Linda92007's Reading for 2012: Part 2

Currently Reading

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce by Robert Penn Warren
The Vivisector by Patrick White
Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann
A Poet's Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie

Books Read January - June 2012

January
1. Brothers of Gwynedd: The Legend of the First True Prince of Wales by Edith Pargeter – Book 2
2. Ghost: A Novel by Alan Lightman
3. The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
4. The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
5. Slavery By Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon
6. Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent by Ruth Gruber

February
7. The Broken Word by Adam Foulds
8. Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse
9. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
10. The Writer as Migrant by Ha Jin

March
11. The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West
12. Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! by Kenzaburo Oe
13. Troubles by J. G. Farrell
14. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant

April
15. Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
16. Human Chain by Seamus Heaney (poetry)
17. Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O'Driscoll
18. To A Mountain In Tibet by Colin Thubron
19. Fishing the Sloe-Black River by Colum McCann

May
20. The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel by Victor del Arbol
21. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

June
22. Eternity on Hold by Mario Susko (poetry)
23. The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail (poetry)
24. The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk
25. Mentors, Muses & Monsters by Elizabeth Benedict
26. blue has no south by Alex Epstein
27. The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller
28. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Books Read Continued

July
29. The Earth in the Attic by Fady Joudah
30. Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz
31. The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts by J.M.G. Le Clézio
32. Like A Straw Bird It Follows Me, And Other Poems by Ghassan Zaqtan
33. Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz

August
34. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
35. The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing
36. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders
37. The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison
38, 39, 40. Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy by Sigrid Undset: The Wreath, The Wife & The Cross

September
41. A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor
42. Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
43. The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger
44. The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag

October
45. Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville

November
46. The Vivisector by Patrick White
47. Absolution by Patrick Flanery

December
48. The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
49. Notes on Chopin by Andre Gide
50. The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol

Linda - looks like I'm first up to congratulate you on your new thread.

Thanks Paul. But it looks pretty pitiful in comparison to your mammoth numbers!

I am starting a personal challenge to read at least one book by each Nobel Laureate in Literature, assuming an available translation. Since this is supposed to be enjoyable, I won’t impose any deadlines or other rules, and I do expect this to take a number of years, as I will not be reading from this list exclusively. I have decided that the easiest way of tracking is to simply list all of the winners directly on my thread, indicate what I have read, and add as I go along. Books I have already read will count, but I plan to re-read many that were first read years ago (up to 40+!). Making this list has made me realize just how bad my memory is regarding the details of books from the past, but writing LT reviews seems to be helping with this. I will also very likely read multiple books by some authors.

Nobel Laureates in Literature
Books listed are those I have read.

2012 - Mo Yan
2011 - Tomas Tranströmer
2010 - Mario Vargas Llosa: Death in the Andes, The Storyteller, Who Killed Palomino Molero?
2009 - Herta Müller: The Hunger Angel – June 2012
2008 - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio: Desert – 2011, The Round & Other Cold Hard
Facts – July 2012
2007 - Doris Lessing: The Cleft - 2010, The Grass Is Singing - August 2012
2006 - Orhan Pamuk: Snow, The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist – June 2012
2005 - Harold Pinter
2004 - Elfriede Jelinek: The Piano Teacher
2003 - John M. Coetzee: Disgrace, Life & Times of Michael K., Youth: Scenes from
Provincial Life II, Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life
2002 - Imre Kertész: Fatelessness - July 2012
2001 - Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
2000 - Gao Xingjia: Soul Mountain
1999 - Günter Grass: The Tin Drum
1998 - José Saramago: Blindness – I abandoned this three quarters of the way through,
but plan to go back and finish it. The Double, The Cave
1997 - Dario Fo: My First Seven Years (Plus A Few More): A Memoir
1996 - Wislawa Szymborska
1995 - Seamus Heaney: Human Chain – April 2012
1994 - Kenzaburo Oe: Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! – March 2012
1993 - Toni Morrison: Beloved
1992 - Derek Walcott
1991 - Nadine Gordimer: The House Gun, None to Accompany Me, Sport of
Nature, Loot and Other Stories, The Pickup, Get A Life
1990 - Octavio Paz
1989 - Camilo José Cela
1988 - Naguib Mahfouz: Arabian Nights and Days – July 2012
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1986 - Wole Soyinka
1985 - Claude Simon
1984 - Jaroslav Seifert
1983 - William Golding: Lord of the Flies
1982 - Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of
Cholera, News of a Kidnapping
1981 - Elias Canetti
1980 - Czeslaw Milosz

Nobel Laureates in Literature
Books listed are those I have read.

1979 - Odysseus Elytis
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 - Vicente Aleixandre
1976 - Saul Bellow
1975 - Eugenio Montale
1974 - Eyvind Johnson
1974 - Harry Martinson
1973 - Patrick White
1972 - Heinrich Böll: The Safety Net
1971 - Pablo Neruda
1970 - Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago Three, One Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich
1969 - Samuel Beckett
1968 - Yasunari Kawabata: Beauty and Sadness - September 2012
1967 - Miguel Angel Asturias
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1965 - Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre: Nausea
1963 - Giorgos Seferis
1962 - John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, The
Winter of our Discontent
1961 - Ivo Andric
1960 - Saint-John Perse
1959 - Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 - Boris Leonidovich Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago
1957 - Albert Camus: The Stranger, The Plague
1956 - Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 - Halldór Kiljan Laxness
1954 - Ernest Miller Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the
Sea, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms
1953 - Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1952 - François Mauriac
1951 - Pär Fabian Lagerkvist
1950 - Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell
1949 - William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August,
Sanctuary
1948 - Thomas Stearns Eliot: I have read The Wasteland and Prufrock, but do not recall the actual book editions.
1947 - André Paul Guillaume Gide: Notes on Chopin - December 2012
1946 - Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha, Steppenwolf
1945 - Gabriela Mistral
1944 - Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
1940-1943 – No prize awarded.

Nobel Laureates in Literature
Books listed are those I have read.

1939- Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 - Pearl Buck
1937 - Roger Martin du Gard
1936 - Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
1935 - No prize awarded.
1934 - Luigi Pirandello
1933 - Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
1932 - John Galsworthy
1931 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930 - Sinclair Lewis
1929 - Thomas Mann
1928 - Sigrid Undset: Kristin Lavransdatter - August 2012
1927 - Henri Bergson
1926 - Grazia Deledda
1925 - George Bernard Shaw
1924 - Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont
1923 - William Butler Yeats
1922 - Jacinto Benavente
1921 - Anatole France
1920 - Knut Pedersen Hamsun: Pan
1919 - Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler
1918 - No prize awarded.
1917 - Karl Adolph Gjellerup
1917 - Henrik Pontoppidan
1916 - Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam
1915 - Romain Rolland
1914 - No prize awarded.
1913 - Rabindranath Tagore
1912 - Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann
1911 - Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck
1910 - Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse
1909 - Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf
1908 - Rudolf Christoph Eucken
1907 - Rudyard Kipling
1906 - Giosuè Carducci
1905 - Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 - Frédéric Mistral
1904 - José Echegaray y Eizaguirre
1903 - Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson
1902 - Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen
1901 - Sully Prudhomme

Linda- Congrats on the new thread! That is a very cool but daunting list of Nobel Laureates. It looks like I have some serious work to do. LOL.

Thanks Mark. I became a little worried when I realized how many of them I have never heard of. But I have a decent jump on the 1980-2000s, and a few back for the 1940-1970s. Earlier than that looks pretty bleak, with only one book read. I hope I don't have too much trouble finding some of the earlier ones. I may have to learn a few languages to complete this goal!

Oh my, Linda, that is quite a personal challenge. I will be following your progress and applauding your efforts. I am going to emulate Paul's list of one significant book per year for the 20th century and beyond. I want to fill in the many gaps I expect to find. Maybe I'll read some by Nobel winners.

I rather liked Blindness but can understand why you quit reading. Bleak stuff...and I'm still not certain what the cause was or indeed even the purpose of the book.

Wow Linda that is a very intimidating challenge and as I look at the list I can see why some critics say there is a bias against American writers. So many of these authors I've never even heard of. Good idea not to have a deadline so you can just pick and choose your way through the list. I'll be watching with interest.

Thanks for the support, Donna and Bonnie!

>12 Donna828: I think it would be quite difficult to compile such a list, Donna. I know it is beyond my capacity! Funny my reaction to Blindness. I really enjoyed it up to a point. The repetitive descriptions of overflowing toilets was what pushed me over the edge. Since then I have seen the movie, which felt less bleak, and I really do want to go back and finish the book. Have you read the sequel, Seeing?

>13 brenzi: I am myself a bit intimidated, Bonnie. But I have nothing to lose, some great reading to gain, and I have very much enjoyed most of the Nobel winners that I have read so far. I suspect that the further back I go, the more difficult it will become to find books by some of the authors. A good excuse to visit all of the used book stores on our Finger Lakes vacations!

Hi Linda - Wow. I'm impressed with the number you've read so far! The early part of the century looks a bit frightening. Good luck with that! And I didn't realize that Sinclair Lewis had won it. He's one of my favorites.

Linda - I really like the idea of knocking off challenges and all the Nobel winners are certainly a challenge. In terms of books I own and would like to read or reread I think I can join you for a tilt at it. The obscure poets may be difficult but let's see. My planned reads or re-reads will be (from my shelves): Anything I've read the last couple of years I'll give myself a start with - example to 1995.

Vargas Llosa - The Feast of the Goat
Herta Muller - The Appointment - read this year
Le Clezio - Desert
Lessing - The Fifth Child
Pamuk - Snow - read in 2010
Pinter - The Birthday Party
Jelinek - The Piano Teacher
Coetzee - Disgrace
Kertesz - Fatelessness
Naipaul - A Bend in the River
Gao Xingjia - Soul Mountain
Grass - The Tin Drum
Saramago Blindness - read last year
Heaney - District and Circle

>15 DorsVenabili: Good to see you, Kerri! I agree that the early years are quite intimidating, but it remains to be seen how many of those authors are even available in translation. I have never read anything by Sinclair Lewis. What would you recommend as his best?

>16 PaulCranswick: Will you read all of those this year, Paul? Although Kertesz, Naipaul and Pinter are the only ones of those authors that I have not read, several of the other books you list are on my TBR pile. Maybe we will cross reading paths. I also very much want to re-read some Faulkner. Am I correct in recalling that you were planning some of his?

Early Reviewer Book

The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller, translated by Philip Boehm

In her 2009 Nobel Lecture, Herta Müller speaks of objects, gestures and words as the elements that connect us to our existence. For Müller, it is the handkerchief that evokes memories and ties together the periods in her life. It is the handkerchief also that she references in recognition of Oskar Pastior, the poet who was her early collaborator in writing The Hunger Angel and who, based on his own experiences, supplied many of the book’s details of the Soviet labor camps. Unfortunately, Pastior passed away before the book was finished, but the handkerchief and compassion offered him by an elderly Russian woman, live on in the tale of Leopold Auberg, the book’s protagonist.

Leopold is a seventeen-year-old of German ancestry, living in 1945 Romania, when he is deported to the Soviet Union for a five-year term in a labor camp. Conditions in the camp are harsh, the work is physically demanding and dangerous, and the essentials of life are scarce. Workers die, crushed by coal cars, buried alive in cement, drowned in a mortar pit and poisoned by coal alcohol. Precious possessions are sold for salt and sugar, and crumbs of bread are traded in endless hopes of securing a larger portion. The hunger angel is a constant companion, a part of, yet separate from each person, and dictating every aspect of camp life.

… the hunger angel thinks straight, he’s never absent, he doesn’t go away but comes back, he knows his direction and he knows my boundaries, he knows where I come from and what he does to me, he walks to one side with open eyes, he never denies his own existence, he’s disgustingly personal, his sleep is transparent, he’s an expert in orach, sugar, and salt, lice and homesickness, he has water in his belly and in his legs.

As a reader, it is easy to be overcome by the bleakness of the camp conditions. Yet glimpses remain of what it means to be human. There is dignity in the way the workers embrace the routine of camp life and its backbreaking work, and resilience in the forced normality of Saturday night dances that otherwise seem almost grotesque. There is humanity in the unspoken rules that protect the weak, and in the standards of fairness and honesty that are unquestioningly accepted and enforced. And happiness is not fully absent. There are sudden, fragmented moments of ‘mouth happiness’ and ‘head happiness’, as well as the ‘onedroptoomuchhappiness’ that is found in the peaceful relief of death.

Despite its extreme deprivation, the camp becomes Leo’s home, a place of safety, familiarity and even fairness, where he is never alone. “I don’t need a day pass, I have the camp, and the camp has me. All I need is a bunk and Fenya’s bread and my tin bowl…I don’t even need Leo Auberg.” Upon his return to Romania, he suffers from an inability to adjust and the rejection of family members who have assumed him dead and erased his place in their lives. “By staying alive I had betrayed their mourning.” But the worst effect he must endure, the ultimate devastation to the human spirit, for which there is no healing, is his fear of being free.

By now I’ve realized that what’s written on my treasures is THERE I STAY. That the camp let me go home only to create the space it needed to grow inside my head. Since I came back, my treasures no longer have a sign that says HERE I AM or one that says I WAS THERE. What’s actually written on my treasures is: THERE I’M STUCK.

Müller’s writing is spare yet poetic, and her literary technique is wonderful to observe. Color is used to reinforce the sense of desolation, the ubiquitous grayness of cement, mortar and fly ash covering even the white of winter, with only the occasional burst of yellow, pink, green or red as simple reminders that the world is not always this way. The simplicity of the narrative, its short chapters and focus on concrete images and the smallest of daily events, mirrors Leo’s physical and emotional fading. Müller uses the device of revealing her protagonist’s character through his interaction with objects in the environment. In Leopold’s world, objects take on their own personae, developing relationships with him. Words, feelings, hunger and even boredom, become objects to be treasured, taking over for feelings that can no longer be safely felt or expressed.

I taught my homesickness to be dry-eyed a long time ago. Now I’d like it to become ownerless. Then it would no longer see my condition here and wouldn’t ask about my family back home. Then my mind would no longer be home to people, only objects. Then I could simply shove them back and forth across the place where it hurts, the way we shove our feet when we dance the Paloma. Objects may be small or large, and some may be too heavy, but they are finite.

It is not difficult to see why Herta Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Hunger Angel is of archival importance, documenting events that were real, brutal and inhumane, yet have been largely overshadowed in history by the horrors of Nazi Germany. Her writing is brilliant, reflective and full of moments that stand alone in their beauty, as with ”Monstrous tenderness gets tangled in guilt differently from intentional cruelty. More deeply. And for longer.”.

I highly recommend this book. 5 Stars

Oh my, Linda, you make it impossible for me to resist The Hunger Angel. I first read about these forced labor camps in The Invisible Bridge last year. Unbelievable that I knew nothing about this other horror of WWII. I find Leo's story irresistible after reading your quote: "By staying alive I had betrayed their mourning." Thumb from me!

What a wonderful and thoughtful review of The Hunger Angel Linda.

I am very interested in your Nobel authors project. I decided myself when I was relatively new to LT that I wanted to read more of these authors, and last year I had a category in my 11 in 11 challenge dedicated to this. I find it hard to decide whether to focus on reading new authors or delving more deeply into an author's body of work. One problem I have with the Nobel list is so many of the authors write primarily poetry and I find poetry much more intimidating. Here are the results of my focus so far. (bold indicates this was a new author for me)

2012
Orhan Pamuk: Snow
Toni Morrison: Beloved (reread)
John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row
Ivo Andric: The Bridge on the Drina
Eugene O'Neill: A Long Day’s Journey Into Night; Ah, Wilderness

2011
Mario Vargas Llosa: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The War of the End of the World
V.S. Naipaul: A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River
José Saramago: The Elephant’s Journey
Seamus Heaney: Human Chain
Toni Morrison: Sula, Paradise, A Mercy, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye
Nadine Gordimer: July’s People
Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the
Sea (reread), A Moveable Feast

If I were to take this on more systematically (maybe next year or maybe on an ongoing basis) I would probably start with the many books languishing on my shelves.

Vargas Llosa: The Feast of the Goat, In Praise of the Stepmother, The Way to Paradise
LeClezio: The Prospector
Lessing: The Golden Notebook
Coetzee: Disgrace
Naipaul: Half a Life, The Mystic Masseur
Walcott: White Egrets
Saramago: Blindness
Gordimer: Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black
Milosz: Second Space
Mahfouz: Miramar
Marquez: Of Love and Other Demons
Faulkner: A Light in August
Steinbeck: East of Eden, Tortilla Flat, The Winter of Our Discontent, Travels With Charley, The Long Valley
Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, A Farewell to Arms
Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago
Lewis: Babbitt, Cass Timberlane

>19 Donna828: Thanks Donna. I think that Müller is an author that may receive mixed reactions, but based on this book, I personally feel that she is brilliant. I am anxious to read another of her works to see how that impression holds up. Her translator, Philip Boehm, is also no slouch!

I also read The Invisible Bridge last year and had the opportunity to hear Julie Orringer speak. She was very impressive.

Linda- Great review of The Hunger Angel. Lisa, (labs39) also just wrote a glowing review of it as well. I guess, it needs to go on the list, pronto!

BTW- I'm reading a very good NF book called Island of Vice, which you might have some interest in.

Wonderful review of The Hunger Angel which somehow just jumped onto my teetering tower Linda. Like Donna, I first learned about the forced labor camps in The Invisible Bridge last year which took place in Hungary during the WWII years. Her portrayal of them building the road to the Russian border will stay with me forever I think. Muller's book sounds very powerful too. Thumb!

>20 AnneDC: Thanks Anne.

That's a great list of Nobel authors read and to be read, and you have given me ideas for Andric, O'Neill and Lewis, none of whom I have yet read.

I have every intention of re-reading or reading more than one book per author when I find them of interest, which applies to most of the Nobel Laureates I have read so far. If it slows me down in reaching my ultimate goal, well, so be it!

>22 msf59: Thanks Mark. And thanks for the book recommendation. We have several of Edmund Morris' books on Theodore Roosevelt that I have yet to read, but from what I know of him, he is certainly a fascinating individual. I'll have to keep my eye out for this one.

>23 brenzi: Thanks Bonnie. The two books vary greatly in style and approach, but I think you will appreciate Müller's writing. It is interesting to me that fiction has frequently been the vehicle for so much of what I have learned about world history.

Wonderful review of The Hunger Angel, Linda!

Linda- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt might be the best presidential bio I've ever read. It's outstanding. I have still not read the 3rd book in the trilogy.

>26 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl.

>27 msf59: I can believe it, Mark. We saw Edmund Morris speak at the NYS Museum and he was incredibly knowledgeable regarding Roosevelt. You would have loved it.

Linda - great review of The Hunger Angel. I wasn't blown away by The Appointment to be honest but I could see it's merit.

The list I put up was a "tickler" for a new list I'm going to start my next thread with. I will list all the Nobel winners whose books I have and pick one of them to read to do the challenge. I will add slowly to that list until I've tracked down all the winner and completed the challenge. Game on!! I will cheat of course and include as completed those writers I have read in the last few years.

Thanks Paul.

Game on!! It will be great to have your company in this challenge! You will probably leave me in the dust with the speed of your reading and statistical compulsions, but that's okay. I am in no rush and will resist the stirring of my competitive urges! :)

I fully expect to benefit from your recommendations and finesse at tracking down books, since your library and reading are so extensive and you certainly haunt the bookstores. I expect it will be challenging, if even possible, to find translated works by some of the authors. And including those you have already read is not cheating, although I will definitely be doing a good number of re-reads. I hope to someday complete this challenge feeling that I have truly delved into and have a deeper appreciation for these authors.

Linda, I read about your personal Nobel challenge on Paul's thread and came over here to see more about it. I'm very impressed by your reviews and will definitely become a frequent visitor here.

I've been working on reading the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction for several years now and have been thinking about adding Pulitzer Prize biography winners also. That said, I think I need to add more non-American authors into my reading mix and reading from the Nobel list seems a great way to do that. So, if you don't mind, I'd love to join you and Paul in this large and (on my part) probably slow endeavor

Welcome Reba! I love having new visitors. It would be great to have you join in on the challenge of reading from the Nobel Laureates list. It is after all just a personal challenge, so any way you want to approach it works. Reading all of the Pulitzer winners is also quite a challenge. I'll have to look in on your progress with that. Do you have a Pulitzer tracking list posted anywhere?

#17 - Hi Linda - My favorite is Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry is also excellent. There are still several of his novels that I want to read at some point.

#32 - While I am not Reba, I do have an Excel spreadsheet containing several literature prizes that I've put together over the years. If anyone wants it, feel free to send me a PM. It contains shortlist/longlist/finalists when available.

Thanks for the Lewis suggestions, Kerri. And thanks also for your offer on the prize listings. I just sent you a PM.

Lots of exciting news.

My younger stepson and his girlfriend got engaged this weekend! Not a terribly big surprise, as they already own a house together, but still exciting. They are great together and I couldn't ask for a better DIL.

And on the literary front: The NYS Writers Institute does not announce their upcoming season this early, but the talks are often listed well in advance on the UA events calendar. The Fall line-up is looking great. Some highlights so far:

Salgado Masanhao - Brazilian Poet, with translator Alexis Levitin
Junot Diaz - Exciting! Has a new collection of short stories due out in September.
James Mann - political journalist
Dorothy Driver - scholar in South African literature - Really looking forward to this one, followed the next day by:
J.M. Coetzee and Paul Auster - I am so excited about this! A Nobel Laureate!
Ghassan Zaqtan - Palestinian poet and translator and Palestinian-American poet, Fady Joudah
David Quammen - science/natural history writer - another one I am really looking forward to
Joy Harjo - Native American poet with a new memoir
Denis Johnson - presenting his new play "DesMoines"

Tonight we are going to Skidmore College (NYS Summer Writer's Institute) to a reading by Louise Gluck and Caryl Phillips. I am hoping they talk some, rather than just reading. But most of the summer events I have been to were just readings, so we'll see.

That's a great line up, Linda. I'd love to hear about Caryl Phillips talks about, and what he's working on now. I enjoyed Colour Me English, his recent collection of essays, but I didn't like his last novel, In the Falling Snow.

Linda, I once interviewed Joy Harjo when she was coming to our town for a reading, and she was just great. A very warm, thoughtful, wonderful person to talk to. One of the things she said that has always stuck with me is the loss in modern culture of the joys of just doing something because you love it, with no expectations of being an expert. She was specifically talking about singing, and how in the "old days" families would gather around the piano and sing together, and it didn't matter that whoever was playing wasn't a classically trained concert pianist, and it didn't matter that the singers didn't take vocal lessons. It was just about the joys of community and shared experience. Now many people would rather listen to professionally produced music than try to produce their own. She felt it was a loss to lose that joy of making music on our own, no matter how imperfect.

I'll have to look for her new memoir.

Yes, we used to know how to entertain ourselves, and more important, IMO, to participate instead of sit like lumps in the audience.

>36 kidzdoc: Hi Darryl. As I suspected, most of last night was reading, with little introduction and no questions. But Caryl Phillips did share a little about his work in progress, a novel based on Emily Bronte, for which he acknowledges not having yet accomplished much actual writing. However, he has started to write something else that he thinks may later connect back into the Bronte effort and this is what he read from - the story of a young man looking back from the present to growing up in the 1960-70's, with a largely absent single mother and a dysfunctional childhood. He weaves references to music from the era into the story and chapter headings, but in a fairly understated manner. I did enjoy his reading, which ended at a cliffhanger with the sudden disappearance of his protagonist's younger brother.

They were selling a few of Phillips' novels at the talk, but did not have Colour Me English. I'll check the library for that.

Louise Gluck read a new long poem which I think she said was entitled "The White Series". I enjoyed it but did not find Gluck's voice to project as well as Phillip's. I know that poetry is supposed to be read aloud, but I get so much more out of it when I can see the words on the page. I recently bought The Seven Ages, which will be my first reading of her work.

>37 rosalita: Hi Julia. Thanks so much for sharing your interview experience. It's always more interesting to attend a talk having a sense of the author. I have not read any of Harjo's poetry, but will try to do that this summer. Amazon shows her memoir as coming out on July 9th: Crazy Brave: A Memoir. It will be interesting to see if she speaks on the same themes as she did with you.

>38 ffortsa: we used to know how to entertain ourselves You are so right, Judy. I especially worry about kids whose every waking moment is programmed. What happened to spending a summer afternoon lying in the grass watching ants, butterflies and cloud formations? But those were also the days when mothers could stay home and kids could safely roam the neighborhood. We have lost something precious in our society.

I guess this makes me sound really old.

>40 Linda92007: Linda, you don't sound old! I'm in my mid-30s and feel exactly the same way. My niece and nephew (7 and 3) have very little time to just play, and it makes me sad...

Thanks for the reassurance, Katie!

blue has no south by Alex Epstein, translated by Becka Maria McKay

3 Stars

Alex Epstein is an Israeli who emigrated from Russia as a child, and who writes in Hebrew. He is known as a master of the miniature story and was the 2003 recipient of Israel’s Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature. blue has no south is a slim volume of 131 short-short stories, ranging in length from a few sentences to a few pages, with most just a paragraph or two.

Some of Epstein’s miniature creations are stories with glimpses of protagonists and plot. Others seem more accurately described as prose poems, being simply moments or thoughts, captured in a photograph of words. Epstein’s pieces address a diversity of subjects, with common themes including the myths of Odysseus, Penelope, Theseus and Sisyphus converted to modern settings, Kafka and Jung, time machines and time travel, chess, suicide and earth-bound angels with broken wings.

I picked this volume off the shelves at the library out of curiosity regarding the short-short story genre and ended up basically enjoying this quirky little book. Epstein clearly has a talent for creating a mental image that tells a story in just a few lines. Where his effort fell somewhat short for me, however, was in the failure of many of the stories to elicit an emotional connection, although several, such as “The Chase”, did leave me feeling disturbed. The following are a few examples from Epstein’s shorter pieces.

“A Wayward Text Message”

From time to time, even though all the batteries were supposed to be sent to another warehouse, a short tune bursts from one of the phones in the used cell phone warehouse. The sleepy guard locates the defiant device and erases another love message that will go unclaimed.

“The Crippled Angel”

The crippled angel sat in a wheelchair especially designed for winged creatures of his kind and chain-smoked. From his usual spot in the plaza in front of the museum he observed with concern those coming in. He tried to guess which of them intended to hang himself in one of the exhibition halls.

“Gloss”

Their love story ended many years ago. He still writes her name as a solution to crossword puzzle clues of suitable length. Two words: four letters and five letters. Once, at a bus stop, he thinks he recognizes her waiting for a bus across the street. His hand trembles when he takes his new book of crossword puzzles from his bag. He opens it to the first one and quickly finds a suitable clue. Even afterward, on the bus, the trembling in his hand does not stop. The tip of the pencil breaks against the bright paper.

“The Chase”

On one of the previous mornings, soaked to the bone, we saw a tall, stooping angel dragging his wings in the mud. From time to time he stopped, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and spitting to the side. We fired on him but he didn’t fall. Not one of us remembers exactly when this chase began (in the newspapers piling up in the roadhouses, it is written that this was already the tenth year). And also today, according to the clouds bursting with gray in the heavens, it’s about to rain. The tracker stops suddenly, pointing at the footprints on the ground. “Now,” he remarks in amazement, “now we are chasing after a blind man with a stick.” We pick up the pace.

#135 - Hi Linda - Congrats on your stepson's engagement! And that is a truly amazing schedule of talks. I'm horribly jealous. I would especially love to attend the Junot Diaz and the Coetzee/Paul Auster one, especially since I believe that Coetzee is apparently a bit of a recluse.

Hi Kerri. I have read the same things about Coetzee - that he did not attend either of his Booker Prize award ceremonies (although he did attend his Nobel ceremony), is reclusive, very quiet, rarely laughs. I am assuming that he will be making the rounds in the States, but it would be interesting to know what is motivating that. I have not seen anything yet about a new book coming out. And I'm also puzzling over his pairing with Paul Auster.

The one thing I did note that seems consistent with Coetzee's reputation is the format of the talk, which is usually an informal Q&A style afternoon seminar and a more formal reading/presentation in the evening. In this case, both are being presented as 'J.M. Coetzee in conversation with Paul Auster'. I am wondering if that means he won't be taking direct questions from the audience in the afternoon. But I would not be able to work up the courage to ask a question of a Nobel Laureate anyway!

Linda - You're right the pairing of Auster and Coetzee does seem a tad off-kilter. Should be fascinating though. btw. I've managed two "new" Nobel winners already this month!

Hi Paul. I have been following your progress on your thread. At this rate, you'll be done with the Nobel list in no time flat! I am reading three at the moment: almost finished with one, the second is an author I have read before, and the third is 1000+ pages, so it may take awhile. But sooner or later you have to tackle the behemoths!

#45 - I've only read one Paul Auster novel (In the Country of Last Things), but I agree it does seem like an unlikely pairing. I look forward to your report.

Just wanted to let you know that I will be able to be on LT only intermittently through the rest of the month. I didn't want anyone to think I was being rude if I am slow in responding, or that I am ignoring your threads if I don't visit very often. But I am still hoping to get some reading done and maybe even some reviews written, as I have fallen behind!

Morning Linda- Thanks for the heads-up! Enjoy your Sunday and good luck with your reading schedule.

Hi Linda--

I love the idea of reading through the Nobelists--I'm making my list now, so I can join in! :) Like you, I will probably have trouble with some of the poets.

You asked above about books by Sinclair Lewis. I read many of his books when I was young, and I've wanted to reread one or two for awhile. I have a sneaking suspicion that they may not have held up well. However, as to recommendations, the one I found most interesting was Elmer Gantry (which was made into an excellent movie starring Bert Lancaster). It's about the 1920's/30's equivalent of a televangelist. I think that's the one I would reread. Main Street seems to be his most-read novel, and it's another one I'd be willing to reread (if I could find the time).

Enjoy your time away from LT--and congratulations on your stepson's forthcoming marriage.

Hi Linda, you've convinced me to start the Nobel winners by reading the ones that I own. Of course I'm starting with Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz and I'll go on from there. I hope you're doing something fun with your away from LT time. I'm jealous, of course, of all the great writers you're going to see. I will be seeing Russell Banks in October and Julia Alvarez in April and Nuruddin Farah at some point but I can't remember when. Alexandra Fuller will be speaking too but I can't decide whether or not I'll go to see her.

I'm back from vacationing in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, where they have some really fabulous used bookstores. I bought quite a few books, as you can see below, many of which will count towards my reading of Nobel Laureates. Unfortunately, I didn't get much reading done, as I was surrounded by non-readers and boisterous children. After reading the same pages over and over and over, I usually just gave up and went kayaking or walking. I will be on LT for only a few days this week and then off again for a few more days, but hopefully not long.

>50 msf59: Hi Mark!

>51 arubabookwoman:, 52 I'm excited that you will join me in reading the Nobel Laureates, Deborah and Bonnie. As you will see from the list below, I'm having fun just collecting their books!

Deborah, I saw Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here in a store window, but was in the middle of checking out, so I didn't explore it. Is that one of his that you have read?

Bonnie, I recently finished Mahfouz's Arabian Nights and Days and loved it - it's on the pile for a review - so I bought a few more of his books. The author talks you have lined up sound great. I think Alexandra Fuller would be very interesting. I read Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight years ago and enjoyed it. Are these talks being held at SUNY Buffalo?

My vacation purchases are listed below. Haven't yet found the touchstones for a few of them. The three history-related books were my partner's selections. He obviously showed more restraint than I did.

The Bridge On the Drina by Ivo Andric
Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
My Century by Gunter Grass
Notebooks 1935-1951 by Albert Camus
Collected Stories by William Trevor
New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant by The Moosewood Collective
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist by Myriam Anissimov
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates 1973-1982 by Carol Joyce Oates
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel
In Light of India by Octavio Paz
The Other Voice by Octavio Paz
In the Pond by Ha Jin
Collected Poems 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott
Turbulence: A Novel by Jia Pingwa
No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Earwitness - Fifty Characters by Elias Canetti
The Vivisector by Patrick White
A Dry White Season by Andre Brink
Detective Story by Imre Kertesz
Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata
The Mirage: A Modern Arabic Novel by Naguib Mahfouz
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
A Writer’s Reality by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
Joseph Brant 1743-1807 - Man of Two Worlds by Isabel Thompson Kelsay
Hitler’s Generals edited by Corelli Barnett
Saki: The Fiction: Complete and Unabridged by H. H. Munro Saki
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces Sixth Edition - Volume 2
The Norton Anthology of English Literature Sixth Edition - Volume 2

That's quite a haul. The only one I would warn you about is the Eco. I read it a few years ago and it was quite a struggle.

35 books and plenty of Nobel ammunition.
Lovely to see Deborah is going to join us in the quest!

>55 ffortsa: Hi Judy. A struggle in the sense of challenging, or as in 'why am I reading this'? I have read The Name of the Rose and own a few others of his.

>56 PaulCranswick: Yes, two more questers, Paul. Deborah and Bonnie!

I found it a struggle in both senses. It was a book club choice a couple of years ago, and most of us found it difficult without sufficient reward. There is a sort of payoff at the end, but it's a long way to get there.

53: Hi Linda, my reading time has been seriously compromised this month too. I just want to hand visitors a book and say, "Let's read!" At least you fit in a very productive book shopping expedition.

I am following the Nobel questors with interest. You have started another LT craze, Linda! I think I'll go as far as tagging my books "Nobel," but have no plans to make another list. Palace Walk is on the agenda for later this week.

Catch ya later!

>58 ffortsa: Hmmm. Maybe I'll tackle one of Eco's others first.

>59 Donna828: Hi Donna. I just want to hand visitors a book and say, "Let's read!" That's a good idea. I wonder if I could make that work with this crowd next year. It might at least calm the kids down for a bit. But it probably won't work, since at least one of them told me very directly that she never reads books (how can that be?) and the others looked at me a bit strangely when I named some of the books I bought.

Whoa that is quite a list Linda. Hmmm, I wonder what ever happened to my copy of Norton's Anthology of English Literature from college?? It's got to be around here somewhere...

Re the non-reader - did she give a reason? I'm always curious as to why people don't read.

>61 brenzi: Bonnie, I can never resist anthologies, as they are such fun for just browsng. Mine is the 6th edition. The touchstone connects to the 7th edition, which seems to have added some great new authors. I wonder how much the content has changed since your college days.

>62 ffortsa: She did not give a reason, Judy, and I didn't ask. She's a lovely person, but not someone who is very interested in intellectual pursuits. Although I know many very intelligent people who are not big pleasure readers, perhaps because they just never developed that habit when they were younger.

Fabulous haul, Linda!

#54 - Hi Linda - Wow! What a list! And the Norton Anthology brings back memories. Not a great one to carry around though, that's for sure : )

Hi Darryl and Kerri!

I'm finally back and anxious to get caught up on the threads and with my reviews, although both may take awhile.

Mentors, Muses & Monsters by Elizabeth Benedict

In compiling this volume, Elizabeth Benedict invited writers of fiction to submit personal essays about the people, books and experiences that have had a defining impact on their development. The result is a gathering of essays from thirty authors who are as diverse as the influences of which they write.

This is a collection of intimate, revealing glimpses into the experiences that have encouraged writers, mostly young, to persevere. There is nothing glamorous in their contributions, just ordinariness and honesty. Some cite the impact of direct interactions with teachers, parents, friends, editors and fellow writers. Others describe more distant influences, as in a book read or a body of work by a revered author. The authors of these essays seem exceptional, not for their early displays of talent, but for the resolve with which they set forth on their writing paths, their determination nurtured by even the smallest moments of encouragement.

Elizabeth Benedict has a senior tutorial with Elizabeth Hardwick, whose mentorship seems to be largely contained in just a few words: “I think you can do the work,” she said kindly, “but you have to decide if you want such a hard life.”

As a graduate student, Robert Boyers receives a note from an editor in response to a poetry submission, saying ”You’re obviously very bright, …but I would recommend that you try something else.” That advice would discourage him from writing fiction until when nearly fifty, he is strongly affected by the work of the Italian writer, Natalia Ginzburg.

The Dutch author, Arnon Grunberg, credits his writing career to having dropped out of high school after locking himself in the bathroom for hours to convince his parents of his seriousness. An aptitude test rates him as having below average language skills and an attempt to develop an acting career quickly fizzles, before a friendship formed in ballet class leads him finally to literature and writing.

Sigrid Nunez lived for a time with her boyfriend in the home of his mother, Susan Sontag, from whom she learned the 'rules' of writing and life.

In her mid-20s, Cheryl Strayed receives an unexpected letter of encouragement from Alice Munro and dreams of meeting her, yet when the opportunity presents, is unable to form the words and simply walks away.

Despite having been an editor and a publisher, Joyce Carol Oates’ husband rarely read her work, whether published or in-progress. No one is comfortable when others perceive, or believe they can perceive, the wellsprings of their “art” amid the unremarkable detritus of life.

Contained within the essays are also little gems of writing advice gleaned from teachers and mentors.

Annie Dillard’s advice to Alexander Chee:

Remember that adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb. Verbs control when something is happening in the mind of the reader.

You can invent the details that don’t matter…At the edges. You cannot invent the details that matter.

Gordon Lish in a workshop attended by Lily Tuck:

“Your first sentence ordains your world; do not be trivial or petty. Nothing is worse than being trivial... As Joy Williams once said, ’The world makes everything taste like chicken. ‘ Own your first sentence, make it yours…Each sentence gives rise to the next sentence, each sentence owes everything to its predecessor. Reveal how elastic a sentence can be. Get into the habit of recasting sentences. Learn how to open up a sentence...

Do not proclaim….Instead, show the world being made…The more you feel the object you are rendering, the less you have to explain.…

You should never make claims of feelings in the first person if there is no irony….

Fiction…must create an argument, if not it is facile. Nothing is earned. Engage in an activity that is difficult for yourself and not merely an I reporting on itself.”

The worthiness of these essays lies in the simple pleasure of being introduced to a new author or learning more about a familiar one, while gaining a sense of them as individuals. I would recommend this collection to readers who are fascinated by 'the person behind the author’.

3 ½ Stars

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

I have struggled with my reactions to this book, of which there are already many fine reviews posted.

Changez is a young Pakistani from a prominent family of professionals who are experiencing economic decline in their homeland. He comes to America to attend Princeton, secures lucrative employment with a valuation firm, and falls in love with Erica, a beautiful but troubled woman. With the advent of 9/11, his discomfort grows with both his adopted lifestyle and the ethics of his profession. Distracted by world events and struggling with his failure to establish an enduring romantic relationship with Erica, Changez ceases to function at work, with the result that he is fired and returns to Pakistan, where he becomes an academic and activist. The last few chapters are particularly chilling in their ambiguity, as the reader begins to question who Changez really is, or what he has become.

I found Hamid’s use of first person monologue to be extremely effective, driving the tension of the narrative and eliciting a range of emotional reactions that build as the story nears its conclusion. Hamid is also very effective in blending the personal, social and political influences that intermingle and blur in the life of a young adult struggling to establish relationships and identity. What is truly and deeply believed versus what is simply a response to confusing life events? Changez feels resentment and shame over the declining fortunes of his homeland and finds the United States an easy culprit for blame. While he both embraces and benefits from an Americanized lifestyle, he also feels anger at himself for having succumbed to such. And although he experiences real incidents of discrimination following 9/11, the changes in his circumstances seem driven more by his own personal decisions than by any external force or doctrine. Consistent with the universal striving to belong, Changez’s return to his homeland and retreat into a radical philosophy become the seemingly inevitable solution.

When I first finished this book, I felt engaged but disappointed, as I thought that the author had failed to convincingly support the reasons for Changez’s change of attitude towards America, which is after all, my country. I did not feel that he had shown us events sufficiently compelling to bring a man of sensitive intellect full circle to becoming a dangerous fundamentalist. But with more thought, I found something else of import that transcends the global politics of the 9/11 tragedy - that to the extent that attitudes are shaped heavily by emotional reactions, we may all hold within us the potential for becoming “fundamentalist”, given the right confluence of life events.

Mohsin Hamid is a talented author and his intended message is one that I continue to find somewhat elusive. But this affecting book will linger in my thoughts just the same.

4 stars

68: Wow, Linda, you make me want to run upstairs and rescue my copy of The Reluctant Fundamentalist off the TBR shelf right now. Let's see...another 100 pages in Palace Walk and close to 250 pages in Truman. Nope, Changez is just going to have to wait his turn! But I did love the honesty of your review, and I will read the book soon.

Oh Linda, that's a terrific review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I had a similar reaction but the book stayed with me for a long time and even now, several months later, the reminder of the book stirs deep feelings. I think that's the sign of a very effective narrative.

#67 and 68 - Hi Linda - Two excellent reviews! I actually have The Reluctant Fundamentalist on my Kindle, but had completely forgotten about it. I'd like to get to it at some point. It definitely seems thought-provoking.

Thanks everyone!

>69 Donna828: Donna, it is a quick read and I think you will be glad that you dug it off the TBR pile. This book made me feel "uncomfortable", but in a strangely undefinable way.

>70 brenzi: Bonnie, this is a book that I wish I had read with a book club or library discussion (even though I have never attended one), as I would really liked to have had someone to discuss it with. Or better yet, I'd love to attend an author talk with Hamid!

>71 DorsVenabili: Kerri, I picked it up somewhat randomly, also on my Kindle - I think it was on sale recently? And it was not at all what I was expecting.

Excellent review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Linda. I agree 100% with your assessment of it.

engaged but disappointed,

That would sum up the book for me too Linda - it was good but somehow I was left feeling it could have been better still.

>73 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl!

>74 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul. The more I thought about it, the more I saw Hamil's message as being on several levels, which ultimately brought me to a greater appreciation of the book. I am still mulling it over in my mind and feeling conflicted about the story, which says to me that he is a very skillful writer who likely accomplished his purpose.

Hmmm...maybe I'll suggest The Reluctant Fundamentalist to my book group. They have been complaining about reading lengthy books lately! I appreciate books that make me think. I liked what the Booker committee based their choices on: "a text has to reveal more, the more often you read it". TRF sounds like that kind of book.

Great idea, Donna. It is a quick read and bound to generate interesting discussion, and I would expect some diverse opinions. I would love to hear how your book group reacted.

Linda- Great review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist! It looks like one I'll keep an eye out for. I just started a NNF title, Empire of the Summer Moon and it looks to be another winner, at least in the early going.

Thanks Mark. Empire of the Summer Moon does indeed look very interesting. I recently learned that I have one Blackfoot Indian in my genealogy, four or five generations back. I would love to be able to learn more about her, but so far am hitting dead-ends.

Stay tuned, I am just about to post a review of a wonderful short story collection! This is one you really need to read.

The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts by J. M. G. Le Clézio, translated by C. Dickson

In this masterful collection of eleven short stories, J.M.G. Le Clézio explores the lives of those who subsist on the margins of society, the victims of poverty, crime, age and the disintegration of family and tradition. Described as being set largely in the French Riviera region, against its unseen backdrop of affluence, these stories seem to exist in the harsh space between traditional culture and the modern world.

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, Le Clézio was described by the Nobel Committee as an “…explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization”. There is a subtle brutality to the lives of Le Clézio’s characters, a feeling that society has ceased to protect them, no longer offering sanctuary or sustenance. We see them in moments of extreme vulnerability, but without knowing how they have arrived there. Their tales unfold with an intense realism, through finely wrought landscapes interwoven with vividly rendered thoughts and memories.

Moloch is a compelling story of distrust and resiliency. Young, pregnant and fearful of the authorities, Liana awaits the delivery of her child while living isolated in a mobile home with only a wolf dog for company. The most chilling moment in this collection is seen through the eyes of the wolf dog, ravaged by hunger and left alone in the mobile home with the newborn.

In The Escapee, a prison escapee employs the survival lessons of his family’s shepherding culture as he flees to the mountains. His thirst, hunger and fatigue elicit memories of tending sheep with his brother and evading soldiers with his fugitive uncle, until an encounter with a young boy brings both rescue and betrayal. I found the tone of this story to be somewhat reminiscent of Le Clezio’s excellent novel, Desert.

In Yondaland, a young girl finds solace in an abandoned theatre that faces the ocean, where she soaks up the energy of sun and sea, to be carried back to her hospitalized mother. But the building is slated for demolition and she awaits the wrecking ball from her perch under the pointed arch recess of a window, desperate to save her one remaining place of happiness.

The destructive forces of time and progress converge in Villa Aurora, as a young man returns to the site of childhood memories, a neglected villa overrun by feral cats and home to a reclusive, mysterious woman. Expecting to relive the magic of his memories, he finds only an elderly woman living alone in fear, silence and loneliness.

The title story, The Round is a simple, yet powerful tale of youth seeking risk and excitement, trying to fill an inescapable emptiness. Two young women make a round of the downtown streets at high-speed on mopeds, intending to commit a petty theft, with devastating consequences.

Although choosing to write in French, Le Clézio was raised in a bilingual, English-French household and was introduced to English literature at a young age. Knowing this makes it all the more disappointing that so few of his works are readily available in English translation. Le Clézio is a brilliant writer who deserves to be more widely read. Literate and accessible, lucid and eloquent, these stories are dense and absorbing in their expressive power. I highly recommend this outstanding collection.

5 Stars

That does indeed sound like a good collection Linda. I certainly don't think of the French Riviera and "the lives of those who subsist on the margins of society." That one went straight onto my WL. (well, you know, what with the 5 stars and all)

Thanks Bonnie. If you haven't already read it, I would also recommend his novel Desert.

Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies

This is not Naguib Mahfouz’s most well known work, but I found it a captivating introduction to a Nobel Laureate whose other novels are now high on my must read list.

Beginning where the classic One Thousand and One Nights ends, Shahrzad has concluded the stories she tells to the violent, bloodthirsty sultan, Shahriyar, in hopes of extending her life. Dandan, her father and the sultan’s vizier, is exultant to learn that the Shahriyar has decided to keep Shahrzad as his wife, as she has both given him a son and brought him a new awareness of his past evil deeds and a desire to more closely align himself with goodness.

Yet even as the sultan seeks to atone for his past deeds, the residents of his medieval Islamic city struggle with the greed and corruption of its most prominent citizens and government officials, leading to widespread social unrest. This is the story of a society where genies act as forces of both good and evil, and transgressions or even suspicion of such are treated harshly, often through public beheading. It follows the fates of a quick succession of characters, set in motion when the merchant, Sanaan al-Gamali, falls afoul of the genie Qumqam, who orders him to kill the governor of the quarter or incur an unknown punishment. Sanaan’s grasp on reality and moral fortitude deteriorating, he rapes and murders a girl and is beheaded. The chief of police, Gamasa al-Bulti, is the next to encounter a genie, when he accidentally frees Singam, who rewards him after also being beheaded, by granting him a new life as Abdullah the porter. The men of the city gather to discuss the events of the day at the Café of the Emirs, and one after another they are caught in the web of two mischievously evil genies, Zarmabaha and Sakhrabout. The sultan’s nocturnal wanderings, exploits of men who associate with a loose but married woman, romantic matches, a cap of invisibility, the unjust execution of Aladdin, and the return of Sinbad from his voyages all add to the fast moving and beautifully written narrative.

As one would expect from these magical fables, moral lessons abound. They are, however, utterly confounded by classic questions of whether the end justifies the means. ‘Good’ genies manipulate men to perform evil acts in order to put an end to the corruption of government officials, while ‘evil’ genies manipulate men just for the fun of it. But despite its representation of humankind as greedy and weak, I found this to be primarily a work of optimism. Each man is free to decide for himself how he will respond to the demands of the genies. Even the sultan, known for his brutality and mistrusted by his own wife, chooses to seek salvation. Abandoning his throne and family, he becomes the bridegroom of the queen in a mythical land inhabited only by women, where mortal time does not exist. But he too falls prey to weakness and one day, unable to resist the temptation of a forbidden door, finds himself back in the desert with Abdullah the porter, who offers him a place to dwell and this enigmatic advice.

“I give you the words of a man of experience, who said: ‘It is an indication of truth’s jealousy that it has not made for anyone a path to it, and that it has not deprived anyone of the hope of attaining it, and it has left people running in the deserts of perplexity and drowning in the seas of doubt; and he who thinks that he has attained it, it dissociates itself from, and he who thinks that he has dissociated himself from it has lost his way. Thus there is no attaining it and no avoiding it- it is inescapable.’”

This is a charming and engaging tale. Although I suspect that Mahfouz may have incorporated satirical elements related to modern day Egypt, my knowledge of that country and its history is not sufficient to have detected them. Read it as an entertaining adventure or search for something deeper. Either way, it is wonderful.

4 Stars

Just taking a moment to assess my progress with reading Nobel Laureates. During July, I added two that were new to me (Naguib Mahfouz and Imre Kertesz) and revisited a third (J.M.G. Le Clezio). I am currently reading books by two Laureates (Sigrid Undset and Doris Lessing), only one of whom I have not previously read. So I am at a total of completed reads by 30 of the 108 winners. Although I have a long ways to go, I am greatly enjoying this venture, finding both challenging and pleasurable books along the way, and more than likely some new favorite authors with many works to explore.

And another source of pleasure - I have been indulging in some book buying lately, with quite a few on my Kindle that I have yet to catalog. Those Kindle purchases are very insidious things! I have also been eyeing the summer sale at NYRB and will probably end up buying several of the special sets, which contain books I have learned of through LT reviews (of course!).

Linda, do you have a link to the NYRB summer sale? I tried the website, but no joy.

Hi Judy. I am signed up for email alerts from NYRB. Try this.

http://www.nybooks.com/books/summersale/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYRB+...

Also, if you go in on the main site and click the black BOOKS button on the top right, it will take you to a page where the sale is listed second under Announcements. 40% off the featured sets or 25% on single titles. Enjoy!

#83 - Hi Linda - Another excellent review! This sounds good, but I'll probably try to read The Palace Walk and the rest of that trilogy first.

Also, I felt similarly at a loss when recently reading Illywhacker, because my knowledge of Australian history was insufficient. However, like you with this one, I was still able to enjoy it on another level.

Thanks Kerri. Illywhacker looks interesting, if a bit strange. I wonder how I missed that on your thread.

Linda, you continue to read and review the most engaging books. Your thread is dangerous to me, but I will continue to visit here. ;-) I will not be visiting the link you posted to the NYRB sale, however. Must be strong!

Hi Donna. I look forward to your visits and your thread is a bit dangerous itself!

What a fabulous review of the Mahfouz book Linda! I'm currently completely taken up with Palace of Desire, Book 2 in The Cairo Trilogy, so I can appreciate your delight in this Nobel Laureate. Arabian Nights and Days is now on my WL.

Thanks Bonnie. It's always nice to discover new authors that you love and find that they have many more books still to explore!

Fatelessness by Imre Kertész, translated by Tim Wilkinson

”At all events, in any place, even a concentration camp, one gets stuck into a new thing with good intentions, at least that was my experience; for the time being it was sufficient to become a good prisoner, the rest was in the hands of the future….”

There are any numbers of excellent, fictionalized accounts of life in the Nazi concentration camps, but this semi-autobiographical novel by the Hungarian writer and Nobel Laureate, Imre Kertész, is very different from others I have read.

György Köves is a Hungarian Jew who at the age of fourteen is taken off a bus in Budapest and transported to Auschwitz. Despite his father having already been sent to a labor camp, György does not strongly identify as Jewish and does not experience this as a particularly distressing turn of events. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, although not yet understanding what is actually happening, he heeds the frantically whispered exhortations of a prisoner, presents himself as sixteen and capable of work, and thus avoids extermination in the gas chambers.

Over the year that follows, György survives as if in a fog of denial, seeming never to fully grasp the dire nature of his imprisonment and adapting to each hardship and change as if it were a natural event. After only three days at Auschwitz, he is moved to Buchenwald and from there to the Zeitz work camp, where he is paired with a seasoned prisoner who acts as a guardian, conveying the knowledge and skills necessary for survival. But the harsh conditions at Zeitz gradually lead to György’s mental and physical deterioration, and when no longer useful as a worker, he is returned to Buchenwald. There he is inexplicably pulled from a pile of bodies thought to be dead or beyond saving, is hospitalized and receives surprisingly humane treatment for his wounds, before being suddenly liberated by the Allies.

This novel focuses very directly on György’s individual experience, with relatively few secondary characters introduced and little extraneous description of camp conditions. Told in the first person in precise, detached language, György’s narration is unsettling: self-absorbed, devoid of fear, and accepting to a degree that only an adolescent, oblivious to his own mortality, could be. On the initial train transport, he finds himself intrigued by the names of the German towns and feels fortunate to have been on the earlier, less crowded transport, separated from the infants and very elderly. At Auschwitz, he sees himself as a ”sort of guest in captivity” and experiences the camp as “That boredom, together with that strange anticipation”. He admires the efficiency of the German soldiers and their sense of order, and views the deprivations that he experiences as natural, almost reasonable within the context of the camps. He is also the beneficiary of great luck, and the occasional kind treatment and glimpses of sympathy demonstrated by his Nazi overseers are notable.

György’s arrival home following liberation arouses a confusion of emotions, including frustration with those who cannot comprehend his views and an expression of feeling hatred towards everyone. Yet despite this previously unvoiced sentiment, he does not rail against his fate and refuses to confirm the hell and atrocities of the camps. Instead he speaks of how he has come to understood his experiences only gradually, step-by-step, with the help of time.

By the time one has passed a given step, put it behind one, the next one is already there. By the time one knows everything, one has already understood it all. And while one is coming to understand everything, a person does not remain idle: he is already attending to his new business, living, acting, moving, carrying out each new demand at each stage. Were it not for that sequencing in time, and were the entire knowledge to crash in upon a person on the spot, at one fell swoop, it might well be that neither one’s brain nor one’s heart would cope with it….

In a perplexing conversation with a well-meaning uncle, György becomes angry, unable to accept the notion of fate. “Why did they not wish to acknowledge that if there is such a thing as fate, then freedom is not possible? If on the other hand-…if there is such a thing as freedom, then there is no fate;…that is to say, then we ourselves are fate….” Accepting that his experience was fated would denigrate his own free will and ability to connect his past with his future. Yet by choosing to instead believe in freedom, or "fatelessness", he asserts complicity, however guiltless, on the part of the victims, as "...it was not quite true that the thing “came about”; we had gone along with it too."

I struggled with the author's presentation of these ideas, introduced abruptly in the final chapter and in my opinion, not fully supported by the preceding narrative. Himself a camp survivor, Kertész challenges the prevailing preconceptions of how an individual experienced the camps and asserts the uncomfortable notion that the victims themselves contributed to their "fate" through their own cooperation. I am not certain that I will ever fully comprehend his viewpoints, but he has certainly forced me out of my comfort zone.

4 ½ Stars

Linda - I also plan to read this one very soon. Tremendous review and it has me anticipating the book with above average expectations.

Thanks Paul. I will very much look forward to your thoughts on the book. Kertesz forces his reader to confront some very uncomfortable notions. I think the worth of reading his work is not in whether you agree with or fully understand his viewpoint, but in whether he makes you think more deeply about some very important issues.

Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

If you are reading this, I would strongly recommend that you also consider the many fine and highly positive reviews that have been posted of this Orange Prize long-listed book. I just do not fully agree, but won’t belabor the point beyond a few brief comments. Although I found this novel to be skillfully written, populated by interesting characters and an entertaining enough read, its underlying premise struck me as formulaic.

***Spoiler Alert*** From the beginning, the role of Harriet as unreliable narrator, the foil of a mischievous, disturbed child, and elements of the plot reminded me very strongly of Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger. It seemed obvious early on in the book where things were headed. But due to the author’s ability to build tension, I resisted this foreshadowing and instead waited for the unexpected twist that I was sure would come, but never did.

I ultimately both enjoyed and was disappointed by this book.

3 Stars

Morning Linda- It looks like I haven't been by in awhile. I LOVED your review of Fatelessness. Sounds powerful. Sorry you didn't love Gillespie and I. It seems to be an LT fav and I've had it high on my WL.

Thanks Mark. You have had a good excuse, being so busy with very well-deserved vacations. But it's good to have you back. I missed your visits!

It is probably a good thing that we don't all love the same books. Makes for greater variety to consider. I do think Jane Harris is a skilled writer and I would read her again.

Speaking of books we don't love, I am about halfway through Tenth of December: Stories and definitely not loving it. If it wasn't an ER book that I need to review, I would donate it somewhere immediately! But maybe it's just me and I'll be curious to see what you and others who received it think.

What a terrific review of Fatelessness Linda which souNds like such a powerful book. Straight to my WL with it. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy Gillespie and I more. Sometimes, the more you hear about a book from people who loved it, the harder it is for the book to live up to expectations. It's one of the reasons I try to get to new books before they get on a particular roll. Oh well, you've done some terrific reading this year so once in awhile you're bound to come upon a disappointing read.

Thanks Bonnie. Fatelessness is powerful and I don't think that you will regret reading it.

You have a point about book expectations. I think I tend to be the opposite from you, as I rarely read books when they first come out, although I'm not really sure why. Wolf Hall and Matterhorn (and ER books, of course) are the two exceptions that I can recall in recent years and I did love them both, but I am sure I would love them even now on a re-read.

Linda - I am probably with you in being amongst the second wave of readers in the group when it comes to new releases. Mainly because I have far too many on the shelves already but also because some of the titles don't get here until everybody else has read them.
Have a lovely weekend.

For having trouble getting the newer titles, you still seem to do pretty well with your book purchases, Paul! I hope you also have a great weekend.

Hi Linda - Great review of Fatelessness. I just put it on the wishlist.

Sorry you weren't thrilled with Gillespie and I. It's one I'd like to get to this year, but I have heard mixed reviews.

Thanks Kerri. Many whose opinions I deeply respect loved Gillespie and I. Even though I didn't think it was great, I didn't think it was awful either. Go for it!

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing

It is by the failure and misfits of a civilization that one can best judge its weaknesses.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Doris Lessing’s first novel opens as it ends, with Mary Turner, a white Rhodesian farmer’s wife, found dead at the hands of her black houseboy, Moses. The story that follows is a powerful portrayal of failed hopes and disintegration of the human spirit, within the societal tyranny of rural, white-dominated southern African.

Mary is an independent, 30 year old, single woman who leads a contented, productive life in a South African town, until she becomes aware that her friends are gossiping about her spinster status. Having no true desire to marry but yielding to this social pressure, she meets and impulsively weds Dick Turner, an honest, hard-working, yet unsuccessful farmer. Her life changes overnight as she moves to his farm in Ngesi, Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), exchanging her comfortable life for one of extreme poverty, isolation and boredom in the veld, reminiscent of her childhood with a bitter, ineffectual mother and alcoholic father. Mary does not love her husband, feels repulsed by him, resents his unwillingness to have children, and is angered by his succession of failed farming experiments. Dick loves his wife and his farm, yet struggles to cope with Mary’s constant criticism and harsh treatment of their native workers.

Mary is extremely racist and drives houseboy after houseboy away with her dominating impatience, the power of the master-servant relationship satisfying a deep anger and need for control. But Moses is different from her other houseboys. Intelligent, willful and powerful, he gradually insinuates himself into Mary’s life, forming an ambiguous bond fraught with vague sexual tensions and a perversion of the white-black power relationship that is for Mary at the same time enticing, humiliating and terrifying.

Lessing is skillful in bringing to life the atmosphere of a poor African farm, while subtly interweaving the manner in which this unforgiving, harsh society is repressive of both blacks and whites. I could see the drabness of the farmhouse, and feel the heat and heavy emptiness of Mary’s idle days. But the full power of this novel is found in the intimacy and depth with which Lessing draws her characters.

Her portrayal of Mary’s disintegration is written with a realism that is palpable. With every page, I could feel Mary’s hope draining away, culminating in her confused obsession with a black man to whom she is attracted, yet fears and abhors. Dick Turner is practical, accepting and uncomplicated, his determination fading into resignation as he is dragged down in the spiral of his wife’s emotional deterioration. Yet neither husband nor wife can escape the suffocating dependency that binds them to their marriage.

Charlie Slatter and Tony Marston are archetypal for the period and place of late colonial African society. Slatter is the prosperous white farmer whose relationship with his natives is defined by the motto ”You shall not mind killing if it is necessary.” He seeks to benefit from the Turners’ tragedy, yet cannot tolerate Dick’s failures and is obligated to rescue him, as a poor British white upsets the social order of superiority. The young, decent Marston, recently arrived from England, is endowed with an enlightened racial attitude that seems unlikely to survive the world that he has entered.

The most inscrutable of Lessing’s protagonists is Moses, his thoughts and emotions unknown to us, consistent with a society where blacks are felt to be less than human and their inner lives not worthy of consideration. Is he driven by deep-seated resentment, anger and revenge, or by feelings of loss and betrayal?

There is barely a bright moment in this book. Devastatingly bleak, it is nonetheless brilliant in revealing layers of failed relationships – personal, social, racial and societal – through the experience of one ill-fated woman. Although I have read only one other work by Doris Lessing, I am left imagining that this, her first, may be her best. I highly recommend this novel by the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

5 Stars

Excellent review, Linda. Really interesting. I have a couple of Lessing's books on my TBR shelves but this is not one of them.

Oh wow Linda, 5 stars is pretty hard to resist. I've read nothing by Lessing and, frankly, I've heard nothing very good about her, but this is the one book by her that I do want to read.


Her portrayal of Mary’s disintegration is written with a realism that is palpable. With every page, I could feel Mary’s hope draining away, culminating in her confused obsession with a black man to whom she is attracted, yet fears and abhors. Dick Turner is practical, accepting and uncomplicated, his determination fading into resignation as he is dragged down in the spiral of his wife’s emotional deterioration. Yet neither husband nor wife can escape the suffocating dependency that binds them to their marriage.

That is an incredibly powerful statement. Thumb for your review.

Thanks Katie and Bonnie! The only other book by Lessing that I have read is The Cleft: A Novel and I was not that impressed, to be honest. This was her first book and the only one I was really interested in reading. I am so glad I did, but I am not anxious to seek out more, as her later writing seems to have taken a different path. I'd rather associate her with this excellent book than be disappointed by her other works, if that makes any sense.

Your excellent review of The Grass is Singing brought the book back to me forcefully. Somehow I can never associate the title with the story, but at the same time, the story itself is indelible. Thanks.

Thanks Judy. I think it is a lovely title, actually, although at first I also didn't see the association. But it comes from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. My edition excerpted the following, which does seem to convey the same atmosphere as the novel.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, above the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico, co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over the Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder

- T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Outstanding review of The Grass Is Singing, Linda. It's a timely one for me as well, given the discussion of Doris Lessing that was taking place on my thread earlier this week. A well earned thumb for your review, and another book to add to my wish list.

Thanks Darryl! I have no reservations about recommending this book.

Uh-oh, The Cleft is one of hers that I have!

Linda- Excellent review of The Grass Is Singing. I was not familiar with the book or the author. Now I am. Thanks!

> 113 Katie, over on my Club Read thread there have been some very favorable comments about The Golden Notebook, The Fifth Child and its sequel, and her semi-autobiographical Children of Violence series of 5 books starting with Martha Quest. Are any of these on your TBR shelves?

I actually started out the week feeling that I had probably read the best Lessing had to offer, and based on reading The Cleft: A Novel, was not too interested in pursuing her further. Now I am ending the week with up to nine of her books on my wishlist. That's what LT does to me. I will never, ever be able to read all of the books that I would like to, but I just keep adding to the list and the purchases anyway!

>114 msf59: Thanks Mark!

In addition to The Cleft, I have Mara and Dann which looked quite interesting. I picked up both for a song on BookCloseouts.com so no harm, no foul if I end up not loving them.

Great review of The Grass is Singing . Thumb from me. I have heard of Doris Lessing but that is about all. Now I may look out for the book that you 've reviewed.

Thanks Deb!

#105 - Excellent review, Linda! I was wildly impressed with this one as well. Now I just have to find the other Doris Lessing novels that match its quality. The Good Terrorist was pretty dreadful, but there must be more good stuff out there.

Thanks Kerri. I recently came across Lessing's African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe as a library e-book. I think I may read that before taking on more of her fiction.

Stopping by to have a chuckle with you! As far as the LT " Oracle" says about The Absent One and The Keeper of Lost Causes, I tried it out for both of the books, and it said for both of the books that I was "unlikely to enjoy " either one of the books, and in fact I enjoyed them both very much. There is real reliability for you are far as the LT Oracle goes! LOL!

Linda, thank you for that lovely review of The Grass is Singing and the excerpt from The Wasteland with the quote. This one is definitely going on the wish list. It seems like I've owned The Golden Notebook forever, but it hasn't called out to me...yet.

>121 vancouverdeb: Hi Deb. Did the Oracle say that you were unlikely to enjoy them even after you entered your four star ratings? Every time the Oracle is mentioned, I get a mental picture of the Wizard (of Oz) behind the curtain! :)

>122 Donna828: Thanks Donna. The Grass is Singing is an excellent book and I hope you will read it. Just pick a time when you can handle bleakness. I tend to prefer my books to be dark, but I actually had to stop reading this one mid-way for a few days because Mary's mental deterioration felt so visceral.

This reading experience has nearly convinced me that I should only request ER books by authors that I already know.



Tenth of December by George Saunders
Early Reviewers Book

George Saunders’ latest collection is an uneven assortment of nine short stories, a number of which have been previously published in The New Yorker. The recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and Guggenheim Fellowships, Saunders may be most widely known as a satirical writer. Unfortunately, despite these lofty credentials and the positive reviews by other members, I found little of interest in these stories.

In the opening piece, Victory Lap, a teenage boy witnesses the abduction of a neighbor girl and struggles against his controlling parents’ teachings in deciding whether to intervene, while the victim suffers in the aftermath from surprisingly astute nightmares. Home is the story of a war veteran struggling to adjust and reconnect within the strained relationships of his family. The fates of a young boy and a suicidal cancer patient cross unexpectedly by a wooded, frozen pond, in the title story, Tenth of December.

Saunders’ style left me with the impression of an author who was trying too hard to be relevant and edgy. His overuse of italics, parentheses, braces, and the phrase “etc. etc.” was particularly annoying and distracting. Many of his characters were shallow and unlikable, and the plot lines were often predictable. In Escape From Spiderhead, a participant in government testing of designer chemicals that can control mood and behavior, finds himself in the position of determining whether another will receive a potentially lethal substance. The protagonist of Al Roosten, an out of shape, middle-aged man, fails to show “moral courage” after causing a crippled girl to miss an important appointment through his childish behavior at a charity auction. In My Chivalric Fiasco, an actor at a medieval theme park, while under the influence of a chemical substance given to enhance his improvisation, publicly reveals the affair of a married co-worker and his boss.

This collection was my introduction to George Saunders and I would not have bothered to finish it had it not been an Early Reviewers Book. Others seem to enjoy and admire him, but I will definitely not be reading this author again.

2 Stars

It's about time you had a book that I would not be forced to add to my teetering tower Linda;-) I don't care how many people admire him, this is one book I won't be reading.

So your tower is safe for the moment, Bonnie. But be warned - I intend to only read great books for the rest of the year!

Sorry to see that the latest one didn't match up to expectations. Your views on The Grass is Singing certainly mirrored my own Linda as I don't think Doris Lessing ever matched that effort. Have a lovely weekend.

Hi Paul. Given Lessing's prolific body of work, it is frustrating to think that her first was her best and such an excellent one at that! I hope you also enjoy your weekend.

A Time To Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Patrick Leigh Fermor’s interest in monastic life began with a 1950s stay in a French monastery that he sought as a quiet, inexpensive place in which to write. This short volume focuses on his visits to the French religious communities of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle, Solesmes and La Grande Trappe, and the abandoned Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia in Turkey, combining an overview of their history with his own experiences and observations of monastic life.

Through much of history, the monasteries of Europe have reflected the turmoil of the broader society, not always having served as places of calm contemplation. Fermor touches on their extensive history of being repeatedly destroyed, buildings and libraries emptied out, rebuilt and reinstated - their peace assaulted by invaders, fire, revolutions, political favors and legislation. The invasion of the Normans, the Hundred Years War, Napoleon’s armies, the French Revolution and the allied bombers of WWII all contributed to instances of their physical destruction, but political forces were equally as devastating. In the 1500s, courtiers who were never monks, but who were rewarded by appointments as commendatory abbots, ravaged the resources of abbeys and priories. Monasteries were emptied by the French Revolution’s abolishment of all religious communities and again by the Waldeck-Rousseau government’s 1901 anti-monastic legislation. In between each event, the monastic orders returned and rebuilt.

By comparison, little is known of the history of the Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia, a long-abandoned site of early Christian coenobitic life. Carved into cones of volcanic rock are dozens of churches, brightly painted, decorated by frescoes, and complete with the features of classical cathedral architecture – arches, columns, domes, narthex, apse and basilica. The many hermitages nearby give a clear indication of an abundantly populated, although simple communal life.

Life at each monastery, as described by Fermor, follows a prescribed schedule of hours, activities and religious observances. While many contemplative orders exist within the overall structure of the Catholic Church, their focus and purposes vary greatly. The Benedictines focus on worship and prayer, and have played an important role over the centuries in preserving literature and the humanities. At the Benedictine Abbey of St. Wandrille De Fontanelle, guests mixed with the monks at meals and religious services, but were required to observe periods of silence and restricted from interaction with individuals without the Abbott’s permission. The monks spent 3.5-4 hours each day in church, with additional time devoted to reading, private prayer and meditation. Fermor’s impressions were of a balanced, gentle and erudite community, holding a deep respect for the order to which their lives are devoted, and guided by an abiding belief in the importance of prayer.

In contrast, the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, more commonly known as Trappists, followed a strict routine of long days that began at 1-2 a.m. and included 7 hours in church, hard manual labor with no leisure or recreation, primitive living conditions, strict discipline and nearly absolute silence. At La Grande Trappe, guests were fully separated from the monks, allowed only distant observation and no direct interaction except with a few members of the upper hierarchy. Other than a few superiors, those who sing the offices, and commands given to farm animals, the rule of silence was nearly absolute, with a special nonverbal language having evolved to provide for necessary communications. The average monk or lay-brother spent his entire career speaking only within the confessional or in spiritual consultation with the Abbott. The monks were required to publicly accuse each other and penances were of a primitive nature. Fermor observed that their lives were ones of “humble and completely unintellectual simplicity”, with every moment dedicated to God and reflecting the concept of vicarious penance where “they seek, by taking the sins of others on to their own shoulders, to lighten the burden of mankind.”

Fermor’s adaptation to life as a monastic guest was revealing of the extreme dissimilarities between a life of seclusion and silence and the outside world of chaos and noise. At first he experienced depression and sleep problems, gradually progressing to a sense of freedom and peace, as his tiredness dissipated and his desire to talk faded. While the conditions he encountered at St. Wandrille and Solesmes were comfortable in comparison to the austerity of La Grande Trappe, at each monastery his adjustment followed roughly the same course, ending with feelings of quiet and calm.

I found this book to be a fascinating and beautifully written introduction to the nature of monastic life, as viewed by an outsider. The introduction by Karen Armstrong, a religious scholar and prior member of a religious order, and the author’s own introduction and postscript add a broader context to the extreme nature of the monastic life and those who seek to renounce secular life. It is unfortunate that Fermor’s description of the monks’ daily routines and personal views is unavoidably sparse, being constrained by the structure and rules of the monasteries themselves. My only criticism is that in most of the few instances where the direct words of the monks are cited, they are in Latin or French, without interpretive footnotes. While my limited proficiency was sufficient for a basic sense of meaning, I would have appreciated a more nuanced understanding.

4 Stars

Outstanding review of A Time to Keep Silence, Linda. Onto the wish list it goes.

Having just read The Beautiful Mystery, I found your review of A Time to Keep Silence interesting. I'm going to add it to a list for a sometime read! I suspect I'll have to ILL it.

>130 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. I think you will find it interesting. It is a quick read that left me wanting to learn more. I am definitely going to follow this up with some of Fermor's better known works.

>131 thornton37814: Nice to see you here, Lori! It's interesting how we can make connections between and enjoy books that are of completely different genres, but share similar themes or settings.

Excellent review of A Time to Keep Silence Linda. I have one of Fermor's books here, A Time of Gifts that I've been meaning to get to. Guess I'll have to add this one to the teetering tower.

Thanks Bonnie. I am always thrilled to become acquainted with a new-to-me writer of excellent travel narratives and fortunately, Fermor has written quite a few. I think you will enjoy him.

Linda, I've always been fascinated and sometimes envious of those who live the monastic life. A Time to Keep Silence is going on the wishlist. If you haven't read it, you would probably enjoy Karen Armstrong's memoir about life in a convent, Through the Narrow Gate.

I have A Time of Gifts on my Kindle, and I'll plan to read it early next year, then read A Time to Keep Silence afterward.

>135 Donna828: I will definitely look for Through the Narrow Gate, Donna. Thanks for mentioning it. Karen Armstrong wrote a very interesting and insightful introduction to A Time to Keep Silence, in which she mentioned her time in the convent.

>136 kidzdoc: I also have A Time for Gifts, as well as Between the Woods and the Water. This weekend I saw Fermor's book on his travels in the Caribbean and was tempted to buy it, but made myself resist...for the time being!

We spent last weekend visiting my stepson in NYC. It was a great time, filled with museums, a play, bookstores, good food and a great deal of walking. I came home with a few blisters, a head cold and three books. I don't know why we don't make it down more often.

A visit to the Guggenheim Museum was somewhat disappointing, as the museum was only half open, the spiral ramps being closed in preparation for the upcoming Picasso Black and White exhibit. But having never been there and not having much time anyway, we decided to try it. The exhibitions we saw were items from the permanent Thannhauser Collection, the paintings of Kandinsky, and the photography of Rineke Dijkstra. The last was my favorite, being a collection of photographs and video portraiture, primarily of adolescents and young adults, including studies of a young man who has joined the French Foreign Legion, young mothers who have just given birth, and bullfighters direct from the ring. Unusual but very striking.
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/rineke-dijkstra-a-retrosp...

From there, we visited the International Center for Photography, whose current exhibit is Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life. It is a wide-ranging and powerful exhibit, with a lot of detail to take in, and might best have been seen over several visits.
http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions

We also saw the National Theatre of Great Britain production of War Horse at Lincoln Center. The play itself was pretty light stuff, being a children’s story about the British Cavalry in WWI. What was truly outstanding about this play was the incredible puppetry, created by the South African Handspring Puppet Company. The puppets were life-sized representations of horses, a goose, and a few birds. The two lead horses were each operated by three persons, one under the hind quarters, one under the shoulders and one standing outside at the head. While the horses themselves were very obviously mechanical structures and the puppeteers visible to the audience, their presence faded as they skillfully brought the horses to life, replicating their natural movements, breathing and reactions. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

And of course, what would a trip to NYC be without a few bookstores, and a stop at the main Brooklyn Public Library for a bit of browsing. Despite stops at The Strand and several neighborhood bookstores, I was not anxious to add weight to my luggage and managed to keep my purchases to a minimum. We also quite by accident stumbled across the Brooklyn Literary Festival, where unfortunately, we did not have nearly enough time to visit all of the booths, nor did we see any of the author presentations. Had I known ahead of time, we would have planned our time differently.

All told, I only personally purchased three books, although my partner and stepson together added five more that will be available for borrowing. Here are mine:

Wandering Star by J.M.G. Le Clezio – from The Strand
Scenes from Provincial Life by J.M. Coetzee – from The Strand
The Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog - from the ICP

I am trying to get caught up with reviews. First up is the easiest one - the perfect summer read. I was in the mood for a good mystery when a friend passed her copy of this book on to me.



The Skull Mantra by Eliot Patttison

Eliot Pattison’s Edgar Award-winning book is the first in a series of mysteries set in modern day Tibet, following its incorporation as an entity under the People’s Republic of China. The story takes place in the high Himalayas, to where Shan Tao Yun, a former Chinese police inspector, has been banished for a “political” offense and imprisoned as a member of the People’s 404th Construction Brigade, made up primarily of Buddhist monks whose monastery has been destroyed. The mystery begins when their work gang finds a decapitated body on a high mountain road and the district administrator recruits Shan Tao Yun to investigate.

I found this to be a great read on multiple levels. It is a complex mystery that held my interest and kept me guessing until the end. Adding to its appeal is the author’s skill at weaving throughout details of the Tibetan setting and culture, Buddhist practices, and the effects of the contemporary struggle between the Chinese and Tibetans upon the region’s residents and cultural artifacts. Although clearly falling within the mystery genre, it also conveys the significance of the Tibetans’ struggle to retain their culture and beliefs. Upon finishing the book, I could not help but feel that any loss of Tibetan traditions will be a loss to the entire world. I plan to follow up, not only with the other books in this series, but also with Pattison’s own suggestions, made in an Author's Note, for further reading on the modern Tibetan experience.

4 Stars

That sounds like a great NYC weekend, Linda. I'm eager to see the Picasso exhibit at the Guggenheim when I return to the area during Thanksgiving week. I was going to go to the ICP exhibition on Tuesday, but the friend I was planning to see wasn't available. The puppetry from War Horse looked interesting, but I decided not to see it when I was in London earlier this month; maybe I should have. Nice book mini-haul; I haven't read Wandering Star yet, and I do want to read Scenes from Provincial Life.

It's too bad you missed seeing the ICP exhibit this trip, Darryl, but maybe you will have the chance on your Thanksgiving trip. I'll be interested in your thoughts on the Picasso exhibit also. I won't get around to reading Scenes from Provincial Life right away, but J.M. Coetzee is speaking here in a few weeks and I am very excited!

Linda, let me know the next time you're in town. Jim (Magicians_Nephew) and I would love to meet.

Linda - stopping by to wallow in your superb reviews and to wish you a wonderful weekend.

>142 ffortsa: I would love that, Judy. We don't get down to NYC nearly as much as we should, considering that it is only a 2 1/2 - 3 hour train ride. I think it had actually been two years before this last trip. But I think we should rectify that. I saw that Darryl was asking about interest in a meet-up in NYC around Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, family plans would prevent our attending. Does anyone ever come to Albany?

>143 PaulCranswick: Happy Saturday to you, Paul!

Hi Linda, your weekend in NYC sounds absolutely delightful. Thank you for the museum links which I will love further exploring. The Skull Mantra sounds very good and I am adding it to my teetering tower even though I already have too many series.

Morning Linda- Hope your weekend went well. I had The Skull Mantra on my long-list for September but it got squeezed out. I've been wanting to read this one for a couple years now.

Good to see you both, Bonnie and Mark. The Skull Mantra certainly isn't high literature, but I really enjoyed it, as much for the details of Tibet and Buddhist beliefs as for the story itself. It would be a good choice when you're just looking for a break from all the heavy stuff. At least that's how I tend to treat mysteries.

Hi Linda - I stopped by to read your wonderful reviews with my coffee this morning. The Skull Mantra seems about my speed right now, so I'll put that one on the wish list. Have a lovely Sunday!

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata

Oki Toshio is a 54 year old, successful novelist who leaves his wife and children at home and embarks on a visit to Kyoto, presumably for the purpose of hearing the temple bells ring in the New Year. His real intentions are to reconnect with Otoko Ueno, his mistress of twenty-four years prior, with whom he had fathered a stillborn child while Otoko was only fifteen. After Otoko’s mother moved her to Kyoto, ending the relationship, Oki openly incorporated their love affair in a novel. Now a well-known painter, Otoko lives with Keiko, her young, female protégée and lover.

The storyline is hardly unique and although framed as psychological suspense, is written in a quiet, dispassionate manner. The setting and characters are deftly drawn, although much is left unexplained, adding to the sense of apprehension. Oki is predictable as the immoral man who seems to lack any genuine regret for his illicit affairs and the pain they have caused his family. It is Kawabata’s female protagonists that are considerably more interesting. The reactions of Oki’s wife to his philandering behavior are far from typical, as her initial jealousy gives way to a disturbing acceptance. Otoko imparts a quiet sense of inscrutability. Haunted by the loss of her child and her lingering feelings for Oki, she strives to express the entangled beauty and sadness of these feelings through her paintings. The unbalanced Keiko who embodies the recklessness and fervor of youth, both carries and confuses the storyline, as her disparate feelings of love, pathological jealousy and hatred converge.

Kawabata is known for exploring themes of love and this novel focuses on its potential as an aggressive and ruinous force. This is a tragic story of self-absorbed love and pointless vengeance, but its ending is strangely ambiguous. Although the awful events that have transpired are clear, the characters’ reactions to them seem inappropriately shallow. I did find this short novel absorbing, but mostly for the sedate and simple elegance of Kawabata’s writing, and the depth and complexity of his female characters.

4 Stars

Good to see you Kerri! I hope all is going well with your studies and that you are able to enjoy some relaxation over this holiday weekend.

October is shaping up to be a month packed with interesting seminars and author talks, but I am already falling hopelessly behind here. I will try to squeeze in a review or author talk now and again until I eventually get caught up.

Since retiring I have been a member of UCALL (Union College Academy for Lifelong Learning), which sponsors an excellent series of seminars each Fall and Spring, many of which are taught by professors from Union or other colleges in the area. This semester I am attending seminars on Astrobiology (my own suggestion and hands down favorite!), Opera (first up was Turandot), Charles Darwin, and Parasitology. Unfortunately, no literature courses are being offered this semester. Add to that an introductory Yoga class, several Writers Institute events each week, a chamber music series to which we subscribe, and an untimely summons for Jury Duty, and it looks like available reading time may be somewhat limited. So I am focusing mainly on Patrick White’s The Vivisector for the Club Read Group Read. So far, it is wonderful.

Salgado Maranhão, poet and Alexis Levitin, translator
10/2/12 - NYS Writer’s Institute

Salgado Maranhão is a Brazilian poet who writes in Portuguese. His latest and first bi-lingual volume is Blood of the Sun. This reading took the form of Maranhão reading first in Portuguese, followed by Levitin reading in English, with both offering additional comments throughout.

Maranhão is actually a pen name, taken from the impoverished area of northeastern Brazil in which he grew up. His background is extremely interesting, as he is the son of a rich, white landowner and a fieldworker of African descent (similar to a sharecropper). When he was born, both parents wanted to raise him (his father having only daughters with his wife), but his mother prevailed, although she did not take the easy path. She was very proud, refused to accept help offered by his father and never allowed Salgado to ask for help either. In response to a question regarding the effect of such mixing of cultures, Maranhão said that all of life is a failed meeting – meetings that don’t quite work, failed meetings between cultures and races. But that in his case, the mixing was a fortunate meeting that brought him into existence. Life is dramatic and traumatic, and it is important to be tested by experience, out of which come fruitful things. He is grateful to have come from the world he did, exposed to both worlds, as poetry needs conflict.

His interest in poetry began as a young child. In northeastern Brazil, there was a tradition of traveling oral poets, reminiscent of the provencal troubadours. His mother would invite these poets into their home, where they would compete to invent poems on a theme thrown out by someone in the audience. Maranhão described his mother, who lacked a formal education, as being very sensitive to poetry and poetic in her daily language, without being aware of it. Maranhão worked in the fields harvesting crops until age 18 and did not learn to read and write until he was 15 years old. He began to write poetry when he discovered the great poets through the library and was able to respond to their rhythms, even when he did not yet know all the words.

Maranhão and Levitin frequently referenced the sound and rhythm of language, saying that poetry stirs you through its music more than through the meaning of the words. Maranhão described his poetry as being rhythm and image, but noted that for those coming from an impoverished background, words can also be a weapon. You may be lacking in political power or money, but you still have words that can be an instrument for confrontation.

Levitin’s comments regarding the challenges involved in translating poetry were extremely interesting. He pointed out specific difficulties he encountered, particularly with rhyming couplets, words with double meanings, internal rhymes and rhythmic patterns that would be lost in translation. He worked closely with Maranhão (who speaks no English) in addressing these difficulties, making no changes without the poet’s approval.

Maranhão had a lovely reading voice, deep and rich, and I was able to follow the rhythm and sounds of the Portuguese words both in writing and aurally, despite having no specific knowledge of the language. The reading went quite a bit overtime and I think would have continued even longer had the moderator not interceded. Maranhão is touring throughout the States (Maine, Minnesota, Georgia, Texas and places in between all mentioned) and will be giving 51 readings.

I will address Maranhao’s poetry more specifically in a future review of Blood of the Sun, but here is a teaser from the title poem, “Blood of the Sun”.

I come from gullies
of brackish water,

abandoned fields
of stubbled earth,

the sun has cracked
the dry clay

of my face: that’s what I say
to the guardians

rummaging about
in my silence. (123-132)

The book doesn't seem to yet be in LT's database, although I thought I had already added it. I guess I need to fix that before I can add the touchstone.

ETA: I added the book to my library, but it still does not want to appear either on a search or as a touchstone. I'll have to play around with it a bit, I guess.

Nice comments on Blood of the Sun, which seems to point to a touchstone for another book of the same title.

The jury pool must need expanding. I got my questionnaire yesterday.

Linda, I sure wish I lived within a few hours of NYC. Your time there sounds fabulous. Your classes sound like fun, too. While I love lit classes, I also think its important to be well-rounded. Astrobiology sounds like it will do the trick!

Any insights on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature this year? I'm sure there's a thread or blog about nominations somewhere.

Wow you really are very busy Linda. And what a lineup of activities. I'm adding Beauty and Sadness based on your excellent review.

>153 ffortsa: Thanks Judy. The touchstone is not working and I haven't been able to figure it out yet. I may be the only one in LT with this book. Jury duty is important, but it always seems to come at the most inconvenient times!

>154 Donna828: Hi Donna. I have always secretly wished I was a scientist (although I'm not sure I have any real talent in that direction) and astrobiology is incredibly fascinating. The Nobel Prize for Literature announcement is being announced in about ten minutes (and counting). There's actually a countdown clock on the Nobel website, but unfortunately I can't stay and watch!

>155 brenzi: Thanks Bonnie. Kawabata is an excellent writer. His Nobel Prize was awarded on the basis of his earlier works, which I am anxious to read.

We agreed on the Nobel challenge and amazingly chose to read Kawabata and the same Kawabata at the same time! We also largely agreed on its merits although you elucidated your opinions more eloquently than I. Have a lovely Sunday.

I am enjoying my Nobel challenge immensely, Paul. Since starting in June, I have read eight books (one a trilogy, so I guess actually ten) by Nobel Laureates with six of them being first time reads of the author. And I am midway through two more, both new to me. Since you are a statistics lover, that brings me to having read 32 out of the 108 Laureates. And best of all is that I am adding amazing authors to my list for further reading!

Junot Diaz - NYS Writer’s Institute – 10/4/12
Works: Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, This Is How You Lose Her

I attended a question-answer style seminar with Junot Diaz, a much acclaimed author and 2012 awardee of a MacArthur Fellowship. Diaz was very natural, insightful and funny, and directed his remarks mainly to the many students present. The seminar room was as full as I have ever seen it and it was wonderful to see the high level of student attendance and participation. Latinos, especially Dominicans, were strongly represented and it was obvious that they closely identified with Diaz and his experiences as an immigrant. Their reactions were perhaps the most striking aspect of this session, revealing something of their personal uncertainty and vulnerability, both as writers and as Latinos in this country, with many of their questions focused on making sense of their own bilingual, bi-cultural status.

The self-identity of Dominicans in the U.S. is important to Diaz’s writing and his comments on this were very candid. Immigrants to the U.S. come into a cultural setting of white supremacy that determines almost everything else, although that is never said or acknowledged. “The person least apt to get love is the person of color.” Diaz’s own journey from being the son of impoverished Dominican immigrants to becoming a novelist was a theme throughout his remarks. In his earlier years, he felt he belonged to a community that no one knew or cared about. He did not see his reality anywhere and felt like he was being “erased”. Considering his family’s poverty, becoming an artist was considered a kind of lunacy. It was a journey that he fought very deliberately, working full-time while going to college.

Diaz currently teaches creative writing at MIT and was blunt in expressing his concern that many young writers do not want to be artists. Rather, they see writing as a profession that one pursues, not unlike how one pursues dentistry. They are anxious to enter MFA programs, want to work little and have little contact with the world. But it is being in the world that makes art powerful. He stressed that there are better ways of making money and obtaining approval than to be a writer. He spoke of the difficulties of being an artist at a time when all of the ‘easy’ has been done before, and only what is hard or nearly impossible is left.

Diaz indicated that sensitivity to one’s audience is key and matters more than what you want as the writer. He stated that his writing is directed to a multi-generational conversation that he never had within his own family. Before coming to the U.S., Diaz was largely raised by his grandparents in Santo Domingo and was fascinated by them, leaving him with a lasting sympathy and attraction to older people. He spoke of the history of invasion, slavery and genocide, inflicted both on and by the Dominican Republic, and the negative effect this has had on the self-identity of Dominicans - originally a very open, giving people who have become closed off to others, and taught to not love themselves or other Dominicans. In a multi-generational family, all of these stories are present simultaneously. He regrets that his grandparents and parents never shared their stories of past times with him and sees bearing witness to each other as essential to truly connecting.

In response to questions on how to be vulnerable as an artist and deal with criticism, Diaz noted that students often confuse comfort and safety in this context. When he subtracts his ego and the argument is persuasive, the critic has done him a favor. You cannot learn without being uncomfortable, but this is not the same as being unsafe. The ability to write more “organically” comes from mastering your form, with the “long way” being the best way - when you internalize a form, you move conscious knowledge into unconscious pattern. He stressed to the students that writing is also not the same as speaking and formal English must be thoroughly mastered before you can play with it in your writing. Although Diaz spoke little of his own books, he did use Oscar Wao as an example in discussing inter-generational relationships, use of slang and Spanglish, and being a nerd in a culture invested in masculine identity. He also noted that it took him sixteen years to write This Is How You Lose Her, his latest collection of short stories that he conceptualized as being one unit, from beginning to end.

Diaz described himself as having no special talent, his success as a writer having come from investing so much of his life in reading. His advice to those who are struggling with their writing is to read more. He noted that being a writer is not even in the top ten aspects of his identity, while being a reader occupies several of these spots. He ended with his best comment of the talk: “I love books more than I love writing”.

Linda, it sounds as if you are making progress on your Nobel challenge. Better yet, you are discovering new authors to love. I like your slow, steady approach.

Thanks for the comments on Junot Diaz. I have yet to read anything by him. I love that last paragraph that highlights his humility. What a great closing remark.

I'll be reading another Nobel laureate this month Linda---Mo Yan. It sounds like Junot Diaz is the best kind of writer---a reader's writer.

Donna and Bonnie - Yesterday I heard an interview with Diaz on our local public radio station that might interest you, as he talks more about his actual books. Here is the link: http://www.wamc.org/post/book-show-1266-junot-diaz.

Slow approach is right, Donna. I never realized that I might be a slow reader until I joined LT, where so many read at the speed of light! But life does tend to get busy and when I encounter a good book, I do like to savor the words.

I have several of Mo Yan's books waiting, Bonnie, but probably won't get to them in the next few months, so I'll have the benefit of your impressions when I do.

I just reread several of your reviews. They are really well written. Do you write other things too?

Thanks for the nice compliment, Reba. I enjoy writing, but since retiring haven't ventured beyond LT reviews. One of the local colleges offers online writing courses in fiction and creative nonfiction. I have thought about taking one but need to work on my confidence!

Well I find your reviews well thought out and very well written. I'd urge you to do it!!

164: I'd think a common trouble with writing is lack of confidence and a good course would help you break through. What is "creative nonfiction"?

Linda- Sorry, I've been absent over here. I loved all the Diaz comments. What an interesting man. His latest collection is one of my top reads of the year. Hope all is well.

>166 qebo: Good to see you, Katherine. I don't know why the course uses that title, but I interpret it to mean the same thing as narrative nonfiction.

>167 msf59: Not to worry, Mark. There hasn't been much new here to see. I haven't been posting much this past month, although I have still been religiously reading a lot of threads, including yours! We all go through those busy periods, I guess. I need to motivate myself to get caught up with writing reviews etc., but instead I stopped at the library on the way to yoga and found:

Absolution by Patrick Flanery
The One That Got Away: Short Stories by Zoe Wicomb
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by Anonymous
By A Slow River by Philippe Claudel

Now if I can just finish my books in progress so that I have time to read them.

Good picks at the library Linda - haven't got any of 'em so I'll be interested to see what you think. Have a lovely weekend and I am so pleased that your excellent reviews are getting the recognition they deserve!

Thumbs up for your wonderful review of The Grass Is Singing.

Oh I read A Woman in Berlin in my pre-LT days and really loved appreciated it Linda, Very, very intense and sooooo powerful. I think you'll like it.

I also never realized what a slow reader I was until LT. Ignorance is bliss I guess. Then I participated in one of those LT Read- a- thons (what ever happened to those?) and got my eyes opened. No wonder some people are reading a couple hundred books a year and I'm, well, not.

>169 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul. I hope you also have a lovely weekend, as it sounds like you have been working very hard!

>170 Whisper1: Thanks Linda. So nice to see you here!

>171 brenzi: I suspect that I will agree with you on this one, Bonnie. I usually do anyway... I started A Woman in Berlin last night - couldn't resist, despite having a few other books in progress that I am enjoying and really need to finish - and can see already that it will be an intense read.

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset’s fourteenth century Norway is a place of breathtaking, yet dangerous beauty, where vast geographical distances separate settlements and farms, relationships and interactions are governed by a complicated array of social conventions, and myth and superstition live alongside the official Catholicism. Lineage, land and family reputation are the legacies left to offspring. Religion features prominently in daily life and monks wander the countryside, while elves, trolls and goblins live in the forest and under rocks, and the spirits of the deceased are never far away. Living and meal arrangements are largely communal and strong codes of hospitality prevail. Ale is a staple of the household for both adults and children, and is even given to horses on occasion. But there is little that is sentimental in the hardness of these times, with tragedy ever-present and stoically accepted. Death is a frequent outcome of childbirth and illness. Both adults and children must contribute to the constant labor necessary to support a household. Even prosperous but overburdened parents may elect for a child to be raised by foster parents. The distances involved in travel require long periods of parental absence from the family household. Violence is common and landowners are entitled to protect themselves with physical force.

Undset’s masterwork trilogy excels as historical fiction that is richly revealing of the customs, beliefs and daily life of medieval Norwegian society. Meant to be read as a whole, its three volumes flow seamlessly together in a straightforward but layered narrative that explores the inner lives of its protagonists, the hopes, conflicts and disappointments inherent to passion and marriage, and the stresses of a society transitioning from pagan to Christian values. Undset’s two major works based in medieval Norway, the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy and The Master of Hestviken tetralogy, were recognized by the Nobel Committee in awarding her the Prize for Literature in 1928, for her portrayal of ideals that contributed to the development of Germanic culture.

The Wreath introduces Kristin Lavransdatter as the beautiful daughter of Lavrans Bjorgulfson, a widely respected and influential farmer and landowner, and his wife Ragnfrid, moody, reclusive and suffering from depression following the loss of three infant sons. Kristin’s childhood and adolescence follow the expected path to her betrothal at age fifteen to Simon Andresson, the handsome and promising son of a neighboring landowner. But despite being relatively privileged, she is not shielded from hard work and harsh realities, and the course of her life is changed abruptly by events that unfairly bring the derision of the villagers upon her. Sent to temporarily board at a convent, Kristin meets and is seduced by Erlend Nikulausson, a handsome but reckless and impulsive man who has been ex-communicated by the Church for his relationship with a married woman, with whom he has two children. Struggling against her strong attachment to her father, Kristin seeks to end her betrothal to Simon and win permission to wed Erlend, while complicity in a death and the shame of hidden pregnancy foreshadow the turbulence of their union.

The Wife follows the years of Kristin and Erlend’s tumultuous, yet passionate marriage, the birth and upbringing of seven sons, and Erlend’s increasing entanglement with the country’s politics. Forced to assume responsibility for Erlend’s ill-managed estate, while experiencing the difficulties of childbirth and Erlend’s irresponsibility and frequent absences, Kristin becomes increasingly ambivalent and bitter regarding her marriage. The storyline seems to meander through these years, at times feeling a bit overlong as marital and family relationships develop, deteriorate and reconcile, child after child is born and raised, loved ones die, and the intrigue of political conspiracy is introduced.

It is in this second volume that the depth of Undset’s many characters emerges, the intensity of their thoughts and emotions skillfully revealed alongside the vivid details of landscape, everyday objects and daily activities. Kristin and Ragnfrid are strong, capable women, but dependent upon their marriages and children for their identity and reason for living. Both are disgraced as fallen women, having not been maidens at their marriage, and both bear the disappointment of husbands whom they love passionately, but who will never fulfill their emotional needs. Lavrans and Simon represent the strength and morality of a traditional society that rewards adherence to hard work, duty and faith. Erlend is the perpetually overgrown adolescent, charming but unreliable, whose individualism clashes with the collectivism of medieval society. But as different as Lavrans and Erlend seem, they share a restlessness, a need for the adventure of wilderness and sea. Erlend loves Kristin passionately, but he finds life with his wife and children suffocating.

Now he longed only to go away to that strife-torn place. He yearned madly and wildly for that remote promontory and for the thundering sea surrounding the forelands of the north, for the endless coastline and the enormous fjords which could conceal all manner of traps and deceptions, for the people whose language he understood only slightly, for their sorcery and inconstancy and cunning, for war and the sea, and for the singing of weapons, both his own and his men’s.

Even the deeply religious and reliable Lavrans harbors a secret resentment for having been forced at a young age to marry Ragnfrid, an older woman whom he did not love. ”He had been a good husband to her , he believed that himself… He had simply wanted to live with her without her always trying to seize what was in his heart- and what he refused to reveal.” Undset’s many secondary characters are drawn with equal care, notable among them being Kristin’s seven sons and Brother Edvin, whose wisdom and simple joy contrasts with the storyline’s dark, haunting adversity.

In The Cross, a mature Kristin sets forth to atone for her moral failings. Erlend’s estate has become the price for his release from political imprisonment and the family must return to Kristin’s childhood farm, only to again experience rejection by the townspeople amidst marital separation, accusations of adultery, and the death in infancy of an eighth son. It is in this final book that Undset focuses most clearly on the theme of religion and redemption. Ambivalent in her faith, yet seeking purpose following Erlend’s death and the scattering of her grown children, Kristin sets forth on a pilgrimage to become a lay member of the convent. It is here that she makes her final atonement, among the ravages of the Black Death.

Surely she had never asked God for anything except that he should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for - for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road’s end.

She had not come to God with her wreath or with her sins and sorrows, not as long as the world still possessed a drop of sweetness to add to her goblet. But now she had come, after she had learned that the world is like an alehouse: The person who has no more to spend is thrown outside the door.

Highly recommended. 4 1/2 Stars

Delurking to say what a wonderful review of Kristin Lavransdatter, Linda. I read the first two books years ago but never got to the third. Your review makes me want to remedy that. And I agree with Reba's comments above about your reviews being well-thought out and well-written.

Thanks so much, Pat. I read this as an e-book edition of the full trilogy and was barely aware of transitioning from book to book. And welcome to my thread. I love it when new visitors de-lurk!

173: I loved the Kristin Lavransdatter books. I think a Norwegian girl like me should have them in her permanent library. I haven't been lucky enough to run across them at the library book sales or used bookstores...yet. But I did pick up a copy of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao based on your comments on the Diaz seminar. You are a good influence on my reading, Linda. Thanks!

Thanks for that excellent review of Kristin Lavransdatter, Linda. I have the three books on my shelf and look forward to getting to them soon.

>176 Donna828: Thanks Donna. I would feel more comfortable if I had tempted you with a book or author that I have actually read! I still have yet to read anything by Diaz and plan to start with his short stories in Drown. I'll be interested to see what you think of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

>177 katiekrug: Thanks Katie. In my opinion, you really need to read the three books straight through as a whole and that is a commitment! Do you have the Nunnally translation? There seems to be consensus that hers is the best.

I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a year or two ago and quite enjoyed it. Hope you like it too, ladies :-)

I've read Drown and have recently started This Is How You Lose Her. I think Diaz is a great writer and I really need to dust off my copy of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao soon.

When I read the first two books of the Kristin Lavransdatter triology, I also read the Nunnally translation. I read them for a book club led by a literature professor and she stressed that was the translation to read.

Note to self: get the Nunnally translation.

Well, you've done it again Linda: roped me in with one of your signature insightful reviews. And for a book(s) and an author I've never heard of. I hate to admit that because I can see all the members of the intelligentsia have piped up to say they've already read the trilogy and here I sit, woefully ignorant;-) Well there's hope for me yet. All I have to do is find the right translation and get started. Thanks Linda.

>179 RebaRelishesReading:, 180 Reba and Pat - It's good to have your affirmation on Diaz. I don't know why I still have Drown sitting here unread. Too many priority books!

>181 brenzi: Bonnie, you are not alone. I had never heard of Sigrid Undset or her trilogy until several on my Club Read thread mentioned it in conjunction with my Nobel Laureate reading. A few over there have read it twice! I am continually in awe of all of the wonderful literature that is out there to be discovered, just waiting for our time. This is a great one for when you just want excellent, old-fashioned storytelling that transports you to a different place and time.

Oh, dear, that is not the translation I have. I guess I will give it a try and if it doesn't work for me, I'll seek out the Nunnally...

Happy Thanksgiving, Linda!

Linda - I have plenty to give thanks for this year including the making of your acquaintance. Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving, Linda!!

Happy Thanksgiving, Linda.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Linda!

Darryl, Paul, Kerri, Reba, Pat and all of my other LT friends - Thank you all for the Thanksgiving wishes and I hope you and your families also had a wonderful holiday. Now on to the Christmas preparations!

189: Now on to the Christmas preparations!
Noooooo, not yet!

Hi Katherine. I always feel rushed at this time of year. Time's a wastin'!

Linda - Just thought I would let you know that I have added to my Nobel writers collection in the last week or so with new titles from unread writers:
A Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
The Captain's Verses by Pablo Neruda
Poems New and Collected by Wislawa Szymborska
Viper's Tangle by Francois Mauriac
Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo
The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello

Have also ordered ten more from Book Depository so next year I may make a real impression on the list!

Loved your review of the Sigrid Undset book. I ordered one of hers by the way from BD.

Trust that you are having a lovely weekend.

Nice haul of Nobelists, Paul. Can't wait for the reviews.

>192 PaulCranswick: Thanks for sharing that great list, Paul. It gives me some ideas for filling some of my own holes. I feel like I am making slow, but steady progress, and being introduced to wonderful new writers in the process.

I hope you will come back with the list of ten you have ordered from the Book Depository. Which Undset did you order?

I am determined before the year ends to catch up with my reviews, as well as with some comments on author talks and seminars that I attended this Fall.

Over the course of two days in October, J.M. Coetzee and his partner, Dorothy Driver were each featured at the NYS Writers Institute, Coetzee being joined also by the author, Paul Auster.

Dorothy Driver – NYS Writers Institute - 10/11/12

Dorothy Driver is a recognized scholar of South African literature, with a special expertise in women writers. Her presentation was a prepared lecture, with an academic style that was interesting but difficult to follow, given its technical nature and my lack of knowledge of the authors she discussed. She read quickly and with enough of an accent that I often struggled to catch her words.

The promotional flyer for Driver’s talk described its focus as follows.

Driver’s major research interests have been in the constructions and reconstructions of gender and race both under Apartheid and after Apartheid, and in writing by women. Her lecture “The Work of Dreaming: Race, Feminism, and New South African Nationhood” will examine literary texts as sites of dreaming in which unrealized visions of social harmony and individual autonomy – primarily in women’s writing - serve as antidotes to the historical forces that have produced South Africa’s nexus of race-class-gender oppressions….Driver will examine how South African feminist thinking sometimes reproduces a Western feminism but sometimes also inscribes into the South African imaginary new forms of social interaction, thereby opening a route into Julia Kristeva’s revolutionary “women’s time”. Dreaming and writing thus become a powerful basis for change.

My much more simplistic understanding of Driver’s basic premise was that South African fiction writing falls within two modes: social realism, where fiction stays close to reality; and discursive writing, where the writer “lures the reader to another world”. In the context of the latter, she focused specifically on the use of semiotics and dreaming in literature to explore issues of race, class and gender that could not be addressed more directly under Apartheid, providing examples from the works of three female writers: Olive Schreiner, a white, 19th century author, early feminist and anti-racist; Bessie Head, a black South African by birth who did most of her writing after moving to Botswana as an adult; and Zoë Wicomb, a modern day, black South African writer who currently lives in Scotland.

The question period that followed focused primarily on issues of feminism, a word that Driver indicated as only now seeing common usage by young South African women, having previously been negatively associated with European, white feminism. Previously, if a white South African were to call herself a feminist, it was felt to be at the cost of those blacks working in her household. Black women who called themselves feminist were derided by their peers as being “white”. Feminism was also viewed as running counter to the importance of encouraging, rather than further diminishing, black men.

The complex social and political issues associated with language in South Africa were also briefly raised. Driver indicated that she thought it unlikely there would be a language movement and that what seems to be occurring is a "reinvention" of English with the entry of African words.

I left this lecture with far less than a full understanding of Driver's ideas, the names of three South African authors that were new to me, and the anthology, Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region, for which Driver was one of seven editors. I am currently reading Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm, which is quite unusual, and will follow this with books by both Head and Wicomb.

J.M. Coetzee and Paul Auster - NYS Writers Institute, 10/12/12

I had looked forward to Coetzee’s visit with great anticipation and was frankly disappointed that neither of the presentations I attended was anywhere near equal to my expectations. So my comments will be brief.

The talks by Coetzee and Auster took place in two sessions. Instead of the usual Q&A seminar, the afternoon consisted of a “master class” on Herman Melville’s short story/novella, Bartleby, the Scribener: A Story of Wall Street, involving the authors and a panel of students. While some audience participation was allowed, it was focused exclusively on Bartelby. I was very disappointed at this odd choice of format, as it did not provide any insight into the authors’ own works or writing processes, nor was the discussion particularly interesting, although I had read the work in advance. Being aware that Coetzee has the reputation of being a very private individual who rarely makes public appearances, I assume that it was a deliberate strategy to avoid interaction with the audience.

The evening event was a reading from Here and Now, a compilation of the written correspondence between Coetzee and Auster from 2008-2011, to be published March 2013. The selections they chose to read covered a diverse range of topics, including serving on a Cannes jury, chess and the pleasures of competition, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, electronic versus paper books, and the American mid-term elections. Both displayed a dry sense of humor, with Coetzee’s demeanor and letters being slightly more reserved and serious than Auster's. There was no allowance for questions and neither Auster nor Coetzee engaged in much extemporaneous talk. However, the letters were entertaining and revealing of the authors, and I am very much looking forward to their publication.

This was all interesting to me. I've never heard of Dorothy Driver or the three female writers she spoke about. And I didn't know that Coetzee and Auster were friends and had a book of correspondence coming out.

The NYS Writers' Institute seems like a wonderful resource and I'm so glad you go to most of their functions and discuss them here. Thanks for taking the time to write up your notes and impressions.

Pat, I feel very fortunate to be able to attend these talks and enjoy writing up the notes to share, even though I am quite behind right now. I'm looking forward to the announcement of the Winter-Spring line-up.

Absolution by Patrick Flanery

“Accidents were always happening,” Sam thinks of his past. “He had come from a country of accidents. He tried to understand what this meant. It seemed to mean that no one was ever responsible for anything if only you could tell the truth and most of all if you could say you were sorry.”

Clare Wald is a celebrated author, living in post-apartheid South Africa, who has authorized the relatively unknown Sam Leroux to write her official biography. Aging, irascible and living in self-imposed isolation, she has made it clear that she will not make this process easy, with many aspects of her personal life being off-limits. Yet Clare and Sam share an unacknowledged past acquaintance and a connection through Clare’s activist daughter, Laura.

The novel unfolds in four threads, each of which offers a version of events –the past as perceived by Sam; the past as reflected in Clare’s fictionalized memoir; Clare’s imaginings of the fate of her daughter; and an account of events presented in an unascribed third-person voice. Clare struggles with feelings of responsibility for the death of her sister and brother-in-law, prominent supporters of the apartheid government. Haunted also by the guilt of being an emotionally distant parent, she is consumed by questions of Laura’s fate and envisions her having suffered a horrific death that would be unimaginable to most mothers. Sam is troubled by his own guilt for an act committed as a young child, after being orphaned and left to the care of a brutal and neglectful uncle. Laura, known to him as a close friend of his parents, was then the serendipitous agent of his rescue and is now his enduring link to Clare Wald. Laura is the most unreliable of characters, given voice only through her journals and the memories of others, and it is her very ambiguity that pulls the storyline forward to its uncertain conclusion.

Flanery explores themes of truth, responsibility and absolution suitable to post-apartheid South Africa, but adds a further dimension by applying them to deeds that are more personal than political. However, this distinction becomes confused at times and the narrative is diverted by scenes of testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that seem largely gratuitous. Flanery is highly skillful at entering the minds of his protagonists and lending a sense of intimacy to the narrative, particularly in his portrayal of Clare Wald's imagined discourse with her daughter. The repeated juxtaposition of the various threads adds tension and suspense. However, some key elements with the potential to add greater depth were only briefly mentioned and then left unexplored, such as the question of Laura’s true allegiances. I was also disappointed that an early sidebar on censorship was not further pursued as an aspect of the story, and that little was shown of present-day conditions beyond the constant threat of personal danger and inferences of pervasive poverty. The result was a setting that felt somewhat one-dimensional, when I had hoped for a more complex portrayal of post-apartheid South Africa.

This is Patrick Flanery’s first novel and overall, an impressive debut that succeeded in telling an interesting story while posing universal questions related to the nature of truth and reconciliation. What is truth, how is it determined, and to whom is it owed? Do memory and emotion make us all unreliable narrators of our own pasts? Do we seek absolution as a means of penitence or as a way of mitigating the guilt of our own culpability?

" ... If you refuse to absolve me, will you also refuse to judge me, or does judgment belong to a different order of ethics?"

3 ½ Stars

Excellent review of Absolution, Linda. I almost purchased this twice this year, and now I wish I had. I'll add it to my wish list.

197: I'm looking forward to the announcement of the Winter-Spring line-up.

I am, too, Linda! Thanks again for sharing your experiences with us. I enjoy all the tidbits about these authors that you share.

>199 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl I hope you like it if you do get to it. The book was short or long-listed for six different awards, winning one.

>200 Donna828: I am a bit behind with my write-ups, Donna, but it's good to know that you and others do enjoy them. I find it fascinating to learn something of the people behind the books!

Do memory and emotion make us all unreliable narrators of our own pasts?

I love books that raise this question. I'm going to look for Absolution at the library. Thanks for another very interesting review.

Hi Linda, I love the non-linear construction of this novel as you describe it and have just added it to my teetering tower based on your excellent review. Thumb. I'm also looking forward to your reports on your author events.

Thanks Pat and Bonnie. I'll be very interested to see what you think.

>203 brenzi: I liked the way Flanery used the four threads throughout the book, but it initially took a little bit to catch on to what he was doing with the various voices.

Hi Linda! Sorry to hear the Coetzee/Auster talk was disappointing. I had heard Coetzee is very shy and only does scripted presentations. I do actually love Bartleby, the Scribener: A Story of Wall Street, so that would have been exciting...or maybe not : )

Great to see you back out and about on the threads, Kerri! I suppose it is possible that Coetzee is shy, but my assumption was a bit different... At any rate, he is certainly reserved.

I am going to start a new thread, even with only a few weeks left in the year, as this one is behaving very sluggishly for me.