The Last Hours

Minette Walters

The Last Hours by Minette Walters is the first book in a historical trilogy that takes place in Dorsetshire in 1348 when the area was first afflicted with the Black Death. It focuses on Lady Anne of Develish and her struggle to save the serfs and others under her care when her husband dies of the plague.

 Lady Anne is an anomaly among women of the period. Educated by nuns, intelligent, and politically astute, she is married to the licentious and brutal Sir Richard. She treats serfs with compassion and humility, teaching them literacy and the importance of maintaining strict personal and public hygiene. When news reaches of her husband’s death, she welcomes the serfs to the moat surrounding the Manor House to protect them from the pestilence, denying entry and exit to all others to prevent the spread of the disease. She has the support and loyalty of the serfs but must contend with hostility and aggression from her daughter, Eleanor. Her husband’s Norman steward distrusts her actions due to her insistence on empowering the serfs. Anxiety, food shortages, and the suspicious death of a young boy add to the problems facing this isolated community.

The historical research for the novel is impressive. Walters drives home the inequality of the period in which serfs are treated as chattel while their masters grow fat by exploiting their labor. The social hierarchies and class discrepancies are omnipresent and especially evident in the contrasting views of the serfs expressed by Lady Anne and Eleanor. Walters immerses the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of the plague. She shows how the pestilence spreads suspicion and shatters the established norms of society by destroying lives, eliminating status, and modifying codes of behavior.

The novel’s strength lies in generating the atmosphere of isolation and fear pervading the communities suffering from the plague in 14thC England. But the character portrayals were weak. The characters were one-dimensional—either too good to be true or too wicked to have a single redeeming quality. They lacked subtlety and nuance. Lady Anne was so far ahead of her time in attitudes and beliefs that she stretched plausibility to the limit. The excessive amounts of telling and too little showing slowed the pace, dragging the narrative down unnecessarily. This was very evident in Thaddues’ ramble through the countryside in search of food and supplies. Many of the redundancies and repetitions could have been edited out, making for a much tighter construction and shorter novel. The novel lacks a satisfactory resolution as it ends with an abrupt cliffhanger in preparation for the next book in the series.

Recommended with reservations.

The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales From 1001 Nights

Yasmine Seale, trans.; Paulo Lemos Horta, ed.

The Annotated Arabian Nights, translated by Yasmine Seale with an introduction and annotations by Paulo Lemos Horta, is a 700-page tome that is a visual and intellectual delight. The research is extensive, exploring the Arabian Nights from its beginnings; its translators; its various permutations and translations; its literary and artistic offshoots; and culminating with a selection of retellings. Its pages are adorned with the beautiful illustrations the stories have inspired throughout the centuries, including the enchanting illustrations of Edmund Dulac and the contemporary illustrations of Dia al-Azawi. This magnificent piece of scholarship includes a Foreword by Omar El Akkad, an Afterword by Robert Irwin, and an extensive bibliography.

The volume is in five parts: Part I is Tales from Arabic; Part II is Tales from French; Part III is Hanna Diyab Tales; Part IV is Translators of the Arabian Nights; and Part V is Retellings of Arabian Nights. Paulo Lemos Horta’s Introduction places the Nights in its historical, cultural, and social context; critiques previous translations; and explores its many iterations in art and theatre. His invaluable annotations appear on the margins of each page. These provide commentary, context, analysis, geographical locations, and explanations of the social and cultural mores of the time. They also include how a particular passage, theme, character, or event has re-surfaced in the work of subsequent authors and artists.

Yasmine Seale’s translation has a contemporary feel. She strips the tales of the archaism, exoticism, and Euro-centric lens of previous translations, which had claimed authenticity by presenting the tales as embodying the life and customs of the Arabs. Whereas Victorian translators routinely undercut female characters, Seale re-introduces strong female characters missing from previous translations. She captures the rhythm, ambiguity, irony, and spirit of the Arabic while giving voice to a Shahrazad who is intelligent, courageous, and a formidable warrior for justice. Shahrazad reminds us stories can be powerful transformational tools. Her use of storytelling to educate others and to fight oppression and injustice has inspired countless generations of storytellers to do the same.

The Annotated Arabian Nights is a remarkable piece of scholarship. The volume is a visual feast for the eyes and an inspiring feast for the mind. It should be savored slowly, allowing the eye and the mind to pause, linger, and treasure.

Very highly recommended.

Latitudes of Longing

Shubhangi Swarup

Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup consists of four novellas in which one or more characters in each novella forges a latitudinal connection with a character in the subsequent story, thereby linking the stories. The four sections, labeled Islands, Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert, spread across the Andaman Islands, Myanmar, Nepal, and Antarctica.

The first section on the Andaman Islands is the strongest. It follows the life of Girija Prasad who studies plants and trees, while his wife, Chanda, talks to trees and sees ghosts. The diction is lyrical and sensuous, weaving myth, flora, fauna, and magic in prose that is lush and immersive. Girija Prasad’s character is realistic and enchanting. He displays a love for Chanda that is tender, patient, and fused with wonder at her mysterious abilities. The second section abandons the lush prose and thrusts the reader into graphic scenes of imprisonment, torture, and the brutality experienced by a political prisoner during the military dictatorship of Myanmar/Burma. Sections three and four are stories of love and longing.

Elements of magical realism weave throughout the sections as do folktales, stories within stories, and flashbacks of the characters’ lives. Nature is depicted in a state of continuous flux with its monsoons, tsunamis, shifting glaciers, receding oceans, and rising and shrinking mountains. The scenic backdrop serves to reinforce the view that humans are just tiny specks within the vastness of geological time and an ever-morphing nature.

Although this debut work shows a lot of potential, unfortunately, it loses steam after the first section. The remaining sections ramble and become increasingly incoherent. Swarup’s apparent effort to articulate a vision that unites politics, culture, and spirituality with the natural environment is commendable. But it fails in execution primarily because of the fractured nature of the stories. She overshoots her mark by being too ambitious. Her overwriting is evident; her attempt to philosophize smothers. Despite these flaws, Shubhangi Swarup shows she is capable of writing spell-binding prose so long as she doesn’t overreach.

Recommended with reservations.

The Girls of Slender Means

Muriel Spark

The setting for The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark is a London hostel for young women called the May Teck Club. The year is 1945 at the closing of World War II. Rations and coupons are in high demand. The women residents discuss lovers, food, jobs, coupons, diets, who gets to wear the much sought-after Schiaparelli gown, and who is thin enough to sneak through the upstairs lavatory window to have a clandestine meeting with a lover on the roof.

The women are seemingly oblivious to the political events of the time and conduct their lives as if all is normal. Their superficial concerns are humorous against the backdrop of a world in ruins. The narrative flashes back and forth in time. Among those at the hostel is Joanna, an elocution teacher whose overheard poetry recitations frequently interrupt the narrative. Meanwhile, Jane who works in book publishing, demands quiet while she performs “brain-work.” This consists primarily of fabricating fan letters to famous people in the hope of cashing in on a signed reply. Selina is the beauty in the group who attracts men with ease. Throw into the mix several girls who giggle a lot and a couple of young men who frequent the club, one of whom is married and having an adulterous affair with one of the women; the other is Selena’s lover and an aspiring author.

The narrative drifts from one character or situation to the next. It is peppered with humor, witticisms, and sarcasm but there is no plot, little continuity, and sparse character development. Perhaps its strength lies in depicting the post-war atmosphere as consisting of young people aimlessly drifting while engaging in superficial dialogue to avoid confronting the horrors of war. If so, the narrative echoes the aimless drift in so far as it seems to meander along without much rhyme or reason.

The White Book

Han Kang; translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

The White Book by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, is an autobiographical meditation using fragmented images of objects in the color white to serve as the backdrop for the narrator’s grief at the death of her older sister who died two hours after her birth.

The narrator opens the novel by listing items in the color white, many of which connect to her baby sister: swaddling bands, newborn gown, moon, shroud, etc. She describes snow, blizzards, frozen lakes, a white bird, a white dog, and other manifestations of white. Also included is her mother’s narrative of being alone while undergoing the premature birth and subsequent death of the infant. The fragmented images serve as catalysts for meditation.

While on a writer’s residency in Warsaw, the narrator observes how the remnants of bombed out buildings have been incorporated into new structures as permanent reminders of the past. She entertains a parallel thought that she has incorporated her sister into her being. She circles back to the scene of her baby sister’s birth and death several times and projects various scenarios incorporating her sister had she survived. By integrating her sister into her life and her writing, the narrator asserts her as a living presence.

Kang’s language is poetic and delicate; the tone elegiac and reflective. Each image invites contemplation. Some images are only a few lines long. The format is unusual in that there are blank pages and copious amounts of white space between images. This suggests the narrator offers the reader empty space to contemplate the image and/or to project meaning on the blank screen.

The cumulative impact of fragmented images, sensitive musings on the color white, and grief at a sibling’s death accentuate the transience and fragility of life. The narrator is haunted by her past, by her guilt at surviving when her sister did not. Her pain is evident, as is her longing to transcend that pain through language and imagery. What emerges is a compelling narrative in an unconventional format capturing the poignancy of dealing with loss.

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

Sandy Tolan

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan is a work of non-fiction chronicling the four-decade old friendship between Bashir Khairi, a Palestinian, and Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, an Israeli Jew. Sandy Tolan, a professor of Journalism, includes the history of the formation of Israel and its increasing encroachment on Palestinian land.

The book opens with Bashir and two of his cousins traveling from the Palestinian town of Ramallah to the Israeli town of Ramla to see their former homes now occupied by Israeli families. Completion of Bashir’s home, built decades ago by his father, was commemorated by the planting of a lemon tree in the back yard that has since grown and blossomed. Bashir knocks on the door and when Dalia opens it, he explains this was his family’s home and he asks permission to see it. Dalia graciously lets them in and allows the three men to look around. So begins an unlikely friendship between Dalia and Bashir.

Tolan gives an overview of world events, including the two world wars, that led to the formation of Israel and the partitioning of Palestinian land. He provides the backstories of the respective families. Bashir’s family was expelled from their homeland by the Israelis; Dalia’s family, who fled from Bulgaria to Israel during World War II, moved in to what they were told was an abandoned home. As Dalia and Bashir become friends, visit each other’s homes, and share their respective histories, Dalia realizes a terrible injustice has been perpetrated on the Palestinians. As her husband, Yehezkel, says, “ . . . you are the only ones who have a legitimate grievance against us. And deep down, even those who deny it know it.”

The tension between the two friends is palpable when describing their conflicting positions. Dalia recognizes the injustice while simultaneously trying to explain to Bashir what the land has meant to Jews for centuries. Bashir reminds her the land belonged to Palestinians for generations and insists that because it was stolen, it should be returned. He argues it is unjust to punish Palestinians for the atrocities committed against the Jews by the Europeans. Their relationship is interrupted when Bashir is suspected of being a terrorist and is beaten, tortured, and incarcerated in an Israeli jail for over a decade. Eventually, Dalia and Bashir agree on a compromise and turn the home into a school for Arab and Israeli children.

Sandy Tolan is to be commended for giving a human face to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Bashir and Dalia recognize they have a shared history of oppression and persecution. Both were forced to flee their homes to preserve their lives. Despite individual efforts, however, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far too complex for individuals to solve alone. The solution must come through the unbiased and fair-minded intervention of powerful people in positions of authority. The irony is that it was powerful people in positions of authority who generated the conflict in the first place through the decisions they imposed. Those same individuals are no longer alive to bear the brunt of pain, anguish, and suffering their actions have caused and continue to inflict on subsequent generations.

Purple Hibiscus

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Set against the backdrop of civil unrest and a military coup in Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a coming-of-age story of fifteen-year-old Kambili. The story unfolds in Kambili’s first-person voice.

Kambili lives at home with her father, mother, and brother. Kambili’s father, Eugene, is affluent and well-respected in the community. Kambili tries to reconcile her father’s esteemed position in the community with the father she experiences at home. Eugene is a fanatic Catholic, determined to stamp out even the slightest whiff of indigenous traditions. He runs his household like a prison camp, always on the lookout for behavior he considers deviant. His punishment is swift and cruel. He physically abuses his wife and children if they do not meet his unrealistic expectations. His family lives in perpetual fear, treading carefully around him and saying only what they think he wants to hear.

The extent of their oppressive home life becomes apparent to Kambili and her brother when they visit their Aunty Ifeoma. Although living in poverty, Aunty Ifeoma and her children are happy. Their home is infused with laughter, songs, and unrestricted chatter in a relaxed atmosphere. They exhibit pride in their Nigerian heritage, indigenous traditions, and spirituality. The experience of a healthy home atmosphere prompts Kambili and her brother to rebel against their father. He punishes Kambili so severely she is hospitalized. After her mother commits a desperate act to protect her children, it falls upon Kambili’s shoulders to assume responsibility for holding the family together.

Adichie’s characters are rich with ambiguity. On the one hand, Eugene is a generous man. He donates regularly to charitable causes, feeds the hungry, pays tuition for children whose parents are poor, gives to the church, and lives up to his reputation as a leader in the community who can be counted on to help. On the other hand, he is intransigent, cruel, violent, dictatorial, and brutal towards his family.

Kambili struggles with the conflicting images of her father. She desperately wants to win his approval and savors his praise and attention. But she also lives in abject fear of his violent temper. As the novel progresses, her voice strengthens and becomes increasingly discerning. She recognizes her father has suffocated any hope of a healthy home environment with his fanatic religiosity and iron-fisted control of his family’s daily activities.

Kambili is shy, fragile, and vulnerable. Her voice is authentic. At first, she discloses her father’s acts of violence through hints and innuendo as if to indicate a reluctance to acknowledge his cruelty. Her stay with Aunt Ifeoma exposes her to a way of life free of violence and fear that she never knew existed. Initially embarrassed by her ignorance of the outside world, she eventually bonds with her cousins and learns to adapt. She blossoms. She experiences first love. She grows in strength and aptitude.

Adichie delivers a sensitive coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of political and domestic violence. It ends on a hopeful note with Kambili as a mature, self-assured young woman who assumes the role as head of the family.

Highly recommended.

At Night All Blood is Black

David Diop; translated by Anna Moschovakis

Winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize, At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis, chronicles the descent into madness by a Senegalese soldier fighting with the French in the trenches in World War I.

Unfolding in the first-person point of view of Alfa Ndiaye, the novels opens with a shocking image and revelation. Alfa Ndiaye’s “more-than-brother” childhood friend, Mademba Diop, has been fatally wounded. With his guts sprawled outside his body, he pleads with Ndaiye three times to put him out of his misery. Ndaiye can’t do it. He lies next to him and waits for him to die. As soon as Mademba takes his last breath, Ndaiye experiences a profound sense of guilt for not honoring his friend’s last request. He carries his friend’s body back to the trench for burial. And that is when he begins to unravel.

Ndaiye embarks on a gruesome ritual of capturing German soldiers to torture and mutilate. He slits open the stomach of each soldier he captures, pulls out his insides, and lies next to him to watch him die. He severs the soldier’s hand and takes it back to the trenches as a trophy. Initially, his comrades congratulate him for his bravery and ingenuity. But after he brings back the seventh severed hand, they begin to fear and avoid him as a devourer of souls. Eventually, Ndaiye is sent to a field hospital to recuperate.

A series of flashbacks about his childhood and his friendship with Mademba convince Ndaiye he is to blame for Mademba’s death. Consumed with guilt, he circles back to his childhood, his first sexual encounter, and he contrasts his impressive physique with that of Mademba. His conviction that a young French nurse in the hospital physically desires him leads to rape. His constant refrain that he speaks “God’s truth” is ironic since he is far from being a reliable narrator.

The contrast between Ndaiye’s childhood and his touching first sexual experience to the brutal, torture-loving man he becomes is horrific. His descent into madness is replete with graphic images of female sexual organs as metaphors for the trenches. Ndaiye recognizes the insanity of war which expects the savagery and madness be switched on or off with the flip of a switch at the captain’s command. He also sees that exploitation of the “chocolat” soldiers is reinforced by the French captain using racist stereotypes to urge the African soldiers to behave with excess brutality on the battlefield.

The language is visceral and graphic; the translation sounds authentic, capturing Ndaiye’s rhythmic diction. The novel opens with the words, “ . . . I KNOW, I UNDERSTAND, I shouldn’t have done it.” Done what? The question is open-ended since there is so much he shouldn’t have done. Desperate for atonement, Ndaiye’s struggle and descent into madness graphically illustrate the savage consequences of war and its horrific impact on the psyche by stripping it of compassion and humanity.

Depicting the intersection of racism, masculinity, violence, and war, this is a compelling novel. But it may not be for everyone because of its graphic description of violence.

Crimes of Conscience: Selected Short Stories

Nadine Gordimer

Crimes of Conscience: Selected Short Stories by Nadine Gordimer, the 1991 Nobel Prize laureate, is a collection of eleven stories set in South Africa. The stories vary from first person point of view to third person point of view. They all have in common characters who are put in the position of having to make a difficult choice, one which frequently leads to a crime of conscience and its concomitant feelings of guilt.

Gordimer’s characters are caught up in a South Africa in the grip of the violence and political turmoil of apartheid. With depth and breadth, she explores the subtleties and nuances of her characters’ emotions against this background. Her characters face a moral quandary and must choose. Why they choose to do what they do is sometimes not clear even to them. But in one form or another, they are all plagued with guilt for the choices they make.

The situations vary. A wife betrays her husband’s friend to the authorities. A white farmer’s son murders the infant daughter he has fathered with a black farm hand. A former guerilla leader remembers only too late how much he owes to the white lawyer and his wife for opening their home to him. A village chief reports the presence of strangers in his village with devastating consequences. A man reveals to his lover he has been sent to spy on her. The destruction of termites and their queen under the floorboards of a home takes on symbolic significance, haunting a child well into her adult years. A refugee grandmother must choose between saving her spouse or her grandchildren.

Gordimer’s movement from one situation to another, from one setting to another, and from one voice to another seems effortless. Her characters are authentic. They are complex and deeply felt. Her observations on people in morally complicated situations are honest, astute, and depicted with a sensitivity to their predicament and their weaknesses.

There are no easy answers to the dilemmas posed in these stories. Set against the background of an apartheid South Africa where systemic racism is the rule of law, Nadine Gordimer’s stories remind us that living under an oppressive government takes a tragic toll on people’s lives and thrusts them in moral dilemmas where they feel they have no choice but to commit crimes of conscience.

Very highly recommended.

Nature Obscura: A City's Hidden Natural World

Kelly Brenner

Nature Obscura: A City’s Hidden Natural World by Kelly Brenner explores the microflora and microfauna of an urban landscape that many of us either don’t see or simply take for granted.

Brenner, a naturalist blogger, organizes her book around the seasons. She visits the same location, even her backyard, at different times of the year to record the changes in plant and animal life brought about by the changes in weather. She is meticulous in her explorations, recording and documenting what she sees and hears in the minutest details. Her reverence for all living organisms, including the microscopic ones, is evident. She gently lifts a piece of bark or a rock or a shell so as not to disturb the habitat of what lies beneath. And what she doesn’t know or can’t identify, she solves by soliciting the help of experts.

Not all her locations are urban since she visits nature reserves, parks, shores, wetlands, forests, and graveyards. Her curiosity, sense of wonder, and enthusiasm at what she discovers is palpable. Who would have thought that mold, fungi, moss, and lichen could generate such excitement or have a multitude of varieties? Brenner shows the same level of enthusiasm for the hummingbird as the hardy but minuscule tardigrade that is so weird-looking, it might be a suitable candidate for a science fiction movie.

In writing that is accessible and conversational, Brenner’s work is full of interesting insights and observations. Above all, it is a meditation on the connectedness of all living things, from the most minuscule creature whose presence and movement can only be detected with a strong microscope to the majestic trees and the flora and fauna who inhabit them. Through her explorations and discoveries, she shares the wonder of nature and introduces us to the scientists who have advanced our knowledge about the natural world. She invites her readers to conduct their own explorations by providing instructions and tools for those harboring urban naturalist aspirations.

Recommended.

The Book Smuggler

Omaima Al-Khamis; translated by Sarah Enanny

Winner of the 2018 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, The Book Smuggler by Omaima Al-Khamis, translated from the Arabic by Sarah Enany, recounts the adventures of Mazid Al-Hanafi as he journeys to various capitals in the Middle East and Spain in the 11th Century CE. His journey coincides with a time of transition when political and religious conflicts were ubiquitous in the Islamic world. Rivalry between the factions was rampant with different sects having the upper hand across the region.

Mazid leaves home with a thirst for learning and exploration. He is a bookseller with a passion for books at a time when certain books were considered blasphemous and could land a person in prison or dead were they to be found in his possession. Undeterred but cautious, Mazid devours books of Islamic thinkers and Greek philosophers, determined to preserve them for future generations. His travels take him to Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Granada, and Cordoba.

While in Baghdad, Mazid is initiated into a secret society of books smugglers, individuals who risk their lives to preserve and disseminate books containing scientific and philosophical knowledge. He is given a chest of books and tasked with distributing them on his travels to individuals who will benefit from and appreciate them. The work is dangerous. He approaches each city cautiously and does not reveal the controversial books until he has satisfied himself that the selected individual can be trusted and is worthy of receiving the precious gift. He also connects with other members of the secret society by using code words to identify himself.

Al-Khamis’ detailed and vivid description immerse the reader in the zeitgeist of 11th Century Islam. Mazid attends the mosques in each city to pray and to attend discussion circles of the various sheikhs. He learns about the politics of the city, which faction/sect is fermenting dissent, who is accusing whom of blasphemy, and the ubiquitous conspiracies at court. He becomes embroiled in political intrigue everywhere he goes and is obliged to make a hasty exit with his treasury of books.

The novel is steeped in the history of the time, perhaps more so than it needs to be. Although a table of historical figures, dynasties, people, and terms is included in the beginning of the novel, the amount of detail and references to various historical individuals, quotations, poems, tribes, caliphs, different sects, and who is fighting whom coalesce to bury the reader in a morass of confusing detail. It was hard to keep track of who, what, where, how, when, and why.

Mazid’s growth from a naïve young man to one intimately involved in the political and religious struggles of the day was compelling. His journeys on the caravans and his sojourns in various cities vividly immerse the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of traveling through deserts and experiencing the atmosphere of a medieval Arab city. But the many references to religious and political individuals, the excessive detail of sectarian rifts and debates can be bewildering to someone with little more than a cursory knowledge of the historical intricacies of the period. Their presence clouds what would otherwise have been a much stronger novel.

Miss Benson's Beetle

Rachel Joyce

Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce is a quick and easy read about an unlikely friendship between two very different women as they set sail for a scientific expedition.

The central character is Margery Benson, a single school teacher in her mid-forties. World War II has ended, but England hasn’t fully recovered from the bombings, shortages in supplies, and rationing. Conscious of her shabby existence and shabby appearance, Margery is lonely and alone in the world. And then, one day, she snaps. Confiscating a particularly unflattering sketch of her drawn by one of her students, Margery does something uncharacteristically spontaneous. She runs out of the school, stealing the deputy’s new boots along the way. She has never stolen anything in her life.

Convinced it’s a matter of time before the police catch up with her, Margery decides to leave the country. She will indulge her lifelong fascination with insects by escaping to New Caledonia in quest of the elusive golden beetle to present to the Entomology Department at the Natural History Museum. She advertises for an assistant, and after a series of bumps and starts, she hires the young and flamboyant Enid Pretty. Their adventure begins.

The women are a study in contrasts—Margery in her dowdy brown outfits and sensible boots and Enid in her tight outfits, pom-pom sandals, and flaming blond hair. Their personalities couldn’t be more different. Margery is methodical, organized, prefers to remain unobtrusive and quiet. Enid is garrulous, charismatic, ostentatious, and with a flair for attracting male admirers. They travel together by sea, plane, boat, and car; survive cyclones and torrential rains; navigate challenging terrain; collect and document rare insects; share meager supplies; and experience unexpected dangers. As a result of their adventures and misadventures, they experience growth and cement a close friendship based on mutual respect, acceptance, support, and love.

Joyce excels in describing the natural environment. Her descriptions are rich with sensory detail and immersive. The reader is transported to the rain forest of New Caledonia and walks alongside Margery and Enid as they hack their way up the mountain through dense foliage while mosquitoes nibble away at them. But the novel also has its weaknesses. Although there are moments when the characters are portrayed realistically and show some depth, for the most part, they border on being caricatures. The events are far-fetched; the humor leans toward slapstick. But this plot-driven novel is a quick, easy, and entertaining read if approached with reduced expectations in terms of character depth and plausibility.

Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women

Annabel Abbs

In Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women, Annabel Abbs retraces the steps of exceptional women who had a passion for walking. Her selection of women is international: Frieda Lawrence, the German wife and muse of D.H. Lawrence; Gwen John, a Welsh artist; Clara Vyvyan, an Australian author; Daphne Du Maurier, an English author; Nan Shepherd, a Scottish author; Simone de Beauvoir, a French writer and feminist theorist; and Georgia O’Keeffe, an American artist.

Abbs provides brief sketches of the lives of each of these women and conducts extensive research on their writing to determine where they walked, when they walked, why they walked, and how walking impacted their lives. Some ventured to exotic locations far from home, while others preferred to walk closer to home. But they all experience the same exhilaration of simply putting one foot in front of the other and walking.

Their reasons for walking primarily had to do with the need to assert themselves, take pride in their physical prowess, and claim their autonomy. Unfortunately, some of them had latched on to men who dominated and confined them while toying with their affections. Walking became a release, a freedom from the cloying atmosphere of male domination.

The book is also part memoir since Abbs interjects details about her personal life and the challenges she faces as a mother whose children will soon be leaving home. She uses the lives and walking experience of these women to serve as her platform for sharing her experiences, exploring her thoughts, and working through some of her challenges. Although these interjections can be interesting and insightful, they interrupt the narrative flow. One minute we are experiencing Frieda’s exhilaration in the Alps; the next minute we are invited to observe the Abbs’ family quibbling about toads in a concrete bunker. The effect is jarring, the juxtaposition incongruous.

Abbs performs a valuable service by focusing her lens on these extraordinary women. To learn about their lives, to hear them speak in their own voices, to applaud their accomplishments, and to witness the transformative impact walking had on their lives make this an interesting and worthwhile read. It’s unfortunate the effect has been marred somewhat by personal interjections.

Recommended with some reservations.

All's Well

Mona Awad

All’s Well by Mona Awad is a wild romp into magical realism. The novel opens with Miranda Fitch lying on her office floor. An assistant professor in theatre, Miranda is determined to direct Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. But there’s a problem. Miranda suffers from chronic pain, the result of falling off the stage during one of her acting performances. The pain is so debilitating she can barely move. So she lies on her office floor, swallowing pain killers while ignoring repeated knocks on the door reminding her students are waiting.

Eventually, Miranda gets up and hobbles on to the stage to announce to the class they will be performing All’s Well. The students are disappointed since they had set their sights on performing Macbeth. The tug-of-war begins between Miranda and Briana, a student whose parents have donated generously to the theatre department. Making full use of her parents’ influence, Briana stages a coup in favor of Macbeth. It appears as if she will get her way, that is until Miranda steps into her local pub where she encounters three men. And that’s when the fun begins.

These are no ordinary men. They have mysterious powers, talk in riddles, are aware of Miranda’s predicament, assure her all will be well, and offer her a gold-colored miracle drink. Miranda drinks up only to find the chronic pain in her leg and hips has dissipated. The next day she learns anonymous donors have given generously to the theatre department and insist on seeing a performance of All’s Well. And that’s not all. The three men have bestowed on Miranda the trick of transferring her pain to others, which she does by simply touching Briana’s wrist. She brims with health while Briana’s condition deteriorates.

The further we get into the novel, the more surreal it becomes. Miranda hyperventilates words, thinks and speaks in staccato sentences, hallucinates, conducts conversations with people who aren’t there, and exhibits manic behavior. Meanwhile, she radiates energy, vitality, and sparkles with physical health. The play is eventually performed to an over filled theatre, the crowd demanding entrance as they wave the wrong theatre tickets. Briana miraculously recovers her health during the performance while Miranda chases a vision of her ex-husband.

The novel’s strength lies in its realistic portrayal of Miranda’s interiority, her chronic pain, and how others react to her invisible pain. A central focus is the way in which the medical profession refuses to acknowledge the reality of female pain. Miranda’s male physicians and therapists condescend, patronize, and dismiss her pain as if it is all in her head. Her desperation to alleviate pain makes her comply with their directions even when they pull, tug, stretch, prod, and poke her body while blithely ignoring her tortured cries of agony.

This excursion into magical realism borrows heavily from Shakespeare, as well as Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, and echoes Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The three men are the witches to Miranda’s Lady Macbeth. Her pact with the three men is Faust’s pact with Mephistopheles. Miranda is Shakespeare’s Miranda, the beneficiary of Prospero’s magic. And the transmission of her debilitating pain to Briana while she radiates physical health and vitality is a nod to Dorian Gray.

In the end, all’s well that ends well. Or is it? Is Miranda cured of her chronic pain? Was it all in her head, after all? Is she having some drug-addled hallucination? What exactly happened? The conclusion offers no clear answers. But what a roller coaster ride it was!

The Manningtree Witches

A. K. Blakemore

It is 1643 in Essex, England. The civil war is raging between the Puritans and Royalists. The time is rife with superstition and fear. Neighbor turns against neighbor. Scapegoats for life’s tragedies are hunted and persecuted. This is the setting for The Manningtree Witches by A. K. Blakemore, a blending of fact with fiction of the Puritan witch trials in which several women were executed for witchcraft in 1645 in the village of Manningtree. The protagonist is Rebecca West, the 19-year-old daughter of Beldam West, the ostensible ring-leader of the witches.

Life was never easy in Manningtree, but it takes a turn for the worse when the mysterious Matthew Hopkins, “the witchfinder,” moves into the village. Hopkins is on a mission to ferret out witches and bring them to trial. He gives full vent to his misogynism under the guise of doing “God’s work,” sniffing here and sniffing there until he finds a suitable target. His laser-sharp focus pinpoints weak, vulnerable, impoverished, elderly widows living on the margins of society who are easy prey. Through Rebecca’s eyes, we see the patriarchal hunting machine in full force as it singles out these women, solicits testimony against them, examines their frail bodies for evidence of satanic activities, uses their poverty as a sign of weakness, demonizes their pets, tortures them to solicit confessions, and twists their words to obtain a conviction and execution. Logic and common sense are in short supply. Rebecca, caught in the web of conspiracy against these women because of her mother, is temporarily incarcerated with them but obtains her release by telling the patriarchal court what it wants to hear.

The novel unfolds primarily through Rebecca’s first-person point of view. But it shifts sporadically to third person to describe scenes and events in which Rebecca is not present. These unnecessary shifts can be jarring and confusing. Rebecca’s diction is detailed and evocative. Replicating the idioms of 17th century England, it is replete with graphic descriptions, pungent odors, and immersive imagery. The diction is generally effective but can occasionally veer toward being too flowery and obscure.

The novel’s strength lies in its realistic character portrayals and in its lyrical description of the sights, sounds, smells, squalor, and poverty of 17th century England. Superstition, fear, Puritan fervor, lies, petty jealousies, and betrayal coalesce to scapegoat destitute women living on the fringes of society. The tension gradually builds up as layer upon layer of “evidence” against the women accumulates until the unthinkable happens.

The portrayal of the misogynistic Matthew Hopkins, clothed head to toe in black, is particularly effective as he sniffs around for vulnerable, elderly women to victimize. He is simultaneously sexually aroused and repulsed by a woman’s flesh. Rebecca’s mother, the fearless Beldam, emerges as the most powerful female. She is a crone in every sense of the word—a woman who refuses to be intimidated by the patriarchy, who will not submit to male domination regardless of the consequence to her personal safety, who exercises agency, and whose voice is not silenced until the patriarchy puts the noose around her neck to silence it.

An atmospheric plunge into a tragic period in English history. Highly recommended.

The Wrong End of the Telescope

Rabih Alameddine

The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine explores the plight of refugees arriving on Lesbos. The narrative unfolds in the first-person voice of Dr. Mina Simpson, a transgender Lebanese-born doctor estranged from her family for decades. The short chapters and their quirky titles reflect Mina’s musings, sensitivity, and dry humor.

Mina, born Ayman, has been living in the United States for over thirty years. An experienced physician, she answers the call for help from a friend with a Swedish NGO assisting refugees arriving in Lesbos. Being so close to Lebanon conjures up memories of her childhood and family, the conflicts she had with her abusive mother for being trans, and her ensuing estrangement from her siblings except for her brother, Mazin.

Interspersed with flashbacks on her childhood and her life with her partner in America, Mina encounters refugees and hears their harrowing tales of oppression and escape. She is particularly drawn to Sumaiya, a Syrian wife and mother with terminal liver cancer. Sumaiya wants her condition kept secret for fear it might jeopardize her family’s chance of going to Europe.

While in Lesbos, Mina encounters a gay Lebanese author she had met and admired in the past. He is in Lesbos, presumably interviewing refugees for his novel. She addresses him as “you” in her narrative and includes his back story. But this unnamed author, possibly based on Alameddine, himself, has been severely impacted by the scale of human tragedy. He has become disillusioned and reclusive, hiding in his hotel room to avoid interaction. Mina and her friends temporarily draw him out of his self-imposed shell.

Mina describes the two groups in Lesbos with an acute eye for observation. The first group are the volunteers, some of whom come with genuine concern and desire to serve refugees; others come primarily prompted by a desire to be seen in an altruistic light. They take selfies while posing with refugees and behave with shocking insensitivity. The second group are the refugees, themselves. And, here, Mina’s description is at its strongest. As an Arab and a volunteer, Mina straddles between the two groups. She speaks the language of refugees and understands their culture in ways American and European volunteers do not.

The media posits refugees as a group of indistinguishable individuals hoarded together en masse. Mina gives each refugee she meets a unique identity and background, ranging from the crotchety, grumbling grandmother; to the Iraqi child who holds her hand and guides her through the camp; to the young newlyweds who can barely keep their hands off each other; to Sumaiya and her family; and to countless others. They are unique, well-rounded human beings with a story to tell. All are portrayed with sensitivity, empathy, and compassion. And all are depicted as struggling to make the best of a horrendous situation, waiting patiently in long lines for documents and food amid the squalor and the mud.

The seamless blend of fact with faction grounds the novel in real events. Rabih Alameddine reverses the customary lens. He looks through the wrong end of the telescope to shine a light on the volunteers and journalists as they are perceived by the refugees. In the process, he portrays refugees as complex individuals who have embarked on a heroic struggle to survive after losing their homes, livelihoods, and families. He bears witness to their struggle without being maudlin or creeping toward sensationalism. No matter how brief the encounter, each refugee discards anonymity, assumes a unique identity, is presented as fully fleshed-out and as well-deserving of our sympathy.

Recommended.

The Wild Fox of Yemen

Threa Almontaser

The Wild Fox of Yemen by the Yemeni American author, Threa Almontaser, thrusts the reader into a whirlwind. Almontaser’s diction is bold, exuberant, vibrant, and sizzles with electricity.

The poems address multiple topics: navigating a space between two cultures; interrogating what it means to be a Muslim black woman in America; immigrant assimilation; the yearning to belong; othering; Islamophobia in post 9/11 America; dreams and nightmares; body image; visits to Yemen; sexism; sexuality; politics; racism; and condemnation of the war in Yemen. Almontaser also includes translations of two poems by the Yemeni poet Abdullah Al-Baradouni.

Almontaser’s voice is unflinchingly honest and unapologetic. She peppers her poems with Arabic words, seamlessly moving from one language to another while crisscrossing cultural borders. Her images are vivid, startling, scattered, fragmentary, and burst energetically on the page. She uses strong, provocative language. Her voice is powerful; her roar, loud; her energy, untamed; her spirit, undaunted.

Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, this breathtaking collection draws the reader into Almontaser’s world imbued with personal and political intensity. If you enjoy the poetry of Walt Whitman, you will love the way Almontaser sounds her “barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

Very highly recommended.

My Father's Notebook

Kader Abdolah; translated by Susan Massotty

Kader Abdolah, the pen name for an Iranian political exile currently living in the Netherlands, wrote My Father’s Notebook in Dutch. Translated by Susan Massotty, the novel is in three parts. Part 1, told by an omniscient narrator, is the story of Aga Akbar and his son, Ishmael. Part 2 is told by Ishmael in the first-person. And Part 3 returns to the omniscient narrator to conclude the story. This structure allows the narrator to provide the back story of Aga Akbar and Ishmael while later allowing direct access to Ishmael’s interiority.

Part 1 introduces us to Aga Akbar, an illiterate deaf-mute who mends carpets and lives in an Iranian village at the foot of Saffron Mountain. Aga Akbar communicates using a rudimentary form of sign language that few people can understand. He writes cuneiform characters in a notebook that no one can decipher. When Ishmael is old enough, he acts as his father’s interpreter, going everywhere with him and mediating his father’s conversations. The two form such an inseparable bond that one becomes almost an extension of the other.

Part 2 unfolds in the first-person point of view of Ishmael, now living in the Netherlands. While describing his daily activities as an exile, he pours over his father’s notebook, trying to decipher the cryptic characters. This triggers flashbacks to his life and family in Iran. As a former political activist and an engaged member of the communist party in Iran, his life was in constant danger for opposing the shah and the mullahs who succeeded him. Forced to escape Iran when his identity is discovered, he loses connection with his family.

Part 3 is picked up by the omniscient narrator and includes the fate of Ishmael’s family after his departure from Iran.

Kader Abdolah weaves Persian legends, songs, myths, poems, and verses from the Koran throughout the novel. And intricately threading the narrative is the history of 20th Century Iran beginning with Reza Shah and concluding with the Khomeini government. The history, plagued with torture, disappearances, and the violent crush of dissent, renders the suffering of the Iranian people in somber detail.

The novel forms a rich tapestry in which the personal lives of Aga Akbar and Ishmael play out against the larger political framework. Infused throughout its pages is the profound love father and son have for each other. The vocabulary is unadorned and concise. The characters are vividly portrayed. Ishmael emerges as a soul adrift in a foreign land, desperately trying to decipher his father’s notebook as if to mitigate the guilt he feels for abandoning him and fleeing his homeland. His struggle to understand his father’s notebook can be read as a metaphor to reconnect the severed lines of communication between the simple, trusting Aga Akbars of this world and their educated, politically savvy offspring cut off from their origins.

The character who garners the most sympathy is Aga Akbar. He painstakingly struggles to make sense of the world around him, communicates in a sign language few people can understand, and writes in a notebook that only he can decipher. He is out of step with the times. His unwavering love for his son remains constant. A kind, generous, compassionate man, his silence speaks volumes.

Highly recommended.

The Garden of Evening Mists

Tan Twan Eng

An ethereal, meditative tone permeates the atmosphere of The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. The narrative unfolds in the first person-point of view of the Supreme Court judge in Kuala Lumpur, Teoh Yun Ling. Her voice is dull, bland, as if to suggest she has had a lifetime of repressing her emotions. Diagnosed with aphasia, Yun Ling retires to the Cameron Highlands, the tropical rain forest where she grew up and where the former gardener of the Emperor of Japan, Nakamura Aritomo, resides.

The narrative unfolds very slowly. The details of Yun Ling’s past emerge in fragments scattered throughout the novel in the form of extended flashbacks. The daughter of a prominent Chinese Malaysian family, Yun Ling and her sister had been captured by the Japanese during their invasion of Malaysia and sent to a prisoner of war camp where her sister was brutally and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers and where Yun Ling did what she had to do to survive.

The horrors of the prison camp are never far from Yun Ling’s memory, frequently impinging on her daily activities even decades later. Until her retirement, her professional life was dedicated to prosecuting Japanese war criminals and to locating the prison camp to retrieve her sister’s remains. With the onset of aphasia and the knowledge she is losing her memory and will soon lose her ability to understand language, she decides to honor a promise she made to her sister by hiring Aritomo to build a Japanese garden for her.

Aritomo declines to work for her, instead offering to take her on as his apprentice to teach her the skills in building a Japanese garden. Despite her hatred for Japanese, Yun Ling accepts. Against the violent backdrop of a Malaysia in turmoil after World War II, British occupation, and a communist insurgency, the Japanese garden forms a verdant oasis of peace and tranquility. As layer upon layer of the garden slowly takes shape, the connection between Aritomo and Yun Ling slowly deepens until they become lovers.

Tan Twan Eng weaves the concepts informing the ancient arts of Japanese gardening and tattooing with the brutality of war, the inhumane acts it generates, and the guilt associated with survival. In poetic language and immersive imagery, the novel explores the theme of remembering and forgetting—what we remember and what we try to forget. This is particularly poignant since Yun Ling suffers from aphasia and will soon forget the memories that haunt her.

Just as the Japanese garden is a deceptively simple construction, none of the characters are what they superficially appear to be. Their external veneers gradually strip away to reveal complex, conflicted personalities haunted by their past actions. And just as a Japanese garden requires empty space to fulfill its promise, the novel ends with empty space in the form of inconclusive answers to open-ended questions.

A finely crafted, mesmerizing novel, rich with ambiguity and suggestion.

Nightbitch

Rachel Yoder

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper meets Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis in Rachel Yoder’s riveting tale, Nightbitch.

The story is of a nameless middle-class woman, known as ‘the mother,’ married to a nameless engineer, known as ‘the husband,’ and their two-year-old toddler, known as ‘the boy.’ The three characters remain nameless throughout the novel to reinforce their anonymity and perhaps to suggest some of their generic qualities. The novel opens with the mother as a stay-at-home mom. After juggling work with breast pumps, a day care where the staff neglected her baby, exhaustion, guilt, guilt, and more guilt, she abandons her career to take care of her child. Her struggle begins. The husband, traveling during the week for his job, is blissfully clueless of his wife’s struggles and condition.

The mother spends all her weekdays with the boy who consumes every second of her every day and most of her nights with his persistent demands. She is lonely, desperate, resentful, exhausted, self-deprecating, and suffering from sleep-deprivation. The drudgery and monotony of catering to the needs of a demanding toddler eat away at her. She questions herself, questions her choices, questions her identity, and questions her future. She tries to bury her anger and resentment only to have it surface in an extraordinary way. She turns feral, experiencing a gradual transformation into a dog, complete with canines, fur, claws, a tail, and an insatiable appetite for raw meat. Her transformation takes place at night. She becomes the Nightbitch, prowling around at night on the hunt for little, furry creatures to clamp between her teeth.

The mother loves her son and is fiercely protective of him. But his all-consuming demands on her time and energy exhaust her. She has no time for herself. And on those rare occasions when she snatches a few minutes of quiet, she either sits in a semi-catatonic state or she cries. The only time she feels fully alive, fully herself, is in her doggy manifestation. Whether she actually metamorphoses into a dog or just imagines herself as one is never made clear. But what is clear is that her ostensible transformation into a wild beast enables her to release the frustration, loneliness, tedium, resentment, and suppressed anger she feels as a stay-at-home mother of a demanding toddler.

The novel is not for everyone because of the graphic descriptions, replete with blood and gore, of violence toward little, furry creatures. But the mother’s interiority is fascinating and will no doubt resonate with many stay-at-home mothers. The prose draws the reader in as we watch the mother question her sanity, struggle with her mothering role, embrace her canine persona, and follow her as she stalks the parks and streets at night.

A highly original, and, at times, hilarious story that articulates the feral side of motherhood. It will resonate with modern stay-at-home mothers who experience de-selfing, internal conflicts, guilt, isolation, a stifling of their creativity, and society’s erroneous assumptions about their lives. It does all this with penetrating insight and honesty.

Very highly recommended.