LONG DIVISION

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Long Division, Kiese Laymon, Bolden Books, 2013, 267 pp

Here is another book I would not have read or possibly even heard of if not for the Tournament of Books. It is gut wrenching and powerful. The writing reminded me sometimes of James Baldwin, other times of Alice Walker. The story is a testament to the reality of racism and its continued presence in American culture, despite our half-black president, despite the unparalleled success of Oprah Winfrey.

City is an Alabama boy raised as much by his small town grandma as by his mom. He is smart, he goes to an exclusive high school, and his Black swagger is melded with the insecurities and confusions about life for a Black male in 21st century America.

Due in part to a book called Long Division, given to him by his school counselor, and in part to the ghostly presences in the woods by his grandma's house, City time travels back to 1964 and 1985. A second narrator named City lives in the 1985 sections. Also included in the rather large cast of characters are a missing classmate named Baize, an enigmatic female whose favorite punctuation mark is the ellipsis, and Shalaya Crump, unrequited crush of the 1985 City.

It is a tangled story and sometimes hard to tell which City is narrating or which time period is going on. In the end, that confusion is the book's charm as well as its theme. Time passes, cultures change, technologies progress, but the color of one's skin is still the deal breaker.

In 2013, City and his frenemy Lavender Peeler take part in a grammar competition called "Can You Use That Word in a Sentence," supposed to be free of cultural bias. Turns out it has a liberal agenda designed to prove we are no longer a racist society. After City creates a historic meltdown over the word "niggardly," the video of which goes viral, the contest goes by default to the other minority, a Mexican contestant.

Kiese Laymon, born and raised in Mississippi, is now an associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Vassar College. He has clearly taken to heart the necessity for a Black person to run twice as fast to get half as far. In fact, he has probably run four times as fast. I will read any novel he writes. As Toni Morrison ages, I've wondered who could take her place. I may have found him.

(Long Division is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

APRIL READING GROUP UPDATE

Don't know where March went. But it is over and that is no April Fool's joke. My reading lesson in March was that I am not a rereader. I know some people are and some writing instructors say you can learn to write better by rereading a book you loved and figuring out what made it so great. When I reread, I usually find the magic is gone. This was not true when I was a kid. Then I read my favorite books over and over. Now I sit there restlessly looking at all the not yet read books on my shelves and wanting to read them! So there!!

Here is the line up for April:

The New Book Club:   

Once Upon A Time Adult Fiction Group:

One Book At A Time:

Bookie Babes:

Tina's Group:

There you have it. I wasn't able to get the book links from Indiebound today. Some glitch on the site. 

 

I WON'T be rereading The Power and the Glory (read in 2002 and loved it) or Orphan Train (read last month), but I will attend the meetings and discuss. I am looking forward to the James Baldwin and to The Liars' Club.

How do you feel about rereading books?

MR PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE

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Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012, 288 pp

Reading this novel was pure fun with just enough meat in the story to keep me happy. In fact it was a refreshing break from all those thick tomes and challenging worldviews I have been plowing through since January in preparation for the Tournament of Books.

Robin Sloan does challenge a current worldview: is the rapid takeover of internet and computing technology ruining the world for book lovers and book readers?

When Clay Jannon, young web designer, loses his job in the Silicone Valley economic meltdown, he gets himself hired at Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore only to find that in addition to his paltry wage he has gone through a portal. The bookstore has just a few odd customers who arrive during his graveyard shift. They don't buy books; they "check out" obscure volumes from the shelves of books that Clay has been forbidden to read.

Everyone (except possibly Mr Penumbra) knows when you tell a person in his early 20s that something is forbidden, he will look at it. Clay does and falls into a secret society searching for the key to immortality.

Besides being savvy in all things concerning digital marketing, Clay has equally cool friends doing equally modern things. Together they invade Mr Penumbra's world, run up against an evil cult-like leader, and do their best to force a singularity moment.

Somehow the author pulls off a feat that has crossed genres and age groups. His book appeals to reading groups, fantasy geeks, as well as the iPod and Google generation. What do you know? We all like books and bookstores and story telling. We are all human!

I'm not saying this will happen for everyone who reads Mr Penumbra, but I had a revelation. Yes, the internet and Google and handheld devices can distract us, can invade our privacy, can contain false information, and turn us into victims of sophisticated marketing techniques, but you know what? This is the world we live in now and it is still up to each of us to decide how to use these tools. For fun, for profit, for nefarious purposes, for the rapid exchange of ideas, for whatever the user decides. 

Me, I joined Twitter. LOL!!

(Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. It is also available in hardcover and eBook by order.)

THE GOOD LORD BIRD

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The Good Lord Bird, James McBride, Riverhead Books, 2013, 417 pp

I read this for the Tournament of Books. As of this morning, it won its fourth round and could very well go on to win the Tournament. It also received the 2013 National Book Award. I've not read either of James McBride's previous novels even though I loved his memoir, The Color of Water. I wasn't expecting to like The Good Lord Bird that much so I'm happy to be able to say I did.

I have recently complained about satire not successfully done in The Dinner by Herman Koch and praised it as well done in Mohsin Hamid's How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Both of those books went down in the first round of TOB. I'm not sure James McBride is on a winning streak due to his satire, but in my opinion it is the most impeccably done of the three but is also so subtle, it is easy to miss.

The story of John Brown and his ill-fated raid on the Harper's Ferry armory is one you always hear about but without much detail. Now I have possibly more detail that I know what to do with, but I certainly know what happened. Thank you James McBride for turning your research into an entertaining story.

McBride's narrator is Onion, freed from slavery by John Brown but curiously enslaved to the man in other ways. As a scrappy 12-year-old boy pretending to be a girl, he is an unreliable source of information whose combination of innocence and self-protective impulses provide wry interpretations of John Brown, abolitionists, and the white man. By the end I was pretty sure Onion's voice was James McBride, a trick requiring some very cool literary skill.

You may wonder how the Civil War got started. If you have read much literature about the war, you will have come across numerous answers to that question. If you believe James McBride, it was the cauldron of Bleeding Kansas which spawned a man like John Brown, driven by the word of God to free all the slaves; whose fanaticism put him in Harper's Ferry at just the right time.

But then you finish The Good Lord Bird, nearly convinced that maybe the author was just putting you on. As one slave character says to Onion, "Every nigger got the same job. Their job is to tell a story the white man likes."

(The Good Lord Bird is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. The paperback will be released in July, 2014)

LITTLE FAILURE

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Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart, Random House, 2014, 368 pp

Gary Shteyngart has written a possibly perfect memoir, in which we learn about the tears and sorrows behind his Russian clown persona. Though many authors have woven the immigrant experience into their development as writers, he adds accents I've not read before.

"Like most Soviet Jews, like most immigrants from Communist nations, my parents were deeply conservative, and they never thought much of the four years I had spent at my liberal alma mater, Oberlin College, studying Marxist politics and book writing. On his first visit to Oberlin my father stood on a giant vagina painted in the middle of the quad by the campus lesbian, gay, and bisexual organization, oblivious to the rising tide of hissing and camp around him, as he enumerated to me the differences between laserjet and inkjet printers, specifically the price points of the cartridges. If I'm not mistaken, he thought he was standing on a peach."

That quote is only the second half of a paragraph and there I heard the voice of the author who could write The Russian Debutante's Handbook. I expected to be entertained in a novel with such a title but had no idea I would be as entertained in a memoir called Little Failure.

And so it goes. His asthmatic early childhood in a cold one-room Soviet apartment; his parents' mystification once they made it to the United States in 1979; his miserable years in a Hebrew elementary school. The only hope you have for his survival is that he has lived for over 40 years and published three acclaimed novels.

It took Oberlin, lots and lots of drugs and alcohol, but also as we learn, the secret love of his father (secret because of all the beatings) to raise Mr Shteyngart up from his mother's curse when she named him Failurchka or Little Failure. I got the idea that no one was more surprised about this than the author himself.

My happiest moment (and Gary's luckiest) was when Chang-rae Lee read a draft of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and convinced his agent to represent Gary. I wondered if it was the immigrant connection, since these two authors write so differently: Chang-rae Lee with his serious measured prose and Gary Shteyngart who writes like a guy riding a unicycle, always on the verge of taking a tumble. I suppose it takes balance to write either way.

In 1996, Shteyngart had a panic attack while in Strand's looking at a photograph of the Chesme Church in Leningrad, a place he passed and marveled at daily as a toddler. In 2011, he made his sixth or seventh trip to Russia, trips that began in 1999. He had his parents with him and they tour their former life in the former Soviet Union together.

In Little Failure, Chapter 25, called "The Final Revelation," reads like the greatest of Russian novels as written by Gary Shteyngart. Somehow I had not realized that was where he was going with this memoir, but he so generously shares his revelations with us. 

A life is not a straight line.

(Little Failure is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. The paperback will be released in September, 2014.)

HILL WILLIAM

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Hill William, Scott McClanahan, Tyrant Books, 2013, 200 pp

Here is another book I would never have come across if not for The Tournament of Books. It is a coming of age tale but not much like any such story I have read before.

The opening sentences: "I used to hit myself in the face. Of course, I had to be careful about hitting myself now that I was dating Sarah. One night we got into a fight and I went into the bathroom to get rid of that sick feeling in my shoulders, and I did it. I wasn't feeling any better afterwards, so I hit myself in the face one more time."

I don't know to whom I could recommend this book. It is dark and gritty and unrelievedly disturbing. I guess I could recommend it to people like myself who like to read dark and gritty stuff. It is the story of a boy who grew up in poverty in Appalachia with bad parenting and numerous sociopathic types for boyhood friends and neighbors.

It is also a story of this young man trying mightily but not completely successfully to overcome his origins. I'm pretty sure it is autobiographical so the fact that Scott McClanahan has written and published six books is proof that he is in some ways winning his battle.

I read stories like this to remind myself now many people in the United States live so far from the "American Dream," lest I forget. Whatever the American Dream is though, it is a powerful force and here is this guy reaching for it in his own way.

 

Reading Hill William, I felt ridiculous for ever once complaining about my life. I realized again what an awesome responsibility it is to be a parent. I wondered for the billionth time why life in the world has to be the unbalanced mess that it is. Yes, the resilience of the human spirit, that driving force of fiction, produces amazement whenever we contemplate it, but I can't help wondering if the optimism with which I regard that resilience is misguided.

Getting better, making progress, being and doing and having more? Is that a worthy plan for a sentient being? Is there even an answer to that question? It's what we do no matter the cost.

(Hill William is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING

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A Tale For The Time Being, Ruth Ozeki, Viking Penguin, 2013, 418 pp

I loved this book because after all is said, it was so cool. Besides it various charms, it is about Buddhist philosophy and I have a weakness for philosophical fiction. And I think of myself as a time being (defined in the second paragraph of the first page of the first chapter in the novel as "someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or will ever be.") And the title is a play on words. My father taught me about plays on words and we delighted in making them up, so I am still making them up with my husband and still delight in coming across them.

The two main time beings in the story are Nao (pronounced now) and Ruth. Nao is a Japanese teenager who grew up in the Silicon Valley where her dad was a programmer for a start up but lost his job in the recent economic crash. Now they are back in Tokyo, poverty stricken. Nao's dad is depressed and suicidal, her mother is disturbed and clueless, while Nao is being bullied at school making her depressed and suicidal but trying to get a clue by writing a diary.

Ruth is a writer living on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her brilliant but challenged husband. One day Nao's diary washes up on the shore inside a Hello Kitty lunchbox. Ruth has been trying to write a memoir but has become completely blocked. When she finds the lunchbox, she develops an obsession with Nao's diary and in fact with the girl's existence, fearing that the lunchbox has arrived as a piece of debris from Japan's tsunami.

The rest of the story is about a mysterious connection between these two time beings, so if my overly long synopsis sounds intriguing you must read the novel. It is not a perfect novel. It is uneven at times, there is not exactly a plot, Nao's voice is narcissistic teen angst and Ruth's voice is narcissistic middle-aged blocked writer angst.

In the end, especially due to Nao's 104-year-old great-grandmother who is a Zen Buddhist nun, it all worked for me. One of my earliest life decisions was to live 100 years. Now I am not sure I want to but if that is my fate, I want to be as wise and cool and hip as Nao's great-grandmother.

(A Tale For The Time Being is available on the shelf in paperback at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN BOY DETECTIVE

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Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective, Donald J Sobol, Dutton Children's Books, 1964, 88 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

This is the first book in the Encyclopedia Brown 28 book series. I read it as research for my novel. I've seen these books for years at the bookstore where I used to work and at libraries. They are all short chapter books recommended for reader aged 7 and up.

Pretty good. Each chapter concerns a mystery case solved by the well-read and logical thinker Encyclopedia Brown, who is 10. His real name is Leroy but everyone except his parents and teachers call him by his nickname because his "head was like an encyclopedia. It was filled with facts he had learned from books. He was like a complete library walking around in sneakers."

Mr Brown, his father, is the chief of police for their small town. Idaville, in this first book, is typical for the mid 60s. Kids ride all around on their bikes and are allowed to roam about after dark. After Encyclopedia helps his father solve a puzzling case, using observation and logic in the style of Sherlock Holmes, he decides to go into the detective business himself.

He makes up handbills (now there is an old term) and a sign, charges 25¢ per day (plus expenses) and eventually takes on a bodyguard and junior partner named Sally Kimbal.

At the end of each chapter, after the mystery has been solved, are the words HOW DID ENCYCLOPEDIA KNOW THIS? or some variation of that question. The reader is directed to a page in the back of the book for the solution. Of course, I tried to figure out each one on my own first and I imagine a young reader would do the same.

I wonder if Donald Sobol updates the environment as the series progresses. The 28th book was published in 2012. I hope my library has it. Does anyone know?


(Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE PEOPLE IN THE TREES

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The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara, Doublday, 2013, 362 pp

Culture clash! A research scientist of dubious moral character discovers a source of extreme longevity in the meat of a turtle on an unspoiled Pacific island. It is one of the oldest tales on earth: the serpent in the garden; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the discovery of fire; the splitting of the atom; test tube genetics; information technology. What will those humans do next?

I happen to like the story of man's perilous road to scientific knowledge. I would not for a moment dream of seeking to halt it. My world view is comprised of what I call "optimistic anarchy" meaning that I have a slender but sturdy belief that mankind can work out its destiny into eternity.

But we need such tales of caution as Ms Yanagihara presents in The People in the Trees. Ann Patchett told hers in State of Wonder. Barbara Kingsolver tells hers in almost every book she writes. Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy is another example. The People in the Trees has as its mad scientist Norton Perina, a suitably complex character. He goes too far, though he wins a Nobel Prize, and his attempts to make amends are foiled by his own troubled nature.

The author chose to have Perina's story told by a worshipful associate, a man who is blind to Perina's faults and whose certainty that genius trumps, even excuses, behavioral lapses is clearly stated. The brilliant writing in the novel enables us to see through this hagiography. Actually she creates a double veil for us to peer through, since the associate is the transcriber and editor of Perina's memoirs.

Not for the squeamish, The People in the Trees reveals tribal custom, jungle living, and the scientific method in full living color and detail. It raises just about every conceivable question about the fine lines between science and spirituality, ceremony and abuse, sanity and madness, progress and destruction. 

Of all the Tournament of Books contenders this year, I found this one the hardest to read in terms of horrific scenes and yet the most rewarding for it provocative nature.

(The People in the Trees is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. The paperback will be released in April 2014.)

MOTHER NIGHT

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Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Delacorte Press, 1961, 202 pp

This is the book I mentioned in my review of The Dinner, as an example of perfectly executed satire and moral ambiguity. I love opening a Vonnegut novel because I never know what I am going to find. Even when he stumbles, as I feel he did in The Sirens of Titan, he is so uniquely himself and I am never bored.

Howard W Campbell Jr: ersatz Nazi spewing out propaganda for the Party in WWII, undercover CIA spy, loving husband. He is writing his memoirs while languishing in an Israeli prison awaiting trial for war crimes. Vonnegut sets the stage in his introduction:

"This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

Good advice for all the Facebook addicted people of the world, though in 2014 apt to fall on deaf ears.

So Howard explains how an American lives in Germany, marries a German woman, gets caught up in the prewar Nazi madness, finds himself promulgating Nazi propaganda on worldwide radio, embedding intelligence after his recruitment to the CIA, escapes back to the United States without his wife and without any CIA backup, lives in hiding in a New York City walk up, meets with Fascist types and trickery and eventual betrayal to the Israelis.

It is a mad tale and a cynical as well as bleak assessment of politics, anti-Semitism, and the dangers of pretending. All the while making the reader laugh, smirk, and cringe at the same time.

Truly amazing!

(Mother Night is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

TELL THE WOLVES I'M HOME

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Tell The Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt, The Dial Press, 2012, 355pp

I am not usually a fan of what I call Terminal Illness Lit (you know, cancer, AIDS, etc) but this one wormed its way into my heart because it is also about sisters, unconditional love, and coming of age, with a complete nerd as its heroine. Oh yes, there is also art (painting) involved.

Shy, misunderstood June Elbus, who would rather live in the Middle Ages, lost her beloved uncle to AIDS in 1987 when she was 14. It is hard to remember now, but in 1987 AIDS was barely understood and causing great alarm as well as gross amounts of hurtful commentary. 

Thus in June's family, Uncle Finn, his illness, his lifestyle, and finally his death had divided them in many ways, making June's grief and mourning even more lonely. She forms a friendship with her uncle's still living lover and gropes her way through to healing and redemption.

If this does not sound like your cup of tea, you would not be missing that much if you passed on the novel. For me, it was the kind of book I liked while reading it but promptly forgot when I was done.

The writing is good and not mushy or sentimental. Brunt gives June the believable voice of a girl her age. She also does the trick of making an unreliable narrator become reliable as June matures and figures out what is going on.

I had trouble believing the parents as characters. They are portrayed as loving parents but are so out of touch with their teen daughters, it belies the love. I had a similar problem with the parents in Jodi Picoult's The Pact. In fact, I swore I would never read Picoult again because I don't trust her.

Carol Rifka Brunt retained my trust. I am aware that raising teens in America these days is one of the more challenging enterprises an adult can attempt, so I would recommend Tell The Wolves I'm Home to parents of teens if only to alert them to how much they might be in the dark about their offspring and to how much love, communication, and caring it takes.

In the end, June becomes the heroine who saves her family, recovers her sister's love, and finally is able to participate in the world. It is all somewhat unbelievable but if only the believable happened in life, we would be in even worse straits than we are. Isn't that one of the purposes of fiction? To present us with various possibilities?

(Tell The Wolves I'm Home is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE TUNER OF SILENCES

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The Tuner of Silences, Mia Couto, translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw, Biblioasis, 2013, 282 pp

I read this because it was on the short list for the Tournament of Books. The reading experience was similar to reading other novels set in African countries and written by African writers. It felt very foreign and outside of my own experience. And yet I felt an affinity with and understanding of the characters caused by the excellence of the writing and I suppose the translation also.

The other morning I looked up some reviews of the novel and background on the author. While doing so, I realized The Tuner of Silences could be read on two different levels. One is to take what is there with no preconceived ideas which is how I read it.

I found a remnant of a family (a father and two sons, a servant and and uncle) living on the grounds of an abandoned game preserve somewhere in Africa. The wife of the father and mother of the sons is dead. We don't know until near the end of the book how she died but the father has become almost mad with grief and an undefined guilt.

The father runs his sons' lives with an iron hand, literally at times, determined to keep them entirely separate from the outside world. There has been a war (the servant is an ex-soldier) and you get the idea that all is irredeemably lost.

But boys will be boys, especially at ages eleven and sixteen. The uncle and the servant are wild cards as is a Portuguese woman who arrives out of the blue. All of these characters work against the father's desire for disconnection from the world, each in their own different ways.

I ended up loving the story and being moved by everything about it. But I did finish it wondering about its setting and the details of the surrounding world, so that would be the other level on which I could have read it, if I had known those things. I am glad I didn't because part of the spell worked on me was the dribbling out of clues and facts, creating in me the same desperation to know that drives the younger son who is the narrator. I learned what I wanted to know only as he did.

(The Tuner of Silences is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MARCH READING GROUP UPDATE

March came in like a lion in Los Angeles with the biggest rain storm we have had so far this year. While the east and midwest get dumped with snow daily we have been in a drought here all winter. Plus rainy days are the best reading days.

This month all of my reading groups are meeting. I am geeked because there is nothing I love more than discussing books. Luckily for me I have already read one of the books and another will be discussed in two different groups. It is also the Tournament of Books craziness. That began yesterday and I still have four books to read by next week. Am I having fun or what?

In this post I will attempt to make all the book links go to IndieBound. Then, if you want to know more about the book, you can click on the image and find a summary as well as an independent bookstore locator. Here we go:

The New Book Club:

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Once Upon A Time Bookstore Adult Fiction Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Bookie Babes:

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World's Smallest Reading Group:

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Tina's Group:

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I always like to know what books you are reading in your reading groups. If you are not in a reading group I encourage you to join one. If you need tips on how to find a good reading group, let me know. I am an expert!

THE DINNER

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The Dinner, Herman Koch, Hogarth, 2013, 292 pp

This is going to be one of my signature rambling reviews. It will not have a theme nor will it have a through line, except that even a week after finishing The Dinner I can't decide what I think about it.

When I first heard of the book last year, because it had a big buzz, I was repelled by both its description and the reviews I read. I decided not to read it. Then it reared its head on the Tournament of Books 2014 list. I'm not exactly sorry I read it but I could have gotten along just fine in my reading life without it.

Two things I somehow hadn't realized are that this is a translated book (from the Dutch) and that it is set in Amsterdam. While the first person narrator (do we ever learn his name?) did strike me as a foreign version of a particular kind of man, someone I would call an asshole/bigot type best avoided at parties and family gatherings, the rest of the novel could have taken place just as easily in Boston or San Francisco or even Houston. So I don't think the problem stems from location.

The voice of Mr Lohman, narrator, was annoying to me in the extreme. I'm fairly sure that was intentional. Besides his misanthropic views, he goes on and on like a right-winger on talk radio. I did not totally buy that his personality defects could be blamed on his unnamed mental illness, though I suppose I do consider people like him to be mentally unbalanced.

What did work for me was the painstaking and intricate revealing of what was really going on with these two sets of parents. It kept me glued to the pages in morbid fascination. Both marketers and readers have compared The Dinner to Gone Girl, another book I read only because of TOB and still can't make up my mind about. I agree with the comparison for two reasons, one being the painstaking intricate reveal.

The other similarity is a slippery as well as disturbing sense of moral ambiguity. I am currently reading Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut and marveling at his ability to write on the bleeding edge between moral ambiguity and satire; wishing there were authors in the 21st century who wrote that way.

I'm not totally sure but I suspect Herman Koch was going for such a thing. Ultimately he didn't quite pull it off due to a bit too much heavy handedness on the moral ambiguity and a certain less-than-exact rendering of satire. The bleeding edge became a chasm in his hands into which I fell and I can't seem to get out.

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

THE DEATH OF BEES

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The Death of Bees, Lisa O'Donnell, HarperCollins, 2013, 310 pp

It would be interesting to count up the number of novels written about children raised, neglected, abused, and/or deserted by bad parents. Reading such stories always make me either wish people had to get a license to reproduce or fills me with wonder at the resilience of the children who survive such upbringings. The Death of Bees delivered both sides of that emotional divide.

Marnie and Nelly live in a Glasgow housing estate, sort of like what are called the projects in the United States. Their parents are, or I should say were, drug addicts who have turned up dead one morning. Marnie at 15 is the elder sister and does her best to take care of 12 year old Nelly, who is somewhat challenged, perhaps a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome. The goal is to keep the deaths a secret and to stay away from welfare and foster care.

In alternating chapters we get the story from these two barely reliable narrators. It is grim but there are moments of levity and the obligatory element of hope. 

This was a reading group pick. As usual, most of the ladies reacted in various tones of shock and horror. It makes me wonder under what rocks they live. Praise should go to Lisa O'Donnell for making the tale palatable to them. Isn't it about time to realize that there are vast levels of difference amongst the 99%?

Anyway, I liked reading the book due to the honest portrayals of all the characters including the gay neighbor who rescues them, the suspicious grandfather, etc. The happy ending was a little too pat but if it had all ended in grief and disaster I am sure Lisa O'Donnell would not have been able to sell her novel.

Such stories leave me wondering if there is nothing to be done about our world except to practice random acts of kindness.

(The Death of Bees is available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. It is also available in hardcover and eBook by order.)

HOMBRE

Hombre, Elmore Leonard, Ballantine Books, 1961, 190 pp

Somehow I thought this was Elmore Leonard's first novel. In fact, it was his fifth. He began publishing Westerns in 1953 with The Bounty Hunters. But for me Hombre is a good place to start.

Hombre was the name given to John Russell, a tough and fearless white man raised partly by Apaches. The story is set in Arizona mining country complete with stage coaches, outlaws, and a big pile of money over which the other main characters commit violence and crime.

I hadn't known that Leonard started out with Westerns. Though his style is not as flashy as it became, the voice is recognizable as is the timing of the plot and the hint of philosophy underlying it.

A movie version starring Paul Newman was released in 1967 but since I have not yet seen it, the climax in the novel came as a complete surprise to me. Hombre is a hero alright but with Elmore Leonard's brand on him.

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

A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS

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A House For Mr Biswas, V S Naipaul, McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc, 1961, 531 pp

V S Naipaul's fourth novel is his longest so far. Still mining the Trinidadian Indian Hindu community amid which he grew up, the locations, people, traditions, the Pundits and the strivers, the remnants of the Indian caste system, are all in play. Having read all four books, I swear I feel as though I know these people well.

This is a more somber book. Some humor remains but it felt as though Naipaul's affection for his people had waned. The story covers the entire life of Mr Biswas from his birth under a few bad signs to his death. One funny thing is that the author calls him Mr Biswas throughout and rarely uses his first name.

Mr Biswas lost his father at a young age and was reared mostly by relatives in varying stages of poverty. He had virtually no self confidence but his lifelong dream was to have a house of his own. He eventually married into a wealthy family, got a job as a newspaper reporter, and had four children. Until the age of forty, he was doomed to live in the houses of his wife's family where he felt belittled.

I am puzzled as to why I found the novel so readable. The writing is assured and in a style not quite resembling any other author. Besides immersing the reader in the society and times of Trinidad, including the harbor city Port of Spain, Naipaul brings to life the customs, strivings, and intimate details of these people. He made me feel their absurdities as well as their eternal efforts to rise from the indentured workers who were their ancestors into participation in mid 20th century life by means of education and grasping onto any possible business opportunities.

So it is an immigrant story in the long run and that is pretty much the story of the world: people who have come from somewhere else either by choice or because of wars and slavery, intermingling their lives, customs and beliefs with other peoples. It is essentially a sad story and so is the life of Mr Biswas threaded with defeats and humiliations.

I kept hoping he would triumph somehow but his accomplishments were miniscule, reminding me that history is actually made up mostly of people living from day to day with hopes that are largely dashed but always harboring those hopes as an incentive to rise above mere survival.

A House For Mr Biswas is considered to be Naipaul's breakout book. After this he moved on to writing novels set in Great Britain and around the world. He has won both the Booker Prize and the Nobel along with a reputation bespattered in recent years with charges of misogyny and racism. In the numerous portrayals of beatings of children and wives along with a deep distrust of anyone not Hindu that pepper his early novels, I can see how his influences would make it difficult to achieve any level of "political correctness." Perhaps he has carried Mr Biswas with him throughout his life.

(A House For Mr Biswas is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA

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How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Mohsin Hamid, Riverhead Books, 2013, 228 pp

I was so impressed by the writing in this short novel that I am determined to read both of Mohsin Hamid's earlier novels.

This one is the story of one Asian man's rise from the poorest of rural boys to wealth and corporate power. Hamid uses the construct of a self-help book with the book's author speaking to the aspiring man in the second person.

Many readers and reviewers found both the self-help book conceit and the second person voice either unimpressive or annoying. I found it an inventive if not brilliant way of telling a story that has featured in various novels over the past several years, including The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga as well as Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire.

This novel is also a consummate piece of satire about business practices in today's world including rapacious criminality and the personal sacrifice entailed in becoming a self-made success.

The relationship between this unnamed entrepreneur and the one woman he ever loved is bittersweet but again creates an underlying treatise on the ways that both poverty and materialism can break down the human requirements for family and connection.

That all this depth and breadth is packed into a slim and compulsively readable novel is a feat not found in several of the long novels published in 2013.

(How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE GOLDEN ARROW

The Golden Arrow, Anna Redmond, Assembly! Press, 2014, 282 pp

The Golden Arrow is the first volume of a fantasy trilogy by first-time novelist Anna Redmond. Intermingling political strife with magic, the tale pits a ruthless ruler, the offspring of a deposed noble family, the Queen Mother and her royal granddaughter against each other as they contest for power.

Patria is a country conquered two decades ago by an enemy state and now governed by Archibald Mercer as a supposed egalitarian society. In truth, though its monarchy was toppled, Patria is ruled as much as it ever was by means of power and influence with the former noble class anxious to regain its wealth and position.

When the Queen Mother awakens from the coma into which she sank after the King's defeat and death, intrigue arises and lives are again in peril.

Nicola, a ravishing beauty at sixteen, daughter of a once powerful family, walks blithely into danger. Her father has arranged an alliance with the Queen Mother by agreeing to have Nicola bound to the surviving Princess Eloise in an ancient and erotic ritual that will make the two young women sisters of each others' hearts as well as lovers.

Joseph de Brulle, Nicola's brother, ambitious and reared in the current political climate, dreams of regaining honor for his family by demonstrating merit and complete support of Mercer's politics.

Alas, Nicola and Joseph are far too innocent and sheltered to comprehend the forces at work around them. The best parts of this expertly plotted novel are the moments of dawning awareness to the realities of their lives as these two attempt to realize their youthful dreams and passions.

I was immediately drawn in as much for the plot as for the more than a few surprising touches:

News travels in Patria by means of "pamphlets" which are a sort of People Magazine/Facebook/blog complete with images and gossip. Nicola and her girlfriends pore over these daily issues as girls everywhere do while members of the government track their rivals.

Along with evolving plot points, the pages of The Golden Arrow sparkle with descriptions of elaborate gowns, social affairs, and the tempting dishes enjoyed by the upper class: roast kid, crisped fowls, lotus buns, comfits with herbs and spices, whiskey chocolates.

Each main character leaps off the page through glimpses of individual episodes of distress, violence, and even madness. The many scenes of ritual and passion between Nicola and Princess Eloise are written with graceful eroticism. As the tale unfolded I felt I was in the hands of a seasoned writer.

The final chapters reveal the meaning and purpose of the Golden Arrow. Yet the book ends with much of its mystery unresolved and left me wishing I could open the sequel right away and keep reading. All very impressive!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

I have known Anna Redmond for almost a decade because she is married to my nephew. They also live in the Los Angeles area, are raising two daughters, and regularly attend our family gatherings. When Anna told me last fall that she had finally sold her novel, I begged for a copy and promised a review. Because I knew she read lots of books and was smart as well as savvy, I was reasonably confident I would like her work. Obviously, I loved it!

In today's publishing world it is harder than ever for a new author to become known. I asked Anna if she would answer a few questions about herself as a writer. Here are her answers:

KTW: How long have you been writing? In fiction terms, have you always written fantasy?

AR: I've been writing since I learned how to spell, but I think I've only been a true writer for a couple of years. I discovered this later than I should, really, but there is a profound difference between writing (even writing well) and being a writer. Being a writer means having the courage to take your idea, jump into it, and see it through to end - - which by the way, is something I struggled to do for many years, through half-finished manuscripts in many different genres. When I started writing fantasy fiction, it felt freeing and empowering in a way that was really very profound. At least for me, right now, it felt like the right genre to tell my story.

KTW: In your interview at Science Fiction Book Club, you mention Alexandre Dumas and The Three Musketeers as an influence. Would you care to comment on your influences among fantasy writers?

AR: Ray Bradbury was a huge early influence. He wrote more science fiction than fantasy, although I would argue that a number of his stories were really a blend of the two. I actually remember writing him a letter when I was twelve or thirteen. In terms of contemporaries, I really enjoyed the Game of Thrones series, and structurally, it was an influence in how I chose to construct The Golden Arrow.

KTW: Your novel has an assured political viewpoint. Am I remembering correctly that you have a degree from Harvard in political science? If so, were you aware of that knowledge and training coming into play in the story?

AR: I actually studied Economics and Information Technology Policy! But close - certainly took my fair share of courses at the Kennedy School (of Government) at Harvard. I think what was a bigger influence than my degree, though, was really my family's background - we immigrated from Russia when I was five, and growing up, I watched a lot of communist-era films. I found the way that the politics had filtered down into everyday life to be fascinating. The nature of the propaganda was so different from the way that I was growing up in the U.S. I draw on a lot of that in Golden Arrow.

KTW: Would you place your book into a specific sub-genre of fantasy? I would call it political and erotic fantasy but I don't want to say that if you object to those labels.

AR: Ha! Love it. Political and erotic fantasy. I think that may be a new category. It's always hard for a writer to categorize her own work. My publisher described it as a "political fantasy thriller laced with sex and intrigue." My writing group pushed me to include more sex in the first novel. I held them off, promising more in the second book in the series!

The Golden Arrow was released this month by the publishing arm of the Science Fiction Book Club. It can be purchased there in hardcover and is also available from Amazon in hardcover and as an eBook.

THE CROOKED MIRROR

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The Crooked Mirror, A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation, Louise Steinman, Beacon Press, 2013, 240 pp

In graceful and heartfelt prose, Louise Steinman captures a horrific topic: the results and residue of the Holocaust in Poland. Thanks to my reader friend with whom I formed the World's Smallest Reading Group (just the two of us), I learned about and read The Crooked Mirror.

Louise Steinman, daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, had lived all her life without learning a thing about her family's past. Her mother could not even say the word Poland and Louise was only told that the country allowed almost all of Poland's Jews to be exterminated and possibly was even complicit in the genocide.

I immediately sympathized with her dilemma. One of the reasons I decided to write my own autobiography was because my parents rarely talked about their ancestors, nor as it turned out did they know much about them. All my ancestors were German immigrants who came to the United States in the mid to late 1800s. Two world wars with Germany as America's enemy had effectively silenced my grandparents about their origins. In their efforts to assimilate and blend in, neither their native language nor tales of the families' pasts survived.

By the time Louise Steinman began her quest and odyssey into the past, she was a practicing American Jew in Los Angeles whose rabbi was also a Zen Buddhist. Only in LA, right? The purpose of her first trip to Poland, by invitation of the rabbi, was to attend an International Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This experience led her to Radomsko, her grandparent's Polish hometown, and ultimately to a more complete understanding of the complexity of Polish-Jewish relations.

Having read John Hersey's The Wall and Leon Uris's Mila 18 (both are fictional accounts of the Warsaw Ghetto), as well as The Patagonian Hare, the memoir of Claude Lanzmann (creator of the Holocaust movie Shoa which I watched), I was fairly well prepared historically to appreciate the emotional prejudices Steinman had to confront. None of this reading prepared me at all for the reading group discussion of The Crooked Mirror.

My friend brought another friend to the meeting. Both of them are Jews of Polish descent. My friend has been to Poland twice and her friend at least four times, including visits to the hometowns of their forebears. The book meant more to them than I could have imagined.

My ancestors were Lutheran and emigrated for economic reasons. These women's ancestors were obliterated almost without a trace. Our discussion ranged far and wide leaving me with many of my preconceived notions rearranged.

To all of these women goes my admiration for their courage in facing the past and their willingness to help heal a countrywide breach caused by the evils of both the Nazis and post WWII Communism. Though the history of the persecution towards the Jewish people dates much further back than 1939, there was a time when Jews and Catholics in Poland lived shoulder to shoulder in tolerance and cooperation.

Steinman's memoir follows her progression from tentative inquiry through increased involvement and finally to enough healing to allow hope. To this day hardly any Jews live in the entire country of Poland, but efforts by both Jews and present day Polish Catholics have brought to light what really happened. In older times "a Polish Catholic painted the zodiac on the ceiling of Radomsko's Great Synagogue and a Polish Jewish tinsmith designed the spires of the town's cathedral."

(The Crooked Mirror is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE

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Twelve Years A Slave, Solomon Northup, Derby & Miller, 1853, 235 pp

I read this slave narrative as a reading group pick. Not having previously read any slave narratives, I can't judge it by comparison but I found it a gripping read.

The twist in this one is that Solomon Northup was a freeman in the North who was captured by trickery and sold into slavery, a crime at the time. The drama is how he survived for twelve years and finally arranged to be rescued by people he used to know in the North. And it is dramatic right up to the end.

I presume this book has provided details for many a novel about slavery written since. Should you read it before or after seeing the movie or in addition to seeing the movie? I have not as yet watched the movie so I can't say, but members of my reading group who have, say they make good companions to each other.

I don't guess any of us need to do either to be convinced that slavery is a wicked thing. The worth of the book was its role in the abolitionist movement as well as the power of literature to create change.

My copy was part of an eBook by Timeless Reads that also contains five additional slave narratives including Up From Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T Washington; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Uncle Tom's Cabin; The Life of Josiah Henson; and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. (I have wanted to read the Frederick Douglass book ever since I read Transatlantic by Colum McCann, because Douglass features in that story.) All of these books were first published in the 1800s except for Up From Slavery in 1901.

I read both Twelve Years a Slave and Black Like Me during the week of Martin Luther King Day. That is enough for now but next year I'll have more to read. I also watched The Butler that week. Good for me!

(Twelve Years A Slave is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LIFE AFTER LIFE

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Life After Life, Kate Atkinson, Little Brown and Company, 2013, 529 pp

A good deal of great writing kept me going in Life After Life but overall I was left feeling less than thrilled by the end. In fact, at the very end I was confused and had to talk it over with a couple reading friends.

Ursula Todd gets born in 1910, then she gets born again and again with different scenarios ensuing. It is kind of like that movie Ground Hog Day, without the humor. She also lives through various parts of her life several times and because of her choices ends up in better or worse states than other times.

Once I got used to not knowing when it was and to finding the clues to when it had been, I didn't mind the time shifts. Anyone who made it through The Time Traveler's Wife, a book I loved completely, can make it through this novel. Some parts were quite gripping, especially the section on the London Blitz in WWII. 

I liked Ursula's crazy aunt and the beloved brother. I didn't think Sylvie, Ursula's mother, quite hung together as a character.

I guess I liked the concept of the book better than the reading of it. It must have been fun to write. Of course, it all got me thinking about points in my life where I could have made different choices and thus have had a different life.

There you have it. A disjointed and inconclusive review, not unlike the novel itself. You are what you read? Most definitely! 

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

THE BORROWERS ALOFT

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The Borrowers Aloft, Mary Norton, Harcourt Brace & World Inc, 1961, 192 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

How sad that I have reached the end of The Borrowers series, but what a send off!

The Borrowers came ashore after their harrowing escape by boat in The Borrowers Afloat to find a miniature model village with a ready made home just their size. Of course, it had been discovered by the intrepid Spiller.

This volume begins with a short history of how the model village came into being as a hobby of Mr Pott, a retired railway man. His meticulous craftsmanship reminded me of Keith Stewart, the main character from Nevil Shute's 1960 bestseller, Trustee From the Toolroom.

Mr Pott has a rival, a Mr Platter, wealthy builder who constructed his own model village just across the river with the aim of making money. No sooner are the Clocks are getting settled in Mr Potts' Little Fordham, than they are discovered by Mr Platter who kidnaps the family and imprisons them in his attic for the winter. He is building a house for them in his village where he plans to showcase the little people as his latest attraction.

Anyone who has read the stories of The Borrowers knows that their greatest fear is "being seen." Escape from Mr Platter must be accomplished at all costs. 

Taking their usual roles as Pod the father/inventor, Homily the worried mother, and Arrietty the adventurous discoverer of new things, the family builds a balloon in which they plan to sail out of an attic window to freedom. Arrietty, you may remember, had taught herself to read back in the original house of the first book. There in the attic she found an article about ballooning in an old number of the Illustrated London News.

Their feverish work on the balloon, their departure and journey by air back to Little Fordham, and a climax more surprising than any of the previous stories, make for a suspenseful read. I never read this final book in the series as a kid. By 1961 I was starting high school and reading adult books. But I should have read it because Arrietty turns 16 and realizes that she loves Spiller and wants to marry him. To do so, she must navigate her parents' resistance to such an outlandish proposal while she learns to understand Spiller's fiercely independent personality.

Mary Norton accomplished a feat not often repeated in children's literature until J K Rowling had Harry Potter age along with his readers. Brilliant! Now I must see the movie, The Secret World of Arrietty.

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

IN DUBIOUS BATTLE

In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck, The Viking Press, 1936, 313 pp

I did not read Steinbeck's novel about an attempt to organize migrant workers as part of My Big Fat Reading Project because it was published before 1940, the year I chose for the beginning of my project. I read it now for a reading group and must say, it is a much better book than The Grapes of Wrath.

All of the qualities I love best about Steinbeck are here. Great complex characters, description that brings the locations and the weather and the events to life, and a thoughtful look at a big human problem.

The trouble with trying to help a person or specific group with a problem is that the helper is not the person or a member of the group. The main characters from "the party" (Steinbeck does not call them communists but the growers do) come in from the outside. They are desperate characters for their own reasons but they are not migrant workers and their agenda stems from a political consciousness.

Steinbeck gives a brilliant exposition of the methods used to organize downtrodden workers into people who will fight the system: finding or even creating an incident that will ignite them out of apathy, the "end justifies the means" mentality, and the justifications for violence and criminal activity. It has been ever thus when the dregs or unfortunates rise up.

He shows all of it, making his book still vital today. The novel moved me as much as East of Eden.

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