The Baghdad Clock

Shahad Al Rawi; trans. Luke Leafgren

The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi, translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren, won the Edinburgh First Book Award and was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The novel unfolds in the first-person voice of a young girl in Iraq in 1991. The unnamed narrator hides in an air raid shelter during the Gulf War. There she meets and befriends Nadia, and the two form a lifelong friendship. The narrator describes her youth, school years, young adulthood, and first love while navigating wars, sanctions, and the depopulation of her community. The narrative is laced with magical realism and vivid dreams.

In a childlike voice, the narrator describes the impact of the war, followed by the sanctions and America’s bombing and occupation of Iraq. All these events have a debilitating effect on the child’s neighborhood. Homes deteriorate; businesses close; people lose hope; neighbors emigrate; armed soldiers patrol the streets. Bit by bit, the neighborhood is depopulated of all the familiar characters until it is no longer recognizable. The narrator, Nadia, and another childhood friend decide to counteract the erasure of their community by capturing their neighbors’ stories in a book entitled The Baghdad Clock: The Record of a Neighborhood. The Baghdad clock is a familiar landmark in the neighborhood and serves as a meeting place for young people. It marks the passage of time, but it also preserves the past through its namesake, the book. Like so many buildings in Baghdad, the Baghdad clock is eventually destroyed by American bombs.

The strength of the novel lies in Al Rawi’s ability to show the devastating impact of wars and sanctions on a community. War is not depicted in abstract terms. It is personal and its impact on people’s lives is profoundly personal and debilitating. The characters, many of whom are portrayed as unique individuals with unique idiosyncrasies, are haunted by heartbreaking memories of what they once had, how they once lived, and the people they once knew. They carry those memories with them in whatever corner of the world they now inhabit as refugees. Their despair and yearning for their past lives are heart-wrenching. Even the fate and ultimate demise of Biryad, the dog, is depicted in very moving terms.

The novel showed a lot of promise but was not entirely successful in its execution. The narrator’s voice was problematic. The novel opens with her as a naïve child engaged in childlike musings and questions. However, that same voice intrudes even into her adulthood. Although many of the characters are vividly portrayed, some, like the fortune teller, are introduced and then dropped. The many digressions detract from the narrative, and its concluding section is somewhat bewildering. But the novel is strong in its depiction of the devastating impact of war on communities and on people’s lives.

Lady Macbeth

Ava Reid

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid is ostensibly a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The novel unfolds through the lens of Roscille, the illegitimate daughter of a French lord. At the ripe old age of seventeen, Roscille is a pawn in a politically arranged marriage. She is sent off to Scotland to become the wife of Macbeth, Thane of Glammis. With her exceptionally pale hair and piercing eyes, Roscille has a reputation of being witch-touched and as having the ability to manipulate men’s minds through eye contact.

Not only is Roscille deprived of her lady-in-waiting as soon as she arrives in Macbeth’s castle, she is the only female in a castle seemingly populated exclusively by men. This begs the question, who is doing all the child-rearing, spinning, weaving, cooking, and cleaning? Roscille has to learn to dress herself and to do her own hair. She has to veil her face and avert her gaze from men’s prying eyes. She critiques their uncouth manners, lack of finesse, and brutish propensity for violence. She depicts all aspects of Scottish culture as barbaric and uncivilized. Terrified of her husband, she hatches a plan she hopes will result in Macbeth’s death. The plan backfires, and instead of dying on the battlefield, Macbeth emerges victorious as the Thane of Cawder.

Macbeth increasingly takes Roscille in his confidence, introducing her to the three witches he keeps chained in a cave beneath the castle, consulting with them and relying on them for prophecy. When they announce he will be King Hereafter, Macbeth charges Roscille with orchestrating the king’s death. She accommodates by utilizing the power in her eyes to make the king’s guards kill him and then kill each other. The king’s two sons demand revenge, one of whom escapes to form an army against Macbeth. The other son, Lisander, is captured, incarcerated, and has a unique ability to transform himself into a being other than human. To complicate matters, Lisander and Roscille fall in love. The novel ends with the death of Macbeth in the hands of Roscille, Lisander as the new king, Roscille as the queen, and the three witches released from captivity.

In addition to other problematic issues, the novel is apparently riddled with historical inaccuracies. Needless to say, this retelling is so far removed from Shakespeare’s play that it hardly qualifies as a retelling. The original Lady Macbeth is middle-aged, ambitious, clever, shrewd, and the unquestionable force behind her husband’s quest for power. Roscille is depicted as a whiny, unintelligent child who hatches one plan after another only to find later she has gravely miscalculated and caused the needless deaths of many. Macbeth is rendered one-dimensionally as a power-hungry, blood-thirsty man who worships at the altar of brute force. The only male who is depicted as sensitive, cultured, and handsome just happens to be half-English with not an ounce of Scottish blood in him. In a bizarre twist, this same character has the ability to transform himself into a creature straight out of mythology.

Readers who enjoy gothic and fantastical elements in a novel may enjoy this novel. But those who are expecting a retelling of Shakespeare’s play will be sorely disappointed. Whatever else Lady Macbeth is, it is definitely not a retelling.

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Hanif Abdurraqib

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib, the 2021 recipient of the MacArthur “genius grant”, is an innovative memoir that encompasses Abdurraqib’s childhood in Columbus, Ohio; his love for the city; his passion for basketball; and his analysis of the game and its players. The memoir is structured like a basketball game in four sections with intermissions and timeouts. The four sections are time-stamped to reflect the twelve minutes of each quarter of a game, replicating the seconds and minutes ticking away as a game is being played or a section is being read.

Abdurraqib’s passion for basketball soars in every page. But this is more than just a celebration of basketball. The game of basketball comes to represent something much larger than itself. It is the lens through which Abdurraqib views the culture at large. Its towering figures, like LeBron James, come to symbolize the hope and aspirations of a generation of young people trapped in the quagmire of poverty and discrimination.

Abdurraqib ricochets from basketball to music; to growing up in his beloved Columbus; to the deaths of African American males at the hands of police; to his experience with being unhoused and incarcerated; to a consideration of the hustle; to his father’s bald head; to the act of witnessing; to the betrayal felt by LeBron James’ departure from Ohio and the celebration of his return; to songs about leaving and songs about longing; to his complex feelings about his home state. He leaps from one topic to another forging connections, and peppering the narrative with astute observations and insights, all the while weaving the disparate elements together with prose that borders on poetry.

This highly unconventional biography and cultural critique is packaged in language that is lyrically stunning. The words leap off the page with energy and passion, swerving and spinning in an exhilarating fashion. Abdurraqib is particularly adept at describing the movement of players across a basketball court. The resulting leap at the goal post and the ensuing slam dunk is described in slow motion as if suspended in space and frozen in time. It is akin to witnessing the miracle of a man floating on air.

In the hands of this gifted writer, basketball is seen as more than just a game. With its challenges, triumphs, failures, and leaps into the seemingly impossible, it is a metaphor for life.

Highly recommended.

Normal People

Sally Rooney

Set in Ireland, Normal People by Sally Rooney explores the on-again, off-again relationship of two young people whose love affair begins in high school. Marianne is an intelligent, skinny, and anxiety-ridden social outcast in high school. Connell is a popular football player. The two are attracted to each other even though they seem totally unmatched.

The couple come from different social classes and have very different home environments. Connell’s mother, Lorraine, is a single mother who had him when she was seventeen. She is a cleaning lady in Marianne’s home. She is kind, sensitive, generous, and showers her son with unconditional love. By contrast, Marianne’s widowed mother is cruel, neglectful, resents her daughter, and encourages Marianne’s brother to bully and abuse his sister.

The narrative unfolds in the third-person point of view, alternating between Marianne’s and Connell’s perspectives. At Connell’s request, they keep their relationship secret in high school. They go their separate ways but pick up where they left off when they both attend Trinity College Dublin. Here, the tables are turned. Marianne is popular and socially in her element while Connell feels very much the outsider. The two get together, separate while they have relations with different partners, but then get back together in an on-again, off-again dance that continues for several years.

Rooney’s dialogue captures the tentative quality in their relationship. They hesitate, fail to communicate properly when they are together while simultaneously feeling comfortable only when they are around each other. The absence of quotation marks in the dialogue as the narrative shifts seamlessly between the spoken word and their interiority exposes their failure to fully articulate their feelings or to understand one another. Both characters are insecure and vulnerable. Marianne is damaged. Her internalized feelings of being unworthy of love complicates her relationships. Connell suffers from depression, especially after the suicide of a former class mate. They are both isolated, confused, and wounded in different ways. And it is only in those moments when they are together that they feel less alone.

With no plot, the novel focuses on the tentative and evasive nature of young love. Rooney’s diction is effortless, precise, and direct. Her dialogue captures the way young people actually talk. Her strength lies in her ability to pierce the veneer of the outer shell of her characters and portray their psychological and messy emotional lives with authenticity and insight.

My Friends

Hisham Matar

My Friends by Hisham Matar blends fiction with historical fact. It takes the form of an extended flashback with the characters living against the backdrop of historical events.

The novel unfolds in the first-person voice of Khaled, a middle-aged Libyan living in exile in London. Hosam, his friend of many decades, is emigrating to America and Khaled is seeing him off. After the friends say their farewells, Khaled takes a circuitous walk through the streets of London to his small apartment in Shepherd’s Bush. He passes by familiar landmarks while reminiscing and reflecting on the last four decades of his life in exile and the close friendships he formed with his fellow Libyans. His recollections form the extended flashback. The novel alternates between the flashbacks and Khaled’s walk in London’s streets.

Khaled arrives as a student attending Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1983. There he befriends Mustafa, a fellow Libyan. The two are cautious about what they say and who they say it to because they are well aware that Gaddafi’s spies monitor the speech and activities of Libyans living abroad. Gaddafi had a history of bombing and murdering Libyan dissidents living in exile. In spite of the risks involved to themselves and to their families in Libya, the two friends go to London to participate in an anti-Gaddafi demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy in St. James’ Square. On that day, April 17, 1984, Libyan officials inside the embassy fire a machine gun into the crowd of unarmed protestors. This is an actual historical event. A young policewoman is killed, and several protestors are wounded. Matar blends historical fact with fiction by situating the two friends among the demonstrators who are shot. The two spend several weeks recuperating in a London hospital. But their fate has been sealed. They can no longer return to Libya. Khaled is burdened with physical and internal scars forever.

Taking it one day at a time, the two friends try to adjust to life in England. Mustafa becomes a successful real estate agent and Khaled becomes a school teacher. On a trip to Paris, Khaled encounters a fellow Libyan, the writer Hosam, also living in exile for writing a political allegory advocating resistance to the Libyan regime. Hosam returns to England and constitutes the third member of this close-knit group. The days turn to weeks; the weeks turn to months; and the months turn to years. It has now been thirty-two years since Khaled left Libya.

Mustafa eventually returns to Libya to join the resistance fighting Gaddafi’s regime. Hosam follows his footsteps not long after. When travel restrictions ease after the fall of Gaddafi, Khaled’s sister and parents visit him in London. They urge him to come home, but Khaled is reluctant to do so. Too much time has elapsed. He has changed; Libya has changed. His is a life adrift between two worlds. He is out of time and out of place.

Matar captures the pain and grief of exile, the reluctance to fully commit to one’s adopted country, the yearning for home, and the recognition that home as one knew it no longer exists. He also captures the intense feelings and shared understandings among three friends who have experienced the trauma, isolation, and rootlessness woven into the fabric of exile. The novel’s pacing is skillfully handled, slowing down for crucial events and accelerating when needed to compress the passage of time. Khaled’s interiority is explored with sensitivity. The narrative is compelling; the characters, authentic; the situation, heartfelt.

Highly recommended.

Whereabouts

Jhumpa Lahiri

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri is a series of vignettes unfolding in the first-person-voice of a university literature professor in her 40s. Lahiri wrote the novel in Italian and translated it into English, herself. The narrator is unnamed, possibly Italian. The location is unnamed, possibly a city in Italy. The 46 chapters of this short novel, covering a period of one year, consist of the narrator’s reflections on her life, her past, and the people she knows. Each reflection is stamped with a location, the whereabouts, as in “At the Street,” “In the Piazza,” “At the Beautician,” etc. But the whereabouts also refers to the narrator’s fluctuating emotional locations at any point in time. No more than a few pages long, the chapters are stand-alone and not in any particular sequence.

The narrator reveals she had an unhappy childhood with an emotionally distant father and a mother prone to fits of rage. She has had relationships, but nothing lasted. She describes feeling out of place at an academic conference, at work-related meetings, and at gatherings with friends. At times, she seems to celebrate her solitude and longs to be back at her apartment; at others, she seems frightened at being so alone. She is curious about strangers she sees in coffee shops or on trains, imagining scenarios about who they are, where they are going, and what they are doing. Her life is replete with deliberate routines and rituals to anchor her days and to give her a sense of purpose.

There is no plot. The episodes are disconnected and fragmentary. The friends, former lovers, colleagues, parents, and strangers are presented as shadowy figures viewed through the prism of detachment. They serve primarily as prompts for the writer’s meditations. These either reinforce her gratitude for solitude or are reminders of her loneliness. Adrift in life, disconnected from others, going through the motions of living, and longing to locate her place in the world, her mediations are poignant and handled with sensitivity and delicacy.

Lahiri’s writing is subtle, restrained, spare, and slow-moving. But the cumulative effect is powerful, resulting in a compelling novel, highly recommended for its portrayal of the internal landscape of a solitary life.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a lyrical and impassioned plea for healing the planet. Through a blend of science, personal insights, indigenous wisdom, mythology, and culture, Kimmerer articulates the lessons of healing and reciprocity we can garner from plants. She provides a plethora of examples to make her case.

An academic scientist and a member of the Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer describes her own journey to reconnect with her roots. She takes classes to learn the Potawatomi language in an effort to resist attempts at erasure and to allow the culture imbedded in the language to flourish. It is a culture of gratitude for what the earth has to offer and is based on reciprocal relations, healing, and restoration. To achieve this, Kimmerer argues for what she terms a “grammar of intimacy.” This means viewing nature not as a resource to be exploited for profit, not as an “it,” but as a living entity with whom we have kinship. If we begin to view nature as our other-than-human relatives, we will want to nurture and protect it. It will reciprocate by nurturing and protecting us.

Kimmerer aims to instill a compassionate ecology, one based on interdependence, connection, and humility. In addition to viewing plants through the lens of a scientist, she interprets their sacred role and spiritual significance. Actions and words have symbolic value. As an example, she narrates the stories of Windigo, the monster in children’s stories designed to teach them behavior in a sacred manner. Windigo becomes a metaphor for ravenous consumption and greed. Children are taught from an early age to take only what they need, to reciprocate and share, and to be respectful toward one another and toward nature. Otherwise, they risk fueling Windigo’s insatiable appetite.

Kimmerer’s diction is lyrical and inspiring. Her words are a wake-up call to recognize the devastation we are causing our environment and a plea to use our creative gifts to raise awareness and combat environmental disasters. Her chapter on the damage done to Onondaga Lake by chemical companies is particularly heart-breaking.

With profound compassion, Kimmerer urges readers to see our natural environment through the lens of reciprocity, inclusivity, and gratitude. She makes a compelling case for the adoption of a culture of gratitude and respect toward all life, a culture which will not only transforms our relationship with nature but which will, ultimately, transform our relationship with ourselves and with one another.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent

Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea consists of a series of interviews which O’Hea conducted with Dame Judi Dench in which she speaks of her seven-decade acting career. Her recollections encompass a history of British theatre during the post-war years. Interspersed throughout the chapters on individual plays are short chapters on aspects of performance, such as rehearsals, audience, critics, etc.

Each chapter focuses on a different Shakespearean play. Dench delves deeply into the characters she played, probing into their motives and psychology. She has unwavering trust in Shakespeare and views her role as adhering faithfully to his words and to his ability to make his characters believable to an audience. She tries to understand not only the character she plays but also the rest of the cast and the nature of their interactions with one another. She speaks of the characters as if they are real people she knows intimately and with a knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, their foibles and quirks. Her remarkable memory enables her to cite words from the plays as if it were second nature. Her passion for Shakespeare’s language is contagious.

Dench’s no-nonsense attitude shines through in her distinctive and familiar voice. She can be critical of her previous performances and claims she would have played some of her roles differently if she had it to do, again. She is quick to praise the performance of other actors and credits them and various directors with teaching her how to improve her performances. She peppers her discussion with thoughts on acting and on interpreting each Shakespeare play, describing in detail the language, her elaborate costumes, the set, the specific theatre where the performance took place, her renowned fellow actors, and the different directors and what she learned from each.

The tone throughout is delightfully conversational with O’Hea prompting Dench and, at times, goading her into contradicting him. Dench is witty, generous in praise of others, and unpretentious. She gives practical advice on acting and on how to read a Shakespeare line. She perceives a production as a collaborative effort where all work together as a cohesive unit. She is uncompromising in her dismissal of the idea that success can be attributed to a single individual with “star” quality. She insists that if a production succeeds, the credit belongs to everyone. Her speech is dotted with interesting and humorous anecdotes about herself and other actors. She offers a glimpse into some of the playful antics that go on during rehearsals and before and after performances. Her joyful spirit, unabashed honesty, dedication to acting, and unequivocal passion for Shakespeare light up her words just as she lit up the stage with her memorable performances.

An engaging and delightful read for lovers of Shakespeare, the theatre, and, of course, for fans of Judi Dench.

Silken Gazelles

Jokha AlHarthi; translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth

Silken Gazelles by Jokha AlHarthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, explores the lives of three Omani women whose lives intersect.

The novel opens with a young mother who accidentally drops her infant upon hearing the news of her father’s death. Ghazaala, the infant, is caught by a neighbor who then nurses her with her own daughter Asiya. Ghazaala and Asiya grow up as milk-sisters until tragedy strikes Asiya’s household and Asiya leaves the village without a trace. Ghazaala marries a violin player, gets a university degree, has twin boys, and is abandoned to raise the boys on her own when her husband disappears. While in university, she befriends Harir whose path had also crossed with Asiya even though neither she nor Ghazaala know they had a friend in common.

The non-linear time line adds layer upon layer of detail concerning Ghazaala’s and Harir’s lives, their families, marriages, and children. The characters are haunted by past relationships that bleed into their daily existence. Although Alharthi captures their sense of loss and loneliness, the characters are poorly developed and uninteresting. The narrative flounders. Its episodic, anecdotal nature and disjointed time line lack a cohesive structure and overarching theme. The episodes follow one another in a bewildering fashion with no apparent rhyme or reason.

A disappointing read and certainly not up to the quality of Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies.

Birnam Wood

Eleanor Catton

Set in New Zealand, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton is a political thriller with an elaborate plot. It opens with what appears to be a natural catastrophe—a landslide in which five people die. The Darvishes, owners of a large farm near the accident site, agree to sell the farm to Robert Lemoine, a billionaire and co-founder of Autonomo, a drone manufacturing company. Robert claims he wants to build an underground bunker in preparation for the impending apocalypse. His real intention, however, is more sinister: to illegally extract rare earth minerals from the nearby Korowai national park. His mining activities actually caused the landslide.

The farm has also attracted the attention of Mira Bunting, the founder of Birnam Wood, an activist collective that illegally grows vegetables on vacant public and private lands as a means to promote social change. Mira meets Robert Lemoine at the farm who offers her a hundred thousand dollars to fund her project. She convinces the Birnam Wood co-op to establish itself on the farm and cultivate produce. The lone dissenting voice comes from Mira’s former boyfriend and aspiring journalist, Tony Gallo. He argues it is a betrayal of their core principles to work with a capitalist billionaire who makes surveillance equipment for the military. He is outvoted, and the Birnam Wood crew head out to the farm to establish themselves. Sensing a scoop that will bring him fame as a journalist, Tony secretly follows them and gathers information exposing Lemoine’s clandestine activities in the park. He is spotted by security guards who chase him.

Meanwhile, Lemoine plays the congenial host to the gullible left-wing radicals on the farm. He is at once charming, duplicitous, manipulative, and calculating. He has surveillance drones and spy cameras at his fingertips, hacks phones, infiltrates emails and computers with the blink of an eye, and hires security guards with military training to keep trespassers away from his clandestine activities. He projects different personas and assumes different identities depending on his audience.

The plot twists and turns with the last section moving at a breathtaking pace. The situation rapidly deteriorates when Owen Darvish makes an unannounced visit to the farm. An accidental death leads to a chain of events that culminate in a bloody crescendo. The early sections, however, lean heavily toward exposition in lengthy sentences of unnecessarily extensive background information on even the minor characters. These feel like fillers, as do the debates about identity and privilege. The characters are portrayed in stereotypical fashion—the ruthless, all-powerful, arrogant billionaire; the young, idealistic, naive environmentalists cultivating vegetables while oblivious to the environmental devastation happening in the vicinity.

Catton positions her characters at major and minor intersections where they have to make a choice. Regardless of how noble or ignoble their intention, once they have made the choice, the consequences spiral out of control, rendering as meaningless all their strutting and fretting, all their dreams and aspirations. Just as Macbeth’s intention to be king is vanquished when the seemingly impossible happens with “Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill/Shall come against him,” Robert Lemoine’s ruthless ambition to multiply his billions many times over is similarly vanquished as a result of the seemingly innocuous activities of Birnam Wood.

Actress

Anne Enright

Actress by Anne Enright unfolds in the first-person voice of Norah, the daughter of a brilliant Irish actress, Katherine O’Dell. Norah is visited by a graduate student who is conducting research on her mother. This prompts Norah to embark on a retrospective of her mother’s life, her own life, and their complex mother-daughter relationship.

Norah explores her mother’s early years, her rocket to fame beginning as a stage actress in Ireland, then as a movie star in Hollywood, followed by her gradual decline into mental illness and death. Weaving in and out of her mother’s story, Norah includes her own story and her relationships as she reflects back on her life at the age of 58. She addresses this extended monologue to her husband.

Partially set against the political troubles in Ireland in the 1970s, the novel also illustrates the vulnerabilities of women in the hands of ruthless men who exploit and undermine them. Norah’s sharp eye recounts the past events through the lens of a perceptive middle-aged woman who recognizes misogyny as well as the games actors and directors play to satisfy their monstrous egos.

The narrative is non-linear as Norah’s anecdotal recollections hop backward and forward in time. There is very little plot to speak of in what is a character-driven novel. The unconditional love and support the mother and daughter have for one another shines through their interactions and through Norah’s monologue. They are impeccably drawn as characters. They are flawed, believable, indulgent of one another’s frailties, and protective of one another. Norah’s voice is engaging, fluent, witty, uninhibited, and forgiving of her mother’s shortcomings. She describes the difficulty of having to share her famous mother with strangers, and of having to assume the role of praising the brilliance of each of her performances. She understands her mother and knows when to prod and when to step back if soliciting information about her mother’s past or about the identity of her absent father.

The seemingly haphazard structure of the novel simulates the experience of remembering. Norah remembers her mother in patchy bits and pieces as a person and as a performer. As Norah observes, sometimes her mother’s roles merge as when she behaves in real life according to the expectations placed on her as a famous star.

A subtle and moving portrait of two generations of women told with unflinching honesty in the flawless, engaging, and seemingly effortless prose of Anne Enright.

What Life was Like on the Banks of the Nile: Egypt 3050 - 30 BC

Eds. Time Life Books; Denise Dersin

What Life was Like on the Banks of the Nile: Egypt: 3050 – 30 BC, edited by Time Life Books and Denise Dersin, offers a comprehensive and intimate portrayal of the daily life of a number of Egyptians from different walks of life. The volume is richly illustrated with paintings, artifacts, reliefs, maps, and diagrams of buildings. The volume provides a valuable glimpse into Egyptian life, belief systems, culture, and history.

Highly recommended for those interested in the history and culture of Ancient Egypt.

About Grace

Anthony Doerr

About Grace by Anthony Doerr tells the story of David Winkler, a trained hydrologist with a gift (or, is it a curse?) for dreaming of things that come true in his waking life. As a young boy, he dreams of a man with a hat box being hit by a bus as he exits from a shop. A few days later, he points the man out to his mother. They watch in horror as the man exits the store only to get hit by a bus. This event just gives us a taste of what is to come.

As an adult, David dreams of the circumstances in which he will meet the woman he falls in love with and later marries. It comes true. He later dreams of a flood in which his infant daughter drowns while he tries to save her. To avoid that fate, he abandons his wife and daughter by escaping to St. Vincent where he spends the next 25 years living in a shed and doing odd jobs. He is befriended by a family of exiles from Chile—Soma, Felix, their two sons, and their daughter, Naaliyah. He dreams of Naaliyah accidentally drowning in the ocean and rescues her when his dream is about to materialize.

Eventually, David returns to the United States to seek his wife and Grace, his daughter. He learns of his wife’s death. He tries to reconcile with Grace and her young son with little success until he manages to save his wife’s first husband after dreaming of his impending heart attack.

Although the novel has some beautifully descriptive passages of ice crystals, rain, and cloud formations grounded in detailed observation of the physical environment, there is a tendency to overdo it. These extensive descriptions detract from the narrative, drag it down in lengthy details, and stunt character development. Nature takes a prominent role with an emphasis on describing it in lyrical prose. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of other elements of the narrative, interrupting flow and coherence.

Four Seasons in Rome: A Memoir

Anthony Doerr

Four Seasons in Rome: A Memoir by Anthony Doerr chronicles the year Doerr spent in Rome as a fellow at the American Academy. He takes along his wife, infant twin sons, and barely a rudimentary knowledge of Italian. The Academy provides him with living quarters, a studio to pursue his writing, and a small stipend. What follows is a delightful memoir/travelogue in which Doerr reflects on the wonders of Rome, its rich history, churches, bakeries, piazzas, coffee shops, museums, fountains, St. Peter’s Square, and the Pantheon; the joys, delights, surprises, and challenges of raising twin baby boys; the struggle to communicate in a foreign language and navigate through foreign streets; and the multitudes of people attending the funeral of Pope John Paul.

What makes this memoir so captivating is Doerr’s amazing eye for detail. He captures the sights, sounds, smells of Rome in immersive detail. One can almost taste the olive oil, feel the intense heat from the sun, hear the booming traffic, and gaze in wonderment at the skill that went into creating each fountain, each architectural structure, and each work of art. Doerr does not limit his discerning eye for detail to the sights and sounds of Rome. As a new father, he is fascinated by his children, as well he should be. He charts the smallest changes in his infants—their facial expressions, their first waddling steps, their first words, their sleep habits, their cries, and their chuckles.

Anthony Doerr’s gift for writing beautifully crafted prose is in full evidence in this highly memorable memoir and travelogue of one of the most unforgettable cities in Europe. The result is at times funny, insightful, touching, inspiring, poignant, breathtaking, and always, always delightful.

My Grandmother's Braid

Alina Bronsky; trans. Tim Mohr

My Grandmother’s Braid by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr, unfolds in the first-person voice of Max, a young boy who lives with his Russian grandparents in Germany in a home for refugees.

Max has been fed all sorts of misinformation by his domineering grandmother. She tells him he is weak, incompetent, unhealthy, and prone to catch germs. She hovers over him continuously, denying him the space to breathe, to eat what he wants, and to live his life as a child. She takes every opportunity to put him down. But as Max gets older, he begins to recognize her exaggerations and lies for what they are. And although he maintains the façade of being a bit of a dolt, he is smart enough to notice his grandfather is having an affair with their neighbor, Nina. When Nina gets pregnant with his child, things come to a head. Much to Max’s surprise, his grandmother embraces her husband’s illegitimate child and acts as a surrogate mother to the newborn and to Nina who is incapable of handling the situation alone.

The dialogue is rich with biting humor. Max tolerates his grandmother and finds ways to thwart her prohibitions without her knowledge. He is intelligent, astute, observant, and knows how to manipulate and distract her. But it is Bronsky’s portrayal of Margarita, the grandmother, that carries the novel. She is simultaneously a tyrant, incorrigible, unlikeable, threatening, and demanding. But she is also compassionate, loving, generous, and capable of great tenderness. In Margarita, Bronsky has created a complex character that generates sympathy in spite of her crazy notions, a grandmother that one can dislike and love at the same time.

A Complicated Kindness

Miriam Toews

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews unfolds in the first-person voice of 16-year-old Nomi growing up in a Mennonite community in Canada. Throughout the course of the novel, Nomi exposes the cruelty and intransigence of the Mennonite community which shuns and excommunicates those unwilling to conform to its very stringent standards.

Nomi’s voice carries a novel in which very little else happens. She is intelligent, funny, irreverent, sarcastic, and highly critical of the abundant restrictions placed on the behavior, words, dress code, and activities of Mennonites. She describes in detail her daily routine, providing background information on her life and family along the way. We learn she lives alone with her father since first her older sister and then her mother are excommunicated and leave the community, their current whereabouts unknown.

Nomi is perceptive and has a heightened sense of the absurd. She is rebellious and confused. In between bouts of drinking, smoking, and doing drugs, she spends her days taking care of her father, defying her teachers, making out with her boyfriend, conducting imaginary conversations with her sister and mother, and talking back at authority figures, including her uncle, known as The Mouth. Nomi also has a compassionate, gentle side. She is devoted to her father and to her best friend hospitalized for illness. And she treats children, the elderly, and the bereaved with tenderness and sympathy.

Because very little happens in the novel, the descriptions of Nomi’s daily activities are repetitive and can get tedious. But her voice, which is engaging, warm, and funny goes a long way to sustaining interest in the novel.

The Road to the Country

Chigozie Obioma

The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma is the story of the 1967 civil war in Nigeria in which the Igbo-dominated region of Biafra sought its independence from Nigeria. The conflict lasted a little over two years, after which time the Biafran forces surrendered. Up to 3 million people, mostly Biafrans, died during the war due to starvation, disease, and violence.

This devastating conflict is seen through the eyes of Adekunle Aromire (Kunle), a quiet, reserved young man. Kunle blames himself for an accident that has permanently confined his brother to a wheelchair. He is preparing for a new term at the university when his parents ask him to come home. The civil war has just started. Kunle learns that his brother has gone to Biafra, so he sets off with the intention of bringing him home. His plan is thwarted when he is captured by Biafran soldiers and is forced to join the conflict.

Kunle’s initial thoughts are to escape and find his brother. But fear of being shot as a deserter prevents him from doing so. Gradually, he befriends some of the fighters and develops a strong sense of loyalty and camaraderie. He gets caught up in the frenzy of fighting for independence until he witnesses the carnage and devastation caused by the war.

The brutality, horror, and violence of war are depicted in graphic and immersive detail: the chaos of trench warfare; the endless trudging in the rain and mud while accosted by mosquitoes; the ubiquitous presence of dismembered bodies; fields littered with corpses; torsos soaked in blood; skeletal remains exposed to the elements; wounded soldiers abandoned to their fate; children dying of starvation; women whose unborn babies have been yanked out of their bodies; evidence of rape, torture; and the slaughter of innocent civilians unwittingly caught in the conflict. Fear is palpable as is the stench of rotting flesh, sweat, filth, vomit, and excrement.

The carnage is relentless; the description, unflinchingly honest. Kunle witnesses it all, including the deaths of some of his comrades. He comes close to death, is wounded several times, blown up, hospitalized, falls in love, and has a vivid hallucination of journeying to the underworld where he encounters the newly dead, including enemy soldiers.

Graphic descriptions of violence are interspersed with an element of magical realism in the form of a seer who predicts the war before it happens and who intermittently observes and narrates Kunle’s progress during the war.

Because of a plethora of scenes of shocking violence and carnage, this book may not be for everyone. But if the goal is to offer a realistic rendition of the brutality and palpable horrors of war, Obioma has accomplished his mission.

Good Night, Irene

Louis Alberto Urrea

Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea is a fictional account based on his mother’s actual service in the ARC Clubmobiles during World War II. Urrea uses the few available historical records coupled with available letters, newspaper accounts, and recorded interviews to build a picture of the experiences of the women who served the troops in and around the combat zones in Europe.

The novel opens with Irene escaping from an abusive fiancée. She has volunteered as a recreation worker with the American Red Cross and is on her way to New York to report for duty. She is joined by an army of women volunteers, one of whom was to become her life-long friend, Dorothy. The two become inseparable as they travel to England and from there all over Europe. Their job is to drive the Clubmobile, affectionately dubbed, the Rapid City, to wherever the army sends them to serve the troops with coffee, donuts, and a slice of home. The Clubmobile is fully equipped with coffee urns, a boiler, burners, water tanks, a donut machine and a Victrola with records.

Urrea immerses the reader in the experiences of these brave women. Irene and Dorothy travel to England, France, Belgium, and Germany. They witness the effects of the war first-hand in the mangled bodies of the dead, in the eyes of the troops they serve, and in the bombed-out land and villages. They experience some narrow escapes from death. They are with the troops who helped to liberate Buchenwald. The women witness scenes that etch themselves indelibly in their memories and haunt them in their sleep. They remember the faces of the young men they served and the loved ones they lost. Urrea describes it all in graphic, unflinching detail.

Interspersed among scenes depicting the horrors of war are scenes of much needed rest and recreation—sleeping in comfortable beds, bathing in bubble baths, swimming in the ocean, and building romantic relationships.

In spite of their trauma, the women continued to serve the troops with smiles and flirtatious banter. They were the mothers and sisters of the young men who desperately needed a friendly female face to remind them of home. Their presence boosted morale. Their smiles and welcoming demeanor offered the troops a good listening ear and a shoulder to cry on whenever needed. Their role was invaluable and their contribution to Allied victory should never be underestimated.

Urrea portrays the horrors of war with honesty. But the novel is weak in its portrayal of characters. Neither Irene nor Dorothy emerges as a fully-fleshed, well-rounded individual. Their dialogue sounds inauthentic and canned. They spout quips at one another that feel rehearsed. Their psychological and emotional lives are treated superficially. As a result, the reader doesn’t become invested in them as characters. This is unfortunate since Urrea based the character of Irene on his mother. But with that caveat aside, the novel is worth reading because it offers a glimpse into the sacrifices and invaluable contributions these women made to the Allied victory—a contribution that is frequently marginalized or overlooked.

North Woods

Daniel Mason

North Woods by Daniel Mason consists of a series of loosely connected vignettes covering a period of three centuries. The thread connecting them is the sequence of characters inhabiting and/or visiting the same yellow house in the woods at one time or another. 

The narrative opens with a pair of young lovers in colonial New England fleeing from their Puritan neighbors. They successfully escape into the north woods and lay the foundation stone that will later serve as the location for the yellow house. One by one, we are introduced to a succession of inhabitants of the house in a sort of relay race. These include a woman captured by Native Americans; Charles Osgood, who loves the woods and who cultivates a delicious variety of apples called Osgood’s Wonder; his two daughters living well into their spinsterhood; an abolitionist; a runaway slave; a famous landscape artist; a manufacturer; his daughter and her schizophrenic son. And, of course, one mustn’t forget to add to the mix a couple of ghosts thrown in for good measure.

The yellow house experiences various transformations and stages of decay and revival, ranging from expansion, abandonment, disrepair, refurbishing, and rebranding. The surrounding woods experience their share of change with the loss of the original flora and fauna and the introduction of disease-bearing insects, invasive fungi, and pathogens.

The narrative is a hodgepodge of styles consisting of exposition, letters, poems, diary entries, song lyrics, medical case notes, documents, a real-estate listing, calendars, a reporter’s true crime detective story, and an address to a historical society. Each vignette is self-contained but drops a seed that is picked up in a vignette further down the line. Botanical illustrations separate each vignette. Peppered throughout are breathtaking descriptions of the natural environment, including a hilarious passage of the coupling of two amorous beetles.

With so many styles, so many characters, and so much going on in this lowly house in the woods, the novel shouldn’t work. But in the hands of a master craftsman like Daniel Mason, it not only works, it works brilliantly. The vignettes are self-contained and compelling with unique, fully-fleshed out, and authentic characters. The ghosts—literal and metaphorical—flit in and out of the narrative. Nature comes alive in soaring, lyrical diction. It is resilient and survives in different manifestations as when, for example, the skeletal remains of a human body shelter an apple seed that takes root, strengthens, and shoots up to catch the sunlight. The same apple trees later meet their demise when swallowed up by oak and chestnut trees. Nothing and no one that is dead is gone forever. All merely transform from life to death to new life in a never-ending cycle. And all is inextricably intertwined. In this hodgepodge of a narrative, Mason is somehow able to imbue the tale with a gentle comedy that pokes fun at human foibles.

In one of the most moving vignettes, Robert, the schizophrenic, believes he can “stitch” and repair the forest with his footsteps. Daniel Mason has performed a magical stitching of his own in a novel that is well-deserving of all the accolades and praise heaped upon it. His content and structure are imaginative; his execution, brilliant. In an astonishing tour de force, he bursts open exhilarating new possibilities for the novel form.

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

Nadia Hashimi

The Pearl that Broke its Shell by Nadia Hashimi unfolds in parallel narratives of two women in Afghanistan who lived a hundred years apart. The women are Rahima and her great, great grandmother, known as Bibi Shekiba.

The novel opens with Rahima as a young girl living with her parents and sisters. Their aunt begins telling them the story of Bibi Shekiba to inspire them. One side of Bibi Shekiba’s face is severely disfigured as a result of a cooking accident. She assumes the role of a man by fending for herself after her immediate family dies of cholera. She is then taken in by her relatives who cheat her of her birthright and treat her as a servant before trading her away to serve another family. Her story inspires Rahima to become a bacha posh, the cultural practice which allowed any family without sons to dress a daughter as a boy. This was a temporary solution to help the family since a son had freedom of movement to go to school, to shop, and to work—something denied to females.

Bibi Shekiba is eventually traded to work in the king’s palace. Dressed as a male, her job is to guard the women in his harem since men could not be trusted to do so. When one of the king’s wives is discovered to be in an illicit sexual relationship with a man, she is stoned to death. As the guard on duty, Bibi Shekiba is punished for failing in her duties. She is sent off to become the second wife to a close advisor of the king’s son. She gives birth to a son, securing her position in the household.

Along parallel lines, Rahima is married off to pay for her father’s debt. She becomes the fourth wife of a brutal war lord where she is abused by him, his mother, and some of his wives. Because she knows how to read and write, she accompanies his first wife to the Afghani parliament in Kabul to help her navigate the paperwork as a member of the newly formed parliament. When Rahima’s young son dies unexpectedly of illness, she disguises herself as a bacha posh and escapes to a shelter for abused women.

Rahima’s aunt intermittently weaves Shekiba’s narrative to inspire and encourage Rahima to follow in her ancestor’s footsteps. Although they lived a hundred years apart, the similarities between the lives of the two women are readily apparent. The restrictions on women remained unchanged. Sequestered, secluded, and powerless, women were the property of men to be dealt with and disposed of as they saw fit. They were denied voice and deprived of their rights. Bickering and jealousy proliferated as women competed for male attention and privilege. And with few exceptions, women were frequently used as tools to reinforce the patriarchal oppression of their sisters.

The narrative structure worked well with the intermittent weaving of the dual story lines. But more could have been done with the setting by immersing the reader in the sensory experience of life in Afghanistan. The characters felt distant, perhaps because of the nature of the writing which was primarily expository. While we read about and sympathize with Shekiba and Rahima for the abuse and discrimination they experience as a result of the patriarchal tenets of their culture, we are not drawn to them as characters. Their stories end inconclusively: Shekiba hopes her son’s generation will see better days; and Rahima escapes the abuse to end up who knows where.