“Henri Poincaré was a man who longed to believe, a man who was moved by mystery and beauty but a man for whom belief was impossible. He was too much a scientist, ever the investigator in a world bound up in webs of cause and effect that had served him well in every regard save one: that at the hour between dusk and darkness, when the sky slid from deepest cobalt into night, he suspected something large, momentous even, was out there just beyond his reach….”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (NOV 3, 2011)

In Leonard Rosen’s superb mystery, All Cry Chaos, Henri Poincaré, fifty-seven, is a veteran Interpol agent who believes that it is “better to let one criminal go free than to abuse the law and jeopardize the rights of many.” One of the malefactors that Henri tenaciously and successfully tracked down is Stipo Banovic, a Serb accused of ordering and participating in the mass murder of seventy Muslims in Bosnia. A furious Banovic vows to make Poincaré suffer. In a stunning exchange, during which Henri trades invective with the imprisoned criminal, Banovic screams, “Did you once stop to think why a man becomes a killing machine?” He goes on to say, “I will put you in my shoes before I die.”

Such confrontations do Henri no good, especially since he suffers from heart arrhythmia. His wife, Claire, has repeatedly urged her husband to retire to their farm in the Dordogne; she would like him to spend stress-free hours with her, their son, and their beloved grandchildren. Instead, Inspector Poincaré persists in using his experience and uncanny intuition to “anticipate a criminal’s moves as if he were the pursued.”

Poincaré’s next case involves an explosion in an Amsterdam hotel where a thirty-year old mathematician, James Fenster, had been staying prior to delivering a speech to the World Trade Organization. All that is left are the corpse’s charred remains. Who would want to destroy this man of ideas, a gentle and brilliant scholar with no obvious enemies? The search for Fenster’s murderer will lead Henri down many byways, during which he will encounter, among others, a Peruvian activist, a fabulously wealthy mutual fund manager, Fenster’s former fiancée, and a graduate student in mathematics. Most fascinating of all is the possibility that the crime occurred as a result of Fenster’s prodigious mathematical knowledge and wide-ranging imagination.

Nothing is obvious or can be taken for granted in this beautifully constructed and intricate novel. Rosen’s vividly depicted characters have lively discussions that touch on philosophy, economics, psychology, theology, mathematics, and jurisprudence. Passages of deliciously dark humor and vivid descriptive writing enhance All Cry Chaos, a challenging brain-teaser as well as a powerful, literate, and entertaining police procedural. Rosen expresses ideas about family, human rights, morality, and justice that take on added significance in a unsettled world marred by war, financial collapse, political infighting, and lawlessness.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 33 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (September 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Leonard Rosen
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Bibliography:

Interpol Agent Henri Poincaré series:

• All Cry Chaos (September 2011)

“Dad, do you think dogs go to heaven?”

“You mean what will happen to Grandma when she dies?”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn Oct 16, 2011)

George Baxter Henry is no paragon of virtue. In fact, he is a paradigm of vice, with a penchant for lustful young women. His marriage is on the rocks and his fractured family is falling apart. Connor Bowman’s novella after The Last Estate takes us back to the South of France—this time Nice, but with an American protagonist. In this sinfully laugh-out-loud story about a wounded family trying to stitch itself back together, Bowman manages to make the reader care about these cross and querulous individuals who are headed on a grease skid to oblivion.

George is a fifty-one-year-old trial-phobic attorney in Boston. His vitriolic ninety-one-year-old mother-in-law, Muriel, hired a snoop, who captured George in a Kodak moment in flagrante delicto, and now Muriel is trying to convince George’s wife, Pearl, to divorce him. Seventeen-year-old rock musician, Billy, needs dad’s consent to a big record deal offer from Carnivore records, but George won’t do it until Billy’s urine is clean for a month; he snorts cocaine like kids eat Cheerios. Fourteen-year-old daughter, Iska, is researching apples for a book she wants to write, and is on the brink of new discoveries.

George sequesters the family away to a rented chateau in bucolic Nice, hoping to save his marriage, his son, and his finances from ruin. Pearl is open to reconciliation, but Muriel, his nemesis, is determined to interfere. A former screen star of the twenties and thirties, Muriel Hale née Meek is an italicized battle-axe who George derides as “about as meek as a Panzer division.” She never lets anyone forget her averred fame and one-time Oscar nom, flashing celebrity names like rhinestones on an Elvis cape.

George executes his own private rehab for Billy — he locks him in his room, while trying to repair the fault lines in his marriage, which has had a five-year sexual drought. Every step of repair between Pearl and George is a lure for sabotage by Muriel:

“If you’d listened to me all those years ago, you’d have married somebody suitable instead of scraping the barrel for an engagement ring and a time-share in George’s pecker.”

George starts playing boules with some locals he encounters during daily solitary walks, and also meets an Elvis-obsessed French pastry chef with a hot oven, big cupcakes, and porn-star moves. Salvation is laced with cream pie.

George’s perspective on life volleys between mockery and scorn, with a generous dose of self-effacement to lend a measure of vulnerability to his cynicism.

“Children are the single greatest drain on the world’s finances after global warming and oil slick clean-up costs… As far as they’re [children] concerned, it’s win, win, win. They didn’t ask to be born, so you pay for that. You want the best for them, so you pay for that, and best of all, they hate you and you want them to love you, so you pay for that, too. Stick a dunce hat on me and call me Chase Manhattan!”

The avaricious tension between Muriel and George keeps the zingers fresh and lively:

“To get a clear picture of my precious mother-in-law in your head, think Godzilla meets Margaret Thatcher and they have a child.”

As the narrative glides like a combat missile, the reader is installed in George’s personal battle of a lifetime — a self-propelled mission to redeem himself and his family. There’s a bit of a dues ex machina, but it comes with a wink and a wallop that will have you cheering for his redemption.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (August 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Conor Bowman
EXTRAS:	Publisher page on The Redemption of George Baxter
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Last Estate

Bibliography:

• Life and Death and in Between: Stories (2004)
• Wasting By Degress (1998)
• The Last Estate (2008; August 2010 in US)
• The Redemption of George Baxter Henry (2008; August 2011 in US)

“In his mid-forties, he feels he’s come to a pretty good place in his life, and he couldn’t have got there if he hadn’t been able to survive some of his earlier selves, forgiving, maybe, but also forgetting, even erasing. From his present vantage point, it isn’t exactly magnanimity he feels toward the passionate but confused graduate student he’d been twenty years ago. From that time onward he’s been acutely aware of the importance of chance in the affairs of human beings, and he hopes it’s given him a better understanding of people who are down on their own luck. But what he feels toward the person he’d been then is mostly relief that he’s been able to move beyond him.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (AUG 1, 2011)

It’s 1968 and Alan Ripley is a graduate student. He is definitely a man of his era, tuning in, turning on and, to some extent, dropping out. He is attending a party and the posters on the wall are of Dylan, Che and Stokely. “Like the saints in old churches, Alan thinks, the measure of our dreams and aspirations, our doubts about ourselves.” At this party, Alan meets Lily, a true revolutionary who wants to provide guns to oppressed black people.

The problem is how to get the guns. Alan is attracted more to Lily and her drugs than to her politics but he goes along with her as Lily machinates a caper designed to provide weapons to the oppressed. The idea is that some students, along with two ex-cons, will rob a gun store and give all the guns to the oppressed black population. Alan agrees to participate as a watchman. He will be in the car and be a spotter for anything suspicious going on. On the day of the heist, however, Alan feels sick and he ends up in the hospital getting his appendix out. A man named Rory takes Alan’s place. The caper fails as an off-duty policeman sees the suspicious goings on and gunfire erupts. One man is killed and the policeman is injured. Rory gets caught by the police and spends fifteen years in jail. The heist is known as the Lyletown Five, after the five participants.

Despite being caught by the police, Rory never gave them Alan’s name though he did give the police other information including the names of the other participants. Alan has always been thankful that he hasn’t been implicated in this debacle though he is not sure why Rory spared him. He never visits Rory in jail as they really didn’t know each other very well.

Fast forward to 1988, “After Lyletown.” Right after the caper, Alan spent some time in solitude in Vermont and later decided to study law. Alan becomes a successful attorney near Boston. He is a partner in a law firm that represents a housing project and Alan gets to work with both renters and tenants. He has a wife and son and is happy. He plays tennis, has a weekend home in Connecticut and is living the good life. Out of the blue he gets a phone call from Rory. Alan is scared, not knowing what Rory wants. Is it blackmail, money, just catching up, or what? He agrees to meet Rory for lunch.

Rory tells him a bit about his time in jail and informs Alan that the other Lyletown Five, have never been seen or heard from again. There are rumors that one of them died in a car crash and that Lily owns and runs a bakery in Washington. Rory does ask for some money but it’s for a “business venture” and he assures Alan he will pay him back with interest.

The novel examines who we are now and who we were in the past. Which one of our selves is the real one or are all our selves real, past and present? The parts of the book that deal with Alan and Rory are psychologically astute and excellent reading. The book flounders some in the middle when it takes a turn and focuses on Alan’s legal work which is not really all that relevant to the book.

The language is crisp and the dialogue right on. I found myself back in the sixties remembering C.O.R.E., SDS, the Weathermen and other political movements. Images of Timothy Leary popped into my head and I remember the immense allure of “flower power,” trying to make real change in the government and protesting the war in Vietnam. K.C. Frederick gets all of this along with the picture of baby boomers – their paths to the present and their lives in the past.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (July 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	K.C. Frederick
EXTRAS:	Award winning author
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Backward-Facing Man by Don Silver The Color of Night by Madison Smartt Bell

Bibliography:

• Country of Memory (1998)
• The Fourteenth Day (2000)
• Accomplices (2003)
• Inland (2006)
• After Lyletown (July 2011)

“The arid land looks bleak and empty, but it is full of life, both wild and domestic, and – in the gaps between what is native – I have sown yet more life, embellishing the terrain with characters and stories culled from books. I am a grower of stories, I farm them as I would millet, a way of surviving in the world, assuaging hunger and confirming the future. ”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe (JUL 17, 2011)

A “story man” walks from village to village across bare African lands, carrying a heavy book bag over his shoulder, filled with an odd collection of English language classics that visitors gave to him when passing through the villages. The books have opened his mind, like windows into another world: “I have read their books and told their stories very many times. I understand them, have seen the places that made them, seen the lives they want to live…”

Charles Davis’ new novel, Standing at the Crossroads, set most likely in Sudan, is an heart-rending example of superbly imaginative storytelling. It is centred around a gripping and often disturbing survival story of three travelers – man, woman, child – pursued by one of the violent local militias, “The Warriors of God.” Claiming Truth and God to be on their side, they are roaming the countryside, intent on devastating everything and killing everybody who stands in their way. Intimately woven into the action-filled narrative are richly modulated, visually expressive descriptions of the spectacular and highly varied desert landscape. I found myself drawn into Davis’ novel from the first page.

“I dream books in the waking world too, […] walking with the characters from my books, picturing them at my side.” So much so that the narrator introduces himself with “Call me Ishmael,” referring to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. He also loves telling “sea stories,” comparing the hostile immensity of oceans to that of the desert: “the surface of the desert is furrowed like a sheet of iron, each ripple rusted by the fast falling light of the setting sun, the dips filled with lengthening shadows, so it looks to me exactly like I imagine the sea must be, like after line of waves stretching away, the crest capped with a froth of golden light and sparkling air, as if aspiring to become another element altogether…”

En route to his “well of books,” where he hides his books in an abandoned village, Ishmael notices Kate, a white American scholar, traveling alone. Women alone are in even greater danger in this land where bandits and rebel groups are in control. Both escape a deadly attack by the Warriors, and Ishmael, against his better judgment yet committed to his own moral code, accompanies the young woman. Kate is passionate about documenting with her photographs the atrocities she is witnessing in this “undeclared war.” Once the world knows, she argues, governments will act. Ishmael questions her rationale and the wisdom of being seen taking pictures. “Pictures, in any case, preserve nothing because they do not engage the imagination like words. Only the imagination can make things live again…” Two very different world views clash: images against words; activist versus quiet “witness” – both needing to survive.

Through Ishmael’s voice, Davis subtly weaves into the narrative relevant political and philosophical reflections, underscoring the differences between the two protagonists: “Men with guns and horses […] may pretend they are invincible, but at heart they know they are vulnerable. Power is a trick, like community is a trick, like love and charity are tricks, like reading and telling stories and walking them out across the land are tricks, ways of denying death and pretending we can somehow escape. Everyone needs these tricks and it doesn’t matter much what your trick is, so long as it teaches a little human warmth and pity.”

After hiding from their pursuers in another devastated village, a mute young girl attaches herself to them and the trio, in effect, turns out to be more able to deter the hunters than any of them could have achieved alone. They will eventually discover a hidden oasis on the other side of the mountain range… where spirit and body has a chance to recover, where solace and some form of love could grow, and, at least for a while, they feel like having found Paradise … yet, they can hear the guns firing and detect the white flowing gowns of the Men on Horses in the distance…

The author plays with metaphors, allegories and symbolisms in this novel, not only as he imagines his heroes’ paradise. For example, the weight of his books, both literally and metaphorically, afford him strength in the ongoing struggles with his childhood friend, turned vicious enemy, Jemal, the leader of The Warriors of God. Or, hinting at the life-saving, water-giving well that saves the Biblical Ishmael, Davis’ Ishmael hopes that his “well of books” can also save him and his companions. The author’s extraordinary skill to bring the diverse desert landscapes to life, with all their beauty, harshness and fragility to life, I was reminded of J.M.G.’s Desert, set in the deserts of West Africa.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 9 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press; hardcover edition (February 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Friderike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Charles Davis
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

Bibliography:

• Walk On, Bright Boy (2007)
• Walking the Dog (2008)
• Standing at the Crossroads (February 2011)

“He trained his eye on the barren land below, thinking of the concentration of human history here, in such a small corner of the globe—and yet how clean and innocent the desert looked from the air. After a lifetime spent in the urban landscapes of California, he liked this easy legibility of form, the broad and simple sweep of it, and played with the notion that his life here could reflect the same spacious characteristics.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (JAN 27, 2011)

In the period right after the first Gulf War, an uneasiness hung all over Kuwait—its residents forever waiting for Saddam Hussein to strike again. As an American expat in the country for five years around that same time period, author Anastasia Hobbet witnessed this unease first hand. It forms a perfect backdrop for her novel, Small Kingdoms, which tells the story of an assorted set of Kuwaiti and American characters.

One upper-class Kuwaiti family includes Mufeeda, the wife, and her doctor husband, Saaleh. They live in a huge mansion with their kids (who, they worry, are fast becoming too Americanized), Saaleh’s domineering mother and a whole assortment of maids and help. Across the street lives an American expat family—Kit who is a wide-eyed American who is trying to go beyond her humble Oklahoma roots; husband, Jack, who works at the Kuwait branch of an American company and their two children.

At the hospital where Saaleh works is an American doctor—Theo, a recent transplant to the country. Theo takes lessons in Arabic from a Palestinian woman in the country—Hanaan. The two are rebels from their individual cultures in many ways and it is perhaps inevitable that they soon fall in love.

The story that moves this novel forward revolves around the help, usually provided by South Asians. There have already been three cases of severe abuse and death of South Asian maids recently but nobody is paying attention. “…They’re mistreated and yet that fails to move us because we consider them so far beneath us,” says a local of the South Asian workers, “They’re cheap and expendable.”

But then, a similar situation arises close to home. Mufeeda’s cook, Emmanuela, a young immigrant from Goa, India, has been sneaking food and trying to get it through to a severely abused woman who is working next door. Deprived of food and fresh air, this woman is enduring the worst abuse and it is only slowly that word about her situation leaks out. Soon most of the primary characters—especially the women—will play a part in saving this woman from what would be an assuredly miserable fate.

Small Kingdoms succeeds in large part because of the tremendous observational powers of its author. Hobbet’s unerring rendition of even the smallest of details works to create a fascinating portrait of the Kuwaitis for sure, but also of the relationships they have with people outside their immediate circle. Very few authors are able to weave these kinds of precisely observed details effectively into stories (Jhumpa Lahiri is one who readily comes to mind) but Hobbet does so beautifully. In one instance Theo thinks back to his interactions with South Asians in his native California, when he meets an Indian doctor. He notices “the same blunt style he’d noted among newly-arrived Indians in the U.S.: Where do you live? What is your salary?” Hobbet writes. Even this seemingly insignificant detail is a precise capture of the community.

Class and status are important considerations in the society—Hanaan, native to Palestine, is considered a “bidoon” (a person without a state) and Hobbet writes about the class system that exists not just between the rich Kuwaitis and their help but also within the help itself. The driver for example, complains when his task is handed over to the gardener. “But he is just a gardener,” he says.

Especially interesting is the nuance Hobbet paints even the Americans with. To the Kuwaitis, Americans all seem like one big homogenous group: “Perhaps this was the essence of Americans. They could be fine people: sincere, well-educated, and yet very raw,” Mufeeda thinks. Yet, it is obvious that class plays out even internally within the expat community. Kit, who comes from a small community in Oklahoma, finds it difficult to get used to the idea of having someone else do the cooking or the dishes. She also doesn’t readily identify with other American women expats who come from presumably more urban backgrounds. “Everything’s alien to me, even other Americans,” she says.

As the book moves along, Hobbet also shows how many characters must face compromises that pit their cultural values against what they believe is right. The final choice might not always be what the reader (or the character) wants but it’s certainly understandable.

In a final sequence of events, the women in Small Kingdoms act in concert to save the starving Indian maid. In banding together they prove capable of uniting despite their cultural differences. What’s more it’s apparent that these bold acts are as much of a challenge for Kit as they are for Mufeeda. This is the only part of the novel, which I thought strained credulity a bit. Some readers might find it hard to believe that the ever-diffident, conformist Mufeeda would ultimately suddenly garner so much inner strength as to do what she does in the end.

The increasing tension surrounding the maid’s condition and the women’s attempts to free her is tied to a separate accelerating set of events—another strike from Saddam is imminent and the American families are ordered to evacuate. So essentially Kit must take part in this heroic effort as she races against the clock, trying to wrap it all up before she boards a plane for England with her children. This pacing too seems a little forced and eventually a little melodramatic.

In the end though, Small Kingdoms will be treasured for its contribution to literature about a place that is little understood. Hobbet’s enormous powers of observation allow her to weave a tale that is an insightful peek into daily life in Kuwait. The picture she paints with a varied and interesting set of characters is vivid and vibrant. You can almost taste the sand in your mouth.

What’s especially interesting is how much Kit and Mufeeda—women from two radically different cultures—have in common. It is Hobbet’s ability to shine light on their shared humanity that ultimately makes Small Kingdoms a moving read.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 19 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (January 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anastasia Hobbet
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another novel with insight into a Middle East country: In the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz

Bibliography:

• Pleasure of Believing (1997)
• Small Kingdoms (January 2010)

“Everybody has some kind of scar, and I have already explained how I have come to have mine. Lines drawn across my face divide my horizons–mark the end of my childhood and the beginning of another phase–these fractions of my life blur together if I am honest now. ”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (AUG 27, 2010)

This is a short but pungent tale about crime, betrayal, passion, love, and a scar–both real and psychic. How juicy is that? Especially when you blend in the Côtes du Rhône-Villages wine made from the dark-skinned Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Cisault grapes. Throw in a pivotal love affair, a chateau, a virulent father, and an odious priest, and you have the crushing, pressing, and fermenting ingredients of a serious page-turner. The title refers to the legacy of the protagonist–the chateau, estate, and wine cellar he is set to inherit.

In a tiny village at the foot of the Dentelles Mountains, sixteen-year-old Christian Aragon is finishing up his education at the village lycée. The year is 1920, and his brother Eugene has already died in the Great War several years ago. His father (Papa) runs the wine chateau of Montmirail and expects Christian to honor his legacy and enter the family business. His mother has no influence on the racist, violent, and hateful rages of Papa, and Christian is often the beneficiary of undeserved beatings and mental cruelty.

“In the countryside, where the village is the kingdom and the child is the peasant, the father is king. The son is like a granite rock on the edge of a vineyard; his job is to reflect, and his destiny is to remain in that place forever.”

Christian is a headstrong, fearless young man who has experienced loss and deep sorrow. Besides the death of his brother, there was a boy, Couderc, who inflicted a large facial scar on him with a hunting knife. Cicatrice is the French word for scar, and for a time this became Christian’s sobriquet. Coudrec died of TB a year later, and Christian grieves for him. They shared an enigmatic glance the last time they met in the village square, right before he died.

Christian is psychologically advanced for his years; he’s a complex, self-willed, and passionate young man that hails the freedom of the spirit, the self, and the soul.
“I believe most of all in the inherent capacity man and woman possess to change.”
“…to become what we want, and to refuse to continue to be who and what we are if those manifestations do not reflect our own desires.”

Fate brings opportunity and a school trip effects a turning point for Christian. Desire leads to love and consequences, and a crime could bring ruin on Christian’s life and the life of his beloved, Vivienne Pleyben, his geography teacher. To add brimstone to the fire, the Jesuit priest, Father Leterrier, inadvertently learns of Christian and Vivienne’s relationship and tries to turn it into a sordid affair. Letterier is an obsessive fanatic and a hypocrite who is mired in his own secret desires and contradictions. He comes in twice a month to instruct the adolescents on moral welfare and “Holy Purity,” and delivers his sermons with a frightening zeal.

Christian does have a friend, George Phavorin, his father’s foreman, who offers indefatigable loyalty and fatherly love. His character is a striking contrast to Christian’s bully of a father.

The narrative is told by Christian in a solemn style that fits the times and setting. There is a mournful rim, but the tone is blended with the compelling and muscular verve of the protagonist. The final scene is foreshadowed with a hint of danger and a tortured suspense, and the ending is satisfying and messy, but strangely immaculate.

Conor Bowman is an Irish author who spent many summers in France. Like George Moore (1852-1933), he is a largely naturalistic writer that was obviously influenced by the French realist writers, like Émile Zola (1840-1902). However, there is a healthy dose of Romanticism in this tale that offsets the harsh darkness and pervasive pessimism of the former writers. This is his first novel published in the United States. I look forward to his next novel, The Redemption of George Baxter Henry.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (August 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Conor Bowman
EXTRAS:	Publisher’s page on The Last Estate
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another that might be of interest:  No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows

Bibliography:

• Life and Death and in Between: Stories (2004)
• Wasting By Degress (1998)
• The Last Estate (2008; August 2010 in US)
• The Redemption of George Baxter Henry (2008; August 2011 in US)

“It was as if growth had been the country’s vengeful response to Saddam. Spanking new three-story cement mansions sat on lots only meters bigger than their outer walls; all the freeways had been rebuilt; and the Cornice along the Gulf had been redesigned in its entirety, stripped bare of its immediate history as a battleground of the war. And everywhere, litter. It blew with the sand and grit of the city, tracing the fence-lines and thoroughfares, and cluttering the flat, dismal beaches. Children, standing on car seats, always unbelted, threw paper cups and candy wrappers from car windows like confetti, opening their little fists into the hot wind.”

Book Review:

Review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (MAR 7, 2010)

Anastasia Hobbet’s novel about life in Kuwait between Saddam’s invasion of that country and the American invasion of Iraq is both gorgeous in its prose and compelling in its varied perspectives. Kuwait here is a real country, not a geographical footnote to a war, populated by people, both Kuwaiti and not, who navigate the difficult terrain of fear, loyalty, and social conventions. The story follows its characters to the brink of the second war where they, like the country they inhabit, face the changes ahead.

Theo, an American doctor who arrives in Kuwait following the death of his poet father, confounds the Kuwaitis and the Indian doctor for whom he works. Why would he want to work there if he did not have to? Even to the Kuwaitis, the country is a desolate choice for an American. The son of the Indian doctor, Theo’s friend Rajesh, warns that “there’s no more calamitous place on earth than the Middle East,” yet Theo yearns to erase his easy Californian identity for something more poetic: falling in love with a country not his own. When he meets his Arabic tutor, Hanaan, a Palestinian denied Kuwaiti citizenship despite having been spent her entire life there, he is faced with cultural barriers that seem impossible to bridge.

The other American protagonist, Kit, is the wife of an executive assigned to a temporary stint in Kuwait. Like Theo, Kit has recently lost a parent, but, for her, the geographical separation causes her more pain than comfort. Kit finds herself uneasy with the country and its social constructs, and she fears for the safety of her two children as rumors circulate of another attack from Saddam Hussein. At first, Kit is isolated, left mostly alone by her workaholic husband. She finds herself unable to identify with the other wives, who all seem more worldly and adept than she. When she meets her neighbor Mufeeda by accident, she finally glimpses the culture of her host country. Many traditions seem unfathomable to her, while others she finds exhilarating; however, what she learns about the underside of Kuwaiti society shocks her into action.

Kit’s neighbor Mufeeda, a true Kuwait in social standing unlike most of the other characters, is a devout Muslim married to the agnostic Saleh, a doctor and Theo’s colleague. Mufeeda runs her household staff as generously as she can facing the tantrums of her grim mother-in-law. Of all the characters, Mufeeda is the most traditional, a woman of her upbringing and station in life. As much as she hates it at times, she submits to the hierarchy of authority, both within her family and outside. For comfort, she turns to her religion. In one memorable scene, she runs into Kit and the other American women at the market where she finds herself caught between obligatory hospitality and horror at the brash manner of the Americans. Fittingly, she becomes transformed only because, out of an inability to rebel, she is dragged into a situation that confronts her with an ugly truth.

Emmanuella, a maid from India whose entire family depends on her meager salary, works for Mufeeda and, eventually, part-time for Kit. Emmanuella is the most vulnerable of the main characters, as her employers have her passport and can deport her at any moment. She risks everything to help the abused maid next door, and, in the process, finds herself at the mercy of a higher-ranking male servant and Mufeeda’s mother-in-law.

The paths of the characters intersect as the novel progresses, each story touching upon the others. Love, friendship, loyalty, and safety are tested. Theo, especially, makes an excellent guide through the intricacies of Kuwait from an outsider’s perspective, and both Mufeeda and Emmanuella offer what the jacket copy refers to an “Upstairs/Downstairs of the Arab word.” Ironically, given that she seems most modeled on Hobbet’s personal experience, Kit’s character is the least interesting, as her actions and motives are never as complex as the others’. Her naiveté often seems a device used to explain Kuwait to American readers, unnecessary since Hobbet’s descriptive language and other characterizations advance that understanding with ease. By the end, however, Kit is a pivotal character, as her actions propel the resolution for all the others.

Although the individual stories unfold with their own conflicts and outcomes, they share a common theme: challenging the societal norms. Each character faces a point at which he or she risks ostracism or physical danger by following his/her conscience instead of convention. This makes the author’s sensibilities seem typically American, but the novel does not suffer from this perspective; on the contrary, it gets its power from the courage of its characters and its critical dissection of cultural mores.

Perhaps most astonishing in this accomplished novel, Kuwait becomes a place so definite, so well-described that it comes alive on the page. Hobbet’s characters make worthy guides through this country of natives and internationals. Most Americans know Kuwait through images broadcast by CNN during the Gulf War, a country rich in oil but incapable of defending itself. Anastasia Hobbet offers a much more intimate portrait of a country struggling to come to terms with itself.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 19 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (January 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Debbie Lee Wesselmann
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anastasia Hobbet
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another novel with insight into a Middle East country: In the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz

Bibliography:

• Pleasure of Believing (1997)
• Small Kingdoms (January 2010)

Everything is illusion, and I am confident that all is well. – a Tibetan adept

Book Review:

Review by Beth Chariton (JAN 11, 2010)

Francis’s story is a familiar one – she’s a housewife who’s bored in her marriage, unfulfilled as a mother at home, and unsure of her own identity. She’s married to reliable, boring, regular Harry. They live in the suburbs of New York City with their two children, seven-year-old Cathy and three-year-old Bernie. The man she was once so attracted to when they married, has become chubby, clumsy, and pathetic in her eyes.

Francis meets Beat poet, Joseph Pasternak at a wedding. He’s the total opposite of Harry – he’s artsy, philosophical, worldly and poetic, and she’s immediately smitten. She begins to fantasize about him, and they write personal letters to each other almost daily, full of erotic and romantic possibilities. Within a few weeks she’s on her way to Colorado where they begin an illicit, irrational affair. With Joseph, Francis creates her fantasy world where she feels sexy, desirable, living a life that’s passionate, interesting, and way more exciting than her regular life.

Harry is angry and upset by the affair, which Francis does very little to conceal, but he refuses to leave his wife and break up their family. While she’s away with Joseph, Harry tends to the house, the kids, and his job as an engineer. At first, he sleeps on the couch, but then builds himself a hut in the backyard, where he sleeps and works.

Joseph is not a self made man; he has been molded by his common law wife, Arlene Manhunter, a powerful and persuasive woman who is used to getting what she wants, and is relentless in her pursuits. She’s the respected founder of a school of poetry and translation, and she conveniently makes Joseph a Sanskrit professor. She provides him with a lifestyle that any man could want, in the hopes of calming his wandering eye.

When Arlene realizes that Francis might be a real threat, she does everything in her power to separate Joseph from her. She harasses Francis, threatening her by phone, and telling her of Joseph’s other indiscretions, hoping to scare her away, but Francis doesn’t care. When Arlene can no longer control Joseph, and sees he’s used her to get ahead, she disappears, knowing he will be arrested for suspicion of murder. Fearing that she’s next on the list of suspects, Francis begs Harry to let her go to Paris with their daughter, Cathy. He relents after many heated arguments.

Once in Paris, Francis takes on a carefree and bohemian existence, another fantasy world. Like Joseph, Paris is exhilarating to her, and she can’t understand why her daughter doesn’t immediately fall in love with the city. They go to museums and cafes, from hotel to hotel, oblivious to their limited funds. Their time there is extravagant and unrealistic, much like Francis’ affair with Joseph.

After some time in Paris, they realize they’re being watched. Eventually, Cathy and Francis befriend Lewis, the private investigator who’s been sent to follow them. Francis is still in contact with Joseph, who is in prison. But as time passes, the flaws of her relationship with Joseph begin to surface, and she realizes that she’s a long way from home, and the comfortable life that she took for granted. Although she’s suspicious, Francis begins to answer Lewis’ questions, finally exposing the truth – that she was in over her head, caught in a love triangle where she had no control, and that she had nothing to do with the disappearance of Arlene Manhunter.

The book was intricately written, and driven by frustrating characters. At first, I couldn’t find anything to like about Francis – she seemed selfish, insensitive and narcissistic. I couldn’t understand what she saw in Joseph. He saw himself as the victim in all of his failed affairs, couldn’t sustain himself financially, and had no official professional merits that he’d accomplished independently. But yet sensually, many women were drawn to him as a poet and a lover of nature. Harry consistently appeared as a doormat, and I wanted him to put Francis in her place. And Arlene, who was so beautiful, talented and capable, ended up to be no more personally assured than the others in the story. As the story slowly developed, I realized how hard Francis was trying to be someone she never would be, and how saddened and defeated she was by accepting her life and who she had become.

There were points where I almost ran out of patience, waiting to see a glimpse of a redeeming quality in Francis, while Joseph’s surface charm quickly dissipated. I found myself disappointed that Harry didn’t have more self-respect. The ending was depressing, and other than Francis realizing that the affair had to end, and that she had taken her wonderful family life for granted, I couldn’t find any positive outcome for any of the other characters. However, the story was thought provoking, and could certainly inspire a number of interesting and reflective debates. It was definitely geared more towards women, and many will secretly relate to Francis and her personal dilemma.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (August 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Beth Chariton
AMAZON PAGE:	Beat
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Only information I could find on Amy Boaz
EXTRAS:	Another review of BEAT
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	This one makes me think of : Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates Good Morning, Darkness by Ruth Francisco

Bibliography:

• A Richer Dust (March 2008)
• Beat (August 2009)

“Memory is an odd thing. . . There are entire blocks of time, years, that I have but little memory of at all. . .Except for the summer before my sixth birthday. For that summer, I have almost photographic recall of the heat, the voices that surrounded me, the smells, all those incidents, particulars that took place. They changed me.”

Book Review:

Review by Danielle Bullen (SEP 13, 2009)

Looking After Pigeon transports the reader to the Jersey shore in the mid-seventies, with the precocious five-year old Pigeon as narrator and tour guide.

After their father walks out, their mother, Joan, moves Pigeon and her older siblings Robin and Dove to their uncle Edward’s house in an un-named New Jersey beach town.

“I have heard that in the sixties, they spoke of free love and equally free living. But little of it seemed to have rubbed off on our mother.” Order reigns supreme in the house. Their mother is a stickler for rules, and frequently preaches the evils of materialism. Joan gets a job at the local movie theater, determined to stay busy. Later, to the children’s surprise, she brings home a man named Cary who becomes a fixture in the house that summer.

Ten-year-old Robin becomes enchanted with a fortune-teller named Edith. He soon starts to believe that he has the gift, that he can predict the future and sets up shop alongside her, Edith marketing him as the boy wonder. Not everyone shares his enthusiasm, as other family members worry that the woman is only using Robin as a novelty to increase her profit. Robin doesn’t care and spends most days at Edith’s run-down shack.

Sixteen-year old Dove waitresses at Joe Winter’s diner. Like the bird she is named after, Dove is beautiful and delicate. She shakes up the family dynamic when she announces she’s pregnant with her boyfriend Stan’s baby. The news throws the family into a tailspin, as everyone tells Dove how to handle the situation. Complicating matters is the unusually close, flirtatious relationship Dove and her boss have, a relationship that “might make people wonder who the father of her baby is.”

Although the story takes place only thirty-some years ago, these characters occupy a completely different world. Pigeon is frequently left alone when her family goes to work, something that’s unheard of these days. She has a well-cultivated sense of independence. Although she is the youngest, Pigeon acts as a confidante to her brother and sister, who tell her about the escapades with the fortune teller and the pregnancy before any one else. For her part, Pigeon keeps these secrets with a solemnity that belies her age.

Pigeon still has moments that show her true naiveté. Towards the end of the book, she accompanies her uncle Edward into New York for a business day trip. Pigeon sneaks off and tries to find her father, who had recently sent her a postcard from Manhattan. “I did not realize the impossibility of my task–to find an apartment in New York City with no address, to find among all of the people, only my father .”

Reading this novel feels as if you are looking in on a real family instead of a fictional one. Marson’s novel expertly captures the rhythms of everyday life. Her writing flows very easily making the story move along at an effortless clip.

Looking After Pigeon is a unique coming-of-age-story. Even though the reader sees everything filtered through Pigeon’s eyes, it is just as much about Dove’s and Robin’s summer of growing older and wiser. I felt a strong attachment to all the characters and flipped the pages eagerly wanting to discover their fates. This engrossing novel has much to recommend it.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 11 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (July 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Danielle Bullen
AMAZON PAGE:	Looking After Pigeon
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Maud Carol Markson
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More coming of age novels: The Absence of Nectar by Kathy Hepinstall The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle Another mid-1970s book: American Woman by Susan Choi Another New Jersey book: The Cranberry Queen by Kathleen DeMarco

Bibliography:

• Looking After Pigeon (July 2009)