The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

Mark Helprin

The Oceans and the Stars by Mark Helprin tells the exploits of Stephen Rensselaer, a Navy captain nearing the end of his accomplished career. Called upon to speak in front of the president of the United States, Rensselaer annoys the president by brazenly defending a new type of warship. The president humiliates him by assigning him to command this prototype warship, the Athena. Rensselaer recognizes this assignment for what it is—a demotion. But he takes it in stride and embraces the challenge.

His adventures unfold when he is deployed to the Middle East, sinks an Iranian battle ship, and rescues tourists on a French cruise ship who have been captured by Isis-affiliated Somalis. But before any of this transpires, he meets and falls in love with Katy Farrar, a lawyer whose given name is Penelope. Rensselaer’s determination to overcome challenges and to return to his beloved “Penelope” sets up the obvious comparison with Odysseus.

The story line is interesting and can be exciting, at times. But the narrative gets bogged down with excessive technical information about military equipment, Athena’s navigation and structure, and how she differs from other ships in her class. These technical descriptions are tedious and can go on for several pages.

The novel suffers from weak characterization. Although men are more fully developed than the few female characters, their dialogue is unnatural and stiff. This is especially true of Rensselaer who tries too hard to sound erudite, comes across as pompous, and seems intent to baffle his crew with his literary allusions. The few women who are mentioned, including Katy, are described almost exclusively by their ravishing appearance. They are all so beautiful that men can’t help fawning all over them.

And, finally, the existence of rampant stereotyping is troublesome. The navy men suffer from a strong dose of male machismo, and the bad guys are described in such a way as to fuel Arab stereotypes. They are barbaric, undisciplined, savage, uncouth, and smell badly. There is no ambiguity or nuance in their portrayal. The lines of conflict are clearly drawn and depicted as a case of angels versus devils; good versus evil. This is unrealistic because in the real world, conflicts can seldom be so simply and so clearly delineated.

In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing

Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein

In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, is a collection of four essays originally presented as lectures in which Ferrante discusses her views on writing and the various authors who influenced her evolution as a writer. Ferrante describes how she desperately tried to write within the margins as a child. The act of writing in the margins becomes a metaphor for the tension in her own writing between adherence to constraints versus the desire to break free from those restraints.

Ferrante argues that a writer’s choice of genre can act as a restraint. She urges writers not to be limited by the constraints of a genre. Rather, she encourages them to disrupt it since it is through disruption that writing can become powerful and unique. She seeks to disrupt anticipated character development, saying of her characters, “I become passionate about them when they say one thing and do the opposite.” She insists writing should show life as it is in all its settled, unsettled, and conflicting glory.

Ferrante also explores male dominance in writing and how men frequently use language to circumscribe women and prevent them from speaking in their own voices. She describes her personal struggles to find her own voice from under the barrage of male writers she read earlier in her development. Her foray into gendered writing leads her to consider the challenges faced by women writers. She encourages women to write their own version of truth, to share and reflect on their stories with other women, and to become a cultural and political force in their own right.

The essays are not so much a how-to on writing good literature. They are more of an outline of what Ferrante learned about writing. She refers to some of her own novels and how she struggled with and formulated the characters. Insisting that all writing is built on one’s reading of great literature, Ferrante cites the words of several authors and credits them with influencing her approach to writing.

These essays offer insight into Ferrante’s craft and will appeal to fans of her novels.

Devil in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley takes place in 1948 in Los Angeles. Ezekial (Easy) Rawlins, a black war veteran, has just been fired from his job for defying his white boss. Worried about making his mortgage payments, he agrees to take on a job for a white gangster. His assignment, for which he is handsomely paid, is to find Daphne Monet, a beautiful young blond woman known to frequent black jazz clubs. As a black man, Easy has access to these bars and begins asking questions. He soon discovers he is not the only one trying to locate Daphne. The hunt is on to find her before anyone else does. He is joined by his former partner, Mouse. Along the way, several people are murdered, and Easy is hauled in for questioning by the police. But he and Mouse emerge from the ordeal relatively unscathed and a little richer. Easy announces his intention to embark on a new career path—that of a private investigator.

The crime novel unfolds in the first-person voice of Easy. His voice is fresh, original, and engaging. He takes the reader on jaunts to jazz bars and barber shops, from Watts to Beverly Hills, and from the underworld of Los Angeles to the world of the shady rich and famous. He interacts with black and white gangsters, is fast-talking, knows what to say and what to hold back. Easy comes close to losing his life but manages to survive thanks to a bit of luck and to the quick actions of his gun-carrying side-kick, Mouse.

This fast-paced narrative leads up to the climactic confrontation between Easy and Daphne. The dialogue is authentic. The atmosphere of post-WWII America is realistically infused with racial tensions. The novel is peopled with colorful characters ranging from the femme fatale Daphne, to the bartender Joppy, to the alluring Coretta, to the steely-eyed DeWitt, to the loose cannon Mouse, and to the solid Odell. Weaving them together is Easy, the quick-thinking, smooth-talking reluctant detective who searches for answers by plying his friends with drinks.

This is a quick and enjoyable read that immerses the reader in the gangster world of the late 1940s Los Angeles.

Hum

Helen Phillips

Hum by Helen Phillips is set in a bleak future when climate change has caused irreparable damage to the environment and when technology intrudes into every aspect of lives. The novel focuses on May Webb and her family. Recently unemployed, May and her husband are barely able to make financial ends meet for themselves and for their two elementary school children. In desperation, May agrees to submit to an experimental procedure designed to alter her facial features to avoid detection from the ubiquitous presence of surveillance cameras. In exchange, she will receive the equivalent of ten months’ salary.

The novel opens with May undergoing the procedure performed by a smooth-talking, reassuring humanoid robot called a Hum. Her family are initially startled by the changes in her face. Determined that her sacrifice should be meaningful, May splurges on a three-night stay for her family at the Botanical Gardens, a retreat for the very rich, plush with greenery, free-roaming animals, clean water, and fresh air. The Gardens are shielded by high walls that cut them off from the city’s filth, grime, litter, soot, and poor air quality.

The vacation is off to a good start until the children wander off and get lost. Frantic, May solicits help from a Hum to locate them. She gives the Hum permission to send for an emergency search inquiry. And that’s when the situation spirals out of control. The children are found, but a doctored video goes viral. It shows May fast asleep while her children wander around in the dark, barefoot and in tears. May is bombarded with messages accusing her of being a horrendous mother. The nightmare scenario is exacerbated when the Bureau of Family Aid launches an investigation to determine if the children should be taken into custody for their own protection. The family seems to be on the verge of falling apart until a Hum comes to their rescue.

The atmosphere is immersive and unsettling. Dirt and grime flourish in the city. The air is polluted. Tap water is discolored. Animals and plants struggle to survive. News headlines about the dire state of the world, many of which are factual and referenced at the back of the book, blare out in all public spaces. Surveillance cameras proliferate. Hums have taken over the tasks formerly performed by humans. And humans are addicted to their devices. The children interact with and heavily rely on their wrist “bunnies” that monitor their locations and vital signs. And the whole family spends much of its time crawling inside their separate “wooms”—networked isolation chambers that access memories and streaming services, enable one to converse with confidants, and offer an immersive experience.

Phillips incorporates many of life’s current challenges: online shaming; the frustration of talking to machines; the dependence on technology; the proliferation of surveillance; the constant bombardment of commercials; rampant consumerism; and the invasion of privacy. In the midst of a world spinning out of control, Phillips shows the how the love between family members can serve as an anchor of stability, and how technology can both create and resolve a crisis.

A thoughtful and provocative cautionary tale urging serious consideration of the limits we should place in our reliance on and use of technology.  

The Coin

Yasmin Zaher

The Coin by Yasmin Zaher unfolds in the first-person voice of a wealthy Palestinian woman who remains unnamed. She has inherited millions from her parents but has to rely on her brother to dole out her monthly allowance as dictated by her father’s will. She lives in New York and teaches at a middle school for underprivileged boys.

Obsessed with cleanliness, the narrator describes in minute detail her daily routine for scrubbing her body, including all its orifices. She claims her obsession with cleanliness was probably instilled by Palestinian women who scrubbed and cleaned their homes because they had very little control over other aspects of their lives. She spends a lot of time cleaning her home and even makes the students help her clean the classroom.

She has a long-term boyfriend but doesn’t live with him, valuing her independence. She befriends a man she refers to as “Trenchcoat,” who embroils her in a pyramid scheme of reselling Birkin handbags. She is generous with her students, taking them on field trips, buying them burgers, and dropping $20.00 bills in the classroom for them to find and keep. She is always stylishly dressed, making a point of naming each item of designer clothing she wears. She walks down the streets of New York, proud of her appearance. But underneath this veneer of confidence, she is untethered and spirals out of control.

The story line is non-linear and chaotic. The narrator’s leaps from one event to another lack cohesion. She is adept at lying and fabricating images of herself and her background to others with no explanation as to why she feels the need to do this. Threaded throughout her narrative are flashbacks of her Palestinian home, talks with her grandmother, her grandmother’s once beautiful garden in Palestine, and her grandfather’s broken heart at losing his home in Palestine. All of this leads us to the coin, the title of the novel.

The narrator is convinced that she swallowed a coin when she was a child. The coin never leaves her body and lodges itself in her back. No matter how hard she tries to dislodge it, no matter how hard she scrubs, she can never get rid of it. She is aware of it inside her body, claims she can feel its physical presence, refers to it as “you,” and addresses it in her monologue. The coin comes to manifest the inherited trauma of a dispossessed population. She has ingested the trauma which has become an integral and permanent part of her psyche. It never leaves her, impacting her thoughts, behavior, and self-image. As she says to the coin: “You’ll come with me everywhere I go, I said to you, we have no choice.”

In controlled prose and in series of disparate threads woven together in short vignettes, Zaher takes us inside the mind of a woman who is dispossessed, deprived of a homeland, cut off from her culture and traditions, set adrift and untethered in a foreign land, conscious of her outsider status, culturally estranged, and harboring a deep yearning to belong. The style is hypnotic; the narrative, absorbing; the conclusion, shocking. The trajectory of the narrator’s descent into erratic, disturbing behavior is moving, haunting, and cleverly executed.

Entitlement

Rumaan Alam

Entitlement by Rumaan Alam is the story of Brooke, a 33-year-old black woman who quits her career as a teacher and takes a position as an assistant to 83-year-old Asher Jaffee, a billionaire who wants to distribute his money to support causes that make a difference to people’s lives. The novel investigates the corrupting influence of money and explores the issues of race, identity, class, and white privilege.

Asher tasks Brooke with finding some worthwhile community causes that can benefit from an injection of his funds. Brooke embraces the task with relish. Her research leads her to a community school that teaches dance to inner city school children. Much to her surprise, she has an uphill battle to convince the school to accept Asher’s money. Meanwhile, Asher has taken in interest in Brooke. He calls her his protégé. He exposes her to his exorbitantly affluent lifestyle, taking her all over town in his chauffeur-driven Bentley to eat in expensive restaurants, attend meetings with foundations soliciting his funds, and show off his home away from home New York apartment.

When Asher drops several hundred thousand dollars to purchase a painting for his wife’s birthday on Brooke’s advice, Brooke becomes heady with the seeming power she yields over him. She goes down the precipitous path of feeling she is entitled to some of Asher’s money. She purchases expensive clothes and charges it to the foundation. She sets her heart on an apartment and forges a signature to exaggerate her salary for a mortgage application. She becomes alienated from family and from friends she has known since childhood. She skips a close relative’s memorial service without remorse.

From an idealist who wants to do good into someone who is willing to lie, cheat, and abandon friends and family in pursuit of a life-style she can ill afford, Brooke’s transformation is complete. She feels entitled to Asher’s money, convincing herself that he wouldn’t even feel its absence if he bought her an apartment. Her proposition to Asher at the end of the book shows just how far she has fallen. Her exposure to so much wealth seduces her into believing she is entitled to a share of it, confusing what she wants with what she must have and what she thinks she deserves. As her wealthy billionaire mentor, Asher is partly responsible for her downfall because he is oblivious to the impact exposure to so much wealth can have on an impressionable young woman.

Alam’s style of writing is jarring with choppy sentences, fragments, and unsettling shifts in perspectives. A shortcoming of the book is its portrayal of characters, which are flat and border on caricature. They are not well-rounded and come across as mouthpieces for articulating platitudes. Brooke is in an ideal position to critique the social implications of so much wealth and the motives behind affluent liberalism. But she fails to do so. Instead, she gets sucked into the maelstrom of wanting more for herself. Although her interiority and transformation are not convincing, the novel is to be commended for its exploration of the potentially corrupting influence of excessive wealth.

The Lion Women of Tehran

Marjan Kamali

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali opens in the 1950s. It tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two young girls growing up in Iran at a time of political turbulence, revolution, war, and civil strife.

The story unfolds primarily in the voice of Ellie who, at the age of seven, meets and befriends Homa. The two become inseparable until Ellie’s mother remarries and relocates to a different part of town. The friends reunite when Homa is admitted to Ellie’s elite high school. Although their friendship rekindles, the two girls are very different, harboring very different aspirations. Ellie falls in love and looks forward to marriage. Homa wants to become a judge and is politically active and outspoken in her opposition to the Shah’s oppressive rule. She is incarcerated, raped, and is six months pregnant before being released from prison.

The friends don’t reconnect until many years later. By this time, Ellie has escaped much of the political turmoil in Iran. She lives in America with her Iranian-born husband who is now a university professor. Homa, whose daughter is now a teenager, is, once again, politically active. This time her opposition is to the Muslim fundamentalist government that seeks to crush women’s freedom. Her commitment to human rights, especially the rights of women, is unwavering.

Moving at a brisk pace, the novel immerses the reader in decades of Iran’s history and culture. Against the backdrop of Ellie’s and Homa’s friendship is the political upheaval in Iran with the fall of the Shah, regime change following the Iranian revolution, the ascendance of Muslim clerics, the Iran-Iraq war, persecution, and civil unrest defying the Fundamentalists restrictions placed on women. Threaded throughout are frequent references to Iranian food, traditions, beliefs, hairstyles, and clothing. The challenges of assimilation that immigrants face is explored through Ellie and, later, through Homa’s daughter, Bahar. The novel ends in 2022 with Ellie and Bahar celebrating a birthday while Homa is back in Iran leading a demonstration in support of women’s rights.

As the narrator, Ellie is probably the least interesting character. She is naïve to a fault, superficial, and seems totally oblivious to the reality of what is happening in the world around her. Her focus during her high school years is on her appearance, clothing, popularity, and marriage. Meanwhile, dissidents to the Shah’s regime are being incarcerated, tortured, and killed. But in spite of her naivete, Ellie is well-meaning and has a good heart. She struggles with the guilt of unwittingly putting her friend’s life in danger. When given the opportunity to make amends with Homa, she does so unhesitatingly.

The novel’s strength lies in its immersion of Iranian culture and recent history. It’s portrayal of the vicissitudes in the lifelong friendship between Ellie and Homa is well-executed. But the novel is weakened by its lackluster point of view. It may have been strengthened by telling it through the point of view of Homa, a far more interesting and vibrant character.

Glorious Exploits

Ferdia Lennon

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon is set in Syracuse, Sicily, in 412 BCE. The Athenians have been thwarted in their attempts to invade the island. Although many Athenians escaped, many thousands were captured as prisoners. Because Syracuse had no structures large enough to house that many Athenian prisoners, it was decided to entrap them in a rock quarry, deprive them of food, and bind them with chains with no hope of escape. The intent was to eventually starve them to death.

Along come two intrepid Syracuse potters, Lampo and Gelon. Their love for Greek theatre, especially Euripides’ Medea, spur them to hatch a seemingly preposterous plan—to put on a performance of the play in the quarry using the Athenian prisoners as their actors. From the emaciated prisoners, they select those who know how to act and who are familiar with the play. Using food and wine as incentives, they convince them to participate in the production. Rehearsals begin. Our plucky directors persuade a wealthy trader to fund the project. They commission elaborate costumes and scenery and solicit a bevy of children to run errands. At the suggestion of one of the Athenian actors, they decide to make it a double billing and include a performance of Euripides’ The Trojan Women. On opening day, the Athenian audience shows up in droves to view the performance. All goes according to plan—until it doesn’t.

The novel unfolds in the first-person voice of Lampo, a delightful and likeable narrator. His narrative voice sparkles with life. His unmistakable Irish vernacular would be quite at home in a contemporary Irish novel. He is funny, poignant, sensitive, compassionate, moving, and profoundly loyal. His friendship with Gelon stems from their childhood and a shared love for Greek literature. But the two could not be more different. Their relationship echoes that of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Gelon is the dreamer. Despondent over the death of his son and missing wife, he wants to escape his sorrows through literature. Lampo is earthy, practical, and willing to ride on the coattails of Gelon’s vision. Their banter is the stuff of comedy.

The novel clips along at a face pace. The setting is immersive; the imagery, effective. The diction is so convincing and immediate that it’s as if the action unfolds before our eyes. Peppered throughout are phrases from Homer and a couple of subplots.

The main theme of the novel is the power of art to potentially heal former enemies. Lampo and Gelon form relationships with the Athenian prisoners, learn their back stories, their pain, their losses, and their suffering. Former enemies connect with one another and recognize their shared humanity through the vehicle of art. Of course, not everyone in Syracuse shares that sentiment or can transcend the anger and hatred felt for those responsible for killing family and friends. But Euripides, whose plays give voice to the oppressed and marginalized, and who attempted to warn of the dangers of cruelty and lack of compassion, may be smiling in his grave to find a 21st century novel using the performance of one of his plays as the vehicle to transcend the hatred felt by former enemies.

Kudos to Ferdia Lennon for this his debut novel. It was engaging, funny, brilliantly imaginative, entertaining, original, well-executed, poignant, and harboring a profoundly important message.

Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Atul Gawande

Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande is a collection of essays exploring the knowns and unknowns of medicine. The collection is divided into three categories: Fallibility, Mystery, and Uncertainty.

Dr. Gawande writes with honesty and compassion about medicine. Especially in the case of surgery, he reveals much of learning takes place by trial and error. The more practice a surgeon has, the better he/she becomes at performing a surgery. Although mistakes can be made in the process of learning, studies show that repetition and practice make perfect. We are reminded doctors are not machines. Just like the rest of us, they are human beings and, therefore, apt to make mistakes. But without hands-on experience, a surgeon cannot be expected to improve.

Included are essays on the following: cases which baffle doctors, for example, a patient suffering from debilitating pain for which there is no identifiable cause; graphic detail of what happens in the operating theatre; the weird sensation of cutting open human flesh; mistakes surgeons have made; and split-second decisions that have to be made by doctors and/or patients. A recurring theme is that not all medical problems can be addressed with text book answers.

In language that is engaging and clear, Dr. Gawande demystifies medicine. He shows it to be based on a combination of science, learned knowledge, practice, experience, educated guess-work, and, sometimes, a good old fashioned gut feeling. His frank account reveals the limits of medicine as a science. Although we are learning more about the human body with each passing day, there is still much that remains a mystery. Gawande is refreshingly honest and humble about medicine and how far it can take us. After all, as his subtitle tells us, it is an imperfect science. Imperfect it may very well be, but for better or worse, that’s all we’ve got to go on.

The Swan's Nest

Laura McNeal

The Swan’s Nest by Laura McNeal is a historical novel based on the clandestine love affair between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning.

The novel opens in 1845 when Robert Browning sends a letter to Elizabeth declaring his love for her and for her work. Because she is an invalid, Elizabeth seldom receives visitors and is too fragile to leave home, especially during the cold winter months. The two poets begin a frenzied correspondence which lasts several months before they are able to meet face-to-face. Their subsequent meetings and correspondences cement their mutual love, respect, and admiration for one another’s creative output. Robert proposes marriage and offers to take Elizabeth to Pisa where the climate is more suitable for her health. She hesitates because she knows her father will object to her marrying a poet with insufficient means to support her. Eventually, Elizabeth accepts Robert’s proposal and the two marry in secret, after which they escape to France and then to Italy. Elizabeth is subsequently disowned by her father. The novel concludes with the two lovers in Italy on route to their final destination.

To write the novel, McNeal performed extensive research on the two poets, their backgrounds, their correspondences, their love affair, and their journey from England to France and Italy. In prose that is compelling and persuasive, she captures the tender love and mutual admiration the pair feel for one another. Browning emerges as a devoted lover and husband, passionate about his wife, and totally committed to her well-being. Elizabeth emerges as equally devoted to him. But she is also plagued with guilt about losing her father’s trust in her and abandoning her siblings to his autocratic mindset.

McNeal weaves threads of England’s legacy of slavery and exploitation in the novel. The Barretts profited from the indigenous labor on their sugar plantation in Jamaica. Sam, one of Elizabeth’s brothers, fathered a child with Mary Ann Hawthorne, a formerly enslaved Jamaican woman. After Sam’s death of a tropical fever, Mary Ann brings their son to England, requesting his grandfather provide an education for the boy. But her request is rebuffed by the Barrett patriarch and she returns to Jamaica. McNeal also highlights the difficulties encountered by the females in the Barrett and Browning families whose lives, choices, and movements are circumscribed by social and patriarchal precepts that are designed to keep them cloistered, weak, and dependent.

McNeal tells a beautiful love story of two kindred spirits who share an enduring passion for one another and who mutually admire and support one another’s work. Her language is lyrical; her narrative, compelling; her execution, accomplished; and her characters, authentic and drawn with sensitivity. A love story for the ages, lovingly rendered.

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Hanif Abdurraqib

In They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abduraqqib tackles American culture through the prism of music. His analysis forms a lens on what it means to be black in modern America. He focuses on the significance, message, band members, and historical and political context of rap music. Weaving in and out of his discussion are personal details of his upbringing, family, friends, and neighborhood. He includes insights about Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Nina Simone, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Marvin Gaye.

What may seem like a disparate collection of essays about a variety of different topics coalesces around the theme of struggling to survive in a culture that frequently demands silence and invisibility of its black population and perpetrates violence against black bodies. Abdurraqib writes with urgency, sincerity, and passion. There is a breathless quality to his writing, as if he is rushing to get his thoughts on paper. Music is his vessel through which he feels and processes what is happening around him. It serves as a reminder of who he is, where he came from, whom he loved, and whom he lost.

Abdurraqib’s navigates effortlessly from music to life and/or death. Each informs the other in an intertwining dance. In one breath, he describes what it’s like to be the only black audience member in a Bruce Springsteen concert before he transitions to visiting the grave of Michael Brown. His writing is suffused with genuine heartache at the suffering of those caught at the intersection of race, class, and gender. He eulogizes young black lives cut short by racial violence. He speaks of being a Muslim and of prejudice against Muslims, especially after 9/11. Some essays are more poignant than others; some encapsulate moments of joy in an otherwise bleak environment—moments that carry us forward and give us hope to continue. All essays contain nuggets of piercing insight of what it means to be black in America. And all are in diction that is eloquent, lyrical, and moving.

Hanif Abdurraqib is not only a sensitive and astute critic of culture. He is a gifted writer whose prose captures the rhythm, lyricism, and intensity of poetry.

The Baghdad Clock

Shahad Al Rawi; trans. Luke Leafgren

The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi, translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren, won the Edinburgh First Book Award and was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The novel unfolds in the first-person voice of a young girl in Iraq in 1991. The unnamed narrator hides in an air raid shelter during the Gulf War. There she meets and befriends Nadia, and the two form a lifelong friendship. The narrator describes her youth, school years, young adulthood, and first love while navigating wars, sanctions, and the depopulation of her community. The narrative is laced with magical realism and vivid dreams.

In a childlike voice, the narrator describes the impact of the war, followed by the sanctions and America’s bombing and occupation of Iraq. All these events have a debilitating effect on the child’s neighborhood. Homes deteriorate; businesses close; people lose hope; neighbors emigrate; armed soldiers patrol the streets. Bit by bit, the neighborhood is depopulated of all the familiar characters until it is no longer recognizable. The narrator, Nadia, and another childhood friend decide to counteract the erasure of their community by capturing their neighbors’ stories in a book entitled The Baghdad Clock: The Record of a Neighborhood. The Baghdad clock is a familiar landmark in the neighborhood and serves as a meeting place for young people. It marks the passage of time, but it also preserves the past through its namesake, the book. Like so many buildings in Baghdad, the Baghdad clock is eventually destroyed by American bombs.

The strength of the novel lies in Al Rawi’s ability to show the devastating impact of wars and sanctions on a community. War is not depicted in abstract terms. It is personal and its impact on people’s lives is profoundly personal and debilitating. The characters, many of whom are portrayed as unique individuals with unique idiosyncrasies, are haunted by heartbreaking memories of what they once had, how they once lived, and the people they once knew. They carry those memories with them in whatever corner of the world they now inhabit as refugees. Their despair and yearning for their past lives are heart-wrenching. Even the fate and ultimate demise of Biryad, the dog, is depicted in very moving terms.

The novel showed a lot of promise but was not entirely successful in its execution. The narrator’s voice was problematic. The novel opens with her as a naïve child engaged in childlike musings and questions. However, that same voice intrudes even into her adulthood. Although many of the characters are vividly portrayed, some, like the fortune teller, are introduced and then dropped. The many digressions detract from the narrative, and its concluding section is somewhat bewildering. But the novel is strong in its depiction of the devastating impact of war on communities and on people’s lives.

Lady Macbeth

Ava Reid

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid is ostensibly a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The novel unfolds through the lens of Roscille, the illegitimate daughter of a French lord. At the ripe old age of seventeen, Roscille is a pawn in a politically arranged marriage. She is sent off to Scotland to become the wife of Macbeth, Thane of Glammis. With her exceptionally pale hair and piercing eyes, Roscille has a reputation of being witch-touched and as having the ability to manipulate men’s minds through eye contact.

Not only is Roscille deprived of her lady-in-waiting as soon as she arrives in Macbeth’s castle, she is the only female in a castle seemingly populated exclusively by men. This begs the question, who is doing all the child-rearing, spinning, weaving, cooking, and cleaning? Roscille has to learn to dress herself and to do her own hair. She has to veil her face and avert her gaze from men’s prying eyes. She critiques their uncouth manners, lack of finesse, and brutish propensity for violence. She depicts all aspects of Scottish culture as barbaric and uncivilized. Terrified of her husband, she hatches a plan she hopes will result in Macbeth’s death. The plan backfires, and instead of dying on the battlefield, Macbeth emerges victorious as the Thane of Cawder.

Macbeth increasingly takes Roscille in his confidence, introducing her to the three witches he keeps chained in a cave beneath the castle, consulting with them and relying on them for prophecy. When they announce he will be King Hereafter, Macbeth charges Roscille with orchestrating the king’s death. She accommodates by utilizing the power in her eyes to make the king’s guards kill him and then kill each other. The king’s two sons demand revenge, one of whom escapes to form an army against Macbeth. The other son, Lisander, is captured, incarcerated, and has a unique ability to transform himself into a being other than human. To complicate matters, Lisander and Roscille fall in love. The novel ends with the death of Macbeth in the hands of Roscille, Lisander as the new king, Roscille as the queen, and the three witches released from captivity.

In addition to other problematic issues, the novel is apparently riddled with historical inaccuracies. Needless to say, this retelling is so far removed from Shakespeare’s play that it hardly qualifies as a retelling. The original Lady Macbeth is middle-aged, ambitious, clever, shrewd, and the unquestionable force behind her husband’s quest for power. Roscille is depicted as a whiny, unintelligent child who hatches one plan after another only to find later she has gravely miscalculated and caused the needless deaths of many. Macbeth is rendered one-dimensionally as a power-hungry, blood-thirsty man who worships at the altar of brute force. The only male who is depicted as sensitive, cultured, and handsome just happens to be half-English with not an ounce of Scottish blood in him. In a bizarre twist, this same character has the ability to transform himself into a creature straight out of mythology.

Readers who enjoy gothic and fantastical elements in a novel may enjoy this novel. But those who are expecting a retelling of Shakespeare’s play will be sorely disappointed. Whatever else Lady Macbeth is, it is definitely not a retelling.

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Hanif Abdurraqib

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib, the 2021 recipient of the MacArthur “genius grant”, is an innovative memoir that encompasses Abdurraqib’s childhood in Columbus, Ohio; his love for the city; his passion for basketball; and his analysis of the game and its players. The memoir is structured like a basketball game in four sections with intermissions and timeouts. The four sections are time-stamped to reflect the twelve minutes of each quarter of a game, replicating the seconds and minutes ticking away as a game is being played or a section is being read.

Abdurraqib’s passion for basketball soars in every page. But this is more than just a celebration of basketball. The game of basketball comes to represent something much larger than itself. It is the lens through which Abdurraqib views the culture at large. Its towering figures, like LeBron James, come to symbolize the hope and aspirations of a generation of young people trapped in the quagmire of poverty and discrimination.

Abdurraqib ricochets from basketball to music; to growing up in his beloved Columbus; to the deaths of African American males at the hands of police; to his experience with being unhoused and incarcerated; to a consideration of the hustle; to his father’s bald head; to the act of witnessing; to the betrayal felt by LeBron James’ departure from Ohio and the celebration of his return; to songs about leaving and songs about longing; to his complex feelings about his home state. He leaps from one topic to another forging connections, and peppering the narrative with astute observations and insights, all the while weaving the disparate elements together with prose that borders on poetry.

This highly unconventional biography and cultural critique is packaged in language that is lyrically stunning. The words leap off the page with energy and passion, swerving and spinning in an exhilarating fashion. Abdurraqib is particularly adept at describing the movement of players across a basketball court. The resulting leap at the goal post and the ensuing slam dunk is described in slow motion as if suspended in space and frozen in time. It is akin to witnessing the miracle of a man floating on air.

In the hands of this gifted writer, basketball is seen as more than just a game. With its challenges, triumphs, failures, and leaps into the seemingly impossible, it is a metaphor for life.

Highly recommended.

Normal People

Sally Rooney

Set in Ireland, Normal People by Sally Rooney explores the on-again, off-again relationship of two young people whose love affair begins in high school. Marianne is an intelligent, skinny, and anxiety-ridden social outcast in high school. Connell is a popular football player. The two are attracted to each other even though they seem totally unmatched.

The couple come from different social classes and have very different home environments. Connell’s mother, Lorraine, is a single mother who had him when she was seventeen. She is a cleaning lady in Marianne’s home. She is kind, sensitive, generous, and showers her son with unconditional love. By contrast, Marianne’s widowed mother is cruel, neglectful, resents her daughter, and encourages Marianne’s brother to bully and abuse his sister.

The narrative unfolds in the third-person point of view, alternating between Marianne’s and Connell’s perspectives. At Connell’s request, they keep their relationship secret in high school. They go their separate ways but pick up where they left off when they both attend Trinity College Dublin. Here, the tables are turned. Marianne is popular and socially in her element while Connell feels very much the outsider. The two get together, separate while they have relations with different partners, but then get back together in an on-again, off-again dance that continues for several years.

Rooney’s dialogue captures the tentative quality in their relationship. They hesitate, fail to communicate properly when they are together while simultaneously feeling comfortable only when they are around each other. The absence of quotation marks in the dialogue as the narrative shifts seamlessly between the spoken word and their interiority exposes their failure to fully articulate their feelings or to understand one another. Both characters are insecure and vulnerable. Marianne is damaged. Her internalized feelings of being unworthy of love complicates her relationships. Connell suffers from depression, especially after the suicide of a former class mate. They are both isolated, confused, and wounded in different ways. And it is only in those moments when they are together that they feel less alone.

With no plot, the novel focuses on the tentative and evasive nature of young love. Rooney’s diction is effortless, precise, and direct. Her dialogue captures the way young people actually talk. Her strength lies in her ability to pierce the veneer of the outer shell of her characters and portray their psychological and messy emotional lives with authenticity and insight.

My Friends

Hisham Matar

My Friends by Hisham Matar blends fiction with historical fact. It takes the form of an extended flashback with the characters living against the backdrop of historical events.

The novel unfolds in the first-person voice of Khaled, a middle-aged Libyan living in exile in London. Hosam, his friend of many decades, is emigrating to America and Khaled is seeing him off. After the friends say their farewells, Khaled takes a circuitous walk through the streets of London to his small apartment in Shepherd’s Bush. He passes by familiar landmarks while reminiscing and reflecting on the last four decades of his life in exile and the close friendships he formed with his fellow Libyans. His recollections form the extended flashback. The novel alternates between the flashbacks and Khaled’s walk in London’s streets.

Khaled arrives as a student attending Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1983. There he befriends Mustafa, a fellow Libyan. The two are cautious about what they say and who they say it to because they are well aware that Gaddafi’s spies monitor the speech and activities of Libyans living abroad. Gaddafi had a history of bombing and murdering Libyan dissidents living in exile. In spite of the risks involved to themselves and to their families in Libya, the two friends go to London to participate in an anti-Gaddafi demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy in St. James’ Square. On that day, April 17, 1984, Libyan officials inside the embassy fire a machine gun into the crowd of unarmed protestors. This is an actual historical event. A young policewoman is killed, and several protestors are wounded. Matar blends historical fact with fiction by situating the two friends among the demonstrators who are shot. The two spend several weeks recuperating in a London hospital. But their fate has been sealed. They can no longer return to Libya. Khaled is burdened with physical and internal scars forever.

Taking it one day at a time, the two friends try to adjust to life in England. Mustafa becomes a successful real estate agent and Khaled becomes a school teacher. On a trip to Paris, Khaled encounters a fellow Libyan, the writer Hosam, also living in exile for writing a political allegory advocating resistance to the Libyan regime. Hosam returns to England and constitutes the third member of this close-knit group. The days turn to weeks; the weeks turn to months; and the months turn to years. It has now been thirty-two years since Khaled left Libya.

Mustafa eventually returns to Libya to join the resistance fighting Gaddafi’s regime. Hosam follows his footsteps not long after. When travel restrictions ease after the fall of Gaddafi, Khaled’s sister and parents visit him in London. They urge him to come home, but Khaled is reluctant to do so. Too much time has elapsed. He has changed; Libya has changed. His is a life adrift between two worlds. He is out of time and out of place.

Matar captures the pain and grief of exile, the reluctance to fully commit to one’s adopted country, the yearning for home, and the recognition that home as one knew it no longer exists. He also captures the intense feelings and shared understandings among three friends who have experienced the trauma, isolation, and rootlessness woven into the fabric of exile. The novel’s pacing is skillfully handled, slowing down for crucial events and accelerating when needed to compress the passage of time. Khaled’s interiority is explored with sensitivity. The narrative is compelling; the characters, authentic; the situation, heartfelt.

Highly recommended.

Whereabouts

Jhumpa Lahiri

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri is a series of vignettes unfolding in the first-person-voice of a university literature professor in her 40s. Lahiri wrote the novel in Italian and translated it into English, herself. The narrator is unnamed, possibly Italian. The location is unnamed, possibly a city in Italy. The 46 chapters of this short novel, covering a period of one year, consist of the narrator’s reflections on her life, her past, and the people she knows. Each reflection is stamped with a location, the whereabouts, as in “At the Street,” “In the Piazza,” “At the Beautician,” etc. But the whereabouts also refers to the narrator’s fluctuating emotional locations at any point in time. No more than a few pages long, the chapters are stand-alone and not in any particular sequence.

The narrator reveals she had an unhappy childhood with an emotionally distant father and a mother prone to fits of rage. She has had relationships, but nothing lasted. She describes feeling out of place at an academic conference, at work-related meetings, and at gatherings with friends. At times, she seems to celebrate her solitude and longs to be back at her apartment; at others, she seems frightened at being so alone. She is curious about strangers she sees in coffee shops or on trains, imagining scenarios about who they are, where they are going, and what they are doing. Her life is replete with deliberate routines and rituals to anchor her days and to give her a sense of purpose.

There is no plot. The episodes are disconnected and fragmentary. The friends, former lovers, colleagues, parents, and strangers are presented as shadowy figures viewed through the prism of detachment. They serve primarily as prompts for the writer’s meditations. These either reinforce her gratitude for solitude or are reminders of her loneliness. Adrift in life, disconnected from others, going through the motions of living, and longing to locate her place in the world, her mediations are poignant and handled with sensitivity and delicacy.

Lahiri’s writing is subtle, restrained, spare, and slow-moving. But the cumulative effect is powerful, resulting in a compelling novel, highly recommended for its portrayal of the internal landscape of a solitary life.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a lyrical and impassioned plea for healing the planet. Through a blend of science, personal insights, indigenous wisdom, mythology, and culture, Kimmerer articulates the lessons of healing and reciprocity we can garner from plants. She provides a plethora of examples to make her case.

An academic scientist and a member of the Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer describes her own journey to reconnect with her roots. She takes classes to learn the Potawatomi language in an effort to resist attempts at erasure and to allow the culture imbedded in the language to flourish. It is a culture of gratitude for what the earth has to offer and is based on reciprocal relations, healing, and restoration. To achieve this, Kimmerer argues for what she terms a “grammar of intimacy.” This means viewing nature not as a resource to be exploited for profit, not as an “it,” but as a living entity with whom we have kinship. If we begin to view nature as our other-than-human relatives, we will want to nurture and protect it. It will reciprocate by nurturing and protecting us.

Kimmerer aims to instill a compassionate ecology, one based on interdependence, connection, and humility. In addition to viewing plants through the lens of a scientist, she interprets their sacred role and spiritual significance. Actions and words have symbolic value. As an example, she narrates the stories of Windigo, the monster in children’s stories designed to teach them behavior in a sacred manner. Windigo becomes a metaphor for ravenous consumption and greed. Children are taught from an early age to take only what they need, to reciprocate and share, and to be respectful toward one another and toward nature. Otherwise, they risk fueling Windigo’s insatiable appetite.

Kimmerer’s diction is lyrical and inspiring. Her words are a wake-up call to recognize the devastation we are causing our environment and a plea to use our creative gifts to raise awareness and combat environmental disasters. Her chapter on the damage done to Onondaga Lake by chemical companies is particularly heart-breaking.

With profound compassion, Kimmerer urges readers to see our natural environment through the lens of reciprocity, inclusivity, and gratitude. She makes a compelling case for the adoption of a culture of gratitude and respect toward all life, a culture which will not only transforms our relationship with nature but which will, ultimately, transform our relationship with ourselves and with one another.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent

Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea consists of a series of interviews which O’Hea conducted with Dame Judi Dench in which she speaks of her seven-decade acting career. Her recollections encompass a history of British theatre during the post-war years. Interspersed throughout the chapters on individual plays are short chapters on aspects of performance, such as rehearsals, audience, critics, etc.

Each chapter focuses on a different Shakespearean play. Dench delves deeply into the characters she played, probing into their motives and psychology. She has unwavering trust in Shakespeare and views her role as adhering faithfully to his words and to his ability to make his characters believable to an audience. She tries to understand not only the character she plays but also the rest of the cast and the nature of their interactions with one another. She speaks of the characters as if they are real people she knows intimately and with a knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, their foibles and quirks. Her remarkable memory enables her to cite words from the plays as if it were second nature. Her passion for Shakespeare’s language is contagious.

Dench’s no-nonsense attitude shines through in her distinctive and familiar voice. She can be critical of her previous performances and claims she would have played some of her roles differently if she had it to do, again. She is quick to praise the performance of other actors and credits them and various directors with teaching her how to improve her performances. She peppers her discussion with thoughts on acting and on interpreting each Shakespeare play, describing in detail the language, her elaborate costumes, the set, the specific theatre where the performance took place, her renowned fellow actors, and the different directors and what she learned from each.

The tone throughout is delightfully conversational with O’Hea prompting Dench and, at times, goading her into contradicting him. Dench is witty, generous in praise of others, and unpretentious. She gives practical advice on acting and on how to read a Shakespeare line. She perceives a production as a collaborative effort where all work together as a cohesive unit. She is uncompromising in her dismissal of the idea that success can be attributed to a single individual with “star” quality. She insists that if a production succeeds, the credit belongs to everyone. Her speech is dotted with interesting and humorous anecdotes about herself and other actors. She offers a glimpse into some of the playful antics that go on during rehearsals and before and after performances. Her joyful spirit, unabashed honesty, dedication to acting, and unequivocal passion for Shakespeare light up her words just as she lit up the stage with her memorable performances.

An engaging and delightful read for lovers of Shakespeare, the theatre, and, of course, for fans of Judi Dench.

Silken Gazelles

Jokha AlHarthi; translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth

Silken Gazelles by Jokha AlHarthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, explores the lives of three Omani women whose lives intersect.

The novel opens with a young mother who accidentally drops her infant upon hearing the news of her father’s death. Ghazaala, the infant, is caught by a neighbor who then nurses her with her own daughter Asiya. Ghazaala and Asiya grow up as milk-sisters until tragedy strikes Asiya’s household and Asiya leaves the village without a trace. Ghazaala marries a violin player, gets a university degree, has twin boys, and is abandoned to raise the boys on her own when her husband disappears. While in university, she befriends Harir whose path had also crossed with Asiya even though neither she nor Ghazaala know they had a friend in common.

The non-linear time line adds layer upon layer of detail concerning Ghazaala’s and Harir’s lives, their families, marriages, and children. The characters are haunted by past relationships that bleed into their daily existence. Although Alharthi captures their sense of loss and loneliness, the characters are poorly developed and uninteresting. The narrative flounders. Its episodic, anecdotal nature and disjointed time line lack a cohesive structure and overarching theme. The episodes follow one another in a bewildering fashion with no apparent rhyme or reason.

A disappointing read and certainly not up to the quality of Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies.