A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki unfolds in two parallel lines. It opens with Nao, a Japanese American teenager who has been transplanted from Silicon Valley back to Japan when her father loses his job. Nao is sixteen years old and is thoroughly miserable. She is bullied mercilessly at school, ostracized for being a Japanese American, worries about her suicidal father, and contemplates her own potential suicide. She writes her thoughts in a diary which she hides inside the covers of a volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Somehow the diary washes up in a Hello Kitty lunchbox on an island in British Columbia.

Ruth, a Japanese American writer who lives with her husband on the island, stumbles on the lunchbox. Her husband suspects it arrived on the throes of the tsunami. Ruth begins to decipher its contents, which include Nao’s diary and old letters from Nao’s great uncle, a Kamikaze pilot during World War II. His letters are addressed to Jiko, his mother and Nao’s great grandmother, a 105-year-old former anarchist now turned a Zen Buddhist nun.

The parallel threads alternate between Nao’s dairy and Ruth’s life on the island. Nao describes the punches, bruises, and sadistic bullying she experiences in the hands of her Japanese classmates. Severely depressed during the school year, she experiences transformation and spiritual growth the summer she spends with her great grandmother in the Buddhist monastery. There she learns to empty her mind, breathe fresh air, meditate, and scrub the dead skin off great grandmother’s back.

Meanwhile, Ruth struggles with writer’s block and with the challenges of living on an island beset with severe storms and frequent power cuts. She paces herself as she reads Nao’s diary and scours the internet to learn about Nao, her father, and her anarchist great grandmother.

The novel’s strength lies primarily in the Nao sections. Nao’s teenage voice is unique and authentic. She is irreverent, funny, articulate, and intelligent. Her story is compelling; her description of the abuse she experiences at the hands of her classmates is heart-breaking. Her sections keep the novel afloat, unlike the Ruth sections which tend to drag and have little content.

The novel is a hodgepodge. As the parallel threads unfold, Ozeki peppers the narrative with Zen Buddhism; Ruth’s attempts to decipher the documents in the lunchbox; interactions with a mysterious crow visitor to the island; bizarre happenings in which words disappear from the page; Nao’s halting conversations with her great uncle’s ghost; Ruth’s long dream sequence; alternative realities opening up different possibilities; parallel threads across time and space which seem to merge; Japanese phrases translated in copious footnotes. And to conclude it all, she includes a lecture on quantum mechanics.

A potpourri of a novel that plays with the concept of time, blurring the lines between the past and the present, reality and illusion, the here and the now, and with smatterings of Zen Buddhism thrown in for good measure.

The House of Doors

Tan Twan Eng

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng opens in 1947 in Doornfontein, South Africa. Lesley Hamlyn has just received Somerset Maugham’s collection of short stories in The Casuarina Tree. Cradling the book in her hands, she is transported back to the time she and her husband lived in Penang, Malaya, in the 1920s. She recalls the year 1921 when Somerset Maugham, her husband’s close friend, spent two weeks with them in Malaya. Maugham was accompanied by his secretary/lover, Gerald Haxton. As she reads his stories, Lesley marvels at how Maugham wove facts with fiction in crafting his stories.

Having set the background, Tan Twan Eng unfolds the novel in two threads. The first thread takes place in 1921 and consists of Lesley’s meeting with Maugham and subsequent conversations with him. The second thread consists of Lesley revealing to Maugham the events that occurred in 1910, eleven years before she met him. Included in these events is the discovery of her husband’s infidelity, her own affair, her political activism with Sun Yat-Sen’s movement to overthrow the government in China, and the trial of Ethel Proudlock for murder.

In essence, The House of Doors is about how real events and experiences are manipulated into material for fiction. Somerset Maugham does this when he crafts Lesley’s revelations into material for his short stories; and Tan Twan Eng does it by weaving into his novel Somerset Maugham’s actual Penang visit and referencing the short stories which emerged from the visit. The result is a book about memory, about the hunger to tell our stories and be heard, about the building blocks that form the foundations for story-telling, and about love and forgiveness.

Tan’s style is elegant and restrained; his prose, descriptive; his verbs, active; his recreation of the sights and sounds of plush, exotic landscapes, immersive; his characters, authentic; and his ability to weave an engaging story, masterful.

Highly recommended.

River Spirit

Leila Aboulela

River Spirit by Leila Aboulela is the story of the Mahdist war in the Sudan during the 1880s. The Mahdi claims to be descended from the Prophet of Islam. His ostensible mission is to conduct a holy war to liberate Sudan from its Ottoman-Egyptian colonial oppressors.

The novel unfolds through the perspectives of several different characters. Some are first-person narratives; others are in third person. Included is the perspective of Musa, an idealistic young man who aligns himself with the Mahdi uprising. Other perspectives are those of Yaseen, a young man who works with the Turkish colonialists; Richard, a Scottish artist who has come to Sudan to seek renewal after the tragic death of his wife; Fatimah, Yaseen’s mother; Salha, Yaseen’s wife; and Charles Gordon, the British general sent to quell the revolution and evacuate the British from Khartoum. The central figure is Akuany, later re-named Zamzam. She is a young woman who is sold into slavery several times over and who experiences the uprising from different vantage points. The chapters rotate between the perspectives of different characters but always return to Akuany as the anchor.

Aboulela presents a panoramic view of the Mahdi’s uprising and its impact on the people. Although she presents alternative views on the uprising and on colonial power, her lens focuses on those traditionally marginalized by the larger political context, namely, the experience of women and what women do in order to survive. At the end of the novel, Salha reflects on the impact of the uprising. Through letters, she reveals that after the Madhi’s unexpected death, his mantle is picked up by another who claims to be the new Mahdi and who proceeds to oppress the people. A revolution waged on behalf of the people ends up terrorizing its people. Desperate for a solution, the population seek a new redeemer only to be repeatedly let down and tossed from one oppressive government to another.

There is much to be admired in the novel. The wide scope and panoramic view immerse the reader in Sudan’s complex history during the 1880s. The novel effectively illustrates the desperate plight of a population ready to cling to anything promising hope. But the shifting of numerous perspectives can feel choppy and confusing at times, and some sections of the novel are better integrated than others. A few of the characters are not well developed and emerge merely as mouthpieces for specific points of view. However, if the goal is to capture a time in Sudan’s turbulent history from a variety of vantage points and shed light on the deleterious impact of colonialism, slavery, and the desperation of its population, then Aboulela has succeeded.

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett unfolds in two interlocking threads. The first thread consists of flashbacks in which Lara Nelson, the narrator, tells her three grown daughters about the summer she played the role of Emily in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The second thread consists of the present in which the whole family works long hours to harvest the cherries in their Michigan farm. Popping in and out of both threads is Lara’s husband, Joe.

The three Nelson siblings are sequestered at home during the pandemic lockdown. They badger their mother to tell them about her short-lived experience as a young actress, including her stint at the Tom Lake summer stock theatre. They are particularly interested in her relationship with Peter Duke, a fellow actor and ex-boyfriend who later became a famous movie star. Lara muses on how much to reveal to her daughters and how much to hold back. The narrative voice alternates between Lara’s storytelling of her coming-of age, eventful summer in the long ago past and Lara as the first-person narrator telling the story to her grown daughters in the present. The switch from present to past and back again is done seamlessly.

The two threads intertwine and are integral to one another, enhancing the storytelling. Lara’s flashbacks are interrupted with comments and questions from her daughters. They demand details of her past, demonstrating their insatiable appetite to learn about their parents’ lives, pre-marriage and pre-children. Meanwhile, the family picks cherries during the day, swims in the lake for the occasional reprieve, and eats dinner together at night. Weaving in and out of both threads are references to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, when Lara and her co-actors rehearse the play, and to Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. What emerges from the two threads is the contrast between a young girl’s passionate first love with the strong, resilient, and mature love Lara feels for her husband and their three daughters.

The characters are lovingly and authentically portrayed. Each of the siblings has a unique identity with unique interests and unique temperaments. They bicker and tease one another, and tolerate one another’s foibles. But the strength of their bond is never questioned. Similarly, Lara’s and Joe’s relationship is on a firm foundation built of enduring love. Some of the best moments in the novel consist of the dialogue and touching moments between family members, especially when the girls begin to empathize with the young woman their mother once was.  

Unfolding in precise, measured prose, Ann Patchet’s quiet, unassuming book is a warm meditation on first love, on family love, on parenting, on marriage, and on the relationship between mothers and daughters. This is a beautiful story beautifully told with sensitivity and insight.

The Four Winds

Kristin Hannah

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is set during the Great Depression.

The novel opens in 1921 in Texas with a young Elsa, marginalized by her abusive family and suffering from low self-esteem. She becomes pregnant, marries the father of her child, and moves in with his family. She quickly adjusts to farm life and gains acceptance and love from her in-laws. Elsa feels she belongs for the first time in her life. But then disaster strikes.

Severe draught and unrelenting dust storms plague Texas. The depression hits. Life becomes a grinding nightmare. Elsa’s husband abandons her and their two children. When dust inhaled in her son’s lungs causes his serious illness, Elsa decides it’s time to leave Texas. She takes her two children to the greener pastures of California. But reality soon hits. Her meager funds leave her no choice but to live in a make-shift camp with hundreds of others who, like her, have come to California hoping to find work. She becomes a field laborer, is exploited and castigated by landowners and town dwellers. The novel concludes with Elsa’s involvement in organizing a workers’ strike, an activity which leads to her ultimate demise.

The novel is weak in several areas. Its only strength lies in the detailed description of the dust storms and draught that plague the landscape. Hannah immerses the reader in howling winds and raging dust that get into every nook and cranny of the house and cover every inch and crevice of the body and clothing. Unfortunately, that is the only redeeming quality of the novel. The characters are flat, one-dimensional types with little depth. They never emerge as well-rounded, interesting individuals. The prose loses energy by suffering from too much telling and not enough showing. Attempts to manipulate emotions are blatantly transparent. The reader is constantly told what to think and feel, which is not the same as experiencing a feeling generated by descriptions of the situation. The contrived ending left a lot to be desired and was another obvious attempt at emotional manipulation.

Suffice it to say, the novel was disappointing. It just wasn’t for me.

House of Odysseus

Claire North

House of Odysseus by Claire North picks up where Ithaca, the first book in the series, left off.

The opening scenes of the novel plunge Penelope into a maelstrom. She continues to struggle with the suitors. Meanwhile, Telemachus has abandoned her to look for his father. To add to her complications, Elektra arrives in Ithaca with her brother, Orestes, seeking refuge. Plagued by the Furies who hover over him and chomp at the bit to avenge the murder of his mother, Orestes is a babbling mess. He has apparently descended into guilt-ridden madness for the matricide. Close on their heels is their uncle, King Menelaus. His ostensible aim is to help his nephew. But his real aim is to seize the throne of Mycenae from Orestes by declaring him mad. What follows is a thrilling, exciting, fast-paced novel saturated with palace intrigue and populated with unforgettable, well-developed characters.

The novel unfolds in the first-person narrative voice of Aphrodite. She watches the events unfold and comments on the proceedings and the characters in her inimitable manner. She is sensuous, bawdy, scandalous, irreverent, and funny—everything one imagines a goddess of love to be. Her interactions with Athene and Artemis show her skill in communication. She carefully measures when to speak, when to touch, and when to back off so as not to risk offending her fellow immortals.

The novel’s characters are authentic, well-crafted, and convincing. Menelaus is cruel, vindictive, malicious, and power-hungry. A shrewd Laertes provides comic relief in his banters with Menelaus. But it is Penelope who emerges as the star player. She is intelligent, shrewd, and a brilliant strategist. It is fascinating to watch her and Menelaus as they try to out maneuver each other in a deadly game, articulating pleasantries that neither one means, and exhibiting behaviors riddled with deceit.

In true feminist fashion, the novel celebrates woman power. Penelope’s entourage of women are fiercely loyal to her. They protect, support, and obey her while maintaining a façade of frivolous, helpless women in order to fool Menelaus and his motley crew of Spartans. Priene, her fearless warrior, exudes strength and power. Helen fools everyone with her drunken, mindless babble. And Elektra matures from a selfish, arrogant girl to a woman who understands her place and who recognizes her reliance on the intelligence and political savvy of Penelope. And ever present in the background is the cacking laughter of the Furies.

Claire North fleshes out the story of Ithaca during Odysseus’ long absence. By retelling the story to include Menelaus’ scheme to usurp his nephew’s throne, she adds a new level of intrigue, suspicion, and suspense to an Ithaca already beset with problems. Her retelling is engaging, rich in historical detail, and an absolute delight to read.

By the Sea

Abdulrazak Gurnah

By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, is the story of two refugees from Zanzibar whose lives intertwine in unexpected ways.

The novel opens with Saleh Omar’s arrival in a foggy coastal town in England. He has fled his home to seek asylum in England. An anomaly because he is older than most asylum seekers, he is initially sent to a detention center. He carries a fake passport in the name of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud, and he pretends he cannot speak English. Rachel, a social worker specializing in immigration cases, takes an interest in his case. She contacts Latif Mahmud, originally from Zanzibar, to act as translator. Latif Mahmud, who just happens to be the son of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud, is a professor of literature in a London university. He is curious to know who has taken on his father’s identity.

After Saleh Omar reveals to Rachel he is fluent in English, she contacts Latif Mahmud to tell him his translation services are no longer needed. But Latif Mahmud decides he wants to meet this elderly refugee from Zanzibar to discover why he assumed the identity of his father. The two finally meet and unravel the complex story of the tangled relationship between Saleh Omar and Latif Mahmud’s family. They are initially distrustful of each other and share different versions of the past through extended flashbacks. Eventually, their versions coalesce, with each filling gaps in the other’s story.

Much of the novel takes the form of stories recalling the past. Saleh Omar shares his stories with Rachel and then with Latif Mahmud. It is through these stories he becomes a character in his own tale. He describes his initial success in his furniture business, his marriage, his incarceration, his release after many years, and his eventual escape from his homeland. Latif Mahmud has his own story to tell of his family life, a scholarship to study in East Germany, and his escape to England.

The novel moves at a slow pace with leaps backward and forward in time. What emerges from the story is the strong sense of displacement experienced by both characters. Although Latif Mahmud is a successful author and university professor and although Saleh Omar is settled comfortably in his new surroundings, neither one feels at home. The two come together because of a shared history in a country that spit them out and because of shared feelings of displacement in a foreign land.

Abdulrazak Gurnah conveys the complexity of his characters’ psychologies and their feelings of rootlessness with sensitivity and compassion. He probes delicately into the psychology of refugees clinging to the stories of their former lives as a means of remembering who they are and where they came from while simultaneously struggling to make sense of their new lives in an alien land.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon unfolds in the first-person point of view of Christopher Boone, a fifteen-year-old boy with autism. The novel is an unusual combination of genres: a coming-of-age novel with a detective story. Christopher is portrayed authentically and with a sensitivity laced with gentle humor.

Christopher lives with his father. Because he is incapable of lying, he believes it when his father tells him his mother died in hospital of a heart attack. His life is very regulated. He has his likes and dislikes, avoids anything in yellow and brown, goes to school where he excels in math, and determines the quality of his day by the number of red or yellow cars he sees on the way to school. He seems moderately content, that is until he finds his neighbor’s dog with a garden fork plunged through his chest. Christopher embarks on “detecting” to solve the mystery of who killed the dog. And that is when his life begins to unravel. His “detecting” leads to unintended consequences. He uncovers information that erodes trust in his father, after which he embarks on a terrifying journey on London’s trains and subways.

What makes this book so fascinating is the insight we gain into the mind of a child with autism. Christopher is an autistic savant—a genius when it comes to facts and figures. His ability to see and to recall details is prodigious. His matter-of-fact revelations about his likes and dislikes, his need for routine and structure, his love of science and mathematics, his quirks, his logic, his literal-minded understanding, his need for specificity, his fear of crowds and of being touched, his interactions with others—all are, at times, hilarious, and, at other times, poignant and emotionally heart-breaking. His trip to London realistically captures his fear of being in unfamiliar settings, surrounded by crowds. But it also captures his immense bravery and determination to overcome obstacles.

In Christopher Boone, Mark Haddon has created an unforgettable character who elicits compassion, empathy, and understanding. The irony is he does it through a character who is emotionally detached, one who is completely oblivious to the emotional lives of people around him—even those who love him and try to protect him.

An impressive achievement. Highly recommended.  

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Rick Rubin

In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, the co-founder of Def Jam Records and producer of countless hits, offers a self-help guide on creativity and on being open to life’s possibilities.

Rubin’s strategies for fostering creativity range between the granular and the generalized. For example, he claims one can better focus on music if it is heard through speakers rather than through headphones. He suggests taking a break or a walk when encountering a roadblock during the creative process. He advocates recontextualizing problems—looking at the work from an unfamiliar angle. His strategies will supposedly facilitate creativity in any path we choose to follow, whether it is in music, painting, or writing. The same strategies can even help with problem solving in relationships or at work.

Rubin urges us to reclaim the ability to perceive the wonder of nature with a child-like openness and innocence. Much of what he advocates sounds very similar to mindfulness in meditation. If one wades through some of his trite aphorisms, one will occasionally find a truth that strikes a chord. Some may find his advice helpful in overcoming the challenges of creativity; others may dismiss his advice as a peddling of superficial jargon.

The Iliad by Homer

Emily Wilson, translator

Following her acclaimed translation of Homer’s Odyssey, Emily Wilson has released her translation of Homer’s Iliad. She exceeds expectations with this translation since there is much to be admired.

The translation opens with a substantial Introduction to the text in which Wilson explores some of the major themes and emotional landscape of the poem. She follows this with Translator’s Notes in which she explains how and why she made the choices she did in translating the text while adhering to the spirit of the poem. This section is particularly interesting, especially her explanation of why she chose to translate the poem in iambic pentameter as it allowed her “the flexibility and energy necessary to evoke the experience of reading the Greek.” The Translator’s Note is followed with maps, the text, extensive Notes, Genealogies, and Glossary. The result is a thoroughly comprehensive work that breathes fresh life into this classic.

Wilson’s translation is elegant, sensual, and packed with emotional fervor. Her characters emerge as unique individuals who reveal themselves through fresh, natural-sounding dialogue and through the warrior banter in which they try to outdo each other with insults or praise, depending on the situation. She movingly captures tender moments as when Hector embraces his son. And she captures the bickering back and forth between the immortals, portraying them as spoilt children nursing a grudge. The poem moves at a breathless pace with a rhythm that is buoyant. Her diction is in plain, accessible English with a contemporary feel.

Wilson successfully communicates the oral nature of the poem, designing it in such a way as to be read and heard aloud. This is an impressive achievement, breathing fresh life into the poem and filling it with vivid color, plunging action, and immersive sensory detail.

Very highly recommended.

Nothing But the Night

John Williams

Nothing But the Night by John Williams depicts a day in the life of Arthur Maxley, a young man psychologically tormented by a traumatic event that happened in his childhood. The nature of the trauma is not revealed until the end of the novel.

Arthur had been advised to forget the memory of this traumatic event but his fragmentary recollections constantly intrude, paralyzing his thoughts and actions. He has abdicated all sense of agency, drifting aimlessly throughout a day punctuated with frequent hallucinations of his mother in a white gown, portraying her as some sort of hovering angel. He is self-obsessed, morbid, and confused. He meets and argues with a friend. His dinner with his estranged father is fraught with tension. And his encounter with a young woman in a club ends his day in violence.

This is Williams’ debut novel, and it shows. Unlike his brilliant subsequent novels, Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus, it lacks the subtlety and poignant silences that spoke volumes in the later novels. Nothing But the Night is unrestrained, histrionic, melodramatic, and highly-strung. But it contains flashes of the writer Williams was to become, so it is probably worth reading for that reason alone.

When I Sing, Mountains Dance

Irene Sola; trans. Mara Faye Lethem

When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sola, translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, is set in the Catalan region of the Pyrenees on the Spanish-French border. The novel focuses primarily on the fate of one family, Domènec, Sió, and their two children, Mia and Hilari.

The novel unfolds in a non-linear sequence through fragmentary, first-person monologues, only some of which are delivered by humans. The narrators are past and present inhabitants of the village, ghosts, a bear, a water spirit, witches, clouds, lightning storms, mushrooms, mountains, a roe deer, and a dog, to name a few. Each chapter unfolds from a different point of view, and it may take a few paragraphs to figure out who or what is speaking. The stories are all connected and build a multilayered picture of the area. Peppered throughout the narratives are stories from myth, nature, folk tales, and history—especially the Spanish Civil War. Guns, shrapnel, grenades, and other wartime mementos turn up on the soil as constant reminders of the trauma.

What sounds like a narrative hodgepodge works remarkably well in portraying the flora, fauna, animate, and inanimate inhabitants of the region. Past and present blur, suggesting the past exists concurrently with the present just as ghosts exist alongside the living. But more than any other factor, the novel’s strength lies in the lyricism, poetry, and rhythm of the language. Sentences shimmer with life and energy on every page. Animate and inanimate, vegetable, animal, and human pulse with life through all-encompassing, lush, and sensory detail, all of which is admirably captured in the translation.

A stunning achievement with a level of exuberance and playfulness in language that echoes the poetry of Walt Whitman. And just as in the poetry of Walt Whitman, this novel contains multitudes.

Very highly recommended.

The Narrowboat Summer

Anne Youngson

The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson is a story about three very different women who form a bond over a narrowboat as they journey through the meandering canals of England. Each of the three women is at a crossroads in her life.

Eve and Sally are both in their mid-fifties. Eve has just been fired from a prestigious job and is at a loose end. Sally has just informed her husband of twenty-five years that she wants out of her marriage. The two strangers are walking towards each other from opposite ends of a towpath when the sound of a howling dog brings them to a screeching halt in front of Number One, a narrowboat. Eve breaks the door down to let the dog out just as Anastasia, the boat owner, shows up.

Anastasia, too, is at a crossroads in her life. She has been diagnosed with cancer and is need of medical treatment. Anastasia reveals she needs someone to take her boat to Chester for maintenance and to bring the boat back to her at Uxbridge. It is a serendipitous encounter. Eve offers her apartment to Anastasia while she undergoes treatment, and Sally and Eve agree to navigate her narrowboat down the English canals to Chester. Anastasia gives them a crash course on boat navigation. With no experience but plenty of gusto, Sally and Eve set off on their adventure.

The novel meanders much like the journey on the canals. Sally and Eve learn to navigate the waterways, negotiate the opening and closing of numerous locks, and adjust to life in confined quarters. As they make their journey to Chester, they encounter a motely group of colorful canal voyagers, some of whom become permanent fixtures as friends. Occasional phone calls to Anastasia keep them grounded. But for the most part, the two women are alone. They learn about one another, learn about themselves, develop skills neither one knew she had, and cultivate new interests, all the while enjoying the scenery and serenity a journey down the river offers.

This is a meandering, relaxing read. As Eve and Sally twist and turn through the canals of England, they discover strengths in themselves and in each other. Life on the canal affords them with a much-needed escape to formulate their thoughts and next steps. Although they stop along the route for food, news, and mail, these stops serve as little punctuation marks until they can get back to the refuge they experience on the boat. The novel ends with the group of friends planning their next adventure together.

Set against an idyllic backdrop of canals and the English countryside, this is a gentle, quiet read, which, like the canals it explores, has little depth but is enjoyable, nevertheless.

How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide with Select Translations

Carl W. Ernst

How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide with Select Translations by Carl W. Ernst is a nontheological literary and textual analysis of a select number of suras in the Qur’an. Professor Ernst, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, argues that the Qur’an, like many other influential books, is part of a global heritage. As such, approaching it on its own terms and within its own context becomes a relevant exercise regardless of one’s religious persuasion. His nontheological reading is not intended to challenge the divine status of the Qur’an as accepted by Muslims. Rather, Professor Ernst insists theological considerations are outside the scope of his work.

The work consists of a textual and structural analysis of select suras in terms of the symmetry and balance of verses within a sura, the tripartite structure of various suras, and the presence of ring composition as a symmetrical literary form whose presence is ubiquitous in previous early literature. Professor Ernst claims that a chronological reading of the Qur’an, beginning with the early Meccan, later Meccan, and Medinan suras provides a clearer understanding of the Qur’an since it approximates the sequence of its presentation to its initial audience:

As a result, it becomes possible to grasp the development of the Qur’an over time, the literary structure and organization of the sura as a literary unit, and the intertextual approach of the Qur’an in its engagement with biblical and other early sources, with cautious use of external historical sources to provide a context for the explanation of particular sections of the Qur’an.

This literary historical approach to the Qur’an is engaging, informative, and provides valuable insight into increasing our understanding a text revered by more than one billion people.

Highly recommended for readers with an interest in monotheistic traditions.

Regeneration

Pat Barker

Regeneration by Pat Baker is the first book in a trilogy that blends fact with fiction. Set in Craiglockhart Hospital during World War 1, the hospital houses men suffering from psychological trauma as a result of shell shock and exposure to the horrors of war, especially to trench warfare. It features two prominent war poets as residents of the hospital, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

The focal character is a psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, the actual doctor who treated the residents of the hospital. Impacted by what he sees and hears from his patients, it is through his interactions with them that we learn of the horrors they experienced. Their traumas are manifested in a variety of forms, including nightmares, speech impediments, tremors, memory lapses, psychosomatically induced inabilities to eat or walk, and hallucinations. Sassoon is in the hospital because his friend, Robert Graves, managed to convince the powers-that-be Sassoon’s letter calling for an end to the war is due to a nervous breakdown.

Although many of the characters’ names are fictitious, in the Author’s Note, Pat Barker claims to have based their histories and methods of treatment on Rivers’ posthumously published book. Barker alternates between characters with Rivers as the focal point. She inhabits their minds as they interact with Rivers and with each other. But because she is limited to historical accuracy in how far she can take historical figures, her characterization is sketchy. As a result, the characters don’t emerge as fully rounded individuals. They are presented in a series of interrupted vignettes which fail to fully engage the reader.

The strength of the novel lies in its depiction of war and its impact on young, vulnerable men. Barker does not sugar-coat their experiences. She allows them to describe the horror with unflinching honesty. The novel captures a medias res point in their lives, a pit stop of sorts. The young men are sent to the hospital to recover from their trauma so they can be sent back to continue the fight. As Rivers recognizes, his job is to help them recover so they can be re-traumatized.

This powerful antiwar novel, focusing as it does on the middle point of the soldiers’ lives, illustrates the obscenity of war by demonstrating its traumatic impact on men’s minds and bodies.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is a delightful romp in a Moscow hotel during the early to the mid-twentieth century. It opens in 1922 with the sentencing of Count Alexander Rostov to house arrest in Moscow’s luxurious Metropol Hotel. Confined to the hotel for over three decades, Count Rostov manages to make the most of a bad situation.

The classic Metropol Hotel hosts an illustrious clientele. A who’s who in Moscow as well as in the international community pass through its doors to bask in its elegant atmosphere. It boasts a barber shop, a florist, a seamstress, and a chef who prides himself with his gourmet creations. Into this mix steps our gentleman count. Demoted from his formerly spacious quarters in the hotel to a bleak, small room in the upper levels of the hotel, the count quickly adjusts to living in a confined space. His day consists of strict adherence to a regimented routine, that is until all is upended by Nina, a precocious nine-year-old guest at the hotel. She disrupts his life and introduces him to areas in the hotel’s underbelly he never knew existed.

Nina is just one of the many colorful characters who interact with the count during his confinement. Among them is the glamorous actress, the chef, the maître d’, the Russian official, the piano teacher, the kind-hearted seamstress, his childhood friend, an American State Department official, and Sofia—the young child he adopts as his daughter. A connoisseur of fine wine and fine foods, Rostov is well-suited for the role he later assumes as head waiter. His life becomes even more interesting as he observes guests and garners valuable information while serving them dinner. Although confined to living within the walls of the hotel, Rostov is not cut off from the rest of the world. Quite the opposite. The hustle and bustle of the outside world with its political and social upheavals intrude into the hotel with Rostov witnessing the thick of it. His life is never dull.

An astute observer of human behavior, Rostov is also charming, erudite, cultured, intelligent, generous, well-mannered, kind, and witty. He is loved and respected by nearly everyone he meets. His endearing personality counts in large measure for the success of the novel. He is particularly delightful while conversing with children. The narrative voice also plays a significant factor in the novel’s success with its asides, footnotes on historical events, commentary, direct addresses to the reader, sparkling diction, and tongue-in-cheek humor.

The novel is well-deserving of all the accolades it has received. The plot, with its surprising twists and turns at every corner, moves at a brisk pace and keeps one engaged. The characters are well-developed, colorful, and authentic. The central figure is unforgettable, thoroughly charming, and a gentleman in every sense of the word. And piecing it all together is an engaging narrative voice.

Reading the novel is akin to having a leisurely, gourmet meal with a charming dinner companion who entertains and delights with a gripping story in a captivating voice. One almost wishes the meal would never end.

Nightcrawling

Leila Mottley

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley is based on a real crime committed in 2015 in which police officers in the Oakland Police Department sexually exploited and brutalized young women, especially women of color.

The story unfolds in the voice of Kiara Johnson, a seventeen-year-old African American living with her older brother, Marcus. Their father is dead, and their mother is detained in a rehab facility. Marcus refuses to get a job, pinning his hopes of finding success in the music industry. Faced with eviction, it is left up to Kiara to find the income to pay for the rent. To add to her problems, Kiara assumes responsibility for her neighbor’s son, Trevor, a nine-year-old abandoned by his drug-addicted mother.

Unable to find employment and desperate to earn an income, Kiara becomes a street walker. She is picked up by two police officers. Her life of sexual exploitation by some Oakland police officers begins, spiraling Kiara into a bottomless pit where she faces threats unless she attends their parties and complies with their sexual demands. When a police officer commits suicide and mentions her name in his suicide note, Kiara becomes embroiled in a police investigation.

Kiara’s interiority generates sympathy for her plight as she tries to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges and is torn in all directions. Motivated by her determination to protect Marcus and Trevor, she gives in to demands that humiliate and degrade her. She is thrust into a life of prostitution because she feels she has no other options. Initially, she tries to convince herself she is making a rational, economic choice. She becomes a pawn in the hands of police officers who may or may not pay her but who threaten to arrest her brother if she exposes them. Later, she is a pawn in the hands of the justice system. Through all this, Kiara emerges as tough, intelligent, articulate, resilient, and with a fierce passion to do whatever is necessary to save the people she loves regardless of the cost to her personhood.

In Kiara, Mottley has created an unforgettable heroine. Kiara’s voice is poetic, rhythmic, immersive, and infused with energy. She activates all the senses in the depiction of her dingy apartment, of the sewage infested swimming pool, and of the seedy but vibrant Oakland streets she walks at night. Her diction is peppered with vivid imagery and colorful metaphors, some of which are a little strained. And there are times when credibility seems stretched to the limit. But throughout it all, Kiara’s voice soars with authenticity and vibrancy.

In unflinchingly honest and compelling diction, Leila Mottley has depicted the plight of the powerless, poverty-stricken, and marginalized as they navigate situations and systems which exploit, abuse, traumatize, and spit them out as disposable entities at every turn.

A remarkable achievement for a young author who, at the time of writing, was barely a few years older than her unforgettable heroine.

Fight Night

Miriam Toews

Fight Night by Miriam Toews is the story of three generations of strong, resilient females. The story unfolds in the first-person voice of nine-year-old Swiv, a precocious, intelligent, articulate young girl who straddles the line between responsible caregiving with the naivete of childhood. Swiv has been suspended from school for fighting. Her grandmother, Elvira, takes it upon herself to home school Swiv in an unorthodox manner. Included in her lessons are survival skills and reinforcement of her granddaughter’s fighter instincts. Swiv’s mother, an aspiring actress, is in her third trimester of pregnancy.

 Elvira has given Swiv the assignment of writing letters to her absent father. Because her mother is in rehearsals for a play, it falls upon Swiv to be the caregiver for her ailing grandmother. She reminds her to take her medication, picks up pills she has dropped, struggles to squeeze compression socks on her legs, brushes her teeth, bathes her, saws her heavy books for easier transportability, and waits patiently while her grandmother has a bowel movement. She writes every day happenings in letters that will never be sent. She punctuates her words with cautionary tales for Gord, her soon-to-be-sibling, while alerting her to their mother’s “scorched earth” fits and their grandmother’s idiosyncrasies. Her promises to protect and help Gord navigate her nonconformist family are heart-warming.

Swiv takes on a lot of responsibilities for a child and is wise beyond her years. What makes this book so delightful and so hilarious is Swiv’s endearing voice. She parrots her mother’s and grandmother’s phrases, mimicking their frustrations. Her observations are astute. She comments on events, interacts with her indomitable grandmother while squirming at her irreverent sense of humor, and mothers her heavily pregnant mother. All this makes for hilarity. Swiv’s voice is also very poignant. Mortified by the behavior of her mother and grandmother, she is frequently haunted by the possibility they will die and abandon her.

Threaded throughout is Toews scathing critique of the oppressive Mennonite community she left behind. The characters comment on the repressive nature of the religion and its discriminatory practices toward women. Toews also weaves the depression and later suicides of her father and sister since Swiv’s grandfather and aunt killed themselves. In spite of these tragic losses, the theme to forge on ahead is uplifting. Grandmother’s insights on life and death, on finding meaning in life, on perseverance, on maintaining a fighting spirit, and on retaining a sense of humor in spite of—or because of—life’s absurdities are priceless. As Elvira says, “To be alive means full body contact with the absurd.” These words will serve her granddaughter well.

A compelling celebration of female resilience, of their fierce determination to fight for a life on their own terms, and of their unconditional love for one another.

The Summer Book

Tove Jansson; translated by Thomas Teal

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal, is a mesmerizing, quiet read. Very little happens in the novel. It is the story of a grandmother and her granddaughter spending time together during a summer on a Finnish island.

Six-year-old Sophia, who has lost her mother, is on the island with her grandmother and father. Her father is relegated to a minor role, appearing intermittently while working at his desk or on his boat. The focus is on the interaction between Sophia and her grandmother. The two of them explore the island together, chatting, arguing, and playing.

Sophia is a precocious, impetuous, articulate, and imaginative little girl. Her grandmother indulges her by playing make-believe games with her and entertaining her with stories. Their intergenerational relationship is heart-warming. They respect each other’s limitations. Sophia reminds her grandmother to take her medications, retrieves her walking cane when her grandmother drops it, and looks for her grandmother’s false teeth. And the grandmother supports Sophia in her imaginative flights of fancy, guiding her and teaching her important lessons that run the gamut from musings about life and death, happiness, the environment, and tolerance and acceptance of diversity. The two have an easy, comfortable relationship as they amble along coastlines and forests. Their interactions are peppered with moments of delightful humor.

Beneath writing that is disarmingly simple, Tove Jansson conveys important life lessons that are as relevant today as they were when the novel was first published fifty years ago. She does this gently, unobtrusively, and seemingly without effort. The quiet strength of the novel lies in authentic character portrayal and in that Jansson does not bombard the reader with her characters’ interiority or with excessive detail, leaving much that is left unsaid while disclosing only the bare essentials.

A wonderful novel that captures the essence of the preciousness of youth and the wisdom of old age without lapsing into preachifying.

The Woman From Tantoura

Radwa Ashour; translated by Kay Heikkinen

The Woman from Tantoura by Radwa Ashour, translated from the Arabic by Kay Heikkinen, is a testament to the suffering of Palestinians forced into exile during the 1948 formation of the state of Israel and its aftermath.

The novel unfolds in the first-person voice of Ruqayya. She lives in Tantoura, a village in Palestine. At the tender age of thirteen, she witnesses the massacres in Palestinian villages by the Zionist paramilitary forces. She recognizes the bloodied corpses of her father and brothers piled on top of other corpses. She escapes to southern Lebanon with her mother to live with her aunt and uncle. But Lebanon provides only an intermittently safe harbor during subsequent years due to the Israeli occupation of Beirut, the massacres that take place in Palestinian refugee camps by Lebanese extreme right-wing forces, and the ensuing Lebanese civil war. She relocates to Abu Dhabi temporarily to live with her eldest son and his family before moving to Egypt to be with her adopted daughter while she attends university. Having successfully educated and raised three sons and a daughter, she returns to Lebanon as a seventy-year-old grandmother.

Ruqayya records the events in her life as a testament to the atrocities and violence she has witnessed. One of her sons is gathering evidence, interviewing survivors of the atrocities, and documenting testimonials with the intention of suing Israeli authorities in court for their crimes against humanity. Ruqayya’s memory leaps backward and forward in time, jumping ahead or going back to a previous thread to record something she has just remembered. Her story is heart-wrenching. Like many Palestinian women, she wears the key to her home in Tantoura on a chain around her neck to keep alive the hope she will one day return. She feels an outsider wherever she lives. The yearning to return to her homeland is ever present and is particularly poignant in the final chapters when she goes to the border with Israel and looks across at the land where she was born, where her ancestors lived for generations—a land she is now prohibited from visiting.

The story is one of survival and resilience. It gives an intimate voice to Palestinian women who have endured the loss of fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands. In spite of their suffering, the women endure. They nurture their surviving children, educate them, and try to provide a safe haven for them to thrive even in hostile lands.

In clear and precise prose, Radwa Ashour has written a powerful story exposing the horror and violence that occurred in the formation of the state of Israel and the traumatic impact of expulsion, displacement, and ethnic cleansing on the Palestinian people. Palestinian land may be occupied, but the memory of their homeland and their yearning to return endures in the hearts and minds of Palestinians.