New York Times Notable Book Challenge

Alentejo Blue - Wendy's Review

2008-02-22T17:49:00.002-05:00

She wore her black slingbacks and a white cotton dress with blue flowers that matched the paint that framed the door. Alentejo blue. here she was, in a picture, in a moment, setting out for the rest of her life. -From Alentejo Blue, page 131-

Monica Ali's novella - Alentejo Blue - is a collection of moments lived by its vast array of characters. The Alentejo region of Portugal -located in south-central Portugal and known for its tiny, medieval villages - is the perfect setting for Ali's book, which seems to be a collection of interconnected, short stories. Ali is adept at exploring her characters' inner lives. The reader is gradually introduced to the inhabitants of the fictional town of Mamarrosa: Joao, an old timer who has seen the days of Communism and remembers the revolution of the peasants; Vasco, the baker whose obesity and compulsion with eating hides his painful losses; Teresa, a young woman who longs to break away from the village of her birth; Sophie and Huw, an engaged couple whose holiday to Portugal uncovers the deeper issues of their relationship; Elaine, a middle-aged English woman seeking meaning in her tired marriage; Stanton, the alcoholic writer living a shallow existence; and the Potts family, living a dysfunctional existence far from their home in England. As the novella unwinds, the reader glimpses the connections between characters and the main themes evolve.

There is a theme of "old" world vs. "new" - highlighted by the elderly, traditional members of the village vs. the youth and tourists. Change is in the air, but it is unclear whether it will be for the best, or will simply disrupt the flow of village life.

So we stay as we are and watch the shadows lengthen and smell the evening loaves being baked and fell the sun slipping low, blushing over our necks like the first taste of wine. -From Alentejo Blue, page 94-

Ali's lyrical prose transports the reader into the countryside of Portugal.

The plains spread out on either side. Here and there a cork oak stood grieving. The land rose and fell in modest dimensions. Now and again a gleam of machinery, glittering drops of water on an acacia, a giant eucalyptus shedding its splintery scrolls. Field upon field upon field, wheat and grass and fallow, on and on and on, and in this flat composition there was a depth, both sadness and tremulous joy. -From Alentejo Blue, page 163-

This novel was listed as a 2006 New York Times Most Notable book - and I think it is deserving of that honor. Ali is a gifted writer with great understanding and sensitivity to her characters - picking up Alentejo Blue was like relaxing into small town life, chatting with the neighbors and observing the ebb and flow of the days beneath a Portugal sun. I will be reading more of Ali's novels in the future.

Highly recommended; rated 4.5/5.

The Future of the NYT Most Notable Challenge

2008-01-31T20:32:00.000-05:00

This challenge has been expanded to include other notable fiction and non fiction lists. Please go to the Notable Books blog to participate in this challenge in 2008.

The 2007 NYT Most Notable List is posted on that blog here.

Hope to see you there!!

3M's Challenge Wrap-Up

2007-12-29T18:42:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Wendy, for a wonderful challenge!

I committed to reading ten and finished ten, though I did switch out some titles. I loved the top three, which were truly outstanding books. I'm really glad I read the middle of the pack, and I could have done without the last two.

Here they are, ranked in order of enjoyment:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Translator by Leila Aboulela

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers

Lisey's Story by Stephen King

Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Everyman by Philip Roth

Suite Française - 3M's Review

2007-12-29T18:40:00.001-05:00

Suite Française is the incredible incomplete set of novels by Irene Nemirovsky, a Russian Jew who had been living in Paris for 10 years before ultimately dying in Auschwitz. The preface to the French edition states that:

She dreamed of a book of a thousand pages, constructed like a symphony, but in five sections, according to rhythm and tone. She took Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a model.

Sadly, only two of the planned five were completed. In these stories, she creates such vivid characters and situations that it is a shame we never get to find out what happened to them. She was a fine writer. Her characters were so well-defined; I cared about the worthy ones and loathed the loathsome ones. Even in her description of the latter, there was humor to be found. Both good and bad die, and of course the question is always, "Why?" The accounts of the flight from Paris as the Germans descended on them during 1940 were chilling and frighteningly relevant to what could happen today. Then, during the section depicting the occupation of France, I was most surprised at her portrayal of the German soldiers, in which some could be seen as sympathetic.

Her two daughters had kept these stories in a suitcase for years, not even looking at them as it was too painful. When one of her daughters did finally take out the papers to type them, she found this wonderful, incomplete novel and it was published in France in 2004, sixty-two years after her death in 1942.

Highly recommended.

2006 for the English translation, 367 pp.
Rating: 4.5

Last Evenings on Earth - 3M's Review

2007-12-25T09:43:00.000-05:00

Bolaño is a Chilean author whose book The Savage Detectives was also named to the most recent NYT Most Notable list. It seems to be getting a lot of buzz on many 'Best of 2007' lists. Although Bolaño died in 2003, some of his works are just now being published in English.

The settings of these stories are in Chile, Mexico, Spain, and many other countries. It has a very international feel to it. Bolaño's writing is fascinating. Without really enjoying many of the stories, I still felt compelled to read them. There is always something literary going on; perhaps that's why they intrigued me. However, many of the stories just had too much violence and seediness for my taste--otherwise the book would have had a higher rating from me.

I'm curious about The Savage Detectives, though, and I may try to read that one in 2008.

2006 (for the English translation), 219 pp.
Rating: 3.5

Skinner's Drift - kookiejar's review

2007-12-18T11:30:00.000-05:00

Eva is a young woman who returns to the remote South African ranch she was raised on when her widowed father falls into a coma. While at the ranch, she reads her mother's old diaries which take her back to her childhood when she was witness to great violence, including a family secret that makes her question her place in the world.

Lisa Fugard seamlessly weaves the past and the present unfolding the events in a way that keeps you curious about the characters until the final page.

My favorite part was when the black ranch hand, Nkele buys his grandson a comic book, but feels the need to destroy it because it has pictures of AK-47s in it.

"He knew how it would end, who would be killed and who would be saved, and the ease with which 'AK-47' had fallen from the mouths of the children, tumbled out soft as the patter of rain, distressed him."

My only problem with the novel was that although the characters were interesting and their problems were intriguing, I was emotionally disconnected from them. It could have been my own problem, just coming off a reading slump, but I would only recommend this book to people who are fans of novels set in Africa or ones that deal with race relations.

This is my last book for this challenge. Of the 15 I finished specifically for the challenge, I'd have to say my favorite was "Apex Hides the Hurt", but my favorite off the entire list was "The Road". Thank you Wendy for hosting the challenge and thanks to all of my lit-blogging compatriots.

The Emperor's Children - Wendy's Review

2007-12-13T11:47:00.001-05:00

"Well, then." Ludovic sat up against the headboard, cleared his throat. "As parents, we visit our complexes, whatever they may be, upon our children - our neuroses, our hopes and fears, our discontents. Just the way our broader society is like a parent, and visits its complexes upon the citizenry, if you will." - From The Emperor's Children, page 205 -

The Emperor's Children is an intellectual miasma about the superficiality of the privileged classes - and the subsequent collision of values between the haves and have nots. Set in New York City in 2001, the book explores the lives of five major characters: Marina - a rich and spoiled pseudo-journalist; Julius - a gay, confused free lance critic; Danielle - a television producer with attitude; Frederick "Bootie" Tubb - an idealistic and slightly creepy college drop out; and Murray Thwaite - a middle aged, liberal "emperor" who has made a name in journalism. The novel is narrated in alternating points of view and spans a period of half a year, tying together (with an artistic flair) the rather superficial threads of each character's motivations and lives. None of these characters is especially likable, but all are compulsively readable.

Messud creates a novel about the upper classes: their attitude of entitlement, their petty betrayals, their focus on power. In doing so, she reveals some interesting truths about humanity. I enjoyed her observations about higher education:

The Land of Lies in which most people were apparently content to live - in which you paid money to an institution and went out nightly to get drunk instead of reading the books and then tried to calculate some half-assed scheme by which you could cheat on your exams, and then, at the end of the day, presumably simply on account of the financial transaction between you, or more likely your parents, and said institution, you declared yourself educated - was not sufficient for Bootie. - From The Emperor's Children, page 55 -

...about raising children and giving them everything their hearts desire:

Murray Thwaite had little patience for this. He suddenly saw his daughter as a monster he and Annabel had created - they and a society of excess. - From The Emperor's Children, page 66 -

...and about high tech, computerized corporate America:

The company, it seemed, engaged in middle man activity, the procuring of rights - of abstractions - that permitted, elsewhere, the actual trading of information (also abstract) for huge sums of money. Which was, of course, itself abstract. It was a though the entire office were generating and moving, acquiring and passing on, hypotheticals, a trade in ideas, or hopes, to which value somehow accrued. - From The Emperor's Children, page 60 -

Messud has written a sharp, witty expose that intrigued me. Her writing is observant, her characters complex and well developed. Although this is not the type of book I usually enjoy, I found myself unable to put it down.

Recommended; Rated 4/5.

Wahoo!! I'm done!!

2007-11-30T14:35:00.001-05:00

I met my goal of reading 12 notable books this year. Because I joined in June or July I set the bar low and I chose several "lighter" fiction books to finish off the last part of the year. My reviews (and other posts) are here.

I'll see a lot of you on the other blog. I also expect to be reading more of the 2006 notable books in between the 2007 books (and my usual airplane fare) because many of these reviews have interested me. It's great to be part of a group that reads good books.

One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson

2007-11-30T14:32:00.000-05:00

One Good Turn is wonderful! From the very first sentence I was entranced by Atkinson's use of words and her terrific low-key sense of humor. I was surprised to find that the book is actually a mystery, but there is nothing genre-like about it, no standard investigation or even single investigator. I was further surprised to find that it makes use of characters first developed in another of Atkinson's books, again a genre technique. It doesn't matter as we learn what we need to know from this book alone.

The story begins with a "road rage" incident in Edinburgh involving a suspicious name-changing character and a beefy guy who wields a baseball bat. The incident draws together an interesting group of characters, but the story reads rather like strings spreading further and further apart, or perhaps more like a web built by a spider. Each chapter develops the story for one or two of the characters, and only near the end do the paths intersect, in a crazy, hilarious episode, rather like the punchline in a shaggy dog story.

The writing is superb. The insights into character are well-informed. The humor is delicious.

Digging to America, by Anne Tyler

2007-11-27T09:36:00.000-05:00

Two families wait at the gate in the Baltimore airport for the same flight, which is carrying their newly-adopted Korean babies. One family, fully American, has made an event of it. Everyone is wearing labels ("Mom", "Grandpa") and the family is filling the waiting area, almost forcing out others, making a party of it. The other family is transplanted Iranian and has made no fanfare of the arrival of their new baby.

Bitsy, the American mom, eventually invites Ziba, Iranian mom, to join an invented "arrival" celebration of the two infants, and the two families are thus joined. The differences in the families pricks at the edges of each encounter, with members of both families trying - or not trying - to understand the other. Throughout the book the individuals seem unable to keep from generalizing, the Iranians finding the Americans laughable, crude, at times overbearing, the Americans finding the Iranians stiff, sometimes unresponsive, perhaps "too good" for them.

Ziba's mother-in-law, Maryam, is perhaps the most reluctant Iranian. She was at peace with her widowed existence, her proper life, and she has no need for the sometimes overwhelming assault of well-meaning friends. She is proper and polite, often seeming cold because of her reserve, so she does join the parties because it would be rude to refuse.

Although we get into the minds of almost all of the many characters, ultimately it is Maryam who takes center stage. Through her thoughts and actions we begin to understand how difficult it must be to live in such a foreign culture, unable to join it. She admits to herself, though, that she had differences in Iran as well, and we begin to grasp that it may not be so much the differences in cultures that affects these clans so much as the differences in individuals.

The book is so easy to read that it is easy to miss its complexity, its quiet effects on our thinking. I felt at times that there was too much generalizing but those who read carefully will see that the generalizing came from individuals rather than from Tyler herself.

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

2007-11-24T23:59:00.000-05:00

Black Swan Green is a funny, insightful book about a 13-year-old boy, told in the language of a 13-year-old in England in 1982. The book spans one year of Jason's life, through the Falklands war and within the Reagan-Thatcher years, into a dip into the pond of "girls" and the unintended viewing of a coupling in the countryside, in the village of Black Swan Green (a village where there are no swans, black or otherwise).

Jason is addicted to contractions the like of which, the extent of which, I have not seen before. We go way beyond "could've" into "...our marines'll..." and "...with any luck, my strategy'd clear some spaces..." and "..the talk'd shifted..." and so much more. The contractions alone had me laughing right from the first page.

Jason, like so many adolescent boys (and girls), struggles most of all to fit in. He hides his propensity for writing poetry, turning in poems to a local magazine under a pseudonym, which later leads to his making strange and secret visits to an elderly woman living in the vicar's quarters, who offers advice about life - and poetry - that ultimately Jason takes to heart. Jason gets sorted this way and that from his mates, from bullies, from teachers and his parents, as he tries to find his place, and somehow emerges a little wiser and ready to be fourteen.

At first I found the book simply funny, and that was enough. Over time, though, I was won over by the compassion and sense of realness Mitchell gives to his hero. It's a lovely slice of England. And of adolescence.

One Good Turn reviewed by raidergirl3

2007-11-18T19:27:00.000-05:00

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

New York Times Notable Book 2006

I like books like this: a murder mystery, with a seemingly unconnected cast of characters. The first half of the book is spent setting the stage and I felt like a juggler keeping track of all the people and motives and backstories. And then, gradually, people become connected and the story really picked up.

Jackson Brodie is the main character, I suppose, and according to the back cover, he was the investigator in Atkinson's last book, Case Histories. I would mention that it wouldn't be required to read the first book, as I didn't feel I missed any back story in reading the sequel, but I would be very interested in seeing what happens with Jackson next. Jackson witnesses a road rage incident that sets off the chain of events and characters. A meek writer, an obnoxious comedian, a dirty rich developer, his fed up wife, and a few Russian immigrants round out some of the characters, along with a tough female detective for Jackson to butt heads with.

Although it felt a little long, the action is continuous and a thread of humor is woven throughout so that I enjoyed reading it a lot. The summer arts festival in Edinburgh provides the background, and Atkinson kept my interest with so many different characters.

also posted on my blog here

Joy Completes Challenge!

2007-11-08T15:01:00.001-05:00

I'm having difficulty posting, so here's my list of books with links for this completed challenge:

New York Times Notable Book Challenge

I will be doing a synopsis of the challenge at the end of the year.

Lisey's Story - 3M's Review

2007-11-02T06:18:00.000-05:00

It had been over 20 years since I had read a Stephen King book. I used to love horror and love his books. I really, really did. That changed and I don't like horror at all now. I like scary, suspenseful stories-just not horror. I think I had convinced myself that surely there wouldn't be that much horror because he put so much of his wife/marriage into the story. I guess there probably wasn't as much as in his other books, but it was still too much for me.

Stephen King had said that he wrote this after considering what could happen to his wife if he had died in the car accident that he had. I do think he put quite a bit of himself and her into this story. I liked the beginning of the book very much, but then in the middle there was a little too much of the horror element for me. Lisey's husband Scott flashes back to a horror-full childhood. There were some crazy things that happen to Lisey as well that bothered me because I kept thinking, "How can he think of these things happening to his wife?"

Anyway, it was a good book to also use for the R.I.P Challenge, but I don't think I'll be reading another King book for awhile. If you know of one that is very tame, I might try it. Otherwise, there's just too much horror in King for this wimpy woman. I really wish I would have thought to read The Inhabited World instead.

2006, 509 pp.

Rating: 3.5

The Omnivore's Dilemma

2007-10-29T15:28:00.000-05:00

"When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the potential foods on offer are liable to sicken or kill you." ~The Omnivore's Dilemma, page 3

This is not a book you should read if you are not prepared to take a long, hard look at what you eat. In this book the author leads us through four meals: industrial, big organic, sustainable, and The Perfect Meal.

The industrial meal follows a steer from birth, death to it's presumably winding up in a typical fast food meal. This section was very shocking to me and helped me to understand why animal rights people would be outraged at the treatment of these animals. It is horrifying. Worst of all, it's only for money. Obviously, it is of no benefit to the animal and it actually makes their meat less healthy for us to consume.

Big Organic farms are better in that the animals do not have steroids or antibiotics and are not fed animal by-products but the treatment of the animals is not more humane. As for organic produce, it may be more healthful(no pesticides, better vitamin content, etc.) but it is not without cost to the environment. In short: This method's heavy reliance on fossil fuels for processing and transportation makes it unsustainable.

As for the sustainable farm, the guiding principles that they follow are best outlined on their own site: Polyface, Inc.

I have to admit that this book has sparked an intense interest for me to find locally grown meat and produce and the metropolitan buying clubs. I had already been very interested in minimizing the processed food in my family's diet. I just didn't understand exactly how far the processing went.

The Perfect Meal is the one that Pollan hunts and gathers himself. He says that the meal is not perfect because it has the best taste. It's perfect because it is the one which caused him to work the most both physically and intellectually for his food. He knows where it all comes from and exactly what went into processing it and bringing it to the table.

I can't say that I enjoyed every section of this book. Some of it was difficult to read. But it was very eye-opening and worth the effort.(4.5/5)

Half of a Yellow Sun - 3M's Review

2007-10-22T10:40:00.000-05:00

A beautifully told story of a savage civil war, Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun definitely deserves the 2007 Orange Prize and to be on the NYT Most Notable list.

"They sat on wooden planks and the weak morning sun streamed into the roofless class as she unfurled Odenigbo's cloth flag and told them what the symbols meant. Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future."

I resisted reading this book because I really just don't like war stories at all. I wanted to give it a chance, though, because so many bloggers had said they appreciated it. They were right; it's a very special book. Based on the conflict in Nigeria in the late 1960's, it not only depicts the horrors of war, it also hauntingly and lovingly depicts the lives of the participants. Apparently many of the characters were based on real people in Adichie's family history, and this authenticity very much shines through.

There were some content issues for me in the book, but I'm very glad I read this story. I look forward to reading Purple Hibiscus and other books of hers to come. If you decide to read the book (and I highly encourage it), afterwards you might want to go to her website http://www.halfofayellowsun.com where you can find a lot more information about the true story.

2006, 541 pp.
2007 Orange Prize
Rating: 4.5

The Road, reviewed by raidergirl3

2007-10-21T15:08:00.000-05:00

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Better late than never. I went back and read everyone's reviews last night after I finished, and I wish I had read it when everyone else did, because there are some things I would have liked to talk about.

My review is at my blog here, although I didn't review it so much as just make some comments. This book was so sparse and so well written, and as I'd read many reviews beforehand, I was prepared for the punctuation issues, or the lack, and it didn't bother me. I had a terrible pit in my stomach for most of the books, and tears at the end.

I'm glad I read it, and I won't forget it for a while. Could I do it? Could I survive like that? What exactly hapened in that world? So many questions to think about. Thanks for all the discussion that went on last spring - I enjoyed it last night.

After This, by Alice McDermott

2007-10-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

After This is a beautifully written book. It begins and ends in a church, and takes us from the marriage of Mary, a 30-year-old woman, through the birth and growth to adulthood of the four children she has with her husband John. The working-class family lives on Long Island during the middle-to-late decades of the twentieth century, riding out the storms of change in the culture, their lives, and in their church.

Although religion is a big part of their lives, I wouldn't call this a "religious" book. Rather, McDermott shows how the church and the family's beliefs affect - or do not affect - how they live. Mary in particular takes her church's teachings to heart, lighting candles during the two wars she experiences, attending mass regularly, insisting that the children attend Catholic school. We watch, too, as John lies in bed with a slipped disk, thinking of how his life might end, how it might not be as he had imagined, in bed, tended by a priest, but may be as unexpected as falling down dead in the street.

We see segments of each family member's life in vivid color, with light sketches in between phases. Thus we are treated to details of a dinner conversation or a night with a lover and then we may not hear much of that person until he or she is much older. Yet it works. I didn't feel cheated. Many of the moments are deeply moving by themselves, the more so because the moment is not over-labored.

I couldn't help comparing this book to a couple I read recently by Anne Tyler, both of which covered much of the same era in our history. Tyler's books seem, to me, more mocking, more like throwing a veil between the writer and the subjects, while After This is more intimate and touching.

And what is "after this"? From early on I suspected it was "after life". What then? After all that Mary and her family has done and gone through, what then?

Eight down, four to go

2007-10-16T12:06:00.001-05:00

More to keep myself straight than for any other reason, I am reporting that I have read eight of the twelve I committed to reading. I am well into the ninth and partly into the tenth (I always read more than one book at a time) so I believe I will reach my goal!

I think this challenge has been excellent because the books are not just anything you happen to like. These are all good books and worth our time.

The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

2007-10-16T11:50:00.000-05:00

This book is Amy Hempel’s life work. Of course there is the odd story here and there that did not get in here but essentially this is it. In 404 pages she tells her own story in the form of short fiction, 49 stories in all. Most are shorter than most short fiction, one consisting of just one sentence and another just one page.

In this way, and in the language itself, these stories are much like poetry. All of them distill moments and thoughts economically, making much out of few words. Character is sketched in a phrase, and that’s all that is needed. Because of this depth it may take longer to read these seemingly simple stories than you might expect.

The elements also repeat themselves in a way similar to the film “32 short films about Glenn Gould”. We read about the lover of an artist, an artist who perhaps has many lovers. We hear about time in an institution. We read about dogs and cemeteries. Not once but many times, slid in between lines or used as the whole, layers or whole pies. I am sure that these elements come from Hempel’s real life, although the incidents probably did not happen to her exactly as written. In their way, skewed or direct, they tell us about this writer and the way she sees. It’s a beautifully-written book, full of images and feelings.

**Note to members of this group: If you would like to have this book contact me (judith at judithlautner dot net). I have registered it with bookcrossing.com so all I ask is that you make a journal entry there when you receive it (and preferably when you've read it, too). I'll be happy to ship it to the first person who asks, for free (outside the U.S. I'd want to split the postage).

Laura's Challenge Wrap-up

2007-10-07T20:23:00.000-05:00

The New York Times Notable Books Challenge was one of the first I joined this year, egged on by challenge host Wendy (aka Caribousmom). I was a little embarrassed that I'd heard of so few of these notable books, and set about to correct that by reading a dozen of them. The books I read for this challenge were:

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (read in 2006)
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (completed 3/26/07)
Old Filth, by Jane Gardam (completed 3/31/07)
Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (completed 4/13/07)
One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson (completed 5/25/07)
The Translator, by Leila Aboulela (completed 5/28/07)
Alentejo Blue, by Monica Ali (completed 6/17/07)
Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury (completed 7/25/07)
Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes (completed 8/26/07)
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (completed 9/2/07)
A Woman in Jerusalem, by A.B. Yehoshua (completed 10/7/07)

Favorite Book of the Challenge: This is a real toss-up. I enjoyed Suite Francaise, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Road the most.

Least Favorite Book: One Good Turn. This crime mystery was a pretty light read compared to the others on this list.

What I learned through this challenge: Every one of these authors was also new to me, and many of them are from outside the United States. This challenge really opened my eyes to the wealth of great literature in the world, and has inspired me to continue seek out authors from around the world.

Laura's Progress Report & List

2007-10-07T20:00:00.000-05:00

Here's my list!

Completed (with links to reviews):

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (read in 2006)
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (completed 3/26/07)
Old Filth, by Jane Gardam (completed 3/31/07)
Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (completed 4/13/07)
One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson (completed 5/25/07)
The Translator, by Leila Aboulela (completed 5/28/07)
Alentejo Blue, by Monica Ali (completed 6/17/07)
Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury (completed 7/25/07)
Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes (completed 8/26/07
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (completed 9/2/07)
A Woman in Jerusalem, by A.B. Yehoshua (completed 10/7/07)

Laura's Review - A Woman in Jerusalem

2007-10-07T19:56:00.001-05:00

A Woman in Jerusalem
A. B. Yehoshua
236 pages

First sentence: Even though the manager of the human resources division had not sought such a mission, now, in the softly radiant morning, he grasped its unexpected significance.

Reflections: An anonymous woman is killed in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, and her body lies unidentified and unclaimed. A recent pay stub is found among her belongings, and a news weekly publishes an article, calling the company uncaring and negligent. The elderly owner calls on his human resources manager to uncover the truth and salvage the company's reputation.

The human resources manager, recently divorced, is dealing with problems of his own. But he has no choice. Researching personnel records, he discovers the woman was an immigrant from one of the countries in the former Soviet Union, and had come to the city for religious reasons. Although trained as an engineer, she was employed as a cleaning woman on the night shift. She was recently let go, but an apparent clerical error resulted in her continuing to receive wages. The human resources manager meets with her supervisor, learns some interesting details, and finds himself personally committed to locating the woman's family and making arrangements for burial. This becomes a journey of atonement and, while it was initially intended simply to clear the company's name, the human resources manager begins to view it as a personal quest, even though he did not know the woman personally.

Yehoshua's prose is terse and understated. The characters do not have names. Yet I found myself caught up in the story, sympathizing with the human resources manager, and mourning with the woman's family. I couldn't put this down and finished it in an afternoon. ( )

My original review can be found here.

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

2007-09-29T16:45:00.000-05:00

An extraordinary book about the dust storms on the High Plains in the 1930s. This book takes us into the lives of several people who made up the "nesters" - farmers, along with cowboys, ranchers, doctors, teachers, and newspapermen. We follow the history of the plains from the early twenties, when land was free or cheap and hopes were high, when government policy fed the ambitions of the settlers, on into the 1930s and the worst of the storms.

It is clear from our present perspective that the horrors of the "dust bowl" were man-made. It took a few years and some gutsy thinking people to get that message out during the worst of it and to start the process that would lead to some recovery. Not that these plains have ever fully recovered.

Of particular interest are the extraordinary details. What the storms did to people, animals, buildings, and what happened on the rare occasions when it actually rained. While in the air (which was most of the time) the dust created such static electricity that people were afraid to touch each other. The touch could knock them across a room. The electricity shorted out engines and started fires. The dust destroyed just about everything it touched, killing the natural animal and plant population while bringing in insects that thrived on what was left. Millions of acres of land were left sterile, while the swarms of dust moved into the cities, over other parts of the country, and into the ocean. The storms even reached New York City and Washington, D.C. on occasion.

How the government responded is another fascinating tale, featuring a president who couldn't think of anything to do - Hoover - followed by one who did everything possible - Roosevelt. It's possible that the biggest hero of the time was the person who took on a new governmental position under Roosevelt, Hugh Bennett, and came up with ways to hold the soil down. He didn't stop there, of course. He took his mission to the loners who made up the plains settlers and convinced them that they had to work together to fight this thing.

The story is devastating and often heart-breaking. And so very readable.

A Woman in Jerusalem - A.B. Yehoshua

2007-09-24T11:33:00.000-05:00

Title: A Woman in Jerusalem
Author: A.B. Yehoshua; translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin
Country: Israel
Year: 2004
Rating: A
Pages: 237 pgs.

First sentence: Even though the manager of the human resources division had not sought such a mission, now, in the softly radiant morning, he grasped its unexpected significance.

There was a lot of hope for the future of the Middle East when the Oslo accords were first signed. However, as many of you probably know, with both sides disappointed in the implementation of the accords, the fall of the Oslo peace process in September 2000 was marked by the start of the second Intifada, the second wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis since 1967. The violence did not begin to abate until the death of Yasser Arafat at the end of 2004, and the relative success of the Sharm el-Sheikh peace summit in February 2005. Marked by Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem and other cities, and Israeli military excursions into West Bank, Gaza, and other Palestinian settlements, more than 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were killed in a seven year period.

A Woman in Jerusalem, a novel by A.B. Yehoshua, takes place in Jerusalem around 2002. An immigrant woman is killed by a suicide bombing at her local market. Her body lies unidentified for a week, the only clue to her identity a bloody pay stub from a local bakery. After a tabloid newspaper article is written about the bakery's callousness towards her death, the human resource manager is sent on a mission to identify the woman and return her body to her family.

The only character that receives a name in the story Yulia Ragayev, the cleaning woman from the bakery who was killed. All other characacters are referred to by their positions: human resources manager, owner, office manager, consul, ex-husband, young son. It is a technique that works extremely well for the style of the novel. I especially liked the italicized inserts of the thoughts of random bystanders to the story line: the bakery's shift workers, Yulia's neighbor's, her mother's fellow villagers.

The story line certainly sounds dreary and depressing, but it is ultimately a story of hope and humor. The final scenes may not appeal to many readers, but I felt they were perfectly appropriate to the characters Yehoshua created. This is the first of his novels I have read, it will certainly not be the last.

The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin

2007-09-15T18:12:00.000-05:00

The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a rare, beautifully-written book that explores a fundamental theme: where the choices we make in our lives take us.

Sukhanov, a 56-year-old art critic in Moscow in the mid-1980s, who long ago "sold out" to have a financially comfortable life in a country that does not respect true art, finds that his walled-off past is starting to invade the present. Little by little, triggered by incidents in the present day, he faces the choices he has made over the years. The wall does not come tumbling down neatly, brick by brick, but rather like it has sprung occasional leaks. Sukhanov races to repair the damage again and again, reasserting his stuffy, arrogant self each time.

The attacks from his past come in the form of dreams, both while he sleeps and when he is awake, and without warning. The drifting into dreams become more frequent, and eventually we begin to enter Sukhanov's mind ourselves, as the third-person narrative increasingly slides into the first.

While the dreams threaten to take over, the present does not stop trotting along, plunging Sukhanov into a world he had for so long tried to avoid. Assailed from the present as well as the past, Sukhanov eventually finds escape.

In addition to exploring Sukhanov's personal demons, Grushin brings us into the world of art, particularly surrealist and impressionist art. As other reviewers have noted, the writing itself is often impressionistic and nearly surreal. Just as the great impressionist painters were able to bring their visions to a diverse audience, so is Grushin able to paint so that we understand, and at the same time we sometimes gasp with wonder.

After This - kookiejar's review

2007-09-14T07:09:00.001-05:00

This book truly was a 'challenge'. It was a challenge to stay awake long enough to finish it.

I know I shouldn't say things like that, but it's the truth.

Here we follow the courtship and then marriage of John and Mary Keane. They end up having four children and we see little vingettes of their lives as they move through the landscape of 50's and 60's America.

The children grow and struggle as we all do and people will continue to do until we are extinct. Therefore, what is the new ground being broken here? None.

What is gripping or interesting or thought provoking about this novel? Nothing.

Someone else, with a different perspective needs to read this and tell me I'm wrong, but until then I'm giving this book 4 yawns.

Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski

2007-09-10T09:55:00.000-05:00

Metromix has posted this interview with Mark Z. Danielewski. In part, the interview explores his unusual way of relating the story:

Sam and Hailey, two teenage lovers, race through history and across America, while their distinct voices gather in a geographic fashion on different parts of the book’s pages, forcing the reader to turn the book, quite literally, upside-down and sideways to keep up. What to make of it? We spoke with Danielewski—who reads at Skylight Books on Thursday—during a recent sweltering afternoon in Los Angeles.

You’ve spoken about the “wonderful analogue qualities of paper, especially paper that is bound together in book form.”
Definitely. A book, I maintain, is still the most efficacious way of communicating and translating information. There’s an enormous amount of information available from a book. Images provide a certain type of information, but it tends to be just static information. You can see what Iraq looks like to no end in sight, but when you’re reading a book on the Iraq war, you’re getting a far denser amount of information.

There is some interesting stuff on Only Revolutions.

The Echo Maker - Wendy's Review

2007-09-06T14:04:00.001-05:00

All the humans revered Crane, the great orator. Where cranes gathered, their speech carried miles. The Aztecs called themselves the Crane People. One of the Anishinaabe clans was named the Cranes - Ajijak or Businassee - the Echo Makers. The Cranes were leaders, voices that called all people together. Crow and Cheyenne carved cranes' leg bones into hollow flutes, echoing the echo maker. -From The Echo Maker, page 181-

Richard Power's novel - The Echo Maker - is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Award. Beneath a simple story lies complex questions about self and memory. How does memory define who we are? Is our sense of self and the larger world just a series of synapses and neurons firing or is it something bigger?

The novel begins with a horrific car accident along the Platte River during the annual crane migration. Mark Schulter survives the crash, but is left with a rare and devastating brain injury called Capgras Syndrome. Believing his sister, Karin, is really an imposter who is pretending to be his sister, Mark's recovery from his injuries takes the reader along a winding path of self-discovery, misidentification, conspiracies, and the complex and sometimes fragile nature of relationships. Powers constructs the novel around four major characters: Mark Schulter, his sister Karin, a renowned scientist named Gerald Weber, and Barbara Gillespie - a nursing home aide who is surrounded by mystery. It is not only Mark who struggles with his identity. Karin, a woman who has tried unsuccessfully to shed her past, finds herself searching to re-define it.

When Mark was himself again, she would restart them both. She'd get him on his feet, listen to him, help him find what he need to be. And this time she'd take him away with her, someplace reasonable. -From The Echo Maker, page 26-

Making herself over, personality du jour. Imagination, even memory, all too ready to accommodate her, whoever her is. Anything for a scratch behind the ears. Scratch from anyone. She is nothing. No one. Worse than no one. Blank at the core. She must change her life. From the mess of her fouled nest, salvage something. Anything. -From The Echo Maker, page 407-

Gerald Weber is shocked to discover that perhaps he is only defined by the way others perceive him - that perhaps his life's work is no more than a critics review: He'd let his critics convince him. Something had eroded, the core pleasure in his accomplishment. - From The Echo Maker, page 315-

This novel is meant to be read slowly - it is a thoughtful novel, and one that is challenging on an intellectual level. Powers deftly constructs a story which questions the very core of who we are and how self is defined - a fascinating treatise about what makes us human. The backdrop of Nebraska and its incredible crane migration - an astounding feat of migratory memory and ritual - is a fitting symbol of the novel's thematic content. With a surprising twist at the end, the novel is ultimately a satisfying read.

Recommended; Rated 4.5/5; read my original review here.

Wendy's Preliminary List

2007-09-06T12:00:00.001-05:00

Books completed are highlighted in red. This is my preliminary list (subject to change of course!):

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Completed January 7, 2007. Rated 5/5)
Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky (Completed February 17, 2007. Rated 5/5)
The Translator, by Leila Aboulela (Completed March 23, 2007. Rated 4.5/5)
Only Revolutions, by Mark Z. Danielewski (DNF - horrible book)
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai (Completed March 16, 2007. Rated 4.25/5)
Old Filth, by Jane Gardam (Completed May 29, 2007. Rated 3.75/5)
Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (Completed March 5, 2007. Rated 3.75/5)
All Aunt Hagar's Children, by Edward P. Jones
Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury
Lisey's Story, by Stephen King
The Inhabited World, by David Long
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (Completed May 17, 2007. Rated 5/5)
The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud (Completed December 12, 2007. Rated 4/5)
Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (Completed March 26, 2007. Rated 5/5)
Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta (Completed May 22, 2007. Rated 3.5/5)
Digging to America, by Anne Tyler
A Woman in Jerusalem, by A.B. Yehoshua
Alentjo Blue, by Monica Ali (Completed February 22, 2008. Rated 4.5/5)
One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson
The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers (Completed September 6, 2007. Rated 4.5/5)
Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes (Completed April 30, 2007. Rated 4/5)

Amy's Progress

2007-09-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

I didn't manage to get any books read for this challenge in August. However, I have two sitting here that I hope to get to in September:

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Pollan
Half of a Yellow Sun - Adichie

I have completed:

The Ghost Map- Johnson
The Keep - Egan
The Inhabited World - Long
The Road - McCarthy

Hope to read yet this year:

The Translator - Aboulela
Black Swan Green - Mitchell
A Woman in Jerusalem - Yehoshua
The Inheritance of Loss - Desai
Suite Francaise - Nemirovsky
Alentejo Blue - Ali

As you can see, I am hopelessly behind but I will keep plugging along.

Laura's Review: The Road

2007-09-02T19:35:00.000-05:00

The Road
Cormac MacCarthy
241 pages

First sentence: When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.

Reflections: A man and his son set out on a journey across a country which has been destroyed in some kind of apocalyptic event. This event apparently took place several years ago, but everything is still covered in ash. No life remains in the towns, and there are usually signs of a hasty departure, of townspeople fleeing to safety. Very few were spared; bodies appear in buidings, and even in the middle of the road. It is not clear how or why the man and boy survived up to this point. Now they are on their way south, hopeful of finding a better place.

Survival skills are paramount. Bands of robbers roam the land, looting and killing. Survivors often resort to cannibalism. The contents of homes and stores have usually been ransacked by travellers and bandits. Yet the man and boy explore every building they come across. Occasionally they find something: blankets, clothes, or food. At the same time, MacCarthy's describes in great detail these once-fashionable houses, in a way that made me question why we place so much importance on our homes and other material possessions.

The man's deep love for the boy permeates every sentence in this book. The emotional intensity is evident both in their will to live and in the ways they care for one another. MacCarthy manages to convey this deep feeling through the most basic dialogue, as in this example when they have just come across a bountiful store of food:

Go ahead, he said. Don't let it get cold.
What do I eat first?
Whatever you like.
Is this coffee?
Yes. Here. You put the butter on your biscuits. Like this.
Okay.
...
Do you think we should thank the people?
The people?
The people who gave us all this.
Well. Yes, I guess we could do that.

The most haunting aspect of this book was the boy's mother's death. She apparently committed suicide when it became evident the world as she knew it would be destroyed. She preferred to end her life; the man chose to remain with his son and try to survive. When considering what path I would choose, I realized how difficult this decision could be. There really is no correct answer.

This is a beautifully-written book that will remain with me for a very long time. ( )
Original review can be found here.

My First DNF for this Challenge - Wendy's non-review of Only Revolutions

2007-08-30T16:33:00.000-05:00

There are very few books I do not finish. Mark Danielewski's Only Revolutions is one of them. Unfortunately I bought this book off of Amazon before going to the bookstore and thumbing through it (my usual routine). Had I read even one page, I never would have wasted my money. I've never read a Danielewski book before so I don't know if this novel is representative of his usual style...or if he was just tripping on LSD when he sat down to write it. I couldn't make any sense of the book - there are multiple threads of writing (both forwards and backwards and in the margins) and it is just a jumble of words. Why this book was chosen as a NYT Most Notable is beyond me. I can't even imagine anyone actually reading the whole thing. What a disappointment. Now I have to decide what to do with it - any suggestions?

Wendy's July/August Update

2007-08-30T14:39:00.000-05:00

August 30, 2007: You're off the hook, Kookie! I didn't even get 10 pages into Only Revolutions before I gave up. I'm faring better with The Echo Maker...I MIGHT get through it before the month ends!

August 7, 2007: Well I did not read even one of these books in July ... sigh ... I am sinking fast with my challenges lately. Too busy. And I hate that. BUT, I refuse to give up and hope I can get to at least a couple of these books in August. Kookie - if I manage to get through Only Revolutions, I expect a party *big grin*

Oh, this has been a heck of a summer for me. I'm not really complaining - but, my consulting business has suddenly gotten very busy (I picked up a new HUGE contract and will be doing some consulting for the State of California on top of that). I am sad to say, I am falling behind in some challenges. I had planned to read several NYT Most Notables in July and probably will not even get to one. At any rate, I have these as my next "picks" to read:

Only Revolutions (which I half expect to be a DNF given the crappy reviews it has seen) DNF - hated it; I rate it a big fat zero
The Emperor's Child
A Woman in Jerusalem
Gate of the Sun
The Echo Maker If I'm lucky, I'll finish this one before the end of the month!

Wish me luck!!!

Laura's Review: Arthur and George

2007-08-26T19:44:00.000-05:00

Arthur and George
Julian Barnes
441 pages

First sentence: A child wants to see.

Reflections: This book was a Booker Prize finalist, and a 2006 New York Times Notable Book, so what took me so long to read it? It kept calling to me everytime I visited a bookstore, and after a while I finally gave in and bought it in a "3 for 2" sale at Borders. Even then it took a while to reach the top of my TBR pile, but I can say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Arthur and George is the story of two men from very different backgrounds, whose lives become entwined in a most unusual way. Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. George Edalji is a solicitor who is wrongly imprisoned for crimes committed in his village. The characters are first introduced as boys. Arthur is the son of an alcoholic father, who is largely absent. His mother figures prominently in his life, and Arthur seemingly wants for nothing. George, the son of a vicar, grows up in a repressive environment with virtually no friends. Arthur moves through education and military service with ease, marries, and joins London society. George struggles to establish himself as a solicitor in Birmingham, while continuing to live with his parents. George begins to receive anonymous, threatening letters, and at the same time village livestock are being brutally murdered in the middle of the night. George is accused and convicted of these crimes, and serves a 3-year prison sentence. Meanwhile, Arthur leads a prosperous life, although his wife has become an invalid and his true love waits patiently for the inevitable to occur.

Arthur and George do not meet until more than halfway through the book, when Arthur becomes interested in George's case, and begins to investigate what really happened. While initially a character study, at this point the book begins to read more like a detective novel, and I was unable to put it down. Barnes held my interest throughout this book with his deft turns of phrase (my favorite: "They squelched through the consequences of a herd of cows..."), and his use of authentic letters and newspaper accounts from the period. Highly recommended! ( )

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala - Sally906's review

2007-08-24T15:17:00.000-05:00

Review also posted here

This is my seventh book of this challenge - which is 3 more than I planned to read. I am going to say that I have met this challenge now. BUT I know me too well and am sure to read more books from this list as they become available to me. So while the pressure of "the challenge' is off - you will still get the odd review or two from now until the end of the year.

Finished: 23/08/07
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 177
Rated: A
Cover: Paperback

Opening Sentence: "...It is starting like this..."

It was very hard to read this book for a couple of reasons. Firstly I did not like the grammatical way it was written - I know what the writer was trying to do. This is the story of a young boy, who, although bright, was not well schooled - so it was written in the way such a child would speak, think and write. The second reason is the horrific content. Having said that - both of the reasons I found the book hard to read are the reasons I have given it an A.

Agu is a small boy who is forcibly, and violently coerced into joining a rebel army in an unnamed African country. Later in the book we find out that he has just seen his father killed by the same group of men. Through Agu's eyes we are given a horrific glimpse into what the life of a child soldier, with all of its responsibilities and humiliations, might possibly be like.

Soon after he joins he is told to kill or be killed. Killing will make him happy, like making love, neither concept fully understood by a young boy of nine. What he does understand in his terror, is that by doing as the Commandant demands - he may just live another day. So he does what he is told he— hacks people to death, he burns houses, shoots, rapes, maims - basically kills — without complaining.

He endures hunger, disease and the nightly sexual molestations of the Commandant, because he is simply too young to know how to get out of it. He thinks of his mother and sister, who were evacuated to safety by NATO, constantly, apologising in his mind to them for the things he does. He was brought up with Christian values, so he knows the life he is living is totally the opposite to how a Christian should live. He sobs to God that he is a really good boy, on the outside he is a doing bad things, but really inside where it counts, he is a good boy.

Agu tells us his story in a mixture of local language, biblical imagery, childish thinking and military slang; and it just breaks your heart. We see his confusion, his shame, his fear, his occasional bravado and pride, but most of all, we see his unrelenting horror.

Everyman by Philip Roth: Dewey's review

2007-08-22T17:37:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at my blog.

Everyman is the first Roth book I've read, and it definitely makes me want to read more of his work. But it was terrifying. It begins with the funeral of the main character, then flashes back through his life, ending with his death. I'm not uncomfortable with the idea of death -- I've worked in a funeral home. But I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of the increased health problems that often become the focus of life as one ages. The unnamed main character, like Roth himself, finds himself suffering repeated hospitalizations. I found the detailed descriptions of the illnesses of this man in his 70s frightening and disturbing. His death almost came as a relief for me, as I imagine it does for many chronically ill people. By the way, mentioning his death isn't a spoiler; the book opens with his funeral.

The main character's life is fairly empty due to a lot of burned bridges with his family members and the loss of connection with his friends once he retires. He's been married (and divorced) three times, and his two children from his first marriage, angry their entire lives about the divorce, aren't on speaking terms with him. He does have a close, rewarding relationship with his daughter from his second marriage, but he's very aware that being the only person she's close to may be somewhat a burden for her. He has very little or no contact with his former wives; his parents are dead; and his brother, though probably the person he's cared most about in his life, has a very active life rich with family on the other side of the U.S., and the main character feels a bit disconnected from him and his children. He's a lonely man, as many older people seem to be.

He doesn't seem to have much to do during the day; he keeps active, exercising twice a day, but that's about all he has planned for each day. He used to paint and even give painting classes to other retirees, but gave up on it. He doesn't seem to read. Unlike most of the elderly neighbors I've had, he doesn't spend all day watching TV.

I guess I've always expected to be an older person much like Wallace in Wallace and Gromit. I expect to have a companion, though preferably a human (my husband, I hope!) instead of a dog. I expect to have passionate interests, such as Wallace's mechanical contraptions, his gardening, and his self-employment. I've assumed my interests as an older person would be pretty much the same interests I have now. But in Everyman, the main character seems to lose interest in what he used to love, even in what he had spent his younger life assuming he'd pursue during retirement, his painting. I'm not sure that's true for everyone; I have friends and acquaintances the age of the main character who still keep active and busy.

I marked a few favorite passages:

"There's no remaking reality," she told him. "Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes."

I both love and loathe this passage. I love it because it's the main character's daughter, at his funeral, repeating a maxim she'd heard her father use many times in the past. I loathe it because it's so resigned, so defeatist, such an assumption that life will always be a trial.

It was inexplicable to him -- the excitement they could seriously persist in deriving from his denunciation. He had done what he did the way that he did it as they did what they did the way they did it. Was their steadfast posture of unforgivingness any more forgivable? Or any less harmful in its effect?

This is the main character thinking about his broken relationships with his sons. He goes on to think that as he had never abused them or even been strict, they shouldn't hold a life-long grudge against him because he could no longer tolerate marriage to their mother. I like the spirit of letting go of grudges here. I agree with the main character that one should save long-term unforgivingness for more heinous transgressions such as abuse.

Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious folderol meaningless, childish, couldn't stand the complete unadultness -- the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers.

This passage is part of the section that Roth chose to read aloud in an NPR interview with him, and I appreciated being able to hear him expand upon his feelings about religion. Although I like to consider myself more tolerant of others' beliefs than the main character of Everyman is, I do share his puzzlement about it. Roth's interviewer seems to find herself puzzled by Roth's descriptions of religion as "irrational" and "delusioned," since she brings the topic back to religion a couple times in the interview, seemingly trying to get him to admit that he does have some sort of religious beliefs, or at least that he does understand why others do. He remains polite but firm in his stance.

I think this firmness is one of the things I found most interesting in the novel. I kept expecting the main character to develop religious convictions as I've seen some of the older people in my family do after a lifetime of indifference to it. I've always assumed that this is driven by a fear of death, of wanting to reconcile with whatever higher power one might meet after death. But the main character (and Roth himself, exactly the same age as his character) remain secular as mortality approaches.

At the same site where you can hear Roth's NPR interview, you can also read the first chapter.

Reading a Guardian interview, I came to the conclusion that Roth would despise this post, and probably book blogging in general. He says:

I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk. Fairytale talk. As soon as you generalise, you are in a completely different universe than that of literature, and there's no bridge between the two.

The Possibility of an Island --kookiejar's review

2007-08-21T10:45:00.000-05:00

It is the distant future and humans have more or less (through war, famine and apathy) died out. The only hope for mankind is the 150 clones who have been charged with keeping the story of our lives alive.

Daniel1 is a comedy writer in our present day who feels doomed by his fast approaching golden years. He has a much younger girlfriend who hasn't told anyone (including her sister) of their relationship. Daniel1 asks her why...

"She replied after a few minutes reflection, in a pensive voice: 'I think she is going to find you too old...' Yes, that was it, the moment she said it I knew it was true, and the revelation caused me no surprise, it was like the echo of a dull, not unexpected shock. The age difference was the last taboo... In the modern world you could be a swinger, bi, trans, zoo, into S & M, but it was forbidden to be old."

Daniel1, feeling more and more despondant takes up with a cult called the Elohim who promise everlasting life. They are correct to a point. They have figured out how to clone humans. These clones are then charged to study the lives of the clones who preceeded them.

The novel is told from the point of view of Daniel25 as he looks at not only his own life, but the life of the original Daniel.

As I was reading, questions kept popping up, the hows and why kept me guessing. I was sure there would be no concrete answers but to my delight there were. Every question was answered to my satisfaction and the final two chapters made me glad I finished this challenging, and at times frustrating novel.

You don't need to enjoy science fiction to like this, but I must warn you that there is lots of (at times) graphic and gratuitous sex that will turn off certain readers.

What's it REALLY like to be a 13-year old Boy?

2007-08-17T12:19:00.000-05:00

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (294 pgs, Random House) answers that very question. I choose this book to read as a part of the NY Times Notable Challenge, and I'm certainly glad I did!

Black Swan Green is the name of the small village in Worcestershire where 13-year-old Jason Taylor lives. It's a sleepy little village minus the swans. The year is 1982, and Jason is trying to navigate his way through a maze of difficulties: bullies at school, trying to blend in, overcoming a stammer that could label him forever, parents at war with each other, an older sister that calls him "The Thing", a war in the Falklands, and gypsies that have taken up residence is the village. Can life really be so difficult at 13? You bet it can!
Eliot Bolivar is a poet that submits his writing to the local parish magazine. He is talented and writes eloquently. And he is actually Jason Taylor, our 13-year-old antagonist. But really, could a kid hold up his head in school if he admits to being a POET? I think not!

This book is chocked full of insight. It is exactly one year in the life of Jason Taylor. Mitchell's writing is so fantastic, you can actually see through the eyes of this boy. At first, it was a bit difficult to understand some of the British phrasing and terms, but that didn't stop any enjoyment I felt reading this book. When Jason was called on to read aloud in class, I actually could FEEL his fear in the pit of MY stomach. Trying to navigate through school without being seen, not popular enough to be part of the in-crowd, and not detested enough to be one of the lepers, Jason tries hard to fit in. And he has to fit in in a way that lets him live with himself.

One of my favorite passages in the book comes right at the end: "The world's a Headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or a Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever, or , one day, you DO notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about THAT hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps. There are always more."

The entire book is filled with this type of writing and insight. The characters are all well-rounded, simple yet complex. This book will make you laugh and it will make you cry. And it will make you exceedingly glad that you never have to go through that horrible time in life again. I would recommend it whole-heartedly! 4.5/5

(this review was orinally published on my blog, Stephanie's Confessions of a Bookaholic)

Giving Up

2007-08-14T19:18:00.001-05:00

Originally posted here.

I am about 50 pages into "Eat the Document"and I once again find myself avoiding reading. So, I am calling it quits. It really is too bad because at first I was interested but the book keeps switching around and I haven’t ever really caught on to what’s going on. This may be one I come back to when I am in a different mood.

On a different note, I have joined the Book Around the World Challenge and I have added some books to my list that fit that challenge and this one. Here are my added titles that I hope to read yet this year:

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngochi Adichie
The Translator - Leila Aboulela
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
A Woman in Jerusalem - A.B. Yehoshua
The Inheritance of Loss Kiran Desai
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
Alentejo Blue - Monica Ali

This makes me feel better since 3 of my4 DNF's for this year are NYT Notables. It can only get better, right?

The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson

2007-08-11T11:35:00.000-05:00

After reading The Great Influenza I became newly interested in the way diseases are spread. That book details not only the lives of the many persons involved in research and public health responses to the influenza of 1918, but also details the lives of the virus itself. I was interested in another outbreak, this time of cholera, in London in 1854. Specifically, I was interested in The Ghost Map. [links are to my amazon store]

The cholera outbreak lasted just about a week, the worst of it anyway, but it was horrifying in its proportions. It also was hardly the first or last time the disease devastated a city. This time, according to Steven Johnson's uncomplicated telling, science ultimately got the better of it.

The two principals responsible for discovering and alerting the health boards and the population to how the disease is transmitted were John Snow, physician, and Henry Whitehead, cleric. Both were young at the time and both observant and given to a questioning state of mind. They ultimately clashed with the popular theory at the time that diseases such as cholera are spread by "miasma" - smells in the air. The worse the smell, the more saturated is the air with disease. Snow suspected, instead, that water carried the disease, even though at the time there was no germ theory and he had no idea what form it took. Whitehead used his social skills and observant mind to bring together the closest to absolute proof that Snow was right.

The story doesn't end with this discovery. All do not live happily ever after.

The public health response was less than ideal, and it was several years before Snow's theory was accepted and acted upon. The response was remarkable, though. A major sanitary sewer project was undertaken that is still in use today. When it was complete the citizens were no longer drinking each other's bodily waste. And cholera could no longer get a foothold.

The real thesis of The Ghost Map is not the telling of this story. It is the implications for urban life today and in the future. Before Snow burst on the scene cities were reaching such proportions that residents lived in daily fear for their lives. It was commonly assumed that large cities would reach some critical mass when the numbers could no longer sustain themselves, spelling the death of the metropolis. Dealing with the daily waste of large numbers of persons appeared an impossible task that would ultimately limit the viability of the city itself. Snow's discovery and the construction of a workable sewer system changed all that. Which is why Johnson's position is that science can conquer almost everything.

It is only in the epilogue that Johnson's short, readable book that this thesis comes to life, rather like an indomitable puppy dog, expecting only the best. He expounds briefly on how viruses and bacteria mutate rapidly (within a day a virus can go through thousands of variations) and then blithely states that our masses of scientists, with our modern technology, can surely keep ahead of this curve.

Even if it were true that scientists are even now creating every possible variation on a virus and finding a vaccine for each, he ignores another significant element: the public health response. We have seen in this book that public health officials held the old-line views on miasma and hindered rather than helped the response in 1854. Similarly during the Katrina hurricane response we found that although the science was there it was not in use.

I can't buy Johnson's cheery prognosis. He ignores the far more complicated science of these disease elements that is described in great detail in that other book, The Great Influenza. He largely ignores the ignorance of the public at large and its alarming attachment to the supernatural. Most importantly, he ignores the political animal that determines how a health crisis will be met.

This book is an engaging story of one outbreak. It is well-written and informative and it includes genuine heroes. Read it for that story. For any theory of the future it would be better to read a more thorough discourse on public health issues, including The Great Influenza.

"Black Swan Green" reviewed by Ariel/Sycorax Pine

2007-08-10T19:36:00.000-05:00

[Review originally posted at Sycorax Pine]

Once a poem's left home it doesn't care about you. (146)

Jason Taylor is a thirteen year old bastion of early 80s suburban torment, child to sniping parents, terrified into sullenness by his own stammer, desperate to maintain his middle-ranking status at his comprehensive school (not cool enough to hang out with the bullies, not geeky - or noticeable - enough to be consistently targeted by them), and excruciatingly baffled by his own sexuality.

Eliot Bolivar, by contrast, is a dashing poet, published in the Black Swan Green parish newsletter, capable of transforming the torture of Jason's daily social encounters into the meat of poetic observation.

And no one knows that these two people are in fact the same - or so Jason believes.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell - whose Cloud Atlas was so acclaimed and has sat neglected on my shelf for too long - is a detailed study of the mundane events of Jason's youth: the slow disintegration of his parents' marriage, his fear of their judgement, his daily struggle with thuggish brutes who either want to coopt him or pummel him, and his encounters with a series of flamboyant teachers. Most notable of these teachers is the forceful Madame Crommelynck, an aggressive bohemian who promises to nurture him as a poet. He is entranced by her artistic background, complete with a romantic genius of a father, a suicidal lover, and a flight from the Nazis, and pores over the artefacts and photographic remnants of that past:

A bride and groom pose outside a flinty chapel. Bare twigs says it's winter. The groom's thin lips say, Look what I've got. A top hat, a cane, half fox. But the bride's half lioness. Her smile's the idea of a smile. She knows more about her new husband than he knows about her. Above the church door a stone lady gazes up at her stone knight. Flesh-and-blood people in photographs look at the camera, but stone people look through the camera straight at you. (157)

You can see here the spareness of Mitchell's language, but also a playfulness with both word and image that we see more often in poetry than prose. Does the groom's "Look what I've got" encompass the bride, or simply the trappings of privilege - the hat, cane, fur? Is the half fox merely an item, or is it a description of him, the equivalent of her "half lioness"? The inanimate eyes of the statue can see through history straight into Jason's secrets, as if bodies that have never lived are exempt from the strictures of time and pretense.

For a time it seems that we know what kind of a coming-of-age story this will be - a tale of mentoring, in which the quirky guidance of the epigrammatic Mme. Crommelynck will guide Jason into a more honest sense of self. But then Madame is whisked away, a victim to her own secrets, and it becomes clear that in Black Swan Green as in Harry Potter, teachers can't do the working of growing up for you.

Primary school seemed so huge then. How can you be sure anything is ever its real size? (226)

At first the youthful concerns of the novel (bullying, nascent sexuality, parental approval, being perceived as cool), its diction that perches precariously between surly catchphrases ("That's epic!") and self-conscious poetry, and its gleeful insistence on reminding us just what 1982 looked like culturally, may fool you (as it did me) into thinking that it is a surprisingly slight book. But oddities recur with literary frequency. Ringing phones haunt the households Jason occupies and visits, the unheard and ignored voices on the other end implying the mundane catastrophes that lie in wait for the houses' secrets to be made known. Secrets are the core of this novel, and, it reveals, at the core of virtually every YA novel, after-school special, and coming-of-age story. Puberty is the time when, new to the capacity for certain types of abstract thought and awoken by sexuality to new dimensions of social belonging and exclusion, we are forced to make decisions (seemingly final, but not truly so) about our identity, both about how we see ourselves and how we wish others to see us.

In one of the novel's most delightful scenes, another of Jason's many teacher-figures gives her class a truly brilliant lesson on secrecy, beginning with this exchange:

"But what is a secret?"
It takes everyone a bit of time to get going after lunch.
"Well, say, is a secret a thing you can see? Touch?"
Avril Bredon put her hand up.
"Avril?"
"A secret's a piece of information that not everyone knows."
"Good. A piece of information that not everyone knows. Information about ... who? You? Somebody else? Something? All of these?"
After a gap, a few kids murmured, "All of these."
"Yes, I'd say so too. But ask yourselves this. Is a secret a secret if it isn't true?" (264)

Reputation and the construction of identities is at the core of all this secrecy. Jason's stutter is among his biggest secrets, but it quickly becomes obvious that only he considers it so. But this is because it is something he believes both defines him and should not define him. What will happen, he has to ask himself, if the bullies at school find that he is Eliot Bolivar? They will exclude and persecute him; he will never belong. But does he want to be a poet or does he want to be a bully?

There is a wooded area of Black Swan Green, a town that is a transitional hybrid between a yuppie suburb and a farming community, where the kids go to play out games of violence and connection, and to which Jason flees whenever he wants to escape the pressure of quotidian secrecy. This is truly a "green world" in Northrop Frye's usage, a liminal space to play out forbidden struggles with eros and thanatos, a parallel reality that both defies the structures of normalcy and order and provides its citizens with a place to purge iconoclastic impulses, enabling their safe return to the status quo (A Midsummer Night's Dream, by the way, is the most frequently cited example of a "green world").

The novel in fact begins in this green world, when a pond amidst the trees freezes over and Jason, left alone there, becomes convinced that he can sense all the children who have ever drowned in its waters. He seeks shelter in a cottage straight out of Germanic fairy tale, where he has an encounter so surreal it feels truly baffling, as if we really had suddenly plunged into a folkloric world of magic and madness.

And then the chapter ends, and the incident evaporates as if it had never happened. The only evidence that remains of it is a broken watch, left to Jason by his grandfather, that our hero has smacked against the ice. [My review may contain some SPOILERS about the formal construction of the novel from this point onward.] This is a frequently used strategy of the novel's: chapters end on almost cliffhanging notes of drama, and new ones begin on the next page in an entirely different mental and narrative state. Mitchell repeatedly denies us the satisfaction of resolution and anti-climax over the course of the novel, a device that I found at first disorienting and manipulative.

As the novel progresses, however, we become aware that these narrative disruptions are at least in part a result of the fact that Jason is writing this story, cathartically transforming his painful, mundane life into the stuff of folktales and adventure stories. This is a thrilling realization and it underscores the lightly experiment nature of the novel's construction. The possibility that some of the tale might be fiction and some reality, and that we as readers will never be fully aware of which is which, speaks to all the books most beloved issues of identity-creation and secrecy.

In the final chapters, however, the plot-lines that unraveled so marvelously after each of the abandoned cliffhangers are all tied neatly together. I have to imagine that this is the same feeling Jason got when he discovered, towards the end of the novel, that the forest, his rampaging and chaotic green world, is in fact about the size of a small field: the deflating knowledge that convention has triumphed over the creative richness of uncertainty.

Despite this final feeling of slight deflation, this was a novel that won me over quickly with its wit and readability. In its aftermath, I found myself wishing that I had anything even half as gripping to read. But, alas, once a book has left, it doesn't care about you.

Black Swan Green (2006)
David Mitchell
****

Catching up

2007-08-09T19:02:00.000-05:00

I was on the road for over a month (long story, not sensible to tell it here) and I didn't bring my notable books with me. I read junk instead. So now I am catching up, and realizing I have forgotten which books I chose to read! So I am listing here those I have read and those I am about to read or am starting already.

I committed to twelve books for this year. So far I have read:

A Strange Piece of Paradise
The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Amateur Marriage
The Most Famous Man in America

I am currently reading The Ghost Map.

I have started The Worst Hard Time. And I have obtained The Dream Life of Sukhanov.

So that's six. I don't remember if I already chose the other six. No matter. I will.

Just writing this helps me stay on track and makes me feel better!

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

2007-08-09T18:54:00.000-05:00

It all comes down to a meal.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes four specific meals but they collapse into one: what you are eating tonight.

Pollan asks the question, where does my food come from? In this amazing book that defies easy cataloging, he does his best to discover the origins of four different meals, progressing from the "industrial" to the foraged (hunted and gathered).

He discovers that "industrial meals", including fast food, come from corn. The many uses to which corn is put is flabbergasting by itself. Following its trip from a farm in Kansas to a McDonald's in Berkeley, though, is disturbing.

He follows the corn to the beef cow that first spends an idyllic six months, more or less, living on grassy hillsides, but then is introduced to the corn mixtures at a factory farm, in an environment that words cannot adequately describe. Cows are not meant to eat corn, so the grain is sliced into wafers to make it more digestible and the cows are bred to tolerate it. The small saving grace here is that the life of this animal isn't long.

Pollan looks at the other parts of the meal as well, but not so intensely. In fact, it is the meat part of the meal that seems to interest him most throughout this book. Which is not to say that vegetarians need not read this book. It has a great deal to say to all of us.

After eating a McDonald's meal on the road, Pollan moves to Big Organic, and shows us how organically-raised animals differ little in their experience of life from their industrial counterparts. Similarly organic crops are raised in a manner similar to large non-organic produce. The benefits are still there for humans, however. These fields don't contaminate water or air with toxic chemicals and our bodies get more nourishing food (Really. Several studies have now shown that organically-grown food has greater quantities of antioxidants and other nutrients that ward off disease). The down side is that "Big Organic" is not sustainable organic. Small Organic can be. And the animals are not treated as we'd like them to be treated. "Free range eggs?" If you get a chance to see one of these operations you'll laugh at the term.

The third meal comes from a "Beyond Organic" farm where cattle, chickens, turkeys, and other animals are raised in such a sustainable manner that their existence actually enhances the quality of the land. This remarkable farm is run by Joel Salatin, a third-generation beyond-organic farmer. The farm doesn't run itself. The workers spend long days moving animals, cutting hay, processing chickens, doing whatever needs to be done, and something always needs to be done. But the result speaks for itself: a farm run on almost nothing beyond human labor and some power for some equipment. What is especially notable is that the farm's products are so desirable that people drive many miles to get them (Salatin refuses to ship anything because he doesn't want to add the cost of pollution to his bill). Polyface (the name of the farm) also supplies many top restaurants in the area and is sold at farmers' markets.

An ideal farm if it could be replicated all over this country. However, such farms must be run by knowledgable "grass farmers", which is antithetical to the common model for large farms. Factory farms rely on cheap, ignorant labor. Polyface relies on committed, intelligent management. Could be done, though. Salatin feels that when enough people "opt out" of the current mode then factory farms really could become extinct.

The fourth meal is one that Pollan prepares from food he hunted or gathered himself, with a few exceptions. All local, regardless. He spends months learning how to forage and to hunt and finally pulls it all together in a meal he serves to special friends who helped him along the way. This one he dubs "the perfect meal". Not because it tastes better than all the others but because he feels it expresses his gratitude for every item in it. In eating this meal it appears that Pollan reached back into pre-history and felt at home.

I had some quibbles with a segment on vegetarianism and animal rights, because, contrary to how generously he treats others with differing points of view, Pollan actually ridicules animal rights people. Because I am one myself, I was offended not just because of his attitude but because he failed to realize that we are not all the same. Some of the arguments he made against vegetarianism can easily be refuted, but I won't go into that diversion here. Enough to say that he doesn't get much of it right, although he gets more right than many others I know.

This one quibble, which looms rather large in my mind, still did not affect my overall impression of the book. I believe that anyone reading this book will have the tools to make intelligent decisions about how they eat. More, I believe that there are some simple changes that can be made to the law to discourage the production of cheap corn and its trail of toxicity. Knowledge is power.
4.5 out of 5 stars

The Most Famous Man in America, by Debbie Applegate

2007-08-08T13:41:00.000-05:00

The Most Famous Man in America: the biography of Henry Ward Beecher [link takes you to my amazon store], is a comprehensive, exhaustive story of Beecher's life, written almost like a novel. The book introduces us to a vaguely familiar figure in American history and brings him to sparkling life, complete with a look at his famous family and the scandal that later almost destroyed him.

Henry Ward Beecher was one of Lyman Beecher's children, and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lyman became well-known as a preacher in his time, as a strict Calvinist, a believer in the old testament way of seeing God: vengeful, punishing. He was known for following his own strict code of ethics, but at home he was a loving, forgiving father. Unlike many evangelical Christians today, he also believed strongly in education and questioning, encouraging all of his children to learn all they could.

Lyman wanted all of his sons to follow him into the ministry. Eventually, hesitantly, Henry did just that.

From childhood, though, Henry did not resemble his father. He was easy-going, optimistic, playful. He made others laugh. He developed a vague sense that Lyman's view of God didn't mesh with Lyman's own actions, and he puzzled over the twisted logic needed to follow Calvinist tenets.

Over time, as much for self-acceptance as for any other reason, he strayed from the Calvinist and developed a view focused more on Jesus and on love. At first he took little steps away from his childhood teachings but eventually just threw the whole thing away, embracing not only love and forgiveness but even finding a way to meld the Bible's teachings with the early concepts of evolution.

Henry was a terrific orator. He discovered this talent early in school and eventually this is what made him most famous. What really drew them in, though, was his warmth. Over the years, as crisis followed scandal, he tended to emerge with his head above water mostly because of this capacity. People liked him.

Henry's unique brand of religion was more palatable than the old-style version. People liked to hear that there was hope for them, that when they sinned they were just human. Above all, Henry believed and taught that it is "more important to do good than to be good."

It's clear from his life in this book that much of what he preached is what he wanted to hear himself. He was far from a saint. He overspent, went into debt constantly, enjoyed riches and good clothes, loved being with women. Later in life he even took up drinking (he did continue the church's teachings against drink, gambling,and prostitution throughout his life). Eventually his relationships with a few women led to a major scandal, bringing all of the pundits of the day well out in the open, destroying friendships, and sobering his effervescent personality.

Overshadowed by his large presence was his sharp, questioning intellect. Beecher became friends with several of the so-called transcendentalists, and in fact brought much of that high-minded philosophy down to earth, where he himself practiced it. He was passionately interested in science and in the origin of man as a biological being.

It was his radical approach to religion that earns him his place in history, however. Most modern churches follow his practice, so much so that we forget Christianity has not always preached love and forgiveness.

This biography is a sympathetic yet not sycophantic telling of the story. It's clear that Applegate likes what she knows of Beecher (and she knows a lot: she started this book as a thesis at Amherst, where Beecher went to college, and the librarians there led her to thousands of treasures about and by Beecher) but she does not let it cloud her vision. She tells it as it is, careful to specify what is known absolutely and what is not.

As a bonus,the story encompasses a wade swath of early American history. A significant portion of the book tells the tale of slavery and abolition. It is easy, sometimes, from the distance of time, to imagine that it was a simple situation: slavery is bad and therefore must go. But of course it was not simple. Lincoln himself famously said that he was for the union and if that meant slavery had to stay then it would; if that meant slavery had to go it would. In other words, political expediency outflanked moral obligations then as well as now.

What made Henry's sister Harriet's book (Uncle Tom's Cabin) so famous is that she made slaves human. This had not been done before. Critics now can easily rail against her sentimental writing and characters but those critics weren't there then. She wasn't a great writer but she said what others did not.

Henry, too, leaned toward abolition. But he wavered again and again, primarily for his own political reasons. He was no sturdy oak of principle. He would sacrifice principles and people to protect himself. Yet still people loved him. Perhaps because they saw much of themselves in him.

There was more to this extreme man than can possibly meet the eye today. This book helps us realize that and gives us an excellent picture of the times.

The Amateur Marriage, by Anne Tyler

2007-08-07T14:10:00.000-05:00

The Amateur Marriage follows two people with very different personalities who are flung together in wartime and decide to make a marriage of it.

Pauline is an energetic, attractive, talkative young woman, who likes to enjoy herself. Michael is quiet and reserved and likes to stay home.

Michael rather impetuously proposes to Pauline, remembering how she looked, how she ran toward him to say goodby when he was leaving for the war, her red coat flying behind her. At various times in his later life he remembers that moment and reaffirms his love for her.

The marriage has a rocky beginning. Pauline is expected to move into a tiny apartment above Michael's mother's store, and to live with Michael's mother. She manages to adjust to it but has her eye on a more suburban type life, which she ultimately obtains.

The two don't understand each other and it appears that neither knows quite what to do about it. The rocky beginning extends into the middle and further out into Pauline and Michael's time as grandparents. Through all these years the two struggle against each other's different ways of seeing the world but they never seem to make a real effort to bridge the gap. The marriage never gets past amateur status.

I felt that the descriptions of Pauline in particular are almost mocking, almost parody. Little episodes from their lives as it spans decades are drawn lightly and similarly with almost a smirk, mocking the age and the sensibilities of the time, and the nature of this woman. She isn't particularly likeable.

Michael is drawn with a little more affection, yet his stiffness is always apparent and often irritating. I found myself drawn more, at times, to the children.

Tyler seems to like looking back at the fifties and sixties in particular, and she has an ear for how it sounded, how people talked and thought then. Even though I felt the sets were accurate, I would have preferred more inside work, more of Pauline and Michael inside than out. It may be, of course, that the superficial way she does invade their consciousness does mimic how many in this generation did feel and think.

In general, I like Anne Tyler's work but feel that it touches me lightly rather than deeply. It makes me think a little but does not linger.

Lisey's Story: Dewey's review

2007-08-06T13:17:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at my blog.

Title, author, and date of book? Lisey's Story, Stephen King, 2006

Genre: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, history, etc.? Fiction. King generally writes horror, and there are aspects of that in this book, as well as thriller and fantasy.

What made you want to read it? Did it live up to your expectations? I generally read everything new that King publishes. No, it didn't really live up to my expectations. Since this was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, I expected it to be one of the best King novels. It's about average on my personal spectrum of King novels.

Summarize the book without giving away the ending. The main character, Lisey, is the widow of a famous writer. She's grieving as well as trying to process some of what she knows about her husband and his past, and trying to deal with an ill sister, and trying to deal with a deranged stalker.

What did you think of the main character? I thought she was very strong; she's one those quiet women you may not notice, but if you get to know them, you realize they're intelligent and strong as hell.

Which character could you relate to best, and why? I didn't relate to any of the characters. The main character, Lisey, has 20 million dollars, a dead husband and several sisters. She's the youngest in her family and she's never had a career. The only thing I really have in common with her is that I know what it's like to travel so much that it's not even fun any more. Her sister, Amanda, is catatonic through most of the novel, so it's hard to identify with her. I certainly don't identify with a male Pulitzer/NBA winning novelist. And most of all, I don't identify with a deranged, violent stalker.

Were there any other especially interesting characters? The dead writer has a father and brother that we meet through flashbacks to his childhood. They were some of the most interesting characters, for me.

Did you think the characters and their problems were believable? Well, no. But I don't think I'm meant to. There is another world that the characters visit in a vaguely Narnia-like way. Those who can visit that world have amazing healing powers.

From whose point of view is the story told? Lisey's.

Was location important to the story? There are a lot of references to King's fictional places in Maine. For details on those connections, click here.

Was the time period important to the story? It seemed more like current technology interfered with the story. For example, in order to make some of the isolation Lisey experiences more plausible, she had to be completely clueless about her own cell phone.

Was the story told chronologically? Was there foreshadowing? No, it wasn't told chronologically. There were a lot of flashbacks, both to the time that Scott (Lisey's husband) was alive and to Scott's and Lisey's childhoods. Yes, there was some foreshadowing.

Did you think the story was funny, sad, touching, disturbing, moving? It wasn't as sad and disturbing as it was probably meant to be. I think a stronger sense of grief was required from Lisey, whereas there was really more a problem-solving air about her.

What did you like most about the book? As always, I enjoyed King's wordplay.

What did you like least? The disgusting scenes featuring the violent stalker. But I think they were meant to be that disgusting.

Share a quote from the book. A "long boy" is a sort of monster from the alternate world the characters travel to.

Her own fear is so great it's incapacitating, and any sense of exhilaration at having him back is gone. Has he lived with this all his life? If so, how has he lived with it? But even now, in the extremity of her terror, she supposes she knows. Two things have tied him to the earth and saved him from the long boy. His writing is one. The other has a waist he an put his arms around and an ear into which he can whisper.

Share a favorite scene from the book. I have two favorite scenes.

In the first, Lisey and Scott are spending a winter in Germany. King did a wonderful job evoking the sense of despair and desperate homesickness the two experienced. I also like how this scene captured the way in which the mental anguish of one person in a couple can be contagious for the other.

I also enjoyed the flashbacks to Scott's childhood. King has a gift for characterization, particularly with child characters. The events of Scott's childhood are so horrific, but so real in spite of their basic unreality, that I had to wonder if King himself had lived with a mentally ill parent.

What about the ending? To be honest, this book really bogged down in the last 1/3 or so. I got to the point where I just wanted to finish. The end contains some writing of Scott's that Lisey found, which gives her a sort of closure. I'm not sure I believe there is such a thing as closure on losing someone you have lived with and loved for 25 years. But Lisey comes as close as she could probably hope for.

What do you think will be your lasting impression of this book? I think my lasting impression will be "one of the Stephen King books with a female main character." Not one that stands out.

Thanks to Bonnie for her version of the book review questionnaire.

Here's an interview with King about this book, though they don't get to discussing this book in particular until halfway through the four minutes. The playful humor you find in King's books is apparent also in this interivew.

Laura's Review: Gate of the Sun

2007-07-25T20:25:00.000-05:00

Gate of the Sun

Elias Khoury

539 pages

First sentence: Umm Hassan is dead.

Reflections: One of the most valuable lessons of my adult life has been realizing that the history we learn in school is just one point of view. As Elias Khoury writes, "I'm scared of history that has only one version. History has dozens of versions, and for it to ossify into one leads only to death."

In Gate of the Sun, Khoury tells of Arab - Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective. Khalil Ayyoub is a doctor caring for a man named Yunes, his mentor and father figure who has fallen into a coma after a stroke. Although the hospital director has declared Yunes will not recover, Khalil maintains a bedside vigil, talking to Yunes in the desperate hope that this will bring him back. Khalil recounts Yunes' youth prior to the formation of the Israeli state in 1948, the displacement of Palestinians, and Yunes' work as a freedom fighter from that point onwards. Yunes is forced to live apart from his wife, Nahila, and their children, because he will be killed if found. His rendezvous with Nahila take place in a cave near their village, the only place they can spend time together. They lived this way for years, with Nahila bearing several children and raising them on her own.

Khalil also tells stories of his own life, including his love for a woman named Shams, who is a sudden victim of the violence surrounding them. Shams' story, and that of their relationship, unfolds gradually throughout the novel. The book proceeds with Khalil sitting by Yunes' bedside weaving tales day after day for nearly seven months. Through these stories we gain an understanding of this period in history as seen by Palestinians; a very different perspective from that of the US government and media.

Khoury writes beautiful, descriptive prose: "A woman walking alone through the rubble of her village looking for the stones that were once her house. A woman alone, her head covered with a black scarf, hunched up in that emptiness that stretches all the way to God, among the hills and valleys of Galilee, within the circle of a red sun that crawls over the ground, passing slowly and carrying with it the shadows of all things." Yet I found the stream of consciousness style a bit difficult to follow, and had trouble keeping names, places, and events straight. In the end, I was ready to finish this book so I could get on to my next read.

Digging to America - kookiejar's review

2007-07-23T11:38:00.000-05:00

At first this appeared to be the story of two young families who have adopted infant girls from Korea.

The Yazdans are second generations Iranian immigrants who name their new daughter Susan and let her assimilate seamlessly into American culture. The other couple are the Donaldsons, whose daughter Jin-soo is encouraged to keep and practice the Korean culture (even though she had no real knowledge of it).

However, in the middle of the novel there is a jarring narrative shift and suddenly we are following the lives of Susan and Jin-Soo's grandparents. Specifically, Jin-soo's grandfather, Dave and Susan's grandmother, Maryam. Dave is recently widowed and finds himself drawn to Maryam, while she, although attracted to Dave is put off by her unfamiliarity with American culture and the aggressively strange customs Dave's daughter initiates.

I thought it was weird that on one page we would be reading about 'Bitsy, Dave and Miriam' and a little later (when looking at the world through Jin-Soo's eyes), these same people were 'Jin-Soo's mother, Jin-Soo's grandfather, and Susan's grandmother'. It seemed like a cheap trick (narratively speaking) and completely unnecessary.

I would have preferred if the story has continued to be about the girls and their acclimation to American life (given their foster parents' differing attitudes on the subject), but I guess the author felt differently.

That being said, the story was very affecting and I had tears in my eyes on the last page, when Maryam discovered that you don't get to choose your family, your family chooses you.

Arthur & George reviewed by raidergirl3

2007-07-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

also posted to my blog

I am so glad I just finished reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. At times I felt I was reading Arthur Conan Doyle's biography, and the line between fiction and nonfiction has become very blurred for me. Much of what I read will become my belief about Doyle, even though I know it shouldn't. Barnes writes in a note at the end of the book that quotes and excerpts from newspapers are all factual.

This is the story of two men, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, one a famous writer, and one a quiet solicitor wrongly accused of a crime. I found the prose compelling and enthralling as I read the life story of both men, and how they eventually met, and how their stories became entwined. Doyle comes off as priggish and arrogant as his character, Sherlock Holmes. Edalji, son of a Parsee Vicor, is very British as well, with his stiff upper lip and resignation to his fate. Barnes is very ambitious with his story, and I quite enjoyed it.

It felt a little weak at the end, as he tried to connect the ideas of faith, and spiritism and the characters. It was rushed in content and yet slow at the same time. However, overall, a great read, with meticulous details and a wonderful telling of an obscure event in British history. Barnes is now two for two with me, having read and enjoyed A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters.

from the Guardian (UK) " Arthur & George is Julian Barnes's inventive account of a true and important miscarriage of justice... What Barnes adds to the tale--it was cause celebre of its day--is imagination, insight, passion, and of course his beautiful writing."

next up: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

The Ghost Map - Review by Sally906

2007-07-12T03:55:00.000-05:00

Finished: 30/05/07 Review also found here
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 284
Rated: B
Cover: Hard Copy
Obtained from? Own it
Reason(s) for Reading: Wanted to

Opening Sentence "...It is August 1854, and London is a city of scavengers..."

At the end of the summer of 1854, the deadliest outbreak of cholera in London's history erupted. At the time, London was one of the biggest, most populated and relatively modern city in the world. What it didn't have was sewerage systems in place, or access to pure water sources. But that was OK - because every one in the scientific and religious world knew that the people who died of plagues and cholera caught it from bad odors (miasma) - and as London was virtually covered in poo - there was a lot of miasma around.

The book traces the history of the cholera virus, and it is fascinating. It then goes on to describe the investigations of Doctor John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead. Separately at first, then joining forces they set out to prove that the virus was not caused by breathing foul air - but by raw sewerage getting into the drinking water. Totally at odds with the scientific thoughts of the day. Unfortunately Snow never lived long enough to see his theory proved and accepted.

While the book is easy to read and fascinatingly informative - which is hard to find in the scientific Non-Fiction genre. However, I did find it to be very repetitive at times. Often, as I read a paragraph, I virtually rolled my eyes thinking " Hello you've told me this twice already - I get it!!"

He finished up comparing this event to the modern viruses around today, such as bird flu, and how it could potentially happen again. I was disappointed that this was put in at the end, almost as an afterthought - maybe if he had repeated himself less then he could have expanded more on this theory.

On the whole though - it was easy to read, informative and very interesting.

The Inheritance of Loss - Review by Sally906

2007-07-12T03:50:00.000-05:00

Finished: 16/04/07
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 312
Rated: E
Cover: Trade Paperback
Obtained from?: Library
Reason(s) for Reading: Wanted to

Opening sentence "...All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths..."

I read this book for one of my reading challenges, the New York Times Notable Book Challenge.

Kiran Desai is the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006. Surely as a recipient this means that she is a superb writer, whose books are going to be the ultimate fiction experience. But no, not for me I'm afraid. Despite great reviews and accolades I just couldn't get into the book. I would just start to get engrossed and she whipped me off somewhere else - either jumping forward six months - or backwards thirty years. She has beautiful descriptions, such a poetic turn of words - I mean just look back up at the opening sentence - it is so mood setting. I read them and thought Ahhh - I'm in for a treat. Unfortunately the promise of the opening words just didn't follow through into the plot. I am not sure I even know the meaning of the end - or if the last page is the end - she just stopped. the only character I really cared about and can only imagine her fate - is that of Mutt. I shed a tear as I fear she will end up in the curry pot. I was devastated at her probable end - but again you just aren't told - no closure. I do hate that.

I do have Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard I am a bit reluctant to read it - but many people have told me it is a much better book - so will give it a try.

Read this in April but didn't realise I had not posted the review in this blog. Review can also be found here.

Digging to America - Sally's Review

2007-07-12T03:45:00.000-05:00

Finished: 11/07/07
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 277
Rated: C +
Cover: Trade Paperback
Obtained from? Library
Reason(s) for Reading: Wanted to

Opening Sentence: "...At eight o'clock in the evening, the Baltimore airport was nearly deserted..."

Well it was deserted except for the two families, Bitsy and Brad Donaldson along with Ziba and Sami Yazdan. They are here to pick up their adopted Korean daughters and from this auspicious moment a friendship is formed. Bitsi, is the main driver behind the friendship - an over the top gregarious wonderful American - she sometimes overwhelms the Iranian Yazdans. Ziba, in turn, tries to out-American her USA born friend.

Quietly in the background though the two cultures are more alike than they admit - with Bitsi's father and Sami's mother slowly breaking down the barriers and falling in love.

Each year the two families hold an 'Arrival' party to celebrate the arrival of the two little girls. It is over the top and shows the different ways the two families raise their daughters. Betsi insists on her daughter, Jin-Ho, retain her Korean name and culture. Where as Ziba changes her daughter Sookie's name to Sue does not emphasis her Korean roots. As the years progress the families face all sorts of challenges in this gentle book - it is a complex book, with many nuances, and unfolded at a gentle pace. It is not an in-your-face exciting read - but it leaves you well satisfied.

Review also found here

Everyman - kookiejar's review

2007-07-10T10:32:00.001-05:00

I must admit here and now that I am somewhat fascinated by old men. They seem obsessed with death and sex and are unable to do anything about either.

The unnamed main character in 'Everyman' is no different. The bulk of the story is a look back on his life, as the opening scene is his funeral. We learn he has been married three times, has two grown children and has battled various physical ailments most of his life.

I got the impression that his inability to maintain a healthy relationship had a lot to do with his life long dance with death. His poor physical health seemed strongly linked to his emotional health.

My favorite part was where our hero tried to 'put the moves' on a pretty, young woman some 40 years his junior. She rebuffs him in the nicest way possible, but I wondered at what age does a man stop being a viable sexual partner and start being a dirty old man.

At times the descriptions of his various medical procedures seemed endless, and I found his sexual conquests to be rather coldly clinical, but all-in-all this was extremely well-written and I was pretty much engrossed from page one.

I have only attempted one other of Roth's novels ("The Plot Against America") and I didn't really like that, but I will try some of his others now that I've read 'Everyman'.

Nemirovsky's Novels in Demand

2007-07-09T08:27:00.001-05:00

Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise has sparked an interest in her previous novels.

This from Alan Riding of the New York Times:

"First published in France in 2004, it has sold 600,000 copies in French and close to 1 million more in 30 other languages. And predictably, a dozen of her earlier books have since been reissued and sold for translation.
Now another previously undiscovered Nemirovsky novel has been unearthed. A powerful tale of love, betrayal and death in a Burgundy village, "Chaleur du Sang" -- provisionally titled "Fire in the Blood" in English -- was published to warm reviews in Paris in March."

To read more of this article, go here.

Forgetfulness; reviewed by Lisa

2007-07-04T13:08:00.001-05:00

I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Ward Just. I have only read one other of his books, An Unfinished Season (link is my review). I liked that book also, but I liked this one better. Perhaps you have to be "in the mood" for Just's books, and I was this time.

In Ward Just's books (it seems...I've only read two) nothing much happens. They are not action-packed. There is a pivotal event, and then you get to ride around in the character's head for the rest of the book while they figure out how they feel about it, what it means, and so forth. When you finish a Ward Just book, you feel like you are losing a friend in a way, so close have you been inside this person's head.

This particular book centers around the murder of a French woman married to an ex-pat American (that's not a spoiler, really, it's on the jacket and comprises the first pages of the book). This takes place post 9/11, and we get a view of how the idea of terrorism has changed the world, and the views of different cultures about it. Fascinating, a quick read, and deep well developed characters.

I said this before, when I read Unfinished Season, but Ward Just has been a prolific writer and more of his books are going on my list.

*Cross posted on my Book Blog

Alentejo Blue reviewed by raidergirl3

2007-07-03T13:23:00.000-05:00

Reposted from my blog.

I just spent a lovely week in the Alentejo region of Portugal, living among the locals, as well as with a few British tourists, and a few ex-pat Brits as well. Each person I met told me a little about their life, but it's funny how they see each other. It is so easy to label someone as 'trouble', or 'know-it-all' or 'nosy' based on a few characteristics. Once you meet the person, and realize why they are, or are not, the way they are, it all changes. As Joao, an old wise man of the village said, "There's more than one way to look at it."
I stayed until the fall festival occurred. At the same time, Marco, a cousin and former resident returned home, successfully from abroad. It was a great festival, lots of food and music, but everyone was there and there were some personality fireworks. Some people stayed, some people left, and then, life continued.

next up: Arthur and George

The Echo Maker reviewed by raidergirl3

2007-07-02T14:12:00.000-05:00

This is the review I posted to my blog.

I'm somewhat conflicted about reviewing this book, because I know it is an award winner (National Book Award, 2006) and it was recommended by 3M for the Something About Me Challenge. And I can see why it was an award winner, but I think I read it at the wrong time of the year, when my brain has essentially ceased functioning at the end of June. There were some big ideas in this novel - who are we? how is memory of a person compare with their reality? the trust we have in the people around us? And these big ideas would take a lot more thought than I was prepared to give them.

Mark has been in a car accident and when he awakes from his coma, he believes his sister has been replaced, an imposter. This is called Capgras syndrome and Dr Weber, a reknown cognitive neurologist, comes to investigate.

There were several levels to this novel: the cranes which return to Kearney, Nebraska each year; Mark's recovery and dealings with his sister and their past life; the mystery of what happened to Mark on the night of the accident; Dr Weber's tentative hold on reality in his own life; the different syndromes associated with brain injuries; and the existential questions of self and memory. I mostly enjoyed the mystery of the accident and the note that was left for Mark in the hospital. I found my mind wandering during sections about the cranes and about Dr Weber and his problems. It could have been shorter and I wouldn't have missed much of the filler. Mostly, I didn't connect with the characters and found their actions difficult to understand, especially Mark's sister.

I also enjoyed the setting of Nebraska and feel the author did a great job of describing the feel and mood of the location. The science background describing the different symdromes was also very interesting, as was the mystery of the accident and the Capgras syndrome. I wanted to finish the book and never contemplated not finishing, but it was a little long, and I read three other books after I started this one because I couldn't read this very fast. The pages really dragged in parts and I had to concentrate to get through the novel. I blame much of this on me and my tired head this month.

This was a NYT Notable Book of 2006, and while I enjoyed much of the story I don't think I'll be looking for another of Powers' books for quite a while.

next up: Alentejo Blue

Intuition - kookiejar's review

2007-07-02T06:20:00.001-05:00

Science is the search for facts. It is, however, a discipline steeped in failure, as that is the only way we learn. Unfortunately, too many people are unwilling to allow medical science the failures necessary to advance the field.

"Intuition" takes place in a laboratory where a vaccine for cancer has proven effective in mice. Of course, a finding that huge cannot be kept secret for long, despite the lack of follow-up tests. The media is alerted, with predictable results (the handsome doctor is profiled in People Magazine, the female doctor lauded for succeeding in a male-oriented field, the Asian doctor applauded for achieving the American dream, etc.)

Then one of the doctors notices a small discrepancy in the notations of the head of the department. Her decision to bring it to the attention of the scientific community brings the wrath of the government and public opinion down on the lab. Instead of focusing on the facts at hand, the investigation turns ugly and personal, threatening to destroy all the good work done there.

The whistle blowing doctor is appalled by what her actions wrought but is powerless to stop the snowball she set rolling. I thought this novel was very well-written and Goodman really nailed some of the uglier aspects of human nature and office politics. I would highly recommend this book to everyone but especially anyone with an interest in science.

The Road -- Dewey's review

2007-06-27T15:54:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at my blog.

This is my first book for this challenge, and I feel awkward giving an at least partially negative review to such a widely-loved (and critically acclaimed) book my first time posting. Don't hold it against me, please! :)

If I were Cormac McCarthy's editor, here is what I would have said to him: I realize that your stylistic choices in this book are meant to reflect a world so barren that it doesn't have the luxury of such frills as apostrophes, commas and complete sentences. But your post-apocalyptic setting is stark enough, your characters are traumatized enough, your spare prose is Hemingwayesque enough that you don't need to resort to twee gimmicks to get your point across. Stop that.

Well. I feel better now! On to the review.

It took me a long time to warm up to The Road. I could not become immersed in the story because I was too busy working out why some contractions deserve the dignity of apostrophes and some don't. I mean dont. Because it's only the negatives who are forced to walk around naked without their punctuation. Even my favorite sentence of the book, a thought the man has while watching his sleeping son, was ruined for me by McCarthy's aversion to commas: If he is not the word of God God never spoke. God God sounds like something God's mom called him when he was a toddler. When I'm being moved by a father's love for his son and a pretty metaphor, I don't want to be distracted by the idea of God as a toddler with a mom, you know?

If you stripped this novel of all the tedious ash ash ash, walk walk walk, forage forage forage, rain rain rain details, it would be a good short story.

But I did say I eventually warmed up to the book. At about the middle of the novel, the man and the boy find a hatch in the ground, fully equipped and left behind by someone with forethought, but without the luck to have survived long enough to use it. After the man had rested and eaten well, suddenly he thought in paragraphs! He had complex ideas! Now this was some damn good writing, but I stopped and had a WTF? moment while I tried to figure out why the style had changed so drastically.

And then I got it. The man and the boy, on the road, are far too exhausted and hungry to say more than "Okay" and "I don't know." Their thoughts are simple despite their obvious intelligence because their more basic needs are unmet. Their world is nothing but ash ash ash, walk walk walk, forage forage forage, rain rain rain. When their basic needs for cleanliness and sleep and food are met, they become more than just nomadic animals with minimal communication skills. Brilliant! I decided I loved this particular technique.

Compare:

Is it cold?
Yes, it's freezing.
Do you want to go in?
I don't know.
Sure you do.
Is it okay?
Come on.

He turned and looked at the boy. Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he. He tried to remember the dream but he could not. All that was left was the feeling of it. He thought perhaps they'd come to warm him. Of what? That he could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own. Even now some part of him wished they'd never found this refuge. Some part of him always wished it to be over.

Still spare, still treating commas like McCarthy is a black coffee fan and commas are the whipped cream on some frou-frou Starbucks beverage -- and what more can you expect from a writer who calls semi-colons "idiocy?" But the man is desperate, even suicidal, so I can accept spareness. At least it no longer reads like first grade primer.

Through the entire first half of the novel, the starkness was distracting and irritating, and I found myself reading just to finish the book. After the respite in the underground shelter, when the point of the style clicked for me, I was more ready to accept devices like the tediously simplistic dialogue, though I still felt irritated by the crazy punctuation.

In spite of all this distraction from the actual story, I found myself frequently thinking about the characters when I was away from the book. I absolutely love the relationship between the father and the son. I love the son's intrinsic ethics, which the father doesn't want to squelch, and in another time wouldn't have to, but which he fears are dangerous on the road. And I love that McCarthy got so many of the emotions of parenting just right.

There were three big questions hanging over my head throughout the book.

1. How old is this boy?
2. What the hell happened to the world to make it this way?
3. How did these two survive when most people are dead?

These questions went without any definitive answers, but I found myself absorbed in watching for clues of the boy's age. I settled on seven. He can read in spite of a life without books, but he's still very vulnerably young. I have no idea why I fixated on figuring out the boy's age. He was my favorite character (not that there was much competition) and I think I was given so little information about him that I needed to ferret out more to make him feel more real.

There were more clues to the answer to my second question. The setting seemed to be the southeastern U.S. suffering from the effects of nuclear winter. They couldn't see the sun, it was cold, and there was ash everywhere. So I'm assuming there was a nuclear war, though it could have been some enormous natural disaster, maybe caused by global warming.

Not answering the third question seemed to me a flaw in the narrative. I really want to know what allowed them to survive. Had they found safe shelter? Were they just lucky? It seems essential, because if they survived due to their own cunning, that allows the reader to accept that they could keep surviving on the road.

Before even starting the book, I ran into a spoiler that revealed to me just how it ends. Knowing that ahead of time, combined with the unwavering hopelessness throughout the novel, prepared me for the unbearably sad ending. In fact, the book was so depressing in general that I found myself despairing over the pointlessness of life. Fortunately, I prescribed myself some chocolate chocolate chip Haagen-Dasz and an episode of Family Guy, and I was cured and ready to face life again.

I want to avoid spoilers, but I have to say that in I was even more disappointed by the deus ex machina ending after the sad part than I was by the stylistic oddness. I haven't seen anyone else mention this, either in blog reviews or print reviews, and I'm not sure if that's in an attempt to avoid spoilers or if people just didn't mind it.

Here is an amusing account of Oprah's interview with McCarthy.

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala (reviewed by Literary Feline)

2007-06-23T06:15:00.000-05:00

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
Harper Perennial; 2005
Fiction; 142 pgs

Completed: 06/22/2007
Rating: 5 Stars

First Sentence: It is starting like this.

Reason for Reading: After reading Wendy's (Caribousmom) review of Beasts of No Nation, I was instantly intrigued. This is my fourth selection for the New York Times Notable Book Challenge.

Comments: Uzodinma Iweala first came upon the idea of writing a story about a child soldier after seeing an article in Newsweek. He wanted to get inside the mind of a child soldier and understand what the child goes through. Eventually, after careful research and drawing from his own background, Beasts of No Nation was created.

This novel may seem small in size, however, its content is quite powerful. Beasts of No Nation is the story of a young boy in western Africa whose mother and sister have fled from their village with the war’s approach and who witnesses his own father’s murder. Agu is discovered hiding by a young boy soldier and soon finds himself fighting among the guerrilla fighters in a civil war. He is awed by the commandant’s posture and strength. The commandant can be gentle and kind, ruthless and brutal. Throughout his training and the fighting, Agu remembers his past, his relatively simple life. He loved school and books, he liked playing with his best friend, and dreamt of being an engineer or a doctor someday. His new life was vicious and hard.

Uzodinma Iweala captures the voice of his young narrator, creating a story that is both raw and authentic. The child’s fear and anguish can be felt on every page. I had no difficulty being pulled into the rhythm of the narrative and dialogue and it turned into a surprisingly fast book to read even with the unique nuances in the writing style. However, the subject matter itself was quite disturbing in parts; the experiences Agu had to live through are the kind no human being, much less a child should have to experience.

Favorite Part: The author did a wonderful job at giving his character Agu a voice. Several times throughout the book I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around Agu and save him from the hard life he had to live. I was grateful he and Strika had each other. I think their friendship got them both through the most difficult moments.

I also liked the way the author weaved myth and fable into the novel, specifically the story about the leopard and the ox and then the story of the greedy cloth seller. Such tales offered an insight into the events taking place in Agu’s life, part of which he may or may not have fully understood.

Note about the Author: Here is an interview with the author.

Miscellaneous: I read an article earlier in the week about three Sierra Leonean military leaders being convicted of a variety of crimes, including conscripting child soldiers. This could have a major impact on future cases involving similar charges, something that is long overdue.

(review originally posted at Musings of a Bookish Kitty).

Administrative question about the header

2007-06-22T12:02:00.000-05:00

On a duller, more procedural note that I meant to bring up a long time ago: Is anyone else having trouble with the blog's beautiful header? On my computer, perhaps because it is a Mac or because I use Firefox, the photograph is having two effects: it now takes a very long time to load the blog, and the text in the header now runs off the screen. Is it just my computer? If so, does anyone know what I can do to fix it? If not, is there any way to adjust the size of the picture to fix these two problems? I love the picture and would not like to return to the olden days of a purely textual header.

Ariel/Pour of Tor's review of "Beasts of No Nation"

2007-06-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

** Cross-posted at http://sycoraxpine.blogspot.com/ **

In the opening pages of Uzodinma Iweala's first novel (adapted from his undergraduate creative writing thesis, which had no less illustrious an adviser than Jamaica Kincaid) young Agu is snatched from his village - situated in an intentionally unspecific African country - and from his family by a rebel militia he knows would just as happily kill him as conscript him. What unfolds over the next 140 pages is the dense and excruciating tale of a child soldier - that paradox of innocence and immorality that seems so alien to the very concept of childhood, but is the experience of so many around the world right now. Agu's new family, led by the charismatic and despotic Commandant, is held together by bonds of fear, born of the certainty of death for the soldier who shows anything but the most eager obedience, the most frenzied hunger for flesh and blood. This death grip of a familial bond seems claustrophobically tight until it is suddenly - and with nightmarish, vertiginous ease - released.

But how can a child like Agu define himself in the aftermath of this sort of belonging? How do you return to any semblance of youth in the absence of the familial support that the war destroyed and then coopted?

This is a very, very difficult novel to read, and despite its short length, it took me several months and a great deal of willpower to finish it. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable feat of craftsmanship for an author at the beginning of his career. This is, after all, a prolonged and attentive exercise in character and voice. The novel is told entirely in Agu's idiosyncratic and trauma-shattered words, filled with exclamations, elisions, repetitions and unexpected ventriloquisms. We are constantly aware of Agu's childlike but detailed (all part of the central paradox of trauma) impersonations of other voices. This is why it is significant that Agu's only friend in the militia is the silent Strika, whose withholding of speech is both a mark of protest in world virtually without free will and a sign of sincerity and immediacy.

Beasts of No Nation is a book so profoundly oral that it requires absolute concentration, sometimes even in a quiet room, alone, reading aloud. Most often noted by critics among Iweala's many carefully wrought stylistic experiments is his use of an insistent, unsettling present tense. Consider this remarkable passage in which Agu reflects on the violence of coming of age rituals before the war, and the present tense blurs the lines between memory, possibility, actuality, and the current:

By the river, tied to one palm tree by its horn and its leg an ox was always waiting and stomping and making long low noise that are making you to sadding very much in your heart. The whole village was watching as all the dancer is dancing in the shallow river until the whole water is shining with small small wave. Then the top boy is going to the village chief and kneeling before him while the other leopard and ox dancer are dancing around and around him. The chief is giving him real machete and saying something into his ear until the boy is going and chopping one blow into the neck of the ox. Blood is flying all over his body and he is wiping it from his mask with his hand. Then he is putting his hand where he is cutting and collecting the blood to be rubbing on his body. When he is finishing, all the other is doing the same until everyone is covering in so much blood. They are spinning and spinning in their leopard mask or ox mask until KPWOM! the drum is sounding.

Everybody is knowing that to be killing masquerade you are removing its mask.

All of the dancer is removing their mask.

All of the spirit are dying and now all the boy is becoming men.

I am opening my eye and seeing that I am still in the war, and I am thinking, if war is not coming, then I would be man by now. (56)

The immediacy of Iweala's language takes us dizzyingly into Agu's head, and it is difficult to inhabit someone consciousnous with this level of intimacy. But these same qualities also make it impossible to distance yourself from the events of the novel, or to romantize them, as so many foreign treatments of African narratives do. The present tense seems to me to be in the service of expressing this inescapable immediacy of trauma, of memories that can be approached but cannot be reconciled through masquerade or narrative. Beasts of No Nation is difficult to read because it is so successfully wrought (although, as a study in character, it pays scant attention to plot, moving swiftly through the conventional - if sadly true - landmarks of child abuse and war crime). The immediacy of the prose is truly oppressive. As this sort of tale should be.

Beasts of No Nation
Uzodinma Iweala
(2005)
***1/2

New York Times Notable Books Challenge Selection - 3/12
(Review of Twilight of the Superheroes to come soon, I hope!)

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (reviewed by Literary Feline)

2007-06-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf, 2006
Fiction; 435 pgs

Completed: 06/18/2007
Rating: 4.5 Stars

First Sentence: Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings and had too much hair.

Reason for Reading: I was drawn to this novel from the very first time I heard about it several months ago, and the more I heard about it, the more I was sure I wanted read it. And so it was with great anticipation that I opened the book to the first page and began to read. This is my third selection for the New York Times Notable Book Challenge and my eighth and final selection for the Spring Reading Thing.

From the Publisher: With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place.

Comments: Between 1967 through to the beginning of 1970, Nigeria was in the midst of a civil war. A coup over the government by the Igpo people was short lived when another coup by the Hausa followed hot on its heels, becoming a nightmare for the Igbo people in Nigeria. On the back of a massacre that would continue throughout the war, the southeastern provinces of Nigeria declared themselves the Republic of Biafra and attempted to secede from the rest of the country. Although atrocities occurred on both sides, the use of starvation as a weapon to the isolated and war torn Biafra has become one of the grim trademarks of that vicious war.

A number of books have been popping up recently describing life and war in Africa, from a variety of cultures and perspectives. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel is one among many; however, it is one that stands out. The author is a gifted storyteller and her novel drew me in from the very first page and did not let go until long after I breathed in the last word. I am struggling with what to write about this book. The story moved me beyond words. I found myself chuckling during the lighter moments of the book, bubbling with anger at the atrocities described, fearful for the lives of characters I had grown to care very much for, and as if covered by a great veil of sadness, knowing that although Adichie’s novel is a work of fiction, there is much truth there as well.

The author’s words breathe life into the characters. How typical Ugwa was as a thirteen-year-old boy! There was Olanna with her kind heart and self-doubt; Odenigbo, so full of passion for what he believes; Richard whose outsider status never held him back from believing he belonged and yet whose uncertainty made him unsteady on his feet; and Kainene, who stood apart and kept her distance more often than not, hiding behind her sarcastic comments. It was Kainene I was most fascinated by, surprising even myself. I would have expected to be taken in more by Olanna’s gentle but tough character for she is the character I could most identify with.

Adichie painted a vivid picture of the brutality of war and the impact it had on her characters. No one went unaffected in some way, whether they paid the ultimate price or were oblivious throughout most of the war. I especially remember the scene near the end when a woman visits the Nsukka home searching out her old friend, Odenigbo. She makes a comment about how life had gone on for her almost like normal during the war and that she had no idea the extent of the war on her Igbo friends. She only learned of the terrible conditions her Igbo friends endured by reading a London paper while attending a conference. The irony, the dichotomy, of the situation was like a hammer hitting a nail home.

From the interactions of the characters and their relationships, and in the war itself, the author was able to touch up the issues of race and class struggles, the prejudices surrounding them. One aspect I found intriguing throughout the novel was the underlying influence the British colonization had on the various tribes and cultures in Nigeria and how much of that played into the events that would unfold in that country as well as in the book itself. It came as no surprise, mind you; however, it is a reminder of how all actions have consequences, some of which are unforeseen until they completely unravel.

The morning after, I still feel the affects of this marvelous book. Half of a Yellow Sun is a haunting story that took me right into the hearts of the characters and a country torn by jealousy, greed and hate. The story of Nigeria’s Civil War is not so unusual in the grand scheme of things, but it is a story that needs to be told and remembered. Still, Half of a Yellow Sun is not just about the war, it is about the people, their relationships, and their struggle to survive.

Favorite Part: With a novel like this, it is hard to pick out one favorite part, or even two or three. There was not a moment while reading this book I was not riveted to the words on the page. The characters were well drawn and interesting and the story flowed so smoothly that I was surprised at how quickly I moved through the book.

I liked how the author divided up her sections, at times going back and forth in time. The break from the war to return to the pre-war period was a short reprieve from the darker moments in the story, while at the same time proved quite revealing in better defining the characters and their relationships with one another.

Miscellaneous: There is a section on the author's website where people are allowed to share their own experiences regarding Biafra, which I spent a little time perusing and hope to revisit again to read at more length in the future.

(review originally posted at Musings of a Bookish Kitty).

The Translator by Leila Aboulela

2007-06-18T20:34:00.001-05:00

My second book for the NYT Notable books; this review was from my blog.

The Translator by Leila Aboulela is a simple love story, about finding faith and about the life of an exile. Sammar is a Sudanese widow living and translating in Scotland. She begins coming out of a four year mourning period due to the attention of Rae, an expert on Islam and the Middle East. Sammar has been, I hesitate to say living, but going through the motions in Scotland while her aunt/mother-in-law raises her son in Sudan. Rae begins to bring her back to life and Sammar begins to come alive. Her faith in Islam is a stumbling block and the book details her awakening as she returns to Sudan, but she doesn't fit in there either.
I felt so much sympathy for Sammar as she tries to fit in everywhere - she never fit in to Scotland, and her return to Sudan is rough as they see her as an outsider. She really had no home. The writing was lovely and the two countries are wonderfully described. This is a gentle story, more of a character study, but the settings are important too. I prefer a little more story, less lyrical writing, but I enjoyed the book each time I picked it up, and I really enjoyed Sammar and would have liked to know her. She was a strong woman, but her life is so different from mine, in so many respects. I would like to read more about Islam and I enjoyed how her faith guided all her decisions.

Next up: The Echo Maker

Digging To America

2007-06-18T13:50:00.000-05:00

I was very interested in reading this book for several reasons. First, because I really love Anne Tyler and secondly, because we are close friends with multiple couples pursuing overseas adoptions, of both infants and older children. I found in this story that Anne went deeper than the adopted children trying to make a home in America, in fact, their story was almost a side note. What Anne wrote about more was how people who are already Americans, whether by immigration or by birth, make themselves at home in this strange and sometimes frightening country we call home. What is family and culture and how do we respect them, how do we keep them, in this place where all are welcome but no one is quite sure how to fit in. Do we hang on to what makes us comfortable even when there may be nothing there to warm us? Or do we step out into a new world where those we love may not talk like us or look like us but take up residence in our lives just the same?
I have read several people who have not enjoyed this novel very much, but I loved it. In a world that is becoming more, rather than less, segregated by culture which may or may not include nationality, how do we reach out? And whom do we let in? And most importantly, what are we afraid of losing when we do?

The Emperor's Children - kookiejar's review

2007-06-18T11:27:00.000-05:00

This novel is very much about the sense of entitlement that is so pervasive in our culture today. Kids graduating from high school or even college refusing to work certain jobs that they feel are 'beneath' them or even worse refusing to work at all because they feel that they are destined for greatness.

The 'emperor' from the title refers to Murray Thwaite, a very rich and highly respected New York journalist. His daughter, Marina has been trying to write a book (about the historical significance of children's clothes, of all things) since she graduated from college but hasn't found the proper inspiration to complete it. Enter poor relation, Cousin Booty, a slacker from upstate who, on the spur of the moment decides he is destined to be one of the world's great thinkers. So, he decides to apprentice with the greatest thinker he knows -- Uncle Murray.

Spoiled Marina and her equally spoiled and idiotic friends live their lives as if what they do is of Earth shattering importance and when a tragedy (a HUGE tragedy) unfolds around them, it kicks their own self-importance into high gear.

The characters in this book are utterly ridiculous and completely unlikeable. I really didn't care one fig what happened to any of them. Even when the tragedy occurred, I knew they were going to internalize it in a way that made all the suffering about them. They did not let me down.

The prose is slow and plodding for the most part and the only reason I kept reading was to see if Booty (who reminded me of Ignatius P Reilly from 'A Confederacy of Dunces' ) was ever going to make good. He didn't.

I agree with Kim. Don't waste your time with this one.

My update: I've got 7 more to go to finish the 20 I promised myself I would complete. However, with one more, I will have read exactly one half of the entire list (fiction only). Whew!

I am currently reading 'Everyman', and 'Digging to America' and I have dipped my toes into 'Possibility of an Island'. I'm still chugging along.

Laura's Review: Alentejo Blue

2007-06-17T20:23:00.000-05:00

Alentejo Blue

Monica Ali

226 pages

First sentence: At first he thought it was a scarecrow.

Refiections: This novel is in effect a series of character sketches, set in Portugal's Alentejo region, a southern agricultural area just north of the Algarve, the popular tourist destination. The book begins in the middle of Mediterranean summer, and Ali vividly evokes the languor of oppressively hot days. The village of Mamarrosa is a sleepy hamlet with the usual local cafe, butcher, shop, church, and village square. An enterprising villager has just opened an Internet cafe, but the information superhighway comes slowly in these parts: "It was an internet cafe without the Internet, and nobody expected any better." (p. 123). The hopes of many villagers are pinned on a prodigal son, who is scheduled to return to the area any day. It is rumored he will be opening a large hotel, raising hopes of employment and prosperity.

Mamarrosa is populated by locals, British expats, and a few tourists, and we meet them all in turn. There's a poor and dysfunctional English family, whose teenage daughter is well known around town: "The Potts girl walked into the cafe preceded by her reputation so that everyone was obliged to stare." (p. 14). A local girl, Teresa, has just been presented with an opportunity to leave the region for London, and wrestles with her decision and the potential impact on her family and boyfriend. Vasco, a widower, married an American and lived in the United States until her death. He now runs the local cafe & bar, and resists the competitive threat of the Internet cafe. Eileen, a mid-50s British tourist, is on holiday with her husband. Their relationship is strained; she has chosen the holiday destination this year and it's not quite to his liking. But for her, it's just right: "I like it better than all those delightful Tuscan towns we 'did' the year before last. All that history and architecture -- it gives you a headache, just shuffling past on sore sightseeing feet, trying to blot out the English voices everywhere." (p. 81).

While there are tiny threads linking chapters together, it's the characters, not the plot, that are the beauty of this book. Ali has written an enjoyable, if not particularly complex or thought-provoking, book.

A Strange Piece of Paradise by Terry Jentz

2007-06-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

I wrote a review of this book in my book review blog, so I am copying it here [the link to the book is to my amazon store]:

This large nonfiction book details a woman’s exploration, many years after the event, of a night when a man wielding an axe attacked her and her friend. The two were seven days into a bicycle trip across the country, and camping in the Cline Falls Park in central Oregon.

The attack took place in June 1977. Jentz started to become obsessed with it in 1992, after many years of almost-flippant references to it, a kind of denial of her feelings that lasted 15 years.

She began her investigation by traveling to the scene of the crime and the surrounding area, gathering police reports and interviewing people. The trip left her unsatisfied and she returned two years later to continue the search, even though at the time she wasn’t at all sure what she was searching for. From then on she returned frequently, making dashes at various lines of inquiry, tracking down leads and involving the different law enforcement agencies in the area.

In the course of this long, involved investigation, Jentz discovers that nobody was ever charged with the crime and there were few suspects. The police seemed unable to pursue what leads they had. It appears that the collection, storage, and use of the evidence was far from thorough as well. Eventually her search narrows into a search for the attacker. The statute of limitations on the crime ran out three years after the attack, so she knows the perp will not have to face the justice system, but she desperately wants to find out who he is and, if possible, find a way to keep him from hurting others. She also has a vague idea that when she knows who he is she can start to heal herself.

The story is, as many reviewers have written, gripping and absorbing, and hard to put down. Other reviewers have complained that there is too much “navel-gazing”, too much time spent on introspection. Overall, I find it a book well worth reading. But not perfect.

Jentz is given to a writing style that seems unnecessarily “literary”, yet also incorporates a type of jargon popular in “victims rights” and “women’s rights” articles. It gives in to the passive voice frequently and awkwardly. There is a kind of unevenness to it, as it veers from one style to another, sometimes using words inappropriately. For example,

How could I access the rage?

The use of “access” as a verb seems to have its roots in the women’s rights and group therapy movements.

…I’d never wrapped my mind around what the experience might have been for her;…

I fight in vain for the removal of the term “wrapped my mind around” from the language.

Meticulous cowboy

This is the term Jentz uses for her attacker. He was carefully dressed, with his shirt fastidiously tucked in so there were no creases. He wore western clothing. I find the adjective “meticulous” not really right for this case. Most often it refers to a way of acting, of doing, not a way of appearing. This young man was fastidious, was dressed immaculately, but it’s hard to call his actions - driving over a curb, knocking over a tent, and slashing out at his victims with an axe – “meticulous”. Each time Jentz referred to him this way it jumped out at me. And she uses it constantly, like a drumbeat. Probably her intention.

Almost as often she refers to her attacker as a “headless torso” or “headless cowboy torso”, bringing to mind just the trunk of a man, with no arms. In fact, that’s what the definition of “torso” says. Given that he used his arms to wield an axe, I suspect – I know from her book – she saw the arms, too.

These are picky points and I can’t explain why they bothered me, except that they were repeated so often.

I fully believed that he was guilty of the attack against Shayna and me. But I couldn’t connect the dots between this man and the fingerprints he had left in my psyche. His presence had not triggered a seismic reaction in me.. . .

Some part of me at the edges of consciousness had lost trust in the order of things. The facts of the world broke faith with me. I was no longer deceived that life was following a script in which certain things would never happen.

Passive, passive, passive. “I was no longer deceived”? This type writing suggests that something other than Terri herself was taking control of her life. It’s an interesting perception, given that the book is also saturated with references, both direct and indirect, of fate somehow leading Terri here and there and forcing her to find the meaning in the attack or to make sense of random incidents and comments. She frequently runs into names of places that include “axe” in them and seems to think there is a personal reason for this. The reason is actually simpler than that they were put there for her alone. Oregon in the 1970s and before was a place where axes were far from uncommon.

Well into the book, Terri meets up with a couple who fight for victims’ rights and who do a great deal of investigating for other victims (their daughter was murdered in 1980), to help solve cases or otherwise right wrongs. This couple fills Terri in on their theory of crime and punishment in Oregon: they believe that a misguided “liberal” public favored the view that criminals are not responsible for their actions; “society” is.

I have met a few people who more or less subscribe to this theory, to some extent, in my life. Very few, even though I consort with so-called liberals (and am one). I believe that this couple, and Terri herself, misread the justice system, as do many victims’ rights advocates. They feel that the accused perps are given more attention and more help than are the victims, and that this comes from that perception that it isn’t really their fault.

It’s true that our justice system leans over backwards to protect the rights of the accused. The reason, however, is that it is “better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be convicted”. The laws that protect the accused protect all of us. Terri and her friends forget this. Terri makes it clear again and again that she would never want to see anyone wrongly convicted, yet she rails against a system that tries to prevent wrongful convictions.

Jentz also joins her investigating friends in the view that “permissive parents” are more likely to raise criminals than those who abuse their children. One chapter begins with a quotation from the book Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore, brother of Gary (murderer of two who was eventually executed). The quotation is from a legal system that incarcerated Gary at one point, and it says that Gary’s parents would do anything for him, were overly permissive. If Terri actually read that book (which I did) she would realize that his father repeatedly beat Gary while his mother just watched. Is this a type of permissiveness? The quotation clearly did not represent the truth in that particular case.

I do not lack compassion for the victims. I believe that both the accused and the victims deserve special treatment, and to accord such treatment to one doesn’t automatically exclude it from the other.

This is Terri’s book and these are her thoughts and she has every right to them. Nevertheless, I feel a need to offer my own counter-thoughts to some of her conclusions.

One theme that screams loudly in here, and that needs to be heard, is that the law enforcement agencies did not do a good job investigating this crime. There appear to be many reasons for this lack of attention, which Jentz offers and which make sense:

· The term “serial killer” had not even been coined; what were called “stranger murders” were perceived as near-impossible to solve. The investigators apparently felt helpless without a motive or witness. There was plenty of physical evidence (tire tracks, a footprint, probably more if the forensics team had been really diligent) but the investigators seemed to believe they could do nothing with it.

· The attack did not result in murder. Attempted murder takes a huge backseat to actual murder.

· There were two women involved. Some people believe there was a sense in the community that women should not be bicycling alone, that they somehow brought this on themselves.

· The law enforcement agencies were overworked. They had to set priorities.

· The head of the state police department that investigated this crime was not expert in criminal investigation and tended to block real investigation, certainly did not aid it.

· Although a great many people in the community immediately “knew” who did it (and many had stories to tell that more than backed up this charge) only one or two actually made an attempt to tell the police what they knew. A part of the reason for this strange neglect seems to be the “individualism” so prevalent in Oregon – a preference for staying out of the way rather than accusing someone who may not be guilty. What struck me was that the law enforcement officials did not follow the leads and find these persons themselves.

Jentz also considers a theory that some of the investigation was simply covered up. Records disappeared. To protect the community from its own? There doesn’t seem to be an answer.

Whatever caused this “miscarriage of justice” certainly needs to be evaluated and if there haven’t been changes to address it (current members of law enforcement say major changes have been made – and ultimately these agencies were more than helpful) there should be. I was constantly reminded of how criminal investigations are most often presented in television fiction, and how that representation is more the ideal than the real. Books like this do us a service by letting us see how horrific crimes can be left unsolved, in spite of adequate forensic and witness evidence. More, it gives us insight into how many lives are affected by a single incident, and for how long.

Orange Prize Winner: Half of a Yellow Sun

2007-06-06T15:50:00.000-05:00

Half of a Yellow Sun has won the 2007 Orange Prize.

Golden Country -- kookiejar's review

2007-06-06T12:14:00.000-05:00

This book explores the entanglement of three Jewish families in 1950's America. Seymour is a salesman who finds he can make enough money working for a gangster called the Terrier that he can finance the Broadway show he's always dreamed of. Joseph is the inventor of a new kind of household cleaner called Essoil, which he named after his wife, Esther. Frances, whose sister is married to the Terrier, becomes the tv spokeswoman for Essoil.

The novel alternates between the stories of how Seymour and Joseph made their fortunes and the upcoming wedding of their offspring, David and Miriam.

I really liked Joseph's storyline more than the others. He was a gentle man who always tried to please his horrible overbearing wife and be a good father to Miriam. Neither of them really appreciated his work (which made their lives possible) and didn't know what they had in him, until it was too late.

Even though I enjoyed the book, I wish Gilmore had spent more time making each of the characters more distinctive, as I got confused about who was who on more than one occasion. It's exactly like Amy said in her review, you just can't keep the characters straight in your mind because they are all kind of similar and the perspective of the story changes often.

Anyway, I doubt this book will go down in history as anyone's all-time favorite book, but it was okay.

My goal and a question

2007-06-05T11:41:00.000-05:00

I read A Strange Piece of Paradise in January of this year. I wrote a review of it on January 13. I think that I started it in January, not December, but I can't find confirmation. So is it fair to include this book on my list of books I've read for 2007??

I am setting what seems to be a reasonable goal at this point: 12 books.

June Update from Amy!

2007-06-04T14:03:00.000-05:00

I have been scarce around the NYT challenge blog for a bit but that's because I was shooting for a little lighter reading after having read several of the NYT books in earlier months. So far, the only book I have slated to read in June for this challenge is "One Good Turn" by Kate Atkinson. However, if I get a lot of the other reading I have planned completed then I really would like to read one of my NYT non-fiction choices. We'll see how it goes!

Happy reading!

The Inhabited World by David Long (reviewed by Literary Feline)

2007-06-04T00:24:00.000-05:00

The Inhabited World by David Long
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006
Fiction; 277 pgs

Started: 06/01/2007
Completed: 06/03/2007
Rating: 3.5 Stars

First Sentence: When he looks at his hand, he sees the hand he remembers—ropy branching veins, a ridge of waxy skin on the inside of the wrist where he fumbled a glowing iron rod at his father’s forge one afternoon in 1966.

Comments: The Inhabited World is not an easy book to describe. It is not quite a ghost story. It is more of a story about life, redemption, and moving on. The main character just happens to be dead. It is about a man, Evan Molloy, who died by his own hand. He is stuck in a state of limbo, unable to leave the property his Washington house is set on, and so his days and nights are spent observing the new residents as they come and go. Evan does not understand where exactly he is or why.

Maureen Keniston is the most recent tenant, a woman who is running away from her old life, trying to reestablish herself and find her footing after a long affair with a married man. Although her story is an important part of the narrative, Evan's story is the main focal point throughout most of the novel. As Evan watches Maureen and begins to understand her situation, all the while wishing he could offer her some solace, he is lost in his own memories, the recounting of his life and how he ended up where is today, including what led him to pull the trigger.

David Long's novel had an "it could happen to me" feel to it right from the very start. Evan was an average man whose life did not stand out much beyond the norm. His families, both in childhood and adulthood, were no more dysfunctional than most in today's society. Evan was really never made out to be a victim of his circumstances, which is a definite strength in this novel, fitting in with the overall atmosphere set by the author. I never felt sorry for Evan, although I could empathize with his plight.

I was most drawn to Evan's experience with depression, including the onset and his cycles in and out of it. Although it's named, the illness is never fully accepted by Evan for what it is, which itself is not too uncommon. There is a stigma about depression in its many forms and other mental illnesses as we see with not only Evan, but his stepdaughter, Janey as well. Physical health problems have always been more acceptable; those of the mind, even if the root may be physical, are still hard to accept.

There was a constant layer of melancholy that settled over the novel, both in the author's prose and woven into the lives of his characters. The Inhabited World is not one that stands out in the sense of climax and melodrama, and yet there is a quality about it that lingers because of the subtleness and the realness of it.

One side effect of having read this book is that now I find myself wondering if I am truly ever alone. Is there a spiritual being sitting in the pink (Anjin says it's brown) armchair, watching as I write this?

(excerpt of review taken from Musings of a Bookish Kitty)

Intro Post by raidergirl3

2007-06-01T16:44:00.000-05:00

I've been reading over here for quite a while and I thought it was time to introduce myself. I'm raidergirl3, a teacher and mom who likes to read more than clean or cook. Luckily, I have a husband who likes to eat and recognizes that he needs to cook to accomplish that. I wasn't going to join here, just gleam good suggestions, but you have made so many good reviews, my list of books to read is growing exponentially. I may as well join you since I am now reading books you have raved about. I see me reading at least 6 titles and perhaps more but I'm only committing to 6. My little list includes:

Half of a Yellow Sun - Aldichie (already read; review at my site)
The Echo Maker - Powers
The Translator - Aboulela
Arthur and George - Barnes
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Pesel
The Road - McCarthy

Some other possible books would be Black Swan Green by Mitchell and A Woman in Jerusalem by Yehoshua. So many of these great books fit in my own personal reading across borders challenge.

An update from Alisia

2007-06-01T14:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I haven't been reading very many NYT Notables lately, in lieu of other challenges. For a recap of what I have read, you can go here.

Next up, but probably not for at least another month, will either be A Woman in Jerusalem, Iran Awakening, or Suite Francaise. It mainly depends on my mood, and which one is most easily accessible from the library!

Sally906's June Update

2007-05-31T14:41:00.000-05:00

Well of the 6 that I was going to definitely read - I have read 5 - probably won't get a chance to read the Anne Tyler one for a couple of months as will be travelling on and off - and libraries frown upon you keeping their books too long - LOL!!!

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Read
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - Read
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai - Read
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson - Read
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Read
Digging to America by Anne Tyler (library)

Hoo Roo

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

2007-05-31T14:37:00.000-05:00

Review also found here

Finished: 30/05/07
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 284
Rated: B
Cover: Hard Copy
Obtained from? Own it
Reason(s) for Reading: Wanted to

Opening Sentence "...It is August 1854, and London is a city of scavengers..."

Wendy's June Update

2007-05-30T14:26:00.001-05:00

Here we are - only a couple of days from June - hard to believe! I am happy to report that I have now completed exactly half of the books on my list for this challenge.

For June I am planning to read nothing for the NYT Most Notable because, quite frankly, I am overwhelmed with other reads! I will be reading 8 books for other challenges, and 5 books for book groups - an almost impossible number. But I like a challenge, in case you haven't noticed!!

Old Filth - Wendy's Review

2007-05-29T12:11:00.001-05:00

Old Filth dozed off then with this picture before him, wondering at the clarity of an image thirty years old when what happened yesterday had receded into darkness. He was nearly eighty now. -From Old Filth, page 24-

Old Filth ("Failed in London Try Hong Kong") is a surly, retired Judge who begins to remember his past as he enters the final years of his life. The story is told in a series of flashbacks, taking the reader to Malaya where Filth was born, to Wales where he is fostered by the evil Ma Didds, to England where he attends school, and to Hong Kong where he finds his professional niche. Along the way, people from Filth's past surface to fill in the gaps of his memory - and a crime is uncovered.

This book was hard to rate - there were moments of brilliance from Jane Gardam. She likes to play with words and metaphor, such as when Filth meets a character by the name of Loss.

Loss's defection was the metaphor for Eddie's life. It was Eddie's fate always to be left. Always to be left and forgotten. Everyone gone, now. Out of his reach. For the first time, Eddie was utterly on his own. -From Old Filth, page 230-

Gardam also uses this same style to explore the idea of revelation - a central theme in the novel.

The suitcase was immense. He got it out of the roof like a difficult birth. Its label called it a Revelation. "Revelation was once the very best luggage," said Filth. "They were revelations' because they expanded." -From Old Filth, page 282-

And just in case the reader misses it, Gardam ties it up in a neat bow when Filth strikes up a conversation with a character he meets on a plane.

"I always feel tip-top. I say - you're not by any chance...?"
"Yes. Old Filth. Long forgotten."
"Well, you're still remembered out here."
"Yes. Well, I dare say. I hope so. Ha. Did you ever come across a chap called Loss?" "No. I don't think so."
"Or Islam?"
"They're all called Islam."
"He's probably dead. Certainly retired. I've got one of his suitcases. Called a Revelation."
-From Old Filth, page 287-

Gardam is a natural storyteller who writes stellar dialogue, heavy with meaning. Despite this, Old Filth is not an easy novel to read. At times the story becomes dreamlike and the characters warp into odd, almost surreal figures. Gardam's style tends to be circular, which ultimately leaves the reader with a satisfying end.

Not great, but good - rated 3.75/5. Recommended for those readers who enjoy literary puzzles and creative use of language.

*Read the original posting of this review on my blog here.

The Stories of Mary Gordon ... kookiejar's non-review

2007-05-29T10:41:00.001-05:00

I really don't get a lot of contemporary short fiction. As I understand it, fiction should have a clear beginning, middle and end. All too often modern authors can only accomplish one 1 or 2 of those. Mary Gordon is hit or miss in this regard.

One of the stories in this collection is called "My Podiatrist Tells Me a Story About a Boy and a Dog". A woman with a plantar's wart goes to a podiatrist for treatment and at every visit the doctor tells her a funny story. One day he tells her about a dog he had as a boy who turned out to be a wolf. Then he says he'd like to tell her more stories, but he won't be seeing her again because her feet are healed. What?

I ask you, what kind of story is that? Stupid...that's what kind.

The very first story is about a woman who has become disenchanted with her family and her life and gradually grows a fascination for the lifestyle of her dirty, mean neighbor. He rejects her and she goes home. Okay, beginning, middle and end...but who cares?

Those are just the first two of 41 stories, so I turned to a random story in the middle called "I Need to Tell Three Stories and To Speak of Love and Death". The narrator tells us three stories and two of them have to do with love and death, but the third is about -and I wish I was making this up- the time an Indian woman pooped on the floor of the locker room at her gym! What the...? How in the heck is that a story of love and/or death?

After that revolting and mildly racist little story, I decided that Mary Gordon and I needed to part ways. And it's a shame because she writes very well, with quite accessible and descriptive prose, but until she learns to give a story a proper ending, I won't be reading her again.

Laura's Review - The Translator

2007-05-28T15:13:00.001-05:00

The Translator (original review here)

Leila Aboulela

203 pages

First sentence: She dreamt that it rained and she could not go out to meet him as planned.

Reflections: Sammar is a Sudanese woman, working at a university in Aberdeen as an Arabic translator. She is tormented with grief over her husband's tragic death four years ago, and the manner in which she was subsequently ostracized by her mother-in-law. Her young son, Amir, remained in Khartoum and is being raised by her mother-in-law and other relatives. Sammar lives in a spartan apartment; she has not decorated, nor has she bought any new clothing, since becoming a widow. She struggles to cope with the Scottish customs and weather, and her only social contact is with her university colleagues.

Most of her translation work is done for Rae, an Islamic scholar and department head at the university. Rae is divorced and lonely, and it seems almost inevitable that Rae and Sammar become close. Yet the customs of Sammar's culture, and of the Islamic religion, do not make it easy to express her feelings. She does so in small gestures, which seem bold to her: visiting him in hospital, and meticulously making soup to help him heal. Rae does not practice any particular religion, and Sammar knows the only way their relationship can be sanctioned is if he were to convert to Islam. This is not a subject the pair can discuss openly, yet Sammar hold fast to her beliefs.

Rae arranges for Sammar to travel to Egypt for some translation work, and she then goes to Khartoum for an extended stay with family and a reunion with her son. There is much to comfort her here, but her relationship with her mother-in-law is still strained. While she is in Africa, Rae experiences a journey of his own; one of faith, which he describes, "... it didn't have anything to do with how much I've read or how many facts I've learned about Islam. Knowledge is necessary, that's true. But faith, it comes direct from Allah."

Leila Aboulela's prose is dreamy and wonderful. This was a short book, and yet I found myself setting it down every 50 pages or so, just to reflect on the text and allow it to wash over me.

"Thoughts of Joy..." ~ One Good Turn (Atkinson)

2007-05-28T12:39:00.000-05:00

"Thoughts of Joy..." can be found here.

One big disappointment was my feeling as I concluded this chunkster. I loved the cover and title, the author was new-to-me, the plot was intriguing and unfortunately I was let down. An "okay read" ends up as a real literary bummer when you anticipate something great.

The "across the pond" setting produced mixed emotions in me. I like exploring cities that I've never physically been to, but I also like to be familiar with (or made to feel familiar with) the lingo, names of places and buildings, etc. I sometimes felt like I had to read at a slower pace just to make sure I didn't miss an important piece of the puzzle. I was at a disadvantage.

The beginning opens with a road rage scene that really drew me in and then I was flooded with a stream of characters that ultimately held no water. Their personalities did not entice me, yet I thought it was going to happen at any moment. There were plenty of hopefuls and with a very prolific author I was surprised that none of them panned out. I experienced the same with the plot. Great ideas and some really good scenes, but something was missing or maybe it was just too bland for a thriller. I don't know. ???

Making the NYT Most Notable Books of 2006 is interesting. I'm not sure how that whole process works, but this book doesn't qualify in my opinion. Rating this book a 3 seems like a gift, but it's not. I'm just miffed that I spent hours and hours reading it (a chunkster no less) and wasn't satisfied.

May Update - Wendy

2007-05-27T09:51:00.000-05:00

May 17, 2007: I finished The Road tonight. Wow, wow, wow. I need 24 hours to absorb this book and try to come up with a semi-coherent review on it. I've gone on and read all the reviews here on this book and added to some of the comments. There are a lot of questions I have, and sort of vague thoughts. Hopefully will post a review tomorrow.

May 27, 2007: I've moved things around. I need to read Old Filth for The Spring Thing challenge, so I've decided to wait on The Emperor's Children. I started Old Filth last night.

I am drowning in books - of course, I'm not really complaining since I love books - but nonetheless, I've created a goal list of to be reads that far exceeds my capability.

At any rate, if all goes well this month I will have read the following NYT Most Notables before the calendar flips into June:

1. Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta (FINISHED 5/22/2007)
2. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (FINISHED 5/17/2007)
3. The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud (MOVE THIS TO NEXT MONTH OR AUGUST)
4. Old Filth, by Jane Gardam (FINISHED 5/29/2007)

Laura's Review: One Good Turn

2007-05-25T09:47:00.001-05:00

One Good Turn (original review can be found here)

Kate Atkinson

418 pages

First sentence: He was lost.

Reflections: One Good Turn is a mystery set in Edinburgh, and begins with a horrible "road rage" incident in which a man named Paul Bradley is brutally attacked on a busy street in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival. There are several witnesses who play key roles in the story: Martin Canning, an author, who stops the attack by throwing his laptop bag at the attacker; Gloria Hatter, unhappily married to Graham, a corrupt real estate developer; and Jackson Brodie, an ex-cop and the only one to note the attacker's license plate number. I can't say much more without giving it all away, but like any good mystery I was drawn into the lives of these characters and the plot infiltrated my dreams (which was not necessarily a good thing!).

This book was a "New York Times Notable Book" for 2006 and while I would recommend it, in my view it was not quite as "notable" as others like Suite Francaise and Half of a Yellow Sun.

Vasilly's list

2007-05-24T20:14:00.001-05:00

Just like Dewey I'm joining late, but I think this is such a great challenge.I'm only joining to do about three of the many books I'm picking since I've signed up for so many other challenges.

After this. By Alice McDermott
Arthur and George. By Julian Barnes
Everyman. By Philip Roth
Forgetfulness. By Ward Just
Gate of the Sun. By Elias Khoury

One Good Turn. By Kate Atkinson
The Road. By Cormac McCarthy. (Let's hope I can stomach this one.)
The Translator. By Leila Aboulela
Suite Francaise. By Irene Nemirovsky
The Afterlife. By Donald Antrim. (I know I'm going to read this one. I read such a great review about this book in Poets and Writers.)

Eat, Pray, Love. By Elizabeth Gilbert. (This is one of my favorite books ever. It made me so happy. It's also very truthful about life and very funny.)
The Lost: A search for six of six million. By Daniel Mendelsohn
The Places in Between. By Rory Stewart
Reading like a writer: A guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them.
By Francine Prose (I started reading this one. Already I feel myself paying more attention to what I am reading.)

Dewey's list

2007-05-23T16:01:00.000-05:00

Hi Everyone!

I know I'm joining really late, but so many of these books are already in my TBR pile or on my bookmooch wishlist, so I decided my list would just be everything I'm already planning to read.

1. After This by Alice McDermott
2. Digging to America by Anne Tyler
3. Everyman by Phillip Roth
4. Lisey's Story by Stephen King
5. Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski
6. The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq
7. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
8. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
9. Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
10. Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
11. The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
12. The Road by Cormac Mccarthy

My blog is The Hidden Side of a Leaf.

A very belated update from Ariel, a.ka. Pour of Tor or Sycorax Pine

2007-05-23T09:05:00.000-05:00

Hallo all!

I am afraid that I have fallen desperately behind in our mutual project during my recent (couple of months of) travel and conferences, but I am eager to hop back in the saddle and get some of these books read so that I can join in the conversation again. I have been trying to keep from reading your reviews until I have read the books myself, but I often yield to temptation and find myself adding books to my to be read list. Which makes it all that much more dispiriting that I have been so belated in accomplishing my original goals.

At the moment, I am halfway through a number of books from our list, either because I wasn’t finished with them when I had to leave town on a trip, or because they are in such high demand at my library that I had to return them before I had made it to the end. Here are the ones I have started, but not yet completed:

1) “Twilight of the Superheroes” by Deborah Eisenberg
2) “Beasts of No Nation” by Uzodimnma Iweala [there is no excuse here – I own the novel, and it is not a long one]
3) “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai
4) “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” by Marisha Pessl

My goal for the end of May is to finish “Twilight of the Superheroes” and “Beasts of No Nation.” June’s goal will be “The Inheritance of Loss” and “Special Topics.”

"Thoughts of Joy..." ~ Everyman (Roth)

2007-05-22T15:36:00.001-05:00

"Thoughts of Joy" can be found here.

If you like to read or listen to someone complaining about aches and pains, medications, surgery, sickness, infidelity, divorces, estranged relationships, and death - this one is for you. It was NOT for me!

Eat The Document - Wendy's Review

2007-05-22T12:10:00.000-05:00

Anyone can start a new life, even in a small town. Everyone moves so much these days. You get a divorce, you move and start over. Try it. See how little people ask about you. See how little people listen. Or, more precisely, think about how little you really know about the people you know. -From Eat The Document, page 198-

Dana Spiotta's novel, Eat The Document, is an edgy expose` on the American countercultures of the early 70s and late 90s. The story revolves around Mary Whittiker and Bobby Desoto, two idealistic and passionate characters who get caught up in the radical Vietnam protests of their time. Told from multiple points of view and leaping back and forth in time from the heady days of the early 70s to the angst driven world of the late 90s, the novel uncovers Mary and Bobby's rebellion gone awry and the reinvention of their lives as they go underground.

Spiotta excels in the development of her female characters and portraying the intricacies of relationships and how those complexities shape one's decisions.

This was the power of a couple - their doubts occurred at different times and canceled each other out, making them much more fearless as a pair than they would ever be on their own. And that's how a life changes - it could go either way, and then it just goes one way. -From Eat The Document, page 229-

I must admit to being somewhat impatient with Spiotta's exploration of some of her male characters - especially Jason, who I found annoying and overwritten. Jason perhaps encapsulates the angst of youth, but his intellectualizing and preachiness reminded me he was a character in a story rather than bringing him to life on the page.

I am the center of the culture. I am genesis, herald, harbinger. The absolute germinal zero point - that's me. I am the sun around which all the American else orbits. In fact, I am America. I exist more than other Americans. America is the center of the world, and I am the center of America. I am fifteen, white, middle class and male. -From Eat the Document, page 123-

Spiotta laces her novel with a subtle and sarcastic humor which saves it from becoming just another overly serious interpretation of the Vietnam years and the rebellion of America's youth.

Miranda also began to notice things in the meetings Nash led (or "facilitated," because naturally there were no leaders). They were held on Tuesday and Thursday nights under Nash's highly mannered and hermetic nomenclature: SAP (Strategic Aggravation Players and/or Satyagraha by Antinomic Praxis); or the Neo Tea-Dumpers Front; or Re: the "Re" Words - Resist, Reclaim, and Rebel; or the "K" Nation (single-tactic group that merely inserted the letter k or removed the letter k - dislokations were what they called them - to cause psychic discomfort and disturbances. As in blac bloc instead of black block, or Amerika instead of America. They sent out ransom-note-style missives to unnerve their targets: Welkome, konsumers! you have been under attac. Better watch your bac, et cetera). -From Eat The Document, page 62-

Eat The Document is a smart, witty novel that falls just shy of being very good.

To read the original review of this (on my blog) go here.

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

2007-05-19T09:54:00.000-05:00

"I close my eyes and jump in"
When you are reading The Keep that is perhaps the best thing to do. After reading this book, I read several reviews that called it "confusing" and "convoluted." But I disagree. What we have in The Keep is a delightful reversion to a style more like Wilkie Collins or Edgar Allen Poe in which the reader simply has to be patient and wait while bit by bit of the story is unfolded and revealed at the pace of the author's choosing. No, you won't understand everything from the beginning. In a book that holds secrets and mysteries spanning over a period of thirty or more years, you aren't supposed to.
Even more delightful to me was the discovery, some 60 pps into the novel that there is a second and even eventually a third story line. Each weaving and twining in and around the others spiraling downward to a point where all the stories come together and all the mysteries are revealed. While I originally bemoaned the lack of punctuation, as the story lines unfolded I realized that this was a brilliant and pivotal part of the story as well. Not all of the story is unpunctuated, to tell you why would be to spoil some of the surprise.
It's a story of mystery and secrets but also of forgiveness and redemption, of leaving the darkness and finding yourself again in the light. Don't go there looking for John Grisham style action, you won't find it. The pacing, the style, the slow tightening of tension bit by delicious bit is what makes this such an unforgettable book. It is one of my favorites this year.

The Road - Wendy's Review

2007-05-18T09:44:00.000-05:00

He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. he raisedhis face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God. -From The Road, page 10-

Cormac McCarthy just won The Pulitzer Prize for The Road, a novel of profound bleakness and beauty which almost defies definition. I was worried about reading this book, which has garnered praise but has also been described as dark and depressing. It is dystopian literature which I usually avoid because the genre always struck me as so pessimistic. That being said, The Road blew me away and will make my list for one of the best books I've read in 2007.

The story appears to be a simple one: a father and his young son are traveling along a road somewhere in America after a devastating event which has killed almost every living thing and left the world in a gray haze of floating ash and weird weather. There are "bad guys" and there are horrors; there are moments of sheer terror which seem to be nightmares instead of actual life. Layered beneath this story is a larger story - one about a boy and his father and the love they share, one about faith and hope and the will to survive. It is heartbreaking and beautiful and written in an unembellished language which somehow makes it that much more powerful.

I found myself compulsively turning the pages, unable to stop reading the story. I would lay the book down, and then pick it up only moment later. Just a few more pages. McCarthy carries the reader along on this journey, looking for the hope around every curve in the road, holding their breath, wondering if God has survived the devastation after all.

McCarthy uses metaphor and symbolism throughout the novel - the fire which the boy carries inside him (is this spiritualism? hope? humanity?), and the road itself - to just name two. This is a deep book, one that deserves to be discussed and thought about. It is certainly worthy of the Pulitzer.

There are some wonderful reviews of this book out in the blogosphere. You can go here to read several in one place, and to take part in some interesting discussions of the book.

Highly recommended.

**Original post of this review may be found on my blog here.

Only Revolutions - kookiejar's review

2007-05-16T11:56:00.000-05:00

I actually tried this one before the Challenge was announced. I took one look at the first page and decided to skip it. But, I thought it would only be fair for me to try to do an actual review of it for the forum, so I tried again.

Here's what I could gleen from my second attempt...Sam is 16 and lives during the Civil War. Hailey is 16 and lives in the early 60's just after President Kennedy was assassinated. They meet and interact even through the gap in their timelines.

Time marches on as evidenced by the dates and historical footnotes on the margins of each page, but Sam and Hailey's story moves along as if months aren't zipping by as they talk.

The book is supposed to be read 8 pages at a time (for Sam's story) and then flipped over for the next 8 pages (for Hailey's story), so half the print on each page is upside down. It is written in free verse with copious, well-researched footnotes. However, punctuation, grammar and spelling rules are flagrantly disregarded. The author makes up words to suit his purposes (which is not unprecedented in literature), and for some reason all the o's are a different color from the rest of the text. I found it incredibly annoying. In fact, it may well be the most annoying book I've ever picked up.

Here I've recreated one page from Hailey's story (including the odd colored o's, nonsensical bold face type and capitalizations and made up words). I'll give a cookie to anyone who can make any sense of it...

When Renverse to bole, hundred
ringed, with Frightened Crown.
Oddly roped for hacks
by savage frown:

-O here. Now. Let me go. Please.

Shirpbawkelay!

Strong Pith. Tall Phloem.
Great Heartwood, Oily Barked with
comes of Ever Dust. Perfumes
trampled by Diesel Trucks, chain
sawed, and clear cut
for that SNIDEY CLYDE:

-You cain't own
what you cain't end.

Notching and atimbering. I dash,
murdering gaps to gum his axe
hacking at my Tree.
Tall Pith. Warm Heart
creeing just to stay
a little longer except
by violent do's
allready removed.

Yeah, I didn't think so. I'd love to know who decided which books made the NYT list and how that was decided, because this book isn't worth the paper it was printed on.

Sally906's May Update

2007-05-12T21:24:00.000-05:00

I planning on reading The Ghost Map next up - Have actually moved it to the shelf beside my bed. I was going to read it last month - but read The Road instead as it came into the library and there is a long list for it - If I had turned it down them it would have been months before I got it again :)

Completed:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Still to do:

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson -

Almost Reading Now

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Once I have done these I will see how I can get my hands on any others. The ones here on my initial list were ones I could easily get my hands on. I thought six book over the year would not leave me too pressure ridden :)

Update from 3M

2007-05-12T05:38:00.000-05:00

Update on 5/12:

I set my goal for 10 books but will most likely do 12. I didn't follow my plan as outlined below, but I am 60% (or 50% if I read 12) finished. I'm happy with that so far. I don't know if I'll be able to complete the remaining titles until after June 30, though, because of all the other challenges I'm doing. Right now I'm reading The Stone Diaries for the bookawards group and toward the end of the month I'll start on The Known World for the Pulitzer group. I'm also trying to pack and put most of my belongings (hence, books!) into storage so my house will be mostly clutter free when we put it on the market. Packing.is.not.fun.

Finished titles:
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (to be reviewed after I re-read print version)
Everyman by Philip Roth
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
The Translator by Leila Aboulela
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

To be read:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
Lisey's Story by Stephen King
Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky

Previous update on 3/15:
I have finished The Road on audio CD from the library. Although somewhat depressing, I liked it very much. Before I write a review, though, I want to read the actual print copy. Luckily, it's a short book. I've bought a copy and will "re-read" it soon. Sometimes I feel like I miss a lot when I just listen to the CD.

I have gotten quite a few NY Notable titles from the library lately. Black Swan Green, Intuition, and Half of a Yellow Sun to name a few. Hopefully I'll complete them by the end of April. I plan on finishing Suite Française and Inheritance of Loss by the end of March.

Other books I'm reading include Big Stone Gap for my f2f book group, and The Myth of Me and You for one of my online book groups.

Previous update on 3/3:

I am halfway finished with Inheritance of Loss. For anyone interested in reading that title with others this month, you may join our Yahoo group here. Our group includes several people from the NYT Notable Challenge.

After I finish Inheritance of Loss, I plan on reading Suite Française. I'm also reading The Book Thief for the Chunkster Challenge. Those two titles should go along nicely with each other.

Happy reading!
(yet another) Michelle

Against the Day... Kookiejar's Review

2007-05-08T12:24:00.001-05:00

This is how I normally read a book. I spend the first 50 pages or so getting familiar with the characters and the setting, growing used to the author's style and vernacular, and generally getting a feel for the book as a whole. The next 50 pages I spend trying the understand the author's intent...what is he trying to tell me and why did he write this particular story.

After the first 100 pages I stop and ask myself these questions...

1. Do I understand what is going on?
2. Do I care about the characters?
3. Does it matter to me what happens next?
4. Do I have the time and energy to see this book through to the end?

If the answer to any one of these questions is 'no', I stop reading. Sometimes I will return to a book years later and the answers will be different, sometimes not.

For 'Against the Day' the answers to all the questions were 'no'. It isn't that it is poorly written, it's just that there are so many characters that we never really get to know any one individual in a personal way. We never form a vested interest in anyone's activities. There is plenty of humor in these first few pages and lots to enjoy, but it just wasn't enough for me.

In the first section he introduces us to a roving group of balloonists called the Chums of Chance, who go on various adventures (supposedly chronicled in tales with titles like 'The Chums of Chance and the Evil Half-Wit') but we too soon leave this merry group for encounters with other characters who are not so enthralling. Too bad. Mr Pynchon, write some of the adventures of The Chums of Chance and I will read it, but don't meander off in search of greener pastures.

So, after a valiant effort (I really, really tried to finish this), I've decided that this book is unfinishable. That does not excuse the so-called professional book reviewers who felt qualified to give an opinion on this book without finishing it. If I were being paid to review it, I would either force myself to read nothing else but this until it was done, or simply not accept payment for this assignment. It's only right.

So, is anyone else game?

Eat, Pray, Love - 3M's Review

2007-05-05T14:21:00.000-05:00

Eat, Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert

2006, 352 pp.

Rating: 4
Caveat! I didn't like the book much. I'm giving it a '4' because of the brilliant writing.

Subtitled One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert's book about "finding herself" after a divorce is, well, interesting to say the least. She is frank, candid, brutally honest, and bares all in this travel memoir. I do give her this: she is a brilliant writer and narrator (I listened to the audio CD). The problem was, though, that after finishing the book, I found I really didn't like it much. It is an easy read/listen, with a little 'too much information' sometimes, if you know what I mean. I also didn't agree with almost any of her decisions or with her conclusions about God and spirituality, though I'm sure she's not asking me to, either! Still, I rated it a '4' because I want to recognize her writing talents.

She goes through a messy divorce and travels through the three "I" countries listed above. She learns Italian and eats a lot of pasta in Italy (the Eat in the title), she "finds God" in India (the Pray), and she finds love (the Love in the title) in Indonesia. She makes it all very interesting, that's for sure. I do recommend this book because it is always fascinating to take a peak at other women's lives and their viewpoints, and as I said, the writing is excellent. In some ways, though, books like these always reinforce my own beliefs and viewspoints as well.

The Translator - 3M's Review

2007-05-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

The Translator
by Leila Aboulela

1999, 203 pp.

Rating: 4

Sammar, (I believe it was pronounced 'Summer'), is a young widow working as an Arabic translator at a university in Aberdeen, Scotland. She has been grieving for several years over the loss of her husband who was killed in a car accident. She has a little boy but feels she is unable to care for him and leaves him with her mother-in-law in Sudan.

Faith plays an important part in Sammar's life, so when she starts to fall for Rae, her boss, she realizes it could never be. That is, unless he converts to Islam. Their relationship starts off slowly, just by talking on the telephone. I found this to be very real and touching. Many of my best conversations with my husband have been on the phone, and this was the first time (that I could recall, anyway), that I had found it portrayed in such a way in a book. The progression of the relationship and the issues of faith and belief are explored in the rest of the novel.

I really enjoyed Aboulela's writing. It was very tender and poignant. I found it easy to feel Sammar's grief. There were a few things I did dislike about Sammar's character, though. I really cannot imagine leaving a child behind like that for such an extended period of time. A few weeks perhaps, but not a few years! The writing was beautiful. However, in the last few pages of the book there were a few too many sentence fragments for my taste. I don't mind some, but it seemed a little excessive. I would definitely read another book by this author, though.

This is the author's first novel and was first published in the UK in 1999.

Kookiejar Checks in

2007-05-04T09:35:00.000-05:00

I'm still alive, and I'm still in the challenge. I've been a bad book blogger, I know. I've been in such a rut. But I'm over it now and ready to continue on my way.

"Against the Day"? I will post on that next Tuesday. I don't think it will surprise anyone that I couldn't finish it.

I am currently reading (and rather enjoying) "Golden Country", so expect a review of that before the end of the month.

I read the first story in "The Collected Stories of Mary Gordon" and I liked it, so I'll try to finish off that collection before June as well.

I am lugging "Intuition" back and forth to the laundrymat with me, and am finally getting into it, so that looks promising.

I have a copy of "The Dissident", but I'm having trouble with it, so we'll have to see where that takes me.

So, that's where I stand. That is all.

Arthur and George - Wendy's Book Review

2007-05-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

Julian Barnes has crafted an imaginative, compellingly readable 'whodunnit' that keeps the reader compulsively turning the pages.

Based on the life and work of Sir Arthur Conan Boyle, it is a tale of two men - George and Arthur - who seem to be living worlds apart, but whose paths cross when a mystery surfaces. The novel explores larger themes of racism and morality, but is driven by excellent story telling and Barnes' gift of creating character.

I read this for a book club read as well as a 2006 New York Times Notable. I am happy I picked it up. If you enjoy evocative novels which spin a good yarn, you will love this book.

Rated a 4/5. Recommended.

You can read my original review of this book on my blog.