World Lit – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.24 LOVERS AT THE CHAMELEON CLUB, PARIS 1932 by Francine Prose /2014/lovers-at-the-chameleon-club-paris-1932-by-francine-prose/ Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:05:02 +0000 /?p=25629 Book Quote:

“Dear parents,

Last night I visited a club in Montparnasse where the men dress as women and the women as men. Papa would have loved it. And Mama’s face would have crinkled in that special smile she has for Papa’s passion for everything French.

The place is called the Chameleon Club. It’s a few steps down from the street. You need a password to get in. The password is: Police! Open up! The customers find it amusing.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (APR 22, 2014)

Early on in Francine Prose’s richly imagined and intricately constructed tour de force, Yvonne – the proprietress of the Parisian Chameleon Club –tells a story about her pet lizard, Darius. “One night I was working out front. My friend, a German admiral whose name you would know, let himself into my office and put my darling Darius on my paisley shawl. He died, exhausted by the strain of turning all those colors.”

History – and the people who compose it – is itself a chameleon, subject to multiple interpretations. Ms. Prose seems less interested in exploring “what is the truth” and more intrigued with the question, “Is there truth?”

The title derives from a photograph that defined the career of the fictional photographer, Gabor Tsenyl: two female lovers lean towards each other at the Chameleon Club table. His is one of five narratives that punctuate the novel. The showcase narrative – written as a biography by the grand-niece of one of the participants – focuses on Lou Villars, a one-time Olympic hopeful and scandalous cross-dresser who crosses over to the dark side and becomes a Nazi collaborator. The other four narratives are composed of devoted letters from Gabor to his parents; the unpublished memoirs of Suzanne, his wife; excerpts from a book by the libertine expatriate writer Lionel Maine; and finally, the memoirs of a benefactor of the arts, Baroness Lily de Rossignol. Each narrative plays off the others and provides subtle suggestions that the other narratives may not be entirely accurate.

What is the truth of this intoxicating time, when artists of all kinds gravitated to the Paris scene and when war with Germany was an increasingly sober possibility? Francine Prose suggests that the truth is fluid. Reportedly, Lou Villars was inspired by a real person named Violette Morris. There are more than a few hints of Peggy Guggenheim in Lily de Rossignol and Lionel Maine bears a resemblance to Henry Miller. How much is fact and how much is fiction?

And once the reader gets over that hurdle, how much of what is revealed by the fictional characters is distorted through their own lens? How much of that is truth and how much is perception? Can we ever know the real person who lurks behind the mask? As Francine Prose writes, “The self who touches and is touched in the dark ,between the sheets, is not the same self who gets up in the morning and goes out to buy coffee and croissants.

I’ve said little about plot and that’s deliberate: the unfolding of the plot is for each reader to discover himself or herself. I will say this: the writing is exquisite and in my opinion, elevates an already talented contemporary writer to entirely new levels. The ending is breathtaking in its audacity. The setting – Paris in the late 1920s – is mesmerizing. The themes touch on universal matters: getting in touch with our authentic selves, crossing society-imposed gender barriers, understanding the fluidness of morality, searching for love and approval in dangerous places, making sacrifices for art, and discovering that history is not immutable, but changes depending on who tells it.

I read Lovers at the Chameleon Club directly after another very disparate book: Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird. Interestingly, both tackle the meaning of truth from very different yet unique angles. This is a stunning book and I enthusiastically recommend it.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 13 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper (April 22, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Francine Prose
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
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]]> THE MARRYING OF CHANI KAUFMAN by Eve Harris /2014/the-marrying-of-chani-kaufman-by-eve-harris/ Mon, 07 Apr 2014 13:08:05 +0000 /?p=25800 online pokies facing a major crisis. Rabbi Zilberman's wife, Rivka, is no longer a contented spouse, mother, and homemaker; she is restless, edgy, and depressed. Adding to the tension is the fact that one of her sons, Avromi, a university student, is acting strangely. He is secretive, stays out late, and avoids telling his family where he has been.]]> Book Quote:

“The bride stood like a pillar of salt, rigid under layers of itchy petticoats. Sweat dripped down the hollow of her back and collected in pools under her arms staining the ivory silk. She edged closer to The Bedeken Room door, one ear pressed up against it.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (APR 7, 2014)

In The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, Eve Harris discloses the secrets of a Chasidic community in Golders Green, London, focusing on the tribulations of three families: the Kaufmans, Levys, and Zilbermans. The Kaufmans have eight daughters, one of whom, nineteen-year-old Chani, is seeking an intelligent, animated, and good-natured husband. The Levys, a well-to-do couple, want only the best for their son, Baruch, and plan to settle for nothing less. The Zilbermans are facing a major crisis. Rabbi Zilberman’s wife, Rivka, is no longer a contented spouse, mother, and homemaker; she is restless, edgy, and depressed. Adding to the tension is the fact that one of her sons, Avromi, a university student, is acting strangely. He is secretive, stays out late, and avoids telling his family where he has been.

Harris goes back and forth in time, creating a well-rounded portrait of a community whose members prize tradition, virtue, and spirituality. If anyone deviates from prescribed standards of behavior–by dressing immodestly, showing too much interest in secular matters, or flouting religious law–he or she risks censure or, in some cases, ostracism. However, the author indicates that many Chasidim have a great deal to be grateful for: particularly the support of relatives, friends, and neighbors and the peace of mind that comes from knowing one’s place in the world.

The cast includes the young and not-so-young, the experienced and naïve, the affluent and those struggling to get by. We observe Chani Kaufman navigating the dating scene with anticipation as well as trepidation. We also meet Baruch Levy, a twenty-year-old who fears that he is not ready to shoulder the responsibilities that marriage entails. Manipulating the matchmaking strings is the smug and calculating Mrs. Gelbmann, a shadchan who relishes the inordinate amount of power that she wields. Readers’ hearts go out to Chani’s mother, a long-suffering matriarch who, at forty-five, has already borne eight daughters and is thoroughly burned out.

Ms. Harris is knowledgeable about the Hasidic lifestyle, and portrays her flawed and troubled characters with understanding, insight, and compassion. Her decision to relate events out of chronological order is initially bewildering. However, it allows us to stand back and consider complex situations from a variety of angles and viewpoints. The author presents the limited options available to young people like Chanie and Baruch. Should they adhere to the accepted laws and customs handed down by their parents or follow a different path that might be more to their liking? Chani wonders, “What was it like to roam freely in the world and not have to think about your every action and its spiritual consequence?” For men and women who find the constraints of a sheltered and choreographed existence limiting, the choice to remain strictly observant is a difficult one. The Marrying of Chani Kaufman is a provocative, enlightening, and engrossing book, written with skill and flair, in which the author explores universal themes that will resonate with anyone who has clashed with loved ones, suffered unbearable losses, and has had to make difficult, life-changing decisions.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 41 readers
PUBLISHER: Grove Press, Black Cat (April 1, 2014)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Eve Harris
EXTRAS: Excerpt and an interview with the author
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]]> LOVE AND TREASURE by Ayelet Waldman /2014/love-and-treasure-by-ayelet-waldman/ Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:00:23 +0000 /?p=25521 Book Quote:

“…tipped the contents of  of the pouch into his plan. He caught hold of the gold chain. The gold-filgreed pendant dangled. It bore the image, in vitreous enamel, of a peacock, a perfect gemstone staring from the tip of each painted feather.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (MAR 31, 2014)

Ayelet Waldman’s new book begins in Red Hook, Maine, the setting of her novel Red Hook Road, but the two could hardly be more different. For whereas she had previously confined herself to two families in the same setting over a period of a very few years, she travels in this one to Salzburg, Budapest, and Israel, at various periods over a hundred-year span. By the same token, though, it is a stretch to call Love and Treasure a novel; it is essentially a trilogy of novellas, each with different characters, but linked by a single object and common themes. The object is an enameled Jugendstil pendant in the shape of a peacock. Although only of modest value, it plays an important role in the lives of the people who people who possess it, and provides a focus for the novelist’s enquiry into the lives of Hungarian Jews both before and after the Holocaust.

In the prologue, Jack Wiseman, an old man dying of cancer, entrusts the pendant to his recently-divorced granddaughter Natalie. Immediately, we plunge into the first and by far the best of the novellas, set in Salzburg, Austria, in 1945. Jack, as a young lieutenant in the US Army, is entrusted with the administration of the box-car loads of valuable goods brought out of Hungary on the “Gold Train” — items that he realizes have all been “donated” by Hungarian Jews prior to their exile or extermination. I have no doubt that this is based on truth — not only the train itself, but the horrifying revelation of what happened to its contents, and indeed the exposure of continuing anti-Semitism on both sides even after the War was over. Set in a jurisdiction almost overrun by the sheer numbers of refugees, survivors, and other displaced persons, the story was disturbing, informative and gripping. Even more so as Jack falls passionately in love with one of the survivors, a fiery redhead named Ilona Jakab. It is a surprisingly muscular piece of writing building to a powerful finale. Had I stopped the reading then, I would have given the book five stars.

The other two sections are not quite of this standard. The second novella returns us to the present day when Natalie is in Budapest, keeping her promise to track down the original owner of her grandfather’s pendant. It is less interesting because the laborious process of searching archives is inherently less compelling, but also because it is more difficult to buy into the romance story in this episode. Natalie pairs up with an Israeli art dealer named Amitai Shasho, virile, polished, and wealthy — everything a hero should be — except that he is essentially a Holocaust profiteer, and thus a difficult man for me to trust. He will change towards the end of the novella, but I never really got over my initial disapproval.

The third section is rather more successful, taking us back to Budapest, but now in 1913. It works because Waldman has so perfectly captured the narrative voice of a Freudian psychoanalyst, Imré Zobel, describing his work with a nineteen-year-old Jewish girl named Nina S. It is a perfect parody of Freud’s own literary style, with the added deliciousness of a narrator who, if not actually unreliable, is certainly self-deceiving. But it takes us away from any of the characters whom we have met earlier, and although it fills in some interesting back-story, it is essentially a stand-alone piece.

I mentioned Waldman’s themes. Chief among them is anti-Semitism, seen in an historical context and in some unexpected places; Waldman both makes a strong case for Zionism, and reveals disturbing patterns of discrimination within the Zionist ideal. Almost equally strong is her concern for women’s rights and the historical suffragist movement. And as always, she writes very freely about sex. I was reminded of two other novels in particular. One is The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, which also looks at the twentieth century in Eastern Europe through the history of a single artifact. The other was The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas, in its multi-sectional structure and use of psychoanalysis, though Waldman’s book is neither so adventurous in its writing nor so strongly focused on the Holocaust. But you might call it a peri-Holocaust novel, and this I did find interesting. If only it had maintained a stronger focus.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 18 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (April 1, 2014)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Ayelet Waldman
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
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]]> KINDER THAN SOLITUDE by Yiyun Li /2014/kinder-than-solitude-by-yiyun-li/ Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:45:17 +0000 /?p=25802 Book Quote:

“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 21, 2014)

“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.” For four friends, that line was crossed during their late teenage years, when one of them was poisoned, perhaps deliberately, perhaps accidentally, lingering in a physical limbo state until she finally dies years later.  The young man, Boyang, remains in China; the two young women, Ruyu and Moran, move to the United States. Each ends up living in what the author describes as a “life-long quarantine against love and life.”

Kinder than Solitude is not primarily a mystery of a poisoned woman nor is it an “immigrant experience” book, although it is being hailed as both. Rather, it’s a deep and insightful exploration about the human condition – how one’s past can affect one’s future, how innocence can be easily lost, and how challenging it is to get in touch with – let alone salvage – one’s better self.

“To have an identity – to be known – required one to possess an ego, yet so much more, too: a collection of people, a traceable track lining one place to another – all these had to be added to that ego or one to have any kind of identity,” Yiyun Li writes.

In the case of Moran, who married and divorced an older man she still cares for, what she called her life “…was only a way of not living, and by doing that, she had taken, here and there, parts of other people’s lives and turned them into nothing along with her own.” Riyu, the most enigmatic and detached of the characters, is an empty vessel, unable to connect or to experience much pleasure or pain, who strives to receive an “exemption from participating in life.” And Boyang, a successful entrepreneur with a cynical sense of the world, has discovered that “love measured by effort was the only love within his capacity.”

This is a deeply philosophical book, one that delves into its characters, with an ambling narrative that shifts from the shared Chinese past to the present –China, San Francisco, the Midwest. It is not for everyone – certainly not for readers who are anticipating an action-packed, page-turning suspense novel. But for those who seek insights into the human condition and love strong character-based novels, Kinder Than Solitude offers rich rewards.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 16 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House (February 25, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Yiyun Li
EXTRAS: Q&A and Excerpt
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]]> THE CAIRO AFFAIR by Olen Steinhauer /2014/the-cairo-affair-by-olen-steinhauer/ Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:08:46 +0000 /?p=25806 Book Quote:

“When you live in a house of mirrors, the only way to stay alive is to believe that every reflection is real.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie  (MAR 18, 2014)

The Cairo Affair takes place in Egypt and Libya during 2011 with flashbacks to Serbia in 1991. It is set during the period when the regimes of dictators Hosni Mubarek, Egyptian President and military commander from 1981 to 2011, and Muammar Gaddafi, a Libyan revolutionary and the de facto ruler of Libya for 42 years, came to a violent end. The revolutionary events of the “Arab Spring” brought to conclusion various repressive Arab governments. The “Arab Spring” is widely believed to have been instigated by dissatisfaction with the rule of local governments, though some have speculated that wide gaps in income levels may have had a hand as well. Numerous factors led to the protests, including issues such as dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights violations, political corruption, (demonstrated by Wikileaks’ diplomatic cables), extreme poverty, and a large percentage of educated, jobless and dissatisfied youth. The storyline of  The Cairo Affair, takes place around the above events…and the events are often current, which makes this novel more interesting.

FLASHBACK: It is September 20, 1991, Sophie and Emmett Kohl are on on their honeymoon and madly in love. “Enthusiasm, imagination and commitment” are the qualities she most admires in her spouse. The newlywed couple choose to travel through Eastern Europe for a holiday. From their TVs at Harvard they’d watched the crumbling of the USSR with excitement. At age 22, Emmett has been to Europe previously, but Sophie has never traveled there. She longs to see Paris, the left bank cafes and the wonderful museums. Emmett tells her that they should go to places where “history is happening.” He wants to take a detour from the tourist attractions of Western Europe and travel to Eastern Europe. He tells Sophie that they would travel “the road less taken”…and she agrees.

They wait until September to make the trip so as to avoid the summer heat and the tourists. After four days in Vienna, where they wander down the broad avenues with their wedding cake buildings and museums, they visit the Sacher, the Stephansdom and the Kunsthalle and the cafes Central and Hofburg. Emmett comments that the city reminds him of Graham Greene’s 1949 British film noir, “The Thin Man.” On the fifth day they board a train to Prague. The couple moves on to Budapest and then they make an unexpected detour to Yugoslavia.

Marshal Josip Broz Tito, the dictator of Yugoslavia died in 1980, leaving the country, a socialist federation, without cohesive leadership. In March and April 1981, a student protest in Pristina, the capital of the then Yugoslav and Serbian province of Kosovo, led to widespread protests by the Kosovo Albanians demanding more autonomy within the Yugoslav federation. After Tito’s death in 1980, tensions between the Yugoslav republics emerged, and in 1991 the country disintegrated and went into a series of brutal wars that lasted the rest of the decade.

It is at this time of enormous tension when Emmett and Sophia choose to visit, knowing full well the dangerous situation in the country. They wind up in the city of Novi Sad where they become involved with an exuberant bunch of 20-something locals who insist that the American couple accompany them to a nearby disco. All their newly made friends are from Vojvodina, the city-state where Novi Sad is located. One such “friend” slams  “Miloševi?, took away our political autonomy. Ours and Kosovo’s. It stinks!” It is in a bar, late at night, when they meet Zora Balasevic, an attractive, hard looking woman in her 40s, who overwhelms the couple by discussing, (a one-sided conversation), Serbian history. “We are happy – you see? – to get rid of the Slovenes, but Croats want to steal our coast. Who pay for these beaches? (sic). Bosnia is next. There will be fire…”

FLASH FORWARD: It is winter 2011. Five politically active Libyan exiles have seemingly vanished from the face of the earth at the same time. Jibral Aziz, is a CIA agent working out of Langley and Cairo, and, with increasing frequency, over the border to Libya. He is a young Libyan American whose father was executed by the Gadhafi regime. Aziz is in Cairo under nonofficial cover, although he meets occasionally with Harry Wolcott, head of CIA activities in Egypt. Awhile back Aziz had concocted a plan, “Stumbler,” whose purpose was to have the US literally high-jack the revolution in Libya, using the exiles and revolutionaries as their front, (sound familiar?). The plan had the CIA turning a popular revolution into a CIA coup, thus giving the CIA complete control over the country’s development…. and, of course, OIL! Oil reserves in Libya are the largest in Africa and the fifth largest in the world. For a variety of reasons, “Stumbler was tabled.” So when it appears someone else has obtained a copy of the blueprints, Aziz alone knows the danger it represents as the players converge on the city of Cairo.

In the winter of 2011, Sophie and Emmett Kohl are stationed in Hungary where Emmet’s official title is “deputy consul.” They had worked/lived in Cairo before the transfer. Sophie, however, doesn’t really have “a life.” She is a 42 year-old lady of leisure, who graduated with honors from Harvard. She has tea with the wives of other diplomats, makes small talk at embassy cocktail parties, has her nails and hair done…and is bored out of her mind. On the evening of March 2, 2011 she meets her husband at a fancy restaurant and proceeds to tell him that she has been having an affair with his boss, Stan Bertolli, who is still in Cairo. She believes she loves him and he has certainly expressed his love for her.

Emmett, in a state of anger and betrayal, confides a long kept secret that had been bothering him. He had met, just once, with the infamous Zora Balasevic, from Serbian days. She is now a spy at the Serbian embassy in Cairo and she attempts to recruit him by blackmailing him. He right out refuses and so Zora backs-off. After the main course at dinner, a thug pops into the restaurant and shoots Emmett in the head in front of his disbelieving wife!

In shock, Sophie flees to Cairo and into Stan’s arms. She doesn’t know why the murder happened or who the perpetrator is. Stan will help her, she thinks. And she is in no shape to return to Massachusetts for Emmett’s funeral. Determined to find out why her husband was assassinated, she follows a trail that leads to the American Embassy in a tumultuous Cairo; to the revolution under way in neighboring Libya; to Langley, Virginia; and to her own ill-fated honeymoon in Eastern Europe.

There are many characters in this story, most with hidden identities, multiple roles, and many betrayals which unravel slowly but inevitably as we view events from several characters’ viewpoints. The fact that the narrative unfolds with a current events background makes this novel appear to be real…and perhaps some of it is. And the portrait the author paints of Cairo really brings the city to life with its colors, smells, people, etc.

Olen Steinhauer’s The Cairo Affair is a complex, well fleshed-out story of the Arab Spring, WikiLeaks, the CIA, a marriage and an affair, “that leaves the reader with the unsettling feeling that, despite all the information won, lost, and put to use, the world of intelligence is no stronger than the fragile, fallible humans who navigate it.” Here allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed.

I highly recommend The Cairo Affair…especially for those readers who are fans of Eric Ambler and John le Carré.

NOTE:  There are no “spoilers” here. The review information takes place in the first few chapters of the novel.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 21 readers
PUBLISHER: Minotaur Books (March 18, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Olen Steinhauer
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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Bibliography:

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]]> BEAUTIFUL RUINS by Jess Walter /2014/beautiful-ruins-by-jess-walter/ Sun, 16 Mar 2014 14:05:04 +0000 /?p=23895 Book Quote:

“After she disappeared inside the hotel, Pasquale entertained the unwieldy thought that he’d somehow summoned her, that after years of living in this place, after months of grief and loneliness and waiting for Americans, he’d created this woman from old bits of cinema and books, from the lost artifacts and ruins of his dreams, from his epic, enduring solitude.“

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 16, 2014)

After looking up various images of the 1963 movie Cleopatra, the film that critically bombed but was lit up by the scandal of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, I saw a coastline of Italy that looked exactly like the cover of this book. It is a most felicitous cover that captures the mood and time that this novel begins, in 1962. A parochial innkeeper, Pasquali Tursi, lives in a rocky coastline village called Porto Vergogna (Port of Shame), a place the size of a thumb between two mountains, and referred to as “the whore’s crack.”

One day, Pasquali is stunned by the vision of a young, striking, blonde American actress, Dee Moray and baffled as to why she is staying at his inn. He learns that she is sick, and waiting for the famous publicity agent, Michael Deane, to take her to Switzerland for treatment. She stays at the ramshackle inn for a few days. Walter depicts their friendship with exquisite wistfulness and beauty. Her Italian and his English are as rocky as the cliffs surrounding the village, but a meeting of the souls eclipses language. On an outing together, they climb the cliffs high above the Ligurian Sea so that Pasquali can show Dee five frescoes painted on the wall inside a machine-gun pillbox bunker left over from World War II. At this scene, I almost wept. These frescoes become the most poignant visual metaphor of the book.

Alvis Bender, an American writer with writer’s block, traumatized from his experience in the war, stays at the inn annually, and has left his one devastating chapter in the drawer in Dee’s room. It is an astonishing chapter, one of the highlights of the novel. It is a treat to witness the variety of stories that make up Walter’s one larger story.

The novel alternates non-linearly from 1962 to contemporary time in Hollywood, Calfornia, where Claire Silver, a scholar of film archives, works for the now legendary film producer Michael Deane. Claire is on the cusp of quitting her job and leaving her boyfriend, and is suffering from several regrets. She is braced for another insipid film pitch when she receives a surprising visitor.

In this pensive, reflective, aesthetically pleasing, and geographically stunning story, we meet a disparate cast of characters that are ultimately linked. There’s also a washed-up rock musician, a frustrated screenwriter, and a cameo appearance by a certain alcoholic son of a Welsh coal miner–a brief but rollicking insertion of a true-to-life legend that is so spectacular and credible, it almost outshines the rest of the book. But the rest of the novel is exquisite, so that the scenes in repose combine with eye-popping chapters, and give the book a sublime balance.

The story has an undulating, timeless presence. Patience is rewarded, as it ascends toward its peak with a languid pace. The outcome may be a little too neat for some readers, but it is a minor flaw that is incidental to the mature and subtle elegance rendered on every page. As time passes, it continues to echo with its alluring characters, resonating themes, and delicate visual beauty and symmetry.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 1,407 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (April 2, 2013)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Jess Walter
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> AMERICANAH by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie /2014/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/ Sat, 15 Mar 2014 14:43:29 +0000 /?p=25941 Book Quote:

“And she had ignored, too, the cement in her soul. Her blog was doing well, with thousands of unique visitors each month, and she was earning good speaking fees, and she had a fellowship at Princeton and a relationship with Blaine—“ You are the absolute love of my life,” he’d written in her last birthday card— and yet there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (MAR 15, 2014)

Americanah is a wonderful epic saga of love, hair, blogs, racism in America, and life in Nigeria. It takes place over a period of about 15 years and is primarily about a Nigerian woman named Ifemelu and her first love, Obinze. The meaning of the word Americanah is a person who returns to Nigeria after spending time abroad.

The main part of the story takes place in a hair salon in Trenton, New Jersey. Ifemelu is on a fellowship at Princeton and the nearest place to get weaves is in Trenton. As she is getting her hair done she goes back in time and the reader gets filled in with her life story.

Ifemelu grew up in poverty in Lagos. She managed to go to university there and won a scholarship to Wellson, a college in Philadelphia. She struggles with money and finds it very difficult to get a job. When she does work, she sends money back home to her parents. Ifemulu’s primary job is as a nanny. She describes the dynamics of her employer’s marriage as “she loves him and he loves himself.” She is introduced to her employer’s cousin Curt and Ifemelu and he have a relationship for quite a while. His being white and rich cause some difficulties for them.

Ifemelu cuts off all contact with Obinze despite the fact that they had planned to be together. She had made a choice to do something that left her shamed and abased and she is unable to tell Obinze about it. So, rather than tell him, she severs their contact. He is distraught and does not know what to do. He continues to write to her for months but there is no answer from Ifemelu.

Meanwhile, Obinze goes to London where he lives underground after his six month visa expires. He is working construction and continues to do this until he is deported back to Nigeria.

Ifemelu remains in the United States for 13 years and has a series of relationships with different men. Of significance besides Curt, who is white, is Blaine who is African American and a professor at Yale. Theirs is a long-term relationship that Ifemelu breaks off in order to return to Lagos.

Ifemelu has started a blog called “Raceteenth: Understanding America for the non-American black.” She writes anonymously about varied topics of racism that she encounters in the United States and the differences between being African American and a non-American black person. Her blog is very successful and brings her status and money as people make financial contributions to keep the blog going. She also does speaking engagements about topics she covers in her blog.

The book has many characters in it, each of whom we come to know and connect with. However, it is primarily about Ifemelu and Obinze, their lives and love. I found the book fascinating and very readable. It does not ever let go of the messages that the author seeks to provide the reader. Racism is a constant theme in the book as is life in America for black Americans and non-American blacks. I found the theme of blogging as a way to share knowledge very intriguing. Actual blogs are a part of the book.

Adiche is a wonderful writer. Her short stories, all of which I’ve read, have knocked me out. I plan on reading her other novels. I can see why this brilliant woman has received a MacArthur Genius Award.   Highly recommended

AMAZON READER RATING: from 511 readers
PUBLISHER: Anchor; Reprint edition (March 4, 2014)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> ALL OUR NAMES by Dinaw Mengestu /2014/all-our-names-by-dinaw-mengestu/ Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:57:05 +0000 /?p=25115 Book Quote:

“I had thirteen names. Each name was from a different generation, beginning with Father and going back from him. I was the first one in our village to have thirteen names. Our family was considered blessed to have such a history.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 13, 2014)

Mengestu’s third book—another about the immigrant experience—is his most accomplished and soulful, in my opinion. He returns again to the pain of exile and the quest for identity, as well as the need for a foreigner from a poor and developing country to reinvent himself. In addition, he alternates the landscape of post-colonial Uganda with the racially tense Midwest of the 1970s, and demonstrates that the feeling of exile can also exist in an American living in her own hometown. The cultural contrast of both countries, with a narrative that alternates back and forth, intensifies the sense of tenuous hope mixed with shattered illusions.

“I gave up all the names my parents gave me,” says the young African man, who moves to Kampala in order to be around literary university students. He has left his family in one country to seek his idealism in another. He meets a young revolutionary, an anti-government charismatic young man, who starts a “paper revolution” at the university. Neither is a student; both seek to realize their ideals. They become friends, and eventually, cross the line into danger and confusion.

The alternating chapters concern Helen, a white social worker in Missouri, who has never traveled far, not even to Chicago. One of the young African men, named Isaac on his passport, travels to the US, allegedly as an exchange student. Helen is his caseworker. Isaac’s file is thin, and Helen knows nothing about his history. They embark on a relationship that becomes more intimate, but yet creates an elusive distance. Mengestu explores the hurdles they face, as well as examining how these obstacles relate to Isaac’s past.

The restrained, artless prose penetrates with its somber tone, and the emotional weight of the story and characters surge from the spaces between the words. Mengestu’s talent for nuance was evident when, days after I finished the book, it continued to move me.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 9 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (March 4, 2014)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Dinaw Mengestu
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
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]]> THE UNAMERICANS by Molly Antopol /2014/the-unamericans-by-molly-antopol/ Wed, 26 Feb 2014 13:15:54 +0000 /?p=25741 Book Quote:

“I wondered how the wife I had known when Daniela was first born— the quiet, sunken woman who read the Czech newspapers in the library every morning and then wrote long letters to her mother in Prague,  letters Katka had known would be swallowed by security— could have become this confident voice on the line.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (FEB 21, 2014)

A title such as The UnAmericans begs this question: what is an American? Or more specifically, what is an unAmerican in Molly Antopol’s world?

Molly Antopol’s characters are mostly Jewish or Eastern Europeans and they are mostly alienated – from spouse or kids, from past ideology and beliefs, and often, from their most authentic selves. Each story is a little gem unto itself.

In one story, we meet an American actor of Russian ancestry who has eschewed his Russian past, only to leverage it in order win a part with a leftist film director. Fingered during the McCarthy era, he goes to prison in support of beliefs that aren’t even truly his. Upon release, he spends a weekend with his admiring 10-year-old son and comes face-to-face with his hypocrisy.

In one of my favorites, “A Difficult Phase,” a downsized Israeli journalist –floundering in her life – begins to question her life choices when she meets an attractive widower and his young teenage daughter. “This is what she was good at: being the blank, understanding face across the table; putting people so at ease they revealed the things they didn’t want to share with anyone, the things they wished didn’t exist at all.”

Another story, “The Old World,” focuses on a middle-aged tailor who meets and marries a Ukrainian widow, and travels with her back to her hometown, only to discover that he is a poor substitute for her dead husband. He reflects on his grown daughter who is a “born-again Jew:”

“Maybe in religion, Beth really had discovered a way never to be alone. Maybe I am the lost one, wandering the streets of Kiev, competing with a dead man.”

Other stories are equally well-crafted and psychologically acute: a decorated Israeli solder comes home and suffers a fluke accident, which sets in play some poignant dynamics between him and his brother. A political dissident in Russia discovers that his neglected daughter has written an autobiographical play with himself as a key character. A young American woman and her Israeli husband must face the reality of their marriage, which is “so scary and real it required an entirely different language, new and strange and yet to be invented.”

Psychologically astute, subtlety crafted and haunted, this is a confident and poised debut, which may very well end up on my Top Ten of 2014 list. There is not one mediocre story in this whole remarkable collection. It’s one of the best debut story collections in years.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 14 readers
PUBLISHER: W. W. Norton & Company (February 3, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Molly Antopol
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> EUROPE IN SEPIA by Dubravka Ugresic /2014/europe-in-sepia-by-dubravka-ugresic/ Fri, 21 Feb 2014 13:07:30 +0000 /?p=25745 Book Quote:

“Every day the world we’re living in is increasingly turning into…a circus. Yes, I know, the comparison’s a dull one. It’s what people used to say in ancient B.G., (Before Google). It’s a compete circus! My life has turned into a circus! Politics is a circus! The word ‘circus’ was an analogy for chaos, madness, unbecoming behavior, for events that had gotten out of hand, for life’s more grotesque turns. It’s possible, though, that the word might soon regain currency. Let’s remember P. T. Barnum for a second, father of the circus and American millionaire, and his declaration that ‘no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.’ Barnum’s cynical declaration naturally doesn’t only apply to Americans. The circus is global entertainment.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie  (FEB 21, 2014)

Dubravka Ugresic’s new collection of cultural essays deal, primarily, with “Nostalgia,” the title of her first piece.

Ms. Ugresice is a Croatian, formally a Yugoslavian, who now lives in Amsterdam.

Her essays delve into politics, history, popular US, Yugoslavian and European culture from the 1950’s to the 21st century, as well as her own thoughts and flights of fancy. She is branded a “Yugonostalgnic,” by many of her fellow countrymen and women. This is a derogatory term, a synonym for those who long for the days of the Yugoslavia of yore under the reign of Tito; dinosaurs who look back fondly to the slogan “brotherhood and unity.”

Her “Yugonostalgia” began before the death of Tito, before the unified country of Yugoslavia broke up into six different states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia. “Back then I was haunted by an unnerving premonition that the world around me was about to suddenly vanish.” She wonders if she has developed what psychologists call LAT, or “Low Authoritarianism Syndrome.”

The collection’s first essay, which really captivated me, has the author visiting New York City in 2011. She is searching for Zucotti Park during the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. She asks a stranger, “Excuse me, where’s the ah, revolution.” She wonders if “a long dormant rebel virus” was stirring in her.

She visits Washington Square in New York City’s Greenwich Village and laments the absence of the “dropouts, the refuseniks, the superfluous men and women, the alcoholics and smokers, the homeless, the pickpockets the vagrants, the hustlers, the grumblers grumbling to themselves, the idlers, the losers, the dreamers,” of before…the Washington Square Park as she remembers it.

The author was born in 1949, around the time when Marshall Josip Broz Tito, a statesman, revolutionary and authoritarian head of the post WWII state of Yugoslavia, told Soviet dictator Stalin “NO!” He modeled his economic development plan independently from Moscow, which resulted in a diplomatic escalation followed by a bitter exchange of letters in which Tito affirmed that although his country would follow the examples of the Soviet system, his country would remain separate from Russia and the Eastern Bloc Countries. Ms. Ugresic seems to be having trouble with what the future has brought. She asks herself, “What in her lifetime of civil war, new passports and fractured identities, betrayals, etc., had actually been realized of all the things promised to us by communists’ ideologues.”

She reflects on a post Soviet Union world, “a BG, (Before Google),” world. However, although she paints the past with artificial colors, (which she is very much aware of), she really doesn’t want to turn time back, but is not happy with life in the present. The author quotes Peter Sloterdijk, a German philosopher, cultural theorist TV host and columnist, “Europe no longer loves life. The radiance of historical fulfillment is gone, in its place only exhaustion, the entropic qualities of an aging culture,” a reign of “spiritual nakedness.” Yes, she agrees, “Europe is in decay.”

With a wry, often quirky sense of humor, she does riffs on 21st century Europe – western and eastern. The essays contain comments on the Netherlands, where undocumented immigrants are not wanted. Here Poles are branded as thieves – they are blamed for everything that goes wrong. Even the Polish prostitutes flourish, taking work away from Amsterdam’s ever famous “ladies” who work their trade in the infamous red light district. As far as Hungary goes – they are “anti-Semitic and despise the Roma, (gypsies).” She muses on formerly great Russian literature and Europe’s neglected film industry, where only yesterday directors, i.e., Luis Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Lina Wertmueller, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Goddard, Sergei Eisenstein, Michelangelo Antonioni, etc., created cinematic masterpieces. She even mentions the popularity of aquarium ownership among wealthy young men, to the marginalization of unattractive people.

There are also pieces ranging from her travels to USA’s Midwest and her native Zagreb, from Ireland to Israel. There are lots of personal anecdotes here. Her insights on the people she meets in her travels are perceptive. Like an anthropologist, she analyzes the norms of the times and writes of “Lookism.” ” ‘Lookism’ is a widespread and very powerful prejudice based on a person’s physical appearance.” It is discriminatory. Fat people are targeted as ugly. Even Sak’s Fifth Avenue has closed their plus-size department. Fat people and smokers are “intolerable social evils.”

The “Sepia” from the title refers to the past…to old photographs in sepia.

These essays are passionate, intriguing, and skillfully written. They should appeal to those who are curious about the take on today’s world by a woman who is the product of both a communist regime and the “now” of the 21st century. Highly recommended. (Translated from the Croatian by David Williams.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 1 readers
PUBLISHER: Open Letter Books; Reprint edition (February 18, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dubravka Ugresic
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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