The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is an epic story of a missionary family in the Belgian Congo in 1959. Nathan Price is an evangelical Baptist minister obsessed with converting the indigenous population in the small village of Kilanga. The story unfolds in the first-person voices of his wife, Orleanna; and their four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. The story takes place against the backdrop of political upheaval as the Congo briefly transitions to independence followed by decades of Mobutu’s tyranny.

The novel opens with Orleanna back in Georgia, years after her departure from the Congo. She grapples to understand their experience and the tragedy that precipitated her exit from the Congo. The novel then shifts back in time to 1959 and the family’s arrival at Kilanga. It moves forward through the next three decades through the alternating perspectives of the four daughters with intermittent reflections by Orleanna.

Divided into seven books, the first two-thirds of the novel describe the family’s experience in Kilanga. The girls initially experience culture shock. They ridicule the clothing, smells, food, morals, and habits of the indigenous population. But gradually, Leah and Adah open up to the culture, develop an appreciation for its positive elements, and begin to adapt. Rachel, the eldest, is self-absorbed, materialistic, and remains consistently aloof and disparaging of the Congolese; Ruth May is too young to form an opinion.

Nathan Price is seen through the eyes of his family. He is a physically and mentally abusive toward his wife and daughters; he is intransigent and close-minded toward the villagers. He refuses to understand their culture or to see anything positive in it. His insistence they embrace his religion and adopt his way of thinking only serve to alienate him. Propelled by his missionary zeal, Nathan emerges as arrogant, bigoted, and a foolish promoter of cultural imperialism.

The novel’s strength lies in a number of factors. Kingsolver’s imagery transports the reader to Kilanga through her detailed, atmospheric description of the local culture and life in the village with its challenges, losses, and rewards. We see the vibrant colors, feel the textures, smell the smells, taste the food, and hear the sounds of the jungle and its inhabitants. Kingsolver’s descriptions are immersive, powerful, and evocative. Her novel’s strength also lies in character portrayal. Each of her characters speaks in a unique, identifiable voice, is well-developed and realistically portrayed.

But the novel loses some of its strength in the last 150 or so pages when Kingsolver traces the lives of Orleanna and her daughters decades later. The passion and energy of the earlier part of the novel is diluted due to a perfunctory description of what happens to each character. Also, although Kingsolver’s scathing critique of western imperialism and Christian missionary zeal with its devastating impact on the Congo has been established earlier, she continues to hammer the point home. Her political advocacy overshadows the rest of the novel to its detriment. In spite of these flaws, however, the novel is a remarkable achievement and well-deserving of the numerous accolades it has received.

Highly recommended.

Painter to the King

Amy Sackville

Painter to the King by Amy Sackville offers a historical panorama of the court of King Philip IV of Spain by focusing on the artist Diego Velázquez and his portraits of Philip and his family.

The novel unfolds through a unique combination of different styles. Dashes and ellipses abound; as do partial sentences; sentences that start and stop and start up, again—all of which constitute a stream of consciousness technique. The technique also replicates the painter’s brush strokes as his hand moves across the canvas, hesitates, and continues.

The nearly four-decade relationship between Velázquez and Philip is told chronologically with intermittent interruptions in which the narrator inserts herself as she walks through the dusty streets of Madrid and Seville, retracing Velázquez’s footsteps and frequenting his former haunts. She dips in and out of Velázquez’s mind, stands behind him as he paints, evokes his struggle to capture the right amount of light and shade in an image, speaks to him directly, and invites him to answer questions about his life and his art. She occasionally walks readers through a painting, directing our eyes to certain details as if seeing them from inside the canvas.

Sackville’s attention to detail is immersive and atmospheric. She plunges the reader into chaotic scenes depicting the frenzied activities and celebrations in Philip’s court. Her impressive use of visual imagery conjures a scene or a painting before our eyes. Her sentences pile on the details and can extend for several lines, giving the text an almost breathless quality. The style is remarkable; the historical research extensive.

In terms of style, this is a remarkable work. However, it may be too much of a good thing. The novel is weighed down by an excess of style and too little substance. The dashes, ellipses, stops and starts, shifts in perspective, the chaotic atmosphere, lengthy sentences, and the breathless quality, while effective in generating an atmosphere, can be quite exhausting and tedious to read. The fragmentary style leaves little room for character development. Neither the king nor Velázquez emerge as fully fleshed-out characters that engage reader attention.

Perhaps Sackville was aiming for something different. Perhaps her intention was to translate Velázquez’s breathtaking portraits into words that emulate his pauses and deliberations during composition; the sweep of his brush strokes; his play with light and dark; his manner of suspending gestures; his attention to detail; his intense scrutiny; and his angle of vision—all of which characterize his masterpieces. If that were her intention, then she has succeeded admirably.

Recommended.

The Whispering Muse

Sjón; translated by Victoria Cribb

The Whispering Muse by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb, blends fiction with mythology. The narrative unfolds through the first-person voice of Valdimar Haraldsson, a somewhat pompous elderly gentleman with an inflated ego. He is the author of a 17-volume journal devoted to demonstrating the supposedly mental and physical superiority of the Nordic race which he attributes to its consumption of fish. He has written articles and given lectures on the subject. Haraldsson is at a cross roads in his life when he is invited by the son of a deceased friend to join a Danish merchant ship on its way to Turkey. He embraces the opportunity. The year is 1949.

Once situated on the ship, Haraldsson meets the senior members of the crew. Among them is Caeneus, the second mate. Caeneus regales the guests at dinner time with tales of Jason and the Argonauts on their adventures to retrieve the Golden Fleece. He claims to have sailed with Jason, his muse being a broken fragment of the Argo’s hull which whispers in his ear. He serves as the muse’s mouthpiece. His tales include the stay at Lemnos whose exclusive inhabitants are females eager to entertain their male guests; his rape as a female and subsequent transformation into a male; his stint as a bird, as well as many other fantastical elements. He weaves Nordic mythology with Greek myths from Apollonius, the plays of Euripides, and the poetry of Ovid. He garners the rapt attention of the dinner guests, much to Haraldsson’s chagrin since he had hoped to entertain them with his theory on the benefits of eating fish.

Caeneus’ playful, fantastic tales contrast sharply with Haraldsson’s dry, controlled speech. His mythic retellings intersect with events on the ship. For example, during Easter when the ship is delayed at port, Caeneus tells the story of the Argo’s extended stay at Lemnos. He also echoes Easter when he launches into an improbable tale of being nailed to a cross to heal his broken bones.

Haraldsson barely contains his boredom as he listens to the Caeneus’ tales. He cannot fathom the audiences’ fascination with the stories and is frustrated by the lack of seafood on the ship’s menu. When he finally delivers his lecture on “Fish and Culture,” the audience listens in polite silence. He is dull, insufferable, and bereft of imagination. He refuses to be transported by Caeneus’ narrative. His perceptions are out of joint with the other guests and he is totally clueless on the impact he has on those around him. Upon his return home, he starts a romance with his elderly neighbor. The novel ends with Haraldsson stroking the “whispering muse” he smuggled off the ship.

This is an unusual, light-hearted mingling of mythic elements, storytelling, and sea-faring yarns, all told through the voice of a self-absorbed, pedantic egoist. The translation flows smoothly and is very readable. The narrative is entertaining, but it lacks the gravitas and intensity of Sjón’s The Blue Fox.

Recommended.

Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story

Hamid Sulaiman; translated by Francesca Barrie

Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story by Hamid Sulaiman, translated by Francesca Barrie, is a graphic novel about the civil war raging in Syria. Inspired by his own experiences, Sulaiman blends fact with fiction to depict the bloody carnage and devastation caused by the conflict.

The novel opens with a brief biography of each of the characters. It is March 2012. Yasmin, a young Syrian, and her childhood friend, Sophie, a journalist of Syrian origin, are smuggled back to Syria. Yasmin has established Freedom Hospital, an underground Syrian hospital in the fictitious town of Houria in Northern Syria. Sophie is there to film a documentary about Freedom Hospital and its occupants.

Revealed periodically are back stories of each of the characters and how they came to be involved with the hospital. We witness their desperate struggle to save lives with the meager resources available. Meanwhile, the bombing continues unabated. The mounting death toll is disclosed every few days and printed at the top of the page as a recurring drum beat in the background. Also identified is the type of type of weapon used, whether gun, bomb, plane, or tank, as well as where it was manufactured. Sulaiman acknowledges he inserts footage from YouTube videos, photographs of demonstrations, excerpts from speeches, and propaganda slogans to pepper the text. And in the midst of the carnage, romance blossoms between a few of the characters.

The illustrations are rendered starkly in black and white. They resemble dark blotches and have a sketchy, hurried quality, perhaps to reinforce the dark, haphazard condition of the hospital, located in a dark place at a dark time. Some of the characters are drawn with only partial outlines, suggesting a corresponding loss of life and limb.

In his Postscript, Sulaiman admits he cobbled together bits and pieces of his own experiences and the experiences of people he knew. Unfortunately, this patchwork quality is evident. The characters are flat and never come alive. They function as mouth pieces, spouting slogans from one faction or the other. The dialogue is stilted and unrealistic. The narrative contains gaps and jumps around, disrupting the flow.

Sulaiman’s intent is to familiarize people with the complex, political situation in Syria; to render the diversity of characters involved in the civil war; and to show how extremists attempted to co-opt opposition to the Syrian government. He is to be applauded for wanting to shed light on a very tragic situation. But his execution, no doubt heartfelt and well-intentioned, is somewhat scanty and sporadic, qualities that may be attributed to the nature of the medium more than to anything else.

Recommended with reservations.

The Grass is Singing

Doris Lessing

The Grass is Singing by the 2007 Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing, is a scathing indictment of South Africa apartheid as revealed through the tragic lives of Mary and Dick Turner and Moses, their “house boy.” The novel opens with the newspaper announcement of Mary’s murder and Moses’ arrest. The novel then shifts back in time to reveal the events leading up to the murder.

Eager to escape her drunken father and embittered mother, Mary moves to the city where she leads a contented, financially independent life as a secretary. She is happy being a reliable, “sisterly” friend without romantic attachments or desires until she hits the age of thirty when she becomes focused on finding a husband. She marries the first man who asks her—Dick Turner, a farmer. She is shocked to discover the meager condition of his home and farm. Her restlessness transforms to anger when she learns of her husband’s incompetence in managing his affairs and his total inability to eke out a decent living. Anger soon transforms to disengagement and apathy. Her disappointment in life and abject loneliness coupled with an attraction and repulsion she feels toward Moses eventually leads to her total breakdown. The final chapter skillfully conveys her muddled mind as she struggles to discern what is real and what is imaginary.

Lessing sustains a relentless tone of impending doom throughout the novel. Every detail spells misery--from the intolerable heat; to the blinding sun; to the parched, unforgiving earth; to the incessant chirping of the cicadas; to Dick Turner’s yet another in a series of failed new ventures. The main focus, however, is on Mary. Plagued with unmitigated boredom, embarrassment at their poverty, loneliness, isolation, increasing estrangement from her husband, and the gradual erosion of her hope for a better future all contribute to the gradual deterioration of her mind.

Mary is far from being a sympathetic character. Her treatment of the black “house boys” and farm workers is despicable and arises from her gendered and racist socialization. She struggles to navigate an appropriate relationship between master and hired hand when Moses enters her life as her house boy, the same Moses she had whipped when he defied her in front of the other farm hands. Tormented by her action, Mary finds herself both attracted and repulsed by him. She dies without understanding the expectations placed on her as a white female and wife in a South Africa riddled with the racial tensions and injustices of apartheid.

Lessing casts an unflinching lens on the impact of apartheid on white and black races. She allows us access to Dick Turner’s mind and draws him with some sympathy. But she never allows entrance into the mind of Moses who remains a mystery. This may be an intentional strategy to capture the truism that whereas the survival of the slave/servant depends on his ability to know the mind of the master, the master can cultivate a willful indifference to the thoughts and feelings of those he has subordinated. We never learn Moses’ attitude toward Mary although he is shown to be solicitous toward her on occasion. Does he murder her because she represents a system that strips him of his humanity? To avenge himself for her cruelty? Because the balance of power has shifted and he now feels he has the upper hand? Or does he murder her because he witnesses her mental breakdown and wants to put her out of her misery? His motivation is never made clear. What we do know is Moses calmly surrenders to white authorities and seems to accept his fate with equanimity.

A very powerful, well-crafted novel that demonstrates Doris Lessing’s consummate skill as a writer. Her unflinching lens and immersive details expose the tragic, dehumanizing impact on oppressor and victim in a virulently unjust, brutal, exploitative, and racially segregated society. This is what happens, Lessing tells us, when you dehumanize another.

Highly recommended.

Beowulf

Translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

Maria Dahvana Headley’s opening salvo in her translation of Beowulf is the word “Bro!” This sets the stage for an irreverent, rollicking, electrifying, and astonishing translation unlike any we have seen before.

Headley has studied the poem extensively. Her goal was to render the poem as close to the spirit of its original form as possible. As she says in her extensive introduction, “The original reads, at least in some places, like Old English freestyle, and in others like a wedding toast of a drunk uncle who’s suddenly remembered a poem he memorized at boarding school.” She captures the rollicking spirit of the poem admirably, generating a work that is not so much a translation but a re-creation. Her goal was to create “a text that is as bubbly and juicy as I think it ought to feel.”

Headley smashes the sedate lines of previous translations with flashes of lightning. As she explains in her introduction, some of the Old English words are difficult to pin down in modern English. Just as previous translators have had to interpret and take liberties with the wording, Headley has had to do the same. Whenever possible, she opts for wording that conforms with the original temperament of the poem. For example, the word “hwaet,” which has been variously translated as “Listen,” “Hark,” “Lo,” she translates as “Bro!” She conceives it as the poet’s attempt to capture audience attention and as a form of masculinist coded language. She punctuates traditional, stately passages of sublime poetry with the occasional four-letter word and phrases currently inhabiting social media. For example, Wealhtheow admires Beowulf’s “brass balls.” Treasure is now “bling.” The watchman in Denmark initially confronts Beowulf with, “There’s a dress code! You’re denied.”

Headley perceives the narrator as “an old-timer at the end of the bar, periodically pounding his glass and demanding another.” He shouts to be heard in a mead hall of rowdy men falling over each other in a drunken stupor. He interrupts himself, comments on the action, engages in foreshadowing, and addresses the audience directly to retain attention. She argues his language is laced with satire as he interrogates definitions of masculinity with its concomitant heroic boasts and chest-thumping.

One of the more interesting aspects of Headley’s translation lies in her treatment of Grendel’s mother. She allows her the simultaneous qualities of a monster while retaining her human qualities as a mother experiencing overwhelming grief at the loss of her only child.

With its raucous rhymes, refreshing language pulsating with contemporary idioms, Headley successfully reclaims a thousand-year-old manuscript for today’s audience. She comes out swinging. This is definitely not your father’s Beowulf.

Very highly recommended for its originality, riotous fun, effusive temperament, and sheer audacity.

Apeirogon

Colum McCann

Apeirogon by Colum McCann is a mosaic of vignettes focusing on the Palestine-Israel conflict. The 1001 vignettes or chapters vary in length from one sentence to several pages. They tell the true story of the tragic deaths of two girls and how their real-life fathers crossed paths to forge an unlikely friendship. Their common grief acts as the transformative catalyst. They become vocal advocates for an end to the occupation through dialogue as the means to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In 1997, Smadar, a thirteen-year-old Israeli girl, is killed when three suicide bombers blow themselves up in Jerusalem. Rami Elhanan, her father, is an Israeli Jew. About ten years later, Abir, a ten-year-old Palestinian girl, is shot dead with a rubber bullet by an Israeli border guard in East Jerusalem. She had crossed the street from school to buy some candy. Bassam Aramin, her father, is a Palestinian Muslim.

The story of Smadar and Abir, and of Rami and Bassam unfolds intermittently in a non-linear sequence of fragments. The gruesome details of the deaths of the young girls, their back stories, and the back stories of their families are revealed gradually and sandwiched between elements of fiction, quotations, anecdotes, insights, commentary, historical and religious explorations, information on bird migration, the Irish conflict, and various other miscellany. The novel is replete with symbolism that reverberates throughout the sections. The different threads, some of which initially appear as only tangentially connected to the main narrative, are stitched together, dropped, only to be picked up later.

The sections are numbered from 1 to 500, a middle section numbered 1001, followed by sections that reverse the numbering by beginning with 500 and concluding with section 1. The motion is circular and ends where it began with the wording of the final sentence varying slightly from the very first sentence. We are brought full circle. This circular structure reflects the activity of both fathers as are they are repeatedly called upon to tell and re-tell the story of their daughters. They dip in and out of the story, never willing or able to put it behind them. The fragmentary nature of the narrative also effectively replicates the trauma of losing a child since the pain of loss imposes itself on one’s consciousness, unbidden, interrupting the flow of thought at any time of the day or night.

This is not an easy novel to read. It contains graphic descriptions of torture, violence, and dismembered bodies. The heart-wrenching content, especially that which details the youth, innocence, and lost potential of the young girls, coupled with the fragmentary nature of the format make it a challenging read. Through its hybrid form and content, McCann has produced a multi-faceted perspective, an apeirogon with a countable infinite number of sides, which explores the issues surrounding one of the world’s most complex political conflicts. As Rami and Bassam demonstrate, although dialogue alone is insufficient in resolving the conflict, it is an essential first step in eradicating the de-humanization of the other, in generating empathy, and in dismantling the structural barriers which fuel the conflict.

A compelling novel that defies easy categorization but which leaves a lasting and profound impact. Very highly recommended.

Homeland Elegies

Ayad Akhtar

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize winning author for drama, seamlessly blends memoir and fiction. Akhtar uses experiences from his life as the skeletal framework which he fleshes out with fact and fiction. Where the memoir ends and the fiction begins is impossible to discern. Ultimately, it makes no difference. What emerges from this brilliant hybrid of a novel is a raw, convincing, and gripping portrait of America and of life post 9/11 for an American born Muslim son of immigrants.

Unfolding in the first-person point of view, the narrator and author of the novel have much in common. Both are born in the U.S., are the sons of Pakistani immigrants, and are successful authors awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama. But that is as far as we can go with the comparisons. We don’t know with any certainty when we slip from memoir to fiction or vice versa.

The novel reads like a memoir interspersed with a series of essays in which the narrator critiques American capitalism and its obsessive focus on materialism to the detriment of the health and well-being of society as a whole. Akhtar weaves history, political events, and real characters in his narrative to add to the confusing blend of reality versus fiction. His parents are successful doctors. His father embraces all things America, initially lending his whole-hearted support for Donald Trump. The narrator shares with his mother a more critical and nuanced perspective on all things America.

Although he was born in America and has lived all his life in America, the narrator experiences “othering” and bigotry as a Muslim person of color in a post 9/11 America. Those experiences, described in vivid and immersive detail, are chilling. His critique extends to fellow Muslims. He argues they have lost focus by adhering to rigid, fundamentalist thinking and by reacting to what others have said about their religion. He suggests they should deconstruct their own behaviors and attitudes and accept some measure of culpability for their failures instead of seeking to blame others.

The narrator’s voice is engaging, brutally honest, genuine, not always likable, and carries with it the appeal of self-disclosure. He struggles with identity. He experiences contradictions as an American born of immigrant parents. He interrogates the culture that victimizes him with its racism and bigotry. He feels the push and pull toward Islam and Muslims. He undergoes a temporary change in attitude when he experiences a moneyed lifestyle. He excoriates an America fragmented by race and class; the diminishing of its middle class; the lifetime of student debt; the unbridled greed of the health care industry; and the decline of critical thinking in education.

This combination of memoir and fiction delves deep and covers wide. It is unique, riveting, challenging, and compelling.

Highly recommended for its intensity, provocative thinking, originality of form, and sheer brilliance.

The Still Point

Amy Sackville

The Still Point by Amy Sackville is a powerful debut novel which skillfully weaves together two threads one hundred years apart but linked together by the same family.

One thread involves the escapades of a newly-married Edward Mackley who sets off to reach the North Pole. He never makes it there. He dies on the frozen tundra where his body is discovered sixty years later. Meanwhile, his young wife Emily puts her life on hold, waiting for his return. She waits and waits for Edward to come home.

The second thread involves Julia, Edward’s descendent. One hundred years after Edward’s disappearance, Julia inherits the family home. She is tasked with archiving the belongings of her illustrious ancestors. Julia lives in a fantasy world. She reads Edward’s diary discovered with his body. She reads Emily’s letters to Edward which were never sent. And she spins a vibrant fantasy about their love for each other. Julia goes through the motions of living in the present. But her fantasy constantly intrudes and she finds herself trekking with Edward through blizzards and ice or with Emily living in her brother-in-law’s home while waiting for a husband who never returns. While indulging her fantasies, Julia neglects her husband and her marriage because neither is able to live up to her romantic illusions. When a revelation about Emily punctures her fantasy, Julia finally adopts a realistic attitude toward love and marriage. The novel ends on a hopeful note of reconciliation in her marriage to Simon.

The two interlocking threads are skillfully woven together punctuated with the occasional dream narrative. Sackville dips in and out of each thread and time frame in prose that is lyrical, elegant, and soars like poetry. Her diction and detailed description evoke striking images of the polar landscape, of frost-bitten bodies, and of a house pregnant with relics from the past. Her characters are well-developed and portrayed sympathetically, their complexity revealed through their interactions and thoughts. The narrative shifts from past tense to present tense coupled with an occasional direct address to the reader create a sense of intimacy as she invites us to join her in observing her characters and exploring their surroundings.

The title of the novel, taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton, conveys layers of meaning. It is the intersection of time where past and current generations meet. It is a house frozen in time, laden with artifacts, relics, documents, and paraphernalia of the past. It is the still point in time for Edward and his men as they trudge across a snow-covered landscape stretching as far as the eye can see, day after day, until time, itself, freezes. It is the still point for Emily who suspends the rest of her life waiting for Edward’s return. And it is the still point for Julia who puts life and marriage in abeyance while she relives the fantasy of Edward and Emily.

The strength of this novel lies in the stunning beauty of the narrative voice. Amy Sackville’s use of immersive detail, the poetry of her diction, her skillful shifts in narrative threads, and her ability to invite the reader to pause with her on a scene is masterful. While the narrative threads in and of themselves are compelling, it is in the telling of the story that Amy Sackville demonstrates her truly exceptional talent.

Very highly recommended.

The Wind That Lays Waste

Selva Almada; translated by Chris Andrews

The Wind That Lays Waste by Selva Almada, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews, is a short novel with a deceptively simple plot where it seems as if very little happens. The narrative describes the events of a single day.

Reverend Pearson, an evangelical preacher, is traveling across rural Argentina preaching the word of God to whoever is willing to listen. He travels with his daughter, Leni. After their car breaks down on a deserted highway, they are towed to the workshop of Gringo Brauer, a mechanic. Gringo lives with his assistant, a young boy named Tapioca.

While Gringo struggles to fix the reverend’s car, the characters interact with each other, gradually revealing intimate details about their lives and vulnerabilities. The two teenagers are both motherless. Leni has vague memories of her father abandoning her mother on the side of a road. Tapioca can barely remember his mother. She abandoned him with Gringo, claiming that he is the boy’s father. The reverend is fixated on saving souls and sets his eye on Tapioca as a suitable candidate for salvation. Gringo dismisses organized religion, believing nature is the best teacher and that a person’s action is all that matters. The tension gradually and imperceptibly builds between the two adults, culminating in a climax that coincides with a fierce thunder storm and torrential rain.

Almada has crafted a very tightly structured, taut novel where every word tells. Her prose is simple, direct, and lucid. She conveys the complexity of her characters, the dynamics of their relationships, their inner conflicts and flashbacks, and she does it all in language that is sparse but effective. Her images evoke a strong atmosphere—from the graveyard of broken cars and jagged metal paraphernalia, the sweat-stained clothes and sticky bodies, the stunted trees and thirsty soil, Gringo’s bouts of convulsive coughing, and Leni silently watching the two men fight as tears roll down her face.

This is a wonderful story, skillfully executed in vivid imagery and concise diction. The narrative is deceptively simple but it packs a powerful punch.

Highly recommended.

Broken Glass Park

Alina Bronsky; translated by Tim Mohr

Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr, unfolds in the first-person voice of Sascha Naimann, a seventeen-year-old Russian immigrant living in Germany. The tragic circumstances of her young life are gradually revealed. Her mother and mother’s boyfriend were murdered by Vadim, her mother’s former husband, leaving Sascha and her young step-siblings as orphans. Her step-father’s cousin, Maria, moves to Germany to take care of the children.

Sascha is forced to grow up quickly. She assumes responsibility for her siblings and acts as translator for Maria who cannot speak German. Her narrative is dotted with frequent flashbacks to her mother and Vadim—a despicable human being tormenting the family with physical, mental, and sexual abuse, culminating in his act of double murder. Sascha tries to make sense of why her mother tolerated him for as long as she did. She heaps piles of abuse on Vadim and conjures elaborate plans for murdering him when he is released from prison. Her plans are thwarted when she learns Vadim has committed suicide in his prison cell. The news causes Sascha to snap temporarily.

The narrative voice is initially strong. Sascha is intelligent, street-smart, tough, resilient, observant, and determined. She can also be funny, vulnerable, tender, compassionate, and fiercely protective of her younger siblings. But, above all, she is consumed with anger and rage. Her voice is engaging and convincing. But it begins to fall flat when she seems to fall in love with an older man and, for no apparent reason, sleeps with his son. She later sleeps with a complete stranger because he happens to share the same name as the man she ostensibly loves. Her romantic entanglements are confusing and aimless. As a consequence, her voice loses much of its strength and focus. Her story drifts into that of a lovelorn teenager. The plot becomes haphazard, lacking purpose, direction, and the urgency that characterized its opening pages.

This is Alina Bronsky’s debut novel. The writing is fast-paced, vigorous, and engaging. Bronsky’s talent lies in writing first-person narratives. She has an ability to create interesting, complex, and believable characters that generate sympathy. Although she is able to do so to some degree with Sascha, her skill is more finely honed in her subsequent novels where she is more successful in capturing voice and motivation and in tightening narrative structure and focus.

Recommended.

The Lambs of London

Peter Ackroyd

The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd is a fictional glimpse into the lives of Mary and Charles Lamb and their erstwhile friend, William Ireland. The setting is late 18th century, early 19th century London.

We meet the Lambs as adults. Charles spends his days at the office and his nights drinking at local pubs. Mary leads a cloistered life at home, relying on her brother for intellectual engagement and discussion. The novel’s beginning is promising in that it focuses on the Lambs. But then it veers toward William Ireland and his ostensible discovery of new works by Shakespeare. The shift to William Ireland, his fraught relationship with his father, his Shakespearean “discoveries,” and the quest for their authentication becomes the primary focus of the narrative, relegating Charles and Mary Lamb to the margins.

The novel is a quick and easy read and, as a work of fiction, its deviations from historical facts about the Lambs are irrelevant. The story line had potential. The relationship between Charles and Mary would have been fertile ground for exploration. Unfortunately, it is never fully developed. The characters, as a whole, are not fully realized. Mary is the most interesting character in the narrative. She is an intelligent, articulate woman suffocating under the social conventions of the time. Her predictable attachment to William in the narrative is subordinated in importance to his obsession with promoting his discoveries as the genuine works of Shakespeare. Why she descends into madness and murders her own mother is hinted at but, again, never fully explored. This, too, would have been fertile ground for greater development. Although William Ireland’s ostensible motivation to commit fraud is to earn his father’s approval, the extreme measures he takes to gain that approval are unconvincing. Even the title of the book is misleading as the focus is not so much on the Lambs as it is on William Ireland and the reception he receives for his ostensible discoveries.

The strength of the novel lies in its ability to evoke London at the turn of the century. The details are immersive. The muddy Thames, London’s bustling streets, its colorful street characters, and its pungent smells are captured in all their squalor and glory. The few glimpses of the Lambs and their excursions into literature are a delight. The novel held out promise, but its shift in focus from the Lambs to William Ireland diluted its potential.

Recommended with reservations.

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

James C. Scott

It has been generally believed that state formation was a consequence of the domestication of animals and plants. The theory was that when humans no longer had to hunt and gather food, they settled down in agricultural communities which eventually evolved into the modern state. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, James C. Scott argues this is a false narrative. He proposes an alternative narrative for state formation based on more recent archaeological and historical evidence.

Focusing his analysis primarily in ancient Mesopotamia as the birthplace of the earliest state, Scott cites evidence showing sedentism and animal and plant domestication existed at least 4,000 years before the appearance of agricultural villages. The one did not give rise to the other. Instead, states materialized with the gradual emergence specifically of domesticated grain crops that required labor for planting and harvesting. Unlike other crops which grow underground, grain is visible, portable, storable, ripens at the same time, and, more significantly, is measurable for tax purposes. And with that comes the need for a large pool of laborers; hierarchically structured societies; tax collectors; city walls to prevent grain-theft by non-state dwellers (stigmatized as “barbarians),” and as a deterrence for a mass exodus of laborers.

Movement between sedentary and non-sedentary populations was fluid in either direction. Scott argues the shift to sedentary communities was not necessarily advantageous. Non-sedentary populations were mobile when they needed to be, ate a more diverse diet, and the dispersed nature of their communities impeded the rapid spread of disease. The more densely populated areas, especially those sharing living space with animals, were subject to the rapid spread of epidemics, viruses, and parasites; ate a diet poor in proteins consisting primarily of cereal grains. They were taxed, their movements restricted; and their labor exploited to serve the elite.

The study is full of fascinating insights, for example, while we domesticated animals and crops, they domesticated us as evidenced by the development of our husbandry skills; the “collapse” of states may simply mean population dispersion, not disappearance; the “barbarians” living outside of state control were healthier and happier than their sedentary counterparts; the birth rate of sedentary populations outstripped the nomadic birth rates in spite of their higher mortality rate; writing was invented to tabulate crop production and allocation; state formation was about intentional control over reproduction of crops, animals, and people; slave labor was essential to state formation; states were fragile entities vulnerable to crop devastation and the spread of disease among people and animals; states grew in size by absorbing more of the surrounding resources, displacing the neighboring population who either had to move further afield or be absorbed into the state.

This is a fascinating study articulating an alternative narrative for the shift from non-sedentary to sedentary populations and the consequences of the shift. Although a lay audience may require a dictionary for some of the technical terms, the effort is well worth it.

Highly recommended for those interested in the study of early populations and state formation.

Burnt Shadows

Kamila Shamsie

It is a saga of two families whose lives are inextricably intertwined. It is an epic tale sweeping across continents over a sixty-year period. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie begins in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945; goes to India just before partition in 1947; to Pakistan in 1982-1983; and concludes in New York and Afghanistan in 2001-2002.

The central figure is Hiroko Tanaka, a Nagasaki resident. The novel opens with her as a twenty-one-year-old and engaged to a man of English and German descent. When the atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, Hiroko loses her fiancé and her father. In addition to her emotional and psychological scars, Hiroko carries disfiguring burn scars on her back. Having lost everything in Nagasaki, she decides to make a clean break. She visits her fiancé’s half-sister, Elizabeth Weiss, who lives in India with her husband, James Burton. There she meets and marries Sajjad Ashraf, a Muslim employed by the Burtons. The partition in India forces the newly-weds to relocate temporarily to Istanbul then to Pakistan which they call home for nearly twenty years until Sajjad’s untimely death. Hiroko then relocates to New York to live with Elizabeth. The ties connecting the Tanakas, the Ashrafs, and the Burtons extend to their respective children, Henry Burton and Raza Ashraf, and to Henry’s daughter, Kim Burton.

Shamsie skillfully infuses the different time frames and locations with historical and political events. Through Hiroko’s eyes, we see Nagasaki in the aftermath of the atomic bomb. We see the escalating tensions in India between British colonists, Hindus, and Muslims. From neighboring Pakistan, we see Afghanistan’s armed struggle against Russian occupation. And in New York, we see the aftermath of 9/11.

Set against the backdrop of global conflicts over a period of nearly sixty years, this family saga wrestles with a number of complex issues. Scenes throughout reveal cross-cultural conflicts, racism, cultural understanding, cultural arrogance, ethnocentrism, loyalty, sacrifice, family, othering, betrayal, and the displacement of a civilian population. The four sections are seamlessly woven together with transitional passages to explain the leaps in time and location. The characters are unique, believable, and speak in authentic voices.

Shamsie’s portrayal of Hiroko is particularly effective. She emerges as independent, loving, strong, tender, adaptable, and the anchor which binds the narrative and families together. Her fluency in several languages illustrates how language facilitates understanding and appreciation of a culture. But fluency in languages and dialects can also have catastrophic consequences, as evidenced by Raza. Having inherited his mother’s language skills, Raza sets in motion a series of events which end tragically. Hiroko’s character also contrasts racism with acceptance of the other. When Kim Burton seeks understanding for reporting an Afghan Muslim to authorities solely on the basis of a shared religion with the 9/11 terrorists, Hiroko responds with, “Should I look at you and see Harry Truman?” Enough said.

A very powerful and compelling novel showing the impact of global conflicts on the lives of individuals. Told with compassion and sensitivity in immersive, riveting language.

Very highly recommended.

The Happy Marriage

Tahar Ben Jalloun; trans. André Naffis-Sahely

The Happy Marriage by Tahar Ben Jelloun, translated from the French by André Naffis-Sahely is in two parts. Part 1 unfolds from the perspective of a highly successful Moroccan Artist from an upper-class family in Fez. Part 2 unfolds in the first-person point of view of his wife, a young woman from a poor village in Morocco. The narrative chronicles the deterioration of their marriage from two entirely different perspectives.

The novel opens in the year 2000 in Casablanca with the artist having suffered a severe stroke leaving him semi-paralyzed and speechless. He is helpless, frustrated, and embarrassed by his condition. His narrative alternates between Morocco and France at different time periods. He recalls his life and the early days of his marriage in France when both he and his wife were initially very happy and very much in love. He flashes back to describing his affairs with a parade of women before and during his marriage, expressing no remorse for his philandering. He depicts his wife as totally irrational, borderline insane, and prone to bouts of physical and verbal abuse. As he regains movement and speech, he dictates his version of events to a writer friend.

Part 2 is in the first-person voice of his wife. She discovers the manuscript of her husband’s version of events and presents her side of the story which, not surprisingly, does not correspond with his version. She is a poor Berber village girl who endures both classism and racism from her husband’s family. After their first couple of years of marital bliss, her husband turns into an ogre. She describes him as controlling her with money, demeaning her in public, embarrassing her, flaunting his infidelities, and abandoning her with their children while he gallivants all over the world exhibiting his paintings.

Ben Jelloun captures a marriage in crisis through the contrasting views of his characters who reveal as much about themselves as they do about each other. Although he projects himself as the hapless victim of a tyrannical wife, the artist emerges as selfish, egotistical, and self-absorbed. He is oblivious to his wife’s needs, justifies his infidelities and secrets, and harbors patriarchal views of marriage. The wife, on the other hand, has a modern approach to marriage. Her expectations for loyalty, fidelity, honesty, equality, and mutual respect are thwarted by her husband’s behavior until, by her own admission, she turns into a nasty, vengeful, embittered, and vindictive human being. The children barely receive a mention in either version as if their welfare is incidental to the marital feud.

His exposure of the marriage through contradictory lenses enables Ben Jelloun to illustrate the conflicting tensions within race, class, and age disparity. But the fundamental conflict that undergirds all others is the clash between a traditional, patriarchal view of marriage with a modern view of marriage. The couple inhabit two different worlds. Ben Jelloun skillfully interrogates both perspectives leaving the reader to reflect on whether either perspective is reliable—if at all.

A thought-provoking novel.

A Long Petal of the Sea

Isabel Allende; trans. Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson, is a family saga that begins in Spain just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and concludes decades later in Chile. The narrative focuses on two families, the Dalmaus and the Del Solars. Their lives intersect in unexpected ways with the full consequences becoming evident decades later.

When General Franco comes to power in Spain, the brutal bloodbath and killings begin, forcing thousands to make the difficult trek over the mountains to escape to France. Victor Dalmau, an army doctor, arranges for his mother and Roser, his pregnant sister-in-law, to escape while he stays behind to help the wounded and dying on the battlefield. Eventually, Victor escapes to France, and with the help of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, he and Roser sail on the Winnipeg with other refugees to establish themselves in Chile. While in Chile, Victor has a brief affair with Ofelia Del Solar, the daughter of a prominent family.

Establishing themselves in Chile, Roser and Victor become contributing members of society. She is a prominent musician and Victor is a well-respected physician. But their lives are uprooted again after the military coup that establishes Pinochet as the iron-fisted ruler of Chile. They move to Venezuela with their son until it is safe for them to return to Chile. Spanning several decades, the novel concludes with Roser’s death and Victor, now in his eighties, reconnecting with events from his past.

Allende weaves the story of Franco under Spain and Chile under Pinochet throughout the narrative. Although these political events were initially treated as the backdrop, they assume greater prominence as the novel progresses. And that is when the novel begins to suffer from an excess of exposition—a mechanical telling of events in the form of “this happened, then this, then this.” The focus of the novel shifts from the characters to a narrative of the political upheavals in Spain and Chile. The characters recede into the background; the language becomes passive and prosaic; the pace slows considerably; the dialogue becomes stilted and perfunctory; and the story bogs down in a recounting of the political situation.

Allende discloses in the Acknowledgements she has a personal connection to the events and to the characters. She was inspired to tell their story and admits, “This book wrote itself, as if it had been dictated to me.” While Allende’s desire to tell the political events that impacted her friends and family deserves respect, the preponderance she allocated to the political situation in the narrative may have been better suited to a work of non-fiction. Her efforts to weave it in with the fictional narrative were not entirely successful and did not do justice to either of the narrative threads.

Recommended with reservations.

American Indian Women

Patrick Deval; trans. Jane-Marie Todd

American Indian Women by Patrick Deval, translated from the French by Jane-Marie Todd, brings to the forefront a group that has largely been neglected in historical and anthropological studies of American Indians. In this wide-ranging study, Deval relocates American Indian women from the margins to the center, highlighting the pivotal roles they played in the spiritual, political, and cultural lives of their communities. The study includes the role played by prominent American Indian women and others who are not so famous but who are no less worthy of respect and admiration.

Deval divides his exploration into different categories: women as guardians of tradition; their role in American Indian spirituality; their function in first encounters with the Spanish, the English, and the French; their contributions during the nineteenth-century and to the education of their children. He includes their portrayal in modern mass entertainment and Hollywood and concludes with their literary, artistic, and political efforts to resist the dominant culture’s efforts to erase their culture, traditions, and language.

Women performed multiple roles within their communities. They used their extensive knowledge of the plant world to feed their people, to heal illnesses, and to exert power in religious ceremonies. They served as warriors, guides, and interpreters. They were sought for their wisdom and knowledge and as purveyors and guardians of culture and tradition.

The study is wide in scope and intent on correcting many of the misconceptions harbored about American Indians in general and about American Indian women in particular. It is valuable as an educational tool. One of its greatest assets is its inclusion of a wealth of black and white photographs dating from the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century. The photographs are mainly of American Indian women. They are breath-taking. Some depict mother and child in a tender embrace; some show women performing various tasks; and some situate women in their natural environment. But the most moving are the close-ups of women’s faces which exude strength, wisdom, suffering, and fierce determination. These images are beautiful, mesmerizing, and haunting.

Highly recommended.

How It All Began

Penelope Lively

How it All Began by Penelope Lively is a delightful novel that illustrates how a single incident sets off a series of ramifications on the lives of characters linked together in a tapestry of interlocking threads.

The catalyst that precipitates the butterfly effect is the mugging and subsequent injury of Charlotte Rainsford, an elderly widow. Because Charlotte has broken her hip, she is obliged to move in temporarily with her daughter Rose and son-in-law Gerry. Her injury sets off a chain of events which include the discovery of an illicit love affair; an on-again, off-again divorce; a pompous, deluded, elderly academic dabbling in a T.V. series; the disastrous consequences of an upscale interior designer’s meeting with an ostensibly wealthy client; and the blossoming of a tender romance between a married woman and an immigrant. Along the way are the backstories of each of the characters.

Charlotte, the central character, is a charming, independent, retired teacher of literature with a passion for reading. Her injury affords her the opportunity to keenly observe her daughter’s marriage, comparing it with her own. To fill up her time while recuperating, Charlotte volunteers to teach an immigrant the fundamentals of reading. She draws him in by introducing him first to children’s stories and gradually working him up to more advanced stories as his reading skills improve. Their conversations about reading and the passion they share for stories were some of the most delightful aspects of the novel. Charlotte is witty, engaging, sensitive, perceptive, and compassionate. Her observations about life, marriage, children, and aging are astute. These observations intermittently weave in and out of the novel sandwiched between the events unfolding in the lives of the other characters.

What makes the story so delightful is Penelope Lively’s narrative voice. The tone is informal and engaging. Her wide range of characters are sympathetically drawn and well-developed, each speaking with a unique voice. Particularly successful are Lord Henry’s ego-inflated, out of touch and out of time prognostications. Lively moves nimbly between characters and flips back and forth in time with great ease. She has an astute eye for physical and emotional detail. She knows what to say and what to leave unsaid, trusting her reader to fill in the blanks. Her asides and commentary reflect her perceptive observations and insights concerning the quirks and foibles of human behavior. She does it all with a delightful sense of humor and in a language that is informal, upbeat, and engaging.  

An entertaining read that provides a light interlude to be sandwiched between more heavy reading.

Highly recommended.

An Imaginary Life

David Malouf

David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life envisions the life of the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso in the first century CE after Emperor Augustus banishes him to Tomis, a desolate village bordering the Black Sea, on the outskirts of the Roman Empire, at the edge of civilization. Malouf imagines the author of Metamorphoses recounting his own experience with metamorphosis through his first-person voice.

Deprived of the comforts of a life of luxury in Rome, Ovid endures an existence stripped to its bare minimum at Tomis. He lives in a hut, relies on others to survive, and since none speak Latin, is bereft of speech until he learns to speak their language. He is painfully self-conscious of his status as an outsider, viewed with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity by the villagers.

Ovid’s transformations are gradual, internal, and experienced in separate stages. First, he learns the villagers’ language, joins them on their hunts, assists with net-making, and cultivates an appreciation for their lifestyle, recognizing it as one more grounded in reality than his previous life in Rome. He sheds his former identity and is born anew:

It is about to begin. All my life till now has been wasted. I had to enter the silence to find a password that would release me from my own life.

One day, Ovid sees a young feral boy in the distance. The boy is captured and brought back to the village where Ovid becomes his caregiver and teacher. He tries to tame the wildness out of the boy and teach him the ways of living among humans. But circumstances change and, in an ironic twist, the novel concludes with the boy as guide and Ovid as student.

In lyrical, luminous language, Malouf explores the boundary between civilization and nature. He uses Ovid as his vehicle to articulate a metamorphosis from an urbane existence to one of total immersion in the natural environment. Ovid learns from his feral companion to read and appreciate nature and to live in total harmony within it. His final transformation, a merger with the earth from where he sprang, is accepted with total peace and equanimity.

The narrative unfolds in a beautiful, poetic prose laced with mysticism and mythology. It includes flashbacks to Ovid’s childhood, recollections of dream sequences, and meditations on his life. From his initial assessment of living with barbarians, Ovid re-fashions himself twice over. By releasing his former self, he embraces his new identity, first as one of the villagers and then as a student of nature learning at the feet of a child master teacher.

The novel can be interpreted on multiple levels. It is an allegory, situating Australia at its center, and representing Ovid’s metamorphoses as a culture’s gradual acceptance of and appreciation for the indigenous people and their knowledge of the environment. It conveys the wisdom and re-prioritization that can come with aging. It is an account of the internal metamorphoses and life-altering experiences of the author of Metamorphoses. And, finally, it recounts a man’s quest for self and belonging.

Recommended.

The Book of Night Women

Marlon James

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James is a sweeping masterpiece set in a late eighteenth century Jamaican sugar plantation. The central character is a slave named Lilith.

Born into slavery, Lilith is singled out because of her green eyes. She is fortunate in that she is not required to perform the back-breaking task of working in the fields. As soon as she is old enough, Lilith becomes a house slave at the Montpelier Estate. There she interacts with other house slaves and is taken under the wing by Homer, the female head house slave. She experiences close-up the inhuman and demeaning treatment of slaves by slave-owners and overseers. She recognizes the hierarchy among slaves and sees how they are pitted against each other. Eventually, she becomes embroiled in a slave plot to rebel against the slaveowners.

In addition to describing the horrific conditions of slavery, this coming of age story shows Lilith struggling to understand herself and her identity as a woman and a slave. She feels torn between two cultures, aspiring to be recognized and treated as a desirable young woman but constantly being reminded of how she is perceived as nothing more than chattel. Her back is riddled with scars as a result of the frequent lashings she receives. She witnesses the unimaginable brutality perpetrated on slaves. She gravitates between hatred for slaveowners and a strong desire for acceptance, recognition, and love. Her feelings become increasingly conflicted when she finds herself developing a push and pull attachment to the Irish overseer who shows her tenderness and consideration.

The novel bristles with detailed and graphic description of unimaginable acts of physical and sexual violence. Frequent references to human body parts, especially female body parts, punctuate the narrative. Limbs are cut, torsos are lashed, flesh is burned, eyes are gouged, heads are severed, and every orifice of the human body is raped, tortured, or both. Marlon James does not sugar-coat the violence. His explicit descriptions are not for the faint-hearted.

What makes this novel an astounding achievement is the narrative voice, the identity of which remains a mystery until the end. The narrative unfolds in the rhythm, dialect, and syntax of Jamaican English. The dialogue is rendered realistically. James captures the ebb and flow of the vernacular so adroitly that one gets the sense of overhearing an actual conversation.

A narrative voice that is spell-binding; a cast of well-developed, strong, and highly complex female characters; description that immerses the reader in time and place; and an intricate plot that captivates from beginning to end—these are just some of the factors that make this a remarkable achievement.

Very highly recommended.