Review of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Note: The Book Stop is on vacation!  This post was written in advance.  But please feel free to comment.

This was my second book by Haruki Murakami, and it blew me away.  There’s so much in this book, I don’t know where to start. Last year I read Norwegian Wood, which was very good.  I started there because bloggers said it was an “easier” Murakami read – more linear, less weird.

Wind-Up Bird was definitely weird.  Much of this book was like reading a dream – if I could put my dreams into writing, which I can’t.  But Murakami clearly can.

The story, briefly, is that Toru Okada is searching for his wife’s beloved cat, when his wife Kumiko goes missing as well.  It appears that she’s left him, but he’s not sure, and all he knows is that he has to figure out what went wrong to get her back.  Only figuring this out seems to involve some very strange women with psychic powers, the sixteen year old girl down the street, the dried-up old well down the street, and Kumiko’s strangely evil brother.  Oh, and two World War II veterans who fought in China.  Okada goes on a strange, mystical journey to figure out what happened to his cat and his wife.

I have to say I have no idea what a lot of the book meant, but I really like the way Murakami writes and the way he thinks.  There’s something really clear and honest about it.  I may not get the symbolism, and I certainly got lost in all the Japanese/Chinese war history, but Murakami’s writing about basic human emotions, like love, betrayal, abuse, people’s need to connect with others, and the ability to feel too much or too little.

For example:

What most moved me in his letter was the sense of frustration that permeated the lieutenant’s words: the frustration of never quite being able to depict or explain anything to his full satisfaction.

This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else.  Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else.  I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me.

And my favorite:

What happens in between the time when you push the switch and the microwave rings?  You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover.  Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding.  We think it’s only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but for me that’s just a presumption… Maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it’s all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin.

This was a huge book, something you really sink into.  And sometimes Murakami’s divergences were hard to get into (he likes his characters to tell long stories) but most of the time I was completely enthralled.  And “enthralled” is a word I rarely use about a book.

In the end, I can’t say enough about this book, nor can I adequately say anything meaningful.  I can say this: Wind-Up Bird was the rare book that I highlighted again and again (electronically, that is) because there are parts I want to experience again.

One thing about Murakami is he does seem to have strange views about sexuality, from both of the books I’ve read.  His female characters seem to be completely overwhelmed sexually, like it’s either something painful or horrific, or they can’t get enough of it.  I’m not sure if this is a weird distorted view of women’s sexuality or Murakami’s trying to make a more subtle point.  For the record, I do understand that defilement in this book isn’t generally about sex.  But I still think he portrays women’s sexuality very oddly.  Thoughts?

I really liked the main character – sometimes a character is so passive it’s annoying, but in this book, Okada isn’t really passive at all.  He’s following his instincts even when that means taking action by doing nothing (say, by climbing into an empty well to meditate).  He never stops searching, never gives up faith that he’s on the right track.

My favorite character was May Kasahara, the teenage girl down the street.  He writes her with such a unique voice, unlike the other characters who seem to blend into each other at times.  Most of the quotes I’ve used in this review come from her character.

I haven’t read a lot of Japanese writers, so at times the writing style seems very foreign – and at times not at all.  I know some of that comes from the translation, and some of it may just be cultural differences.  Regardless, I enjoyed this step outside my comfort zone, and I will definitely read more of Murakami’s books.  This may have been my favorite book of the year so far.

Review of The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Note: The Book Stop is on vacation!  This post was written in advance.  But please feel free to comment.

If you like well-written fantasy with a strong female character, this is the book for you.  The Hero and the Crown won a Newbery Medal in 1985, which is awarded once a year to the best novel in children’s literature.  This may be a children’s book, but the writing is incredibly adult.  McKinley gives us a fantasy novel that doesn’t rely on the standard tropes and doesn’t take any easy ways out.

Aerin is the daughter of the king of Damar, but she’s never been accepted by the people because her dead mother was rumored to be a witch who enspelled the king into marrying her.  Even worse, royalty in Damar are expected to manifest some magical talents by adolescence and Aerin has failed on that front.  She’s not beautiful, not talented, and mistrusted by her peers.  Her only support comes from her father, her best friend Tor, who is the next in line to be king, and her maid Teka.

Her life becomes more interesting when she rehabilitates Talat, the old and lamed horse who rescued her father in battle but hasn’t been ridden since.  She also creates a new way of riding without stirrups or a bridle.  She and Talat heal each other.  Then, while reading a book about fighting dragons, she discovers an ancient recipe for an ointment that protects skin from dragonfire.

In the world McKinley has created, dragons are small but because of their fire, incredibly dangerous to kill.  They prey on crops and villages, and it usually takes a team of trained warriors to slay one.  And lately, the threat of dragons has been increasing.

This is an incredible fantasy novel, and a surprisingly challenging read.  McKinley writes in a complex, lyrical style, which is at times almost dreamlike.  Most fantasy isn’t “literary” but this one is.

The book mixes the expected (dragon battles) with the unexpected (her visit to Luthe and the Lake of Dreams).  As with most fantasy, Aerin is destined for more than she realizes.  But each battle is hard fought and nothing comes easy to this heroine.

This is the kind of book I would love for my nieces to read, because I know it will make them think, but also because Aerin beats most heroines for bravery and strength.  I think this is a book you could read a few times and get more out of each time.

Review of The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

I liked the movie but not as much as I expected to.  I loved the book.

The movie was well-cast, well-acted, and rose way above the typical rom-com.  And yet… it was, in the end, a “dance movie”.  Why do movies insist on acting like dancing will heal everyone’s problems?

Without going into a lot of detail about how the book differed from the movie, I’ll just say this: the dance part happens in the middle, not the end.  Pat and Tiffany have issues that can’t just be danced away.

What I loved about this book: Pat Peoples is an amazing character.  He’s not perfect, and he’s not terribly smart, but he’s someone you’ll care about.  I love the way he thinks about literature.  I love that he cries.  And that he loves his wife.  And that he cares about his mother.  And that he’s working towards “being kind, not being right”.  I like that he thinks about what it means to be mentally ill, and how people with problems are treated by society.  And what it means to be a friend.

The movie does a nice job of conveying those things, but the book does it better.

Somehow the book did a better job of not only helping me understand Pat, but also making Tiffany likeable.  She’s not the main character, so you don’t have to love her, and you don’t even have to understand her.  You just have to sympathize.  I found that easier to do in the book than the movie, mainly because the book doesn’t revolve around the dancing quite so much.  Mom is also a more interesting character in the book.

There’s a lot of football in this book, which was a good thing — except while I love football, I hate the Eagles.  Both the book and the movie made me dislike them even more.  Eagles fans seem just fine with beating non-Eagles fans to a pulp.  No, they celebrate it.  Yes, my Redskins have a racist name that bothers the hell out of me – but in general I like our fans.  It’s not easy being a Redskins fan, but at least my life doesn’t revolve around whether they win or lose (although some Sundays it seems to).

This book is funny, smart, romantic and thought-provoking, all in the guise of a rom-com type read.  It never takes itself too seriously even while dealing with serious subjects.  One of my favorite parts is where Pat gives us his version of the dance movie montage (he has to learn the word first from his therapist).

So except for confirming my perception that Eagles fans are basically thugs (the only one that isn’t is the guy who spent years in a mental institution), I liked everything about this book.

In fact, if I wanted to compare this book to something I’ve read recently, I couldn’t.  It’s just different.  You have to like a book where a “dumb jock” reads The Bell Jar and appreciates it.

Pat says he’s living the movie of his life, and he expects it will come out happy.  Only everyone around him says that life doesn’t work that way.  It’s this back and forth about what it means to live in the real world and be a good person, that makes this book so worth the read.

Review of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life is one of those books that’s hard to review.  It’s a challenging read and it’s got glowing critical reviews.  I’m a big fan of Kate Atkinson, so I expected to like it, and I did.  Be warned though, it’s quite a departure from her other books.  This is a book that combines historical fiction with alternate reality and a good dose of philosophy.  It’s been called science fiction although it definitely blurs a lot of genre lines.

As its title suggests, this is a book about Ursula, a girl born in 1910 England to Sylvie and Hugh Todd.  She’s a middle child of five, a serious, introspective child favored by her father but not so much by her mother.  They live at Fox Corner, a fairly idyllic life in a bustling, well-to-do household. Her story would be an average one of anyone who lives through this turbulent time period, except that for some reason, when she dies, she gets to start again.  Not in a new life but the same one – only she gets to do things a little differently each time and that leads her life down many different directions.  She’s an abused wife in one life, and a bomb warden in another.  She dies at birth in one life, and lives into her fifties in another.

To give you a sense of Atkinson’s writing, here’s Ursula’s perspective as a baby:

Bare branches, buds, leaves – the world as she knew it came and went before Ursula’s eyes.  She observed the turn of the seasons for the first time.  She was born with winter already in her bones, but then came the sharp promise of spring, the fattening of the buds, the indolent heat of summer, the mold and mushroom of autumn.  From within the limited frame of the pram hood she saw it all.  To say nothing of the somewhat random embellishments the seasons brought with them – sun, clouds, birds, a stray cricket ball arcing silently overhead, a rainbow once or twice rain more often than she would have liked.

What makes this book so thoughtful and entertaining is that 1) we get to see how many paths one person’s life might take, given slightly different actions in each one; and 2) we get to experience the years of 1910 through WWII through a lot of different perspectives.  Instead of giving us multiple characters experiencing different parts of the war, Atkinson gives us the same character, just with different knowledge and experience.

The challenge is making sense of what this all means.  Is Ursula special or are we all living parallel lives?  This book plays on déjà vu and those uneasy feelings you get that you can’t pin a cause to.  I certainly get those.  You ever get the feeling you shouldn’t get on the road one day, or a gnawing at your stomach but you can’t say why? Or a feeling you know someone when you’ve never met?  In Ursula’s world, all of those feelings have meaning in another life.  The difference is that Ursula occasionally feels strongly enough about those feelings to act on them, and those actions send her life spiraling in a new direction.

Another question the book raises is, are Ursula’s lives building in a way where she’s improving each time?  Or is she saving herself from drowning only to become a lonely alcoholic in another life.  Atkinson seems to be suggesting we can exert some control over our lives (but only some).  She brings in notions of karma, fate, and consciousness.  Philosophy isn’t my strong point, and I have to admit I’m not sure if this is the kitchen sink approach to the subject or if there is one clear meaning Atkinson is trying to convey.

But that’s one of the things that makes this book a worthwhile read.  It’s not an easy read though.  Ursula’s life stops and starts abruptly, and keeping track of the many different characters and timelines is an effort.  Sometimes the book is written chronologically, and sometimes it seems to hop around to different times.

Ursula herself is a fairly stoic character, and at times, like in Nazi Germany, I really wanted to see more emotion from her.  She seems to understand what the Nazis are doing yet has no reaction to it.   Other times, her quiet strength is admirable and when she’s at her lowest points, it can be devastating.

As usual, I’m trying so hard not to say too much, I’m not sure I’m making sense.  This is powerful historical fiction, that plunks you down in the middle of World War I and World War II in a very unique way.  Her description of London during the bombings is particularly vivid.  It’s always fascinating to see these years through the eyes of women, because women’s lives changed in so many ways during this time.  And Kate Atkinson is such a skilled writer, she really takes you there.

I can’t help but compare Atkinson to Kate Morton, having recently read The Secret Keeper.  Both are skilled writers, but where Morton writes everything in high melodrama, Atkinson writes with a depth and subtlety that I much prefer.  You could make any of Morton’s books into a great movie, and her books are certainly enjoyable.  I’d hate to see anyone try to make Life After Life into a movie.

If you like Atkinson, World War II historical fiction, or philosophy, there’s something for you in this book.  Don’t pick up this book expecting a Jackson Brodie-like mystery novel, or straight-up historical fiction.  This is a book you’ll work at, and think about, and appreciate for its complexity.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review of How Angels Die by David-Michael Harding

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author in exchange for a review.  Historical fiction, French Resistance, female spies.  What’s not to like?

In a word, WOW.  This was a Made-Me-Miss-My-Metro-Stop kind of book.  Literally – and I can’t remember the last time that happened.

Honestly, I went into this book with a little skepticism.  I read the first chapter and thought the relationship between the sisters felt a little forced.  One’s a sexy seductress, one’s a tough-as-nails soldier. They seem to have had the same argument for years – is it better to kill people in the name of war or is it better to sleep with them for their secrets?

It’s the story of two sisters in France during the Nazi occupation.  The McCleash family hates the Nazis, they just hate in different ways – Dad rants into his pipes, Mom quietly sews Nazi uniforms, and the two daughters, Claire and Monique, work for the French Resistance.  Monique steals the secrets of Nazi officers by dancing and drinking — and other things when necessary.  Her family hates what she’s doing, but it does have results.  Claire, on the other hand, is a gun-wielding soldier in the Resistance Army who can’t get enough of killing Nazis.  Monique’s weakness is that she longs for love and passion based on honesty.  Claire’s weakness is that she hates so much it threatens to consume her.

The surprise is that Harding brings some subtlety into this story of extremes.  Whose activities are worth more to the Resistance?  Who has the most to lose?  Claire puts her life at risk every day but so does Monique — only Claire earns respect from her father and conspirators while Monique is labeled a whore (the implication being that she really enjoys what she’s doing).  Where are the moral lines, and who is most likely to lose herself in the part that she’s playing?

The appearance of the sisters triggered a soft hum of recognition.  As various members of the movement passed within arm’s reach they stopped to hug Claire or grip her arm in silent acknowledgement.  Of the many who passed, few said a word outside of a soft hello and fewer still acknowledged Monique beyond a negligible nod.

Be warned: this book opens up with a vicious rape.  Harding pulls no punches, which is fine; I don’t want the war sugar-coated.   It’s page-turning historical fiction — brutal but also sad and even beautiful.  Is it over-dramatic at times?  Yes.  This book would be a perfect movie.  And yes, it’s blatantly emotional and even sappy.  But I forgive Harding for that.

If the book goes over the top a few too many times (the idea of Monique as whore/saint gets a little overplayed) it’s got a story that will keep you riveted.  I won’t say more.  Harding introduces a cast of fascinating, at times disturbing characters that you don’t know whether to love or hate, but you won’t forget them.   It starts out a little slow, but at some point in this book I felt like I walked right into Monique and Claire’s lives, it felt that real to me.

That’s when I missed my Metro Stop.  When you look up from a book and don’t know where you are, you know it’s good.

I will say I wish there had been a Jewish character or two in the story.  Harding makes it clear that the Jews are all gone by this time, and maybe that’s historically accurate.  I like to think the French Resistance had a lot of Jewish fighters in it, but maybe that’s only the case earlier in the Occupation.

I can’t tell you whether the book is historically accurate, but I can tell you I couldn’t put it down.

So if French Resistance and sister spies sounds good to you, I highly recommend this book.

Review of What is the What by Dave Eggers

It’s not very often you read a book that really changes your perspective on the world, but this was one of those books.  Now admittedly, I tend to stick my head in the sand when it comes to foreign affairs.  We have so many tragedies at home on a daily basis, how can I wrap my head around the civil wars, massacres, even genocides that happen in so many countries?

But of course we shouldn’t close our eyes to those things, even when there’s little we can do to help.  I read this book to learn, and learn I did.

This is an unusual book because it’s presented as a novel by Dave Eggers, yet it’s really an autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng.  In a Reader’s Guide posted on Valentino’s website, Eggers explains the reason it was written as fiction.  First, they wanted it to be in Valentino’s voice, but his English wasn’t strong enough to write the story.  Second, because he was very young when most of the events of the book happened, it wasn’t realistic to think his story could be considered strictly factual.  Third, in order to humanize the suffering of Sudan’s people, they felt it necessary to write creatively (for example by inventing dialogue).

In my opinion, they succeeded at what they set out to do.  First and foremost, their goal was to tell Valentino’s story and raise awareness of the plight of the South Sudanese.  This book really brought that story to life, in a way that was devastating but also inspiring.

The book tells the story of the Second Sudanese Civil War, a conflict that took place in the 80s and 90s, between the Sudanese Government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army.  Eggers explains that the Government is primarily the Arabic population of the North.  The Southern population of the Dinka people were mostly enslaved or killed.  This is the story of the Lost Boys, children who were orphaned during the war and walked hundreds of miles to find refuge.

I lifted this description from Valentino’s website:

The conflicts between northern and southern Sudan are often understood through their historical roots: centuries of exploitation and slave-raiding by the “Arab” north against the “African” south, followed by Britain and Egypt’s imperialist meddling. Arab tribes first arrived in Sudan from Upper Egypt and across the Red Sea during the Middle Ages, and colonial occupation began in the nineteenth century. However, it is impossible to explain Sudan’s recent conflicts from any single angle or with any simple terms. While religion, race, economic exploitation, and colonialism are all major elements in the crisis, none of these factors fully explains the situation.

Valentino is a young boy when he’s torn from his family and forced to run for his life.  He ends up with the “walking boys”, a group of boys who are being led across Sudan to safety in Ethiopia.  These boys walked hundreds of miles in horrible conditions to get out of the country alive.  As they walk, Valentino sees close friends die of starvation, disease, and murder. There are thousands of boys, walking in different groups, and when one boy drops, the others just have to keep going.

This book is vivid and graphic, but Eggers balances out the devastation with the occasional positive moment of people helping each other any way they can.  But even that can be devastating, because seen through Valentino’s eyes, he never knows when someone is going to give him food or fire a gun at his head.  He experiences both.  Yet through it all he maintains an optimism in human nature that’s naïve but believable.

One of the most striking (and thought-provoking) aspects of this book is Egger’s contrast between the dangers of living in the U.S. with the dangers of life in Sudan.  The boys in the book spend years dreaming of moving to the United States, yet life as a refugee in the U.S. is far from easy, and he’s provided with mentors and a support network for a while.  The book begins with Valentino opening his apartment door in Atlanta to a woman who needs to make a phone call – only he ends up robbed, beaten, and tied up on the floor.  Valentino wonders why it suddenly feels like life in Sudan was safer.

What I appreciated about this book was that it really put the events of Sudan in a context I could understand.  And that’s saying something.  Eggers uses a lot of “fictional” techniques to help the reader understand, like having the walking boy’s leader explain to Valentino the conflict between the Northern and Southern Sudanese (the Arabs and the Dinka).  I can describe it best by saying it reminded me of the movie Titanic, where James Cameron spends a lot of time having his characters explain how the ship works and what went wrong.  It feels a little forced but you need the information.

Eggers effectively puts the events in Sudan in a global context, explaining that the Islamic extremists actually sheltered Osama bin Laden during this time period and then he ties that to the events of September 11.  Similarly, Eggers writes a lot about aid workers who helped the refugees, and the impact of basketball star Manute Bol (also Sudanese) on the boys.  He also explains how the policies of other countries like Britain have impacted the war in Sudan and its likely outcome.

In the end, what gives this book such a punch is the voice of Valentino.  Whether fact or fiction, Valentino is absolutely someone you’ll root for.  Sometimes you think he’s going to conquer the world, and then you realize just how hard it is for him just to survive each day, whether in Sudan or the U.S.

Reading this book, I found myself looking up information about Sudan and wanting to know what happened between the time the book was published (2007) and today.   I also wanted to know how this book has impacted Sudan, and what happened to Valentino.  This is a book you’ll read and then look for a way you can help.  Valentino’s Foundation, or Eggers’ Voice of Witness site, will give you plenty of ideas.

Thanks again to Giraffe Days, for prompting me to open my mind by reading about other countries.  This was an excellent book and one I recommend highly.  It’s also my first book by Eggers, and I plan to read more.

Review: Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

Please Look After Mom is a widely acclaimed Korean novel by Kyung-Sook Shin, which tells the story of a family who lose their mother in a Seoul subway station.  Park So-Nyo is an elderly wife and mother of five who gets separated from her husband in a crowded station and disappears.  The family’s efforts to find her are described from the perspectives of her son, her daughter and her husband.  We experience not only their sense of loss and their treasured memories, but also the conflicts that come with any close family relationship.

A portrait of “Mom” emerges – she’s a mother with high expectations who spends her life feeding and caring for her children and husband, often at the expense of her own needs.  She’s been struggling with severe headaches, and it seems likely that she’s lost “mentally” as well as physically.  Everyone in the family struggles with not being a good enough son/daughter/husband to Mom, and wondering whether they’ll have the chance to make it up to her.

Obviously this is a book that will make you think a lot about your own family.  If someone you loved disappeared, what would you do?  How would you look for them?  What amount of effort and sacrifice would be enough?  And what regrets would you have about your relationship?

I tend to avoid books and movies I think fall into the category of “emotionally manipulative” and at first I worried about that with this book, but I found it raised so many questions and issues that it really rose above the tear-jerker “you don’t know how much you love someone until you might lose them” kind of story.

This novel asks a lot of tough questions, not only about family relationships, but about motherhood itself.  Is this generation of mothers different from the ones that went before us?  Are we more focused on our own happiness versus sacrificing for the needs of our family?  Or, is our pursuit of “happiness” a function of economic stability rather than a generational change?

I expect this is a very different read if you’re a mother yourself.  I couldn’t experience the book in that way — but I can tell you the ideas of sacrifice and putting your children above yourself are things I thought about when deciding whether to have children.

An issue I found compelling was whether motherhood means taking care of everyone else in the family but yourself – is that noble self-sacrifice or unfair to the family?  Is the family willfully blind to her health concerns, or does Mom go too far in resisting any kind of help?

The siblings wonder whether Mom’s life has been a happy one, and this book has no easy answers.  Does motherhood mean not being seen as an individual?  Do we ever really know our parents?

Much of the book is written in second person, which I found distracting from an otherwise well-written and thought-provoking story.  Why are two sections written in second person and one in third?  Who is the narrator?

I enjoyed reading about the holidays, food, and culture of Korea.  The setting is different but the themes are universal – love, family, home, food, parenting.  The book is translated from Korean, so I did wonder at times whether the parts that were difficult to understand may have been a translation issue.  That didn’t happen often.

I’m being pretty restrained so I don’t tell you too much.  This would be a great book to discuss in a book club so you could really get at all the different issues.  I imagine people react to this book in very different, but very personal ways.  An excellent read.

Review of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

My Classics Club list is a list of 50 books and authors I’ve always felt I should read, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is exactly that.  My sense is that past generations of girls had to read this book in school but not anymore.  And if I’m being honest, if a teacher had made me read this book because I was a girl, like Jane Eyre, it would have earned my eternal resentment.

And yet, this was an amazing novel that really immersed me in a different time and place.  And it’s cool to know that generations of women (at least the last few) have been reading this book.

The book was published in the 40s but takes place mostly from about 1912 to 1917.  It shows the U.S. on the cusp of World War I, but also on the cusp of electricity, women’s suffrage, Prohibition, and other changes.  It’s a big story but also a very small story.  It’s the story of Frances Nolan, a girl growing up in poverty with her mother, father, and brother in Brooklyn.  It’s about children sent to sell junk for pennies and haggle with the baker for an extra loaf of stale bread. It’s about picking out penny candy and watching the neighborhood girls dress up to go out on Saturday night.

Francie is eleven when the book begins.  She’s smart, reads a book every day from the library, but struggles in a school with abusive teachers.  Her mother, Katie, works endlessly scrubbing floors and cleaning houses to keep the family alive.  Her father, Johnny, is charismatic, a talented singer, and really understands Frances – unfortunately he’s also an alcoholic who barely works and drinks away all his tip money.  One of the things Frances struggles with is the mother she doesn’t like, who is clearly the better role model but doesn’t have time for affection.  Katie also shows a clear preference for Frances’ brother Neeley, while Johnny adores his daughter.

The title refers to a tree growing outside Francie’s house that grows despite people trying to cut it down.  It grows where it isn’t wanted, on the rough sidewalks of Brooklyn where nothing else grows.  It’s a symbol of strength and perseverance.  Smith’s lack of subtlety here can be forgiven due to the complexity of the rest of the book.  Also the tree is seen through the eyes of young Francie, and I can remember doing the exact same thing when I was her age (romanticizing stars, birds, trees, etc.).

You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined.  You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone’s yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district.  The tree knew.  It came there first.  Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished.  That was the kind of tree it was.  It liked poor people.

That was the kind of tree in Francie’s yard.  It’s umbrellas curled over, around and under her third-floor fire escape.  An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire escape could imagine that she was living in a tree.  That was what Francie imagined every Saturday afternoon in summer.

Francie’s grandparents are Austrian and Irish, and her story is that of many children growing up in the U.S. at this time. I felt like I could see my grandparents growing up in this world, except that my family was Jewish and being Jewish in America in the 1910s may have been a very different experience.  Also, my grandparents were much more recent immigrants to the U.S. than the Nolans.

And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans… She had Johnny’s sentimentality without his good looks.  She had all of Katie’s soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie.  She was made up of all these good and these bad things.  She was made up of more, too.  She was the books she read in the library.  She was the flower in the brown bowl.  Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.  She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly.  She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping.  She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.  She was all of these things and something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living day to day.  It was something that had been born into her and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families.

We see the small aspects of Francie’s daily life as well as the big issues of war, religious and class intolerance, poverty, and illness.  But there’s happiness amidst all the suffering.  Francie is genuinely loved by her family despite their troubles.  She and her brother have a close relationship and she takes great pleasure in her daily trip to the library.

Smith writes about female sexuality in a way that’s pretty blunt and I wonder if it shocked at the time it was written, or even decades later.  She writes about women who enjoy sex but doesn’t ignore the consequences.  Francie grows up in a world where most girls don’t know much about sex, but her mother works too hard to hide the realities of life from her daughter.

I also liked how women are portrayed in this book not as saints or as villains, but as unique individuals.  Of course that’s the mark of good writing, but it can be hard to find literature with such strong female characters.  The women in this book struggle to keep their families together, but they are all different and all have faults.  Francie’s mother struggles to relate to her daughter; her beloved Aunt Sissy is at times irresponsible and struggles to stay in relationships.  Evy is a more distant aunt but still there for her family.  Francie’s grandmother Mary may be the closest to a saint-like character in the book who serves as a guide to her three daughters.

I don’t think this book should be viewed as a book for girls or women, even though I know it is.  I suppose the male characters aren’t nearly as strong as the women.  But the themes of this book are universal.  I’m curious if any men out there have read it and what they thought.

This is a pretty long book, written at a slow-moving pace, but I didn’t mind that.  I found it hard to put down.  Francie is such a great heroine — smart, ambitious, tough, caring — I couldn’t wait to see how she turned out.

Review of At Drake’s Command by David Wesley Hill

Author David Wesley Hill sent me his novel, At Drake’s Command, with a request for review.  I love historical fiction, but I’ve never read the works of C.S. Forester (the Horatio Hornblower series) and Patrick O’Brian (Jack Aubrey) because I’ve been told the books are too nautically-detailed for me to enjoy them.  Still, I enjoyed the movie portrayals of both Hornblower and Aubrey so this seemed worth a read.  I appreciated this book immediately because it’s written from the point of view of a cook, not a sailor, so the nautical terminology and the history felt really accessible to me.  I would compare this book to the works of Naomi Novik (minus the dragons of course).

The main character is Peregrine James, a 20-year-old cook who gets into trouble over a girl, endures a whipping for a crime he didn’t commit, and ends up signing on to work for Francis Drake as an assistant to the ship’s cook.

Out of the corner of my eye I observed her captain striding along the quay side with the swaggering bow-legged step of a man more accustomed to having a heaving deck under the soles of his boots than the solid stone upon which he was walking.  He had a slight limp in one leg, where a piece of lead shot still lodged, a souvenir of battle.  I recognized him by the gold of his hair and by his fiery beard and by the boom of his laughter as he bantered with a companion.  This was no great achievement, however, since everyone in Plymouth, from the lowest scullion to the highest aristocrat, knew him or knew of him.  His name was Drake, Francis Drake.

Perry knows nothing about exploration or sailing, but soon learns that on a ship, everyone’s expected to help with everything.  His first lesson is to climb up the rigging on the ship’s mast, and what seems like a daunting task at first quickly becomes second nature to this smart and adaptable character.

Because he’s compulsively honest, Perry runs into lots of conflicts aboard the ship, which is rife with corruption.  He’s at times a little too brash and too quick-witted to be believable, but it makes for a fun story.

The writing is detail-rich, especially the attention paid to geography.  Hill’s goal in writing this book is to trace the actual route of Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe in 1577.  He does a nice job combining history with entertainment, and also educating the reader at the same time.

Hill notes in the book’s Historical Preface:

The wealth of information about the voyage has allowed me to follow the adventure almost on a daily basis as the fragile wood ships proceeded across the brine.  Google Earth has allowed me to look down upon the places they anchored and to see the large black rock where the crew caught fish five hundred years ago.  Although this is a novel, I have attempted to present an accurate portrayal of the voyage, embellishing history rather than manufacturing it.  Wherever possible, I have used the actual words of my characters, allowing them to speak for themselves across the divide of time.

If you know a ton about nautical history, Hill’s writing style may be distracting.  He tends to explain nautical terms as he writes about them, which I found very helpful.  But then I know little about sailing in the 1500s.  Here’s a good example.

Since morning a sailor had been taking soundings from the bow in order to determine the depth of the ocean, which was a measurement used by navigators to help identify their location and to provide warning of shallow water, an unpredictable danger when approaching an unfamiliar shore.  Every so often he threw overboard a line with a lead weight and allowed it to pay out.  Marks on the line ticked off the length of a fathom, which is the distance between a man’s hands when they are stretched to either side, about two yards.

Perry may seem a little too heroic at times for a young man who has never sailed or fought.  Still, Hill deftly uses Perry’s knowledge of cookery to aid him in times of struggle – he’s more successful fighting enemies using ground chili pepper rather than a sword.  Hill pays a lot of attention to weaponry, which my husband would appreciate.  He also explores a lot of different cultures that the crew encounter on their voyage.

This book is the first of a series, and the end of this book will definitely leave you wanting to read the next one.  Unfortunately it’s being written as we speak, although I’ve been told by the author that the research has been completed so it shouldn’t be long.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for an objective review.  The author had no input in the content of this review.

Review of The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Round House is a compelling book, and I can appreciate all the acclaim it’s received.  I’ve been a fan of Louise Erdrich since I read Love Medicine in college (many years ago).  If this book brings Erdrich the critical acclaim and mainstream readership she deserves (including last year’s National Book Award), then I’m all for it.

This is a tough story to read.  Living on a reservation in North Dakota, Geraldine Coutts survives a brutal rape and she, her husband, and her teenage son Joe must struggle to deal with the aftermath.

The writing is intense, and rich, and often unexpected.  There’s a calmness to the way Erdrich writes, despite the turbulent events of the book.

Even if she’d gone to her sister Clemence’s house to visit afterward, Mom would have returned by now to start dinner.  We both knew that.  Women don’t realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits.  We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones.  Our pulse is set to theirs, and as always on a weekend afternoon we were waiting for my mother to start us ticking away on the evening.

And so, you see, her absence stopped time.

What’s unique about this story is that we experience her tragedy through her son’s eyes.  It’s impossible to imagine how a boy his age, already dealing with turmoil in his life, can possibly deal with this as well.  How does a teenage boy process what it means to be raped?  To be violently beaten and threatened with murder?  To live with knowing the attacker may never face justice because there’s not enough evidence –or because complicated tribal laws limit whether the crime can even be prosecuted.

Joe is narrating this book as an adult, many years later, so Erdrich gives him the voice of an adult, but the emotions of a 13-year-old, which is a difficult balance to pull off.

Much later, after I had gone into law and gone back and examined every document I could find, every statement, relived every moment of that day and the days that followed, I understood that this was when my father had learned from Dr. Egge the details and extent of my mother’s injuries.  But that day, all I knew, after Clemence separated me from my father and led me away, was that the hallway was a steep incline.  I went back through the doors and let Clemence talk to my father.  After I’d sat for about half an hour in the waiting room, Clemence came in and told me that my mother was going into surgery.  She held my hand.  We sat together staring at a picture of a pioneer woman, sitting on a hot hillside with her baby lying next to her, shaded beneath a black umbrella.  We agreed that we had never really cared for the picture and now we were going to actively hate it, though this was not the picture’s fault.

Joe sees his parents falling apart, but he doesn’t understand why his mother isn’t healing more quickly.  As an adult (and female) reader, I could understand that his mother’s recovery would be much more emotional than physical.  As adults we can understand that rape involves more than just a physical assault – it brings with it fear, shame, powerlessness, violation, etc.

But as a boy at a very difficult age, not only is Joe unable to understand these things, he struggles with the emotional loss of his parents at a time he really needs them.  That, more than anything, was what made this book heartbreaking.  Because a teenager’s life doesn’t stop because something terrible happens.  In this story we see not only a tragedy but Joe’s day to day struggle just to grow into an adult, without the support of the loving parents he’s always known.

This book has a lot of different layers to it.  There’s the story of the family, but it’s also a coming of age story of Joe and his friends.  And it’s a story of the tribal judicial system, and how difficult it is to achieve justice.  I was pretty shocked by some of the rape statistics that Erdrich offers in her Afterword.  For example, she states that 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime (and that figure may be higher as most women don’t report).  86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men, and few are prosecuted.

If I hesitate a little to recommend this book, I think it was mostly a pacing issue.  It moves slowly and thoughtfully – yet while I could appreciate the writing, the story, the emotions, I also didn’t get completely sucked into it.  It felt at times like more of a “should read” than a “must read”.

And yet, in the end, I have great admiration for the story that Erdrich has told.  Some books you wrestle with long after you put them down, and this is one of them.