Review: THE BOOK OF DOORS

Title: The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

Book Beginnings quote: 

In Kellner Books on the Upper West Side of New York City, a few minutes before his death, John Webber was reading The Count of Monte Cristo.

Friday56 quote:

"The young have the loudest dreams,” Drummond murmured, more to himself. “Unfettered by life and reality."

Summary: Cassie Anderson works at a bookstore in NYC. She befriends a lonely man who often comes to the store for a company and a coffee. The night he dies he is reading The Count of Monte Cristo. When Cassie finds him, there is a small book next to him on the table, a gift book for her. The inside inscription reads "Any door is every door. All you need to do is step through them." This is the book of doors, a magical book with magical powers. When Cassie gets home she and her roommate Isabel discover they can travel the whole world simply by picturing a door in another place and stepping through to visit a new place. It is fun in the beginning. But Isabel is worried that no good will come from it, and she is right. Other people, with their magical books want hers and soon she and Isabel are being pursued all over the world and back and forth throughout time.

Review: My daughter read The Book of Doors first and highly recommended it to me. I started it a few days before Christmas and just couldn't put it down, or didn't want to put it down. It has been a long time since I have been so captivated by a book. The book is very dark. The underbelly of the world seeking a book from two regular, innocent girls. In a way the book of doors reminded me of the ring in the Tolkien series. Everyone wanted it and most of those seeking it were up to no good and willing to exert deadly power to get it. At first this darkness really put me off. But soon, as the good guys started to emerge, and as the time travel started up, I was hooked. I had to know how this all was going to possibly work out. Many deep and confusing conversations with my daughter ensued, too, as I have a hard time figuring out how time travel works out when placed against the "now." Anyway. We had fun discussions.

My rating: 5 stars.

 

-Anne

Review: KNIFE: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Title: Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Summary: 

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him

On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide. (Publisher)

The book is profound and very literate. I was touched by so many of his meditations/essays and wanted to capture them by sharing a few excerpts.I will let these excerpts speak for themselves instead of relying on just my own thoughts on the book.

Rushie expands on his thoughts on 'knife' as an idea:

• A knife is used to make the first cut on a wedding cake; 
• A kitchen knife is essential for the creative act of cooking;
• A  Swiss Army knife is a helper, able to perform small but necessary tasks; 
• Knives can be conceptual like cutting through bullshit;
• "Language, too, was a knife. It could cut open the world and reveal its meaning, its inner workings, its secrets, its truths...Language was my knife" (85).

Referring to the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and how literature spoke to him during his recovery:

 "I didn't want to repair any motorcycles, I learned that through literature, I could repair myself" (90).

On reflecting on the past with regret, he says:

"To reject what your life has been is true folly, I told myself, because the person doing the regretting has been shaped by the life he suhe subsequently regrets" (94).

With his own mortality on his mind he offers thoughts on grief after the death of a friend: 

"It is the trivia of the past that one mourns as much as greater matters (such as literary talent) when one is saying goodbye to a friend" (127).

Rushdie imagined a conversation with his would-be assassin (I've quoted this reflection several times when I've noticed how some people seem to have no sense of humor about anything):

"There's a thing I used to say back in the day, when catastrophe rained down upon The Satanic Verse and its author: that one of understanding the argument over the book was that is a quarrel between those with a sense of humor and those without one. I see you now, my failed murderer, hypocrite assassin, mon semblable, mon frere. You could try to kill because you didn't know how to laugh" (168).

I enjoyed how Rushdie referred to the works of other writers or poets to explain his thoughts. Here Rushdie reflects on the Raymond Carver's poem "Gravy" and the concept of second chances. Carver lived ten years after a fatal diagnosis. Carver described that time as gravy. 

"That was a good way to think of it. Every day of life, was gravy" (171).

On making a new life going forward and the importance of his relationships:

"Everywhere I looked, as I contemplated my next steps back into the world, I felt the reassuring arms of friends around my shoulders" (172).

Rushdie emphasized several time how writers have an important role in responding to the ugliness of the world (and these quotes help me, too, as I digest all the misinformation [lies] that got Trump re-elected):

"How should we respond? It has been said, I have said it myself, that the powerful may own the present, but writers own the future, for it is through our work, or the best of it at least, the work which endures into that future, that the present misdeed of the powerful will be judged...Even after Orpheus was torn to pieces, his severed head, floating down the river Hebrus, went on singing, reminding us that the song is stronger than death" (180).

"Above all, we must understand that stories are at the heart of what's happening, and the dishonest narratives of oppressors have proved attractive to many. So we must work to overturn the false narratives of tyrants, populists, and fools by telling better stories than they do, stories within which people want to live" (181).

On closure:

"I remembered a Doonesbury comic strip which one character tells another: "You know, I really miss September 10th." That sentence, speaking so tenderly as it did of lost innocence, even a lost world, had stayed with me...I wanted very badly to be, once again, that carefree fellow...a writer with a new novel soon to be published, and a man in love." There may not be closure but there could be a reconstructed happiness...a wounded happiness and there was and perhaps would always be, a shadow in the corner of it. But it was a strong happiness nevertheless, and as we embraced, I knew it was enough" (203, 207)

The book wasn't an easy read. The topic is very distressing and so were the details, but I did enjoy the way Rushdie made so many literary references and talked about his life as an artist and the power he and other writers have in righting the record. For some reason that gave me a bit of hope for our future.

My rating: 4 stars.

-Anne

Review: THE JAPANESE LOVER

Title: The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

Book Beginnings quote: 

When Irina Bazili began working at Lark House in 2010, she was twenty-three years old but already had few illusions about life.

Friday56 quote: 

With apocalyptic hurricane force, war had descended on Europe.

Summary: Three people: Irina Bazili, Alma Belasco, and Ichimei Fukuda are all victims of war and politics. They live in a world blinded to their predicaments, too. This is their story, as they all come together later in life at a place called Lark House.

Review: Isabel Allende has got to be one of the best writers living today. Her stories always touch on the impact of politics or war, racism or poverty have on people's lives. In this story, which centers on the life of Alma Belasco, touches on the lives of Jewish children separated from their families because of the Nazi's detemination to exterminate all Jews during WWII. Alma reaches America and lives with her aunt and uncle in San Francisco, seemingly untouched, but profounded changed by the circumstances of her life. While living with her relatives she meets and befriends the Japanese gardener's son, Ichimei. After the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese, Ichimei and his family are sent to an internment camp (called a concentration camp in the book). The two friends lose contact until many years later when they meet up by chance and renew their bond. Separated by race and financial status the two cannot/do not marry, though there is deep love between them.  Fast forward fifty years and we meet Alma again, this time living in Lark House where Irina works. The two women form a bond and we learn details of their back stories as they get to know each other.

The story has many plot lines and moves forwards and backwards in time but eventually everyone's story comes out and the reader is left with a sense of the lingering sadness in all three characters lives. Allende does a masterful job drawing all the lives together into a touching story. This was a book club selection and it was rated as the groups second favorite read of the year.

My rating: 4 stars.

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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-Anne

Review: PIRANESI

Title: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Book Beginnings quote: 

When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of Three Tides.

Friday56 quote:

They were all enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old. As if merit was a function of chronology!

Summary: 

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

Review: I decided to read Piranesi for a variety of reasons. One, though I don't recall anyone's actual review of the book, I had a general feeling everyone loved it. And when I peeked at what others' said in their Goodreads reviews, I was right. Two, Piranesi is offered as a book club kit at my library and the thought struck me that some librarian somewhere thought this would be a good discussion book. I like books I can talk about. And lastly, I noted Piranesi won the Women's Prize in 2021 and since I am making an effort to read the past winners, it was a no-brainer I should read it sooner than later.

My husband and I decided to listen to it on a recent car trip, thinking it was short enough we could finish it on the roundtrip. I had no idea, one doesn't see the printed words when listening, that the book was full of capitalizations seen in the opening quote. The main character, Piranesi, which is not really his name but you don't learn what his real name is until late in the book, writes in a journal every day. Perhaps the frequent use of capitalizations is meant to show us that the journal is for personal writing. Who follows all the rules of grammar in their own personal journals? Someone on the Internet said it is meant to represent another world. Well, Piranesi lives in a different world, that is for sure. His world is a house made up of an infinite number of rooms, halls, floors, and vestibules. It also has an ocean inside the house and when the tides are just right (or wrong) they can cause terrible flooding. The house is also filled with millions of unique statues, like the one on the cover of a faun playing an instrument. Piranesi loves the house and feels responsible for taking care of it, as best he can.

Now I must admit based on my summary the book sounds boring. Piranesi walking around in different rooms endlessly. A book about nothing. But this book is full of drama and a mystery. It is also about misconceptions, love, acceptance, and friendship. But as another blogging friend, Jinger, said in her comment on Goodreads, I'm not going to tell you anything about the good stuff because I want to read it for yourself and experience it without preconceived expectations. My husband and I had no idea what we should expect. It took us a while to adjust to fantasy -- you know, get a picture in our heads of what the house was like -- and we had to stop the audiobook several times to discuss aspects of the story. But we both ended up really liking the book and felt the story ended on just the right note.

Rating: 4 stars from both of us.

-Anne

Review: HOW TO BE BOTH

Title: How to Be Both by Ali Smith

Book Beginnings quote: EYES, page 1

Friday56 quote: EYES, p. 47

Summary: 

How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

A NOTE TO THE READER:
Who says stories reach everybody in the same order?
This novel can be read in two ways and this book provides you with both.
In half of all printed editions of the novel the narrative EYES comes before CAMERA. In the other half of printed editions the narrative CAMERA precedes EYES. The narratives are exactly the same in both versions, just in a different order.

Review: Oh boy. This book is unique. First, you can start it at the heading CAMERA or EYES. Together the two sides make up a complete story told from a different vantage point. The audiobook I listened to began at CAMERA which is a more modern story of a girl who is deep in grief after the death of her mother, thinking back when she and her mother interacted with art. One episode led them to Italy to visit a fresco done by a group of artists where one artist's work was clearly better than the others in the room. After finishing the CAMERA side I listened to the EYE side, which was the story of that good artist, what life was like during the Renaissance for artists. The first quote is when this artist is pulled into the 21st century and can see the girl as she goes about her daily life beginning with her sitting in front of a painting in an art museum.

The book is extremely clever and odd, frustrating and satisfying, and very unique. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I began the book and from the audio I heard the directions about starting at CAMERA or EYES. Oh boy, hang on, I thought. Why did I pick How to Be Both? Earlier in the year I set myself a challenge to read the winner or finalist for the last decade of Women's Prize Book Award winners. How to Be Both won the prize in 2015. It also won a ton of other awards that year, obviously because the book is so unique. It also ended up on the NYT list of 100 best books of the 21st century. I am attempting to some read books from that list, too, so I double-dipped with my selection of How to Be Both. That said, just because a book wins an award or ends up on a prestigious list doesn't make it popular or easy-to-read. And How to Be Both is not easy to read, as evidenced by the (pages-long) poem which starts the EYES half of the book. I think listening to the audiobook helped prevent some confusion but might have caused other issues. For one, I wasn't aware of the poem format, which may have been a blessing. And look at the punctuation in the second quote with all those colons. There are no colons in audiobooks!

An interesting side note: the photo on the cover of the two women makes it into the storyline several times. I found myself looking at that photo over and over again. Once again, the versatility of art!

My rating: 3.5. I liked the book but didn't fully understand it.

-Anne

Novellas in November Wrap-Up

Novellas in November is over for 2024 and I had a very successful month of reading. It even surprised me to note how many books I was able to read and review. 

In total I completed 19 novellas, or short books. I DNF'd one book. I reviewed all but one of the books. To my delight I was able to finish several classic novellas which have long resided on my TBR pile: A Christmas Carol, Giovanni's Room, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Turn of the Screw, A Room of One's Own. I read several books I never would have picked up if not for this challenge (All Systems Red, A Strange Library) and found new favorites (Foster, Truman Capote's Stories, Orbital). I even read the best novel noone has ever heard of: Pedro Páramo. It was a good month!

Here are my reviews, many posted in batches of three:

1-2-3: Review batch number one:

A Christmas Carol by Dickens

Dept. of Speculation by Offill

A Strange Library by Murakami

4-5-6 Review batch two, all classics:

Giovanni's Room by Baldwin

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy

The Postman Always Rings Twice by Cain

7-8-9 Review batch three:

Foster by Keegan

Buffalo Dream by Duncan

All Systems Red by Wells

10 Single review and group read:

Orbital by Harvey

11 Single Classic review:

The Turn of the Screw by James

12-13-14 Review batch four:

Whereabouts by Lahiri

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by King

House Made of Dawn by Momaday

15 Single Classic review:

Pedro Páramo by Rulfo

16-17-18 Review batch five:

Truman Capote Stories (A Christmas Memory; One Christmas; and The Thanksgiving Visitor)

A Room of One's Own by Woolf

Another Brooklyn by Woodson

-Anne

Three Novella Reviews: TRUMAN CAPOTE STORIES; A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN; ANOTHER BROOKLYN

Today is November 30th. It is my last chance to highlight three more novellas completed this month. And what a way to go out.

Truman Capote: A Christmas Memory. One Christmas & The Thanksgiving Visitor. Modern Library, 1996. 107 pages.

Taking its place next to Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood on the bookshelf is this new and original edition of Capote's most famous short stories: "A Christmas Memory, " "One Christmas, " and "The Thanksgiving Visitor." All three stories are distinguished by Capote's delicate interplay of childhood sensibility and recollective vision, evoking a strong sense of place. (Publisher)

I dropped by a used bookstore the other day, looking for a gift for my mother, a 95-year-old voracious reader. I found a few good books I know she will like but while I was perusing the shelves for one more, to round out the lot, this used Truman Capote short story collection caught my eye. I've read, in fact, I own a copy of "A Christmas Story," but was not familiar with the other two stories. Of particular interest to me was "The Thanksgiving Visitor" since we just celebrated that holiday. Since my husband was driving I started it before we left the store's parking lot. I completed the book this morning, devouring all three stories before handing it over to Mom.

Truman Capote had an especially hard childhood. One bereft of love from either parent. As a very young child he was shunted off to live with his mother's relatives in Alabama and there he found love and solace from a distant cousin, Miss. Sook, a 60-year-old who was very much like a child. Capote considered her his best friend. All three of the stories involve his adventures with Miss Sook. In "A Christmas Memory", Buddy, as he was called, and his friend make fruitcake and prepare for Christmas. Neither task was easy because it was The Depression and money was scarce. But the love and the fun were abundant. In "One Christmas," Buddy has to travel to New Orleans by himself to spend the holidays with his father, who he barely knows. His friend enticed him to go with the promise of possible snow. Buddy had his belief in Santa Claus shaken by a father who did not believe in magic. In the last story, "The Thanksgiving Visitor," Miss Sook invites Odd Henderson to join their family for Thanksgiving dinner. Odd is Buddy's tormentor at school and he wants nothing to do with the bully. Thanks to his best friend, a truce of sorts is reached and lesson is learned.

I loved all three stories and I hope to add this book to my Christmas-book reading rotation next year, after I retrieve this copy of the book from my mother.

Though not officially a novella, I am counting it as part of my Novellas in November challenge. At 107 pages it looks and feels like a novella.

Rating: 5 stars

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson. Harper Collins, 2016. 175 pages.

Running into a long-ago friend sets memories from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.

But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion. (Publisher)

I finished up my Novellas in November challenge with an author I am very familiar with, Jacqueline Woodson. This book, Another Brooklyn, is her first foray into adult fiction, but it is every way just as poetic as her poetry-in-prose novels and memoirs meant for teens and preteens. Those books, however, were more straightforward. I found this book confusing as the narrator wanders around in her memory circling around the question of what happened to her mother. None of the characters were fully fleshed out, either, so when bad/sad/frustrating things happened to them I felt little compassion or empathy as a reader. Set during the early 1970s, there were a few cultural references to the events of the times, but most didn't really impact the story so their mention was just window dressing. Honestly, I like Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming much better than this book if you are thinking of giving this author a try.

My rating: 3.5 stars.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. Original publisher: Hogarth Press, 1929. 112 pages. Audiobook published by Fort Raphael Publishing Co., 2025. [Not a typo. This is the date stated on the audiobook.]

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister. A sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary women never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those without. Her message is a simple one: women must have some money and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create. (Publisher)

In 1928 Woolf was asked to give a series of lectures at Newnham and Girton colleges on the topic of 'Women and Fiction.' This small volume is a collection of essays based on those lectures. Though the book has a fictional narrator who tells the story of not only the research Woolf did in preparation but also her opinions about other female writers, of whom only Jane Austen and Emily Bronte gained her praise. The book is considered nonfiction, shelved in the social science section of a library, specifically under feminist literature. Technically, it is not a novella either, but we were assured tby hosts of Novellas in November that nonfiction titles were allowed. Woolf is a spectacular writer.

I don't know how I managed to live over 60 years without reading this classic very feminist book about what women need to be self-sufficient and equal to men in power and talent. Even a hundred years after these essays were written we are still struggling to reach a true level of equality, which completely gauls me. In fact, I couldn't help thinking of the results of the 2024 US election being, at least in part, due to misogyny. Grr. 

I started out reading the print edition but found it very difficult to read due to the pages-long paragraphs. I switched to the audio version, narrated by Sara Nichols. Since I purchased it with an Audible credit I can urge my daughters to listen to it and there will be no impediment to their access. I want my daughters to grow up believing they can do anything they want, not held back by their gender. I also want to reread it in a year or two as I'm sure I will get plenty of new insights from it on each reading.

My rating: 5 stars.

-Anne

Classic review: PEDRO PÁRAMO

Pedro Páramo: 

"The Perfect Novel You’ve Never Heard Of"(Slate)

About two years ago I read a list of 75 books one should read before they die. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo was on that list. I had not heard of the book but figured it would be good for me to read more Latin American literature and added Pedro to my TBR list. Since then I've noticed the books on several other must-read lists and noted an upcoming Netflix film adaptation. It was time to get more serious about locating a copy of this classic book.

First I searched the library and found that all of their print versions had a long waiting list. The library had an audiobook available, which I prefer anyway, but on closer inspection I determined the recording was in Spanish. Since that wouldn't work for me I went ahead and used an Audible credit to purchase the English translation audiobook. My next challenge was to find a time to listen to the book with my husband who is better at interpreting magical realism or books with deeper meanings than me. Since Pedro Páramo is short, less than 130 pages and only 4-1/2 hours listening time, we were able to complete the book on a recent car trip. And, boy, was I glad Don listened to it with me. 

Wikipedia describes Pedro Páramo this way, "This novel showcases the roots of Mexican culture and its beliefs on afterlife through deeply complex characters, spirituality, and a constant transition between realms/dimensions that encompass a nonlinear chronology." Well, that doesn't sound confusing at all (snark)! To add to the mixed-up timelines, the shifting narrators and verb tenses switch back and forth so often that time itself has no meaning. The first/main narrator, Juan Preciado, travels to his mother's hometown, Comala, to confront the father he has never met, Pedro Páramo. When he reaches Comala Juan meets ghost after ghost, though distinguishing the living from the dead is an ongoing and futile effort. The town itself seems to be disintegrating. Through these ghosts Juan learns about the history of this town and of his father. The memories they share do not match up exactly with the memories his mother shared with him before her death. In the end, before he is literally scared to death, he learns the town has become a ghost town because of his father. Everyone died because of Pedro Páramo's cruelty. 

At some point during the trip -- midbook, actually -- I looked up information about Pedro Páramo on Shmoop, my favorite go-to spot for literary criticism. The book plays with the question "what is reality anyway?" The reader is never really sure what just happened. "The chorus of ghosties helps keep this sense of dread rolling around in your head not only when you are reading but long afterwards. Isn't that the definition of being haunted?"

A book becomes a classic when it is never done saying what it has to say, making a rereading likely. Pedro Páramo has a lot to say about spirituality and religion, time and memory, madness and suffering, gender differences, and culture and history. The author, Juan Rulfo, was speaking to issues that Mexicans living in the 1950s would understand about the death of rural communities as people were leaving for urban centers and various abuses of the Catholic church. These themes and many others are ones we can still relate to today. Rulfo also played with the names of the characters that perhaps only Spanish speaking readers would immediately understand. Many character names were clearly carefully chosen to reflect personalities, fates, or themes. For example Abundio Martinez, with a name that implies abundance, starves to death.

The version of Pedro Páramo we listened to was translated by Douglas Weatherford, who included an endnote describing his efforts to translate the text the way it was written, which may be a bit more confusing to English readers than other previous translations. Gabriel Garcia Marqués wrote the forward and extolled Rulfo's book and writing in general. Marquez credits Rulfo with really opening up his own career -- and for many other famous Latin American authors -- which we know included the very highly regarded One Hundred Years of Solitude. He read Pedro Páramo over and over. Marquez thinks he could actually recite the book line for line from cover to cover. High praise for a book I had never even heard of.

My rating: 4 stars.

At 122 pages, Pedro Paramo qualifies for Novelas in November.

-Anne

Review: THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE

Title: The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

Book Beginnings quote:

The day of the countess's famous harvest party began with a driving rain that hammered down on all the ancient von Lingenfels castle's sore spots -- springing leaks, dampening floors, and turning its yellow facade a slick, beetle-like black. In the courtyard, the paper lanterns and carefully strung garlands of wheat drooped and collapsed.

Friday56 quote:

The rest of the evening passed pleasantly. There was no further talk of politics, and Connie seemed truly interested in learning all about her. Benita had never been asked so many questions.

Summary: 

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a Nazi resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

Review: The Women in the Castle was this month's book club selection. Every gal who braved the windy forecast for a 'bomb cyclone' said they really enjoyed the book. So did I. Oddly and to a person, we all noticed the similarities between the politics of Germany in the 1930s and 40s under the Nazis and what we are experiencing today in American politics. We had to stop ourselves from talking about one issue just to move on and discuss other questions from the publisher. Shattuck said the story was related to her family story but didn't elaborate on that note. Did she mean her grandparents were Nazi resisters like the characters in the book? Or did she just mean that her grandparents had to live through the lean years after WWII were Germans were forced to confront their complicity in the Holocaust even if they were ignorant, as most said? Shattuck also said that the book took her seven years to write and it was published in 2017. There is no way she knew what kind of politics Trump would bring forward, or embrace at the time of her writing. So we decided her book was unintentionally prescient. 

Most WWII books stop at wars end. This book is mainly set after the war's end when Marianne sets out to find and protect the other resister's widows. She finds two and brings them and their children to live with her in the old family castle that is a cold and leaky place. The stories of these three women, and to a smaller degree their children, populate the book. War has all kinds of victims. Some die in the fighting, others can't seem to make sense of their lives after it is over. This book addresses those grey zones of life in the shadows and aftermath of war.

Discussion questions for The Women in the Castle (from Lit Lovers):

1. What does the novel reveal about the method and degree of Hitler's appeal to the German populace? In what way does it address the most problematic question of the War: how the German people allowed themselves to be swept away by Hitler and Nazi propaganda. Just as important, how much—and at what point—did ordinary citizens truly know about the impoundment and murder of Europe's Jewish population.

2. Describe each of the three women—Marianne, Ania, and Benita. Talk about their different views of the Hitler regime as it unfolded and their various reasons for supporting it. What was each woman's role, or position, in German society, and how did each experience the war? What about the years after the war?

3. Which woman's story do you find most compelling, frightening, or horrifying? Are you more sympathetic toward one than the other two?

4. Most of the recent books about World War II focus on the horrors of the holocaust, and for good reason. Yet ordinary Germans also suffered, especially as the war neared the end. What was it like for the country as Nazism collapsed? Consider the population at large, but most particularly the women at Burg Lingenfels. How are the three of them luckier than most survivors?

5. What roles do hope…denial…and forgiveness play in this novel? Is Jessica Shattuck's book an attempt to somehow exonerate the citizens who supported Hitler's rise to power?

*6. What comparisons can you make between the politics of the 1930s/40s in Germany and those of today in the US?

*7. WWII has certainly been fodder for a lot of books and movies. What are you favorites about this topic? How does this book compare to those?

-Anne

Classic Review: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

A Death in the Family by James Agee was the 1958 Pulitzer Prize winning fiction book. Published after the author's death it is thought to be semi-autobiographical. This fact sort of haunted me as I read the book and still does one month later as I sit down to review it.

The story, A Death in the Family, is told from the perspective of Rufus Follett, a young school-aged boy of no more than six years. The year is 1915. The setting is Knoxville, Tennessee. A telephone call in the middle of the night wakes the small family of four. It is the father's brother, Ralph, calling Jay to tell him that their father is very ill, possibly dying. Jay makes the ominous decision to leave immediately, even though it is still the dark of night, to make the journey to attend to his own parent.  After a quick breakfast with his wife, Mary, Jay heads out with a promise he will return before the kids are in bed the next day. He never makes it home. Jay dies in a single car accident when some part of the steering mechanism breaks loose, killing him instantly in the ensuing crash.

The rest of the story takes place in the following hours and days after the death is discovered as the bereaved family copes with all the decisions of what to do with the body, where the funeral will be, and how to go on. By and large Rufus and his younger sister are shoved off to the side, as the adults gather round Mary to help her make decisions. But being told to sit down and be quiet doesn't help a child to understand what is happening and how to proceed from this step forward. Rufus is left in the dark, confused and afraid.

It is a heartbreaking story, one the author had to live himself. When he was six his beloved father died in a car accident. A year later he and his sister were both sent off to boarding schools. In one scene in the book, a Catholic priest comes to the house presumably to talk about the funeral, but the priest casts his unkind eyes on the children correcting them about some issue or another. I got the creepy feeling, perhaps unfounded, that this scene provided foreshadowing for what was ahead for the children -- parochial schools taught by unkind, judgmental teachers.

At another point in the book older children taunt young Rufus saying they heard the father (Jay) was drunk and that was why he was in the accident. Rufus tries to intervene on his own behalf saying it was the steering mechanism. But a memory intrudes. Rufus recalled a time when he was younger when he was taken by his father to a bar where his father tossed back several drinks and then told Rufus to never tell his mother where they went. In addition, the phone call from Ralph, which started the whole chain of deadly events, was probably precipitated because Ralph was drunk when he called. Alcohol was an issue in this family. The author never definitively discounts the story of driving drunk, which leaves it as an open question.

When I learned A Death in the Family was semi-autobiographical I did a little research on the author. Though James Agee was a modestly successful writer and a successful film critic, his personal life was a shambles. He died in 1955 from a heart attack, at age 45 years. He was a heavy smoker and an alcoholic. He had been working on this book for years, so his publisher was able to put the story together in some cohesive form and publish it posthumously. Clearly this publisher did a good job since the book won the Pulitzer Prize the next year and has not been out of print since then.

The tragic early death of James Agee got me thinking about events in life which abruptly change one's trajectory. A boy's father dies young and that boy's life spins off in a new direction, often untethered from the security that home and parents provide. We had such a tragedy in our family. A relative's daughter lost her husband in a tragic way. Her son was preschool aged at the time. I often worry about this boy. Can his mother and grandparents provide him with the stability he needs to keep him from spinning off in a new, possibly terrible, direction? I pray so.

Sometimes I marvel at the books still on high school reading lists after more than a half century. I don't wonder about A Death in the Family. There are so many themes that need to be probed: death, religious fanaticism, children as thinking/feeling beings, alcoholism, etc. It is not a cheery story but one certainly worthy of many good class discussions.

My rating: 4 stars.

-Anne

Novella Reviews: WHEREABOUTS; RITA HAYWORTH AND THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION; A HOUSE MADE OF DAWN

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
Knopf, 2021. 157 pages.

The unnamed narrator of Whereabouts admits to having an unhappy childhood. This book, a sort of diary, may be the product of her work with a therapist who asks her after every session to name one happy thing in her life. In 46 brief chapters, or entries as I think of them, the narrator gives her impressions of the people and places she encounters in her unnamed Italian city. She is troubled by her unresolved feelings toward her dead father and her living but elderly mother who has always been so critical of her. She talks about friends and lovers with an arms-length of separation, never allowing herself the passion to really get  involved on a deep level. As the year progresses through the seasons, her entries become more and more melancholy until finally she hits upon a solution. The book ends as she prepares for a year-long journey to a new town, a fresh start.

I fell in love with Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, when I read it a few years ago. This past week I decided to walk the bookshelves of the public library to see if I could locate any novellas for my November challenge. I picked books based on size alone until I got to Whereabouts. I knew I wanted to read more by this author. I learned from the book jacket this is Lahiri's first book written in Italian and the first full length novel she has translated into English. She lives in Italy now, after growing up in the USA, and the book had a very European feel to it which I appreciated so much. The writing was lovely. In the sample except, the narrator is thinking back to a time when she was on the beach, but unprepared for the sun. She ended up getting as close as she could to a woman who was casting a bit of a shadow for relief. Here she muses about shadows.

I've always felt in someone's shadow, even though I don't have to compare myself to brothers who are smarter, or sisters who are prettier. 

There is no escape from the shadows that mount, inexorably, in this darkening season. Nor can we escape the shadows our families cast. That said, there are times I miss the pleasant shade a companion might provide. (112)

I recommend the book for its writing but the melancholy of the narrator is so palpable I would warn off anyone feeling a bit blue themselves.

My rating: 4 stars.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King. Originally published in 1982 as part of the collection Different Seasons by Viking Press. In 2009 it was reprinted in another collection, Stephen King Goes to the Movies in 2009. The novella was published in 2020 by Scribner as a standalone book. 128 pages.

An unjustly imprisoned convict, Andy Dufresne, seeks a satisfying revenge in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.

Andy's story, as well as details about life behind bars, is narrated by Red Redding, a 57-year old convict, a lifer in Maine's Shawshank State Penitentiary. As a former bank executive Andy starts helping guards and prison administrators with their financial forms and issues. He even starts laundering money for one warden who is making a killing (pun intended) with kickbacks from the work done for the Inside-Out programs he has organized in the community, which is essentially providing slave labor from the inmates for projects. When a chance arises for Andy to have a new trial to exonerate himself, the warden sees to it that all of Andy's defense witnesses are out of commission. He doesn't want to lose his cash cow. Then Andy escapes.

I've seen the movie, Shawshank Redemption at least a dozen times and I never seem to get tired of it. If you live anywhere near a TV where old movies are run, you've probably seen it several times yourself. There are a few differences between the story and movie, however. In the book Red Redding is an Irishman with red hair. In the movie that role is played by Morgan Freeman, a Black man. I never wondered at the name Red before. Did you? My favorite scenes in the movie aren't in the book -- 1. When Andy locks himself in the warden's office and plays an opera song on the record player but blasts it out to the yard so the other prisoners hear it. 2. When Andy steals the warden's clothes and shoes so he has something good to wear when he escapes. He also doesn't get away with the laundered money and doesn't frame the warden in the book. Minor details. Lastly, Andy is imprisoned in Shawshank for thirty years before he escapes, making him in his 60s or 70s. In the movie the timeline is condensed.

Stephen King was at his best when writing Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. It is generally considered to be one of his best works. It is quite different than his usual horror/terror novels, though it is exciting in its own way. If by chance you are part of the small minority who has never seen the movie, read the novella first, then watch the movie for comparison's sake. And what about Rita Hayworth in the title? What does this old-timey actress have to do with a prison escape story? Actually quite a bit. Read it and find out.

My rating: 4.75 stars.

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday. 
Harper and Row, 1968. 212 pages.

A young man, Abel, returns home from a foreign war to the land of his Native father where one is always aware of the rhythms of the seasons and the beauty of nature. A life focused on the cultural traditions of his Native people and and of the ancient rites and stories passed down by generations. A life at odds with the rest of civilization -- modern and industrial. This life demands much from Abel and sets him at odds with himself. 

The book sounds great but, oh boy, it is confusing. It reminded me a little of Sherman Alexie's Flight: A Novel. In that book the main character, an Indigenous boy, experiences scenes from his tribe's history by time travel. The kid is messed up but the reader comes to understand why after experiencing the historical events with him. Abel, in House Made of Dawn, seems to be doing the same thing but there is no clear "now I'm time traveling" prompts to help the reader. And the divisions between stories about his life in the present tense (which was in the 1950s) and his visions of rites and stories just seem abrupt and jarring. So much so I contemplated not finishing the book. That was my plan until I ran across a review by Great Books Guy. His words, not Momaday's, kept me reading.

Structurally, House Made of Dawn is a highly fragmented, kaleidoscope of a novel that was initially conceived as a series of poems, but Momaday collected the poems and re-worked them into a novel, albeit a panoramic collection of stories and recollections. The book is also peppered with Kiowa legend and ritual, while the protagonist, Abel, comes to embody the tragedy of indigenous cultural loss. With House Made of Dawn, I was thankful for the opportunity to learn more about an indigenous tribe.

I mentioned Sherman Alexie as a Native writer, but Momaday came first, paving the way for many famous and important Indigenous writers of today. I also found it interesting that the book was originally conceived as a series of poems. Momaday wrote the novel after he had finished his course work for his Masters degree in poetry. He was trying a new thing out.

Great Books Guy goes on to analyze the book and concludes with this --

Throughout the novel, Abel is a scarred and wounded World War II veteran, seemingly unable to find a place to call home, an outsider everywhere he goes. His post-traumatic stress disorder is manifested in a blur of alcoholism, murder, suicide, and a pervasive sense of spiritual isolation. His character was an amalgamation of different individuals Momaday knew in the Jemez Pueblo. But by the end of the novel, Abel –divinely scorned– displays signs of returning to the traditional world of his ancestors, at least he is running at dawn again. Abel is a tragic character, unable to share in the post-war bounty enjoyed by his fellow veterans. He experiences the quiet cultural devastation of his people, the Kiowa, while stumbling into numerous personal pitfalls. In later reflections, Momaday said “Abel’s story is that of one man of one generation. It is otherwise a story of world war, of cultural conflict, and of psychic dislocation. And at last it is a story of the human condition.”

Thanks to this review I was able to appreciate the book much more and understand why it was selected as the 1969 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. Momaday was the first Native American to win the coveted award and only the second winner to write about the experiences of Native people in America at that time. Abel's story is the story of so many lost and discouraged people who need to find their way "home."

That said, I still would find it hard to recommend this book to anyone. It is just too confusing. 

My rating: 2.5 stars.

-Anne