Around the World in Eighty Days

Jules Verne

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne recounts the adventures of Phileas Fogg, the unforgettable, unflappable, stiff-upper-lip English man who travels around the world with his trusty valet, Passepartout.

 While playing a card game with his friends in the Reform Club, Fogg calmly announces he can travel around the world in eighty days. His companions refute his claim, and a wager is set for the princely sum of twenty thousand pounds. The wager begins that day. Fogg insists on finishing the card game before setting home to announce to his astonished valet to pack his belongings in preparation for a trip around the world. And so the adventure begins.

 Fogg and Passepartout travel to exotic locations, including India, China, Hong Kong, and North America. They travel in whatever means of transportation is available, whether it is by steam ship, train, elephant, and even a sledge that hurtles across the snow. They are on a tight schedule, missing their connections on more than one occasion. Somehow, Fogg finds alternatives to get him where he needs to be. Along the way, they intervene in a suttee by rescuing an Indian woman from being burned alive on her deceased husband’s funeral pyre. They are chased by priests in India and attacked by Sioux in Nebraska. They are stalked in their travels by a detective who is convinced Fogg is a bank robber. And all the while, time’s winged chariot ticks loudly in the background.  

 This delightful classic, first published in 1872, has held up well over time. Adventure, excitement, exotic locales, cultural contexts, interesting observations, glimpses into an era long gone, and a cast of colorful characters make this a light, refreshing, and thoroughly enjoyable read, one that has survived the test of time with flying colors.

 Highly recommended.

The Whale Rider

Witi Ihimaera

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera is a young adult novel that tells the story of eight-year-old Kahu, a female descendent of Kahutia Te Rangi, the whale rider.

Kahu is a member of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand. Her great grandfather, Koro Apirana, is the elderly chief. Desperate to seek a male successor, he pins his hopes on a male great grandchild since Maori tradition stipulates a male heir. So when Kahu is born, he is devastated. Kahu’s determination to earn her great-grandfather’s love is undaunted. She is unsuccessful at gaining his acceptance until that fateful day when hundreds of whales beach themselves and Kahu proves she is the rightful heir of the whale rider.

The narrative is loosely structured with a lengthy digression in which the narrator, Kahu’s uncle, travels to Sydney and Papua Guinea. The digression does little to advance the main story line which is about Kahu’s ascent as the tribe’s whale rider. The diction is simplistic and with minimal character development.

Ihimaera weaves Maori mythology and sprinkles Maori words in the narrative. These lend authenticity to the tale. A Glossary is provided to explain the phrases and words. The novel’s strength lies in the intersection of mythology with reality. It depicts the struggle of the indigenous tribes to maintain traditional belief systems in the face of modernity. Its primary appeal is to a young adult audience who may see it as a heart-warming tale of a young girl’s successful struggle to overcome the challenges of a male-dominated culture.

The True Deceiver

Tove Jansson; trans. Thomas Teal

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal, consists of a battle of wills between two women while it explores the issue of lies—those we tell ourselves and those we tell others.  

Katri Kling is an outcast living in an isolated Swedish village. She keeps to herself, eschews pleasantries with the villagers, and is taunted by the village children. But she is good with numbers, and so the villagers seek her advice with their finances. Her companions are a dog she refuses to name and her simple-minded brother, Mats. Katri has been Mats’ care-giver since their parents died. She is very protective over him, caters to his obsession with boats, and wants to buy him his own boat.

Anna Aemlin is an elderly, highly successful illustrator of children’s books. She submits her paintings to her publisher who then contributes the story to go with the pictures. Anna’s illustrations capture the forest ground in minute detail. She populates her paintings with bunny rabbits adorned with little flowers. As the village celebrity, she is well-respected. She lives alone in a large family home dubbed the rabbit house.

Katri ingratiates herself with Anna, orchestrating a fake burglary in Anna’s house to convince her she should not be living alone. Anna agrees. After Katri and Mats move in, Katri proceeds to make herself indispensable. She picks up Anna’s groceries and mail, replies to her correspondences, and manages her finances.

The two women, having very different dispositions, constantly tangle with one another. Katri is cynical, suspicious of people and their motivations, judgmental, and always on the lookout for being exploited. Anna seems trusting, simplistic, and leads a sheltered life. She refuses to soil her fingers with discussions of money and is oblivious as to how she is being cheated by merchants and publishers until Katri informs her. A gradual, almost imperceptible, shift in attitudes occur. As Anna becomes more reliant on Katri, she becomes increasingly distrustful of her neighbors. Her suspicions seem to thwart her creativity. For her part, Katri regrets planting the seeds of suspicion in Anna’s mind and retracts her accusations.

In spare, taut, and disarmingly simple language, Jansson situates the narrative in a harsh winter climate with its unrelenting freezing temperatures and dark days. The frigid atmosphere reinforces the chill and remoteness of human interactions. The point of view constantly shifts from third person to Katri’s first-person voice. This inexplicable shift in narrative voice is unnerving and contributes to the simmering tension. Jansson skillfully conveys the tense atmosphere with few words and a controlled prose. Katri and Anna seldom speak to one another. Instead, they engage in the occasional flash of verbal jousting tinged with a mutual distrust, after which one or both exit the room leaving the atmosphere charged with electricity.

An unusual novel, skillfully executed, and with a haunting atmosphere that leaves one with more questions than answers. The reader is left wondering who is to be trusted, who is being deceptive, when did the deception start, and, finally, whether there is a connection between self-deception and creativity.

Recommended.

Deacon King Kong

James McBride

Deacon King Kong by James McBride is an absolute masterpiece.

Set in the vicinity of a south Brooklyn housing project in 1969, McBride’s novel sizzles with energy. At its center is seventy-one-year-old Sportcoat, the deacon of Five Ends Baptist Church who ambles through life with the aid of a home brew he has affectionately labeled King Kong. For some inexplicable reason, Sportcoat wakes up one morning and fires a gun at the young ringleader of the local drug gang. Over a dozen people witness the incident, but no one steps forward to assist the police. As for Sportcoat, he was so drunk he has no recollection of the incident.

Sportcoat’s action sets off a series of events that involve local police; drug gangs fighting over territory; the hunt for a mysterious artefact smuggled out of Europe after the war; murders; several attempted murders; a contract on Sportcoat’s life; lucky escapes; the occasional slap-stick humor; coincidences; love interests; a big-hearted, lonely policeman; honorable and not so honorable mobsters and drug-dealers; charitable acts; and several disparate threads that eventually converge. Infuse every page with humor and a delightful cast of characters who share a common history, invade one another’s lives, continuously spout their opinions, and fiercely protect one another from outsiders, and you begin to get a taste of the electricity surging throughout in the novel.

The housing project neighborhood is racially and ethnically diverse. McBride’s motely cast of characters are colorful, unique, and easily identifiable should they step off the page. Their dialogue is an authentic replication of the back and forth of actual speech. They are flawed, loveable, and street-smart. Although they are very aware of the racial inequities in society and their drug-infested, crime-riddled neighborhood, they are not bitter. Their lives intertwine with one another. They attend church, bicker profusely, laugh at the ironies in life, and love and support each other with a fierce intensity that is unshakeable. What emerges is their powerful sense of community.

The novel moves at a breath-taking pace with the occasional interruption of a character’s back story. The prose radiates energy, capturing the vibrant pulse of the community. The sentences can extend for several lines, piling on details and images. Chapter 7, which describes the progression of a colony of red killer ants from Colombia to their invasion of the housing project in Brooklyn, is nothing short of brilliant. How McBride manages to pack so much and juggle it all with such dexterity is a testament to his absolute genius.

A boisterous barrel of fun. Very highly recommended.

Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World

Candace Savage

Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World by Candace Savage is an engaging tribute to the multi-faceted crow. Relying on research and some fascinating anecdotes, Savage explores the tool-making and tool-using capabilities of crows, their intelligence, their ability to relay information to other crows (“crow language”), their trickery, their social interactions, and their family dynamics. Peppered liberally throughout the text are short myths and fables featuring crows and ravens, as well as some beautiful illustrations of the birds, including delicate water colors, engravings, prints, and photographs.

The book avoids technical language, making it a very readable and engaging introduction to all manner of crow-dom. Although there is a lot we know about crows, Savage clearly indicates there is much we don’t know. Further research is needed to fully explore the capabilities of this interesting species with whom we seem to have a lot in common.

Recommended.

Pond

Claire-Louise Bennett

Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett lies somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories. It consists of a series of chapters or fragments, varying in length, in which the first-person narrator pours out her thoughts.

The unnamed narrator lives in a coastal town in Ireland (“the most westerly point of Europe, right next to the Atlantic Ocean”). Her rambling, stream-of-consciousness thoughts explore the minutiae of everyday objects, surroundings, and activities. She engages in extensive navel-gazing, analyzing her thoughts in minute, step-by-step detail. She is also painfully self-conscious, second-guessing herself and her interactions with others. She will occasionally drop oblique hints about her appearance, education, and love life. Articulate and intelligent, she has a dry sense of humor that surfaces in the most unexpected times.

She has a keen eye for observing even the most trivial details and recording them. A whole chapter is dedicated to her faulty cooker knobs. Her keen eye for detail extends to her natural surroundings. She charts the passage of a beetle as it skirts across her forehead and listens to a spider moving through the grass. Nature assumes an almost mythic quality in some of her descriptions. In between her rambling thoughts and convoluted sentences, she will hit you with a prescient insight that can take your breath away.

Whether you like the novel or not depends on what you think of the narrator. Some readers may lose patience with her and dismiss the novel as a pretentious exercise. Others will enjoy getting inside the skin of a narrator who is intense, intelligent, funny, observant, self-aware, and who reflects on and delights in the mundane.

Recommended.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy concludes The Mayor of Casterbridge with the following words: “. . . happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” These words sum up the tenor of the novel.

The novel opens with an infamous scene in which Michael Henchard, in a drunken stupor, sells his wife and young daughter to the highest bidder. Full of remorse when he realizes what he’s done, he spends the next few years searching for them. But to no avail. As penance for his actions, he abstains from drink for two decades, works hard, succeeds in business, and eventually becomes the respectable mayor of Casterbridge. When his wife shows up with her now fully grown daughter, Henchard tries to make amends. He re-marries his wife to give their relationship the cloak of respectability. All seems to be right with the world. But not so fast. This is Hardy, and his Henchard will not be let off so easily.

What follows is a series of challenging events, love triangles, unfortunate circumstances, secrets, past transgressions, regrets, and mistaken identities. Henchard constantly tries to be a better man, but he comes up short mainly due to his arrogance, pride, and quick temper. He is full of remorse for his mistakes. He no sooner regrets a past action when he has plunged himself headlong into another morass. His attempts to be good are thwarted at every turn. He is his own worst enemy and fails to see the good in others until it is too late.

Another character haunted by past transgressions is Lucetta. Hardy is equally tough on her. Lucetta tries to bury her secret past and lead a respectable life with a man she loves. But Hardy won’t allow it. There is no redemption for her or Henchard. Burdened with past mistakes, both characters die untimely deaths. The only characters permitted to have some modicum of a happy ending are those who are relatively blameless.

Hardy is masterful in establishing setting. He immerses the reader in rural Wessex and populates it with a motley crew of locals speaking in a dialect and diction barely intelligible to a modern reader. His plot is carefully constructed with twists and turns, unexpected appearances, and failed attempts at expiation. In Henchard, Hardy has created a complex, nuanced character riddled with flaws, one who is gruff and unlikeable. And, yet, somehow, he generates sympathy for him. We watch him struggle to be a better man. We want him to do well. But he disappoints and lets himself down at every turn. A Hardy-esque fate has him in its grasp and it won’t relinquish him.

Hardy’s vision is unrelentingly bleak, tragic, powerful, compelling, and masterfully executed. It is a cautionary tale of how mistakes made in one’s wild and woolly youth can have enduring and tragic repercussions.

Highly recommended.

In the Time of the Butterflies

Julia Alvarez

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez blends fiction with the true story of the three Mirabel sisters, operating under the code name “the butterflies.” The sisters were assassinated in 1960 for their opposition to the dictatorship of General Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

The novel opens in 1994 with a journalist interviewing Dedé, the surviving sister, about the events leading up to the murder of her siblings. It unfolds in the alternating voice of each of the sisters (Patria, Minerva, Dedé, and Maria Theresa), and spans the decades between 1938 to 1960. It describes their lives as young girls, as teenagers, as young wives and mothers, as members of a clandestine guerilla cell, and ends with their murder. The Dedé 1994 sections which frame the narrative, articulate Dedé’s guilt at her failure to be as politically active as her sisters, her survival, and her ongoing struggle to come to terms with their deaths while honoring their memory decades later.

Alvarez breathes life into these historical figures. Each sister is portrayed as a unique individual who gradually gets drawn into the struggle to overthrow Trujillo. They are shown as inching their way to becoming revolutionaries, each with her own reasons for doing so. Forming a guerrilla cell, they meet regularly to plan and hide crates of guns and ammunition in preparation for the uprising. Eventually, they and their spouses are discovered and sent to prison. After the sisters are released from prison, they are placed under house arrest, their movements and phone calls monitored by the Military Intelligence Service (SIM). They live in fear, but their resolve is unwavering. It is while returning from a visit to their spouses in jail they are ambushed and murdered.

Through her powerful diction, Alvarez captures the sheer terror of living under a military dictatorship in which people are in constant fear of stepping out of line. Loved ones are routinely murdered, incarcerated, or disappeared. The filth, squalor, starvation, and constant fear of torture and beatings the sisters experience during their incarceration reinforces the trauma of life under dictatorship.

By blending historical fact and fiction, Julia Alvarez disseminates information about the heroic struggle of the Mirabel sisters to a wider audience. Their courage and determination elevates their stature to mythic proportions.

Recommended.

The Heroine with the 1,001 Faces

Maria Tatar

In The Heroine with the 1,001 Faces, Maria Tatar interrogates Joseph Campbell’s definition of the hero and the heroic quest in his landmark book, The Hero with the Thousand Faces. She argues Campbell’s definition is masculine-centered and blind to the heroism of women simply because women operate under a different set of constructs.

That women do not conform to Campbell’s model of heroism does not negate their status as heroines. Using examples from mythology, folktales, fairy tales, and a host of other works, Tatar argues for expanding our definition of heroism. As she convincingly demonstrates, women have traditionally operated under a different paradigm of heroism by using use a variety of woman-centered skills and tools at their disposal to save themselves and to rescue others. Words are wielded as weapons through their story-telling. And information is shared in women’s circles through what has pejoratively been labeled old wives’ tales or gossip. When women are denied voice, as in the case of Philomela whose tongue was cut out to prevent her from reporting her rape, women spin and weave and write their stories to warn others and to demand justice.

From mythology, Tatar moves to fairy tales and folktales; to contemporary re-tellings of myths which give prominent voice to women who had been marginalized in male-centered heroics; to novels; to what female authors and their female characters have said about finding voice; to popular young adult novels about female detectives; and to current examples on television, films, and social media. She discusses the evolving definition of female heroism, women’s fight for social justice, and female vigilantes.

Tatar interrogates the word “curiosity.” She provides illustrations in mythology and fairy tales of women punished for all forms of curiosity, including sexual curiosity. Women’s curiosity has historically been muffled, silenced, or repressed. Tatar argues that rather than being a drawback, a woman’s curiosity is an invaluable asset for generating knowledge. It makes women particularly adept at solving mysteries, observing details in speech and action that others have overlooked, asking questions, investigating, cultivating an ethic of care and compassion, and pursuing social justice.

Tatar’s research is extensive; her examples are wide-ranging. Her expansion of the definition of heroism allows us to recognize the heroic work of a Shahrazad as we invite her to step up to the platform to receive her accolades alongside traditional male heroes. Who is to say that when Shahrazad rescues her community of women through story-telling she is any less worthy of praise than a blood-splattered hero emerging victorious from battling enemies? Her tools may be different, but her struggle and the struggle of all women who use their voices and the tools at their disposal to pursue social justice are worthy of the honorific title of heroines.

Maria Tatar’s exceptional, well-researched, and accessible study, with its extensive notes and index, makes an invaluable contribution toward re-defining our concept of heroism to include woman-centered voices and woman-centered work.

Highly recommended.

The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between

Hisham Matar

Hisham Matar’s The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between is a poignant memoir about his quest to learn the fate of his father. It includes background on Libya’s fight for independence from Italy and Ghaddafi’s emergence as Libya’s brutal dictator.

The memoir opens in 2012 with Hisham returning to his native Libya after Ghaddafi’s ouster. He reconnects with his extended family and seeks information about his father, Jaballa Matar. Hisham’s father had been a prominent political activist who used his money, influence, and voice to fight the Ghaddafi regime. The family escaped to Egypt when the situation became too dangerous for them in Libya. They lived in Egypt for several years until Jaballa was kidnapped and returned to Libya to be incarcerated in the notorious Abu Salim prison. That is the last his family knows of his whereabouts. In 2011, Hisham’s uncle and cousins are released from prison after serving 21 years for opposing the Ghaddafi regime. His father is not.

Hisham returns to Libya after an absence of thirty years. In the interim, he has acquired fame as an author. He was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. His fame and outspoken political activism earn him global recognition and garner influence with the British authorities by calling attention to the horrendous plight of political dissidents under Ghaddafi. He causes such turmoil for Libya that he is eventually able to extract a commitment for Ghaddafi’s son to reveal the fate of his father. Promises are made; promises are broken. And it is only after his return to Libya in 2012 that Hisham concludes his father was probably murdered by the Libyan authorities and that his body will never be found.

Matar’s diction is lyrical and emotionally gripping. He moves seamlessly between Libyan history to stories about his father’s incarceration, the brutality of the regime running as a common thread. Matar has been caught in a liminal phase since his father’s disappearance. He occupies a space between his adopted home in England and his homeland in Libya, feeling like an exile wherever he goes. He lives simultaneously in the past and present. His memoir consists of frequent flashbacks to the past, recalling incidents with his father, his life in Egypt, and the day of his father’s disappearance. He is trapped in the in-between space of not knowing whether his father is alive or dead. Should he continue to hope, or should he abandon all hope?  He fluctuates between anger and despair. This in-between psychic space has plagued Matar since his father’s disappearance and fuels his memoir.

Matar’s haunting memoir shows the perpetual impact of the disappeared on family members left behind. The agony of not-knowing permeates every aspect of Hisham’s life. He and his family share a common plight with family members of the disappeared all over the world as they desperately try to learn the fate of their loved ones.

A powerful memoir that depicts in meticulous and harrowing detail the emotional and psychological trauma of the search for truth and justice on behalf of the disappeared and their families.

Highly recommended.

Writers and Lovers

Lily King

Writers and Lovers by Lily King unfolds in the first-person narrative of Casey Peabody, an aspiring author who has been struggling to write a novel for six years. This is a coming-of-age story of a thirty-one-year-old finally finding her place in life.

Casey faces a lot of challenges. Still grieving over the sudden death of her mother, she works as a waitress, is burdened with student loans, and lives in a virtual hovel. She struggles daily with her writing, work, cramps, relationships, and a health scare. She is in survival mode as she goes through the motions of her daily routine while clinging to writing as a life jacket that will somehow rescue her from her emotional and financial crises. Having recently broken up with her boyfriend, Casey becomes involved with two very different men, unable to decide between the two. The novel ends on a happy note with things finally working out in Casey’s favor.

This is a light, easy read. The pace, which is very slow going in the first half, finally picks up. King’s portrayal of Casey’s introspection and life struggles feel contrived—as if she threw all possible challenges at her protagonist before allowing her to emerge as a resilient and empowered female with a strong voice. The novel has the feel of a made for television show—light, entertaining, but lacking in depth, and with a conclusion leaning heavily on the happily-ever-after fairy tale variety.

The Celestial Hunter

Roberto Calasso; trans. Richard Dixon

Translated from Italian by Richard Dixon, The Celestial Hunter by Roberto Calasso moves at a dizzying pace reflecting the dizzying speed of Calasso’s thoughts. Calasso credits the activity of hunting as the source of rituals, cults, and myths, which, in turn, formed the basis of religions and the pursuit of all areas of human knowledge. Hunting, as represented by the celestial hunter Orion, permeated the divine, human, and animal realms, bleeding from one realm to the other through porous boundaries.

Hunting fundamentally transformed man’s relationship to his environment. Calasso traces the progression from man as the hunted to man as the hunter and beyond. Killing and eating what one has killed precipitated a momentous shift in human consciousness that informed man’s relationship with animals. When humans made the shift from prey to predator, when they changed from the hunted to the hunter, they began to see themselves as distinct from the animal kingdom, possessing a unique ability to exert power over nature.

Each time a hunter wore the skin of the animal he hunted, he experienced a metamorphosis. He straddled both worlds by “becoming” the animal. Accordingly, he developed rituals to merge with the animal, to kill the animal, to separate from the animal after a successful hunt, and to atone for killing the animal through libations and blood sacrifice. These rituals formed the foundation of all religions. From metamorphosis, humans shifted to reliance on a “prosthesis”—an arrow, a javelin, a remote-controlled drone—to become the most formidable species on the planet, the only species able to kill without touching.

Calasso’s knowledge of his subject matter is extensive. He moves with alacrity all over the map, weaving Greek and Egyptian mythology and statuary; Hinduism; the Eleusinian Mysteries; the words of Plato, Ovid, Homer, Nietzsche, Herodotus, Henry James, James Frazer, and a host of others including anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and academicians, all in a dizzying display of erudition. His process is non-linear, labyrinthine. His chapters encompass the breadth and scope of his vast knowledge as well as his sense of humor. His technique, akin to stream of consciousness, consists of leaping to whatever associations and anecdotes come to mind even though the connections may be centuries and worlds apart, and not evident to a general reader. It is a daunting task to keep up with his breathtaking pace and to follow his train of thought.

Calasso’s theory is fascinating; his insights are stimulating; his analysis is brilliant; his tone can be irreverent. At times, his mental leaps are baffling. One doesn’t quite know where he’s going or why. But always, always, the depth, breadth, and immense scope of his knowledge is evident.

A challenging book, but one that attests to the presence of a brilliant mind at work.

Highly recommended.

The Hunger Angel

Herta Müller; trans. Philip Boehm

Translated by Philip Boehm, The Hunger Angel by the 2009 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Herta Müller, captures in minute detail the horrors of life in a Soviet Union labor camp in 1945. Her novel is based on the true story of Oskar Pastior, a poet who survived the labor camp and described his experiences to her.

The novel opens when Leo Auberg, an ethnic German, is deported from his home in Romania and transported to a labor camp in the Soviet Union where he spends the next five years. Leo is an astute observer of human behavior. He chronicles in painstaking, minute detail his life and work in the camp. The smallest, most mundane tasks assume huge significance. Leo doesn’t just shovel coal. He describes the different types of coal and explains how to shovel each type in meticulous detail. He has an ongoing battle with cement. He provides step-by-step instructions on the best way to carry cinder blocks. He communes with insects. He flashes back to incidents in his past and hallucinates about flying home on a pig. He lists the different types of lice feeding on his body and the bed bugs that plague him at night. And threaded throughout every aspect of his life and activities is the hunger angel.

Hunger is personified in relentless detail. It permeates every aspect of Leo’s life. He calculates each load he shovels earns him 1 gram of bread. He chews his food, spits it out, and hides it to savor it later in the day. He exchanges pieces of bread with is fellow inmates, always suspecting they came out ahead. He rummages through garbage to eat potato peels and anything else he can forage. He goes to the village to exchange bits and pieces of his meager belongings in exchange for food. He avoids looking in a mirror because he feels ashamed of the skeletal appearance he has in common with his inmates. The images and the insatiable hunger continue to plague Leo for decades. Even decades after leaving the camp, he feels a social misfit and is unable to quell the constant feeling of hunger.

The novel is in short chapters with headings that enumerate Leo’s musings and the mundane objects which assume major significance in his life. Told in simple, almost lyrical prose, the accumulation of minute details and litany of daily activities convey an authentic picture of what life must have been like in a forced labor camp.

This is not an easy book to read. It is, however, a powerful and compelling narrative illustrating man’s inhumanity to man packaged in the words of a very talented writer.

The Last Hours

Minette Walters

The Last Hours by Minette Walters is the first book in a historical trilogy that takes place in Dorsetshire in 1348 when the area was first afflicted with the Black Death. It focuses on Lady Anne of Develish and her struggle to save the serfs and others under her care when her husband dies of the plague.

 Lady Anne is an anomaly among women of the period. Educated by nuns, intelligent, and politically astute, she is married to the licentious and brutal Sir Richard. She treats serfs with compassion and humility, teaching them literacy and the importance of maintaining strict personal and public hygiene. When news reaches of her husband’s death, she welcomes the serfs to the moat surrounding the Manor House to protect them from the pestilence, denying entry and exit to all others to prevent the spread of the disease. She has the support and loyalty of the serfs but must contend with hostility and aggression from her daughter, Eleanor. Her husband’s Norman steward distrusts her actions due to her insistence on empowering the serfs. Anxiety, food shortages, and the suspicious death of a young boy add to the problems facing this isolated community.

The historical research for the novel is impressive. Walters drives home the inequality of the period in which serfs are treated as chattel while their masters grow fat by exploiting their labor. The social hierarchies and class discrepancies are omnipresent and especially evident in the contrasting views of the serfs expressed by Lady Anne and Eleanor. Walters immerses the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of the plague. She shows how the pestilence spreads suspicion and shatters the established norms of society by destroying lives, eliminating status, and modifying codes of behavior.

The novel’s strength lies in generating the atmosphere of isolation and fear pervading the communities suffering from the plague in 14thC England. But the character portrayals were weak. The characters were one-dimensional—either too good to be true or too wicked to have a single redeeming quality. They lacked subtlety and nuance. Lady Anne was so far ahead of her time in attitudes and beliefs that she stretched plausibility to the limit. The excessive amounts of telling and too little showing slowed the pace, dragging the narrative down unnecessarily. This was very evident in Thaddues’ ramble through the countryside in search of food and supplies. Many of the redundancies and repetitions could have been edited out, making for a much tighter construction and shorter novel. The novel lacks a satisfactory resolution as it ends with an abrupt cliffhanger in preparation for the next book in the series.

Recommended with reservations.

The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales From 1001 Nights

Yasmine Seale, trans.; Paulo Lemos Horta, ed.

The Annotated Arabian Nights, translated by Yasmine Seale with an introduction and annotations by Paulo Lemos Horta, is a 700-page tome that is a visual and intellectual delight. The research is extensive, exploring the Arabian Nights from its beginnings; its translators; its various permutations and translations; its literary and artistic offshoots; and culminating with a selection of retellings. Its pages are adorned with the beautiful illustrations the stories have inspired throughout the centuries, including the enchanting illustrations of Edmund Dulac and the contemporary illustrations of Dia al-Azawi. This magnificent piece of scholarship includes a Foreword by Omar El Akkad, an Afterword by Robert Irwin, and an extensive bibliography.

The volume is in five parts: Part I is Tales from Arabic; Part II is Tales from French; Part III is Hanna Diyab Tales; Part IV is Translators of the Arabian Nights; and Part V is Retellings of Arabian Nights. Paulo Lemos Horta’s Introduction places the Nights in its historical, cultural, and social context; critiques previous translations; and explores its many iterations in art and theatre. His invaluable annotations appear on the margins of each page. These provide commentary, context, analysis, geographical locations, and explanations of the social and cultural mores of the time. They also include how a particular passage, theme, character, or event has re-surfaced in the work of subsequent authors and artists.

Yasmine Seale’s translation has a contemporary feel. She strips the tales of the archaism, exoticism, and Euro-centric lens of previous translations, which had claimed authenticity by presenting the tales as embodying the life and customs of the Arabs. Whereas Victorian translators routinely undercut female characters, Seale re-introduces strong female characters missing from previous translations. She captures the rhythm, ambiguity, irony, and spirit of the Arabic while giving voice to a Shahrazad who is intelligent, courageous, and a formidable warrior for justice. Shahrazad reminds us stories can be powerful transformational tools. Her use of storytelling to educate others and to fight oppression and injustice has inspired countless generations of storytellers to do the same.

The Annotated Arabian Nights is a remarkable piece of scholarship. The volume is a visual feast for the eyes and an inspiring feast for the mind. It should be savored slowly, allowing the eye and the mind to pause, linger, and treasure.

Very highly recommended.

Latitudes of Longing

Shubhangi Swarup

Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup consists of four novellas in which one or more characters in each novella forges a latitudinal connection with a character in the subsequent story, thereby linking the stories. The four sections, labeled Islands, Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert, spread across the Andaman Islands, Myanmar, Nepal, and Antarctica.

The first section on the Andaman Islands is the strongest. It follows the life of Girija Prasad who studies plants and trees, while his wife, Chanda, talks to trees and sees ghosts. The diction is lyrical and sensuous, weaving myth, flora, fauna, and magic in prose that is lush and immersive. Girija Prasad’s character is realistic and enchanting. He displays a love for Chanda that is tender, patient, and fused with wonder at her mysterious abilities. The second section abandons the lush prose and thrusts the reader into graphic scenes of imprisonment, torture, and the brutality experienced by a political prisoner during the military dictatorship of Myanmar/Burma. Sections three and four are stories of love and longing.

Elements of magical realism weave throughout the sections as do folktales, stories within stories, and flashbacks of the characters’ lives. Nature is depicted in a state of continuous flux with its monsoons, tsunamis, shifting glaciers, receding oceans, and rising and shrinking mountains. The scenic backdrop serves to reinforce the view that humans are just tiny specks within the vastness of geological time and an ever-morphing nature.

Although this debut work shows a lot of potential, unfortunately, it loses steam after the first section. The remaining sections ramble and become increasingly incoherent. Swarup’s apparent effort to articulate a vision that unites politics, culture, and spirituality with the natural environment is commendable. But it fails in execution primarily because of the fractured nature of the stories. She overshoots her mark by being too ambitious. Her overwriting is evident; her attempt to philosophize smothers. Despite these flaws, Shubhangi Swarup shows she is capable of writing spell-binding prose so long as she doesn’t overreach.

Recommended with reservations.

The Girls of Slender Means

Muriel Spark

The setting for The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark is a London hostel for young women called the May Teck Club. The year is 1945 at the closing of World War II. Rations and coupons are in high demand. The women residents discuss lovers, food, jobs, coupons, diets, who gets to wear the much sought-after Schiaparelli gown, and who is thin enough to sneak through the upstairs lavatory window to have a clandestine meeting with a lover on the roof.

The women are seemingly oblivious to the political events of the time and conduct their lives as if all is normal. Their superficial concerns are humorous against the backdrop of a world in ruins. The narrative flashes back and forth in time. Among those at the hostel is Joanna, an elocution teacher whose overheard poetry recitations frequently interrupt the narrative. Meanwhile, Jane who works in book publishing, demands quiet while she performs “brain-work.” This consists primarily of fabricating fan letters to famous people in the hope of cashing in on a signed reply. Selina is the beauty in the group who attracts men with ease. Throw into the mix several girls who giggle a lot and a couple of young men who frequent the club, one of whom is married and having an adulterous affair with one of the women; the other is Selena’s lover and an aspiring author.

The narrative drifts from one character or situation to the next. It is peppered with humor, witticisms, and sarcasm but there is no plot, little continuity, and sparse character development. Perhaps its strength lies in depicting the post-war atmosphere as consisting of young people aimlessly drifting while engaging in superficial dialogue to avoid confronting the horrors of war. If so, the narrative echoes the aimless drift in so far as it seems to meander along without much rhyme or reason.

The White Book

Han Kang; translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

The White Book by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, is an autobiographical meditation using fragmented images of objects in the color white to serve as the backdrop for the narrator’s grief at the death of her older sister who died two hours after her birth.

The narrator opens the novel by listing items in the color white, many of which connect to her baby sister: swaddling bands, newborn gown, moon, shroud, etc. She describes snow, blizzards, frozen lakes, a white bird, a white dog, and other manifestations of white. Also included is her mother’s narrative of being alone while undergoing the premature birth and subsequent death of the infant. The fragmented images serve as catalysts for meditation.

While on a writer’s residency in Warsaw, the narrator observes how the remnants of bombed out buildings have been incorporated into new structures as permanent reminders of the past. She entertains a parallel thought that she has incorporated her sister into her being. She circles back to the scene of her baby sister’s birth and death several times and projects various scenarios incorporating her sister had she survived. By integrating her sister into her life and her writing, the narrator asserts her as a living presence.

Kang’s language is poetic and delicate; the tone elegiac and reflective. Each image invites contemplation. Some images are only a few lines long. The format is unusual in that there are blank pages and copious amounts of white space between images. This suggests the narrator offers the reader empty space to contemplate the image and/or to project meaning on the blank screen.

The cumulative impact of fragmented images, sensitive musings on the color white, and grief at a sibling’s death accentuate the transience and fragility of life. The narrator is haunted by her past, by her guilt at surviving when her sister did not. Her pain is evident, as is her longing to transcend that pain through language and imagery. What emerges is a compelling narrative in an unconventional format capturing the poignancy of dealing with loss.

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

Sandy Tolan

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan is a work of non-fiction chronicling the four-decade old friendship between Bashir Khairi, a Palestinian, and Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, an Israeli Jew. Sandy Tolan, a professor of Journalism, includes the history of the formation of Israel and its increasing encroachment on Palestinian land.

The book opens with Bashir and two of his cousins traveling from the Palestinian town of Ramallah to the Israeli town of Ramla to see their former homes now occupied by Israeli families. Completion of Bashir’s home, built decades ago by his father, was commemorated by the planting of a lemon tree in the back yard that has since grown and blossomed. Bashir knocks on the door and when Dalia opens it, he explains this was his family’s home and he asks permission to see it. Dalia graciously lets them in and allows the three men to look around. So begins an unlikely friendship between Dalia and Bashir.

Tolan gives an overview of world events, including the two world wars, that led to the formation of Israel and the partitioning of Palestinian land. He provides the backstories of the respective families. Bashir’s family was expelled from their homeland by the Israelis; Dalia’s family, who fled from Bulgaria to Israel during World War II, moved in to what they were told was an abandoned home. As Dalia and Bashir become friends, visit each other’s homes, and share their respective histories, Dalia realizes a terrible injustice has been perpetrated on the Palestinians. As her husband, Yehezkel, says, “ . . . you are the only ones who have a legitimate grievance against us. And deep down, even those who deny it know it.”

The tension between the two friends is palpable when describing their conflicting positions. Dalia recognizes the injustice while simultaneously trying to explain to Bashir what the land has meant to Jews for centuries. Bashir reminds her the land belonged to Palestinians for generations and insists that because it was stolen, it should be returned. He argues it is unjust to punish Palestinians for the atrocities committed against the Jews by the Europeans. Their relationship is interrupted when Bashir is suspected of being a terrorist and is beaten, tortured, and incarcerated in an Israeli jail for over a decade. Eventually, Dalia and Bashir agree on a compromise and turn the home into a school for Arab and Israeli children.

Sandy Tolan is to be commended for giving a human face to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Bashir and Dalia recognize they have a shared history of oppression and persecution. Both were forced to flee their homes to preserve their lives. Despite individual efforts, however, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far too complex for individuals to solve alone. The solution must come through the unbiased and fair-minded intervention of powerful people in positions of authority. The irony is that it was powerful people in positions of authority who generated the conflict in the first place through the decisions they imposed. Those same individuals are no longer alive to bear the brunt of pain, anguish, and suffering their actions have caused and continue to inflict on subsequent generations.

Purple Hibiscus

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Set against the backdrop of civil unrest and a military coup in Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a coming-of-age story of fifteen-year-old Kambili. The story unfolds in Kambili’s first-person voice.

Kambili lives at home with her father, mother, and brother. Kambili’s father, Eugene, is affluent and well-respected in the community. Kambili tries to reconcile her father’s esteemed position in the community with the father she experiences at home. Eugene is a fanatic Catholic, determined to stamp out even the slightest whiff of indigenous traditions. He runs his household like a prison camp, always on the lookout for behavior he considers deviant. His punishment is swift and cruel. He physically abuses his wife and children if they do not meet his unrealistic expectations. His family lives in perpetual fear, treading carefully around him and saying only what they think he wants to hear.

The extent of their oppressive home life becomes apparent to Kambili and her brother when they visit their Aunty Ifeoma. Although living in poverty, Aunty Ifeoma and her children are happy. Their home is infused with laughter, songs, and unrestricted chatter in a relaxed atmosphere. They exhibit pride in their Nigerian heritage, indigenous traditions, and spirituality. The experience of a healthy home atmosphere prompts Kambili and her brother to rebel against their father. He punishes Kambili so severely she is hospitalized. After her mother commits a desperate act to protect her children, it falls upon Kambili’s shoulders to assume responsibility for holding the family together.

Adichie’s characters are rich with ambiguity. On the one hand, Eugene is a generous man. He donates regularly to charitable causes, feeds the hungry, pays tuition for children whose parents are poor, gives to the church, and lives up to his reputation as a leader in the community who can be counted on to help. On the other hand, he is intransigent, cruel, violent, dictatorial, and brutal towards his family.

Kambili struggles with the conflicting images of her father. She desperately wants to win his approval and savors his praise and attention. But she also lives in abject fear of his violent temper. As the novel progresses, her voice strengthens and becomes increasingly discerning. She recognizes her father has suffocated any hope of a healthy home environment with his fanatic religiosity and iron-fisted control of his family’s daily activities.

Kambili is shy, fragile, and vulnerable. Her voice is authentic. At first, she discloses her father’s acts of violence through hints and innuendo as if to indicate a reluctance to acknowledge his cruelty. Her stay with Aunt Ifeoma exposes her to a way of life free of violence and fear that she never knew existed. Initially embarrassed by her ignorance of the outside world, she eventually bonds with her cousins and learns to adapt. She blossoms. She experiences first love. She grows in strength and aptitude.

Adichie delivers a sensitive coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of political and domestic violence. It ends on a hopeful note with Kambili as a mature, self-assured young woman who assumes the role as head of the family.

Highly recommended.