MostlyFiction Book Reviews » Time Period Fiction We Love to Read! Wed, 09 Oct 2013 13:15:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 QUEEN OF AMERICA by Luis Alberto Urrea /2011/queen-of-america-by-luis-alberto-urrea/ /2011/queen-of-america-by-luis-alberto-urrea/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:11:36 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=22142 Book Quote:

“Who is more of an outlaw than a saint?”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (NOV 30, 2011)

Like its predecessor, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Urrea’s sequel, Queen of America is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.

It starts where the first book left off, and can be read as a stand-alone, according to the marketing and product description. However, I stoutly recommend that readers read The Hummingbird’s Daughter first. The two stories are part of a heroic saga; you shouldn’t cut off the head to apprehend the tale. You cannot capture the incipient magic and allure of Teresita without her roots in the first (and better) book. Urrea spent twenty years researching his family history, border unrest, guerrilla violence in the post-Civil War southwest, and revolution, so poignantly rendered in his first masterpiece.

At the center of both stories is the enigmatic and beautiful heroine, Teresita Urrea, named the Saint of Cabora by her legion of followers, when at sixteen, she was sexually assaulted, died, and subsequently rose from her coffin at her wake. She was denounced as a heretic by the Catholic Church but declared a saint by her devotees. An accomplished horsewoman and botanical shaman, she discovered the miracle of healing with her hands. Vanquishing pain and suffering with touch, Teresita has embodied her role with dignity, and sometimes despair, as she sacrifices her personal desires in order to combat social injustice and conquer disease.

Solitude is impossible, as she is followed by humble pilgrims and pursued by the Mexican government, greedy henchmen and dangerous lackeys. In the sequel, Teresita continues her journey and evolvement, with the primary question and theme of her life– whether a saint can find her life’s purpose and also fall in love. Along the way, she is entangled in conflicts between celebrity and simplicity, material wealth and spiritual wellbeing. Although she is idolized as a saint, she is, alas, human, with human emotions—such as lust, love, sorrow, pain, temptation. She makes mistakes, and is periodically confused and conflicted. It’s hard to be a saint when you’re made of flesh and blood and hormones.

After the Tomochic rebellion in Mexico in 1891, Teresita Urrea flees to the United States with her aging but ripe swashbuckler father, Tomas, known as Sky Catcher. She experiences romantic and cataclysmic love with an Indian mystic and warrior, eventually causing a serious breach with her father. When events spiral out of control, Teresita’s journey takes her further and further from her homeland.

From Tucson, to El Paso, St. Louis, San Francisco, New York, and places everywhere in-between, this sequel is a journey from poverty and pestilence to an unknown, glittering, bustling, and modern America, a place that offers new opportunities for immigrant Teresita—-prosperity, new romance, and celebrity. She is hunted by assassins, who claim she is the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution; harassed by profiteers, who want to arrange a consortium to exploit her healing abilities; and haunted daily by pilgrims everywhere, begging her to cure their ills.

Dickensian in scope, this ribald novel is peopled by the humble and the haughty, the meek and the mighty—pilgrims, prostitutes, yeoman, warriors, cowboys, vaqueros, royalty, revolutionaries, financial exploiters, gamblers, tycoons, corrupt politicians, drunks, rogues, and outlaws. It’s gritty, bawdy, tender, and tumultuous, and sometimes turgid, as it meanders down several long and winding paths. When it stalls at intervals, patience and the love of prose and colorful character will keep the reader fastened. This will appeal to fans of high adventure, mixed with folktale wisdom and mystical fantasy. Big, vast skies and rough and tumble travel, this is an unforgettable story of love, purpose, and redemption.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 4 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company; Import edition (November 28, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Luis Alberto Urrea
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

 

Bibliography:

The Border Trilogy Memoirs:

More Nonfiction:

]]> /2011/queen-of-america-by-luis-alberto-urrea/feed/ 0 THE THIRD REICH by Roberto Bolano /2011/the-third-reich-by-roberto-bolano/ /2011/the-third-reich-by-roberto-bolano/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:46:53 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=22086 Book Quote:

“And until you have possessed
dying and rebirth,
you are but a sullen guest
on the gloomy earth.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (NOV 22, 2011)

Bolaño cites this quotation from Goethe (also given in German) towards the end of this early but posthumously discovered novel. It is as good a key as any to what the book may be about. The protagonist, Udo Berger, a German in his mid-twenties, is literally a guest — in a hotel. He is taking a late summer vacation with his girlfriend Ingeborg in a beach hotel on the Costa Brava where he used to come with his family as a child. Together with another German couple, Hanna and Charly, they engage in the usual occupations: swimming, sunbathing, eating, drinking (a lot), and making love. But shadows hang over this idyll. They become involved with a group of slightly sinister local men, called The Wolf, The Lamb, and El Quemado (the burnt one), a hideously-burned South American immigrant who hires out pedal boats on the beach. Their contentment is marred by small acts of offstage violence, and by an unexpected death that touches them more directly. Udo will stay on until the hotel is about to close for the season, a change in atmosphere that is summed up by Bolaño in itchily discordant images:

“The regular muted sound of the elevator has been replaced by scratching and races behind the plaster of the walls. The wind that every night shakes the window frame and hinges is more powerful. The faucets of the sink squeak and shudder before releasing water. Even the smell of the hallways, perfumed with artificial lavender, breaks down more quickly and turns into a pestilent stink that causes terrible coughing fits late at night.”

The biggest shadow of all is that cast by the title, The Third Reich. We learn early on that it is the name of a war game played with counters on a stylized map. The war that the game replays is a purely military operation of armies, deployments, and supply lines; the text has no hint of Nazi ideology or the Holocaust. Yet those associations are inevitably in the mind of the reader, who waits for some at least symbolic equivalent to surface, for the dream holiday to become a nightmare. And Bolaño, who is a master at generating angst from a meticulous compilation of detail, makes a fine start to building the tension here. Udo is the German national champion of war-gaming. Like one of those solipsistic characters out of Ishiguro, he is obsessed in his hermetic world, working out variants of the games, publishing them in obscure magazines, corresponding with gamers in other countries. Alone of the German quartet, he remains pale while the others develop suntans, since he prefers working in his room to lounging on the beach. There is a danger in him, a potential for mental instability, at least as great as any threat posed by the low-life characters with whom the four associate.

This is a beautifully produced book with an evocatively surreal cover and a fluid translation by Natasha Wimmer. I leaped into it the moment it arrived and truly wanted to like it. But I have to say that, for all the fascinating hints of ideas he would develop in The Savage Detectives and especially in 2666, this is not vintage Bolaño. It seemed to be all wind-up and no punch. As so often with Bolaño, there is a surreal element competing with the meticulous realism, but here I felt they canceled each other out rather than reinforcing. Udo, of course, lives much of his time in a totally irreal world, “essentially ghosts of a ghostly General Staff, forever performing military exercises on game boards.” Ingeborg, his girlfriend, is forever reading a mystery featuring the detective Florian Linden, but although reportedly near the end she never reaches it. A vacation involving so great a consumption of alcohol is in itself somewhat unreal, and Udo’s imagination verges increasingly on paranoia. Yet while nightmares, in the sense of actual dreams, play a larger and larger part in the story, the nightmare fails to materialize in reality; the book ends in distinct anticlimax.

All the same, I do see the point of the Goethe quotation. “Dying and rebirth” are certainly among the ideas in play, and Udo is a different person at the end. The novel makes a fascinating addendum for existing fans of Bolaño’s work. But though it is an easy read, even lighthearted at times, I would not recommend it as an introduction for those who do not know the author. For them, and especially for those leery of tackling the vast scale of his major works, I would suggest the novella By Night in Chile, whose compact power is merely hinted at here.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 15 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (November 22, 2011)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Roberto Bolano
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography (translations only):

]]> /2011/the-third-reich-by-roberto-bolano/feed/ 0 11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King /2011/112263-a-novel-by-stephen-king/ /2011/112263-a-novel-by-stephen-king/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:34:45 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=21953 Book Quote:

“It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery glass we call life…A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (NOV 8, 2011)

Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes of Homer, H.G. Wells, Don Quixote, Quantum Leap (the old TV show), Jack Finney’s Time and Again, and even a spoonful of meta-King himself, the czar of popular fiction.

For King fans, the voice is familiar—the hapless, reluctant, lonely, courageous, romantic, destiny-bound hero/scarred social warrior. The story is King-esque– towering, prophetic, and flamboyant. For non-King readers, this may not chime. It may seem melodramatic, exaggerated, histrionic. But he isn’t attempting to write a deep and complex revisionist history. This is mainstream entertainment; King is King of what King does—the unruly escapist story with a huge and sentimental heart. The “Constant Reader” will approve.

This is not horror, in case you are strictly old school fans. However, there is a touch of the supernatural via time-travel. And there is blood and gore sprayed here and there. If you liked Under the Dome,  you will likely enjoy this one. If you are new to King, and are reading this for more insight into the fateful day of 11/22/63, or a “what would the world be like if…?,” this is not King’s principle design. It hovers, yes, and is material only to the primary theme.

Somewhere in the space-time continuum between preservation and progress is the “obdurate past” and the malleable future. Do we have the moral right to alter history, if we could? This is Jake Epping’s noble journey–to answer that question—and, even more so, to ask it. The thrust of the story centers on Jake and the other fictional characters King created; however, JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and other historical characters are an essential backdrop and stimulus to the events that unfold. King’s best nuances illuminate how the past and the present have a harmony that echoes, sings, dances, and shadows.

“It’s all of a piece…It’s an echo so close to perfect you can’t tell which one is the living voice and which is the ghost-voice returning.”

English schoolteacher Jake Epping is introduced to a portal to the past by his friend, Al Templeton, who owns a greasy spoon diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Al discovered it years ago, and has made many “trips” back and forth, but he is too sick now to return. The portal brings you to September 9, 1958, 11:58 am. No matter how many days, months, or years you stay, you always return two minutes later on the day you left, 2011 (but you will biologically age).

Jake’s mission is to stay five years, keep tabs on Oswald and uncover the truth of the Kennedy assassination controversy—and, if Oswald acted alone, to stop him. King provides details that make the time-travel plausible—suspending disbelief in that sense is playfully easy. Compounding Jake’s goal is his desire to change other pieces of the past—to change other tragedies, which confronts the prophecy that “the past is obdurate,” those words that he returns to.

Jake assumes the identity of George Amberson, and makes a couple of trial runs before committing to his five-year stay. He eventually lands in the fictional town of Jodie, Texas, a town north of Dallas, where he can earn a living as a teacher, and tail Oswald during his off-hours. It is in Jodie where the moral questions and most of the adventure lodge in the reader’s heart. Jake/George becomes emotionally invested in the people, the town, and one attractive librarian, Sadie Dunhill. Inevitably, his mission and his new life rub together, generating poignant conflicts and urgent demands that threaten to undermine his quest.

King’s strengths include his sense of place and time. He renders 1958 so specifically that you will be transported. Ten-cent root beers with foam; fin-tailed Chevrolets; cigarette smoke wafting inside and out; Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis from the jukebox; dancing cheek-to-cheek; mink stoles and Moxie soda; rotary dial phones and party lines, and so much more to texturize the “Land of Ago.” There’s even a meta-fictional surprise in Derry, where characters from a former novel appear, connecting George with the past’s push on the present. King makes it credible for memories to branch arterially from past to present, for different time periods to cast hazy shadows and intersections on each other. Parallels flourish, coincidences shade.

The novel is both story and character-driven, but there’s no question of the white hats vs. the black hats here. King removes the guesswork, which can be a drawback to discovery. Dialogue is earnestly overstated, motives occasionally simplified, and plot devices conveniently executed, or with a bait-and-switch technique. He isn’t one for much subtlety, justifying (too many) coincidences by cleverly making coincidence part of the theme. But it works, and beneath it all is an enchanting story. The reader cares as passionately as Jake. Sadie, however, is the unforgettable character in this book. Jake/George may be the hero, but Sadie is the spirited touchstone. Comely, fetchingly clumsy, and wounded, she dances off the pages.

Despite the voluminous research done by King into the Oswald controversy, his conclusions are woven into the book rather cursorily, but emphatically. Does this matter? It might, especially to readers who feel that authorial intrusion into the narrative was intemperate. The reader doesn’t have to necessarily agree with a character’s actions, but if a historical context is displayed as fact, but the facts don’t add up for the reader, then it falls apart.

No popular author closes a story like Stephen King. Consummately sublime and serendipitous, he builds deft bridges and ladders that are not only cosmic and mystical, but also fitting and relevant. He captures in a few chapters what an evocative song can capture in a few minutes. Whatever his flaws, his rewards are plentiful. Classy, cosmic, mystical, and kaleidoscopic–it was radiant and clear, through a glass, darkly.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 2250readers
PUBLISHER: Scribner; Original edition (November 8, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Stephen King
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

*1Takes place in Castle Rock, Maine
*2Takes place in Derry, Maine
*3 Takes place in Little Tall Island, Maine
*P These two books have one “pinhole” vision into each other

The Dark Tower Series

Originally written as Richard Bachman

Co-written with Peter Straub

Non-Fiction:

And the Movies created from his books:

]]> /2011/112263-a-novel-by-stephen-king/feed/ 0 THE CAT’S TABLE by Michael Ondaatje /2011/the-cats-table-by-michael-ondaatje/ /2011/the-cats-table-by-michael-ondaatje/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:00:11 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=21442 Book Quote:

“Sometimes we find our true and inherent selves during youth. It is a recognition of something that at first is small within us, that we will grow into somehow. My shipboard nickname was MYNAH.  Almost my name but with a step into the air and a glimpse of some extra thing, like a slight swivel in their walk all birds have when they travel by land.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (OCT 5, 2011)

In his new novel, The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje imagines a young boy’s three-week sea voyage across the oceans, from his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to England. The eleven-year-old travels alone and is, not surprisingly, allocated to the “lowly” Cat’s Table, where he joins an odd assortment of adults and two other boys of similar age.

In the voice of young “Michael,” Ondaatje shares the boys’ adventures on the ship with charming immediacy, while an older, adult “Michael” looks over his shoulder, first hardly noticeable, and later, more and more directly reflecting on his own recollections and moving the story forward. Are we reading a childhood memoir of sorts, a coming-of-age story, a personal journey into the past? Are we reading fact or fiction? Maybe, all of it. The parallels to the author’s life are easily spotted: a childhood in Ceylon, a nineteen fifties journey by ship from there to England… Other parallels to the author’s life come into view in the course of the book. Also, Ondaatje suggests in the first pages: “I try to imagine who the boy on the ship was…” In the Author’s Note (at the end of the book) Ondaatje is as clear and opaque as can be: “Although the novel uses the colouring and locations of memoir and autobiography, The Cat’s Table is fictional – from the Captain and crew and all its passengers on the boat – to the narrator.” Still…

Young Michael and his two new friends, Cassius and Ramadhin, become soon inseparable; yet, their friendship does not extend to sharing much about their backgrounds, so we don’t know more about them either at this point. They freely roam the huge ship, exploring any nook and cranny they can get into, especially during nights. Cassius is the rambunctious, Ramadhin, the cautious, more reasonable one, conscious of his “weak heart.” Michael describes himself as a “follower.”

The men at the Cat’s Table, astutely observed by young Michael, while distinct in personality and behaviour, share, nonetheless, their curiosity for the happenings on the ship – one could call theirs “the gossip table” – and, more importantly, they each provide some kind of “life lesson” for the boys, be it in history, music, literature or biology. The most intriguing passenger at the table, however, is Miss Lasqueti, who appears to have insider knowledge of a very different kind. From time to time, they are joined by seventeen-year-old, beautiful and “mysterious” Emily, a distant cousin of Michael’s. Given her “higher social standing” and her placement in the dining room, she can contribute intriguing news for any evolving “story.” She knows, for example, much about the dangerous, heavily guarded, prisoner, who the boys have noticed during their nighttime adventures. Of course, Emily also has her secret encounters at night, overheard by Michael hiding in a lifeboat…

For the first half or so of the novel, I am simply charmed by the descriptions of the boys’ hilarious or risky escapades on the ship as it moves across the Indian Ocean towards the Suez Canal. We explore the ship’s “world” through a child’s eyes. The episodes, told more like independent vignettes than in a contiguous narrative, succeed, nonetheless, in carrying our curiosity forward: they capture the atmosphere on ship, provide personality capsules of passengers or crew, and details of their various activities. Once closer to land, we are offered glimpses into the varying landscapes and port cities. While Michael’s journey is depicted with gentleness and often lyrical descriptions, something seems to be missing in terms of the story’s overall meaning and depth – at least for me. But soon enough, like entering a new section in the book, the voice of the adult Michael takes on a more prominent role. He drops hints how different episodes or people might be connected; he starts asking questions about the veracity of what we have been told, pondering the reliability of his long-term memory…

And, most engagingly, Ondaatje, while continuing to remain within the overall three-week time span of the journey, now leaves it with ease to reveal aspects of past and future of several of the central characters. These mental excursions – relating to Emily, Miss Lasqueti, Ramadhin, etc. and, last but not least, the prisoner – help us fill in gaps within earlier descriptions of episodes during the voyage. They also add an integrating layer to the narrative that I had been hoping for. Finally, they bring us also closer to the adult Michael. It is only later in life that he realizes the journey’s importance as “a rite of passage;” a journey that formed him in more ways than he has acknowledged for a long time. In hindsight he can give voice to an emotion that he experienced then and many times since as he grew into an adult as “a desire that is a mixture of thrill and vertigo.” Emily, when he meets her again, much later, has the better phrase for what affected them: “We all became adults before we were adults.”

In the end, it does not matter anymore – at least to me – whether this book is a novel or a memoir/autobiography. It is a beautifully rendered story of growing up and living with the memories of youth. The novel’s language, the tone, the images and the tender approach to his subject suggest that this is probably Ondaatje’s most personal and intimate novel in many years.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 46 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Michael Ondaatje
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

Poetry:

Movies from books:

]]> /2011/the-cats-table-by-michael-ondaatje/feed/ 0 THE WHITE DEVIL by Justin Evans /2011/the-white-devil-by-justin-evans/ /2011/the-white-devil-by-justin-evans/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:05:38 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=21233 The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.]]> Book Quote:

“The eye sockets were sunken; the eyes protruded, a vivid blue; his flesh was a morbid gray. Long blond hair—almost white, albino-looking—hung over his eyes. Once he was forced to break from his labor to cough—and Andrew recognized the noise that had drawn him. The cough combined the bark of a sick animal with a wet, slapping sound. The skeletal man drew his hand across his mouth. Then he looked up. He locked eyes with Andrew.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (OCT 1, 2011)

Kicked out of his last American boarding school for drugs, Andrew Taylor’s father has sent him to England’s Harrow Academy to redo his senior year. It’s his last chance, and Andrew tries hard to follow the rules and not bring attention to himself. But author Justin Evans has other plans for Andrew in The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.

Andrew witnesses the murder of his friend, Theo, on a path near the school’s graveyard, but he can’t give all the details to the police. No one would ever believe that a ghost, for that is all Andrew can come up with for an explanation of the albino-type figure that killed his friend and then vanished.

Rumors abound of the Lot Ghost, a ghost that haunts the house-turned-dorm in which Andrew lives. But there’s much more to this mystery that’s gradually revealed. Andrew bears a strong resemblance to Byron and is cast as the lead in the school play about the Harrow alumnus, written and directed by Piers Fawkes, a poet and master at Lot. Andrew’s other confidante and love interest is Persephone, the only girl at Harrow, the daughter of the school’s headmaster. What Andrew can piece together is that his friends’ lives are in danger, and if he can’t find out the mystery with Lord Byron at its center, he may die as well.

Life at Harrow lies at the center of Evans’s tale. He combines the bullying and torrid relationships of the past with the goings-on in the present, moving easily between the two. Our hero, Andrew, with his resemblance to Byron, links the two eras together. There’s a chance he can solve the mystery of who the ghost is and why people are dying with the help of Fawkes, Persephone and a library researcher, but time may run out on him.

My only pet peeve with this book is that the author tries to do too much. Add in Fawkes problem with alcohol, a speech Andrew has planned for speech day and some of the story threads get dropped without becoming fully developed. That said, Evans does a nice job of pulling the reader into the story and maintaining enough tension and hints to keep one’s focus.

I have a penchant for books with boarding schools at their center as well as those with historical settings in part or in whole, so I enjoyed the story immensely. Part horror and part thriller, there are enough creepy, very realistic moments in the story to give out shivers. Evans has a talent for vivid descriptions too, and some weren’t so pretty. While I don’t think the novel has any profound messages to pass along, fans of historical settings, Lord Byron or boarding schools should give it a whirl. Just don’t turn out the lights if it’s late.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 44 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper (May 10, 2011)
REVIEWER: Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Justin Evans
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> /2011/the-white-devil-by-justin-evans/feed/ 0 CHILD WONDER by Roy Jacobsen /2011/child-wonder-by-roy-jacobsen/ /2011/child-wonder-by-roy-jacobsen/#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:57:12 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=21281 Book Quote:

“It was time it happened, the determination that this should never be allowed to repeat itself, the hatred and the bitterness of not being able to decide whether to thrust a knife in her or start to weep so that she could console me like a second Linda, for I was no child any more and yet I was, and I wanted to be neither, but someone else, again.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (SEP 28, 2011)

Navigating that shaky bridge between childhood and adulthood is never easy, particularly in 1961 – a time when “men became boys and housewives women,” a year when Yuri Gargarin is poised to conquer space and when the world is on the cusp of change.

Into this moment of time, Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen shines a laser light on young Finn and his mother Gerd, who live in the projects of Oslo. Fate has not been kind to them: Gerd’s husband, a crane operator, divorced her and then died in an accident, leaving the family in a financially precarious position. To make ends meet, she works in a shoe store and runs an ad for a lodger for extra money.

To complicate the situation, Finn’s father’s second wife – a now-widowed drug addict – views the ad and unloads on the family Finn’s half-sister, Linda – a young girl who appears to have mysterious problems that are only gradually revealed. Figuratively, this “poor mite got off the Grorud bus one dark November day with an atomic bomb in a small light blue suitcase and turned our lives upside down.”

Linda becomes the mirror in which Gerd, Finn, and others (including the lodger Kristian) eventually define themselves. Gerd, who identifies strongly with Linda, is transported back to an abusive childhood and views herself in the little girl. Finn — who is the first-person narrator — battles jealousy, bewilderment, and eventually, stirrings of love as he defends Linda from the Norwegian educational system and the school bullies. He reminisces: “Linda was not of this world, one day I would come to understand this – she was a Martian come down to earth to speak in tongues to heathens, to speak French to Norwegians and Russian to Americans. She was destiny, beauty and a catastrophe. A bit of everything. Mother’s mirror and Mother’s childhood. All over again.”

Not unlike his regional compatriot, Per Petterson, Roy Jacobsen is (as one publication stated about the latter), “a master at writing the spaces between people.” He succinctly and beautifully captures the incomprehension of a young boy who is trying to make sense of the adult world and his place within it. The increasing bond between the boy and his accidental sister is explored painstakingly and is exquisitely poignant. The portrayal of Linda’s evolution to her new family is genuinely heartrendering.

A pedestrian and at times downright awkward translation does not serve the stream of consciousness sections well. In the best translations (such as the talented Ann Born’s translation of Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses), the reader loses sight that the book is a translation. It takes a little while to get into the cadence and the rhythm.

But the authenticity of Roy Jacobsen’s vision wins out with its universal themes: how others become gifts in our lives, unveiling us, and the lengths we go to preserve relationships with those we love. Or, in the words of the author, “Something happens to you when someone spots you – you see yourself from the outside, your own peculiar strangeness, that which is only you and moves in only you, but which nonetheless you have not known…” This quiet book is a hopeful testimony to transformative change.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: Graywolf Press (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Roy Jacobsen
EXTRAS: Blog with all sorts of Roy Jacobsen info
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Partial Bibliography (translated):

]]> /2011/child-wonder-by-roy-jacobsen/feed/ 0 ON CANAAN’S SIDE by Sebastian Barry /2011/on-canaans-side-by-sebastian-barry/ /2011/on-canaans-side-by-sebastian-barry/#comments Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:30:43 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=21045 Book Quote:

“The sunlight didn’t miss its chance, and as we approached the first high point of the ride, it moved in behind a brassy cloud high above the river, and then suddenly, like a very thunderstorm of light, dropped a cascade of brightness the size of Ireland down on the water, so that the river halved into brightness and brilliance, and you would half suspect that there was a more mysterious ticketman somewhere, from the mountains of heaven, pulling heavenly switches.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (SEP 18, 2011)

So here I was yesterday, pounding my treadmill, reading Sebastian Barry’s new novel, alternately sobbing and laughing aloud at the sheer magnificence of it, reveling in the exuberant brilliance of his writing. Admittedly, exertion at the gym calls forth such strong reactions, but the book had touched me quietly already with its first pages upon waking, and would retain its hold through the limpid ambiguity of its final paragraphs, read before going very late to bed. Yes, I finished it in a single day; I could not help myself. But there were many passages that I went back to reread more slowly and then more slowly still, just to savor the magic of Barry’s style.

The paragraph quoted above, coming almost halfway through the book, is the opening of a magnificent set piece, when Irish expatriate Lily Dunne and a fellow servant are taken by an admirer to ride their first-ever big dipper in Luna Park in Cleveland. “We poised, three beating hearts, three souls with all their stories so far in the course of ordinary lives, three mere pilgrims, brilliantly unknown, brilliantly anonymous, above a Cleveland fun park, with the wonderful catastrophe of the sunlight on the river, the capricious engineering of the tracks, the sudden happiness of knowing Joe…”. So begins a two-page paragraph, all in a single sentence, as the poise and the rush and the joy and the terror, laughing and crying all at the same time, becomes the pivot point for an entire life.

As indeed it is. “What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking?” asks the second sentence in the book. Grief-stricken at the death of her grandson Bill, Lily wants only to write down her own memories, or make her confession as she calls it, before putting a quiet end to her own life too. Each chapter, headed simply “First Day without Bill” and so on, tells us a little bit about her present life and a lot about her past, until eventually the two meet up. She is living in the Hamptons, in a small cottage fixed up for her by her former employer for whom she worked as cook. Her memories take her back to the age of four, in the early years of the last century, when her father was a senior police officer in Dublin. Associated with the wrong side, unfortunately, for in the struggles for Irish independence, Lily and her fiancé are forced to flee to America with a price on their heads. The “Canaan’s Side” of the old hymn, the near bank of the Promised Land after the crossing of the Red Sea, is of course the USA, where Lily and her lover are forced to lead a fringe existence under assumed names. It will be long before she will feel herself truly American — the fun-park ride is a first hint of it — but she ends up surrounded by caring, tactful people who respect and even love her.

Here I get stuck. In revealing that the dead Bill was Lily’s grandson, I already anticipate something that Barry will reveal in his own good time, though only a dozen pages into the book. But his technique of adding facts only when truly important does make it very difficult to say any more about the plot. Suffice it to say that it will take Lily from the bloodshed of the Troubles in Ireland to an America moving from the heady Twenties through the Depression and several wars. All the men in Lily’s life will be touched by war, from the First World War that killed her beloved elder brother Willie to the First Gulf War that so affected her grandson Bill. The assassinations of the Sixties will also play a part, bringing to the surface issues of race that had been a dormant subtext from quite early on. I am not convinced that Barry can quite manage to sustain the story over such a long span; there are some chapters about two-thirds of the way through when the intensity flags somewhat, and a couple of revelations towards the end stretch credulity a little. But his ability to balance the epic with the intimate, as the book jacket rightly claims, is nonetheless amazing.

All Barry’s books begin, at least in back-story, at roughly the same place, with the agonized birth of the Irish state; he seems to extend the story further in time and place with each one. A Long Way (about Lily’s brother) addresses the paradox of Irish soldiers fighting for their country in Flanders only to be treated as traitors at home (a point which Barry gently parallels to the plight of Vietnam veterans here). The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and The Secret Scripture follow the legacy of those conflicted loyalties deeper into the twentieth century, as does Annie Dunne, about Lily’s sister in the Fifties. On Canaan’s Side extends the story across the Atlantic, though it turns out to be more about America than Ireland, except in the marvelous poetry of the Irish voice. The Secret Scripture showed Barry’s remarkable ability to get into the mind of a very old woman, and that is one of the true joys of this book too. For what might have turned into a despairing wail of grief becomes instead a tapestry of light and wonder. I will let Lily have the final word:

“And I notice again in the writing of this confession that there is nothing called long-ago after all. When things are summoned up, it is all present time, pure and simple. So that, much to my surprise, people I have loved are allowed to live again. What it is that allows them I don’t know. I have been happy now and then in the last two weeks, the special happiness that is offered from the hand of sorrow.”

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 8 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking Adult (September 8, 2011)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Sebastian Barry
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> /2011/on-canaans-side-by-sebastian-barry/feed/ 0 INCOGNITO by Gregory Murphy /2011/incognito-by-gregory-murphy/ /2011/incognito-by-gregory-murphy/#comments Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:00:19 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=21039 Book Quote:

“I’m afraid I’ve made more than a few mistakes along the way”

“Well, then, unmake them. That’s what life is about—making and unmaking mistakes, getting back on the track and moving on. The problem with mistakes is that they have the habit of growing into such big, fat, lovely excuses.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (SEP 17, 2011)

Thirty-one year old William Dysart should be on top of the world. He is a successful attorney, lives in a beautiful home, and is married to Arabella, a stunner who turns heads wherever she goes. Gregory Murphy looks beneath the veneer of the Dysarts’ seemingly enviable life in Incognito.

William is growing tired of doing the bidding of Phil Havering, the managing partner at his law firm. In addition, he has become disenchanted with his wife who, in spite of her great beauty, is insecure and demanding. After six years of marriage, the couple is childless, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that Arabella is a social-climbing, vain, and shallow individual who is more interested in material possessions and status than she is in her relationship with William. “It was rare now that their conversations did not end in a quarrel.”

This is Edith Wharton country —- New York society in 1911 -— and, for the most part, Murphy mines this fertile territory effectively. The premise is intriguing: William is dispatched by his boss to Long Island to convince the lovely Sybil Curtis that it would be in her best interest to sell her five-acre property to Lydia Billings, a fabulously wealthy widow who wants to augment her two-thousand acre estate. William is surprised to learn that Sybil is a self-possessed and independent young woman who is not interested in selling her home, even for the princely sum of ten thousand dollars. Dysart senses that there is ill-will between Lydia and Sybil that goes far deeper than the matter at hand. As the weeks pass, the attorney finds himself sympathizing with Sybil, while Havering is furious that William cannot convince Sybil to accept Lydia’s offer.

Incognito effectively unmasks the hypocrisy of affluent, prominent, and degenerate people who carefully hide their vices behind a veneer of respectability. William and Arabella spend a great deal of time attending charity functions, dinner parties, and other lavish events, and although Arabella is in her element, William is becoming bored with the strain of keeping up appearances. It is painful to observe his deteriorating marriage, and in flashback, we eventually learn why William settled for this loveless union instead of seeking a partner with more depth and character. This is a touching study of men and women at cross purposes. Although William is anxious to bring about a rapprochement between Sybil and Lydia, until he finds out why there is bad blood between them, he is powerless to accomplish his mission.

Murphy stumbles, however, when he makes some labored points about the pettiness, prejudice, and selfishness of those who occupied the highest strata of New York society. They socialize compulsively, spend money lavishly, and care little about such issues as the rights of women and the oppressed. Sybil is a mysterious and provocative character who is less than candid about her tragic past. William is at heart a good man who knows that he will never be content unless he makes some fundamental changes in his life. The book’s main flaw is that, as it progresses, the narrative becomes heavy-handed and melodramatic, with too many revelations, ugly confrontations, and a conclusion that is a bit too pat. Although most of us would agree that the keys to happiness are fulfilling relationships, meaningful work, and peace of mind, Murphy might have conveyed this message with a bit more subtlety. As it stands, Incognito has some powerful scenes, an appealing protagonist in William Dysart and, for the most part, a story that keeps us turning pages, wanting to know what will happen next.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 19 readers
PUBLISHER: Berkley Trade; 1 edition (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Gregory Murphy
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> /2011/incognito-by-gregory-murphy/feed/ 0 BOXER, BEETLE by Ned Beauman /2011/boxer-beetle-by-ned-beauman/ /2011/boxer-beetle-by-ned-beauman/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:56:54 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=19879 Book Quote:

“Normally you can’t get a proper look at your own conscience because it only ever comes out to gash you with its beak and you just want to do whatever you can to push it away; but put your conscience in the cage of this paradox, where it can slither and bark but it can’t hurt you, and you can study it for as long as you wish. Most people don’t truly know how they feel about the Holocaust because they’re worried that if they think about it too hard, they’ll find out they don’t feel sad enough about the 6 million dead, but I’m an expert in my own soul.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  SEP 13, 2011)

First-time author Ned Beauman really lays it out there in the first chapter of this extraordinary novel, which begins with an imaginary surprise birthday party thrown by Hitler for Joseph Goebbels in 1940. It is an exhilarating, outrageous opening to a book that will in fact take a quite different course. But it is important as a way of establishing the moral parameters (and this IS a moral book) and freeing up an imaginative space in which Beauman can explore some ideas that are normally unapproachable.

Actually, Beauman reminds me of nobody so much as Evelyn Waugh. He writes about the same period (England in the 1930s), he inhabits some of the same milieux (a house party in some noble pile), he shares or even tops Waugh in his outrageous use of absurd humor, and he writes about serious subjects at heart. His debut novel explores the world of British Fascism in the years before WWII. Despite the opening, the German Nazis never make an appearance other than as tutelary deities. In its place is a gaggle of mostly well-connected amateurs, a sort of lunatic fringe of the upper class, pursuing theories of eugenics and a universal world language. Yes, they had their real-life counterparts; Lord Claramore’s family is in the book, the Erskines, somewhat resembles the Mitfords; Evelyn Erskine, the daughter who shows her independence by becoming an atonal composer, is virtually identical to Elizabeth Lutyens; and Sir Oswald Mosley, the real-life leader of the British Union of Fascists, makes a cameo appearance, but his 1936 march of supremacy through the largely-Jewish London East End is shown as the farcical debacle it really was.

This period background is viewed from a modern frame. Kevin Broom, the narrator and a collector of Nazi memorabilia, gets caught up in a rivalry which leaves two other collectors dead and Kevin himself in danger of his life. The goal of the rivalry is not at first clear, but it turns upon a letter from Hitler to British scientist Philip Erskine thanking him for an unusual gift, and some as-yet-unspecified connection between Erskine and a diminutive London Jewish boxer named “Sinner” Roach.

Do not look to the story for any great plausibility, though. It propels the plot with exhilarating efficiency, but it is more in tune with the popular adventure stories of the earlier part of the century than with modern expectations of verisimilitude; Kevin’s role model, for instance, is Batman. Waugh used such devices also, but Beauman is very much of his own time in translating Waugh’s absurdity into shock or even disgust. Kevin, for instance, has trimethylaminuria, a genetic disease that makes his bodily secretions smell of rotting fish; there is also strong undercurrent of homosexual violence, which may turn some readers off the book.

Which would be a pity, because the best parts are very good indeed. I am thinking especially of a dinner conversation in New York involving Sinner, two Rabbis, and an American architect, showing how easily some humanitarian endeavors such as mid-century town planning may be perverted into crypto-fascism. Or a brilliant discursion on the quest for a universal language that would unite mankind, discussing real attempts such as Esperanto and Volapük together with the fictional Pangaean, invented by an Erskine ancestor. Or Philip Erskine’s own work with beetles, breeding them for extraordinary aggression and strength, an obvious parallel to the human Eugenics programs of the Nazis for the enhancement the Master Race — though the principle had earlier advocates in both Britain and America. This is a valuable and serious subject for a novelist (it is also examined in Simon Mawer’s excellent Mendel’s Dwarf), and though Beauman chooses an absurd and at times offensive vehicle in which to present it, his obvious intelligence and meticulous linking of his story to real events makes this a far better book than a mere summary might suggest.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 33 readers
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury USA (September 13, 2011)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Ned Beauman blog  and website
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

 

]]> /2011/boxer-beetle-by-ned-beauman/feed/ 0 THE TWELFTH ENCHANTMENT by David Liss /2011/the-twelfth-enchantment-by-david-liss/ /2011/the-twelfth-enchantment-by-david-liss/#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:47:23 +0000 Judi Clark /?p=20422 Book Quote:

“I know that changes are coming, and we must be ready to face them. Dark and terrible things, things such as what you saw with Lord Byron and at the mill, but those things are … minor disturbances, harbingers of beings much more dangerous.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  AUG 26, 2011)

The Twelfth Enchantment, by David Liss, starts off promisingly. It is the early nineteenth century and our heroine, Lucy Derrick, is a twenty-year-old orphan who is living unhappily in Nottingham, England, with her cruel uncle and an abusive woman named Mrs. Quince. Although she was well-educated by her late father, Lucy was left almost penniless when he died. She is at the mercy of her vicious uncle, Richard Lowell, who cannot wait to be rid of her. In fact, her uncle plans to give her hand in marriage to a thirty-five year old, dried up prune of a man named Olson, the owner of a local hosiery mill.

Although the Industrial Revolution has brought prosperity to some, this newfound wealth and efficiency has come at a high price. Smokestacks belch thick and toxic fumes that pollute the areas bordering the factories. In addition, manual laborers have been replaced by machinery, leading to high unemployment and abject poverty for those who can no longer feed their families. Furthermore, conditions in the factories are vile and unsafe; even the children who work the looms are beaten when they do not meet their overseer’s expectations.

Lucy’s existence is upended by a series of strange events involving Lord Byron (he shows up often in historical fiction these days), a roué named Mr. Morrison who tarnished Lucy’s reputation when she was just sixteen, an avuncular William Blake, and a mysterious and beautiful stranger, Mary Crawford, who introduces Lucy to a world of spells. It seems that Lucy has uncanny abilities that, if harnessed properly, would give her enormous power. She will need to master a huge amount of arcane knowledge and show tremendous courage, for she will find herself pitted against mighty and evil forces.

Meanwhile, Lucy must decide whether to fend off Byron’s not entirely unwelcome attentions (she admits that he is gorgeous to look at but a thorough reprobate). Lucy has a great deal on her plate: Whom can she really trust? Does she have the intellect and determination to use her unique talent effectively? Will she ever meet the love of her life?

By now, you may have deduced that Liss has overstuffed his narrative. There is a derivative quality to this novel that brings to mind familiar (and better) works, such as: Jane Eyre, who was cast off without a penny but stood up for herself as a proud, moral, and independent woman; Hard Times, in which Charles Dickens decries the forced labor of children and excoriates those who would enrich themselves on the backs of the poor; and the Harry Potter series, in which J. K. Rowling breathes life into magic and wizardry, while also dealing with feelings, relationships, and social issues. Liss often writes lush sentences, is a skilled descriptive writer, and he imbues Lucy with warmth and spirit. It is really too bad that, as the book progresses, the author resorts to clichés, contrivances, and silly twists and turns. The conclusion is flat and anticlimactic, when it should have been exciting and exhilarating. Much of The Twelfth Enchantment is captivating, but the weak conclusion may leave readers less than spellbound.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 47 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House; First Edition edition (August 9, 2011)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: David Liss
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

See also:

Bibliography:

Benjamin Weaver thrillers:

Other Historical novels:

]]> /2011/the-twelfth-enchantment-by-david-liss/feed/ 0