillusioned with
love, until she meets a tall, handsome, sexy, sociologist at a Thanksgiving
dinner for strays. Soon, soaked in sex and romantic notions, they
are on their way to marriage, even as mildly alarming things seem to happen
around her beautiful new love, Dennis. Dennis is accident-prone.
At first it is just the constant spilling of coffee and wine, then it is
the unexplained cuts and bruises.
Dennis loses his job, but that's
okay because he has money. They move in together, and soon the accidents
extend to her. Her arm is accidently broken, her neck is wrenched,
a plate glass table breaks under them. That's okay because he is
loving, repentant, generous. She gets scared and runs away to think,
then comes back. When Dennis lets Icarus the cat out of the house
and then promptly runs him over, she is shocked to learn from the vet that
Dennis has had three former wives and many, many dead pets.
She has no choice. She
must kill him. This is first and foremost
a comic novel, but what is most satisfying is the insight into the follies
of romantic love that is displayed by the author. Both insightful
and tender, Shapiro regards each of her characters with sympathy and humor,
even as their holding on to love spirals out of control.
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Plainsong
A Gesture Life
Personal Injuries
The Desperate Season
A Boy in Winter
By the Shore
Who's Irish?
Plainsong
by
Kent Haruf
This
beautiful novel is about the existence of both profound good and profound
evil in everyday life. Kent Haruf creates the community of Holt,
Colorado, by giving us alternate glimpses into the lives of a few of its
residents over a period of a year. Ike and Bobby Guthrie are the
young sons of Tom and Ella Guthrie, who are separating. We see their
mother, inert and depressed as they see her, as well as the other events
that befall them as they conduct their paper routes, accompany their father
to a local cattle ranch, and witness sexual perversion among local teenagers.
Victoria
Roubidoux, a young pregnant girl, has been shut out of her home by her
mother. Maggie Jones, one of the teachers at the school where Tom
Guthrie also teaches, approaches Raymond and Harold McPheron, the elderly
cattle ranchers, about taking Victoria into their home. These men
have lived alone since their parents were killed when they were Victoria's
age, but while they hesitate, they see clearly what it is that they are
going to do. Their simple care of her is the novel's most touching
element.
Kent
Haruf's spare prose brings all these characters into vivid relief.
The word "plainsong" is defined as the "unisonous vocal music used in the
Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody
or air." The title is perfect for this deeply moving novel.
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A
Gesture Life
by Chang-Rae Lee
The subject of the
Korean "comfort women", utilized to fulfill the sexual needs and boost
the "morale" of the Japanese army during World War II, has been explored
in a few novels, most notably "Comfort Woman" by Nora Okja Keller, and
each one speaks volumes about the devastating brutality of the Japanese
army and the permanent damage done to lives for decades. This book deals
with the same issues, but with its subtle prose and structure, it begins
in a deceptively simple and graceful way. Franklin Hata, called "Doc"
by his neighbors, is an outstanding, upstanding citizen of Bedley
Run, and exclusive Long Island suburb. A Japanese of Korean birth,
he has lived in the community since the early 1950's running a business,
cultivating friendly relationships with the other townspeople, and raising
his adopted daughter, a Korean orphan named Sunny. But his perfectly
ordered life in his perfectly ordered house proves to be nothing more than
an elaborate veneer over the chaos of his past memories.
As Doc nears the end of his
life, his solitude and his well-tailored life no longer seems to fit, and
he begins to reflect on his solitude. We learn that despite his careful
efforts as a father, Sunny has turned out badly, and indeed, despises him.
His one relationship, with a pretty widowed neighbor, has simply slipped
away. He has now sold his business and is watching it, and its young
owners, fail. One day, burning some old papers and photos, he accidentally
sets his house on fire, and this event proves to be the catalyst for him
to finally face his past and move on. It seems that he was the medical
officer in charge of maintaining the health of the comfort women brought
into his regiment at the end of the war, and doing so, he witnessed unspeakable
tragedies and atrocities. At one point, seeking to protect one of
the young women in defiance of his superiors, he believed he was in love
with her. She saw things much more clearly than he did, however,
and, knowing that he could not save her, begged him to kill her instead.
He could not bring himself to do it, and the end of the war found him defeated
in every way. Coming to America and constructing the life of the
kindly "Doc" Hata was his attempt to leave it all behind, and his adoption
of Sunny was his attempt to make amends to the girl he couldn't save.
But as his daughter tells him, his is only a "gesture life", there is nothing
real beneath it.
This is a very sad novel, and
I found it, like other Japanese and Korean fiction, to be devastating in
the gradual way the horrible truths of its characters' lives are revealed.
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Personal
Injuries
by Scott
Turow
After
wading through the last two of Scott Turow's books, I was pleasantly surprised
at how good this one was. While there is still a long set-up and
lots of legalese, the characters Turow has created in this story are truly
alive, believable, and likable.
Robbie Feaver, a
successful PI attorney in Kindle County, the fictional setting of each
of Turow's novels, has been busted for bribing judges. Stan Sennett,
the frighteningly ambitious U.S. attorney, wants him to begin wearing a
wire, not only to nail the judges, but to get at Brendan Tuohey, former
cop and Appellate judge who gets a part of everyone's cut. Robbie
is also required to hire a new female paralegal, Evon Miller, an undercover
agent who must accompany him everywhere. Because he is a notorious
philanderer, they are also meant to appear to have an affair. Robbie
maintains that his partner, the nephew of Tuohey and his friend since childhood,
is innocent, and he also wants to avoid telling his wife Lainey, who is
dying from ALS.
Under all the layers of
lawyering and lies, however, Robbie is actually an extremely sympathetic
character of great depth and heart, who loves many and who takes care of
his friends. We find ourselves and the narrator, his attorney, feeling
more empathy with Robbie than with the cutthroat prosecutor. Even
the undercover agent, forced to spend all her waking hours with Robbie,
becomes conflicted as the case progresses.
It is because of this complexity
that this novel is engrossing from start to finish. Genuinely satisfying.
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The
Desperate Season
by Michael
Blaine
Maurice Coleman, a young schizophrenic,
is waiting for his father Nathan to pick him up for the weekend from the
hospital. Unfortunately, his disease has something else planned.
What takes place is told alternately from the point of view of Maurice
himself, his mother Moira, his father Nathan, and his sister Crissie, along
with Vince Vitale, a longtime lover of Moira, and Julia, Moira's best friend
and Nathan's mistress. It would seem that with the level of dysfunction
evident in this group, Maurice might be a candidate for the type of criminal
activity he undertakes, even without a chemical imbalance. As it
happens, his planned failure to take his medications causes him to run
amok.
Maurice takes off from the hospital
grounds alone and plunges into his familial morass after dumping all of
his pills into the river and buying an illegal gun with the money his well-meaning
father always leaves in his bank account. He entices Moira, who seems
to be the focus of everyone's angst in this book, up to the family's hunting
camp. It seems that the beautiful Moira is someone who might have
been called a "free spirit" in the Sixties, but who could never by any
stretch of the imagination be called a "soccer mom" in the Nineties.
She has blithely slept her way through any number of affairs, and has championed
well-meaning political causes while neglecting her children and estranged
husband Nathan. We are made aware of the anger and mixed emotions
each character has toward Moira in their separate accounts, but it is Maurice
who feels that it is his mission to actually punish her. His madness
is terrifying, and the author makes the mounting dread of all of the characters,
and the ultimate tragedy, palpable.
Intermixed with
the extreme events of this story is the complex set of emotions any parent
or family member of the mentally ill is forced to confront: guilt,
fear, anger, love, hope, denial. All are present here.
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A
Boy in Winter
by Maxine
Chernoff
After nine years in a small
apartment, Nancy Horvath and her son Danny buy a fixer-upper and move into
a new neighborhood. On their first day there, Eddie Nova, the boy
next door, climbs in Danny's window and into their lives, bringing his
father Frank. Eddie is a difficult child, hyperactive and often mean,
but he becomes a fact of Danny's everyday life nonetheless. Frank
Nova is a handsome paramedic in a bad marriage, and soon he and Nancy are
friends and more, stealing time together as they ostensibly chaperone the
boys. When Eddie is killed in a terrible accident that seems to be
Danny's fault, their world falls apart.
The story is told alternately
from the perspectives of Nancy, Frank, and Danny, but it is the quiet voice
of Danny that is the most moving. He sees and knows so much more
than the adults around him think he does, and yet his struggle to live
on while accepting responsibility for what has happened is portrayed in
an often agonizing way.
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By
the Shore
by
Galaxy Craze
This book is written like a
child's diary. The voice is that of May, the 12-year old daughter
of Lucy, and sister of her 4-year old brother Eden. Two years ago
Lucy left London and took Eden and May to the country, buying an old girls'
school and attempting to turn it into a hotel. This is apparently
intended to be an antidote to Lucy's formerly torrid lifestyle that produced
her two children, one by the playboy rake who is May's father, and the
other by the stoned-out rock'n'roll star Paul.
Lucy still has not mastered
stable familyhood, however, and May is lonely and usually left to fend
for herself. When the writer Rufus takes up residence in their little
hotel, things begin to change. Lucy and Rufus begin to like each
other, and May describes these developments exactly as any child would.
She is alternately fascinated, angry, ashamed, and happy. Eden is
much less conflicted, but soon May finds herself being quizzed and manipulated
by Patricia, Rufus's girlfriend who constantly calls and visits to check
up on the "progress" he is making on his book. Complicating the mix
is the arrival for Christmas of May's father, something she had long hoped
for. When it becomes clear that he has only come to ask Lucy for
money, May is saddened to realize that she actually wants her father to
go away.
This is a charming book.
Galaxy Craze ( I wonder what hippie parents gave her that name) recalls
the awkward pre-adolescent stage of life perfectly.
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Who's
Irish?
by Gish
Jen
This collection of stories by
the author of "Mona in the Promised Land" centers around the lives of Chinese
and Chinese-American women. In one, an elderly Chinese woman lives
with her daughter and her Irish-American husband and their little daughter
Sophie. According to her grandmother, Sophie is not being disciplined
properly, so she takes matters into her own hands, appalling her modern
daughter Natalie. The conflict escalates to such a point that the
old woman has no place to live, and in the strangest of circumstances,
she is taken in by the Irish mother of her son-in-law. Other stories
deal with the same type of cross-cultural issues and efforts to assimilate,
always in a way that is deep, entertaining, and poignant.
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Evensong, by Gail Godwin
The Springs of Affection,
by Maeve Brennan
Sister of My Heart, by
Chitra Divakaruni
Falling Slowly,
by Anita Brookner
Evensong
by Gail Godwin
In this deeply spiritual book, Gail Godwin examines life at the end of
the Millennium by revisiting Margaret Bonner, the main character of her
earlier work, Father Melancholy's Daughter. In that book,
and in her last book, The Good Husband, Godwin displays an encyclopedic
knowledge and interest in religious faith and in the rituals and history
of the Episcopalian church. Margaret has followed her father into
the priesthood of the Episcopal church, and is living with her husband
Adrian, also a priest, in High Balsam, a small town in the Smoky Mountains.
The action
of the book takes place in the last two months of 1999, during which a
number of events come together to bring about a huge change in Margaret's
life. A fundamentalist Christian march is being planned for "Jesus's
Birthday", and Margaret is under pressure to participate. In her
quiet elucidation of why she opposes such ostentatious practices, Margaret
voices definitions and interpretations of faith and our relationship with
God that are extremely profound. Hers is a faith with a rich cultural
and intellectual texture, and while these concepts and musings seem to
be the spiritual core of the book, it is the other events that occur that
move the plot. Between a problem teenager from the school at which
Adrian is subbing as headmaster, and the arrival on her doorstep of a phony
80-year old monk, and Adrian's ongoing and deepening depression, Margaret
reflects on all the events of her life and what these things could possibly
portend for the future. Nevertheless, the year 2000 arrives, faith
is tested and renewed, and life in the church goes on regardless of personalities
or events.
While
this book and its subject may not be for all tastes, Gail Godwin is a writer
of the first order, and brings all of this information to us both gracefully
and gently.
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THE
SPRINGS OF AFFECTION
by Maeve Brennan
This is a group of short stories, about life in Ireland, particularly Dublin,
in the early 1950's. Many of these stories are entertwined, covering
the span of the characters' lifetimes and marriages. Maeve Brennan
was a writer for the New Yorker magazine, famous for her wit and style.
Her last work appeared there in 1973, and what makes the stories more interesting
is the introduction by William Maxwell, her friend and editor at the New
Yorker, telling of her writing and the sad end of her career and life,
leading up to the posthumous publication of these stories, most of which
appeared in the magazine over a period of years. We learn that most
of these stories must have been based on her own autobiographical memories
of Ireland before she left for the United States at the age of seventeen.
The details of these stories evoke the working class Catholic atmosphere
of these early neighborhoods, recounted in vivid detail. These are
not happy characters, but you know that they are very true. Many
of them are trapped for years and years in marriages with no way out, watching
early dreams die, enjoying little communication, so that the small rituals
of domestic life become ends in themselves. The
time at which tea is served, or the way the fire is lit, speaks volumes
about the strife between a husband and wife, while no words are spoken.
Inheriting a dead relative's living room furniture becomes a lifelong obsession.
And yet at the end of that long wordless marriage, love is realized.
Maeve Brennan's writing recalls that of both William Trevor and Edna O'Brien,
who also write movingly about "ordinary" Irish life, so much of it dictated
by the limited set of options provided by church and politics. And
yet through it all, underneath the surface, always lie the most melancholy
and poetic of souls, ready to dream and laugh and fight and live another
day.
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SISTER
OF MY HEART
by Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni
Chitra
Divakaruni, originally recognized as a poet, has written three works of
fiction that, in different ways, depict the culture clash faced by many
from India, especially women. India is a land largely mired in religious
and social traditions developed hundreds, and even thousands, of years
ago. Even as the twentieth century has brought technology, political
freedom, and education to them, Indian women in particular still must face
a lack of choices when looking to the future. For most, marriages
are arranged, a girl must provide a dowry, and she must produce a suitable
male heir. All this, plus caste and skin color will determine the
way she lives the rest of her life. It is difficult for us in the West
to imagine that life still goes on like this within the Indian culture.
In her book Arranged Marriage, Divakaruni brought this situation
vividly to life for a number of characters. In this book, it is the
lives of two Indian cousins, Sudha and Anju that are described.
The Chatterjees,
once-prominent land-owners in Calcutta, are living in reduced circumstances.
Sudha and Anju live together with "the mothers", their own two mothers
who were married to cousins, and Pishi, the widowed sister of Anju's dead
father. The girls' fathers were killed on an ill-fated adventure
just before the girls' birth. As a result, the girls, born one day
apart, cannot conceive of life without each other.
As they
reach adolescence, however, Anju's mother becomes too ill to run the bookstore
that supports them, and the girls must be trained to find suitable husbands
and give up their dreams of free choice or education. Soon their
marriages are arranged, with heartache for both. Sudha must marry
a man she does not love and enter his household as the slave of his mother,
because if she carried out her plan to elope with the man she truly loves,
Anju's marriage will be canceled because of the scandal she would cause.
Anju's husband takes her to California, where her marriage is turbulent,and
Sudha becomes the target of abuse first for not conceiving a child, and
then for having a girl.
Ultimately
Anju and Sudha are reunited by tragedy and fate. Their family's life
unfolds in a number of startling ways. Divakaruni's prose is indeed poetic,
and evokes all the beauty of India with its smells, colors, and exotic
atmosphere, but it is how all these women, the cousins, the aunt, and the
mothers, break from the past into a new kind of life that is the most moving.
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Falling
Slowly
by Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner is a novelist
whose characters make themselves known primarily through the detailed description
of their thought processes. These are very British people whose passions
remain largely unexpressed, who are not necessarily likeable, and whose
lives may seem profoundly uneventful. However, if one stops to contemplate
the depth to which Brookner takes her characters, we see that their singularity
is what brings the beauty to each of her novels. I read all of her
books, although to some they may be an acquired taste.
In this novel, Miriam and Beatrice
Sharpe are middle-aged sisters of very different temperaments, united by
the reality of their very difficult family history. Beatrice is a
hopeless romantic, a musician who buries herself in romance novels and
forever entertains the fantasy that such love is possible. Miriam,
a translator of French novels, fancies herself a realist. Her five-year
marriage to a prominent physicist was little more than an irritation, and
whose present adulterous affair with a handsome music agent she recognizes
as doomed even as it commences.
The story's action revolves
around Beatrice's failing health at an untimely point in her life.
Miriam is forced to take over more of her care, and it is her process of
recognizing and accepting this fact that occupies much of her time, along
with the cessation of her sexual affair with the music agent. Miriam
is profoundly unsentimental, and it is her honesty and self-examination,
while at the same time allowing her sister her self-delusion to the end,
that absorbs the reader.
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