Somewhere Towards the End

Diana Athill

Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill is an elegant memoir by one of England’s most famous book editors. Athill was an editor for several decades at Andre Deutsch, Ltd, a London-based publishing company. She worked with famous authors and began writing her own work late in life. She was eighty-nine years old when she wrote this memoir. She died in 2019 at the age of 101.

Athill shares her thoughts about aging, death, and dying. She reflects on the changes in outlook, priorities, and opinions she experienced throughout the decades. She is intelligent, articulate, unflinchingly honest, charming, calm, and self-possessed. The force of her presence carries the memoir. No subject is off limits. She writes about her sex life, former lovers, preference for black males, atheism, gardening, reading, miscarriage, friendships, illness, and declining capacities. All are shared with the same degree of clarity and detachment. There is no hint of self-pity or emotional upheaval in her writing. Her sentences are elegantly phrased. She peppers her writing with the occasional lucid insight on aging and dying, nuggets of wisdom that whet the appetite for more of the same.

One of the pleasures she discovers about herself in her old age is the joy she finds in writing. She sees writing as a form of therapy, as a way of grappling with past hurts and failures. But she doesn’t wallow on feelings of guilt or shame, which she considers a waste of time. She embraces life as an adventure and perceives death as an event so ordinary that it is hardly worth making a fuss about. But her fearless attitude toward death does not extend to the process of dying. She expresses concern about burdening others with her incapacities after witnessing the care friends and family required during the final stages of their lives.

A book about aging by an octogenarian who is very conscious of time’s winged chariot drawing near may sound like fodder for depression. But Diana Athill is far from depressing. She embraces the good and the bad, the ups and the downs life has to offer with equanimity and good cheer.

The Aeneid

Virgil; translated by Shadi Bartsch

The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Shadi Bartsch, attempts to stay as close to the original as possible by adhering to a line-by-line correspondence, approximating Virgil’s meter, remaining within his six beats to a line, and maintaining his simplicity of language without losing his effects of alliteration and assonance. As Bartsch declares in her introduction, her goal was to make it accessible to the general public while simultaneously adhering faithfully to the original. She includes an Introduction which provides context for the poem, its reception, character analysis, and commentary. Also included is a Translator’s Note which explains the challenges and choices she made in translating, her Notes, a Bibliography, and a Glossary.

Bartsch’s translation is impressive, her scholarship extensive. She offers a different reading experience of the Aeneid that makes evident the ambiguity, nuances, and subtlety of language and characterizations. Her notes are helpful in highlighting the contradictions within the poem and in interrogating the character of Aeneas. She has performed an invaluable service to reading the classic by opening it up to new interpretations and meanings while remaining faithful to the original.

A Night in the Emperor's Garden

Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan

A Night in the Emperor’s Garden by Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan chronicles the true story of a production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in Afghanistan.

In 2005, with the Taliban temporarily weakened and a newly elected Afghan government in place, Afghanistan was experiencing a cultural renaissance. Corinne Jaber, a visiting actress from Paris, came up with a highly unusual proposition: to produce a Shakespeare play in Kabul with Afghan actors. With financial backing from the British Council, the Goethe Institute, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and various other entities, Corinne set about implementing her vision.

Shakespeare’s text was translated into the Dari language. With the help of an interpreter, Corinne conducted auditions and hired male and female actors to rehearse the parts. The challenges were enormous. Some of the actors had little to no experience with acting; most had no knowledge of theatre. There were language and cultural barriers to overcome. Several of the actors could not understand the lines they were reciting and were generally reluctant to interact with actors of the opposite sex. And then there was the actor who threw the occasional temper tantrum and marched off in a huff only to return later. Corinne persevered. Her interpreter was the cohesive force who undertook whatever task necessary to hold the troupe together. Eventually, the actors learned their lines, becoming increasingly comfortable with and adept at performance.

On opening night of August 31, 2005, the play was performed in front of an overflow crowd. It was a huge success. Several other performances followed in different cities in Afghanistan, including one in the emperor’s garden. The book concludes with a follow-up on the actors ten years after the final performance. By this time, the Taliban had begun to resurface. The actors suffered tragedy, threats, and accusations of immoral conduct. Some went into hiding and were forced to leave the country while others abandoned acting for fear of their lives.

The book chronicles the challenges of putting on a play with very limited resources in a country deprived of theatre for decades. It also provides a fascinating peak into the daily struggles of life in Afghanistan. The challenges were ubiquitous: navigating the streets, locating supplies, making sure the female actors were home before nightfall, contending with gossip, cultural objections to women on the stage, language and gender barriers, familial opposition, unreliable transportation, less than adequate accommodations, and the constant threat of violence. But this motely troupe of Afghan actors, with the help of an immortal playwright and a determined director, succeeded in temporarily shining a beacon of light and spreading joy in a country desperately in need of entertainment and laughter.

Recommended.

Ariadne

Jennifer Saint

Jennifer Saint’s debut novel, Ariadne, retells the story of Ariadne and her sister, Phaedra. Part I is devoted to the first-person point of view of Ariadne. Parts II and III alternate between Ariadne and Phaedra. Part IV focuses on Ariadne. The novel follows the basic outline of the myth, beginning with Ariadne’s childhood; the birth of her brother, the minotaur; her assistance to Theseus and subsequent abandonment by him on the island of Naxos; his marriage to her sister, Phaedra; Ariadne’s marriage to Dionysus; and Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus. It concludes with the tragic end of the two sisters.

Saint gives voice to women in Greek mythology whose voices have been silent. We see the devastating impact of patriarchy on the lives innocent girls and women. King Minos and Theseus are depicted as misogynistic, self-serving males who use women as pawns to further their agenda. The Greek gods fare no better. Even Dionysus, who initially appears as differing from his immortal counterparts, emerges as having the same streak of cruelty and power-hungry appetite.

Greek mythology invariably depicts women as victims of betrayal, violence, and jealousy. What is needed is a fresh approach to their stories, including the story of Ariadne and Phaedra. Unfortunately, the novel fails in this regard. Ariadne emerges as a passive character more acted upon than acting. The only time she shows agency is when she helps Theseus escape from the labyrinth. Even then, she is motivated by her love for Theseus. In other words, the male is the catalyst that spurs her to action. After her abandonment on Naxos, she is helpless until Dionysus rescues her. She marries him, gives birth to his sons, and turns a blind eye to his wonderings and drunken, bloodthirsty, orgiastic rituals until Phaedra accuses her of choosing to remain in blissful ignorance. Phaedra shows greater agency in that she tries to navigate a space for herself in governing Athens during Theseus’ many absences. But like Ariadne, she looks to a male for salvation, which leads to disaster.

Saint’s knowledge of Greek mythology is impressive as is her ability to weave multiple stories from myths into her narrative. But the prose is cumbersome and flowery. The middle section dragged and is especially heavy on telling rather than showing. The dialogue is stiff and unnatural. The characters are flat and not particularly interesting. And the relationship between the two sisters feels strained and artificial. Although Ariadne and Phaedra live in a heavily patriarchal world with little space to maneuver, more could have been done to develop their characters as active, vibrant agents with greater reliance on themselves and each other. Instead, they rely on males to navigate the situation for them. It is disappointing that a myth with the potential to portray assertive, empowered, self-reliant females with a strong sisterhood bond fails to capitalize on its potential.

Recommended with reservations.

Light Perpetual

Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual takes as its starting point an actual event when a bomb exploded at a Woolworth’s store on Bexford High Street in London in 1944, killing 168 people, 15 of whom were children.

The novel’s opening is astonishing. Spufford gives an intricately detailed, clinical description in slow motion of the bomb as it detonates and explodes. He suggests an alternative reality by inviting the reader to explore the lives of five children who died in the explosion. He gives them fictional names and offers an alternative trajectory of their lives, a what might have been had they lived. The five children are Jo and Val (sisters) Vern, Alec, and Ben. Spufford develops the narrative thread of each character’s progression in fifteen-year intervals. He begins with section t+5: 1949 and concludes their narratives with t+65: 2009 when they are in their 70s.

The structure is very original. Against the backdrop of the shifting cultural, economic, political, social, and physical changes in London, we witness the characters as they grow, make choices, and struggle with their inner and outer demons. They experience tragedy, setbacks, and triumphs. The characters are distinct, authentically drawn with rich and varied lives, their interior struggles skillfully depicted, their narrative threads compelling. The seeds of who they are as children forecast who they become as adults. We see them grow up, marry, become parents and grandparents, separate, divorce. We see them as bus conductors, musicians, teachers, con artists, union organizers at a newspaper, construction workers, mental health patients, and criminals.

The most outstanding quality of this book and what makes it such an incredibly powerful read is the luminous prose. It soars and lifts. Its intricate, tactile details create immediacy. Even the most mundane task, like washing dishes or working with a machine, are endowed with significance. Some of the descriptions are breathtakingly riveting. The pace varies, sometimes slowing down, other times speeding up. Spufford’s brushstrokes are masterful whether he describes Ben’s crippling anxiety or Val’s guilt, Jo’s synesthesia or Vern’s scheming. The interiority of the characters is handled with a delicate empathy. What emerges from this powerful story is the imagined lives of five children in all its thorny and poignant detail.

The writing is beautiful, perceptive, stunning, and threaded with compassion and tenderness for the lives cut short in 1944. The tone of melancholy throughout extends far beyond the knowledge that these children never lived long enough to experience a future. It extends to the complexity, fragility, finitude, and interconnectedness of all that pulsates with life.

Highly recommended.

The Spare Room

Helen Garner

Helen Garner’s The Spare Room, loosely based on the death of one of Garner’s friends, is an unflinchingly honest narrative about an extremely challenging situation. Helen and her close friend, Nicola, struggle to maintain a friendship while Nicola undergoes experimental therapy for terminal cancer.

The narrative unfolds from Helen’s perspective as she prepares her spare room to receive Nicola. She approaches the task of care-giving with sympathy and compassion. She bathes Nicola, feeds her, goes with her to the doctor, and changes her bed sheets 2-3 times a day as needed. All the while, she cringes at the alternative treatments that leave Nicola completely debilitated, weakened to the point she can barely move, unable to control her bodily functions, shivering profusely, and suffering from unrelenting pain. Nicola persists in continuing with the treatment. Her cheery and indomitable conviction that the treatment will cure her of cancer eventually leads to a thoroughly exhausted Helen angrily confronting her.

The novel explores some very difficult issues. How does one deal with a dying friend who refuses to accept the inevitable? Nicola is willing to endure all manner of painful alternative treatments, convinced she will be cured. She expects Helen to believe in these cures and to nurse her while undergoing the treatment. While she has a right to choose her path for treatment, she has no right to impose the harrowing consequences of her choice on friends or family who are not professional care-givers. Helen runs herself ragged taking care of Nicola, witnesses her struggle with outlandish treatments that cause her incredible pain, and tolerates her stubborn refusal to see qualified medical professionals. She struggles with feelings of rage, guilt, and tenderness, feelings which leave her mentally and physically drained. We witness her increasing frustration and sense of helplessness. On the one hand, she wants to support her friend; on the other, she wants to shake some sense into her.

The novel skillfully portrays the contrasting worlds of a frustrated, guilt-ridden Helen with the cheery, desperate, living-in-denial spirit of Nicola. The writing is sharp, clear, and effective. It is a quick read but not an easy one due to its realistic treatment of the challenges that go with witnessing and caring for a loved one suffering from a terminal illness.

Ten Minutes, Thirty-Eight Seconds in this Strange World

Elif Shafak

Ten Minutes, Thirty-Eight Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak opens with the death of Tequila Leila, a prostitute in Istanbul. She has been murdered and her body thrown into a dumpster. Exploring the notion that the human mind remains active for several minutes after physical death, Shafak takes us into the mind of Leila during the liminal phase between death but not quite death. She records the minutes and seconds from the time of Leila’s death until her brain finally shuts down. Leila’s story unfolds against the backdrop of a time of civil strife in Turkey with historical events incorporated into the storyline.

Part 1 consists of Leila’s recollections of pivotal moments in her life. Each flashback is triggered by smell and taste. She recalls her early childhood; her family; her experience with repeated sexual assaults, beginning when she was just a child; running away from home; her life in Istanbul; her time as a prostitute; her marriage; and her murder. Interspersed throughout her recollections are brief back stories of her five close friends, all of whom are misfits living on the fringes of society. Part 2 consists of Leila’s friends retrieving her body from the Cemetery of the Companionless to give her a proper burial. And Part 3, only several pages long, consists of Leila’s taste of freedom as her corpse is released into the sea.

Part 1, the longest and strongest part of the novel, immerses the reader in the sights, sounds, smells, and ambience of Istanbul. Bustling with life, inhabited by an ethnically and racially diverse population, Istanbul radiates energy. It is riddled with contradictions, celebrating difference on the one hand, demonizing it on the other. Leila’s narrative exposes the seamy side of Istanbul, an ominous place where danger can lurk behind every corner, especially for a woman. Leila’s five friends are introduced through short, hasty sketches of information. Unfortunately, these do not allow for character development, so the five never emerge as well-rounded, authentic characters. Instead, they are reduced to caricatures.

This failing becomes even more pronounced in Part 2 where Leila’s friends retrieve her body from the cemetery. The dialogue sounds stiff and unnatural. The language lapses into clichés; the action verges on slapstick. The flashbacks of their conversations or incidents with Leila give the appearance of afterthoughts, of being haphazardly inserted. And Part 3, in which Leila’s soul finds freedom in the sea, is maudlin.

A book with an interesting premise and strong start disappoints when it fizzles out into mawkish, melodramatic farce.

Mr. Loverman

Bernardine Evaristo

Mr. Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo introduces us to the delightful 74-year-old Barrington Jedidiah Walker (Barry), born in Antigua and transplanted to Hackney, London.

Barry is a dapper, flamboyant, Shakespeare-quoting successful businessman, husband to Carmel for fifty years, father to Donna and Maxine, and grandfather to the teenaged Daniel. Carmel is convinced Barry stays out late at night because he cheats on her with other women. She’s wrong—and right. Barry has never cheated on Carmel with another woman. And he never will. But that’s not to say he hasn’t cheated. Barry has a secret lover by the name of Morris. The two have been closeted lovers since their boyhood days in Antigua. Their ongoing love affair has lasted decades and continues into their adult life in London.

The novel unfolds primarily in the first-person voice of Barry. He is witty, sarcastic, intelligent, generous, full of vim and vigor, with an endearing and magnetic personality. He is also chauvinistic, homophobic, and unconscionably selfish for deceiving his wife for so many decades. Barry’s narrative is interrupted with Carmel’s first-person voice. Carmel’s monologues are sheer poetry. The unpunctuated, rhythmic lyricism of her language is breathtaking. Her cadence is captured so well that one can almost hear her speak. She talks to herself, chastises herself, recalls her past, her hopes and aspirations, and her disappointment in marriage and in the man she married.

The alternating narrators shift back and forth in time. Through their narratives we learn the back story of Barry and Carmel, their marriage, their relocation to England, the birth of their daughters, Carmel’s pursuit of a degree, her career, and Barry’s business success. Their lives are peppered with the presence of Carmel’s life-long, church-going friends who are never short of gossip or advice, but who are always there to support each other. And then, of course, there’s the kind, gentle, lovable Morris.

All the characters have distinct, unique voices. They are authentic, and so well drawn, they can step off the page. The novel moves at a brisk pace. The dialog sizzles. The bond between Barry and Morris is deep-seated and enduring. They know one another so well they can almost read each other’s thoughts, finish each other’s sentences. Their conversations are crisp and entertaining and choke full of humor.

The novel explores a multitude of themes: intergenerational conflicts; love in its various manifestations; homophobia; gender socialization and identity; misogyny; aging; race relations; and masculinity. The themes are intricately woven together, finding expression in a cast of delightful, unforgettable characters all of whom rotate, gravitate, oscillate toward the hilarious, exasperating, unforgettable, and totally charming Barry, their axis mundi.

Highly recommended for its humor and brilliant character portrayals.

The Patience Stone

Atiq Rahimi; trans. Polly McLean

The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi, translated from the French by Polly McLean, takes place in a single room in a city in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. It is primarily in the form of a young wife’s monologue to her comatose husband. He has a bullet lodged in his neck and appears to be brain dead. The unnamed woman ministers to his wounds, puts drops in his eyes, bathes him regularly, feeds him through a feeding tube, and prays for him. All the while she talks to him and pleads with him to wake up.

The monologue is punctuated with the sound of explosions and gun shots. The woman enters and leaves the room in periodic intervals to take care of her two young daughters. After two Taliban fighters invade her home, she takes her daughters to her aunt for safe keeping. She leaves her husband in the room with the intention of never coming back. But she always comes back to minister to him.

With each of her returns she becomes increasingly more vocal about the injustices and abuse she experienced from him and from some members of his family. She confronts him with his inadequacies and impotence, revealing this is the first time in their decade-old marriage she has felt she could be totally honest with him. She punctures the inflated egos and hypocrisies of men, including her husband. Once the floodgates of silence are opened, her words gush out in a torrent. Her language is raw and brutally honest. This leads to a perverse intimacy in which she kisses him on the lips—something he had never allowed her to do. Eventually, she claims him as her Sang-e-Saboor, her patience stone to which she can unburden all her guilty secrets. And unburden them she does with shocking revelations about prostitution and sexual infidelity, all of which lead to the final explosive crescendo.

The novel unfolds in sparse, staccato language. The atmosphere is confined and claustrophobic. The fear is palpable. The noise of explosions and gunfire, the Taliban invasions of the space where a defenseless woman huddles in the corner reinforce the terror of the situation. The woman’s many entrances, exits, and movements read like virtual stage directions, giving the novel the feel of a play.

The winner of the 2008 Prix Goncourt, this novella is highly recommended for its compelling treatment of the injustices and grievances experienced by many women in Afghanistan and the desperate measures they take to survive.

A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, From the Middle East to America

Leila Ahmed

In A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America, Leila Ahmed explores the evolution of veiling beginning with Cairo in the 1940s and culminating in the 21st Century. She grounds her research on the influence of historical and political movements in Egypt, the permutations of various Islamic groups, and the role of Saudi Arabia in spreading Wahhabism in the United States and Europe.

Veiling has always been embroiled with political movements in one way or another. During the 1940s and 1950s, while Cairo was under the influence of Western colonialism, veiling was deemed a relic of the “backwardness” of the Arab world, a symbol of the culture’s misogynistic treatment of women. Accordingly, educated middle-class women removed the veil and entered the work force and institutions of higher education in increasing numbers.

Since then, veiling has experienced a resurgence. Ahmed conducts interviews with both veiled and unveiled women to chart the changing attitudes toward veiling. She learns why they chose to veil or why they chose to remove their veils. Their reasons are diverse but, surprisingly, their choice was not indicative of their commitment or lack of commitment to Islam. Some women did not veil because they were convinced the religion doesn’t require it. Other pursued the opposite trajectory, arguing their choice of clothing symbolizes pride in their identity. But in all cases, their belief in Islam as a religion of political activism advocating for social equity, including gender equity, is unwavering.

Ahmed claims the new generation of American Muslims do not see a contradiction between being American and being a Muslim. In fact, the opposite is true. They argue Islam promotes the same ideals espoused in America and are vocal in their support for minorities and in their demands for social justice. They challenge traditional readings of the role of women in Islam, insisting Islam does not advocate the subordination of women since it is a religion of social justice and equity. As Ahmed says:

It is not, by and large, secular American Muslims nor American Muslims for whom religion is a private matter but rather the children of Islamists who are notably present in and at the forefront of the activist American and American Muslim struggles of our times: be it against torture, erosions of civil rights, racial profiling, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other foreign policy issues, and also in the cause of women’s rights and gay rights in relation to Islam.

At the conclusion of her study, Ahmed admits her research has caused her to experience a change in attitude about the veil.

Following out this story and focusing in particular in the last chapters on American Muslim women’s activism in relation to gender and women’s rights has brought me to the astonishing conclusion that it is after all Islamists and the children of Islamists—the very people whose presence in this country had originally alarmed me—who were now in the vanguard of those who were most fully and rapidly assimilating into the distinctively American tradition of activism in pursuit of justice and who now essentially made up the vanguard of those who are struggling for women’s rights in Islam.

Ahmed includes extensive notes, bibliography, and index in her insightful study of the veil’s resurgence and the growing activism of Muslim American women. The work is highly recommended for any who seek an understanding of women’s changing role in Islam.

Territory of Light

Yuko Tsushima ; translated by Geraldine Harcourt

Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt, was originally published in twelve installments in a Japanese literary journal. It consists of a series of twelve fragmentary episodes chronicling one year in the life of a young mother recently separated from her husband. Unfolding in the first-person point of view, the narrator records her struggles with finding an apartment on her own, juggling employment while raising her three-year-old daughter, the tense interactions with her husband, and her loneliness.

After moving into her apartment, the narrator describes the tedium of her daily routine: waking up, getting her daughter ready for daycare, dropping her off, heading to work, picking her daughter up, shopping, dinner, and bed. She is mentally drained and physically exhausted through it all. To add to her distress are unannounced appearances from her estranged husband and her daughter who throws tantrums, cries at night, and wets her bed.

The narrator’s plight generates sympathy, but the narrator is not a sympathetic character. She is distant, awkward, immature, irresponsible, isolated, impatient with her daughter, and, at times, abusive toward her. Her veneer isolates her from other characters, as well as from the reader. The narrative is disjointed and fragmented. One incident follows another with little to no connection between them, possibly due to its publication in monthly installments as separate episodes. The detailed description of the mundane activities of her daily life coupled with her interiority become repetitive and redundant, failing to sustain interest or generate sympathy.

The strength of the novel lies in its stunning use of light imagery. The narrator’s lens is sensitive to the play of light all around her, whether it is the light dancing on the red floor of her apartment, the sunlight streaming through the windows, the shimmering light reflected on the silver roof, the sparkle of fireworks, the flashing neon signs, or the chemical explosion of a building. These images somewhat redeem the novel from its otherwise lackluster narrative and flat characters.

Nothing Holds Back the Night

Delphine de Vigan; translated by George Miller

Nothing Holds Back the Night by Delphine de Vigan, translated from the French by George Miller, hovers between fiction, memoir, and a biography of de Vigan’s mother. It opens with the shocking scene of the author discovering her mother’s corpse, the result of an apparent suicide.

To understand her mother and the reasons for the suicide, de Vigan embarks on a project to write her mother’s biography. She combs through her mother’s papers, conducts interviews with the surviving members of the family, reads diaries, scrutinizes photographs, and watches old videos to piece together her mother’s childhood. This section is as much a portrait of a family as it is a portrait of de Vigan’s mother. The author tries to reconstruct her mother’s childhood environment, growing up in a rambunctious home with Bohemian parents and eight siblings. She imagines and embellishes scenes and conversations, attributing thoughts, feelings, and motivations to individuals. This section is fictional in approach with the author describing the childhood of her mother, aunts, and uncles as if they are characters in a novel.

The second part of the book shifts in tone as the author describes first-hand experience with her mother. She includes her sister’s recollections and conversations and the experiences they shared. She provides a litany of her mother’s failures, short-comings, and struggles: failure to be a responsible and responsive parent; an addiction to drugs and alcohol; a divorce; multiple lovers; erratic mood swings; manic episodes; hallucinations; mental illness; diagnosis of bi-polar disorder; repeated stays at various mental institutions; a complete breakdown in which she tries to stick needles in her daughter’s eyes; and cancer. The author also describes periods of stability in her mother’s life when she is on her medication.

Threaded throughout this part biography, part memoir, part fiction are whole sections in which the author engages in self-examination. She expresses her anxiety about conveying an accurate portrait of her mother. She has doubts about completing the project, stops in the middle of describing a situation to pose questions to herself as if groping to find answers that are just out of reach. The work is replete with the author’s introspective self-doubts, with her struggle to understand, and with the burden of responsibility she feels to do justice to her mother’s memory.

What emerges from this dark, gripping book is a daughter’s portrait of a mother who is beautiful, mysterious, introspective, tortured, distant, and courageous—a mother who suffered childhood traumas, including a possible sexual assault that may have triggered her mental instability. What also emerges is the love the author feels for her mother and the respect she has for her mother’s courageous battles with her inner demons.

The Barefoot Woman

Scholastique Mukasonga; translated by Jordan Stump

The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Jordan Stump, is a loving tribute to Mukasonga’s mother, Stefania. Mukasonga delivers this tribute in the form of a memoir. She describes her family’s life after they were forcibly deported from their homes in Rwanda by the Hutus in a horrific episode of ethnic cleansing. Forced to relocate, they had to eke out a living as best they could. Terrorized by Hutu militias because of their Tutsi ethnicity, their lives were frequently interrupted by Hutus clamoring into their homes, stealing their possessions, destroying their crops, raping their women, and killing their sons and husbands.

Through it all, Mukasonga’s mother tries to hold the family together. Her unwavering focus is on saving her children. She is ever on the alert for the sound of approaching soldiers. She hides food in the bush for her children in case they ever need to make a hasty getaway to Burundi to avoid being massacred. She trains them to be ready at a moment’s notice to hide and even runs practice drills for them to make sure they know where to go.

Mukasonga describes her mother’s efforts to create a loving environment for her children. She praises her ability to make do with little. From her mother, she learns housekeeping skills, cooking, the rituals involved in growing sorghum, which traditional medicines heal specific ailments, various beauty treatments, the ceremonies around birth and marriage, and the role of storytelling in the preservation and transmission of culture. Above all, she honors her mother for her toughness, her resilience, and her unflagging devotion to her family.

The memoir opens with Mukasonga’s mother reminding her daughters to cover her body when she dies since no one must see a mother’s corpse. Mukasonga regrets she wasn’t there to cover her mother’s body when she was killed because her body was never discovered. She does the next best thing. She gives voice to her mother’s indomitable nature and celebrates the traditions she embraced in the hope her words will be the shroud which enable her mother’s spirit to rest.

Recommended.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, is a whimsical delight enjoyed by young and old, alike. A host of memorable talking creatures, Mad Hatter tea parties, riddles, puns galore, mushrooms to make you grow or shrink in size, and other nonsensical events are seen through the eyes of Alice, a young girl with the curiosity and wonderment of a child. The novel’s influence is still felt more than 150 years after its publication. The characters and events have become a frame of reference—a sort of shorthand for the nonsensical; expressions such as, “falling down a rabbit hole” and “curiouser and curiouser” have become part of the English lexicon.

This nudge into a fantasy world with eccentric characters, playful language, and a young girl as our guide may be just what the doctor ordered. The escape from rational thinking by turning reason upside down and inside out can be a refreshing reprieve so long as we remember to emerge from the rabbit hole.

Human Acts

Han Kang; translated by Deborah Smith

Human Acts by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, focuses on the 1980 Gwangju uprising in South Korea. Deborah Smith provides historical context of the uprising in the introduction. The two decades of the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee were followed by another military dictatorship, that of the army general, Chun Doo-hwan. The people of Gwangju, led by student demonstrators, revolted against the military dictatorship, demanding democratic freedoms and better working conditions. Lasting for ten days, the Gwangju uprising was met with brutality, torture, and the massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians. It is against this backdrop that Han Kang situates her novel.

The novel is divided into seven sections. Six of the sections are from individuals who experienced the uprising and its aftermath, including torture and rape. The six are all connected either through employment or friendship or as family. The seventh section, the Epilogue, veers away from fiction to fact by chronicling what prompted the author to research the Gwangju massacre, its impact on her life, and her decision to write a novel about it.

The novel opens with fifteen-year-old Dong-ho joining a group of civilians in the Provincial Office recently transformed into an improvised mortuary to deal with the influx of bodies. Dong-ho has been tasked with recording what information he can about the mountain of bodies piling up in hallways and rooms. His colleagues wash the bodies and cover them with sheets to afford them some dignity until family members can identify them and pick them up for burial. The next section is the ghost of Dong-ho’s friend. Killed by the army, he describes his body unceremoniously carted off in a truck and dumped with a pile of other rotting bodies before all are set ablaze. This is followed by sections from an editor, a prisoner, a factory girl, Dong-ho’s mother on the 30th anniversary of his death, and the Epilogue.

Each section describes in graphic detail the torture, the rape, the mutilation, the bludgeoning and shooting of innocent civilians. That human beings are capable of such inhumane acts is difficult to fathom. Through her characters, Han Kang shows survivors of the uprising as haunted for the rest of their lives by what they witnessed, what they personally experienced, and the loved ones they lost. Their psychological trauma remains unabated.

This is not an easy book to read. The descriptions are graphic; the horror is relentless; the violence is raw, brutal, and unflinching. The novel poses questions about the nature of humanity. What impact does a crowd have on individual behavior? Does crowd behavior compel us to perpetrate acts of unspeakable violence or acts of exceptional bravery or both? Are human beings naturally prone to inflicting such brutality and pain on one another? How does one confront such brutality? And how does one recover from it—assuming recovery is even possible?

Skillfully executed, gut-wrenching, immersive, and compelling, this is an important read. It is highly recommended but not for those who find it too distressing to read graphic descriptions of man’s inhumanity to man.

We Need New Names

NoViolet Bulawayo

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo unfolds in the first-person point of view of ten-year old Darling in Zimbabwe. Darling lives in a shanty town, ironically named Paradise. She is without consistent adult supervision and spends her time running riot with her gang of friends, playing games, stealing guavas, supporting each other, calling each other names, and generally getting into mischief.

Darling and her young friends suffer from bouts of hunger due to food shortages. They are surrounded by tragedy and violence: a young woman hangs from a tree; a mob invades the home of a white couple, destroys their possessions, and defecates on their floor; Darling’s father dies of AIDS; a man is brutally beaten and ferreted away by the authorities. Darling’s young friend is raped by her grandfather and now carries his child. The children are feral, dirty, hungry, barefoot, and clothed in tatters. Despite these horrendous hardships, Darling’s voice is fresh, young, and engaging. She is astute, sensitive, resilient, street smart, and with a keen eye for observation and an ability to decipher the moods of adults. She can also be very funny.

With no transition, the second half of the novel finds Darling living with her aunt in Michigan. She is torn between adjusting to her new environment and homesickness. She dislikes the intense cold and snow of Michigan but is gratified by the abundance and availability of food. She learns life in America has its benefits as well as its disappointments. Constantly reminded of her outsider status while living in fear of deportation because she is an illegal immigrant, Darling adopts the language and mannerisms of an American teenager to blend in with her new environment.

The plot structure of the novel is episodic in nature. The accumulation of events in Zimbabwe eventually coalesce to form a picture of life there. Darling does not shy away from describing the hardships. Her feelings of humiliation when aid workers take photos of the children covered in dirt and wearing torn clothing is poignant. The children tolerate the embarrassment and accommodate with smiles in exchange for gifts. But despite its challenges, Zimbabwe provides Darling with a sense of belonging, a community, and friends with whom she shares common experiences—qualities she doesn’t fully come to value until they are no longer available to her. This section throbs with vitality and energy.

The second section of the book lacks the vibrancy and immediacy of the opening half. Darling seems to drift aimlessly, recording one experience after another. The series of episodes chart her sense of alienation in America as well as her growing estrangement from family and friends in Zimbabwe. She straddles between two cultures and feels the pain of being an outsider in both. She gradually realizes she is a displaced individual who no longer has a place to call home.

Bulawayo skillfully captures the intensity and communal life in Zimbabwe with vivid details and realistic dialogue. And through Darling, she captures the alienation of a first-generation immigrant torn between two cultures. Darling must abandon her old identity and adopt a new one, a new beginning and that calls for new names.

Recommended.

History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History

Samuel Noah Kramer

History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History by Samuel Noah Kramer, a leading Sumerologist, provides a fascinating look at cuneiform tablets detailing the achievements of the Sumerians of 4,000 years ago, a people who lived in what is now southern Iraq.

Piecing together various clay tablets, some of which are scattered in different museums across the globe, Professor Kramer translates and compiles 39 firsts. Among these is the first time on record where a father implores his juvenile delinquent son to stop idling about and to focus on his studies; the first bicameral congress; the first legal court case; the first instance of tax reform; the first flood; the first library catalogue; etc. etc. Professor Kramer discusses Sumerian use of literary imagery, laments, and elegies. He gives a detailed discussion of the Gilgamesh epic and shows the parts later borrowed by the Babylonians. He draws similarities between the language in tablets detailing ancient Sumer’s Sacred Marriage Rite with the Biblical Song of Songs. And he finds common threads in Inanna’s descent into the nether world and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

Professor Kramer is careful to credit the work of previous translators and makes it clear he is building on their efforts. He also expresses his indebtedness to his former students and assistants in compiling and translating the clay tablets. He summarizes the contents of each of the tablets before providing a translation. He includes a table showing the origin and development of the squiggly signs representing the cuneiform system of writing; illustrations of some of the clay tablets as well as actual photographs; addenda; a glossary; and maps.

This work is the culmination of years of brilliant, painstaking research. It is very accessible and will appeal to both scholars and a general audience interested in Sumer’s contributions to civilization. Professor Kramer’s tone is engaging; his enthusiasm for the material is contagious. By breathing life into these ancient documents, he reminds us we share many of the same joys and concerns as our ancient ancestors.

Four thousand years ago, a father pleaded with his child to take his schoolwork seriously. What’s not to love about a study that allows his voice and the voices of others to reverberate through the millennia?

Very highly recommended.

Whereabouts

Jhumpa Lahiri

In a series of short vignettes, some only 2 pages long, the first-person narrator in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, Whereabouts, unwraps her life as she meanders through various locations in an unnamed Italian city where she lives.

The unnamed narrator is a forty something university professor, living alone. She derives comfort by establishing a routine and rituals for herself, frequenting the same restaurant, coffee shop, bookstore, streets, and piazzas. She has friends and work colleagues, but she never seems to fit in, viewing herself as an outsider. She shies away from intimacy and is estranged even from her mother, her sole surviving relative.

The vignettes cover a period of one year. The city is shown in its seasonal ebb and flow with the narrator enjoying the first burst of spring or shivering under a winter blast. She describes what she sees, hears, and thinks wherever she happens to be, whether she is in bed, in the coffee shop, in the pool, on a train, or under a shade tree. She is an astute observer of people, their comings and goings and their overheard conversations. But she is primarily concerned with analyzing herself. She records her moods and is preoccupied with trying to understand the triggers that generate her feelings of contentment, sadness, depression, alienation, or belonging. At the end of the novel, her decision to leap into unknown territory by accepting a fellowship at an unfamiliar place perhaps indicates her willingness to push back her self-imposed boundaries.

The novel is without a plot. Lahiri originally wrote it in Italian and then translated it herself into English. This once removed process may account for the narrator’s unwillingness or inability to allow for intimacy. Not only does she distance herself from others, but she distances herself from the reader. The impression is of a person talking to herself, not of one inviting others into her life. Her language is restrained; her observations are detached and calculated. Her impenetrable external veneer inhibits investment in her as a person or in her story. As a result, we don’t really get to know her or feel sympathy for her isolationism. What we do get is a glimpse into the self-absorbed mind of an individual who has taken deliberate steps to maintain her sequestered lifestyle while simultaneously trying to locate her place in the world.

Voices of the Lost

Hoda Barakat; translated by Marilyn Booth

Winner of the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Voices of the Lost by Hoda Barakat, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, is in a three-part structure. Part 1, Those Who are Lost, consists of a series of letters to and from unnamed individuals in unspecified countries in the Arab world. Part 2, Those Who are Searching, consists of several monologues by the intended recipients of the letters who never receive the letters but who present events from their perspective. The final section, Those Who are Left Behind, is a monologue by a postal worker sheltering in a bombed-out post office. He has sorted and registered the letters in the hope they will eventually be delivered.

Part 1 is by far the largest part. The letters, addressed to a former lover or family members, are confessional. A woman writes to her former lover. An escaped torturer begs forgiveness from his mother for torturing, maiming, and killing while he was a member of the secret police. A sister writes to her brother explaining why she became a prostitute. The letters never arrive to their intended recipients. They are discarded in hotel rooms, storage lockers, and airports to be picked up by complete strangers who are then prompted to write their own letters in a chain that tangentially links the letters.

The format is interesting and well-executed. The contents of the letters reveal individuals living on the margins of society. They suffer from poverty, childhood trauma, and abuse. Some are illegal immigrants or criminals hiding from authorities in a European country. A few of the letters are very disturbing, describing violence, rape, and domestic abuse in graphic detail. The writers seek understanding and forgiveness for their past actions. Their tone is fatalistic—as if fate dealt them a poor hand and they had no option but to pursue the path they did.

Barakat’s portrayals are sensitive and nuanced. She gives voice to individuals denied voice by mainstream society—the criminals, the prostitutes, the homeless, the refugees, and the desperate. The letter-writers have in common they escaped from their war-ravaged countries. They are alienated, isolated, and bereft of support structures. Some generate sympathy; others generate absolute horror. But all emerge as real individuals suffering from serious, deep-seated wounds.

Although there is a smattering of hope embodied by the nameless postman who continues to sort letters in anticipation of better days, the tone throughout is unabashedly bleak. Its value lies in depicting those relegated en masse to the periphery of society as unique individuals whose powerful and angst-ridden voices deserve a hearing.

Recommended.

Second Place

Rachel Cusk

In the afterword to her most recent novel, Second Place, Rachel Cusk states she was inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s 1932 memoir of the time D. H. Lawrence stayed with her in Taos, New Mexico. Unlike in Luhan’s memoir, the visitor in Cusk’s novel is an artist, not an author.

Second Place is in the form of an extended monologue. The first-person narrator is identified as M. She addresses the monologue to her friend, Jeffers, telling him about the time L, the artist, visited her and her husband in their home on the marshes. The title refers to the second home they constructed as a guest house for visiting artists to work unencumbered by the outside world. It also refers to M’s self-identification as someone who is, at best, second place and subordinate.

M is a conflicted, tortured soul plagued with questions about her identity as a woman, her skills at parenting, her need for recognition, and her role in her marriage. She is not a particularly likeable character. She invites the celebrated artist L to stay in her home because she feels connected to him through his paintings. She wants to see her marshes through his eyes. But above all, she wants him to paint her, as if by seeing her he will, somehow, endow her with self-worth. When L eventually shows up, he recognizes her intensity and need for attention. He reacts by distancing himself from her. M’s frustration grows and eventually comes to a head.

This brief summary might lead one to believe this is a lengthy, boring monologue where very little happens. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although M is not particularly likable, her words are hypnotic and fascinating. While wallowing in self-examination and self-doubt, she philosophizes about the meaning of freedom, the role gender plays in our identity formation, selfhood, power dynamics, positions of privilege, marginalization, the nature of parenting, marriage, the role of art in society and its relationship to life, and the character of the artist. She contrasts her approach to life with that of her steadfast husband, Tony. She shares her feelings toward her daughter and how parenting her now adult child is fraught with tension.

Cusk peppers her sentences with lyrical, breathtaking descriptions, most notably of the landscape. She sustains interest through the potency of her pronouncements and deliberations. Almost every other sentence invites contemplation. This is a compelling work in which words need to be savored, read, and re-read for their piercing insights about life, relationships, and identity.

Highly recommended.