Just Call Me Superhero

Alina Bronsky; trans. by Tim Mohr

Alina Bronsky’s Just Call Me Superhero, translated from the German by Tim Mohr, is told through the strong narrative voice of seventeen-year-old Marek. It is a compelling coming-of-age story in which the narrator learns about self-acceptance and the value of human connection.

Marek’s face has been badly disfigured by an attack from a Rottweiler. His facial scars make it difficult for him to smile. He is very self-conscious about his looks, wears dark glasses to hide behind his disfigured face, and refuses to look at himself in the mirror. He disrespects his divorced mother, shows no sympathy for her, and addresses her by her first name. When his mother tricks him into a joining a support group for young people with disabilities, Marek more fully reveals his nature. He is cynical, resentful, self-absorbed, homophobic, insensitive, callous, irreverent, and tactless. He is also intelligent, observant, and very funny.

Referring to the support group as “the cripple group,” Marek coolly assesses each of its members, including the leader whom he facetiously dubs “The Guru.” His attention is immediately drawn to a young, beautiful woman in a wheel-chair. As much as he resents the group, he agrees to join them on a week-long bonding retreat organized by the Guru. But when he receives news of his father’s sudden death, Marek is forced to cut short the retreat to attend his father’s funeral.

Forced to help with the arrangements of his father’s funeral, Marek steps outside of himself and begins to show growth. He attends to the needs of his mother, young step-mother, and six-year-old step brother. He displays genuine concern for others, and is especially solicitous towards his mother and young step brother. He is shocked when his support group unexpectedly shows up to pay their respects. It slowly dawns on him that although people, including his young step-brother, may initially recoil at seeing his face, they ultimately move beyond his appearance and accept him for what he is and not for the way he looks. The novel concludes with Marek removing his dark glasses and looking at his reflection in the mirror.

The novel explores an age-old theme: how much of our identity is tied up with the way we look? Marek learns people may initially judge you by your physical appearance, but, ultimately, how you look withers in significance to how you treat others. Alina Bronsky gives the theme a refreshingly new treatment by injecting laugh out loud humor, vivid imagery, keen observations, nimble pacing, well-developed characters, and a narrator who comes to recognize who we are is defined by the love we show for others.

A compelling coming-of-age story and a delightful read.

Highly recommended.

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power

Sady Doyle

In Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power, Sady Doyle examines the influence of patriarchy on culture and media; describes how patriarchal norms fuel attitudes toward women and women’s roles; and illustrates the way in which acts of violence against real women are intertwined with popular cultural depictions of women, with each feeding off one another and reinforcing one another. Doyle divides her feminist exploration into three parts: patriarchal strictures on daughters, wives, and mothers.

Doyle provides a historical perspective going all the way back to Aristotle and his claim that women are deviant males. She traces the concept through the ages and includes Freud’s contribution that women are traumatized because they don’t have a penis. Doyle argues the patriarchal projection of women as monsters, deficient, and deviant ultimately stems from fear of the power of women and their capacity to reproduce. Labeling women as monsters represents the extreme and violent lengths patriarchy is willing to go to punish women for daring to disrupt or undermine patriarchal control.

The real-life crimes Doyle describes are of women murdered, persecuted, tortured, dismembered, and flayed. The examples horrify. Some women suffered from mental illness; some were driven to madness; and some were murdered simply because they were strong, independent women who refused to cower down to their husbands. Her analysis of horror movies depicting pubescent girls was particularly insightful. She argues the male lens portrays young girls transitioning to womanhood as something other than human, as demonic, possessed by the devil, ineffable, and spewing all manner of filth from every orifice of their bodies. Her analysis of The Exorcist analyzes scenes from the movie in terms of cultural revulsion at menstruation and a girl’s sexual awakening.

In spite of some of the deeply alarming content, Doyle avoids saturating her book with doom and gloom. She lightens the tone by injecting humor and sarcasm where appropriate and is not averse to poking fun at herself. Her research is impressive, as is her ability to synthesize the experiences of real-life women with fictional portrayals in movies and books depicting woman as monster. The scope of her analysis is wide, stretching all the way from Shelley’s Frankenstein to Jurassic Park. She concludes with a call to action for all women to celebrate and embrace the monster within. An extensive resource guide, notes, and index are included at the end of the book.

Although prone to the occasional hyperbole, the work is highly recommended for its contribution to feminist scholarship. It will appeal to those interested in understanding how popular culture serves to reflect and reinforce patriarchal norms which are designed to oppress women and restrict their choices.

Island of a Thousand Mirrors

Nayomi Munaweera

Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera tells the story of the Sri Lankan civil war which raged from 1983-2009, claiming over 80,000 lives. The events leading up to and including the civil war between the Sinhalas and Tamils unfold in the voices of two young women on opposite sides of the ethnic divide.

Part 1 of the novel focuses on Yasodhara and her Sinhala family. Yasodhara describes the beauty of pre-war Sri Lanka with its pristine beaches, unpolluted ocean, abundant fish, colorful sunsets, succulent fruits, and aromatic foods. This section, with its immersive description of the lush landscape, also introduces her grandparents, parents, and sister. Yasodhara has an eye for detail and exhibits a delightful sense of humor as she highlights her family’s quirks and foibles. With tensions increasing between the Sinhalas and Tamils leading up to the civil war, Yasodhara’s family use their resources and contacts to leave Sri Lanka for Los Angeles.

Part 2 opens with the first-person voice of a young Tamil woman, Saraswathi. It then alternates between her voice and the voice of Yasodhara. Saraswathi’s dreams of becoming a teacher are shattered when she is brutally raped by army personnel who then abandon her for dead. She staggers home only to be told her “spoiled” woman status leaves her no option but to join the Tamil insurgency. She is indoctrinated by the Tamil Tigers and demonstrates her prowess in becoming a killing machine with a lust for revenge, butchering government forces and innocent civilians with no compunction. Her path collides with Yasodhara and her sister who have returned to Sri Lanka to work with orphaned children. The consequences are devastating.

The novel has many strengths. It immerses the reader in the culture, prejudices, and tensions evident in Sri Lankan families both before and during the war. It is a powerful illustration of the universal brutality of all wars with each side perpetrating horrendous atrocities while claiming the moral high ground. It shows the impact on innocent civilians who are brutalized by one side or the other, their young forcibly recruited to join the ranks of fighters and their women used as instruments of war. Fighters on both sides are so brutalized they de-humanize the enemy, maiming and killing at random. And those who survive the horror suffer internal scars that may never heal. Through her graphic description of the violence and devastating impact of civil war, Munaweera demonstrates a universal truth about war: it is brutal and it brutalizes.

The novel’s greatest strength lies in its diction, rhythmic language, and immersive detail. The sights, sounds, smells, and atmosphere of Sri Lanka are evoked in lyrical, vivid prose. One can almost bite into the succulent mangoes, luxuriate in the warmth of the ocean, and feel the languid summer heat. The natural beauty of this tropical island, captured in breathtaking imagery, is later contrasted with the horror of corpses and mutilated limbs situated on full display in villages to terrorize the population. The immigrant experience of adjusting to life in America is realistically reflected in the struggles with outsider status as well as in the initial bewilderment and humorous observations on cultural differences. The characters are well-developed and authentic. Both Yasodhara and Saraswathi are portrayed with sympathy and depicted as caught up in circumstances completely beyond their control.

This is a powerful and deeply moving novel unfolding in exquisite, captivating language. It evokes the lush beauty of Sri Lanka skillfully contrasting it with the brutality of war on a people and its land.

Highly recommended and well deserving of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize for the Asian Region.

Fifteen Dogs

André Alexis

Fifteen Dogs: An Apologue by André Alexis is a fable about dogs that begins with a wager between Hermes and Apollo. Apollo is convinced that any animal given human consciousness would be even more unhappy than humans. Hermes disagrees. The wager is later modified to specify happiness or unhappiness at the moment of death. The two gods bestow human consciousness on fifteen dogs who happen to be staying overnight at a Toronto veterinary clinic. The fifteen dogs escape from the clinic. Their fate is observed by the two gods as if it were a spectator sport.

We follow each dog as he/she tries to adjust to a newly developed consciousness and self-awareness. Before long, a fight for supremacy ensues. Some dogs reject their new ways of seeing and speaking and want to return to their doggy consciousness. They brutally murder those who oppose them. One dog becomes a poet and manages to escape their wrath. Another becomes devious and conniving, carefully engineering the deaths of the remaining dogs before he dies a painful death of poison. In the end, the poet is the lone survivor. Deprived of vision and hearing and suffering from an aging body with multiple ailments, he experiences an epiphany before being put to sleep on the cold, metal slab in the veterinary clinic. He recognizes the value of the gift he was given. He has a final vision of his beloved master and his spirit soars with happiness as he takes his final breath. Hermes wins the wager.

The novel has echoes of Animal Farm and The Lord of the Flies. The premise is interesting, but the execution is disappointing. The dogs fail to engage the reader. Their characterizations are not fully developed; their motivations are never adequately explained. Why did some choose to reject their new consciousness? Why were they so adamantly determined to crush opposition? Why did one suddenly experience a spiritual awakening but only after he had torn his former comrades to shreds?

The novel raises some interesting questions. Can we resist the pressure to abandon our individuality and conform to group behavior? To what extent are we willing to sacrifice principles in order to survive? Once we have familiarized ourselves with a different culture, can we ever view our own culture in quite the same way and/or retreat to the way life used to be? Is violence part of our human nature? Does the acquisition of knowledge necessarily alienate us from our community? Does knowledge come at too steep a price? These and other questions are dangled but never fully explored or explained.

There should be some internal logic to an allegory. It should have some correspondence to what it is ostensibly allegorizing, in this case whether human consciousness and human language is a blessing or a curse. But this novel failed in its exploration of these weighty issues. Instead, it presents us with haphazard events in which dogs run around helter skelter, behaving in ways that are erratic and inexplicable.

If the intention was to provide an insightful commentary on human behavior by using a fable about dogs as its vehicle, it simply failed to deliver. The book has won awards, but it just didn’t do much for this reader.

The Translator

Leila Aboulela

The Translator by Leila Aboulela is the love story of Sammar, a young Sudanese widow, and a Scottish professor.

The novel opens a few years after the death of Sammar’s husband, a student at an Aberdeen university. After taking his body back to Khartoum for burial and leaving their young son with her mother-in-law, Sammar has returned to Aberdeen. She supports herself by working as an Arabic translator at the University. She grieves for her husband, is isolated and lonely. She gradually emerges from her shell and finds herself attracted to Rae, a Scottish professor specializing in Islam. The two work closely together, their friendship developing into love. The situation is complicated since Sammar is a devout Muslim and will not marry outside her faith. Torn between the dictates of her faith and her love for Rae, Sammar decides to sacrifice her chance for love. She returns to Khartoum, reconciled to her fate as a lonely widow. It is only after she gives up hope of ever finding love that her prayers are answered, her patience rewarded.

Sammar is a complex character, not without her faults. She exhibits little remorse for leaving her son with his grandmother. She seldom thinks of him, treating him as a nuisance she has happily discarded. She lashes out at Rae when he rejects her conditional proposal of marriage. Her self-awareness comes to fruition when she later recognizes the selfishness of her motives and prays for forgiveness. Some of the most moving passages are those that describe the peace and solace she derives when reciting the Qur’an, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and bowing down in prayer. Ultimately, she shows a great deal of courage in relinquishing her job and returning to an uncertain future in Khartoum all because she does not want to deviate from her faith. It is refreshing to see a female character who remains true to herself and her beliefs, one who refuses to sacrifice her identity for love and marriage.

Sammar’s fluctuating feelings are conveyed with delicacy, alternating seamlessly between her memories of the past and her current situation. She illustrates the immigrant experience of being caught between two worlds, epitomized in the contrast between the grey, cold, and lonely landscape of Aberdeen with the color, warmth, vitality, and community of the Khartoum she remembers.

Aboulela’s style is elegant and understated. Her language is rhythmic and poetic; her words subtle and restrained. This is a quiet, tender love story minus the hoopla and fuss. It is the story of two people from two very different cultures and lifestyles who gradually draw closer together to become one.

A beautiful story told in language that flows with grace, lucidity, and elegance.

Highly recommended.

The Mercies

Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is based on the 1620 witch trials in Vardo, a remote Norwegian coastal village. It tells the story of two women, Maren Bergensdatter who lives on the island and Ursula (Ursa), a young woman from Bergen.

The novel opens with Maren and the women on the island witnessing a freak storm at sea which drowns most of the village men out on their fishing boats. Maren loses her brother, father, and fiancé. Left to fend for themselves on the island and facing starvation, the women learn to be self-sufficient, assuming the roles once filled by their men. But a schism develops among the women between those who view traditional systems of belief and healing as the work of witches and those who willingly embrace both the indigenous and Christian traditions.

The focus shifts to Ursa in Bergen as she is about to marry Absalom Cornet. Woefully unequipped for marriage or home-making, Ursa leaves her father and sister and moves to Vardo with her husband. There she interacts with the women and develops a close relationship with Maren who teaches her the skills of cooking, sewing, and maintaining a home. Meanwhile, Ursa’s husband has been sent to the island for the sole purpose of eradicating it of alleged practitioners of witchcraft. In his obsession to catch the culprits, Absalom solicits and encourages women to testify against their neighbors. The community is torn apart. Women are tortured, put on trial, and executed on the flimsiest of evidence. And Ursa’s abhorrence of her husband’s activities, coupled with her desire to protect Maren, cause her to oppose her husband with violence.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s writing is immersive, plunging the reader in the sights, sounds, smells, and activities of life on Vardo. The setting is palpable and rich with vivid detail. The characters are well-developed, complex, and fraught with anxiety. Their daily chores for survival in a hostile climate and taxing setting are depicted with credible detail and contribute to the overwhelming feeling of an impending disaster. The outcome is predictably bleak.

The women’s burgeoning independence and self-reliance after the death of their men comes to a screeching halt with the arrival of Absalom and his cohorts. Hiding behind Christian ideals, their real aim is to trample on women’s independence and restore male hegemony and female subordination. They are aided in their pernicious efforts by women who align themselves with male authority figures either out of fear of persecution or because they have internalized female subordination.

This is a well-researched and impressive work of historical fiction highlighting a period in history in which attempts are made to snuff out women’s voice and agency.  

Recommended.

Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm

Isabella Tree

Wilding: Returning Nature to our Farm by Isabella Tree is the story of the Knepp experiment of returning a 3,500-acre Sussex farm back to nature.

The estate, inherited by Tree’s husband, Charlie Burrell, had been in his family for centuries. The land was intensively farmed until doing so no longer became economically viable. That is when Isabella and Charlie decided to adopt a non-interventionist policy to the land and allow nature to take its course. Much to their amazement, nature rebounded with a flourish. Slowly but surely, the land experienced an astonishing increase in diversity of plants and wildlife, including birds whose numbers had previously been on the decline. The experiment yielded new understandings of the habitats of species of animals and birds and proposed new approaches to conservation while challenging some long-held assumptions.

Tree charts the gradual and considered steps they took to re-wild their land. She describes local opposition to their experiment, even citing some community letters of complaint. She bemoans governmental bureaucracy that denied them financial support in a timely manner. But through it all, there is celebration. The land is now home to a veritable cornucopia of flora and fauna. Nightingales, turtle doves, peregrine falcons, and purple emperor butterflies have settled in to breed; rare water violets have popped up on their pond and purple orchids on their land.

Tree and her husband visited re-wilding areas across Europe and sought the advice of experts in the field. The work of environmentalists and conservationists are cited. Tree includes historical and geographical information on various species. Some of the passages are overly technical with descriptions that are, perhaps, more detailed than necessary. Once the experiment was underway, her repeated efforts to justify it became tedious. But in spite of these minor drawbacks, the book was inspirational and educational. The chapters on the return of the nightingale and the turtle dove to the English countryside were heart-warming. And the chapter explaining the capacity of nature-managed soil to trap carbon has significant ramifications for the alleviation of global warming.

Knepp farm illustrates the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living organisms where even something as lowly as the earth worm has a valuable role to play in soil restoration. Tree is at pains to argue the economic, environmental, physical, and mental health benefits to rewilding. She wants to rid us of our biases against the appearance of a nature allowed to roam freely. She makes an impassioned plea for thinking holistically about land and advocates building systems that work with nature instead of against it. Her arguments are compelling and must be taken seriously if we ever hope to reverse the deleterious impact of the impoverishment of our natural environment.

Highly recommended.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Christy Lefteri

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri is the emotionally compelling story of a Syrian refugee couple as they undertake the perilous journey from Aleppo to England to escape the Syrian civil war.

The story unfolds in the first-person narrative of Nuri Ibrahim. Together with his cousin Mustafa, Nuri runs a successful beekeeping farm in Aleppo. The only thing that exceeds his passion for bees is his passion for his wife, Afra, and their young son, Sami. With the outbreak of civil war, their lives are turned upside down. People are snuffed out by bombs and by gun-toting militias who roam the streets, raping, pillaging, and killing at will. Tragedy strikes when Mustafa’s son is killed. Mustafa escapes Aleppo to join his wife and daughter in England. When Nuri and Afra’s son is killed by a bomb, Afra loses her eyesight as a result of the explosion. Initially Afra refuses to leave Aleppo in spite of the escalating danger. But when Nuri’s life is threatened, she agrees to leave. They embark on their hazardous journey to England to join Mustafa.

The chapters alternate between the present and flashbacks of the past. The novel opens with Nuri and Afra in a B & B in England awaiting their asylum application. The flashbacks of the past include their simple, happy lives in Aleppo before the outbreak of the civil war; Nuri’s partnership with his cousin on the bee farm; memories of his son; his nightmares, dreams, and hallucinations; the journey to Turkey; the boat trip to Greece; the refugee camps; and the arrival in England.

The journey is fraught with danger every step of the way. Nuri and Afra rely on smugglers to transport them from one country to the next. They encounter refugees from the Middle East, Iran, and Africa, many of whom are broken and traumatized by their experiences. As the story unfolds, it becomes evident Afra’s loss of vision is psychosomatically induced by the trauma of her son’s death, and Nuri suffers from hallucinations and post-traumatic stress disorder.  

Her work as a volunteer at a UNICEF-supported refugee center in Athens in 2016 and 2017 sensitized Christy Lefteri to the plight of refugees and gave her first-hand knowledge of their lives and experiences. Her emotionally gripping novel furnishes a human face behind the statistics of refugees flooding Europe to escape the horrors of civil war and persecution. Lefteri has produced a well-crafted story and told it simply and elegantly. Her characters are authentic and rendered with compassion and sensitivity. Nuri and Afra’s experiences and the experience of their fellow refugees are heart-wrenching. Although the uplifting, hopeful conclusion is gratifying, one is left wondering if and how a people’s invisible scars can ever fully heal after experiencing such trauma.

A compelling novel of courage and the fierce determination to survive against all conceivable odds.

Highly recommended.

Quixote: The Novel and the World

Ilan Stavans

If you love Cervantes’ Don Quixote, you will enjoy Quixote: The Novel and the World by Ilan Stavans as a delightful companion to Cervantes’ masterpiece. Stavans divides his exploration into two parts: Section 1 focuses on the novel; Section 2 focuses on its reception, contribution, adaptation, and influence on Western literature.

Stavans explores Don Quixote from all angles. He includes biographical information on Cervantes and the publishing history of the novel. He engages in literary criticism, character analysis, and compares translations. He discusses the many literary and artistic expressions it has influenced. He cites prominent writers and artists throughout the centuries who engaged with the novel, many of whom gushed in their praise of it. There is analysis, facts, and opinions. Stavans also delves into the fundamentals by exploring the various spellings of “Quixote” and their significance. The novel’s impact on the Spanish language and culture are also explored as are the various adaptations in visual arts, musicals, operas, ballets, and movies.

The thread running throughout is Stavans unabashed passion for the masterpiece. His gushing enthusiasm is reflected in his willingness to go wherever the novel or its offshoots take him. The organization of his book is somewhat haphazard as Stavans jumps around and changes direction at a breathless pace. But throughout this very personal exploration, Stavans is informative, entertaining, and serves a veritable feast for lovers of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

Recommended.

Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangarembga

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga is a coming of age story of Tambudzai, a young girl from a rural village in Zimbabwe. The narrative unfolds in her voice as she witnesses social injustices and the conflicts of living in a postcolonial environment.

Tambudzai (Tambu) is a precocious young girl who wants more from life than the one circumscribed for the women in her culture. She resents her brother’s entitlement to an education while hers is initially denied because she is female. With her brother’s unexpected death, the educational opportunities for Tambu are flung wide open. She attends school, succeeding beyond expectation. The novel ends with her obtaining a scholarship to a prestigious Catholic high school. Tambu’s awakening to the injustices perpetrated on women is gradual. It comes about as a result of observing the lives of four women—her mother, her uncle’s wife, her aunt, and her young cousin.

Tambu’s mother has internalized her oppression and tries to transmit it to her daughter. She is adamantly opposed to Tambu pursuing her education. Tambu resents the opposition and is initially convinced her mother only wants her to conform to restrictive societal expectations. She later recognizes her mother may have been trying to protect her from disappointment. She acknowledges the wisdom in her mother’s words—a western education will alienate a person from family and culture.

Maiguru is married to Tambu’s uncle, Babamukuru, the patriarch of the family. Maiguru is an educated woman with a Master’s degree, an accomplishment so ignored by her community that Tambu does not learn of it until late in the novel. Maiguru has no opportunity to use her education and is denied a voice. She flutters and fusses over her husband, catering to his every need, soothing his temper to maintain peace in the family, and obeying his every whim while tolerating his family’s snide remarks aimed at putting her down. When her frustration reaches its limit, she temporarily walks out on her husband.

Lucia, Tambu’s aunt, is an unmarried woman who has had multiple sex partners. Because she is single, she is viewed with suspicion by women in the community. But unlike her married counterparts whose role is to be subservient to their husbands, the unattached Lucia has the freedom to behave as she pleases. Her voice is loud and unabashed. She is intelligent and is skilled at manipulating men, including Babamukuru, to get what she wants.

Nyasha, Tambu’s cousin and the daughter of Maiguru and Babamukuru, experiences an identity crisis. Having lived for a while in England with her parents, she has adopted western ways and attitudes. She rebels against the gender stratification and gender oppression she encounters within her family circle. Her frustration with the cultural restrictions place on women eventually leads to her eating disorder and nervous breakdown.

Dangarembga skillfully portrays the nervous conditions of each of these women to illustrate how the interlocking circles of oppression of race, gender, and class are manifested and internalized in their lives. On the one hand, obtaining a western education opens possibilities otherwise denied; on the other hand, a western education leads to alienation from one’s own culture. Factor in systemic racism and gender discrimination and the situation becomes more complex.

Dangarembga doesn’t provide any answers or easy solutions. Her novel illustrates the complexity of the problems through the voice of a sensitive, intelligent, and impressionable young girl who struggles with systemic racism, gender stratification, exploitation, and oppression. Although Tambu may be unaware of it, her struggle is universal in nature.

Highly recommended.

Unbowed: A Memoir

Wangari Maathai

Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, begins with Maathai’s childhood and charts her growth into adulthood where she becomes increasingly politicized and involved in a variety of causes. It concludes with her election as a member of Kenya’s parliament. Her journey is fraught with challenges and obstacles. Her persistence and fierce determination to do what is right and to take on the powerful forces that oppose her is nothing short of heroic.

Unlike the majority of girls at the time, Maathai was fortunate to receive an education. After finishing high school in Kenya, she went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the United States. She later went on to earn a Ph.D., becoming the first women to do so in East and Central Africa.

Maathai credits her experience in America with increasing her political awareness. Upon her return to Kenya, she establishes the Green Belt Movement, which implemented a program of planting trees to combat the deleterious effect on the land and its people of deforestation and soil erosion. She recognized the connection between deforestation, clean water supplies, poverty, famine, and peace, seeing them as interlocking issues under the umbrella of social justice and gender equity. She valiantly and publicly opposed land-grabbing by the Moi government—the appropriation of public lands for private, economic benefit. She stood in line with women whose sons and husbands were illegally incarcerated and tortured by the corrupt Moi government. Through it all, she endured insults, incarceration, physical violence, abuse, threats, and ostracization. But she persevered, undeterred.

The memoir moves from her personal life as a child to her political activism and her involvement in environmental advocacy and causes of social justice and equity, especially gender equity. She becomes adept at using the media to further her goals and empower grassroots activists. She is at pains to explain how and why she got involved in various causes. She also goes to great lengths to express gratitude to her supporters in Kenya and to stress the pivotal role played by the international community in her success.

In simple, unadorned language, Maathai conveys her strong sense of justice and her passion and commitment for speaking out against injustice wherever she finds it. Her lasting impact continues to be felt throughout Africa and the rest of the world.

An inspiring memoir of an inspiring, courageous woman.

Highly recommended.

Last Train to Istanbul

Ayse Kulin; trans. John W. Baker

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin, translated by John W. Baker, alternates between France and Turkey in the years between 1940-1943 and includes the Nazi occupation of France.

The focus is on Selva, the Muslim daughter of a prominent Turkish pasha. Because she married a Turkish Jew against her father’s wishes, Selva and her husband move to France to start a new life for themselves. When the Nazis occupy France and begin rounding up the Jews, Selva works with Turkish diplomats in France to smuggle Turkish and non-Turkish Jews out of Nazi-occupied territories to find safe harbor in Turkey. The non-Turkish Jews are furnished with fake identity papers by the Turkish Consulate and are taught a smattering of Turkish words to bluff the Nazi officials. Their harrowing journey through enemy lines takes place on the last train to Istanbul.

The secondary thread, which occurs in Turkey, involves Selva’s sister, Sabiha, and her husband, a diplomat working in the foreign ministry. As Turkey tries to retain its war-time neutrality in spite of intense pressure to enter the war, Sabiha’s marriage seems to be falling apart. She misses her sister and feels estranged from both her husband and her daughter. Eventually, she seeks the assistance of a therapist.

Although the story had a lot of potential, the execution was very poor. Some of the problems may have been due to the translation. The writing was stilted and riddled with clichés; the dialogue was stiff and unnatural. There was too much exposition throughout, and whole sections which explain Turkey’s diplomatic maneuvers to remain neutral during the war were better suited to a history book. The main characters were not well developed. They are portrayed stereotypically, acting and speaking as mouthpieces, not as individuals. Lengthy back stories were attributed to several minor characters on the train, but since they did little to advance the narrative, their presence was an unnecessary digression. There were a lot of dangling threads, including Sabiha’s marital crisis and her sessions with her therapist, all of which made no sense, went nowhere, and detracted from the main focus.

Once the characters got on the train, the novel’s pace picked up. There were fewer digressions. The focus shifted to the journey—the strongest part of the book. Tension was palpable as the passengers navigated through each train stop in Nazi territory. They endured the many document checks along the way and were able to survive through quick-thinking and collaboration. But although the last section of the novel was handled relatively well, it did not redeem the novel as a whole.

It is unfortunate that a story as important as Turkey’s role in helping Turkish and non-Turkish Jews escape from Nazi-occupied Europe should suffer from poor writing and poor execution.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Olga Tokarczuk; trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is a murder mystery told in the very original and authentic voice of a feisty woman in her 60s. She prefers the company of animals to humans, talks to ghosts, believes astrology governs our lives, and suffers from a series of ailments. Her name is Janina Duszejko.

Janina Duszejko (she hates her first name and constantly has to correct the mispronunciation of her last name) is an eccentric, elderly woman living in a remote Polish village near the Czech border. She is dismissed by many as a batty old woman with a penchant for traipsing around the countryside, spouting weird notions about astrology and horoscopes, claiming animals have souls and are capable of avenging themselves for the atrocities perpetrated on them by humans. She reserves her special brand of anger for hunters, accusing them of murder. She is a constant thorn in their sides, heckling them and destroying their animal traps. Her passion and advocacy for animals is fearless.

Janina is never happier as when she is outdoors surrounded by the flora and fauna of nature. She reads the signs in nature with a meticulous eye for detail. It is due to her astute observations in nature that when a neighbor is found dead in his home, she is convinced she knows who the culprit is. But the neighbor’s death is just the beginning. Three other bodies turn up mysteriously. The police are baffled. Janina’s hilarious letter-writing campaign announcing the killers and citing historical precedence of animal revenge as evidence is summarily dismissed. After all, who is going to pay any attention to a dotty old woman who scours the countryside talking to animals?

Janina has many admirable qualities. She willingly trudges in the cold and snow to help an animal in distress. She imbues nature with an ethic and generosity of spirit she finds sadly lacking in humans. Much of her philosophical pronouncements and observations of human behavior ring true, giving one pause. She is capable of great civility and literary prowess, discussing translations of William Blake over cups of tea with Dizzy, one of her former students. The connection to Blake is reinforced since the title of the book and the opening epigraph of each chapter are taken from his works. And although suffering from many ailments, Janina never hesitates to help a neighbor in need. Her quirky narrative voice is an absolute delight. Janina is funny in spite of her craziness—or, perhaps, because of it.

Olga Tokarczuk has created a lovable, crazy, quirky, eccentric, and hilarious figure in Janina. Her prose is lyrical and elegant, with a distinctive eye for detail and for juxtaposing seemingly unrelated objects in refreshing and enlightening ways. In Janina she has created an unforgettable character.

A brilliant story unfolding in lyrical prose through the endearing voice of a memorable narrator. Olga Tokarczuk’s consummate skill as a writer makes her a truly deserving recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Highly recommended.

The Blue Fox

Sjón; translated by Victoria Cribb

Winner of the 2005 Nordic Council Literature Prize, The Blue Fox by Sjón, translated by Victoria Cribb, is part fable, part fairy tale, part myth, and part magical fantasy.

Set in Iceland’s stark, wintery landscape in 1883, the novella is divided into four parts. Part I describes Reverend Baldur Skuggason hunting a blue fox and ends with him firing his rifle and killing the fox. Part II focuses on Fridrik Fridjonsson and Abba, his young assistant who suffers from Down’s syndrome. It includes Abba’s tragic backstory of her victimization and abuse, and her death at the age of thirty. Part III transports us back to the snowy mountains where Baldur, having triggered an avalanche when he shot the fox, is now wounded and trapped in the snow. He hallucinates. Metamorphoses occur: the fox becomes human; the human becomes animal. Baldur consumes the fox’s heart, wears its fur, and lusts after a vixen in heat. Part IV sews together the two seemingly disparate threads. The narrative’s non-linear progression gradually unfolds to reveal the true nature of the reverend, leaving one to ponder who is the real animal in the story.

The diction, especially in Parts I and III where Sjón describes Iceland’s unforgiving landscape, reads like a series of lyrical poems. The short paragraphs on each page surrounded by copious white space reinforce the poetic quality as well as the snowy, white landscape of the setting. Sjón takes us inside the minds of the hunter and hunted as they try to outmaneuver each other. The hunter stalking the hunted, the hunted evading the hunter, is described as if in slow motion. Our sympathies lie with the exquisitely described beautiful blue fox. And when she raises her head for the last time, the bullet that ends her life reverberates throughout the stark landscape.

A combination of fable, fairy tale, myth, and magical fantasy, Sjón has written a visual masterpiece in hauntingly beautiful prose. The narrative addresses the theme of good versus evil; innocence versus guilt; charity versus hypocrisy; compassion versus bigotry; the pristine beauty of the natural world versus the cruelty, corruption, and avarice of man. And like all great fables and myths, the relevance of its message transcends time and place.

Highly recommended.

Lost City Radio

Daniel Alarcón

Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcón takes place in an unnamed South American country in the aftermath of a civil war. The population continues to experience disappearances, curfews, unlawful imprisonment, and torture. In the hope of reconnecting with the missing, people tune in every week to hear Norma, the host of Lost City Radio. She reads the names submitted to her of missing relatives, friends, and loved ones in an attempt to reunite them with their families. When a young boy arrives at the radio station with a list of names of missing loved ones from his village in the jungle, Norma is shocked to discover her husband’s name is on the list. She has spent the last decade of her life since his disappearance waiting for him to come home.

The narrative alternates between the present and the past. The past takes the form of a series flashbacks which reveal the backstory of Rey, Norma’s husband; their meeting; his arrest and torture for being a suspected member of the Illegitimate Legion, a group actively engaged in overthrowing the oppressive government; their marriage; and his periodic disappearances in the jungle, ostensibly to research the medicinal properties of certain jungle plants. The present takes us through Norma’s day at the station; her meeting with the young boy; the discovery of her husband’s name on the list of missing. It concludes with reading their names on the air, including the name of her husband, which may be considered a subversive act.

Alarcón skillfully captures the experiences of a society living under an autocratic government. History is re-written; maps are re-drawn; villages and city landmarks are re-named. An official policy is adopted of erasing traces of the past both physically and in the collective and individual memory. People don’t know who can be trusted and who is an informant for the government. They have nowhere to turn for help if a loved one is carted off to an unknown destination never to reappear, again. Arrests are made on the flimsiest of suspicions. Just the appearance of being friendly with someone deemed a suspect or of asking too many questions is enough to get you arrested. Torture is inflicted with impunity. Young men, barely old enough to have facial hair, enter villages waving their guns, terrorizing the population, demanding food, and kidnapping children as recruits. Censorship, self-censorship, and fear of reprisals are woven into the fabric of everyday life.

The impact on the population is devastating. A universal fear permeates every aspect of life. Flashbacks come in half-suppressed thoughts and intrude on the present in unexpected ways, triggered by a smell, a sound, or an image. Questions remain unanswered. Should one even try to remember? Is it better to cultivate amnesia? Is it safe to ask about a missing relative or a loved one? What recourse is there for justice when living under a totalitarian government?  

It would be easy to dismiss the novel as depicting a dystopian society, as an exaggeration of the horrors that could happen. But it would be a mistake to do so. Millions of people across the globe currently live under tyrannical regimes where they are forced to consume a daily diet of injustice and oppression. The novel serves as a reminder of the fragility of democratic institutions and of the urgency to safeguard those institutions to preserve democratic freedoms.

Highly recommended for its perceptive depiction of a society living under tyranny.

The Good People

Hannah Kent

Hannah Kent is a gifted writer. She has an uncanny ability to immerse the reader in the climate, culture, landscape, dialogue, atmosphere, and fabric of life in the setting of her novels. She did it in Burial Rites by transporting her reader to early nineteenth-century Iceland. And she has done it again in The Good People.

This time the setting is in Ireland’s Fesk valley during the mid-1820s. The novel is loosely based on a true story of Ann/Nance Roche who was acquitted of murdering an infant supposedly possessed by fairy (“the Good People”).

The novel opens with the death of Nora Leahy’s husband, Martin. Her daughter died earlier in the year, so Nora is left as the sole caretaker of her grandson. Although he started life as a normal baby, Micheál has regressed since the death of his mother. And at four-years-old, he is neither able to speak nor move. His limbs flail, his stare is vacant, and he reeks of urine and vomit. He is totally reliant on others to take care of him and spends most of his waking hours screeching. Realizing she can’t cope without help, Nora hires fourteen-year-old Mary Clifford as her maid.

The situation in the surrounding countryside becomes increasingly bleak. A healthy man inexplicably drops dead; cows aren’t producing milk; crops aren’t surviving; food is running scarce; a baby is stillborn; a woman catches fire. The villagers look for someone to blame. They focus on Micheál, convinced he is a changeling possessed by fairy. They also turn their suspicion on Nance Roche, an elderly woman who uses traditional methods for healing. They are encouraged to do so by the priest who argues superstitions, natural healing methods, herbal medicines, and midwifery are the work of the devil. He targets Nance Roche as the source of evil and misfortune.

Increasingly frustrated with Micheál’s situation and convinced he is a changeling, Nora seeks help from the priest. When none is forthcoming, she asks Nance to heal her grandson by using traditional means to rid him of fairy. With Mary Clifford as an unwilling accomplice, the three resort to increasingly drastic measures to “cure” Micheál. The consequences are tragic.

Hannah Kent skillfully evokes the atmosphere of rural life in early nineteenth-century Ireland. The rural poor live in cramped dwellings, frequently sharing them with goats and chickens. They breathe the pungent smells emanating from the animals and their droppings. What diet there is consists mostly of potatoes. Irish fairy lore, superstition, folk beliefs, and rituals are woven into the fabric of their everyday lives. The belief in their efficacy to ward off evil spirits is deep-seated but conflicted due to the influence of Catholicism.

Kent’s prose vividly evokes the setting and its inhabitants. The rural landscape and harsh climate are ever-present and described in sensuous detail. The dialogue is richly textured with Irish diction and idioms. The characters are drawn with compassion and authenticity as they struggle with poverty, fear of the unknown, grief, hunger, superstition, scapegoating, and the erosion of traditional beliefs. The prose is lyrical; the quality of research is impressive. A tragic and haunting tale, beautifully written. Hannah Kent is a truly gifted storyteller.

Highly recommended.

The Break

Katherena Vermette

The Break by Katherena Vermette focuses on four generations of Métis women from the same family. The Métis are of mixed European and indigenous descent originating in Western Canada.

The story begins with Stella, a young Métis mother who witnesses a violent attack just outside her home. The police are called in to investigate. Since there is no body, the police dismiss the incident and imply Stella may have imagined the whole thing. But when a young girl is admitted to the hospital having been brutally raped, the police begin a thorough investigation.

The story unfolds primarily through the multiple perspectives of four generations of women related to the young victim. All are descended from the matriarch of the family, the great grandmother, known as Kakoom. Emily, the victim, is Kakoom’s thirteen-year old great grand-daughter. The perspectives alternate between the sisters, aunts, nieces, friends, and acquaintances. Included is the lone male perspective—a young Métis police officer who is sympathetic to the victim and her family.

Each of the women reveals her backstory as she struggles to cope with the horror of what has happened to Emily. What emerges from their stories and from their current situation is their exposure to violence. In one way or another, all the women have been victims of violence, whether directly or indirectly. They have become hardened and suspicious toward the outside world as a result.

These are women who have had to be strong in order to survive. Threaded throughout their narratives are stories of addiction, domestic violence, sexual assault, gang violence, distrust of the system, exposure to police apathy, and floundering relationships with men. Sons are present, but fathers are noticeably absent. The women have only each other and their traditions to cling to for support. They band together in times of crisis, surrounding Emily in a cocoon of love and support.

Vermette effectively contextualizes the challenges facing these women as members of the Canadian Métis community. The characters are sympathetically drawn as each struggles with her own personal demons and tragedies. Unfortunately, the constantly shifting perspective of this very large cast of characters is problematic. The family tree at the beginning of the book helps to alleviate some of the confusion. But it doesn’t bode well when one has to frequently refer to it to situate one of the many women within the family. In addition, the constantly shifting perspectives does not allow a strong connection to be forged with any of the characters. We are given barely a glimpse of a character’s past or current situation before the perspective shifts to someone else. This has the effect of diluting character development, with no one character emerging as fully developed.

A dark and intense intergenerational family saga that sheds light on the plight of Métis women in Canada. The story is very powerful; the language, beautiful; the execution, problematic. This is not an easy read because of the nature of the subject matter.

Recommended with some reservations.

Stay with Me

Ayobami Adebayo

A finalist for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo is an impressive debut novel.

The setting is Nigeria. The narrative unfolds in the first-person voices of a young married couple, Yejide and Akin. The voices alternate, describing the same events from two different perspectives. There are also alternating shifts in time from the mid-1980s to 2008. These provide the back story of how Yejide and Akin met in university, fell in love, married, and were later torn apart by circumstances and events.

Yejide and Akin are initially presented as a happily married couple. Akin is an employee at a bank and Yejide owns a successful hair salon. They seem to have everything going for them with one exception. Even after four years of marriage, medical tests, and fertility procedures, Yejide has failed to get pregnant. Family members intercede and force Akin to take on a second wife to provide him with children. Understandably, conflicts ensue. Yejide resorts to desperate measures to get pregnant. And because he loves his wife and wants to save his marriage, Akin resorts to his own desperate measures to ensure his wife’s pregnancy. Their marriage falls apart as the lies, deceptions, secrets, and manipulations gradually surface.

Against the backdrop of a Nigeria subject to political upheavals and military coups, Yejide and Akin experience personal tragedies at the deaths of their children due to sickle-cell disease. The couple is subjected to intense family pressure to participate in traditional rituals to ward off the evil spirits that ostensibly plague their family. With her third pregnancy, Yejide determines not to get too attached to her child, fully anticipating she will die young as did her former siblings.

Adebayo knows how to tell a story that sustains reader interest with its many twists and turns, shocking revelations, dramatic tension, and skillful use of suspense, all of which pack a powerful emotional punch. The intimacy generated by the first-person voices of Yejide and Akin affords them the opportunity to describe the intense familial pressure they experience and to explain why they made the choices they did. We may not agree with their decisions, but we can understand and sympathize. The characters are multi-dimensional, flawed, and conflicted. Their voices are authentic, their plight generating compassion. The supporting cast of characters are equally well-drawn, especially Akin’s brother, Yejide’s in-laws, and her multiple step-mothers.

Woven into the fabric of the narrative are elements of Nigerian culture, traditional beliefs, customs, food, and folk tales. The plot is well-constructed with shocking revelations periodically interspersed throughout the narrative to sustain reader interest until the surprise ending. The novel lays bare the extent to which people are willing to sacrifice their core beliefs in order to satisfy their fundamental need for love and acceptance.

Highly recommended.

Disoriental

Negar Djavadi; trans. by Tina A. Kover

Disoriental by Negar Djavadi, translated from the French by Tina A. Kover, won several writing awards in France. And deservedly so. The title word combines the disorientation characterizing the immigrant experience with that of families moving from the orient to Europe. It also applies to the disintegration of a large, cohesive family unit uprooted from its homeland to scatter all over the globe.

The novel opens at a fertility clinic in Paris. Our narrator is Kimiâ Sadr, a young Iranian immigrant awaiting her appointment to be artificially inseminated. This pivotal moment in her life prompts her to explore who she is and where she came from by going back in time to describe her extended family. She does so in a series of fragments and anecdotes populated by great grandparents, grandparents, parents, six uncles, aunts, two older sisters, and cousins.

The first part of the novel (“Side A”) introduces the Sadr family, an upper class, flamboyant medley of characters. One side of the family is originally Armenian, the other Iranian. Beginning with her great-grandfather Montazemolmolk with his harem of fifty-two wives, Kimiâ traces the generations until she arrives at her parents Darius and Sara. Her father, a journalist, wrote articles critical of the Shah’s regime and of the Khomeini regime that followed since both stifled democratic institutions and brutally clamped down on dissidents and freedom of expression. His life in danger, her father escapes to Paris and arranges for his wife and daughters to join him. With her mother and sisters, Kimiâ experiences the harrowing journey of being smuggled out of Iran to Turkey before finally arriving in Paris.

Side B describes Kimiâ’s coming of age in Europe, her struggles with her sexual identity, her increasing estrangement from her family, and her search to find an anchor in a foreign culture. One of the great strengths of this book is Kimiâ’s manifestation of the struggle facing new immigrants. In order to be re-born in the culture of their adopted country, immigrants are obliged to sever themselves from the fabric of their original culture. Kimiâ’s parents are shadows of their former selves, never able to fully adapt to life in France because their hearts and minds remain in Iran. Her sisters marry and successfully assimilate but try to preserve some vestiges of their traditional culture to pass on to their children.

Djavadi skillfully weaves recent events of Iran’s turbulent history into Kimiâ’s narrative. Footnotes are conveniently included on the political and historical events to assist readers unfamiliar with Iran’s recent history. The narrative unfolds in a non-linear fashion. The scene in the fertility clinic is peppered with multiple journeys back to different points in time, anchoring Kimiâ to her family and culture. The anecdotes and fragments are immersive, capturing in evocative detail the sights, sounds, and smells of the characters populating her life, from the way they look, to their activities, to the food they eat.

But perhaps the greatest strength of this novel lies in the narrator’s voice. Kimiâ frequently addresses the reader directly. Her tone is intimate, as if she is sharing her life story with a close friend. She can be funny, informative, serious, sarcastic, complex, confused, and conflicted. But throughout it all, she is authentic, engaging, charming, and believable.

This is a compelling narrative capturing the immigrant experience of an upper-class family while seamlessly threading it with the personal and political history that drove them to flee their homeland.

Very highly recommended.

The Bear and the Nightingale

Katherine Arden

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden is a magical fantasy combining elements of Russian folktales, fairy tales, an indigenous belief system, and Christianity. The folk and fairy tales are deeply rooted in the inhabitants of a small, isolated village in 14thC Russia (known as Rus) where winter is harsh, lasting most of the year and bringing with it fierce snow drifts that virtually paralyze the community.

Into this setting enters Vasilisa, a daughter born to Pyotr, the leader of the community. Her mother dies giving birth to her. She is raised by a kindly nurse who nourishes her love of fairy tales and folk tales. Even as a child, Vasilisa is different. She sees and talks to spirits and demons no one else can see. She honors ancestral traditions and feeds the household spirits to strengthen them as they fight to ward off evil. She defies gender norms of the time through her rebellious spirit, and by romping in the forest, riding horses, preferring the company of animals to people, and harboring an indifference to her appearance.

Conflicts arise when her father re-marries a woman who is ostensibly a devout Christian but who is haunted by demons. The conflict is exacerbated with the coming of a new priest determined to rid the people of their traditional beliefs while urging them to accept Christianity. Vasilisa straddles both worlds. She attributes the ensuing crop failures, harsher winters, and evil spirits lurking ever closer to her home to the abandonment of the traditional beliefs and rituals that nourished her community for centuries. A fiercely independent Vasilisa sets off on a quest to fight the force of evil to save her village. As this is the first book in a trilogy, the ending of the novel promises more adventures for Vasilisa.

The novel has many strong qualities. The blending of folklore, fairy tales, and the characters who populate them was interesting. The description of the setting with its harsh winters, heavy snow drifts, and the hungry family huddling around the oven for warmth effectively transport the reader to a different time and place. But the plot was unnecessarily confusing with its many twists and turns, talking horses, spirits coming back from the dead, household guardians, a dark god in the form of an evil bear whose brother is the not-so-evil winter demon king. There was too much happening, too many characters, with too many incidental details that did little to contribute to the main story line. The plot would have benefited from a tighter focus, fewer distractions, and stronger character development.

Recommended for readers of magical realism.