Burial Rites

Hannah Kent

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent is based on the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed for murder in Iceland in 1829. Kent researched the material for many years, pouring over official records, parish archives, census reports, local histories, and publications. Selections from some of these official documents are interspersed between chapters. And while Kent invented some characters or altered their names, others can be found in historical records.

Agnes, found guilty of a brutal double murder, is taken to live in an isolated farm while awaiting execution. The farmer, his wife, and two grown daughters are initially horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer. But as the days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months, they develop an attachment to Agnes. In turn, Agnes learns to trust them and gradually reveals her life story. The family and priest assigned to hear her confession grow increasingly sympathetic toward her until they recognize she is only partially to blame for the murder and does not deserve to be executed.

An illegitimate child born into poverty and abandoned by her mother at a young age, Agnes has had to fend for herself all her life. She is shuffled from one farm to another, first as a foster child and then as a housekeeper. Exploited and unceremoniously tossed out wherever she lives, she eventually agrees to take a position as a housekeeper to Natan Ketilsson, a man she passionately loves. Desperate to believe her feelings are reciprocated, she soon discovers her mistake. Natan is cruel, abusive, manipulative, deceptive, and exploitative. She is accused of murdering him in a jealous rage.

By fleshing out skeletal archival evidence, Kent imaginatively conveys the tragic circumstances surrounding Agnes Magnúsdóttir’s life. The third-person narrative is punctuated with lyrical, haunting passages in which Agnes speaks in the first person. She emerges as an intelligent, literate, sympathetic character, mired in poverty, deprived of affection, and with very limited options available to her as a woman. Her powerful, poignant monologues gush with anger, pain, despair, and loneliness.

The hauntingly beautiful but challenging Iceland landscape serves as the backdrop for Agnes’ story. Kent’s skillful evocation of atmosphere is impressive: Iceland’s bone-chilling winters; the sparse, cramped living conditions; the sights, sounds, and pungent smells of the surroundings; and the arduous manual tasks involved in sustaining a farm. Against this unforgiving climate is a woman awaiting her execution, seething at the injustice of the fate she has been dealt. The tone of impending doom gradually builds up until Agnes’ final days.

Hannah Kent’s treatment of Agnes’ story invites us to ponder the legitimacy of Agnes’ execution. Was justice served in executing her? Or was Agnes a victim of her times? This was a time in which poverty left women with very limited options. Their intelligence and healing skills were viewed with suspicion and fear. Ownership of their sexuality made them vulnerable to slanderous gossip and accusations of moral depravity.

We may never know the complete story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. But Hannah Kent’s treatment of her invites us to ask the right questions.

Highly recommended.

Salt Houses

Hala Alyan

Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses is the story of three generations of a Palestinian family living in the diaspora. Salma and Hussam Yacoub are forced to leave their home in Jaffa when Israelis occupy their land, hurling burning rags into their orange groves. The family moves to Nablus, and from there the now adult children scatter in different directions—Kuwait City, Amman, Beirut, Paris, and Boston. With each move, they have to rebuild their lives in a foreign city. The narrative progresses in chronological time, spanning several decades. Each chapter advances a few years, signals the new location, and focuses on the perspective of a different family member. Threaded throughout the narrative are flashbacks in time and place.

 The novel opens with Salma on the eve of her youngest daughter’s wedding. The year is 1963 and the city is Nablus. Salma’s husband has already passed away, and her eldest daughter is married and living in Kuwait. As the years unfold, we learn the fate of each of Salma’s children—their evacuation from Nablus; her son killed in an Israeli prison; her youngest daughter, Alia, raising three children with her husband in Kuwait City. We learn the fate of Alia’s three children, each of whom marries. One lives in Amman; the other in Boston; and the third goes to Paris, Boston, and back to Amman after her divorce. The novel ends with Alia suffering from dementia, recalling glimpses of her life in Nablus while she is surrounded by her husband, children, and grandchildren.

 This is primarily a novel about family dynamics—the inter-generational squabbles, tensions, and love that bind a family together, especially in times of crisis. By skillfully weaving in the conflicts in the Middle East from 1963 to 2014, including the 1967 war; the civil war in Lebanon; the Gulf war; and 9/11, Alyan is able to show the disruptive impact these traumatic events have on the lives of ordinary civilians. The political turmoil that triggers each family re-location reinforces the point that children and grandchildren of Palestinian refugees inherit a legacy of homelessness. They are perceived as outsiders wherever they go even while living in an Arab country because they are identified as Palestinians, as not belonging.

 Alyan writes elegant, lyrical prose with language that immerses you in the sights, sounds, and smells of a city. With great poignancy, she portrays the challenges the family faces each time one of them is displaced from a home and has to rebuild in a different country.

 The multiple points of view are handled with great skill. Each character is given a unique perspective and authentic voice. The older generation clings to tradition, culture, and memories, weaving them intricately into their daily lives. These inevitably become diluted as their children scatter all over the globe. Yet, somehow, the grandchildren and great grandchildren retain a sense of their family’s origins.

 Salma yearns for her home in Nablus. Her children inherit that yearning, and her grandchildren and great grandchildren inherit a sense of loss even though they have never been to Nablus. Nostalgia for what has been lost coupled with the trauma of displacement is transmitted through the generations. In 2014, Salma’s great granddaughter, Manar, visits Israel to breathe the air of her family’s homeland and to re-trace her family’s footsteps. The descendants of Salma and Hussam Yacoub are determined to remember.

A compelling narrative, skillfully rendered, and highly recommended.

The Housekeeper and Professor

Yoko Ogawa; trans. Stephen Snyder

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder, is a quiet, charming novel about the unlikely friendship that develops between a housekeeper, her son, and a professor.

 The novel opens with the housekeeper preparing to face her new assignment. She is hired to take care of a brilliant math professor with a short-term memory of only eighty minutes, a disability caused by a traumatic head injury. Each morning as she shows up at his doorstep, she has to remind him who she is and has to begin their relationship anew. But she is an astute housekeeper and gradually learns to accommodate. She assists him with his memory loss by helping him posts notes on his person to help him remember.

 Although his short-term memory spans only eighty minutes, the professor’s brain retains knowledge of mathematics and the passion and exuberance he feels for it. His enthusiasm for the elegance of mathematic equations and his ability to draw connections and discern the beauty in numbers is contagious. Soon the housekeeper and her ten-year-old son are captivated by the professor’s prodigious knowledge and his extraordinary abilities to draw mathematical connections between the mundane and the spiritual. Their friendship is strengthened by a shared love for baseball.

The relationship is mutually beneficial. The professor instils in them an appreciation for numbers and for the ability of math to impose logic and order in an otherwise chaotic world. In turn, they adjust to his quirky mannerisms and disability with sensitivity and affection, taking care to shelter him from the harsh reality of his memory loss. The three form a strong bond that continues for many years until the professor’s death.

The novel is replete with equations, numbers, theorems, baseball, and baseball statistics. These will resonate with aficionados of math and baseball, but you don’t have to know about either to appreciate the beauty and simplicity of the novel since it is primarily a delightfully quiet and charming story about an unlikely friendship that blossoms into love.

The professor is kind and showers the housekeeper’s child with attention and concern. The child who has never known his real father finds in the professor a surrogate father. The housekeeper finds in the professor a gentle soul who shares a love for her child and who ignites her enthusiasm for the world of numbers. And the professor finds in the housekeeper and her son two people who nurture him and shield him from harm. A single mother, her child, plus a mathematics professor unite to form a loving family—a family the professor would no doubt be able to express in an elegant mathematic equation.

Highly recommended.

Kudos

Rachel Cusk

Kudos by Rachel Cusk is the third and concluding book in her trilogy which began with Outline and Transit. As is the case with the first two books in the trilogy, there is very little action. And just as in the previous novels, Faye narrates in the first-person point of view.

Faye is visiting a couple of European countries to participate in writing conferences and festivals. It begins as it did in Outline with the narrator on an airplane where the passenger in the next seat shares his thoughts. In this instance, the passenger discloses his feelings of being an outsider in his own family before launching into the circumstances surrounding the death of his dog. From there the narrator goes to hotels, conference locations, restaurants, etc. where she interacts with other writers, interviewers, agents, publishers, conference organizers, and various personalities in the literary culture.

And, just as she did in previous novels, the narrator engages in self-erasure. She seldom offers a comment or an opinion. Instead, she listens and records, casting her lens on the individuals she encounters, each of whom embarks on a feat of intimate self-revelation and self-analysis. They share their views on a range of topics including Brexit; failure in marriage; raising children; divorce; custody battles; socially-constructed gendered norms and the struggle to transcend them; the relationship between suffering and works of art; and the changes in literature, the reading public, and the publishing industry. Many of the conversations have in common a “then and now” tenor, in which a character expresses his/her understanding of the circumstances as they happened at the time and how that understanding has now changed. These vignettes are tinged with sadness of things that have been lost. They are fascinating and pregnant with reflections that give one pause about one’s own life and views.

The monologues are akin to a relay. A character reveals intimate details about his/her life and opinions and then passes the baton to another character who enters the scene and proceeds to share his/her opinions. Meanwhile, the narrator observes the physical attributes and mannerisms of each speaker, listens, and records while virtually erasing her presence from the scene. She is an astute observer of human behavior and a sympathetic listener, seldom offering an opinion unless she is asked.

With her carefully constructed prose, Cusk’s slowly draws the reader in to overhear the monologues. This is the same technique she used in the first two novels of the trilogy. And because we are now familiar with it, the novelty of this style of writing doesn’t have quite the same punch as it did when first encountered in Outline. But the vignettes continue to reveal fascinating observations of human behavior.

Toward the end of the novel, one of the speakers describes a church ravaged by fire. She expresses her initial anger that the church still holds the scars of the fire. Then she describes this image:

“But then I noticed,” she said, “that in certain places where statues had obviously been, new lights had been installed which illuminated the empty spaces. These lights,” she said, “had the strange effect of making you see more in the empty space than you would have seen had it been filled with a statue. And so I knew,” she said, “that this spectacle was not the result of some monstrous neglect or misunderstanding but was the work of an artist.”

This striking image is a metaphor for Cusk’s consummate skill as a writer. She erases herself to provide an empty space for others to shed their light on human behavior. It is truly the work of an artist.

Highly recommended.

The Water Dancer

Ta-Nehesi Coates

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a first-person narrative of Hiram Walker, a slave in a Virginia tobacco plantation. His father owns the plantation; his mother is sold after she is captured while attempting to escape. Ripped away from his mother at a young age, Hiram is so traumatized by the experience that his memory of her becomes fragmented and fleeting.

 Selected by his father to live in the large house to serve Maynard, his half-brother and heir to the estate, Hiram is exposed to the lifestyle of wealthy Virginia landowners. He refers to them as Quality and learns to distinguish between the different classes of Quality. He understands the fragility of the structure they have established, as well as their total reliance on slaves (the Tasked) to sustain that lifestyle. When Maynard dies in a drowning accident, Hiram experiences a Conduction—the mysterious ability to transport himself magically across land and water. Eventually Hiram makes a daring escape, only to be captured and brutally tortured. He is rescued and his services enlisted in the underground war to free slaves. His taste of freedom in Philadelphia convinces him to return to the plantation to liberate his surrogate family.

 The novel has a strong opening. Hiram has a vision of his mother dancing on the bridge as he struggles to stay afloat in the water. His half-brother drowns, but Hiram survives the ordeal. The novel holds the reader’s attention until about half-way through when it begins to drag. Characters are introduced but not fully developed. They step in and out of Hiram’s life as accessories that are never fully-fleshed out. The narrative flow is frequently interrupted with pages dedicated to Hiram’s thoughts. These interruptions become repetitive, monotonous, and tedious. The use of Conduction as a plot device infused with magical realism gains prominence as the novel progresses. But the description of what occurs during a Conduction is, perhaps, intentionally confused and confusing, so one is never quite sure what has happened.

There is much to admire in the novel. At times, the language rises to the level of poetry. The graphic description of the brutality of slavery, the gut-wrenching forced separations of family members and the trauma such separation creates is extremely moving. Coates’ exploration of the psychology of the enslaved is insightful. And his exploration of the psychology and internal conflicts of the slaveowner in the shape of Hiram’s guilt-ridden, aging father is sensitively drawn. But the novel would have benefited from a tighter focus, fewer and more fully-developed characters, and less tangential side-stories that contribute little to the narrative.

Recommended.

Kintu

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a complex novel that tells the story of Uganda through several generations of the descendants of Kintu Kidda. It begins in 1750 when Kintu Kidda unintentionally kills his adopted son. In doing so, he unleashes a curse that haunts his family for generations.

Leaping forward to the 21st century, we are introduced to the many descendants in Kintu’s clan. Each character has a personal story whose life has been impacted by the curse in its varied manifestations. Some are plagued with mental illness; some suffer from depression; some are haunted by ghosts; some are victims of violence; some perpetrate violence; some cling to traditional beliefs; some adopt the religion of the colonizers; some are aware of the curse; others have been intentionally kept in ignorance about their ancestral history in the hope that such ignorance will protect them. The political turmoil of Uganda is seen through their eyes, but it acts as a backdrop to the more prominent drama of the events unfolding in their personal lives.

The novel is divided into six sections, only one of which is told from a woman’s point of view. The final section unites the disparate family threads, gathering clan members in a ritual to rid them of the curse that has plagued them for many generations.

Each section of the novel looks back in time, presenting the character’s childhood, immediate family, and connections with extended family. It is challenging to keep track of who is related to whom and how. To add to the confusion is the large number of descendants; the fluid concept of who is considered a parent, a sibling, a twin, and a cousin; the plethora of adopted children; the multiple names by which a single character is identified; the fluidity of marital relations; and characters who have been introduced but whose connection to the family is not revealed until the final section. As it is, characters get jumbled up in a confusing whirlpool of intersections and interpersonal relationships. A family tree outlining how the characters are related to each other and a listing of their offspring would have gone a long way to alleviate the confusion and make it a more pleasurable read.

One of the more salient aspects of the novel lies in seeing the modifications and distortions Kintu Kidda’s original story undergoes as a result of oral transmission through the generations. His story hovers in the background. The basic outline remains the same, but interpretation of events varies and manifests in various superstitions within the family.

This is a challenging read as disentangling the family connections requires patience. The novel is vast in scope, spanning several generations of a family. Its value lies in providing a glimpse of the Ugandan clan system and in illustrating how individuals within the same clan navigate their survival against the backdrop of cultural traditions and a common ancestry.

Recommended with some reservations.

Thames: The Biography

Peter Ackroyd

Thames: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd charts the history, geography, flora and fauna of the Thames, as well its cultural, industrial, and economic impact on London and Londoners. It paints a vivid portrait of those who made their living on the Thames, by the Thames, or near the Thames.

 Ackroyd’s research is extensive and impressive. He explores the Thames under chapter headings ranging from its role as metaphor; its evolution through the centuries; as a site for the performance of rituals, including baptisms and sacrifices; as an instrument of industrialization and trade; as a source of inspiration for art and literature; as a healer; as a depository for human waste; as a site for pleasure; and as a place of life and death. At various times in its long life and in its various locations, the Thames is described as pristine and full of potential; at other times, it is dark, murky, with an overpowering stench that saturates its surroundings.

Although replete with interesting tidbits about authors and artists and where they lived along the Thames, the biography suffers from choppy writing and a lack of coherent unity. At times it’s as if Ackroyd merely parades names, activities, and/or locations, barely linking them with a unifying theme. The lists alternate with little anecdotes about life and activity on the Thames. Overall, the impression is of a series of research notes hurriedly pasted together. The narrative seems to mosey along, jumping from one point to the next, from one location to the next, and from one time frame to the next.

Ackroyd is so profuse in his admiration for the Thames that he seems to endow it with almost mythic qualities, occasionally elevating it beyond reason. The Thames does have a long and interesting history. It has had a profound effect on the growth of a city. And it is a beautiful river. But it is worthwhile to remember, when all is said and done, it is just a river.

Recommended with reservations.

The Greenhouse

Audur Ava Olafsdottir; trans. Brian FitzGibbon

The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir, translated by Brian FitzGibbon, is a slow-moving, quiet novel about a young man’s coming of age.

The narrative unfolds in the first-person point of view of Arnljótur Thórir (Lobbi), a young man in his early twenties who harbors a passion for gardening, especially roses. The passion was instilled in him by his now deceased mother with whom he shared a special bond. Not fully recovered from her unexpected death in a car accident, Lobbi sets off on a journey to restore a famous rose garden in a monastery in a remote village. The village is never identified by name, but we know it is in a foreign country since Lobbi struggles with learning the language. He leaves behind his father, his mentally challenged twin brother, and his baby daughter conceived with a woman he barely knows and with whom he once had a brief sexual encounter in his parent’s greenhouse.

Lobbi is very introspective, awkward, constantly questions himself and his behaviors, and is painfully self-conscious. Arriving at his destination, he immerses himself in restoring the monastery garden. He is at his most comfortable when surrounded by flowers and when his fingers tunnel in the soil. He barely has time to get acclimatized to his new surroundings and to village life when the mother of his child shows up with baby in hand. They move in with him temporarily, causing him to adjust his daily routine and outlook.

This is a very simple story about the healing power of care-giving and nurturing and about the peace that can come from the performance of simple, daily tasks. The once neglected monastery garden begins to flourish as a result of Lobbi’s efforts. The tenderness and care he showers on the garden extend to his daughter and her mother. Lobbi learns how to care for a totally dependent human being, deriving unexpected satisfaction from his new role as a father. He finds his path in life through working with the soil and through the care-giving and loving relationship he forges with his daughter.

The novel’s pace is slow. Some readers may find it too slow. The progression is subtle. Lobbi’s thoughts are somewhat repetitive; his rationalizations and self-doubt constant to the point of almost becoming tedious. But the novel’s charm lies in its depiction of the power of simple, nurturing tasks that effect an individual’s transformation and growth. From learning to cook meals to teaching his young daughter to walk, Lobbi grows into his new role as a father, a role he embraces with total commitment and from which he derives a sense of peace and fulfillment.

Recommended.

Motherless Brooklyn

Jonathan Lethem

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem is a murder mystery with a twist—a first person narrator with Tourette’s Syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This unlikely hero, Lionel Essrog, unravels the mystery of his mentor’s murder while plagued with rapid and uncontrollable explosions of verbal and physical tics consisting of nonsensical babble, barking, touching, tapping, counting, poking, and, basically, rending asunder the English language. As the first-person narrator, Essrog delivers inside access to a life with Tourette’s. He takes the reader for a raucous ride.

The narrative opens with Lionel as an orphan in St. Vincent’s Home for Boys. Along comes the mysterious Frank Minna who offers Lionel and three other orphans a chance to earn money while running various errands for him. It soon becomes obvious to the boys that their mentor is somehow affiliated with gangsters and the tasks he assigns them are legally suspect.  But, no matter. The boys remain loyal to Frank and grow into adulthood under his mentorship.

When Frank is murdered, Lionel sets himself the task of discovering his murderer. Unable to control his Tourettic compulsions, he, nevertheless, approaches the task systematically. He faces a loaded gun on a few occasions but survives relatively unscathed and somehow manages to cobble together the pieces of the puzzle to unravel the mystery.

Lionel has difficulty communicating with others and calming his mind. He delivers a precise play-by-play of his verbal and physical anomalies as if he were observing a separate entity that just happens to reside inside his body. We witness his inner struggles as he tries to suppress his physical and verbal tics from becoming externally manifest. These details generate understanding for his condition and sympathy for the character whose mind we have come to inhabit. We want him to succeed. Meanwhile, against this ricocheting mental backdrop is his determination to find Frank Minna’s killer.  

Motherless Brooklyn is a solid murder mystery. But Lethem’s most impressive achievement is his compelling portrayal of a narrative voice that reveals the inner workings of the Tourettic mind. In creating a narrator with Tourette’s Syndrome, Jonathan Lethem successfully captures the dilemma of an unfiltered mind that runs helter-skelter in all directions. His ability to do so is uncanny. And he does so with compassion, sensitivity, and humor. We come to know Lionel. And some of us come to like him.

Recommended.

An Artist of the Floating World

Kazuo Ishiguro

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro takes place a few years after the end of World War II. The narrator is an elderly artist, Masuji Ono. As a young man, Ono was praised for his art, receiving accolades and awards. He worked hard and played hard, spending time with colleagues in the “floating world,” a euphemism for the neighborhood pleasure district. But then Ono shifts focus. Rejecting art portraying ephemeral beauty, he paints propaganda art to promote Japanese imperialist ambitions. Now, as an aging grandfather, he struggles to come to terms with his past and his role in promoting the patriotic fervor that led to Japan’s devastation and loss of life as a result of the war.

The novel is divided into unequal four sections: October 1948, April 1949, November 1949, and June 1950. Ono’s first-person narration is replete with digressions, flashbacks, flashforwards, commentary, and analysis. We learn he lost wife and son in the war. He has two daughters, one of whom is married and has a child; the other is on the verge of getting married.

Ono’s recollections of past events reveal him to be an unreliable narrator since his recollections are at odds with the perceptions of his daughters and acquaintances. His assessment of the past is flawed. His recollections are fuzzy. For example, he seems genuinely surprised when a former pupil rebuffs him. It is only later we learn he had once acted as a police informant and was responsible for the beatings and torture of this same pupil.

His childhood flashbacks reveal the emotional and psychological abuse he experienced at the hands of his father who belittled him if he didn’t conform to rigidly high expectations. His father’s treatment contrasts with Ono’s current treatment of his daughters and grandson. He tolerates their objections, is influenced by their words even though he may disagree with them, and allows them to express their opinions—something his father would never have allowed him to do. He makes serious attempts to adjust to changing times, behaviors, and surroundings while expressing concern about a post war Japan falling increasingly under Western influence.

Ono frequently addresses the reader directly with words such as, “You may remember . . .” It is as if he is reminiscing with an old acquaintance. This generates a tone of intimacy with the reader. We watch with compassion as Ono struggles to come to terms with his past and present circumstances. In the process, he reveals more about himself than he may be aware.

In typical Ishiguro style, there is an undercurrent of something festering beneath the surface. Clues, hints, suggestions of something troubling pepper Ono’s narrative. He emerges as a complex character. On the one hand, he tries to justify his past actions by contextualizing them; on the other hand, he harbors guilt about his involvement in the propaganda machine. He does what most of us do as we age: he looks back on his life with a nostalgic fondness for things that have passed while simultaneously harboring remorse for some of his earlier decisions.

A sensitive portrayal of an elderly man reflecting on his life.

Recommended.

Flights

Olga Tokarczuk; trans. Jennifer Croft

Winner of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft, can very loosely be considered a novel. It consists of the unnamed narrator’s observations, social commentary, and philosophical reflections on a broad spectrum of topics sandwiched between a series of short, self-contained stories.

The narrator is constantly on the move, changing locations and modes of transportation, all the while observing people and places as she travels. Her interest in human anatomy takes her to museums and other locales where internal organs and external body parts are preserved in jars for all prosperity. She describes at length the various methods of embalming and holds a somewhat morbid fascination with scrutinizing dissected pieces of the human body. Her map of the human body is somehow analogous to the geographical maps appearing periodically throughout the novel, as if suggesting it is only through a detailed mapping of our bodies and our lands can we begin to grasp their meaning.

Her observations are interrupted with seemingly disconnected short stories. In one form or another, the stories deal with people taking flight. A mother and son mysteriously disappear for three days while on vacation. A woman answers a summons by a former lover she hasn’t seen in years to administer the injection to end his suffering. A seventeenth-century anatomist dissects his own severed limb before lapsing into his own private world. A mother spends several nights sleeping on the streets and in trains to avoid going home to her severely disabled son and her non-communicative husband. Chopin’s sister absconds with his heart to give it a proper burial in Poland.

The stories are fascinating, self-contained units. They capture fleeting and fragmentary moments in a life, a small part of a much larger whole. They give the impression of being frozen in time, dissected, and preserved—as if these bits and pieces of lives correspond to the bits and pieces of dissected body parts frozen in jars. The stories are punctuated with the narrator’s ongoing movements as she navigates from one hotel to the next, from one airport to the next, from one train station to the next. Movement and stasis feed off each other. The ephemeral and the permanent form two sides of the same coin.

The structure is complex, much like a patchwork quilt that loosely stitches together disparate pieces to form a whole. Tokarczuk pulls it off brilliantly. She keeps the reader guessing with a narrative alternating between fleeting images of a life frozen in time and the narrator’s constant mobility within which she pauses to observe and comment on body parts preserved in stasis. She leaves it up to the reader to tie the pieces together and to draw conclusions—if any are to be drawn.

A remarkable feat, innovative, original, thought-provoking, and highly recommended.

Transit

Rachel Cusk

Transit by Rachel Cusk, a sequel to her novel, Outline, consists of a series of encounters with various characters who share their personal experiences and stories with the narrator, Faye.

The setting is uncomplicated. Faye, who has moved back to London with her two sons, purchases a council flat in dire need of renovation, and employs builders to fix it up. One by one, she introduces us to a motley crew of characters, each of whom engages in self-revelation. Among those we encounter are the estate agent, the construction workers, her belligerent neighbors, her former boyfriend, her hairdresser, fellow authors at a reading, a couple of her students, a male friend, and her cousin, Lawrence.

Just as she did in Outline (see my review of April 10, 2019), the narrator engages in self-abnegation. All her chapters begin with a different character, as if to minimize her role in the narrative. Each speaker reveals intimate details of his/her life. Faye listens and observes, reporting what she sees and hears without judgment or commentary while absorbing every detail. She intentionally tries to render herself invisible, gradually receding into the background.

Faye employs the Socratic method by drawing people out through a series of questions that frequently begin with the words, “And then I asked . . .” Each seemingly simple question prompts the speaker to probe deeper and deeper into his/her own psyche in search of answers until the words gush out in torrents, unaided and unfiltered. Her form of interrogation allows for nuggets of truth to emerge from their experiences.

The stories have in common the struggle to transition from one relationship to another in an effort to connect. A divorced friend tells her:

There has been a great harvest, he said, of language and information from life, and it may have become the case that the faux-human was growing more substantial and more relational than the original, that there was more tenderness to be had from a machine than from one’s fellow man.

A student reveals his fascination with Saluki dogs who are total in sync with one another:

This idea, of the two dogs sharing the work of reading the hawk, was one he found very appealing. It suggested that the ultimate fulfillment of a conscious being lay not in solitude but in a shared state so intricate and cooperative it might almost be said to represent the entwining of two selves. This notion, of a unitary self being broken down, of consciousness not as an imprisonment in one’s own perceptions but rather as something more intimate and less divided, a universality that could come from shared experience at the highest level . . .

For her part, Faye listens. As she tells her cousin, “I had found out more, I said, by listening than I had ever thought possible.” She allows us a glimpse of her thoughts on those rare occasions when she articulates her views, but she does so in passing—as if they are an aside to the real drama. Her anonymity is deliberate; her self-erasure carefully constructed. She doesn’t even reveal her name until we are almost at the end of the novel.

The technique is fascinating. It positions the narrator as a conduit, a vehicle for transmitting another’s thoughts. And it positions the reader almost as a bystander overhearing a conversation between two people—one of whom coaxes revelations through a series of questions in the manner of a psychiatrist, while the other reveals intimate details of his/her life.

At one point in the novel, Faye says, “. . . it must be interesting to be able to see people without them seeing you.” Her technique allows her to achieve a level of invisibility that is both impressive and fascinating to observe.

This is a brilliant novel, brilliantly executed, innovative, and very highly recommended.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque; trans. A.W. Wheen

Little can be said about All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque that hasn’t already been said. This is understandably considered one of the greatest war novels ever written. Told through the first person point of you of the twenty-year old German soldier, Paul Bäumer, the novel immerses us in the graphic sights, sounds, and stench of World War I as it is fought trench by muddy trench.

Bäumer is an everyman as his experience mirrors the experience of soldiers on all sides of the conflict. We witness the horrors of war through his eyes as he aches with hunger, exhaustion, and fear. We trudge alongside him through the mud and the rain, the sweltering heat and sweat. We hear the cacophonous sounds of exploding shells, guns, and bombs. We watch him struggle to put on his gas mask before he inhales the killer gas. We taste the fear and anxiety in his mouth as he sees severed limbs strewn on the battlefield and witnesses the death of comrades. We feel his alienation as he goes home on leave only to recognize that home and his former life will never be the same again. And we sympathize with his gradual realization of the futility and waste of human life and potential that is war. In the midst of the horror, we experience with him the touching moments of intimacy with comrades and prisoners of war—an intimacy based on a recognition that they are all mere pawns fighting to the death in a war they don’t believe in or understand.

The imagery is vivid, the description is stark, and the view is unflinchingly honest. By describing the experience of war through the eyes of a young recruit, Remarque shines a light on the horrors of war at all times and in all places. This novel is as relevant today as it was when first published in 1929.

Very powerful and highly recommended.

Lizzie Siddal: Face of the Pre-Raphaelites

Lucinda Hawksley

Lizzie Siddal: Face of the Pre-Raphaelites by Lucinda Hawksley is a biography of the model who graced many of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

While working as a hat-maker and assistant in a London hat shop, Lizzie is discovered by the Irish poet William Allingham. He recommends her to his artist friend, Walter Howell Deverell of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. With her flowing red hair, delicate features, and waif-like figure, Lizzie captivates the Pre-Raphaelite artists, serving as their muse and posing for many of their paintings. She becomes romantically involved with the most illustrious of the Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The attraction was instantaneous and mutual. Their tempestuous relationship was to last a little over a decade until her untimely death.

Jealous, possessive, and childish, Rossetti threw temper tantrums if Lizzie formed friendships with anyone other than himself. But he allowed himself the liberty of engaging in sexual relations with other models, understandably causing Lizzie considerable distress. All the while, he dangled Lizzie for over nine years with the promise of marriage, finally marrying her in the tenth year of their relationship.

For her part, Lizzie used emotional blackmail and her illnesses (real or imaginary) to manipulate Rossetti into running back into her arms whenever she felt threatened by his absence. Possibly anorexic and complaining of constant pain, she began taking laudanum to dull the physical and psychological pain, becoming increasingly dependent on the drug. She intentionally overdosed at the age of thirty-three.

It is to Hawksley’s credit that she portrays Lizzie Siddal as having more than just a stunning face. She was a talented artist and poet in her own right. Although she had no formal training, her sketches and paintings elicited praise and eventually garnered the patronage of John Ruskin, a leading art critic. Hawksley includes several of Lizzie’s poems and pictures of her art. Lizzie emerges as a talented, tortured soul whose entanglements with the Pre-Raphaelites presented her with advantages she would otherwise never have had. But her turbulent relationship with Rossetti came at a heavy price.

Hawksley situates Lizzie in the context of her time and place, making it as much a biography of the times as it is of Lizzie Siddal. We are given glimpses of the Pre-Raphaelites’ life-style, families, friendships, and relationships with models. On the surface, the group appears fun-loving and supportive of each other’s artistic endeavors. But lurking beneath are infidelities, betrayals, and estranged relationships, all of which are underpinned with a heavy dose of class distinctions.

Hawksley’s portrayal is balanced in that neither Lizzie nor Rossetti emerge unscathed. Lizzie is a product of a time when women were totally reliant on men for support. As such, she resorts to subterfuge, deception, manipulation, and emotional blackmail to achieve her goals. Rossetti is egotistical, selfish, and exploitative, monopolizing and controlling Lizzie with promises of marriage and respectability.

The biography is engaging, accessible, and provides a balanced perspective on the life and times of an intriguing woman who died tragically before realizing her potential. The bibliography is impressive. But the book suffers from a lack of adequate citations, leaving one wondering how much is speculation and how much is based on fact.

Recommended.

Our Lady of the Nile

Scholastique Mukasonga; Trans. Melanie Mauthner

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Melanie Mauthner, uses the backdrop of a girls’ school in Rwanda to underscore the seeds of the Rwandan genocide.

Our Lady of the Nile is a high school for daughters of elite, politically prominent Rwandan families. The school is situated on a mountain top, surrounded by a brick wall, an iron gate, and armed guards who patrol the perimeter. The ostensible purpose of the setting is to preserve the girls in a state of physical and moral purity to retain their eligibility for suitable marriages. The girls are admitted to the school according to a quota of Hutus vs. Tutsis—two Tutsis for every twenty Hutus.

The school is a microcosm of Rwandan society. The girls play out on a small scale the larger conflicts plaguing their society. The two sides bicker and feud. The dominant Hutus spread malicious rumors about the Tutsis by engaging in othering and denigrating and dehumanizing their perceived enemies. Gloriosa, the daughter of a prominent Hutu, fuels the simmering hatred and distrust with lies and innuendos. The Tutsis, represented by Veronica and Virginia, become increasingly isolated and fearful until the final crescendo when the atrocities and slaughter occur.

Through these young girls, Mukasonga highlights some fairly common behaviors among a people. The majority don’t go to the extreme of fabricating lies or spreading vicious rumors about their opponents. But they allow themselves to be manipulated by leaders who have the loudest voices and who seem to have the upper hand politically. They suspend disbelief and swallow whatever lies they are told to gain acceptance by the dominant group. Meanwhile, external forces who can educate the girls on the values of inclusivity and non-discrimination squander the opportunity by fidgeting on the sidelines and allowing the tensions to escalate.

When Gloriosa damages a statue of the Virgin Mary and fabricates a lie that Tutsis destroyed the statue and that they plan to attack the school, she sets a series of events in motion. These include the imprisonment and torture of an innocent Tutsi; the involvement of the military to ‘protect’ the school; a purge of the Tutsis; violence to people and property; and the rape and murder of Tutsi girls and their sympathizers. When confronted by her friend that everything she has set in motion is based on lies, Gloriosa replies, “It’s not lies, its politics.” So, there you have it. Once again, truth is being sacrificed to political expediency.

 Mukasonga has written a compelling novel illustrating some of the forces that culminate with the Rwandan genocide. She weaves several elements in this short novel: the impact of colonialism; Rwandan folklore and superstitions; indigenous traditions hovering on the outskirts of Christianity; internalized racism; hatred of the other; economic tensions; an abusive priest; a white man living his exotic fantasies in Africa; and political corruption. The picture is not all bleak, however. There is hope. Amid the horror, Mukasonga shows that there are those among the girls who know the truth and who risk their lives to save others.

On the surface, this is a novel about girls in a Catholic high school in Rwanda. But beneath the surface lies a whole world that explores one of the saddest chapters in human history.

Recommended.

Spring

Ali Smith

Spring by Ali Smith is the third book in her seasonal quartet. It links to its predecessors, Autumn and Winter, by sharing some of the same features, including oblique references to characters given greater prominence in the earlier books. Of the three books, Spring is the strongest.

The story unfolds in two narrative threads that eventually converge. The first thread involves Richard, a TV producer grieving over the loss of his closest friend and collaborator, Patricia (Paddy). He boards a train heading for Scotland with no specific purpose or destination in mind. The second thread involves, Brittany (Brit), a guard at a detention center for migrants. On her way to work, she encounters a young school girl, Florence, at a train station. When Florence boards a train heading for Scotland, Brit follows her. The two form a connection and end up in Kingussie, Scotland, on the same railway platform as Richard. The three then join Alda in the cab of her coffee truck on a road trip to Inverness.

In true Ali Smith fashion, the narrative threads leap forward and backward in time. The present is layered with snapshots of the distant and more recent past. Allusions to artists and their work dot the landscape—Katherine Mansfield, Rainer Maria Rilke, Beethoven, Charlie Chaplin, the contemporary visual artist, Tacita Dean, and a nod to Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

Again, in true Ali Smith fashion, political commentary on current events weaves its way throughout the narrative. Smith is unabashedly political. With unflinching honesty, she forces us to examine the ramifications of our political decisions on individual lives. The political is unequivocally personal. In this case, Smith turns her laser sharp focus on the horrendous, inhumane treatment of refugees held in detention centers; the clandestine network of volunteers who help them escape to freedom; and the borders and fences erected as markers of separation between people. Contemporary struggles for freedom reverberate with the 1746 Battle of Culloden at Inverness and with the death of Michael Collins in 1922. These echoes give history a decidedly cyclical quality—as if we are caught up in a whirlpool of experiencing different manifestations of some of the same struggles.

Smith’s writing is vigorous and moves at a rapid pace. Her prose is lucid and powerful. Her delight in puns and word play is contagious. Her writing is compassionate, intelligent, warm, and brilliant. Her consummate skill as a writer is, perhaps, never more evident than in her use of dialogue. Conversations sparkle, especially those between Richard and Paddy, and between Brit and Florence.

Just when you were convinced she couldn’t do better than Autumn or Winter, Spring comes along and proves you wrong.

 Highly recommended.

Chaucer's People: Everyday Lives in Medieval England

Liza Picard

Chaucer’s People: Everyday Lives in Medieval England by Liza Picard is a delightful romp back to fourteenth-century England.

Taking each of Chaucer’s pilgrims as her starting point, Picard explores the lives, habits, professions, clothing, food, trade, and medicine of the medieval world. No detail is overlooked, beginning with the individual’s temperament and habits, including what these might reveal about Chaucer’s attitude toward members of the profession.

Picard situates the pilgrims in their social, cultural, and historical context by launching into an extensive exploration of the origins and the nature of their occupations. She details the clothes they wore, the fabrics, the headdresses, and the significance of various colors. Her research is impressive. For example, when discussing the cook, she describes medieval kitchens, cooking equipment, food, drinks, and spices. She even includes some medieval cooking recipes! The Doctor of Physic section includes cures for common diseases, a discussion of the plague, and a hilarious section on women’s medicine. For example, to prevent pregnancy, a woman is advised to place the testicles of a weasel in her bosom. Alternatively, to guarantee the birth of a son, the woman is to “take the womb and vagina of a hare, or its testicles, dry and pulverize them and drink the powder in wine.” Presto! A son is born. Sounds perfectly logical, doesn’t it?

Through her comprehensive research and extensive use of detail, Picard injects the pilgrims and their environs with a strong dose of energy and vitality. We half expect them to step off the page—warts and all. The fascinating tidbits about medieval life coupled with an engaging style and a delightful sense of humor make this a worthwhile read for those interested in immersing themselves in Chaucer’s England.

Highly recommended.

The Blood of Flowers

Anita Amirrezvani

Anita Amirrezvani’s The Blood of Flowers is a skillfully crafted coming-of-age story of a young girl in seventeenth-century Persia. To adhere to a feature of traditional folk tales, the girl remains nameless. She lives in a small village with her parents, surrounded by friends and neighbors. Her happy existence comes to a screeching halt at the sudden death of her father, leaving her and her mother destitute. They seek help from their only living relative, her father’s half-brother who lives in the bustling city of Isfahan. They move into his home where both mother and daughter are treated as servants by her uncle’s wife.

Fortunately for the girl, her uncle is an accomplished rug-maker for the Shah. Since she has harbored an enduring passion for designing and making rugs, she becomes her uncle’s assistant, developing her skills, and eventually succeeding in designing and making her own sought-after rugs.

Without a dowry, however, her options as a woman are severely restricted. Pressured by her family, she agrees to a sigheh, a pseudo-marriage renewable every three months. This practice is nothing more than glorified prostitution under the veneer of a temporary marriage. It exploits poor, vulnerable women, denying them the rights of a real marriage, and leaving them completely at the whim of their wealthy benefactor. When the girl refuses to renew the sigheh contract, she and her mother are thrown out into the streets to fend for themselves. Destitute, the girl is forced to beg. Eventually she is able to her expertise in rug-making to lift them out of poverty.

Amirrezvani has produced a gripping tale that transports the reader to seventeenth-century Persia. She spent several years researching material for the novel and succeeds in vividly evoking the fabric of life in Isfahan—the bazaars, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the food, the clothing, the colors, the gender stratification and exploitation of women. She peppers her narrative with short folk tales, some of which are traditional and some of which she fabricates.

A major strength of the novel lies in the detailed description of the process of rug-making. The vibrant colors and dyes; the intricate detail of each design; the work of translating the design on paper into a rug; the painstaking work of generating small, tightly bound knots to make the desired images and patterns; and the skilled artistry and craftsmanship involved in each step lead up to a breathtaking finished product that earns enthusiastic accolades from all who see it.

The only criticism of the novel lies in the unnecessarily graphic and lurid details of the sex acts the girl performs with her benefactor to live up to the obligations of the sigheh contract. Although her initial desire to sustain her benefactor’s interest is understandable, the extensive description of her sexual prowess in the bedroom does little to enhance the story. But in an interesting twist, the girl ultimately benefits from her disadvantaged position as a woman in her culture. The circumstances that led her to agree to the sigheh are the very same circumstances that help her transform her life. She capitalizes on being a female to gain access to the Shah’s harem where only women are allowed, using this privileged access to her advantage by befriending the women who then commission her to make their rugs. As a result, she becomes an independent, strong, empowered, and confident business owner who is finally in control of her own destiny.

Its immersive nature in depicting seventeenth century Persia makes this a highly recommended novel for lovers of historical fiction.

Minutes of Glory

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Minutes of Glory by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a collection of 16 short stories organized thematically under the headings Of Mothers and Children; Fighters and Martyrs; Secret Lives; Shadows and Priests. The stories cover a range of topics dealing with Kenyan culture, the impact of British colonialism, racism, political corruption, indigenous beliefs and traditions versus Christianity, internalized racism, discrimination, the erosion of indigenous culture, and gender relations.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o explores these topics by showing how they manifest in the lives of his characters. The conflicts take many forms. We witness women ostracized by their communities because of their inability to bear children; a village’s desperate struggle to survive a draught; people adopting western ways, western clothing, and western attitudes in a tragic effort to gain respect and acceptance; villagers turning against members of their own community; conflicts between city and village, between rich and poor; the smug attitudes of the colonizers, convinced of their superiority to the indigenous peoples and of their right to appropriate native land; and the ways in which oppression of the other also entraps the oppressor. But it is not all bleak. The collection concludes with a couple of delightfully whimsical short stories.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a skilled storyteller. He weaves folkloric elements, ghosts, magical happenings, and superstitions into his stories, giving them an other-worldly quality. He also grounds them in political reality with intermittent references to the Mau Mau uprising and its repercussions. The stories are told simply, with compassion and poignancy. The characters are drawn with sensitivity.

This is a compelling collection of short stories focusing on the challenges facing Kenya. But the themes transcend Kenya. They illustrate the deleterious impact on all people and all cultures ripped apart by colonialism, classism, and corruption.

Highly recommended.

Winter

Ali Smith

Winter by Ali Smith, the second volume in her seasonal quartet, shares many of the characteristics of its predecessor, Autumn (see June 18 review). Swirling within the politics of the day with references to Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, the anti-immigrant environment, and Brexit are narrative leaps in time alternating between decades in the past, to the more recent past, to the present; multiple flashbacks and flash forwards; intelligent characters frequently talking at each other instead of to each other; and a plethora of word plays and puns.

The narrative unfolds through the perspective of the elderly Sophie and her adult son, Art. Visiting his mother for the Christmas holiday, Art has hired Lux, a young Croatian woman, to pretend to be his recently estranged girlfriend, Charlotte. Meanwhile, Sophie has her own problems. We first meet her as she interacts with a disembodied head of a child as it bounces around in her house. She no longer has any desire to eat and she exhibits such strange behavior that Lux convinces Art to contact his mother’s estranged older sister, Iris, to spend Christmas with them. The sisters, who have not spoken to each other for years, resume the same squabbles of the past—Sophie as the pragmatist espousing conservative views and Iris as the life-long hippie and political activist whose energy has not diminished with age.

Smith adds substance to this skeletal framework by ricocheting multiple threads off each other: flashbacks to the siblings’ childhood; Iris’ political activism, including her involvement in the Greenham Common protest; Sophie’s successful business; the siblings’ relationship with their father; Art’s dysfunctional relationship with his mother and failing relationship with Charlotte; his inability to feel, act, or connect with real people and/or to the environment even though he writes a blog on nature; Lux as the compassionate and perceptive outsider who penetrates Sophie’s defense mechanisms; Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures; and a character linking this volume with its predecessor.

Add to this expansive scenario is Smith’s virtuoso treatment of time in which the different layers of time coalesce to depict its movement as a widening gyre with each circle connecting to what is above and what is below, what is happening now with what happened then. The past constantly intrudes on the present; the present flashes back to the past. The anti-nuclear and environmental protests at Greenham Common metamorphose into the pro-immigrant and climate change activism of the present.

The novel ends on a positive note. Art questions the emptiness of living in a virtual world. His aloofness to the real world thaws as he searches for Lux in the streets of London. The siblings experience a glimmer of reconciliation. And it is Christmas, after all—a time for new beginnings.

A multi-layered, complex novel that weaves together multiple threads and moves at an energetic pace. Another Ali Smith memorable achievement.

Highly recommended.