THE LONELY GIRL

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The Lonely Girl, Edna O'Brien, 1962, Plume (also available in The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986) 200 pp

The Lonely Girl is the second volume of Edna O'Brien's Country Girls Trilogy. I had read the entire trilogy back in 2004, which is when I fell in love with O'Brien, so this was a second reading.

She captures so well the innocence and emotional states of Kate and her friend Baba. Baba mostly just wants to have fun but Kate falls in love with another older man. She had done that in the first book, The Country Girl, when she was still living at home and grieving for her recently deceased mother and had her heart broken. This time, she and Baba are living in a rooming house in Dublin, working at dull jobs, usually short of money, and looking for men.

Eugene Gaillard is a supposedly divorced writer who lives outside of the city on a large country estate. In fact, he is still married to his American wife with whom he has a daughter but they are separated. The romance is doomed because he is worldly and Kate is a country bumpkin, still a virgin, steeped in her Catholic teachings, in no way prepared to deal with his ways and her insecure jealousy.

It is painful to watch how her inept youthful inexperience causes her to suffer. Painful also to remember those years in my life. In some ways my early twenties were more exciting than anything in life so far but in the end there was more heartbreak than fun.

Kate's drunken father plays a huge role as he shows up at Eugene's house with a priest and a friend. They virtually kidnap her, a 20-year-old woman, and take her back to the small town where she grew up. It is all sanctimonious Irish Catholic sentiments from men who actually mistreat women. Sound familiar? Though she manages to escape she has learned very little.

Disgusting, disturbing, and the central theme of all the O'Brien novels I have read so far. Her brilliance is in plumbing the inner thoughts and feelings of her female characters.  

THE TIME OF THE DOVES

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The Time of the Doves, Merce Rodoreda, Graywolf Press, 201 pp (originally published in Spain, 1962; translated from the Catalan by David H Resenthal)

Ah, this was a beautiful book. It is tragic and sad so how did she make it so beautiful? The author, a Catalonian woman who came of age during the Spanish Civil War, saw her early novels burned by the authorities of the time as she became a refugee in France and did not write again for eight years. The Time of the Doves was her first novel after that hiatus.

Though I have not ever had to live where a war was being fought, this novel was personal to me for other reasons. I was raised by parents whose childhoods were shadowed by the Great Depression and whose young adult years were crimped by the fears and deprivations of WWII. In the 50s we had all we needed, though the Cold War was a distant but ever-present threat. My sisters and I were taught to believe that happiness was ours if we behaved ourselves, trusted that Jesus loved us, and did well in school.

So I grew up thinking that happiness was the goal and I pursued it madly, not by being a well-behaved believer in Jesus, but still sure it was my birthright. It was not! Now as I approach my elderly years, I know that happiness is as fleeting as spring flowers. 

Suddenly, while reading The Time of the Doves, I realized, as the Eastern sages have been saying for eons, that happiness and sorrow are only polarities as are riches and poverty, success and failure, and on and on. There is a strange beauty in all of it.

Natalia, whose mother died when she was young and whose father barely acknowledged her existence, meets Quimet during a dance in one of the town squares of Barcelona. He woos her away from her current fiance, he bullies her yet holds for her a strange fascination. They marry and have two children but Quimet becomes obsessed with raising doves on the roof of their apartment building and stops making money. Natalia goes to work as a cleaning woman, the Spanish Civil War begins, and eventually she loses her husband, her job, and barely survives with those kids, all nearly starving to death.

Finally rescue, safety, and even love come back into her life but she cannot recover from the trauma or believe in love anymore. It is only because of Merce Rodoreda's exquisite prose (probably even more so in Catalan) that the whole picture of this woman's desires, fortitude, despair, and finally hope kept me from collapsing under all of Natalia's misfortune. I was sure she was doomed but there was beauty everywhere in the writing.

By the end, another one of my mother's lessons finally made sense to me. Only if one keeps going, one foot in front of the other, doing one's duties, does one have a chance at happiness, survival, and even life itself. As a child I thought she meant it was my duty to be happy. But she knew how fleeting happiness is, she already knew how long life could be, and that there is no sense crying about it. Instead she grew flowers, played the piano, and kept an orderly home. Thanks Mom. Thanks Merce Rodoreda. They both knew that beauty matters.

Thanks also to my blogger friend Edith at Edith's Miscellany for introducing me to this novel in her review. The Spanish version she read was entitled In Diamond Square.

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

THE PYRAMID CLIMBERS

The Pyramid Climbers, Vance Packard, Penguin Books, 1962, 319 pp

 

 

This is the fourth book I have read by Vance Packard. It concerns big business in America, how it is structured (as a pyramid though not to be confused with today's pyramid schemes) and how employees climb that pyramid to executive, company president, and chairman of the board.

 

Though it is one of the driest yet of Packard's books, it was interesting to read about the amount of control and influence those companies wielded over their executives in the early 60s. It mattered what sort of wife they had, where they bought their homes, what clubs they joined. People of color, Jews, women, and recent immigrants stood little chance of reaching executive positions.

Personality and psychological testing came into common use beginning in the mid 1950s. Regular assessments of how a man was doing on the job and how he was perceived by his superior and co-workers were conducted. Demands for increased production year after year led to unethical practices in order to meet the quotas.

It all paints a picture of these big corporations as almost a cult. The early 60s were a time of transition from promoting within the companies to using head hunters to steal men away from other companies. It was also the beginning of the overseas branches and multinational conglomerations that led to the situation we have today of out-sourcing and its accompanying unemployment in America.

Basically WASPs ran everything and a corporate culture of blandness rather than the outrageous types who we now call the Robber Barons were being replaced by executives bound by their Boards of Directors and shareholders.

Sometimes the author fell prey to generalities though he attempted to show differences between various kinds of industries. Aside from that complaint and the boredom that comes from reading too many statistics, I felt I learned as much as I wanted to know about the transitions in business that led to where we are now.

My husband and I were both children of fathers who worked for a major corporation: Ford Motor Company and United States Steel. Neither of us has ever had a desire to follow that path. My father-in-law made it pretty far up the pyramid and died of a massive stroke at age 52. My father chose to not angle for promotions and took early retirement. He had some health problems later in life but lived to be 85.

Being a person who is concerned about climate change and the unsustainable culture we have today, I got a glimpse of the inner workings of businesses based solely on profits and growth. Where will it all end?

(The Pyramid Climbers is out of print and not found in my libraries. Used books are available.)

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY

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All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders, TOR Books, 2016, 313 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.

But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's ever-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together--to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

 

 

My Review:

Incredible! Last week I read Dexter Palmer's Version Control, among other topics, a book about time travel. This week I read this sparkling and crazy novel that imagines a war between magic and science taking place as the world enters its final slide into oblivion for the human race. A time travel/anti-gravity device is a possible solution for saving at least a small portion of humanity by sending them off to another planet.

 

There are richly complex characters to love and hate, a magic system and a scientific one, with a world just around the corner from where we are now.

 

If you want an idea of the plot, read the summary above. Honestly, as thrilling as the reading experience was, it was also exhausting and anyway, I hate writing plot summaries. This is a book for geeks of all kinds. 

 

Patricia, the magical witch/healer who can talk to animals and Laurence, the scientific child prodigy, make most of the fantasy or sci fi characters who are outcasts in their own lives look kind of mainstream and well adjusted by comparison. Their childhood friendship and adult romance are more what we are used to but hold up better than other couples in the genres.

 

If this sounds like something you might like to read, be prepared to jettison all preconceived ideas and just go with it. If you like your facts and emotions pinned down and your beliefs kept intact, skip it. This book is crazy good but it is also plain crazy! I loved it.

 

Also it is a TOB 2017 contender and just got nominated for a Nebula award. 

 

 

(All the Birds in the Sky is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

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Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Spiegal & Grau, 2015, 152 pp

Summary from Goodreads: In a series of essays, written as a letter to his son, Coates confronts the notion of race in America and how it has shaped American history, many times at the cost of black bodies and lives. Thoughtfully exploring personal and historical events, from his time at Howard University to the Civil War, the author poignantly asks and attempts to answer difficult questions that plague modern society. In this short memoir, the "Atlantic" writer explains that the tragic examples of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and those killed in South Carolina are the results of a systematically constructed and maintained assault to black people--a structure that includes slavery, mass incarceration, and police brutality as part of its foundation. From his passionate and deliberate breakdown of the concept of race itself to the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, Coates powerfully sums up the terrible history of the subjugation of black people in the United States. 

My Review:

For me, this book defies being reviewed. It is so personal, so true, so well thought out. I don't feel I have the right and I certainly don't have the nerve to write about what this man wrote.

I already knew we are not, in America, living in a post-racial world. Racism is alive and well and being committed as a harmful act gazillions of times every day.

I thought I already knew what it is like to be Black in America, but now I know I can't ever even really know.

I suppose I felt "lucky" or "blessed" that my karma this lifetime is to be middle class and white. Now I know that is the ultimate privilege, even if one is female or lower class or poor. Anyone seen as White in this country is safer, has more opportunity and more freedom than a Black person, no matter how much education or power or money that Black person has.

So I thank Ta-Nehisi Coates for writing this book, for getting it published, for thinking so hard and writing so clearly, for applying his intelligence and his love for his son to what is more than just a problem but is actually an insanity.

I don't know what to do about it except to keep reading and encouraging others to read the books by people of color who tell us White people what it is like for them. Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jacqueline Woodson, Malcolm X, Walter Mosley, Colson Whitehead, Gloria Naylor, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Mc Bride, Dorothy West, and many more. I encourage you to read all of them. Then do what needs to be done where you live, where you work, where you vote. 

(Between the World and Me is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

VERSION CONTROL

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Version Control, Dexter Palmer, Pantheon Books, 2016, 495 pp

Back in 2010, I read Dexter Palmer's first novel, The Dream of Perpetual Motion, and I did not like it much. Seven years later I confess that it was more a case of I didn't get it. I was ignorant of the steampunk genre back then so had no way to determine how or if his steampunk setting was any good. Compounding my ignorance, I somehow missed that it was a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest not to mention that as of 2010 I had not read The Tempest. My apologies to Dexter Palmer. I will give the novel another read one of these days.

Version Control on the other hand blew me away. I did not even mind the obvious fact that Palmer was intending to blow as many minds as he could. Though the novel is set in a near future time (including self-driving cars, an internet dating service whose actual moneymaker was data collection sold to political and marketing clients, and a President who appears to people personally on their hand-held devices to wish them Happy Birthday and give them words of wisdom about their "private" worries) this is a love story steeped in science.

Rebecca, who had to go back to living at home after college because she could not find a job, met Philip on the dating site where she also finally got a job. Philip is a mad scientist deeply involved with quantum mechanics, string theory, and developing an invention he calls the "causality violation device" but which the press calls a time machine.

In Version Control, Palmer takes the ever and increasingly popular time travel trope into uncharted territory. He is still pretty wordy (he has a PhD in English lit from Princeton University, so), he is still cramming everything under the sun into his story, and his writing style is still a bit pedestrian though he has his lyrical moments. But he has written a highly entertaining story with perplexing twists and turns and made me even try to understand the science.

When the surprising conclusion I did not even see coming signaled the end of the novel, I felt like I would rather keep reading Version Control for the rest of 2017 rather than start another book.

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

THE NIX

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The Nix, Nathan Hill, Alfred A Knopf, 2016, 620 pp

In an interview with Nathan Hill, he talks about how he spent years trying to become a novelist by writing what he thought publishers would buy and worked himself into a defeatist state of mind. Finally he got a job teaching writing and used his spare time to write what he wanted to say. The result was The Nix.

The protagonist, Samuel Andresson-Anderson, is then somewhat of an autobiographical character, a not uncommon circumstance in a first novel. I found him to be a sympathetic character reminiscent of fellows in books by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Adrift in a sea of losses (his mother, his best friend, his one true love) he loses himself in on-line gaming as he struggles/procrastinates in writing a novel, long overdue, the huge advance he'd received long spent. Then his long lost mother resurfaces.

The structure of this novel is unwieldy and certain sections could be called over-written. By the time I finished reading all 620 pages, I forgave Nathan Hill everything. He wrote the story of a family that is littered with the universal detritus of failures, cowardice, love, bad communication, terrible parenting, immigration, myths and ghosts.

Somehow, and somewhat ungracefully, he stuffed all of this into what is either a sprawling mess or a brilliant synthesis of American life over the past century. Samuel's grandfather ran away from a hopeless future in Norway, landing in a mid-western American town with a job for a company that produced chemical weapons of mass destruction. He brought with him the Nix, a piece of Norwegian folklore about an evil trickster who steals whatever you love most and breaks your heart.

He raised his daughter Faye on stories of the Nix, leaving her in a state of personality disintegration. She escaped to Chicago in 1968 and got involved with the protests at the Democratic National Convention. Though she eventually returned home and married her high school sweetheart, she was more traumatized than ever. She left Samuel and his father when her son was a boy, disappearing completely. As she enters Samuel's life again decades later, she has been accused of a sordid crime committed in Chicago during the demonstrations.

As in the common current technique of novel writing with the story moving back and forth in time, the mysteries and losses of Samuel's life are revealed to both Samuel and the reader. The result is a heart wrenching story about how we make sense of our parents' actions and the possibility of reconciliation after deep misunderstanding and hurt. Along the way we also get to relive a social history that brings us up to where we are today.

The Nix is a long read that alternates between action and introspection. It won't please everyone but it was a bestseller last fall, has had glowing reviews and 4+ stars on Goodreads and Amazon. I loved it.

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

THE SWORD OF ALDONES

The Sword of Aldones, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ace Books, 1962, 164 pp

 

 

Because I read and loved The Mists of Avalon back in the 80s, I decided to include Marion Zimmer Bradley in My Big Fat Reading Project and read all of her novels in order of publication. The Sword of Aldones is the first book she wrote in her renowned Darkover Series.

 

There are two schools of thought regarding how to read that series because, like Star Wars movies, they were not written in chronological order. MZB provided a numbered chronological list before her death and some people read them that way. She also recommended reading the books in order of publication, so that is what I am doing.

The Sword of Aldones was written when she was 16, so while she had clearly done her world building in her mind, not all of it comes across smoothly. It is mostly an action tale, there are many characters, and the magic, of which there is plenty, doesn't all make sense. 

I liked it anyway, as a tale of two intergalactic civilizations in conflict. Terran is on a path to take over as many planets as possible for trade purposes. Darkover runs on magic and myth. It is a theme of hers and of many other writers, both speculative and historical. I found that theme in Mary Renault's two historical novels about the legend of Theseus (The King Must Die and The Bull From the Sea.) It is also the major theme of The Mists of Avalon. 

The writing and plotting and characters are all a bit sketchy and suffer from her inexperience but her voice is there and the promise of what became a fascinating series.

(The Sword of Aldones is out of print but can be found at used book sites and in audio and ebook versions. Happy hunting!)

GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

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Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, Max Porter, Graywolf Press, 2016, 114 pp

Nearly everyone alive has lost someone dear to them. Not everyone can write well about it but Max Porter has done it in breathtaking fashion.

A man has lost his wife suddenly, unexpectedly due to an accident. His two young sons have lost their mother.

Three voices reach out to us:

The boys as a sort of braided, combined consciousness, with the young boys-eye-view of the events, the emotions, the weird adjustment to a life run only by dad and a home without a mom.

The dad, figuring it out day by day, seeking oblivion but tethered to life by his boys.

The crow, an imaginary presence who drops feathers as he performs the role of grief counselor and family guardian. That crow symbolizes the magical thinking so well described by Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking.

Max Porter has been a bookseller and is currently an editor for Granta Books. He loves poetry and this is his first novel. You can learn about how and why he wrote it by listening to his interview on the Otherppl podcast, but I suggest reading the book first.

Very short chapters, some of which read like poetry, take you through the grieving process of the man and his sons. That crow is a trickster myth character who mixes words, sounds, free verse, and shenanigans.

If you have ever lost someone you loved and grown weary of the stock phrases (I am sorry for your loss), the platitudes of grief counselors, the surreal days and nights of dreams and hauntings by the lost one, this book will feel so familiar.

Such grief never really ends and it can make one feel slightly insane, so for me it brought new insights and a sort of reassurance and comfort and forgiveness for my own. 

(Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

REINHART IN LOVE

Reinhart in Love, Dell Publishing Inc, 1962, 438 pp

 

 

Where did I learn about this author? From an obituary when he died at 89 in 2014. He is one of those under-sung, under-read, literary authors. It was a cinch I would go for that label!

 

I read his first novel, Crazy in Berlin, 1958, and found it challenging. It was the first literary novel I had read set at the beginning of the Cold War, in which Carlos Reinhart, an American serviceman, is completing his enlistment in Berlin as a medic. I decided it had been worth reading, so I continued with this account of his first year back in the United States as a civilian.

 

He has troubles fitting in. He lives at home in Ohio with parents who are some truly strange but very American characters. He falls in love with the secretary at the office of a real estate mogul where he took at job and eventually they marry. 

 

True to the character I got to know in the first book, he stumbles into the oddest adventures, all the while trying to figure out how to be an employed man, a husband, and a fellow who has the idea that he is an honest person.

The story includes hot subjects like racism, corruption in local politics and business, and lots of sex. Berger writes rather long, convoluted but grammatically correct sentences filled with literary allusions. Reading him requires work and concentration. Once again I was rewarded by his subtle satire, his humor, and his fine-tuned awareness of life in America.

Since that perception of middle class life is part of what I am looking for when I read these books from the 1960s, it worked fine for me. However, unless that is something you are looking for in your reading, I can't give this novel a high recommendation to all readers.

(Reinhart in Love is out of print. Check for it at your favorite used bookseller site.)

FEBRUARY READING GROUP UPDATE

I got a bit behind on blogging this week. I spent a good deal of time reading, hanging out with friends and seeing movies. All worthwhile activities in these insane times. Reading groups are more wonderful than ever for me right now because getting together with real live people and discussing books is the needed antidote for my compulsion to read and follow the news. The news makes me feel crazy. The people and discussions bring me back to sanity.

It is going to be an interesting month with the groups. And believe it or not I have joined another group: The Literary Snobs! We are a start-up group this month, we are small with just three members, and we are dedicated to reading books written only by Nobel Prize winners. New reading groups are subject to all kinds of attrition so we will see what happens.

Laura's Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Molly's Group:

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Bookie Babes:

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Literary Snobs:

What are your reading groups reading in February?

BOOKS READ IN JANUARY

Mostly it rained here in the Los Angeles area and we were overjoyed! It didn't make up for five years of drought but it surely raised the reservoirs and the plant life was so grateful. Three days after Christmas my back went out and I went into hobbling mode, whining mode, and pain reliever mode. Remember when they used to call them painkillers? I guess because that is an alternate fact they are now called pain relievers. In any case, it was sciatica, it is still hanging around, but on this last day of January I am much better.

At least I could read! I read 8 books, two of which were long enough to count as two regular length novels, but long books are perfect for cold rainy days when it gets dark early. Best of all, there was not a bad one in the bunch.

Stats: 8 read. 7 fiction. 5 written by women. 1 memoir. 1 scifi/fantasy. 4 from My Big Fat Reading Project. 2 from the 2017 Tournament of Books list.

Favorite: The Nix. 

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How did your reading go in January? What were your favorite books? 

HILLBILLY ELEGY

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Hillbilly Elegy, J D Vance, Harper, 2016, 257 pp

First off, let me say that this review contains my very personal reactions to this book as well as some political views. I don't generally like to get political on the blog or on social media, but the current scene has changed me. I feel I need to speak up for as long as I have a chance to do so. I don't expect everyone to agree with me and in fact welcome all comments, so long as they are not hateful or rude. 

I am glad I read this. J D Vance grew up in a small Ohio town, the son of an unstable mother who went through men the way some women go through shoes, who was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and who left her son feeling unstable, unloved, and unprotected. If not for his maternal grandparents, he would have been a statistic. Because of them and his sister along with a few other teachers and friends, he became a success story.

The grandparents were hillbillies from Kentucky's Appalachia area who moved to Ohio to escape poverty. Their story shows you can take the hillbilly out of Appalachia but you can't take the Appalachia mentality out of the hillbilly. Alcohol, inconsistent and sometimes abusive parenting, as well as the culture of Appalachia made a "middle class" family that sounded nothing like my ideas of the American middle class. J D's story is harrowing, in the way that Jeannette Wall's The Glass Castle was.

Yet, he did finish high school, he graduated from college and Yale Law School, became a successful lawyer, and found a wonderful wife. This is a story of hope leavened by the randomness of life. I would say, after reading the book, that the author is in the one percent of people who can rise above the self-defeating cultural patterns of poverty, drug use, Evangelical beliefs, and violence that plagues so much of our country.

I credit the book for painting what I accept as a credible picture of a large part of society. I am a middle class white liberal and I could hardly recognize the people in J D Vance's family. However, since the election of Donald Trump, I have forced myself to listen to/read the screeds of his followers because I felt it was important to understand why anyone would have voted for him. I still don't totally get it but I am beginning to fathom a mentality that I had been in denial about. In fact, ever since watching the movie Idiocracy, I have joked about the idiocracy. 

Hillbilly Elegy convinced me it is no joke, that in fact our country is riddled with misinformed,  under-educated, crippled individuals who are divorced from what is actually going on in the world. I am starting to understand how such a disaster can happen in the richest, most powerful democracy in the world, but I have little idea what can be done about it. 

I am aware that our new President also has many supporters who are well educated, who grew up in stable homes, who have been successful in life. I don't get that at all. It is sad.

I think Hillbilly Elegy is an important book. While it purports to be a memoir and is successful as such, the author mixed in a good deal of sociological analysis. Those sections were less successful because they led to no real solutions.

The main conclusion I came to is that it is not our government leaders or even our political system that will either solve or exacerbate these problems. It takes an entire populace, the majority of whom are dedicated to the ideals of democracy and equal rights, to justice, to liberty. The question in 2017 is do we have such a majority. I choose to believe we do.

(Hillbilly Elegy is available on the non-fiction shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ARARAT

Ararat, Stella Wilchek, Harper, 1962, 561 pp

 

 

Some years ago I stumbled upon a book by this author entitled Judith. Since that is my name and since "Judith" is a book from the Apocrypha, I decided to read it and recall it fondly. It tells the story of that infamous Hebrew woman who murdered Holofernes, an incident that inspired the famous "Judith Beheading Holofernes" painting by Carravagio. I loved the novel and intend to read it again when I get to my 1965 list.

 

 All of Stella Wilchek's four novels are out of print and there is little information about her on the internet. She was born in Austria in 1922, apparently escaped the Holocaust, and died in 1997 in America. She wrote well, was obviously highly educated, and was celebrated as an early feminist novelist. Perhaps she was ahead of her time because after Judith she disappeared from the publishing world.

Ararat is the story of a small group of Austrian Jews who emigrated to the fictional South American town, El Paramo, in 1939, intending to wait out the war. Their escape, journey and trials are related through the diary of Professor Bernstein, a somewhat unreliable narrator with a detached, wryly humorous tone. He observes the daily lives of several different families in great detail, giving a picture of an intensely small community set adrift in a foreign culture. 

The people rely on rumor and gossip; they compete in various ventures as they try to make enough money to survive. The consciousness of themselves as Jews, as persecuted outcasts, and as people who have lost their country and livelihoods permeate the novel.

The mountains, the natives, and the extraordinary weather of the Andean country in which they find themselves, all play into creating an atmosphere I have rarely found in any novel. (Although The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman, which I read last year, does tell a similar story.)

Eva, the 17 year old wife of Walter Kramer (he being the son of one of the most prominent families) is beautiful, sensual and a born female rebel. She is clearly one of the author's favorite characters and was mine as well. Refusing to be tamed, she has several affairs, drives her mother-in-law crazy and defies her husband. She reminded me of Mathilde in Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies, with her coldblooded approach to men, love and personal fulfillment, though the stories of these women play out so differently. Eva also put me in mind of Lila in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels.

In fact, all of these novels have soap operatic qualities due to the emotional minutiae and the almost claustrophobic intensity of personal interactions. I conclude that despite wars and politics and financial issues in the macrocosm of life, it is these intimate details of life that keep us from dying of boredom or heartbreak in this vale of tears we inhabit.

(Ararat is out of print but can be obtained through used book sellers on line.)

A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW

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A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles, Viking, 2016, 464 pp

A most enjoyable read despite it length due to wonderful characters and a unique look at life in Moscow during the years immediately following the Russian revolution. 

Count Alexander Rostov, wealthy and unrepentant aristocrat, is brought before a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922 and sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, the grand hotel where he already lives in a luxurious suite. He must give up that suite and most of his possessions to live in two small attic rooms. He is not permitted to leave the building under any circumstances and it becomes his entire world for many years.

If this sounds like the girl in A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, it does have its similarities, including a happy ending. But the Count is a middle-aged man, he manages to have a little money secreted away plus is well educated and wise in the ways of the world.

After adjusting to his much reduced circumstances, he is shown all the secrets of the Metropol by a precocious young girl who reminded me of Eloise, another delightful hotel dweller in the New York Plaza Hotel. 

As the story moves along the Count becomes a waiter in the hotel restaurant, acquires a daughter of his own when the young girl is left behind by her revolutionary mother, and falls in love with a movie star. All along, he learns the ways of life in a totalitarian society, he develops compassion for all kinds of people and proves that with wiles and luck, a person can figure out how to survive in any circumstances.

As entertaining and even intelligent as the story is, I did have doubts as to its likelihood. Having recently read The Green Tent and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, both of which show a much darker view of life in the Soviet Union, I could not help thinking that the Count got off too easily.

At the end of the story, it turns into more of a thriller which is full of danger and excitement, but despite some close calls no one get hurt. I decided to enjoy the excellent writing and the entertainment value along with some pithy satire. The author managed to stay just enough away from heartwarming but my heart was warmed anyway. He made me love Count Rostov. 

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

 

THE BULL FROM THE SEA

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The Bull From the Sea, Mary Renault, Pantheon Books, 343 pp

In her sequel to The King Must Die, Mary Renault completes her fictional retelling of the legend of Theseus, Greek hero, bull leaper, mythical son of Poseidon, ruler of Athens. In the way of larger-than-life heroes he comes to downfall and death. It is almost enough to make one give up hope in our dreams to either be heroes/heroines or be saved by them.

Then again, he had adventure, danger, pleasure, even love. In this latter part of his life he returns from Crete, puts his glorious bull leaper days behind him, and tries to settle down and be a good King. He does well, he makes his kingdom more just, and he prospers.

Theseus is a high energy restless dude though and likes to go off with his pirate friends. During one of those adventures he meets his female counterpoint, Hippolyta. Although she is sworn to the Amazon goddess, she gives it all up to go with him and be the love of his life.

Meanwhile, for political reasons, Theseus must wed Cretan princess Phaedra to whom he was earlier betrothed. He has a son by each woman. It does not turn out well.

One of the central themes of both novels is the conflict between those who worshipped the Earth Mother, a matriarchal belief system, and those who saw their Kings as intermediaries between humans and the Sky Gods. Theseus is the King who thwarts the Earth Mother traditions of old and brings about full patriarchy in Greece.

As any good feminist scholar knows, this is the age old battle of the sexes, lost by women long long ago. Whether or not the result has been or ever will be good for the people of Earth, it makes for great tales. The Legend of Theseus is one of them and Mary Renault tells it extremely well. 

(The Bull From the Sea is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

BEAUTY IS A WOUND

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Beauty Is A Wound, Eka Kurniawan, New Directions, 2015, 470 pp (published in Indonesia in 2002, translated by Annie Tucker)

Summary from Goodreads: The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million "Communists," followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.

My Review:

I first learned of this novel from the BTBA (Best Translated Book Award) Fiction long list for 2016. I bought it because it is a fictional account of Indonesian history and because I liked the title. It was the last book I read in 2016. Filled with wild and crazy characters, featuring colonial oppression and the rape of natural resources and as well as a mixed race descendant of a Dutch East India Company trader, it covers war, communism, slaughter, rape, unstable politics, indigenous customs, and ghosts. The result is a rich tapestry.

Not that we don't have rape issues in the United States and not that rape is ever OK but boy, it was as common as dirt in the tumultuous archipelago now known as Indonesia. The central character is a woman, Dewi Ayu, the mixed race descendant mentioned above.  She is possessed of great beauty, four daughters who are each from different fathers, and demonic powers. She is the most renowned prostitute in Jakarta.

When she rises from her grave, where she had been buried 21 years ago, all the tales and many of the ghosts come alive as well. The author then takes us back to where it all began for Dewi and brings us forward through 400 years of history.

I was drawn in from the beginning and except for a few lulls in the narrative, remained intrigued to the end. In college, I studied Margaret Mead's books about her anthropological studies on Bali, one of Indonesia's islands, and became fascinated with the area. I have since read Euphoria by Lily King (a novel loosely based on Ms Mead) and Mead's autobiography Blackberry Winter. But these are books written by Americans. Beauty Is A Wound is the first novel or book of any kind that I have read written by an Indonesian author. There is just no comparison.

As a reader you need to hang tough though. You will enter a world so foreign to any Western country with customs and beliefs strange to us. And yet, because of Western colonization there are elements of Western civilization intermixed. If you have read books by African or Asian authors, you will be prepared.

There is no denying that Dewi Ayu, her four daughters, and the men in their lives are the brilliant and vibrant center that holds the story together. As far as the human story of how we have developed from tiny bands of individuals to globalized interconnected trade and war, it is apparently one I never tire of reading.

(Beauty Is A Wound is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

CRITICAL MASS

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Critical Mass, Sara Paretsky, G P Putnam's Sons, 2013, 462 pp

Summary from Goodreads: V.I. Warshawski’s closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust.  Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder.  When Kitty’s daughter finds her life is in danger, she calls Lotty, who, in turn, summons V.I. to help.  The daughter’s troubles turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets, and silence, whose origins go back to the mad competition among America, Germany, Japan and England to develop the first atomic bomb.  The secrets are old, but the people who continue to guard them today will not let go of them without a fight.  

My Review:

This crime thriller was on my stack of reading for the last week in 2016, consisting of books I had meant to read during the year but hadn't gotten to. It is Ms Paretsky's 18th novel and I have now read them all. One more to go and I will be caught up before her next one comes out later in 2017. She is one of my top favorite mystery/crime novelists. Every book so far has been amazing for its genre.

V I Warshawski, fearless and crusading private investigator, once again finds "the crimes behind the crimes" as Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times puts it. In her hometown of Chicago she ferrets out corruption and destructive inequalities, taking down criminality and standing up for the forgotten people. If we had a few like her in every major American city, our country would be more like what our Founding Fathers hoped they were founding.

Critical Mass uncovers secrets and lies going back to the WWII arms race with its competition between Germany and the United States to develop the first atomic bomb.

Reading coincidence: Michael Chabon's Moonglow, read earlier in December, covers similar territory. In both books the traumas of Nazi concentration camps and the use of Jewish scientists to further that research are key plot elements.

The fast pace, multiple characters, extreme danger to V I's life, and her biting yet comedic take on all events are as present here as in all her books. I always make a list of characters as they appear, tedious near the beginning but eliminating the need to turn back the pages and remember who's who so I can enjoy the ever accelerating pace that invariably makes up the last 100 pages.

In Critical Mass (a physics term meaning the minimum amount of material, such as plutonium, necessary to maintain a nuclear chain reaction), Paretsky honors Jewish Austrian physicist Marietta Blau. She was a researcher whose scientific work deserved a Nobel Prize she never got because she was Jewish. Paretsky's fictional character Martina Saginor is based on Ms Blau.

Even more impressive, the story makes clear the destruction of so many lives due to secrets that were kept both by members of the researcher's family and by some sorry practices of government and corporations, hidden behind actions justified by national security.

No matter what your politics or your patriotic views, Critical Mass will challenge you to pay more attention and look more deeply into our current times. Also it is more fun than watching Twitter fights!

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

THE CRY OF THE OWL

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The Cry of the Owl, Patricia Highsmith, Harper & Row, 1962, 271 pp

I have now read five of Highsmith's novels. A few days ago I wrote in another review about the importance (for me, at least) of reading books written by women. Now I have to add that there are all kinds of women writing stories and this author is on the far side of some spectrum.

For one thing, she seems to lack sympathy for human beings or at least she rarely creates characters who are admirable and many, including women, who are despicable. I know this is true in life. None of us, men or women, are always admirable and some are despicable. Thus I must contradict myself and say that she does have a certain sympathy for the despicable and looks deeply into why and how that is. We have writers like that now, but Patricia Highsmith was doing this in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Cry of the Owl includes two spurned men. Robert, who is depressed and adrift after his divorce from a despicable woman and another man who turns hateful after his fiancee takes up with Robert. Just to unstabilize things a bit more, Robert has been lurking outside the window of this other woman's house, being a peeping Tom.

It gets messy right away as the murky motivations of both the men and the women never become quite clear. If I had to live as any one of these people, I would be fearful for my sanity. Robert at least has a couple good friends which I suppose is a sign that he is not despicable but he is unbalanced and weird in an Aspergers kind of way.

I have always been afraid of people who appear insane to me. I try to steer clear of neurotic individuals. I feel these are healthy attitudes but a better understanding of what makes such people the way they are does help alleviate the fear. Besides self preservation, it is also a fear of the unknown.

That is why I read Patricia Highsmith.


(The Cry of the Owl is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MISTER MONKEY

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Mister Monkey, Francine Prose, Harper, 2016, 285 pp

I read Mister Monkey for an on-line discussion group. I have always meant to read Francine Prose but somehow never have. Now she has entranced me and I will read more.

I was one of the few participants in the discussion who liked the book. I think because for me it was about people with unfulfilled dreams, one of my obsessions as I get older and look back at the dreams I had.

Mister Monkey is a children's musical adapted from a novel written by a Vietnam vet with PTSD. Said novel was converted by an editor into what became a bestselling picture book for kids, along the lines of Curious George. Now the author is rich but he hates the musical because it makes a travesty of his original story.

Mister Monkey, the novel by Francine Prose (quite erroneously described as "madcap" by whoever wrote the dust jacket copy) uses the musical as a framework to take readers into the lives and souls of various people connected to an off-off-off-off-Broadway production of a tired old show. Included are several of the actors, the director, the costume designer, a grandfather, and Ray, the original author of the children's book. Each chapter features one of them but in circling around begins to connect them all in interesting and surprising ways.

I am not much of a theater goer but one of my sons spent a year of college being a set builder and one of his daughters acts in every play she can at high school. In fact, I have always liked novels set in the theater, so here I was again enmeshed in all the tacky backstage interpersonal trauma of actors, directors, playwrights, and support crew. Ms Prose must have some theater experience because she crafts those scenes so perfectly.

Ultimately though, this is a story about people of all ages and different walks of life who are mildly unhappy but looking for joy wherever they can find it. I could not put it down. 

Today the shortlist for the 2017 Tournament of Books came out and Mister Monkey made the list! I have read 6 of the 16 books that will compete in the tournament. Watch for more reviews of the rest of the books since I always attempt to read as many of them as I can. 

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