WEST WITH THE NIGHT

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West With the Night, Beryl Markham, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, 294 pp

A friend lent me this memoir with the recommendation "this book has been loved, very." Well, I loved it as well. Beryl Markham was a woman who lived large and refused any attempt to mold her.

She was born in England in 1902 but was taken to Kenya by her father when she was four. These were the years when the British East Africa Company had colonized both Kenya and Uganda (according to wikipedia), bringing along British settlers who mainly farmed. Beryl was raised by her father, learning to run wild and hunt with her native childhood friends. She barely ever attended school but was a big reader.

Eventually, after a stint in her late teens and early twenties as a race horse trainer, she became a pilot. She flew all over Africa delivering supplies, performing rescues in the bush, and escorting safari hunters after scouting from the air for big game. 

In the book she relates all of the above in marvelous prose. She clearly loved Africa and horses and flying. She wasn't exactly fearless but she was entirely brave and addicted to adventure.

As for the controversy over who actually wrote the book (some say it was her third husband Errol Trzebinski, a professional ghost writer), who knows. The writing is really quite exceptional; perhaps they collaborated. The slightly ironic tone towards colonialism, the love of Africa, the resigned sorrow over what became of Kenya in her later years, and the flippant attitude towards propriety sounded genuine to me.

Markham had mostly male friends and according to her biographers they were also lovers. She married three times. It all fits. In 1936, she was the first woman to attempt a solo flight west from England to New York. She lived to be 83 and died in Kenya.

I say: what a woman! Reading her memoir got me excited to be alive, renewed my own spirit of adventure and my pride in being a non-conformist.

(West With the Night is available in paperback on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE AGE OF MIRACLES

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The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker, Random House Inc, 2012, 278 pp

Lotsa hype on this one, which was released today. It will probably do well because the writing is accessible, not too challenging, and the pages whiz by. Also while it is being marketed to adults, I found it equally suitable for readers 14 and up.

Julia is looking back at her life. She was 11 years old when the rotation of the earth began to slow down, the days and nights gradually getting longer, the environment deteriorating and life getting weirder month by month. As adults and the governments of Earth freak out and try to deal with these changes, Julia and her friends proceed through the usual coming of age experiences: soccer, bras, periods, boys.

In her Southern California suburb live regular middle-class families including Mormons, green living types, and the remnants of broken marriages: the standard 21st century American neighborhood in affluent cul de sacs. As things get increasingly strange, conflicts break out and Julia's parents begin to fracture as a couple. So she has plenty to deal with.

I liked the book just fine while I was reading it but by the end I had qualms. Because though all the elements of good fiction are there (characters developing throughout an imaginative plot), it just seemed a little too calm and dreamlike when actually the world was going to hell.

Nothing really bad happens to Julia, except that she and everyone around her lose all of life as they knew it. It's as though the author is breaking it to us gently that the world is going to end. Will we really be that well adjusted if global warming and environmental meltdown is our future?

My conclusion: good read while I was reading it but unbelievable after I finished. A few days later I went to my granddaughter's middle school graduation. As one of the honors students gave her talk, I thought I heard her say that her goal was "to grow up and help fix the mess you have made of our planet." Ha! Now that is my idea of a contemporary eleven-year-old female.

(The Age of Miracles is available in hardcover and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GREAT HOUSE

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Great House, Nicole Krauss, W W Norton & Company, 2010, 289 pp

Nicole Krauss is one author I wish wrote more novels because I enjoy reading her so much. Yet for some reason I have not ever read her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room (2002), which I must remedy right away. And I did not get around to Great House until it was picked by one of my reading groups. Her second novel, The History of Love (2005), was one of my best loved novels ever. I feel a bit abashed for allowing novels of much less quality to crowd out Ms Krauss. It is almost as bad a watching TV instead of reading.

Much has been made of the desk in Great House and it is pivotal to the structure of the novel. In fact, the structure confounded me and several other members of the reading group. Like blind people trying to describe an elephant, we talked among ourselves until we got it mostly figured out.

I wasn't bothered by a persistent feeling of confusion while I read because I like a novel that requires the reader to so some of the work. I wasn't too concerned about how and when the desk went here and there, because the sheer power of the narrative kept me reading closely and as rapidly as I could, wanting to savor the prose but wanting even more to know and understand the characters.

Another odd facet was that not one of the ten or so characters was exactly admirable, though somehow they were all sympathetic. Because of that, the story's somewhat fantastic elements were outweighed by what felt like reality. People suffer and thus lose hold of what makes them admirable. They survive doing whatever holds them together and once in a while achieve understanding and even happiness. 

I think that is pretty true to the way life is. My personal discovery while reading Great House was that I expect people to be admirable, including myself, but the best of us have flaws and the worst of us have good reasons.

Great House is a great book.

(Great House is available in paperback on the shelf and in hardcover as well as eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HENDERSON THE RAIN KING

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Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, The Viking Press, 1959, 341 pp

This is the fifth Saul Bellow novel I have read. I started with his first, The Dangling Man (1944) and moved along. I don't know that he is currently read much (and I don't know why), but I just love his novels. I would think that an author who won three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, and the Nobel Prize should be an American treasure.

Henderson is a character who could only have been created by Bellow. Larger than life, literally and figuratively, socially embarrassing, personally challenged as a husband and a father, and richer than Croesus, he moves through life leaving a wake of disaster.

Due to various events including having become bored of being a pig farmer, Henderson decides to go to Africa, looking for adventure and personal redemption. He finds both, his well-intentioned but calamitous antics among the natives affording him access to tribal royalty.

As I read on, enjoying every page, I began to see that simmering below the picaresque and the improbable was satire of the highest order. Is this the year I learn to understand and appreciate satire? It keeps popping up in the most unexpected novels and I have learned that it must be tastefully done or it drives me mad.

So in 1959, Bellow published a novel that spoofs the mid-life crisis, the search for personal fulfillment, the African safari, and the American can-do attitude. At the same time, Henderson actually resolves his mid-life crisis, finds personal fulfillment, has the best ever safari (yes, there are lion hunts), and refines his American bull-headed ways.

How did he do that?

(Henderson the Rain King is available in paperback and on CD by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LOIS LENSKI'S AMERICAN REGIONAL SERIES

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the link I have used in my reviews of this series is no longer openly available. All of the original hardcover editions of the books are out of print, but can be found in libraries or purchased from used book sellers. This year an indie publisher, Open Road, has begun to release the series in eBook and paperback. So far seven titles have been released. This is good news because the books preserve a way of American life that is virtually gone: different regions of the country with varying ways of life and traditions. Ms Lenski's series is an important historical legacy for children in my opinion.

THE LIST

Bayou Suzette 1943

Strawberry Girl 1945 (Newbery Award 1946)

Blue Ridge Billy 1946

Judy's Journey 1947

Boom Town Boy 1948

Cotton in My Sack 1949

Texas Tomboy 1950

Prairie School 1951

Mama Hattie's Girl 1953

Corn Farm Boy 1954

San Francisco Boy 1955

Flood Friday 1956

Houseboat Girl 1957

Coal Camp Girl 1959

Shoo Fly Girl 1963

To Be a Logger 1967

Most of the titles are reviewed on my blog or soon will be. Just enter the title in the search window and you will find the review. I would be interested to know of anyone who has read these books as a child or is reading them to children now, at home or in schools or libraries. Feel free to leave comments and especially to tell of the reactions of modern kids when they hear or read the books.

FLOOD FRIDAY

Flood Friday, Lois Lenski, J B Lippincott Company, 1956, 94 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

I am almost caught up on reading all the books from Lois Lenski's American Regional Series. Flood Friday is #12 out of 16. (Unfortunately the excellent link to a full Lois Lenski bibliography, which I have included in many of my earlier reviews, has gone to limited access. But I found another link here.) In my next post I will present a complete list of titles in the series.

Flood Friday is another one that stands out in my memory as a favorite; one that I read over and over. When I reread childhood favorites, I always try to figure out why I loved them so.

On Friday, August 19, 1955, after days of relentless rain, the three major rivers in Connecticut flooded, driving many people from their homes. Flood Friday is a fictional account of what this was like for several children in the area. There are dangerous rescues by boat and helicoptor, some houses are completely destroyed, and families are sheltered in school buildings.

Sally and her family are lucky. They still have a home when the water that almost reached their second floor finally recedes. But it is a house soaked and mud covered. While it is being cleaned up and repaired, they stay with neighbors who live on higher ground.

I think what I liked as a child was the sense of danger.  This is one of Lenski's most dramatic stories. Also, the idea of staying at a neighbor's house where one of your best friends lives, camping out on floors and sofas, and eating whatever food can be found, would have been my idea of a great adventure. I bet it was a complete pain in the neck for the adults.

(Flood Friday is out of print in hardcover, but may be found at libraries or from used book sellers. It has recently been released in paperback and eBook by Open Road Media.)

BLUE NIGHTS

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Blue Nights, Joan Didion, Alfred A Knopf, 2011, 188 pp

I went into this book prepared to have trouble with it. It took me close to three years to get over my Mom's death. I have not ever lost a child, despite two close calls. I just did not feel ready to read a book about mourning. I read it for a reading group.

Instead, I fell in love with Joan Didion. Here is a woman who has lived a long life, mostly in her mind. She has achieved respect, a good income, some say notoriety, by the use of her intellect. She had a long and happy marriage with a soul mate. Now she has lost the husband, followed by her adopted daughter who suffered a long illness.

No matter what opinions people may hold about Joan Didion, she has done a lot of living: the highs, the lows, the hard work, the celebrations, and the day-to-day. She is still going in her mid-seventies, still writing her way through her life.

The writing in Blue Nights is perfect for the subjects addressed. It is filled with finely wrought images. She meanders the way memory does with no loss of her signature control. What might be somewhat new is the degree of emotion displayed, never maudlin or self-pitying, but the product of a search deep into her self. Doubts about her suitability for motherhood, failings as a mother, and anxiety over her future run through the pages like a dirge. Yet her pride in that daughter flares like a beacon through the gloom.

I will turn 65 this summer. I don't care what they say about 65 is the new 45 or any such blather. The fact is that I am fortunate to be healthy and fairly fit but my "elderly" years are just around the corner. I have no desire to live past the time when I am still healthy and fit; to be in the hands of doctors; to linger in less than a condition of having my full faculties. I see in the women ten years or more ahead of me that either it comes on gradually or there is a sudden decline.

As I read about Ms Didion's experiences with all this, I felt a sisterhood with her. Fears of walking the streets of New York alone, of falling, of living by herself, are possibly worse outcomes for such a woman than losing the two most important people in her life. Oh my, oh my.

(Blue Nights is available in hardcover, paperback, and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HOME

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Home, Toni Morrison, Alfred A Knopf, 2012, 147 pp

A new novel by Toni Morrison is always cause for celebration in my world. In her tenth novel, she follows the life of Frank Money who escaped from his small Georgia town by joining the army, as so many disenfranchised young men have done. He fought in the Korean War and returned to America traumatized and troubled, only to find the same old racism under which he had always lived. 

Adrift, half crazy, he gets a message that his only sibling is at death's door. So he leaves the only person who has brought him peace to go to her rescue. He is an African American Odysseus.

Home is an exercise in restrained understatement, an exposition of Toni Morrison's recurring themes that morphs from the tale of a black man who fought for freedom to the story of a black woman who learns the true price of freedom.

It seems to me that ever since Toni Morrison became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, literary critics have mostly criticized the novels she has written. Paradise-heavy-handed foreshadowing and contrived plot devices; Love-haphazard; A Mercy-fared better but some complained it was too slight. Home has been called too short, too plain, too simple, lacking emotion.

I admire this writer. I am enthralled by anything she writes. Judging by reader review in such places as Amazon and Goodreads, so do most readers. Thankfully she does not write for the critics. She obviously writes for readers.

Home reads like a blues song, like an epic poem. It has a symmetry and balance which sang to me as a former songwriter. It is in fact short, it is not on the surface "luminous" or "lyrical," but like any classic epic or song, it moves along, circles back, and tells of lives being lived and lessons being learned.

THE WAR LOVER

The War Lover, John Hersey, Alfred A Knopf, 1959, 404 pp

The trouble with John Hersey is that he always has an agenda in his novels. Plenty of authors who write fiction have an agenda, in fact many of my favorite ones do, but the trick is to embed it so the reader figures it out herself, not to bludgeon us over the head with it.

So The War Lover is clearly anti-war and also carries a large dose of Freudian thinking. Buzz Marrow is an ace pilot, an American flying out of a base in England during WWII. He is a jerk in his personal life who brags about his female conquests every chance he gets. Except when he is flying a bombing mission, he is chronically in a bad mood, drinks heavily, and generally belittles both his superiors and his crew.

Bowman, his co-pilot, tells the story of his initial hero worship for Buzz and its gradual disillusionment as his flying team approaches their final mission. The missions in those months prior to D-Day were so dangerous and nerve wracking that once 25 missions had been accomplished, the pilots and crew were reassigned to something less intense.

Finally there is Boman's English girlfriend Daphne, a combination of English wartime resignation and perfect, understanding, sexy goddess. When Boman isn't stressing out about the next mission, he is driving himself batty over whether or not Daphne is also sleeping with Buzz.

The story has tension by the bucket load. Hersey is actually quite a good writer. But due to the chapters that alternate between a countdown of the final mission and the back story, I was never really sure what time it was. By the end, I didn't care.

The point of all this? Men like Buzz, who love war get off on annihilation more than they do on sex, are in fact impotent, and have a death wish. I guess if the human race were rid of such types, we wouldn't have war? Sorry, Mr Hersey, I don't think it is quite that simple.

(The War Lover is out of print. I found a copy in my local library. It is also available from used book sellers.)

BITTER IN THE MOUTH

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Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong, Random House Inc, 2010, 282 pp

I was completely enchanted by Monique Truong's first novel, The Book of Salt. Of course, it was set in Paris, with a fictional Vietnamese immigrant who served as cook to Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. So tasty.

Bitter in the Mouth is set in the American south, but as I know from William Faulkner, the south can be another country to a northerner like me. In that area of the United States they have their own customs, including a finely honed talent for not noticing the most obvious matters when they don't fit the customs. Women who marry but don't have children, anyone who drinks too much, homosexuality, any other race than white, women who break the mold, are just a few of those matters of which one may not speak, except by way of gossip, alluding, or backstabbing remarks.

Linda grows up knowing she was adopted, knowing that her adopted mother does not love her, depending on her father and uncle for love, closeness and any happiness there is to be found. She is a character for a reader to admire: highly intelligent, a reader herself, in a love/hate relationship with words. She and her best friend Kelly have written letters to each other since grade school, even when they lived just a few houses apart. But Linda has auditory-gustatory synethesia, a "secret sense" that causes her to taste words, sometimes a blessing, often a curse.

Much happens in such a medium length novel. The writing made me feel respected and intelligent as a reader. I love that approbation from a novelist. The coming-of-age, the long slow process of learning about herself, the stratagems Linda adopts in order to survive, are all presented from Linda's viewpoint and revealed to the reader only as she gains understanding about her life and the people in it.

Monique Truong says she used To Kill A Mockingbird and Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms as inspiration as she wrote Bitter in the Mouth. I'm glad I didn't know this before I read the book, but knowing it afterwards explains why I felt so much familiarity with her characters.

The end of the book, where Linda makes her peace with life, was a bit too melodramatic for me. a little too spelled out in terms of what she, and therefore the reader, realized. I would have preferred a few more rough edges remaining. But getting to that point surely made a satisfying and moving story.

(Bitter in the Mouth is available in hardcover, paperback and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE LAST BROTHER

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The Last Brother, Nathacha Appanah, Graywolf Press, 2011, 164 pp (Editions d"Olivier, France, 2007, translated from French by Geoffrey Strachan)

I loved this book. It was a contender in the third round of the Tournament of Books. The writing is stellar; because it was translated from French to English, I am also praising the translation. 

The elderly Raj is looking back on his childhood on the island of Mauritius, set in the Indian Ocean. Due to poverty and an alcoholic, abusive father, childhood was hard enough but when the boy's two brothers died on the same day, life for this nine-year-old child became almost insupportable.

Because of another brutal incident Raj meets David, a child his own age, who becomes both burden and savior for one of the saddest boys I have ever met in a novel.

In less than 200 pages, the author wove a story of loss and longing, survival and guilt, love and friendship, family and social life, disaster and the effects of war. All of that would be enough to weigh down a 600 page tome. Instead she wrote a fairytale set in the intersections between humans and the natural world.

Raj and David are mostly ignorant of the tragedies that brought them together, as was I before I read the book. If you read other reviews, you get too much information in my opinion, which lessens the impact. Raj as an old man finally learns about the historical events of his childhood and thus is delivered from all that he has carried for over 60 years.

(The Last Brother is available in paperback and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MIGUEL STREET

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Miguel Street, V S Naipaul, Alfred A Knopf, 1959, 142 pp

Miguel Street was the third novel published by V S Naipaul, except that it is not really a novel. He wrote this collection of vignettes before he had published any novels, so it makes sense that it is actually composed of short stories about different characters who live on this street in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Through the eyes of a young boy, we experience the life of the street.

I like Naipaul's writing style so I didn't mind reading the book, though there is no plot. I assume he was warming up for his first two actual novels: The Mystic Masseur and The Suffrage of Elvira. Because I had already read and enjoyed those I felt at home in Port of Spain.

Now I am looking forward to his breakout novel A House for Mr Biswas, published in 1961. 

(Miguel Street is available in paperback and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

DIVORCE ISLAMIC STYLE

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Divorce Islamic Style, Amara Lakhous, Europa Editions, 2012, 184 pp (Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein)

The challenge, as well as the potential delight, in reading novels originally written in another language than one's own, is becoming accustomed to the flow of that language and its relation to the customs of the country of origin. Especially, if like myself, the reader speaks and reads only English, a translation must bridge differences in culture, quirks of conversational habits, viewpoints about gender, work, money, and even romance. Amara Lakhous was born in Algeria, speaks fluent Arabic, but lives in Italy and writes in Italian. It took me a while to get used to his style. I have not read many books translated from Italian.

His novel has no particular literary pretensions but is a sparkling political satire set amidst a pseudo-thriller. In alternating chapters, two narrators relate the tale: Christian, having been whisked away from his job as an Italian/Arabic court translator by the Italian Secret Service, is posing as an immigrant from Tunisia. His mission is to discover the members of a suspected Muslim terrorist group.

Sofia, a young, married Egyptian immigrant, is teaching herself Italian and aspires to be a hairdresser, although her husband requires her to wear the veil. The two meet in a cafe situated in the Roman neighborhood Little Cairo, each coming to the cafe to use the call center. They are instantly attracted to each other.

As Christian, whose Tunisian name is Issa, tells of his day by day experiences finding lodging, getting a job making pizza at the restaurant where Sofia's husband works, and trying to find the alleged terrorists, he collides with the contradictions of multicultural Italian life and the absurdities of the War on Terror as it plays out in Rome. He is appalled by the conditions under which recent immigrants must live.

Meanwhile, Sofia's story centers on her awakening to the repressive training of an Islamic wife as she realizes all the opportunities she now has to become a modern European woman. She is hilarious. At times the author's voice leaks through the interior monologues of these two, making them sound too much alike, but Ann Goldstein's translation of the dialogue between the various characters captures the music and cadences of both Italian and Arabic speech. 

Satire is tricky. I usually find myself annoyed by too much absurdity while reading an entire novel in the genre. It happened to me here. Though I was in agreement with the thinly disguised criticisms of bumbling secret service officers, of governmental double standards for immigrants, and of the rampant racial profiling, some scenarios and plot twists went beyond plausibility. On the other hand, it was somehow refreshing to read about political dissent in another country besides my own.

(Divorce Islamic Style is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MANSION

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The Mansion, William Faulkner, Random House Inc, 1959, 436 pp

The Mansion completes the Snopes trilogy (The Hamlet, 1940 and The Town, 1957.) This novel follows Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, MS, all the way up to early 1950s, but since a small Southern town was still quite behind the times in the 1950s and since Faulkner writes always within the hovering shadows of history, it barely feels like a modern story.

The resident psychopath in this volume is Mink Snopes. He is, as they say in the South, a piece of work, who could only have been created by this author: a man of almost zero consequence except for his ability to hold a grudge with the patience of Job.

Other characters whom I have, in a weird sense, grown fond of throughout the trilogy, live out their destinies. All of these destinies are intertwined to such a degree that one small action by a single individual can produce major ripples in the lives of the others. It is these outcomes which drive the plot through the dense thickets of Faulkner's prose.

As always when I read Faulkner, I passed through all the emotions known to man. I struggled with his confounding sentences as I marveled at the sheer storytelling rhythms of his characters' voices. I wanted to quit the book but was compelled to read on. Through the tiny prism of his imagined Yoknapatawpha county, he illuminates all of mankind and especially American mankind. Reading him feels like something that is supposed to be good for you. In the end, it is!

(The Mansion is available in paperback and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE FORGERY OF VENUS

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The Forgery of Venus, Michael Gruber, William Morrow, 2008, 318 pp

Sometimes you just want to read at a fast pace and not have to think too deeply. Especially if like me, you don't watch TV. Don't get me wrong. Michael Gruber can actually write. He falls into a category of thriller author who is a step or more above the David Baldaaci crowd, plus his subject matter tends toward the cultural: Shakespeare and rare books in The Book of Air and Shadows; painting in The Forgery of Venus.

Painter Chaz Wilmot is the tortured genius type. I always enjoy reading about a genius, either from real life or imagined. I was surprised to find an incident where the artist runs amok, slashing paintings in a museum. Elizabeth Kostova included such a scene in The Swan Thieves, though her book was published two years later. Apparently crimes against art are more prevalent than I realized.

In fact, the thriller aspect here involves several varieties of art crime and features a villain you almost like. In another twist concerning male genius, the artist is the victim instead of the wife. And I loved the fact that Chaz participates in program testing a new drug to enhance creativity, leading him to either channel a famous Spanish painter or go into past life regression. Delicious!

Great read. Michael Gruber is on my list any time he writes a new book. He might have a touch of genius himself.

(The Forgery of Venus is available in paperback and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LOOKING FOR ALASKA

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Looking For Alaska, John Green, Dutton Books, 2005, 221 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY YOUNG ADULT READ

First of all the title: This earliest novel by John Green has nothing to do with the state of Alaska.

Second of all, though marketed as YA and then promptly banned by schools across the country, I guess for sexual content, I don't think it is solidly YA, but straddles the YA/Adult boundary. Then again, the sexual content is pretty much straight out of a 16-year-old boy's mind, so what? Are we going to ban 16-year-old boys from thinking? I guess that is what the book banners hope.

I liked this novel. It portrays teens quite exactly right. Not the teens we are shown by the media and advertising, but the real ones of the late 20th and early 21st century who like to think deep thoughts while pulling off silly pranks, eating junk food, getting high and/or drunk, and figuring out sex vs love.

It is a boarding school novel for sure which is a great setting for all of the above because there are no parents around. Also it puts kids from all kinds of backgrounds and families with varying values and rules under one system of regulations. Potent mix.

What I loved:

Miles (Pudge) with his fascination for "last words" of famous authors and his search for the "Great Perhaps."

Alaska, who is one of the truly great female characters created by a male author.

Constant references to The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

What I didn't love as much:

The second section when all the friends process the terrible thing that happened (no spoilers here.) Compared to the first free-wheeling, hilarious and realistic part, this section had a teen counsellor drift. Not that I think counselling is a bad thing, but I don't like it when an author is doing it surreptitiously via fiction. No! No! Not OK!

Having worked in a bookstore featuring a strong YA section, I'd heard plenty about John Green. Now I have finally read his first novel and see that he is an accomplished and talented writer. I am looking forward to An Abundance of Katherines.


(Looking For Alaska is available in paperback on the shelves and as an ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCE

The Force of Circumstance, Simone de Beauvoir, G P Putnam's Sons, 1964, 658 pp (Librairie Gallimard, Paris, 1963; translated from the French by Richard Howard)

What a long but enriching read this was. The Force of Circumstance is the third volume of the autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir. The physical book itself, which I got in hardcover from the library, weighed so much that my wrists and hands would tire. I only managed to read about 30 pages per sitting. In addition, the subject matter was heavy in the extreme.

This volume covers the years (1945-1963) when Beauvoir and Sartre watched their dreams for a just society (called socialism and at times communism) crumble and fade in France at the hands of monied fascistic right wing politicians. It was compelling to read about this from the viewpoint of a French intellectual. While the United States poured dollars into Europe via the Marshall Plan, fought communism in Korea, and took over Vietnam from the French by stealth and "diplomacy," Beauvoir watched the resurgence of the bourgeoisie in her country. The manic changes in communism as Stalin gave way to Khrushchev, and the attempts to misinterpret, ridicule and discredit Sartre along with Existentialism led her to bouts of depression.

Meanwhile she kept falling in love, traveling, and writing books. She relates in the memoir her entire relationship with American novelist Nelson Algren; then explains how she fictionalized it in The Mandarins. The years she spent researching and writing The Second Sex, then experiencing the subsequent fallout in France (negative) and America (wildly positive), as well as the effects on her of fame and wealth, are portrayed as much from the heart as from the mind.

There is so much more: her changing relationship with Sartre as he turned increasingly to politics; her long love affair with Claude Lanzmann; the horrid, bloody, endless and completely shameful Algerian War for independence. She and Sartre went everywhere: the USSR multiple times, China, Cuba, Brazil, the Sahara Desert and more. They were looking for any evidence that socialism and human rights activism were being successful.

As I read on and on, I kept being struck by the parallels between her life and mine in terms of joys and sorrows at any given age, because she lived through these things 40 years before I did. I wondered if other women would find similar parallels. 

I admire this woman for many qualities but most of all for her seamless melding of heart and mind. The ability to bring strong emotion as well as keen intelligence to the business of living is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of women. This ability does not always lead to personal happiness (though when one or the other is suppressed you get a deranged woman), but it is ultimately good for humankind. 

Beauvoir writes an epilogue in the last pages of The Force of Circumstance, summing up the meaning of life to her at age 55. She compares the young dreamer she was at 20 to the disillusioned, aging woman she feels she has become. She looks at death and is terrified. She longs for those dreams, for her loves in their earliest bloom, for the energy and passion she once had. It is not despair; just a clear-eyed look at what it all amounts to. When I closed the book, my eyes were streaming with tears, but I felt strong and validated for who I am.

(The Force of Circumstance is out of print in hardcover, though can be found in libraries. Some used booksellers have paperback copies of it, split into at least two volumes. I think a hardcover reprint is long overdue.)

THE LOLA QUARTET

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The Lola Quartet, Emily St John Mandel, Unbridled Books, 2012, 288 pp

I did not experience the unconditional love for this book that I felt after Emily St John Mandel's first two novels. This is not necessarily a bad thing because I could feel her growth as an author. The fine writing, the suspense, the great characters are all present but she has had a change of heart. Last Night in Montreal centered around a young woman whose bizarre childhood compelled her to wander ceaselessly. The protagonist in The Singer's Gun tried to outrun his criminal upbringing. Both of these characters were trapped by destiny but I got a sense of hope that each one would possibly escape.

The Lola Quartet, named after a four-piece band of high school kids, takes place ten years after (ha, another good band name) the four members have gone their separate ways. Like a chorus that comes around over and over, they are pulled back together in their crappy Florida town. Once again destiny has claimed them.

Mandel sticks with her usual themes: individuals in their twenties reaching towards a mirage of adulthood without any good examples, life lived on the fringes of normalcy, and questions of identity and connection. A mystery runs through it carrying brutal consequences stemming from money, drugs and paternity. This time there is a child involved; a ten-year-old girl who is blissfully unaware of the danger that surrounds her.

Set smack in the present moment with the fall-out from economic meltdown, suburbs composed of the same malls and fast food emporiums no matter the town, and criminals at every level of society, the novel reads almost like today's news. Many of us are in better shape than these characters but we are surrounded by them every day on the streets of our towns and cities. 

I guess everyone in the story gets what he or she deserves by the end. No one changes much. By tiny increments but just as much because of something like karma, the truly bad are punished, the ones who can help others get a chance and the guys who started out as hopeless remain hopeless. Pretty dark stuff. I wonder where Emily St John Mandel will go from here. I wonder where the world will go from here.

(The Lola Quartet is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

FIFTEEN

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Fifteen, Beverly Cleary, William Morrow and Company, 1956, 254 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

This was Beverly Cleary's first novel for teens, preceding The Luckiest Girl by two years. I had not read it when I was growing up, but if I had I probably would have loved it. I wasn't a complete girly girl but I certainly was interested in boys!

Jane Purdy is 15 and a high school sophomore. She has never been on a date with a boy she likes; only some boring boy named George, a friend of the family. 

" 'Today I'm going to meet a boy,' Jane Purdy told herself, as she walked up Blossom Street toward her babysitting job." She does. She meets Stan and eventually they do go on dates, have misunderstandings, and it all ends happily.

Cleary gets it exactly right from a 1950s teen girl's viewpoint. The worries about her clothes, her hair, her parents. The inability to think of anything to say when she and Stan go on their first date. The extreme tension when she is waiting for a phone call. It is all there just as it was for me.

I don't think 15 year old girls will ever be that innocent again, but many will have similar insecurities. The girl in 13 Reasons Why is more of a modern day Jane Purdy than anything else though less able to deal with the stress. Jane has to deal with some bullying but has the resources to figure out how to handle it.

Those first experiences of going out with boys are a rite of passage even though the social conventions change through the decades. I wonder what a 15 year old girl would think of this book today. 

(Fifteen is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

CHILDREN OF THE ALLEY

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Children of the Alley, Naguib Mahfouz, Doubleday, 1959, 448 pp (translated from Arabic by Peter Theroux)

I have read quite a few novels by Naguib Mahfouz and found this one weaker than what I have read before. The premise is a good one: to cover the spiritual history of mankind in terms of our efforts to improve our existence and society.

Using the framework of key historical moments, he offers tales concerning the inhabitants dwelling in an Egyptian alley. All these people have a common ancestor and indeed exist to greater or lesser degrees by the whim of their patriarch. In each period covered throughout the novel, some sort of exceptional, always male, person arises from the masses of people and attempts to resolve the conflicts and sufferings of his fellows.

One of these is similar to Adam from Genesis. Another pair of brothers are reminiscent of Cain and Abel, one is Christ-like. Each of them has a special connection with Gabalawi, the ancestor, who dwells in a big manor house and owns all the area around and including the alley. These potential heroes or saviors feel they are fulfilling the wishes of the old man, who seems to live forever. They often better conditions but eventually die, after which the population of the alley regresses to their old ways. Greed, oppression, envy, competitiveness, and other ills are never conquered.

The means applied by each of these reformers vary, from non-violence to the use of force, from enlightenment to magic. I was kept reading because Mafouz seemed to be following a progression of spiritual evolution and because each section has intriguing plots, counter plots, and relationships.

In the end however, progress has not been made. Man is incorrigible and carries on telling the old tales while hoping that magically all will come right if only one is patient. I was left confused. Is Mahfouz saying that hope is the key? Or is he mocking our irresponsible habit of waiting for some god or hero to solve our problems for us?


(Children of the Alley is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)