The North Water

Ian McGuire

Coarse language? Yes. Vulgarity? Yes. Violence? Yes. Brutality? Yes. Graphic references to bodily functions and smells? Yes. Murder? Yes. Greed? Yes. Animal cruelty? Yes.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you’ll find in The North Water by Ian McGuire. It is definitely not a novel for the squeamish. But if you enjoy reading about the gritty, harsh reality of life on a whaling boat in the late 1850s; good versus evil fought against the expansive backdrop of the Arctic with its inhospitable climate; man against beast; and the struggle for survival in nature at its harshest, you will enjoy this novel.

Ian McGuire holds nothing back in descriptive detail. His extensive research on the whaling industry is on full display in the novel. With unflinching honesty, he evokes the sights, sounds, smells, and activities of men on a whaling boat and their efforts to survive amid Arctic snow drifts and blizzards. There are echoes of the work of Jack London, Melville’s Moby Dick, and William Faulkner’s short story, “The Bear.”

Through their coarse, vulgar dialogue and the descriptive detailing of their appearance and behavior, the characters emerge as well-rounded figures who are all too real. McGuire provides a stunning example of evil personified in Henry Drax, a man without a conscience or moral compass. He takes what he wants and slits the throat of man or beast without batting an eye. Pitted against him is Patrick Sumner, a flawed hero struggling with his past and hiding in a fog of laudanum addiction. The narrative clips at a rapid pace with an unremitting suspense that grips the reader from the first page to the last.

Historical accuracy, attention to detail, the portrayal of complex characters, a vernacular that captures the coarse speech of men on a whaling vessel, and the use of present tense to generate immediacy combine to immerse the reader in a real time, in a real place, and with real people.  

A compelling read. Highly recommended for those who enjoy historical fiction with the grit and authenticity of the period.

The Pyramid

Ismail Kadare

The counselors and High Priest gasped. The Pharaoh Cheop’s had just announced his intention to deviate from tradition by refusing to have a pyramid erected in his honor. His announcement sent his counselors in a panicked frenzy to research the issue. They finally found their answer. The pyramid, they told Cheops, serves multiple purposes. It is not just the future burial site of the Pharaoh. It also serves to keep the multitudes under control through oppression and forced labor. Give them busy work, they argued. The higher the pyramid, the more arduous the task of building it, the less time the rabble will have to make trouble. It would be an obsession for decades, keeping the masses distracted from their other concerns. Once completed, it would stand as a symbol of the Pharaoh’s power and majesty, dwarfing everything and everyone in its surroundings.

Cheops was convinced.

So begins Ismail Kadare’s The Pyramid, a tour de force depicting the brutal tactics a totalitarian regime will employ to sustain its powers. The pyramid snuffs out people by the hundreds. Kadare chronicles in elaborate detail the hauling of thousands upon thousands of giant stones from far away quarries, their positioning in the pyramid, and the numbers of people who lost their limbs or were crushed to death in the process.

The construction of the pyramid precipitates periodic purges in which people are disfigured, tortured, and executed. It chronicles theories of internal and external conspiracies; the ubiquitous spread of superstition, rumors, and lies; the tedium and mind-numbing boredom of the work; the silencing of speech; paranoia; the fear and trembling with which the Pharaoh’s closest advisors approach him; and the rush to fulfill the Pharaoh’s every whim even at the cost of the maiming and killing of innocents.

The pyramid comes to represent different things to different people throughout the decades of its construction, its completion, and beyond. It symbolizes a tool of oppression wielded by authoritarian governments whose goal is to magnify the power of the regime and diminish all else in their wake. At the end of the novel, Kadare explicitly draws a parallel between the construction of the pyramid and modern tools of oppression:

Pyramidal phenomena occurred in cycles, without it ever being possible to determine precisely the timing of their appearance; for no one has ever been able to establish with certainty whether what happens is the future, or just the past moving backward, like a crab. People ended up accepting that maybe neither the past nor the future were what they were thought to be, since both could reverse their direction of travel, like trams at a terminus.

The Pyramid is an allegory of life under any authoritarian regime at any time and in any place. The atmosphere is haunting, eerie, and terrifying. This may not be a novel for everyone, but it is a remarkable achievement, prescient and relevant to our time.

Highly recommended.

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

Alina Bronsky

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky tells the story of three generations of women: Rosalinda (Rosa) Achmetowna; her daughter, Sulfia; and Sulfia’s daughter, Aminat. Their story is told through the voice of Rosa, an unreliable narrator who shares her unvarnished opinions on life, love, marriage, and a host of other issues, including her supposedly good looks and impeccable taste in food and clothes.

Rosa emerges as an unsavory character with a distorted self-image and tyrannical tendencies. Convinced her daughter is too stupid and too ugly to find a husband for herself, Rosa successfully orchestrates the terrain for her. Sulfia marries and divorces twice. Rosa then navigates a third husband for her, a German enthralled by Aminat, Sulfia’s young daughter. Undeterred, Rosa insists he cannot have the one without the other two. Besotted with the young girl, the German agrees to the deal, and the three women move to Germany to live with a man who reluctantly marries Sulfia while obsessing over Aminat.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of Rosa’s devious machinations. Her interference in the life of her daughter and granddaughter has no limits. Convinced she is only doing what is best for them, she hounds them, threatens them, and bullies them into submission. She exploits the weakness of anyone she encounters to further her agenda, resorts to blackmail at the earliest opportunity, maneuvers people like pawns in a chess game, and engages in the most bizarre behaviors.

In spite of her many unsavory qualities, Rosa is enterprising, industrious, and determined to make a better life for herself and her family, no matter the cost. She perceives every obstacle as a challenge. To save herself embarrassment in front of her daughter’s future in-laws, she sets a tablecloth on fire to divert their attention from her husband who has shamelessly fallen asleep on the dinner table. Armed with her stockpile of chocolates and other goodies, she bribes her way to get what she wants. We sympathize with her daily struggles to obtain even the most basic necessities in a communist country. But we also cringe at the ridiculous extremes she goes to in order to advance her agenda.

Rosa’s outrageous behavior and attitude is exaggerated, almost bordering on caricature. This cartoon-like portrayal of Rosa and an ending that is inconclusive weaken an otherwise engaging read.

Recommended with some reservation.

Things We Lost in the Fire

Mariana Enriquez

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez is a collection of twelve short stories set in the backdrop of an Argentina plagued with heat, poverty, and stench. The stories are unnerving. In one form or another, each story deals with a jarring event that defies explanation. The stories are replete with mysterious disappearances, brutality, violence, addiction, and characters (either real or imagined) that are misshapen and physically or mentally damaged.

Violence and brutality occur with regular frequency: the corpse of a young boy is found with cigarette burns on his torso and a decapitated head; a young girl (possibly a victim of child sexual assault) self-mutilates; a priest kills himself after warning of something demonic residing in the polluted black river of a nearby slum.

And then there are the mysterious disappearances and appearances that defy explanation: two girls are accosted in a room by the sounds of cars, heavy pounding on window shutters, running feet, screaming men, shining headlights—all of which terrify the girls but none of which is either seen or heard by adults; the ghost of a brutal child-murderer appears to a tourist guide on a bus; a husband disappears while on a road trip; two teenagers witness the disappearance of their friend behind a door in an abandoned house. Never seen again, her ghost supposedly haunts the house. A woman sees a young boy in her neighbor’s courtyard. His legs are chained and he looks barely human. When he shows up in her bedroom and devours her cat, we are not sure whether what she sees is real or a hallucination.

Finally, there are disturbing activities: a young woman’s obsession with a human skull she finds tossed among a pile of garbage. Taking the skull to her bedroom, she decorates it with beads, a wig, lights for eyes. Determined to “complete” the skull, she decides to dig for human bones. And then there is the story of a young boy who withdraws from the world and becomes obsessed with the deep web. And in another story, a clandestine organization helps women set themselves on fire so they can serve as visually potent protests of male violence against women.

The anthology is dark and disturbing. Many of the stories are inconclusive, ending on a chilling note that contributes to the atmosphere of unease. Enriquez juxtaposes bizarre events with routine concerns and a resigned tone—as if to suggest Argentina, having barely emerged from a brutal dictatorship, continues to be haunted by its past horrors, blurring the lines between reality and illusion, between the normal and the insane.

Recommended for those interested in tales of horror and the macabre.

An Unnecessary Woman

Rabih Alameddine

"You could say I was thinking of other things when I shampooed my hair blue, and two glasses of red wine didn’t help my concentration.

Let me explain."

With those words, we are introduced to Aaliya Saleh, a seventy-two-year-old Lebanese woman and the narrator in Rabih Alamaddine’s novel, An Unnecessary Woman. Her culture may classify her as unnecessary because she is elderly, divorced, and childless. But Aaliya is anything but “unnecessary.” She is precocious, sassy, eccentric, witty, resilient, socially recluse, introverted, brilliant, and an absolute delight.

The novel unfolds in the form of Aaliya’s monologue. She reveals details about her childhood, her loveless marriage at the age of 16, her subsequent divorce, her tense relationship with her mother, her friendship with Hannah, her employment in a bookstore, her aging body, her three neighbors (“the three witches”), and a consuming passion to which she has devoted fifty years of her life. This passion consists of translating translations into Arabic. Specifically, she translates novels that have already been translated into French or English. She completes a translation, crates the manuscript, and ferrets it away in an empty room to be hidden from prying eyes. Each January 1, Aaliya embarks on a new translation. By the time we meet her, this small room is bursting with crates. 

Her monologue is full of witticism, inspirational gems and insights, her voice vibrant and engaging. She has a way with words. When her husband divorces her and walks out of their apartment, she says, "I did not wait for the smell of him to dissipate on its own. I expunged it." Convinced she will remain unloved and unattractive all her life, she says of herself, “I was already different: tall, not attractive at all. Mine is a face that would have trouble launching a canoe.”

To say Aaliya is an avid reader doesn’t begin to do her justice. Aaliya lives and breathes books. She speaks of characters in novels as if they are old acquaintances. She peppers her musing about life with lines from poetry. She drops names of artists effortlessly in her sentences. She is erudite, knowledgeable about music and composers, and shares interesting tidbits about their lives. And she does all this while navigating the streets of Beirut during lulls in the civil war with its decimated buildings, crumbling infrastructure, shell-shocked population, and intermittent power outages.

This is a wonderful novel. Rabih Alameddine uses his immense talent to craft an endearing portrait of an unforgettable woman. The last scene was particularly moving. Aaliya’s storage room with all her crated manuscripts has been flooded due to a leak in an upstairs bathroom. Fifty years of labor is reduced to a soggy mess. Devastated, Aaliya weeps uncontrollably. But all is not lost. Rescue comes in the form of her three neighbors, clad in dressing gowns and slippers, who begin the painstaking task of salvaging the manuscripts armed with hair dryers and clotheslines. This is a beautiful image of sisterhood and community to end what is a remarkable novel.

Highly recommended, especially for those of us who share Aaliya’s passion for snuggling up between the covers of a book.

White Teeth

Zadie Smith

White Teeth by Zadie Smith tells the story of the turbulent interaction of three dysfunctional families living in England: an Englishman, his Jamaican wife, and their daughter; a couple from Bengal and their twin boys; and an English couple, Joyce and Marcus Chalfen, and their children. Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, who served together in the military, link the first two families. The Chalfens are drawn into the foray through the children.

Smith vividly details the internal and external conflicts plaguing the families. There are the obvious generational conflicts and the conflicts between the colonizer and the colonized. Additionally, the immigrant parents and their children struggle to locate themselves in a culture that is racist and exclusionary. Samad Iqbal wages and ultimately loses the battle to instill in his children pride in their culture and adherence to their religion. Meanwhile his wife, Alsana, constantly undermines and ridicules him. Irie, the daughter of Archie and his Jamaican wife, Clara, struggles with her identity and exhibits signs of internalized racism. Add into the mix an Iqbal son who becomes radicalized; a Jehovah’s witness grandmother; a lesbian cousin; an English woman (Joyce Chalfen) disguising her unwholesome obsession with the handsome, young Millat Iqbal in the garb of “I’m only trying to help him;” her husband incurring the wrath of religious communities for performing genetic experiments on a mouse; stir the pot gently with the struggle for cultural and racial identities, sprinkle generously with institutionalized racism, derogatory language and behaviors, and one begins to get an inkling of the abundant story-lines in the novel. Smith skillfully weaves the disparate threads together uniting them in the crescendo of the final scene.

Two qualities in the novel are particularly impressive. The first is Smith’s uncanny ability to capture the dialect, intonation, accent, and diction of each of her characters to reflect their ethnicity, racial heritage, and age group. Smith has an impressive ear for replicating the ebb and flow and pacing of dialog so much so that one can almost overhear the conversations and easily recognize the speaker. But even though some of her characters may share the same cultural heritage, they don’t necessarily express the same concerns. Each emerges as a fully rounded, well-developed, flesh and blood individual with a unique personality and distinct voice.

The second impressive quality lies in the voice of the omniscient narrator—sharp, witty, funny, and perceptive. The novel is replete with instances of laugh out loud hilarity. The narrator pokes fun at her characters, punctures their grandiose, ostensible motives for pursuing a course of action or embracing a cause when their real motives usually have to do with feelings of guilt and/or sexual desire. There are plenty of asides to the reader as invitations to share the joke. But while we may laugh at the quirky personalities and their dilemmas, what emerges is the narrator’s love for her characters in spite of—or maybe because of—their struggles, their foibles, their weaknesses, their delusions, and their search for belonging—in other words, those very qualities that make us all human.

White Teeth is an engaging, funny, entertaining, and well-crafted multi-cultural novel with true-to-life dialog and flawed characters stepping off its pages in all their richness and diversity.

Highly recommended.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Madeleine Thien

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien is a novel of epic proportions. It tells the story of two families whose lives intersect during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China, culminating in the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The novel opens with Marie (Jiang Li-Ling), the daughter of Chinese immigrants, living in Canada with her mother. Her father has abandoned them and returned to Hong Kong where he later commits suicide. When the daughter of one of her father’s former friends arrives at their home seeking refuge, Marie begins a fractured odyssey to learn of her roots. Her odyssey unveils an intricate web of connections with family and friends who lived through China’s Cultural Revolution. Woven within the shifting time lines and different generations are actual historical events that lend authenticity to the novel.

Thien portrays a memorable array of characters with colorful names like Big Mother, Knife, Old Cat, Swirl, Wen the Dreamer, Ling, Sparrow, Ai-ming, and Flying Bear. Each character struggles to maintain a semblance of personal dignity and authenticity while living within the severe restrictions of the Cultural Revolution. Against the backdrop of famine in the countryside, portraits of Mao Zedong and Zhou EnLai glaring from city street corners and inside buildings, forced separation of families, “re-education” in labor camps, random accusations of “counter-revolutionary” activities, neighbors betraying neighbors to save themselves, the parroting of the latest government sponsored slogans, castigation of students and faculty for their embrace of European music and musical instruments, and government sanctioned torture and executions, Thien details how a repressive regime instills fear by invading every aspect of people’s daily lives.

The characters pursue a variety of paths to survive the onslaught of repressive measures. Some take to hiding their libraries in secret, underground cellars; some communicate secret messages encoded in The Book of Records; some transport themselves to different worlds by composing and/or playing classical music; some acquiesce to the demands of the regime; while others refuse to submit and are punished accordingly or go into hiding. For some the daily humiliations and beatings are too hard to tolerate, and they commit suicide.

The characters meditate on the nature of time; the many uses of language to hide, reveal, betray, and coerce statements of self-incrimination; the definition of art; and the power of literature to link past, present, and future. But it is music that plays the most prominent role in the novel. References to classical music and the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, and Prokofiev infuse the novel and stitch together the lives of the characters, providing them with solace and a temporary means to escape the brutal reality of their lives. The characters immerse themselves in and have an intimate relationship with music. Young Zhuli is a gifted violinist who takes her own life after suffering a demoralizing humiliation and severe beating; her uncle Sparrow, on the faculty at the Shanghai Conservatory, is a brilliant composer who experiences a shut down of his creative juices for decades; and the talented pianist Kai eventually takes his own life, unable to forgive himself for betraying friends and colleagues.

Thien has crafted a novel deeply rooted in the politics of China, but its detailed depiction of life under a repressive government is universal. The location may change; the players may change; but the nature of oppression does not. As Old Cat says to Zhuli:

If they want to come for you, they will come, and it doesn’t matter what you read or what you failed to read. The books on your shelves, the music you cherish, the past lives you’ve lived, all these details are just an excuse. In the old days, spite and jealousy drove the eunuchs in all their power struggles. Perhaps we live in a new age, but people don’t change overnight.

A powerful novel, complex in execution, panoramic in scope and depth, profound in insight, and universal in applicability.

Highly recommended.

Boudica: Dreaming the Serpent Spear

Manda Scott

Boudica: Dreaming the Serpent Spear is the fourth and final book in the Boudica series by Manda Scott. This has been a captivating series about the warrior queen Boudica as she spearheaded the Celtic struggle to defeat the Roman occupation of Britannia. This final book coalesces the threads from previous books and brings them to a culminating, climactic battle in which Boudica is killed and the Celtic warriors are forced to retreat in defeat. Although history tells us the Boudica does not live to see the expulsion of Rome from Britannia, nevertheless, Scott’s masterful and tension-filled description of the final battle keeps us hoping until the last page for an alternative outcome.

The characters are vividly portrayed and show growth. Bán/Valerius is reconciled with his dual identity and is no longer conflicted about where his allegiances lie; Cunomar shows his maturity by putting the needs of the people above his own need to prove himself worthy. Although still a young child, Graine shows a maturity and understanding well beyond her years but one that perhaps borders on implausibility considering the physical and emotional trauma she experienced at the hands of the Roman conquerors. And, finally, there is Boudica, a mother, a sister, a warrior, a hero, and a leader. Through her portrayal of Boudica, Manda Scott shows that a leader transcends her physical limitations because she represents something larger than herself. By the end of the series, Boudica the warrior is no longer capable of being the warrior she once was, but Boudica as a symbol and representative of her people’s aspirations remains untarnished.

The final book of the series veers more toward historical fantasy than historical fiction in that gods and spirits of the ancestors intrude in the affairs of humans with greater frequency than in previous books. And animals continue to be endowed with an uncanny connection with humans, anticipating their thoughts, actions, and emotions.

Scott draws the reader into a world in which men and women willingly sacrifice themselves for the greater good; in which to die in battle is considered the highest honor; in which the spirits of ancestors are seen to receive the dead; and in which dreamers are honored and relied upon to manipulate nature, send their thoughts across great distances, and give direction and guidance to the people.

The battle for control of Britannia is depicted as a clash of cultures. The invading Roman army is technologically advanced, disciplined, organized, eager to pillage natural resources, and brutal in its treatment of the indigenous population. The indigenous population consists of feuding tribes, which eventually unite to fight a common enemy. They communicate with nature and with the world of the spirit just as easily as they communicate with each other. Viewed by their Roman conquerors as primitive, they paint their bodies, run around naked, and engage in an elaborate system of mystical beliefs that baffle and scare the invading army. But they behave according to a strict code of honor, placing loyalty to family, friends, and tribal affiliations above all else.

The novel is not without its shortcomings. Descriptions of the battles can be confusing and some passages are obscure and unnecessarily drawn out. But the biggest drawback lies in the conclusion. The intense tumult of the final battle, replete with clashing armor, screams of vengeance and death, blowing trumpets and horns, thrashing horses, and dismembered limbs was a thrilling page-turner. By contrast, the final scene with the dying Breaca feels inconclusive and disappointing, as if the novel fizzled out with a whimper.

In spite of these few shortcomings, however, Boudica: Dreaming the Serpent Spear is a crowning achievement in an entertaining and exciting series.

Highly recommended.

Baba Dunja's Last Love

Alina Bronsky; translated from the German by Tim Mohr

So you live in the northern Ukrainian village of Tschernowo. Your village has been evacuated because of its proximity to the nuclear power plant accident in Chernobyl. In spite of dire warnings from your physician/daughter and government officials, you decide to move back to your village. You prefer to live in your own home in your own village on your own terms and not worry about radioactive contamination. You are a feisty octogenarian, fearless, full of grit, compassionate, kind, fiercely independent, and fiercely determined. Meet the delightful Baba Dunja in Baba Dunja’s Last Love by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr.

Baba Dunja lives in her once abandoned village with a handful of elderly neighbors, all of whom lead quiet, simple lives, unfazed by the radiation that has seeped into their bones or into the contaminated, misshapen fruits and vegetables they grow and consume. They form a small community, isolated from the outside world with occasional visits from reporters or from people in white protective suits who arrive periodically to take samples of insects, vegetables, and bodily fluids from the intrepid residents. The residents’ peaceful existence is temporarily interrupted when a stranger shows up with his young daughter to take up residence.

Into this improbable setting of a radioactive village, Alina Bronsky thrusts a motley crew of unique, quirky characters. There is the terminally ill Petrow who refuses to eat certain foods because they are hazardous to his health; the overweight but beautiful Marja who keeps company with a goat; the doll-like Lenotschka who is quick to smile as she knits her endlessly long scarf; the almost 100-year old Sidorow who proposes marriage to Marja after Baba Dunja declines his overtures; and the Gavrilow couple who keep to themselves.

At the center of it all is their de-facto leader, the endearing Baba Dunja. By choosing to tell the story through the first person point of view of Baba Dunja, Bronsky gives us intimate access to the mind of this feisty, lovable woman. She is strong, resilient, and calmly accepts whatever life throws her way. She has raised two children, survived an abusive and alcoholic husband, been exposed to lethal doses of radiation. Now all she wants is to be left alone to live a humble life in her radioactive village. And no amount of reasoning with her will change her mind.

Baba Dunja exudes wisdom, generosity, and equanimity. Her gentle spirit touches all who come in contact with her. She can sum people up in a few short, pithy sentences and loves them in spite of—or maybe because of—their foibles. The image of this diminutive figure, not more than five feet tall, with her wrinkled face, liver-spotted hands, billowing head scarf, limping slowly back to her home in a virtually abandoned radioactive village is an image not soon to be forgotten.

Highly recommended.

The Woman Who Read Too Much

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani

The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani is based on the life of the 19th century Persian poet, theologian, radical thinker, and staunch advocate for women’s rights, Tahirih Qurratu’l-Ayn. The novel pays homage to Qurratu’l-Ayn for challenging orthodox interpretations of Islam and for her insistence on a woman’s right to literacy. Qurratu’l-Ayn, referred to throughout the novel as the poetess of Qazvin, is a courageous, brilliant, and stunningly beautiful woman who refuses to compromise her principles or submit to the role of a subordinate female as dictated by her patriarchal culture.

Grounding her advocacy of women’s rights on Islamic texts, the poetess of Qazvin debates the clerics and mullahs sent to interrogate her, outsmarting them at every turn. She incurs the wrath of her husband because of her superior intelligence. She challenges the cultural precepts designed to restrict a woman’s intellectual development by citing Islamic religious texts, which impose no such restrictions on women. In short, the poetess of Qazvin defies cultural norms and threatens the status quo by being a woman who is not only literate but is also educated, intelligent, articulate, outspoken, fearless, and a religious scholar.

The men responsible for her incarceration and brutal murder are threatened by her intelligence and ability to unmask their motives and behaviors. In times of famine, public executions, assassinations, torture, and the Shah’s callous indifference to the suffering of his people, the all-consuming focus of those in power is what to do with a woman who reads and who teaches other women to read to provide them with tools to think for themselves.

Nakhjavani is to be credited for recognizing that opposition to pioneers frequently comes from the very people they are trying to elevate. The Shah’s mother is particularly virulent in her opposition to the poetess of Qazvin because she understands a literate female with the unmitigated gall to think for herself poses a serious threat to the status quo. The younger sister who ultimately betrays the poetess is fueled by vindictive jealousy.

The novel is in four parts: The Book of the Mother (the Shah’s mother); The Book of the Wife (the mayor’s wife); The Book of the Sister (the Shah’s sister); and The Book of the Daughter (the poetess of Qazvin). Nakhjavani employs interesting techniques in telling the story. None of the characters are named. Instead, they are identified by their roles, perhaps to suggest their universality. The non-linear narrative shifts backwards and forwards in time. The movement is spiral, circling back to the same event but moving upward as it does so with the addition of details, layers of meaning, and differing perspectives.

Nakhjavani sustains the readers’ attention with her storytelling technique and beautifully crafted sentences. Her words create patterns by weaving in and out through shifting time sequences. With irony and humor, the narrative voice exposes the hypocrisies, contradictions, willful ignorance, greed, and sheer brutality of those persecuting the heroine.

This is a novel about the power of literacy to subvert authority by undermining systemic efforts to oppress a people. It is about who has control over whom. Political events of the past and present are replete with examples of oppressive regimes exerting power over others by demonizing, persecuting, ridiculing and eradicating the opposition; engaging in censorship; curbing debate; stifling freedom of expression; seeking scapegoats for political unrest; and curtailing the education and movement of women. Nakhjavani’s novel about the struggles facing a pioneering advocate for women’s rights in 19th Century Persia is as relevant today as it was then. Ultimately this novel is about the struggle for autonomy and self-determination.

An inspiring and compelling read. Highly recommended

Boudica: Dreaming the Hound

Manda Scott

Boudica: Dreaming the Hound by Manda Scott is the third book in a four-book series about the Celtic warrior Boudica who led the tribes of Britannia against their Roman invaders.

This is the most exciting book in the series so far. It lacks the long, drawn out, complex battle maneuvers of Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle (#1) and the unconvincing transformation in Boudica: Dreaming the Bull (#2) of Bán of the Eceni tribe into Julius Valerius of the Roman military.

The novel is full of interesting twists and turns, allegiances and betrayals, disguises, confrontations with the Romans, acts of heroism, sacrifice, and spiritual quests. Scott skillfully builds each scene to its inevitable climax/confrontation. The characters are more fully developed: Cunomar, Boudica’s son anxious to step out of the shadow of his parents by proving himself a battle-hardened warrior; Graine, Boudica’s youngest daughter, frail, delicate, and a powerful dreamer; Bán/Valerius struggling to come to terms with his identity and define his allegiances; and Breaca/Boudica bearing the heavy mantle of leadership. The novel ends with Boudica and Valerius amassing an army to fight the onslaught of Rome’s battalions.

The novel leans more toward historical fantasy than historical fiction since the voices and spirits of the ancestors play a prominent role and influence events more so than in previous books in the series. Animals, notably hounds and horses, exhibit a refined sensibility and connection with humans bordering on the unreal/magical. Dreaming becomes paramount as gods and spirits of dead ancestors communicate regularly with the living. The characters rely heavily on lucid dreaming to guide their actions, nudging the series more toward historical fantasy and further away from historical fiction.

Although Scott depicts the actions of the Roman military as brutal and savage and their alliance with slavers as driven by an unquenchable thirst for profit, not all Romans are painted with the same sordid paintbrush. Some behave with honor and are quick to condemn the gang rape of young girls and the slow deaths by torture and crucifixion. An intriguing aspect of the novel lies in its depiction of allegiances and loyalties to individuals with a shared history that transcend allegiances to the Roman military. We see this with the Roman prefect Corvus who chooses not to betray Breaca even though he recognizes her as Boudica. His loyalty to and feelings for Valerius are unwavering. We also see this loyalty in Longinus who fought along side Valerius against the rebels while both were in the Roman military but who now stands at his side with the rebellion.

Manda Scott combines extensive research on the era with a creative imagination to craft another page-turning, entertaining novel that continues the intriguing saga of Boudica, the Celtic warrior who took arms against the invading army of an empire.

Highly recommended.

Men Explain Things to Me

Rebecca Solnit

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit is a collection of previously published essays. The topics address “mansplaining” (the irrepressible need some men have to “explain” things to women); the systemic and ubiquitous instances of violence against women; the devastating impact of the IMF on the economies of developing countries; why gay marriage is perceived as a threat to traditional marriage; the ways in which women are erased, silenced, and/or rendered invisible; a discussion of Virginia Woolf’s embrace of the unknown; the attack on women’s credibility; how some men’s feelings of entitlement impact women’s bodies and women’s voices.

In spite of the dire circumstances Solnit discusses, the collection ends on a positive note with the essay, “Pandora’s Box and the Volunteer Police Force.” In it Solnit argues although we still have a long way to go, now that feminists have let the djinns out of the bottle, there’s no going back. We are slowly but surely making progress.

Solnit’s essays are loosely connected with overall themes of gender equality and global justice. With an unabashed feminist lens, Solnit writes in an engaging style, peppering her points with humorous anecdotes when appropriate. But this is far from being a light-hearted, rose-colored view of the world. Solnit is unrelenting in exposing the global war against women and in drawing parallels between that and the exploitation of developing countries by their wealthier and more powerful neighbors. She draws on specific current events to buttress her case. Her chapter on “The Longest War” includes sobering statistics revealing the extent to which women are victimized by sexual harassment, sexual assault, battery, and murder. She argues for a need to examine the link between the social constructs of masculinity and male violence.

There are gaps in Solnit’s analysis. For example, she fails to address intersectionality: how racism, classism, and sexism create overlapping systems of oppression. She also tends to paint developing countries with the same homogeneous paintbrush. But to address these issues systematically would have required a more extensive work. Presumably her intention was more limited in scope.

As a work that advances the goals of feminism and one that engages in feminist analysis within its established parameters, Solnit succeeds admirably in putting together a collection of essays that introduce the reader to some of the basic tenets of feminism.

Recommended.

House of Names

Colm Tóibín

Based on the Greek myth of Agamemnon, House of Names by Colm Tóibín retells the story of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods; Clytemnestra’s revenge; and Orestes’ eventual murder of his mother to avenge his father’s death. Tóibín deviates from the original myth by minimizing the role of the gods and placing the action squarely on the shoulders of his characters. The point of view alternates between Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra, and the ghost of Clytemnestra. The sacrifice of Iphigenia unleashes a cascade of catastrophes in which there is no shortage of political intrigue, blood-spilling, betrayal, and murder.

The opening section, told from Clytemnestra’s first person point of view, is the most riveting part of the novel. We share in her excitement as she prepares her daughter for the impending nuptials. We experience her anxiety and rage when she discovers Agamemnon’s deception. We hear her screams until she is forcibly silenced, gagged, and thrown into a pit while her daughter is dragged to the sacrificial altar. And as the novel progresses, we witness her descent into a cruel, violent monster.

Electra and Orestes are not portrayed as convincingly as is their mother. They seem to lack motivation and, in the case of Orestes, are more acted upon than acting. Orestes is portrayed as weak, hesitant, and submissive. He is a follower rather than a leader, taking his direction from Leander when they escape from their kidnappers and from Electra when he murders his mother. Electra is stronger and more capable of leading than is her brother. She shares her mother’s capacity for plotting and scheming and has assumed many of her mother’s mannerisms by the end of the novel. Interestingly enough, both Orestes and Electra refuse to hold their father responsible for Iphigenia’s death. But they have no qualms about blaming their mother for avenging her death.

Tóibín is at his best in his portrayal of Clytemnestra. He skillfully depicts her as larger than life, as the axis around which everyone revolves. She is a mother consumed with rage at a father who willingly sacrifices his daughter. She plots her revenge with meticulous care and relish. Her anger is augmented by her belief in the futility of the sacrifice since for her either the gods no longer exist or, if they do, they are indifferent to the actions of humans. Whatever sympathy one may initially feel for Clytemnestra rapidly dissipates, however, as we witness her plummeting in a vortex of cruelty, corruption, loneliness, paranoia, deception, and murder.

House of Names is an engaging read in spite of some of its drawbacks. Tóibín’s imaginative retelling of the story is compelling in many ways, especially in his portrait of Clytemnestra and in his depiction of the political intrigue and devious machinations plaguing the dysfunctional house of Atreus.

Recommended

The Blue Between Sky and Water

Susan Abulhawa

The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa tells the story of the Baraka family from the Palestinian village of Beit Daras. The story spans four generations, focusing on the plight of the women.

When the family is forced out of their ancestral home by the Israeli military, they make the trek to Gaza. Some are killed along the way; some sustain life-long injuries; others survive physically intact but emotionally devastated by the loss of their home and way of life. They settle in a refugee camp, cobbling bits and pieces of their lives to make a new home. At the center of it all is Hajje Nazmiyeh, the matriarch. She is the glue that holds the family together.

With vivid detail, Abulhawa describes the harsh reality of living under Israeli occupation and the challenges of survival during the Gaza blockade that made of the area a virtual prison. Forced to navigate Israeli checkpoints, food shortages, intermittent electricity and water supplies, unemployment, harassment by the Israeli military, daily humiliations, displacement, incarceration of loved ones, etc., the Baraka family confronts the challenges with a determination and resilience. The family is able to eke out a living, survive, and even laugh and love through pain and tears. The strength of their family bond is unshakeable.

The novel addresses the loneliness and displacement of the Palestinian diaspora through the figure of Hajje Nazmiyeh’s brother, Mamdouh, who emigrates to the United States with his wife, Yasmine. Mamdouh never feels fully at home in America. He is wounded by the alienation of his son who rejects his cultural heritage. After his son’s death in an accident, Mamdouh takes custody of his young granddaughter, Nur. His plans to take her to Gaza are thwarted by his sudden death. Nur is thrust into a downward spiral. Molested by her mother’s boyfriend, she is shuttled from one foster home to another until she reaches adulthood. Eventually she reunites with her family in Gaza where she finds herself wrapped in their cocoon of unconditional love and acceptance.

Abulhawa weaves actual historical events in the novel: the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their villages, the death of the peace activist Rachel Corrie at the hands of an Israeli soldier, the Gaza blockade, and the prisoner exchange. The novel’s strength lies in its depiction of the resilience and fierce determination of Palestinians to survive. The women, especially Nazmiyeh, are credited with holding the family together. Through her cooking, Nazmiyeh nourishes the bodies of her husband and children; through her unconditional love and devotion, she nourishes their spirits, restoring dignity and respect to a people living in a hostile climate whose intent is to strip them of both.

There is an element of magical realism threaded throughout the novel with the presence of a djinn with special powers; a sister who predicts the future while alive and guides the living after her death; and a young man who navigates across different time zones, communicating with the living and the dead.

Abulhawa covers a lot of ground in this novel, so much so that it suffers from a lack of cohesion. The incidents pile on, one after the other with little time to digest them; the characters are insufficiently developed; the situations seem contrived; the coincidence of Nur finding her family in a sprawling refugee camp in Gaza is far-fetched. The work reads more like the biography of a family than a literary novel. It lacks subtlety and nuance and is transparent in its use of events and characters as a platform to promote a political agenda.

Although it is regrettable her treatment of this important subject was not as effective as it could have been, nevertheless Abulhawa is to be credited for shining a light on the plight of the Palestinian people. We see the world through their eyes; experience with them their forced eviction from their homeland; witness their losses, pain, and suffering; and empathize with their longing to return to their homes.

Recommended with reservations.

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination forges a ground-breaking contribution to feminist literary criticism. In this study, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue for the existence of a distinctly female literary imagination in women writers of nineteenth-century. Their landmark study has influenced how we read women writers ever since. 

Gilbert and Gubar systematically deconstruct the obstacles women authors faced and how their struggles are manifested in their works, beginning with the fundamental perception that literary authorship was perceived as an exclusively male activity, a patriarchal endeavor, bestowing ownership and authority on the work. As such, it not only excluded women from authorship, it asserted that women who were authors defied their essential nature, i.e. they were being “unfeminine.” Unlike their male counterparts who suffered from an “anxiety of influence,” women authors suffered from an “anxiety of authorship.”

Among the many patriarchal constructs inhibiting women’s writing were the stereotypical depictions of her as either angel or monster; the circumscribed space she was forced to inhabit in society; her limited sphere of permissible activities; the plethora of literary texts saturated with male hegemony and female subordination; the misogyny of Milton’s Paradise Lost; the trap of “feminine” roles in patriarchal homes; the deliberate malnourishment for her writing; the assumption of a vapid intellectual life; and the interiorization of her as Other.

Through their brilliant analysis of the writings of such authors as Jane Austen, Christina Rossetti, the Brontë sisters, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and through references to numerous others, Gilbert and Gubar demonstrate the strategies for artistic survival women developed to counteract these crippling constructs.

Comprehensive in scope, the study weaves the author’s biography with detailed textual analysis and discussion of her work to show how her thoughts evolved and in what ways and to what degree she was able to counteract patriarchal constructs. By interpreting the literature through the “mad woman” lens, Gilbert and Gubar open the literary work to subtleties and nuances, revealing sub-merged layers of meaning that may otherwise have been overlooked.

This is a fascinating study, a consummate tome of feminist literary criticism, and so well deserving of the high praise it has received. It is highly recommended as a valuable resource for students of Victorian women writers and for the readers who love to immerse themselves in the literary masterpieces they crafted.

Boudica: Dreaming the Bull

Manda Scott

Boudica: Dreaming the Bull by Manda Scott is the second in a four-book series on the Celtic warrior Boudica, leader of the coalition of tribes fighting Rome’s invasion of Britain. As with the first book in the series, Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle, Scott combines historical research with a creative imagination. But this second book in the series falls short of its predecessor.    

Picking up where Dreaming the Eagle left off, Dreaming the Bull begins with a lengthy description of ongoing battles and complex battle maneuvers between the two sides. The description is unnecessarily detailed, convoluted, and somewhat tedious. But once you get passed that, the pace of the novel picks up.

Intermittently threaded throughout the battles and skirmishes with the indigenous population, we witness Bán (Boudica’s brother) becoming progressively more brutal. The novel focuses on Bán and his downward spiral more so than on Boudica. Bán, who has adopted the name Julius Valerius, has immersed himself thoroughly in Roman culture and the military, dedicating himself to the Roman god, Mithras. He has worked his way up the military ranks, becoming increasingly brutal toward members of his former tribe and their coalition partners. He uses his knowledge of their battle maneuvers to entrap them, rapidly developing a reputation among all sides for his extreme brutality.

Unfortunately, Bán’s transformation from Bán of the Eceni tribe to Julius Valerius, Decurion of the first troop, First Thracian Cavalry, was unconvincing. Why does Bán become more Roman than the Romans? Why is he so hell-bent on destroying all traces of his heritage even after he learns his sister is still alive and leads the rebellion? Why is he so full of venom that he embraces every opportunity to betray the tribes and their cause? We read of Rome’s cruelty toward the rebels—tortures, crucifixions, flaying of victims, and hangings—all of which Bán eventually endorses. His pangs of guilt manifest through frequent visits from spirits of his deceased family and friends, but he suppresses their voices by calling on Mithras and/or burying himself in alcohol. His journey from Bán to the “Decurion on the pied horse,” the rebel’s most hated military officer in the Roman army, isn’t believable.

Scott peoples her novel with a motley crew of characters: a Roman emperor desperate to hold on to power; dreamers who commune with the gods, see into the future, and control the weather; a young man from the Eceni tribe turned cruel Roman soldier who suffers from a severe identity crisis; a female warrior who leads a coalition of tribes in the resistance to Roman occupation of its lands. The spirits of the dead make frequent appearances, blurring the lines between the real and imaginary. The transitions are seamless with characters dialoguing with one another as routinely as they dialogue with spirits. Greater prominence is given to life in the Roman military and the political intrigues of the Roman Empire than life among the rebels. Similarly, the degree to which we follow the tribulations of Dubornos, Cunomar (Boudica’s son) and Caradoc after their capture shifts the attention away from Boudica and relegates her to the margins of her own story. 

Despite its shortcomings, Boudica: Dreaming the Bull is an entertaining and compelling read as Scott manages to sweep us up in her vision of a time when Rome’s tentacles reached the shores of Britain.

Recommended with reservations.

Bright Air Black

David Vann

Bright Air Black by David Vann is a lyrical masterpiece. Based on Euripides’ classical Greek play Medea, Vann’s re-telling of Medea’s story is dark, brilliant, and hypnotic. Two notes of caution, however. First, some familiarity with the story of Medea and Jason is necessary prior to reading the novel. And second, this is not a novel for the faint of heart. Vann spares none of the gory details of Medea’s horrific actions in all of their blood-curdling madness.     

The novel opens with Medea on the deck of the Argo tossing chunks of her brother’s body (a brother she murdered and dismembered) into the sea to delay capture by Aeetes, her father. Aeetes rages at his daughter each time he has to slow his ship to gather the bits and pieces of his son’s body to give him a proper burial. As horrifying as this opening scene is, it is just the beginning of a series of Medea’s violent and bone-chilling deeds.

Since the story is told from Medea’s point of view, we are sucked into her vortex of demonic rage. We watch as she scurries in the night to collect roots, plants, spiders, termites, salamanders, a scorpion, and mushrooms that induce hallucinations. She concocts a brew for Jason and his men using this potpourri, forces them to drink it, and proceeds to terrify them into submitting to her demands. We listen as she manipulates the daughters of Pelias into believing she can restore their father’s youth if they chop him into pieces, bite into his testicles, and throw his butchered body into her cauldron. We watch with horror and fascination as each of her schemes comes to fruition.  

Our perception of the world through Medea’s filter forces us to understand what motivates her to do the things she does. Medea rages at a world that marginalizes her because she is a woman and a foreigner and, therefore, deemed a “barbarian” by the misogynistic, male-dominated, xenophobic Greek society. She repudiates her designation as “Other”, viewing men with absolute contempt and seizing every opportunity to lash out and ridicule them. Her hunger for power prompts her to destroy anyone in her way. More than anything else, she wants control over her life, the ability to decide her destiny. She abhors submission of any sort and murders her two children rather than surrender control of them to Kreon’s soldiers. Her many references to Hatshepsut, the female Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled Egypt independent of any man, reflect her desire to reign as king. But because she knows Greek culture will not accommodate for a female ruler, Medea has to rely on Jason to help her get what she wants. She is complex, fierce, calculating, demonic, manipulative, and a brilliant strategist who leaves nothing to chance.    

 Medea’s internal machinations are captured by David Vann’s writing style—a style both mesmerizing and lyrical. Most sentences are in fragments with fleeting images. They surge in short, choppy spurts. Many are stripped of definite articles and verbs. There is very little direct dialogue and no quotation marks. The effect is jarring, the impact powerful. The style borders on stream of consciousness, thrusting us in different directions as we try to navigate the maze of Medea’s thought patterns and emotions.

It’s important to note that Medea is not the only character capable of brutality and murder. We are told Aeetes hangs corpses on trees; Pelias murders his brother and nephew to seize control of the throne. He also tortures and enslaves Jason and Medea for six years until Medea obtains their release through her gruesome machinations. But because these are powerful men, they act with impunity. Medea’s conduct suggests if it is acceptable for men to behave as monsters then it should be acceptable for women to do the same. She hammers her point by perpetrating her crimes in particularly graphic and brutal ways. For example, she not only decapitates her brother, she smears his blood, licks it, and spits it out in full view of Jason and his crew. As with her male counterparts, Medea’s goal is to instill fear and absolute obedience.     

Euripides’ Medea and David Vann’s Bright Air Black can be seen as cautionary tales in that they share a common theme about possible consequences of “Othering.” They suggest that if a people is consistently “othered;” marginalized; discriminated against; denied rights available to others; stripped of voice and agency; labeled foreigners, savages, monsters; some of these people may one day rise up screaming revenge. And if that revenge is ever manifested, it may take a form that is brutal, monstrous, and designed to make us reel in shock and horror.     

This is a stunning novel in its haunting depiction of the internal machinations of a dark, complex, maniacal, and brilliant female in Greek mythology. Some may sympathize with Medea and understand her rage while condemning her actions. Others may turn away in disgust. But whatever one thinks of her, David Vann’s Medea is a character not soon to be forgotten.      

Highly recommended.

Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle

Manda Scott

Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott is the first of four books on the life of Boudica of the Eceni tribe, the female Celtic warrior who defended Britain against the invading Roman army beginning in the year 43 C.E.     

At the ripe old age of eleven, Breaca, later named Boudica, (“Bringer of Victory”) kills the man who attacked and killed her mother. We follow Breaca as she matures into a heroic warrior who slowly but surely assumes the mantle of leadership in her community.     

Manda Scott combines the available research on tribal Britain and the historical figure of Boudica with a creative imagination that is both convincing and compelling. She serves a tale of epic proportions. Scott plunges us into the world of 1st Century Britain with its tribal conflicts and alignments, its Dreamers who predict the future through their dreaming, its animals perceived as emissaries from the gods, and its spirits of the dead who frequently appear to the living to warn them of impending disasters and to guide them forward.    

Painted in vivid detail, this is a world simultaneously brutal and sensitive, a world in which battle scenes are littered with bloodied corpses and mangled limbs, a world of horrific torture and desecration of the dead. But it is also a world in which warriors value honor, loyalty, and oaths that bind; in which cultural rules are adhered to and respected even at the cost of personal sacrifice; in which the elderly are honored; and in which the spirit of community and sisterhood is in full display as the women rally around Breaca after the death of her mother and celebrate with her at the onset of her menarche.    

Love connections weave their way throughout this tapestry, including illustrations of parental love, sibling love, heterosexual love, and homosexual love. Love of animals is also in full display, including a boy’s love for his hound and his horse.    

Manda Scott has packed a great deal into this novel. And perhaps that is its biggest downfall. She has packed too much. The novel is long and unnecessarily drawn out. At times it was difficult to follow the complex technicalities of the battle scenes and to keep track of which tribe was situated where in the battle lines. In addition, transitions from the natural world to the world of the spirit weren’t clearly delineated. This required re-reading whole passages to distinguish the real from the visionary. But these shortcomings diminish in significance when one considers the work as a whole.    

Manda Scott has written an exciting novel immersing us in her fictional re-imagining of the life and times of Celtic Britain and the remarkable woman credited with challenging the Roman Empire. This is an extraordinary feat of the imagination that will captivate its readers, especially lovers of historical fiction.       

Highly recommended.

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés is an unqualified call to arms for every woman to unleash the Wild Woman buried within her depths. Estés, a Jungian analyst and storyteller, interprets fairy tales and folk tales as empowering how-to guides for women to reconnect with their wild, instinctual natures. She invites women to view wolves as their metaphorical role models, as inspirations to help them unleash the shackles silencing their voices, stunting their behavior, and smothering their instincts.

By incorporating Jungian psychology and women’s intuition, Estés explores such themes as the importance of belonging; the deleterious impact cultural socialization can have on girl’s psychic development; the ways in which women stunt their own development by internalizing the “mother” voice; the recognition that effective mothering is contingent upon being mothered effectively; the necessity of returning to one’s “soul-home” for replenishment and self-nurturance. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic, for example, “Nosing out the Facts: The Retrieval of Intuition as Initiation” or “Finding One’s Pack: Belonging as Blessing.” Estés introduces the topic by summarizing a short tale and then dissecting and analyzing it to reveal its archetypal layers of meaning. She endows even the most seemingly innocuous detail in a story with meaning and significance.    

Estés is a gifted writer who alternates between explaining complex theories of archetypes and expressing her ideas with a folksy turn of phrase. For example, in describing her clients initial fear of Skeleton Woman and the positive qualities she embodies, Estés says: “It [Skeleton Woman] careens into shore, and before you can say jackrabbit, they [Estés’ clients] are running for their lives, and as analyst I am running along beside them trying to put a word in, while guess-who bumpety-bumps along behind.” Her writing is full of similar gems. At times, however, she has a tendency to repeat herself and prolongs explanations unnecessarily as she tries to hammer home her message. And some of her sentences suffer from excessive verbosity. But for the most part, her writing is engaging, lively, and spirited.    

Estés’ discussion is full of interesting insights and theories about why we behave the way we do. Her analysis helps us gain a better understanding of both the internal and external forces that collude to impede our development. With this understanding, we are given the tools for tapping into our inner resources to manifest our authentic selves.    

This is a book that can be read and re-read, slowly and thoughtfully, to extrapolate the nuggets of wisdom to be found in virtually every page. Some sections will prove more relevant than others depending on the individual, his/her experiences and stage in life. Also, the passage that resonates with a reader today may not be the one to resonate with the same individual years from now. But no matter where one is in life, no matter one’s circumstances, there is sure to be something here for everyone.    

Highly recommended.

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” With that opening sentence, Sylvia Plath immerses us in the world of Esther Greenwood, the nineteen-year-old narrator of The Bell Jar. This opening sentence is prescient in that the reference to the Rosenberg’s electrocution foreshadows Esther’s electric shock treatments in the asylum; her declaration of aimlessness sums up the lack of direction she feels about her own life.    

Esther is articulate, intelligent, talented, and penetratingly honest. Plath does a remarkable job of taking the reader inside Esther’s mind as she struggles with herself and evaluates her life from the standpoint of a detached observer. Plagued with despair, self-doubt, and feelings of inadequacy and futility, her flirtation with thoughts of death permeate the novel. Her almost clinical exploration of the possible methods of committing suicide is chilling enough only to be compounded by the knowledge that Plath took her own life two weeks after the novel’s publication.    

Plath’s prose is threaded with elegant metaphors and unforgettable images that evoke her narrator’s frame of mind. The writing is descriptive, clear, poignant, and reflective of a sensitive young girl alienated from the world around her and feeling hollow inside. Esther describes herself as trapped in a bell jar, isolated, exposed, stifled, and . . . “blanked and stopped as a dead baby.” From inside the bell jar, the outside world appears to her as a “bad dream.”

Esther draws us into her life, making us her companions as she evaluates herself and the people around her with a jaundiced eye. She drifts from one sporadic event to another with no apparent purpose and no obvious connection. The effect is jarring and reflects Esther’s spiraling descent into depression, breakdown, and attempted suicide. Her unabashed honesty is compelling. Her dry sense of humor is endearing. Her voice is gripping. And her refusal to conform to the restrictive pressures society inflicts on her is heroic.   

The novel closes with Esther’s appearance in front of the board that determines whether or not she is well enough to be released from the asylum. We cheer her on hoping she has extricated herself from the bell jar with its stifling, suffocating air and is now filling her lungs with air that is fresh, clean, and breathable. And we do so with the sobering knowledge that Sylvia Plath, the brilliant author who introduced us to this memorable character, tragically never escaped her own bell jar.  

Highly recommended.