Vermeer in Bosnia

Lawrence Weschler

Lawrence Weschler, a staff writer for The New Yorker for more than 20 years until his retirement, was a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for journalism. His collection of essays, Vermeer in Bosnia, is an eclectic mix loosely divided under six headings. Part 1, “A Balkan Triptych” is by far the strongest. Here, Weschler connects seemingly disparate events and objects in fascinating ways. He draws a connection between Vermeer’s art and the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague; Henry V at Agincourt in 1415 with the massacre of 8,000 male Muslim prisoners at Srebrenica; and a loud speaker reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics during a protest demonstration in Belgrade.

Weschler follows this section with three Polish survivor stories, including a profile of Roman Polanski; essays under the general heading of Grandfathers and Daughters; three pieces on Los Angeles; and portraits of three artists, including David Hockney.

The collection is wide-ranging; the connections are creative; the writing is lucid and accessible. But unless one is interested in his meditations on family members, or on the works of particular artists, or on the background of Polish survivors of the Holocaust, or the nature of light in Los Angeles, these essays don’t offer the fascinating insights of the opening set of essays.

Reservoir 13

Jon McGregor

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor opens with news of thirteen-year-old Rebecca Shaw who has gone missing. Her parents are frantic. The villagers form a search party and comb through the area looking for the girl. Divers search the reservoirs. The police investigate; the news media flood the area. But there’s no sign of the girl anywhere.

McGregor plays on our expectations that the novel will be about the missing girl and what became of her. But just as he did in his later novel, Lean Fall Stand, he pivots to a new direction. His focus shifts to the collective group of villagers. In thirteen chapters, each of which represents a new year, McGregor offers brief glimpses of the villagers’ daily lives in painstaking detail. As a detached, impartial observer, the omniscient narrator takes us inside their hearts and minds, their conversations, their work, their loves, and their fears. Babies are born; people die; people get married; and people get divorced. Children grow up and head to university. Some find jobs; some come back. Narrative threads hinted at in one chapter are picked up in the subsequent years of the later chapters.

McGregor immerses us in the totality of village life—the people and the surrounding ecology. He shifts seamlessly from narrative to indirect dialogue to a character’s interiority to a detailed observation of an animal, a plant, or nature’s seasonal changes. A sentence about Sally and her abusive brother or Irene and her son with special needs is juxtaposed with a sentence describing a heron on the lake or a badger messing about in the woods. Nestling between insights into the villagers and their lives, we witness the inexorable passage of time. The sheep are herded; the fox gives birth; the boar calls out to the sow in mating season; the fish are biting; the weather turns. The juxtaposition appears random; the effect is cumulative; the view is both panoramic and all-encompassing.

The missing girl haunts the pages of the book. References to her or to her clothing crop up intermittently with each passing year. Her absence gnaws at us just as it does the villagers. We anticipate that on any page now, she will pop up alive and well or her body will be discovered when someone wades in the river or walks along the reservoir or trudges through the muddy woods.

McGregor’s control of his material is impressive. His prose is deliberate, dispassionate, contained. In lengthy paragraphs, in sentences choke-full of detail, in conversations reported exclusively in the indirect voice, and in narrative threads that are casually mentioned only to be picked up in a later chapter, McGregor has achieved something quite remarkable. For a novel that offers no closure and no plot, this is a powerful, mesmerizing, and rhythmic read, skillfully executed by a craftsman very much in control of his craft. Its impact will linger long after the final page has been read.

Very highly recommended.

Empty Wardrobes

Maria Judite De Carvalho; translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite De Carvalho, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, is about three generations of women. The primary focus is on Dora, a wife and mother. Her mother-in-law is the gregarious Ana; her daughter is the vivacious Lisa. The three generations correspond to the three phases in a woman’s life—the virgin, the mother, and the crone.

The novel opens years after the death of Dora’s husband. The story unfolds in the voice of Manuela, Dora’s friend. She tells Dora’s story out of sympathy for her since both have suffered in the hands of men. According to Manuela, the Dora before marriage loved to dance, dress up, and embraced life with exuberance. But the Dora after marriage is the opposite. She mirrors her husband, adopting his spartan life-style, his disdain for the simple pleasures of life, and his total lack of ambition. She loses her identity, her voice, and her agency. She wears dowdy clothes, neglects her appearance, and seems to have lost all energy for life. She persists in this manner for a decade after her husband’s death until her mother-in-law reveals that he had been planning to leave her for another woman. The shock jolts Dora back to life. She transforms her appearance and resuscitates the former Dora who embraced life. Unfortunately, her enthusiasm is short-lived. She is, once again, betrayed by a man who leaves her emotionally and physically scarred.

The novel depicts the deleterious impact of male-dominated society on the lives of three generations of women. Dora, the wife/mother, has been socialized, in the words of Virginia Woolf, to reflect her husband at twice his natural size. She stifles her voice, engages in de-selfing, adopts his attitudes as her own. She has no life without him, lives through him and for him.

Ana, the mother-in-law and post-menopausal female, has internalized the values of a culture that worships all things young, firm, and perky. Consequently, she adopts measures to camouflage her aging body through heavy make-up and flamboyant clothes. And Lisa, the young virgin, opts to abandon her dream of independence, self-sufficiency, and autonomy. She agrees to marry a man twenty-four years her senior simply because he is wealthy, thereby becoming totally dependent on him financially. Her grandmother, who has always encouraged her to marry rich, applauds her decision.

The fate of the three generations of women—the virgin, the mother, and the crone—is told in simple, unadorned language. As the title of the novel suggests, all three are empty shells, victims of a male-dominated society that has stripped them of identity, valorizes youth, and keeps them financially dependent on the men in their lives.

Lean Fall Stand

Jon McGregor

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor begins in an Antarctic expedition that goes tragically awry and then pivots to an entirely different direction. The novel is in three parts.

Lean introduces us to Robert “Doc” Wright, Thomas, and Luke. The three are conducting research in the Antarctic when an unexpected blizzard strikes. They are separated, each battling for survival. This section is riveting and fast-paced. Robert, the seasoned guide and technical assistant for the two newcomers, falls during the storm and experiences a concussion. When he regains consciousness and finds his way back to base, he is confused and his language garbled. His inability to articulate words and failure to string them together coherently mirror his inability to think coherently. Meanwhile, Luke and Thomas catch snatches of each other’s voices on the on-again, off-again radios, as they battle the raging storm.

Fall takes us far away from the Antarctic and back to England where Robert battles a different type of survival—that of recovering from a brain injury. This section moves at a considerably slower pace. The focus shifts to Robert’s wife, Anna, as she struggles to meet demands from work while assuming the role of her husband’s caregiver. Robert’s stroke and aphasia have severely limited his mobility and rendered him unable to articulate words coherently. All this places considerable strain on Anna who experiences physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.

Stand takes us through Robert’s painstaking steps toward some measure of recovery. His participation in physical and speech therapy improves his condition. The novel concludes with a performance put on by his therapy group.

Although each of the sections is strong, the shift from the Antarctic to the remaining two sections is jarring. But the writing in all three sections is flawless. Lean captures the chatty banter of the three men in the Antarctic and follows it with the broken, staggered, and frantic attempts at communication when the blizzard strikes. The section concludes with a remarkable passage that takes us inside Robert’s head as he struggles to piece together his disjointed thoughts and words.

Fall and Stand capture the tragic circumstances of Robert and Anna in poignant, deeply moving detail. Robert, barely communicative before his stroke, now slurs words and waves his arms in the air in a desperate effort to communicate. Anna, an academic oceanographer, fiercely independent, strains to understand the garbled words of her husband as she struggles with her new role as caregiver.

In stunning, measured, and compelling prose, McGregor provides a fascinating glimpse into the interiority of victims of stroke and aphasia as they navigate through movement and speech. Through Anna, he shows the strain and inordinate amount of patience and diligence required of their caregivers. And with their limited physical and linguistic abilities, the aphasia patients re-enact Robert’s last day in the Antarctic in a final scene that is deeply moving and evocative.

Highly recommended

The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees

Douglas W. Tallamy

The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees by Douglas W. Tallamy explores the impact oak trees have on the natural environment.

Beginning his exploration in October, Professor Tallamy proceeds systematically, month by month, to describe the changes the oak experiences. As he takes us through the different stages of the oak’s annual cycle, he explains how the wild life supported by its bark, leaves, root system, and leaf litter experiences a corresponding change. The stage each microorganism and little critter undergoes is described in minute detail and augmented by colorful photos. Also shared is advice about planting oak trees and the best oak options for each region.

Professor Tallamy’s enthusiasm for oak trees is contagious. He enumerates the countless ways in which oak trees are essential in supporting our ecosystem while acting as efficient purifiers of water and air. Although the book is ostensibly about oaks, it is actually more concerned with the rich biodiversity the oak supports than about the oak itself. As an entomologist, Professor Tallamy’s primary focus is on the insects, caterpillars, walking sticks, birds, and spiders that rely on the oak tree for sustenance and procreation. He meticulously charts each stage each species undergoes. Although this is a perfectly legitimate undertaking, it is somewhat misleading given the title of the book.

In diction that is clear, precise, accessible, and one which thankfully avoids academic jargon, the book is educational and choke-full of fascinating information about how different species inhabiting and surrounding the oak rely on it for life and sustenance. Professor Tallamy demonstrates how all is interconnected in a web of life even though it may seldom be seen with the naked eye.

Recommended.

The Vegetarian

Han Kang; trans. Deborah Smith

The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, is an unusual novel unfolding in three parts.

Part 1 is in the first-person voice of Mr. Cheong, the husband of Yeong-hye. He describes his very ordinary existence with his very ordinary wife. All seems to go according to his plan until Yeong-hye begins having dreams drenched in blood and violence. She becomes a rigid vegetarian, refusing to allow any meat to enter her home. When her father tries to force meat into her mouth, she reacts by cutting herself. The family structure spirals downhill from there.

Part 2 focuses on Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law and his growing obsession with her body, especially her Mongolian birthmark. He convinces her to allow him to videotape him as he paints flowers on her naked body. She agrees because she has become fixated on vegetal life and wants to be plant-like.

Part 3 focuses on Yeong-hye’s sister as she struggles to deal with her sister’s mental breakdown and divorce; her own separation from her husband; and the disintegration of her family. All the while, she juggles work at her cosmetics store with the demands of single-parenting.

The novel explores a series of complex issues dealing with agency, social conformity, self-determination, identity, self-erasure, authentic personhood, thwarted and realized desires, exploitation, institutions for the mentally ill, and the amorphous boundary between sanity and mental illness. Peppering the narrative are short, italicized segments of Yeong-hye’s thoughts in fluid, stream-of consciousness sequences. The prose gradually lures the reader deeper into the horror of Yeong-hye as she withers away physically and disengages from reality mentally. The horror is intensified by acts of institutional and familial violence perpetrated against her, ostensibly for her own good.

The language shifts from the mundane, prosaic language of Mr. Cheong; to the blood-drenched narrative of Yeong-hye’s dreams; to the seductive language of entwined bodies painted with flowers; to the anxiety-ridden thoughts of Yeong-hye’s sister; to the visceral horror of Yeong-hye’s body as it whittles away.

Han Kang probes deeply into complex issues without offering facile responses. She forces her characters to confront what they would prefer to dismiss. Some, like the bland Mr. Cheong, will simply walk away; others, like Yeong-hye will aim for authentic selfhood regardless of the cost; while others still, like Yeong-hye’s sister, will struggle to search for answers.

Han Kang has performed an extraordinary feat. Her novel packs a powerful punch that goes well beyond its slim package of 190 pages. Deborah Smith should also be acknowledged for an English translation that does justice to this powerful and very unusual novel.

Highly recommended.

The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

Maria Rosa Menocal

The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal is a historical survey of life in Al-Andalus, Spain, during the Middle Ages. The survey beings in Damascus in 750 and concludes in Grenada in 1492 with the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain.

The study opens in Damascus with Abd al-Rahman, an Ummayad, escaping the massacre of his family by their rivals, the Abbasids. Abd al-Rahman ends up in Al-Andalus in 755. From there he establishes a flourishing center for the free exchange of knowledge and culture coupled with an unprecedented tolerance for religious differences. This was a time and place when Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side-by-side, respecting each other’s differences, and borrowing freely from one another’s language, art, and architecture. Abd al-Rahman and his descendants perceived difference as an asset and contradictions as constructive and positive. This highly fertile culture led to innovations in poetry, philosophy, language, fiction, and architecture. The spirit of cooperation led to a boom in commerce and trade.

Menocal discusses the role of prominent figures who contributed to syncretism, tolerance, and the cooperative spirit that reigned in Muslim Spain during this period. She makes interesting connections and peppers her survey with engaging anecdotes. She also traces the extensive influence of the Arabic language and Islamic culture on European art, science, philosophy, literature, and architecture.

This edifice eventually collapses under the onslaught of fundamentalist factions within the religious traditions. When the concepts of purity of blood and faith fastened their grip on Europe, when scapegoating and othering became the flavor of the month, Spain proceeded to expel Muslims and Jews and eradicate signs of its Islamic heritage. Intolerance and bigotry became the norm.

The study is well-researched and extensive. Maps, black and white images of buildings, an Index, and suggestions for further reading are included. The writing is accessible and engaging. The tone throughout is one of nostalgia for a time when things were different, when tolerance, flexibility, inclusion, and cooperation were embraced in civil society, when difference was perceived as an asset. Menocal reminds us such a time existed in the past and maybe—just maybe—it can be possible in the future.

Norwegian by Night

Derek B. Miller

Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller combines the elements of a police thriller; a wild chase; a statement about the enduring psychological wounds of war; Kosovar war criminals on the hunt; a dedicated police inspector; and an unforgettable, cantankerous, delightful central character. The setting is in beautifully scenic Norway. Add to the mix some laugh out loud hilarity, and what you have is a gripping novel that is hard to put down.

The central character is Sheldon (“Donny”) Horowitz, an eighty-two-year-old former marine sniper in the Korean war. Widowed and retired from his watch repair business in Manhattan, Sheldon relocates to Norway to live with his granddaughter and Norwegian husband. He struggles to make sense of his new surroundings.

Alone in the apartment one day, Sheldon hears evidence of a violent argument in the upstairs apartment. He opens his door to find a terrified woman with her young son. Sheldon gives them shelter. While he and the little boy are hiding in the closet, the violent stranger breaks down Sheldon’s front door and strangles the woman. Sheldon escapes with the boy and heads toward the safety of his granddaughter’s summer home in the woods, embarking on his mission with a fierce determination to save the young boy at whatever the cost. He uses his marine training to evade the police and the killers until the final showdown.

As Sheldon makes his way across the Norwegian countryside, he flashes back to his time in Korea and to his son’s death in Vietnam. Plagued with guilt, Sheldon is convinced he is responsible for his son’s death by encouraging him to go to war. He hallucinates, imagining Koreans are chasing after him. He conducts conversations with his former war buddies, his wife, his son, his friends—all of whom are deceased. He talks reassuringly to the little boy, but since the little boy does not understand English, it is a one-way conversation.

The novel’s strength lies primarily in the vivid characterization of Sheldon. He is authentically portrayed as an intelligent, brave, resourceful, and curmudgeonly old man. Haunted by the wounds of war and his son’s death, he reminisces and hallucinates. Although he has trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, he always returns to the task at hand with the knowledge that relaxing his guard can be fatal. His dialogue is peppered with humor, regardless of whether it is with his granddaughter, the figures he conjures up from his past, or the one-sided conversations with the boy.

This is a gripping novel that encompasses the excitement of a crime novel with the haunting memories of war veterans. It is also a meditation on aging, regret, and making amends.

Highly recommended.

Medea: A Modern Retelling

Christa Wolf

Medea: A Modern Retelling by Christa Wolf, translated from the German by John Cullen, is not the same Medea familiar to readers of Euripides’ play by that name. In her retelling, Wolf recasts Medea as a fiercely intelligent, compassionate human being, absolved of all wrongdoing, and scapegoated for the crimes of Corinth society.

The novel unfolds in a series of first-person voices. Included are the voices of Medea, Jason, Glauce, Creon’s advisors, and Medea’s former pupil who betrays her. Each one speaks in an authentic voice, providing multiple perspectives on the same narrative. The characters are complex and conflicted; their voices individualistic. Some recognize the tension gradually building as evidence is fabricated against Medea, but they feel powerless to stop it. Others add fuel to the fire.

In Wolf’s retelling, Medea is a healer who escapes Colchis with Jason because she abhors her father’s willing sacrifice of her brother to cement his position as king of Colchis. She assumes Corinth will be a safe haven for her, not expecting to encounter Corinth’s racism, xenophobia, and gender discrimination. A foreigner and woman of color, Medea refuses to conform to Corinth’s circumscribed roles for women, alienating the people of Corinth for her assertive and non-obsequious behavior. She defies all attempts to marginalize her. And when she discovers Corinth’s political class is corrupt and harbors a dark secret kept buried from the masses, she is perceived as a danger to the political status quo. Steps are undertaken to eliminate her.

Nefarious, false accusations are drummed up against Medea to rile up the masses. The accusations are fueled by some of her own people who lie to ingratiate themselves with authority figures. Rumors spread that she caused the earthquake and the ensuing plague. Targeted as a scapegoat for all the ills befalling on Corinth, labeled a monster, Medea is put on trial, ostensibly for murdering her own brother. Found guilty, she is banished from Corinth. The Colchian refugees are persecuted, and those who survive escape to the caves. When the king’s daughter commits suicide, the real cause of her death is covered up and blamed on Medea. And in a frenzy to retaliate for Medea’ ostensible crimes, the mob stones her two children to death.

Wolf retells the story of Medea as an allegory to explore the extent to which people will go to cling to power. They will manipulate and lie to the masses, prey on their fears, stir them up into a frenzy, and offer them convenient scapegoats on which to vent their fury. Those targeted and persecuted are innocent immigrants who have been othered, marginalized, and designated as “inferiors.” They are easy targets because they are so readily identifiable.

Wolf’s retelling of the Medea story is a political tour de force. In her hands, the ancient story of Medea becomes a vehicle to explore the political machinations of those in power to retain that power. They have no consideration for the truth or for the innocent victims trampled in their wake. If they succeed in holding on to power, they ensure their version of past events survives because they will be the ones who write the history books.

Highly recommended.

Stone Blind

Natalie Haynes

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes retells the story of Medusa and how the youngest of the Gorgon sisters became an ostensible monster.

Lovingly raised by her two sisters who find her on the shore outside their cave, Medusa is happy until she attracts the attention of Poseidon who assaults her in Athena’s temple. Athena vents her anger on the violation that occurred in the sanctity of her temple by transforming Medusa’s hair into writhing snakes and cursing her with the power to turn all living creatures into stone. Meanwhile, Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danaë, is on a quest to bring back the head of a Gorgon to save his mother from an unhappy marriage. With the help of Hermes and Athena, he succeeds in his quest. He cuts off Medusa’s head, carts it around with him in a bag, and brings it out when he wants to exploit her power by turning his perceived enemies into stone.

Haynes retells the myth with compassion for Medusa and contempt and derision for Perseus. But her primary focus is not on Medusa. Instead, it is on the Greek pantheon with their petty squabbles, their bickering, their jealousies, their petulance, and their prolific use of humans as pawns in their vengeful schemes. In fact, more time is spent on Athena than Medusa. Included is the birth of Athena and the war between the Titans and the Olympians. Medusa’s head, snakes, an olive grove in Athens, and a crow are given speaking parts in addition to nymphs, gods, goddesses, and mortals. The narrative is interrupted several times by Medusa’s head (“the Gorgoneion”) chatting directly with the reader and commenting on the characters and events.

The novel suffers from a lack of focus. The scope is too vast with so many characters and so much happening that Medusa is relegated to the status of a minor player, bereft of agency. The dialogue is dull, stilted, and vacuous; the characters one-dimensional and lack depth. Hanes’s attempts to inject humor fall flat.

All in all, a disappointing read from the author of A Thousand Ships, a better novel by far.

Lessons in Chemistry

Bonnie Garmus

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is the story of the intrepid Elizabeth Zott.

The novel opens in 1961 with Elizabeth as the star of Supper at Six, a television cooking show for housewives. A single mother in dire need of an income to support her little girl, Elizabeth reluctantly agrees to host the show but determines to make it in her own image—that of a die-hard scientist. So while she instructs her audience on how to bake this or bake that, she familiarizes them with the chemical compounds of her ingredients and explains how they interact. She treats her audience as adults, coaching them and coaxing them to transcend socially-constructed, gender-specific limitations. Her producer is initially horrified; her audience is thrilled. They are inspired by her words and take copious notes as if attending a lecture.

The novel flashes back to the 1950’s where we see Elizabeth fighting to claim her position as a bona fide scientist in a male-dominated profession. Women are threatened by her; men can’t see her as anything other than a sexual being. She is sexually assaulted, harassed, ridiculed, humiliated, maligned, and suffers the indignity of having her research appropriated by her male supervisor. Fired from her job at the research institute, and having lost the love of her life in an unfortunate accident, Elizabeth reluctantly agrees to become a cooking show host to make ends meet.

The comedy stems from Elizabeth’s dogged refusal to be anything other than a scientist. She is fiercely determined to continue with her research at whatever the cost. She transforms her kitchen into a chemistry lab and is oblivious to the shocked expressions of visitors when they see it. She treats her little girl as a young adult, teaching her to read at a very early age and instilling in her a love for scientific inquiry, much to the chagrin of the girl’s kindergarten teacher. Convinced that her dog is capable of learning language, Elizabeth begins a systematic regimen of teaching him vocabulary words. In short, Elizabeth Zott is anything but conventional.

To enjoy the novel, one has to overlook the abundant cliches and lack of plausible situations. Elizabeth of the 1950s speaks as a feminist of the 21st century. She inspires her female audience to free themselves of restrictive, gender-based shackles. Apparently, that is all it takes for them to turn their lives around and share their success stories with her. So consumed by her work, she is completely unaware of how physically attractive she is. She takes up rowing and by figuring out the chemistry of rowing, she is able to excel in the sport in the space of a few days, out maneuvering hefty men who have been at it for years. She is out of touch with the world around her, is awkward with human interaction, and blithely marches on as if all life’s problems can be solved through chemistry. And she is an atheist because, apparently, faith in science is incompatible with faith in God.

Bonnie Garmus has written an entertaining, feel-good novel with a predictably happy ending. Its appeal lies in the deadpan humor; Elizabeth’s dogged determination to forge ahead; her laser-focus on science; the snappy dialogue; and the interiority of the characters; including, perhaps the most endearing character of all, a highly perceptive dog who has mastered several hundred words and whose running commentary on human behavior adds to the humor.

Assembly

Natasha Brown

Assembly by Natasha Brown is a one-hundred-page novel that packs a powerful punch. It unfolds in the first-person voice of an unnamed British narrator of Jamaican origin. The stream of consciousness technique allows the narrator to skip from one vignette to another, from one experience to another. Threaded throughout are illustrations of the insidious racism and sexism bombarding the narrator in every aspect of her life.

The narrator has a successful career at a London finance firm and has just received a big promotion. Even though she works diligently, tries to say the right things, tries to blend in and not call attention to herself, tolerates subtle and not so subtle innuendos and micro aggressions, she knows her male colleagues are convinced she only got the promotion because of her race and gender. She describes them in grotesque terms:

Dry, weathered faces; soft, flabby cheeks; grease-shined foreheads. Necks bursting from as-yet-unbuttoned collars. All shades of pink, beige, tan. Fingers stabbing at keyboards and meaty fists wrapped around phone receivers.

Those same colleagues never fail to remind her she received the promotion because of the firm’s eagerness to meet diversity quotas in its hiring procedures.

And then there is her white boyfriend from an affluent liberal British family. She is invited to join his parents’ celebration of their wedding anniversary at the family estate. She observes them as they make obvious and concerted efforts to demonstrate their liberal attitudes toward race.

And that’s not all. She has been diagnosed with cancer. It is spreading throughout her body and requires immediate treatment, which she has so far refused. Her doctor’s reminders to seek treatment periodically interrupt her flow of thoughts.

The novel captures the narrator’s sheer exhaustion at having to navigate and contend with racism and harassment in every aspect of her life. She is in a state of constant alertness. She analyzes how others perceive and react to her. She chooses her responses carefully. She never reveals what she really thinks, operating under a split consciousness. She feels herself to be on constant display, always projecting an image that others expect of her. Her heightened awareness that she is a black female surrounded by a white culture that benefited from slavery and that continues to benefit from systemic racism permeates all her thoughts. The cancer that is spreading throughout her body comes to symbolize the cancer of racism infecting all aspects of her life. The narrator seems to have given up the struggle on all fronts by apparently refusing to fight the cancer that is killing her.

The novel is brief but powerful. The stream of consciousness technique is highly effective in presenting fleeting vignettes of the narrator’s experiences, all of which combine to illuminate the debilitating racism that is slowly draining her life, leaving her in a state of apathy and numbness.

The House of Broken Angels

Louis Alberto Urrea

The House of Broken Angels by Louis Alberto Urrea is a portrait of the De La Cruzes family, an immigrant Mexican-American family living in San Diego. The seventy-year-old patriarch, Big Angel, is dying of cancer. The novel opens with Big Angel preparing to go to his mother’s funeral. He has scheduled his birthday celebration the same weekend of the funeral so the extended family can attend both functions in the same trip.

Urrea paints a vivid portrait of the members of this large, extended family. There are children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, spouses, ex-spouses, siblings, step-siblings—in short, a motely crew of people bursting in and out of the pages. The focus is primarily on Big Angel as he recalls bits and pieces of his life and tries to come to terms with his impending death. Urrea doesn’t stop there. He takes the reader inside the thoughts of some of the other characters as they remember the past, their lives in Mexico, their poverty, their struggles with assimilation in America, their lovers, their estrangements from family, and the deaths of loved ones. Every page is a flurry of activity, teeming with noise.

Because the sheer number of characters can get confusing, presenting a challenge in keeping track of who is related to whom and how, a family tree would have been helpful. But perhaps the confusion was intentional. With such a large extended family, even some of the characters were at a loss to figure out who was related and who was not.

What emerges from this frenzy is an authentic portrait of a complex family. The petty jealousies, grudges, and family dynamics are realistic and recognizable. There are moments of genuine tenderness between family members, especially between Big Angel and his half-brother, Little Angel; and between Big Angel and his wife, Perla. The love they have for each other is evident. What is also evident is Urrea’s contagious affection for his characters. The unbreakable bond between family members, their unwavering support for each other, and the love and esteem they hold for their dying patriarch spills out of every page.

A poignant, moving, and vibrant portrayal of a Mexican-American family, brimming with color, activity, noise, and the energy of life.

Animal Life

Audur Ava Olafsdóttir; trans. Brian FitzGibbon

Animal Life by Audur Ava Olafsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon, is a quiet, meditative novel with very little plot. It unfolds in the voice of Dýja Dómhildur, a midwife in Reykjavík. Dýja comes from a long line of midwives from her mother’s side and a long line of undertakers from her father’s side. She is well-acquainted with beginnings and endings.

The novel opens after the death of Dýja’s great aunt Fifa, a respected midwife known for her eccentricities. Dýja has inherited her home with all its cluttered, mismatched furnishings. Among her great aunt’s possessions, Dýja discovers her forty-year correspondence with an overseas pen pal, a woman who shares her interests. She also discovers boxes and boxes of her great aunt’s manuscripts and other writings. Dýja reads through the material, making slow progress as she tries to piece together its jigsaw quality. Her ruminations on her great aunt’s writings infiltrate her activities as she brings babies into the world; reassures new and expectant mothers; talks with her neighbors, co-workers, and sisters; and prepares for an impending severe storm. Little else happens in the novel.

The fragmentary nature of the writing reinforces the great aunt’s wholistic approach to life and her ability to observe connections in what is seemingly disconnected. She reflects on birth, life, and death; man’s place in the world; man’s nature; the fragility of life; the degradation of the natural environment; the importance of preserving plant and animal life; empty spaces; and the pivotal role coincidences play in our everyday lives. Since the writings cover several decades, the great aunt was well ahead of her time in her prescient awareness of global warming and its deleterious environmental impact.

The Icelandic term for midwife is ljósmódir, which means “mother of light.” By contrast, the novel takes place in Iceland’s season of darkness, just before Christmas, the darkest time of the year. The interplay of light and darkness resonate with the great aunt’s reflections on light and dark, both literal and metaphorical. To reinforce the theme, Dýja’s sister, a meteorologist, peppers her conversations with anxious reminders that a severe storm is heading in their direction, bringing with it heavy winds, disruption of services, and darkness.

Set against an immersive backdrop replete with vivid descriptions of Iceland’s weather, its stark and beautiful landscape, its star-filled night skies, and its shimmering sunrises, the novel’s fragmentary nature and wide-ranging topics stitch together to form an intricate tapestry that is, at once, thought-provoking, meditative, tranquil, subdued, and beautiful.

Very highly recommended.

Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, inspired by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, is set in Appalachia. The narrative unfolds in the voice of Demon, beginning with his birth to an impoverished, drug-addicted single teenager on the floor of her trailer. Known as Demon Copperhead because of his red hair, Demon charts his growth from a young boy to adulthood. His father died before he was born. Even as a young child, Demon faces hardship. He assumes the role of parenting his own mother, but with help and support from the neighboring Peggot family, his life chugs along fairly smoothly until his mother remarries. And that is when Demon catapults from one tragic situation to another in a series of events over which he has little to no control.

An abusive and violent step-father makes his life miserable. His situation deteriorates after his mother’s tragic death of a drug overdose. Now an orphan, he is shuffled from one foster home to another where he is abused and exploited. He runs away, is robbed of his meager savings, sleeps near dumpsters, and hitchhikes until he locates his grandmother and moves in with her. His situation improves dramatically when his grandmother arranges for him to stay at the home of his high school football coach so he can attend high school. Demon excels in football, becoming a local football hero until he injures his knee. He is prescribed a copious number of painkillers and predictably slides down the slippery path to increased addiction. His circle of friends are all drug-addicts who fuel one another’s addictions. He hits rock bottom when his girl-friend dies of an overdose and two other friends die in a drowning accident. It is only then that he decides to get help for his addiction.

In spite of experiencing a slew of bad luck and engaging in self-destructive behaviors, Demon is fortunate in that there are people who see the good in him and are willing to help him. These include his art teacher who recognizes his talent for drawing and encourages him to pursue it, the coach’s daughter who never gives up on him, and Mrs. Peggot who is always willing to provide him with a meal. His luck turns when a friend with whom he had previously shared a foster home encourages him to draw a comic strip for a local newspaper about an Appalachian super hero. The popularity of the comic strip leads to an opportunity to publish a graphic novel. No longer addicted to drugs, on the verge of a new romance, and a soon-to-be published author, Demon ends the novel on a hopeful note.

Kingsolver’s political agenda is clear throughout. The novel becomes her platform for exposing the many obstacles the Appalachian poor and opioid-addicted experience. She makes no attempt soften their desperate circumstances, the marginalization and bigotry they endure, their poverty, and the child-welfare agencies that fail them. She lays responsibility for the opioid epidemic squarely on the shoulders of the pharmaceutical company for aggressively targeting the poor and desperate. She thrusts Demon from one misfortune to another, all of which seems excessive at times and bordering on overkill. But what saves the novel is Demon’s voice. He is at once funny, desperate, cynical, precocious, engaging, delightful, devoted, and, above all, remarkably resilient.

The Marriage Portrait

Maggie O’Farrell

Inspired by Robert Browning’s poem, “My Last Duchess,” Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait takes what little is known about the historical Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia di Cosimi de’ Medici d’Este, and weaves an unforgettable tale of intrigue and murder in 16th century Italy.

The novel spans nearly two decades with the conception of Lucrezia in 1544 and concluding in 1561. Lucrezia is the third daughter of Cosimo I de’Medici, ruler of Florence. A willful, precocious child with a love for animals and a talent for painting, Lucrezia is forced to marry Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, when she is fifteen years old. She slowly realizes the duplicitous nature of her husband—loving and gentle on the one hand and mercilessly cruel on the other. Her only function is to provide him with an heir. When she fails to do that, she realizes her days are numbered.

Unfolding in the present tense, the novel opens in 1561 when Lucrezia, just one year into her marriage, barely survives being poisoned by her husband. Suspense is established from the outset and haunts the narrative as it threads its way back in time to Lucrezia’s childhood and early days of her marriage. The timelines alternate between Lucrezia’s past and the day in 1561 when she realizes her husband has poisoned her. That she is in danger of losing her life looms across the pages of the novel.

O’Farrell immerses the reader in the mind and experiences of Lucrezia. Her rich inner life, her painterly eye for detail, her intensity, and her humanity are skillfully captured. When Lucrezia learns that artists frequently conceal an original work by painting over it, she practices layering her own paintings. This layering plays an important role in the novel. The surface conceals what lies beneath. People are never what they appear to be on the surface. Alfonso conceals his cruelty under a veneer of tender love and concern for his wife. Lucrezia conceals her fury and fear under the veneer of agreeable acquiescence to Alfonso’s demands. The artist’s apprentices are not what they appear to be. And at the climax of the novel, even Emilia, Lucrezia’s maid, is not what she appears to be.

The very texture of 16th century court life is vividly captured. The courts and palazzos of Renaissance Italy with their heavy drapes and frescoes, ornate tapestries, billowing dresses, elaborate hair styles, intrigues, and political machinations spring to life. Descriptions are replete with lavish imagery. Some scenes are cinematic. Lucrezia’s encounter with the tiger is described in such visual, auditory, and tactile detail that it is as if one is by her side in the scene. There are times when O’Farrell belabors a point or injures her otherwise lucid and poetic prose with excessive detail. However, these lapses are few and far between and do not detract from a novel that breathes life into a historical figure whose pulsating energy is set against a background brimming with vitality, subterfuge, and suspense.  

Maggie O’Farrell has written another powerful page-turner in every sense of the word.

Hannah Coulter

Wendell Berry

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry is a meditation on aging. The story unfolds in the first-person voice of Hannah Coulter. Hannah, now in her late seventies, reflects on her life in a small farming community in Kentucky.

Growing up during the Great Depression, Hannah learns the survival skills of cooking, farming, and housekeeping from her grandmother. She marries her landlady’s nephew, Virgil, and is pregnant with their first child when he is called to serve overseas in World War II. Virgil is killed in the war and never sees his child. Hannah re-marries Nathan, a neighboring farmer. They have two sons and raise the three children in a healthy farming environment. Theirs is a happy marriage, spanning nearly five decades until Nathan’s death.

Now that her children have grown and gone their separate ways, Hannah evaluates her life. She paints an idyllic picture of farm life in the past, comparing it with the present. She sees the economic and social changes taking place all around her. She laments changes she sees in the natural environment and in the breakdown of community life in which farming families shared their joys and sorrows and were quick to help each other out in time of need. Most of the people she grew up with have died. The fabric of social life that sustained her and her neighbors has unravelled to make way for new, but not necessarily better, ways of living.

Hannah’s insights, as she looks back on her life, ring true for the most part. She tends to ramble, at times, and can come across as a bit preachy, which can add to the authenticity of her voice. The tone throughout is moving and pensive. The novel is a meditation on aging and an elegy on a way of life and the values it embodies that are slowly but surely fading into the distance.

The Map of Love

Ahdaf Soueif

A finalist for the Booker Prize in 1999, The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif unfolds in two different timelines and through a variety of different formats.

The novel opens in 1997 with Amal, an Egyptian-American living in Cairo. She is contacted by Isabel, a young American journalist, with a request to translate Arabic papers and journals she found in her mother’s old trunk. Amal agrees to the task and so Isabel turns up in Cairo and the two begin going through the papers. They soon discover they are distant cousins. The papers belong to Anna Winterbourne, an English woman and Isabel’s great grandmother. Anna’s second marriage was to an Egyptian who happened to be Amal’s great uncle.

The second timeline, beginning in 1899 and running through to 1913, consists primarily of Anna’s journal entries and letters. After the death of her first husband, Anna decides to travel to Egypt. She revels in the sights, sounds, and smells of Egypt, but expresses frustration at her less than authentic experiences since she is primarily confined to a British circle of friends. Determined to remedy the situation, she disguises herself as a young man and sets off to find adventure in the desert. She gets more than she bargained for when she is kidnapped and taken to the home of Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi. Predictably, the two fall passionately in love and marry.

Anna adopts Egyptian ways and customs and begins learning Arabic. She is embraced by her husband’s family and friends, but is shunned by many of her former British colleagues. Happy in her marriage and very much in love, Anna soon finds herself embroiled in the political upheavals of an Egypt trying to break free from British and Ottoman control and a Palestine increasingly occupied by European Zionists.

The novel transitions from Anna’s timeline and that of Amal and Isabel unravelling the documents in 1997. The plot is further complicated when Isabel confides she has fallen in love with an Egyptian—Omar, a famous symphony conductor and Amal’s brother. The timelines intersect and parallel each other. Just as Anna contends with the political turmoil of the early twentieth-century, Amal has to navigate the political turmoil of Egypt at the end of the century. Sometimes the shifts are abrupt, and sometimes the political wranglings go on longer than necessary as if the speakers are mouthpieces presenting different points of view. There are a number of coincidences and twists which stretch credibility.

Ahdaf Soueif’s treatment of language is interesting. Anna doesn’t speak Arabic and Sharif Pasha doesn’t speak English, so they speak to each other in French—a language that is not native to either one, forcing them to pay close attention to what each is saying. Amal occasionally tutors Isabel on the roots and outgrowths of certain Arabic words. And the novel is peppered with transliterated Arabic words and idioms, all of which are explained in the glossary and which provide readers with a taste of Arab culture.

An intricately woven and engaging love story that connects the past with the present while showing how the seeds of the current political turmoil in the Middle East are rooted in decisions made in the past.

Woman of Light

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine is the story of a multi-generational Chicano family in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The setting is the Lost Territory and Denver, Colorado. The narrative unfolds in separate threads with alternating settings and time periods. It focuses on Luz Lopez, “Little Light,” a tea leaf reader and laundress as she struggles with her aunt and brother to eke a living in a Denver teeming with racial discrimination, oppression, and harassment.

The narrative opens with the unceremonious abandonment of Luz’s grandfather, Pidre. Abandoned as a baby in 1868 in the Lost Territory, he is found and raised by an elderly woman, known as Sleepy Prophet. Pidre lives with her until he is old enough to make his own way in the world. The narrative switches to Luz Lopez in Denver, 1933. From then on, the narrative alternates between Pidre and Luz in the form of flashbacks and flash forwards, revealing the background of each character and developing each thread separately. The threads coalesce at the end of the novel when Luz decides to share her dreams of a sleepy prophet with her young niece.

Fajardo-Anstine immerses the reader in early 20th Century Denver with its racist history, its Ku Klux Klan rallies, and its rampant police brutality and violence against the indigenous population. Luz navigates her life through this turmoil. She experiences visions and prescient dreams, which she struggles to decipher. And she develops a reputation as a gifted reader of tea leaves. When her brother is run out of town, she takes a job as the assistant of a local attorney who advocates for the rights of the indigenous population. She gets embroiled in a love triangle between her boss and a local musician.

The chapters recounting Luz’s story are not told chronologically. And since her chapters also alternate between chapters recounting the story of her grandparents, the narrative feels like it is constantly interrupted. Following the different threads and time lines poses a challenge intensified by the absence of a connection between the disparate threads until late in the novel.  

Fajardo-Anstine’s prose can be quite breathtaking at times. Her use of metaphors can be highly effective in creating the setting and in capturing the suffocating atmosphere experienced by her characters. Her characters are compelling, especially Luz as she struggles to find her place in the world. The plot has potential, but Fajardo-Anstine’s treatment with its alternating threads is jarring. Switching from one narrative thread to another and from one timeline to another confuse and detract from what would otherwise have been a much stronger novel.

Stealing From the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe

Diana Darke

In Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe, Diana Darke maintains that the structural elements and style of many European gothic buildings borrowed heavily from the Arab world, especially from Islamic architecture.

Darke learned Arabic, immersed herself in the literature and culture of the Arab world, traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Turkey, and spent several years in pre-civil war Damascus. She visited many of the archaeological ruins and religious sites she describes in her book. She makes a compelling case that structural elements and construction techniques in architecture, including pointed arches, ribbed vaulting, cross vaults, spires, stained glass, rose windows, domes, horseshoe arches, spires, window grilles, etc. had their roots in the Arab and Islamic world.

Through meticulous research, Darke demonstrates that from the early Middle Ages, various travelers to the Middle East and Spain studied Islamic buildings and mosques, taking extensive drawings and notes on the structures. From the crusaders and pilgrims visiting Jerusalem; the thriving trade routes, especially between Venice and Arab countries; military conflicts; and visitors to Muslim-ruled Spain, the opportunities for interaction and influence were many. The methods, computations for construction, styles, and techniques of Arab and Islamic architecture were transmitted to Europe where the structures were imitated. Europeans also studied the translated writings of Arab scholars in science and geometry to learn their techniques. These borrowings appear in prominent European buildings, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Venice’s St. Mark’s, and Notre Dame.

That Europe gained considerable knowledge of medicine, philosophy, science, mathematics, astronomy, including the words Algebra (from the Arabic word al-jabr, meaning to connect; to bring back together) and Algorithm (from Al-Khwarizmi, the scholar working in Baghdad during the late 8th century CE) is well-documented. It should come as no surprise that Europe also borrowed heavily from Islamic architecture. But as Darke argues in her conclusion, the point is not to claim the superiority of Arab architecture over its European counterpart. It is simply to acknowledge the heavy influence the Arabs and Islam have had on the architecture of Europe.

Darke’s research is extensive. The language describing the intricate parts of a building and the details of its construction may be too technical for those not well-versed in architecture. Fortunately, Darke provides an invaluable chapter at the end of her book in which she itemizes the first appearance of a key architectural feature of Arab/Islamic origin and highlights its appearance in European buildings. She also includes a glossary, index, and some breathtaking illustrations of ancient sites, mosques, cathedrals, and other prominent structures in the Middle East, Turkey, and Europe.