Lizzie Siddal: Face of the Pre-Raphaelites

Lucinda Hawksley

Lizzie Siddal: Face of the Pre-Raphaelites by Lucinda Hawksley is a biography of the model who graced many of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

While working as a hat-maker and assistant in a London hat shop, Lizzie is discovered by the Irish poet William Allingham. He recommends her to his artist friend, Walter Howell Deverell of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. With her flowing red hair, delicate features, and waif-like figure, Lizzie captivates the Pre-Raphaelite artists, serving as their muse and posing for many of their paintings. She becomes romantically involved with the most illustrious of the Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The attraction was instantaneous and mutual. Their tempestuous relationship was to last a little over a decade until her untimely death.

Jealous, possessive, and childish, Rossetti threw temper tantrums if Lizzie formed friendships with anyone other than himself. But he allowed himself the liberty of engaging in sexual relations with other models, understandably causing Lizzie considerable distress. All the while, he dangled Lizzie for over nine years with the promise of marriage, finally marrying her in the tenth year of their relationship.

For her part, Lizzie used emotional blackmail and her illnesses (real or imaginary) to manipulate Rossetti into running back into her arms whenever she felt threatened by his absence. Possibly anorexic and complaining of constant pain, she began taking laudanum to dull the physical and psychological pain, becoming increasingly dependent on the drug. She intentionally overdosed at the age of thirty-three.

It is to Hawksley’s credit that she portrays Lizzie Siddal as having more than just a stunning face. She was a talented artist and poet in her own right. Although she had no formal training, her sketches and paintings elicited praise and eventually garnered the patronage of John Ruskin, a leading art critic. Hawksley includes several of Lizzie’s poems and pictures of her art. Lizzie emerges as a talented, tortured soul whose entanglements with the Pre-Raphaelites presented her with advantages she would otherwise never have had. But her turbulent relationship with Rossetti came at a heavy price.

Hawksley situates Lizzie in the context of her time and place, making it as much a biography of the times as it is of Lizzie Siddal. We are given glimpses of the Pre-Raphaelites’ life-style, families, friendships, and relationships with models. On the surface, the group appears fun-loving and supportive of each other’s artistic endeavors. But lurking beneath are infidelities, betrayals, and estranged relationships, all of which are underpinned with a heavy dose of class distinctions.

Hawksley’s portrayal is balanced in that neither Lizzie nor Rossetti emerge unscathed. Lizzie is a product of a time when women were totally reliant on men for support. As such, she resorts to subterfuge, deception, manipulation, and emotional blackmail to achieve her goals. Rossetti is egotistical, selfish, and exploitative, monopolizing and controlling Lizzie with promises of marriage and respectability.

The biography is engaging, accessible, and provides a balanced perspective on the life and times of an intriguing woman who died tragically before realizing her potential. The bibliography is impressive. But the book suffers from a lack of adequate citations, leaving one wondering how much is speculation and how much is based on fact.

Recommended.

Our Lady of the Nile

Scholastique Mukasonga; Trans. Melanie Mauthner

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Melanie Mauthner, uses the backdrop of a girls’ school in Rwanda to underscore the seeds of the Rwandan genocide.

Our Lady of the Nile is a high school for daughters of elite, politically prominent Rwandan families. The school is situated on a mountain top, surrounded by a brick wall, an iron gate, and armed guards who patrol the perimeter. The ostensible purpose of the setting is to preserve the girls in a state of physical and moral purity to retain their eligibility for suitable marriages. The girls are admitted to the school according to a quota of Hutus vs. Tutsis—two Tutsis for every twenty Hutus.

The school is a microcosm of Rwandan society. The girls play out on a small scale the larger conflicts plaguing their society. The two sides bicker and feud. The dominant Hutus spread malicious rumors about the Tutsis by engaging in othering and denigrating and dehumanizing their perceived enemies. Gloriosa, the daughter of a prominent Hutu, fuels the simmering hatred and distrust with lies and innuendos. The Tutsis, represented by Veronica and Virginia, become increasingly isolated and fearful until the final crescendo when the atrocities and slaughter occur.

Through these young girls, Mukasonga highlights some fairly common behaviors among a people. The majority don’t go to the extreme of fabricating lies or spreading vicious rumors about their opponents. But they allow themselves to be manipulated by leaders who have the loudest voices and who seem to have the upper hand politically. They suspend disbelief and swallow whatever lies they are told to gain acceptance by the dominant group. Meanwhile, external forces who can educate the girls on the values of inclusivity and non-discrimination squander the opportunity by fidgeting on the sidelines and allowing the tensions to escalate.

When Gloriosa damages a statue of the Virgin Mary and fabricates a lie that Tutsis destroyed the statue and that they plan to attack the school, she sets a series of events in motion. These include the imprisonment and torture of an innocent Tutsi; the involvement of the military to ‘protect’ the school; a purge of the Tutsis; violence to people and property; and the rape and murder of Tutsi girls and their sympathizers. When confronted by her friend that everything she has set in motion is based on lies, Gloriosa replies, “It’s not lies, its politics.” So, there you have it. Once again, truth is being sacrificed to political expediency.

 Mukasonga has written a compelling novel illustrating some of the forces that culminate with the Rwandan genocide. She weaves several elements in this short novel: the impact of colonialism; Rwandan folklore and superstitions; indigenous traditions hovering on the outskirts of Christianity; internalized racism; hatred of the other; economic tensions; an abusive priest; a white man living his exotic fantasies in Africa; and political corruption. The picture is not all bleak, however. There is hope. Amid the horror, Mukasonga shows that there are those among the girls who know the truth and who risk their lives to save others.

On the surface, this is a novel about girls in a Catholic high school in Rwanda. But beneath the surface lies a whole world that explores one of the saddest chapters in human history.

Recommended.

Spring

Ali Smith

Spring by Ali Smith is the third book in her seasonal quartet. It links to its predecessors, Autumn and Winter, by sharing some of the same features, including oblique references to characters given greater prominence in the earlier books. Of the three books, Spring is the strongest.

The story unfolds in two narrative threads that eventually converge. The first thread involves Richard, a TV producer grieving over the loss of his closest friend and collaborator, Patricia (Paddy). He boards a train heading for Scotland with no specific purpose or destination in mind. The second thread involves, Brittany (Brit), a guard at a detention center for migrants. On her way to work, she encounters a young school girl, Florence, at a train station. When Florence boards a train heading for Scotland, Brit follows her. The two form a connection and end up in Kingussie, Scotland, on the same railway platform as Richard. The three then join Alda in the cab of her coffee truck on a road trip to Inverness.

In true Ali Smith fashion, the narrative threads leap forward and backward in time. The present is layered with snapshots of the distant and more recent past. Allusions to artists and their work dot the landscape—Katherine Mansfield, Rainer Maria Rilke, Beethoven, Charlie Chaplin, the contemporary visual artist, Tacita Dean, and a nod to Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

Again, in true Ali Smith fashion, political commentary on current events weaves its way throughout the narrative. Smith is unabashedly political. With unflinching honesty, she forces us to examine the ramifications of our political decisions on individual lives. The political is unequivocally personal. In this case, Smith turns her laser sharp focus on the horrendous, inhumane treatment of refugees held in detention centers; the clandestine network of volunteers who help them escape to freedom; and the borders and fences erected as markers of separation between people. Contemporary struggles for freedom reverberate with the 1746 Battle of Culloden at Inverness and with the death of Michael Collins in 1922. These echoes give history a decidedly cyclical quality—as if we are caught up in a whirlpool of experiencing different manifestations of some of the same struggles.

Smith’s writing is vigorous and moves at a rapid pace. Her prose is lucid and powerful. Her delight in puns and word play is contagious. Her writing is compassionate, intelligent, warm, and brilliant. Her consummate skill as a writer is, perhaps, never more evident than in her use of dialogue. Conversations sparkle, especially those between Richard and Paddy, and between Brit and Florence.

Just when you were convinced she couldn’t do better than Autumn or Winter, Spring comes along and proves you wrong.

 Highly recommended.

Chaucer's People: Everyday Lives in Medieval England

Liza Picard

Chaucer’s People: Everyday Lives in Medieval England by Liza Picard is a delightful romp back to fourteenth-century England.

Taking each of Chaucer’s pilgrims as her starting point, Picard explores the lives, habits, professions, clothing, food, trade, and medicine of the medieval world. No detail is overlooked, beginning with the individual’s temperament and habits, including what these might reveal about Chaucer’s attitude toward members of the profession.

Picard situates the pilgrims in their social, cultural, and historical context by launching into an extensive exploration of the origins and the nature of their occupations. She details the clothes they wore, the fabrics, the headdresses, and the significance of various colors. Her research is impressive. For example, when discussing the cook, she describes medieval kitchens, cooking equipment, food, drinks, and spices. She even includes some medieval cooking recipes! The Doctor of Physic section includes cures for common diseases, a discussion of the plague, and a hilarious section on women’s medicine. For example, to prevent pregnancy, a woman is advised to place the testicles of a weasel in her bosom. Alternatively, to guarantee the birth of a son, the woman is to “take the womb and vagina of a hare, or its testicles, dry and pulverize them and drink the powder in wine.” Presto! A son is born. Sounds perfectly logical, doesn’t it?

Through her comprehensive research and extensive use of detail, Picard injects the pilgrims and their environs with a strong dose of energy and vitality. We half expect them to step off the page—warts and all. The fascinating tidbits about medieval life coupled with an engaging style and a delightful sense of humor make this a worthwhile read for those interested in immersing themselves in Chaucer’s England.

Highly recommended.

The Blood of Flowers

Anita Amirrezvani

Anita Amirrezvani’s The Blood of Flowers is a skillfully crafted coming-of-age story of a young girl in seventeenth-century Persia. To adhere to a feature of traditional folk tales, the girl remains nameless. She lives in a small village with her parents, surrounded by friends and neighbors. Her happy existence comes to a screeching halt at the sudden death of her father, leaving her and her mother destitute. They seek help from their only living relative, her father’s half-brother who lives in the bustling city of Isfahan. They move into his home where both mother and daughter are treated as servants by her uncle’s wife.

Fortunately for the girl, her uncle is an accomplished rug-maker for the Shah. Since she has harbored an enduring passion for designing and making rugs, she becomes her uncle’s assistant, developing her skills, and eventually succeeding in designing and making her own sought-after rugs.

Without a dowry, however, her options as a woman are severely restricted. Pressured by her family, she agrees to a sigheh, a pseudo-marriage renewable every three months. This practice is nothing more than glorified prostitution under the veneer of a temporary marriage. It exploits poor, vulnerable women, denying them the rights of a real marriage, and leaving them completely at the whim of their wealthy benefactor. When the girl refuses to renew the sigheh contract, she and her mother are thrown out into the streets to fend for themselves. Destitute, the girl is forced to beg. Eventually she is able to her expertise in rug-making to lift them out of poverty.

Amirrezvani has produced a gripping tale that transports the reader to seventeenth-century Persia. She spent several years researching material for the novel and succeeds in vividly evoking the fabric of life in Isfahan—the bazaars, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the food, the clothing, the colors, the gender stratification and exploitation of women. She peppers her narrative with short folk tales, some of which are traditional and some of which she fabricates.

A major strength of the novel lies in the detailed description of the process of rug-making. The vibrant colors and dyes; the intricate detail of each design; the work of translating the design on paper into a rug; the painstaking work of generating small, tightly bound knots to make the desired images and patterns; and the skilled artistry and craftsmanship involved in each step lead up to a breathtaking finished product that earns enthusiastic accolades from all who see it.

The only criticism of the novel lies in the unnecessarily graphic and lurid details of the sex acts the girl performs with her benefactor to live up to the obligations of the sigheh contract. Although her initial desire to sustain her benefactor’s interest is understandable, the extensive description of her sexual prowess in the bedroom does little to enhance the story. But in an interesting twist, the girl ultimately benefits from her disadvantaged position as a woman in her culture. The circumstances that led her to agree to the sigheh are the very same circumstances that help her transform her life. She capitalizes on being a female to gain access to the Shah’s harem where only women are allowed, using this privileged access to her advantage by befriending the women who then commission her to make their rugs. As a result, she becomes an independent, strong, empowered, and confident business owner who is finally in control of her own destiny.

Its immersive nature in depicting seventeenth century Persia makes this a highly recommended novel for lovers of historical fiction.

Minutes of Glory

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Minutes of Glory by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a collection of 16 short stories organized thematically under the headings Of Mothers and Children; Fighters and Martyrs; Secret Lives; Shadows and Priests. The stories cover a range of topics dealing with Kenyan culture, the impact of British colonialism, racism, political corruption, indigenous beliefs and traditions versus Christianity, internalized racism, discrimination, the erosion of indigenous culture, and gender relations.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o explores these topics by showing how they manifest in the lives of his characters. The conflicts take many forms. We witness women ostracized by their communities because of their inability to bear children; a village’s desperate struggle to survive a draught; people adopting western ways, western clothing, and western attitudes in a tragic effort to gain respect and acceptance; villagers turning against members of their own community; conflicts between city and village, between rich and poor; the smug attitudes of the colonizers, convinced of their superiority to the indigenous peoples and of their right to appropriate native land; and the ways in which oppression of the other also entraps the oppressor. But it is not all bleak. The collection concludes with a couple of delightfully whimsical short stories.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a skilled storyteller. He weaves folkloric elements, ghosts, magical happenings, and superstitions into his stories, giving them an other-worldly quality. He also grounds them in political reality with intermittent references to the Mau Mau uprising and its repercussions. The stories are told simply, with compassion and poignancy. The characters are drawn with sensitivity.

This is a compelling collection of short stories focusing on the challenges facing Kenya. But the themes transcend Kenya. They illustrate the deleterious impact on all people and all cultures ripped apart by colonialism, classism, and corruption.

Highly recommended.

Winter

Ali Smith

Winter by Ali Smith, the second volume in her seasonal quartet, shares many of the characteristics of its predecessor, Autumn (see June 18 review). Swirling within the politics of the day with references to Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, the anti-immigrant environment, and Brexit are narrative leaps in time alternating between decades in the past, to the more recent past, to the present; multiple flashbacks and flash forwards; intelligent characters frequently talking at each other instead of to each other; and a plethora of word plays and puns.

The narrative unfolds through the perspective of the elderly Sophie and her adult son, Art. Visiting his mother for the Christmas holiday, Art has hired Lux, a young Croatian woman, to pretend to be his recently estranged girlfriend, Charlotte. Meanwhile, Sophie has her own problems. We first meet her as she interacts with a disembodied head of a child as it bounces around in her house. She no longer has any desire to eat and she exhibits such strange behavior that Lux convinces Art to contact his mother’s estranged older sister, Iris, to spend Christmas with them. The sisters, who have not spoken to each other for years, resume the same squabbles of the past—Sophie as the pragmatist espousing conservative views and Iris as the life-long hippie and political activist whose energy has not diminished with age.

Smith adds substance to this skeletal framework by ricocheting multiple threads off each other: flashbacks to the siblings’ childhood; Iris’ political activism, including her involvement in the Greenham Common protest; Sophie’s successful business; the siblings’ relationship with their father; Art’s dysfunctional relationship with his mother and failing relationship with Charlotte; his inability to feel, act, or connect with real people and/or to the environment even though he writes a blog on nature; Lux as the compassionate and perceptive outsider who penetrates Sophie’s defense mechanisms; Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures; and a character linking this volume with its predecessor.

Add to this expansive scenario is Smith’s virtuoso treatment of time in which the different layers of time coalesce to depict its movement as a widening gyre with each circle connecting to what is above and what is below, what is happening now with what happened then. The past constantly intrudes on the present; the present flashes back to the past. The anti-nuclear and environmental protests at Greenham Common metamorphose into the pro-immigrant and climate change activism of the present.

The novel ends on a positive note. Art questions the emptiness of living in a virtual world. His aloofness to the real world thaws as he searches for Lux in the streets of London. The siblings experience a glimmer of reconciliation. And it is Christmas, after all—a time for new beginnings.

A multi-layered, complex novel that weaves together multiple threads and moves at an energetic pace. Another Ali Smith memorable achievement.

Highly recommended.

Goat Mountain

David Vann

Goat Mountain by David Vann is not for the faint of heart. Deceptively simple, the story is dark and unsettling.

 The narrative unfolds in the first-person point of view of a man recalling a specific hunting trip he took when he was eleven years old. With his father, his grandfather, and his father’s best friend by his side, he makes the annual trek to the family ranch on Goat Mountain every fall to go deer hunting. Although he has been on the deer hunt many times in the past, this time is different. This time he is actually considered old enough to fire his rifle at a buck. He is eager to taste his first kill.

 When they arrive at the family ranch, they see a poacher in the distance. The father hands his son a rifle so he can view the poacher through his scope. It takes only a split second, but in that split second the boy does something that changes their lives forever. He intentionally shoots at and kills the poacher.

In this haunting and unsettling story, David Vann explores what it means to be human. He asks the same questions William Golding asked in his 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies. Is bestiality intrinsic to our nature? Is it ever present, hovering under a thin veneer of civilized behavior, ready to surface at the first opportunity? What code of ethics, what rules operate when we are isolated in the wilderness, far from the social, cultural, and moral norms of society?

The wilderness setting and harrowing events are heavily imbued with an atmosphere regressing to a primal time and place. Atavism is stretched to its limits. References to the biblical story of Cain and Abel abound, as do echoes of ancient myths, especially Oedipus. The companionship and bonding that presumably take place among men on hunting trips is missing. Theirs is a contentious relationship with constant quarrels that frequently deteriorate into fists and blows and even threats of murder. The characters seep into the landscape, almost becoming a part of it. The boy imagines monsters and dinosaurs traipsing the earth as he slithers across the terrain like a snake. He admits to feeling greater kinship with hunter-gatherer societies than with his own time and place. He sees the act of killing as wired into our nature since the beginning of time. He lusts to kill. And it is only after he has shot the buck, witnessed its agony and heard its deafening screeches as it struggles to survive, does he begin to question his assumptions about killing.

This is not an easy read. The prose is heavy, intense, and saturated with explicit detail. The language is visceral, at times too heavy, too conscious of itself, too anxious to hammer the point home. The graphic violence borders on being gratuitous. The description of killing the deer, gutting it, and dragging its dismembered corpse back to camp extends for several interminably agonizing pages. It is in stark contrast with the clinical, dispassionate nature of shooting the poacher. The savage nature of the boy is fully brought home as he bites into the raw liver and heart of the buck he has just killed. As they watch blood dribbling down his chin, his father and grandfather bequeath on him the honorific title: “Now you’re a man,” they say.

A haunting and provocative novel that poses questions about human nature, about kinship, and about actions and their consequences. It provides no answers. The adult narrator seems satisfied with merely describing a harrowing experience of his childhood without articulating in what ways—if any—it has transformed or impacted him. 

Recommended with reservations as this is not a book for everyone.

Measuring Time

Helon Habila

Measuring Time by Helon Habila skillfully weaves the political and cultural environment of Nigeria from the 1960s to the 1990s with the lives of twin boys, Mamo and LaMamo, in the Nigerian village of Keti.

 Mamo, the older twin, suffers from sickle cell anemia, is physically weak, reserved, introspective, and intellectual. LaMamo is athletic, boisterous, outgoing, and glib. The brothers dream of escaping from their domineering father to lead adventurous lives. Their paths diverge after they run away together to become soldiers. Mamo is forced to return home because of a health emergency; LaMamo continues his journey and becomes a mercenary, fighting alongside various rebel groups in Liberia and Guinea, and eventually working with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) before returning home.

Although Mamo’s disease prevents him from leaving the village, he escapes intellectually and emotionally from his father. He succeeds academically, becoming a history teacher in the local school. He embarks on a project to write a history of the village through interviewing its people. His project attracts the attention of village leaders who invite him to write a biography of the village chief. Close interaction with village leaders exposes Mamo to the corruption, bribery, and moral turpitude of those in power.

Meanwhile LaMamo travels to neighboring countries as a mercenary, joining factions fighting for African liberation. He keeps his brother apprised of his travels and activities by periodically sending him letters. These reveal LaMamo’s increasing disenchantment with wars, with the exploitation of children coerced into fighting, and with senseless killing and suffering of innocent civilians.

Through the lives of these twin brothers and the people they interact with, Habila shows a society riddled with corruption. A school that provides educational opportunities for village children is tossed around as a pawn between political factions and is eventually forced to close. The money raised for drilling new wells in draught-ridden areas is whittled away in the hands of corrupt politicians. The police crush riots through brutality, violence, and intimidation. Rebel leaders and their followers, ostensibly fighting for African liberation from the yoke of colonialism, rape and pillage at will. As a result of their separate experiences, the brothers become increasingly discouraged about the possibility of a better future.

Habila’s characters are realistically portrayed, especially his protagonist Mamo who emerges as a sensitive, conscientious individual determined to record the dignity and resilience of ordinary people in his village. The description of village life, inhabitants, traditions, and customs is rich in detail. Habila has woven an intricate tapestry that threads the recent history of Nigeria with the lives of twin boys, thereby expanding his vision to illustrate both the personal and political challenges facing a people.

 A powerful story, told in clear, succinct prose, with sensitivity and compassion.

 Highly recommended.

Ithaca

Patrick Dillon

Ithaca by Patrick Dillon retells Homer’s Odyssey primarily through the eyes of Telemachus, the son of Odysseus.

The three-part novel opens with sixteen-year-old Telemachus struggling to assert himself in the face of suitors who bully, taunt, and ridicule him. He watches helplessly in despair as the suitors turn his home into a ramshackle free-for-all while gobbling up his inheritance. He decides to set out in search for news of his father. Part 1 concludes with Telemachus heading first to Pylos and then to Sparta with Nestor’s daughter, Polycaste.

Part 2 begins with Odysseus’ encounter with Nausicaa at Phaeacia, includes a narrative of his adventures after his departure from Troy, and ends with Odysseus’ arrival at Ithaca.

Part 3 re-focuses on Telemachus; his meeting with Odysseus; the killing of the suitors and their accomplices; the reunification of Penelope and Odysseus; and Telemachus’ rejection of the warrior lifestyle. It concludes with him leaving Ithaca intent on leading a quiet life with Polycaste on a remote island.

On the positive side, the novel is a quick and easy read, moving at a brisk pace with detailed descriptions. Some of the most moving lines describe the devastating physical and psychological impact of the war on its survivors—men with missing limbs and shattered psyches; women and children still grieving over the loss of loved ones. War is a decidedly unheroic enterprise, stripped of glory, turning men into monsters, and shattering lives in its wake.

Some character portrayals are interesting. Telemachus is plagued with self-doubt and frustration. Menelaus seethes with resentment at Helen. Helen is duplicitous and manipulative. Penelope is non-communicative and ineffectual. Odysseus is a broken old man, eaten up with guilt at his treatment of wife and child.

But . . .

Although an author can take some liberties in retelling a myth by fleshing out details and embellishing scenes, the novel has to at least be consistent with itself. Since this is a novel about Telemachus, the whole of part 2 was incongruous and a distraction. Odysseus recounting his adventures to the Phaeacians had nothing to do with Telemachus. He wasn’t even present at the time in either the epic or the novel. So why include it?

Furthermore, Dillon so seriously deviated from Homer’s epic that it brings to question the extent of his research and knowledge of the times. In the Homeric epic, when Nestor suggests to Telemachus he should seek news of his father from Menelaus in Sparta, he sends his son, Peisistratus, to accompany him. He does not send his daughter, which is what happens in this novel. No father at that time would send his unmarried daughter on a journey unless she were accompanied by an entourage of men for protection. He certainly wouldn’t send her off in the sole company of young man, especially since she is a princess whose virginity is perceived as a prized commodity.

Another serious deviation concerns Odysseus’ journey to the underworld. In Homer, he seeks direction from the blind prophet Tiresias. In the novel, he speaks with Laocoon, a Trojan priest. It makes no sense for Odysseus, a Greek, to seek advice from a Trojan priest, especially since this is the same priest who cautions the Trojans against bringing the infamous horse into their city. Why should Odysseus seek him let alone trust him?

Although showing strength in some areas, the novel as a whole suffers from glaring inaccuracies and fails to deliver on its potential.

Bellman & Black

Diane Setterfield

Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield opens with a ten-year-old William Bellman playing with three friends. The boys try to outdo each other at running, tree-climbing, and arm-wrestling. William takes out his catapult and brags he can hit a rook (crow) in a far-off tree. The boys are skeptical. Even William is skeptical. He makes a great show of selecting just the right stone. He aims and launches the stone, all the while hoping the bird will fly off before being hit. The bird doesn’t move. The stone hits its target. The bird falls on the ground, lifeless. Immediately, there is a noticeable change in the four boys, especially in William. He becomes feverish for several days, trying hard to suppress the memory. He almost succeeds.

This pivotal childhood event impacts the trajectory of William’s life. We follow his career as he becomes the manager of Bellman’s Mill and then its owner. He astonishes employees with his prodigious amount of energy. Constantly on the move, feverishly running from one project to another, William lives at an accelerated pace as if he is afraid to slow down, afraid to remember. All seems to be going well, but then friends and family start dying off, including his wife and all but one of his children. At each funeral he attends, William sees a tall, mysterious stranger dressed in black. He eventually confronts the stranger (“Mr. Black”) and thinks he has struck a bargain with him to keep his remaining child alive. Accordingly, he establishes Bellman & Black, a one-stop shop for every conceivable item dealing with the death industry.   

William’s success comes at a cost. As his frantic pace increases, he begins to suffer from dizzy spells and nausea. He neglects his daughter and friends, is haunted by guilt, but he never allows himself to pause and reflect. He only knows he must rush through each day at a frenzied pace while obsessively checking items off his to-do list.

As William tries desperately to appease Mr. Black by accumulating wealth for his “silent” partner, it becomes evident his refusal to confront his guilt has generated problems. Mr. Black is imaginary. He exists only in William’s mind as a manifestation of a suppressed memory. William learns too late that suppressed memories never disappear. They manifest in various forms, influencing behavior and actions in ways that are not necessarily rational. This is not a ghost story. It is a novel about actions which haunt us throughout our lives.

Although a quick and easy read, this novel is not as successful as Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale or Once Upon a River. Setterfield’s ability to evoke a haunting atmosphere through revealing details and suggestive phrases continues to impress. Her description of the structure and activities at the Bellman & Black emporium is particularly effective. The passages about rooks and their sporadic, haunting appearances throughout the novel provide an added dimension to the other-worldly atmosphere. But with the exception of William Bellman, the characters are not well developed and fall far short of the fully-fleshed out, interesting characters in Once Upon a River. The novel drags in certain parts and is repetitive in others. But on the whole, it is a compelling portrayal of possible consequences of a suppressed trauma.

Recommended.

The Egyptian

Mika Waltari

The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, translated by Naomi Walford, was an international best seller in the 1940s. The novel immerses the reader in the life and times of ancient Egypt during the reign of the rebel pharaoh Akhnaton. The story unfolds in the first-person narrative of Sinuhe, the personal physician to Akhnaton.

Born under mysterious circumstances, Sinuhe is adopted by a couple who shower him with love and support. His success as a student enables him to work his way up through the many layers of hierarchy until he becomes the personal physician to the pharaoh. As an intimate of the court and one who is privy to its secrets, he describes in vivid detail the palace intrigues, sexual liaisons, marriages, murders, and shifting political alliances.

At times, self-absorbed, arrogant, and cowardly; at times, heroic and generous, Sinuhe emerges as a conflicted soul, gravitating from one extreme to the other. He shows compassion by healing the poor and needy without demanding compensation. But when embroiled in palace politics, he commits murder and inflicts brutal revenge on his enemies. On the one hand, he sympathizes with and tries to propagate Akhnaton’s vision of the equality of all human beings under the one god; on the other hand, he is convinced of Akhnaton’s madness and responsibility for the breakdown of law and order in Egypt and its surrounding empire.

Waltari demonstrates his consummate skill as a writer by creating a compelling texture of ancient Egypt. His research is impressive. Egypt comes alive with its hustle and bustle, pungent odors, opulence, intense heat, noisy streets, graphic violence, wars, exploitation, territorial skirmishes, extremes in poverty and wealth, systemic brutality and oppression, rituals and mythology. Waltari’s re-creation of Crete with its bull dancers and of Babylon in all its ancient splendor are particularly memorable. Sinuhe’s diction sounds old world appropriate and sustains reader interest with its intricate, vivid details. There are many noteworthy phrases peppering the novel, one of which is the amusing reference to a birth in poverty as a birth “with dung between your toes.”

The characters are well-developed and believable. Their behavior is self-serving; their morality questionable. Some forge friendships with Sinuhe. Perhaps the most delightful relationship is that of Sinuhe with his one-eyed, self-aggrandizing slave, Kaptah. Kaptah’s droll comments, antics, and down-to-earth perspective ingratiate their way into Sinuhe’s heart until Sinuhe grants him his freedom and trusts him to manage his worldly assets. Kaptah proves to be loyal to his former master and an astute business man. He freely confesses to stealing from Sinuhe only what amounts to a reasonable amount. Their relationship endures, blossoming into a charming friendship of opposites.

The novel is rich in historical details, presenting a panoramic but bleak view of ancient Egypt during the time of Pharaoh Akhnaton. It brings to life a turbulent time in Egypt’s history, a time plagued with political intrigue and internal conflicts because a pharaoh defied an institutionalized belief system with its powerful infrastructure by insisting on the monotheistic worship of Aton as the one god.

Highly recommended as a well-researched, immersive, and vibrant work of historical fiction.

Autumn

Ali Smith

Autumn by Ali Smith, shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, is the first book in her seasonal quartet. The book loosely revolves around an unusual friendship between Elisabeth and her long-term relationship with her elderly neighbor, Daniel Gluck.

Daniel is a charming companion and baby sitter for the young Elisabeth, never condescending, always respectful. He is learned, erudite, well-versed in literature and art, and an imaginative storyteller. He shares his knowledge with Elisabeth as if she were a kindred spirit, awakening her interest in art while challenging her to think critically. Theirs is a beautiful relationship, so it’s no surprise that Elisabeth continues to honor their friendship for decades.

The narrative jumps back and forth in time, gradually revealing portions of their backstories, and flashbacks to some of their decades’ old conversations and word games, all of which are an absolute delight. One passage may describe the initial meeting between Daniel and Elisabeth when she is in primary school; the next passage shows Elisabeth as a 32-year-old reading to Daniel, now 101 years old, living in a rest home for the elderly where he is either in a deep sleep or a coma. Elisabeth visits him weekly, posing as his granddaughter to gain access to his room to read to him.

Weaving in and out of the Daniel/Elisabeth relationship is Elisabeth’s relationship with her mother; references to Pauline Boty, the only female artist in the British Pop Art movement of the ‘60s; the aftermath of the contentious Brexit vote; dream sequences; stream of consciousness interludes; flashbacks; make-believe stories; and miscellaneous references to songs, literary works, and artists. It is a hodgepodge of frenzied activity, frequently without a segue or indication to alert the reader as to whether we have plunged into a dream sequence (Elisabeth’s or Daniels?), an event from the past (whose past?), or are listening to Elisabeth’s hilarious tangle with officious Post Office personnel in a bureaucratic nightmare. What holds this incoherent jumble together is Ali Smith’s extraordinary skill with words.

Ali Smith has a definite way with words. She can make them dance on the page. She can make them twist and turn, pirouette and summersault. Whether she addresses the subject of friendship, love, loyalty, bigotry, aging, the passage of time, politics of the day, political scandals of the past, sexual inequality, the media, cultural icons, and so on, she exhibits an infectious, unadulterated joy in playing with words. Her pace is energetic; her sentences, nimble; her language bursts with vitality even while critiquing political obfuscations and lies.

Autumn is the season of waning. The year is in decline as nature prepares for winter. Daniel Gluck, lying in a nursing home, is in the declining days of his life. England is undergoing a transformation as a result Brexit and will never be the same again. Autumn is followed by winter, a time when nature goes dormant. But as Percy Bysshe Shelley reminds us, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” If Ali Smith’s Autumn is an indication of what’s to come, her Winter, Spring, and Summer are sure to be treasures worth savoring.

 Highly recommended.

The Book of Collateral Damage

Sinan Antoon; Trans. Jonathan Wright

The Book of Collateral Damage by Sinan Antoon, translated by Jonathan Wright, weaves together two narrative threads, each of which illustrates different aspects of the collateral damage caused by the Iraq war and occupation.

The novel opens with Iraqi-born Nameer, a future professor at Dartmouth College, returning to Baghdad in 2003 after an absence of a decade. While in Baghdad, he visits Al-Mutannabi Street, a street famous for its book shops, where he encounters the bookseller, Wadood Abdulkarim. Wadood shares with him his manuscript in which he catalogues the unacknowledged losses caused by the most recent war.  

The first thread chronicles Nameer’s journey upon his return to America. In many ways, his journey parallels that of the author, giving it the definite feel of an autobiography. From Dartmouth College, Nameer goes to New York University as an associate professor. He accumulates images and newspaper cuttings about Iraq for a novel he plans to write but is never able to begin. He struggles with PTSD, haunted by images and the faces of people he saw during his recent trip. Events, objects, and even the smell of certain foods transport him back to his childhood in Iraq. His depression and creative paralysis lead him to a therapist who encourages him to write as a form of therapy.

Periodically interspersed throughout Nameer’s narrative are excerpts (colloquies) from Wadood’s manuscript. These are fascinating vignettes of objects, plants, and animals, most of which come alive in the first-person point of view. Included among them is a Kashan carpet that once enjoyed the patter of children’s feet. A bomb drops on the home, silencing all who have huddled together on the carpet for protection. A tree thrives in the sun, bearing fruit. It describes its agony as its limbs are cut off, its wounded trunk injected with poison to suffocate its roots. What little remains burns when ash falls from the sky. A young boy gives his friend a stamp album for safe-keeping when he and his family are deported because of their ostensible Iranian heritage. The boy grows into manhood, treasuring the stamp album and faithfully adding to the collection. One day a missile breaks through the window pane of his apartment, setting all his belongings on fire. Add to this list a race-horse, a camera film, a wall, a cassette-tape, and many others. Each meets with a violent end.

The threads alternate between the losses catalogued in Wadood’s colloquy to Nameer’s struggle with his own internal demons as he recalls his personal past and the recent past of his country. The threads are so intertwined that the words become interchangeable the further the novel progresses. With news of Wadood’s death at the hands of a suicide bomber, Nameer decides to write his novel of collateral damage as both a tribute to honor Wadood and as a way to heal his fractured self. In part, therefore, this is a novel about an author’s struggle to write a novel that serves as a testament to the trauma of a nation.

By structuring his novel with two interlocking threads that feed off each other to accentuate the intensity of loss, Sinan Antoon has illustrated in a profoundly moving and poignant way the true cost of war. The cost should not be measured only by the loss of human life, potential, aspirations, and mental stability. It must also be measured by the devastation inflicted on the environment, on the destruction of valuable cultural artefacts, on homes that once sheltered families, on objects of aesthetic value, on spaces that hold significance, and on personal mementos wrapped in memories of better times. Each loss is felt deeply and illustrates the annihilation caused by war. All are victims of collateral damage.

Highly recommended for its powerful and sensitive evocation of the true cost of war.

A Thousand Ships

Natalie Haynes

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes provides a unique and fresh look at the Trojan War by retelling it from an all-female perspective. With Homer’s Iliad and his Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and several classical Greek plays serving as her inspiration, Haynes gives voice to nearly two dozen females ranging from slaves, wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, nymphs, and goddesses.

With the exception of Calliope, the muse of poetry, who speaks in the first person, and Penelope whose voice is heard in the letters she sends to Odysseus, the narrative unfolds in the third person point of view. The perspective changes from one character to the next, with the narrative flashing forward and backward in time to reveal a character’s back story, and disclose the causes, duration, and aftermath of the war.

Haynes’ vivid imagery and diction bring to life the agony and trauma experienced by the Trojan women. We run alongside Creusa as she vainly struggles to find a viable escape from a city engulfed in flames. We hear Hecabe’s guttural cry when the Greeks drop the mangled body of her youngest son, Polydorus, at her feet. We watch Polyxena claw her face when she recognizes her brother’s corpse. We share Andromache’s anguish as she clutches her young son, pleading with the Greek soldiers not to wrest him from her arms to certain death. We feel Cassandra’s paralyzing helplessness as she predicts the future unfolding before her eyes only to have no one believe her. We huddle together with the Trojan women as each awaits her fate, whether it be to slavery or sacrificial death. We feel the festering of Clytemnestra’s anger toward Agamemnon as she plots to avenge her daughter’s death. And we listen in as Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena squabble like badly-behaved children to possess the golden apple.

For the most part, the characters are well developed, believable, and demonstrate great resilience and strength in the face of adversity. But a few are indistinguishable, speaking as they do with the same voice. Andromache and Cassandra are particularly strong and moving. The forever patient Penelope is somewhat insipid as she pleads for Odysseus to come home. Her letters serve as fillers, restating Odysseus’ adventures on his ten-year homeward trek after the war. A few characters make brief appearances in the form of short vignettes; others survive long after the end of the war.

Haynes injects the occasional note of humor into an otherwise traumatic event. Calliope as the muse of poetry takes funny jabs at the poet who pesters her for inspiration. She is determined to force his lens on women and to convince him their suffering and endurance is as heroic as that of the men who fought and died on the battlefield.

By shifting the lens of vision, by moving women from periphery to center, Natalie Haynes has made a significant contribution to feminist retellings of classical myths. Her story is imaginative; her words engaging. She has heard the song of the feminist muse and given voice to those whose voices have been muffled since the beginning of recorded history. How refreshing it is to finally hear their voices.

Highly recommended.

So Long a Letter

Mariama Bâ; trans. Modupé Bodé-Thomas

Winner of the 1980 Noma Prize, So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ, translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas, is in the form of a long letter written by one middle-aged Senegalese woman to another. A recently widowed Ramatoulaye writes to her childhood friend, Aissatou. The two share a similar fate in that their respective spouses took on second wives. But their reactions differ. Aissatou divorces her husband, raises her children, and makes a life for herself outside of Senegal. Ramatoulaye opts to stay in her village and endure the public humiliation of her husband taking on a second wife, a woman young enough to be their daughter.

Ramatoulaye eloquently reveals intimate details of her life. She falls in love with her future husband and marries him in spite of her mother’s reservations. They are happily married for over two decades when her husband takes on a second wife. Ramatoulaye is not prone to histrionics and maintains a calm, external demeanor when hearing the news even though she is shocked at the revelation.

Abandoned physically and financially by her husband, she shows her resilience and strength as she struggles to maintain the semblance of normalcy for herself and for her children. She lists the challenges she faces in paying bills and putting food on the table since her husband showered all his financial support on his extravagant new wife and her family. And she describes the difficulties of raising her brood of twelve children. But she harbors no bitterness toward her deceased husband whom she still loves.

One of the most endearing qualities that comes to the forefront in this novella is the relationship between the two friends. Theirs is a wonderful sisterhood of support and respect for each other’s choices. When Aissatou learns of Ramatoulaye’s hardship in finding adequate transportation, she buys a car for her friend to help ease her burden. And for her part, Ramatoulaye never criticizes her friend for choosing the path she did. Although they chose different paths, Ramatoulaye recognizes the choice one woman makes may not work for another. She supports a woman’s inviolable right to choose her own path and understands the pivotal role education plays in empowering women to exercise voice and choice. The novella ends on a beautiful note with Ramatalouye eagerly awaiting her friend’s visit to Senegal on the following day.

Ramatoulaye emerges as a compassionate, sensitive, intelligent, resourceful woman who has finally come into her own. She values her independence, gains strength as the novel progresses, and shocks her community by her repeated rejection of suitors seeking her hand in marriage after her husband’s death. Strong, dignified, empowered, and stoic, Ramatoulaye serves as a beacon of light for all women suffering injustice and oppression at the hands of men who exploit culture, tradition, or religion to gratify their selfish desires and to justify their abuse of women.

Highly recommended.

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, is a riveting tale of two young people whose lives intersect in the turmoil and devastation of World War II. The narrative unfolds in three separate threads that converge at the end of the novel.

The first thread involves Marie-Laure, a young French girl living in Paris with her father. Marie-Laure is blind. Her father fosters her independence by building a miniature model of their neighborhood so she can learn to navigate the streets on her own. As the Nazi invasion of France becomes immanent, Marie-Laure and her father escape to the coastal town of Saint-Malo to stay with her great-uncle. Her father, an employee of the Museum of Natural History, is given the museum’s most valuable jewel for safe-keeping—a large diamond supposedly endowed with magical properties.

The second thread involves Werner Pfennig, a young German boy who lives in an orphanage with his sister. Werner is a self-taught technician with an exceptional talent for building and fixing transmitters. He is recruited to the Hitler Youth and then sent to the battle front to determine the exact location of the transmitters used by the resistance.

The third thread involves a German officer dying of cancer with an obsession for locating this “magical” diamond because he believes it will cure him of his disease. After systematically chasing down all the clues as to its possible whereabouts, he ends up in the home of Marie-Laure’s great uncle, convinced the diamond is hidden there.

The narrative alternates between these three threads in flash forwards and flashbacks while simultaneously shifting locations. The sequence is not chronological—chapters switch between different characters and different years. This technique heightens the tension and sustains interest as one has to read the whole book to fit the pieces together chronologically. The tension in each thread gradually builds up until the climax when the three threads converge in the great uncle’s home. To accentuate the rapidity of movement, Doerr frequently writes short, clipped, well-crafted sentences; to generate a sense of immediacy, he uses the present tense.

Doerr’s prose is poetic; his imagery immersive; his research impressive. The rich, sensory details transport the reader to war time Europe where we breathe, taste, smell, touch, hear, and see the impact of war on cities and on lives. Rather than focusing on the big picture, Doerr chooses to focus his lens on the lights we cannot see—the impact of war on the lives of ordinary people, especially children. He gives voice to their experiences by illuminating what typically remains hidden in the shadows. And he does so in luminous prose that sizzles and sparkles on every page evoking the electrical currents in Werner Pfennig’s transmitters.

A remarkable achievement and highly recommended for all who love a good story told in poetic, immersive language by a master craftsman.

Everything Under

Daisy Johnson

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson is a modern re-telling of the Oedipus myth buried in twists and turns and interlocking threads. Set against the backdrop of the river and canals of Oxford, the novel weaves in and out of the past and present as it winds its way along the river’s murky waters.

The primary thread involves a now thirty-something Gretel on a hunt for her missing mother after years of estrangement. While searching for clues as to her mother’s possible whereabouts, she dredges up images from the past when she lived on a riverboat with her mother. She harbors a love/hate relationship for her mother—the secret language they shared; the bond they formed while living on the margins of society; and her mother’s eventual abandonment of her when she was a teenager.

There are several tributaries running off from this primary thread, one of which involves a teenager who has run away from home. Another involves Gretel eventually finding her mother and learning she now suffers from Alzheimer. Gretel struggles to cope with her mother’s forgetfulness and erratic behavior, as well as with her mother’s past actions when they sheltered the runaway teenager. And then there is the Bonak—either real or imagined—a mysterious creature lurking in the water or along the riverbank whose haunting presence hovers over the events.

The novel alternates between Gretel’s first-person point of view and a third person point of view. Shifts in time and location are signaled by chapter headings. In addition to the theme of parricide and incest, the novel borrows several elements from the Oedipus myth, including child abandonment, riddles, a dire prophesy, cryptic clues, mixed messages, surrogate families, family secrets, blindness, and mistaken identities, all of which lead to the inexorable conclusion. Tiresias is given a nod when Johnson plays with the concept of fluidity in gender identities and language. He speaks the truth but appears to speak in riddles. Gretel and her mother communicate in a secret language no one else understands. Fairy tale and folk tale elements are also apparent. The name Gretel echoes the fairy tale of the little girl and her brother trying to find home by following bread crumbs; the lives of the river people are steeped in folk tales and superstition.

A lot happens in this novel. At times the interplay of different narrative strands can get confusing, especially during the latter part of the novel. But Daisy Johnson is an accomplished writer. She has served a gripping tale with surprising twists and turns in language and imagery that electrifies. She explores the concepts of fate, free will, destiny, identity, and memory—what we remember and what we choose to forget. She takes us to a culture that lives on the margins of society in the river people, a culture with its own rules and methods of coping. But she is at her best when she conjures up vivid language that brings the omnipresent river and its surroundings to life in a haunting atmosphere laden with darkness, mystery, and fear of the unknown.

Highly recommended.

Border Districts

Gerald Murnane

Border Districts by Gerald Murnane is in the form of an extended monologue with lengthy paragraphs uninterrupted by page breaks or chapter headings. There is no plot or story. Instead we are served a map of the narrator’s mind with its meanderings, reflections, detours, memories, digressions, and opinions. It is akin to stream of consciousness in that one seemingly random thought or image triggers a memory that sets the narrator down a winding path, the relevance of which may or may not be readily apparent to the reader. But we follow the narrator because his prose is hypnotic, his thoughts luminous, and because we are curious to see where he will take us next.

The narrator is an elderly gentleman, a grandfather, who has moved from a capital city to a quiet township near the border. He tells us he has done this to experience the freedom to record his “. . . image-history, which includes, of course, my speculations about such image-events.” And that is precisely what he does. He writes a report in which he records the images that have preoccupied his mind from childhood into old age and he considers if and how his reflections on those images have changed in the interim. If all this sounds somewhat bizarre, that is because it is.

The central image preoccupying his mind and one that recurs is of stained or colored glass windows. His focus is intense as he studies the colors, the shapes, and the fluctuating impact of light as it filters through the colored panes. He sees himself as “a student of colours and shades and hues and tints.” He is intent on looking at things sideways since “a glance or a sideways look often reveals more than a direct gaze . . .”

The narrator is painfully self-conscious, analytical, and deliberate in his writing, as in, for example, “I strayed a little in the previous two sentences” or, more typically, “While I was writing the previous two paragraphs . . .” He writes in the past tense and has a propensity to use the conditional construction in his sentences: “If only I had had . . . I would have had . . .” etc. He launches into elaborate scenarios where he imagines things that might have been. For example, while visiting a friend, he weaves an elaborate tale in which he envisions a marriage between his friend’s spinster aunt and her sweetheart returned from the war. He constructs their home in his imagination and even compares his childhood and schooling with that of the imaginary daughter adopted by the aunt and her sweetheart.

All this makes for curious reading. One wonders what he’s up to. And then a sentence toward the end of the book brings the entire work into focus. The narrator has taken a photograph of a colored glass window in his friend’s home. As he examines the photograph, he makes the following statement:

“ . . . a part of my seeing was investing the glass with qualities not inherent in it—qualities probably not apparent to any other observer and certainly not detectable by any sort of camera; that what I missed when I looked at the photographic prints was the meaning that I had previously read into the glass.”

In other words, Murnane does with images what many of us do with books. We can read the same book many times over and experience it differently with each reading depending on our life experiences at the time. If we are astute and deliberate readers, we can recall which passages in the book left an impact on us, when, how, and why. This exercise reveals as much about the reader as it does about the book. We might do it with the written word; Murnane does it with images. He imbues what he sees with meaning. His images of landscapes and colored glass are significant because they reveal the eye of the beholder, then and now.

Murnane has charted the landscape of his mind throughout the decades by using image-events as triggers. He explores the development of his mental state by gauging his reaction to visual stimuli. He has been doing this all along in the novel, but it is not until the end that the whole enterprise comes into clear focus.

An unusual novel in terms of structure, content, and theme. Highly recommended for those who enjoy reflective, digressive writing.

Celestial Bodies

Jokha Alharthi; trans. by Marilyn Booth

The winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies paints a vivid portrait of Omani society as it grapples with the cultural and social changes precipitated by its transition into a modern society. The tension between late twentieth-century values and behaviors with those of the present is played out in the lives, marriages, and relationships of three generations of an affluent Omani family. Threaded throughout the novel are details about daily life and the interplay of folklore, traditional healing methods, and religion.

The narrative unfolds in a series of vignettes told by a third person omniscient narrator focusing each time on one of a dozen or so characters. These vignettes alternate with the first-person narrative of Abdullah, a young man damaged by his father’s abuse and his mother’s death under mysterious circumstances. The multiplicity of characters and perspectives would have been confusing had Alharthi not provided a family tree to show the relationships. This family tree is essential, especially in the early pages of the novel, until one becomes familiar with each character’s placement.

The primary focus is on three sisters. Mayya, the eldest, suppresses her desire for the man she loves by acquiescing to parental demands to marry Abdullah, a man she does not love. Asma, the second in line, is the reader in the family. She agrees to marry the man chosen for her because she perceives the marriage to be a means to an end—the end being the ability to pursue her education. Khawla, the youngest, is in love with her cousin, Nasir. She resists all offers of marriage, stubbornly insisting to wait for his return from Canada.

Alharthi’s scope is wide. In the character of Zarifa, we learn of her mother’s captivity into slavery, the treatment of slaves, and the aftermath of their eventual emancipation in the 1960s. In addition to the generational conflicts, we read about political upheavals and rebellions as Omanis struggle for independence. We watch the gradual erosion of a rigid patriarchal structure where male infidelities, spousal abuse, and child abuse are rampant, and where women are treated as possessions, and where young girls are kidnapped and forced into marriage. In the space of a few short generations, the society transitions. The slaves have been freed; political factions have reached an uneasy truce; women now have careers, make their own voting decisions in elections, choose their own spouses, and divorce them for their infidelities.

The narrative progresses through non-linear shifts in time. We dip in and out of the long ago past, the more recent past, and the present. We watch Zarifa as she leaves food for the djinn to ward off harm for Abdullah at his birth. Within a few pages, we listen in on a conversation between Abdullah and his now adult daughter. As we piece together the shifts in time and the different perspectives, the back story of each character falls into place and a clear picture emerges.

Highly recommended for its immersive nature and breadth of scope in depicting Oman’s gendered lives and different socio-economic classes as it transitions into a modern society.