Avaland's 2009 Reading, Part II

Time for a new thread, I think. HERE'S my previous 2009 thread.

My 2008 thread is HERE, I was not logging my reading in this way prior to 2008.

2009 Books Read

Novels/Novellas:

Cleaned Out by Annie Ernaux (novel, French)
The Luminous Depths by David Herter
The Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya (novel, Indian)
Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller (German-Romania author, Nobel winner)
Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates (US author)
Jamilia by Chiniz Aitmatov (Kyrgyz author, Kyrgyzstan setting)
The Hunter by Julia Leigh (Australian author, Tasmanian setting)
Mysteries of Winterthurn by Joyce Carol Oates (American Gothic)
A Peculiar Grace by Jeffrey Lent (US author, Vermont setting)
Genesis by Bernard Beckett (SF novella, NZ author)
My Driver by Maggie Gee (UK author, UK & Uganda setting)
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (reread for group read, fiction, Canadian, Toronto area setting)
Four Freedoms by John Crowley (novel, US author, WWII era setting, mostly Oklahoma setting)
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa 4.5/5 (Japanese author, Japanese setting)
Leaving Tangier by Tahar Ben Jelloun (novel, Moroccan author) 4.5/5
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (dystopian satire, futuristic setting) 4.5/5
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Gothic thriller, Spanish author, 1930s Barcelona setting)3.5/5
The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles (historical fiction, Brazilian author, 1930s Brazilian setting) 5/5 2008.
Nadia by Assia Djebar, originally published in French as "La Soif" or "The Mischief." 1958. (Algerian author, 1950s Algerian setting)
Under the Frangipani by Mia Couto (fiction, Mozambique)
De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage (fiction, Canadian-Lebanese author)
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley (science fiction, UK author)
The Enclave by Kit Reed (science fiction, US author)
The City and the City by China Miéville (fiction, UK author)
The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll (fiction, US author)
The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels (fiction, Egypt/Canada, Canadian author)
*The Coquette by Hannah Foster (fiction, late 18th C, US author)
Tinkers by Paul Harding (fiction, US author)

Short Fiction/Connected stories:

Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women Writers, By Sukrita Paul Kumar (Editor), Malashri Lal (Editor)
Short Stories by Latin American Women edited by Celia Correas De Zapata
American Salvage by Bobbie Jo Campbell
The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry by Assia Djebar
Decapolis: Tales From Ten Cities, edited by Maria Crossan
Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona (connected short stories, South Africa)
By the North Gate by Joyce Carol Oates (short fiction)
The Female of the Species: Stories of Mystery and Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates (short fiction, American)
I'd Like by Amanda Michalopoulou (short fiction, Greek author) 4/5
Flash Fiction: 80 Very Short Stories, edited by James Thomas
Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian (short fiction, Tibet, Chinese author) 4/5
Dear Husband: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (short fiction collection)
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (connected stories, Pakistan)
Inside and Other Short Fiction: Japanese women by Japanese women by Amy Yamada et al. (short fiction anthology, Japanese authors)
The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa (short fiction collection, Japanese author)

Mysteries

Death Angels, Åke Edwardson
Never End, Åke Edwardson
Sun and Shadow by Åke Edwardson
Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson (Swedish)
Death Rites by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett
Hypothermia by Arnuldar Indridason
Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (mystery, Icelandic author)
My Soul to Take by Yrsa Sigurdadottir (Icelandic author, Icelandic countryside setting)
Prime Time Suspect by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett (Spanish author, Barcelona setting)
Dog Day by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett (Spanish author, Barcelona setting)
Arctic Chill by Arnuldar Indridason (Icelandic author, Reykjavik setting)
The Black Path, Asa Larsson (Swedish author)
The Man who Smiled by Henning Mankell (Swedish author)

Nonfiction:

Last read: Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James
Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
If Here Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents by Gregory Rabassa
*The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, edited by Elaine Forman Crane (nonfiction, diary, 18th century American)
*A Good Master Well-Served: A Social History of Servitude in Massachusetts 1620-1750. Dissertation by Lawrence William Towner
*Rereads of significant portions of: The Transcendental Wife : The Life of Abigail May Alcott, The Alcotts: Biography of a Family, Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands . . .etc.

My research project has been turned in, I'm happy to report, so I will probably lay off the early New England social history and literature for a while. It might be good to get out of the 17th, 18th and early 19th century and into the 21st.

While researching and writing, I was careful not to distract myself too much with my pleasure reading. I can't explain that any better except to say I sometimes bypassed books I thought I might get too absorbed in, or that might trigger a reading jag in a subject that would affect my concentration... Such restrictions are gone now and, needless to say, I have accumulated a fair number of books in the TBR piles over the last year and a half!

The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates

I've been reading more short fiction lately, and when another LT sent me this volume, well, I couldn't resist. I'm hoping to read more Oates this year anyway!

The cover design of the hardcover edition of this collection should be a clue as to what this collection is all about. We can see a portion of the Caravaggio painting "Judith Beheading Holofernes" (1599) and this, along with the title, tells us exactly what these stories are all about --- the female of the species can be very, very dangerous. Most of these stories fall under the mystery or suspense category, although at least one, I think, would be classified as horror (you will never look at those mirrors in the store dressing rooms quite the same way again...). My favorite story of the collection is about a young girl who is haunted by rabbits in cages in the basement; however, while there are indeed cages in the basement where they live, they are empty. I found it interesting to read a series of stories where the women or girls are dangerous. And really, isn't it all about power? This is a good, outside-the-box sort of collection.

>2 avaland:, Congratulations Lois!

>4 fannyprice: thank you (although it's not quite over yet...)

I've decided that I should might like to try reading an essay a day - at least while I'm still not working. It might not happen everyday, but it's a laudable goal, I think.

Today's essay was from Essays on African Writing II, edited by Abdulrazak Gurnah (no touchstone, apparently). "Strategies of Transgression in the Writings of Assia Djebar," by Belinda Jack. I'm not sure I learned anything new about Djebar's writing from this essay, but there were a few interesting bits and some discussion about her struggle with language. French is my 'stepmother' tongue. Which is my long-lost mother-tongue, that left me standing and disappeared? (...) After more than a century of French occupation--which ended not long ago in such butchery---a similar no-man's land still exists between the French and indigenous languages, between two national memories: the French tongue has established a proud presidio within me, while the mother-tongue, all oral tradition, all rags and tatters, resists and attacks between two breathing space. . . . I am alternately the besieged foreigner and the native swaggering off to die, so there is seemingly endless strife between the spoken and written word. (excerpt from Fantasia)

Today's essay is "Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights" from Uncensored: Views & (Re)views by Joyce Carol Oates. This essay serves as the introduction to the Oxford Univ. Press edition of the book.

I think it's clear that Oates loves this book and her insights are wonderful. "Has there ever been a more astonishing 'first novel' than Wuthering Heights? she asks. I liked her observation that where Jane Eyre and Rochester are clearly opposites, Cathy and Heathcliff are soul-mates and their feeling for each other is "narcissism of the most intense kind." Of course, there is so much more in this 10 page essay...

**I've decided that the idea of reading an essay a day, might be too ambitious.

As I said on my thread, congrats on getting your project turned in, and I hope that everything wraps up for you soon (do you need to defend?) and that you enjoy your return to the 21st century. :) I always look forward to your posts, of course, but I'll be especially interested to see your thoughts on the Couto.

Under the Frangipani by Mia Couto (fiction, Mozambique)

When Mozambique became independent in 1975, Mia Couto interrupted his medical studies to become a journalist and newspaper editor. Later, he returned to his studies. He is now an environmental biologist and an author novels, short fiction, and poetry. (from the author bio in the book) Excellent extended bio HERE.

In Under the Frangipani, a young police detective is called to an island fortress to investigate the murder of the magistrate. As he interviews the mostly elderly inhabitants, he finds him mired in a labyrinthine puzzle of sorts as each of the residents in turn seem to want to claim responsibility for the murder.

As with other African writers I have read, Couto is using magical realism to integrate oral storytelling traditions and indigenous beliefs into his story, the result, is this case, is inventive language and storytelling. The division between the living and the dead is fairly porous in this story, as also the division between fantasy and reality. The inhabitants of the refuge, as it is called, speak in what I can only describe as part poetry, part puzzle, part lie, part truth. For the reader, it's like one of those Chinese finger traps, the more you struggle, the tighter it gets. The trick is, I discovered, is to stop struggling against it and read it more like poetry.

If your patience allows, I'll explain. Come into the light a bit more. Don't be afraid of the smoke. Don't even fear getting burnt: There's no other way of listening to me. My voice grows weaker and weaker the longer I go on unravelling these confidences. Keep quiet as you listen to these stories. Silence makes the windows through which we glimpse the world. Don't write anything down, and leave that notebook on the ground. Be like water in a glass. He who is a drop always drips, he who is dew evaporates. Here in this refuge, your ears will grow bigger. For we live to talk. (from the inspector's first interview, p. 22).

Ultimately, this original story has a lot to say about Mozambique, the present. There is something you come to understand in the telling. Once I settled into it, I really liked it, but it's probably not the kind of book for everyone.

eta, this is a different kind of story than his Sleepwalking Land, more playful, I think.

Very interesting to read about Under the Frangipangi; I had some of the same thoughts about Sleepwalking Land, which I wanted to like more than I did. It troubled me with that book that Mia Couto is the child of Portuguese colonists, as I wasn't quite sure how to take his use of indigenous traditions/story-telling/beliefs -- did you have any concerns about that?

>10 rebeccanyc: It surprised me to learn of that, yes, but he does undeniably seem to have a certain African sensibility and I have not detected any animosity against him and his work. Mozambique was colonized in the very early 16th century by the Portuguese, wrestling it out of the hands of the Arabs, so there is a much longer mingled history there. It's my understanding that most of the Portuguese living there left before or just after the country became independent. Apparently, he was not one of them. He does touch a little on racial identity in the book; his characters are black, white and mullato (and the inspector is a black educated abroad...etc. which is up against certain prejudices).

#9: Thanks for the review! Under the Frangipani will go on the "someday" list. I bought A River Called Time on rachbxl's recommendation, so maybe after I read that one I'll pick up Frangipani.

>9 avaland: The trick is, I discovered, is to stop struggling against it and read it more like poetry. That often works for me...just go with the flow. Sometimes the meaning is a feeling.

I like your idea of reading an essay a day (or maybe something less ambitious like 3 a week). I have so many intriguing collections of essays around---what makes me think I should read them in their entirety all at once? Dipping in on a regular basis makes a lot more sense.

>13 laytonwoman3rd: yes, I was thinking along this lines also. I have since realized that most of my essay collections are literature-related. Might have to look into some others...

Nadia by Assia Djebar, published originally in France as "La Soif" or "The Mischief," written in 1956.

This is Assia Djebar first novel, written when she was just twenty years old. Perhaps I was judging a book by its cover, but I didn't have high expectations for it, but, on the other hand, this is the first novel of a woman who would win the Neustadt Prize and whose name gets mentioned in the same sentence with "Nobel" from time to time.

Set in Algeria, Nadia tells the story of one young woman's summer escapades. Nadia has European looks and education, she is beautiful, arrogant, cynical, somewhat spoiled, and bored. She is rebelling against convention, and likes to think herself highly individual. She begins to play games and toy with the people around her in her own narcissistic way. But Nadia really doesn't have a solid sense of self and through tragedy she will be humbled and changed. I would be tempted to call this a coming-of-age novel, it certainly has many of those qualities, but her transformation feels a bit incomplete at the end. Nadia is a character who is difficult to warm to, although I did support her desire for freedom from convention, and was more sympathetic as her insecurities began to be revealed.

What is remarkable about the book, is that it is nearly apolitical, with barely a mention of Algerian's war for independence going on at that time. However, some literary criticism seems to see in Nadia's quest for self-identity, a reflection of Algeria's own quest for identity. The book is interesting, but mostly, imo, because it is Djebar's first novel. I can see glimpses in this first, rather immature novel, of the writer that Assia Djebar will become.

re 15 -- "it is nearly apolitical"

Isn't that amazing? I recall noticing the same thing when I read it. It was one of those instances in which I had to ask myself whether looking for political undercurrents was pushing too hard... as if all Lit of a Certain Type has to have them. Then again, as you note, considering when it was written makes the absence kind of incredible. Will definitely keep an eye open for whether/what Djebar has ever spoken or written about this book...

>16 Fullmoonblue: I think I read somewhere that she had been criticized for this, but one has to start somewhere!

And what a fabulous front cover! The pink trenchcoat and the heart over the i in Nadia would have me reading the back cover and deciding to buy it even if I'd never be able to read it in a public place. Things have gone all tasteful. Think of how literature could be refreshed with snazzier covers, instead of tasteful reproductions from the National Gallery's collection.

>18 RidgewayGirl: Welcome to the 1950s! I think book covers are meant to sell the book, of course, and to send a message to the prospective buyer. This one is meant, I think, to indicate a love story, perhaps some racy behavior, but I think the buyer/reader would be disappointed if that is what they came to the book expecting.

Oh so true -- and 50s covers, especially pbs are so amazingly lurid -- like pulp magazines. Just a couple of examples that are totally inappropriate to the content of the books:

This is Edith Pope's Colcorton, retitled Brutally with Love -- a serious novel about miscegenation and race relations in Florida:



and William Faulkner's The Wild Palms

Excellent examples, Jane! Just think of it, one could read serious lit in a 'mixed' crowd on the beach, for example; and no one would be the wiser.

Oh the panting that must have ensued!

There was a short discussion on Reading Globally--Africa about whether there was such a thing as "chick-lit" in Africa, and if so, whether it would ever be published in translation, since most of the African literature we are exposed to is of a political nature in one way or the other. Nadia sounds darker than what we usually think of as chick-lit, but maybe it's the closest we'll get to chick-lit from Africa.

>23 arubabookwoman: It's true, we are often exposed to what publishers wish to identify as African lit (certainly confirmed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a recent interview). This predates the publishing genre of 'chick lit' so I would hesitate to appropriate the term here. I think of it a part of the evolution of a great writer. Here's a paragraph from a 1996 article in World Literature Today, "Reappropriating the Gaze in Assia Djebar's Fiction and Film" by Mildred Mortimer.

Despite the fact that Djebar's first novel, La soif
( 1957 ), represents a flight from the harsh realities of
the Algerian War by depicting a love triangle set
against the backdrop of Mediterranean beaches, her
subsequent works chart woman's transformation
from passive object under patriarchal and colonial
rule to active subject of her own discourse. Her fem­
inist commitment first emerged in Les enfants du
nouveau monde ( 1962 ) and Les alouettes naïves
( 1967 ), novels depicting woman's coming of age
through direct or indirect participation in the Alge­
rian War, and developed further in her film La
nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua ( 1977 ) and sub­
sequent collection of short stories Femmes d'Alger
dans leur appartemen...

I'm reading two hefty books now. The Seamstress is turning out to be a very good, detailed historical fiction set in early 20th century Brazil. And I've started, from the beginning, Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. I had been having some pain in my left thumb joints and it has recently occurred to me that this is from holding books open (I'm left-handed). These two books obviously require more careful handling . . .

Early in the week, I bought a couple of new poetry books. Publishers put out a fair number of new poetry volumes in April because of the increased attention Poetry month gives them, so it's an ideal time to browse the shelves. I bought The Making of a Sonnet which features over 300 sonnets from the last 5 1/2 centuries. I also bought Poems from the Women's Movement, edited by Honor Moore. While I have quite a few of these poems in individual collections or anthologies, I like having them together in one volume like this. I expect to read this when I need a certain kind of inspiration. Finally, I bought Jay Parini's Why Poetry Matters. I'm looking forward to dipping into all of these...

mmmm... they look yummy!

Looking forward to your review of The Seamstress - it's one of the books on the List o' Mt. TBR.

The Seamstress by Frances De Ponte Peebles

As I mentioned elsewhere, I picked this book up first because of the title, second for the cover art (I have always loved to sew), and third because the story sounded interesting.

The Seamstress tells the story of two sisters, Luzia and Emília, brought up by their aunt in Brazil's lawless northern backcountry during the early decades of the 20th century. Luzia is very tall, short-tempered, devout and has been cruelly given the nickname "Victrola" because an injury fused her elbow joint so that her arm is permanently in a bent position. Emília is pretty, even-tempered and forms her ideas of the world away from their small town through fashion magazines and romance novels. Both girls have been taught by their aunt to be seamstresses; their reputations as such are unrivaled. Both girls long to escape their situation. It is no spoiler to say that the girls' paths soon diverge when Luzia is taken by a gang of outlaw cangaceiros headed by the infamous "Hawk," and somewhat later, Emília unexpectedly marries very well and moves to live among nuevo rich in high society Recife. The story of each is riveting, for who can resist a story of a girl surviving among outlaws, or an unsophisticated girl surviving the throes of high society?

It has been my experience that historical fiction seems to often fall in three categories. There is the kind of story which is totally character-driven with the historical setting a mere backdrop. There is the kind where the historical setting is so credible and prominent it almost figures as another character in the story. And then, there is the kind like The Seamstress which combines the very best of both. It is richly, detailed and offers the reader total immersion into 1920s & 30s Brazil - both the dry, lawless backcountry, and the rich, mannered high society of the city. And yet, it tells a similarly rich and detailed story of the sisters themselves and their relationships with the people around them. Like the two sisters, both parts of the story are inextricably linked.

The Seamstress is a magnificent, mesmerizing historical fiction and debut novel. The reader very soon finds himself captive within its 650 or so pages, and is not released until the very end. But, unlike the cangaceiros, the story is merciful. . .

Lois, off it goes to the Amazon wishlist!
Thank you.
:-))

Is that Zafon's new novel? I read, and managed to be both entertained and disappointed by Shadow of the Wind. Would give him another shot though.

>30 Jargoneer: Yes, indeedy (the bookstore still slips me some arcs from time to time). I'm hoping for easy ride through an entertaining story. I thought Shadow quite good for a debut novel, although in hindsight, I think he could have trimmed up the story some (quite a lot going on there).

>31 avaland: - Shadow was something like his 5th novel, if you include his YA titles. My disappointment was that it started like Borges and ended up being a fairly standard, if enjoyable, gothic.

>32 Jargoneer: Did not know about his YA stuff. Hmm.

I loved The Shadow of the Wind. I'll be eagerly awaiting your comments on The Angel's Game (Amazon indicates that it won't be published until June 16th).

Thanks for your review of The Seamstress. I keep picking it up and putting it down again, based on those tempting skeins of thread. I now give myself permission to pick it up, putting aside all the older, faithful member of my TBR.

And the next Zafon book goes on my wishlist. I loved Shadow of the Wind less for the plot than the atmosphere.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books . . .This place is a mystery. A sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see, has a soul. the soul of the person who wrote it and the souls of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands, a new spirit... p. 461

Set in 1930s Barcelona, this gothic thriller tells the story of a writer named David Martin. As a boy, David has had a rough life, but his luck seems to change when, as a young teen, while running errands for the reporters at the local newspaper, he is noticed by one of the most notable of the reporters and a successful novelist, Don Pedro Vidal. A few words from Vidal and David is soon at the threshold of his own literary career. Soon he is moving into the strangely abandoned "tower house" that he used to see each day on his way to the newspaper. And before long, not content to write pulpish thrillers his whole life, David is soon drawn to the enigmatic and decidedly sinister foreign publisher, Andreas Corelli. Corelli makes David an offer that will make him rich and he is soon embroiled in something that he doesn't understand and must work to unravel. And yes, around page 100, we get to revisit the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, the place that enthralled so many of us in Ruiz's Shadow of the Wind.

Ruiz is a terrific storyteller; he moves this thriller along and ratchets up the suspense so that the reader feels like she is on a train which is slowly accelerating until it is headed at breakneck speed towards the end of the line. This story (which has a high body count, btw) is decidedly gothic. It has the requisite crumbling old architecture, darkness, death, decay, dreaming, madness, secrets, and thwarted love...etc. (and it does seem to be raining quite a bit). Yet, I also thought it seemed sort of noirish --perhaps it was the tone of the first person narrative or perhaps it's the mostly 1930s setting --- I can't quite put my finger on it. The book is filled with great bits on religion, faith, fiction, literature and storytelling; and populated with more than a few book lovers. I suspect, the author owes a debt to Borges, to the gothic novels of the 19th century, and the pulps of the early 20th. It was a fun read, best saved for a rainy evening;-)

Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. -- David Martin in The Angel's Game, p. 205

Great review! I'll be eagerly awaiting its publication, as I loved The Shadow of the Wind.

It's so good to know that he has written another good one! I'll be watching for it, too.

I read Shadow before its US publication in '04, so I'm pressed to remember much beyond the basics, but, it seems to me, that this story is of a similar ilk. I liked Shadow and I enjoyed this, but I wonder if I will continue with his books if they keep to this form...

Lois - Thanks for the great review of The Seamstress - it's on my ever-growing wishlist.

>40 Talbin: It's just awful, isn't it? I wish writers and publishers would just take a year off, so I could catch up a bit!

That said, all books have been tossed aside as my former boss passed an arc of the forthcoming Margaret Atwood to me... looks like a dystopian satire...yum!

Avaland, I have just caught up with your thread. (I was locked in a cupboard by that hairy Fydor and only just managed to get out). I'm very interested in your idea of reading one essay at a time (message 6) rather than a whole book of essays. I love reading essays! Perhaps one essay a week, might be more do-able?

It would be nice to get some more interest going in this neglected/overlooked form.

Belated congrats on finishing your project!

I seemed to have misplaced this thread for awhile, just catching up. Lots of nice reviews, and some interesting comments on Ruiz Zafón. I have some unresolved thoughts on Shadow of the Wind. I'd post if I could figure out/decide how to express them...

Annals of devoted fanship: when avaland heard about the Atwood arc, she drove 56 miles round-trip to get it. And a few other books too...

Actually, what is really so awesome, is not my devoted fanship so much as the response dukedom had when I told him I was heading North to fetch the arc. He said, "of course." Gotta love a man like that!

The other book I came home with was Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed by Kathy Marks. I heard her interviewed on "Fresh Air" on my trek north.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103569364&ft=1&f=10...

>42 tomcatMurr: an interesting thought...

tomcatMurr@42,

Blog posts sometimes have the length and thoroughness of a good essay; maybe the rise of blogs has absorbed some of the appetite for essays in books and magazines?

>47 dukedom_enough: Yes indeed, you may be right. And many articles from the more serious journals and literary magazines also have the character of essays, as journals and magazines are the main platform for essayists. But only a few modern writers can steer the course between the Sybilla of an academic essay (saints preserve us from these) and the Charybdis of a meaningless puff piece.

Apart from the great essayists of the past (Bacon, Lamb, Hazlitt, Montaigne) there are comparatively few modern writers who really excel in the form: Gore Vidal, for instance, being one.

Any other modern essayists spring to mind?

I am very fond of Anne Fadiman's essays in Ex Libris; a great deal lies beneath the surface in them.

NOTE: I've created an essay thread HERE, so that others might pick up on the topic or chose to post comments about the essays they read.

I'm salivating over the Atwood and looking forward to your review when you finish!

>51 janeajones: well, you know, jane, I think I'm back in the world of Oryx & Crake, but in the pleeblands (whatever they were called). The time period may be earlier or later...

pea green about the ARC of Atwood and thanks re the review of "The Angel's Game"
I'm seriously thinking about becoming a vampire so that I can read all I want to read

tomcatMurr@48,

Can you suggest a decent collection of Hazlitt pieces? My attention has been drawn to him because he features in Small World, by John Lodge, the novel I read during my recent trip.

(((This post copied to the new essays thread)))

I just discovered your thread- thanks to your Hot Review of "Angel's Game" - and I spent the last 15 minutes reading your reviews. I didn't manage to read them all yet but I've read enough to know I'm starring this thread :)

Happy reading!

Eliza

>55 girlunderglass: Thank you for the compliment. Another LTer just left me a note on my profile page about the "hot review". I wouldn't have known it otherwise as I have that feature turned off on my home page.

I'm also very jealous that you've gotten your hands on the newest Atwood! I'll be following your thread to see what you think!!

I'm curious about where you got it (I apologize if this was mentioned elsewhere and I missed it... please feel free to point me in the right direction instead of explaining again!)?

>57 neverlistless: I'm a former bookseller and my former bosses still pass arcs to me from time to time. Sometimes they've received multiple copies of an arc, other times it's something the staff probably won't read. They know my favorites also. And I still give them a little press, like in last Sunday's Boston Globe's book section, the ShelfLife column, I had the book pick of the week (a couple of lines from my review of The Winter Vault) which identifies me still as "formerly of..."

The pressure is on!

whoa! Talk about connections :)

I hope you enjoy the book!

fasciknitting@59,

It's a power she only uses for good.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, forthcoming September '09

Apologies in advance if this, because it is posted months ahead of publication, is a bit of a tease.

It is year twenty-five, the year the waterless flood, a global pandemic, has swept across the earth. God’s Gardeners, a religious group who have dedicated themselves to the preservation of Earth’s plant and animal life, have long predicted it and have honed their survival skills for decades. Two women have survived the flood: Ren, a young trapeze dancer at Scales & Tails, a high end sex club, is locked in a comfortable isolation room at the club, and Toby, the manager of a luxurious spa, is barricaded there, and subsisting on some small food stocks and the edible spa treatments. Both women have lengthy past ties to God’s Gardeners. What will survival entail in a world which has become a strange, savage, and decaying place practically overnight?

Atwood has created a inventive and riveting parallel story to that of Oryx, Crake and Jimmy, set in the same dystopian future in roughly the same time frame, except this story is set in the Pleeblands --- the rough urban areas outside of the secure corporate compounds we became familiar with in Oryx and Crake. The book is divided into thirteen chapters, each named after a holiday observed by God’s Gardeners (i.e. Saint Dian Day...as in Dian Fossey) and each with a short homily by the leader, Adam One, and an appropriate hymn for the occasion. In subchapters, the reader alternates between Ren and Tory’s survival in the present day, and the back story of their lives and that of God’s Gardeners. No twp stories set in the same time and place can be entirely detached from one another, and so this parallel story is not always, truly parallel and this and her previous novel slip back and forth across each other, but the “how” of this is best left to your own discovery. Atwood has created a mesmerizing story, filled with social commentary and a sharp gallows humor, yet also compassionate, thought-provoking, and ultimately hopeful.

Having now had a full night's sleep after finishing the book, I am once again struck at how witty Margaret Atwood can be. If you have ever seen an interview of her, you've seen this wonderful dry wit. In Oryx and Crake, as with this new novel, she writes a story which, in some parts are as bad-ass and suspenseful as McCarthy's The Road, but she adds this satirical, mordant humor that just is hilarious in places.

Lois, thank you for this review! I will make an effort to reread Oryx and Crake before this one is released. I have to admit that it wasn't one of my favorites by her but if it will help with the flow of this novel, I will definitely give it another go.

And I love it when authors weave in characters and settings from other books. It feels like such an inside joke!

Great review; I'll have to add both books to my list. I see that Oryx and Crake was shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize. One of my long-term goals is to read most of the shortlisted books, so I'll definitely get to it in the next year or two.

>63 neverlistless: Although I think one could read this book without having read O&C, doing so certainly enhances the reading of this new one, so I would recommend it. There were times that I wanted to go get my copy of O&C to clarify some remembrance, but it usually got worked out as I continued to read.

>64 kidzdoc: kidzdoc, I don't know if dystopian satires are your kind of thing, but if you do read O&C, I will certainly enjoy your comments on it.

Scales and Tails? Great name. Reminds me of some of the names used in The Handmaid's Tale - Holy Rollers etc. In fact, does Scales and Tails sound like the sex club that Offred was taken to?

>66 charbutton: I don't think that one had a name beyond "The Club", but this would be the same one that Crake takes Jimmy (Snowman) to in O&C.

sorry I wrote that badly, i meant that having a sex club in the new book made me immediately think of the club that Offred is taken to.

Waiting with bated breath for the release in September -- thanks for the early peek!

>68 charbutton: yes, it does, to some extent.
>69 janeajones: You're welcome.

Leaving Tangier by Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco, Moroccan author)

Leaving Tangier is a story about leaving one's country of origin. Actually, it's more about how one cannot truly leave their country behind. It tells the tale of a brother and sister, Azel and Kenza, both who wish to leave Morocco for greater opportunities in Spain. Azel has a degree in law and international relations but cannot find work. He drifts aimlessly, and becomes obsessed with leaving. When he meets a wealthy Spaniard who is attracted to him, he sees his way out of the country. Kenza will eventually join them in Barcelona.

I thought this a powerful story of immigration, identity, disillusionment and danger. Azel struggles with a life that is not as he imagined it would be and his relationship with Manuel shakes up his sexual identity. Kenza, who is a trained nurse and talented dancer, is a bit more stable and adapts more easily. In alternating chapters the narrative gives us Azel and Kenza's stories while also telling the stories of other people who are connected to them. The picture we get of Morocco outside the tourist regions is that it is corrupt, exploitative, depressed and yet, through some of our characters we are drawn irresistibly to it.

The book reminded me of two other books I'd read, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami and Harbor by Lorraine Adams. The three books are complimentary, I think.

I'm eagerly looking forward to your review!

Re 71, 72 -- ditto!

Thoroughly enjoying the thread avaland. So here I am in Rangoon, Burma, and my clock on the wall says 12:55pm so lunch is on the table and I am relaxing and thinking about you're promise of a review 'later' today and then of course I am wondering where you are and what time zone you are in? I mean have you gone to bed now or are you in an armchair immersed in 'leaving tangier' with a morning coffee? I still have the recommendations you gave me from earlier this year and as soon as I am in Seattle in June I will begin browsing the book stores.

Sorry, not only did I get distracted but I haven't found the book yet. I took it with me over the weekend thinking I'd write it then, but was having way too much fun to settle down to read or write quietly. Off to search for it again...

Maybe you left under the bed on the weekend trip? No worries. I read Oryx and Crake quite sometime ago now and became completely immersed in the dark tale. I shall wait for the paperback of "The Year Of The Flood" so sometime around Christmas perhaps?

>76 BeesleSR: Well, as you can see, I found the book and posted a review:-) btw, I assume that Atwood's new book will be out in the UK in September also. I believe you can sometimes get a paperback at the same time as the hardcover in the UK? I do feel a little bad about posting a review for something that doesn't come out for four months...

I'm currently reading The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa which is turning out to be a fab book about ....math! (or maths). I've never been much of a math person, but two years ago I took an interdisciplinary class that included a lot about math in nature. This novel is very complimentary to that class, a story about the beauty of numbers.

I've also returned to the Showalter book and will post more on that on that specific thread.

>77 avaland: I just got The Housekeeper and the Professor out of the library yesterday - glad to hear you think it's fab. I'll be starting it over the next few days, will let you know what I think...

Leaving Tangier sounds great. Onto my wishlist it goes!

I was lucky enough to have won a book (Secret Son) by Laila Lalami from the LTER program this month so I get to read a book set in Morocco next!

>79 SqueakyChu: Squeak, Lalami's Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is a very excellent little book and I did look at The Secret Son in the bookstore recently but, I think, the comparison to The Reluctant Fundamentalist and another book whose title I forget, kind of put me off. Still, I will be glad to hear what you think of it.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

After recentlyreading and enjoying Ogawa's collection The Diving Pool, I was anxious to read more from this talented author, so I quickly picked up The Housekeeper and the Professor when it became available. This novel tells the story of an unnamed housekeeper, a single mother with a 10 year old son, who is sent by her agency to care for an aging mathematics professor. The professor had received a serious brain injury when hit by a car in 1975 and, as a result, his short term memory is limited to around 80 minutes. He can, however, remember before 1975 including his passion for numbers. Without giving any more details away, this is a beautiful story of living in the present, of the kind of families we create, and of the beauty and solace of numbers.

note: I've never been much of a fan of mathematics. Only fairly recently did I enjoy a interdisciplinary class that included the fascinating connection between nature & mathematics. So, I felt a bit like the housekeeper in this story, piecing together what the professor was saying and discovering a kind of beauty, a kind of calmness.

Every time I read your post I add a book to a growing list.
>77 avaland: What does btw mean? And where do you post your reviews?

#81 - in a similar vein, uncle petros and goldbach's conjecture is a very enjoyable novel about being immersed w/ maths - but the reader doesn't have to be a strong math person to enjoy the quest/obsession for pure knowledge. The Goldbach Conjecture states that every even number is the sum of two primes; that's a given even I can understand w/out having a clue as to how the abstruse approaches to possible proofs are created.

But the story isn't really about the proof that the narrator's uncle claimed to have discovered. It's about discovering ones intellectual self (on the part of the nephew) and the rigors of setting one's life's goal along a limited but very difficult road (though Uncle Petros' familiarity and kinship w/ numbers allows him to pursue this life).

The Housekeeper and the Professor sounds like one to be on the lookout for. Thanks for the recommendation.

>82 BeesleSR: btw (by the way). In that reference, I meant posting here in message 71. I post my comments (I really don't like to call them 'reviews', but sometimes I slip and do so) here and on the book's page. If relevant, I also post them on my thread in Reading Globally.

>83 bobmcconnaughey: It's unlikely I'll make math-laced novels a regular thing, but this particular one was just lovely. I only glazed over in one spot...

>84 Nickelini: yes, I think you might like it. I will keep an eye out at library sales for you.

Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghh,

I routinely only look at threads where I have previously commented. So, after being gently slapped, I go in search of the new avaland thread, and see I have missed 84 !!! posts. I am clearly much too distracted by Real Life and not spending enough time on LT. :-)

OK, onto the real post now, after that whine: I was shopping today at Canada's Largest Book Wholesaler, spending someone else's money, having a great time. I came across a large volume of JCO Journals. The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973-1982 Are you aware of these? Do you have them or wish to have them?

OK,

caught up now on all the posts here. Seeing the universal salivating about the new Atwood ARC, I think (but I could be proved wrong) that I could lay my hands on it (I DO have some Canadian bookseller friends) and perhaps then pass it around. I will see what I can do.

>86 polutropos: Really, has her journal been remaindered? How sad. I know I scooped up a copy as soon as it was published.
>87 polutropos: Andrew, you must stop this white knight thing. They can wait until September, really. Please go home, put your feet up, and read a book or something:-)

I'm enjoying Four Freedoms by John Crowley at the moment and have started a circa 1960s short fiction collection by Joyce Carol Oates, By the North Gate. It's been a terribly busy last two weeks. I haven't gotten around the threads as much as usual.

Four Freedoms by John Crowley

This is the story of the ordinary women and men who, for their various reasons, went to work for the war effort in a Oklahoma bomber factory during WWII. Crowley recreates the 1940s homefront in great detail; one almost might say in loving detail, as he tells the backstory of not only some of the workers at the Van Damme Aero plant in Ponca City, but also of the Van Damme brothers themselves, who masterminded the Pax B-30 bomber being built.* We hear how the war and the unusual opportunities it opened up affected people like Violet Harbison, a cattle rancher's daughter and talented baseball player; and Connie Wrobleski, a twenty year old single mom who comes to the factory looking for her husband; and especially Prosper Olander, a handsome, disabled young man whose legs are partially paralyzed due to spinal surgery in childhood. Crowley writes with skill, sensitivity and respect, and the book comes across as a kind of homage, a tribute to these women and men of the so-called "Greatest Generation." 4/5

*The Van Dammes, the Aero plant and the Pax B-30 are all fictional constructs.

(was mostly offline for a few days, the router died...)

I got an ARC of Atwood's The Year of the Flood yesterday. I loved Orxy and Crake. I didn't think I could bear to wait another two months or whatever. It is good to have contacts among local purveyors of books. Unfortunately, right now all my reading time is being taken up with reading about prostate cancer. Robbie has just been diagnosed. I am having kittens, which is not going down well with the Welsh terrorists :-) In between, I am trying to finish Boys in Khaki Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918. I am supposed to be finished with Dostoevsky's House of the Dead by Sunday at 2:00. I feel like telling Dodo to shove it right now. Unfortunately, I am the group leader. What I would really like are suggestions for utterly wonderful mind candy available via Kindle.

>91 urania1: well, if it of an consequence, The Year of the Flood, while not mind candy, is a perfectly delightful read (it's the satire...). Good luck, I can tell the pressure is on!

>92 avaland: Thanks avaland.

Mary,

I don't know about Kindle availability but I have been greatly enjoying a very light work called Words in a French Life. Light, frothy, amusing, little sections so that even ADHD personalities like me, or people going through trials, can still enjoy.

(Sorry about the thread hijack, Lois)

By the North Gate by Joyce Carol Oates (short fiction)

The hardcover of this collection was published in 1963. This was Oates' first published collection and contains "In the Old World", her first published story, published in Mademoiselle in August 1959. My edition, recently acquired from BookMooch, is a paperback edition issued in 1971 after she had won the National Book Award.

The fourteen stories contained in this debut collection, all written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, all have post-depression, rural American settings, many (or perhaps all) in the fictional and clearly ironically named "Eden County." Her characters are mostly the rural poor. Having read several of her more contemporary collections in the last year, I was struck with how often she tells a story in the voice or from the viewpoint of a child or adolescent. I was also, once again, struck with how amazingly observant she is and how eerily perceptive - and what a damn fine writer she was even as a college and graduate student. There were a couple of stories that bewildered me, and at least one I didn't care much for, but the others were very good and I thought two very powerful. In "A Legacy," a young girl named Laura is being taken by her father to see her brother a last time. As the story unfolds, the reader comes to understand, much better than Laura, just what the brother's situation is and why it is a "last time." But it is the child's perceptions and reactions as she struggles to understand which are so powerful (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here). The other story which stood out as both riveting and powerful turned out to be her first, "In the Old World" is a story of wrong, remorse and racism. The reader catches just a glimpse of something in the story, in one of the characters -- hope maybe, and then it's gone (many of these stories are written with a bit of mystery to them that Oates' slowly undresses). These collected stories seem to challenge American idealism and morality, and they seem to speak to the urges and desires secreted away in all of us.

Wow...that's a compelling review. I must add this to my TBR list. Thanks, Lois!

I would venture to guess "Eden County" is in western NYS -- sometimes I think that's why I've avoided Oates. I read one of her early books back in the early 1970s and was rather horrified by her portrayal of the area in which I grew up -- in a rather idyllic childhood, despite the fact that my father died when I was 16. There just seemed to be so much gratuitous violence. Maybe I should revisit..... or maybe not...

>97 janeajones: Well, I first thought that it was that part of NY, but I changed my mind a number of times. In one story there was an unusual snowstorm and the deputy talked about the regular snowstorms he had when he lived up North. In my mind, I placed it vaguely around southern Ohio, maybe slightly more south... (the picture on the cover of this paperback suggests mid-Atlantic or New England). As I've learned from having 4 siblings, we can have the same upbringing in the same place with the same parents and have five entirely different versions of life at that time.

>96 kidzdoc: It was pretty interesting to read her writings from that time in history. The few stories which deal with race, made me think back (or ahead?) to her novel Black Girl/White Girl. I'm really enjoying my Oates explorations, but I need to mix her work between other books:-) I would certainly be interested in your perspective, kidzdoc.

avaland - If I ever read Joyce Carol Oates, you will be fully to blame. So, question for you, if I only wanted to read one of her books, is there one you would recommend?

>99 dchaikin: The short answer is no .... and yes. However, I think I need to read more of her before I can answer fully. I'm enamored of her short fiction at the moment and it fits in nicely when I'm not in the mood to crack open whatever novel I'm reading. I'll have to get back to you;-)

but...well...I guess I'll have to wait then. :)

I might suggest that if you have time, you wander into this relatively new JCO group: http://www.librarything.com/groups/fansofjoycecaroloate and see what a range of readers are saying. There are also synopses on her official website, the link of which is on the aforementioned group page.

oy, I just noticed I have the Crowley review posted twice...

Thanks, I'll take a look over there. There is even a thread of "favorites". I'll skip the JCO webpage for selecting a first book, I'd rather go by reader suggestions.

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

In Grimm's tale of "The Robber Bridegroom", a cunning man lures young maidens away to his woodland lair and then cuts them up and eats them. Until, of course, he comes across a maiden who is more than a little skeptical and who, with the help of an old crone, avoids the trap and dramatically outs the murderer later on the day of their wedding.

In The Robber Bride, Atwood turns the fairy tale on its head by creating a dastardly villain in the form of Zenia, a woman who skillfully manipulates other women and runs off with their husbands/boyfriends (which she then chews up and spits out). But Zenia is the foil against which she places Roz, Charis and Tony, now three middle-aged women who knew Zenia in college. Roz is a outgoing, assertive, successful entrepreneur and Tony is bookish history professor specializing in warfare. Charis is what one might call a free spirit, with an uncanny sense of knowing. She works in a shop which sells New Agey stuff like crystals and incense.

The book begins by telling us that each of these women, although they hated Zenia for their own various reasons, attended her funeral five years ago upon the request of the dying woman (according to her lawyer). The women, who all live in the Toronto area, get together periodically for lunch, of late at a bistro named "Toxique". While dining and chatting, the women are shocked when Zenia walks into the bistro and takes a table across the room. This sets off a chain of events which Atwood slowly plays out for us, while giving us the backgrounds of Roz, Charis and Toni and their particular history with Zenia. The stories are not particularly upbeat, and Atwood laces the tale with some wicked and subtle humor which made me feel complicit so that I felt guilty everytime I snickered or giggled. We never hear Zenia's story except from the perspectives of the other characters, although she does speak in the book. There's a lot to think about in this provocative story, about power, moral choices, history, the difficulties of being 'liberated', our personal monsters, and especially about our relationships with other human beings. I think Atwood is also saying something about storytelling. As a final note, I add this excerpt from the beginning of chapter 17. Tony falls into thought while writing a presentation she will make at a future conference (we should note that Tony, who is a converted lefty, likes to write backwards, and enjoys palindromes):

All history is written backwards.... We choose a significant event and examine its causes and its consequences, but who decides whether the event is significant? We do, and we are here; and it and its participants are there. They are long gone; at the same time, they are in our hands. Like Roman gladiators, they are under our thumbs. We make them fight their battles over again for our edification and pleasure, who fought them once for entirely other reasons.
Yet history is not a true palindrome, thinks Tony. We can't really run it backwards and end up at a clean start. Too many of the pieces have gone missing; also we know too much, we know the outcome.

A bit off on reading lately for a few reasons. Generally too much going on, I suppose. I may have to take up some light stuff for a while. This is not the lighter stuff.

How to Start a Business in Massachusetts
How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation

Oy! Two dry, informative, and somewhat repetitive books on related subjects. However, they are less expensive than one hour with a lawyer and thus, I persevere. However, two parts enthusiasm, one part vision and a dash of that perseverance makes it a bit more palatable.

So, what kind of business are you starting?

I haven't been reading as much lately, either. I was thinking of you the other day, though, because I have been making my way through a collection of stories by Joyce Carol Oates. They are good, but kind of grim. Is that just this collection, or is she always so dark?

>106 sussabmax: which collection? Definitely some are grimmer than others. She portrays a lot of poverty and all the grimness that comes with that, and she is fascinated with tragedy (maybe fascinated isn't the right word for it). She also dips into psychological suspense and horror.

It's a website that will promote certain kinds of books, but I'm not quite ready to put the idea out on the public boards yet - at least until I've locked in a name and domain name.

Lois, good luck with this new business. Keep us informed :)

I recently finished my first Oates. It was The Gravedigger's Daughter and I really enjoyed the beginning and the middle (her growing up in the small cottage and her marriage to her Tignor), but I didn't enjoy the last section too much. Have you gotten to read it yet?

The Collector of Hearts, which has a subtitle of New Tales of the Groteque, I see here. That is very fitting. Like I said, it is good, but I had to take a break.

Good luck with the new business. I can't wait to see it.

>108 neverlistless: yes, I very much enjoyed that one, although I do remember there was a part in middle, somewhere past the mid-point that I thought dragged a bit. I could be wrong though, that's many books ago:-)

Thanks for the encouragement, will keep you all posted.

I'm reading the fifth in Indridason's Icelandic mysteries. It's about all I can handle at the moment.

Would you consider Indridason light and uplifting? I'll admit that I find Scandinavian crime novels calming, but thought that was just me.

Have you read Ella Minnow Pea? I found it the ideal light summer read for the kind of person who prefers their books not to have gold embossed lettering on the front cover.

>111 RidgewayGirl: oh gosh, no. Indridason's mysteries, like his main character, are dark and depressing (perhaps not depressing but there is a heaviness in them). The prose is spare, the tone somber most of the time.

I have read Ella Minnow Pea quite a long time ago now. I thought it clever and entertaining.

>109 sussabmax: I do have that collection but haven't read it yet. I've not read much of her horror stuff yet - a few stories here and there.

It just occurred to me that I have a duty to recommend this book to the vast hordes who read this thread. I am sending a copy to the good DoctorUrania but it should be read by all, as it is a great unknown (or known to too few) classic.

Double Hook by Sheila Watson. I have just posted a mini-recommendation/review.

#113 OK, you've hooked ME.

How interesting, Andrew. (yeah, you would've slain Ms. laytonwoman3rd at the mention of Faulkner:-)

Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason

This is the fifth of Indridason's urban Reykjavik police procedurals in English. A young Thai-Icelandic boy is found murdered, his body frozen to the January ice, in a garden not far from his home. His older brother has gone missing. Erlendur and his investigative team of Elinborg and Sigridur must piece together what few clues they have and dig for more through determined hard work and pavement-pounding. What lies just below the surface are simmering tensions around immigration and the issues involved, but are those tensions what leads to murder. Fans of the previous novels will enjoy these latest installment, if not for the satisfying police procedural and exploration of a contemporary issue that Iceland struggles with, then for a continuing look into the lives of our three detectives, particularly Erlandur who in earlier books came off as a bit of a loser.

If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents by Gregory Rabassa

I started reading this over six months ago but set it aside to as not to distract myself from my project... thanks to rebeccanyc for this book.

If This Be Treason is Gregory Rabassa's memoir about becoming and be a translator, and of the art of translating. Rabassa doesn't spend much time on his family or upbringing, but does, in hindsight, mention the things he experienced growing up as a child and as a young adult which seem to have contributed to his becoming a translator. He talks about the nicknames they were all given as children, his dabbling in languages in college, the cryptography he did during WWII. All of these stories laced with priceless bits about the art and occupation of translation. The second part of the book discusses each of the authors he has translated (he says 27, but I count 30 listed) and the fascinating challenges their particular work or works provided him. His first translation was Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, which won the National Book Award (they once had a translation prize). I found the discussions of everything from word choice and style to the difficulty of translating slang and racial slurs all intriguing. While there are certainly some familiar authors here (e.g. Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marguez and Antonio Lobo Antunes), there are certainly many I am not familiar with, including several women authors.

"A piece of writing cannot be cloned in another language, only imitated." --Gregory Rabassa

Grrrrrrrrrr Lois,

I have promised not to buy any more books. All I can do is trade, but the chances of me coming across this title in a local used bookstore are slim and none. I am trying to convince myself that I don't HAVE to own this, but you are making life difficult :-)

Andrew, post your address privately on my profile page an I'll send you my copy. I'm done with it:-)

I've not had as much time to read in the last few weeks, being preoccupied as I am with several things. I am reading My Driver by Maggie Gee at bedtime though and am enjoying it.

Re 117's "discussions of everything from word choice and style to the difficulty of translating slang and racial slurs..." Sounds interesting, and readable. I'll definitely watch for his work.

I've added If This be Treason to my wishlist. I'm interested in translation since we all know that a tone deaf translation can render a book unreadable. I have found that some languages translate better into German than into English (the only two languages I read well enough to notice nuance) and want to know why.

Does anyone get the idea that p. is vigorously pushing The Double Hook ;-) I just received my copy in the mail. Thanks Andrushka!!!!

>122 RidgewayGirl: Might be an interesting discussion to have with citizenkelly, a German-English translator:-) It sounds like you would enjoy the book, RidgewayGirl.

My Driver by Maggie Gee

Clearly, I'm not going to get this review up before I leave for the convention...

I've picked up The Mysteries of Winterthurn by Joyce Carol Oates...

I can't believe it's been a month since I've posted!

But THIS is what has me preoccupied (some of you already know this).

I'm about halfway through Mysteries of Winterthurn and have picked up Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by South African author Sindiwe Magona. I have a sort of literary ADD lately when it comes to my personal reading.

I read Dog Day* by Spanish author Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett. A pretty good police procedural with a twice-divorced, middle-aged female inspector with a healthy libido. Told with wit. I liked it well enough to buy the next two in the series.

*This one is about dog trafficking in Barcelona - probably not for really sensitive dog lovers.

Welcome back!

Oooh -- Belletrista looks wonderful -- can't wait to see it up and running. For those who can't get there through the above link (it didn't work for me because it had the librarything URL in front of it) -- http://www.belletrista.com

Jane, thanks for the link. Lois, congratulations on the project -- can't wait to see how it develops!

Finally, I finished a book! (you know it's been too long when you can't find your thread on the list of Club Read threads!)



Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona (South African author)

This book is a collection of stories divided into two parts. The first part is a ring of connected, gossipy by black South African women working as domestic servants for whites. The pieces, which really highlight the different personalities of each women, and read like oral pieces (if that's possible) are written in first person and are directed to another of the women. I had the distinct feeling I had read these before, but I think the stories are similar to ones I read in '07 in a memoir called Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman by Mpho Matsepo Nthunya.

The second part is comprised of several standard short stories set in the 60s through the late 80s, during the Apartheid system in South Africa, at least one story set during some of attempts at reforms in the 80s. The stories are bleak, often tragic, and several were very powerful. There was at least one I would deem "delightful". It was told by a young girl who detailed what her wonderful Fridays were like. This is an important collection, but I could not help but wonder about the stories now. I'm not so naive as to think that the vestiges of such a longtime segregation policy do not linger, but I wondered if the stories now were more hopeful.

I will edit this post later to include an excerpt which I found wonderfully musical.

I will probably return to the Oates, but one never knows. I seem to be drifting these days.

>129 avaland:, I think you're a bit preoccupied with new adventures!

Being preoccupied with getting the first issue of Belletrista out, as fannyprice alludes to in #130, my personal reading has slipped considerably. On the up side, I have read some fabulous reviews and other writing for the 'zine; on the down side (if it really can be called a down side), my concentration for other reading has slipped somewhat.

All that said, I recently completed the second in the mystery series by Spanish author Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett.

In the second book, Inspector Petra Delicado and Sgt. Garzón are assigned to investigate the murder of a well-known television 'journalist' who made his living unearthing scandal on celebrities and those in power. It's a complicated case that straddles both Barcelona and Madrid. Our investigative twosome must tread delicately in some social circles, not something they are naturally inclined to do.

Gimenez creates a lot of dialog between her characters, some of it business and some of it personal, and much of it laced with wit*. The twosome often bicker like an old married couple or pick on each other like siblings. Petra is outspoken and rarely obeys orders without some comment first. All this dialog serves to make her characters more credible and likeable; one can't help but develop an affinity for them.

I'm a fan of Wallander, Rebus, Dalziel & Pascoe, Erlander, and Dalgleish (to name a few), and I'm adding Petra Delicado to the gang, she adds a bit punch and color.

*Reginald Hill has some great wit in his mysteries also.

#129: I saw your post on the Magona the other day when I dropped by too quickly to be able to comment. I've been eyeing this one for a while, wondering whether I ought to add it to my wishlist. I'll definitely do it now--the first part sounds particularly interesting.

Continuing in a trend towards lighter or shorter reading:



My Soul to Take by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Very good Icelandic mystery, 2nd in the series. Set in the countryside, and part ghost story, the 'detectives' are Thora, a city lawyer and divorced mother of two and her German boyfriend, a former detective, who is handicapped because he doesn't speak Icelandic. Not a police procedural, per se, as she's not the police, but the brainwork of an intensely curious person who is working without some of the usual information the police have is interesting (and yes, somewhat implausible). The author does a nice job infusing the book with bits of Iceland culture and history.

"Genesis" (no touchstone) by NZ author Bernard Beckett.
Novella-sized tale set in the far future. A young historian is being examined for four hours by a board. She hopes of being admitted to the esteemed Academy, the people who run their society. Her scholary expertise centers around a legendary figure known in their history as Adam, a young soldier who, when the island society walled themselves off from the rest of the plague-ridden world in the mid-21st century, failed to shoot on sight a solitary young girl who approached the sea fence in a small boat. In fact, he 'rescues' her. But the tale the historian tells is more about the consequences of Adam's actions, for, as punishment they lock the young man up with a robot-like artificial intelligence in an effort to allow the latter to interact and grow. What follows, once Adam gets over his anger and begins talking to the AI, is an extended conversation that leans towards the philosophical: what it means to be human, what is a 'machine', what is consciousness, what is a soul...and so on. I found some of this interesting, albeit tedious at times (for didn't we have these conversations in various Asimov novels and stories?). But Beckett, does have some interesting twists up his sleeve and an unexpected ending which made me forgive him for some of the tediousness I felt earlier.

The book is hailed as 'original' which I was quite irked about at first. The intense examination of the scholar reminded me much of the academic review at the end of The Handmaid's Tale. The tale of a society walling itself off from the dangerous rest-of-the-world is not new, nor were the conversations between Adam & the A.I....but, it's not so much the components of Beckett's story that are new but it's the way he's mixed them together to tell the story for he tied it altogether quite nicely.

avaland,

I think it was quite unkind of you to wave Genesis in front of me knowing how partial I am to such fiction. It was particularly unkind since the book is available via the evil Baron von K., and thus just one click away.

Genesis sounds interesting... I think I might have to add that one to the wishlist, myself.

I don't know the author's literary history, but it often seems to me that when writers or readers come into an SF-type story from outside the science fiction field, they tend to credit it as being a lot more original than it actually is. Which isn't necessarily a problem -- originality is hardly the end-all-be-all of storytelling -- but it kind of irks me, too. I also sometimes feel the same way about movies. I'm still scratching my head over all the people who seemed to think The Matrix was mind-blowingly imaginative, when it felt like a rather pretentious mishmash of decades-old SF cliches to me.

The premise of Genesis also sounds a bit like The Giver by Lois Lowry.

I loved The Giver.

Can anything be truly "original" if it falls within a genre? Avaland, great appetizing review of Genesis.

>138 dchaikin: Personally, I'd say "yes," for reasonable definitions of "original" and "genre." I mean, almost anything set in the future can fit under the heading of science fiction, and that leaves a lot of scope for originality, even if many writers never do go much beyond the usual conventions of the field.

(Genesis has now been added to my wishlist, by the way!)

I am dubious that there can be anything "original" in SF anymore. It's all been done. (that may be true of fiction, in general). However, the originality lies in taking the bits and pieces and rearranging them into something interesting. I did mostly predict from the beginning one element that is revealed at the end (based on previous SF reading) but he did manage to surprise me with his ending and I give him much credit for that.

Perhaps it's more original for those who have read less in the genre? (and I have read a mere fraction of what dukedom has read, so imagine...)

Perhaps Tim Jones knows a bit more about his fellow kiwi SF writer? I don't think he has a literary history yet, though.

Mary dear, with regards to the Baron, imo you could be considered "an easy woman".

avaland dearest

Easy? Yes. Cheap? No.

Decapolis: Tales from Ten Cities edited by Maria Crossan

Authors & Cities: David Constantine/Manchester, Jacques Réda/Paris, Agúst Borgpór Sverrisson/Reykjavik, Empar Moliner/Barcelona, Aldo Nove/Milan, Dalibor Simpraga/Zagreb, Amanda Michalopoulou/Athens, Emil Hakl/Prague, Larissa Boehning/Berlin, Arnon Grunberg/Amsterdam

I was introduced to this small, independent UK press (Comma Press) when I bought Rob Sherman's (shearrob) first collection Tiny Deaths. I admit I bought this anthology solely for the Amanda Michalopoulou story, which seems to be her only other publication in English besides her clever collection I'd Like which rachbxl and I so much admired.

Ten stories set in ten cities by ten international youngish authors (most seem to be born in the later 60s and 70s). Many of the stories are translated. Except for references specific to the city of a story's setting, I couldn't detect any individual 'feel' for any one city or another. Thus, these stories come across as essentially urban tales and perhaps it is the commonality of the urban experience that stands out as a whole.

As with most anthologies, there are some stories I liked better than others. The Michalopoulou story, "The Four Hundred Pleats" is one I liked. It's a tale of a graduate student, who after finishing her studies in the UK, reluctantly returns to Athens where she crosses paths with one of the stone-faced, elaborately dressed guards at the Parliament (I'll post a picture).



The story tells of her interaction with him (he's not supposed to respond while on guard...) and trails off into a kind of fantasy which I won't give away.

Others I really liked were "A Man of the Streets" which follows one young man's interaction — relationship, if you will — with Georges Louis, a homeless man living on the streets of Paris. "The First Day of the Fourth Week" - is one day in the life of an unemployed man in Reykjavik. "Something for Nothing", set in Berlin, is about the relationship between a young woman and an older, overweight, middle-aged man she buys an "orangey red Swallow moped" from. At one point he takes her to an abandoned factory in what was East Berlin, a scene I found really interesting. I won't belabor my review by listing all the storeies :-) There were only a few of the ten that I didn't respond to. Overall, a nice collection and nice sampling of international writers (note to self: must look for more work by Larissa Boehning).

A Peculiar Grace by Jeffrey Lent

I read Lent's earlier two superb historical fictions, but hadn't moved forward with his newer stuff which are contemporary stories — until the other day.

The premise of the novel is laid out practically on the first page - damaged, immature and solitary middle-aged man meets screwed-up, possibly crazy young woman and both their lives are changed because of it. It seemed a bit of a cliched theme. Well, I thought, there's nothing more to say about it, is there? I was wrong.

Hewitt Pearce lives the quiet life in rural Vermont. He's an artist of sorts, a blacksmith, pounding out iron on the old family homestead while he still lingers over thoughts of the girl he loved at 17 (the one who dumped him). His father was a painter, his mother an Irish immigrant. If Howard needs something in town, he takes the tractor, as he doesn't drive a car. Into his life one day comes Jessica Kearns, a twenty-something vagabond who hasn't had a bath in quite awhile, and who just might be a bit nuts. But that's just the first layer of a surprisingly multi-layered, beautifully written story about one middle-aged man's inner life (my husband assures me that this is a fantasy:-). The book is about processing, letting go, and growing up; about fathers & sons, inheritance, about rootedness and freedom, and about the healing powers of art and, yes, love. About the time you think you've seen everything in these people's lives, Lent peels off another layer, unveils another secret. There is a lot stuffed in this one book.

The book is beautifully written. Lent has a remarkable ability to describe things - it's genuinely arresting at times. Although I wouldn't call his prose lyrical, it is poetic. It has certain organic rhythms and dispenses a kind of compelling, simple wisdom that comes from insightful observation.

While at the bookstore, I hosted Lent twice, at least. I know he is a big fan of Faulkner, and I know he is often compared to Faulkner and other more contemporary authors. I haven't read enough Faulkner to comment on that, but I do think he is an under-appreciated author, who might get pegged as 'regional'. And that would truly be a damn shame.

avaland -- I've never heard of Lent before, but your review definitely has me interested -- yet another for that ever growing wishlist and TBR pile.

I love the regional element in a good novel. Place is very important to me, and many of my favorite authors are associated with a particular locale. But I agree that being labelled a "regional author" is not complimentary, and those same favorites of mine have so much more than local color to offer. It's how they transport us to their unique place, and yet make us feel the universality of it that makes them worth reading.

>142 avaland: OK, so it was worth the wait for your review of Decapolis - thanks! It's frustrating that there's nothing more of Michalopoulou's translated, isn't it? When I was doing my review of I'd Like for Belletrista I came across all sorts of references to novels and stories of hers with English titles - only for it to transpire that nobody's got beyond translating the titles! There's one particular novel that I really like the sound of - Wishbone Memories.

I'd never heard of Lent either - thanks for the review.

>145 laytonwoman3rd: well said, laytonwoman. I have his most recent novel also but will let it languish in the TBR for awhile.

>144 janeajones:, 147 If you like fiction with historical settings, I would recommend Lent's In the Fall for a first read. Otherwise, one can start with this one.

>146 rachbxl: yes, agreed. Well, guess we'll have to check to see if Dalkey Archive Press will be publishing more (or perhaps Comma Press will translate more) or we'll have to make it one of Belletrista's first projects;-) I can't wait to hear what you have to say about her story.

The Lent book looks good. I too like place in a book, especially if it rings utterly true and if I sense that the author loves that place, wherever it is. I still have In the Fall on the tbr pile.

#149 In the Fall should be in your HAND...it was just marvelous.

Finally, I can say that my latest project, Belletrista.com is LIVE!

www.belletrista.com

Lois,

I have not had time to really look at it, but a quick glance shows that your hard work has paid off. I am looking forward to sitting down for a good look. Congratulations on a wonderful new site.

Avaland, it looks wonderful, and the two pieces that I read from the Afghan Woman Writers project were wonderful as well. Congratulations.

Wow, Belletrista is amazing and I want to get the kids to sleep so that I can sit down and read! Congratulations!!

Hola Lois. Your new website is just lovely. I've just finished reading all around it and bookmarking it.

Congratulations Lois, the website is wonderful. The Eleanor Catton inteview was really good.

#133 Regarding Bernard Beckett the author of Genesis, he has mainly been a YA writer, and won several awards for his books. Genesis was originally marketed at the YA level, but his latest novel Acid Song is for adults and was shortlisted for our NZ Montana Awards.
He is a highschool teacher of drama (and maths I think) and he started writing Genesis and his nonfiction Falling for Science: asking the big questions while on a Royal Society NZ Science, Mathematics and Technology Teaching Fellowship. He explored DNA mutations while working at the Allen Wilson Centre for Molecular Evolution during this time.

Congratulations on an excellent website and exciting venture!!

I particularly enjoyed reading about the AWWP. The way the Taliban treat women is disgusting and shameful. It's important to hear their voices, as the piece says.

All the best to you.

Thanks, all. I baked cookies last night and I'm delivering them to my web developer son-in-law (Ian) this morning (he said he'd work for cookies!)

Congratulations, Lois, that's a fantastic project!

Wonderful Lois! Great set-up, great resource. I look forward to spending too much time on all those "New & Notable" pages.

Just stunning, Lois. I'm sure it will revitalize my global reading!

Belletrista is alluring. Thanks so much for providing a place that will slowly take over my free time! Looking forward to a longer look later when things are quiet.

And my wishlist will grow longer and longer and longer.....

Bah...silly boss didn't have any meetings today so I have had to wait all day to read some of the new magazine. It looks great!

>162 RidgewayGirl: what? there's free time after LT?

>160 dchaikin: you and me both!
>161 lauralkeet: if it needs revitalizing, I hope we can help!

Thank you all. We were hoping to introduce you to some new authors:-)

Did you read those pieces from the women in Afghanistan... I spent a whole afternoon reading their blog, it's riveting stuff.

2009 will go down as my Joyce Carol Oates year, I think. You know they say regular Oates helps your cholesterol go down. . . :-)

It had not seemed like an entirely quixotic plan to write a sequence of "genre" novels linked by political, cultural, and moral (especially "feminist") themes, set in a long-ago/mythic America intended to suggest contemporary times: a Gothic family saga, a nineteenth-century 'romance," a saga of Gothic horror . . . and a "novel of mystery and detection." It had not seemed quixotic — but then, it never does, for otherwise we would not have outsized and unclassifiable works of art, of any kind — to hope that there might be readers for such novels, that seek to transform what might be called psychological realism into "Gothic" elements . . . Joyce Carol Oates in the Author's Afterword for Mysteries of Winterthurn.

I include the excerpt above because the author herself does a fine job of describing this superb novel. Mysteries of Winterthurn is a collection of three inter-related stories - mysteries - cases 'solved' by the renowed American detective Xavier Kilgarven. Our narrator is a private collector of "Murder", as he puts it, an amateur expert, looking back upon the time of these 'cases' in the late 19th century. He tells the tales with a wonderful, heightened language and much omniscience (considering he is just a 'collector'). He leads the reader down a merry path (ok, 'merry' may not be the right word here) with many a short excursion hinter and yon. It's delightfully frustrating (of course, I know that is an oxymoron!) when the reader is anxious about the fate of our hero, or the verdict of a jury.

Winterthurn is a small city, full of large family estates with their pedigreed occupants (the Kilgarvens are but one of them), and all of the other things a bustling American city of the late 19th century might have (i.e. mills, millworkers, boarding houses, cottages, churches . . .). Xavier is a young man who has not yet left the city to find fame and fortune in Manhattan in the first tale, and middle-aged in the last. There is something that plagues him internally about these mysteries in his home town.

There is certainly a lot I could say about why I so enjoyed Winterthurn — in short,it is an wonderfully entertaining, thought-provoking novel. In the afterward, Oates talks briefly about why we are attracted to classic Gothic tales, a sort of acting out of an inner reality (my paraphrase). I find myself mulling that from time to time and really enjoying the mull when I do!

Strangely, I read this book over the course of about two months. I would read a chapter or two and then set it aside while I read something else. I'm not sure why I did that, it certainly was not out of disinterest, but I don't regret reading it in such a way. This is a not-for-everyone novel, I suppose, but it has become, I think, my favorite Oates work.

The Hunter by Julia Leigh



I read Leigh's Disquiet some time ago and enjoyed it, so when I came across her first novel in a publisher's catalog, I was curious.

The Hunter is the story of a man, known only to the reader as "M", who is hired to kill and obtain genetic material from what is believed to be the last Tasmanian tiger. His base camp, such that it is, is a rented room from a family who lives on the very outskirts of the jungle. The man of that house, a naturalist, who claimed to a few that he had seen the tiger, never returned from his last excursion and is assumed long dead. "M" uses the name Martin David and claims also to be a naturalist.

The story follows M on his long excursions into the jungle in great detail. We are in this guy's head for nearly all 170 pages. There are some moments where I found myself completely mesmerized in this tale of obsession, survival — of predator-prey — and other times where I felt I was spending way too much time in this guy's head. But still, I kept on reading!

I think this would be a fascinating book club choice, but I suspect most bookclubs might not be able to get past the cruder aspects of The Hunter (i.e the skinning of animal in detail). It's a fascinating character study, and I try to imagine the same story with the hunter as a female. What would be different? See, I love a book that gets me thinking. . .

Jamilia by Chingiz Aitmatov (Kyrgyzstani author)

Published in 1958, Jamilia was the novel that drew the world's attention to Chingiz Aitmatov. My copy does not say what language it was translated from, but the author wrote in both Kyrgyz and Russian.

Jamilia is a lovely story told to us by the young teenager Seit, who remains the only son still on the farm after his brothers have been called to war (WWII, I believe). Each day, Seit and his young, beautiful and high-spirited sister-in-law, and Daniyal, a former soldier who was wounded on the battlefield, load their wagons full of bags of grain for the war effort and haul them to the train station. With this as his set, and the Kyrgyzstan countryside as his backdrop, Seit tells us this love story, a story of which he has been a part of, but yet, also a story that feels older somehow. I think this is what I enjoyed most about this short book, the feeling that the story is something of folklore or myth.

I'm glad you liked Jamilia - I read it earlier this year and thought it was beautiful. You're right, there's something ancient about it which is quite haunting. (And that wonderful scene where they drive their grain carts by moonlight and he sings gave me goose bumps). I think it was written in Kyrgyz; at least, that's the impression I got from my (French) translation.

Oh yet another book for the Wishlist --Jamilia sounds wonderful.

Same here....sigh.....

yup, one for me too.

It's on my wishlist now too.

I did a little cleaning of the author on LT, limited because it's mostly not in English. But now the touchstone goes to a work with 152 copies instead of seven. The name of the author comes in quite a few different spellings.

>173 dchaikin: And so does the name of the book (and main character) - I read Djamilia by Tchingiz Aitmatov (actually with 2 dots over the 'i' in his surname as well, but I don't know how to do that), which brings up the touchstone for the German translation, different again...

Aïtmatov - I was just too lazy to figure out the two dots. If you are on a Mac, Rachel, it's opinion+u, then the i.

>173 dchaikin: yes, when I entered it, I think my copy came up with only a few copies.

>168 avaland:: Jamilia sounds very interesting. I had picked up his The Place of the Skull in the library and read a couple pages, but ended up not taking it. Perhaps I'll try this instead. Unfortunately, the former is not available in the library, so I guess another poke at AbeBooks or Amazon.

Thanks.

>174 rachbxl:: If you're on a PC, Rachel, there are two ways. If you don't know the keycode, you can use Character Map to put any symbol in (Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Character Map). If you do know the keycodes: turn on NumLock and hold the Alt key while typing the keycode. In this case Alt-0239 = ï.

Or...just ignore them since Windows makes it such a pain. :-)

>174 rachbxl: Wow, I had no idea that Character Map was there - thanks, TadAD!

Ack! Global lit! Love story! Feels like folklore or myth! Lois, I promised myself I'd cut down on book buying, and yet here you are, reviewing a book that brings together so many of my literary loves!

It has been three weeks since I bought a book and I have an itchy trigger finger... do I visit Book Depository or not?

>179 Medellia: Yeah, good thing I didn't include "magical realism" or that would have certainly pushed you off the cut-down-on-the-book-buying wagon. The story behind my reading it is: I was going through the Telegram Books catalog for Belletrista but, as always, it's hard not to resist shopping a little for oneself. I bought three or four titles, including Jamilia. These are available here in the US as they are distributed through Consortium, so bookshops here should be able to get them (I had my bookstore order them for me).

Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates

4.5/5

Zoe Kruller, a beautiful young mother and bluegrass singer, is found brutally murdered in her apartment which she shared with a woman friend. Taken into custody and questioned as "persons of interest" are her estranged husband, Delray, and her married lover, Eddie Diehl. As the investigation continues, neither are arrested and charged with the murder, and a cloud of suspicious hangs over both men which shapes their lives from thereon in.

JCO loves tragedy, she considers it the highest form of art, and here again she explores it, like a knife probing an open wound. Not everyone is up for such a read, but I find her stories a bit like the equivalent for the brain, of rubbing a crisp, fresh, cotton towel across my skin - it's rough and hurts a bit, but ultimately is refreshing and invigorating.

Little Bird of Heaven is told in basically two parts. The first is by Krista Diehl, now grown daughter of the murdered woman's lover. She tells the story beginning well before the murder and her voice seems to move back and forth from the little girl who adoringly loves her daddy to a teenager and back to adult. (Oates often tells her stories from the viewpoint of children and teens, it's an interesting discussion point... why?). While reading this I could not help but think about how unreliable our memories are, how we shape them and rewrite as we grow older.

The other half of the book is told by Aaron Kruller, the son of the murdered woman and Delray, the other suspect. It is Aaron who finds his mother's naked dead body in the apartment and in his shock covers it with talcum powder. Aaron also begins his story well before the murder, and we see how the little boy Aaron becomes the troubled teen know as "Krull." It is a story of the fathers, the families, but it is more a story of the two children, imo, and both of these stories are mesmerizing in themselves. Despite each child being convinced that the other man, not their father, was the murderer, I found myself shifting my suspicion back and forth between the men. Both men's lives are slowly worn down and destroyed by just that, constant suspicion.

There's so much in this book one could talk about. As I mentioned before, reading this is a lot like probing an open wound. There is violence and passion and oftentimes the two are so mixed as to be indistinguishable. The tragedy of the story seems almost classical, the ending cathartic. The reader cannot help be shaken — and stirred.

I just heard this reviewed on NPR the other day, and thought of you! Glad you enjoyed it so much.

>182 lauralkeet: yes, the hubby heard Alan Cheuse review it also. I must remember to chase it down. I'm sure he said things about it more profound than I did!

Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason

This arrived in my mailbox Saturday just as I was looking for something to read.

This is the fifth of Indridason's Reykjavík mystery series to be translated into English. There is no doubt now that I am hooked and not only that but I've been reading them in tandem with Yrsa Sigurdardottir's mysteries!

The police are called to a countryside cottage to find a woman hanging from the beams of its sitting room, a clear case of suicide. The woman is from Reykjavik and soon Erlendur is called in to speak to the family and tie up any loose ends. When one of the woman's friends hands him a taped seance that involves the dead woman, Erlandur's curiosity is piqued and he sets about doing a little informal investigation off the record. Things are a bit slow down at the station apparently, because Erlendur starts to dabble in some missing person cases from the 70s, after he receives a visit from a father of one of the missing people. Anyone who has read the earlier books will under Erlendur's personal obsession with the search for missing persons. The story only has cameos from Erlendur's two sidekicks this time around due to the informality of his investigation, but the story is filled in with some family stuff as his daughter, Eva Lind, seems determined for her parents to get together and be civil to one another. And readers of the previous books we also understand just how well that should work out.

This is yet another great, entertaining mystery in Indridason's series, in each, as with the Sigurdardottir's, we get bits and pieces of Icelandic culture and history in each (it's the food I noticed in this one). It occurs to me that maybe his translator is different now than the earlier books? (must check on that).

The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller (2009 Nobel laureate)

The Land of Green Plums is a magnificent book; it's clear why it won the Impac Dublin Award. That said, it will not be every reader's cup of tea and let me tell you why:

The novel is very artful; it's craft reflective of the story it is telling. The story is set in Romania in the 1970s, while the country was under Communism and the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (a quick read of the wikipedia entry for this period is a vivid reminder of what that meant). It tells the story of four college friends —three guys and a young woman— each of whom have moved from the countryside to university with hopeful expectations which are fairly quickly dashed. Imagine the university experience in an atmosphere of fear and without freedom of speech. The narrator is the young woman (I'll be darned if I can find her name), and one of the first dramatic events in the novel is when one of her roommates is found hanging in the dorm room's closet - an alleged suicide. Much of the story is told in images - sometimes I thought it resembled a kind of fairy tale language, other times a kind of poetry or a code, and at first I worked hard to decipher it. Somewhere, about 50 pages in, I relaxed and stopped trying so hard. It feels like a code, but it's really a language and by then I was really hooked.

There are a lot of reoccurring images, but there are a few which she carries through the entire story: hair-cutting, fingernail-cutting, grass growing & cutting, teeth & losing teeth, nylon stockings, organs and blood, losing buttons, mulberry trees, and green plums ("You can't eat green plums, the pits are still soft, and you'll swallow your death").

The young woman and her friends have a collection of books, photographs, original poetry and the diary of the woman who had allegedly committed suicide (she left her diary in the narrator's suitcase!) which they take turns hiding from the authorities, even after they all leave university and move into jobs that the state dictates for them. Each of them is subjected to fairly regular interrogation by the local police captain, and their living spaces are searched from time to time. They expect to be arrested at any time. What will happen to the four of them?

The novel, in its artful language of imagery, communicates to the reader — and here, I think, the prose works much like poetry — what it was like to live in constant fear, to not have the ability to talk freely or to trust easily. It conveys the poverty and the brutality of the time, and the peril in resisting the oppression. It's mesmerizing and potent, and stays with you long after you have finished the story.

*interestingly, as the book progresses the imagery becomes thinner.

In my anthology reading, I have read through the China and Hong Kong sections and am halfway through Japan. These are contemporary stories (some poetry) - all quite interesting thus far. The anthology represents 34 Asian countries, so, as you may surmise, I have a long way to go.

After the Müller novel, I have opted for another mystery by Spanish author Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett...

I just finished Faceless Killers by Mankell based upon some of your comments last year. I think I'll try the first Arnaldur Indridason on the same theory.

There seems to be a lot of hanging going on here lately.

Nice review of The Land of Green Plums; I'll plan to read it next month when my copy arrives. I'll head over to City Lights Bookstore after breakfast to see if "The Passport" by Müller is available yet.

>189 kidzdoc: It's more of a rough collection of thoughts, rather than much of a review, but thanks. I will be interested to hear about some of her other books - are they as interestingly artful, for example...

#190 - they are a compelling rough collection than.

>185 avaland: I should also mention that some of the early parts which were thick with imagery I sometimes read over twice and out loud.

Death Rites by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett

Another installment in the Inspector Petra Delicado mystery series by Spanish author Giménez-Bartlett. I thought this was the third, but certainly the chronology places it at the beginning. We get the story of Petra's beginnings at the police departments and her first case with with the Sgt. - to find a serial rapist who makes his victims on the arm with something barbed and circular. There seems to be more personal information in this installment and at times I thought it bogged down the crime-solving story, but then, I'm now fond of the two characters, and Giménez-Bartlett goes for a bit more realism than most - she shows a lot of the footwork and frustrations, wrong turns and the rare moments of insight.



Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya

Now considered a classic, this 1954 novel and bestseller tells the story of Rukmani, the 4th daughter of a village headman in Southern India who is married at the age of 12 to a tenant farmer. What follows is moving story of dignity in the struggle to survive poverty, various disasters and change as we follow her into old age. It's a quick read and I often felt I had read it before...

Of note in the book is it's treatment of women's sexuality (it was written in the early 50s) and the character of Rukmani. It has been likened to Cry the Beloved Country, but it's been a long time since I've read that so I can't comment. It did remind me a bit of Buchi Emecheta's work, at least in theme.

Frozen Tracks by Ake Edwardson (mystery, Sweden)

I picked up this copy at a library sale recently, and it appears to be the third in a series or the third to be translated into English.

The detectives in the city of Gothenburg are very busy, not only do they have a mysterious attacker who is bashing young men in the back of the head with some kind of long-handled instrument (despite 4 attacks, no one is dead yet), but they are also getting some unsettling reports from parents who tell them their children said they have sat in a car with a strange man (yes, of course, he had candy!). I know it says on the book that this is a DCI Erik Winter novel, but the story follows at least four detectives (all male, a few token women officers play minor roles) in their investigations into these two complex cases which makes for a fairly congested mystery — congested in a good way.

Apparently Winter (did I mention how weird it was to keep reading "Winter" in the sentences of a Swedish crime novel?) was a bit of a detective prodigy as a very young man but now that he's middle-aged his giftedness seems to only be good detective work and a bit of a sixth sense/intuition (allegedly more than the usual "hunch" but it didn't really seem extraordinary). And I may be wrong about this, I haven't read the first two books. Winter, btw, has a live-in partner (a woman) and a very young daughter.

So, this is a well-done, congested, complex mystery which builds very slowly. By the time you reach page 270 or so, you can't put it down...and you have 100 pages to go!

This is a collection of short fiction divided into two sections. The first section is five stories, the second section is several interconnected stories. This is the most recent work of Neustadt Prize winning author Assia Djebar.

The interconnected stories in part 2 center around the life of one French woman named Félicie who long ago married an Algerian man and lived in Algeria. In the first story, she is in the hospital in a coma and her son is talking to her. In the process we are told her story and his from his point of view. The second story is told from the youngest daughter's point of view. And so on. She eventually dies and there is a larger family conference to decide where to bury her - in France or in Algeria next to her husband. To do the latter, they must change her first name and declare her a Muslim.
It's an enlightening story but it didn't really grab me in the way that the stories in the first part did...

I read most of the stories in the first part of the collection while sitting in the jury room of Lowell District Court. The story "Burning" is about a young (married) woman, known only as Isma, who is in hiding from the authorities. She is asked to assist a young Somali man in recording the songs of Berber women. She falls in love with him. In "The Attack" a former professor of French has gone 'underground' and, despite attempts on his life, is still writing opposition pieces for the newspapers. The story is told from the point of view of the anxious wife.
In "The Woman in Pieces", Djebar links a story from One Thousand and One Nights to the present (of the story) through a young woman teaching various translations of it.

These are powerful stories about war, about identity and home, about women's lives caught in conflict - the external and the internal. And, as with most of Djebar's work, there is much about language. Three or Four of these stories have stayed with me over the last week...

(I may have to revise this some later...it's awfully piecemeal...)

There seem to be a lot of Swedish crime novels, but I always think of Sweden as one of those low-crime places. I wonder how the real murder rate compares with the murder rate in these books. Do they ever comment on this in any of these novels?

196 - I read a somewhat interesting article about that very thing a few months back.

Scandinavian Crime Wave: Why the most peaceful people on earth write the greatest homicide thrillers.

>197 janemarieprice: yes, I read that also, Jane. Their love of British crime novels is very telling and I can feel the kinship in that they are often complex, mostly cerebral (while not neglecting the footwork), and almost completely lacking guns.
Ironically, I turned to British crime fiction in the early 80s when I was working in the law enforcement field here in the US. I can't read the US stuff - which are mostlythrillers - although occasionally I have read a first-in-a-series or one an historical setting.

I often read mysteries when I'm unable to concentrate on other kinds of literature, or as a literary palate cleanser between different kinds of reads. I don't want to give my brain a day off so much as I want to use it differently for a while. Yes, of course, the outcome is known - the case is solved in the end, but one can really enjoy the sometimes very messy thinking process that gets the detective/s there!

>198 avaland:: almost completely lacking guns

In the Wallender series, which I've just started, it was interesting to hear the dejection as Kurt commented that the "guns were coming" to Sweden.

>199 TadAD: well, my experience is a bit dated these days, but there are way, way more guns and action in American mysteries and thrillers than there is in reality. Of course, there is way more murder also. "The gun" is an American icon that is all twisted up with individual rights...etc. there's a certain romance with it (must get out the pop culture text and review what's written about it). Remember in The Road? I saw three icons in that story: the gun, the shopping cart, and the Coca Cola can...

>200 avaland:: Oh definitely! There seems to be a bit of a theme of Wallender lamenting that the "good ol' days" of Sweden were fading and it was becoming more like America, where guns are ubiquitous.

Hi Avaland - stopping in to visit. I noticed in the Nobel predictor thread you like Djebar. Any suggestions on where to begin?

>202 dchaikin: I think Children of the New World is the easiest to start with.

Thanks - on the wishlist. My library has nothing, not a single book by Djebar.

>204 dchaikin: then again, you can wait until the Mar/Apr edition of Belletrista and read Tad's joint review of three Belletrista books, eh? Is that not tempting? I know I'll be interested to read it:-) Mind you, I have not - yet - read everything of Djebar's in English.

>201 TadAD: My beef with Mankell is that he seems to feel it necessary to add a thriller element at times. In The Dogs of Riga, for example. It's a perfectly splendid cerebral police procedural and then he has to include all sorts of silly chases and hiding over there in Riga. Perhaps reasoning can not be applied in Latvia?

>205 avaland:: OMG, as if the pressure wasn't high enough!

The Passport by Herta Müller

Told as much through images as through action, The Passport tells the story of a miller named Windisch who is waiting for passports for his family to emigrate to Germany from Romania. The process under the Ceausescu's dictatorship is corrupt and Windisch is determined not to play into the corruption.

Like The Land of Green Plums, it's most interesting to me the way she has chosen to tell her story. The Passport often felt like a folktale because of its village setting, and the imagery, and language of that imagery. Müller's imagery is fantastic in every sense of the word, certainly allegorical at times (an apple tree that eats its own apples!), other times used more for surreal purposes. Sometimes she makes literal things that are not. And I could not stop myself from lingering over phrases like, "the night flowed out of the earth and over the village."

Müller also tells her story in relatively short, staccato, simple sentences - barely a conjunction in sight! I couldn't decide what the intended affect was. Sometimes, it seemed she was setting a stage, other times it set a sort of beat going... I'll have to think some more on this.

This is an artform -- story as art. I enjoy seeing how this is done. It's incredible. The sad tale is well told but perhaps not in a vehicle most would enjoy.

*I may have to come back in here and clean these thoughts up... (I'm away for a couple of days though...)

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell (nonfiction, audio, US author)

Sarah Vowell has perfected a kind of geeky, dry and deadpan humor that is only enhanced by her lispy voice (which is exactly why I had to listen to this on unabridged audio). But, that said, do not think that this tale of America's Puritan beginnings is any less researched and serious than, say, Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower.

Vowell explores the Puritan settlement in New England using many of their own words (thus, the title - Wordy Shipmates). She tells us a well-researched story liberally including quotes from journals, letters and documented court cases. On audio, they have used several male actors' voices for the different men she is quoting. She injects her characteristic wit and personal anecdotes along the way. The point of her book, imo, is to show us that "there's nothing new under the sun" and that our national behaviors of today can seen way back in the early part of the 16th century.

It's fascinating ...and very entertaining. I think one would have to have interest in early American history though to enjoy this.

Why I read this now: (shamefully stealing this from Nickelini). I bought this for travel listening. I listened to half a few months ago and was able to finish it on a trip to Maine a few days ago. I spent parts of '07, '08 and the early part of this year studying in New England history and this book fits in nicely. Yesterday, I picked up a hardcopy of the book in case I need to refer back;-)

I've been busy doing several creative projects since Belletrista's issue 2 has come out, and sometimes when I'm in these creative jags I find it hard to settle down with a book. I'm having a tough time getting into A. L. Kennedy's Day, but I seem to be able to settle into a good police procedural...

On another note, my 27 year old daughter has decided that she will be spending her March spring break (from teaching 8th grade science) working on an organic farm in Sweden. She has not read any Nordic crime novels, so she still thinks the country is serene and scenic;-)



Sun and Shadow by Ake Edwardson

This is the first book in Edwardson's series of Erik Winter crime novels translated into English. I commented on book 3 in #194. I knew from reading book 3 that Edwardson follows a fair number of police officers/detectives, sometimes referring to them by last name, other times by first name - so this time I kept a list. There were 7 officers mentioned, a few others in more minor roles and some family members. I did refer to it from time to time, so I think it helped.

Erik Winter is the youngest DCI on the force and he is approaching his 40th birthday. His father is ill in Spain and his pregnant partner is moving in with him. In the midst of this personal turmoil, a gruesome double murder occurs - a middle-aged couple is found naked, sitting on their livingroom sofa, holding hands, and very, very dead. Thus begins a complex case that will delight fans of police procedurals like Mankell and P.D. James. Again, like in the previous book I read of Edwardson's, the footwork seems frustratingly slow - more for the police than the reader, of course - and the suspense builds slowly. Although, at the beginning I speculated "who dunnit" correctly, as it turns out, Edwardson succeeded wonderfully in making me doubt my own speculations.

American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell National Book Award finalist.

This is an excellent collection of short fiction that centers around the lives of rural Michigan people. The stories were so absorbing that I read it straight through - nearly in one sitting last night (I finished the last few stories first thing this morning). I may review it for Belle, so I'll leave it at that.

Sounds like a good one, Lois; I'll look for it.

>211 rebeccanyc: I think you might like it, rebecca. While not uplifting, I did not find it depressing - considering the down-and-out characters. It's amazing that in so few pages she can make you care about some of them...





Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America by Barbara Enrenreich

This is a fascinating look at the positive-thinking philosophy in its various forms that has so permeated American culture. Ehrenreich explores the 19th century roots of this cultural trend and examines its pervasive tendrils into the atmosphere around breast cancer treatment, corporate America and the workplace, the newer forms of Christianity (i.e. Joel Osteen), trends in psychology and yes, our economics. She also examines the "science" being used to booster the philosophy and the commercial industry that has grown up to support it. While she is not against the idea of positive-thinking, she makes us aware of its dangers, both culturally and personally, and advocates a healthy skepticism and a 'vigilant realism.' It's a short, thoughtful 200 pages.

Now, I'm going to peruse the latest "demotivators" catalog...

The Luminous Depths by David Herter

At the end of 2008 I read the first novella in Herter's trilogy, On the Overgrown Path which was a wonderful dark fantasy and mystery featuring the Czech composer Janacek.

This second book begins in the early 1920s with the arrival of Dr. Brod and Franz Kafka at Janacek home. There Kafka is introduced and he produces a mysteries "stave flower" - a folded parchment with many points covered in what seems to be tiny musical notations. Kafka tells him that it fell from the sky and hit him in the chest. With it came an ominous vision of the future.

Now forward ahead to 1930. Composer Pavel Haas, a former student of Janacek is working with Karel and Josef Capek on a revival of their play, R.U.R or Rossum's Universal Robots. After an evening of camaraderie with the Capeks at a local restaurant, Pavel is on his way home when what looks like a paper star flower floats down from the sky and hits him in the chest. He pockets it. Later the next day, when during the play rehearsal he unfolds it, the theater goes dark. . .

What begins now is a gripping fantastical tale that I would prefer not to spoil for you. Herter is actually quite a fine writer. He has created a sense of place and character and - atmosphere rich with period details, musical details, historical details. You are there in the theater with Haas, the Capeks, the other costumed actors. You are there when the lights go out, and you are there for what comes after...

Both books are very well done and I'm really looking forward to the third!

Bright-sided just sounds so entertaining. (and Houston's own Osteen gets a little mention - I'm always amazed to realize other parts of the country know that name.) I haven't posted in a while, but lots of great stuff here.

Deleting a double-post.

>214 dchaikin: yes, he does. As a matter of note, I also heard him recently used as a prime example of the "prosperity gospel" by the author of an Atlantic article about whether these churches bear some responsibility in the financial crisis. She covers some of the same ground as Ehrenreich. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/rosin-prosperity-gospel

I have to admit, I was pretty amazed to hear what the 'prosperity gospel' actually teaches - a bit appalled actually.

yes, it's really disturbing, but yet it's not exactly surprising that it's so popular. Thanks for the link. I made it about 4 paragraphs before the gag reflex kicked it.

Thanks for posting, Lois. Great article. Makes me nuts.

Cleaned Out by Annie Ernaux, translated from the French by Carol Sanders

Cleaned Out tells a coming-of-age story of Denise Lesur, the daughter of a working class couple who own a bar and café in a poor neighborhood. Denise, now twenty and a college student, has just had a back alley abortion and the circumstances lead her to recount her life story during the post war years in France. The central conflict begins when her parents, like so many, hoping to give Denise a better life than they have had, pay for her to go to private school. As Denise becomes educated she resents her family heritage more and more.

The first person narrative and the voice of the book seems like a cross between stream-of-consciousness and a rant. It is vivid, raw, crammed with emotion and angst, swinging from a pernicious resentment and 'hatred' of her unsophisticated parents and the culture she grew up in, to a virulent self-loathing. It's a mere 120 pages, with only two chapters and composed of long, long paragraphs - it was difficult to find a place to stop. But I needed to stop about every 20-25 pages because of the intensity of the narrative.

The story has many elements of other coming-of-age stories - a moving away from one's parents, a sexual awakening, a search for identity. I was reminded the young man in Albert Memmi's Pillar of Salt in places. The title, of course, refers to her abortion, but she is also losing her childhood, and perhaps exhausting some of her anger through this raw narrative, a different kind of cleaning out.

This is Ernaux's first book and she said she wanted to transgress boundaries, to "use not the refined style that I use as a teacher of literature, but an idiom that, by being brutally direct, working-class and sometimes obscene, would take issue with the French tradition of the polished sentence, of 'good taste' in literature." The voice of Denise Lesur certainly reverberates in one's skull long after you've closed the book. Author's first books are always interesting, as is where they go thereafter. I will look forward to reading more Ernaux in the future.

The David Herter trilogy sounds wonderful. I wonder if Polutropos knows about it?

Never End by Åke Edwardson

DCI Erik Winter is forced to resolve an unsolved case of rape and murder when a similar crime occurs in the present day. The previous crime, committed some five years earlier, has haunted the detective ever since and he is determined that this time they will not fail.

This is another stellar police procedural from Edwardson. He writes a detailed procedural around a case that gets more and more complex as the story progresses and very slowly ratchets up the suspense without slipping over into "thriller" mode. I have a lot of respect for crime writers who can do that well. It makes for a well-crafted, intelligent novel in the tradition of the best crime novelists.

Talking about Detective Fiction by P. D. James

I consider P. D. James the still-reigning queen of detective fiction even if I think she is a little "old-fashioned". I have been reading her for three decades now and am only behind the most recent book. The fact that I could wait for the most recent one to come along in paperback, is testimony to the fact that I am, perhaps, outgrowing her novels or detective...

This afternoon I blew through her on "detective fiction". She traces the history of the genre back to the mystery elements in many 19th century novels (Trollope! Dickens!) and leads us merrily into Wilkie Collins, Doyle and Poe. James is writing primarily about the British crime novel, with few exceptions. She spends a good part of a chapter on Hammett and Chandler, with a nod to Paretsky, and she includes kiwi Ngaio Marsh along with Christie, Sayers and Allingham in a chapter about the Golden Age of crime fiction. There is a nod to Mankell and his Wallander series.

I enjoyed her discussion about the differences between Christie and Sayers and her discussion about the above four women as social historians. I also very much enjoyed her refutation of criticism that a novel with a specific structure (which one might call 'formula') hinders creativity (to this she provides the example the sonnet's "formula")

It's a short 200 (small) pages and a delight for anyone who has enjoyed crime fiction, particularly British crime fiction. It's not a sentimental piece but a straightforward, illuminating look at detective fiction from someone who not only reigns in the field but clearly enjoys reading it and watching television adaptations.

Death Angels by Åke Edwardson

The last of Edwardson's mysteries currently available in English. It is the most recent translated, but chronologically the first in the four. A young man's body has been discovered, tortured, in an apartment. It has inherent similarities to a murder in London. DCI Erik Winter and the rest of his team must investigate every shred of evidence to tease out something tantamount to a clue. Because this is an earlier novel, we see Winter as a bachelor (before his partner and child) and that was very interesting. I would have preferred to read the books in order but obviously that didn't happen... Either way, another excellent police procedural by Edwardson - I'll look forward to more.

Short Stories by Latin American Women: The Magic and the Real edited by Celia Correas Zapata

This is an excellent anthology that introduces the reader to 31 authors from 14 Latin American countries. For my juicy comments, you will have to wait for Belletrista, Issue 3 to be posted;-)

This thread is now closed

Please visit my new thread in Club Read 2010 HERE

Hmm. Too bad there wasn't a way to collect all one's personal threads into our own personal group for future reference...just thinking.

I agree.

You can always find them from the "threads you started"/'started by you" option, but of course they're all mixed in with the other threads you started.

#226 YES!!! I've often thought that would be a good thing, Lois. Has it been suggested to Those Who Can Make it So?

Waking the group up to check the settings