August, 2018: Reading while the rest of the world burns

Finished Darran Anderson's IMAGINARY CITIES.

One of the best non-fiction books I've read this year. Informative AND well-written, a rarity these days.

Highly recommended.

I must commend you for the title of this month's thread. My feelings exactly.

It's shocking, isn't it? And the temperature will rise at least five degrees by 2100.

What sort of world are we bequeathing to our grandchildren?

I can't bear to think about it. I find myself switching the channel whenever climate change stories come on. I'm awful. I stopped reading Margaret Atwood when she started writing science fiction novels. That is, The Handmaid's Tale and everything from Oryx and Crake onwards is still sitting on the To Be Read pile. I know I am the biggest coward ever, and I am only 55 years old. My head is solidly planted in the sand.

Currently reading The Trespasser. Fancied some DHL.

Btw, my thoughts on Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, mentioned earlier, are here: https://iansales.com/2018/08/06/reading-diary-2018-13/

Island Beneath the Sea – Isabel Allende
Audiobook performed by S. Epatha Merkerson.
4****

In a bit of a departure from her usual emphasis on Hispano-American history, Allende gives us a story of an 18th-century slave in French-occupied Saint-Domingue (later to become Haiti). We follow Zarité from her childhood through age forty, from Guinea to Saint-Domingue to Cuba and on to New Orleans.

Allende populates the novel with a wide variety of characters: Zarité’s French master and plantation owner Toulouse Valmorain; the free quadroon Violette Boisier who entertains a wide variety of gentlemen callers, chiefly Valmorain and the French military officer Etienne Relais; Valmorain’s Cuban wife Eugenia Garcia de Solars who is mother to his heir, Maurice; the local doctor Parmentier who is married to a mulatta woman Adele but keeps a separate house from that of his family; and a host of other characters too numerous to mention specifically.

Allende is more than up to the task of relating the historical events that frame this family drama. The time frame of the novel is 1770 to 1810, and we witness the slave rebellion that results in the French abandoning Saint-Domingue to the rebel leaders who will ultimately name it Haiti. As the French leave their plantations and the island for safe haven they migrate to the French colony in New Orleans. But just as they feel settled, Napoleon sells a large tract of land to the United States in what we know as the Louisiana Purchase. Against this backdrop of national and international upheaval, we have the family drama of Valmorain, his slave, Zarité, and their children.

I loved Zarité. She’s intelligent, resourceful, courageous, adaptable and wily. A keen observer and a good judge of character, she makes alliances and bides her time, acting when it is most advantageous to her and her family. And she needs every bit of these skills to navigate the dangerous relationships with Valmorain’s two wives: the mentally unstable Eugenia, and the cruel Hortense. Violette is also a richly drawn character – willful, intelligent, confident, loyal and loving. She has made the best of her situation and with the aid of her loyal servant Loula she will ensure the success of her family and those she holds dear. None of the men in her life are a match for her.

S. Epatha Merkerson does a fantastic job of voicing the audiobook. She gives each character a sufficiently unique voice that it is easy to follow the dialogue. But I particularly love the way in which she brings Zarité and Violette to life. These are two strong women, and Merkerson excels in interpreting their characters.

I finished listening to The Unnamable by Beckett. Found it incomprehensible but fascinating. And some sections were hilarious. The audiobook reader, a Sean Barrett, was brilliant. I wouldn't have finished it in other format.

These days I'm reading some sections from The Literatures of Colonial America: An Anthology. Started strong but it has turned kind of meh.

Digging to America – Anne Tyler
Digital audiobook narrated by Blair Brown
4****

A story of the immigrant experience and two families united by the decision to adopt. The novel opens at the airport where the Donaldsons and the Yazdans wait for the daughters they’ve adopted from Korea to arrive. Bitsy and Brad Donaldson, their parents, siblings, nieces and nephews are all there, loud, boisterous, excited to welcome the new addition to their family – Jin-Ho. They virtually take over the gate area. Lost at the back of the crowd wait Maryam, her son, Sami, and his American-Iranian wife, Ziba. Maryam Yazdan had come to America as a young bride and was widowed before she was forty. She retains the reserved, formal demeanor of her Iranian upbringing. Though they don’t express it outwardly, the Yazdans are just as excited to welcome Sooki, whom they will call Susan, to their family.

Tyler writes so well about family dynamics, about all the little events in our lives that both form and show who we are. One sentence perfectly sums it up: “Like more life-altering moments, it was disappointingly lacking in drama.” Over the course of the novel the reader will witness many of these little moments, will watch as two families come together based on a chance meeting, will learn how they differ and how they are the same.

The book also explores what it means to be “American.” Maryam, having lived two thirds of her life in the United States, carrying an American passport, still feels like a foreigner. Ziba, having come to America as a teenager, is fully assimilated, though she still speaks with a slight accent. Bitsy could never be mistaken for anything but an American; friendly and outgoing, offering her opinion on everything without a thought to how it might be received, and yet desperate to infuse her children’s upbringing with some of their native cultures (even when the kids want nothing more than to fit in with their peers, and not wear those “ridiculous outfits”).

As I got to know these characters, I grew to love them. And I wanted to give them all a big hug at the end.

Blair Brown does a fine job narrating the audiobook. She’s a talented actress and breathes life into all these characters. I particularly liked the way she interpreted Maryam and Bitsy, two women who are virtually polar opposites.

The Time In Between – María Dueñas
4****

A sweeping historical novel featuring the young Sira Quiroga, who begins by cleaning the floors of the atelier where her mother is a seamstress and ends up as a sought-after fashion designer in World War II. Using her skills as a dressmaker to connect with the high society ladies, she ferrets out Nazi secrets and passes that information on to the British via Morse code embedded in dress patterns.

Wow … what a fascinating and engaging read. This is Dueñas’s debut work, but it sure reads like the work of an accomplished storyteller. The novel starts off slowly and I was pretty disappointed in the young Sira and the poor choices she made with respect to men. But once she was forced to make her own way (abandoned and penniless in Morocco of all places), the story really picked up.

I loved the way that she grew as a character, coming into her own while carefully observing and learning from her friends, neighbors and clients. Her relationships are wonderfully complex – from the police inspector, to her landlady, to her neighbor and friend, Felix, to the glamorous Rosalinda Fox, and her stoic mother.

I’ve read many novels set in WW2 but only one previous one set in Spain (Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls). What sets this apart is that is mostly deals with the “women left behind.” The ways in which women and men who were not at the forefront of the fighting dealt with the ramifications of the wars, both the Spanish Civil War and WW2. Dueñas fills the novel with details of life “at home” during this time frame: in Madrid, Morocco and Lisbon. The shortages, the black market, the unusual alliances.

Of course, there are real-life people in the book; you cannot set a novel at this place and during this time frame and completely avoid mentioning Hitler or Franco. But I was surprised to discover that Rosalinda Fox was a real woman. Sira is a totally fictitious character, but Dueñas inserts her into the history of the time in a way that is believable.

I understand that there is a Spanish telenovela (soap opera / mini-series) available on Netflix (with subtitles). One of my friends commented that she was hooked on it and loved the ending when Sira is reunited with her mother. Once I told her that the soap opera ending is barely at the half-way point in the novel, she set out to get the book.

I recommend this to anyone who loves a fast-paced novel, with fascinating characters, and a strong female lead. The final scene when she decides to take matters into her own hands and go forward on her own terms is marvelous. I wanted to stand up and cheer!

I'm about 2/3 into To Live, a novel about Chinese peasant life in the mid 20th century by Yu Hua. The tone is very restrained, the life pretty wretched. Little blessings become huge. An interesting book, I think.

The Cruelest Month – Louise Penny
Digital audiobook performed by Ralph Cosham.
3.5***

From the book jacket: Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruelest month is about to deliver on its threat. It’s spring in the tiny, forgotten village; buds are on the trees and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. However, not everything is meant to return to life … When some villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a séance at the old Hadley house, one of their party dies of fright. Was this a natural death, or was it murder?

My reactions
This is book three in the series. I like this series cheifly (pun intended) because of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his relationships with friends, and colleagues. I also am quite fond of the residents of Three Pines and their interactions. I love how they form a community that is practically a family, with squabbles like any family but with an underlying affection and love.

It is not a cozy series, though it does feature a small town with a group of rather eccentric residents. This is much more of a police procedural, focusing on Gamache and his team, and how they investigate and solve the crime(s). Still, what really shines, in my opinion, are the characters and their interactions.

Penny crafts the story from multiple points of view. The reader as well as Gamache must figure out the truth from bits of information gleaned from different witnesses / suspects. You know those photo mosaics where each photo is of a specific part of a whole, but all the photos are artfully arranged to form a larger image that you must step away from to appreciate fully? That’s what these mystery novels are like. I’m not describing that very well; I clearly do not have Penny’s gift.

Bottom line: I’ll come back to this series because I like spending time with these people, and I want to see where Gamache’s relationships lead.

Ralph Cosham does a fine job narrating the audiobook. He set a great pace but gives the listener enough time to absorb details.

About a third into Dave Van Ronk's memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Allegedly at that point (the late 50's) "there was a great deal of overlap between folk fans, the fringe left, and the sci-fi crowd". Really?! The sci-fi crowd?!

>12 mejix: I can believe that. I for one have been a member of all three of those (though never more than two at any one time) and a lot of people I know in one area often turn up in another. And the demographics look very similar - both statistically and visually....

"And the demographics look very similar - both statistically and visually."

Funny line, Robert.

Good start to my morning.

I'm now imagining the day(s) that Robert Day officially withdrew from either the Fringe Left, the Folk Fans, or the Sci-Fi Crowd in order to maintain his "2 of 3 rule" when he wanted to join another.

"Well, I guess I shall be joining the Fringe Left today - but I still love Pentangle!" (tears up "sci-fi crowd" membership card)

"OK, forget about the Folk Fans group, Bert Jansch is dead." (rejoins the SFC and reups membership in the FL)

I have never been much of a conference-goer or "fan" in the sense of joining a group of like minded people, but I would sort of consider myself a semi-member of the first two, and a somewhat sympathetic observer of the third.

I recently finished Declare by Tim Powers, which was a very good read, combination spy thriller and supernatural fantasy.

I am now deep into another book about the Fatimids, The Fatimid Caliphate which is a collection of essays edited by Farhad Daftary. Did anyone know that Muslims of the 11th century had their own "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" - type fake document to combat internecine rivalries, which was the Baghdad Manifesto issued by the Abbassid caliph to denigrate the Fatimid caliphate's pretensions to legitimacy? Fascinating, really. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to propaganda.

>13 RobertDay:
I get it conceptually, they are all about different utopias, but it is hard to visualize. You live you learn, I guess.

The Wonder – Emma Donoghue
Digital audiobook performed by Kate Lock.
3.5***

In August 1859 a report of an 11-year-old girl who has lived without any food for four months is causing quite the sensation. Is she a fraud? Could she be a “living wonder”? The town physician proposes a scientific watch, employing two nurses unknown to the town to carefully watch over the child for a period of two weeks. One is a nun, Sister Michael; the other a nurse trained by Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth “Lib” Wright, a 25-year-old widow.

Lib is the narrator and she struggles to understand the family, the town, the physician, the priest, and most importantly, Anna, the child she’s been hired to watch. Lib is English, and an Anglican. She’s unfamiliar with the beliefs of the Catholic Church and finds it difficult to understand the Irish brogue at times. She views the family, and villagers, as ignorant and superstitious. But she sets out to methodically observe and record Anna’s condition and, in order to do so, she also tries to gain the girl’s confidence. Her medical training tells her that it is not possible for anyone to live without any sustenance. And as the week passes, she notes the child’s deterioration. As the nurse’s eyes are opened to what has happened in the family and how Anna perceives her fast in terms of her religious beliefs, Lib’s personal mission changes from one of pure scientific observation to trying to save this girl’s life.

Her eyes are opened initially by a journalist who has traveled to the village to report on the phenomenon, or more accurately to unveil the fraud. William Byrne befriends Mrs. Wright and finagles a way to casually meet Anna, “just to see for myself.” And what he sees is a child starving to death. The question is “why?”

And the only person who can answer that is Anna (and perhaps her mother). Anna may not have much education, but she is clearly intelligent and curious and learns quickly. She seems to be a quick judge of character and I really enjoyed the conversations between Lib and Anna. But Anna is so steadfast in her faith, in her beliefs in the redemptive power of prayer, that getting to the underlying truth of what led her to undertake this fast is difficult at best. I was as stunned as Lib to discover Anna’s secret, and furious with her mother and her priest for colluding to keep it a secret.

In the course of the novel Donoghue explores issues of faith, belief, guilt, abuse, family dysfunction, social mores and the role of the Roman Catholic Church and her priests in protecting (or not) children. I had to remind myself a few times that the time frame of the work is the mid-19th century. Definitely a thought-provoking book, and I think it would result in a great book-group discussion.

Kate Lock does a fine job of voicing the audiobook, however …. Her Irish brogue is so thick in places that I had difficulty making out the dialogue. Thank heavens I had the text available. Despite Lock’s skill as a voice artist, I do not recommend listening to this book.