Suad Al-Attar

Nesma Shubber

In Suad Al-Attar, Nesma Shubber chronicles the life and art of her grandmother, the internationally recognized Iraqi artist, Suad Al-Attar.

Born in Baghdad in 1942, Suad knew she wanted to be an artist from a very early age. She began painting and exhibiting her work, becoming the first female artist to have a solo exhibition in Iraq in the 1960s. She was a prolific artist and has garnered a strong following throughout the Arab world. When the political situation in Iraq became increasingly intolerable, she relocated to England with her family in 1976. She has lived and worked in London ever since.

The book includes over 130 images of Attar’s paintings and drawings. These chart the evolution of her work. Her oeuvre is replete with mythological creatures, figures from the history of ancient Mesopotamia, and plush gardens bursting with flora. The influence of various artists, including Gustav Klimt, Paul Cezanne, Henri Rousseau, and Paul Gauguin, among others, can be traced in her art. She went through a period in which her work was greatly impacted by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent years. Her canvases at that time depict barely discernible domed buildings in Baghdad going up in flames in swathes of reds and yellows; women’s faces in the throes of fear and distress; dismembered limbs; and a very powerful drawing of Abu Ghraib.

Also included in the book are photos of Al-Attar as a glamorous young woman and later photos of her in her London studio. She has exhibited in London and all over the Arab world, receiving awards for her work.

A thread of longing for her homeland permeates much of Al-Attar’s oeuvre. By painting images taken from Iraq’s mythology, from Assyrian reliefs and Sumerian sculptures, and by filling her canvases with palm trees and hoopoe birds, it is as though she is trying to encapsulate an idyllic vision of the Iraq of the past. Her colorful canvases bursting with flowers and palm trees and with stylized figures in gold and green transport the viewer to a magical time and place. The stunning images attest to the wide range and intricate detail of her work, making this volume a visual feast for the eyes.

Highly recommended.

What Strange Paradise

Omar El Akkad

What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad tells the tragic story of illegal migrants escaping from their war-torn countries and political persecution. Originating from different countries in Africa and the Middle East, the migrants share a common dream of a better future for themselves and their families. To realize that dream, they obtain false documents and pay exorbitant fees to human traffickers to get them to Europe.

The story unfolds in alternating chapters. The “Before” chapters focus on a nine-year-old Syrian by named Amir. We learn about his background, his family’s life, and how he ended up on the Calypso, an ill-fated fishing boat smuggling migrants to an unnamed European island.

The “After” chapters open with Amir as the lone survivor after the Calypso capsizes in the ocean. Amir wakes up on the beach, surrounded by corpses washed ashore. When men approach him in white containment suits shouting in a language he doesn’t understand, Amir runs. He encounters Vanna, a local teenage girl who springs into action to help him. She hides him, feeds him, clothes him, and initially smuggles him into a local refugee camp. The director of the camp asks Vanna to escape with Amir to the other end of the island where a ferryman will take him to a Syrian community at the port. All the while, Vanna and Amir run from island police officers eager to capture Amir.

The novel is difficult to read because it captures the desperation, hardships, and financial burdens experienced by migrants willing to risk death in the hope of a better life. The “Before” chapters describe in vivid detail the arduous journey and the fear, squalor, and stench of human bodies squashed together in cramped spaces without the benefit of food or water in a broken-down fishing boat. Amir sits next to a pregnant woman, Umm Ibrahim, who defends him and shares her food with him. The migrants bicker, disagree, rehearse the stories they intend to tell immigration officials, sleep, snore, relieve themselves, and cling to their hopes and dreams. Mohamed, one of the smugglers, repeatedly tries to puncture their dreams with the reality he claims awaits them.

The “After” chapters depict a frightened Amir struggling to make sense of his new surroundings. His fear and anxiety are palpable. Vanna assumes the role of his guardian, determined to get him to the ferryman. In spite of the language barrier separating them, the two form an inseparable bond, communicating through hand gestures. These chapters highlight the callous desensitization of tourists and some local residents to the plight of refugees.

The temporal shifts of before and after with the desperate migrants on the one hand and the islanders on the other mirror the us-versus-them dynamic that characterizes our divided world. Straddling between the two worlds is a young Syrian child and a European teenager who connect simply and honestly through their shared humanity. In clear, vivid, brutally honest, and riveting prose, El Akkad sheds light on the desperate and tragic plight of migrants before, during, and after their quest for freedom. He gives face and voice to the refugee “other,” and he does so with compassion and empathy. The unexpected twist at the end of the novel underscores the urgency of addressing this global humanitarian crisis.

The Hero of this Book

Elizabeth McCracken

The Hero of this Book by Elizabeth McCracken blurs the line between memoir and novel. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which parts are which because the combination, context, and execution make for compelling reading.

The fictionalized memoir (for lack of a better term) opens with the unnamed narrator wandering through the streets of London. She retraces the steps she took with her mother during their last visit together before her mother’s death. As she ambles along, recognizing familiar haunts, she describes her quirky parents with loving tenderness, events in her childhood, and lists the accumulated jumble of possessions in her parents’ home. But she always returns to her primary focus—to portray her mother in all her delightful idiosyncrasies.

The narrator’s mother, Natalie McCracken, suffers from a life-long, chronic disability that gradually renders her immobile. But she never lets that deter her. She has opinions on just about everything and stubbornly refuses to concede defeat even when the situation calls for it. She is portrayed as a flurry of mental and physical activity in spite of her mobility challenges. The narrator describes her zipping through the streets of London on her scooter. What emerges from this loving portrayal is a strong, fiercely determined, witty, eccentric, and doggedly private woman who embraces life with relish.

Threaded throughout this portrayal of her mother, Elizabeth McCracken, spontaneously tosses out tips on writing with tongue in cheek humor. She interrogates the issue of genre, blurring the distinction between memoir and fiction. She adamantly denies she is writing a memoir but then seems to scramble back toward it while suggesting fiction seldom differs from autobiography.

In this strange hybrid of a book, peppered with a delightful sense of humor, Elizabeth McCracken has painted a vivid portrait of an extraordinary woman who may—or may not be—her beloved mother. Whether the portrait is real or fictional is beside the point. What matters is McCracken has vividly captured a woman with an indomitable spirit. And she has accomplished what may or may not be a tribute to her actual mother without dipping her toe in maudlin sentimentality.

Clytemnestra

Costanza Casati

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati retells the story of Clytemnestra from her childhood until she murders Agamemnon upon his return from the Trojan war. Clytemnestra is portrayed as a fierce warrior, navigating her journey through the male-dominated world of Ancient Greece. She is a staunch defender of those who are unable to defend themselves and is unafraid to challenge male figures in positions of authority.

Weaving in and out of Clytemnestra’s story are stories from Greek mythology. These are told from Clytemnestra’s point of view. Even prominent male figures in Greek mythology, including Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus, are seen through Clytemnestra’s lens. Male heroes who usually take center stage in Greek mythology are relegated to the sidelines. Furthermore, Clytemnestra strips them of their heroic aura by describing them as power-hungry, blood-thirsty, compassionless misogynists.

In Clytemnestra, Casati has depicted a fiery female protagonist who exercises agency. She wields the mantle of power after Agamemnon goes off to war. She transgresses socially gendered norms of behavior in Ancient Greece by seizing a role for herself generally assigned to males. Not surprisingly, she is surrounded by men who want her to crawl back into restrictive woman-space. But she is defiant. Her all-consuming, palpable focus is to seek revenge for the death of her daughter and, in that, she usurps a traditionally male role since Greek mythology is replete with males who seek vengeance for the death of a relative. Her strength and ferocity are reminiscent of Medea, another female figure in Greek mythology who usurped the male role in seeking vengeance for an injustice.

Casati’s diction is clear and accessible. Her knowledge of Greek mythology is extensive. Her characters are believable. The qualities of her male characters reflect what we know about them from mythology. And her feminist portrayal of Clytemnestra is fresh and does a great deal to redeem a much-maligned female figure in Greek mythology.

An engaging retelling that breathes fresh life into an otherwise marginalized figure in Greek mythology.

Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East

Amanda H. Podany

Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East by Amanda H. Podany covers 3,000 years of the history of regions that used cuneiform writing. Those regions are ancient Iraq (Mesopotamia), Syria, parts of Turkey (Anatolia), northern parts of the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean coastal lands), parts of Iran (Elam and later Persia), regions in Egypt, Bahrain (Dilmun), the Lake Van region (Urartu), and the southern Levant. Included in this expansive study is a fascinating exploration of the development of written language from proto-cuneiform to Aramaic and all the various languages and permutations in between.

This sweeping history begins in Uruk (southern Iraq) around the year 3500 BCE and concludes in 323 BCE with a scribe in Uruk in whose home archaeologists unearthed cuneiform tablets copied from far older texts in Sumerian and Akkadian, both of which were dying languages at the time. Dr. Podany imagines a touching scene as this conscientious scribe authenticates his copy of the original tablet: “In accordance with the (original) tablet. Duplicate written and checked and properly executed.” It was signed by “Rimat-Anu, [son of] Shamash-iddin, descendent of Shangu-Ninurta.” Rimat-Anu dates the copy and identifies the city as Uruk. It is in Uruk that Dr. Podany begins her study, and it is in Uruk she ends it—a fitting end since Uruk is the oldest city on earth and the birthplace of advances in law, science, technology, and art.

Dr. Podany invites us to travel with her through time as she knocks on the doors of homes and palaces to learn how people lived, what they did, what they ate, what games they played, what they traded, what they built, what wars they fought, and which gods they worshiped. She deconstructs information derived from surviving cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals. Many of the tablets consist of contracts and trade deals. One of the most memorable contracts was drawn up in Emar in the 13thC BCE and duly signed by witnesses. It includes children’s clay footprints of the young siblings sold into slavery because their parents could no longer afford to feed them during a devastating famine.

With Dr. Podany as our guide, we learn about the lives and activities of kings and queens, priests and priestesses. We also glimpse into the lives of ordinary people—the weavers, scribes, tradesmen, slaves, and inn keepers. Her tone is engaging and conversational. She derives some fascinating insights about the period through her analysis of even the smallest smidgen of a cuneiform tablet. She breathes life into her characters who emerge as very relatable—an administrator, thousands of years ago, making a mistake in adding up totals of deliveries or a scholar including marginalia when copying the words from an ancient text.

The breadth and scope of the scholarship is impressive and extensively researched. It is thoughtful, engaging, accessible, and full of invaluable insights about a fascinating time and place and the people who inhabited it. Included in the study are photographs of tablets, statues, and seals; maps; footnotes; an extensive bibliography; and a detailed index.

Dr. Podany takes us on a fascinating jaunt through history. Her study is highly recommended for those interested in the history of the ancient Near East.

The Dance Tree

Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is set in a European village near Strasbourg in the early 16th century. The central character is Lisbet—young, married, and pregnant. As the story unfolds, we learn Lisbet’s previous twelve pregnancies have all resulted in miscarriages. Lisbet mourns her loss and commemorates it by fastening ribbons and small tokens on to a large tree deep in the forest. She consoles herself by retreating to this private, sacred space. She also finds consolation by tenderly nurturing bees to provide the family with a livelihood. Lisbet lives with her husband and mother-in-law. They are soon joined by Agnethe, Lisbet’s sister-in-law, who returns after performing seven years penance in a monastery for an apparent sin, the nature of which remains concealed until later in the novel. Meanwhile, Lisbet’s husband is threatened with the loss of his beehives and has to travel to Heidelberg to plead his case, leaving the three women alone.

Against the backdrop of a starving, poverty-stricken community and the repressive stranglehold of the church, a woman starts dancing non-stop in the market square. Soon she is joined by other women until there are so many that the city council fears mass hysteria. It harasses the women, persecutes them, imprisons them, and kills them. The situation deteriorates. Thrown into the mix are complications encompassing illicit relationships, a city council member who claims to be doing God’s work as he terrorizes the people, and Turkish musicians who are called upon to play for the dancing women in an attempt to cure them of their mania.

The novel’s strength lies in evoking the sights, sounds, and smells of a 16th century European village where superstitions run rampant fueled by fears promulgated by the church. The struggles and challenges faced by the villagers as they try to eke out a living for themselves and their children is effectively captured. Lisbet’s care of the bees is described in vivid detail. But the novel is weak in character development. The characters lack subtlety and nuance. They are either wholly good, like Lisbet and her cohorts; or wholly wicked, like Plater, the evil council man. The themes of misogyny, bigotry, racism, and the church’s abuse of authority all conclude in what feels like a hurried and improbable tying of loose ends.

Elena Knows

Claudia Piñeiro,

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle, is a short novel packing a powerful punch. It unfolds in Buenos Aires during the course of one day.

The central character is Elena, a sixty-three-year-old woman suffering from a crippling case of Parkinson’s. Her daughter, Rita, is her caregiver. The novel opens with an apparent suicide. Rita has been found hanging in the belfry at the church. Elena is convinced her daughter did not commit suicide and insists the police investigate the death as a murder. When the police and the priest fail to take her seriously, Elena embarks on journey to solicit the help of Isabel, a woman she met briefly twenty years earlier through her daughter.

The novel is in three sections, Morning, Midday, Afternoon—the times of the day governing Elena’s medication schedule. Since her limbs are completely inert without her medication, Elena has to time her mobility according to when she can take her next medication. She has to wait for however long it takes for the medication to activate her body to follow the signals coming from her brain. Even with medication, she achieves barely a modicum of mobility in her limbs. She personifies the disease as the whore that has invaded her body.

Piñeiro’s portrayal of Elena as she struggles with her disease is particularly poignant and effective. Elena sets off on her quest to solicit the help of Isabel. She treks through the streets of Buenos Aires, painstakingly putting one foot in front of the other. Her body is so debilitated as a result of the disease that she can no longer lift her head up. She navigates the streets by eyeing the pavement and the shoes of passers-by. Even the simplest movements are plagued with a mental and physical struggle that can be overcome only with a Herculean effort. After an arduous train journey followed by a taxi ride, Elena reaches Isabel’s home. Isabel invites her in only to disclose shocking information that completely shatter’s Elena’s perspective.

The novel is peppered with flashbacks which reveal the contentious relationship between Elena and her daughter. They bicker and they fight. Her daughter expresses the burdens that come with taking care of her mother’s every physical need, including her hygiene. Rita complains about her mother’s smell, her appearance, and her inability to control her drooling. And for her part, Elena is cantankerous and irritable and physically helpless.

The novel tackles a number of difficult issues including the overwhelming burden of caregiving for the incapacitated; the agony of a crippling disease; bureaucratic obstacles; mother-daughter relationships; the meaning of motherhood; and control—or lack of control—over one’s body. Elena has lost physical control of her body. And Isabel and Rita also suffer from loss of control over their bodies. But theirs is manifested through social and religious restrictions that exercise power over their bodies and are no less damaging than the disease that plagues Elena.

This is a powerful, sensitive portrayal of the deleterious impact on lives and perspectives that can ensue when physical, social, or religious forces beyond our control exercise power over our bodies.

Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Known Author

Sophus Helle, translator

Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author, translated by Sophus Helle, provides a fascinating glimpse into the poetry of Enheduana, a Sumerian princess in ancient Mesopotamia. This remarkable woman lived around 2300 BCE. She was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad and served as the high priestess in the temple at Ur in southern Iraq. Included in this collection are Enheduana’s The Exaltation of Inanna, The Hymn to Inanna, The Temple Hymns, and a series of fragmentary hymns.

The world’s oldest known author lived in turbulent times. Enheduana’s father founded the first empire by uniting the neighboring city states under his rule. He installed his daughter as the high priestess of Ur, the largest city in the empire. Her position as high priestess of Ur’s largest temple endowed her with political and spiritual power. Opposition to Sargon from neighboring cities was immense. Leaders of the city states resented his rule and revolted at every opportunity. As part of the ruling family, Enheduana witnessed wars and tremendous upheaval.

Enheduana’s hymns are not hymns in the traditional sense. Their function was to enlist the help of fickle and unreliable gods in achieving specific goals. Enheduana focuses her hymns on the goddess Inanna. She lavishes Inanna with praise for her strength, acknowledges her ferocity, and pleads for her help in re-installing her in the temple at Ur after she had been unceremoniously ousted of her position by Lugul-Ane, a usurper who seized power in Ur.

Enheduana’s poetry is rich with imagery. She speaks in metaphors and similes, leaping from one image to the next. She is fluent and articulate. Her words are vibrant and pulsate with intensity and passion. The Exaltation to Inanna is particularly powerful as Enheduana bemoans her plight as an exile and tries to convince Inanna she has the power and the authority to come to her aid.

Just as he did in Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic, Sophus Helle has performed an outstanding service in translating, commenting, and interpreting the words of these very ancient poems of the world’s first known author. Helle breathes life into Enheduana’s words and times. He argues the concept of authorship was not as we know it today. Instead, it emerged from dialogue and collaboration as authors and singers created a text through an interplay of voices. He explores Enheduana’s influence and legacy. He delves into the discovery of the Enheduana tablets, attributing much of the credit of their discovery to Katherine Woolley and not to her husband, Leonard Woolley. Katherine was also instrumental in securing funding for the excavation that unearthed these treasures.

Helle’s insights are inspiring; his enthusiasm for the hymns and their author is infectious. He includes comprehensive notes on each of the hymns, an extensive bibliography, a glossary, and an index.

A remarkable piece of scholarship. Sophus Helle is to be applauded for providing an accessible translation and thought-provoking analysis of the eloquent and powerful poetry of the world’s first known author who just happens to be a woman. It is strangely wonderful to read her words coming to us from nearly 4,000 years ago.

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.