Shaena Lambert

Petra Kelly was one of the founders of the Green Party in Germany. She was famous for her work as an anti-war and social justice activist, as well as for the fatal relationship with the former Bundeswehr general Gert Bastian.

Lambert met Kelly in 1986 in Vancouver at a big walk for peace. She was fascinated by Kelly's enormous agenda and the power to touch the audience with her words which motivated her to take on writing this book.

I must say I was surprised that this novel was written by a Canadian writer who didn't participate in the events depicted in the book. This is because it is so incredibly well written, with a great insight into the minds of the characters with a great feeling for the spirit of the 1980s in Germany. The characters, especially Manfred who narrates the story, are very believable. So much, in fact, that it was easy for me to forget this is a work of fiction.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It reminded me of my university years and days wasted discussing Marcuse and reading Havel and Celan with my '68er professors. The book also shows how the nature of activism changed a lot since the 1980s, often not for the better, to be honest.

Of course, following the theme, the book opens some serious questions about dealing with history, activism, political power, idealism and cognitive dissonance.
But, surprisingly, this book has some great insights about loyalty, family and marriage.
I enjoyed the narrator's life story even more than Petra's.

5 stars.… (más)

Shaena Lam
ber’s Radiance is a book from back in 2007, and I think I probably bought it on the recommendation of the late Kevin from Canada, a friend and blogger sorely missed. It’s a thought-provoking novel, the kind I really like.

The novel traces the story of Keiko, a ‘Hiroshima Maiden’ and her ‘house mother’ Daisy Lawrence, but it’s also a devastating exposé of the way ordinary people are used to serve political purposes, no matter the pain it causes. The Hiroshima Maidens were, in real life, Japanese girls with facial disfigurements caused by the atom bomb, who were brought to America for facial surgery to restore their appearance. Keiko stays with Daisy and her husband Walter, an ‘all-American family’ living in the quiet anonymity of the suburbs – while the Hiroshima Project committee organises the speaking tour that Keiko will undertake after her surgery as a poster girl for the nuclear disarmament movement. This is the period between the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb and also the era of the Cold War: peace activists were urging an international ban on the development of nuclear weapons. But as Daisy soon finds out, Keiko’s calm, polite mask conceals a young woman too traumatised by survivor guilt to share the ambiguous truth of her memories.

Radiance is also a novel about national guilt.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/12/07/radiance-by-shaena-lambert/… (más)

I have been a fan of Shaena Lambert for many years, so opened my advance copy of Oh, My Darling, her new book of stories, expecting pure enjoyment. I was not disappointed, because Lambert's writing gives the reader great pleasure. Few writers use such nuanced and precise language, or have such command over the demanding short story form. I can understand why “The War Between the Men and the Women” was chosen for Best Canadian Stories and Ploughshares magazine, and singled out as a “notable story” by Best American Stories.

Each story in this collection is like a mysterious, slippery fish that is played out on a slender line of plot, reeled in, let out again, then hauled quickly to a silvery finish. Lambert is one of the masters of the short story in Canada and reminds me that short stories are literary in the best sense, an art as well as a craft. Many of the stories in Oh, My Darling are about the interplay between men and women. In one of my favourites, "In Delphi", we engage with the raw isolation at the core of human relationships in prose as fine as E.M. Forster's in Passage to India.… (más)