THE SECRET CHORD

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The Secret Chord, Geraldine Brooks, Viking, 2015, 290 pp

 This was a reading group pick, suggested by me. I have read every one of Geraldine Brooks's novels and she always does something unique. The Secret Chord is historical fiction about the life of King David, one of the most well-known figures in the Old Testament. For me, who was raised with a heavily Christian influence, David loomed large because Jesus Christ is considered by prophecy and history to have been descended from the House of David.

Despite which, I knew very little about him. I have tried many times to read the Old Testament only to be defeated by the long genealogical lists in the early books. In preparation for reading this novel, I did plow through the First Book of the Chronicles. I skimmed much of the genealogy but actually got a pretty good account of how David became the King of the Jews and re-established them in Jerusalem. However, it took Geraldine Brooks to bring the story to life.

Those were extremely violent times! I am getting the idea through my reading that the Middle East has mostly been a violent area since time immemorial and truly do not see much hope that it will change. Since it is supposed to be the birthplace of humanity, it looks to me that war and violence are in our DNA.

So, the book. I liked it. Through the narration of David's prophet Nathan, she presents the King as a deeply flawed character whose tragic childhood and successful life as a warrior made him a man who craved power but had some difficulty handling all the adulation he received.

I suppose that for any person who believes in and tries to follow the commandments of God, it is personal weaknesses and character flaws that make such obedience difficult. In the Old Testament God is seen as jealous and vengeful, so in my view God was also flawed.

Then there are the women. David had numerous wives, some of whom he loved, some he married for political reasons, and all of whom were meant to provide an heir and successor. Brooks paints him as a heartbreaker and a sometimes cruel husband whose powerful life force spilled over into lust and womanizing. Right up there with Henry VIII he was. I was left thinking that in fact women have achieved the most change in history as far as taking charge of our own existence and being a force for peace, justice, and balance in the world.

Obviously, as suggested by the title, there is music. In fact, that title is taken from Leonard's song, Hallelujah. 

"Well, I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played and it pleased the Lord."

Brooks makes much of David's genius as a musician, his hours of harp playing, composing songs and Psalms. She has his prophet and spiritual guide say:

"I think that few grasp the connection between waging war and making music, but in the long evenings when firelight flickered on cave walls and the voices joined and rose with his, I learned the unity between the two...

You cannot harmonize in song or play instruments together without listening one to the other, sensing when to be loud and when soft, when to take the lead and when to yield it."

As fascinating and complex a character as David was, his seer was equally so. I first came across the role of a King's seer in Nicola Griffith's amazing Hild. They see things, have visions and in David's case can be considered the voice of God. The visions and words of God came to and through Nathan without his volition, giving him headaches and other ills, but because Nathan was almost always right David counts on him and mostly does what he says. The seer role calls for much finesse and judgement and since Nathan is the narrator of this tale, you get to experience the tensions and burdens that go along with the role.

Finally, the man who was King David did produce an heir who brought about wisdom and a less violent era for the Jews. He was King Solomon and Nathan was his tutor.

(The Secret Chord  is available on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THREE STRONG WOMEN

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Three Strong Women, Marie NDiaye, Alfred A Knopf, 2012, 293 pp (translated from the French by John Fletcher

 

 

 Summary from Goodreads: In this new novel, the first by a black woman ever to win the coveted Prix Goncourt, Marie NDiaye creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as it is beautiful.

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the aforementioned Fanta) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

 

 

My Review:

I've wanted to read this novel since it first came out. I proposed it to a couple of my reading groups but it did not get picked (and I am glad-more about that in a minute.) Then her second book at Knopf (Ladivine) came out this spring and got me excited again so I read this one first.

 

It was not difficult to read, in fact I couldn't put it down, but it was emotionally tough. The three women (called Three Powerful Women in the French title) are loosely connected mainly by the experiences of either being born in France of mixed French/Senegalese parents, emigrating from Senegal to France, or desiring to emigrate. These connections are skillfully created by the author similar to the way the three sections of The Vegetarian are. 

 

What was tough was the dire lack of love or happiness in these women's lives. Americans put a lot of belief into creating happiness for their children. Whether we achieve it is another story. So, despite all the literature I have read about dysfunctional families, it was just a kick in the teeth to read about these people who did not even consider happiness an option.

 

Survival is another issue altogether and that is also what connects the three women. Each one has personal strength or power but it is directed toward other outcomes than happiness. And yet, in another stroke of writing brilliance, you see that they each have hearts that beat and are aware of the happiness they have been denied.

 

Marie NDiaye has a Senegalese father and French mother. She was educated as a linguist at the Sorbonne, the alma mater of Simone de Beauvoir, from whose autobiographies I got the idea that one has to be super intelligent to succeed there. Also tough and, at least for a female, in touch with your inner power.

 

All of that is to say that an almost pitiless intelligence shine through in these stories as well as a firm belief that it takes some kind of spiritual strength to keep pushing forward into lives that are so far from even normal, much less ideal.

 

Do I recommend the book? Not for everyone. For readers who enjoy translated literary fiction, who want to know how people, particularly women, live in other countries and locales, yes. For readers who prefer not to read about the grittier realities of some peoples' lives, no.

 

I will read Ladivine. Also today I learned, thanks to the wonder of Twitter, that there is a second publisher, Two Lines Press, who have published two other novels by NDaiye and are preparing a third.

(Three Strong Women is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MAN WITHOUT A SHADOW

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The Man Without a Shadow, Joyce Carol Oates, HarperCollins Publishers, 2016, 369 pp

 

 

 Summary from Goodreads: In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets Elihu Hoopes: the “man without a shadow,” who will be known, in time, as the most-studied and most famous amnesiac in history. A vicious infection has clouded anything beyond the last seventy seconds just beyond the fog of memory.

Over the course of thirty years, the two embark on mirrored journeys of self-discovery: Margot, enthralled by her charming, mysterious, and deeply lonely patient, as well as her officious supervisor, attempts to unlock Eli’s shuttered memories of a childhood trauma without losing her own sense of self in the process. Made vivid by Oates’ usual eye for detail, and searing insight into the human psyche, The Man Without a Shadow is eerie, ambitious, and structurally complex, unique among her novels for its intimate portrayal of a forbidden relationship that can never be publicly revealed.

 

 

My Review:

I wouldn't say this was my favorite JCO novel but it was surely the most interesting. 

 

Elihu Hoopes is an amnesiac whose short term memory only goes back 70 seconds. Margot Sharpe is beginning graduate school and has been accepted into the neuropsychology program headed by Milton Ferris, a harsh taskmaster but also a brilliant neuroscientist, headed for a Nobel Prize. Both Ferris and Margot go on to make their names because of Project E H.

 

First paragraph: "Notes on Amnesia: Project 'E H' (1965-1996)

She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.

She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.

She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.

At last she says goodbye to him, thirty-one years after they've first met. On his deathbed, he has forgotten her."

 

That is a synopsis of the novel but everything that happens between those lines is what makes the story. Every time Margot comes to work with Elihu, he is meeting her for the fist time as far as he can remember. Over the thirty-one years, Margot falls in love with E H, he becomes her entire life, and she (secretly) takes the lab protocol quite a ways beyond professional limits.

Dr Ferris's team, but especially Margot, make huge advances in the understanding of amnesia, the brain, and the psychology of memory, but Margot lives under the constant stress of being found out concerning some of her methods.

Elihu also has disturbing memories from his childhood, full of guilt and fear over the death by drowning of his favorite cousin when he was only 5 years old.

The novel is full of tension, mystery, and the psychology of love as well as the psychology of psychologists. Only Joyce Carol Oates could have written it. I was left aghast at the end. What a read! Two of my reading groups have selected the book for this summer. One has met and we could not stop discussing!

(The Man Without a Shadow is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF UPTON SINCLAIR

The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair, Upton Sinclair, Harcourt Brace & World, 1962, 330 pp

 

 

I think most people, if they know who Upton Sinclair was, know of him through his early muckraking novels such as The Jungle and Oil. After years of hand-to-mouth living and writing, The Jungle was his breakthrough. Decrying the wretched conditions for both animals and people in Chicago's meatpacking industry, the book captured the attention of Teddy Roosevelt, President at the time, and resulted in legislation which made the meat we eat safer and gave the workers some right. Upton Sinclair, as is evident in his autobiography, dedicated his life to balancing unfairness in human society.

 

I came to know of him in a different way. When I started My Big Fat Reading Project, I found him on the Pulitzer Prize lists. He won that prize in 1943 for his novel Dragon's Teeth, in which he tells about the rise of Hitler and his persecution of Jews.

Eventually I read all 10 books of his Lanny Budd series, published once a year from 1940-1949. Quite a writing and publishing feat, as each book is 600-700 pages long! In the Autobiography I learned that he had always written at that pace and continued to do so for decades.

Anyway those 10 books gave me an education on Europe and American in the first half of the 20th century that I never got in school. So when The Autobiography came up on my 1962 list, I just had to read it and find out how he was able to penetrate the history of those times and ferret out the truths behind the two World Wars that defined the period. And find that out I did!

Upton was kind of a goofy guy-a teetotaler for his entire life and somewhat of a prude when it came to sex. I found out why. He mostly learned everything the hardest way possible. But his drive to give the underdog a fair chance; to right the wrongs of greedy industrialists, capitalists, bankers, and arms dealers; and, perhaps a bit too innocently, to make a difference in the world, makes him a hero to me.

His writing in this volume continues in the voice I got to know in those thousands of pages about Lanny Budd. He actually had a pretty good sense of humor about himself, but he just never backed down.

It is my opinion that he, along with many others, did make a difference. The Autobiography reads like a history of what he called Democratic Socialism in the United States. It is a rocky, dirty, demoralizing history that is still ongoing, based on the idea that a democracy is meant to be "of the people, by the people, for the people" (Abraham Lincoln)

 

The Lanny Budd Series with links to my reviews:

World's End (1940) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-from-1940-part-six.html

Between Two Worlds (1941) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/02/books-read-from-1941-part-three.html

Dragon's Teeth (1942) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/03/books-read-from-1942-part-four.html

Wide Is the Gate (1943) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/04/books-read-from-1943-part-four.html

Presidential Agent (1944) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/05/books-read-from-1944-part-four.html

Dragon Harvest (1945) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/07/books-read-from-1945-part-four.html

A World to Win (1946) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/07/books-read-from-1946-part-three.html

Presidential Mission (1947) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/08/books-read-from-1947-part-four.html

One Clear Call (1948) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/09/books-read-from-1948-part-four.html

Oh, Shepherd Speak (1949) http://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2006/11/books-read-from-1949-part-four.html

(The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair is available in hardcover and paperback but for some reason is quite expensive. I found a copy at my local library.)

LAROSE

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LaRose, Louise Erdrich, Harper, 2016, 372 pp

I have been reading Louise Erdrich for over a decade. She has been writing novels for over three decades. She never lets me down. The new novel, set in familiar territory, the remaining Ojibwe lands of North Dakota, is engaged in spanning: generations, cultures, the spiritual world, and the moral universe. If that sounds deep, it is but her dazzling prose and sophisticated plotting create a novel that is quite impossible to put down.

LaRose is a young boy, descended from at least five generations of Native American women, all of whom were named LaRose and employed courage as well as Ojibwe skills and spiritual practice in the face of violence and oppression. Throughout the course of the novel this heritage reveals and builds the character of a remarkable being, LaRose, who spans every gulf between the troubles in his family.

One morning, Landreaux Iron is out hunting and accidentally shoots his young nephew Dusty. Emmaline Iron is half-sister to Dusty’s mother Nola; Dusty’s father Peter is Landreaux’s best friend. Tragedy, loss, and near insanity invade the lives of these two families. The tribal police and county coroner rule the death an accident but Landreaux’s guilt sends him to the sweat lodge with Emmaline to work out what amends will satisfy the spirits. They decide to give their five-year-old son LaRose to Peter and Nola as atonement for and replacement of their lost son Dusty.

As Erdrich continues to spin this desperate tale, the past comes rushing in to complicate the already delicate relations between Emmaline and Nola, between Landreaux and his mortal enemy, the substance abusing Romeo, between Native American and White culture. In a situation as tangled as a Gordian Knot, she never lets the reader become lost but builds suspense and dread. You feel the emotions of each character while you become immersed in the history of what the American settlers and government have wrought on the natives of the country we conquered. In the end, you are left marveling at the intricacies of the whole sorry situation.

Often in her novels, Louise Erdrich posits that a child will leap across all these chasms and bring about a healing resolution. LaRose is that child here. From the bewilderment caused by having to leave his own loving parents and siblings to live with a woman deranged by grief and a young female cousin raging against her bitter mother, he grows into a wise and funny and brave young dude. Eventually, Emmaline wants LaRose back, so he begins to live in alternate weeks with each family. His increasing love for the new family and a deep loyalty to his birth family bring about an untangling of the many knots of distrust, betrayal, and loss of identity from which the adults suffer. Basically, the kids save the day.

Louise Erdrich writes stories no one else is telling these days. Her books are a study in the ways a conquered people endure living within a different civilization. Although that adjustment has been the problem of millions of people throughout history, the plight of the Native American is not often considered in 21^st century America. She can conjure up healing and resolution as a realistic option without falling prey to sentimentalism. She can imagine people who have the humanity to build a hopeful future without festering in past bitterness, even as she reveals the disintegration of self, caused by culture clash. She is a LaRose herself.

Note: This review was originally published at Litbreak Magazine.

(LaRose is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BIG SUR

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Big Sur, Jack Kerouac, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1962, 212 pp

 

 

Read from my 1962 reading list, this is the third Kerouac novel I have read. (The Road, Dharma Bums are the others.) I am even more impressed. 

 

Don't get me wrong, it is not a happy book. In fact, it is the most disturbing of the three. But his power to describe: the natural world, the intricacies of friendship, the inner life. And the sheer propulsive energy of the writing. Finally, he captured in all these books a lost era, the Beat generation, an important, if under-the-radar, element of American society. If it had not been important he would not have become so famous.

But in Big Sur, he paints the life of an author ruined by fame, having a major identity crisis, and driving himself deeper and deeper into depression. Also he is clearly in the grip of the alcoholism that will send him to an early grave-he died at age 47.

I know there are those who decry any writing done under the influence of alcohol and probably they are right. Even more then the wonder of this writer who could so vividly write the experience.

Throughout the novel he alludes to a breakdown he had, while telling of all the weeks leading up to it, as he careens back and forth from a cabin in Big Sur to San Francisco, from solitude to being surrounded by people, from moments when he transcends his existential anguish to the depths of depression. The pages where he describes the actual hours of his breakdown felt true and real to me. And then, overnight, he is fine.

I don't know what that ability is, to recall and record moments from drunkenness and psychic meltdown so accurately. Certainly not an ability that promotes a stable or happy life. But if, as mental practitioners claim, memories are lost in blackouts and during madness, Jack Kerouac belies that theory. 

(Big Sur is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GOLD FAME CITRUS

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Gold Fame Citrus, Claire Vaye Watkins, Riverhead Books, 2015, 339 pp

 

 

Summary from Goodreads: In a parched southern California of the near future, Luz, once the poster child for the country’s conservation movement, and Ray, an army deserter turned surfer, are squatting in a starlet’s abandoned mansion. Most “Mojavs,” prevented by armed vigilantes from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to encampments in the east. Holdouts like Ray and Luz subsist on rationed cola and water, and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.

For the moment, the couple’s fragile love, which somehow blooms in this arid place, seems enough. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins.

Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins’s novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own.

 

My Review:

Oh my, I loved this story! If you are tired of gritty, violent, and/or depressing post-apocalyptic books, this one is not for you. But if you loved The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi or Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, etc, you would want to check out Gold Fame Citrus.

 

It concerns the southern California drought in a future gone very dry. As in true history, such as the dust bowl story The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, there are people who have chosen to stick around. Two of those, Luz and Ray, are equally damaged characters, though for widely different reasons. Luz is a casualty of the modeling and advertising world. Ray suffers from severe PTSD, the military kind, and has a tendency to desert people.

 

As the story opens, they are hanging on to each other, but prone to making bad decisions. Eventually a couple of these decisions send them on a road trip and quest for safety. Of course, that is not what they find. The writing is so amazing and creative that you feel you are there and become deeply invested in these and several other characters.

 

I am always curious about cults, both cult leaders and the people who join them. The one in this story is on beyond the craziest southwestern UFO cult you ever read about. Even more interesting to me are the people who wake up and manage to escape.

 

Luz is one of those. She is such a broken person but also has courage, so I watched her keep trying. I was rooting for her all the while I was pretty sure she was doomed.

 

When I finished the book I seriously considered moving back to Michigan. The economy there may be one of the worst in America right now but at least it rains! 

 

 

(Gold Fame Citrus is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

MAGNIFICENCE

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Magnificence, Lydia Millet, W W Norton & Company, 2013, 255 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Susan Lindley, a woman adrift. Embarking on a new phase in her life after inheriting her uncle’s sprawling mansion and its vast collection of taxidermy, Susan decides to restore the neglected, moth-eaten animal mounts, tending to “the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails.” Meanwhile an equally derelict human menagerie—including an unfaithful husband and a chorus of eccentric old women—joins her in residence.

In a setting both wondrous and absurd, Susan defends her legacy from freeloading relatives and explores the mansion’s unknown spaces. Funny and heartbreaking, Magnificence explores evolution and extinction, children and parenthood, loss and revelation. The result is the rapturous final act to the critically acclaimed cycle of novels that began with How the Dead Dream.

My Review:

Now I have come to the end of the trilogy: How the Dead Dream, Ghost Lights, Magnificence. I see why she calls it a trilogy (or at least the publisher calls it that.) Characters from the previous books inhabit the latter in a sequence where the time is a bit later than when the former book ended. Each book features a different character as the protagonist. Very David Mitchell.

Because I don't like to put spoilers in my reviews, I can't say much about the plot in Magnificence because I would spoil the end of Ghost Lights. (I even edited out the spoiler from the Goodreads summary.)

I can say that this volume features Susan, the unfaithful wife of Hal and secretary to T. You learn about the marriage of Hal and Susan from her point of view as well as her reasons for sleeping around.

I can also say that the story is extremely woman-centered. I liked that. It is also slower or less plot centered, a bit more meandering and for that reason was overall not as impressive as the first two.

But the last chapter in which Susan stops being foggy-headed, indecisive, vague, and has her ah hah moment is so magnificent that I suddenly saw where the author was heading through the entire three book cycle. So much so that I feel the titles of the books could be interchangeable.

The dead are always dreaming, the ghosts are always shining lights, and the magnificence of life underlies all. 


(Magnificence is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)  

MISSING MOM

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Missing Mom, Joyce Carol Oates, HarperCollins, 2005, 434 pp

 

 

 Summary from Goodreads: Nikki Eaton, single, thirty-one, sexually liberated, and economically self-supporting, has never particularly thought of herself as a daughter. Yet, following the unexpected loss of her mother, she undergoes a remarkable transformation during a tumultuous year that brings stunning horror, sorrow, illumination, wisdom, and even—from an unexpected source—a nurturing love.

 

 

My review:

I lost my mom in 2009. She and I were mostly at odds for many years. Somewhere in my 40s we began to reconcile. She stopped being so critical of me and I began to see her good points. Near the end of her life she needed 24 hour care and wished to remain at home. I honored that wish, left my job, husband, and home, and so spent the last three months of her life by her side. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. ( My wonderful husband was supportive of my choice.)

 

So I related to Missing Mom in a big way. Two sisters must deal with their widowed mother's gruesome death. They have never gotten along but it is the rebellious, free-spirited daughter who comes to stay at the family home, sort through the relics of the past, and deal with her loss.

 

In the process, she learns that her apparently sainted mother had a secret and tragic past. The woman who she knew as mom was practically a created personality who bore little resemblance to the child and teenager she had been before marriage. Learning the truth about both their parents' lives, the sisters change and find their own true selves.

 

I found this book somehow lighter than most of the novels I have read by JCO. Of course, lighter for her is still dark compared to many other authors, but there is a tenderness she does not usually show. I wondered about her relationship with her own parents.

 

It was easy to read, it made me laugh and cry, and I recommend it for female readers who have lost their mom, especially moms with whom they have had their troubles. 

(Missing Mom is available in paperback on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GHOST LIGHTS

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Ghost Lights, Lydia Millet, W W Norton & Company, 2011, 255 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Ghost Lights stars an IRS bureaucrat named Hal—a man baffled by his wife’s obsession with her young employer, T., and haunted by the accident that paralyzed his daughter, Casey. In a moment of drunken heroism, Hal embarks on a quest to find T.—the protagonist of Lydia Millet’s much-lauded novel How the Dead Dream—who has vanished in a jungle. On his trip to Central America, Hal embroils himself in a surreal tropical adventure, descending into strange and unpredictable terrain (and an unexpected affair with a beguiling German woman).

My Review:

I don't know how I discovered Lydia Millet. She has never had a big bestseller but has been a finalist for literary prizes and is loved by literary book bloggers. A few years ago I decided to read How the Dead Dream, the first novel of a trilogy. I was just so pleased.

Ghost Lights is the second in that trilogy and I read it now because I wanted to get through all three novels before her new book, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, came out. For one thing, it does not suffer from the common occurrence where the second of a trilogy is the weaker of the three. If anything, it just carries right on.

In How the Dead Dream the main character, known as T, dumps his successful real estate development business in the hands of devoted secretary Susan and takes off for Central America. He goes completely out of touch leaving Susan consumed with worry. 

Ghost Lights opens with Susan's husband Hal, a deadbeat IRS employee who has just discovered that his wife might be cheating on him. In a convoluted attempt to win her back, he volunteers to go find T somewhere in the jungle and bring him back.

Millet's characters are always just this side of whacked out. In that respect she reminds me of T C Boyle and Michael Chabon, two of my favorite authors. Hal is so oblivious. Obsessed with his confusion about Susan, he bumbles around on the outskirts of Central American tourist towns, takes up drinking, has serendipitous encounters with people who help him, and finds T.

And this is only half of the novel! The thing about Millet is she combines elements that shouldn't work together in the same story but they do. Wry humor bordering on slapstick sometimes, political and environmental viewpoints laced with irony, a smidgen of magical realism, all wrapped around the very real sorrows and quandaries of the human heart.  

It's like when I invent dishes in my kitchen that are a mashup of various cultures. They are usually delicious and I just call them "fusion." Because if the flavors complement each other and the ingredients meet up in interesting ways, everyone's palate is happy. Well, almost everyone.

Lydia Millet delivers something that delights my reading tastes. And she does not care one whit what she does to you. Ghost Lights ends so surprisingly, as did How the Dead Dream. I can't wait to see if or how she wraps things up in the third book, but with the title, Magnificence, she promises quite a lot. 

(Ghost Lights is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

JUNE READING GROUP UPDATE

A new twist on images: why did this one come out off center? Maybe because I am feeling a bit that way trying to catch up on all things blogging.

Only 4 IRL reading groups this month. One of my groups is on hiatus for the summer. But then there is my new on-line group and they are doing 2 books! OMG.

Here we go!

Laura's Group:

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Goodreads On-line Group:

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Goodreads On-line Group:

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Molly's Group:

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One Book at a Time:

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Bookie Babes:

 

 

 

I am looking forward to all of these books! Really a stellar reading group collection. 

What books are you looking forward to reading/discussing this month?

 

BOOKS READ IN MAY

Well, here it is the second of June and I am behind already as a blogger. I have a good excuse this time. Last weekend I flew to Houston, TX for my granddaughter's high school graduation and just got back a couple days ago. Of course, I got no reading done so had to power read the first reading group book of the month for last night's meeting. You will find out what that was tomorrow when I post the June Reading Group Update.

Compared to April, I had a wonderful reading month with no duds, no slumps, and all kinds of interesting stories. I finished 12 books, an acceptable amount for me and my reading goals. Due to an unusual circumstance, I cannot tell you what one of the books was. So it is a "secret book."

Stats: 12 books read, 9 fiction, 3 non-fiction, 8 by women, 2 from My Big Fat Reading Project, 1 translated, 1 speculative.

Favorites: The Death of Artemio Cruz, LaRose, and Gold Flame Citrus

Least favorite: None. All were great.

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How was your reading in May? Any recommendations for me?

THE PAST

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The Past, Tessa Hadley, Harper, 2016, 310 pp

 

 

Summary from Goodreads: Three adult sisters and their brother meet up at their grandparents' country home for their annual family holiday--three long, hot summer weeks. The beloved but crumbling house is full of memories of their childhood--of when their mother took them to stay with her parents when she left their father--but this could be their last summer in the house, now they may have to sell it. And under the idyllic pastoral surface, there are tensions.

 

 

My Review:

One of the ways I like to nerd out as a reader is to read several novels that basically tell the same story in different ways. Then I compare and contrast in my mind about the various books.

 

The Past falls into that group of novels in which a family of adult siblings get together in the home where they grew up for a last reunion before that home must be sold. I think we are drawn to such stories because they examine at least three generations, because all families have their quirks and issues, sorrows and joys, and because we can see how the passing of almost one hundred years affects the way life is for each generation.

 

Literary fiction, by which I mean fiction with skillful writing and deeper thoughts about life than so-called mainstream, commercial, or popular fiction, is my reading preference. I totally get it that it is not for everyone. The Past is highly literary. Set in a small British town, it moves at a slow pace with plenty of description of weather and place as well as a look at the inner lives of the characters. There is however plenty of tension in the story that builds to an unexpected climax.

 

I liked it. It got me to look again at my own family and the ways in which our shared life unites us while our different personalities create friction. I realized that every family has a sort of myth about itself which is just that; a myth, not the truth.

 

This year as I was following The Tournament of Books, I became impressed by one of the many people who comment on each day's winners and losers. When the above mentioned person started a new group on Goodreads, I joined. We read and discuss new literary fiction. Our first group read was The Past and that is how I came to read it.

 

I don't actually enjoy on-line book discussions because they are too disjointed for me. I get worked up about some of the vitriol people express about the book. I much more enjoy book discussions in real life where the dialogue is immediate and we can respond to each other in real time. But I am intrigued by the books this group intends to read.

 

So I lurk and don't comment often. The group's creator and moderator is conscientious, thoughtful, and kind. That helps. I am glad to have read Tessa Hadley and will probably seek out other novels by her.

 

Books I have also enjoyed on this theme:

The Green Road, by Anne Enright

Wish You Were Here, by Stewart O'Nan

 

Can you recommend others I might like?

 

Do you participate in on-line book discussions? If so, what makes them work for you? 

 

 

(The Past is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ

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The Death of Artemio Cruz, Carlos Fuentes, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1964, 306 pp (translated from the Spanish by Sam Hileman, originally published in Mexico, 1962)

 

 

 

This novel made a huge impression on me. Read as part of my 1962 reading list, it was the original translation by Sam Hileman, Fuentes's translator throughout the 1960s.

 

  Artemio Cruz was a fictional impoverished mulatto. In his teens, he ran away to fight in the Mexican Revolution but later betrayed the ideals of that conflict and through sharp dealing became a wealthy and influential financier.

Artemio is dying all the way through the novel, but looking back from his sickbed and through the dreams and delirium of illness. The author therefore becomes the voice of the man, an artful and successful method of unwritten autobiography put down on the page by another.

While still a soldier, Artemio finds his first, his one and only love. Once she dies of a bullet wound, his ideals become diluted by sorrow. The rise to power involves him in a loveless marriage as well as shady dealing with American investors. Like any good mogul, he also buys a newspaper by which he can spin events to his own benefit and influence politicians.

Despite the despicable nature of Artemio's life, I came to care about this man. Like many modern novels of today, the time sequence is tangled but creates the effect of a person coming to terms with his life; seeing how his earlier actions influenced later ones; grappling with the tough questions of honor vs power. As a result, Fuentes presented a history of the revolution through the lens of one man's life.

Also by means of straight memory, dream states, and the continuous contrast of Artemios's current struggle with his illness, his doctors, and his family, the author draws the reader into all the conflicting ways any person deals with a life. The writing is powerful, somewhat experimental, and I almost did not want the book to end. 

I turned the last page and wondered who I could read that writes like this today.

THE MARRIAGE OF OPPOSITES

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The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman, Simon & Schuster, 2015, 362 pp

Back in 2000, I read a bunch of Alice Hoffman's novels. I was drawn to the magical element. But I was always a bit put off by the way she writes though I could never quite put my finger on why. Every writer has a voice and I just could not completely enjoy hers. So I gave her up.

When one of my reading groups chose The Marriage of Opposites, despite my doubts, I read it. The writing still bothered me but it is historical fiction set in two exotic locations and the story revolves around Rachel, who was the mother of Camille Pissarro, a famous painter in late 17th century Paris, now recognized as one of the fathers of Impressionism.

The novel opens when Rachel is a defiant young girl, making her own mother crazy as she refuses to follow the rules. The family are pillars of their small community of Jews on the Caribbean island of St Thomas. Descendants of Jews who escaped the Inquisition and were driven from Europe, the community's rules derived from the need to defend themselves and always be ready to flee in the face of oppression.

Rachel would have been happy to flee such a sequestered life. Her dream is to live in Paris and this is the story of how she eventually realized that dream. Of course, a lot of stuff had to happen first and decades passed. The island is rife with secret relationships, racial and religious prejudice, and a woman's life is hard.

Rachel and her best friend Jestine suffer together through marriages, childbirth, losses, and passions. Hoffman's writing in this book is best when she is describing the beauties of the island and later of Paris. Perhaps because she was writing about the childhood and development of an Impressionist painter, she took on the eyes of an artist.

Also, most of the characters are wonderfully developed and make the story come alive. I always admired her storytelling skills. In The Marriage of Opposites her story is so big, far ranging, and full of incident that I stopped being distracted by her awkward sentences and just read to find out what would happen to Rachel, her two husbands, and her numerous children. I also learned about another facet of Jewish life I had not known before.

Overall a fascinating read, though the two men in the reading group called it chick lit. The women laughed them off. If some men think any story about women who take charge of their own lives is chick lit, maybe it's time they got to actually know some "chicks."

(The Marriage of Opposites is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

WINTER'S TALE

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Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc, 1983, 688 pp

 

 

At last we come to the book that broke my reading slump. After being forced by circumstances to put it down at only 25% through, I could finally pick it up again and live in its spellbinding universe.

 

What can I say about a book that has 3622 reviews on Goodreads and 1069 on Amazon? I guess I can only say what I loved.

 

1.) It is long, so long, but I never wanted it to end. If heaven or eternal life were this entertaining, this full of diverse characters and big ideas and wonder, I would sign up. I can't say I was ever bored. Even the endless descriptions of weather and locations kept me engaged.

 

2.) The Big Idea: Actually it is a big question or a big quest. (How similar are those two words and both are derived from the Latin word "quaerere" meaning to seek, ask, inquire.) In this novel the question is "Is the Universe just?" 

 

Ever since I can remember being able to think, I have asked myself and others that question. When I have protested against what I've perceived as unfair, I have mostly been told that life is not fair. When I have rankled against injustice, I have been instructed that justice is an ideal but nearly impossible to achieve.

The big idea here is that yes, the Universe is just but one must look at the big picture, take the long view. In a seemingly anarchic fashion, the universe, both animate and inanimate, tends toward balance and justice. At this point in my life I don't really worry anymore if such a concept is true or not. It is what I believe and the one freedom that cannot be taken away is the freedom of one's own beliefs. To have this belief narrated in such a great tale was wondrous for me.

3.) The interactions of characters, generations, historical periods and the intricacies that the author creates. While I love many kinds of stories, it is the long, intricate ones that please me most.

Hopefully the next time I hit a reading slump, and that is bound to happen, I will remember the cure: Go to the Books I Really Want To Read shelf and pick one up and read it.

(Winter's Tale is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE WOMAN WHO READ TOO MUCH

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The Woman Who Read Too Much, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, Redwood Press, 2015, 322 pp (originally published in France and Italy, 2007)

 

 

Summary from Goodreads: Gossip was rife in the capital about the poetess of Qazvin. Some claimed she had been arrested for masterminding the murder of the grand Mullah, her uncle. Others echoed her words, and passed her poems from hand to hand. Everyone spoke of her beauty, and her dazzling intelligence. But most alarming to the Shah and the court was how the poetess could read. As her warnings and predictions became prophecies fulfilled, about the assassination of the Shah, the hanging of the Mayor, and the murder of the Grand Vazir, many wondered whether she was not only reading history but writing it as well. Was she herself guilty of the crimes she was foretelling?

 

 

My Review:

Because of its title, I was destined to read this novel. I am the woman who reads too much. But for the poetess of Qazvin, her excessive reading brought tragedy and an early death, while for me it is saving my sanity.

 

Let me say right off that this is an extremely challenging read. Its larger than life characters go by several names and titles each. It is set in mid 19th century Persia. It is told from four different points of view. The time sequence is a tangled and overlapping web. If I hadn't turned to the back of the book and read the author's Afterword first, something I rarely do, and then constantly referred to her "Chronology of Corpses" placed after the Afterword, I would have been as confused and frustrated as the rest of my reading group members were.

 

Because I used those two aids as much as I did, I was rewarded beyond my expectations. The poetess of Qazvin was most definitely a saint and though her ending was violent and grim, she did as much for women and mankind as most saints do. She was blessed to be born to a father who believed women should be taught to read and encouraged to write, in a time and culture when Persian women were meant to be kept illiterate.

 

Being a literate woman who studied the Islamic scriptures she was tireless in working to adapt Islamic practices to include rights for women. She was fearless and beautiful but little concerned for her own comfort or happiness or safety. She taught women of all classes to read and to think for themselves.

 

If one is to read and assimilate Bahiyyih Nakhjavani's extraordinary novel, one must set aside most of her reading habits and expectations and desire to see inside both the palaces and hovels of Iranian culture. In any culture, where women or races or religious beliefs or economic conditions enforce inequality and oppression while using violence to quell discontents, the victims of it develop coping strategies. This is true of the lowliest corpse washer, of the inhabitants of the palace harems, of the mother of the Shah.

 

The author has woven a tapestry of words and images to portray the many ways in which all of the above might play out. The reward for me in deciphering her art and intent was a deeper understanding of the drama that is our modern world or even perhaps that of humanity throughout all time.  

 

By the end I felt something like enlightenment. I could see the big picture, the stakes, the opponents and the goals. It made me want to read more, to better understand myself and my fellow humans, and I felt very happy to be who I am. To me, that is what great literature should do.

 

 

(The Woman Who Read Too Much is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS

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The Little Red Chairs, Edna O'Brien, Little Brown and Company, 2016, 297 pp

 

 

Summary from Goodreads: A woman discovers that the foreigner she thinks will redeem her life is a notorious war criminal. Vlad, a stranger from Eastern Europe masquerading as a healer, settles in a small Irish village where the locals fall under his spell. One woman, Fidelma McBride, becomes so enamored that she begs him for a child. All that world is shattered when Vlad is arrested, and his identity as a war criminal is revealed.

Fidelma, disgraced, flees to England and seeks work among the other migrants displaced by wars and persecution. But it is not until she confronts him-her nemesis-at the tribunal in The Hague, that her physical and emotional journey reaches its breathtaking climax.

 

 

My Review:

 

Installment #5 of my tale of the April reading slump.

 

This is the book that liberated me from the slump and in fact started me off on a reading streak of great books. This review was originally published at Litbreak.

 

 

What if a war criminal appeared in your town and passed himself off as a poet and holistic healer? What if your town was a small isolated place and the man is handsome in a brooding mysterious way? It could happen that he would be secretly sought after by women with private troubles who would be conned into trusting him to the point of intimacy.

So does the incredible Edna O’Brien imagine how this would play out. Fifty-six years after her first novel, The Country Girls, was published, this is not quite the same Edna O’Brien. She is still mining the plight of the Irish woman but that sequestered innocence has been invaded by ever more wars, economic upheaval, and ethnic struggle. In her current alternate history, The Butcher of Bosnia, in disguise, enters the Irish town of Cloonoila on a winter evening and trailing after him are the evils of one of the worst European conflicts of the 20^th century.

The book is prefaced by the following epigraph:

“On the 6th of April 2012, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the start of the siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces, 11,541 red chairs were laid out in rows along the 800 meters of the Sarajevo high street. One empty chair for every Sarajevan killed during the 1,425 days of siege. Six hundred and forty-three small chairs represented the children killed by snipers and the heavy artillery fired from the surrounding mountains.”

Despite having read the above, I went into the novel as innocently as one of those early country girls and almost as ignorantly as an American woman who avoids reading the news and reads novels instead. Perhaps that was the best state in which to be for a first read, because I was instantly under the spell of O’Brien’s prose.

“The town takes its name from the river. The current, swift and dangerous, surges with a manic glee, chunks of wood and logs of ice borne along in its trail. In the small sidings where the water is trapped, stones, blue, black and purple, shine up out of the river bed, perfectly smoothed and rounded and it is as though seeing a clutch of good-sized eggs in a bucket of water. The noise is deafening…

“He stays by the water’s edge, apparently mesmerized by it.

“Bearded and in a long dark coat and white gloves, he stands on the narrow bridge, looks down at the roaring current, then looks around, seemingly a little lost, his presence the single curiosity in the monotony of a winter evening in a freezing backwater that passes for a town and is named Cloonoila.”

Within days the stranger, who calls himself Dr Vladimir Dragan, has met with and overcome suspicion and won over some admirers, including a nun, a bartender, and several ladies. He gives treatments in his clinic and talks at the school. He brings glamour and newness and a bit of the feeling of danger to the dull winter town.

No one comes to actual harm except Fidelma McBride, whose beauty and worldliness is sure to lead to trouble. She is unhappily married to a much older man, childless, and bored, having lost her boutique in the crash. The doctor becomes her obsession and she lures him into an affair. But Dragan is discovered, captured and whisked away. After a scene of stunning violence, Fidelma is left shamed and shunned by the community and her husband.

The final sections of the novel are a classic tale of the ravages of sin, the search for redemption, and the atonement. Fidelma moves to London and lives among refugees and undocumented immigrants, then moves on to The Hague where she attends Dragan’s trial before the United Nations Tribunal. Interwoven with what could be a dark mystery or even a political thriller is this woman’s journey from complicity with evil through guilt to her ultimate understanding of the dangers of innocence. O’Brien calls on the classic legends, tales of innocence lost and evil triumphing, parables of justice and punishment, all from the viewpoint of women ravaged, deprived of home and family, and drowning in grief. Not a moment of melodrama. Just a piercing examination of the travails brought down on women in times of evil getting the upper hand.

When The Little Red Chairs was published in Great Britain last October, the long, drawn out trial of Radovan Karadzic, the actual Butcher of Bosnia, was still ongoing. Just five days before the book’s publication in the United States, the United Nations Tribunal in The Hague convicted him of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. I did not know that piece of news until I began preparing my review. The chilling thought comes to me. Could this masterpiece by a writer of fiction, an Irish female novelist, have made a difference in the judgement of the Tribunal?  

(The Little Red Chairs is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)