Rebeccanyc Reads in 2013, Part 4

* means a favorite read

Books I'm Reading Now

 

Read in September
71. Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou
70. The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo*

Read in August
69. The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart*
68. Morality Play by Barry Unsworth*
67. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
66. The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi
65. Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou*
64. Archangel: Fiction by Andrea Barrett
63. Xala by Sembène Ousmane
62. Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies
61. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset*
60. Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev*
59. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
58. Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier

Read in July
57. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
56. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz
55. Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane
54. The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth
53. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
52. The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley*
From previous thread
51. The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola
50. The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Lab'ou Tansi

Sorry, mysterious duplicate post.

Read on Previous Threads

Read in June
49. A Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
48. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
47. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox*
46. Reticence by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
45. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
44. This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
43. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey*

Read in May
42. Lucifer Unemployed by Aleksander Wat
41. A Priest in the House (The Conquest of Plassans) by Émile Zola
40. Surrender on Demand by Varian Fry*
39. The Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh*
38. Transit by Anna Seghers*
37. Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
36. The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri
35. Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant
34. To Say Nothing of the Dog: or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis*
33. Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin*

Read in April
32. The Sin of Father Mouret by Émile Zola
31. An Armenian Sketchbook by Vassily Grossman*
30. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol*
29. Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories we Tell about Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough
28. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
27. The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant*
26. Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi
25. The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz*
24. It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past by David Satter

Read in March
23. The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia
22. To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia*
21. Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia
20. War and War by László Krasznahorkai*
19. The Opportune Moment, 1855 by Patrik Ouřednik*
18. The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss*
17. Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera
16. A Harlot High and Low by Honoré de Balzac
15. News from Heaven by Jennifer Haigh
14. Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac*

Read in February
13. Jonathan Wild by Henry Fielding
Read on Previous Thread
12. The City Builder by George Konrád
11. Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore*
10. Old Man Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
9. The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
8. Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier*

Read in January
7. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
6. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel*
5. My Century by Alexander Wat*
4. Kornél Esti by Dezsõ Kosztolányi
3. The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo*
2. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss*
1. Pot Luck by Emile Zola

Books Recommended by Others
(Idea for this stolen from Deebee's thread)

The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn Recommended by SassyLassy Bought 1/9
Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas Recommended by dmsteyn Bought 1/9
Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age by Jonathon Keats Recommended by RidgewayGirl
The Recognitions by William Gaddis Recommended by EnriqueFreeque
The Embarrassment of Riches by Simon Schama Recommended by deebee Bought 4/2
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi Recommended by steven03tx
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey Recommended by detailmuse Bought 5/29/13
Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog Recommended bymkboylan
Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger Recommended by Linda92007
The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz Recommended by Lisa/labfs39 Bought 2/15
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion Recommended by MJ/detailmuse and SassyLassy
The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto Recommended by Lois/avaland Gift from Lois
The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History by Peter Heather Recommended by deebee Bought 8/22
The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin Recommended by detailmuse
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton Recommended by RidgewayGirl
Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky Recommended by Chris/cabegley
Color Me English by Caryl Phillips Recommended by Linda92007
Brodeck, Monsieur Linh and His Child, and Grey Souls by Phillipe Claudel Recommended by Lisa/labfs39
Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams by Charles King Recommended by Cyrel/torontoc Bought 5/10
Freud (The Routledge Philosophers) by Jonathan Lear Recommended by Dewald/dmsteyn Bought 6/6/13
The Wandering Jews by Joseph Roth Recommended by SassyLassy Bought 5/10
The Czar's Madman by Jaan Kross Recommended by SassyLassy
Imperium (recommended by SassyLassy) and Shah of Shahs (recommended by Cyrel/torontoc) by Ryszard Kapuściński
The Country of the Blind and other stories by H.G. Wells Recommended by Barry/baswood Bought 6/6
Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains by Keith Heyer Mehldahl Recommended by stretch/Kevin
Resistance a Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France by Agnes Humbert Recommended by Merrikay/mkboylan
Outwitting the Gestapo by Lucie Aubrac Recommended by Merrikay/mkboylan
The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers and Found Treasures edited by Frieda Johles Forman Recommended by Cyrel/torontoc
Writers on Writing by The New York Times Recommended my MJ/detailmuse Bought 7/24
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter Recommended by Edwin Bought 7/16
Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals Recommended by Edwin
The Women's War by Alexandre Dumas Recommended by SassyLassy Bought 7/24
Lost Classics edited by Michael Ondaatje Recommended by Wandering_StarAlready own this!
Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett Recommended by Colleen/NanaCC Bought 8/7/13
419 by Will Ferguson Recommended by Steven
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth Recommended by Barry/baswood Bought 8/12/13
The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough Recommended by Colleen/NanaCC

List by country of books read in 2013 (i.e., country of author)

Africa

Congo
Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou
Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou
The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Lab'ou Tansi

Senegal
Xala by Sembène Ousmane
Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

Asia

Burma/Myanmar
Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi

Indonesia
A Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Vietnam
The Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh

Central America (and Mexico) and the Caribbean
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart (Guadeloupe)
Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)

Europe

Belgium
Reticence by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic
The Opportune Moment, 1855 by Patrik Ouřednik
Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera

England and the UK
Fiction
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
To Say Nothing of the Dog: or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Jonathan Wild by Henry Fielding
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Nonfiction
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz
Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories we Tell about Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore

France
The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo
The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola
A Priest in the House (The Conquest of Plassans) by Émile Zola
Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant
Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin
The Sin of Father Mouret by Émile Zola
The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant
A Harlot High and Low by Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
Old Man Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
Pot Luck by Emile Zola

Germany
Transit by Anna Seghers*

Hungary
War and War by László Krasznahorkai
The City Builder by George Konrád
Kornél Esti by Dezsõ Kosztolányi

Italy
The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri
The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia
To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia
Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia

Norway
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset*

Poland
Lucifer Unemployed by Aleksander Wat
The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz
My Century by Aleksander Wat

Russia/Soviet Union
Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vassily Grossman
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Middle East and North Africa

Morocco
The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi

US and Canada

USA
Fiction
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
Archangel: Fiction by Andrea Barrett
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
News from Heaven by Jennifer Haigh

Nonfiction
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier
The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth
The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey
Surrender on Demand by Varian Fry
It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past by David Satter
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

Canada
Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies

52. The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley



How do I love this book? Let me count the ways. Smiley creates memorable and believable characters and a vivid sense of a place and a time; she writes in a style that calls to mind the language of Norse sagas yet is eminently readable; she interweaves stories of many different characters over several generations with wonderful pacing; and she creates a real sense of unease and even impending doom.

As the title implies, the novel tells the tales of Europeans living in Greenland towards the end of their settlement there. It is not known why these settlements disappeared in the 14th and 15th centuries after lasting since the 10th century when Norwegians and Icelanders (also, presumably, originally from Norway) first arrived; theories include the coming of the Little Ice Age, increasing conflicts with the Inuit (called "skraelings" by the Greenlanders), and environmental degradation due to agriculture and the cutting down of the few trees that were there. In the novel, there is a severe shortage of wood, winters seem colder than in earlier times, and famine regularly strikes.

All this is background to a saga of a people who, although they lived a long time ago in a harsh and unforgiving environment with limited technology, are not all that different from us in their feelings and behavior. The story focuses on the family and descendents of Asegeir Gunnarson: how they interact with each other and with the larger community of which they are a part. There are many tragedies, both those caused by implacable nature and those caused by human pride and hurt feelings and anger and desire and all the other emotions we are prone too. People die a lot, sometimes through dangerous activities like hunting seals, sometimes in childbirth, sometimes by murder, sometimes by disease or by starving or freezing to death. The characters are vividly portrayed, especially the ones who are in some way different, who don't quite fit the mold, the ones who don't enjoy the social realm and feel more at home in the wilderness with the plants and the animals.

The people know that times are changing: they catch fewer seals and reindeer in the semiannual hunts; the winters are colder; the wood is all gone and people fight over driftwood; the land will only support sheep and not cattle; the lawspeaker no longer remembers all of the laws and takes only one day to recite them instead of the previous three days; ships from Iceland and Norway no longer arrive, and thus there are no replacements for the religious and civic leaders; people's farms (steads) can no longer support them and they have to seek work as servants to others; and more. And yet they stay and figure out ways to survive, because they have no other choice.

Another aspect of this novel is the way it integrates people telling tales and sagas into the novel itself; sometimes, indeed, people tell their own stories as if they were someone else's. And the church, and priests, and a bizarre (and probably crazy) "prophet" play important roles too. As life becomes more challenging, people are more responsive to these gloomy prophecies and more willing to take revenge without the benefit of law.

This is a melancholy book, the story of a dying culture and of people who cannot find happiness. But it is also full of life, full of people who jump from the page, full of people living a life that seems completely realistic although so far away. It is completely absorbing.

I've had this book on my shelves since the late 1980s, and I owe my reading of it now to an enthusiastic review by AnnieMod. Thanks, Annie; this is one of my best reads of the year so far.

Following up on the conversation between Linda/laytonwoman3rd and me that started with this post on my previous thread. We were discussing someone named Stephen Pastore and his connection with the Zola Society's publication of "new American translations" of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, published by Grand Oak Books. I sent an e-mail to Grand Oak Books (they gave a Comcast e-mail address not an @grandoakbooks.com kind of address) to find out who wrote the introductions and who were the translators,and whether there were explanatory notes, since this information isn't available on either the Zola Society or the Grand Oak Books web site.

A day or two later, I got this response by someone whose name showed up as "Writer" and whose e-mail address was something meaningless at yahoo.com. "Writer," however, did give a real woman's name at the end of the e-mail. "Writer" wrote:

"The introductions and translations are by various living Zola scholars. No explanatory notes.
Thank you for your interest,"

And then I wrote back:

"Thanks for your response. I've read a lot of Zola. and I'm definitely interested in new translations, especially of the volumes that haven't been translated into English in recent years. That's why I'd be very interested in a list of the translators and introduction writers for each book, if you could either tell me, or point me to an online list of that information."

Needless to say, I haven't heard anything since.

>6 rebeccanyc: You are very welcome :) Glad that you liked it as well.

Hooray! I am glad you liked The Greenlanders. I read it five years ago, and it's really stuck in my memory. But it always seems to be going in and out of print, unusual for such a well-known author - I first heard about it in an anthology called Lost Classics where writers wrote about books which were hard to find and should be better known.

Nice review of The Greenlanders. I might just have to add this to my groaning TBR.

I purchased The Greenlanders after AnnieMod's review. I really need to get to it - sounds like my kind of book!

Great review of The Greenlanders - sounds tempting!

The whole Pastore-Zola affair sounds bizarre and shady! Sometimes I like to read about literary debacles - authors going crazy, shady or incompetent publishers, fake awards - but this is a first.

Thanks, Annie, Wandering, Colleen, japaul, and DieF. It is really a wonderful book. Wandering, I have an old copy as I mentioned in my review, probably one of the earliest paperback editions, and I'm just glad it didn't crumble as I was reading it. It may have been in and out of print, but Amazon has copies available now (hint, hint). The Lost Classics book sounds like fun.

So glad you loved this book too. I read it from the library when it first came out and liked it so much I started giving copies to others. I just read the first line from Lost Classics in ck, A book that we love haunts us forever; it will haunt us even when we can no longer find it on the shelf or beside the bed where we must have left it. which pretty well describes my hunt for a copy of Smiley's book for myself once I realized it was no longer in print. I did find a great used copy, but luckily for others this book seems to be available once more although nowadays the author's name has first billing and the title appears underneath it. I will now have to find a copy of the Ondaatje book. I remember hearing about it when it first came out but then it fell off my radar, so thanks w_s

Fascinating Pastore saga too.

I may order a copy from Amazon as mine is falling apart and I want to make sure I can read it again.

Hmm. LT tells me I have a copy of Lost Classics. Now I just have to figure out where it is.

It's worth digging out!

I can't find it! It isn't in any of the logical places I would have put it (books about books, TBR section about writers, writing, etc.). I reorganized my shelves about a year and a half ago and now books aren't always where I think they should be. Have to go out now, so will have to look more tonight or tomorrow.

You've actually lost a book called "Lost Classics"??? It's not April 1, you know. :-)

Enjoyed your review of The Greenlanders. That one will go on the wishlist (along with Lost Classics).

I didn't comment on it at the time, but I got involved in checking out these supposed Pastore Zola translations after seeing your post. I didn't find out anything you hadn't already reported. If not deceptive, it at least looks like a very amateurish effort.

I once wrote to a publisher to ask who the translator was of a copy of Crime and Punishment I had read. They wrote back saying they had no idea--it was just a public domain text they picked up somewhere.

Just added Lost Classics as well. That looks excellent.

The Greenlanders sounds great. I think that's going on my wishlist.

>9 wandering_star: wandering_star, that's not fair - just throwing a name in the mix and sending people's "I am not buying books just now" resolves to the wind...

Sorry... and I'm afraid it's the sort of book which will send you hunting around the second-hand bookshops (real or virtual), so a double-destroyer of resolve.

Excellent review of The Greenlanders, that one might tempt me.

Enjoying your battle to find out more from Grand Oak books, but that saga looks like it has come to an end.

Great review of The Greenlanders, Rebecca. I purchased the Kindle ebook edition after reading AnnieMod's review.

Well, I looked through all my TBR sections and finally found my copy of Lost Classics! Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I have so many TBR books that I've had to be creative about how I organize them and also had to double-book piles of them, which was where I found LC. Thanks, wandering_star for mentioning this book, and thanks to LT I knew I had a copy somewhere.

Thanks, Barry. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to get useful information from them, because both the Zola Society and Grand Oak Books websites are basically screaming "don't get in touch with us and don't expect us to provide you with information," but I was curious about what I could get them to tell me, as a potential customer. The whole thing, as Steven says, is at best "amateurish" but I really suspect an intent to deceive, based on the introduction writers they mention online being completely un-Google-able (i.e., made-up names) and the nonprofessional e-mail addresses, etc. They do sell their books on Amazon, but the Amazon "look-inside" feature goes to other editions, so it's impossible to find out anything about them that way. I agree that this is the end of this saga.

Well, I've now read five essays in Lost Classics and I've wshlisted three books. It's only three because one is an ancient rare book and one I've already read. This is an EXTREMELY dangerous book! Thanks (I think), wandering_ star!

Wonderful review of The Greenlanders. And you all make me want to snap up a copy of Lost Classics, whereas I should, first, go to my TBRs and get to You’ve Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe...

Oh no, MJ, not another book that's going to drive my wishlist crazy!

Lost Classics sounds wonderful. Enjoyed your review of The Greenlanders and will certainly keep that in mind.

Back on your previous thread, that quote from Zola's The Belly of Paris, the really vivid one of all the cheeses and butter - am I the only one that found it disturbing? Piles of butter "looking like models of bellies on to which a sculptor had thrown some wet rags" - yuck. A wonderful review though.

I am in the middle of moving house, and since my shipping was packed up earlier in the week, I keep being visited by the desire to do something which I haven't wanted to do for ages but of course can't because whatever it is has been boxed up. Re-reading Lost Classics is now added to that list.

Dan, I think in that particular quote showed Zola's feeling that all the piles of food in Les Halles were not only disgusting but also symbolic of middle classes excesses and also somehow a substitute for sex (I may be stretching it here, but the thin and largely homeless boy and girls in the story are the only ones who actually enjoy sex, it seems). Some of the other descriptions, of meats in particular, are even more horrifying. And thanks.

53. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson



In her introduction to the edition I read, Francine Prose calls this book "strange" (she used to teach a course on Strange Books). It is not only strange, but creepy too, and the boundary between reality and imagination is so fluid I often wasn't sure what was really taking place and what was only happening in the troubled 17-year-old mind of the protagonist, Natalie Waite.

The reader meets Natalie as she is on the verge of heading off to a progressive women-only college selected for her by her pompous, overbearing writer father. But in the first part of the novel she is still at home, given writing assignments critiqued each morning by her father and lectured to about the futility of happiness in marriage by her depressed, defeated, and somewhat alcoholic mother on the occasion of her father throwing yet another cocktail party for his friends and "friends." One of the guests at that party lures Natalie into the woods and something sexual does or doesn't happen -- the reader doesn't know. All the time Natalie is living at home she also has an ongoing conversation in her mind with a police detective who suspects her of murder.

In the second part of the novel, Natalie is at college, which gives Jackson the opportunity to skewer the pretensions of this particular type of academia -- professors (all male!), students (and, oh, there are some sweetly vicious ones), and the decor and rituals of dorm (house) living. Natalie fails to make friends, although two "popular" girls make use of her eagerness for friendship, and she becomes interested in and friendly with the wife, a former student only four years older than her, of her English professor. She resists going home, but does for Thanksgiving, and notes that through all her letters home only her mother realized how lonely she was, not her father.

The third part of the novel is utterly confounding, as Natalie returns to college part of the way through the Thanksgiving weekend and meets up with her one friend, a girl named Tony. They may or may not have a sexual relationship. Indeed, as they spend a day in the local town and then take a bus that winds its way out of town, I must confess I couldn't tell whether Tony was real or a figment of Natalie's fevered imagination as she struggles with a psychological breakdown.

For this book, as far as I can tell, is really about what is going on in Natalie's mind, and it is in someways a "typical" adolescent mind and in some ways a deeply troubled one. At one point Natalie imagines the houses and people at the college being dollhouses filled with dolls that she can pick up and take apart and crush. There's a lot that's creepy in this book, and very little that is told outright, starting with Natalie's relationship with her father and the imagined conversations with the detective, continuing with the way students go in and out of other students' rooms secretly, and winding up with the strange friendship with Tony. There's a lot that's symbolic too, from Natalie enjoying time in the garden at the beginning of the novel, then being lured under some trees by her father's guest at the cocktail party, and finally winding up lost/abandoned in some woods.

I am really not sure what to make of this novel, and have little idea of what was real and what was not, but Jackson is a brilliant writer. She pinpoints the foibles of her characters, satirizes the pretensions of the college, and gets inside Natalie's head in an uncanny way. The last section is so strange but so compelling that I could barely put the book down, even though I was totally mystified. I would definitely be interested in knowing what other readers think about this book.

Terrific review. You have left me intrigued and interested in reading this just so I could respond to your last sentence. And you have left me feeling I should at least read something by Shirely Jackson.

Jackson's story "The Lottery," which you may well have read in school, is what she's most famous for, but I am exceptionally fond of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Ok...I may bite on your comment about We Have Always Lived in the Castle...going to check my library.

I had the impression that Shirley Jackson was a somewhat lighter weight writer than your review now suggests. I'll have to give her a try. I like the strange and ambiguous.

What does the title "Hangsaman" refer to?

Steven, there is nothing light about Shirley Jackson, but she does occasionally throw in a twist of the supernatural which might give that impression; the collection The Lottery and Other Stories gives a sense of her scope.

I think the title has more than one meaning.

The epigraph for the novel is:

"Slack your rope, Hangsaman,
O slack it for a while,
I think I see my true love coming,
Coming many a mile."

I think this comes from an old song. Peter, Paul, and Mary sing a variation of it in this YouTube video, but this is obviously later than the original 1951 publication date of Hangsaman. On a quick search, I haven't found an earlier or original version.

At the same time, there is Tarot symbolism in Hangsaman, and one of the Tarot cards referred to in the book is The Hanged Man, described in this Wikipedia article.


From Wikipedia article

Interestingly, and I didn't know this until I read the Wikipedia article just now, a man named A. E. Waite was the co-designer of something called the Rider-Waite tarot deck, described by Wikipedia as "one of the most popular tarot decks in use today in the English-speaking world." Having learned this, I certainly think Natalie's last name is no coincidence. (One of the things she does in the book is play around with variations of her name.) As quoted in the Wikipedia article, Waite writes that the card "suggests life in suspension," which certainly can be applied to Natalie, and "expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe."

Having said this, I tend to find mysticism mystifying and a little yawn-inducing, and I haven't really delved into the tarot symbolism in the book except to look this up in answer to your question.

Thanks for the research, the explanation and the links. (I would have guessed--wrongly--that "Hangsaman" was perhaps a variant name for the word game Hangman.) I enjoyed the song, too.

I agree with you on mysticism. I'm sure there is some cultural information to be gleaned from the origin of the tarot symbols, but I have no interest in fortune telling, horoscopes, etc.

Rebecca, it sounds to me that you have done a great job in reviewing a book that was not easy to understand, although the power of the writing seems to have pulled you through. It sounds great, but I will let Steven read it first.

Wow, Hangsaman sounds EXTREMELY strange - I can't decide whether I want to read it or not. I really loved We Have Always Lived in the Castle also and wanted to read more Jackson but was thinking The Haunting of Hill House.

Did Prose happen to mention what other works she used in her Strange Books course?

Thanks, Barry.

DieF, I loved We Have Always Lived in the Castle but was not as big a fan of The Haunting of Hill House. Prose didn't actually teach Hangsaman in her course because she read it after she taught the course. She mentions "starting with the stories of Gogol and Kleist and ending with Robert Walser's Jakob von Gunten and Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles."

Great review of Hangsaman, Rebecca. I've had my fill of creepy teenagers after finishing The Wasp Factory, so I won't plan to read this book anytime soon.

54. The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth



Although this book wasn't what I expected to be, for the most part I found it interesting, if a little more detailed in places than I would have liked. At the beginning, Huth, a Harvard physics professor, talks about how technology has lessened our abilities to navigate by the stars, predict the weather, use compasses, etc. I thought this book would help me learn techniques for finding my way. Huth notes he taught a course on this topic, and gave his students some practical assignments, so I thought, or hoped, some of them would find their way into the book.

Instead, Huth has written a comprehensive book, heavy on the physics (not surprisingly) but with helpful illustrations, that covers everything from ancient navigation techniques to how people get lost to maps and compasses; the stars, the sun, and the moon; latitude and longitude; weather and storms; waves, tides, and currents; and the construction of hulls and sails. As can be seen, the book focuses more on ocean navigation than on finding one's way on land. Throughout, Huth stresses how vital sustained observation and practice are, and how navigators need to cross-check information obtained in different ways, especially if one reading or interpretation is unexpected.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book for me were the discussions of ancient feats of navigation, especially by the Norse and by Pacific Islanders, and also later, not always successful, feats of Arctic exploration. It is a remarkable testament to the human ability to observe, interpret, and remember patterns of stars, waves, weather, etc., that can be put to practical use. Needless to say, this information and practice are also important in military training.

I didn't attempt to study most of the topics in the book, but instead tried to get a flavor of what Huth was talking about; this was especially true for the sections about navigating by the stars, observing the relative height of the sun at noon, and understanding cloud patterns and what they reveal about weather. By the time I got to the last chapters about boat construction, I was skimming. On the other hand, I found the very limited practical information interesting, such as how big an angle of the sky your hand covers when you hold a fist out at the end of an outstretched arm. Of course, I am unlikely to use this information, but if someone were to condense a handbook of do-it-yourself techniques from the mass of physical information in this book, I would buy it.

Great review of Hangsaman, Rebecca. I have loved the little of Jackson that I have read ("The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House), but never went beyond those. Your review has prompted me to buy The Lottery and Other Stories and I will check the library for others.

Intriguing sounding Shirley Jackson book. I haven't read anything by her yet but think I may try this one. The Lost Art of Finding Our Way sounds fascinating. The loss of connection with the physical world is something that really concerns me, along with the concomitant fear people are developing of the wilderness or even outdoor spaces. The sections on marine navigation sound fascinating.

Thanks, Linda and Sassy. Sassy, I wish The Lost Art of Finding Our Way were more the book I hoped it would be; when I said I would buy a "condensed" version, I actually didn't mean material extracted from this book but a more practical handbook altogether. It is truly amazing, though, the feats of navigation -- could have been more on those too.

Darryl, now that I've read your review of The Wasp Factory I can say with 100% accuracy that the late teenagers in Hangsaman are NOTHING like the ones in that book!

Perhaps the clue is in the title - its a Lost Art.

Thanks for the review of The Lost Art of Finding Our Way. I think I wishlisted it just after being intrigued by the title in your recently added stuff... I'd like to still get a copy, I think I'll enjoy it, and even possibly make use of it!

55. Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane



In this brief but powerful book, Samba Diallo, the son of an important leader of the Diallobé in Senegal, goes first to a local Islamic school, where he studies with a man known as the Teacher of the Diallobé, then to the school set up by the French colonial administration, and finally on to college in Paris. While the novella focuses on Samba (whose schooling, apparently, was a lot like that of the author), it is really a philosophical novel, consisting of multiple conversations about Islamic beliefs versus those of the west. Through these conversations, the Islamic beliefs are presented as a beautiful way of living in the world, of interacting with other people, and of approaching death, while western philosophies and actions are divorced from meaning and from faith, materialistic, and atheistic. Although this could appear didactic or oversimplified, in the context of the novel the conversations appear completely realistic and thoughtful. In essence, the novella confronts the European conquest of Africa with ideas as well as bullets, leading Africans to become estranged from their own history and cultures.

Although this is fundamentally a philosophical novel (how French, one might say), the author has created memorable characters and situations, both in Africa and in France, and a portrait of a time when African leaders had a real choice to make about how to deal with the west. Of course, that choice still continues, and not only in Africa.

56. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz



Grosz, a psychoanalyst based in London, presents brief portraits of some of his patients (disguised, of course), exploring both the range of problems that affect his largely middle-class patients and the psychoanalytic process itself. While some of the patients have what might be considered run-of-the-mill problems (although disturbing and painful for them, of course), others have more interesting stories. And stories are what these are: stories of how the past (and sometimes the future) make trouble for us in the present. (Grosz also gives examples from literature.) Perhaps more interesting was the insight Grosz gives into how psychoanalysts work, what they listen for, what they have to struggle with themselves, how something unexpected can create understanding. I found this book for the most part deeply moving, and very well written, but not as illuminating as I might have hoped.

Nice reviews of Ambiguous Adventure and The Examined Life, Rebecca.

Ambiguous adventure sounds interesting, should it be recommended reading for all those people that think that Muslims are somehow the axis of evil

Thanks, Darryl and Barry. That's a good point, Barry; of course, all religions have their share of wackos, but at this point it seems to be mostly Muslims feeling the heat for theirs.

Interesting last three books...each one on losing and finding ones way (only stretching a little with Kane). Should we be wondering what you are searching for?

Ha ha ha, Dan! I could be glib and just say I'm searching for good books to read! But maybe I should apply a little more introspection to my book choices, especially since I generally make them on the spur of the moment based on what I feel like reading. Right now I've started a serious tome, Kristin Lavransdatter, so I'll be reading that for the rest of the summer, but I'm sure I'll be reading other books along with it, if only to have more manageable ones for subway reads.

My copy of Lost Classics just arrived. It was one of those irresistible $.01 used books on Amazon in "Like New" condition. What they failed to say was that it was a bound galley, and the table of contents says every chapter begins on page 146. Oh well, I don't think I'll ask for my penny back. Time to start growing my wishlist.

I tend to buy from ABEBooks instead of Amazon when I'm going for a used book, because I have a little more confidence in them (although I believe Amazon now owns ABE, so this may not really mean much).

I've seen that when it comes to used books the same sellers list through multiple venues like Amazon, ABE Books, B&N, etc., so I could've gotten the same book even if I'd ordered it elsewhere. I'm not really complaining anyway at that price. Most of the used books I buy are in better condition than described. I've only returned one book out of dozens (hundreds maybe?) bought from Amazon, and that was because it wasn't in English though catalogued as such. (Disclosure: I also own a small amount of stock in the company ;-)

57. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter



Blood is real, blood is symbolic, blood is red, and blood and redness flow through this collection of rewritten fairy tales. Carter's writing is lush, atmospheric, and often sensual, and her imagination vivid and disturbing, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I hoped to after reading edwinbcn's recent review.

Needless to say, some of the ten stories work better than others. I was totally caught up in the first, and title, story, a more modern take on the Bluebeard legend, until the end (which, to avoid spoilers, I will not reveal); perhaps it could have been predicted from the beginning of the tale, but I found it contrived and disappointing. I also enjoyed the two Beauty and the Beast stories; one, "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon," is more literal, and the other, "The Tiger's Bride," much creepier. There are three wolf/werewolf stories, two based on Red Riding Hood, and one, which I found moving, about a girl raised by wolves but then reintroduced to human society, "Wolf-Alice." But the stand-out for me was the humorous "Puss-in-Boots," which I found thoroughly delightful.

Money and wealth and the desire for them and the squandering of them play a role in a few of these stories -- in this, as in other matters, the forms may have changed but human foibles remain the same as in earlier times. But it is redness and blood that really seem to obsess Carter, from the ruby choker necklace (pictured on the cover of my edition) given to each bride of the Bluebeard character, meant to mimic the blood of the aristocrats who were guillotined during the French revolution, to the blood needed by the descendant of Vlad the Impaler in "The Lady of the House of Love," to the menstrual blood that puzzles Wolf-Alice, and more: red cheeks, red mouths, red hoods, and on and on.

Carter's writing is beautiful, if difficult to take in large doses, and I found the collection worth reading for that and for her imagination. But although I am still thinking about this book, I didn't warm to it.

Perhaps too much blood Rebecca, enjoyed your review.

No, I think it was too much lushness and not enough meaning.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book for me were the discussions of ancient feats of navigation, especially by the Norse and by Pacific Islanders...

Indeed! I read about some of them in Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island, written as a memoir of the author's experience on a Marshallese atoll but full of information about their history. He is still very impressed by their boating ability but jokes that it has been on the decline.

The Grosz book reminds me of my recent read by Irvin Yalom, Love's Executioner. Yalom is an existentialist so he may have a totally different account of his process than Grosz does. Personally I prefer Jungian work.

I remember your reading that book about the Marshall Islands, Jonathan, and it sounded very interesting. Not sure I feel like venturing into more psychiatry (books, that is), though.

Abandoned!

Let the Games Begin/Che la festa cominci by Niccolo Ammaniti

Well, I guess you can't tell a book by the blurbs on the cover, which proclaimed this book "wildly entertaining . . .laugh-out-loud fun" by a "master story-teller." Sounded like just what I needed. NOT! I lasted about 40 pages of adolescent male humor and gave up.

Catching up from the "strange books" onward and enjoying your reviews as always, and now >64 rebeccanyc: also your gusto!!

The Examined Life sounds interesting and moving.

Thanks for stopping by MJ. The Examined Life was moving, but not as interesting as I had hoped.

#37 That song is based on Child Ballad #95 "The Maid Freed From the Gallows". Odetta, Dylan, Leadbelly, Led Zeppelin and others have done versions. The Wikipedia article on the song itself references Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman.

Thank you, Detective Linda! Very interesting.

Studied the Child Ballads a bit in a folklore course I took in college. I thought the song sounded like it belonged in that realm, so I checked the list, and made the connection. Fun stuff.

So much here of interest Rebecca! You've really piqued my interest with The Greenlanders!
I'm now here in club read too!
I hope I can keep this reading splurge going :)

Thanks for stopping by, Kim. It's great to see you here, and I'm off to look for your reading thread.

58. Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier



Jaron Lanier is a visionary and and an idealist, and apparently a very successful and well known computer scientist, although I had never heard of him until I read about this book in a review of another one. Much of this book is speculative about the world we will live in when computers and networks become even more ubiquitous than they are now, and while I found some of that both whimsical and provocative, I was more interested in the ideas Lanier focuses on. The key ones, as far as I can tell, because much of his writing is digressive (and at times repetitive) are as follows.

1. We have been seduced by the "fake free," which as resulted in the loss (so far) of many middle class jobs. He cites the example of the music industry (he is also a musician and composer), in which the rise of online music in its various forms has resulted in a drastic reduction in record label jobs, music publishing jobs, record store jobs, etc., as well as in the diminution of copyright protections and payments to musicians when their music is played; for the musicians themselves, this has led to their largely being able to make money only when they perform live, a lifestyle which is possible only for those who are childless and have other means of support (e.g., parents). He extrapolates from this not only to other creative fields, such as writing books and making films, but, ultimately, also to manufacturing (when people will be able to "print" out most of what they need on home 3-D "printers" from design files available free on the internet, buying only the "goop" they need as input), and to medical care, with robots providing many personal care functions. The issue he raises is economic: how will people get paid for their work when it is being distributed for free or performed by machines?

"The idea that mankind's information should be made free is idealistic, and undeniably popular, but information wouldn't need to be free if no one were impoverished. As software and networks become more and more important, we can either be moving towards free information in the midst of insecurity for almost everyone, or toward paid information with a stronger middle class than ever before. The former might seem more ideal in the abstract, but the latter is the more realistic path to lasting democracy and dignity." p. 9

2. We have also been seduced by "Siren Servers," the huge online companies to which we willingly provide all sorts of personal information (e.g., Facebook, Amazon, and others, including large financial institutions and other businesses) while they ruthlessly "spy" on us, collecting, collating, analyzing the information we provide to provide economic value to themselves. He goes on at some length about how they do this and how they can do it.

3. Back in the pre-internet era, in 1960, a computer scientist named Ted Nelson proposed a system, then not technically possible, with two-way links, so that the link would not just connect to something but would also connect back to the person who had created the information. Although this system was not implemented with our current internet, Lanier believes it is both technically possible and a way to, in the future, implement a "nanopayment" system in which people get paid every time someone uses something online that they created, whether it is a song, or a book, or a video, or a file so someone can print out a new dress or a new pair of pants, or whatever we may dream of or not even imagine right now.

"In a network with two-way links, each node knows what other nodes are linked to it.

That would mean you'd know all the websites that point to yours. It would mean you'd know all the financiers who had leveraged your mortgage. It would mean you'd know all the videos that used your music.

Two-way linking would preserve context. It's a small, simple change in how online information would be stored that couldn't have vaster implications for culture and the economy." p. 227

4. Lanier's focus is on keeping human beings at the center of technology ("Belief in the specialness of people is a minority position in the tech world, and I would like that to change"), and in creating an economic system in which there are fewer economic "stars" and more of a bell curve of successful people -- i.e., a strong middle class with minimal extremes of wealth and poverty. He believes in people having economic "dignity." I cannot evaluate either his economics or his technical vision, but this certainly seems desirable from the standpoint of stable economies and stable politics.

5. Lanier also addresses the creepiness factor. "All three creepy vexations -- privacy, identity, and security -- have ancient pedigrees but have been made catastrophically more confusing by big data and network effects." This is one of the places where his idealism comes in, as he believes that a "fundamental economic model" that is structured to reduce the motivations for creepiness will result in "legit companies and professionals" not doing creepy things even thought there will be more and more reasons for people to want to accede to being tracked. As one of his subheadings says, "The Creepiness Is Not in the Tech, but in the Power We Grant to Siren Servers," which he sees as "soft blackmail."

All in all, this is a provocative book. Lanier has garnered both lots of praise and lots of criticism for it, as can be seen in the comments on this New York Times piece. But a reader doesn't have to agree with all his speculation about the future to see the very real problems he describes and to ponder the solutions he proposes.

59. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker



Maureen/Marie. Melissa/Chloe. Shannan/Angelina. Megan/Lexi. Amber/Carolina. These five young women were lost long before they turned to prostitution and were murdered and dumped along a lonely Long Island road by a still unknown serial killer.

To document these women's lives, both their childhoods and their transition to prostitution, Kolker, a journalist, conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with their families and friends. The reader sees the chaos of their economic and social lives; largely from working class communities, often communities from which jobs had fled, they experienced fractured families, occasional abuse, and constant worry about how to pay the bills. They dreamed of something better and prostitution, especially in the era of the internet when they could write their own ads and not owe anything to a pimp or a madam, offered the promise of making more money than they ever could at whatever minimum wage jobs they could manage to get. Of course, the anonymity of obtaining clients over the internet and through cell phone calls has its dangers too: a prostitute can't use her street smarts to sense when a client is weird or scary. And, with drugs so much a part of the scene, many fell into drug abuse too. The first part of the book, and the more powerful, is devoted to their stories.

In the second part of the book, Kolker examines the discovery of the bodies, the investigation (possibly bungled), the media onslaught, the bonding of the families (through Facebook and in real life) and then their unbonding, and some of the people who lived in the remote, gated community of Oak Beach, a marshy barrier island near some of New York's popular beaches, where the bodies were found. He also looks at some of the thinking about serial killers and why they often kill prostitutes. While interesting, I didn't find this as compelling as the first part.

At the end of the book, Kolker rightly notes:

"The demand for commercial sex will never go away. Neither will the Internet; they're stuck with each other. It may no longer even matter anymore whether the sale of sex among consenting adults is wrong or right, immoral or empowering. What's clear is that no good can come from pretending that the people who participate in prostitution don't exist. That, after all, is what the killer was counting on." p. 381

I have a quibble. At one point, Kolker discusses drug addicts hanging around Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan's East Village, and notes that the area has become gentrified and that the park even has a playground. I lived a few blocks from there in the late 70s and early 80s, long before it became gentrified, and there was a playground in the park back then. It's where the poor people who used to live around there took their kids, despite the addicts in the park; where else were they to go? My point is that if Kolker shades his information in this case with which I'm personally familiar, how is a reader to know where else he might be shading information?

The book was enhanced by some excellent maps.

The case remains unsolved, the murderer still at large.

Lost Girls sounds interesting. I will have to check my library.

Your review of Who owns the Future raises some interesting points and I am not surprised that Lanier has sparked so much debate. I do not know which way to jump on the owning of material especially in the music business. I am largely in favour of the amount of music that is now free and on line and can't really feel to sorry for the record company executives who are apparently facing harder times. They had plenty of very good years when we all paid too much for our music. I would be disappointed by Lanier's economic approach to the issues, as it would seem to me that our society is far too concerned with "who gets paid".

Lost Girls: an unsolved American mystery The first thing that struck me was that it would be difficult to write about an unsolved mystery if you had nothing to say about solving the mystery. Kolker seems to have done a pretty good job as a journalist making a story where there really isn't one.

Great reviews Rebecca.

Thanks, Barry. The issue of the music business is much broader than the record company executives. I had friends who ran a small record label in the 90s, and they told me that people just don't understand all the expenses that went into producing a record, not the least of which was paying the musicians, but also paying for studio time, engineers, mastering, production, and marketing, and they then had to sell the CDs to a distributor at a fraction of the retail price (the distributor marked them up to the stores and the stores to the consumers). All of these processes employed people who were not making "record executive" salaries, but who could live on what they were making.

Further, people I know who are musicians now make very little money from selling their recordings, whether actual CDs or online, and very little from performing in person when they are able to get gigs. Furthermore, they are probably not receiving the royalties to which they are entitled from having their music played, especially when it is played on internet "radio" stations, or the royalties they are due on compositions they've written.. This of course isn't true for the biggest of the stars, but it is true for many very accomplished musicians, including, I'm sure, some of the ones you're hearing at the Marciac festival (maybe not the leaders, but the accompanying musisican). I don't mean to get on a soapbox about this, but I think this deserves a look from a broader perspective.

If you read Lanier's book, and you think what he says makes sense to a certain degree, what has happened with "free" music is going to happen with lots of other things. The issue is not "who gets paid" but how can people make a living if the ways they do it now are going to be taken over by technology without a way of acknowledging the work of the people who contribute to making the "free" things possible. I don't buy everything Lanier says, but it's easy to see that what's happened with music could well be the tip of the iceberg. Not everyone can be a computer geek, and other people need to make a living too.

Great review of Who Owns the Future, Rebecca. I find it frightening to think of what would happen to the cultural life of our society if those who create music, literature etc. were no longer able to make a living doing so.

There seems to be this ideal out there that the Internet allows creativity a way to consumers without going though the (suffocating) music industry. Apparently, this Hasn't been the case. I can't feel bad for the big music labels, they have spent 30 years killing American music, but I do feel bad for their employees and, especially for all those smaller labels that aren't making it. Thought provoking stuff, Rebecca.

Lost Girls is sad.

Thanks, Linda and Dan. There was a lot to think about in Lanier's book, and yes, Lost Girls is unutterably sad, not only because they were murdered but because of the way the lack of jobs contributes to chaotic families and miserable choices.

Great review of Who Owns the Future, Rebecca. I've read on some of the topics (eg in Big Data, The Filter Bubble and A Whole New Mind) but am interested in Lanier's deeper delve into the economics of it, since I likely agree with him but am interested in the debate. I think the vast majority of (even talented) artists are already not able to make a living.

A very interesting couple of reviews. I think the technology industry tends to be somewhat self-correcting, with each new generation of products plugging the profit leaks of the previous generation (like copy-protected DVDs replacing easy-to-copy VHS tapes), so the future may not be entirely bleak.

Enjoyed your Lanier review, Rebecca. I detest the way other people steal music. The only time I ever pirate music is when I have bought it previously and lost it - such as when my laptop was stolen or when I lose a CD. (Yes, I still buy CDs. I like the album art and the liner notes.) One model now used is youtube artists. One of my girlfriend's favorite artists, Kina Grannis, has no physical records, no CDs, no contracts. She makes a living entirely off her youtube videos, concerts, and mp3 sales on amazon. The fact that youtube makes this possible is probably quite scary to the record companies.

Thanks for stopping by, MJ, Steven, and Jonathan! Jonathan, that's interesting about the artist your girlfriend likes. I took a look at her web site and see that she is selling a lot of merchandise in addition to her music, which is probably a good way of making more money, although she must have people working for her who oversee the design and manufacturing and sales fulfillment, as well as maintaining the web site. I also didn't realize you could make money from YouTube videos! Maybe making music this way and combining it with merchandising is more natural for younger artists, or ones who essentially make music on their own (i.e., without a band). Another point Lanier makes is that it is easier for a young person without a family to support to get by on the kind of income musicians can make, and easier for such a person to tour. Of course, he also makes the point that there are "stars" who can succeed in the internet-based music world, but most musicians, even if they're good, can't.

Here's what happens to me when I read your thread: I see books that would not appeal to me but by the time I finish your review it is on my WL. Greenlanders and Lost Classics - yep. I sure enjoy your thread.

>61 rebeccanyc:

too much lushness and not enough meaning

Excellent characterization, Rebecca!

We, i.e. modern readership, do not know what fairy tales in their original form as folk tales were like, other than that they were very short stories. Charles Perrault's written versions are said to be extended, fleshed-out versions. Re-written versions to which he added conventions of his day and age. To us, Perrault's fairy tales, e.g. in the translation by Angela Carter (in The fairy tales of Charles Perrault) are still very short.

Carter's invention in The bloody chamber and other stories is that she has re-rewritten the fairy tales adding elements and conventions of her day and age, styled in her own way.

Thus, it seems original fairy tales were all meaning and very little description, while Angela Carter's tales are very detailed, burying a kernel of meaning from the original fairy tales.

Very funny, Merrikay!

Very interesting, Edwin. When I was a child, I devoured fairy tales in a series of collections identified by color, i.e., The Red Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, etc., which I see are still available. They were illustrated, and retold for children, but I imagine they came from Perrault and the brothers Grimm originally.

Those would be the Andrew Lang fairy books. Like many of his era, Lang was many things: historian, writer, anthropologist. He collected stories from many sources. The original books were beautifully bound and illustrated and are definite collectors' items today. Here is a cover from The Violet Fairy Book:

Trying to catch up here, Rebecca, with your fascinating thread.

I read Greenlanders years ago, in, I think, the Book Club edition, which has disappeared from my shelves -- I do remember being fascinated by Smiley's picture of the lives of the settlers. And I've just ordered one of those penny copies of Lost Classics from Amazon -- hope it's not a galley!

Hangsaman is a new Shirley Jackson title -- sounds intriguing.

I can't really read books like Lost Girls -- I find it so terrifying and sad that so many young women (and young men as well, but the girls seem more vulnerable) have so few choices in their lives -- and when faced with choices, so often don't know where to begin to make good choices. It seems to me when we talk about the failure of education, we should be focusing on providing reasonable opportunities for our kids rather than be worrying about test scores.

Oh, and Kristin Lavransdatter is superb -- I think I've read the trilogy three times -- the first in HS, but not for about 20 years now. It's a great picture of medieval Sweden. Fascinating follow-up to the The Greenlander I would think.

Thanks, Jane. I had been planning to make Kristin Lavransdatter a summer read, but I had several other tomes as possibilities. It was reading The Greenlanders that really made the decision for me. I am enjoying KL but I'm finding some aspects of it a little soap-operish!

I don't usually read books like Lost Girls either, but I remembered the discovery of the bodies since Long Island is so close, and it got good reviews, and I needed something that would be an easy and absorbing read during some stressful days! But it is "terrifying and sad," and the author made abundantly clear that the choices of these young women were limited, often by having children way too young (which of course is a choice, because not using birth control is a choice, too), and also because there were no examples of good decisions among the adults they knew. The huge number of young men in jail is the flip side of this for young men,

A lot of interesting reviews as usual! Glad you got around to reading Carter though I liked her stories more than you did - I read a whole book of them, then wanted more Carter! Don't want to get into spoiler territory either but I liked the ending - I'm not sure what part you're referring to, but I thought one aspect of it that may have seemed unbelievable was a nice contrast to the familiar fairy-tale set up of a caring but ineffectual father and an absent/evil/step mother.

A very intriguing review of Who Owns the Future. I didn't know you could make money off YouTube videos either until I read in an article about how much money Psy had made from "Gangnam Style" - a lot, but not anywhere near the several billion views for his video. I'm not familiar with music industry contracts but I've heard horror stories about musicians who ended up owing the companies money. Sometimes I worry about the effect that "free" will have on publishing - there have been a lot of recent stories about commercial publishers merging, partnering with craptastic vanity publishers or offering questionable profit-sharing-royalty-only contracts + a flood of eye-gougingly bad self-published stuff what with the ease of epublishing.

I read some of the reviews for Lost Girls also - it sounded compelling but depressing. Library has it as an ebook so I'll try to get to it sometime when I have non-depressing books to read also. I know what you mean about little errors though - when I read nonfiction, presumably I'm reading to learn new things so I often can't judge how well the author is interpreting the material or sticking to accepted facts, but little incorrect things about familiar topics like that can grate.

Thanks DieF. I worry about publishing too, and all the other art forms. And yes, "grating" is probably what I mean. I am going to send you a private message about the ending of the Carter story, to avoid spoilers, and I will probably read some more Carter since someone (on another thread?) recommended Nights at the Circus as better than The Bloody Chamber.

60. Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev


Photo from the Kurosawa film, "Dersu Uzala"

I found this book fascinating on many levels, and much richer and deeper than the Kurosawa movie which I enjoyed when I saw it some years ago. I was spurred to get the book by references to it in Ian Frazier's wonderful Travels in Siberia. The book is an adventure story, an exploration of a remote rugged area and its plants, animals, and people, and a portrait of a remarkable man, Dersu.

In 1902, and again in 1906 and 1907, V. N. Arseniev was sent by the Russian government to make a geographic survey of the area north of Vladivostok and thus on the strip of Russia that drops down to the borders with China and Korea. "My duties included the making of a reconnaissance of the the chief rivers and of the central watershed, the range called Sihoté-Alin, which dominates the province. My orders covered the study of the zoology and botany of the district, and of the natives, both aborigines and immigrant." He was accompanied by some assistants and by some soldiers, along with pack horses. In the course of their work, they were confronted by many, often life-threatening, challenges, including predominantly weather and difficult terrain (both land and rivers), but also wild animals (including biting flies) and people.

However, they had the amazingly good fortune to very quickly run into Dersu (who actually found them), a native of the Gold(i) people, now apparently known as the Nanai. He and Arnseniev hit it off, and Dersu ended up accompanying them on the 1902 expedition and then, through another stroke of fate, on the later ones. Dersu had lived in the area for all his life, hunting and trapping, especially following an outbreak of smallpox that had killed his family. He was completely attuned to life outdoors, noticing and interpreting the smallest clues about weather, animals, and people. He could see a track in the ground and disturbance of nearby plants and tell what kind of person had been there, how long ago, what he was carrying, and more. He was a man of action, as when he more than once saved Arseniev's life, including building a shelter from reeds when a blizzard was coming in (highlighted int he movie), and a man of philosophy (he humanized all the animals, calling them "men," and he talked to them, and he also believed in not killing more animals than one needs for food and leaving supplies for the next person to use a hut). Arseniev admired him, respected his wisdom and values, and loved him; the reader comes to do so too, and Arseniev as well. They, and the very real hardships and adventures they share, are at the heart of this book.

But it is also a story of exploration, when there were still relatively unmarked lands to map: mountain ranges, rivers, forests, rocky outcrops. Of course, there were people who lived there, both, as Arseniev says, native and immigrant, who could serve as guides, on-trail and off. Most were friendly; some were not. The immigrants included Koreans and Chinese people, and in some cases the Chinese are excoriated for exploiting the native populations. Most people lived in extreme poverty, following traditional means of getting enough from nature to survive (including ingenious traps), although even at the beginning of the 20th century, before all its upheavals and "progress," Arseniev could see that these ways of life were destined to end, largely because of resource exploitation.

" 'All round soon all game end,' commented Dersu. 'Me think ten years, no more wapiti, sable, no more squirrel, all gone.'

It was impossible to disagree with him. In their own country, the Chinese have long since exterminated the game, almost every living thing. All that is left with them are crows, dogs, and rats. Even in their sea they have the trepangs, the crabs, the various shellfish, and all the seaweed. The Pri-Amur country, so rich in forests and wild life, awaits the same fate, if energetic measures be not taken soon to prevent the wholesale slaughter by the Chinese." p. 176

Even discounting his anti-Chinese sentiments (prejudice?), this is a prescient view of what was to happen worldwide later in the century.

Arseniev is entranced by the plants and animals he finds. His lengthy descriptions of the flora of different areas sent me running to Wikipedia to find pictures of some of them. And what remarkable animals: in addition to the wapiti and sable Dersu mentions, tigers, various kinds of deer, wolverines, seals, salmon, birds of all kinds, and more, more more. (Dersu can tell a lot about the weather from bird behavior.) Arseniev's sketchy drawings of some of the birds and other animals enhance the text. He is fascinated by what he sees, and was obviously completely the right person for the Russians to send on this expedition.

This book captures a moment in time. There was a revolution in 1905, and then the one that "shook the world" in 1917. As Jaimy Gordon (!) notes in her excellent introduction, Arseniev died in 1930 with a warrant out for his arrest, and his widow was arrested in 1937 and shot a year later as a Japanese spy. "Among other sagacities," she writes, "Arseniev had the good sense not to live to be old."

I loved this book, and am glad I saw the movie first, as it would have been a disappointment after the book. Kurosawa did a good job of capturing the more dramatic parts of the story, the ones that translate well into film, but he altered the meaning sometimes and made up a wife and son for Arseniev, and expanded the section, when Dersu briefly comes to live with Arseniev in Khabarovsk.

Intriguing review of Dersu the Trapper, Rebecca. I was fascinated by both Travels in Siberia and The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, and would definitely like to read more about Russia's Far East region. I will be looking for both the movie and the book.

What a great find! Definitely a book I would be interested in. (i.e. Dersu the Trapper)

Linda, I think it was your review that led me to buy The Tiger. Have to look for it on the TBR shelves. And thanks, to both you and Edwin.

Fabulous review of Dersu the Trapper, Rebecca!

Great review of Dersu the Trapper -- must get it for my son (an urbanite) and nephew (who lives in Alaska -- mostly off the land though he works a couple of a days a month as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital).

Thanks, Darryl and Jane. It was really a fun and interesting book.

Dersu sounds like a wonderful book. I love primary source books on exploration, throw in some plants and I'm really happy. Intriguing review as Linda says.

It's full of plants, Sassy!

Dersu the Trapper. What a great find and an excellent review. Has it been recently translated?

It was written in 1923 and translated into English in 1941. It was out of print for a while and reissued by a small publisher (with the Jaimy Gordon introduction) in 1996, but I found it on display in a bookstore a year or so ago. The translation is very readable although some of the usage would not be considered appropriate now (e.g., "Chinaman").

So glad you liked The Greenlanders! (that's because I have had it for ages, and you liking it means I probably will also). And enjoyed your review of the Shirley Jackson. I haven't read this one, but through your review I recognize the kinship between some of JC Oates and Jackson's. Have you read Yoko Ogawa's collection of three novellas, The Diving Pool? It's got that creepiness.

I think I commented elsewhere about the Angela Carter. I had a terrific Angela Carter binge/obsession some years ago. She was writing this stuff in a time of realism, and, of course, a time of feminism. She fascinated me on so many levels. She could use, what would be by another's pen, purple prose with intent in Nights at the Circus, much to my delight (there are some passages in that book that I still think about and they always bring a smile to my face). She twisted fairy tales and nursery rhymes, as you have noted. She wrote creepy, too (I think I already mentioned her novel Love). I can be very forgiving for other weaknesses in fiction if I have been delighted or intrigued. I enjoyed her essays and journalism in Shaking a Leg also.

Agreeing: excellent review of Dersu the Trapper, you've made me very interested!

Nice to see you here, Lois! I haven't read Ogawa at all, and someone else recommended Nights at the Circus too. And thanks, MJ!

61. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset
(includes The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross)



I bought this book after reading Linda92007's wonderfully comprehensive and insightful review last year and saved it for a summer read when I would have more time to read the tome it is. There is little I can add to her review, so I'll just supply an overview and some of my reactions to the book.

Essentially, this is a trilogy that tells the story of Kristin and her world, 14th century Norway, from the time she is a young child on her father's successful farm to her marriage, in rebellion against her father's wishes, through her life as a wife and mother, and eventually to her turn to religion and death. Through this story, Undset paints a picture of medieval Norway: its natural beauty, its social and political relations, its deep emphasis on religion (with a smattering of the ancient pagan customs), and of course daily life in both the countryside and towns.

What I was most struck by, in addition to the beauty and harshness of the landscape and Undset's easy familiarity with the customs and materials of medieval life (her father was an archaeologist), was Undset's psychological insight. Through the behavior, and to a much lesser extent the thoughts, of her characters, especially but not only Kristin, the reader learns much about their strengths, their challenges, their reactions to the terrible difficulties and heartbreaks of life and death in the 14th century. Kristin herself is a fascinating character who is able to take the responsibilities life throws at her, but although her headstrong nature gets her what she wants initially, it is ultimately at terrible cost to herself and to the people around her. The secondary characters are drawn with just as much skill, although there are so many even more remote characters the book could have really benefited from a chart of families and relationships, especially when the political plotting took place. I could go on and on, but I would just be repeating a lot of what Linda already said.

If this trilogy has a flaw, it is that some of the plotting seems melodramatic, at least to this modern reader, and borderline soap-opera-ish. I mostly found this near the beginning, so perhaps I found myself drawn into the medieval world as the book progressed; certainly, I began to appreciate the overarching pull of religion, even as that seems irrelevant to much of life today. As I often find, people were not so different from us long ago and far away.

I would just add that I read the recent Tina Nunnally translation, which is the only complete English translation.

Wonderful review of Kristin Lavransdatter, Rebecca. I'm so glad that you enjoyed it. And thanks for the compliment.

>107 rebeccanyc: Rebecca this sounds quite good, and I am intrigued. I just read Linda's review, as well, so find myself doubly intrigued.

Happy you liked Kristin Lavransdatter, Rebecca -- good review.

Thanks, Colleen and Jane, and thanks, Linda, for your compliment and for letting me know about the book.

Great points about a great book. I think you do get drawn in as it goes along, which is why it's a good idea to read the three volumes in one go as you did.

Well summer here is fast disappearing and so no time to read Kristin Lavransdatter this year, but after reading your review and Linda's I am going to buy a copy.

For all of you who do end up reading Kristin Lavransdatter, be sure to get the more recent English translation by Tina Nunnally (I read it in a massive Penguin edition). It is the only complete English version (parts were cut out of the earlier translation), and is (at least according to Nunnally in her translator's introduction) a more accurate rendering of Undset's style.

Barry, you don't have to read it in the summer just because I did! It's my opportunity to have more time at home and thus more time to read a tome that I can't carry on the subway!

62. Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies



I'm glad I'd read most of Robertson Davies' earlier work before reading this one, his next to last, not only because it isn't up to them but also because my familiarity with Davies allowed me to recognize some familiar topics and themes that wouldn't be obvious to someone who read this as his or her first Davies. Briefly, and this is no spoiler because it takes place on the first page, Connor Gilmartin is killed by "the Sniffer," aka Randal Allard Going, when he, Gilmartin, finds Allard Going (as he insists on being called) in bed with his wife Esme. His reaction, "My God, Esme, not the Sniffer," seems to be what spurs the Sniffer to pull the cosh out of his walking stick and hit Gilmartin with it, killing him. But, despite being dead, Gilmartin lives on as, presumably, his ghost.

After delightful scenes when the police arrive and at Gilmartin's funeral, the novel changes its focus from the delicious conceit of the ghost observing the man who killed him. As the ghost is determined to follow Going and make his life miserable, he follows him to a film festival that Going, as the film critic for the local newspaper (Gilmartin had been the entertainment editor) is attending. But instead of seeing the obscure and art movies that are being shown, the ghost of Gilmartin sees "films" that he gradually realizes portray the lives of his ancestors, from a plucky Dutch woman fleeing post-revolutionary New York by canoe to a Wesleyan preacher in Wales to struggling Welsh tailors who come to Canada to seek their fortunes, one as a builder, others in other fields, right up to his own father, a literature professor. Many of them experience bankruptcy or alcoholism; others are rigid and religion-bound, repress their sexuality, and can't express their love; others are deceptive in various ways. All this is eye-opening for Gilmartin (if ghosts have eyes to open); he quotes his friend McWearie, the newspaper's religion reporter, as saying "one's family is made up of supporting players in one's personal drama. One never supposes that they starred in some possibly gaudy and certainly deeply felt show of their own." Later he notes:

"How many children are doomed before they make their entrance into this world to live with fear that lies so deep that they do not recognize it for what it is, having never known anything else? Ghosts cannot weep, or I would weep at what I know now when knowledge comes too late." p. 205

When the film festival ends, so does the ghost of Gilmartin's personal film festival, and the ghost sees, after the familiar "The End," an additional sign that says "Nothing is finished until all is finished." There then remain some scenes with Esme, the Sniffer, McWearie, and various other characters.

The film-told story of Gilmartin's ancestors' lives allows Davies to play with many of his familiar themes -- history, theater, psychology, metaphysics, literature and poetry, journalism, art, deception -- and to use his skills as a story-teller and a satirist with a keen eye for our human foibles and pretensions. All of this made the book worth reading. But, for me, it seemed a little disjointed: it didn't quite hang together as a novel, and there were parts of it that bordered on the tedious. Despite this disappointment, I will eventually get around to reading Davies' last novel, The Cunning Man.

Which of Davies' works would you recommend as his best?

Linda, Davies wrote a bunch of trilogies. I read The Deptford Trilogy first, and it really intrigued me, but I think I ended up liking The Cornish Trilogy more. However, I wouldn't necessarily recommend starting with the Cornish, because the first novel in it, The Rebel Angels, has some aspects that can be hard to take. I also really enjoyed The Salterton Trilogy, but it isn't quite as deep as the Cornish or the Deptford. You can read my reviews of the Cornish and the Salterton on the book pages, but I read the Deptford before I started reviewing on LT>

Excellent review of Murther & Walking spirits from an experienced Robertson Davies reader. I have not yet got to Davies but plan to start with one of his earlier trilogies in this his centennial year. Your review has wetted my appetite.

Thanks, Barry. I think you will enjoy him.

>113 baswood:,114 The trilogy also comes in individual volumes in the Nunnally translation, which is the way I read it. These were in the grey classic Penguins series, which now that I check seem to be out of print, but you may be able to get them used. The individual volumes that amazon currently has are a terrible earlier translation.

>118 baswood: Agreeing with Rebecca that you would like Davies.

63. Xala by Sembène Ousmane



In this bleak satire of post-colonial Senegal, the protagonist, El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a leading "businessman" (the quotes are Ousmane's) discovers that he is impotent, or xala, on the night of his wedding to his third wife, the beautiful and young N'Gone. Earlier that day, the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry had installed its very first African president, of which all its members, including El Hadji (a title which signifies he has made a pilgrimage to Mecca), are very proud. El Hadji is a sort of middleman, who buys goods in bulk and then resells them to other businesses, and he has become very rich over the years; he also spends liberally, on cars, chauffeurs, villas for each of his wives, and money for their children.

Needless to say, wives number one and two are not very happy about wife number three (although for different reasons), and so of course they are initially suspected putting on curse on El Hadji to cause his xala. He is distraught about it, naturally, and runs around to various Muslim and African wise men and healers, to no avail. In the meantime, his wives are unhappy, the whole town knows about his problem, and his business, through lack of attention and extravagant spending, is being run into the ground. Eventually a special healer resolves his problem but warns El Hadji that what he has taken away he can give back. The ending seems a little tacked on, but makes the political point of the novel.

I have previously read God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane, which depicted a railway strike in colonial Senegal and the way it empowered the women of the community. In this book, he illustrates the world of post-colonial Senegal, the way some people tried to emulate the French colonists, the corruption, the difficulties of polygamy, the way Islam and traditional religions interact, the interest of some in the younger generation of speaking in Wolof and not in French, and more, while using El Hadji's impotence to stand for the impotence of the Africans in the colonial and post-colonial world and, perhaps, the impotence of men confronted by stronger women. As in the earlier book, Ousmane creates interesting characters.

I was not as impressed by this novella as I was by God's Bits of Wood, but it is a dark take on post-colonial Africa.

Nice reviews of Murther & Walking Spirits and Xala, Rebecca. I won't add either book to my wish list, though.

Having more time to catch up, I started reading back going over your reviews and the review of Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier caught my attention. Excellent review. The man has interesting and compelling ideas, but he does not seem so sympathetic, an impression I developed while reading one of his other books. Too much in-crowd. There are some interesting speakers on TED.com who address the same issues with more optimism, whether that optimism is justified or not.

Thanks, Darryl and Edwin. Edwin, that's interesting that you say Lanier doesn't seem so sympathetic, as one of the things he does in the book is try to make himself seem sympathetic compared to other high-tech theorizers (of course, he boasts a lot too). I really have to go over to TED.com more; I subscribed to a daily "talk of the day" e-mail, and mostly I just delete the e-mails because I don't have time to pay attention to them. (Somehow, I have time for LT. Hmmm.)

Fine and useful reviews as always. Kristen Lavransdatter is a book I will definitely read at some point. I was not crazy about Davies's "Deptford Trilogy," and it's likely I will read no more by him. I have a couple of Sembène's novels, and it sounds like God's Bits of Wood is the place to start.

I read another book recently where impotence was used as a political metaphor. It was Half of Man Is Woman by Xianliang Zhang.

Thanks, Steven. I remember you reading Half of Man Is Woman; interestingly, part of Murther & Walking Spirits involved the idea of the feminine side of men and the masculine side of women. God's Bits of Wood is definitely better than Xala.

Xala has not made it into the dictionary yet, but it's a much better word than impotent. Excellent review.

Thanks, Barry! Well, I hope none of us has occasion to use either word!

64. Archangel: Fiction by Andrea Barrett



I feel I should like Andrea Barrett's stories better than I do because we have a lot in common. We are about the same age, and were both science majors who also loved literature. And I do like many of her stories, which generally focus on people engaged in scientific activities of various sorts, but I don't usually find myself fully engaged by them.

One of the things I liked about this latest collection of five stories is the way the characters recur in different situations in different stories. For example, in the first story alone, an astronomer mentioned in passing is the protagonist of the second story, a secondary character is the protagonist of the third story, and the protagonist, aged 12, reappears as a young soldier in the last story where he encounters airplanes, which he first saw on an exciting successful test of flight as a child in the first story, used instead as weapons of war. The reappearance of characters made me, as a reader, feel I knew them better and made the stories deeper.

Barret tries to interweave the science with the story, and the scientific activity often seems to parallel the personal story as when, in the last story, a volunteer x-ray technician, in the little known extension of World War I when allied forces intervened in the Russian civil war, can understand how x-rays work and interpret what they show inside bodies, but can't seem to understand the human motivations of the people around her. Or as when, in another story, a young teaching school graduate at a summer field natural history course led by an admired and famous scientist who has become a leading critic of Darwin realizes the validity of the Darwinian theory as she recognizes that her teacher is not the hero she thought he was.

What I'm trying to say is that sometimes Barrett tries too hard to show the analogies. And sometimes the science seems a little too educational and not sufficiently integrated into the stories. But, other times, in a delicate way, Barrett vividly portrays what it means to be a scientist while also showing an understanding of human behavior: the science and the characters click and the stories are moving. I really enjoyed several of them, while one or two left me cold.

Nice review of Archangel: Fiction, Rebecca. To my knowledge there aren't many scientists who write literature, so I applaud Andrea Barrett for her efforts, but I think I'll take a pass on this collection.

I take it these are a new collection of stories from Andrea Barrett.

Yes, just out. I got a signed copy at my favorite bookstore.

Andrea Barrett is an author I'd like to try, but I won't start with this collection. I believe her collection Ship Fever was an award winner.

Your comment about having a lot in common with Ms Barrett started me thinking about what authors, if any, I could identify with because of a common background. The closest I can think of is the science fiction author Roger Zelazny. He and I worked in the same position for the same employer, but he quit eight years before I was hired. I wonder if I could detect traces of that job experience in his writing.

Steven, LT tells me I have Ship Fever, but as I read a few reviews of it I'm pretty sure I never read it. I do think I read Servants of the Map, although I don't seem to own it, and I enjoyed that when I read it.

I was being a little flippant when I said I had a lot in common with Andrea Barrett, because obviously she is a talented and successful fiction writer and I'm not, but when I read about her I was struck by the parallels. That's interesting about Roger Zelazny; his name is familiar to me even though I hardly ever read science fiction.

133/4 Sounds like a question for Rebecca's question thread.

Oops. I've been remiss with that, Barry. Will get back to it tomorrow.

65. Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou



I loved the voice of the porcupine: sly, perceptive, funny, even wise at times. The porcupine who relates his memoirs is the harmful double of a man named Kibandi. He tells the reader about his life with his band of porcupines (led by "the governor"), how he became a harmful double (most doubles are helpful) when Kibandi's father initiated him at age 11, and what he had to do as Kibandi's harmful double, namely killing people with his quills ("eating" them in porcupine lingo). Ultimately, and strangely, the porcupine survives after Kibandi dies in a way caused his own murderous life (said to be the result of the needs of his "other self"); usually doubles don't survive their human, and so the porcupine thinks about what this means and what he should do in the future.

While this novella is essentially a fable, based on an African legend, I found it difficult not to also read it as an allegory, with the porcupines and other animals, all of whom have their own communities, standing in for Africans and the "monkey cousins," or people, standing in for the European colonizers. It isn't a perfect analogy, but I did find this provocative. I enjoyed this book a lot, and will look for more of Mabanckou's work.

Nice review of Memoirs of a Porcupine, Rebecca. I read it too and liked it, although not as much as Broken Glass. I like your allegory; I didn't think of that when I read it, but I'll have to give it some thought.

I purchased Mabanckou's latest book Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty when I was in London last month, which was published by Serpent's Tail. The print version isn't available in the US yet, but oddly enough the Kindle version is. I'll read it next monthI also bought Blue White Red from City Lights earlier this year, which was published by Indiana University Press. I'll probably wait until sometime next year to read it, though.

Thanks, Darryl. I've ordered two more Mabanckou books, Broken Glass and Blue, White, Red (I needed to get two more books to get free shipping on a book I wanted because of one of your reviews, Massacre River).

As for the allegory, it's a little stretched, I know, but when the porcupine was talking about the bad ways people act some of them didn't seem that different from what the colonizers did.

I look forward to your comments about Broken Glass and Blue White Red, Rebecca. I think I'll save the latter book until sometime next year, but I will read his latest translated novel Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty next month.

I can't remember enough of the details of Memoirs of a Porcupine off the top of my head to adequately comment on your allegory, unfortunately, especially since I didn't take the time to review it.

Intrigued by Memoirs of a Porcupine, but not sure I'm up for a parable...

I'm just catching your last six reviews. Fascinated by Dersu the Trapper. From your review I'm not left with the impression the work reads dated. Enjoyed your comments on Kristin Lavransdatter (which I would like to read) and on Davies. I own his Cornish Trilogy and it's sitting my by TBR shelf and I'm very excited to read it...but I never seem to get to all those books on the TBR shelf (or I get to one book, which leads to a hundred new options I hadn't thought about...)

#128 - Love the word Xala - Surely there a variety of ways we could use it, beyond the literal sense...

Thanks for catching up, Dan. Dersu the Trapper doesn't seem at all dated, just sadly descriptive of ecological abundance that is no more, with the exception of a few terms like "Chinaman" -- but that's how they talked back then. I think The Cornish Trilogy is my favorite Davies. And I know exactly what you mean about one book leading to unimagined others . . . that's the story of my (reading) life.

Rebecca, after reading your review of Dersu the Trapper, I ordered the movie through Netflix and watched it last night. Enjoyable, but rather sketchy on the details. It did, however, leave me even more anxious to read the book and there are more than a few books I could add to that order to get free shipping!

Linda, I enjoyed the movie but the book is much better. Go for those extra books for free shipping!

66. The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi



The heart of this undoubtedly semi-autobiographical novel is the delightful story of a young boy, Namouss, living in Fez, in Morocco, apparently in the early 1950s. The independence movement against the French is getting underway, but leaves the boy and his family largely untouched in the central part of the book which is told in the third person. However, this story of Namouss's childhood is bookended by the narrator, writing in 1989 in the first person, watching the fall of the Berlin Wall with his aging father and recounting, at the beginning, the tale of his older brother's marriage and, at the end, the impact of the independence movement. Laâbi, a leading Moroccan poet, novelist, and playwright, was imprisoned by the Moroccan government in the post-independence era, and a literary journal he started banned; he lives in exile in France.

The novel poetically captures the sights, sounds, and smells of Fez and its medina (or walled section) and souks, as well as the characters of Namouss's family, including his mother Ghita with her vivid and creative complaints and comments, his hardworking and patient father Driss, and a strange but entertaining uncle, among others. Through "Radio Medina," or word of mouth, everybody knows everything that is happening. The family is Muslim, and so the reader learns about the way women must cover themselves up when nonfamily members are around (in fact, Namouss's mother rarely seems to go out on her own; her husband, a saddlemaker by trade, sends food home for her to cook). The pranks Namouss and his friends engage in are entertaining, and the few trips the family takes outside Fez to the countryside reveal the beauty of the natural landscape.

Namouss is thrilled to go to school and enchanted by learning new words, a poet in the making, no doubt. As the first person narrator says towards the end:

"The sky was never quiet for long in Fez. You only had to bother looking at it. Why did it fascinate me so much since I had never heard the word "poetry" and could only muster "stars" to describe the myriad celestial bodies glistening in the night heavens?

My word hoard was a meager, meager affair. The inability to pin down the objects in my mind and say "you are called this, and you that" infuriated me. And since I have recognized you and named you with my own mouth, come now, stop being so mysterious, follow me. Jump into my pocket and let's go! You will be companions during my journey, my confidantes, and should we encounter danger along the road, you will become the tongue of my cry and the instruments of my courage." p. 204

The residents of Fez apparently think highly of themselves compared to both other Moroccans and the French colonialists. At the very end of the book, the older Namouss imagines his now dead mother saying, about the fall of the Berlin Wall, "A falling wall . . . it can't have been built very solidly. The walls of Fez are still standing after all."

Enjoyed your reviews of Memoirs of a Porcupine and The Bottom of the Jar. I think I will add the latter to my wishlist.

67. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple



I read this clever and entertaining satire because some Club Readers really liked it; I found it enjoyable but afterwards I felt like I had gulped down a big bowl of candy instead of a nutritious meal. Maybe I need that every now and then!

Great review of The Bottom of the Jar, Rebecca. I'm also thrilled that you enjoyed it, as I plan to read it next month.

ETA: I had originally planned to read all of the novels that were shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize Women's Prize for Fiction, as I did last year, but I can't bring myself to read Where'd You Go, Bernadette? or the book that won (whose title I repeatedly keep forgetting).

I was very interesting in your comments on The Bottom of the Jar because I won an Early Reviewer copy last year but, despite several followups by the LT staff, it never arrived. So it seems I missed out on a pretty good book.

Darryl, I wasn't going to read Bernadette either, because the cover screamed chick-lit, but a couple of people in Club Read whose opinions I respect really liked it. It was fun but fluffy (and not chick-lit). But not your thing at all.

As for The Bottom of the Jar, it was charming, with a little edge. I got it as part of my Archipelago subscription and read it now because of the Reading Globally theme read on Francophone literature from outside Europe. Most of my Archipelago books are languishing on my TBR, so I was glad to have motivation to read one. Sorry your ER copy never arrived, Steven.

Enjoyed your review of The Bottom of the Jar Sounds like you were being kind about Where'd you go Bernadette

>150 rebeccanyc: Right, Rebecca. I would never read a book with that cover in public, and if I ever were to read Where'd You Go, Bernadette? it would have to be a Kindle edition of it.

I stopped subscribing to Archipelago Books a year or two ago, but I've purchased at least five or six titles from their catalog so far this year, and I'll continue to support them. I bought The Bottom of the Jar at City Lights in May, as I knew that I would want to read it for the Francophone literature challenge.

I always thought Morocco was a Spanish protectorate / colony, but apparently it was a dual affair of both Spanish and French protectorates.

I have never thought of reading Moroccan literature. I would probably enjoy The Bottom of the Jar.

Terrific review of The Bottom of the Jar. I'm intrigued. Funny about lost Bernadette. I would still be willing to read it...well, maybe.

Thanks, everyone. Edwin, I think there was a "Spanish" Morocco and a "French" Morocco. I was more familiar with the French part because of my addiction to the movie "Casablanca"! The Bottom of the Jar is the only Moroccan literature I've ever read, but Laabi was apparently an influential writer because he was one of the founders of a literary journal that was banned by the post-colonial government.

Great review of The Bottom of the Jar, Rebecca. Like Steven, I won it as an ER book, but it never arrived. Sadly, I had the same experience with two other Archipelago ER books.

It's too bad that Archipelago is so bad about sending out ER titles. I know they're a shoestring operation based in Brooklyn, but they shouldn't commit to the program if they don't have the resources to fulfill it.

Enjoyed your review of The Bottom of the Jar and think I will wishlist something by Andrea Barrett, likely Ship Fever. I finally have #147's bowl of candy in my TBRs and look forward to the fun.

I'm happy to say I'm going on vacation tomorrow -- up to a family house in the mountains! I'm going to try to wean myself a little from the computer and concentrate on reading, relaxing, walking, and cooking. So I may not be around as much as usual . . . or then again, I may not be able to tear myself away from LT!

LT is addictive. I know that it cuts into my reading time. Enjoy what sounds like a wonderful relaxing place.

159, rebeccanyc -

When I was in France I didn't have a computer at all for three weeks. It was lovely! It actually felt weird and uncomfortable to use a computer when I came back (though now I seem fine again). But I highly suggest leaving the computer on shut down while you relax. We'll miss you on LT but we know you'll be back. ;)

Have a great vacation, Rebecca! LT is terribly addictive, and I have to do a better job of cutting back on it, especially during my off days. Don't worry about us; your plans sound perfect.

Thanks, Nana, lilisin, and Darryl. I wish I could just leave my computer home, lilisin, but since I work freelance I need to check my e-mail once a day. And then, LT is so addictive as you all say . . .

Hope to write one more review this morning and then just think about what books to take with me!

68. Morality Play by Barry Unsworth



This brief and beautifully written novel creates such a sense of foreboding from the very first sentence that, about a third of the way through, I could barely put it down. I read it because of Barry's wonderful review, and I also marked the section he quotes as one I would have quoted if he hadn't.

Briefly, the story is narrated by a young priest who walks away from his work copying a boring manuscript (a punishable offense) because the birds are singing in the trees and, through chance, joins a wandering, down-on-their-luck group of players. It is the 14th century in England, the plague is mostly but not completely gone and lives on the memories of the survivors, and hereditary lords rule the population. Because their standard plays are not bringing in much money, the group's leader, Martin, convinces them to do a new kind of play, based on what is happening in the town which, as it happens, is the murder of a young boy and the immediate imprisonment of a weaver's daughter for the crime; they will create some of it, borrow some speeches from existing plays, and improvise. As the players seek information by wandering through the town and talking to people, they begin to doubt the official explanation, and their exposition of their doubts, in their performances, leads inexorably to trouble.

Not for one moment as I read this book did I doubt that it was all taking place in the 14th century, in a bleak wintry landscape in which the word of God and the rule of the aristocracy and the ever-present need for money and the very real presence of what they would call sin are always there. But things are changing, both in that world and in the way theater is presented. One of the reasons Martin tries something different, even if he is not conscious of it himself, is that he knows the life of traveling players, as it has been, is doomed. The characters of the different players are fascinating, and the way they work together and at odds with each other, and I was very intrigued by their multiplicity of hand signals for communicating on stage and at other times when speaking would be a bad idea. There is a lot of symbolism in this book as well, some of which undoubtedly went by me, from the real fool (as opposed to the theatrical fool) who nonetheless provides a vital piece of information to a vision of death riding on a horse.

This is not quite a perfect book. I had a suspicion who the real killer was long before the characters did, and the ending seemed a little pulled from a hat and overly convenient. Of the only two female characters in the book with more than a bit role, one is a temporarily reformed prostitute and the other has physical limitations (which I won't detail so as not to spoil the surprise); of course, this is probably reflective of the world of the 14th century. But all in all I loved the world that Unsworth created, the way the world of the theater reflects the outside world, the way disguise and theater create a different kind of power from the power of the church and the lords, and the different masks worn by the players on the "stage" and the "players" in the world. This won't be the last Unsworth I read.

Excellent review of Morality Play, Rebecca. I have Sacred Hunger waiting in my TBR piles. Enjoy your vacation - hopefully you'll have good weather.

Excellent review of Morality Play. I remember really enjoying that one when I read it years ago.

Thanks, Linda and Colleen. Leaving in a couple of hours and just finishing up everything work-related and taking an LT break!

Glad you enjoyed Morality Play Rebecca. It is a book that I might re-read sometime in the future, because as you say there is much to enjoy and I am sure there is more to discover.

Have a great vacation and I will look forward to catching up with you when you get back.

>I'm going on vacation tomorrow -- up to a family house in the mountains
"I want to go to there!"
Hope you're already having a great vacation.

Poking my head out of my hidey-hole to say that that was a particularly good review of Morality Play. It's on my "way, way future" TBR list; now I'm looking forward to it.

Woohoo! You're reading Hugo's The Laughing Man! I loved, loved, loved that one. It's a much darker book in a sense than his other books and it's just remarkable. I can't wait till you're done and have written a review.

Phew! I'm caught up on five of your threads. {happy dance} I'm glad you liked Kristin Lavransdatter, but disappointed that the translation that I have (purchased 20+ years ago) is not as good as the new one. Maybe I'll have to reread. Added many book bullets, as usual. Hope you have a great vacation. We just got back from a little over three weeks away, and I must say, it was nice not to be plugged in during that time.

Thanks for stopping by, everyone, and for the vacation good wishes . I'm taking a little time this morning to check my e-mail (in case there's anything that can't wait until after the Labor Day holiday) and of course swing by LT, primarily so I can post a review before I forget the wonderful book I finished.

Barry, I know what you mean about there being more to discover in Morality Play, but even with the best of intentions I rarely reread books because there are just so many other books to read . . .

Lilisin, after I read Toilers of the Sea for your Author Theme Reads group, I was really taken by Hugo, and I discovered two of his books that had been translated by the same translator who translated the edition of TotS that I read, i.e., relatively modern translations. One was The Laughing Man (although I don't know why he translated the title that way instead of literally as "The Man Who Laughs," which seems to me to have a slightly different implication; on the other hand nobody is laughing yet!), and the other was Ninety-Three. I took The Laughing Man with me because it is more of a tome, and it is riveting, so far.

Lisa, good to see you back. Hope you had a great trip! If you've been through five threads, you've found some old ones! Yes, the edition of KV that I read is said to be the only complete one, and also to reflect Undset's language better. But who knows? I don't know Norwegian! We do take a vacation each year where I'm not plugged in because it costs so much to connect I can resist it. But here, where it's "free," I yield to temptation.

69. The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart



This heartbreakingly beautiful novel is at once a celebration of human survival and joy, a meditation on the evil and tragedy and sorrow that are also an integral part of life, a vivid description of a time, place, and way of life, and a penetrating look at what it means to be black and a woman in post-slavery but still colonial Guadeloupe. In prose that can be poetic, mythical, and down-to-earth, Simone Schwarz-Bart tells the tale of four generations of women in the Lougandor family. The tale is narrated by the youngest, Télumée, who focuses on her life and that of Toussine, the grandmother who raised her and who is also know as Queen Without a Name. By portraying Télumée's life from her early childhood through young womanhood, love found and love betrayed and lost, foster motherhood, and into old age, Schwarz-Bart also portrays the life of the communities in which she lives.

The women in this book experience a world of contrast: the bliss of love and the heartache when it is no more, the blessing of children and the unbearable pain of their loss, the pleasures of tending their crops and gardens and taking care of their homes and the viciousness of working on the sugar plantations and their factories and in the homes of white colonialists, the richness of the natural world and the poverty of their homes and lives. The beauty and lushness of the landscape, its sounds and smells, are ever-present, mythical tales are interwoven with the story of the Lougandor women, some women are witches and healers, and death is always waiting. Queen Without a Name and her friend, the witch Ma Cia, are fascinating and deep and wise women. This is an intense book, and I had to read it a little bit at a time so as not to be overwhelmed.

Early in the book, soon after Télumée meets her first love, Elie, Queen Without a Name tells her:

" 'My little ember," she'd whisper, 'if you ever get on a horse, keep good hold of the reins so that it's not the horse that rides you.' And as I clung to her, breathing in her nutmeg smell. Queen Without a Name would sigh, caress me, and go on. 'Behind one pain there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn't ride you; you must ride it.' ", pp. 72-73

This metaphor is carried throughout the book, as is another about needing the wind to lift the sails of one's boat and move forward in life no matter how deep and paralyzing the sorrow and the pain. "And so, throughout all her last days, Grandmother was whistling up a wind for me, to fill my sails so I could resume my voyage." In fact, the original tile of the book is "Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle," or "Rain and Wind on Télumée Miracle" ("Miracle" is a nickname she gets late in life).

Schwarz-Bart's writing is so beautiful and so wise that I marked many passages as I read. Here are two.

The Queen to Télumée:

" 'My child, you will feel just like one deceased, your flesh will be dead flesh and you will no longer feel the knife thrusts. And then you will be born again, for life were not good, in spite of everything, the earth would be uninhabited. It must be that something remains after even the greatest sorrows, for men do not want to die before their time. As for you, little coconut flower, don't you bother your head about all that. Your job is to shine now, so shine. And when the day comes that misfortune says to you, Here I am --- then at least you'll have shone.' " pp. 138-139

Télumée reflecting in old age.

"It's a long time now since I left off my battle robe, and a long time since I've been able to hear the battle's din. I am too old, much too old for all that, and the only pleasure left me on earth is to smoke, to smoke my old pipe here in my doorway, curled up on my little stool, in the sea breeze that caresses my old carcass like soothing balm. Sun risen, sun set, I am always there on my little stool, far away, eyes gazing into space, seeking my time through the smoke of my pipe, seeing again all the downpours that have drenched me and the winds that have buffeted me. But rains and winds are nothing if first one star rises for you in the sky, then another, then another as happened to me, who very nearly carried off all the happiness in the world. And even if the stars set, they have shone, and their light still twinkles there where it has come to rest: in your second heart." p. 238

As a side note, one aspect of the language of this book took some getting used to: Schwarz-Bart's characters refer to themselves, proudly, as Negresses and Negroes. The edition I read was just reissued by NYRB, but the translation is the original 1974 one (based on the 1972 French original), and my assumption is that these are literal translations of what Schwarz-Bart wrote, and of how her characters really would have talked, although they sound odd to modern ears.

Thank you Rebecca for your beautiful review of Simone Schwarz-Bart's The Bridge of Beyond. I've added it to my wishlist.

173 -

I just bought Ninety-three recently so I'll look out for when you read it. Maybe I'll end up reading it along with you. Although I still need to finish Toilers which I had started during my can't-seem-to-finish-any-of-my-books phase so I haven't finished it.

Glad I could inspire you though for Hugo! That's why I chose Toilers as our read and not the typical Les Mis. Les Mis is wonderful but people never get past it to read more Hugo so I wanted you guys to experience the Hugo that I know.

Fascinating review of The Bridge of beyond. Guadeloupe is a place many of us will not get to visit, but I have had a couple of Guadeloupians staying with us fairly recently and so I might be tempted to read this.

Yay my LOCAL library has the movie Dersu and I broke down and ordered a used copy of tyhe book. It just sounds SO good.

Also my library has the translation you recommended for Kristin what,s her name. ;) Think I'd better STOP trying to get caught up now!

Thanks, Vivienne and Barry; it was a wonderful book.

Lilisin, so far I still like Toilers of the Sea better than The Laughing Man, but it is certainly horrifying and compelling. I'll let you know when I start Ninety Three, but it probably won't be any time soon as I like to mix books up.

Merrikay, glad you could track down Dersu! Keep in mind that Kristin Lavransdatter is the tome to end all tomes, so you will be reading it for a long time -- hope your library is understanding!

Rebecca, I am a sucker for medievals and monks, so I enjoyed your review of Morality Play.

Loving your reviews of the Francophone literature -- so many temptations, so little time. I'm glad you enjoyed Morality Play -- it was one of my favorite books read last year.

Breathe lots of mountain air and indulge in vacation-ness.

It's a really good book, Jonathan, if you can tear yourself away from all your serious nonfiction reading. And thanks, Jane; I'm enjoying my exploration of it thanks to a push from this quarter's Reading Globally theme read. Too late to enjoy the mountain air, though; I'm back in ultra-humid NYC (although Florida's probably like that all year round).

I watched and SO LOVED the DVD of Dersu last night! My copy of the book is on its way also.

Actually -- Florida is ultra humid from June to mid-October. The rest of the year is softly humid and utterly lovely. Not mountain fresh and bracing, but embracing.

So glad you loved it, Merrikay! The book is even better!

Sorry, Jane, but the less humidity the better for me!

Today is a beautiful day here, as a cold(er), DRIER, front came through.

I prefer oven to sauna.

Not me -- I don't like dry, flaky skin and straight hair. 70's temps and reasonable humidity make my bones feel better and my skin breathe easy.

I'm going back to the discussion of Hangsaman which started in message 32. There I wrote I must confess I couldn't tell whether Tony was real or a figment of Natalie's fevered imagination as she struggles with a psychological breakdown. Recently I found someone who had also read this book, and she thought that Natalie had, at that point in the novel, a split personality -- herself and Tony. Very thought-provoking.

70. The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo

 
My inadequate cover     A better cover from an uninspired lot

There is nothing funny about either The Laughing Man (the book) or the laughing man (the person) although, in this compelling and horrifying work, Hugo wields a biting wit. In his epigraph, Hugo writes "The proper title for this book would be 'Aristocracy," and indeed it would, although he brings together a wide-ranging cast of characters, situations, and ideas to indict the pretensions, idiocy, and cruelty of the inherited nobility.

The novel starts with an introduction to two unusual characters, friends and companions ("Ursus was a man. Homo a wolf.") and to the practice of physically deforming children for the entertainment of the rich and powerful. The story itself then begins, with Hugo slowly introducing the reader to the pieces of the puzzle: a boy abandoned on a lonely shore, a shipwreck, and the rescue of an infant girl from a dead mother, as well as the machinations of various kings, a queen, a duchess who is the illegitimate daughter of a king, assorted nobles, and a sleazy schemer of the first order. The boy and the girl were taken in by Ursus, and as time passes they not only participate in what is in essence a traveling show but also fall in love. Through a series of coincidences that would be laughable if they were not so masterfully plotted, disaster (perhaps clothed as opportunity) strikes. I won't write more about the plot so as to avoid spoilers, but will only say that the ending was a tad melodramatic. The novel takes place in the late 1600s and very early 1700s in England.

The plot gives Hugo the opportunity to display his knowledge of a wide range of topics, from weather over the sea and how boats founder on unseen reefs to the way children are mutilated and the national backgrounds of people who do it, from the history of the English monarchy to the sequence of when different titles were created and how they were passed down, from the architecture of the old House of Lords to the details of how it operated and how new peers were installed and admitted into it -- and much much more. Because Hugo is such a good writer, most of the time all this is interesting and not overly digressive.

All of this plays into his great subject, which is the appalling depravity and uselessness of the aristocracy, and the heavy toll they and the powerful in general take on the lives of everyone else. In today's terminology, it is the 1% and the 99% writ large. Examples abound.

Discussing the entertainment habits of the young idle rich, Hugo writes: "The members of the Fun Club, all of the highest aristocracy, used to range through London at a time when all good citizens were asleep, tearing shutters off their hinges, cutting the supply pipes of pumps, knocking holes through beams supporting houses and breaking window panes, particularly in the poorer quarters of the town. It was the rich who were doing this to the poor, so that no complaint was possible. After all, it was just fun. . . .If this was being done by poor people they would be be sent to jail, but it is done by well brought-up young men." p. 155

Ursus commenting on his own knowledge (of medical techniques and social insight): "'I am a wild scholar; they are tame scholars. Doctors harass the learned. False learning is the excrement of true learning.' . . . We do not present Ursus as a man of refinement. He had the effrontery to use words which reflected his thoughts. He had no more taste than Voltaire." p. 253

The laughing man making a speech to the House of Lords: ""What is the father of privilege? It is chance. And what is its son? It is abuse. Neither chance nor abuse is substantial; for each comes a day of reckoning. I come to warn you. I come to denounce to you your happiness: it is made from the the unhappiness of others. You have everything and this everything is formed from the nothing of others." p. 410.

But above all this is a lively and entertaining read. The characters are vivid, the plot unfolds, and I found it hard to put down. There were parts, as I said, that dragged a little, especially the somewhat endless philosophizing about love, and I didn't like this book as much as I loved Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, which I read earlier this year. Even in this book, Hugo's writing about the sea is some of his strongest, as this example shows:

"Shipwreck is the ideal expression of impotence. To be near land and unable to reach it, to be afloat and unable to direct your course, to have your feet on something which appears solid and yet is fragile, to be full of life and full of death at the same time, to be held prisoner in the vast expanses of the sea, to be walled in between the sky and the ocean, to have the infinite overhead like a dungeon, to have round you the immense evasion of the winds and the waves, and to be seized, garrotted and paralysed -- this state of dejection bewilders and infuriates you. . . . A grain of sand in the desert, a flake of foam in the ocean are manifestations of stupefying power. Omnipotence does not take the trouble to conceal its atoms; it turns weakness into strength; it fills nothingness with its All; and it is with the infinitely little that the infinitely great crushes you. It is with drops of water that the ocean grinds you down. You feel yourself a mere plaything. pp. 88-89

The laughing man and others in this book are mere playthings for the rich and powerful.

A note on my edition. When I read Toilers of the Sea, I was impressed by the translator, James Hogarth, and noted that this was the only modern translation of this work. So I looked for him as a translator of other less well-known, and similarly not recently translated, works by Hugo and found this book and Ninety Three, published (posthumously for Hogarth) by a British company called Kennedy & Boyd. I am not sure what to make of this publisher; they have a web site, have published other books, and seem to be an imprint of a larger publishing group. However, the book has a completely plain cover, is sloppily edited (i.e., weird sentence breaks in places, a typo in a chapter heading, and inconsistency in how chapter and section titles are presented). It smells of some kind of vanity press, and yet Hogarth is a wonderful translator and provided helpful notes, and publishing a modern translation of this work is a wonderful service for people who can't read French.

I must make time to read more Hugo. Your reviews are so tantalizing. Interesting notes on the translator and publisher.

Brilliant review as ever Rebecca - very interesting.

Good review. Interestingly enough I went back to the year I read the book and although I talked about it a bit in my thread, I never posted a review. And surprisingly, contrary to how I feel now, I was less impressed with the book then. I think though, it was more due to my traveling at the time and the melodramatic ending was too jarring for me then. However, now I just remember all the great writing and the amazing start to the book. One of the most powerful he's written, I believe.

I have not read any Victor Hugo, but I understand that his novels are usually doorstops and so reading one a year is quite an achievement. Enjoyed your review.

Thanks, Lisa, Paul, lilisin, and Barry. I owe to lilisin my interest in Hugo, and indeed in a variety of other French authors who I have somehow previously neglected, through her Author Theme Reads group.

baswood -
It's exactly because of that (mis)understanding that I tend to introduce Hugo via the backdoor so to say. Thus, for the Author Theme Reads group I had a group read of The Toilers of the Sea instead of the traditional Les Miserables which seems to intimidate people out of reading Hugo.

rebecca -
I have no idea what I'm going to do for next year's theme. I think I've exhausted all my resources and ideas!

lilisin, Why don't you ask people to make suggestions? That seems to work for the Reading Globally theme reads.

The first year I did that the typical authors were being brought up and Dostoevsky ended up winning. It was so predictable and that's not what I wanted from the group. I wanted a new approach to be taken which is why, despite taking suggestions still every year, I sort of directed the themes to go into a certain direction and would replace some selections with others that seemed more interesting. Unfortunately I think I've run out of authors to do that with so I might have to leave it to the members again. Around October I'll be posting up suggestions for ideas for next year and we'll see where it leads. I really do love this group and I've been loving giving new authors to members.

I've really been introduced to LOTS of new authors through the group since I joined it, so I'll put my thinking cap on about ones I'd either like to read or can recommend. I love the group too.

Fascinating review of The Laughing Man, Rebecca -- I've been reading English history and historical fiction lately, so I may have to pick this one up. A French point of view would add another dimension.

I had never heard of The Laughing Man before. It sounds enticingly grotesque. Did you find yourself agreeing with Hugo's attitudes towards the aristocracy? Are you ready to burn Downton Abbey to the ground?

ETA: I just ran across this statement in a reference book entry about H. G. Wells's novel The Island of Doctor Moreau:

"A highly significant literary experiment, partly inspired by Victor Hugo's paradigm example of a philosophical satire in the form of a popular melodrama, L'homme qui rit (The Laughing Man)."

LOL!

Jane, thanks. As you may know, Hugo lived in exile, mostly on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, from 1851 to 1870, so he had a chance to learn a lot about England and English ways. At the beginning of The Toilers of the Sea, he goes on at length about the differences among the various Channel Islands. Here, from Wikipedia, is a picture of him on Jersey.



Very funny, Steven. By the time of Downton Abbey, the power of both the king and the aristocracy had vastly diminished. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries, if Hugo is to be trusted, they had nearly absolute power and didn't hesitate to wield it. Interesting about Wells!

Fabulous review of The Laughing Man, Rebecca. As I have greatly enjoyed all of your reviews of Hugo, I am very tempted to purchase the Delphi Kindle edition of his complete works, which includes both the French and English versions of his novels.

Terrific review. Perhaps, if i had not read Les Mis, I would be looking into more Hugo.

Thanks, Linda and Dan. If you do read Hugo, Linda, I encourage you to get recent translations, not the older ones that are probably on the Kindle editions. I looked at an older translation of The Laughing Man on Amazon and it was really stilted and dated.