LAST DAYS OF NIGHT

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Last Days of Night, Graham Moore, Random House, 2016, 357 pp

Summary from Goodreads: A thrilling novel based on actual events, about the nature of genius, the cost of ambition, and the battle to electrify America—New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history—and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul’s client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the light bulb and holds the right to power the country? 

My Review:

I read this excellent historical fiction because I have a bit of an obsession with Nikola Tesla. Luckily one of my reading groups picked it, meaning I read it sooner rather than later.

It is 1888 and Thomas Edison has engaged in a huge legal battle with George Westinghouse over who invented the light bulb. Electric light is just beginning to replace gas light and there is money to be made. Enter Nikola Tesla with his discoveries about alternating current, thickening the plot.

The battle is told through the eyes of Paul Cravath, just graduated from Columbia Law School and in his first year of practise as a junior partner at a small legal office. When George Westinghouse hires him to conduct a counter suit against Edison, Paul anticipates his career getting off to a great start.  

Brilliant story telling puts this untested lawyer smack in the middle of an untested legal issue. Everyone involved makes mistakes but Paul's are the most interesting since we already know how it turned out. (Well, at least I thought I did though I learned much more about the infamous rivalry.) Paul's unceasingly hard work and perpetual setbacks power the plot. Through most of the book I was as stressed out as Paul was, wondering if he would fail epically or win the day for Westinghouse. In the end, he did neither.

Reading about the intersection of science, business, and law that made the book a thriller, I was amazed both at the violence of the times and by how much the late 1800s set the stage for the oligarchy we live in today. J P Morgan gets involved as the financier. Even banking plays a role.

My favorite characters though were Tesla with his almost autistic personality and Agnes Huntington, Paul's love interest, a woman as intriguing as Lilliet Berne in The Queen of the Night.

Graham Moore is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game. I predict he will go far. 

(Last Days of Night is currently available in hardcover on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

 

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, The Viking Press, 1962, 146 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods—until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp.

My Review:

This was my Halloween read. (Yes, I am a bit behind in posting reviews.) It was perfectly spooky and unsettling.

The best aspect was a steady building of creepy tension. Though that is Shirley Jackson's most notorious skill, she kicked it up a notch here in her final novel.

Mary Katherine and her older sister Constance live alone with their senile Uncle Julian in a big house on the edge of town. The rest of the Blackwood family are dead. None of the family were liked in town and Mary Katherine is the only one who ventures there for the weekly shopping. She is bullied in disturbing ways. During the course of the tale you find out the whys for all the strangeness.

It gets continuously more disturbing and there is no redemption at the end. If that bothers you, don't read Shirley Jackson, ever!

I have not read much Stephen King but now that I have read all of Shirley Jackson's novels, I believe I may be ready. She holds up a mirror to our deepest unspoken fears and desires. We all have them as well as evil thoughts we dare not act out.

I also want to read the recently published biography: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin. Ms Jackson gives me courage and permission to tell my own stories.

(We Have Always Lived in the Castle is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

  

THE SLAVE

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The Slave, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Farrar Straus and Cudahy, 1962, 311 pp (translated from the Yiddish by the author and Cecil Hemley)

Summary from Goodreads: Four years after the Chmielnicki massacres of the seventeenth century, Jacob, a slave and cowherd in a Polish village high in the mountains, falls in love with Wanda, his master's daughter. Even after he is ransomed, he finds he can't live without her, and the two escape together to a distant Jewish community. Racked by his consciousness of sin in taking a Gentile wife and by the difficulties of concealing her identity, Jacob nonetheless stands firm as the violence of the era threatens to destroy the ill-fated couple. 

My Review:

I have not yet read anything by I B Singer I did not love. The Slave is no exception. Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978 and always wrote in Yiddish until his death in 1991, in Surfside, FL.

After all my reading this year about slavery in America, I come to this reminder that slavery is as old an institution as prostitution. Both seem to be inherent in the human story. 

The Slave is an epic in 311 pages. Jacob was a learned and pious Jew, son of wealthy parents, who found himself a slave to a farmer in a remote mountain village. His birthplace, Josefov, was a Polish town that lay in the path of Ukrainian Cossacks in the 17th century. The ensuing massacres had cleared the town of Jews. Jacob fled, thinking his parents, wife and children dead, then fell into the hands of robbers who sold him into slavery. 

Though he desperately strove to stay true to his faith, Jacob began to love the farmer's daughter. Wanda was a step above her environment, a practically prehistoric milieu of pagan superstition, tooth and claw existence, and rural poverty. But she was a Gentile and therefore forbidden. Her passion for him finally overcame his religious scruples and they planned to escape.

Of course, that plan fell through on the first attempt. Jacob's life from then on is one of perils and his search for redemption, taking him all the way to Israel as part of the early Zionist movement, at last reuniting with Wanda, and on to his final days where he finds peace and wisdom.

Besides being a beautiful love story, the novel is also a contemplation of the place of religion in human society including the contradiction that it condemns believers who do not follow its commandments while it honors the phenomenon that spirituality can lift us above our animal nature. The result is a timeless tale.

How interesting that Singer published a novel called The Slave just as the Civil Rights Movement was catching fire in America, his adopted country since 1935.  

ELIGIBLE

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Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld, Random House, 2016, 488 pp

This retelling of Pride and Prejudice gave me some of the most reading fun I have had this year. Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Mat Johnson's Loving Day were close runners up though based on the more serious subject of racism. Eligible is about 21st century white people behaving badly.

I don't feel any need to rehash the plot except to say that Sittenfeld hewed closely to Pride and Prejudice while cleverly recreating the major plot points to fit contemporary American society. If we found the Bennet family annoying in the original version and Darcy enigmatic, we are quite completely exasperated by these characters in Eligible. Meanwhile we are laughing all the way.

So to the naysayers out there who called the novel trashy (yes, intentional), over-the-top (yes and so was Jane Austen in her time), not what they expected (what, did you really just want to read Pride and Prejudice again?), I say I am sorry you didn't get it and if you don't think there are families like this today in America, you must be living under a rock.

This is Darcy and Liz with cellphones, reality TV, tabloids, and the insidious class consciousness still  with us. But it also shows us that people can change, terrible teens do grow up, and the parents will never understand.

(Eligible is currently available in hardcover on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE QUEUE

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The Queue, Basma Abdel Aziz, Melville House, 2016, 217 pp (translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jacquette, orig pub by Dar Altanweer, Cairo, Egypt, 2013)

This was a challenging but in the end quite affecting novel. The author, an Egyptian journalist, is also a psychiatrist who treats victims of torture. Excellent credentials for writing a novel about the impact of government oppression. 

The story opens in an unnamed Middle Eastern city with Dr Tarek Fahmy reviewing the file of his patient Yehya Gad el-Rab Saeed. Said patient had come to him for the removal of a bullet in his groin, received during an uprising that has come to be known as the Disgraceful Events. 

Though the uprising failed it had an unlooked for upshot: The Gate, where citizens must go for even the most basic permissions but which never opens. A queue of petitioners grows and grows so long that one cannot see from one end to the other. In order to conceal all evidence that any civilians were shot during the uprising, Yehya must receive permission for the operation to remove the bullet, a permission that will never be granted because that would be an admission that a civilian was shot.

The queue becomes a community in itself attracting people from all walks of life. Many of them camp out there for weeks and weeks so as not to lose their place in line. I pictured something like the lines that form in America for concert tickets and such, except that in this queue the gate will never open.

I grew to admire many of the characters. Yehya, always in pain and slowly dying, is the Stoic. Amani, his girlfriend, in her attempts to help Yehya, pays a terrible price including mental torture. Um Mabrouk needs medicine for her son; her "camping spot" becomes a gathering place where she serves snacks, always has the latest news, and makes a living there instead of going to her job. Ehab is the journalist who keeps writing for the dissenting newspaper that employs him but will not always publish his articles.

When I finished the book, I had to lay on my reading futon with eyes closed and mind wandering for a good 30 minutes until the devastation wreaked on me began to fade. I felt a bit of what Amani must have felt when she was kept captive in a place of darkness, where she could not see, smell, hear, taste or feel anything.

I can't say that I found much hope in the story except from the characters who did their best to stand up to the oppression and not give in. Human beings are equally strong in cruelty and dissent. What impressed me most was the realistic portrayal of the effects of totalitarianism on the human psyche. Basma Abdel Aziz is an incredible writer.

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

THE ITALIAN GIRL

The Italian Girl, Iris Murdoch, Viking Press, 1964, 171 pp

 

 

Summary from Goodreads: Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he finds himself involved in the old, awful problems, together with some new ones. One by one his relatives reveal their secrets to a reluctant Edmund: illicit affairs, hidden passions, shameful scandals. At the heart of all, there is, as always, the family's loyal servant, the Italian girl.

 

 

My Review:

This is Iris Murdoch's eighth novel. I have been reading her novels in order of publication and become quite a fan. She brings a philosophical bent to her fiction. Though the next book for me would have been The Unicorn, one of my reading groups picked this one so I set aside my OCD tendency and went with it. Some critics have considered it one of her weakest novels. I liked it just fine.

 

The younger son, Edmund, has come home due to the death of his mother and tells the story with wistful viewpoints of each member of the household. Lydia, the deceased mother, had been controlling and no longer interested in her husband (now deceased) once she had two sons. She was overly possessive of the boys in alternating periods. Otto, the older brother, still lives in the family home with his wife Isabel and daughter Flora, now a teenager.

 

In Murdoch's usual way, the details of the family come into focus like a developing photograph until you have a distressing picture of psychological disturbance and broken relationships. Edmund, no surprise, has trouble with females, never married, and is possibly still a virgin. Otto drinks, is vegetarian, and works unsuccessfully as an engraver, mostly making tombstones. He has always had criminal-type assistants who cause trouble and are then replaced.

 

Otto's wife, it turns out, is having an affair with the current assistant, David, who has also been sleeping with the daughter and gotten her pregnant. Otto is sleeping with David's mysterious and troubled sister. Quite a mess but this is one of Murdoch's typical families. Edmund's pathetic attempts to help these people all go awry, almost to the point of comedy. Dark comedy is another facet of Murdoch's fiction.  

 

The title is the key to this fractured family, but you don't find out the full significance of the Italian girl until the very end. All you know until then is that the family has had a series of Italian girls as servants. These girls do all the housework, raised the boys when the mother needed a break, and served as companion to mother. The mystery of this arrangement is the big reveal at the end.

I found the novel to be one of her most exquisitely written books. Each scene is carefully drawn with lovely descriptions that create atmosphere and allow you to see ever more deeply into the characters. In fact, it was adapted for the stage by James Saunders and originally performed in 1968.

In spite of there being not a single likeable character, I felt for them all. Murdoch seems to be telling us that in any family there are secrets. Secrets of the heart due to failures to connect, unawareness of what goes on, a lack of perspective caused by the claustrophobia of family. I have found that to be true in most families I know, even the good ones.

The Italian Girl is hard to find in paper; used book retailers do have it. It is also available as an ebook through Open Road.

 

THE BIG GREEN TENT

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The Big Green Tent, Ludmila Ulitskaya, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015, (translated from the Russian by Bela Shayeviich, orig pub in Russia, 2011) 573 pp

Summary from Goodreads: The Big Green Tent is the kind of book the  term “Russian novel” was invented for. A sweeping saga, it tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience.

My Review:

Imagine you are a boy growing up in 1950s Soviet Moscow. You are just a bit outside the norm for a schoolboy in those times, the type who is bullied, the type who has dreams about how his life might go. You find two other boys like you and form a bond that lasts for a lifetime.

Better yet, the three of you find yourselves in a class taught by a man who can bring literature alive and who takes you under his wing. You learn that not all of life needs to be lived in fear of the KGB, in lock step to Soviet rules and plans.

So do Ilya, who loves photography, Mikha and his bent towards writing poems, and Sanya, lost in the wonder of music, become touchstones for each other. Stalin dies, there is a moment of leniency when Khrushchev comes to power, and for young people the dissident life is the thing. People still betray others who are then sent to prison camps. Maybe because these things happen daily and young people often hate injustice and desire change, they believe they can make a difference.

Despite the continuing horrors of the times, this is a great novel in the tradition of great Russian literature but set in our times and written by a woman! Ludmila Ulitskaya revels in story telling and has clearly thought deeply about her country and the souls of the Russian people.

Her novel is filled with many characters, with the thrill of defying authority, with love and loss, joy and sorrow, bravery and cowardice. The pages fly by. No wonder she is one of Russia's most popular writers. 

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

WHAT NOW?

 

What Now?

I feel bad. I feel abused. I feel like taking to my bed with a bottle of vodka. I feel outraged at my country. I feel like I am suffering from a great loss and cannot think straight. I feel apathetic. I feel afraid. I feel guilty. I feel small. I feel confused.

All through this Presidential election campaign, I felt a growing awareness that the country I am living in is not the country I thought I was living in. Now I know for sure that I have not really been looking at my country as it is. I was lulled into a feeling of hope and security by evidence that change was truly happening: change for women, minorities, and the under-represented people in our society. I thought we were ready for a woman to be our President, a woman who had the experience, the courage, and the will to continue the fight for true freedom of all people in our land but who could navigate the treacherous waters of the world as it is, who could continue to redeem our country in the eyes of the world.

I did not realize the extent of the anguish many of my fellow Americans are going through everyday as they try to make a living. I did not realize how very angry are the white, straight, conservative Christian men and women of this country. How ripe this segment of our society, who are still a slim majority, were for the con game of a demagogue who has played on their fears and insecurities to advance his own hunger for power and recognition.

I could not bring myself to post a blog about a book I read three weeks ago before this rude awakening was forced on me. Even though this morning, when I checked my reading log, I see that the next book I was to post a review about is actually completely apropos: The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya, a novel about Soviet Russia in its latter days.

I watched Hilary Clinton’s address to her campaign team yesterday morning and once again admired her courage, her clear thinking, and all the other qualities she has for leadership. I went to my reading group last night to discuss Last Days of Night by Graham Moore, a wonderful piece of historical fiction about the early years of electric power in America; the intersection of science, finance, and the law. We discussed, we drank wine, we got to giggling about pussy grabbing. The gloom began to lift.

This morning I read a great article on Lit Hub: Literary Voices React to President Donald Trump. Again I went through the whole spectrum of emotions. I started making decisions about my future reading. At one point I decided to read only books by women of all races, creeds, and nationalities. At another point I decided to drop the blog and just work on my Big Fat Reading Project and my memoir. I jotted down a quote from Dan Peipenbring of the Paris Review: “And read as often and as violently as you can.”

As always, I was restored by writers.

Lately, in my life, I have been pondering the concept of rebalancing. It is an ecological, Buddhist, Tao Te Ching, long-view concept. Human beings get out of balance due to all kinds of factors that are part of daily life but some cosmic force works always to bring the dichotomies of life back into balance. All of those emotions I cited in the first paragraph of this essay are brought about by the terror of things getting so out of balance that life or the universe will end.

My conclusion today is that I had not totally been facing how out of balance the world and the human race truly is at this time. It is not that I did not know that. It is that I thought things were improving. And I think they are but not as much as I had thought. A huge factor in the cosmic force towards balance is sentient beings. When the storm is over, when the fire is out, when the smoke clears, it is up to sentient beings to come out of disaster mode and start thinking, planning, setting things to rights.

The best sentient beings I know are people who read and write, clearly and as truthfully as they can. That is us! Bloggers, readers, authors, publishers. We dare not give up, give in, or stay silent. We need to read it all, even the words of white male chauvinist bigots. Everyone in a free society gets to have a say, we need to know the enemy and understand him, and we need to be in conversation with him.

So, I will read, I will write, I will attempt to be in concert with the forces of balance, I will not pander, I will not be silent. I will be back tomorrow with my next review.

Thank you for visiting and reading my blog. Take heart, carry on, be the change you want to see in this world, keep the faith, and all that good stuff!

HAG-SEED

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Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood, Hogarth Shakespeare, 2016, 283 pp

My Review (originally published on Litbreak):

 

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The fourth in the Hogarth Shakespeare Series turned out to be the best one so far. A retelling of the oft performed and retold The Tempest, this one is laid out like an intricate puzzle and seeing the pieces come together while reading it was pure enjoyment. It is another example of the brilliance that underlies all of Margaret Atwood’s writing.

For someone who has difficulty reading Shakespeare’s plays, Hag-Seed did me the favor of decoding the many layers of The Tempest. Her main character for the modern day version, Felix Philip, is the former Artistic Director of a Canadian theatre festival, whose total immersion into creativity led to his being thrown under the bus by his assistant Tony. He stands in for Prospero, Tony for the usurping brother Antonio. After malingering in a cave-like rented house for several years, his festering obsession with revenge burning a hole in his soul, he finally changes his name and takes a position teaching the Literacy Through Literature program at a nearby prison. There he will stage his version of The Tempest, the one he never got to put on at the festival.

The prison becomes Prospero’s island for Felix. His methods for teaching Shakespeare to mid-level criminals are inspired. I enjoyed reading about that almost as much as anything else in the novel. He gets beyond the low literacy level of some of his actors and stage crew by forming them into teams that help each other “get it.” He channels their antisocial predilections and develops a method for casting the play that manages to side step the daily potential for violence. For example, he asks them to find all the swear words in the play and then allows only those to be used in class. No f-word, no s-word, just whoreson, plaguey, pied ninny, etc.

Beyond the well-rounded characters of the various prisoners, there were two more that captured me. Miranda is all over the story. One of the reasons Tony was able to outwit Felix was that the Director lost his daughter, named Miranda of course, when she died of meningitis at age three. During his self-imposed exile she reappeared as a ghostly imaginary friend and he conjured a whole life for her as the years went by. For the prison production of The Tempest, not one inmate would agree to play a girl, so Felix located the original young woman he had cast as Miranda in the aborted Festival version of the play,  convincing her to brave the dangers at his current job and take the part. Anne-Marie Greenland was my favorite character: preternaturally creative but tough, full of fun, and a kick-ass dancer. Of course the prisoner who plays Ferdinand falls for her, hard. She also embodies some of the best characters from earlier Atwood novels, especially Grace Marks from Alias Grace as well as Ren and Toby from the Maddaddam trilogy.

Finally comes the revenge. Tony moved on to politics after usurping Felix and visits the prison performance with his new buddies. They intend to shut down the Literacy Through Literature program. Felix and his students manage to get these fellows into a position where he can get back at Tony and save his current job. The scenes where that revenge takes place are over the top, clever, and suspenseful, but require a large suspension of disbelief by the reader. It had to be part of the novel but I was not completely convinced by that section.

These are only the highlights of what made Margaret Atwood’s retelling so dramatic. Not a page is without surprises and treats for the reader. It is as if she is Prospero herself, rendering an entertainment for her captive audience, that being any reader who opens the book. Not only is Felix’s story a retelling of the play, The Tempest is also performed in full, making the entire production the original play within a new play. 

(Hag-Seed is available by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

NOVEMBER READING GROUP UPDATE

Reading group activity always winds down at this time of year due to the holidays. Fine with me because it gives me a shot at all those books I meant to read this year but haven't gotten to yet. Only three meetings this month and I have already read Vinegar Girl. It is all good.

Laura's Group:

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Bookie Babes: 

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One Book at a Time:

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Since this is the month for giving thanks, I would like to give thanks to all the wonderful readers in my reading groups, to all the outstanding authors I have read this year, and to you who follow and read and comment on this blog. All of you are the shining center of my life (along with my husband, ha ha, but he reads also.)

BOOKS READ IN OCTOBER

I had a stellar reading month in October! 

Stats: 13 books read. All fiction. 8 written by women. 2 historical fiction. 1 children's lit. 1 drama. 2 retellings of classics. 3 translated. 4 from My Big Fat Reading Project 1962 list.

Favorites: Commonwealth, Hag-Seed, The Big Green Tent, Eligible, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

Least favorite: Pale Fire

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Which were your favorite books read in October? Did you read any you did not like? My Halloween read was We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Did you have a Halloween read?

PALE FIRE

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Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, G P Putnam's Sons, 1962, 301 pp

Summary from Goodreads: An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king.  

Foreward to my review: I almost did not post these thoughts about Pale Fire. It is not really a review. It is me whining. Then I thought that most avid readers are at one time or another defeated by a novel. Whether we soldier on to the end or DNF, it can be a blow. Whether we blame the author or ourselves, it is a discouraging experience. So I post this as a tribute to readers who go outside their comfort zones and try other types of books.

My Thoughts:

I was nearly defeated as a reader by this book. I read it, off and on, for several weeks. It is the most oddly constructed novel I have ever come across: An Introduction in the Everyman's Library edition I read, written by someone else; a Foreward by the narrator Charles Kinbote; a poem in Four Cantos by the fictional poet John Shade; a lengthy commentary by Charles Kinbote who fancies himself to be John Shade's friend and the editor of his poem, deconstructing the poem almost line by line.

I skipped the Introduction, as I usually do, saving it to read after finishing the book, because Introductions often contain spoilers. On the advice of several reviewers, I attempted to read the poem and the commentary simultaneously, flipping back and forth between the two. I do not advise this method.

I could tell that Nabokov was at his satirical and literary nadir but I could not quite get a grasp of what he was trying to do. In fact, though I have read and liked some of his other novels, I grew to hate him for being unnecessarily obtuse, for making me feel he was mocking the reader, and for making me feel stupid.

Finally, I went back and read the poem all the way through, then picked up the commentary where I had left off and struggled through to the end. I figured out that Charles Kinbote was the ultimate unreliable narrator and that the satire was working on various levels. 

I have read almost all of the Goodreads reviews of Pale Fire and several others from legitimate newspaper reviews. Anyone who liked the book raves about its "ingeniously constructed parody," its wild inventiveness, wit, suspense, literary one-upmanship, political intrigue, perfect tragicomic balance.

I will grant that Nabokov did all that. I will admit that I was woefully under-prepared as a reader to even remotely appreciate it.  I doubt I ever will be prepared enough, but someday when I have read another 2000 books (the number of books I have read since 1991 when I decided to move on from reading trashy bestsellers and become "well read") I may give Pale Fire another shot.

After finally reaching the end and then reading the Introduction, still feeling like I did not get the joke, I found a review by Mary McCarthy, one of my favorite super smart female writers, and she explained everything I didn't get. "Bolt From the Blue". Despite my reading friends telling me I have read everything, I have not, but already in 1962 Mary McCarthy had.

What Vladimir Nabokov and Pale Fire did for me was restore my humility and make me more determined than ever to read all I can for the rest of my life, from ancient to modern, in all genres. Still, I reserve the right to maintain my current opinion that Mary McCarthy's review is more entertaining than Nabokov's Pale Fire. 

Afterword:

So please my blog followers and Goodreads friends, tell me: what books have defeated you as a reader? How did you feel? Did you finish those books or throw them against the wall? What have you learned by reading stuff that is over your head or outside your favorite reading categories? Let me know I am not alone!

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

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The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead, Doubleday, 2016, 306 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned and, though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor - engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. 

My Review:

I liked this novel very much and I admired several things about it. It is the story of a runaway slave in pre-Civil War times and follows her journey to freedom, a journey she has not fully completed by the end of the book.

The stages of her escape and her continuous flight from the slave catcher who pursues her are harrowing. They also reveal the stages a person who has been enslaved might go through to overcome the effects of that enslavement, to find a sense of self, and to learn how to live with more freedom than ever experienced before. I was impressed by the way Cora's journey paralleled the experience of African Americans over the last 200 years or more, including the reality that the social journey is also still incomplete.

Making the Underground Railroad an actual train that runs underground works on so many levels. I am sure I am not the only school child to have originally imagined it that way.

Cora, the runaway, is a great character. She is tough and vulnerable at the same time. She learns from experience, learns to read, and uses the survival skills attained as a slave, while carrying in her heart both the pain and the pride of the knowledge that her mother ran away before her and was never found. 

However, I did not totally love this novel. In interviews, the author says that he read every slave narrative he could get his hands on before writing it. Having read a couple of those myself, including Twelve Years A Slave, I felt that many of the scenes in this book were familiar. His research showed in the writing a bit too obviously. I don't know how else he could have done it and it is important that he is bringing these stories to new readers and keeping them alive. It just bothered me.

Sometimes I lost track of the reality of Cora as a character and felt I was hearing the author's voice more than hers. I think this is Colson Whitehead's first foray into historical fiction and I have found that quibble in other first historical novels before.

Everyone in my reading group was positive about the book, and this is a group that is usually widely divided about anything we read. So that is an indicator that Whitehead has the ability to reach white, middle-aged women on a topic that is full of negatives. Believe me, that is no small feat!  

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

COMMONWEALTH

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Commonwealth, Ann Patchett, Harper, 2016, 322 pp

Summary from Goodreads: One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly—thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them. 

My Review:

Ann Patchett's new novel!! All I want to do is gush but I will try to say something intelligent.

The story opens at a christening party. It is a family of Catholic cops and the Deputy DA shows up uninvited for reasons that are not clear to anyone. By the end of that first chapter you don't quite know what you have just read about but you do know it was unsettling and fun at the same time.

That is how it goes for pretty much the whole novel except quite a bit of sadness gets added to the mix.

Two divorces, six siblings and half-siblings shuffled back and forth between two sets of parents, unreliable adults, kids left to their own devices. It is tragic, sometimes humorous, and you cannot look away.

Never for one minute do you doubt that this is Ann Patchett. She has performed this trick for novel after novel. Not sentimentality, not sensationalism, and just a bit off from what we like to think about humanity and family and relationships and love.

She has a unique proprietary recipe for writing novels. Even as she exposes us for the moral weaklings that we are, she still gives us hope and reasons to believe that love is the answer. 

(Commonwealth is currently available in hardcover on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

THE ENGLISH ASSASSIN

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The English Assassin, Daniel Silva, G P Putnam's Sons, 2002, 383 pp

Summary from Goodreads: When art restorer and occasional Israeli agent Gabriel Allon is sent to Zurich, Switzerland, to restore the painting of a reclusive millionaire banker, he arrives to find his would-be employer murdered at the foot of his Raphael. A secret collection of priceless, illicitly gained Impressionist masterpieces is missing. Gabriel's handlers step out of the shadows to admit the truth-the collector had been silenced-and Gabriel is put back in the high-stakes spy game, battling wits with the rogue assassin he helped to train. 

My Review:

In his second book of the Gabriel Allon series, Daniel Silva takes us to Switzerland. Gabriel has been sent on a supposed art restoration assignment to the home of private banker Augustus Rolfe in Zurich, only to find the man dead. As it turns out, Rolfe had requested the Israeli espionage office to send him a representative, so Gabriel had been dispatched by his longtime handler Shamron, the ruthless spymaster who calls on Allon when he needs something particularly dangerous carried out.

Gabriel lands in a Swiss jail, breaking the foremost rule: "Don't get arrested!" Soon enough he is embroiled in a case of stolen Jewish art, with a crooked Swiss cop and another crazed assassin as his enemies. Of course, Rolfe has a daughter, a world famous concert violinist, whom Gabriel must protect.

The English Assassin gets off to a much quicker start than the first book, The Kill Artist. I suppose this is because Gabriel's backstory is already known to anyone who has read the former book. However, that backstory is lightly filled in so this one could be read alone.

One reason I like spy thrillers is for the knowledge I get about history and political issues that are not always found in history books or the news. I of course knew that the Nazis had stolen money, jewels, and art from Jews during WWII. What I learned in this novel was the extent to which Swiss bankers were implicit in these crimes. In addition, the private Swiss banking system works on another more secretive and well-protected level which still obstructs the recovery of these thefts.

This was a suspenseful read. So much so, that I had to keep reminding myself that there are 14 more books in the series, meaning that Gabriel must have lived through all the scenes in which I was certain he would not survive.

One more surprising aspect was the way several characters changed throughout the story and committed acts of atonement. Appropriate reading for the period of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur during which I read it. 

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

A SUMMER BIRD-CAGE

A Summer Bird-Cage, Margaret Drabble, William Morrow & Company, 1962, 224 pp

 

 

One of the pleasures of the 1962 list in My Big Fat Reading Project has been reading first novels by authors I have always wanted to read or authors whose later novels I have read.

Examples: Cover Her Face by P D James, In Evil Hour by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Letting Go by Philip Roth, Love and Friendship by Alison Lurie.

Margaret Drabble is the sister of A S Byatt. In the usual way of the media, much has been made over the years about their sibling rivalry. Actually both women have been outspoken about this in interviews and though both are highly acclaimed British novelists still publishing novels, they still don't get along. I get it. I have such a sister.

Another theme in novels by women published in 1962 is a growing awareness of a woman's place in society and in marriage, which would eventually become the Feminist movement, although that question has come up sporadically in novels I have read from earlier years.

Examples: The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, Love and Friendship by Alison Lurie, An Unofficial Rose by Iris Murdoch.

A Summer Bird-Cage falls into both categories. Sarah, the main character, is a recent Oxford graduate who is working out for herself how to fit her high level of intelligence into adult life. She can't settle on a career, she can't find a man to love, and she is watching other women for clues. Her older sister Louise has always been a torment to her.

As the novel opens, she has been called home for Louise's wedding. All the years of enmity are still there. Louise got the beauty, Sarah the brains. Puzzling to Sarah is why her sister is marrying an older successful novelist who is also a rather despicable man. Did she marry him for his money?

Over the course of a year, she sees the marriages of both her best friend and her sister fall apart as she grapples with her own identity as a woman and as an aspiring writer. The shift of power between the sisters is the most fascinating aspect of the story.

I have read countless novels about this very thing and usually find them good because the relationships between women and sisters are interesting to me and resonate with my experience. What I found exhilarating in this one was the excellent writing. Drabble (only 25 when this first novel was published) is unabashed when it comes to demonstrating her own intelligence. The tone of the writing is modern with an emphasis on dialogue that reads the way people actually talk. 

I want more of Margaret Drabble!

(The Summer Bird-Cage is out of print but can be purchased as a used book or an eboook. I found my copy at the library.)

 

 

 

EPITAPH

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Epitaph, Mary Doria Russell, Ecco, 2015, 577 pp

This is the sequel to Doc and my reading group were unanimous on it being a great read, even though it is a Western, a genre we have never read in all the 15 years I have been a member of the group! No one even complained about the length.

Mary Doria Russell set out to tell the truest story she could about the shoot-out at the O K Corral in Tombstone, AZ. Her goal was to dispel the myths that have grown up about Wyatt Earp. She accomplished both, including taking the tale all the way to Earp's death many years later, delineating how those myths came about. One member of the group felt sad to learn that this hero of hers was not the wonderful man she had always revered. A peril of reading good literature, I guess.

The novel packs a lot of history and I felt I had learned more than I ever knew before about that time period in America. Somehow, though I grew up with Wyatt Earp as one of my heroes, I had never realized that the O K Corral incident occurred in 1881, just twenty years after the Civil War began. Though the Eastern part of the country was quite civilized at that time, the West was still wild, violent, and only slightly lawful.

Life for women in those Western towns was especially brutal. Most single women who found themselves there were forced to turn to prostitution to survive. Only one of the Earp brothers was married to his woman, though they were mostly faithful. But mining of gold, copper, and other minerals brought businessmen from the East and made them rich and influential. The enmity between the North and the South was still a driving social and political force with deep divisions between the two. In fact, it was politics and money that created the conditions leading up to the massacre that lasted only thirty seconds and left everyone involved either dead or scarred for life.

It is truly a monumental read and gives much food for thought. In light of our current Presidential campaign, please read and ponder the Author's Note found at the beginning of the novel:

"The poles of American politics have been stable since the presidential election of 1800. A federalist party proclaiming, 'We are a nation of laws' has always been opposed by a 'Don't tread on me' party that resists regulation in the name of personal liberty. Since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they've been called the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Please note that in the 1880s, those labels were reversed."

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

SWEET LAMB OF HEAVEN

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Sweet Lamb of Heaven, Lydia Millet, WW Norton & Company, 2016, 250 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Blending domestic thriller and psychological horror, this compelling page-turner follows a mother fleeing her estranged husband.

Lydia Millet’s chilling new novel is the first-person account of a young mother, Anna, escaping her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists—and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined.

A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters—and for all of us. 

My Review: (originally published at LitBreak)

 

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Earlier this year, as soon as I heard news of Lydia Millet’s newest novel, I diligently set about reading the last two novels of her recent trilogy (How the Dead Dream, Ghostlights, Magnificence). Even when this author writes a trilogy, it is more like three loosely connected novels, the way some novels are a collection of loosely connected stories. I finished the trilogy satisfied that she had given me three distinct examples of her worldview shown through the eyes of three related characters.

As I began to read some of the early publicity for Sweet Lamb of Heaven, I became somewhat alarmed. I got the impression that it was a type of thriller with a runaway mother and child being pursued by a creepy husband. Was she pandering? I mean, anyone who loves Millet will tell you she deserves to be better known. Had she lowered herself to write something possibly more commercially successful?

I will admit, sometimes I am a reader of little faith. I need not have worried. In fact, she has written the anti-Gone Girl. Surely you read that and can admit to doing so. Possibly you saw the movie. I did both and mostly felt annoyed, a bit insulted, though I had to admire the twist at the end.

Anna is an unhappy wife with a young daughter she decided to have even though her husband Ned “threw his hands into the air palms-forward” when she insisted on going through with her pregnancy. “Afterward his schedule got fuller, his long work hours longer, his attention more completely diverted.” Anna admits she began to give up on him from that point.

She has Lena on her own with only hospital staff attending. When she wakes up after the birth she begins to hear voices. It is a cacophony of overlapping voices and continuous whenever she is near Lena. Only when Lena is sleeping or when Anna in desperation gets a sitter and leaves the house, do the voices leave her in peace. Out of the babble she discerns a word (powa or poa) and a phrase (The living spring from the dead.)

A diligent researcher, she moves through possible causes. Delirium, post-partum depression, ear or neurology issues, hallucinations, demons. She calls it “the voice” and keeps a diary. On one of the rare evenings when Ned comes home for dinner, in one of the most eerie moments in the book, he hears the voice too!

The early chapters left me less than hooked though. There are clues that Ned is some sort of psychopath, some background on the marriage, the fact that Anna brought money to the union, and her views on religion. Anna had loved Ned in the beginning but had failed to see the warning signs, though she is clearly not stupid or crazy, just naïve. She soldiers on with the voice and her research, learning that powa or poa means a Buddhist meditation practice described as a “transference of consciousness” or “mind stream.” But once Ned heard it she stopped looking for its origin or cause.

On the day that one-year-old Lena says her first word, the voice falls silent. Anna realizes that the voice passes through those newly born and when they speak, it moves on. She and her daughter live blissfully through the girl’s toddler years with the presence or absence of Ned nothing more than a slight annoyance. Sadly, Anna had fallen once more into naiveté. Even when she knew that she had to leave him, it took her several years to do so.

By that time, Ned had decided to go into politics as an adjunct to his business ventures. He had had many lovers but suddenly became a “family values” man. Though Anna only took a portion of their assets, he began to stalk her. He needed the appearance of a happy family to support his campaign.

She is only mildly careful about keeping her whereabouts concealed and by the time he finds her, Lena is six and they are living in a remote and somewhat rundown seaside motel on the coast of Maine. Lena is a bright and happy child, very outgoing, alert and smart. In fact, she is one of the most endearing children I have met in a novel. She makes friends with everyone who stays at the motel and her most special grownup friend is Kay, a former nurse for newborns in a small hospital.

Ned snatches Lena with ease and there follow many chapters devoted to Anna’s anguish and anxiety. Nothing unusual except that by now you know the mother and the child so intimately, it is as if it has happened to you. So stealthily that I hardly noticed it though, the awareness of something strange going on with the other guests at the motel had been building. All of them have a personal affliction in common and all of them knew the motel manager before they came to stay.

Here, dear reader is where I leave you. The plot that wove back and forth from past to present but seemed to meander a bit too much suddenly becomes electric with the wizardry of Lydia Millet. Her themes of women who get a grip, of more than meets the eye, of how to live in our increasingly strange society, and of what really holds us together, coalesce. I can tell you that there is a happy ending, but the novel turned out to be a parable and I would not dream of spoiling that for you.

 Just recently, Sweet Lamb of Heaven was included on the fiction long list for the National Book Award. I sincerely hope Lydia Millet wins the prize she deserves.

(Update: The novel did not make the short list for the NBA. I feel it should have.)

WHISKEY RIVER

Whiskey River, Loren D Estleman, Bantam Books, 1990, 262 pp

Whiskey River begins in 1928 at the height of Prohibition. Jack Dance is an eighteen-year-old on the cusp of becoming one of the top (fictional) gangsters in Detroit. Connie Minor, a young reporter of Greek descent, has just begun his career as a newspaper reporter when the two meet in a blind pig on the night it gets tipped over by the bulls. (I had to look up all this early 20th century slang, so if you don't know those terms, you can too!)

The story is a case of the strange friendship between these two men. As Jack Dance's career, if you want to call it that, rises in the underworld, Connie Minor's follows in journalism due to his reporting on the activities of rum runners and the accompanying police corruption. Minor writes his pieces with all the insight of an inside story. Though he never commits a crime himself, he is often there when they happen. His fascination with Jack Dance, however, does eventually land him in some hot water.

It is a tale you can't put down. The writing is as good as anything by Raymond Chandler, creating the particular flavor of illegal liquor, speakeasies, crime, and violence over the course of about four years.

Reading this one on the heels of The Turner House was a whole experience in itself. Detroit was a mighty city in 1920, almost comparable to Chicago. The two novels are bookends on the rise and fall of a major American city.

My mom was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in a small Michigan town on Lake Huron. Detroit was the closest city. So the first 14 years of her life were the years of Prohibition. How I wish she were still around and I could ask her if she was aware of it and how it impacted her life. She was a very temperate drinker. My dad was not!

I don't remember how I discovered this author or his book. Estleman was born in 1952 in Ann Arbor, MI. Whiskey River is the first in a series of seven novels in which he set out to tell the story of America in the 20th century through the microcosm of Detroit. As he said, "Detroit is the one city whose history mirrors precisely the history of the United States of America." He also wrote many other books yet, despite winning awards, most of his work is out of print already. The Detroit series is now available in eBook form and I plan to read all of them.

THE TURNER HOUSE

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The Turner House, Angela Flournoy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, 338 pp

Summary from Goodreads: The Turners live on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house sees thirteen children get grown and gone—and some return; it sees the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. Despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs, the house still stands. But now, as their powerful mother falls ill and loses her independence, the Turners might lose their family home. Beset by time and a national crisis, the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called back to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts might haunt—and shape—their family's future. 

My Review:

Here we have another one of those stories where the grown children must decide what to do with the family home. Except this family is black and the house is in a section of Detroit, MI, decimated by the 2008 crash, by drugs, crime and homeless people, etc, etc. It is more similar to Loving Day than it is to The Past. Even so, families are families and the offspring always have issues with their parents and each other. 

Detroit was the closest city to me when I lived in Ann Arbor, MI, but when I moved to California in 1991 it was still a fairly vibrant city. Just a decade later the population began a steep downtrend as Ford Motor Company moved auto production to other cities causing a major loss of jobs. By 2013, the city declared bankruptcy.

The Turners had lived on an East Side street for over fifty years. From the boom years and through the bust, they raised 13 children in a three bedroom house on the earnings of truck driving Mr Turner. The novel moves back and forth from the present to the postwar past, telling the story of the parents' move to the city from the South in the late 1940s and exposing the fault lines in the family. 

Thirteen siblings and their spouses and children would have made an unwieldy character list but the author provides a family tree and focuses on four of the siblings as well as their aging widowed mother.  She had been the force behind the family but is now on her deathbed.

When most of the brothers and sisters gather to decide what to do with their now empty family home, the house is only worth a tenth of the refinanced mortgage still due. All of the disparate circumstances of their adult lives come into play and and an old tale about a ghost seen by Charles, the eldest son, when he was just a boy plays a large part in the story. (Loving Day had ghosts too!)

The novel is wonderfully constructed, very American in it scope of dreams chased, hopes dashed, and secrets kept, with the decaying city as a background. Racism is a situation but not the major one. What I got from it is a picture of how the changing fortunes of America have affected people who exist in the lower middle class tier of our society and that is primarily an economic story.

The dust cover blurb calls the novel "a celebration of the ways in which our families bring us home." I would call it a study in how the underside of the American Dream takes its toll on even the strongest of families while it prevents families from fully developing that fabled strength.

(The Turner House is currently available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)