Rebeccanyc Reads in 2012, Part 3

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Rebeccanyc Reads in 2012, Part 3

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1rebeccanyc
Editado: Sep 28, 2012, 11:21 am

I'm starting a new thread for August!

* means the book read was a favorite

Books Read in September
82. The Kill by Émile Zola*
81. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama
80. Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
79. The Old Man and the Medal by Ferdinand Oyono
78. Nervous Conditions by Tistsi Dangarembga*
77. Nana by Émile Zola*
76. Deep River by Shūsaku Endō
75. Vlad by Carlos Fuentes
74. The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle*

Books Read in August
73. The Fortune of the Rougons by Émile Zola
72. L'Assomoir by Émile Zola*
71. Moving Parts by Magdalena Tulli*
70. The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes
69. The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi*
68. Silence by Shūsaku Endō
67. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes*
66. Germinal by Émile Zola*
65. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie*

2rebeccanyc
Editado: Sep 28, 2012, 11:22 am

These are the books I read from January through July.

* means the book was a favorite

Books Read in July
64. Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
63. Phantoms on the Bookshelf by Jacques Bonnet
62. White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov*
61. Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski*
60. Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden
59. Almost Transparent Blue by Ryū Murakami
58. The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes*
57. Distant View of a Minaret, and Other Stories by Alifah Rifaat
56. The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies*
55. What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies*
54. The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies*
53. Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge*
52. The Age of Doubt by Andrea Camilleri

Books Read in June
51. Dreams and Stones by Magdalena Tulli
50. The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death by Jill Lepore*
49. The Potter's Field by Andrea Camilleri
48. The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa
47. The Track of Sand by Andrea Camilleri
46. The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri
45. The Box Man by Kōbō Abe
44. Children inf Reindeer Woods by Kristín Ómarsdóttir
43. August Heat by Andrea Camilleri
42. Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri

Books Read in May
41. The Patience of the Spider by Andrea Camilleri
40. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov* (reread)
39. Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri
38. The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri
37. Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri
36. Voice of the Violin by Andrea Camilleri
35. Europe Central by William T. Vollman
34. The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri
33. The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri
32. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
31. Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin
30. The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri

Read in April
29. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One by Stanley Fish
28. Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil
27. Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia by Thant Myint-U
26. The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abé
Read in March
25. Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge
24. The Jokers by Albert Cossery
23. The Sea and Poison by Shūsaku Endō
22. Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman*
21. The First Crusade: The Call from the East by Peter Frankopan
20. Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki
19. The Emotional Life of Your Brain by Richard J. Davidson with Sharon Begley
18. The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić
17. Vesuvius by Gillian Darley
Read in February
16. Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son by Sholem Aleichem
15. The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner*
14. A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš
13. GB84 by David Peace*
12. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
11. Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki*
10. Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff*
Read in January
9. The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
8. The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier*
7. An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori*
6. This Body of Death by Elizabeth George
5. Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse by Jay Rubinstein
4. To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson*
3. The Colors of Infamy by Albert Cossery*
2. The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis
1. Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery*

3rebeccanyc
Ago 3, 2012, 11:53 am

65. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie



Catherine the Great was a remarkable woman; indeed, she was a remarkable person. Born Sophia Augusta Fredericka, the daughter of a minor German prince and his teenage wife who never cared for her, but who hoped to fulfill her ambitions through her, she was taken to Russia at the age of 14 to marry Peter, the extremely peculiar and emotionally stunted nephew of the Empress Elizabeth (a daughter of Peter the Great), who was next in line to the Russian throne. Her job was to produce an heir to continue the Romanov line. Shunned by her husband (who flirted incessantly with her ladies in waiting but who may have had physical problems as well as emotional ones that interfered with sexual activity), she remained a virgin for seven years until pressure to produce the heir led her to take a lover.

During the the long years of unhappiness and torment while Elizabeth was empress, she read incessantly in both Russian (which she learned) and French, developing an interest in the Enlightenment writers and philosophers such as Voltaire and Diderot), and became very well educated through her own efforts. In a phrase that charmed me, Massie writes, "Books were her refuge," something I have always thought about myself, and goes on to say that "She always kept a book in her room and carried another in her pocket." She was not only well read and curious, but had great strength of will and determination; people enjoyed talking with her and became devoted supporters, as evidenced their encouragement and active participation in the overthrow (and subsequent death) of her husband when he briefly became emperor after the death of Elizabeth.

Catherine is perhaps most famous for her lovers, just as Cleopatra was perhaps most famous for hers, but she should be recognized for her array of accomplishments during her more than 30 years as empress. Not only did she negotiate the complex personal politics of her court and successfully put down a rebellion, but she opened up a southern route to the sea for Russia (by taking land, especially land providing access to the Black Sea and the mouths of rivers, from the Ottoman empire), built a southern naval fleet, and built up towns and villages in the Crimea and southern Russia generally; she tried but failed to improve life for the serfs; in collusion with first the Prussians and then the Austrians, she annexed a huge portion of Poland to Russia in three partitions; she became the premier art collector in Europe and created the collection that became the Hermitage; through her own example she demonstrated the safety and benefits of smallpox vaccinations, modernizing medicine, and built hospitals; and she brought western European philosophy and culture to Russia, among other accomplishments.

She was an autocrat, and believed in the monarchy, but also believed that autocracy should be enlightened and that the key to success was taking heed of what the public wanted. She is quoted by an aide to Potemkin as having said, "It's not as easy as you think. . . .I examine the circumstances. I take advice. I consult the enlightened part of the people, and in this way I find out what sort of effects my laws will have. And when I am already convinced in advance of good approval, then I issue my orders, and have the pleasure of observing what you call blind obedience. That is the foundation of unlimited power. But believe me, they will not obey blindly when orders are not adapted to the opinion of the people." Nonetheless, "the people" were probably the nobility and the intelligentsia, not the millions of serfs; she was terrified by the French revolution because she could see what could (and did, about 125 years later) happen in Russia.

Massie introduces the readers to dozens of the people who were important in Catherine's life, from family and lovers to kings, courtiers, ministers, writers, and generals, and vividly depicts how she interacted with them, winning many to be devoted to her and some to oppose her. At the same time, he illustrates how much in her personal life was unhappy, starting with her relationship with her mother and with the Empress Elizabeth and continuing with her alienation from her own son and her heartbreak with some of of her lovers.

Although Massie had access to Catherine's memoirs (which did not cover her whole life) and other primary sources, I found he relied heavily on secondary sources, at least in his end-of-book selected bibliography and notes. I was captivated by the stories he told, but I did wonder how he knew what he knew. There was the same problem with lack of primary sources in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, but she played fair and discussed her sources in the course of the book. I also thought the maps could have been better.

4Linda92007
Ago 3, 2012, 2:30 pm

Fabulous review of Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, Rebecca, and an interesting observation related to Massie's reliance on secondary sources. I have been waiting to catch up with the library's e-book copy.

5torontoc
Ago 3, 2012, 2:58 pm

The book is on my wish list!

6baswood
Editado: Ago 3, 2012, 5:20 pm

Excellent review of Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. I was wondering how significant the subtitle 'Portrait of a woman' was in this biography.

7rebeccanyc
Ago 3, 2012, 6:42 pm

Thanks, Linda, Cyrel, and Barry. A friend gave me this book after I raved about Cleopatra: A Life (which I did like better than this book). As for the subtitle, Barry, I think Massie meant to imply it was about her as a person, not just as an empress.

8janeajones
Ago 3, 2012, 11:10 pm

I read a bio of Catherine when I was about 15 -- even then I was impressed with her influence and life -- great review of the Massie work!

9Mr.Durick
Ago 4, 2012, 12:42 am

A couple of decades ago I saw the movie A Royal Scandal and so Catherine the Great is to me a Tallulah Bankhead lookalike. Literate she presumably was, but I wonder if her humor could have matched the movie version.

Robert

10kidzdoc
Ago 4, 2012, 6:31 am

Great review of Catherine the Great, Rebecca!

11pamelad
Ago 4, 2012, 7:22 am

Rebecca, I recently saw The Scarlet Empress with Marlene Dietrich as Catherine the Great. I doubt that Marlene would match the woman described in Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, but it's a bizarre and entertaining film, well worth seeing.

There's also a Danish film, A Royal Affair on at the moment, which I've heard good reports of.

Adding the book to the wishlist and planning to seek out the Bankhead film.

12rebeccanyc
Ago 4, 2012, 7:55 am

Thanks for the comments and the movie recommendations. Without having seen any of them, which of course qualifies me for saying anything I want, my guess is that the movies about Catherine bear the same resemblance to her life as the movie of Cleopatra bears to her life as depicted in the excellent Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff.

I would also say about both these women that if if they were men in the same positions of power nobody would waste a second talking about their lovers. (At the time that they ruled; now is a different story, although women are still treated worse than men in this respect.)

13StevenTX
Ago 4, 2012, 9:16 am

I enjoyed Massie's biography of Peter the Great several years ago, and it looks like his new work on Catherine is just as good.

14SassyLassy
Ago 4, 2012, 8:29 pm

Do you know if Massie reads Russian or German? If he doesn't, perhaps that would account for the reliance on secondary sources.

When I was little, for some reason Catherine was one of my role models and I used to read about her when I could find books on her, but I have not kept up as an adult, other than to read the Vincent Cronin biography from 1979 and the older Zoe Oldenburg one. Great review and I will now look for this one.

15rebeccanyc
Ago 5, 2012, 8:09 am

Sassy, I don't know if he reads either Russian or German, but he's written so many books on Russia and Russians I assume he must have picked some up. However, many diplomats, etc, at the time wrote in French; in fact, Catherine's memoirs, although Massie read them in translation and although I think he must speak French because he has lived in France, were written in French.

Somehow I have never read anything about Catherine before and knew very little about her; it's interesting that she was one of your role models. She certainly was smart, self-educated, determined, and very savvy about diplomacy and intrigue. I also was glad to learn more about Potemkin.

16SassyLassy
Ago 5, 2012, 8:25 pm

Potemkin is a fascinating figure and probably hasn't had his due in the English language world. I have a recent biography of him my TBR pile, but it will have to wait until another Russian phase hits. I am looking forward to it. Funny how those phases hit.

17Jargoneer
Ago 6, 2012, 4:59 am

Very interesting review. There is a major exhibition on in Edinburgh at present about her which I have been debating to go to. Your review and now knowing that she invented the rollercoaster has probably swung it in favour of going.

18rebeccanyc
Ago 6, 2012, 8:00 am

I had no idea she invented the rollercoaster; Massie doesn't discuss that!

19Jargoneer
Editado: Ago 6, 2012, 10:14 am

>18 rebeccanyc: - it's a bit of a stretch but here are the details from the National Museum of Scotland page:

Ice mountains were a popular feature in Russia. After climbing to the top of these huge structures, riders would launch themselves down the steep slopes on sledges made of wood or blocks of ice. To continue the pastime into the summer months, Catherine had a summer slide built at Oranienbaum. This three-storey blue and white pavilion boasted a 500-metre slide that used wheeled carriages, which could reach speeds of over 50 miles an hour – surely the first rollercoaster. In fact, rollercoasters are still called ‘Russian mountains’ in several languages.

20rebeccanyc
Ago 6, 2012, 4:37 pm

Over in the New York Review Books group, there's a thread about our favorite NYRB titles. Since I'm such a huge fan of NYRB, it was hard for me to narrow it down very much. Here's what I posted over there, using the format I used for my favorites of 2011; within categories, they are in no particular order.

The Best of the Best
Life and Fate and Everything Flows by Vassily Grossman and "The Hell of Treblinka" from his The Road (no touchstone)
Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin
The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
Memoirs of a Revolutionary, The Case of Comrade Tulayev, Unforgiving Years, and Conquered City, all by Victor Serge
A Time of Gifts and From the Woods to the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
The Balkan Trilogy and School for Love by Olivia Manning
The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
Troubles by J. G. Farrell
Varieties of Exile and Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant
The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson
Sunflower by Gyula Krudy
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

The Best of the Rest
Soul and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov
An Ermine in Czernopol and The Snows of Yesteryear by Gregor von Rezzori
Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery
The Adventures of Sindbad by Gyula Krudy
The Towers of Trezibond by Rose Macaulay
Skylark by Deszo Kosztolanyi
The Cost of Living by Mavis Gallant
The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip by J. G. Farrell
A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Classic Crimes by William Roughead
Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig

Runners Up
The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes
Red Shift by Alan Garner
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley

Finally, I have a What Was NYRB Thinking? category for the very few NYRBs that were duds for me!
After Claude by Iris Owens
A Meaningful Life by L. J. Davis
Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson

21Mr.Durick
Ago 6, 2012, 4:55 pm

If I remember correctly I bought A Meaningful Life for nearly full price at a bookstore because I liked what I read on the cover; that is I thought it might apply more than one need expect of a novel to my life. I wonder where my copy is. You've made me curious.

Robert

22rebeccanyc
Ago 6, 2012, 5:44 pm

Robert, it was the blurb on the back from Paula Fox, along with its being about New York and an NYRB edition, that led me to buy A Meaningful Life, but I was sorely disappointed, as you can tell from my review on the book page if you want to find out why I didn't like it before you read it.

23kidzdoc
Editado: Ago 6, 2012, 6:18 pm

Great list, Rebecca. I'm mildly surprised that only two of my top 10 NYRB books appear in your list: Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur. I'll be interested to see which book gets the most votes; from my last check, it seems that all but one person mentioned Troubles as a favorite book.

I'll post my list on my Club Read thread now...

24rebeccanyc
Ago 6, 2012, 7:03 pm

Darryl, the only other NYRB on your list that I've read is The Winners, which I guess I could have rated a runner-up. But I'll definitely look to your list for some reading ideas. A Savage War of Peace is high up on my TBR.

25janeajones
Ago 6, 2012, 8:08 pm

20> No Tove Jansson ? You must try The True Deceiver and The Summer Book.

26rebeccanyc
Ago 7, 2012, 7:41 am

Jane, I've never read any Tove Jansson, although I see her books in the bookstores frequently. Will have to take the plunge.

27Linda92007
Ago 7, 2012, 7:55 am

Great to see your NYRB list, Rebecca. I am adding it to my favorites for future reference and also heading over to explore the NYRB group. I am always amazed at the wonderful books I would never have even heard of if not for joining LT.

28rebeccanyc
Editado: Sep 28, 2012, 11:27 am

Lisa had an interesting list of the books she'd read this year by ethnicity/country of the author, so I decided to try the same thing. As with her list, in some cases I just had to decide where to put the author.

Europe

Croatia
The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugresic

England
Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge
The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
GB84 by David Peace
Vesuvius by Gillian Darley

France
The Kill by Émile Zola
Nana by Émile Zola
The Fortune of the Rougons by Émile Zola
L'Assommoir by Émile Zola
Germinal by Émile Zola
Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet

Greece
The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis

Iceland
Children in Reindeer Woods by Kristin Omarsdottir

Italy
13 Inspector Montalbano mysteries by Andrea Camilleri

Poland
Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski
Dreams and Stones by Magdalena Tulli
Moving Parts by Magdalena Tulli

Russia
White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (reread)
Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge
Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin

Serbia
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis

Yiddish
The Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son by Sholom Aleichem

South and Central America

Mexico
Vlad by Carlos Fuentes

Peru
The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa

Africa

Cameroon
The Old Man and the Medal by Ferdinand Oyono

Kenya
Globalectics by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Zimbabwe
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Middle East

Egypt
Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat
Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery
The Colors of Infamy by Albert Cossery
The Jokers by Albert Cossery

Iran
The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

Asia

Burma/Myanmar
Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia by Thant Myint-U

India
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

Japan
Deep River by Shusaku Endo
Silence by Shusaku Endo
Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami
The Box Man by Kobo Abe
Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo
Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki

North America

Canada
The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies

USA
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes
The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes
Europe Central by William T. Vollman
World War Z by Max Brooks
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
and 9 works of nonfiction

29SassyLassy
Ago 7, 2012, 6:09 pm

>20 rebeccanyc: Sorry to see Memoirs of Hecate County in your What was NYRB Thinking> category as it is moving up my TBR pile. Love the category though!

30rebeccanyc
Ago 7, 2012, 6:31 pm

Well, maybe you will like it better than I did, Sassy!

31DieFledermaus
Ago 8, 2012, 3:15 am

Great review of The White Guard from the last thread. I"m trying to get to my Russian pile - might have to add that one to it.

Catherine the Great was on my wishlist as well so glad to see your very informative review. It's interesting that you mention that she was possibly most famous for her lovers because although I know little about her, that's not what first comes to mind. With Cleopatra - before I read the Schiff bio, the pop culture/Shakespeare portrayals were what I was thinking back on. Maybe it's just because I haven't seen any Catherine movies.

I love lists and enjoyed perusing your NYRB favorites. There are a number of books on the best list that I need to read or are on the wishlist. After Claude seems to have accumulated a number of bad reviews so I'll skip that one.

32rebeccanyc
Ago 8, 2012, 6:58 am

Thanks for stopping by, DieF. I actually knew very little about Catherine before I read the book, but everyone I mentioned it to remarked on her lovers. (As if kings didn't have dozens of mistresses!)

33kidzdoc
Ago 8, 2012, 8:04 am

I also liked Lisa's idea of listing the countries of origin of the authors whose books she has read. I'll do the same thing later today or tomorrow.

34rebeccanyc
Ago 12, 2012, 9:37 am

66. Germinal by Émile Zola



Germinal is the seventh month of the French revolutionary calendar, falling from late March to late April, when the world is starting to germinate. It is what the 50,000 people who followed Zola's funeral procession through Paris shouted. And it is the first novel by Zola I've read, but it will not be the last.

In Germinal, Zola vividly depicts the almost unbelievably harsh work of mining coal and the equally almost unbelievably harsh living conditions under which the miners and their families (who are often employed by the mine company themselves; women and children both work in the mines) live. The reader feels the biting cold and the biting hunger, the heat and danger in the mines, and much more. At the same time, Zola creates interesting characters who despite their shared suffering emerge as individuals. He engages the readers in the debates between what could probably be called Marxists, anarchists, and gradual socialists. Most importantly, perhaps, he has written an exciting, at times thrilling and scary, at times appalling and enraging, dramatic and at times almost melodramatic, story.

Briefly, the novel tells the story of how Etienne, a young man related to others in Zola's Rougon-Macqart series, with no money, no job, no food, and inadequate clothing comes upon the coal mines at Montsou, by chance gets a job, meets various people, ends up leading a strike, finds himself in a romantic triangle with violent undertones, and ultimately moves on. In some ways, the novel is the story of his growth as a human being. But in the course of this plot line, Zola paints an all-encompassing picture of life in a coal-mining town in the early 1860s, from the the mine and the miners, to the supervisors and bosses, to the bar owners and shopkeepers, to the local bourgeois, the hired mine manager, and an independent mine owner, as well as various political hangers-on including a revolutionary who has fled from Tsarist Russia. While the miners, and their plight as the labor that produces profits for the owners and stockholders without earning enough to live on themselves, are the focus of the novel, Zola doesn't demonize all the owners and business people; like the miners, they are characterized fully, with all their pluses and minuses.

Zola did a lot of research on mines, and it shows in the many scenes set deep down in Le Voreux, the voracious mine that swallows men, women, children, and horses every day (actually the horses live underground; as Tolstoy does in Anna Karenina, Zola gets inside the heads of the horses). It is scary to think of the many dangers that the miners faced, from water seepage to rock slides to bad air, among others, and the harrowing conditions under which they worked for minimal pay. The miners seem inured to their fate, as their parents and grandparents were, and as their children are, and their grandchildren will be, until a change in payment method and the encouragement of Etienne and others lead them to strike. Of course, the strike doesn't work, and the descriptions of their essential starvation are horrifying. But when, after some terrifying mob violence, with a violent official response, they go back, after six weeks, their troubles are far from over.

Another aspect of the story is the effects of everyone living so close together, and the rampant sexual activity, occasionally referred to as "like animals". According to something I read, this has not actually been documented in mining villages, but sexuality is very much part of the story: young (very young) women expect to be be taken advantage of by the young men and to have lots of children; some men are violent to the women and some exploit them; and some women take advantage of their sexuality for fun or profit. All of this is endlessly and often maliciously gossiped about. I believe Zola is trying to show that the the submissiveness of the women is somehow analogous to that of the workers, and that both result from their exploitation and that both could change with education and more autonomy for the workers. However, although Etienne is moving on at the novel, the miners themselves are stuck in their endless cycle of poverty and oppression.

I was interested in reading this book for several reasons. Not only had I never read Zola, but arubabookwoman recommended this book to me because I had read GB84 which deals with the 1984 British mining strike, and then I read in Ngugi's Globalectics that this novel "has affinities" with Ousmane's God's Bits of Wood, which is about an African railway strike. I found it not only fascinating for the world it depicted, but a terrific story.

As a final note, the edition I read had a very helpful introduction by the translator, Roger Pearson; although I found some of the British slang he used in the translation a little distracting, he discusses the difficulties of translating slang in a translator's note.

35kidzdoc
Ago 12, 2012, 9:51 am

Great review of Germinal, Rebecca! I have this on my Kindle, and I'll probably read it early next year.

36rebeccanyc
Ago 12, 2012, 10:01 am

67. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes



Dix Steele (what a name!), a former flying ace in World War II, has come to Los Angeles to try his hand at writing, living on a monthly allowance provided by his stingy rich uncle. He manages to sublet an apartment from an old college friend, and then a chance encounter leads him to reconnect with his best army friend, Brub Nikolai, who is now a detective on the LA police force, and his attractive and perceptive wife Sylvia. Brub is part of a team investigating a series of rapes/stranglings of young women, which has set the city on edge. Later on, Dix seduces a sexy redhead who lives in his apartment complex. A cat and mouse game ensues. (I am trying not to give too much away.)

What I will say is that Dorothy Hughes sure knows how to keep a reader on the edge of her seat! In this unsettling psychological thriller, she gets inside the head of a deeply disturbed man who is what we now know as a serial killer. She is a master of subtly introducing new information, so that the reader gradually develops new ideas of what has happened and what is going on, and new understanding of the protagonist's delusions. I read this brief book in one sitting and could hardly put it down.

37rebeccanyc
Ago 12, 2012, 10:14 am

Thanks, Darryl.

38StevenTX
Ago 12, 2012, 10:33 am

Great review of Germinal, Rebecca. Like you, I hadn't read anything by Zola until this year when I read Germinal a few months ago. It is by far my favorite book of the year. I will definitely be reading more Zola, but I'm not sure what next... possibly Thérèse Raquin.

I hadn't heard of Dorothy B. Hughes before, but In a Lonely Place sounds like it should go on the wish list.

39rebeccanyc
Ago 12, 2012, 10:40 am

Thanks, Steven. I picked up In a Lonely Place right after I read the new NYRB edition of The Expendable Man, which kept me up at night reading it. I hadn't heard of Dorothy Hughes before that, either, but now I'm on the lookout for her work, much of which is out of print.

40baswood
Ago 12, 2012, 11:00 am

Great review of Germinal rebecca. Zola's characters are so good and after reading this book the reader feels as though he has been down the mines himself. It is a good point you made about Zola being almost melodramatic as there is certainly much drama in Germinal, but he draws his characters and his scenes so realistically the he just stays the right side of melodrama.

41janeajones
Ago 12, 2012, 12:06 pm

Wonderful review of Germinal, Rebecca -- I read it in college and don't think I'll revisit it, but you've inspired me to think about reading something else by Zola. BTW -- here's his portrait as done by Manet:

42rebeccanyc
Ago 12, 2012, 1:29 pm

Wonderful picture, Jane. Thanks for posting it.

43SassyLassy
Ago 12, 2012, 8:47 pm

Great review of Germinal, one of my all time favourites. I'll have to follow up on the other books you referenced.

The Dorothy Hughes sounds intriguing.

44labfs39
Ago 13, 2012, 1:22 am

Somehow I lost your thread for a while, although your 75 books one was still starred. Glad to be back for your August thread.

Although I've only read a couple of Zola's novels, Germinal has long been one of my favorite books. So intense. Wonderful review.

I started doing the list of author's nationality as a way to track literature from a native perspective rather than outsiders writing books set in a country, for example books written by travelers or philanthropists. In my tags I also track books as Polish or Poland, for instance. The first connotes a Polish author, the second a book set in or about Poland. It's also interesting to see whether I'm truly reading globally. Sadly, I read woefully little South American lit and Asian lit is not far behind. Since starting the list, I've started to see more African/Middle Eastern titles though.

45rebeccanyc
Ago 13, 2012, 7:19 am

Thanks, Sassy.

Glad to see you back, Lisa. I tag books by the nationality of the author (e.g., Polish literature) but not by where the book is set. I also tag books by the century they were written in (e.g., 20th century literature). Since I didn't work out this system until I'd been on LT a while, sometime when I have a lot of time (ha!), I need to go back and retag all the books I initially entered into LT when I joined.

I was a little perturbed when I made my books by nationality list that I had read so much from Europe (especially eastern and central Europe) and so little from Africa, most of Asia, and South America this year. Off to update the list.

46Linda92007
Ago 13, 2012, 7:46 am

Excellent review of Germinal, Rebecca. The only thing I have read by Zola is his short story, 'The Flood', which I remember as being just bleak.

I am anxious to read something by Dorothy Hughes, after your enticing review of The Expendable Man and now, In A Lonely Place.

47Jargoneer
Ago 13, 2012, 8:13 am

In a Lonely Place is quite well-known as a film, starring Humphrey Bogart as Dix (yes, they keep the name) & Gloria Grahame, directed by Nicholas Ray. It is a good film, one of Bogart's best. The DVD has an interesting featurette about the differences between the novel and the film.

48rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 13, 2012, 8:32 am

There's an afterword to my edition of In a Lonely Place that also, in part, discusses the differences between the novel and the film. They are quite substantial. In fact, except for the names of the major characters, they are two completely different stories.

49rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 16, 2012, 4:41 pm

68. Silence by Shūsaku Endō



I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is an intense and penetrating look at the travails of a Catholic missionary in 17th century Japan, after Christianity has been outlawed and its believers subjected to torture, and a deep and thought-provoking meditation on the meaning of faith. It is also beautifully written, and provides a vivid portrait of Japan as seen through Portuguese eyes as written by a Japanese author.

On the other hand . . . I not only have difficulty comprehending this depth of faith but also, as a non-Christian, I have never been able to understand the extensive, if not extreme, proselytizing of Christianity, the need to convert as many others as possible to its beliefs. It seems patronizing to me: "we know what's best for you." These feelings colored my reading of the book because, while I was appalled by the Japanese methods of torture (although torture has certainly been practiced by those professing to be Christians too), I could understand why they wanted to keep such a foreign (and colonizing) religion out of their country. Nor do I understand the appeal of martyrdom. I also found a little peculiar the way the protagonist, Father Rodrigues, seems to compare his suffering to that of Jesus, and his betrayer to Judas. Perhaps this would not be disturbing to someone who is Christian, so perhaps this reflects a lack of understanding on my part, but it seems a little self-aggrandizing to me.

The overall question, of the silence of God, is more interesting. The 20th century, when this book was written, was a century of evil and suffering on a huge scale, and therefore this question is of even more import now than it was when Father Rodrigues traveled to Japan. Additionally, Endō, himself a devoted Catholic, alludes to the issue of how a western religion like Christianity can adapt itself to an eastern culture like that of Japan. Had he explored this more, I might have found more to like about the book.

As it is, I can only think that, throughout the centuries, not only have people of various religions persecuted and killed people of other religions but, as my grandfather liked to say, more wars have been fought over religion than for any other reason (not sure if this is strictly true). I wish I could say this book helped me understand faith more, but it left me just as puzzled.

50baswood
Ago 16, 2012, 5:11 pm

Interesting review of Silence rebecca. I see that both steven and Dief have read and reviewed this recently, but it is your review that emphasises the Christian stance of the author. I am presuming that Endo is a Christian.

It is difficult for non-believers to put themselves in the same mindset as believers (of almost any religion) and sometimes this does stop you from enjoying a book that has an obvious pro-religious stance. This one seems to have crossed the line for you. Thumbed

51ljbwell
Ago 16, 2012, 5:29 pm

In a Lonely Place looks like a good one.

52StevenTX
Ago 16, 2012, 5:45 pm

Your reaction to Silence is the same as mine, and very well put in your review. As I mentioned on another thread somewhere, it made me angry that there was no acknowledgement that Catholics at that time in Rodrigues's home country and elsewhere were just as ruthless in their treatment of non-Catholics (even other Christians) as the Japanese were of the Christian missionaries.

If you read Deep River, I think you'll like it much more than Silence. It explores the idea of Christianity adapting to an Eastern culture, and Endo's apparent frustration that it hasn't, by putting Catholic orthodoxy in a rather negative light and proposing a more pantheistic and humanistic spirituality. This may reflect an evolution in Endo's beliefs in the decades between the two novels. I'm not suggesting you would agree with him any more than I do, but it makes for a more interesting and less infuriating novel.

53rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 16, 2012, 6:28 pm

Thanks for your comments, Barry and Steven. I struggled with the book because I wanted to respond to it on its own terms, but I couldn't forget a lot of things, including how the Spanish and Portuguese, only a little over a century earlier, treated the Jews (and the Muslims) who had been living there for centuries. However, the idea of some of the Japanese secretly remaining Catholic was interesting to me because of the Jews in Spain who pretended to convert but really maintained their traditions secretly. I read a very interesting article some years ago about people in the southwestern US, whose ancestors had come from Mexico, who had "family traditions" that were really Jewish practices; over the centuries, they had lost the religious connection but had kept up the traditions.

I do plan to read Deep River; I ordered after reading your review, Steven, since I need to read more Endo for the the Author Theme Reads group.

Thanks for stopping by, ljbwell. In a Lonely Place was a great read.

ETA Here's a link to a New York Times article about these "hidden" Jews; not sure if it's the one I read originally, but it will give you the idea.

54kidzdoc
Ago 16, 2012, 6:17 pm

I'm reading Silence now, so I only briefly skimmed your review. I'll come back to it later tonight or tomorrow, after I'm done.

55labfs39
Ago 16, 2012, 7:47 pm

Fascinating article in the NYT; thanks for sharing. I've read a couple of YA novels on the topic of crypto Jews, but no nonfiction. Have you?

56Linda92007
Ago 16, 2012, 8:05 pm

A thought-provoking review of Silence, Rebecca.

57rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 17, 2012, 12:15 pm

Thanks, Linda.

Lisa, no I've never read any nonfiction about these crypto-Jews, although I have had a book called The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot for many years without reading it; I believe it is about Jews who fled to Spain during WWII rather than about the crypto-Jews in the southwestern US. And I read a charming book called The Family Tree by Margo Glantz that is a memoir about a Mexican Jewish family. But nothing about southwestern crypto-Jews. Interesting that there are YA novels about them.

58Nickelini
Ago 17, 2012, 11:39 am

Yes -- very interesting article. I'd like to learn more too, so if anyone knows anything, keep posting. I'm always fascinated by our connections to the past, and which paths our ancestors walked.

59Jargoneer
Ago 17, 2012, 12:44 pm

>49 rebeccanyc: - Nor do I understand the appeal of martyrdom. Surely the appeal of martyrdom is that if you believe in God then death is not the end but only the beginning, your suffering on earth is ended and you will now rejoice in heaven.

>53 rebeccanyc: - the real problem in Portugal came after the conversions. There is a cathedral in Lisbon where a miracle was happening, shining eyes or bleeding or something, when one of 'new christians' pointed out that it wasn't a miracle it was the result of candle light/heat. He was promptly beaten to death and a mob rampaged through the city killing 'new christians'. Only after thousands were killed and order restored did they realise the original 'doubter' was not a 'new christian'.

60rebeccanyc
Ago 17, 2012, 3:56 pm

Thanks, jargoneer, for that information about what happened in Portugal. I know almost nothing about the Portuguese inquisition, and just slightly more about the Spanish one -- much learned around the time I took a trip there, now more than 20 years ago. If I didn't have so many other books I'd like to read, I would think about finding some on both inquisitions. Maybe I will anyway. My mother believed that some of our ancestors were originally Sephardic Jews who fled Spain, so it's a subject that interests me.

As for the martyrdom question, I perhaps could have phrased my comment better. Of course, if you believe you will "rejoice in heaven," that's preferable to suffering on earth; what I don't understand is how people can be so sure there is a heaven, when they can be absolutely sure there is an earth.

61dchaikin
Ago 17, 2012, 6:31 pm

OK, I've read post #1...

Terrific review of The White Guard in your previous thread.

62pamelad
Editado: Ago 17, 2012, 8:27 pm

A few months ago I read Endo's The Samurai in which, as in Silence, Portuguese missionaries endeavour to spread Catholicism through an unwilling Japan. I was not left with the impression that Endo was advocating Catholicism, and, in fact, the Jesuits, the Franciscans and the Japanese warlords were as corrupt and manipulative as one another. Endo's stance seems to be more neutral in The Samurai than it is in Silence. Although his own strong Catholic sympathies are clear, he does not appear to agree with the imposition of a foreign religion on the Japanese. I'd recommend The Samurai: it has left a strong impression.

I very much enjoyed In a Lonely Place last year, and also saw the film. Good film, but, as you say, quite unlike the book, which had to change the character of the main protagonist to allow for the Hollywood happy ending. I've also read Dorothy Hughes's The Blackbirder, which was not in the same class and leaned towards the "had I but known" genre, but was an entertaining read, and have given up for now on Ride the Pink Horse. Will definitely order The Expendable Man.

Because you liked In a Lonely Place, you might like Build My Gallows High by Geoffrey Homes. There is also a film, Out of the Past, starring the wonderful Robert Mitchum.

63labfs39
Ago 17, 2012, 8:58 pm

#57 Interesting that there are YA novels about them. Sorry for not being more clear, I was referring to crypto Jews in general, not Southwestern.

64rebeccanyc
Ago 18, 2012, 8:22 am

#61 Thanks, Dan, and welcome back!

#62 Thanks for the recommendation of The Samurai, Pam. Maybe Endo's feelings evolved. I've been reading works by him because he's the year-long author for the Author Theme Reads group's focus on Japan this year, and I've just bought Deep River for my next read. But I'll look for The Samurai after that.

As for Dorothy Hughes, I found her through the recent NYRB edition of The Expendable Man, which is more complex than In a Lonely Place. I also just bought The Blackbirder, so am a little disappointed by your comments. As far as I can tell, Ride the Pink Horse is out of print here in the US, but since you gave up on it I don't feel so bad about that. Will check out Build My Gallows High, which also seems to be out of print, and also the Mitchum movie. I'm ambivalent about seeing the movie of In a Lonely Place after learning how completely different from the book it is, despite my love of Humphrey Bogart.

#63 Oh, that makes sense.

65rebeccanyc
Ago 18, 2012, 7:05 pm

Just to show how little the world of mining has changed since Germinal, here's a New York Times article about the police killing striking miners in South Africa.

66dchaikin
Ago 19, 2012, 10:14 am

regarding Silence - I am curious about the roll of Christianity in Japan, but don't know anything about it. I would guess that one should avoid looking at it through European eyes. Certainly Christianity meant different things in shogunate Japan, and I wonder what it was responding to, and what kind of political element there might be to it.

67rebeccanyc
Ago 19, 2012, 11:05 am

Dan, those are interesting questions that I don't know the answer to. While in certain places (e.g., Africa and South/Central America), Christianity played a role as an adjunct to colonialism, I don't know what role it played in an independent country, albeit one that was opening up to trade from the west.

68rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 19, 2012, 1:17 pm

69. The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi



It is raining in a northern Iranian city, and the aging colonel hears that knock on the door in the middle of the night that never means anything good. So begins this complex and bleak novel that, with memories, nightmares, and ghosts, interweaves the story of the colonel and his five children with 20th century Iranian history and millennia of Persian literary tradition.

The colonel was in the Shah's army, but was kicked out either for his principled refusal to follow a particular order or for a personal crime, or both. He is an admirer of an earlier Iranian colonel, a hero to secular nationalists, referred to as The Colonel (with capital letters); a portrait of The Colonel hangs in the colonel's home, with photos of his dead children tucked into the frame. At the outset of the novel, which takes place during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, the colonel's oldest son, Amir, released from imprisonment and torture as a revolutionary, is living in the basement, talking to nobody. He has mysterious visits from Khezr Javid, a secret policeman who conducted his "interrogations." The colonel's second son was killed as a revolutionary; his youngest son has just been killed in the war and thus is a "martyr." His older daughter is married to a man who bends with the wind, and the current wind is the Ayatollah; he tries to prevent his wife from visiting her father and brother. And his younger daughter, just 14, has vanished.

On the surface, the novel covers the few days in the colonel's life in which he discovers what has happened to his young daughter, attends the essentially state funeral of his youngest son and other "martyrs," and finally connects with Amir. But the surface, and the present, are only a thin veneer in the book. The reader travels back and forth in time, back and forth between the "real" and the memories, nightmares, and ghosts. It takes concentration to figure out what is happening, and when it is happening. Amir is as important in the colonel; while at times he appears "crazy," the reasons for his behavior gradually become clear.

And what of these memories? The colonel has political memories, of what happened under the Shah and before the Shah took power with US and British help, kicking out the democratic and nationalistic government under Mossadegh, as well as of the Islamic revolution under the Ayatollah in 1979. But he also has memories of his wife, and reflections on whether he raised his children right, given the toll of their involvement in revolutionary activity. Amir has nightmares of his experience in jail, the torture, his wife, the unanswered questions. At the same time, the author weaves in references to earlier Persian history and to Persian literature; the translator has provided invaluable explanatory notes, because otherwise these would go right by readers not well versed in Persian history and culture.

Ultimately, this is a very sad book, an elegy for a lost history of culture and freedom and a reflection on ideology and betrayal, love and loss, reality and the interior world. And it rains and rains and rains.

69rebeccanyc
Ago 19, 2012, 12:03 pm

70. The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes



This wartime tale tells the story of Julie Guille, an escapee from Nazi-occupied Paris, as she flees ahead of the police, the FBI, and the Gestapo from New York to Chicago to Santa Fe in search of the mysterious Blackbirder, said to fly refugees into and out of the US, and in hopes of rescuing her beloved cousin, who she believes to be interned somewhere in Mexico. While the story might be a little outlandish, and while (as Pam says in post 62) this is not "in the same class" as Hughes' The Expendable Man and In a Lonely Place, Hughes is a fabulous writer and she kept me on the edge of my seat as Julie tried to figure out who was friend and who was foe and engaged in all sorts of resourceful exploits. Maybe a little of the story was predictable, but enough wasn't to keep me avidly reading. And in the end, it is a wartime story, published in 1943, and does its bit for the war effort, just as one of my all-time favorite movies, Casablanca, does -- but with a heroine instead of a hero. A very enjoyable read.

70kidzdoc
Ago 19, 2012, 12:54 pm

Fabulous review of The Colonel, Rebecca! I look forward to reading it this coming week.

I seem to be following in your reading footsteps lately.

71JDHomrighausen
Editado: Ago 19, 2012, 12:57 pm

> 49

Great review of Silence, Rebecca. I echo what #59 said about martyrdom. As a Catholic I can see where the missionary mindset comes from, though I too struggle with the seeming arrogance of the whole idea. Perhaps a comparison could be made to modern medicine. If people in another country, a country lacking decent medical care, are suffering en masse from some horrible disease, and if my country has the cure, then its an act of mercy to send the cure to them. There seems to be nothing arrogant about doing so. If they say they do not want the cure (maybe their culture is resistant to Western medicine) then they are just silly and mistaken, and you should persuade them to accept it. I think you can draw out of the parallel.

I've long been interested in practicing and dialoguing with other religions, especially Mahayana Buddhism. How does one balance that with the evangelical mandate? How does one balance the sureness of the truth with the humility of being open to what is true and holy in other religions (as the Church teaches we must)? This is something I haven't worked out yet. But then again I don't think I'll ever me a missionary, and even if I were I would avoid that word with all its connotations.

My youth pastor gave me Silence when I was confirmed Episcopalian at 19, and I devoured it in one day. I'm looking forward to reading Endo's other books for the Author Theme Reads group.

72rebeccanyc
Ago 19, 2012, 1:10 pm

#71 Very interesting comments, lilbrattyteen, as I am almost completely ignorant about how Christianity is taught (and I'm sure, of course, that there are a multiplicity of ways). Did I miss something when you said you are Catholic but were confirmed Episcopalian? I do find no way to wrap my mind around the phrase "the sureness of the truth" -- I find it mind-boggling that people can be that sure that they know "the" truth, or that there is one truth. Maybe that's why I'm not religious.

#70 I think you will like it, Darryl. And there are many times that I follow in your reading footsteps!

73StevenTX
Editado: Ago 19, 2012, 9:25 pm

#68 - The Colonel has been on my wishlist for several months. After your review I will definitely order it as soon as there is room to squeeze it into the reading schedule. I definitely want to learn more about Iranian history and culture, so I was pleased to learn that it is footnoted.

#69 - You put Dorothy Hughes on the wishlist already, and she will stay there.

#71 - librattyteen, your attitude and candor are both very refreshing.

74baswood
Ago 19, 2012, 5:08 pm

75JDHomrighausen
Editado: Ago 19, 2012, 8:31 pm

> 72

Long story short: I grew up in my first two households (crazy childhood) with no religion. Then at 16 I was taken in by a family friend who is a recovering Southern Baptist and now-Episcopalian. She never forced me into church but somehow I gravitated toward it. So I became Episcopalian. Then when I moved out to another city I discovered the Catholic Church through close married friends and a Jesuit mentor. I was confirmed Catholic last Pentecost.

As luck would have it - after not finding any of Endo's books (in English) at the library, the library at the Carmelite convent I visited today had his A Life of Jesus. Good reading ahead.

76DieFledermaus
Ago 20, 2012, 6:19 am

Catching up - some great reviews.

Your review - and the comments - is confirming that I should pick up Germinal sometime soon-ish.

An interesting review of Silence. I could see how the pro-religious tone of the book could be off-putting but I found that the ambiguity undercut a solidly pro-Christian message. For the question of whether it was worth it - the answer could easily be no, that though the government was never able to stamp out the religion, individual suffering and deaths were pointless and Rodrigues was doing more harm than good (also raising the question of whether Christianity was doing more harm than good). I found that Rodrigues' arrogance and mistaken beliefs about his own importance and martyrdom tend to reduce the Christian=good, non-Christian=bad tone as well. The interrogations/tortures did actually remind me of Christian authorities who tortured heretics for miniscule religious differences.

I also wondered whether comparing yourself to Jesus was acceptable. Is "What Would Jesus Do?" okay but "I'm like Jesus" not okay?

I had never heard of The Colonel or Dowlatabadi before and found your review very intriguing.

77rebeccanyc
Ago 20, 2012, 8:36 am

#75, Jonathan, thanks for sharing that information about your religious background. Sorry to hear about your crazy childhood, but it sounds like you've found a good path for yourself.

#76 Welcome back, DieF. I was so impressed by Germinal I've bought several more Zolas, and I think I'm about to start L'assomoir.

I probably neglected the ambiguity in Silence in my review; for me, Father Rodrigues was such a compelling protagonist that I had difficulty in separating the author's intention from his voice.

I found The Colonel on the display table in my favorite bookstore, and later heard about through the Reading Globally theme read on the middle east.

78dchaikin
Ago 20, 2012, 4:49 pm

#68 taking note of The Colonel. Your review makes me realize how little I know about Iranian history...(not to mention all those millenniums before Iran)

79Linda92007
Ago 20, 2012, 5:01 pm

I couldn't resist your review, Rebecca, and have downloaded The Colonel to my Kindle. Since I am not a participant in TBR therapy, I can sincerely say thank you!

80rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 20, 2012, 5:14 pm

# 78 Dan, Years ago (in the late 80s, early 90s, I worked with a young woman whose father was Iranian, although she always said he was Persian. She took us to a fabulous Persian restaurant in NYC; I wish I could remember the name to see if it still exists. I am probably older than you (?), because I remember vividly the Ayatollah taking over, the Shah coming to New York for "medical" treatment, the hostages, the Iran-Contra scandal (I initially thought the person telling me about this was kidding me), and learning about earlier 20th century Iranian history at that time. The translator of The Colonel, in the notes, gives a good historical refresher course.

#79 Linda, You're welcome! I'm always glad to hear from someone who rejects TBR therapy and is happy to have new books enter the home!

81rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 21, 2012, 11:10 am

71. Moving Parts by Magdalena Tulli



In this playful and perceptive novella, Tulli explores what it means to pluck a story out of life, how fiction and reality intersect, and how the past enters the present, and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of telling a story that really represents life. She does this by creating the character of "the narrator," a man who has been hired by some mysterious person or organization to write a story. From the beginning, when the "narrator" tries to figure out who his characters are, he is out of his depth, as the "characters" go off and do things he doesn't necessarily want them to do, as more "characters" enter the "story," and as he finds his way through streets, buildings, stairways, elevators, and basements to try to both follow and constrain them. The time frame is fractured too, as the beginning of the novella seems to be in the present, but towards the end the "characters," including the "narrator," find themselves in wartime Poland, possibly during the Warsaw uprising.

In between, Tulli and the "narrator" meditate on language and grammar, on how they shape both the story and reality. For example, Tulli writes:

The narrator hopes that at this point he'll finally be able to put his foot on the dry land of the past tense, in the kingdom of certainty where facts live and flourish. Only there do they flourish, nowhere else: the past tense is their entire world, the homeland of truths that are incontrovertible though, it must be admitted, usually contradictory. p. 23

They (two of the "characters") would make some tea, and sit in the armchairs, teacups in hand, discussing the worrying suspicion that they would have to relinquish their polished floors and their phonograph and record collection, and they continually cast doubt on something that was blindingly obvious given the ineluctable way in which the future tense turns into the past. They even tried to joke about this process, but their jokes were not entirely successful; they were not funny enough for them to convince themselves they were safely beyond the reach of grammar. p. 95

This is the third of Tulli's books that I've read. All have been fascinating, all have been different. But, in all of them, Tulli writes beautiful, occasionally poetic prose and is an extremely detailed observer of the world around her, particularly of color and architecture, human activities and home furnishings. This was a delightful and thought-provoking read.

82rebeccanyc
Ago 21, 2012, 5:22 pm

Following up on the discussion that started in post 53 about the descendents of converted Jews in the Southwest, here is an article from today's New York Times science section by a Californian/Costa Rican woman who went searching for her Jewish roots in Spain. The author, Doreen Carvajal, has written a book called The Forgetting River: A Modern Tale of Survival, Identity, and the Inquisition, which I've just ordered.

83janeajones
Ago 21, 2012, 5:45 pm

Lovely review of Moving Parts, Rebecca -- I'll have to hunt this one down.

84baswood
Ago 21, 2012, 5:56 pm

Excellent review of Moving Parts rebecca.

85kidzdoc
Ago 21, 2012, 9:14 pm

Thanks for that great review of Moving Parts, Rebecca. I seem to have given it 3 stars, but I'm not completely convinced that I actually read it!

86japaul22
Ago 22, 2012, 12:51 pm

Hi Rebecca, I picked up one of the Camilleri Inspector Montalbano mysteries at the library on a whim but realized its one of the last in the series. Would you recommend reading the series in order or does it not really matter? Thanks!

87rebeccanyc
Ago 22, 2012, 2:12 pm

japaul, You will enjoy them more if you start at the beginning and can watch the characters develop, but you don't have to.

Thanks, Jane, Barry, and Darryl.

88japaul22
Ago 22, 2012, 8:38 pm

Thanks! Maybe I'll request the first one from the library instead of starting in the middle. Unless I get really tempted by the one I have . . .

89DieFledermaus
Ago 23, 2012, 2:02 am

A great review of Moving Parts which I also enjoyed! I have Flaw on the pile but want to save it for a weekend when I'll have a lot of time to read uninterrupted. Also have to get In Red after your recommendation.

90rebeccanyc
Ago 23, 2012, 7:23 am

Thanks, DieF. I have Flaw too, and hope to get to it soon.

91rebeccanyc
Ago 24, 2012, 12:32 pm

72. L'Assommoir by Émile Zola



This novel, the story of the rise and fall of Gervaise Coupeau, is so compelling I could barely put it down, even as there were times I wanted to slap Gervaise and ask her what on earth she was thinking and even though Zola can be didactic at times about his thesis that susceptibility to alcoholism is passed down from generation to generation and eventually inevitably leads to a downfall. Zola's goal with this book was to depict the people and the world of the new industrial working class living in slummy areas in what were then the suburbs of Paris.

We meet Gervaise when she has moved to Paris with Lantier, the father of her two children (one is Etienne in Germinal and the other is Claude of The Masterpiece); a laundress back in the provinces, she gets a job working in a laundry and it is there that she learns Lantier has left her for another woman, taking their meager possessions with him. Eventually, she succumbs to the pleadings of Coupeau, a roofer, to marry him, because she believes he is a hard-working, nondrininking man, who will help her achieve her goal of being able to "work, put food on your table, have a little place of your own, bring up your kids, and die in your own bed." (p. 42) Things go well at first: they have a daughter, Nana (who will have a book of her own) and save enough so Gervaise can achieve her goal of opening her own laundry (although, in the end, a harbinger of bad times to come, Gervaise has to borrow money from a sweet, but apparently slightly dimwitted, metalsmith, Goujet, who has a crush on her to be able to start the business). Again, things go well for a while, but then they don't. In the second half of the novel, we witness Gervaise's slow but inevitable slide into debt, self-indulgence, sloth, and ultimately drinking and despair, helped along the way by Coupeau, who spends his days and nights drinking, and by Lantier, who reappears, integrates himself into the neighborhood and their home, and who not only is always looking out for himself but also always does so at the expense of others.

This is just a broad outline of the plot. Zola peoples the novel and the neighborhood with dozens of other characters, many vividly drawn, others more walk-ons, and the neighborhood itself is equally a character in the novel. People live on top of each other, everyone knows everyone's business (or thinks they do), the sights and sounds and perhaps above all the smells are pervasive, and there are bars all over. Zola's genius is to relate all these people to each other and to reflect aspects of Gervaise's story in other subplots and characters. He also creates some dramatic set pieces in the Coupeau wedding party's trip to the Louvre, Gervaise's saint's day dinner, and a scene in an insane asylum. There is both depth and breadth in this novel; in some ways, Gervaise's rise and fall is reflected in the different places in which she lives, and her desire for cleanliness, depicted by her work and by her admiration of Goujet's mother's apartment, eventually succumbs to dirt and filth.

One other aspect of this novel, which created quite a stir when it was written, is that a great deal of it is written in working class French slang, some of it said to be arcane. This has has apparently been a challenge to translators; the translator of the Oxford World's Classics edition I read, Margaret Mauldon, has used working class British slang presumably from the same period. Most of this is understandable from the context. There are also lots of sexual double entendres, which also seems to have shocked the literary establishment.

Zola was criticized by both the right and the left for his portrayal of the working class: the right thought him a socialist, the left thought his depiction of the working class demeaning. His plan always was to make Germinal his novel about politics and the working class, and this novel was supposed to be their portrait. It is indeed a vivid one.

PS The picture on the cover of my edition shows a woman with dark hair; Zola makes it clear Gervaise was a blonde.

92StevenTX
Ago 24, 2012, 1:39 pm

Great review. After reading Germinal a few months ago I'm sure this is one I'll love as well whenever I can get to it. I have the same translation.

93rebeccanyc
Ago 24, 2012, 2:37 pm

It isn't quite as good as Germinal. I'm on a Zola kick right now.

94kidzdoc
Ago 24, 2012, 3:01 pm

Excellent review of L'Assommoir, Rebecca. One of these days I'll read Germinal, whuch I'll follow with this book.

95SassyLassy
Ago 24, 2012, 3:57 pm

Great review. I had Ladies' Delight on my list for this year, but I think I will switch to L'Assommoir. My edition is translated by Leonard Tancock, so it will be interesting to see if it has the same effect.

96janeajones
Ago 24, 2012, 5:02 pm

I never thought to go on a Zola kick, Rebecca, but you are certainly making it tempting.

97Mr.Durick
Ago 24, 2012, 5:03 pm

Thank you for your review of L'Assommoir. I've had it somewhere here in English for a few years and downloaded it in French to my Nook within the past month or so. It looks like I shouldn't try it in French, and I don't know where my translation is.

Robert

98lilisin
Ago 24, 2012, 5:27 pm

97 -
I don't know what your French level is but Zola is not an author I would recommend to a reader who doesn't have near native reading skills. I've only read one Zola, Au bonheur des dames, but due to his subject matter of the daily life of old Paris, he can use vocabulary that would send its reader to a dictionary every other word, unless one has a great knowledge of petticoats and lace trimmings and whatnot.

I have two other Zola books in my TBR, Le ventre de Paris and Therese Raquin but my Japanese kick has stopped me from picking up other French books other than Hugo and Dumas.

99Mr.Durick
Ago 24, 2012, 5:31 pm

Thank you, lilisin. My French level is a little better than inadequate. If I sit with the Le Figaro Saturday magazine after an hour or so I have some general comprehension.

Robert

100edwinbcn
Ago 24, 2012, 9:03 pm

Tempting reviews. I've been neglecting my French this year.

101baswood
Ago 25, 2012, 4:37 am

Excellent review of L'Assommoir rebecca. I share your view that once you get into a Zola novel it is unputdownable, even though you know there is not going to be a happy ending. As a reader you really do enter the world of his characters, uncomfortable as that may be at times.

102pamelad
Ago 25, 2012, 8:25 am

It's good to be reminded of Zola. Just downloaded Nana, one of the books I missed many years ago.

103rebeccanyc
Ago 25, 2012, 8:52 am

Thanks for stopping by everyone. My French definitely isn't up to Zola in general, and definitely not to L'Assommoir, which as I noted is heavily written in 19th century French working class slang -- not exactly what I learned, lo these many years ago. I am eager to read Nana, now that I've been introduced to her through L'Assommoir.

104StevenTX
Ago 25, 2012, 9:53 am

Speaking of Nana, I have a copy of the 1922 translation by Burton Roscoe (B&N Classics edition). Does anyone know if this translation is bowdlerized or politically censored? After I read Germinal I realized this could be an issue with early English translations of Zola's work.

105rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 25, 2012, 4:16 pm

Steven, my research, such as it was, on translators, revealed that a lot (all) of the Zolas were originally translated by a man who is notorious for his bowdlerizations. Name escapes me at the moment, but it wasn't Roscoe. All (?) the ones that are in the public domain are his, or other early, translations. I've been looking for newer ones. My edition of Germinal was translated by Roger Pearson.

106edwinbcn
Ago 25, 2012, 9:43 pm

One day (in the future) when everyone lists translators , editors, illustrators, etc on LT, this kind of information will be easy to find.

107rebeccanyc
Ago 26, 2012, 11:25 am

Well, my research on translators wasn't on LT. I was looking at downloadable editions and checking out the translators with Wikipedia, etc. (And I do list all that stuff, and even add it on the work page, not just for my own book.)

108JDHomrighausen
Ago 27, 2012, 9:30 am

Interesting review of the Zola book. Sounds upbeat!

109rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 28, 2012, 7:10 am

#108 Upbeat??? If that's the impression I created, I'm sorry. It is a grim book, leavened by humor, but grim nonetheless.

110DieFledermaus
Ago 28, 2012, 5:45 am

Excellent review of L'Assommoir! I've only read Nana but wondered if I'd notice reading his Rougon-Macquart books "out of order". How are you deciding which ones to read next?

111rebeccanyc
Ago 28, 2012, 11:53 am

Thanks, DieF. Although I've been told there's no problem reading the Rougon-Macquart books out of order, I did buy the first one, The Fortune of the Rougons, and am currently reading it. I'm eager to read Nana, as I think I mentioned, since I was introduced to her in L'assommoir, but other than that I'm going to read ones that are readily available in recent translations with good notes. I've also bought The Masterpiece, which focuses on Claude Lantier, the brother of Etienne from Germinal and another son of Gervaise from L'Assommoir, and I have The Beast Within and The Kill on order from Amazon since I haven't seen them in stores. I also want to read The Belly of Paris, but there are several translations, and I want to look them over to decide which one to buy.

112DieFledermaus
Ago 30, 2012, 3:15 am

>111 rebeccanyc: - Thanks for the info about the Rougon-Macquart series. I was thinking I'd read the unrelated Therese Raquin first and pick up more series books later. I'm looking forward to reading your reviews for more Zolas.

113arubabookwoman
Editado: Ago 30, 2012, 8:36 pm

I'm so glad you liked Germinal, and that it has inspired you to read more Zola. I'm starting Pot Luck, which puts me about half way through the series (though I've read several of those remaining). So far The Fortune of the Rougons is my least favorite, but that might be because I read it as a free ebook which was not very well formatted. You haven't mentioned The Earth, which is another of my favorites--it's like Germinal, except with farmers.

Wonderful review of The Colonel. I had a lot of difficulty with that book, and didn't "get" much of it. I was thinking of trying to reread it, after reading the afterword. Your review is very enlightening too.

114rebeccanyc
Ago 31, 2012, 12:29 pm

Wow, I thought I posted a response to you, Deborah, earlier this morning, but either I only imagined it or it disappeared. In any case, I've just finished The Fortune of the Rougons and will review it below; I'm glad I read Germinal and L'Assommoir first, or I would have been disappointed with Zola. And thanks for the compliment about The Colonel -- my understanding was definitely also enhanced by the afterword.

115rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 31, 2012, 3:24 pm

73. The Fortune of the Rougons by Émile Zola



As the first in Zola's 20-book Rougon-Macquart series, the role of this novel is to set the stage, to introduce the family, to explain the rationale, and to highlight the events that started the Second Empire. Zola has several goals in this series: to show the importance of heredity and its interaction with environment; to depict the particular characteristics of the successful, legitimate, Rougon side of the family and the unsuccessful, illegitimate Macquart side; and to illustrate the social system of the Second Empire.

I am glad I read Germinal and L'Assommoir before I read this book, because they show Zola at his best: the fully developed characters, the intimacy of their lives matched by the breadth of their world, the vivid details of the environment (be it coal mining or the slums), the satire, and the compelling story telling. While these can be found in places in this book, Zola gets a little bogged down in setting the stage for the whole series (lots of background information on the two main lines of the family) and goes a little overboard in showing the development of friendship and love between the teenagers Miette and Silvère, both of whom have had difficult childhoods. Additionally, Zola's view of heredity, as explained in this book, is seriously flawed by modern standards, although perhaps novel for its time.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book, which takes place over a week or so during the 1851 coup in which Napoleon's nephew took over the government in Paris fairly bloodlessly while republican resistance took place in the south and elsewhere. The teenagers get wrapped up in the resistance, while Silvère's uncle, Pierre Rougon, and his wife, scheme for greater power, even while fighting their continuing battle against Pierre's half-brother Antoine, one of the founders of the Macquart side of the family. The story of the scheming, and the satiric look at the reactionary cabal, are priceless. I appreciate the understanding I got of the structure of the family (helped by a family tree at the beginning of the edition I read), and I will definitely be reading more Zola.

116Linda92007
Editado: Ago 31, 2012, 3:22 pm

Another great Zola review, Rebecca. Interesting that LT lists these as all part of the Les Rougon-Macquart series, with The Fortune of the Rougons being #1, Germinal #13 and L'Assommoir #7. Are there any connecting threads between the books that you have seen?

ETA: I see that there is actually more to your review on the book page that partly answers my question. It seems to have been cut off above.

117rebeccanyc
Ago 31, 2012, 3:35 pm

Linda, I just noticed that! I didn't use the right HTML code to end the cover picture, but it should be OK now. I'm off to check where else I might have posted it. I don't know there's much I can add to what I said in the review, except to say that the primary characters in the other books are all descendents of these original Rougon-Macquarts.

118baswood
Ago 31, 2012, 6:39 pm

It would be a bit of a project to read all of the Rougon-Macqart series. It is good to see a review of one of Zola's lesser known novels in The Fortune of the Rougons.

119SassyLassy
Ago 31, 2012, 7:04 pm

Enjoying your reviews. One of my problems with reading Zola in any sensible order has been the availability of translations. When found, the translators are not consistent, or if they are, the publishers and so the editors are not the same. It's been very hit or miss to date, but has certainly been on my list of favourite authors for years.

120rebeccanyc
Sep 1, 2012, 7:21 am

Sassy, I'm not sure that there's a "sensible" order, as I understand they don't have to be read in sequence. But I totally agree with you about translations. I'm finding most of the recent translations are published either by Oxford World Classics or Penguin, but as far as I can tell they're using a stable of translators, some of whom recur, but they haven't tried to do a consistent series (which would be a mammoth undertaking of course, and perhaps not worth it considering how little known some of the titles are). I was impressed by the translation of L'assommoir, which is almost entirely in slang, but the notes were largely annoying, along the lines of "Street X is now known as Street Y." I am definitely picking which titles to read by whether there is a recent translation, and I haven't found one I would call bad yet.

121StevenTX
Sep 1, 2012, 9:34 am

Your review is reassuring that it isn't essential, or even particularly desirable, to read the Rougon-Macquart series in strict order. I'll follow your advice as well in sticking with Oxford/Penguin editions.

#112 - Thérèse Raquin will probably be my next Zola as well, but I don't know when. Dief, are you familiar with the opera of that name by Tobias Picker? Seeing its world premier in Dallas was my first introduction to the works of Zola.

122lilisin
Sep 1, 2012, 5:22 pm

but the notes were largely annoying, along the lines of "Street X is now known as Street Y."

You know, that's actually a really common footnote in French books, even in the French footnotes. The Folio (not to be confused with the Folio membership club thing that has all those special editions in English) edition of Hugo's books always love to mention what the roads are called now in present day Paris. When you actually know Paris it's actually quite fun to place the characters in the city but I can see how it could be extraneous information for those who have no idea what streets the author is talking about.

123dchaikin
Sep 2, 2012, 11:50 am

Enjoying your run through Zola. I was curious after looking at the LT series page whether these 20 books should be read in order. All this information on these books (in your review and other comments on this thread) is quite interesting.

124rebeccanyc
Sep 2, 2012, 12:12 pm

Lilisin, that's interesting. It's been years since I've been in Paris, so I was happy to have a general sense of where the story was taking place, but I don't know the streets well enough to be that interested in what they used to be called. On the other hand, when I read books that take place in New York, I love visualizing just where they are.

Dan, as far as I can tell, it doesn't matter what order you read them in. I'm following people, and also looking for recent translations.

125rebeccanyc
Sep 2, 2012, 1:01 pm

74. The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle



As I was reading this book, I didn't quite know what to make of it, but now that I've been thinking about it I see it as a novel that shows us that everyone is human, even if we don't know how to look at them that way, and that those of us who are "different" -- whether through mental illness or something else -- still have human needs, feelings, and the desire to help others and give to society. Even the devil -- the buffalo-headed, cloven-hoofed scourge of the mental ward -- turns out to be just a man, and even a rat gets to tell his story.

The novel tells the tale of Pepper, a large white furniture mover, who is transported to the mental ward of a public hospital after getting into an altercation with three men who, unbeknownst to him, are undercover cops, a trio too lazy to arrest him with all the resulting paperwork, at the end of their shift. Supposedly there for a 72-hour observation period, he remains there apparently indefinitely once the meds kick in and the overworked and underpaid staff, most of whom are just glad to have a job in the iffy economy, do as little as necessary to keep the patients medicated and non-trouble-making. Early on, Pepper is visited by said devil, although he finds the other patients somewhat reluctant to discuss him. As various plots to rout the devil and/or escape develop, and as various mysterious events take place, Pepper gets to not only know his fellow patients, many of whom are vividly characterized, but to gain some long-missing insight into himself and compassion for others -- not, needless to say, through the efforts of the staff, but through the kindnesses and occasional nastiness of the patients.

Although I was a little unsure at the beginning whether I was going to like this book, I did eventually get into it and was fascinated by what was happening in this little community of the outcast from society. LaValle also brings in some apparently extraneous information -- the ethnic diversity of Queens, the oppressive stop-and-frisk policy of the NYC police, immigration policy, the life of Vincent Van Gogh, for example -- but it all gets worked into the story. Class and race play into it too, and the exhausting working conditions of the low-paid. The highlight for me was not the plotting but the development of the characters, many of whom I became quite fond of as their personalities shone through their "crazy" behavior.

I think those who expect this to be a horror novel will be disappointed; although some of the scenes with the devil are downright scary, this is more a novel about humanity than about monsters.

126baswood
Sep 2, 2012, 7:00 pm

Good review of The Devil in Silver Both you and Darryl liked it.

127DieFledermaus
Sep 2, 2012, 11:33 pm

Enjoying the reviews of the Zolas! What were the questionable ideas of heredity in The Fortune of the Rougons? Some form of Lamarckianism?

>121 StevenTX: - Steven, I wasn't aware that Tobias Pickler had done an adaptation of Therese Raquin though his name is familiar (his opera Emmeline, about a woman who unknowingly marries her long-lost son, seems to have had some success). What did you think of it? It's always exciting to see a premiere even if sometimes the music doesn't measure up.

Did you happen to catch the premiere of Jake Heggie's Moby Dick a couple years back (pretty sure that was at Dallas)? I heard very good things about that one and am hoping to see it when it comes to San Francisco. I need to read the book first - downloaded it to my Nook earlier this year after reading the many reviews from the group.

>125 rebeccanyc: - The Devil in Silver certainly sounds interesting - great review.

128StevenTX
Sep 3, 2012, 9:55 am

#125 - The Devil in Silver sounds like an interesting work, but one that is hard to pin down genre-wise. Every reviewer seems to say it defies expectations, but is worthwhile in the end. I enjoy books like that.

#127 - Yes, I enjoyed everything about the opera Thérèse Raquin, and immediately bought Emmeline on CD to hear more of Picker's work. No, I did not see Moby Dick. My wife got burned out on opera after Siegfried ("How can he go on for a solid hour about a damn sword?") and we haven't been back since. In the meantime the Dallas Opera has moved to a newer, nicer facility, doubled their prices, and are now going broke and shortening their season.

129Linda92007
Editado: Sep 3, 2012, 10:01 am

Great review of The Devil in Silver, Rebecca.

I tend to shy away from books that deal with issues that I was involved with during my working years, as I am more apt to be bothered by any inaccuracies. Although I do not expect fiction to represent reality, the premise of an involuntary and unnecessary, extended hospitalization strikes me as dated, in an age of strict regulations and strong mental health legal services. But your focus on LaValle's underlying purpose does leave me interested in reading this novel.

130rebeccanyc
Sep 3, 2012, 10:40 am

#126 Thanks, Barry. It was Darryl's review that led me to buy and read The Devil in Silver.

#127, Thanks, DieF. Zola read Darwin, so he knew about natural selection (and of course people knew about Mendelian genetics much earlier). The problems I had with his ideas about heredity are twofold. He believes that behavioral traits, alcoholism especially, are inherited -- not in the way we now think there might be a genetic susceptibility but as an incontrovertible and unavoidable fact. Additionally, he thinks that people who are peasants have certain physical characteristics and people who are aristocrats have others, and if they have children together the children can start to lose those peasant characteristics. It's not of course that there might be differences that go beyond things like peasants having darker skin from being out in the sun and rougher hands and stronger muscles from physical work, but that he sees this as a way of "improving" the class. (It was hard for me not to see this as the human equivalent of breeding faster horses or more productive cows.) In other words, there's a kernel of truth in what he says, but the way he expresses it is not the way we would these days.

#129 You could well be right about the relative infrequency of involuntary and extended stays in mental hospitals, Linda. In this case, I would say both that LaValle has extensive experience visiting people in mental hospitals because of a lot of mental illness in his family (he says this in an interview on NPR's Fresh Air program that I learned about on Darryl's thread), but also that Pepper basically falls through the cracks in an underfunded, largely ignored, public hospital. Ultimately, however, it is a literary device.

131rebeccanyc
Sep 3, 2012, 12:54 pm

Here's a link to a New York Times interview with LaValle, in the paper today, but apparently online last week.

132rebeccanyc
Sep 3, 2012, 3:21 pm

75. Vlad by Carlos Fuentes



What would happen if Vlad the Impaler/Count Dracula moved to contemporary Mexico City? That's what Carlos Fuentes explores, with humor, horror, and graphic imagery in this novella, published in Spanish several years before his death this spring.

The only other Fuentes I've read is the massive, complex, and brilliant Terra Nostra, so I didn't know what to expect with this story. I think Fuentes must have had fun writing it, and I enjoyed the fact that the reader knows more than the narrator, an upper class lawyer, Yves Navarro, married to a real estate agent, who is entrusted by his aging and imperious boss to find a very specific kind of home for his old school pal, Vlad. The Navarros have a young daughter, but are suffering because their son died in a swimming accident. Fuentes lays on Navarro's obtuseness a little thick, and both Navarro's paeans to his sex life (and his lengthy breakfasts) with his wife and some of the more gory and graphic details later on in the novella didn't work too well for me. And, having reached the end, I really wonder a lot about Navarro's attitude at the beginning, when he refers to his "awful adventure." A little too cavalier?

133StevenTX
Sep 4, 2012, 9:16 am

Your review of Vlad isn't very enthusiastic, but I put this one on the wishlist anyway because Fuentes is an author I'm long overdue for reading, and this novella sounds rather fun. I got a laugh when I went to the book page and saw the two tags that stand out: "lawyers" and "vampires."

134rebeccanyc
Sep 4, 2012, 10:10 am

Well, I sort of enjoyed it and sort of didn't. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood.

135labfs39
Sep 4, 2012, 3:57 pm

#131 I enjoyed your post of the NYT interview with LaValle. Having read the tome Van Gogh: The Life last year, I was especially interested in his comments about why Van Gogh is the "patron saint" of the book. I also liked what he had to say about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

136DieFledermaus
Sep 5, 2012, 12:44 am

>128 StevenTX: - That's a pretty strong recommendation of Picker's work. I've never heard anything by him before - will have to check the library to see if they have any of his stuff.

"How can he go on for a solid hour about a damn sword?"

Heh heh heh. When I saw Siegfried live, I wasn't too familiar with the music and it did seem like he went on and on about his sword. I thought Mime's interjections about taking over the world were pretty funny though. It's probably one of my favorite parts of that opera now - I like to play it at 2 am when I'm stuck at work and need something energetic. (Other favorite part is the end - my friend's partner described that as Brunnhilde going on forever about the sun.)

Too bad about the Dallas Opera. I read an article awhile back describing the financial problems some organizations had after commissioning new facilities. People would give money for the initial construction, then all the bills for running it would add up. It was especially bad if they got an expensive "starchitect" like Gehry, Koolhaas, Hadid or Piano.

>130 rebeccanyc: - Thanks for elaborating. That does sound a lot like the 19th c. tendency to describe "racial characteristics" too - annoying but not too unexpected for that period.

>132 rebeccanyc: - Vlad sounds interesting but I have Christopher Unborn on the pile now - should probably read that first.

137rebeccanyc
Sep 5, 2012, 11:07 am

I do intend to read more Fuentes, and have since I read Terra Nostra. Just not sure what or when.

138staceywebb
Sep 5, 2012, 12:13 pm

Este usuario ha sido eliminado por spam.

139rebeccanyc
Editado: Sep 7, 2012, 11:05 am

76. Deep River by Shūsako Endō



Like Silence by the same author, this novel explores religious belief, this time taking a group of more or less contemporary Japanese men and women on a trip to the Ganges where, for varying reasons, they hope to fill some of the holes and resolve the darkness they feel in their lives. Interestingly, the title comes from an African-American spiritual which Endō uses as an epigram for the book.

Much of the novel focuses on Christianity, and it is filled with what I take to be Christian imagery and Christ figures (in the sense of dying for others), but Endō definitely explores, in this later work, the question of how a western religion like Christianity can or cannot be adapted to an eastern Asian sensibility. There is a lot about Hindu gods (and especially goddesses) and how they incorporate both good and evil, and about mother figures and how Hindu goddesses who are mother figures, especially one known as Chamunda, exemplify giving despite unspeakable suffering in a way that Mary, in Christianity, does not. A recurring character, not one of the travelers, is a Japanese man who traveled to Europe to become a Christian priest, was rejected because he had too many (Asian) ideas which were troubling to his superiors, and ends up, still a Christian in his mind, living near the banks of the Ganges and helping dying people reach it; in this work, he explicitly compares himself to Jesus, who in this book is noted primarily for taking on the suffering of others. Poverty and class also play a role.

I had a little difficulty getting into this book, as I found some of the initial portraits of the Japanese travelers a little schematic, and it was clear that each of the main characters would be changed in some way by the trip, although not necessarily in the way he or she expected. As I read more, I realized this was not so much a book about the characters but a book about different approaches to life, suffering, and death. The Ganges is, both literally and symbolically, the embodiment of both life and death As Endō writes:

The river took in his cry and silently flowed away. But he felt a power of some kind in that silvery silence. Just as the river had embraced the deaths of countless people over the centuries and carried them into the next world, so too it picked up and carried away the cry of life from this man sitting on a rock on its bank. p. 189

In the end, I found the novel thought-provoking, although I'm not sure exactly what Endō hoped readers would take away from it.

140labfs39
Sep 7, 2012, 12:13 pm

I'm torn about this one. I just bought Silence, and I'll start with that, I think. Which did you like better?

141Nickelini
Sep 7, 2012, 12:28 pm

Rebecca - Deep River sounds very unusual but intriguing. On to the wish list it goes--thanks!

142rebeccanyc
Sep 7, 2012, 12:41 pm

I had very mixed feelings about Silence, Lisa, but I think it was a better written book. Also, I would begin with it because it takes place in the 17th century and because Endo wrote it first, so there is evolution both in what is happening in the world and in Endo's thinking by the time you get to Deep River. Most people like Silence a lot better than I do, but I had trouble with the whole missionary concept.

143labfs39
Sep 7, 2012, 5:13 pm

I have a bit of a problem with martyrdom too. I enjoyed both your and Darryl's reviews, although they were so different. Deep River sounded more interesting, frankly, but the discussion arising from Silence made me decide to start there. I'm not sure I'm going to get to it immediately, however.

144dchaikin
Sep 8, 2012, 4:18 pm

I keep coming away from LT thinking I need to read Endo. Another great review, R.

145rebeccanyc
Sep 8, 2012, 4:29 pm

Lisa, Having compared Silence and Deep River, I have to say that the Endo that most impressed and disturbed me was not primarily based on religion, The Sea and Poison. I've just ordered Scandal, which I believe is also not primarily religious.

Dan, in case you don't know, the Author Theme Reads group is focusing on Japanese authors this year, and Endo is our year-long author (there are also quarterly authors).

146dchaikin
Sep 8, 2012, 4:35 pm

I'm aware - but my reading is a bit full. I might need to trip and fall and somehow accidentally land in a book of Japanese literature.

147lilisin
Sep 8, 2012, 4:44 pm

146 -
I'm sure we can arrange that. I know some people. ;)

145 -
When I Whistle is also along the lines of The Sea and Poison (they actually share very similar themes) and does not have those same religious tones.

148rebeccanyc
Sep 8, 2012, 8:09 pm

Thanks, lilisin. I remember you wrote an enthusiastic review of it, and I should have looked for it too when I was perusing ABE Books for Scandal.

149charbutton
Sep 10, 2012, 7:06 pm

Commenting a bit late, but it's great to see some love for Dorothy B Hughes!

150StevenTX
Sep 10, 2012, 8:23 pm

Having compared Silence and Deep River, I have to say that the Endo that most impressed and disturbed me was not primarily based on religion, The Sea and Poison.

I've read the same three books this year and would say exactly the same thing. I wasn't sure if I wanted to try another Endo this year, but if I do I think it will be Scandal.

151rebeccanyc
Sep 11, 2012, 10:03 am

#149 Thanks, and nice to see you, Char. She was new to me, and I have to thank NYRB for reissuing one of her books and thus introducing her to me.

#150 Scandal is my next too, Steven; it's winging its way to me.

152RidgewayGirl
Sep 11, 2012, 3:28 pm

Catching up...and am now determined to read something by Emile Zola soon. But not in French!

153rebeccanyc
Editado: Sep 11, 2012, 3:42 pm

77. Nana by Émile Zola



Who is Nana? Is she a daughter of the working class Parisian slums who rose to fame and fortune by selling her body and using her wiles? Is she a woman who exploited and was exploited by men? Is she a woman who sought happiness and never really knew how to find it? Is she a symbol of the excesses of greed and financial and sexual exhibitionism of the Second Empire? In fact, she is all of these.

I was interested in reading Nana after meeting her as the willful and wayward daughter of Gervaise and Coupeau in L'Assommoir -- and because it may well be Zola's most read novel. Shocking in its sexual frankness at the time it was written, much of it is still shocking today, not in the lack of the kind of graphic descriptions we now regularly read, but in the overtness and ubiquity of the search for and payment for sex.

At the beginning of the novel, Nana is appearing on the stage of a somewhat down-at-the-heels theater that is presenting an operetta loosely based on the amorous intrigues of the Greek gods. Despite her lack of singing or acting talent, she is an immediate success because her extremely shapely body is displayed leaving very little to the imagination and because she has a real but undefinable presence. Soon, men of means and noble status are chasing her and eager to pay her bills. As the novel progresses, the reader follows the ups and downs of Nana's career as a kept woman, her search for love, her search for money, and her search for fame. Her many lovers are introduced, as are the women in the theatrical and kept woman circuits, and even some "respectable" women.

Zola is at the peak of his abilities in this novel, not only vividly depicting the world of the theater and the varied characters, but also creating such completely believable set pieces as an aristocratic party, a party of the theater/demimonde set, high society horse races, life in country houses, and a lesbian bar/restaurant. His descriptions of the finances and decor of Nana's various homes, including an incredibly ostentatious bed that is made for her, her obsessions with various lovers, and the intrigues she's involved in all are compelling. There is much more to this book too, as it examines the theater, street prostitution, the influence of the Catholic church, and the corruptibility of even the "respectable" woman. Yet . . . Zola can pile it on so thick that some of it just doesn't seem believable. And that's why I think he wrote it partly as a metaphor for the decadence and corruption of the Second Empire, an empire that, as the novel ends, is on its way to falling after defeat in the looming Franco-Prussian war.

Finally, from the perspective of the 21st century and feminism, it is easy to look at the lives of kept women such as Nana as artifacts of the past. And yet, men of power and money still seek out attractive and showy woman, still spend their money to demonstrate how much they have, still buy and furnish huge homes, and so on. Plus ça change . . .

ETA Once again, as with L'assommoir, the publisher of my edition picked the wrong picture for the cover: Nana is blonde, not brunette as depicted.

154StevenTX
Sep 11, 2012, 5:14 pm

Excellent review, and I'm dying to read more Zola. It sounds like an unbowdlerized translation is a must for this one.

155Linda92007
Sep 11, 2012, 5:19 pm

Another great Zola review, Rebecca. At this rate you will have finished with him before I even get started!

156baswood
Sep 11, 2012, 6:11 pm

Great review of Nana rebecca.

157rebeccanyc
Sep 11, 2012, 6:25 pm

Thanks, Steven, Linda, and Barry. Linda, I'm taking a break for a while, but as I said I was eager to read Nana because of meeting her as a child in L'assommoir.

158labfs39
Sep 11, 2012, 7:52 pm

I read Nana ages ago, but have been inspired by your reviews to try and plan a L'assommoir-Nana read and reread.

159japaul22
Sep 11, 2012, 8:14 pm

I've enjoyed your Zola reviews. I've never read any of his work, but I'm planning to read one of his novels in the next couple months. I was planning to start with Germinal unless you have a different suggestion?

160rebeccanyc
Sep 12, 2012, 7:32 am

#159 Germinal was the first one I read; it got me hooked, and I do think it's the best of the ones I've read, although I've enjoyed all four that I've read because Zola is such a great story-teller and so great at depicting the world his characters live in and his characters.

161japaul22
Sep 12, 2012, 8:49 am

Thanks, Rebecca, Germinal it is!

162arubabookwoman
Sep 12, 2012, 7:50 pm

After I reread Nana earlier this year, I reread Cousin Bette by Balzac which portrays a similar society--but this time primarily from the pov of a gentleman whose life is ruined by his addiction to these courtesans. (Of course the novels are not entirely parallel--Cousin Bette's primary theme is that of revenge.) If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. I intend to move on to a Balzac binge after I finish the Rougon-Macquart.

163StevenTX
Sep 12, 2012, 7:59 pm

Once again, as with L'assommoir, the publisher of my edition picked the wrong picture for the cover: Nana is blonde, not brunette as depicted.

After noticing that the cover associated with your hot review listing was a completely different picture (a rather frumpy looking nude, also brunette), I went to the book page and saw that there are over 180 different Nana covers, with at least two dozen different depictions of Nana herself--everything from a pre-Raphaelite redhead to a Modigliani nude to a Renoir burnette to some pulp fiction-looking blondes. Just for fun, which one of these images, if any, comes closest to your mental picture of Nana?

164rebeccanyc
Sep 12, 2012, 8:35 pm

Will have to look tomorrow, Steven, as on iPhone now, but that sounds like fun! BTW, the cover on the hot review page is not my cover. No nudes, just a head shot!

165DieFledermaus
Sep 13, 2012, 3:23 am

>153 rebeccanyc: - A very good review of Nana. I think you nicely encapsulated all the questions about her in the first paragraph. I agree that some of the parts weren't too believable - mainly that Nana could ruin so many men and that they were glad to be ruined for her.

166kidzdoc
Sep 13, 2012, 1:33 pm

Excellent review of Nana, Rebecca. You've encouraged me to start reading Zola's novels, although it may take me a couple of years to get to them.

167rebeccanyc
Sep 13, 2012, 1:43 pm

#163 For the Nana covers, I'm not wild about any of them.

I think this one best captures her personality:



And I rather like this one, as she is described as on the plump and fleshy side:



And these two for shock value:



168baswood
Sep 13, 2012, 5:28 pm

Great Nana covers

169rebeccanyc
Sep 13, 2012, 7:40 pm

I admit a fondness for the last two, which we would never see today, despite all the graphic displays in other media.

170StevenTX
Editado: Sep 13, 2012, 11:20 pm

I kind of thought #2 might be your choice since you had pointed out that Nana was a blonde.

171rebeccanyc
Sep 14, 2012, 8:23 am

I was trying to look for ones that captured the feeling of the book, and Nana's personality, as well as just looking like her.

172rebeccanyc
Sep 14, 2012, 9:48 am

78. Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga



This book grew on me as I came to see the richness of the world Dangarembga has created. Much more than a coming-of-age story (although it is one), much more than a wonderful evocation of a time and a place (although it is), this novel illuminates the conflicts of colonialism and feminism: the desire for (English) education versus loyalty to one's village, family, and culture; the struggle for autonomy while remaining connected to people who don't understand; issues of (relative) wealth and poverty; issues of women's roles and patriarchy; issues of Christianity versus the local religion; issues of English versus Shona. Despite these weighty topics, the closest Nervous Conditions comes to being a polemic is in Dangarembga's choice of epigraph: "The condition of native is a nervous condition," from Franz Fanon. It is above all an absorbing novel with compelling characters.

Tambu, short for Tambudzai, is about 14, living with her family in an impoverished Rhodesian (not yet Zimbabwean) village; she is the narrator, but she is clearly telling the story from a more advanced age. Her uncle, the head of the extended family, who has studied in England and is the headmaster of the nearby mission school, has taken his nephew, Tambu's brother, to study there. Tambu longs for an education herself, and dislikes the way her brother has adopted "English" ways and turns his nose up at the village. When her brother dies, she talks her way into going to the mission school herself (despite the family being unsure whether education is necessary, or appropriate, for a girl), and goes to live in her uncle's home. There, she rebuilds her friendship with her cousin Nyasha, a brilliant but troubled girl who can't find her place in the world after having lived in England while her parents were studying there.

Much of the novel involves the interaction of Tambu with Nyasha and her family, and with her own extended family back in the village. The reader sees the sloth of Tambu's father, the sorrow of Tambu's mother, the uncle's power as the relatively wealthy head of the family and the family's traditional devotion to him, the unexpressed frustration of Tambu's aunt, just as educated as her uncle, but subservient to him, the evolving strength of another aunt (her mother's sister, who first appears to be just a pleasure seeker), and much more, as Dangarembga creates complex distinct characters and as Tambu constantly thinks about her actions and reactions, as well as those of others.

Despite the fact that this novel takes place during the late 1960s and into 1970, when the white residents of Rhodesia, under the leadership of Ian Smith, declared their independence from England, leading to a brutal civil war, there are no signs of war in this novel. The white people in it are largely missionaries, and so are though of as "holy" but nonetheless foreign and strange. They can also be extremely condescending and racist without realizing it, as when Tambu is accepted into a prestigious convent school and has to sleep in a crowded room with five other African students (even though the white students sleep four to a room) because, as the nun says proudly, they have so many African students this year.

This book has been on my TBR for a while; I'm happy I finally read it and have already ordered another novel by Dangarembga.

173rebeccanyc
Sep 14, 2012, 10:09 am

79. The Old Man and the Medal by Ferdinand Oyono



I bought this book because I thought Oyono's Houseboy was a powerful depiction of the evils of colonialism and I was eager to read more by him. Although I enjoyed this brief intensely satirical novel, I didn't feel it had the force of the later work. Meka, the old man of the title is, for no apparent reason except that he "gave" his ancestral land to the local church and had two of his sons killed in the French army during World War II, told that he is to receive a medal from the chief white man in Cameroon. At first he is quite proud of this, and his fellow villagers and relatives from nearby villages converge on his home for the expected celebration. Although he does receive the medal, and hears a lot of hypocritical talk from the French colonialists, subsequent events change his mind about "the whites." Oyono paints a vivid picture of village community life and customs, perhaps poking fun at them a little, of various characters including Meka's wife and her brother and sister-in-law, and of the completely separate world of the whites. One of my favorite scenes was when an interpreter, who is translating an interchange between Meka and the French police chief, tells Meka, while the police chief thinks he is translating, "don't annoy the white man. You can think what you like about him when you are out of here . . .Don't do anything stupid! Your case has been all fixed up."

174janeajones
Sep 14, 2012, 10:38 am

172 -- Great review of Nervous Conditions, Rebecca -- I really liked this book too.

175dmsteyn
Sep 14, 2012, 11:12 am

172 - Yes, wonderful review of Nervous Conditions. I'm going to re-read it for a course I'm tutoring to first-year students at our university. I remember disliking the book the first time I read it, but I think this was more to do with my own frazzled state at the time, than any defects in the book. Thinking back, I can remember having to rush through the novel for a content test, which in my experience never leads to fond memories. The only thing I could remember clearly was the description of the rotten (green?) meat that Tambu had to eat...

176Linda92007
Sep 14, 2012, 4:10 pm

Excellent review of Nervous Conditions, Rebecca. Having recently read The Grass is Singing, also set in Rhodesia but from the 1940s, I would be interested in this book for the contrast of a native perspective during the post-colonial period.

177rebeccanyc
Sep 14, 2012, 4:34 pm

!75 Dewald, that was a scene in the book but it is a very small part of it. I can see why you might remember it though! I'll be interested in what you think when you reread it.

176 Linda, Just to clarify, the book was written in the post-colonial period, but takes place during the period when it was still colonial/white-ruled.

178baswood
Sep 14, 2012, 6:40 pm

Good review of Nervous Conditions. The book seems to cover an awful lot of ground.

179Linda92007
Sep 15, 2012, 8:59 am

>177 rebeccanyc: Post-colonial was a poor choice of words on my part. What I meant was following the initial 1965 unilateral declaration of independence from Britain.

180rebeccanyc
Sep 15, 2012, 10:07 am

And strangely enough, Linda, as I mentioned in my review, there's really no hint of the civil war or turmoil in the book.

181StevenTX
Sep 15, 2012, 10:18 am

Excellent review of Nervous Conditions. I've had this book for some time but wasn't in any hurry to read it. It sounds quite interesting.

182DieFledermaus
Sep 15, 2012, 3:22 pm

Excellent review of Nervous Conditions. I heard about it here on LT and made a mental note but it didn't stick. Glad to get a reminder. Is the book you purchased the sequel?

183rebeccanyc
Sep 15, 2012, 4:29 pm

Yes, it's called The Book of Not.

184rebeccanyc
Editado: Sep 16, 2012, 9:45 am

80. Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins



I was eager to read this book of short stories after reading an interview with Claire Vaye Watkins in the New York Times, because I enjoy stories taking place in the vastness of the western United States. Yet I came away from reading this book with very mixed feelings.

Without a doubt, Watkins creates a vivid sense of place, largely in the deserts of Nevada (one motto for Nevada is the Battle Born State), but also in remote areas of California, and of characters. The landscapes are open and bare and bleak, and the people are lonely by choice and by circumstances, and are often coping with losses in their own idiosyncratic ways. All well and good. But, for me, the stories were marred by my awareness of the scaffolding Watkins had created for them, and by her efforts sometimes to be too clever. And the reader doesn't have to struggle to see what interests Watkins: sisters and near-sisters, that the past informs the present (surprise!), and loss of parents and of love.

To give some examples, a lot of the stories have a kind of framing device where the reader sees the protagonist in the present and then learns a story from the past. I think the stories, for example one in which a 30-ish woman ends up telling her boyfriend a sordid tale from her teenage years, would have been stronger without this framing. I think readers understand that more or less everything we do influences who we become later on. Similarly, the strongest story in the book, a long tale about two brothers during the California gold rush, would have been stronger without the epilogue in which one of the brothers relates what happened to him afterwards.

Watkins also uses techniques that didn't necessarily work for me. The first story in the book (which fictionalizes her history as the daughter of a man who was one of Charlie Manson's associates who testified against him and apparently wasn't involved in the murders) is a good example. For several pages, Watkins explores different ways the story "could" start, laying out a lot of the history of the west, and then gets into the main story. I get it that she wanted to locate the Manson story and its personal impact in a larger landscape and time frame, but this seemed gimmicky to me. And there are other gimmicks in other stories that I also found annoying, calling one protagonist "our girl" instead of a name, having one protagonist create imaginary museum exhibits of her life, having one protagonist, perhaps more self-aware than most, saying "These are my friends. These are the funny, ironic things we do so we can be the kind of funny, ironic people who do them." Then there's the guy who keeps peacocks named after the counties of Nevada, and the young woman who introduces Dumbo the Elephant into the story.

And yet, there's a lot to like in these stories, and some of them show a lot of promise, mostly when Watkins can stick to the story and not feel she has to show the reader what she's doing. She is a good writer, especially about the bleakness of the landscape and of people's lives, as when she writes: "Out here a person could get turned around and lose his own trail, each stretch of nothing looking like the next, east looking like south looking like west, not knowing where he came on the lake bed, and not knowing how to get home." I'll look at what she does next.

185Linda92007
Sep 16, 2012, 9:13 am

Excellent review of Battleborn, Rebecca. I especially appreciated your analysis of the techniques that Watkins used and why they didn't work for you.

186dmsteyn
Sep 16, 2012, 10:33 am

Battleborn sounds interesting, though your caveats certainly ring true. Excellent review!

PS - I was worried for a moment that you were going to be reviewing the new album by The Killers ;-)

187rebeccanyc
Editado: Sep 16, 2012, 10:54 am

I'm sure I would find that very funny, if I had any idea who The Killers are! Off to Google land!

ETA Per Wikipedia, the band formed in Las Vegas, so I guess they know Nevada is the Battle Born state too!

188StevenTX
Sep 16, 2012, 10:57 am

...mostly when Watkins can stick to the story and not feel she has to show the reader what she's doing.

I like that observation.

Congratulations on having three hot reviews in the top 10 at the same time (you and I are half the list at the moment, but of course it always has more Club Read members on it than not).

189dchaikin
Sep 16, 2012, 11:04 am

Finally back on the thread. Interesting analysis on Battleborn. Sometime I analyze books that don't quite work for me more than ones I really enjoy. Seems that maybe something like that happened here.

190rebeccanyc
Sep 16, 2012, 5:52 pm

Yes, Dan. I had to think about what made me uneasy about the book, which is definitely harder than thinking about what I like!

191baswood
Editado: Sep 16, 2012, 6:12 pm

Excellent review of Battleborn. It would seem that the collection of stories are too similar to rate more highly.

192kidzdoc
Sep 16, 2012, 9:01 pm

Three excellent reviews, Rebecca! I'll have to move Nervous Conditions higher on my TBR list, although I doubt I'll get to it before next year.

193rebeccanyc
Sep 18, 2012, 8:20 am

Thanks, Barry and Darryl. Barry, interesting comment about the stories been "similar." I hadn't thought of them that way, and I don't think it's necessarily an issue if writers explore similar themes; it's just that they're a little obvious in Watkins's writing.

194JDHomrighausen
Sep 18, 2012, 8:32 am

I'll pass on the short story book. I'm wondering what she refers to as "rural" California. I used to live in Oakdale, population 17,000, which beat out a town in Texas for the title of Cowboy Capitol of the World. Being a Silicon Valley native I found that pretty rural!

195rebeccanyc
Sep 18, 2012, 9:47 am

Not at home, so can't check exactly where, but it was a lot more rural than 17,000 pop. Of course, the Gold Rush story was in the mountains.

196tomcatMurr
Sep 18, 2012, 10:44 pm

I'm really enjoying your Zola reviews! Are you going to read them all?

197rebeccanyc
Sep 19, 2012, 8:06 am

Probably, although not systematically. Also, it's not clear that all of them are available in recent English translation. Some are available online, but they're translated by the original or other early translators, some of whom have been vilified for bowdlerization. Oxford World Classics and Penguin seem to have most of the recent translations, and as I've said earlier or elsewhere, my French definitely isn't up to Zola.

198SassyLassy
Sep 19, 2012, 3:35 pm

Still enjoying your Zolathon.

Interesting review of Battleborn. The author and book were unknown to me and now I'll be on the lookout. Maybe there's something in those vast empty spaces that gives a writer/character time to consider a story from many angles.

199rebeccanyc
Sep 23, 2012, 12:00 pm

81. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama



I've been immersed in this history of the French Revolution, and the period immediately leading up to it, for nearly two months, 875 pages of dense, albeit readable and often witty, prose, enlivened by many contemporary illustrations. Schama announces in his preface that he is taking a revisionist approach to the history, and that he is reverting to a 19th century style and writing it as a narrative. I am not sufficiently versed in the history of 18th century France (actually, I'm not versed in it at all) to evaluate his analysis, except to say that it seems to make sense as he tells it, but I definitely appreciated the chronological (as opposed to thematic) organization, even though I sometimes completely lost track of who people were, as Schama brings in dozens, if not hundreds, of secondary characters. In the end, although I enjoyed and learned a lot from the book, I often felt as though there were lots and lots of trees and it was hard to see the forest.

So what is Schama's revisionist approach? It takes a variety of forms. He argues that the prerevolutionary period, far from being only a deadening morass of ancient customs, was actually a time of great change. spurred by news of the American revolution, enlightenment philosophy, the writings of Rousseau, scientific exploration and experimentation (including, dramatically, hot air balloons), early steps towards manufacturing and industrialization (which upset the guild system), and more frequent and rapid transportation of goods around France. Often nobles, more than the bourgeoisie or the peasants, were the ones behind these advances (after all, they had the time and the money). He also argues that "a patriotic culture of citizenship was created in the decades after the Seven Years' War, and that it was thus a cause rather than a product of the French Revolution." In fact, he spends so long on the prerevolutionary period that it takes him 368 pages to reach the storming of the Bastille.

Schama believes that violence was built into the revolution from the beginning, that "it was not merely an unfortunate by-product of politics, or the disagreeable instrument by which other more virtuous ends were accomplished, or vicious ones were thwarted. In some depressingly unavoidable sense, violence was the revolution itself." Some examples: the "September massacres" of some 1400 Parisian political prisoners, the brutal repression of the brutal uprising in the Vendée and elsewhere, and later, during the Terror, with perhaps one-third of the population killed in certain regions, and with some of the revolutionary military leaders coming up with ideas (unused) that were "sinister anticipations of the technological killings of the 20th century."

Another of Schama's ideas is "the problematic relationship between patriotism and liberty, which, in the Revolution, turns into a brutal competition between the power of the state and the effervescence of politics." Indeed, the chaos of the Estates General and its successors soon turns into absolutism and the need to exterminate enemies. "Revolutionary democracy would be guillotined in the name of revolutionary government." The analogy with the Russian revolution is obvious.

Economically speaking, the Revolution didn't really help the peasants or the poor in the cities, and the revolutionary government still had to deal with bread prices; indeed, in some ways the revolutionary years were harder on the poor than the prior old regime. Schama also makes a convincing argument that "the "bourgeoisie" which Marxist history long believed to be the essential beneficiary of the Revolution was, in fact, its principal victim" because of the attacks during the Terror on mercantile and industrial enterprises in port towns on the Atlantic and Mediterranean and in textile centers in northeastern France.

Perhaps most importantly for the way he tells the history, Schama argues for the importance of individual actions as opposed to theories of the inevitable progress of history. As he writes in the preface, "Nor does the Revolution seem any longer to conform to a grand historical design, preordained by inexorable forces of social change. Instead it seem a thing of contingencies and unforeseen consequences . . . For as the imperatives of "structure" have weakened, those of individual agency, and especially of revolutionary utterance, have become correspondingly more important." Throughout the book, Schama uses quotes from people involved in the actions to illustrate what they were thinking.

I only knew the broad outlines of the revolution before reading this book, and became interested in reading it after I read Hilary Mantel's novel about Robespierre, Desmoulins, and Danton, A Place of Greater Safety, several years ago. So there was much I didn't know anything about, much I learned that was quite fascinating (the origins of the Marseillaise, for example), and much I learned that was quite depressing, especially when Schama focused on the widespread and obsessive violence.

This is such a complex book that I really can only touch on some on the major themes. Schama weaves together a vast number of contemporary sources: philosophical musings, letter-writers, records of speeches, newspaper articles (the revolutionaries were prolific writers), diaries, and more, in a remarkably impressive way. The illustrations of contemporary artists and political cartoonists add immeasurably to the book. Finally, Schama also has a wonderful way with words.

200StevenTX
Sep 23, 2012, 12:25 pm

Great review of Citizens. I recall reading many years ago what was then considered the definitive history of the French Revolution and feeling completely lost in the maze of people, events and issues. To me it sounds encouraging that Schama spends so much time on the developments leading up to the Revolution itself. I also like that it's chronological rather than thematic. I look forward to reading it some day.

201rebeccanyc
Sep 23, 2012, 12:38 pm

82. The Kill by Émile Zola



The kill, the title of this second novel of Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, refers to the spoils of hunting that are given to the dogs both to reward them and to spur them on to greater efforts. It is a chillingly appropriate image of the chase after wealth and sexual pleasure ("gold and flesh") that rules the lives of the characters in this horrifying work. It takes place as Paris is being transformed through the efforts of Baron Haussmann into the Paris we know today, with broad boulevards replacing rabbit warrens of back streets, in an effort not just to "beautify" but also to eliminate good locations for barricades and to provide routes the police and army could follow to put down rebellions. Then as now, such "urban renewal" involves uprooting the poor and creating ample opportunities for real estate speculation.

Zola tells the tale of speculator par excellence Saccard (formerly Rougon) and his love for scheming, corruption, and prostitutes; his sister Sidonie who profits from other people's secrets and troubles; his second wife Renée who, despite constant purchases of dresses that almost completely display her breasts and life in a mansion decorated to excess, is sufficiently bored to slip into a completely inappropriate sexual relationship; and his son Maxime, devoted only to pleasure, sly and corrupt. It is difficult for the reader to decide which of these characters is most despicable. Their lives are frenetic; Zola describes doors constantly opening and closing, people constantly coming and going, husband and wife and stepson living their own lives while living in the same house. Even as they live in luxury -- and the decor of each of the rooms of the house, and especially the plant-filled hot house are described in infinite, and at times stifling, sensual detail -- both husband and wife owe lots of money, and Saccard, especially, is constantly scheming how to juggle the real money and the money that only exists on paper.

As in his other novels I've read, Zola is a perceptive observer of character and place, and includes a wonderful set piece of a costume ball held in the Saccards' mansion. The deception of the costumes mirror the deceptions of speculative finance, official corruption, sexuality, and adultery that fill the novel. He peoples the ball, and the book, with a variety of vivid secondary characters who, in combination, depict the excesses and corruption of the Second Empire. All in all, he is a consummate story-teller, and I could barely put this book down as I waited for the inevitable train wreck.

202RidgewayGirl
Sep 23, 2012, 1:34 pm

I've been waiting for your review of Citizens! Only now I want to reread it.

203StevenTX
Sep 23, 2012, 1:43 pm

Another very enticing Zola review!

Incidentally, another reason for the wide boulevards in Paris and other European cities was to prevent the spread of disease, principally cholera. The prevailing theory at the time was that disease was caused by foul vapors, and the wide, straight streets provided a channel for fresh air.

204rebeccanyc
Sep 23, 2012, 3:37 pm

I do feel it's worth a reread, RG, as I know I don't remember everything I read. It just would be too daunting for me to do for a while. What did you like about it when you read it.

Interesting about the wide boulevards, Steven; all the intros to the Zolas I've read mention the anti-barricade/ease of access for troops angle, but not the cholera one.

205baswood
Sep 23, 2012, 5:53 pm

You are really on a French kick rebecca. Great review of citizens!. I studied the French revolution in school and a couple of years ago read a narrative history The Oxford History of the French Revolution and so I have pretty much got the sequence of events straight in my mind.

The French Revolution like most successful revolutions just went on and on until it exhausted itself. (Lawyers played a not inconsiderable part in the process). I will read Scharma's book as that period of history fascinates me and I would like to read about his revisionism. Again thanks for an excellent review.

The Zola as well. great stuff.

206rebeccanyc
Sep 23, 2012, 6:35 pm

I've noticed that too, Barry, and it's purely accidental/coincidental. I've owned Citizens for years, and have been meaning to read it, as I noted in my review, since reading A Place of Greater Safety several years ago. I had to read it over the summer, when I have more time to read at home, since it clearly isn't a subway read, and this summer I finally determined to do it. The Zola kick came about after I read some Zola reviews here on LT, and asked where to start, and got a recommendation of Germinal both because it is so good (still my favorite of the ones I've read) and because I'd recently read GB84 about the 1984 British coal strike. I'm definitely going to continue reading Zola, but I'm not sure at this point if I'll be delving more deeply into French literature. At some point, though, I really need to read The Red and the Black, which has been languishing on my shelves for decades!

I also found it interesting to learn more about the French Revolution because I've read quite a bit about the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. There are certainly some similarities in how they deteriorated from idealism to massacres and show trials.

207RidgewayGirl
Sep 23, 2012, 6:51 pm

It's been a good decade since I last read Citizens, but what I remember about it was how immensely readable it was and how it made the French Revolution immediate to me. It's not a dry book.

208janeajones
Sep 23, 2012, 8:47 pm

I received The Black Count by Tom Reiss as an LTER, and since I currently don't have time to read it -- being distracted by grading hundreds of papers -- gave it to my husband. He's enthralled by this history/biography of Alexandre Dumas' father who became a general in the Army of the French Republic and its description of both the French Revolution and Napoleon's rise to power.

209avidmom
Sep 23, 2012, 8:59 pm

Thanks for your review of Citizens. I've always been interested in the French Revolution just as a run-of-the-mill history buff. Recently my mother uncovered a story while tracing our family tree that ties our family directly to the French Revolution. Apparently great, great, great (???) grandma so & so found herself on the wrong end of the guillotine. When that happened her husband escaped France with their young son & eventually ended up here. So now, of course, I'm even more interested in the Revolution than I was before. Haven't read any books about it yet, but the Schama book is the one I'll go to first.

210kidzdoc
Sep 23, 2012, 11:20 pm

Fabulous review of Citizens, Rebecca; I'll plan to read it in the next year or two. I still haven't read A Place of Greater Safety, and it looks as though I won't get to it before the end of the year.

Excellent review of The Kill as well!

211DieFledermaus
Sep 24, 2012, 7:21 am

Two great reviews and congrats on both of them being hot reviews (also for finishing Citizens).

212rebeccanyc
Sep 24, 2012, 7:39 am

#208, Jane I read a review of The Black Count, and it did sound interesting. Eventually I guess I'll have to try Dumas too . . .

#209, Avidmom, Wow, that's so interesting about your connection to the French Revolution!

#210, 211 Thanks, Darryl and DieF!

213dchaikin
Sep 25, 2012, 10:09 am

Echoing above, two terrific reviews. Congrats on finishing Citizens. After reading your review I'm not sure whether I want to read it, or hide from it. The book is huge.

214rebeccanyc
Sep 25, 2012, 3:46 pm

Thanks, Dan. It took me 15 years at least to get to it, so you have time . . .

215Linda92007
Sep 26, 2012, 8:50 am

Echoing the comments about your excellent reviews of Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution and The Kill, Rebecca. I own A Place of Greater Safety and have noted the comments of those who wished they had more knowledge of the French Revolution before reading it. In retrospect, would your appreciation of the Mantel have been significantly enhanced by reading Citizens first?

216rebeccanyc
Sep 26, 2012, 7:24 pm

Well, I enjoyed A Place of Greater Safety -- in fact, it's my favorite of all the Mantels I've read -- with just having an educated person's basic knowledge of the French Revolution. I would say you might want to read the novel first because Citizens, although fascinating and readable, can be daunting!

217rebeccanyc
Sep 28, 2012, 12:02 pm

I've started a new thread.
Este tema fue continuado por Rebeccanyc Reads in 2012, Part 4.