SassyLassy still meandering through 2012

I have two rules when it comes to buying "garden" books:
1. it can't tell me "how to" unless it is a specific text or manual on say, propagation
2. it can't fill a lot of space with long lists of plants, no matter how pretty the pictures are

I saw this book on my recent book buying expedition, it met the criteria, so I snapped it up.



34. Embroidered Ground: Revisiting the Garden by Page Dickey, illustrations by William Atherton

first published 2011
finished July 14, 2012

Sadly, middle age comes to gardens, just as it comes to people; it sneaks up before you realize it. That gorgeous clump of irises blooms less and less each year, the columbines have disappeared and the spreading juniper has the diameter of a trampoline. What to do?

This was Page Dickey's conundrum. Duck Hill is her house and garden on three acres, just sixty miles from NYC. She had gardened there for thirty years when she realized that suddenly in a middle aged garden, we reach a point where we have to take stock, stand back, think about renewal, renovation, hacking back, shrinking, adapting and so this is just what she did, just as you would do with real life.

This is not a gardening how-to book. Dickey is writing here for those for whom gardening is life, not for those whose idea of a garden is a huge manicured lawn surrounded by blazing annuals. She is writing for gardeners who know their plants, who seek out new and treasured varieties the way LT members seek out new books.

Embroidered Ground is the story of how Dickey's garden evolved over the years. It is also her plan to ensure that she and her garden can grow old together. Experienced gardeners will recognize, often ruefully, the incredible work to establish the initial version of the garden, the planning put into it as the garden's life and the gardener's life evolved, not always in tandem. They will salute the determination of a seventy year old to plant for her future self, not just the gardener she is today.

Books like this always inspire me to attack my own garden with renewed vigour and inspiration, and this one didn't fail, despite my having to deal with this summer's heat and drought. The lessons of garden architecture; of height, layering, empty space and movement can never be reviewed too often. Dickey occasionally falls into the trap of just listing her plants, but her descriptions of colour, texture, seasonality and fragrance will send you off to the closest nursery.

Most of all this book captures the sense that for Dickey and legions of other gardeners,

...happiness depends on that interaction with the garden, that act of forming, tending, of intimately observing and being involved in its ever-changing process, the birth, maturing, aging, death and rebirth that is the constant theme.

Excellent review of Embroidered Ground. A book that rings true to the gardener in me. Here in South West France we have an old farmhouse with a large garden that was lovingly planted by its previous resident. I spend much of my gardening time ruthlessly cutting back what is already there. Planting schemes have gone out the window as we already have more plants, trees and bushes than we can cope with. Gardens evolve and the difficulty sometimes is taking the decision to dig things up that have gone past their best.

Bas, your large farmhouse garden has me green with envy. Maybe I shouldn't say green in this context? I'm picturing wonderful gnarly trees, blowsy old roses and lots of lavender, possibly some wisteria which doesn't grow in this climate.

Anyway, I made some difficult tree pruning decisions this year. The trees here had obviously been very carefully thought out by a previous owner and I was reluctant to interfere, but now that I have done some maintenance, I am being rewarded with wonderful new growth in the understory. I sympathize though; digging things up seems akin to horrible crimes.

SassyLassy - funny you should mention the wisteria. We have a large specimen that rambles over a low wall that adjoins our neighbours garden. It is so heavy that it threatens to bring down the wall. It is propped up at various points but when a storm hits it from the wrong direction it takes four people to lift it back onto its supports. It grows at an enormous rate (despite being cut back hard in January/February) every year climbing up a telegraph pole and into nearby cherry trees, from which of course it has to be cut back. It is also home to a fairly large grass snake.

Perhaps I ought to mention that it flowers beautifully in April/May and has other flushes throughout the summer. Of course we love it.

Not a gardener, but still checking in to the new thread.

Thanks, Dan. It looks like there aren't many gardeners here, but if you think of the garden as a metaphor for life, there's a lot to be learned there. I think there's a reason Adam and Eve are portrayed in a garden, and that's just the beginning of a long line of references in literature.

Hard to be a gardener in an NYC apartment, but I'm enjoying the discussion.

This book was a present way back in December. After reading The Monk, it seemed like the next logical reading choice. Despite its title, this is not salacious in the least, even though the nuns it documents were behaving decidedly outside the rules of their convents.



35. Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art and Arson in the Convents of Italy by Craig Monson

first published 2010
finished July 15, 2012

Craig Monson, a professor of music at Washington University, calls himself a topo d'archivio, or archive mouse. While researching a Renaissance music manuscript, he was led down an entirely different path when he discovered that the manuscript had belonged to Sister Elena Malvezzi. What was a nun doing with a song book with compositions that would rival stories from Canterbury Tales?

Renaissance nuns who sang created problems, so complaints were made to the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, the body which oversaw discipline for the monastic world at that time. Monson's subsequent search led him to the records of the Congregation in the Vatican Secret Archive. Now completely off the topic of his music manuscript, Monson decided to write about some of the nuns who shook the status quo of their times.

There were two destinies for a woman from a wealthy family in sixteenth and seventeenth Italy: marriage or the wall, a reference to convent life. Dowries for suitable marriages were a huge drain on family coffers; dowries for the convent much less so. It made sense to marry off only one or two daughters and consign the rest to the cloistered life. Monson quotes the astonishing statistic that seventy-five per cent of Milan's women from the wealthier classes were in convents in the seventeenth century. Naturally, few of these women would have had a true religious vocation. Given the statistics, it is not surprising that convents contained rebels.

Life inside the convent often reflected life at home for the nobility. Elegant furnishings, musical instruments and books accompanied the daughters of the wealthy behind the walls. Class divisions still reigned within. While the genteel class of nuns, the professe, devoted themselves to prayer, administrative duties and the gentle arts, the daily routines of cooking, cleaning and tending to the professe were performed by a separate class of nuns, the converse. These nuns were excused from chapel responsibilities and participation in convent affairs so that they could better perform their mundane duties.

Convents were completely female domains, so their choirs were also all female. Monson says nuns originally sang plain chant, but that during the 1500s their singing evolved into polyphony, or choral music. Churches had all male choirs, so this new blend of strictly female vocal ranges became a huge attraction for music lovers. It also provided an avenue for stardom for talented nuns not completely content with their lives.

Laura Bovia of the convent of San Lorenzo in Bologna was just such a woman. Despite the reforms of the Council of Trent and its 1564 decrees banning "lascivious" music, she continued her solo performances, bringing unwanted attention from Church authorities. Her uncle, a Monsignor in the Church, removed her from the convent, only allowing her to return on condition she give up music. Laura returned and kept singing. Opportunity presented itself in the form of an offer to be musical lady in waiting to the Duke of Mantua's prospective daughter-in-law. Negotiations ensued with the Convent and Monsignor Bovio. When it was revealed that the Monsignor was really her father, not her uncle, her prospects fell through. When a secular compostion was dedicated to Laura in decidedly unreligious language, her convent life was over. Her father legitimized her and she joined the elite Medici musica secreta.

Laura was exceptionally lucky in her ease of departure from the religious life. Normally the only way one could ever exit the walls of the convent was the occasion of fire, plague or war. Giovanna Monsolino conspired with other nuns to successfully burn down their convent in Reggio Calabria so that they could all leave. Unfortunately, after imprisonment she was returned to convent life elsewhere.

Sister Christina Cavazza seemed to just want to be in the audience for the spectacular performances that marked Bologna's carnival season. Caught sneaking out of the cloistered walls in the costume of an abbott to go to the opera, she was imprisoned, as was her companion, the priest Antonio Giacomelli. Giacomelli was sentenced by the Curia to life imprisonment at his own expense. Christina was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment in her convent, with no outside contact, and no participation in convent affairs or the religious duties of her order. Christina was to make a dramatic comeback, Giacomelli soon died.

Laura, Giovanna and Christina all took extraordinary measures to escape the confines of monastic life. Monson documents not only their dealings but those of other women with the Sacred Congregation, offering an intriguing glimpse into the social history of that time. His research is thorough and entertaining. His bibliography offers all kinds of temptation for further reading.

I hesitate to call myself a gardener as it implies a certain level of skill that I do not posses. But we have a wonderful little terrace where I grow a good number of herbs and veggies (though this year I am having an ant problem). Embroidered Ground sounds great but I have to stick to container gardening for now.

What an interesting read! When I read The Corner That Held Them, I also found it interesting that several of the characters were in the convent not because they felt a calling but because their families placed them there.

O how can I resist these stories from the renaissance and with a title like Nuns behaving badly it sounds titillatingly perfect.

I knew that many daughters of the nobility were placed in convents as the cheaper option, but did not realise the same class structures existed inside the convent walls. I shall add this to the wishlist.

Great review of Nuns Behaving Badly, Sassy. I am currently reading Kristin Lavransdatter, set in medieval Norway, and it makes reference to unmarried and unmarriageable women being sent to the convent by their families. I worked with many nuns over the years and they were a strong group of women who liked their fun!

Jane, Rebecca and Dan: Everyone is a gardener at heart, no matter where they live or their level of skill. Just give them a trowel, some earth and some plants and watch them go! On a more serious note, I think that some of the most reflective writing is done by some of the great gardeners and landscapers.

Rebecca, I found myself thinking of The Corner that Held Them as I read Embroidered Ground, so I'm happy to see that you made that connection too.

Bas, the class differences still applied when I was in elementary school. Although not a Catholic, I went to a convent school . One day I was entrusted to leave class with a message and take it down to the formal parlour. As I made my way down a long corridor, I was astonished to see a nun on her knees waxing the floor, as I had never seen nuns engaged in manual work before. It was somewhat confusing to me as this nun had a different habit than the teaching nuns. She quickly got up and disappeared, presumably so that I go continue down the corridor unimpeded. I told my teacher about seeing this nun and she was definitely abashed. The only other time I ever saw these working nuns was at meal time when you could catch glimpses of them behind the doors between the kitchen and the refectory. This was my first conscious introduction to the class system and it made a lasting impression.

Linda, I loved the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy when I read it several years ago and it is definitely something I would read again. I was especially struck by the level of faith the characters had that helped them through their sometimes gruesome days. It is something we rarely see today in the western world. Which translation are you reading? It makes a real difference. I started with an early one and when I switched to the Penguin Modern Classics edition, it was like reading a completely different book.

I have the Penguin Books Kindle edition, Sassy, which I think is the same edition. Translator: Tiina Nunnally, Intro by Brad Leithuaser. Very enjoyable and I am finding the footnotes to be very helpful.

Sassy, I may be a "gardener at heart" but the houseplants I have are the ones I've been unable to kill with neglect!

Fascinated by your review of Nuns Behaving Badly.

It's been a beautiful summer in this part of the world if you're a visitor (six weeks without rain and record high temperatures), so there have been visitors. It's been cook, clean chat; cook, clean, chat, change sheets and towels; cook, clean, chat. I'm loving it, but it means little reading and less LT. The next group arrives tomorrow, so there is time tonight to sneak in one review, then I'll probably be mostly away from LT for the next ten days, since my computer is in one of the occupied rooms.

This book was unknown to me, but was a natural after reading The Monk. I was sure cariola or avaland had recommended it, but I can't find any record of that, so thanks, whoever brought it to my attention.



36. The Italian by Ann Radcliffe

first published 1797
finished July 29, 2012

Although the obvious title for this book would have been The Monk, The Italian was published only one year after Matthew Lewis used the title for his shocker. Subtitled The Confessional of the Black Penitents, The Italian reflects once more the English preoccupations with the mysteries and perceived superstitions of the Catholic Church, pitting the evil monk Schedoni against the lovers Vivaldi and Ellena.

At the very beginning of the novel, Radcliffe sets the scene for the disturbing events to follow. In 1764, a party of English tourists, making the mandatory visit to Naples, visits an ancient convent where they see a singular figure half hidden in a cloak. The apparition immediately glides away. A local friar explains to the horrified party that this man is an assassin, protected by sanctuary in the confines of the Church, a foreign and unfathomable concept to the English. They then comment on the gloom of the confession box into which the figure had disappeared. The friar undertakes to send them a story which involved that very confessional just a few years earlier. The story of the Italian follows. There is no link back to indicate how the English received it; it is for each English reader to judge.

As in so many other stories of Italian romance, Vincentio di Vivaldi first saw his love, Ellena Rosalba, in church, accompanied by an older woman. Vivaldi sought their acquaintance and fell in love with Ellena. Naturally there were obstacles. Vivaldi's father, the Marchese di Vivaldi, was from an ancient family. Principled and exceptionally wealthy, he is described as a man still higher in power than in rank. The Marchesa came from a background to match, but we are told right away that she lacked her husband's principles. Neither parent was willing to see their only son marry an orphan of respectable but inconsequential origins. Vivaldi, however, was not to be dissuaded.

The Marchesa enlisted the aid of her confessor, Father Schedoni, in an effort to prevent the alliance. On the very night that her aunt died suddenly, Ellena was kidnapped and taken to a convent, there to be held prisoner. She quickly realized little sympathy could be expected from hearts which the offices of hourly devotion had not purified from the malignant envy that taught them to exalt themselves upon the humiliations of others.

Eventually rescued by Vivaldi, the couple escaped into the mountains. Ellena refused to marry the heart broken Vivaldi on the grounds that she would not marry into a family which did not want her.

On hearing of Ellena's escape, the Marchea ordered Schedoni to take more drastic action. His spies captured the pair by impersonating officers of the Inquisition. Vivaldi was sent to the actual Inquisition charged with kidnapping a nun and Ellena was taken away to a coastal cottage to be murdered. It was at the cottage that Ellena made the terrible discovery that saved her life. Multiple twists and turns follow. Given the era in which the book was written, all ends well.

The portrayal of Schedoni is an excellent one of a man constantly driven to climb just a little further; a man who knows he sins to achieve his goals, but does it all the same. In this way he resembles Ambrosio from The Monk. However, evil as Schedoni is, Radcliffe has him commit his major crimes before he enters Holy Orders. Since the plot to murder Ellena is called off, this monk is only guilty of plotting murder, while Ambrosio's sins were all committed while a monk. This distinction may have been a concession to the uproar that followed the publication of The Monk.

While The Monk and The Italian may seem incredibly far fetched to the modern reader, both address the age old questions of appearance and identity. Monasteries and convents are not refuges from the world; they are prisons run by scheming and ambitious superiors. Peaceful looking landscapes harbour all kinds of dangers. Pride wears many masks. Over all lurks the more frightening question for the reader, are we who we think we are, morally and biologically? To find otherwise is to teeter on a precipice.

Excellent review! Sigh, I know on which shelf I have hidden this... still to be read.

The Italian sounds like a wonderful read, Sassy. I downloaded The Monk onto my Kindle after your review and will now go looking for this one. Thanks for the great review and the additions to my ever-growing TBR pile!

Fascinating! I bought The Monk after you reviewed it, and I too may have to get this one too! Enjoy your visitors, even though your computer will be occupied!

The Italian Phew! what a trip - great review.

Visitors are now gone, sadly. It was lots of fun, but only one book got read. I managed to make another convert to Wolf Hall by giving him my extra copy, but then he kept disappearing to read it. That's okay, it's what vacations are for!

It took me about ten minutes after everyone had left to organize a huge mug of coffee and start catching up on LT. That took some time. Everyone has been doing some fantastic reading.

Thanks all for the comments on The Monk. Rebecca, back in >13 SassyLassy:, I really meant Nuns Behaving Badly, not Embroidered Ground, but I hope you knew what I meant:)

The July part of the group read of The Cairo Trilogy finished just under the wire on July 31st.



37. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

first published in Arabic 1956
Everyman English edition published 2001
finished July 31, 2012

I am not going to write about this first part of the trilogy, but rather will wait until I have finished the whole series.

I realized as I started this post that I had not added the book to LT. When I did, I discovered that the ISBN for this listed Edward Said as the writer of the introduction, whereas my Everyman edition has Sabry Hafez writing it. Since I would like to read what Said has to say, I just may have to find another copy!

ETA author's name... my posting skills are rusty

A book from a friend to read while my house was in an uproar



38. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

first published 2010
finished August 22, 2012

This novel started with an interesting premise; bags of mail from WWII are found in London and delivered to the addressees fifty years later. This leads to a mystery for Edie, a publishing assistant, whose mother receives one of the letters and breaks down in tears.

The problem was that the novel didn't know what it wanted to be: mystery, historical fiction, or gothic thriller. I would have been happy with any of these three, but naturally it couldn't settle on a theme. At almost six hundred pages, it could have used a publishing assistant of its own. The first and last thirds worked well; the middle third lacked direction.

However, it did fulfill its purpose. I didn't have to concentrate while reading it, so I was able to pick it up and put it down without losing any of the narrative thread whenever I had to rush off and do something.

A good book for the cottage when lots of people are around.

This was a book I was really looking forward to based on LT reviews and the fact that it takes place in my favourite city, on streets I had walked as recently as three months ago. The map in the front really hooked me.



39. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

first published 2011
finished August 22, 2012

Harriet Baxter is the most odious woman in current fiction. A condescending, deluded, self centred busybody, who is also completely obsessive, Harriet is indeed the agent of her own destruction.

Some people might feel sympathy for an elderly spinster, who while not quite living alone, has only a pair of lovebirds and a succession of odd maids for company. Don't! She deserves it. Feel sorry for the maids instead.

It is Harriet herself in 1933 who tells us the story of her time in Glasgow from 1888 to 1890. Initially, it seems straightforward enough, but as she intersperses the long ago tale with updates to her current life, it becomes obvious that something doesn't ring true. This feeling is confirmed by her increasing and unwarranted interventions into the lives of the Gillespies, a family who should have put shut to her from the get go. Naturally Harriet doesn't see it like that. Instead, she feels wounded at the thought of people turning against her.

It is not until the last third of the book that we get any outsider views of Harriet, and what better place than in a court room? One by one, her delusions are swept away for the reader, until finally she is skewered with that fine old Scottish verdict, "Not proven". This basically is a legal alternative to "Proven/Guilty" or 'Not Guilty". It is usually taken to mean "You're guilty as sin but we just can't prove it", leaving the recipient free, but tainted for the rest of their days.

Why read a book about such a person? I often asked myself that until I got to the incarceration and trial, and saw how well Harris had built the story of the Gillespies and Harriet and taken it to this point. For those familiar with "Not proven", the verdict probably doesn't comes as much of a surprise. However, the complete lack of self awareness with which Harriet resumes her life is startling. Her need for an obsession never wanes and her final one had me mentally screaming "Just leave now", the equivalent to the movie mutter "Don't go down in the basement".

Now for a confession; I disliked Harriet so much that I projected that to the book. I began my own obsessive search to find something wrong with it. Harris's research was excellent and never heavy handed. It seemed effortlessly incorporated into the novel. It was obviously highly effective writing to produce such a response. In short, I came up empty handed.

Oh, and if you quibble there is no Stanley Street where the map shows it to be, it was Stanley Street in Gillespie's time. The City of Glasgow later changed it to Baliol Street.

an interesting premise; bags of mail (...) delivered to the addressees fifty years later.

In 2009, China Post had an interesting action: write a letter to yourself in the future. China Post has pledged to deliver those letters fifty years later.

>26 SassyLassy: Oh! A protagonist to hate. I love it! :)

>27 edwinbcn: That is really interesting.

>27 edwinbcn: Is that because it will take fifty years to read and censor them:) I wonder how many people took them up on their offer. It does imply a real belief in the future.

Waiting to see what comes out of the October Congress

>28 avidmom: Agreed! Sometimes they're the best

Here is a painting by one of the established painters Harriet loves to hate, Sir John Lavery:



The Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888

Sassy, although I am only lukewarm on Gillespie and I, I think your review is great. And I love the Sir John Lavery painting!

>26 SassyLassy: - Enjoyed your review of Gillespie and I. A bit of a different take from some of the others I read. Reading all the reviews has made me very interested!

Excellent review of Gillespie and I. I am still on the fence as whether I should recommend this to my book club, but your review has convinced me it should provoke some good discussions.

Love those colours in the picture by Sir John Lavery

Enjoyed your review of Gillespie and I almost as much as I enjoyed the book itself!

>32 baswood: Barry, it would DEFINITELY provoke discussion...

Linda, DieF, bas and rachbxl, thanks for the words on the review.

Lavery painted a large number of society portraits, but his work does give a good picture of the time, at least among the privileged classes.

Bas, I think it would be a great book club book for the different opinions the readers would have. I wish I had a book club like yours, based on your reviews.

Part of my reaction to Gillespie and I was to go back to the real life trials Harris mentions in the novel and in her Acknowledgements. All the trials in these two books were intriguing, but I'll only deal with the ones connected to Gillespie and I

and

40. Famous Trials 1 edited byHarry Hodge and Famous Trials 5 edited by James H Hodge
first published 1941 and 1955 respectively
finished August 22 and August 25, 2012

Madeleine Smith by F Tennyson Jesse in Famous Trials 1

Madeleine Smith is perhaps the best known person to receive a verdict of "Not Proven". Sitting in the dock, Harris's fictional Harriet Baxter remembers Madeleine and tries to remember the implications of her verdict.

Madeleine came from a highly respectable Glasgow family. Nineteen and living at home, as she should have been, she started an affair with a Jersey man, Pierre Emile L'Angelier. This could not go anywhere, as Madeleine was too clever to allow herself to be disowned by her father by marrying Emile, and Emile would not marry Madeleine without her family's approval and support. Madeleine appears to have tired of the whole mess, and on January 28, 1857, in a far more realistic move she became engaged to Mr Minnoch, an older man and family friend.

Emile had known for some time that Madeleine wanted to break off their affair and had threatened her with exposure through her letters to him, an act which would have led to her complete ruin. As her relationship with Minnoch progressed, Madeleine's letters to Emile resumed their earlier ardent tone. Why? The most simple answer was that she was trying to get her letters back. The prosecution was to say that she was trying to lure Emile to his death.

Emile had returned home on February 19th and 22nd with severe abdominal pain and vomiting. On March 23, he again returned home in this state. His landlady sent for a physician, who prescribed laudanum and a mustard plaster without seeing the patient. Later in the day, the doctor turned up. More blankets, a hot water bottle, morphine and a poultice were employed. Checking back later, the doctor and landlady found L'Angelier dead. He was found to have eighty-two grains of arsenic in his stomach. Madeleine, who had recently made several arsenic purchases, was arrested and charged with administering poison on three occasions.

The press and prosecution painted her in the worst possible light. In her defence, Madeleine said she had bought the arsenic to lighten her complexion, after telling the apothecaries that it was to kill rats. Her lawyer suggested L'Angelier had committed suicide. Most crucial for Madeleine, however, absolutely no evidence could be found of a meeting between Madeleine and Emile before any of his bouts of illness. Tennyson does hint that some evidence may have been suppressed. Madeleine was found "Not Guilty" on the first count and a verdict of "Not Proven" was returned for the second and third instances. Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom. Madeleine walked out a free woman and into a small library of books plays and movies.

The house where Madeleine lived with her parents
_______________

John Watson Laurie by William Roughead in Famous Trials 5

Two men walked up a mountain; one came down. John Watson Laurie, a Scot, had met Edwin Robert Rose, and Englishman, on the ferry to the Scottish island of Arran, where both were going for a holiday. They agreed to lodge together and were seen by several parties climbing the mountain on Monday afternoon. By Tuesday morning their lodgings were empty and there was no sign of either man.

Two weeks later, after Rose's brother reported Edwin missing, a search was launched. Rose's body was found in a gully on August 5th. It was under the cavity created by a boulder, surrounded by heavy stones and turf. Above the gully were two sheer drops from one of the paths down the mountain. The autopsy said death was the result of repeated blows to the head.

Laurie, who had used the assumed name of Annandale while on Arran, was tracked down. After being seized by a group of miners, he was charged with murder based on being known to have some of the victim's clothing and his return half ticket to London. Laurie's defence claimed that the evidence was purely circumstantial. There were no witnesses and certainly no corroborating witnesses. Rose must have fallen.

In an unprecedented move, Laurie was found "Guilty" after forty-five minutes of deliberation, against all expectations of a "Not Proven"verdict. Guilty verdicts based on circumstantial evidence were virtually unknown.

Laurie was sentenced to hang, but in another unusual move, an inquiry was set up to address his mental state, although there had been no suggestion before or during his trial of any difficulties. Laurie was granted respite from hanging on November 28th, two days before his scheduled execution. He spent the next forty-one years in prison, most of it in the "lunacy department".

In a delightful aside by Roughead, the magistrates of the town of Greenock, where the execution was to have taken place, tried to recover from the Prison Commissioners the expenses incurred by them in preparing for the execution; but the Commissioners, being, officially, devoid of bowels, left the burgh to pay the bill.

In Gillespie and I, Harriet mentions the Laurie case in passing as a current interest, giving context to the reader. Harriet consistently bemoans her inability to speak from the dock, so the date of 1889 is also important, as two years earlier, before changes in the Criminal Procedure Act (Scotland) 1887, she would have been able to.

Harriet also worries when her trial is set for Friday, at week's end. This was considered bad luck. Laurie had the same day set, meaning that prosecution, defence and verdict must be telescoped into two days in order to finish be end of day on Saturday.

Goat Fell, site of the climb

___________________

Oscar Slater in Famous Trials 1

In Gillespie and I, Harriet's co accused are Hans and Belle Schlutterhouse. The nineteenth century saw successive waves of immigration to Glasgow from various parts of Europe. There were the usual fears of the unknown, often encapsulated in prejudice. Harris has Glaswegians testify against Schlutterhouse, when they cannot even distinguish between German and Italian.

Harris cites the astounding case of Oscar Slater in her Acknowledgements. On December 21, 1908, Miss Marion Gilchrist, an elderly woman with a large collection of valuable jewellery, was found brutally murdered, during the brief period when her maid had gone out for the newspaper. The downstairs neighbour and the maid unlocked the door of her flat together and a man left. On Christmas Day, it was reported to police that a 'German Jew' called Oscar was trying to sell a pawn ticket for a diamond brooch. Unfortunately for Oscar, he chose that day to leave Glasgow. Despite nine trunks of luggage, his mistress and a ticket in his own name, the police decided this was their man and he was in flight. After a night in Liverpool, Oscar and his companion sailed on the Lusitania for New York. The authorities followed and Oscar returned to Glasgow.

An atrocious trial filled with witness and evidence manipulation followed. Born in Germany, Oscar's original name was Oscar Joseph Leschziner. Unfortunately he fitted some of the worst prejudices of the time. He was sentenced to death. At the last minute, this was commuted to hard labour in Peterhead. Oscar had many supporters, however, including Rabbi E P Phillips, Andrew Lang and Arthur Conan Doyle. After many legal twists and turns that fill volumes of legal wrangling, he was released from Peterhead after more than eighteen years, at a time when fifteen was a customary life sentence. His case was appealed before five judges of the High Court in Edinburgh. Still unwilling to admit wrongdoing, the court quashed his conviction on a technicality, based on a successful appeal on whether the verdict was vitiated in respect of misdirection by the presiding judge, now conveniently dead.

Slater was granted six thousand pounds compensation, out of which he was expected to pay the costs of his appeal. Part of the money for the appeal was raised by the Jewish community and part by Conan Doyle.



Interior of the magnificent Garnethill synagogue -- E P Phillips was the first rabbi

Sassy, I think I enjoyed your research more than I did the book! Fascinating stuff. But seriously, I wish I had this background before reading the book, as it does give me a greater appreciation for Harris' effort.

Oh, these famous trials books sound great! Last year, I read Classic Crimes, which was a selection of some of William Roughead's tales of trials (including both the Madeline Smith and the Laurie cases). I'll have to look for these books too.

Great summaries of those famous trials.

Linda, rebecca and bas--- nothing like a good trial for great reading. I will look for Classic Crimes as I really enjoyed Roughead's commentary and analysis. Glad you enjoyed these summaries, thanks.

Off to Vermont now for two weeks without a computer. Since there is an excellent association of independent booksellers and used bookstores everywhere it's not a great hardship except for missing LT. I have my list with me.

Enjoy your holiday, and have fun in the bookstores! We expect a full report on your purchases.

I enjoyed the summaries and pictures too, rewarding research I'd imagine.

Nuns Behaving Badly is such an intriguing title, may titilate and may depress but I am interested.

Back for five days now, but this is my first full day at home. I can't believe how busy Club Read has been in the meantime; I am still catching up, which is impossible as people keep posting!

It was a great book buying experience (along with everything else I went for) and I came away with quite a haul, divided up as follows:

Books on Stuff I Do 8

Agricultural History 2
The Story of Agriculture in the United States by Albert Sanford, published 1900--- a look at food production before agribusiness
Farm Conveniences and How to Make Them a collection first published in 1916---imagine if in order to work, you first needed to make almost every tool or building required

Vietnam 3
Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War -- from the days when not everyone was on the same side
Nurses in Vietnam: The Forgotten Veterans -- the title probably says it all
Offerings at the Wall -- a truly heart wrenching book of photos

China 4
Report from a Chinese Village by Jan Myrdal -- a classic which I had read from the library years ago-- it tells of Myrdal's time in a village in 1962, when China was in upheaval--particularly interesting now as I am also reading Mao's Great Famine and Myrdal's book documents the peasant side with first hand accounts
Rickshaw Boy by Lao She -- finally found not only the book but the translation I wanted
Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan -- another one I had been waiting for
In the Pond by Ha Jin -- a favourite author

Social History 8
The Invention of Murder: How Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders --- anyone see the connection with Gillespie and I or Lady Audley's Secret?
In Russian and French Prisons by Peter Kropotkin -- a man who knew whereof he spoke
The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Ladies as Factory Girls by Mrs John van Vorst and Marie van Vorst --an insider look from 1903, somewhat apprehensive about this
After Henry by Joan Didion -- another book read in the past from the library, but worth rereading
Our Appalachia --- oral history with photographs on a region that fascinates me
Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America by Cameron McWhirter -- an era I don't know about
The Children by David Halberstam -- at age 25, Halberstam was assigned to cover the Nashville sit-ins, his account
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander -- has anything changed?

American Fiction 6
Washington Square by Henry James -- slowly reading my way through his books
Losing Battles by Eudora Welty -- because I love southern writers
Sanctuary by William Faulkner -- same reason
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote -- Audrey Hepburn and Truman Capote just seemed like an incongruous pair and I had to know more
God's Pocket by Pete Dexter -- a favourite author, this is his first novel
Resuscitation of a Hanged Man by Denis Johnson -- another favourite author

Other Fiction, Other Lands 5
The Successor by Ismail Kadare --Albania
The Ivory Swing by Janette Turner Hospital --Australia, another favourite author
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco --Italy
Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante -- Italy
Weep Not, Child by Ngugi wa Thiong'o -- Kenya

Biography 1
The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 71 by Molly Peacock -- a great day, a great village and the book looked too intriguing to pass up


I make that 37, so I seem to have misplaced a few, but still a lot of reading ahead. If only I could convince myself to stop buying while these get read!

Wow; great book haul!

Indeed, a great book haul, and several titles that sound interesting, including In Russian and French Prisons and the Denis Johnson. I wasn't completely enamored of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; I enjoyed it, but it wore me out a little.

Never stop buying

I've started reading the list but inevitably I will be distracted, especially by the Reading Globally fourth quarter read on China.

Doc, rebecca and bas: It was a great haul, part of me is really pleased and part is horrified. Thanks for the positive reinforcement bas!

Here's another list, the long list for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, awarded to the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English in the past year. This is one of the top Canadian prizes.

Y by Marjorie Celona
Our Daily Bread by Lauren Davis
My Life Among the Apes by Cary Fagan
419 by Will Ferguson
Dr Brinkley's Tower by Robert Hough
One Good Hustle by Billie Livingston
The Sweet Girl by Annabel Lyon
Inside by Alix Ohlin
Everybody has Everything by Katrina Onstad
The Emperor of Paris by CS Richardson
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler
Ru by Kim Thuy
Whirl Away by Russell Wangersky

I'm embarrassed to say that while I know of some of these authors, I have heard little about these books. I do follow CanLit in a sort of keep up the awareness way, but this year I seem to be completely out of touch. The short list will be announced next week.

The jury is Roddy Doyle, Anna Porter and Gary Shteyngart.

Last year's winner was Esi Edugyan for Half-Blood Blues.

Great list of purchases, Sassy. Thanks also for posting the Giller Prize list. Between the two, my wishlist has grown even before you have posted any reviews.

I follow a blog that holds a Shadow Giller Jury, and they haven't been overly impressed with this year's Giller. Last year's, on the other hand, was very well reviewed. I'm interested to see if you find any gems in this long list.

The Giller shortlist

419 by Will Ferguson
Inside by Alix Ohlin
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler
Ru by Kim Thuy translated from French by Sheila Fischman
Whirl Away by Russell Wangersky short stories, a Canadian specialty

>Cait, I'm inclined to agree with your shadow jury. The only one of these books I'm tempted by right now is Ru. As you say, a real contrast with last year.

Way back at the beginning of August, nickelini wrote an intriguing review of The Aspern Papers, so when I saw it in a book store less than a week later, I snapped it up. I've been completed intimidated at the thought of saying anything about James, but if I'm ever to catch up, I have to get on with it.



41 and 42. The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

first published in serial form, 1888 and 1898 respectively
finished August 26 and 28, 2012

We've all been obsessed at one time or another. It might have been with a new theory, a complex project, or even someone new in our lives. Usually it passes. The theory is absorbed or discarded, the project finished and that new person is revealed as completely ordinary. What happens though when what should be a passing obsession slides out of control and takes over every facet of our life? This is the idea behind these two tales from Henry James.

In his preface, James said he delighted in the idea of the recent past, what he called "a palpable imaginable visitable past", the one we can directly connect to. James had discovered that Jane Clairmount, Byron's former mistress and mother of his daughter Allegra, had still been living in Florence while James had been visiting the city. He mused about the idea that he could have met this link to the Byronic past, but decided it was better that he had not, allowing him to preserve his own visions of that time and place.

The nameless narrator of The Aspern Papers had no such restraint. On hearing that the lover of the American poet Jeffrey Aspern, the elderly Miss Bordereau, lived on in Venice with her middle aged niece, he concocted a plan with a business partner to obtain Aspern's papers. Miss Bordereau had previously turned down all such requests, so the narrator conceived the idea of becoming her lodger. His immediate hope was that he would have access to the papers, and that eventually she would leave them to him on her death.

Easier said than done. Although he was successful in renting rooms, albeit for an outrageous price, he was not received further by Miss Bordereau. Little by little he cultivated her niece, Miss Tina, eventually bringing up Aspern's name. He confessed he was collecting materials and writing about Aspern. Miss Tina's response was to withdraw immediately. Finally, however, the invitation to meet with Miss Bordereau arrived. A strange game of cat and mouse followed; neither giving way or mentioning Aspern's name, yet each clearly knowing what the other wanted. The narrator eventually grew so desperate that he attempted to steal the papers, but was caught red handed by the aunt and niece. The matter was never discussed, but lay between him and Miss Tina until Miss Borodereau's death.

Miss Tina had made a deathbed promise to her aunt not to show Aspern's papers to an outsider. The narrator's sense of horror at this pledge was only intensified when he realized the intent behind Miss Tina's explanation

...that if you were a relation it would be different...Anything that's mine would be yours and you could do what you like.

How far is the narrator willing to go to satisfy his obsession?

-----------------------------

The Turn of the Screw details an internal obsession, something much more difficult for observers to understand as there is no defined starting point from which to explore it. James called this story "an excursion into chaos while remaining...but an anecdote".

A group of friends is sitting around a fireside discussing ghost stories and supernatural occurrences. One of this group, Douglas, offers to tell a story, saying It's beyond anything. Nothing I know touches it. For dreadful -- dreadfulness! Although sketched in broad outline by Douglas years after the events, the actual story is then read in the form of a first person journal narrative, for who better than the person most immediately involved could best convey the sense of disturbance and inner turmoil which prevailed? How Douglas came by the narrative is left to the reader.

A young governess is sent to a beautiful countryhouse to supervise the upbringing of the little girl Flora, and of her brother Miles whenever he is home from boarding school. There is a full staff to help in the running of the household. The governess will be paid well. There is only one condition to her employment: she must never contact her employer.

We know little about the governess except that she is provincial, inexperienced and given to reading novels with a powerful grip on the imagination. Given the stricture against contacting her employer, she is quite unprepared to cope when Miles arrives home for the school break along with a letter of expulsion. No explanation is given by the headmaster as to what might have caused this.

As the governess absorbs tales from the country housekeeper of the previous governess and a man servant, and hears of their unseemly behaviour, she dwells on what that behaviour might have been. She begins seeing the pair as apparitions, then convinces herself they are also appearing to the children. Frantic to protect Miles and Flora from evil, she convinces the sceptical housekeeper of these appearances in an effort to enlist her help. She believes the children are aware of the apparitions and thinks of offering herself to the spirits in their stead. However, another notion presents itself to her. Are the children complicit? How can she address this question with them, especially if the are the innocent creatures they outwardly appear to be?

At one point in her journal, the governess asks, "How can I retrace to-day the strange steps of my obsession?" This is the question that has fascinated readers for years.

I'm afraid to approach James yet, but you have made these two sound fascinating. Terrific reviews.

I used to have a copy of The Turn of the Screw but I "lent" it to someone who saw it on my TBR shelf while she was staying with us overnight before going to the airport for a trip the next morning and thought it looked like just the thing for her plane trip! This was several years ago, and I think I'm going to have to buy another copy. Maybe I'll get the combination edition you read.

Well got on with it SassyLassy; publish and be damned! Excellent reviews of the two Henry James novellas

Fabulous reviews of The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw, Sassy. I have read the latter, as well as The Portrait of A Lady and since I have James' complete works on Kindle, will certainly be reading more. I think he is a wonderful author and not at all intimidating. The density of his style just takes some patience.

Dan, I don't know what it is about certain authors that make us feel that way. I wouldn't think twice about commenting on a book by one of his European contemporaries. As Linda says, he is a wonderful author. No simple declarative sentences here, but once you sink into his language, it takes a while to come back to the present. I'd say jump in!

Rebecca, I sympathize about that kind of "lending", especially when you suspect the book will have no meaning for the borrower. I can't imagine reading that on a plane.

Thanks for the encouragement, bas. I do usually need several prods to get going.

Linda, I read The Golden Bowl last year and I'm encouraged to read more. Do Kindle books have footnotes and introductions?

Maybe we could make James a featured author next year?

Oh, what an interesting idea about a featured author! I'll start a thread a little later this fall about ideas for making Club Read 2013 even better!

By the way, the person I "lent" the book to was my sweetie's mother so I couldn't refuse. I even looked for it on her (one) bookshelf when we visited her after she got back and it was nowhere to be seen, so I'm afraid she left it on the plane or at the hotel. I hope whoever picked it up enjoyed it.

Every summer for the past few years I have caught up on the adventures of John and Effi, so it seemed like a good reading idea back in August when it was too hot to move and nothing real was getting done. I know several other Club Read readers follow them too.



43. Potsdam Station by David Downing
published 2010
finished August 28, 2012

John Russell is journalist with both English and American connections. He is also an occasional intelligence operative. When last seen in the previous book, it was 1941 and he was escaping Germany. John left behind not only his German girlfriend, Effi Koenen, a popular actress, but also his teenage son, Paul, who lived with his German mother and stepfather. It seemed somewhat unheroic, but I expected feats of derring do to emerge from this escape.

Potsdam Station, however, opens in April 1945. The Russians are closing in on Berlin. John, now determined that he must save Effi, concocts the improbable scheme of accompanying the Red Army into Berlin as an official reporter for the West, giving first hand coverage. He has had dealings with Soviet intelligence in the past and will have to explain away his abrupt termination of those activities to them before he can embark on any new ones.

Will he get to Berlin and find Effi? Is Paul still alive? All will be revealed. This is the fourth novel dealing with John and Effi. When the series started, it was New Year's Eve, 1938, so the first three novels covered 1939, 1940 and 1941. I didn't find this one as entertaining, perhaps because there is so much unknown and unanswered about the period from 1941 to 1945.

Will there be another book in the series? It's hard to say. As a minor quibble, this was an English edition, although it came from amazon.ca and it didn't have the same cover style as the previous books, which all had terrific photos. This one had a movie poster cover. Perhaps that was telling me something. If there is another book though, I will read it, in the hopes that somethings will be filled in.

In April, the Short Stories group held a challenge to read thirty short stories, each by a different author, in thirty days. This was when I discovered Eudora Welty. This is an author whose work you almost never see in this part of the world, so I snapped this book up when I saw it last month when I was away. I can't wait to find another.



44. Losing Battles by Eudora Welty
first published 1970
finished September 13, 2012

Granny Vaughan lived in a tiny hamlet somewhere in northeast Mississippi. Every year her descendants came from all over the state on her birthday for a family reunion. Although she claimed to be one hundred, this year was her ninetieth birthday and the first anniversary of the death of her husband, Preacher Vaughan. Granny's granddaughter Miss Beulah, Miss Beulah's husband Mr Renfro and four of their children lived with Granny. The oldest son Jack was away from home.

One by one Granny's five living grandsons, their wives and children arrived at the farm. Excitement was high, children were everywhere and the food seemed limitless. It was the mid nineteen-thirties. The house did not have running water, let alone a telephone, and few in the family were capable of writing letters. Catching up from last year was the order of the day.

As the family members start their tales, it is clear they are master storytellers. To help the process along, there is a brand new sister-in-law to ask questions and be put in her place. Much of the talk is of Jack, his mother's favourite. Miss Beulah is convinced Jack will arrive home today to honour Granny Vaughan. We are not told why Jack is away or where he is. As one person after another tells a story, we learn about him bit by bit, each time from a different perspective. It's like doing a puzzle without the picture; when the final pieces are fitted into place, it all makes sense.

Naturally, as the stories come out, each storyteller can't help but reveal parts of their own story. Other characters appear as the day goes along. Brother Bethune, the new preacher, is expected. Judge Moody and his wife are not. We learn of the death of Miss Julia Mortimer, who taught generations of county children. Of course, almost everyone has a story about her. Through these new stories, we learn about the one family member who refuses to participate in the gleaning of family history.

The multiple layers Welty builds up and then strips away are the true art of this novel. She is a master of voice. Although often told with humour, these stories tell of losing battles in a world more complex than the Vaughans were prepared for. As they are told and the day wears on, real life intrudes. The excitement of the day fades, children become fractious, food runs out and the tales get darker. As the last guests are waved good-bye the next day, the reader can only wonder what the next year will bring.

Henry James is one of my favorite authors. The Aspern Papers is one I haven't read yet, though. (They're actually staging an opera based on the novel here next spring.) I'd love to see James as featured author either here or in the Author Theme Reads group.

#55 - Kindle books usually have whatever the printed book has. If you buy a Kindle version of a Penguin classic, for example, you should get the same introduction and notes as the original. But the free Kindle books (and pretty much every major work by James can be had for free) will only have what the original edition had, which is usually just the raw text. However with the Kindle you can easily look terms up in the dictionary and Wikipedia, which often will take the place of the footnotes.

Your review reminds me that Eudora Welty is an author I should have read long before now, as I have family roots in Mississippi.

I haven't read and don't own anything by Eudora Welty, so Losing Battles looks like a good one to start with. I'll add it to my wish list. I enjoyed your reviews of it and Potsdam Station.

Catching up here and especially enjoying your books that touch on social history (and the list in msg42). Your review of Nuns Behaving Badly started me on a path that may lead to Sisters: Catholic Nuns and the Making of America and The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns.

Losing Battles sounds wonderful

Enjoyed your review of Losing Battles.

>51 dchaikin: - dchaikin - There's a lot of approachable James - I loved Washington Square but I think some people didn't like it because it was too simple. Daisy Miller is a good early novella that has James' "international" theme. It doesn't look like it's too popular on LT but Roderick Hudson is another early novel that I found very readable and it had a kind of appealing naive verve that I didn't find in his other works. The American is another one, also with the old Europe-new America clash. Early short stories could be a good intro also. I do think that the late short stories (The Beast in the Jungle, The Jolly Corner) can be good gateway drugs for the later, difficult novels.

>58 SassyLassy: - Great review of Losing Battles. I hadn't heard of that one before though I should probably read some Welty. I'm always intrigued by books where everyone tells their stories and gradually you get all the pieces of the puzzle.

>59 StevenTX: - Steven, are you planning to go the opera? That would be really interesting to see. I haven't heard of Argento but remembered the name because it was the same as the giallo director.

I think Losing Battles is something I would enjoy, and since I've never read Eudora Welty, this looks like a good place to start.

I'll have to keep my eye out for Losing Battles & this author. Nice review.

Great reviews. Glad to catch up with you.

Thanks all for the comments on Losing Battles. I had heard of Eudora Welty for some time; the name is one that just sticks. When I read the short story "Where is the Voice Coming From?" (in many anthologies), a chilling account written in the voice of Medgar Evers' assassin, I had thought I must be mistaken in thinking of her as an older author, but she was actually born in 1909, so could easily cover both aspects of Mississippi life. She died in 2001.

Her Wikipedia page quotes her mother as saying "...any room in our house, at any time in the day, was there to read in, or to be read to...". Just the kind of environment we all need.

Steven, that's good to know about Kindle editions, as the possibility of losing this information was one of the obstacles in my mind when it came to getting a Kindle. No one in the stores seemed able to answer this question, or if I got an answer, it was not consistent from store to store. Do you have any suggestions for more southern reading?

Detailmuse, I love going off on these reading paths where one thing leads to another. I will look for The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns. I went to a convent school for a few years and was completely intrigued by how the nuns could sweep into the room like royalty with skirts and veils swirling around them.

Thanks for the James info too, DieF. Maybe I should just start at the beginning.

I saw this book in Burlington VT, right after paying for several others, so passed on it. However, I kept thinking about it that night. Next morning I delayed leaving town until the store had opened, so that I could go back and buy it.



45. Offerings at the Wall: Artifacts from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection by Thomas B Allen
first published 1995

It seems odd to write about a book of pictures. These particular ones are not even photographs in an artistic sense, but rather are images of everyday items presented in museum catalogue format. It is the story behind each of these objects that gives it and the book meaning.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, otherwise known as the Vietnam Wall, is the most visited memorial in the US, so it's hard to realize the controversy that surrounded it when it was dedicated in 1982. In his brief but excellent introduction, Thomas Allen gives some background as to how the memorial came about and to the history behind some of the artifacts. Rage, love, guilt and sorrow were just some of the motivations for these offerings. Patriotism is there too, along with profound disillusionment.

The first known object was left even before the wall was completed. A US Navy officer visited the site, throwing his dead brother's Purple Heart in as the concrete foundation was being poured. With the completion of the memorial, it became obvious that a process would be needed to cope with the items being left there. It seemed wrong to just throw them away, as the wall had become in Allen's words "a place to confront futures that could not be".

Instead, a system was organized by the National Park Service to collect items twice daily and tag them with the date, the granite panel number and a reference number. Then everything except flowers, flags and drugs is taken to the Museum and Archeological Regional Storage Facility as a permanent home. The belief there is that it is the people most affected who are deciding what is significant, not an academic curator going out and looking for objects. The curator for this collection is a former infantryman, who can give meaning to some of the more arcane objects and language.

Holidays and Father's Day are some of the busiest times. Looking at the objects left then, there is a sense that relatives and friends are trying to keep the named up to date on current family matters and social issues. Although sealed letters are not opened, notes left there speak of new family members, these days mostly grandchildren. Deaths from Agent Orange are noted there. As one widow wrote, she had to tell her son his father's name would not be on the wall, as "he did not die in Vietnam, but from being in Vietnam". One Gay and Lesbian Pride Day, a pink triangle was left with the message "In memory of the gay soldiers in Vietnam: Made heroes for fighting other men, shamed for loving other men". Often the notes are a catharsis for the writer, starting with a variation of "It's been twenty years..." Medical personnel remember patients, patients remember medical personnel who were killed. Inexplicably, schoolchildren have left Christmas cards for names drawn at random, as they would for soldiers overseas.

Many items appear again and again: combat boots, unit insignia, bottles of Jim Beam, cigarettes and religious symbols. Other items are more personal: debts paid, borrowed objects returned, personal belongings and photographs. Wedding rings turn up singly and in pairs, sometimes with the explanation that the person is moving on, other times with no explanation at all. One photograph is of a fallen comrade ceremony for three members of a company. On the back are the names of two of the dead. The third is identified only as"new guy", someone who hadn't even been there long enough for the others to learn his name. The same photograph of ten members of a marine squad has been left multiple times, each time with a different member named.

Allen speculates that as those closest to these soldiers age, more objects of an individual nature will be left. One there already is the small figure of a dog with the note "Built and painted by a 12 year old boy...Love Mom Dad Ron Andy and our families you never met". A box of homemade cookies still wrapped in its original brown paper and string had been returned to the family as undeliverable, with KIA 10-31-72 scrawled on it. Years later it was delivered to a granite panel. The note accompanying the box says

Mom & Dad want you to have these cookies and Kool Aid. Its time they gave these to you. They send all their Love

The book ends with a list of all 58, 196 names.

Such touching samples from the Wall, thank you. Have you visited? The experience feels unlike any other memorial.

>Medical personnel remember patients, patients remember medical personnel

That reminded me of this related to the Korean war.

What an interesting review, and very interesting book and whole idea behind the book. I know people who are trying to figure out a memorial for a mass shooting event, and all the items that people left at the site and related sites have also been collected. Your review helps me understand the rationale for that better.

Wonderful review on Offerings at the Wall. The Moving Vietnam Memorial Wall came to our small(ish) town a few years ago. I have to agree with detailmuse, it is quite a touching experience.

Thank you for the review of Offerings at the Wall- the experience of visiting the memorial is quite different from others- this one is more personal and makes the visitor aware of the loss.

#69 - Thanks for this review.

>69 SassyLassy: - A very moving review.

>70 detailmuse: to >75 DieFledermaus:

Thanks all. I have never been to Washington, but a trip there is definitely on the radar sometime in the next five years, driven mostly by my desire to visit this memorial.

Thanks for the link, detailmuse; it's fascinating what remains with us and what we lose.

Rebecca, I have always found memorials for more personal events like a shooting or an accident interesting for what they say about how the people left behind express their grief. I have seen everything from a simple roadside white cross to a full size motorcycle atop a telephone pole. Grief to me is far more private, but it is helpful to as you say, understand the rationale behind how others may express it. The Montreal Massacre memorials demonstrate a range of remembrances across Canada.

46. God's Pocket by Pete Dexter
first published 1983
finished September 24, 2012

There are certain writers who excel at telling us about people many would rather ignore. The wino outside the liquor store, the manual labourer in the city park, the harried older woman behind the supermarket checkout counter: all come to life in the work of Russell Banks, Pinckney Benedict, Denis Johnson and Pete Dexter. Their books are filled with people with nowhere to go and no way to get there, people whose behaviour is determined by rules and conventions of their immediate neighbourhood, for make no mistake, there are rules and breaking them comes at an enormous cost.

God's Pocket in South Philadelphia is just such a spot. Leon Hubbard, a small time hood with a big time union ticket, had a day job on the construction site managed by his stepfather, Mickey Scarpato. His coworkers and boss knew things were not quite right with Leon, whose behaviour was completely erratic. One of his habits was to constantly taunt the crew's best worker, Old Lucy. When he took a razor to Lucy one lunch hour, Lucy hit him over the head with a length of pipe and killed him. The police arrived. Mickey said it was an accident, that a piece of equipment had fallen and the investigation was left at that.

However, Leon's mother Jeanie was not content with the outcome and insisted Mickey find out for her what really happened. Mickey took pride in providing the essentials and a little more for his wife, the latter often provided by some work he did on the side, heisting meat trucks for the underworld and selling the contents. He did not want to have to tell her that Leon's death was not an accident.

An involved story follows, peopled by a dubious cast of characters, including a nefarious undertaker, a has been reporter, Jeanie's two sisters, Mickey's two partners in crime and the regulars of the Hollywood tavern. All are hurtling out of control to an even more marginal existence than their current one. Some will not survive.

God's Pocket is Pete Dexter's first novel. I had read three others before this one, and definitely liked his writing, but I'm not sure I would have searched him out if this had been the first one I read. There were good characters to write about here, but too many for a short novel, especially one which jumped from character to character. After finishing the book, I found out that Dexter had been a newspaper reporter. That explained some of the writing; it was as if he had written the characters as columns and then tried to join them together. The strength of this novel was in the sense of place, which played a major role for so many of the characters.

Will I read Pete Dexter again? Definitely. The books I had read earlier made him one of my favourite contemporoary authors and I have two more in the TBR pile. In the meantime, God's Pocket was an interesting look at his start as a novelist.

Great review of God's Pocket. I was familiar with the author by name only, and now know what to expect and where to start.

I was eager to "thumb" your review, but I don't see it on the book page.

Excellent review of God's Pocket

Great review of God's Pocket, SassyLassy. I'll add it to my wish list, as I've wanted to read some of his work.

Terrific review. You completely captured me, and now I really want to read Dexter. I was going to add this to the wishlist, but when I checked the author page I discovered I own one of his books, Paris Trout. I'll start there.

>78 StevenTX: to >81 dchaikin:

I always suspected Pete Dexter was one of those authors around whom there was a decided gender divide in terms of readership and this may just confirm it (naturally I'm the exception). Thanks for the positive comments.

Based on the four I've read, I think the one to start with might be Train. Here is one of my favourite quotes from it and what might be a summary of Dexter's philosophy of life:

The world is a hungry place... and whatever kind of thing you is, there's something out there that likes to eat it. It's natural. That's how the world keeps tidy.

If you start with Paris Trout, I would just caution it is incredibly violent, sexist and racist, but on the other hand, it won the American National Book Award based on the writing. I read it after seeing the film, starring Dennis Hopper, Ed Harris and Barbara Hershey, which should give you an idea of the intensity level.

The next Dexter novel I read will be Deadwood, which I got after watching the series on DVD and reading bragan's review of Doc, which I got at the same time. I was surprised to see Dexter had written Deadwood, as it is out of his usual time frame. However, considering the characters, almost all drawn from real life, it made sense.

Another first novel by another favourite author. The cover on the left is from the edition I read. The cover on the right reflects the book better.



47. The Ivory Swing by Janette Turner Hospital
first published 1982
finished September 27, 2012

Consider Radha, Lord Krishna's lover and considered by some to be his female half; a goddess in her own right, caught for all eternity with Krishna on an ivory swing, as they go back and forth between their divine love for each other and their worldly carnal love.

This is one of the first images Juliet discovers as she trawls an antique shop in Kerala Province with her husband David, shortly after their arrival in India. David will be doing research into forms of Hindu prayer. Juliet, as academically qualified as David, dropped out of that world when David took his first university position in Winston. She has accompanied him to India with their two children to escape the stultifying, soul destroying atmosphere in the grey town on the lake, a thinly disguised Kingston, Ontario.

There were options. She could have stayed in Winston (too deadly), moved to Montreal with her children and resumed her career (too emotionally dangerous). Even in India, she has options. She could enjoy the life of a middle class household with lots of help from her landlord's indentured tenants (too exploitive). Juliet, however, chooses the high road of doing everything for herself and discovers it to be the bypass to despair.

In India, unable to cope with what would be the simplest household tasks back in Winston, unable to adapt to the climate and unable to engage with the Indian community around her, Juliet slips deeper and deeper into a self made morass. Unable even to admit to David that it was a mistake, and to return to Canada for the duration of his research, she mentally swings between her conflicting desires. Does she want predictability or the unknown, the cool clean world of Canada or the chaos of India, her devoted husband or her fantasies of her previous philandering lover? Desperate to find any straw upon which to base a decision, she tries to find fault with her husband and when she can't find anything worth fighting over, she makes that a fault instead.

In the end, Juliet and David's swing becomes a trapeze. In Juliet's words

It is a delicate act, full of balance and hazard. For such a long time we have been skillful, never falling though never certain. Will we touch on the next inward arc? Or will we miss?

This is Janette Turner Hospital's first novel. I have read several of her other novels, as well as some short story collections. While I would normally avoid a character like Juliet, Hospital develops her with the techniques and themes that attend all her writing. She is a master of cultural identities and clashes, introduced in The Ivory Swing in the story of Yashoda, caught in a far more critical struggle between the old India and the India that strives to emulate the west. Hospital is an expert at bringing larger political concerns to bear on her stories and Yashoda's story is part of this, but politics will play a larger role in many of her later works. Her ability to show her characters as products of, and in relation to multiple environments, is a far more realistic situation than other writers are able to portray. Above all, in The Ivory Swing, we see the beginning of her later treatments of how to come to terms with and live with the consequences of our actions, knowing that this is something everyone must do on their own.

Enjoyed reading about the themes in Janette Turner Hospital's novels.

I hadn't even heard of Janette Turner Hospital, but I like the sound of this. I'm particularly struck by your comment about how she shows her characters 'as products of, and in relation to multiple environments' more realistically than other writers - that was exactly my feeling about Deborah Levy's writing in Swimming Home, which I just read (she's another writer I hadn't heard of until recently).

Very interesting reviews of God's Pocket and The Ivory Swing, Sassy. I'm adding both to the list of books and authors begging for attention, although my wishlist is becoming completely unmanageable with so many, many entries.

Wonderful review of The Ivory Swing. As for Paris Trout, I'm still interested despite your comments in #82.

Sympathizing about that wish list Linda. I just ordered two books that weren't even on mine!

Dan, I'm glad you're stubborn enough to still be interested in PT! It is a well written book about an ugly period. I was making an awkward attempt to warn people who like to steer clear of this kind of book, what the tone was. I don't think we should avoid these themes, but there are some who do, although not many Club Read readers.

One summer, Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton was my first introduction to Philip Kerr's writing. That naturally led me to his Bernie Gunther series the next summer. Field Gray, this year's Bernie Gunther offering, marks my official end of "summer" reading, even though this year, you can still sit outdoors and read.
As an aside, I see that some covers spell it "grey", which is my natural inclination.



48. Field Gray by Philip Kerr
first published 2010
finished October 4, 2012

Rebus, Wallander, Montalbano and Bernie Gunther. What is it about middle aged, overweight, slightly alcoholic detectives that puts them at the top of their genre? Perhaps it is because their moral dilemmas are universal ones that can be understood by all, even though most of us would never find ourselves in such situations. Their personal failures are widely shared. However, I think it is the way they all care deeply about the state of their respective countries and reflect those times and places, that make them so intriguing.

This particular Bernie Gunther adventure starts in 1954, when Bernie is arrested off the coast of Cuba and put into the hands of the CIA. World War II wrapped up what seemed like years ago and the world has moved on to the Cold War. Naturally Bernie doesn't quite agree with this state of affairs. He would like more attention paid to punishing war criminals.

Field Gray is the seventh novel in this series. By this stage, authors are often running out of steam, and for I while I feared this was the case here. Bernie's constant wise cracking seemed completely over the top. Several times I was tempted to just stop reading the book altogether.

Then, imprisoned and facing a critical situation, Bernie was forced to sit down and confront his past. The whole tone of the book changed and I read right through. Although still a first person narrative, the format switched to his more formal written account of his time first in wartime France, then as a German soldier on the Eastern Front, and then as a prisoner of the Soviets after the surrender of his unit. Naturally, being Bernie, this was all carefully edited for his American captors, but it reads well. Cross, double cross and cross again play out as Bernie tells his story, trying first to outwit his German superiors, then his Russian overseers at the slave labour camp, and then the Americans.

Over the course of seven books, as Bernie himself put it,

For twenty years I've been obliged to work for people I didn't like. Heydrich. The SD. The Nazis. The CIC. The Perons. The Mafia. The Cuban secret police. The French. The CIA. All I want to do is read the newspaper and play chess.

Somehow I suspect he will be doing more than that in the next instalment and his wonderfully improbable list will grow even longer.

Another first novel, another favourite author. This trio of first novels (see 77 and 83) was completely coincidental, it was just part of the books I found this summer. I read this one for the Reading Globally fourth quarter theme of China and the review was posted on their Asia II thread earlier this month.



In the Pond by Ha Jin
first published in 1998
finished October 6, 2012

Pity Shao Bin. After six years at the Harvest Fertilizer Plant, he has not advanced at all. He lives in one room in a workers' dormitory with his wife Meilan and baby daughter Shanshan. This year he has been passed over yet again for an apartment in the Workers' Park, much to his wife's disgust. Ever the pragmatist, she feels some small gifts from Bin to his superiors would not have been out of line.

An idealist at heart, Bin tries to subdue his rage and disappointment at this slight by retreating to his beloved writing brushes and art books. Seeking advice in the texts, he reasoned he must use writing and painting to expose corruption and strike back at Liu and Ma, whom he blames for his misfortune. After all

Who were Liu Shu and Ma Gong? Two small cadres with glib tongues, uncouth and unlettered. They were wine vessels and rice bags, their existence only burdening the earth, whereas he had read hundreds of books and was knowledgeable about strategies.

That night he produced a cartoon mocking them and accusing them of corruption. Next day he sent it off for publication.

So begins a struggle between worker and employer, powerless and powerful. Anyone who has worked in a large organization will recognize the machinations. Bin's coworkers initially side with him and urge him on, although some are doing this only for the joy of seeing someone fall. As Bin's fortunes wane, many of these coworkers distance themselves from him. Bin, reluctant to accept his minor role in life, escalates his behaviour after each round. Assumptions are made on both sides, leading to completely unanticipated acts after each skirmish.

Although a universal story, this tale is told from a uniquely Chinese perspective. Shao Bin is ordered to write a self criticism. He is belittled openly at a production meeting by his superiors. When a scuffle breaks out, he is labelled a lunatic. His family background is investigated for bad class elements. His bosses consider vandalism against his home. All this would be familiar to Chinese workers.

Serious as the themes are, they are all presented as a very funny slapstick satire. At one meeting Liu addresses the accusation of accepting gifts:

Shao Bin painted that we each received a bag of pineapples. That's a lie. To be honest, I've never seen a fresh pineapple. I don't know how big it is. I've only eaten canned pineapple once and have no idea how people eat a fresh one. Do you peel it, or cut it, or boil it, or pickle it? Tell me how. Come on, some of you are from the south and must know how to handle a fresh pineapple.

Food is both a constant metaphor and a constant presence. Almost every meeting has food lovingly described. If it is absent, that is noted too. At one stage, Liu and Ma, trying to decide how to handle the situation, decide to keep Bin "in the pond"; a small fish feeding their enterprise, rather than letting him go and possibly having the enterprise devoured. The emphasis on food is not accidental. Ha Jin was born in 1956 and grew up through the famine years. Food plays a role in all his writing.

This is a first novel, published after books of short stories and of poetry. Ha Jin has lived in the US since 1985. He writes in English, so nothing has been lost in translation. No time frame is given for this novel, but based on references to the four pests campaign, the anti capitalist roader campaign and the mention that Chairman Mao is dead, I would put the events somewhere in the region of 1977. It doesn't really need a defined time though, for as long as there are workers and bosses, his novel will find an appreciative audience.

Excellent review of In the Pond, Sassy. I have greatly enjoyed everything I have read by Ha Jin and was fortunate to attend a lecture he gave at Skidmore College early this year or late last. He is an interesting author and person.

Sorry that summer has ended SassyLassy, but you can now get on with your winter reading. Good review of In the Pond

Kerr sounds fun. Great review of In the Pond. Someday I hope to read Ha Jin.

I read In the Pond almost ten years ago and mostly recall its emotional spareness ... which I didn't appreciate but which captured me because I perk every time Ha Jin is mentioned. Thanks for this review; I think I'll choose another by him.

Here is more encouragement for you to read Ha Jin.

Thinking this book was misfiled and that I had read it, I pulled it off my TBR shelf only to discover not only that I hadn't read it, but also that it had been there since May 18, 2006. In my mind, I had incorrectly ascribed this title to Ha Jin's The Crazed. which I had indeed read. The fact that the title fit two of his books easily, made me realize that many of Ha Jin's characters spend a lot of time waiting, and it made me think about the nature of waiting.



50. Waiting by Ha Jin
first published 1999
finished October 13, 2012

Is love a habit, a duty, a passion? How do you know when you are in love? These are difficult questions to answer if you live in a society like Maoist China, where the topic is never discussed.

Lin Kong married Shuyu in 1963. It was a marriage arranged by his parents. Lin worked as a physician at an army hospital in Muji City. Shuyu stayed back in their village and looked after Lin's parents until their deaths and then tended their farm. Although Shuyu was a model wife by village standards, Lin had been reluctant to bring her to the city, embarrassed by her bound feet, to him a symbol of what he perceived as her overall backwardness.

In Muji, Lin met Manna Wu, a nurse. Hospital rules forbade men and women to meet outside the compound. Despite this stricture, the two were drawn together and gradually their interaction at work led others to identify them as a couple, despite the platonic nature of their relationship.

Each year on his twelve day holiday, Lin would return to his village and seek a divorce from Shuyu. Each year she would agree, but once in front of a judge, she would say no. Each year Manna Wu grew older and more frustrated by her situation, while Lin felt more guilty for letting her wait for his divorce, rather than getting on with her life. He tried to arrange other marriages for her, but nothing came of it.

The work unit had a rule that a divorce could be granted without the other partner's consent after eighteen years of separation. In the eighteenth year, Lin returned to his village with high hopes.

Waiting is a far bleaker novel than In the Pond. The twenty odd years of Chinese history it spans provide a background and context to the story.

In the winter of 1966 the hospital undertook camp-and-field training. For some reason a top general in Northeastern Military Command had issued orders in October that all the army had to be able to operate without modern vehicles, which not only were unreliable but also could soften the troops. The orders said "We must carry on the spirit of the Long March and restore the tradition of horses and mules."

For a month, a third of the hospital's staff would march four hundred miles through the countryside and camp at villages and small towns. Along the way, they would practice treating the wounded and rescuing the dying from the battlefield.

This may sound farfetched, but it is entirely plausible. It refers not only to a time of fuel and parts shortages, but also to an extremely tense period along the Sino-Soviet border.

Books by foreign authors, either in translation or in the original language were highly problematic. In an unguarded moment in 1972, a commissar explains to Manna Wu how he came across his translation of Leaves of Grass:

I got this copy twenty years ago from the translator himself...when I was a student...He was a well read man, a true scholar, but he died of pneumonia in 1957. Perhaps it was good for him to die young. With his problematic family background, he could hardly have escaped becoming a target for political movements.

He goes on to explain that this translation has been out of print since the early fifties. This was not a book you would want to be found with during the Cultural Revolution and makes the commissar politically suspect and hints at his probable fate.

At approximately the same time, Lin was diagnosed with TB and put in the hospital's Infectious Diseases Unit. There were two wings there: one filled mainly with TB patients and one with hepatitis patients, both diseases more prevalent in the crowded dirty situations so many Chinese were living in. It is telling that even a physician working and living in a hospital should fall victim to such a disease.

Even without the background though, this is an excellent novel, for we all wait for something. Is waiting active or passive? What is the nature of the thing we wait for, and would we consider it worth waiting for if it was usually readily available? Despite the seemingly straightforward narration, the reader is left seeking the answers to these questions and the broader question, what is the impact of waiting on life in the here and now?

>Here is more encouragement for you to read Ha Jin.
Done!

And btw I think waiting is active. Sometimes exhaustingly active.

Interesting thoughts after your reading of Waiting by Ha Jin. Waiting for eighteen years is something more than waiting I think.

Great review of Waiting, Sassy. I loved that book and your review brings out its many interesting aspects.

Yes, great thought-provoking review. I definitely feel encouraged.

A brief (I think) break from Ha Jin; thanks for the comments.

I'm inclined to agree that with everything we invest in it, waiting is indeed active, whether we are doing it willingly or not. It can be exhaustingly active too!

Other novels I've read by Ha Jin are The Crazed and War Trash, both of which I would recommend. War Trash especially would rank up there in any of my lists for top fiction.

This first novel was originally published in French. So far, it has won The Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, The Grand prix littéraire Archambault, The Prix du Grand Public Salon du Livre, The Grand prix littéraire RTL-Lire (France) and the Mondello Prize for Multiculturalism (Italy). It is short listed for the Giller Prize for a Canadian book published in English this past year. The prize will be announced tonight, so just a quick review before the winner is announced.



51. Ru by Kim Thuy
first published 2009, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman 2012
finished October14, 2012

In French, ru means a small stream, and figuratively, a flow, a discharge-- of tears, of blood, of money. In Vietnamese ru means a lullaby, to lull.

Tears, blood and money all figure in this novel about Nguyen an Tinh, a girl born in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, born to replace the lives of those lost in the conflicts and to metaphorically extend her mother's life. Nguyen's name means "peaceful interior", a mother's benediction that will never be realized.

When Nguyen was ten, her family escaped Vietnam on a derelict boat, washing up in Malaysia. From there, they arrived in Granby Quebec in the middle of winter. Life had already changed drastically for the young girl and her family with the fall of Saigon. A cultured French speaking family, a family that had told others what to do, they found themselves vilified and ordered around by the new regime, their house and property taken over. They still had a clear identity as Vietnamese, however.

Life in Canada changed her family forever. Her parents were overqualified for the {French language} course and underqualified for everything else. Unable to look ahead of themselves, they looked ahead of us, for us, their children. Coping with day to day life in their new world, however, robbed the children too of their identity and their own ability to look ahead.

How to eat with a fork, the dry Minute Rice prepared by well meaning strangers; how to distinguish the donated clothing by gender; how to know that there were different clothes for summer and winter, that you didn't just wear more clothes in winter; these were all perplexing questions that no one thought to explain to the family. Without a cultural knowledge of their new world, knowledge was absorbed randomly, odd facts and expressions collected from school, church, work and new friends.

Nguyen became suspended between two worlds: the old Vietnamese world that no longer existed as her family had known it and the new Canadian world where the future could not be known. Thuy portrays this state beautifully, in a way any immigrant, no matter from where, can understand, moving back and forth from past to future and back to the past again, but residing only in the present.

This is a novel without a plot, a flowing remembrance of the past in two worlds, a story told to the self to lull anxiety over the future. In the end, it is also an acknowledgement of the possibility of that future, a future where her children with their new French names will forge the links that will carry forward the lives of her mother and those who came before.

------

In 1979-1980, fifty thousand Vietnamese refugees came to Canada, many sponsored by individuals, churches or local organizations. Kim Thuy's family arrived in Quebec that year and Ru reflects that experience, just as her family reflects what happened to many of the children and grandchildren of those refugees. Kim became a lawyer, one brother a dentist, and the other an actuary. All told, over one hundred and thirty-five thousand refugees came to Canada from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Unfortunately, given recent changes in Canadian immigration laws, it would be very difficult for such a family to gain entry today.

Two good reviews of Ha Jin. I read and enjoyed Waiting and have been looking for another of his to read.

Ru sounds like an interesting book and it is clearly very critically acclaimed. Nice review!

Very interesting about Ru. A few years ago, I read a book by a young Vietnamese writer whose family had emigrated to France, The Three Fates by Linda Le. It was bitter and angry and so convoluted and metaphorical I know I didn't understand a lot of it. This sounds more straightforward.

The Giller Prize went to Will Ferguson for his novel 419. Ferguson is known as a humorist and has won the Leacock award for humour three times and been shortlisted twice, so this reportedly serious novel about Nigerian prince schemes is a departure. That said, I don't think his win was greeted with widespread acclaim.

Thinking about national awards for writing, film etc, as opposed to international awards, made me wonder if the jury should be representative of the particular country. This jury consisted of Gary Shteyngart (Russian-American), Roddy Doyle and Canadian publisher Anna Porter. I'd be interested in knowing how this works elsewhere.

Rebecca, I looked at your review of The Three Fates and think I might try it sometime when I am on I southeast Asia binge.

DieF, have a look at War Trash.

Some people believe that those who die suddenly and unexpectedly need time to fully realize they are dead and that until that time, they haunt the earth before moving on to the next stage. Completely unexpectedly, the following two books deal with people on the other side. That said, there is absolutely no other comparison between them.

This first book was one I picked up in response to Rebecca's question about scary books for Hallowe'en. It was in the house completely forgotten and it seemed like time for some escape.



52. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
first published 2002
finished October 27, 2012

On her way home from school one day, fourteen year old Susie Salmon was raped and murdered by her neighbour in her quiet suburb. However, that is not really what the book is about. It is about Susie's afterlife.

Heaven, it turns out, is not all angels and prayer. Instead, it is a multifaceted place where there is much to learn. Susie's first task is to pull herself together physically and mentally. She finds herself able to track what is happening on earth, as police search for her killer and her family grieves. There is school to go to in heaven, with a full roster of students, only there are no required subjects; you can just go to the classes that interest you.

Each person has in heaven what they would have liked on earth, so each person's heaven is different from the others. Susie has a gazebo where she hangs out with her new friend Holly (remember she's only fourteen) and watches what's happening below. It was this afterlife that I found more interesting than the events below.

Eventually, Susie starts wondering about her new world. Where are the people she knows who should be there, people like her grandfather? Her very matter of fact intake counsellor explains that he is in another part of heaven, an area Susie is not yet ready for. To get to that area, you must be ready to sever your ties with earthly concerns and never look back there.

Susie, like any teenager, moves rapidly from one idea to another. She tries unsuccessfully to break through to earth. As she watches her younger sister and her friends grow into adulthood over the next ten years, she sees through them the things she herself will never experience. She learns about the adults she knew in her earthly life and the ones who entered her life on earth because of her death. She realizes that although her earthly world meant everything to her, as time moves on, she will be less and less a part of that world to those who remain.

This is a quirky book which I read in one sitting. It's easier to say what it is not rather than what it is. It is not a horror book, not a tear jerker, not a gory thriller and not maudlin. In the end, it's just a good read for a lazy day.

53. Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt
first published 2006 as Shengsi pilao
finished October 31, 2012

In 1948, the Chinese landlord Ximen Nao was murdered by his villagers. Such events were commonplace in the China of the time, but Ximen Nao felt he had been unjustly dealt with, for in his eyes, he had been an excellent landlord. Two years later, on January 1, 1950, still full of rage and still proclaiming his innocence, he was sent back to earth by Lord Yama, ruler of the underworld. Lord Yama couldn't bear to listen to him any longer.

Full of hope, Ximen Nao made the journey back, only to find he had been tricked. He had been reincarnated not as a human, but as a donkey foal. Worse yet, the farm where he landed was his own, now that of his former peasant, Lan Lian. Adding insult to injury, Lan's pregnant wife was Ximen Nao's former first concubine, Yingchun.

Ximen Donkey had retained enough of his previous humanity to not only follow the events in Ximen Village, but also to be recognized by his wife, Ximen Bai, now fallen upon hard times for having been married to a landlord. Lan and Yingchun also found something compelling in the donkey and treated him with extra care, going so far as to create a prosthetic hoof for him after he suffered a terrible accident.

When collectivization came, Lan refused to join the new cooperative and remained an independent farmer. This created great hardship for himself, Yingchun and their three children, the older two being twins born to Yingchun and Ximen Nao before his death. The hardship they experienced trying to make it on their own was made worse by the famine. Ten years after returning to earth, Ximen Donkey was killed and eaten by the starving villagers.

In awarding Mo Yan the Nobel Prize for literature, the Swedish Academy said his work "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". This perfectly summarizes this novel, in which Ximen Nao will return again and again in the cycle of life as various animals, until his mind is at peace. Lord Yama will not allow him to return as a human until all his hatred is gone, saying there is too much hatred on earth already.

In each incarnation, Ximen Nao will maintain links with his family, following them over the next forty years. His animal personae allow him free rein for observation and comment. His adventures as a pig on the Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm present the greatest opportunity for satire, as giant pig farms were one of Mao's great failed projects. Mo Yan himself is a character, first as the village's child mischief maker and later as a scurrilous author.

As Ximen Nao's earthly manifestations change, so too does the world around him. The Cultural Revolution comes and goes, Mao dies. Overt capitalism creeps back slowly at first, then with excessive speed and greed. By the end, there are billionaires in mansions and beggars on the streets once more. The wheel has turned completely. Ximen Nao has learned his lesson.

It's nobody's fault...Everything is determined by fate and there's no way anyone can escape it.

I too enjoyed Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out when I read it a few years ago, but I felt it went on a little too long. It doesn't sound like you had that feeling, so maybe I was a little impatient when I read it.

>107 rebeccanyc:

it went on a little too long

All English editions of Mo Yan's work are abbreviated versions. The Chinese editions of his books are all bulkier, and more descriptive. Foreign publishers condense the books to make them more palatable to Western readers.

How strange to read two books with a similar theme so close together. Enjoyed the reviews.

That's interesting, Edwin. I didn't know that. My copy of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out gives no indication that it was abridged.

>110 rebeccanyc:

Shortly after it was announced that Mo Yan had won the Nobel Prize, Dutch newspaper "De Volkkrant" reissued and interview from 2004 between Mo Yan and Mark Leenhouts:

Vlak voor hij het manuscript van Grote borsten inleverde, vond Mo Yan zelfs dat hij bepaalde dingen nog niet voldoende had beschreven: hij voegde een extra deel toe met zeven 'Aanvullingen', die ook als op zichzelf staande korte verhalen kunnen worden gelezen. Dat deel zullen de Nederlandse lezers moeten missen, omdat het in de Engelse vertaling, die haastig in het Nederlands werd omgezet, is weggelaten.

'Ik krijg wel vaker de kritiek dat ik te lang van stof ben. Al vinden anderen het juist mijn fort. De Amerikaanse vertaler Howard Goldblatt en zijn uitgever hebben me bij eerdere boeken ook al voorstellen gedaan om iets in te korten, of om het einde te herschrijven. Zo ook ditmaal. En dat geldt niet alleen voor dat slotdeel, ook in andere hoofdstukken is gesneden. Ik beschouw het maar als een tegemoetkoming aan de Amerikaanse lezer. De Franse en de Italiaanse versie zijn wel integraal.'

Wat de compositie betreft blijft er in de korte versie toch iets vitaals overeind.

Interview

Well, despite the limitations of Google Translate, I get the main idea. I actually had no idea about that before; it's too bad, especially because the translation seemed good to me, as far as I can tell.

Way to underestimate Americans... I've read (on LT) that Murakami's The wind-up bird chronicle has been abbreviated for the American (English?) market as well. Tossed my copy but have yet to come across other translations.

It particularly annoys me that the translation doesn't indicate that it's been altered in any way from the original. That's dishonest as well as patronizing.

Thanks for that link, Edwin. I hadn't realized that. It seemed to me that the incarnations at the end were far shorter than those at the beginning. I realize that the monkey period was only two years as opposed to ten as a donkey, but given all that was happening at the time, it seemed rushed, as if the author just wanted to finish. It would be interesting to know which parts were most heavily edited. I did notice that the translation had been copyrighted in both 2006 and 2012, which seemed odd and made me wonder if there was a difference.

Other than that, I would agree with Rebecca that the translation seemed like a good one, although how are we to know. I read an article about Mo Yan's use of language which seemed to imply that now that his books are being translated, he is more conscious of his use of obscure regional dialect and slang.

Lola, I wonder if the move to shorten translations into English for the US market is a reflection of the small number of books in translation sold in general in the US as opposed to domestic books, with publishers trying to make non American books appeal more to that market? For instance, it seems from Edwin's article that the translations into Italian and French have not been shortened, and an interview with the Swedish translator does not mention any abridgement. Perhaps in Canada we should look for translations being sold in London as opposed to New York if there is more than one translator. I certainly would still have read the book even if it had been significantly longer.

Rebecca, with regard to your comment it went on a little too long, I felt that way a bit with the ox, which I didn't find worked for me as well as the rest of the novel. I also found when I read big chunks at a time, it flowed far better that when I read a few pages here or there.

》113， 115

You are right! According to the interview the translations into Italian and French have not been shortened.

Yes, it's like they put Americans in a "special" class... where "special" isn't a compliment.

#115

I'm not sure whether Murakami (for instance) has more than one translator into English. I've never seen British editions of his work.

Great review of Life and Death are Wearing Me Out - sounds very tempting. But really irritating to hear it was abridged.

Anyone have any figures for translation in other countries vs. the U.S.? I think I remember reading in one article the percentage of translated books for French literature and it was considerably higher.

Now, this was probably 20 years ago, but I remember being in a bookstore in Paris and being astounded by how many English-language books had been translated into French, let alone translations from other languages. The translation publisher/resource Three Percent says only 3% of books published in the US are translations, but that doesn't give a sense of what percentage of foreign literature gets translated.

Awesome reviews of Ru and Life and Death are Wearing Me out. Ru goes on the wishlist list. The Lovely Bones brings back memories, I read that in a past life...

This next is a very long discussion, but I think the book merits it. This is one of the most excruciatingly painful books I have read. If you have read The Gulag Archipelago or The Rape of Nanjing, you will know what I mean.



54. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962 by Frank Dikötter
first published 2010
finished November 4, 2012

In 1996, Jasper Becker published his groundbreaking Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. Becker's work was received with widespread scepticism and even downright disbelief in many western circles, where academics and government agencies found it difficult to believe that thirty million people could die of starvation in just four years without their knowledge. Becker's methodology was sound, however. In the mid nineteen eighties he studied population statistics released by the newly resurrected Chinese State Statistical Bureau for the years 1953, 1964 and 1982, and interviewed people in and out of China who had survived the famine. Becker's work is now accepted, so when Frank Dikötter started writing about the famine, he did not have to prove it actually happened, instead he could look at the why and how of it.

Dikötter doesn't mince words. His opening sentence is "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell". He contends that the famine is best understood as the direct result of the Great Leap Forward, which he considers to be the pivotal event of the People's Republic of China. Much of his book deals with this era, setting up the necessary conditions for the famine. Although access to party archives has relaxed somewhat and records are now open in theory for events that happened more than thirty years ago, full access is almost impossible to obtain. Dikötter got around this to a large extent by using provincial, county and local Public Security records. Reasoning that information was a two way flow, he found much valuable material outside Beijing. He also trained interviewers fluent in local dialects to gather first hand information. This book is filled with numbers and should probably be read at least twice: once for content and once for numbers. Data and claims are backed up with extensive references and bibliography.

The Great Leap Forward, launched in 1957-58, was Mao's effort to 'walk on two legs', in other words to radically overhaul both agriculture and industry at the same time. The goal was to transform China from a backward country using outmoded methods to a modern country where citizens would not want. Along the way, he would one up the rival Soviet Union, which was focussing heavily on industry only in its own effort to outstrip the USA. Economic planners who opposed the scheme, including Zhou Enlai, were subjected to self criticism sessions at best and many were purged in a massive anti rightist campaign.

Irrigation was first on the list of projects, as both agriculture and industry rely on steady reliable supplies of water. The Yellow River was dammed at the Three Gate Gorge Dam. A huge reservoir was built by the Ming Tombs. Tens of thousands of smaller projects were started all over the country. Lacking capital in the from of technology, work was done by hand with primitive tools. It was estimated that out of a population of 650 million, one in six people was involved in working on an irrigation project by January 1958.

Naturally with these numbers, many of the conscripted workers were farmers. Taken from fields and villages, people were put into worker camps with inadequate shelter, clothing, sleep and food. Work was often conducted around the clock. By February, early symptoms of starvation started to appear. With farmers employed on irrigation projects en masse, crops already in the field rotted in the ground without being harvested and new crops were not planted.

At the same time, the process of collectivization began. Farms where amalgamated into huge entities owned and controlled by the state. All domestic farm animals and tools were to be turned over to the commune. Some farmers protested by killing and eating their own animals before they could be expropriated, but this provided only short term relief. Household cooking implements were also to be turned over. In some villages, domestic fires were forbidden. All this was done in an effort to centralize and control food ownership and distribution on the collective, where all meals were doled out in community kitchens. 'From each according to his ability to each according to his need' had nothing to do with how many calories an individual might need. Instead it became a measure of how much the most productive work units needed to keep going, even if it meant sacrificing others.

Ever escalating production targets which reached ludicrous proportions resulted in agricultural experiments doomed to failure. Crops were planted on land and environments that wouldn't support them, intensive planting produced nothing, attempts were made to produce more than one harvest a season where it couldn't be supported, and deep digging resulted in lost soil bases. At the same time, China was exporting existing wheat, pork, seed oils and other foodstuffs to East Germany, Albania and the USSR, to name a few. Highly inflated crop estimates from all levels of administration resulted in ever higher production quotas.

Mao's goal in technology was that steel production reach one hundred million tonnes by 1962, up from just over five tonnes in 1957. This steel would be produced locally by individual communes without the help of 'rightist' experts. Every bit of metal, often including farm implements, was rounded up to be melted down. Trees, straw, feathers, even beams from villagers' huts were used to feed the fires needed to produce what in the end was mostly slag and pig iron.

By 1959 food shortages extended to the cities. Transportation infrastructure for moving food was almost nonexistent, as before collectivization and centralized storage, locally produced food had been stored and marketed in the region, containing any regional famines in the process. Food rotted waiting for transportation. The great farming and steel schemes had failed. Many of the irrigation projects had collapsed. Foreign customers were complaining about the quality of goods. The rift with the Soviet Union, previously a major supplier, was almost complete.

The first real public opposition to the impact of the Great Leap Forward came at the Lushan Conference in the summer of 1959. Peng Dehuai, Minister of Defence and a hero of the Long March, spoke against Mao. Mao was supported by Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao. Peng was forced to confess to being anti Party and anti people, saying he had made "anti socialist mistakes of a rightist opportunist nature". He and the army were purged.

The spirit of fear and terror at the top that followed the conference ensured that no one would speak out further. Over the next two and a half years, the countryside would be stripped of vegetation and wildlife as people desperately searched for food. Seed stocks were eaten. Production plummeted everywhere as starving workers collapsed at their posts. Traditional family roles were smashed by resettlement and collectivization, and violence increased dramatically. Workers and peasants alike were beaten for shirking. People at all levels were charged with theft of state property for offences as minor as eating straw. Suicide rates increased. The medical system collapsed without adequate resources. Children were sold in the hope they would survive. Dikötter's final estimate is that at least forty-five million people died from starvation, suicide, incarceration, beatings, cold, exhaustion, industrial accidents and illness during those four years.

During the summer of 1961, Liu Shaoqi toured the countryside. As a result of what he and others found, some of the regulations governing collectivization were relaxed. In January 1962, he presented his report to the 7000 Cadres Conference in the Great Hall of the People. Mao was enraged. It was the beginning of the end for Liu, but finally the Party was forced to take action despite Mao's denials. Help was on the way, including international aid. The inner Party turmoil created by the Great Leap Forward would continue though, exploding into the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966.

What a wonderfully detailed exposition of what sounds like an important book, SassyLassy. It makes me want to know more about this period of Chinese history.

By the way, have you heard about Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962 by Jisheng Yang? I saw it in The Economist last week, and it looks like it could be a great complement to Mao's Great Famine.

Oh dear! I hadn't heard of Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine and now I have ordered it!

In all seriousness though, thanks for the reference and for your comments. This is a period that never fails to intrigue me. If you are looking for a good general overview, although it is an older book, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980 by Jonathan Spence is very readable, as is anything by Spence. He also has a more recent book on this period, The Search for Modern China

Just catching up .... you've done some great reading lately and I enjoyed all your comments.

Great review. I haven't seem this book around in China, sofar..ahem. It stays on the wish list.

Love the title and premise of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, and your review of Mao's Great Famine is wonderfully informative.

I've had Mao's Great Famine on my TBR for a while, and your excellent review makes me want to move it up! I found the chapter in Vassily Grossman's Everything Flows on the Terror Famine in the Ukraine, also partly a result of forced collectivization and the expropriation of farmers' crops, one of the most horrifying sections of that work (which was a tour of many of the horrors of Stalinism), and this sounds equally if not more horrifying, certainly in the number of people who starved to death.

Great work on Mao's great famine

Great review of Mao's Great Famine, Sassy. It made me realize just how little I know and understand of China's recent history.

Fantastic review of Mao's Great Famine - I'll put it on the list of horribly depressing books to read soon but not too soon (along with several of the ones about North Korea that were reviewed in the group).

>127 rebeccanyc: - Rebecca - any other nonfiction recommendations for the Ukrainian famine/forced collectivization?

Sassy, after reading Everything Flows, I read a book cited in the notes by Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. It was a real slog -- a scholarly book that presupposed a deep background in Soviet politics and that took at least half the book to get to the famine itself. I guess I learned something, although I couldn't evaluate Conquest's political perspective, but I felt Grossman much more fully depicted the horror of the terror-famine. I haven't made an attempt to look for another nonfiction book on the subject.

Hi Sassy. After reading Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine about the famine and preposterous claims of super-abundant grain crops, based on the pseudo-scientific theories of the Ukrainian Trofim Lysenko, I read Martin Amis' Koba the Dread. Laughter and the twenty million.

The problem with this book is that Martin Amis, particularly in his later work, can best be described as a self-obsessed jerk, who finds himself, actually, much more interesting than the Great Terror and famine he writes about, in a light and sarcastic style. However, all the main facts and gruesome detail are there, including some horrific photographs about cannibalism.

Robert Conquest was a friend of Kingsley Amis and often visited the Amis' family at home. Koba the Dread. Laughter and the twenty million is inspired by the conversations of his father with Conquest, probably while the latter was writing or investigating his books on the same topic, and overheard by the young Martin.

>122 dmsteyn:, 124-132
bas, linda and Nickelini, hanks for reading this extraordinarily long discussion.

dm, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 arrived the very next day. It is about number two on my list for what I want to read next (after I finish the books I am currently reading). Thanks again for the reference. Based on the notes and bibliography, it looks like an excellent book.

Edwin, how odd! Dikotter is a professor in Hong Kong. Does that offer any avenues for acquisition? I am guessing you read Jasper Becker elsewhere.
Love your description of Martin Amis. I have read some of his fiction, and apart from House of Meetings, about the Gulag, which I thought was well done, I would have to agree with you. I will read Koba the Dread. Interesting connection with Conquest.

DieF, I was in the city this weekend and toyed with the idea of books on North Korea, as well as one on genocide in Burma, but seeing I had just obtained the Tombstone book and have a book on Pol Pot in my TBR pile, like you, those books go on my horribly depressing list to read sometime, after I recover from this list of USSR and PRC books.

Rebecca, thanks for the Conquest title. We were talking about Anne Applebaum's new book the other night and were trying to remember who wrote the book on the Ukrainian famine and you have provided the answer. Somehow it didn't seem the right topic for the dinner table, but that's often where the best discussions happen. Everything Flows is in the house, so I will add that to my current TBR list.

The notes on collectivization in Everything Flows reminded me that one of the problems for the Chinese peasantry was that only urban residents received cards entitling them to food rations. If a peasant moved to the city in an effort to escape famine, s/he was not eligible for a residence card and so could not get a ration card. After collectivization, country people were on their own for food beyond that issued by the collective.

detailmuse, I hope you get to read Life and Death are Wearing Me Out. It looks quite daunting, but I enjoyed it. I suspect it's one of those books you have to be in the mood for though, as rebecca can attest!

Interestingly, I am reading the new Anne Applebaum now, and also another Mo Yan, Red Sorghum.

Alberto Manguel is the coauthor of A Dictionary of Imaginary Places and an excellent anthology editor and all around bibliophile. When I heard him interviewed about this novel last month, I remembered it was a recent addition to the TBR pile, so I pulled it out for a much needed change of pace.



55. All Men are Liars by Alberto Manguel, translated from Spanish by Miranda France
first published 2008 as Todos los hombres son mentiros
finished November 5, 2012

Alejandro Bevilacqua, an Argentinian refugee, was found dead on the pavement below a Madrid apartment balcony one day in the 1970s. Murder or suicide, the question was never fully resolved. Thirty years later, the reporter Torredillos sets out to get some background on the story, by conducting first person interviews with a variety of people who knew him.

The novel presents these responses in a variety of formats: conversation, letter, stream of consciousness are all used. First up is Alberto Manguel himself, in a one sided conversation with Torredillos. Manguel had met Bevilacqua when both were members of the multifaceted Argentinian colony in the Madrid of the 1970s. Manguel was never fond of Bevilacqua, but the death still haunts him for reasons that will become apparent.

Each respondent in turn presents a change of pace, signalled by the quotations at the beginning of each chapter from sources as different as Montaigne, Shakespeare and Carlo Collodi. Each respondent gives the reader not only a different picture of Bevilacqua, but also of each of the other respondents. Manguel wants the reader to consider the nature of truth. After all, most of us will be remembered not through our own words, self serving though they may be, but through the words of others, left to tell our stories for us.

This was an entertaining novel. Naturally with Manguel as the author, it is filled with literary references; puzzle pieces which tell the reader more than a given narrator is willing to tell either about himself or Bevilacqua. Throw in a twist provided by a character denigrated by the others, and you have a good yarn to boot.

Red Sorghum was my first introduction to Mo Yan. I saw it as a film directed by Zhang Yimou and then went looking for the book. I hope you like this one better, although there is less humour to alleviate the story.

Just reading your excellent review of Mao's Great Famine. If you post your reviews anywhere else, I recommend re-posting this. It's a review to share.

And very interesting about All Men are Liars. I have two of Manguel's books, one an anthology. I'm going to move them into better view.

>133 SassyLassy:

The state-owned Foreign Languages Bookstore sometimes sells books in English which are banned from publication (in Chinese), but rarely books as critical or embarrassing as these. I would not want to have my name in a register ordering a book like that. Ordering books from overseas in China takes 3 to 6 months. Bringing books like these into the country, may cause trouble. I bought the book by Becker in a foreign-owned bookstore in Beijing. I hope they will one day offer the book by Dikotter.

Martin Amis was one of my favourite authors when I was a student. I have read nearly all his books. I keep reading his work, although I do not really like it. (I know this may be a puzzling statement.) The only novel I really liked was London fields, and, more recently, I enjoyed reading The second plane. September 11, terror and boredom.

56. To Live by Yu Hua translated from the Chinese by Michael Berry
first published as Huozhe in 1992
finished November 11, 2012

When I was ten years younger than I am now, I had the carefree job of going to the countryside to collect popular folk songs. That year, for the entire summer, I was like a sparrow soaring recklessly. I would wander amid the village houses and open country, which was full of cicadas and flooded with sunlight.

So begins Yu Hua's novel on a note of hope and optimism, an almost idyllic note. The young narrator falls asleep under a tree. On waking, he spies an old man talking to his ox. Hoping to collect more tales, he strikes up a conversation which will take him back in time, to a different world.

The peasant Xu Fugui starts to tell his story. As a young man, the son of a landowner, he had an easy life in the early 1930s. However, Fugui had two vices: gambling and whores. Not only did he lose his inheritance this way, his father lost their property to a moneylender when he paid off Fugui's debt. Fugui tells this part of his story in a factual manner, not as a victim.

Reduced to peasant status and work, he was kidnapped by the Nationalists to fight in the war against Japan. Here he met another conscript Chunsheng, who will loom large in his later life. Escaping the Nationalists, he joined the People's Liberation Army and travelled back to his home village with them.

The world and the life he returns to he could never have imagined in his former carefree existence. He still has his wife Jiazhen, whom he married when a callow youth, and he still has his two children Fengxia and Youqing. Thanks to his gambling losses, he escapes being executed as the village landlord. This is basically the extent of his luck. Collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, the famine and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution will all take an incredible toll on his family. So poor that his family has no heat, no shoes, no food and only a cloth to cover the eyes of the dead at burial, Fugui endures.

Fugui's narration is interrupted periodically as he takes a break, allowing the reader a respite too from the bleakness of his life. Each time, the folklorist brings us back to the present, describing the setting using words like "warmth", "tranquillity" and "peace" in stark contrast to Fugui's tale. Yet these are words which could also be used to describe Fugui himself. Despite it all, he has persevered and arrived at the point where there was a certain happiness in talking about his life and reliving it that way. He is able to see both the past and the present clearly and to be at ease with both.

This is the heart of the novel. Fugui endures to live, not in the trite western sense of to have a life, but in the far more basic sense of to survive, while at the same time maintaining that which makes us human. It also seemed to me that it was the land and people that would live, that no matter what happened to the country, the eternal peasant would always be there, working the land.

Another good review of To LIve

Nice review. Makes me interested in getting to Brothers, which is languishing on the TBR.

A lovely review. I'll try to keep this one in mind. (Haven't read any other review am although I saw Stevenhasone posted on the work page)

To Live is relatively short for anyone looking for an introduction to Chinese fiction or this author.

Rebecca, I too am eyeing my copy of Brothers, but will need a nice block of time as it looks much longer.

More bleakness:



57. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
first published 1966
finished November 14, 2012

The adjective "hard" used to be used to describe a certain kind of person: one with rough edges, from the wrong side of town, a bit scary but probably just within the borders of the law, someone to be admired or avoided depending on your point of view. Sometimes such a person was simply out of work and forced to make difficult choices. The characters in Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling are just such people.

Jack Levitt was abandoned at birth by his sixteen year old mother. By the time he ran away from the orphanage at seventeen and washed up in Portland, he knew that anything he was going to get in life he was going to have to get for himself. He also knew that money was the only way to get what he wanted.

Jack joined a gang of similar kids, but differed from them in one respect; they saw the future as the same dead end world of their parents, while unencumbered by parental role models, Jack actually had hopes for his future. Jack's crowd included the moocher Denny Mellon, even at that young age well on the way to becoming a washed up alcoholic, and Billy Lancing, part white, part black, at a time when you could only be one or the other. The three of them hustled pool, drank too much and rented hotel rooms to party with girls whenever they could. After partying in a house whose owners were off on vacation, Jack found himself sent to reform school.

Reform school included an astonishing eighty-seven days of solitary in total darkness. Once released, Jack was taken directly to the state mental institution for thirty days observation. At the end of the thirty days he was let out...He knew he was just lucky. He knew that it was an accident that they had come for him at a moment when he was perfectly rational.

More damaged after "reform" than before, Jack retreated into physical labour, gradually drifting down the coast to San Francisco. There he met up with Denny Mellon again and resumed his old life of partying and booze. Inevitably things went very wrong. Jack was charged with felonies and sent to San Quentin where he met up once more with his other old friend, Billy Lancing. In the unlikely environment of San Quentin, for the first time Jack confronted the question of love, an emotion he was completely unfamiliar with. It was a question he would confront again in life after prison. What wouldn't change was his conviction that the world would never want or need him.

In Jack Levitt, Carpenter has created a character who keeps on going, never really knowing why, knowing only that he is one of those whom the world is always trying to tidy away out of sight, in institutions like orphanages, reform schools and prisons created just for this purpose. He knows there will be no trace of his existence left behind. His life will be a file marked "Inactive" and later disposed of to make way for new ones.

First published in 1966, Carpenter has written an extraordinary book about a marginal person whom we might not even like, but will still find compelling. Through him, Carpenter shows a side of American life that all too often is swept away as Jack knew it would be.

I think that I had better get that book.

Robert

Although I usually snap up NYRB books when I see them in the bookstore, this one didn't appeal to me when I looked at it. Now, that' I've read your review, I think I'll buy it!

Excellent review of Hard Rain Falling; I've added it to my wish list.

Enjoyed your excellent review of Hard Rain Falling

Great review of Hard Rain Falling, Sassy. I am also adding it to my wishlist.

> 118 & 119

Perhaps this was the article DieF was referring to? The 3% is alarmingly small, but considering that the figure is even 1% for fiction borders on outrageous. In 2008, 14% of books sold in France were translations, and for Germany, a lower 8%. According to Literature Across Frontiers, a translation advocacy network, 2 in 3 translations are from English, so the bias for English lit seems to be universal. That explains your observation, Rebecca, from 2 decades ago, and which I can confirm still holds true as I observed on my own on trips to bookshops across Europe in over a decade now. It's certainly very true here where I live.

>121 SassyLassy:

Excellent reviews as usual, Sassy, especially of Mao's Great Famine. I bought the book in summer and have been waiting since for inspiration to pick it up. Your review has nudged me in this direction. Learning more about these massive failed experiments and the human cost never fails to shock, but it's important to know.

>130 DieFledermaus:

On my Amazon wishlist is something on the Ukraine experience, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust by Miron Dolot. Perhaps another to add to your "list of horribly deppressing books to read soon"?

Just read your review of Hard Rain Falling, terrific review...again.

>145 Mr.Durick: - >151 dchaikin: Thanks. Now that I've put down my thoughts on Hard Rain Falling, I've read the reviews on its home page and was really happy to see how many other people felt this was an excellent book (caution, there are spoilers there). There are some excellent reviews there.

Like Rebecca, I usually snap up NYRB titles when I see them in a bookstore, although it's probably a completely different experience. I drive 200 km one way to a store which stocks them randomly and look for the spines. 200 km in a different direction there is a used book store which occasionally has them. Lately, I have taken to ordering them online after checking out the NYRB web site, which I don't order from as the shipping cost is almost the same as the book cost, even for their terrific subscription series, which doesn't ship free of charge outside the US. Where I was going with all this, is that like Rebecca, I too had doubts about Hard Rain Falling; liking the sound of it, putting it on my NYRB list, but for some reason, never ordering it. Then once I ordered it last November, it took me a year to get around to reading it. It made me wonder how many more books on the TBR shelves are just as well written and why they hadn't been read yet either.

deebee, I hope you do get to Mao's Great Famine.
Thanks for posting the link about translations. Even living in a country with two official languages, there seems to be very little cross reading in translation, which is definitely discouraging. Thanks too for the mention of the Ukrainian famine book. Like DieF, I too have such a list. I noticed on Mr Durick's home page an interesting library called MostDisturbingBooks, where there was an very good collection of such works.

Yes, it's a lot easier for me, Sassy, as the two bookstores I most often go to both have excellent NYRB collections and displays. Extremely enticing.

I don't have a list or a library called "disturbing," but for several years I've been reading books that I mentally call "horrors of the 20th century." Mao's Great Famine will definitely fall into that category when I get to it, as will the two-volume Stalin biography which is also on the TBR. And Red Sorghum, which I just finished, easily qualifies for that label.

Here's another NYRB book, this time a novel from a Japanese writer, which is rare reading for me, but one about China. I thought reading a Japanese book about China might be interesting, given the history, but there was no hint of any residual animosity. The transliteration of Chinese names into English is the old Wade Giles style, which may take getting used to if you are only used to Pinyin, but that is a minor matter.



58. Tun-huang by Yasushi Inoue translated from the Japanese by Jean Oda Moy
first published 1959
finished November 18, 2012

Chao Hsing-te had a brilliant future before him. The year was 1026 and he had made it to the final round for the Palace Examination, which would take place in K'ai-feng, then the capital of China and a contender for largest city in the world. Passing this exam would guarantee a life of wealth, influence and respect. However, on the appointed day, Hsing-te fell asleep in the courtyard while waiting to be called and missed his great opportunity.

Wandering in a daze through the streets of the city after realizing what had happened, he came upon a barbarian trying to sell a woman piece meal. Horrified, Hsing-te bought all of her and immediately freed her. Feeling she must give something in return, the woman gave Hsing-te a small piece of cloth on which were written characters he couldn't read. The woman thought they represented her name and birthplace, saying she needed to present this cloth to enter Urgai, the capital of the Hsi-hsia.

This event changed Hsing-te's outlook completely. He realized it was completely outside his academic experience and that nothing he had learned could have prepared him for this encounter. Unable to find anyone who could read the Hsi-hsia script, he conceived the idea of travelling to that land and learning its language and script, believing that any country embarking on the task of developing a written language would become a mighty country indeed. Hsing-te would accomplish this goal, eventually developing a Chinese - Hsi-hsia dictionary and translating the Buddhist sutras into Hsi-hsia. Along the way he would travel from present day Kaifeng in Henan province to present day Dunhuang in northern Kansu province.

Hsing-te's story is told like a saga: chronologically, evenly and without emotion. Like a saga, it draws the reader on, always waiting for the next instalment. Epic battles are fought between huge armies led by legendary generals, a princess is rescued, allegiances shift. Tun-huang falls to the Hsi-hsia. Through it all, Hsing-te followed the path that fate had dealt him, without complaint, occasionally wondering what could have happened had he acted differently, but overall, content with his life and the purpose he finally found.

In Hsing-te's time, China was threatened by Moslems from the West, Uighers, Kitans and the Hsi-hsia (Tanguts) themselves. Tun-huang, then called Sha-chou, was a strategic Chinese military base on the Silk Road, where China and central Asia met the west. It was also an important market for provisions for travellers on the road and an important trading and religious centre, so it relied on having the Silk Road open and secure

The inspiration for this novel was the 1907 discovery of ten of thousands of scrolls of Buddist sutras and other writings, including the oldest known printed book. These scrolls had been hidden in the well known Thousand Buddha Caves (Qianfodong) for nine centuries, since the conquest of the Chinese outpost by the Hsi-hsia. Once discovered, the writings helped fill in much of the history of Central Asia. No one knows who hid them. This novel is Inoue's vision of how it all happened.



Statues from the Caves, showing the wealth of cultural influences which contributed to their creation

Something I haven't heard of, from an author I haven't heard of, about events I know nothing about...that sounds fantastic. Love LT...

Great review, Sassy. I enjoyed that book too. And great picture of the statues!

Tun-huang sounds fascinating. This is definitely one for the wish list.

Fascinating review of Tun-huang

Excellent review of Tun-Huang, Sassy. For some reason, I rarely see NYRB titles in the bookstores in this area.

I've had this book on my shelf for years but have yet to read it despite Inoue Yasushi being one of my favorite authors. I'm surprised to see someone else reading his books. I guess he's finally getting translated into English?

Lilisin, I only picked up the book because it was an NYRB edition; this was before you started the Japanese year on Author Theme Reads so I wasn't consciously thinking about him being a Japanese author. There seem to be several titles available in English, although some seem to be out of print.

Daniel is completely right about the kind of books we find on LT. However, I found this book taking a completely different approach. Hoping to escape mid twentieth century China that I seemed bogged down in for Reading Globally, I put NYRB into the search in amazon.ca and went through everything that came up and there was Tun-huang. I had read The Road to Oxiana earlier in the year, and this seemed to promise information on an extension of that road. It also fitted in with the Reading Globally China read, while not being current.

Linda, too bad that right in NY state, the NYRB distribution is low, maybe a trip to NYC is in order! I've decided that in the case of second hand bookstores, the reason they are almost never there is that the books are too good to part with and people who read them tend not to divest themselves of too many books.

lilisin, welcome. I must say you have a truly impressive collection of Japanese books! This particular title was translated into English in 1978, but doesn't seem to have gone anywhere until NYRB published it in 2010. In the introduction to that edition, Damion Searls says that Inoue basically only has two other books obtainable in English: The Blue Wolf and what he calls "an almost unreadable translation" of The Samurai Banner of Furin Kazan. I see there are a lot of titles available in French and German. Maybe readers in English will have to wait for NYRB to pick up more of his books!

Dan, steven and bas, I think you would both like this book. As rebecca said in her review, it is deceptively simple reading, but there is a lot going on.

Right now I'm bogged down in an LT ER book that I feel I have to finish before I can request any more books, but it's not going well.

I know I've seen that his (Inoue's) The Hunting Gun is translated into English. By Tuttle Publishing nonetheless who is an excellent translation company. It is one of his most famous and best books so if you wanted to read more Inoue, that's the one I'd try to get my hands on.

And sassylassy thanks! I'd like to grow my Japanese library even more but I'm just too slow and not consistent enough a reader! Maybe a good New Years Resolution to make.

Great review of the NYRB books, Sassy -- I'm particularly fascinated by Tun Huang -- it's gone on my wish list and will be ordered soon!

An ER book, difficult to get into, but then it really took off. There was much more to it that is not covered here.



59. The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers by Gordon Weiss
first published 2011
finished November 28,, 2012
Sri Lanka is one of the most naturally favoured countries on earth, yet its occupants have been engaged in horrendous communal fighting since the country then known as Ceylon, gained independence from Britain in 1948.

The culmination of this violence came in May 2009. By March and April of that year, approximately fifth thousand Sri Lankan Army troops had encircled an estimated six hundred remaining cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, forcing them onto a tiny spit of land twelve kilometres long and approximately one wide. Trapped in this enclave with the LTTE, were approximately three hundred and thirty thousand ethic Tamil civilians, who had retreated from the SLA along with the LTTE. Without shelter, without food and with only the most rudimentary medical aid, they faced constant bombardment from the SLA who were unable and probably unwilling to differentiate the civilian no fire zone from the rest of the spit. If the Tamils tried to escape this virtual cage, they risked being shot by either side; if they stayed, they risked mutilation and death.

How had things reached this crisis? In The Cage: the Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Gordon Weiss traces the history of Sri Lanka, concentrating in particular on the period from the mid nineteenth century onward. At independence, there were two major ethnic groups. The Sinhalese, predominantly Buddhist, were the ruling group and made up about seventy per cent of the population. The Tamils, predominantly Hindu, made up about twenty-five per cent, but with many fluent in English, they formed much of the civil service and professional classes. Each group had its own language and each was further split by internal rivalries.

Independence saw a Sinhalese oligarchy entrench the position it had gained under British rule. The first overt move against the Tamils came in 1956 with the passage of the Official Language Act. This act made Sinhala the official language, in one stroke rendering Tamils unable to function in business, law and education, and unleashing the first round of severe mob violence against Tamils.

In 1981, Sinhalese action against the Tamils destroyed the library at Jaffna, where ancient Tamil manuscripts and archives were held. Two years later, as the library and collections were being rebuilt, government troops attacked and destroyed this symbol of Tamil nationhood in an act of cultural genocide. In what the President of Sri Lanka described as "a mass movement of the generality of the Sinhalese people", twenty thousand Tamil houses were destroyed and three thousand Tamils were murdered by Sinhalese mobs in the capital Colombo, during just four days in what came to be known as Black July.

Over the next twenty-five years, the Tamils fought four Eelam or homeland wars for the establishment of a Tamil state. The Tamil Tigers received expert training from the Indian army in the Indian Tamil majority state of Tamil Nadu. The Sinhalese purchased weapons from China. Apart from the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, all this happened with very little attention from the outside world. The governing elites of Sri Lanka became masters of media manipulation, media suppression and media intimidation. After the events of September 2001, there was a shift in language and thus in attitudes around the world, as groups that had been considered as working for national liberation, or as freedom fighters, suddenly found themselves labelled terrorists. Support for legitimate quests for independence dwindled. Sri Lanka took full advantage of this change, as many nations now labelled the LTTE a terrorist organization.

By the time the Sri Lankan army had the Tamils surrounded in the cage, it had managed to block not only domestic efforts to help the civilians, but had also issued continued denials of aid and access to the Red Cross and the UN, thus dooming about thirty thousand of those trapped to death, and untold thousands more to horrific injuries. When the Sinhalese president of Sri Lanka declared victory over the Tamils, he thanked India, Pakistan and China, leaving out western countries that had helped. Weiss considers this a signal of realignment of a country once considered a staunch western ally.

Weiss was a member of the UN communications team during this period. His account is documented in great detail with over one hundred pages of notes and other supplementary material. While it seemed to skip around unnecessarily at first, it gained focus in the excellent second half. Here, while still discussing matters in the context of Sri Lanka, Weiss raised more universal questions about the role of non partisan organizations such and the UN and the ICRC, and the rules under which they must operate, and the role of more outspoken organizations like Médecins sans Frontières. He discusses the role of organizations like the International Criminal Court and the International Commission of Jurists in dealing with crimes of "universal jurisdiction". Laws established after World Wars I and II to regulate disputes across borders must now be reconsidered in the light of Kosovo, Rwanda, Darfur and Afghanistan, where disputes are within established national borders. One of the difficulties in these cases is defining the role of combatant versus civilian and willing combatant versus forced conscript. Whether or not you are interested in Sri Lanka per se, this book has important questions.

There was much more to it that is not covered here.

Indeed! I have been working on my review for The Cage: the last days of the Tamil Tigers all week, and I just have so much I want to say!

Sri Lanka is one of the most naturally favoured countries on earth,

What a lovely way to put it!

What a fantastic and thorough review, Sassy! Even if you say there's much more to it than what your review covered, you were able to bring out the message in a compelling way. I know nothing about the history of the Tamils except that they were brought over by the British from now South India to work in the tea plantations. This book seems to be a must read not only to understand the roots of the problems there, but also to better understand the role of international organizations in domestic conflicts. I will definitely pick up a copy.

I know nothing about the history of the Tamils except that they were brought over by the British from now South India to work in the tea plantations.

Actually, those are different Tamils (they're called Plantation Tamils) and most of them are back in India. The much larger population of Tamils that the Tamil Tigers were "defending" (cough, cough), have lived on the island for either several thousand years, or about 800, depending on who's history you believe. Either way, I think they've been there long enough to say "this land is my land too."

All the more reason for me to get to that book now that I've learned that what teeny bit I thought I knew is even incorrect! Thanks for clearing that one up!

Excellent review of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the last days of the Tamil Tigers I found it particularly interesting as I visited Sri Lanka in 1976 and picked up on the tensions on the island. At that time people were discouraged from going to Jaffna and all the Sri Lankans I came into contact with were Sinhalese

Barry - that's interesting-- I know that trouble was brewing since at least when the British left, but it says something that you as an outsider could feel it even back in 1976. Can I ask you what you were doing there? Sri Lanka is my dream holiday, but I refuse to go as long as Rajapaksa and his family are in power.

Sounds like a fascinating and important book, Sassy, and an excellent review too!

A very interesting and thought-provoking review of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Sassy.

Joyce, when I was younger I had the wanderlust and travelled overland to India and onto Sri Lanka. I spent about 18 months touring around. Sri Lanka is a beautiful country and proved to be a bit of a respite from India, as the change of pace was refreshing, however I was not sorry to return to India as the more reserved Sinhalese were not so much to my liking.

Bas - interesting! What a trip!

I was tempted to buy Tun-Huang as it was published by NYRB and sounded interesting, but will definitely do so after reading your review.

Very informative review of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. I should probably read that as my knowledge of the situation is pretty much close to zero.

Great review of The Cage! I need to write my review of it this week.

Terrific review of The Cage, what a history lesson. A book I'll keep in mind.

Thanks all for the good words on The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. I used to do a lot of this kind of reading and it was good to focus in on this kind of topic again.

>177 kidzdoc: looking forward to your review of it.

bas, I envy you your travels.

This is deliberately vague as to plot, as otherwise there would be too many opportunities for spoilers. A note from the translators indicates this is not an abridged version.



60. Brothers by Yu Hua translated from the Chinese by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas
first published in two volumes in 2005 and 2006 as Xiong Di
finished November 30, 2012


When Baldy Li and Song Gang were seven and eight years old, they became brothers. Technically, they became step-brothers, but for the two boys it was true brotherhood. Two more different boys it would be hard to find, yet their bond was unbreakable.

At first, life was good in the newly formed household. Song Fanping, Song Gang's father, was a middle school teacher with a comfortable house. Although Baldy's mother Li Lan worked at the silk factory, she and Baldy Li had been objects of derision in Liu Town since the night her first husband drowned in the public latrine while spying on women. Marrying Song Fanping gave her the promise of a new life.

Brothers was originally published in China in two volumes, brought together in this English edition. The first part of the book juxtaposes the story of the two boys agains the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Much of their life is similar to that of small boys everywhere, as they go to school, get beaten up by older boys and learn about their world. Slowly however, the Cultural Revolution creeps into their lives.

A year or two after the wedding, Li Lan went to Shanghai for medical treatment. At that time, the Cultural Revolution was just starting. While she was away, Song Fanping was arrested and imprisoned on the basis of a childlike remark of Baldy Li's about Chairman Mao, compounded by the fact that Song Fanping's father had been a land owner. At times the two boys, left on their own, were faced with starvation, but Song Gang would still prepare them each a bowl of water for dinner, to be flavoured with salt and soy sauce. Song Gang's selfless refrain of sacrifice "Even if I only have one bowl of rice left, I'll give it to Baldy Li to eat, and even if I only have a single piece of clothing, I'll give it to Baldy Li to wear", contrasts sharply with some of the most gruesome scenes of murder and suicide I've read.

Part II deals with an entirely different kind of cultural revolution: Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up Campaign. Materialism and capitalism sweep over the country as swiftly and efficiently as a marauding army. The citizens of Liu Town struggle to outdo each other in their efforts to become gloriously rich, culminating in the Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Contest. The madness of state sanctioned violence is gone, but extreme poverty still exists, made worse if possible by the contrast with burgeoning wealth. The brothers follow their own paths, one to devastating poverty and one to fantastic wealth. Deep down, however, the bond remains.

Although dealing with some of the same subject matter, this book was a real departure from the earlier To Live (139 above). In Brothers, Yu uses humour, parody, ridicule and satire to impale the mores of modern China, a country which actually hosted a Miss Artificial Beauty pageant. Throughout the book he has a coterie of locals such as Blacksmith Tong and Yanker Yu, who must constantly work out which way to jump. Although they are part of the humour, they also work to keep the book grounded in Liu Town with the two boys as part of a community. At first I found some of the more extreme examples somewhat off. In the end though, I was carried away by the larger story of two brothers and their dedication to each other. I found myself agreeing with another favourite author, A L Kennedy who said

Humour is a perfectly legitimate response to the horror of the world.

Brothers sounds like a great vehicle for contrasting the excesses of communism with those of capitalism in China. The notion of having to "constantly work out which way to jump" is something I've seen a lot in Chinese literature. I enjoyed Yu's novel To Live and will definitely read this one too at some point.

I read a few pages from Brothers last week and decided I wasn't quite ready for it, but I do intend to get to it this month. Thanks for no spoilers!

Excellent review of Brothers, Yu Hua I also agree with A L Kennedy.

Another intriguing review of Yu Hua...

I just finished another Yu Hua book, but no review done yet.

Rebecca, I kind of wondered if I was feeling like reading Brothers too, when I first started it, but after I got past the initial bit about the similar adventures of Baldy and his father, things definitely improved.

Someone wrote an excellent review of this book earlier in the year, and then someone else added a note to that thread saying where in Australia the site was, but I am sorry I cannot find you and so thank you unattributed reviewer for directing me to this book.



62. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall
first published 1959
finished December 1, 2012

Two children were the sole survivors of a plane crash in the Australian outback. Mary, the elder, felt a duty to protect her little brother Peter from the memory of the crash and the fear of what happens next. Completely unaware of their location, or of Australian distances, the children decide to walk to their destination, Adelaide, knowing only that it is to the south. What they don't know is that it is fourteen hundred miles away.

As the pair are collecting fruit for their journey, a boy appeared out of nowhere.

...he was ebony black and quite naked...The boy was young... he was unarmed, and his attitude was more inquisitive than threatening: more puzzled than hostile...The thing that seemed to {Mary} shockingly and indecently wrong, was the fact that the boy was naked.

Marshall takes care to point out the differences between the world of the western children who had never had to learn the realities of life, and that of the child referred to only as the bush boy or the aboriginal, who knows reality all too well. To Marshall, twenty thousand years separate their worlds.

As children will, however, the three link up. The bush boy feels it is a natural obligation for him to provide all he can for the helpless children whom he knows will die without him. Mary and Peter just seem to accept that someone would appear out of nowhere to help them, although Mary wished help had arrived in a different guise.

All the tenets of progressive society and racial superiority combined inside her to form a deep rooted core of resentment. It was wrong, cruelly wrong, that she and her brother should be forced to run for help to a Negro; and a naked Negro at that.

In reality, the boy is on a walkabout, a stage in a boy's development where alone and unaided, he must make the six to eight month journey from one set of water holes to another. Surviving his walkabout will allow him to take the next test, the proving of manhood. What the thirteen year old Mary does not know, and what the boy cannot tell her, is that he has absolutely no interest in her as a female; his culture only allows such rites once the manhood test has been passed.

The skills the boy had already acquired enabled him to guide Mary and Peter across desert, valley and more desert, all the while providing food, water, fire and direction. Reaching a beautiful valley, Mary made a reed home "...in case we want to come back". By this stage, clothing torn to shreds and completely naked themselves, Peter and Mary appear to have gone back Marshall's twenty thousand years to their own Garden of Eden.

In his introduction to the NYRB edition, Lee Siegel says that the book was actually a collaboration between Donald Payne and James Vance Marshall. Payne was an Englishman, and throughout, although he presented the children as American, his portrayals of Peter and Mary seemed particularly English. The one exception jarred oddly. When the bush boy reached out to touch the blonde Mary, she recoiled. "Back in Charleston, it would have got the darkie lynched". Paynes' language is dated and contrasts with that of Marshall. Marshall was an Australian nature writer, whose lyrical descriptions of flora and fauna Payne used for background and context in this novel. Payne went still further and took the name James Vance Marshall as a pseudonym when it was published.

Siegel sees Walkabout as a parable of Christianity with the aboriginal child wandering like Christ in the desert, resisting temptation, while Peter/Simon is the fisher of souls. While it can be read that way, it seemed more like High Wind in Jamaica; a more universal tale of childish innocence brought up abruptly and irretrievably against the harsh world of moral quandary and consequence.

Enjoyed your review of Walkabout SaasyLassy, but I could not tell what you thought of the book.
Published in 1959 I presume it's a bit of a classic and was made famous by Nicolas Roeg's film. That's interesting stuff about Donald Payne and James Vance Marshall.

My first thought was that Walkabout might be the basis of the film, but from SassyLassy's description there were some differences. IMDb does not say anything explicitly about the matter, but it looks like the one follows the other. I wonder why the film was different.

Robert

>187 baswood: I would also be interested in your opinion of the book, Sassy. I had thought about buying it, but Darryl's review was only lukewarm, so I did not follow up.

>187 baswood:, >189 Linda92007: Linda and bas

I did like this book and thought it read well. I was somewhat hesitant to recommend it, however, as I know there are some who may/will find the language and cultural stereotypes offensive.

This book comes from a time (1959) before YA fiction. It's that kind of book that no one seems to write now, one that can be read by children and adults alike, in the tradition of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, R M Ballantyne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Porter and so many others, although Marshall as a writer may not be of the same calibre as these. I have difficulty with trying to impose today's linguistic and cultural values on a book written in a time to which they did not apply. It seems to me we would be dismissing a great deal of otherwise worthwhile writing if this was the approach. That said, if a young person was reading this book now, I would want to discuss it with them in terms of how we would look at the storyline and language differently today.

Knowing I would explain all this so poorly was part of my difficulty with the review; that and trying not to put in any spoilers.

I read Darryl's review too, and usually finding his reviews in line with my own reading tastes, was not tempted to follow up at the time. I wish I could find the review that really liked the book, to give a better idea of it.

>188 Mr.Durick: Mr Durick

Walkabout was the basis of the Nicholas Roeg film. In his forward, Siegel says that Roeg's film was full of violence when there is absolutely no violence in the book. He attributes this in part to the script writer, Edward Bond, saying Bond, the "heir to Antonin Artuaud's 'theatre of cruelty' " has written a script "framed by violence and self-destruction".
Siegel's take on why the film differed so much from the book was

Post-Woodstock, post-Manson, Roeg's startling film is very much of its disillusioned moment, the early 1970s, when the naive enthusiasms of love-ins and flower children have given way to cynicism and despair. The very memory of such naivete and innocence is "an air that kills" the disabused spirit. Neither in civilization nor in the wilderness can one escape the elemental reality of destruction... For Roeg, only violence and death do not lie.

I am usually a fan of Roeg's films, but after reading the book, this particular one does not appeal as it has been so distorted from the original. If I do see it, I will probably have to think of it as completely divorced from the book.

I would encourage you to see the film! I can't speak to its faithfulness to the book, but it's one of the most gorgeous visual events I've seen.

I'm not sure what violence is meant. There are some hunting scenes which will upset people who can't bear to watch animals die (belonging to the species that is the greatest destroyer of other species, I, masochistically perhaps, feel those moments are the least we ought to suffer), and there is self-destruction at the end, which is sad rather than violent.

Interesting review of Walkabout, which hasn't particularly tempted me yet despite my general love of NYRB editions.

Thanks for the comment about Brothers: A Novel. it was that initial part with the similar "adventures," as you put it, of Baldy and his father that kind of turned me off, but I also need Real Life to slow down a little so I can tackle a bigger book.

SassyLassy, thank you for the additional commentary on the relationship of the book to the film. It was a long time ago that I saw the movie. Like Lola, I don't remember much in the way of violence, although there are the results of some violence in the movie. I did take away from it a strong sense that it was about death including about death of the spirit. That may seem like a gruesome entertainment, but as I remember it I liked the film because it engaged me in its subject and did not bludgeon me with horror.

Robert

Walkabout is one of the books on our local school district's recommended summer reading lists for middle school children, so I was surprised when you said it has language and stereotypes that might be offensive.

>194 StevenTX:, steven, maybe I was just being overly cautious. I think this would be a good middle school book on a lot of levels: new vocabulary, good plot, ambiguous ending. The caution would be more about some of the outdated ideas expressed in the book, mostly the ideas Mary has about racial superiority. However, her idea that her culture is inherently superior to others and that she therefore doesn't have anything to learn from others, unfortunately is something that people still suffer from.

The other thing that might cause offense to some school boards, along the lines of Huckleberry Finn is the outdated language. I don't think we should go around changing language in old books to adopt it to today's ideas, but apparently there are those who do.

As an aside, here was an interesting discussion about school books in Texas: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2010/03/24/march-24-2010/

Unfortunately they seem to have deleted the audio link, but scroll down to the transcript

Back when I worked in science textbook publishing in the 80s, Texas had a huge impact on how science was handled in school textbooks; it's discouraging to see that they're now expanding to history. Fortunately for me, I worked in the college textbook division, where this wasn't an issue. It's really outrageous that one state can have such economic clout by virtue of having statewide textbook adoption procedures.

The language may be "outdated" (now that's a euphemism), but that language is part and parcel of racist attitudes in all their glory, and these must be known. The so-called past (I believe less and less that any "past" truly goes away) must be known.

Bottom line, it's a matter of not lying.

That article about the Texas Board of Education is rather old news now, and fortunately the recent elections have steered things in a better direction. At that time in 2010 the social conservatives who would teach religion in place of science and history held seven seats on the 15-member board. Now they hold only five seats. The Republicans are still in firmly charge, but it is a more moderate group of Republicans than before.

>197 LolaWalser:, Lola, I agree with you completely; I don't think we should go around changing language in old books to adopt it to today's ideas. I was just trying to say that many would try to change it, or would ignore such a book completely.

>198 StevenTX: steven, thanks for the update. When I heard the article originally, I was somewhat horrified, especially by the idea that it would affect textbooks outside the US as well. We're "a long way from the road" up here and I hadn't heard the update. Good to hear there is a creeping improvement.

Cautionary tales:
- Don't honeymoon in a war zone!
- Be careful whom you engage as a spy!

Here is an apparently little know escapade in Hemingway's life. The book uses the old Chinese spellings as that is what Hemingway and Gellhorn used, so I am too.



63. Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn by Peter Moreira
first published 2006
finished December 3, 2012

Arthur Ransome, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene: now you can add Ernest Hemingway to the list of apparent novelist/spies.

In 1940, Hemingway was waiting for a divorce from his second wife, while his soon to be third wife, Martha Gellhorn, was planning their honeymoon. Gellhorn was an accomplished journalist, a war correspondent for Collier's magazine, who had covered the Spanish Civil War, the surrender of Paris to the Germans and the Soviet invasion of Finland. She had now decided she wanted to cover the Sino-Japanese War as a honeymoon destination. In December of that year, Collier's gave her the assignment.

Hemingway had just finished For Whom the Bell Tolls and was more interested in relaxing, but finally agreed. He obtained journalist credentials for himself from a new New York paper, PM. Amazingly, neither Hemingway nor Gellhorn had any background knowledge of China. Moreira believes they had not even read Edgar Snow's 1938 classic, Red Star over China.

Two days before departure, Hemingway had a conversation with Harry White, a US Treasury Department official and assistant to Secretary Robert Morgenthau. Hemingway agreed to spy for the Treasury department during his trip. Although the US was funding the Kuomintang government of China in its fight against the Japanese, Morgenthau believed a good part of that money was being diverted to the KMT fight against the Chinese Communists. Given that the Americans would finance the KMT and its leader Chiang Kai-shek to the tune of about $1.5 billion between 1941 and 1946, this was a reasonable fear and one that would turn out to be correct. Morgenthau also wanted information on the Burma Road, a route used to send supplies and aid to the Nationalist capital at Chungking, using an approach through western China.

At that time, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of Nationalist China, had a high profile and many friends in the US, both for his fight against the Axis power Japan, and for his domestic fight against the Chinese communists. Hemingway and Gellhorn viewed this war theatre as similar to the ones they had covered in Europe, that of a fight by decent people against a fascist threat. What they and most Americans did not realize, was that Chiang himself led a Fascist regime.

On February 22, 1941, after a stop in Hawaii, the pair started the Asian part of their journey in Hong Kong, at that time a British colony. Hemingway was to spend forty days of his hundred day Asian trip in Hong Kong rather than in China. Although Gellhorn felt Hemingway spent most of his time loafing and drinking while she worked, he did meet a lot of people deeply involved in China: characters ranging from "Two Gun" Cohen, at one time Sun Yat-sen's bodyguard, right up to the Governor of the colony. Lauchlin Currie, an economist on a special White House mission to China was in Hong Kong. He advised Hemingway that neither he nor Gellhorn should report anything to the US that would exacerbate relations between the two Chinese factions.

While Gellhorn soon made a trip into China on her own, it wasn't until March 25th that Hemingway would venture into China. He and Gellhorn were flown over Japanese lines to the province of Kwangtung, where they were met by KMT officers who had supposedly arranged to take them to the battlefront with the Japanese. What they actually saw was a staged mock battle organized by the KMT; their first real indication of the reluctance of the KMT to engage the Japanese, who were mere kilometres away. Censorship did not allow them to report this excursion.

During this twelve day trip to the mainland, Hemingway saw and briefly spoke with Russian military advisors, whom he reported were aiding the KMT. Stalin, fearing the possibility of an eastern front, wanted the Japanese tied up with China, believing this would prevent an attack by the Japanese on Siberia. Naturally his aid to the KMT did not improve his relationship with the Chinese communists, perceived in the US to be his natural allies.

Hemingway's other significant excursion on his Asian trip was to Chungking. Here, he and Gellhorn stayed in a flat provided by Soong Tse-Ven, brother-in-law of Chiang, the late Sun Yat-sen, and H H Kung, the premier of China. Soong, a Harvard graduate, was lobbying Washington for aid, military supplies, and airplanes. As Moreira puts it, "Soong was in fact housing the spy for the two treasury officials from whom he was trying to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in aid". Other than Gellhorn's complaints about the accommodations, however, Soong had little to worry about.

Hemingway went on to Chengtu, home of an important military academy. Here he found still more Soviet advisors. He was amazed to find 100, 000 peasants and just one steam shovel working to build an airfield for the planes that would later be flown by the Flying Tigers. This display of determination stayed with him.

Back in Chungking, Hemingway and Gellhorn had a secret meeting with Chou En-lai. Although both were charmed by him, Hemingway felt that the information provided by Chou was mere propaganda, as opposed to the information he was receiving from Chiang and company. He therefore underreported Chinese communist strength and its effect on the war against Japan. He did report that among wealthy Chinese, it was thought by many that the best outcome would be an end to the war against the Japanese, so that the Americans could then support the KMT in an all out war against the communists. By this stage, he had come to realize that Chiang's greatest priority was defeating the communists, not the Japanese.

In April, while they were still in Chungking, news came that Stalin had signed a non aggression pact with Japan, allowing the Japanese to continue their predations in China without fear of Soviet reprisals. This pact also caused difficulties for the Chinese communists, who received a lot of support from ordinary Chinese for their opposition to the Japanese, which was perceived to be stronger that that of the Nationalists. With the Soviets signing the pact, it would now be difficult to maintain that support. Theodore White, also in Chungking at the time, gave the news of the pact to Hemingway, but believed he did not understand its significance.

That day, the pair lunched with Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang. Chiang spoke at length about the "distraction" the communists caused in the fight against the Japanese. He also downplayed his troops' massacre of the Communist Fourth Route Army* earlier that year. Hemingway and Gellhotn lunched with Madame Chiang again the next day before flying on to Burma. Gellhorn wrote an extremely flattering and misleading article on this meeting, portraying Madame Chiang as a selfless beauty, whose family wanted nothing for themselves and only the best for China. Hemingway was supposed to report on the likelihood of the Japanese blocking the supply route the Burma Road provided to western China, and on possible substitutes, but after flying over it on the way to Rangoon, only advised Harry White to monitor events.

Neither Hemingway nor Gellhorn had been prepared for China and the conditions there. Gellhorn had not been prepared for Hemingway's drinking. She hated China. He kept telling her that the trip was all her idea. In Rangoon, the couple decided that Gellhorn would go on to Singapore alone. Hemingway would return to Hong Kong. There he resumed his social life and wrote his promised articles. Moreira says these looked at strategic matters in Asia and the possibility of American involvement in the war. Hemingway felt any involvement would be prompted by economic concerns, such as shortages of strategic materials provided by these areas. He felt Japan would first need to defeat China to make any further progress in Asia, so the US should continue to support the Nationalist Chinese.

Gellhorn and Hemingway returned to the US separately. They reported on their travels to both the military and Treasury. Hemingway wrote a long confidential report for Morgenthau. He then went on to more missions in Europe where he met the woman who would become his next wife. By the time Gellhorn arrived in London to meet him, their brief marriage was over.

*This massacre is included in To Live, 56 above.

edited to correct reading date

Fascinating!!! I was not aware that Hemingway had visited China, and this episode certainly doesn't improve his image.

What Steven said! Nor would I have picked him for a spy!

Yes fascinating stuff on Hemingway. If being a spy involves sitting around in bars and cafes listening to the latest gossip then Hemingway was the right man for the job.

I agree - utterly fascinating! Thanks for the great review. Will you be posting it on the book's work page?

Fascinating is the proper word for this story, book and review! This goes to the top of my wish list.

>201 StevenTX: - 205 It's always odd what you find on the remainder shelves. This one looked like a natural, as you say, fascinating info. Now I would like to find something on Martha Gellhorn.

Moreira says that most biographers devote fewer than ten pages to this period in Hemingway's life although he was in Asia almost twice as long as he was in Italy. He speculates that part of the reason for this absence of information is that none of his major works used Asia as a setting.

I agree with Rebecca that you wouldn't necessarily pick such a larger than life character as a spy, but the description bas gives certainly provides a great way to pick up info. Loose lips and all that sort of thing.

I'd love to know what erroneous information he provided from Europe!

My book club is back in action.



64. Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner
first published 1999
finished December 6, 2012

This book is clearly labelled a memoir. It supposedly recounts the first twelve years of Cathy McClure, now Catherine Gildiner, in small town Lewiston New York in the 1950s. Cathy's father was a pharmacist and Cathy helped out in the store, but not in the ways you might think.

Some things ring true: the stultifying life of middle class stay-at-home mothers, the conservative small town values, the lack of interest in the larger world. Others have a definite ring of hyperbole:

Being in the full-time work force at four gave me a unique perspective on life, and I was exposed to situations I later realized were unusual for a child. For over ten years I never once had a meal at home, and that included Christmas. I worked and went to restaurants and delivered everything from band-aids to morphine in the Niagara Frontier. I had to tell people whether makeup looked good or bad, point out what cough medicines had sedatives, count and bottle pills. I also had to sound as if I knew what I was talking about in order to pull it off.

Then there are the scenes that stretch all credibility: a twelve year old girl in knee socks, out alone with an about to be ordained Jesuit, drinking and dancing at a dinner club while the band leader asks if they are honeymooners; an elementary school child frequenting bars and speak easies with the delivery driver.

Besides the fact that I wanted to finish this for the book club, what kept me reading was Gildiner's excellent ear for language. Whether it is boys out sledding, Mother Superior admonishing, or the women in Cathy's mother's bridge club gossiping, Gildiner's dialogue captures the tone and language of the conversation. She also captures the innocent manner of a child, taking words literally, unable to extract the essence of a conversation often with unintended consequences, many of them humorous. It still wasn't enough.

If your great-aunt likes "nice" books, this might be one for her. Apparently there are two follow up books. I'm on to completely different things.

65. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua, translated from the Chinese by Andrew F Jones
first published as Xu Sanguan mai xue ji in 1996
finished December 8, 2012

Xu Sanguan first sold his blood as a young man in his twenties, before he was married. It was done almost as a lark, with two friends. His friends instructed him in the finer points beforehand: how to drink lots of water first to increase the amount of blood, not to pee the water out, what to take the blood chief as a present, and the importance of eating pork livers and warmed rice wine afterwards to replenish the system. Xu Sanguan intuitively realized that the money he received from blood was different from the wages he received from sweat. It couldn't be spent on anything ordinary.

Nine years passed after this lark. Xu was now married with three sons: Yile, Erle and Sanle, or First Joy, Second Joy and Third Joy. The problem was, people were whispering that Yile, his favourite and first born, did not look like Xu Sanguan. Yile must be He Xiaoyang's son.

At about that time, Yile got in a fight with Blacksmith Fang's son and beat him so badly that he was hospitalized in a coma. When Blacksmith Fang could no longer pay for his son's medicine, he came to Xu, as Yile's father, for money. Yu refused to pay, saying it was He Xiaoyang's obligation. He naturally refused. So began a seesaw battle between the families over who was Yile's father, a battle that will not be resolved till the end of the book.

Blacksmith Fang seized Xu's household goods in payment for the medical bills. Left with only their rice bowls, Xu's family was devastated. The occasion warranted special action, so once again Xu sold his blood to buy back the household goods from Blacksmith Fang.

Up until now, life had been manageable for the family. Both Xu and his wife were employed, the boys were in school and everyone was healthy. Then began the Great Leap Forward. Xu's factory went from producing silk to producing pig iron. Kitchens were collectivized and quickly ran out of food. After fifty-seven straight days of eating watery corn gruel, Xu Sanguan decided his family need a real meal.

It was thus that Xu Sanguan arrived at the hospital and found himself facing Blood Chief Li. And he thought to himself, Everyone in town is gray with hunger, but Blood Chief Li still has ruddy cheeks. Everyone in town has lost weight, but Blood Chief Li's face is as fleshy as ever. Everyone in town is always scowling, but Blood Chief Li has a big smile on his face.

Things will only get worse for the family as the famine gives way to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Xu will be forced to sell his blood more and more often. Blood Chief Li finally refused to take it, but in a misguided attempt at helping Xu, suggested he could get around the three month interval rule by going to other collection clinics where he would be unknown. Xu took up this suggestion on his harrowing trip to Shanghai to see Yile, who was hospitalized there and close to death.

Chronicle of a Blood Merchant reads almost like a script. Instead of "Xu said", it might say "Xu Sanguan said to Yile". Xu's wife, Xu Yulan, frequently sits on their doorstep, wailing and declaiming to all who will listen in ever more polished performances. Xu Sanguan's description of making dinner in a game he plays with his hungry boys are not only highly visual, but incorporate directions on what to do. It is as if Yu Hua is turning the widespread use of revolutionary plays and operas around, in order to give his own commentary and criticism on life. His commentary comes to a natural end with his trip to Shanghai. I felt it would have been an excellent novel had it ended there. Instead, there is one more anticlimactic chapter which gave the impression it had been tacked on, possibly to get the book approved and published.

This is the third book I have read by Yu Hua in a month. While each differed widely in style, hunger and the Chinese medical system feature prominently in each. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, published in 1996, four years after To Live, revisits some of the events in that novel and expands upon others. Blood is central to both, but Chronicle also incorporates the ideas of blood lines and blood money. Both novels deal with the lives of ordinary Chinese, and together with the first part of Brothers, present very human tales of ordinary people living in extraordinarily difficult times.

Great review, Sassy. Does this book deal at all with one of the consequences of all this blood selling (which I think I remember reading about some time ago) -- that it contributed to the spread of AIDS in China?

I still have to get to Brothers!

Other than suggestions that healthy donors are dying for unexplained reasons, there is nothing overt about AIDS. Yile's illness could easily be hepatitis, which could be another consequence of these collection centres.

The translator provided an Afterword to the book and says The disturbing revelations of official corruption and mismanagement within this {blood collection} system, as well as the widespread contamination of the blood reserves with the HIV virus, came to light only several years after Yu Hua's novel was published.

The collection centres had been operating for about thirty years by then. My own feeling is that even if it had been known at the time, the information would have been suppressed and the clinics would have continued as usual. He goes on to say that tens and perhaps thousands of individuals were affected, creating AIDS villages.

I really enjoyed catching up with your last four reviews. Loved all the extra information about Walkabout, it sounds worth the effort and problems. The Hemingway story sounds farcical (which is maybe why he didn't write more about it...). Yu Hua sounds very curious, an author to look into, certainly.

I'm reminded how easily the British assumed anyone getting a degree in "exotic" languages or fields that could conceivably take one abroad might be interested in that sort of spying.

Reading about espionage in general, much of it is basic info-gathering--reading the newspapers, taking pictures, chatting up cabbies... Devastatingly stupid, most of it. I think MAD magazine's take on it with Black Spy/White Spy may be the most accurate literary representation of all.

Walkabout goes onto the wishlist.

Hard Rain Falling and Brothers, too, except they call to mind American Rust and Under Fishbone Clouds, respectively, from my TBRs, so I’ll first queue those up to get to early in 2013. Very interesting about Hemingway!

daniel, I hope you do get to read some Yu Hua. Curious is a good word to describe him, given his range of styles. I'll never think of Hemingway the same way again.

Lola, you're right. Just get a degree in Farsi and off you go. It did make for lots of great scandals, novels and movies though!

MJ, I'll take your two TBR books as recommendations. They sounds interesting, particularly American Rust.

I'm now desperately trying to catch up on 2012 and finish off a few already started books.

After getting bogged down in two Israeli authors, David Grossman and Amos Oz, I read right through this book.



66. A Woman in Jerusalem by A B Yehoshua translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin
first published as Shlichuto shel hamemuneh al meshave enosh in 2004
finished December 10, 2012

A woman, the victim of a suicide bomber, lies unidentified and unclaimed in a Jerusalem morgue.

A weekly newspaper, specializing in scandal and rumour mongering has picked up the fact that this woman worked for a particular bakery and had been in hospital for two days before her death, without a visit from friends or colleagues. The editor of the paper, being a friend of the bakery's owner, has sent him the unpublished galleys of an article, "The Shocking Inhumanity behind our Daily Bread", to see if he has a response. Accompanying the galleys is a photograph of the dead woman's pay stub. Now it is the turn of the human resources manager to respond to the bakery owner.

The manager had absolutely no memory of this woman, although he was able to locate his hand written notes, indicating he had indeed interviewed her. Who was she? The night shift supervisor, to whom the woman reported, sheepishly reveals that she no longer worked at the bakery, but was still on the payroll. He adds that the woman had a certain beauty.

Fearing scandal, the owner directed the human resources manager to accompany the body to the woman's family and see that she was buried properly, so that the company could respond with an article of its own.

So begins an amazing novel. The manager will accompany the woman to her native country, a land of snow and bitter cold, two times zones east of Jerusalem. On the way to her remote village, he will face death and emerge reborn. When he arrives in the village, he will be faced with an astonishing request.

The woman is the only person given a name and identity in this novel. Everyone else is a functionary, identified only by role or position. Oddly, this only deepens the mystery of who the woman really is. The reader is slowly drawn into her story, as the human resources manager works to fulfill his task. Outsiders comment on his actions in asides, giving different perspectives to the woman's life and her treatment in death. The tale is played out against the details of everyday life, with various technicians, homework and the mundane details of travel to ground it. The novel has an almost musical quality with chorus and counterpoint, underscored by the manager listening to a live symphony broadcast on his car radio, so that he can know when it is safe to contact the owner.

Yehoshua's novel is an excellent commentary on life in present day Jerusalem, what it means to belong, and the role of the other; ideas that will linger long after the book is finished.

Great review! And another Israeli author for me to look into. The book is on my wishlist.

Excellent review of A Woman in Jerusalem, SassyLassy. I enjoyed Yehoshua's recent novel Friendly Fire, so I'll add this book to my wish list.

Excellent review of A Woman in Jerusalem, Sassy. You have reminded me that I own one of Yehoshua's books - The Liberated Bride - but have yet to read it. Perhaps its time to rectify that.

doc and Linda, glad you enjoyed it and thanks to both of you for more Yehoshua titles.

dchaikin, I hope you do read this and I can't believe I read an Israeli author you hadn't read yet.

Now for a major year end catchup. I am one of those people who need deadlines, and December 31st is always the biggest of all.

I finished this book the night before the school shooting in Connecticut and so delayed posting, given the subject matter. Then I realized it wouldn't make anything any better.
This first novel won the 2003 Man Booker prize.



67. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
published 2003
finished December 13, 2012

Vernon Gregory Little's best friend has just murdered sixteen of their high school classmates. Since his friend then killed himself, and the community needs a real life villain, Vernon is being accused of the murders.

Not only is Vernon unfortunate enough to be wrongfully accused, he has the misfortune of being a poor white boy in small town Texas. No one is going to step forward to help him. Asked by the deputy sheriff to "name the two forces underlying all life in this world", his reply is "wealth and poverty?"

Vernon's father disappeared some time ago. Vernon lives with his mother, who in her own poverty stricken way is constantly trying to keep up with her friends. Vernon's "escapade" is an embarrassment for her. Into their lives steps Eulalio Ledesma, self professed CNN reporter. Eulalio quickly insinuates himself into the Little household, intent on getting any and all scoops as grist for his media mill.

Vernon is smart enough to realize things are not going to go well. He sets off for Mexico, where he believes he can live out his dreams. Since Vernon is only fifteen, he'a a bit vague on the details of how to get there and what he'll do there. Part of his plan revolves around dreams of an older girl from school, a girl with all the advantages denied Vernon.

This story is Vernon's first person narrative. Given his age, it is filled with language and fantasies every parent would like to pretend their child just doesn't know. However, Pierre uses this language to good effect, subtly improving vocabulary and syntax over the course of the novel as Vernon's situation gets worse and worse and he is forced to grow up very quickly.

Pierre's book is a wicked satire on a certain kind of American culture. Competitive consumerism, fast food addiction and the overwhelming desire to become part of a story all get their share of attention. However, it is the role of the media and the part it plays whenever there is a tragedy of this kind, that receives the most brutal treatment. The satire culminates with a nationally televised reality show from death row, where inmates are watched by the audience, who then vote someone off each week, in this case to the execution chamber.

I was thinking about the seemingly never ending media coverage of such events the day after I finished this book. I was thinking about Dunblane Scotland, where the town put limits on the media, allowing the mourners the dignity of grieving in private, away from relentless outsides. Then I heard of the shooting in Connecticut and the whole media circus started again.

Sounds compelling and depressing (i.e., just my type of book!).

dchaikin's great review led me to this book and it certainly lived up to it.



68. When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
published 2000
finished December 19, 2012

Twenty year old Evelyn Sert sailed under false pretences for Palestine in April 1946. Unlike thousands of others with the same goal, she was neither a displaced person, nor stateless. Although recently orphaned, she had not lost any family in the Holocaust.

Evelyn was a hairdresser from London, intent on a new start in life, away from the weight of England. She was looking for a place without artifice or sentiment, where life was stripped back to its basics, where things were fundamental and serious and above all modern. Where else but Palestine, the proto state of Israel, a place where you could look and be as Jewish as you wanted, with no fear of the kind of covert racism practised by the English with such skill. Such were her thoughts, but as she herself said, "What does twenty know?"

Evelyn says "Scratch a Jew and you have a story". Her story will be the particular mix of the stories of those she meets. It is a story of contrasts and paradoxes. It is also a story of identity: personal and cultural, known and unknown, real and assumed. Evelyn will find in Tel Aviv, that blazing white Bauhaus city with its heat and its noise and its smells, a vision of the future, of what could be, as far from the grey rain and rationing of London as possible.

She will find the English too, going about their self appointed duty as colonizers, fighting desperately in Palestine and elsewhere to stem the tidal wave about to swamp their empire. This idea of colonist is one she will struggle with. She is a citizen of the colonial power, yet in her new land, she wants nothing more than to see that power overthrown. However, surrounded by a veritable United Nations of immigrants, she finds the British were the only people who did not seem like foreigners to me.

Evelyn realized that even when the British eventually leave, the new immigrants will become colonizers in turn. She see early intimations of the fate of the Arabs. As one of her new friends says, Why should we put up with their religious craziness? Haven't we got enough of our own?"

As the year passes and the English wives start to be evacuated out of Palestine, she is torn between compassion for them and her ties to her new life. She feels their homesickness and memories of

...the denuded landscapes of the Pennines and the cold winds blowing through slate-roofed towns; hills spread like butter with yellow broom in springtime; a bus up the Brompton Road on a September morning when the windows of the shops were filled with autumn styles and the children's names were being embroidered on to tapes and sewn into school uniforms, and pens and pencils and compasses were purchased and put tidily into satchels...

Years later, looking back on those times in Palestine, times that were truly modern, she will use her old refrain, "Scratch a Jew and you have a story", about herself.

...we are the people of the Book. ..each story a Jew tells is part of that book. We have no choice but to listen. Our history was in our story, for the Arabs of Palestine it was the land. Without a story we're not Jews. Without a land they're not just DPs, they're an abstract idea---a cause....That's not a human being. This is the great wrong we did them.

Is Israel the country it set out to be, or are there as many Israels as there are stories?

This book was a present, together with Nuns Behaving Badly, >8 SassyLassy: above. Way back at NBB, it was stated that the most common path for wealthy girls up to about the 1650s in what is now Italy, was the convent. Fewer women were married off, due to the high cost of dowries. Here is one woman who led a most secular life.



69.The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de' Medici
by Elizabeth Lev
published 2011
finished December 25, 2012

Caterina Riario Sforza de' Medici was born in 1463, illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, heir to the powerful Duke of Milan. Luckily for her, the Sforzas treated their illegitimate children as legitimate, so Caterina was raised at the court of the duke, amid luxury and learning. Not only was she taught the standard fifteenth century womanly arts, she also learned languages, the use of weapons, and politics, all of which were to serve her in good stead later.

Caterinan was married at age ten to Count Girolamo Riario, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV and captain of the papal armies. This marriage made her the Countess of Imola, starting her on a career driven by geopolitics and family ties. In her life, Caterina would work assiduously to keep Imola and Forlì (both just southeast of Bologna) for her children, after the disgrace and death of her first husband. She would marry twice more, once secretly, and persevere through the assassination of her second husband and the early death of her third, Giovanni de' Medici.

Along the way she would outwit the young Machiavelli, sent as a negotiator from Florence, be featured in a Sistine Chapel fresco, support the arts and defeat armies. She was eventually defeated, captured, raped and imprisoned by Cesare Borgia, Pope Alexander VI's son.

All this would make a fascinating biography in the right hands. Elizabeth Lev is an art historian however. She does not quite succeed in placing Caterina in the context of her times, a highly complex period of intertwined political and religious wars and alliances, negotiated among fascinating and powerful families, which would make Tudor England look somewhat mundane in comparison. Lev does try, but is much better at describing the art world of the era and the life of the individual courts, and this is reflected in the bibliography. The book could also have done with a chronology.

The Tigress of Forlì certainly whetted my appetite for more about Caterina. I think the next source will be Machiavelli's On the Art of War where he discusses her defence of Forlì in some detail.

Meanwhile, here is a contemporary portrait of a pregnant Caterina, a renowned beauty, commissioned by Pope Sixtus for the Sistine Chapel: a detail from Botticelli's The Purification of the Leper from 1481. Her son Cesare is at her feet

Fascinating story and fascinating woman -- too bad the book wasn't better. Nice pictures too.

I enjoyed the book I read by Linda Grant, The Clothes on their Backs, and have meant to read more by her, but haven't so far.

This was my first year for Club Read and one of the wonderful authors it introduced me to is Ismail Kadare, winner of the inaugural Man Booker prize for Achievement in Fiction. Here is the second book of his I have read this year, the first was Broken April. This book is based on the story of Mehmet Shehu, supposed successor to Enver Hoxha.

Alberto Manguel's All Men Lie, >135 SassyLassy: above, may echo this novel.



70. The Successor by Ismail Kadare translated from Albanian to French by Tedi Papavrami, this edition translated from the French by David Bellos
first published as Pasardhesi in 2003
finished December 26, 2012

The Designated Successor was found dead in his bedroom at dawn on December 14.

Later that day he was to have attended a Politburo meeting where supposedly he would be forgiven the errors he had been forced to itemize in an earlier self criticism to that body. The papers announced the death as a suicide. The alternative was murder, of either a political or personal nature.

As they anxiously opened their morning papers, hoping to learn more about the event, people were actually trying to fathom which of the two alternatives -- self-inflicted death or death inflicted by the hand of another -- would affect them less harshly

for this was Albania in 1981 and paranoia was the healthiest approach to life.

The western powers duly took note of the death, dusting off their files on the country and realizing yet again just how little they really knew about it. Did Kosovo play a role? What about oil?

Guidance for the people's prognostications was deliberately contradictory. The Successor was given a respectable funeral, however, news of an autopsy and reenactments of the death was less reassuring. No one wanted to be involved in such proceedings, as any results could be countermanded at any time in the future. One earlier Politburo member had had three different burials over several years.

The pathologist chosen for The Successor's autopsy

recalled quite clearly when he had been officially notified that he would be required to undertake an autopsy of prime importance. On the body of the Successor.

He had gone deaf for a brief instant. The whole universe had gone silent. Inside him, everything stopped -- his heartbeat, his brain, his breathing. Then, as those functions gradually returned a thought slowly formed in his mind: So that's how we'll put an end to this business.

"This business" was his own life.

After an autopsy of this kind, the continued existence of the person who carried it out seemed as improbable as evidence of life on the face of the moon.

Initially The Successor's family was allowed to stay in their home. Then one day they were unceremoniously moved with two hours notice to an area of the country filled with "relegations". Was the family somehow to blame for the death? That would certainly make life easier for those still living in fear.

Kadare uses dreams, superstitions, and gossip to bolster his surreal picture of a world that is all too real to its inhabitants. He looks at The Successor's death from various perspectives: those of his daughter, his architect who had just built him the most beautiful house in Tirana, the Guide (Hoxha), and the Minister of the Interior now rumoured to be the next Successor. Each in turn adds layers of possibilities to the story, until finally The Successor himself speaks from beyond the grave.

Highly recommended for other lovers of paranoia and political fiction.

rebecca, "compelling and depressing"... you couldn't have summed up my type of books better!

I'll look for your Linda Grant book. I really liked her writing.

I hadn't heard of either this book or this author, until I spotted it in a used book store. The synopsis didn't sound great, but it was partially set in twenty-first century and was by a female Chinese novelist. Since I hadn't read anything in that setting or much by Chinese women, I took the plunge.



71. Village of Stone by Xiaolu Guo, translated from the Chinese by Cindy Carter
first published in English 2004
finished December 30, 2012

The Village of Stone is one thousand eight hundred kilometres from Beijing. It is a fishing village on the South China Sea, cut off from the rest of the world by the mountain behind it and the sea on the other three sides. It is an almost mythical place, a place where

the houses were built from boulders found around the peninsula, the streets were paved with smaller pebbles, and even the rooftops were covered with piles of stones. No matter how you looked upon the village -- from the ground, from the hillside, even from the sky above -- it really was a village constructed entirely of stone.

Coral Jiang spent her first fifteen years there, brought up by her taciturn grandparents. Life was primitive and Coral was left to her own devices, with horrible consequences. She moved to Beijing, got a job at a video store and lived with her unemployed boyfriend on the bottom floor of a twenty-four story block of apartments. The village was submerged in Coral's mind until one day she received an enormous salted eel in the mail from an unknown sender. The smell of the eel sent her back in memory to the Village of Stone one thousand eight hundred kilometres away.

The village is the old fossilized China. Although the symbolism is heavy, her descriptions of life there are well done. If you've ever lived by the sea, you can smell the salt air, feel the eternal damp and feel the lash of the wind.

The new China in the Beijing megalopolis is life at the bottom, a primeval life like the sea. Everything is at ground level: the apartment, the entry level job, the basement hostels for workers. There is some small hope for the future in this novel, but only to be achieved in small steps.

This is an early book by Xiaolu Guo. It's difficult to determine whether it is a first novel or not. This edition says first novel published in English. Recalling discussions on edited translations of Chinese books in the Reading Globally group, the author thanks "Rebecca Carter for her creative editing".

I will look for more by Xiaolu Guo to see how she develops.

225, sounds like an interesting book. I was fascinated by Albania at the time in question, the most isolated of the communist regimes. Wasn't Shehu killed by Hoxha himself?

Slàinte mhath to all!

Intrigued by The Tigress of Forli. despite your reservations it looks to be a must read for me

Some great reviews to end the year with.

Five terrific new reviews, intrigued by all, even The Tigress of Forli.

#222 - I had kind of written my review of this Linda Grant book off as didn't-work-as-well-as-hoped. I'm so happy it led you to read it and that you enjoyed it. Your review picked up on some layers I missed, especially the passing of the colonial torch.

#219 - actually I have read very very few Israeli authors...I'm just getting started!

zenomax, I don't know much about Albania, but that sounds like a really interesting idea and based on what I have read about the background for The Successor, entirely possible. If you read it, the episodes with his daughter and her fiancé are also based on Shehu's family, only with the genders reversed.

bas, as I was reading The Tigress of Forlì I kept thinking it was something you would enjoy, given your background on the time. There is a lot to interest in the book.

Thanks dchaikin! I hope to get to more Israeli authors myself now that I have suggestions from doc and linda for more of Yehoshua's books.