The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

According to the author’s bio in The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of six novels, including Never Let Me Go and Remains of the Day, which won the Booker Prize and was adapted into an award-winning film.  Ishiguro’s work has been translated into forty languages.  In 1995, he received an Order of the British Empire for service to literature, and in 1998 was named a Chevalier [of the Order of Arts and Letters] by the French government.  All his novels have a serene and ethereal feel to them.  His latest novel, The Buried Giant, has these qualities, while conveying the atmosphere and setting of the middle ages.

Axl and Beatrice have lived a long life together.  Their village consisted of a series of chambers making up a warren.  Their chamber sat close to the opening, as if near death, they could easily leave, and a slightly younger couple could move into that living space.  One day, he rises early.  Ishiguro writes, “…on this particular morning, Axl had abandoned his bed altogether and slipped quietly outside to sit on the old warped bench beside the entrance to the warren in wait for the first signs of daylight.  It was spring, but the air still felt bitter, even with Beatrice’s cloak, which he had taken on his way out and wrapped around himself.  Yet, he had become so absorbed in his thoughts that by the time he realized how cold he was, the stars had all but gone, a glow was spreading on the horizon, and the first notes of birdsong were emerging in the dimness. // He rose slowly to his feet, regretting having stayed out so long.  He was in good health, but it had taken a while to shake off his last fever and he did not want it to return.  Now he could feel the damp in his legs, but as he turned to go back inside, he was well satisfied: for he had this morning succeeded in remembering a number of things that had eluded him for some time” (5).

Axl does not suffer from dementia, nor from Alzheimer’s.  His land is poisoned by the breath of a dragon which robs the inhabitants of their memory.  Ishiguro writes, “…in this community the past was rarely discussed. […] it had somehow faded into a mist as dense as that which hung over the marshes” (7).  I sense a great allegory in this tale, but only a second reading -- with that in mind -- will reveal the underlying truth of this story.

Ishiguro has written a tale part errant knights of the round table, part Beowulf, and part Lord of the Rings, and all adventure.  Axl and Beatrice are deeply in love, and they have suddenly recalled their long lost son who moved to another village.  They decide to go in search of him, so they can spend their final days with him.

I have read three of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels, and I found all absorbing, stimulating, and thought-provoking.  I am positive The Buried Giant will not be my last novel by this talented and entertaining author.  5 stars

--Chiron, 6/19/15

The Green Road by Anne Enright

My Irish roots occasionally lead me to wander into stories of the “Olde Sod.”  When one of those stories comes from the quill of a Man Booker Prize winner, I have no hesitation at all.  Ann Enright’s 2015 novel, The Green Road, tells the story of a family dispersed around the globe. 

Rosaleen Madigan is the matriarch of her four children.  Dan announces he wants to become a priest, and this drives his mother into a funk which last over a month.  She is unable to get out of bed.  Constance – the only sibling to remain in Ireland -- marries Dessie, a local real estate developer, and they have three children, Donal, Rory, and Shauna.  Emmet wanders the globe doing good deeds in impoverished nations.  He is in a relationship with Alice – a fellow activist -- which breaks apart as the novel begins.  Hannah is the youngest.  She is a film actress who lives in Los Angeles with Hugh and their infant child.  This might seem an often used scenario, but Enright delves into what drives this family apart with a rather interesting prose narrative.

Dan moves to New York and engages in some risky relationships.  Constance is driven to distraction by the demands of her mother.  Emmet loses Alice who takes off for a distant area of the globe.  Hannah is an alcoholic, who suffers from depression following the birth of her child.  Complications to all these problems arise from Rosaleen’s obliviousness to the truth about her family.

Enright delves into the turmoil in the lives of each of these children.  For example, she writes about Constance, who has discovered a growth in her breast. “If she had gone to New York she would not have worried about cancer now.  She would have been jogging for years, living on wheatgrass, she would have a yoga ‘practice’, maybe even a personal trainer, and her children would be – she could not imagine what her New York Children would have been like – whiny, at a guess, that mixture of entitlement you saw in city kids.  Her children would be fewer.  Her children would not exist.  Their souls would call to her from the eyes of strangers, as though they’d found some other way into the world.  She would turn in the street to look at them twice: who are you?”  (87).  Enright alludes to the allure of exaggerated ideas of the new world tinged with realism and some wishful thinking.  My introduction to Enright was her 2007 Booker Prize winner, The Gathering, which dealt with similar themes – family relationships, love, sex, and the Irish Zeitgeist.

Each chapter is devoted to one of the family members.  In one, Rosaleen wanders around her home nattering about the past.  Ann writes, “The kitchen was the easiest room in the house, with the heat of the range and two windows, one facing south and the other west.  But it was November, and there were days when she filled a hot water bottle just to make it down the hall.  Outside she had a winter flowering cherry set against the silhouetted winter branches, but it would not bloom for many weeks yet.  Meanwhile, she had no evergreens, for being too depressing, and every November she thought about a blue spruce, or those needle-thin Italian pines, and every November she decided against.  It was an Irish garden.  A broadleaf garden, except for the monkey puzzle at the front of the house.  Straggly now – there were dead and half dead branches for fifty feet or more, but it was her father’s tree and nothing gave her more pleasure.  The monkey puzzle was allowed, as Dan used to say” (145).

Ann Enright’s novel, The Green Road, with nearly rare expletives and a few sexual references, is an absorbing, interesting look at modern Ireland.  The ending is tense as the clan gathers for what may be their last Christmas together.  5 stars

--Chiron, 6/25/15

The Dog by Joseph O'Neill

Joseph O’Neill won the PEN/Faulkner fiction award for the novel Netherland in 2009.  The novel describes the life, in New York, of a man from The Netherlands.  In an attempt to acclimate himself to his new land, he joins a cricket club and begins playing with the team.  The novel is about finding one’s way and place in a foreign land.  He continues this theme in his latest novel, The Dog.

O’Neill was born in Cork County, Ireland of an Irish father and a Syrian Catholic mother.  His family traveled a lot, but they settled in England, where O’Neill became a barrister with chambers in the Temple.  He handled business law cases.  Since 1998 he has lived in New York City where he teaches at Bard College.

The Dog is a peculiar, yet engaging story of a man distraught over a break-up with Jenn, his partner.  He runs into a college friend, Eddie Batros, the youngest son of a wealthy resident of Dubai.  He offers the narrator a job as “Family Officer,” which has a vague, but eclectic, list of duties.  These duties include anything from babysitting a 14-year-old, Alain, who is struggling in school to approving checks for the family foundation.  The name of this narrator is never specifically mentioned, but he refers to himself as “I/Godfrey Pardew.”  The story also includes a number of unusual characters, who make his attempt to assimilate into the Dubai culture all the more difficult.

O’Neill uses long, long sentences with numerous parentheticals.  He sometimes closes sentences with as many as 3, 4, 5, or even 6.  He writes in one instance, “(In my book, the win-win-win ideal, valuable advance though it is on the mere win-win, does not go far enough.  It seems unsatisfactory to restrict the stakeholders in a given transaction to the two transactors plus the inescapable third party, to wit, the planetary/global lot. There is a fourth admittedly subjective and conceptually vague interest at stake, namely the effect of the transaction in terms of the human race’s susceptibility to downfall or glory.  And I suspect, uselessly and a little awfully, that the definition there must be a further, fifth plane of moral reality, beyond our animal comprehension, involving interest that transcend even the destinies of our planet and of the human soul.  I do not mean the divine or the universal as such.  Nor am I mystically hinting at some cosmic good news.  If only I were!)” (86).

An old say goes, “Once a lawyer, always a lawyer.”  O’Neill is a lawyer; I/Godfrey Pardew is a lawyer, so inevitability the bony hand of the law guides some of the prose.  Pardew also has a fondness for writing email which are requests for clarifications, complaints, and candid opinions.  However, he never sends any of these letters.  He fails to completely understand the culture of Dubai, and it costs him in the end.

Pardew’s days consist of shuffling paper, signing a few documents, talking to Alain and his assistant Ali, drinking, scuba diving, and relaxing in his massage chair.  While the story in The Dog by Joseph O’Neill does hold the reader’s interest, the meanderings of his mind and sentences, at whose length the mind boggles, did become a tad annoying.  Only my wondering at what might happen to him tenuously held me from invoking the Rule of 50.  4 stars.

--Chiron, 6/10/15

So It Goes, Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields

Back in the 60s, everyone read Kurt Vonnegut – for his humor, his satire, his snarky comments, and his off-beat and quirky style.  I tried Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5.  I rated both “Meh!”  Recently I came across some of his later works, and I went back and re-read the two early novels.  While I didn’t really enjoy, the novels, I was curious about them.  Then, along comes a new biography of Vonnegut, And So It Goes, by Charles J. Shields.  Now I have a much better understanding of Vonnegut and a greater appreciation for his work.

Shields authored Mockingbird, a best-selling biography of Harper Lee.  A former teacher, Shields has served as a reporter for NPR, a journalist, and the author of several non-fiction books for children.  His biography of Vonnegut, is detailed, well-documented, and illustrated with several photos of important people and moments in the life of the quirky author.

Kurt Vonnegut had a difficult life.  He constantly found himself in the shadow of his older brother, Bernard, who informed the young Kurt he was “an accident.”  He also had a difficult relationship with his father.  Added to that was a rocky marriage complicated by the arrival several nieces and nephews orphaned by a train wreck (their father) and the death of Alice (their mother) of cancer a few days later.

At a party, Kurt sat down to play the piano.  Two women joined him, and the bench collapsed.  Shield’s writes, “Beneath the hilarity, though, several women got the impression that [Kurt’s wife] Jane, pregnant, already had two children on her hands: three-year-old Mark and her husband.  ‘Being Mrs. Vonnegut,” said one of her friends, ‘was not a nine-to-five-job because he was not inclined to do things for himself.’  When attention strayed from Kurt, she tried to direct it back to him.  He didn’t deem like the typical father, either, at least to another dad at the party – rather distant, in fact.  When Mark [Kurt’s son] rode his tricycle into the room, Kurt said quietly, ‘Mark, that’s gauche,’ and let it go at that.  Nevertheless, Jane whisked around the party, floating on happiness. // Two months later, on December 29, their second child Edith was born.”  (110).

Vonnegut also had a peculiar relationship with his wife.  Kurt wanted to move to Cape Cod where he could befriend other writers, and have the peace and solitude he needed to write.  Shields explains, “From now on, they would live for the arts.  They would read the best and latest books, discuss them, make notes to each other in the margins, and give full rein to Kurt’s career in a location that couldn’t be more salubrious for creativity.  They must do it – to be true to themselves.  And for Kurt it was the vicarious realization of his mother’s dream to live and write on Cape Cod’ (118).  Vonnegut also agonized over the suicide of his mother.  This tragedy, together with his knotty relationships and his World War II experiences as a P.O.W. in Dresden during the horrific firebombing by British and American air forces, shaped his personality and informed his style. 

Kurt Vonnegut is an important figure in post-war fiction.  Charles J. Shields’ biography, And So It Goes, Kurt Vonnegut: A Life sheds a brilliant light on this quirky writer.  It also led me to a better understanding of his fiction.  5 stars.

--Chiron, 6/2/15

 

The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee by Marja Mills

Reading Marja Mills’ memoir of her brief time spent with Nelle Harper Lee has much in common with mining for gold.  The successful prospector must sift through tons of dross to acquire a few nuggets of gold.  I expected much, much more insight into the author of the great, iconic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.  Instead I got a load of information I found irrelevant, uninteresting, and completely lacking in insight to Harper Lee.

Our book club read the Charles J. Shields’ unauthorized biography of Nelle Lee, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee a few years ago.  We all thoroughly enjoyed the tantalizingly brief insights into her life.  Lee is widely known as unwilling to give interviews, speak at public functions, or sign copies of her book.  A first edition of TKAM runs to nearly $40,000.  Had Mills’ book not appeared on my club’s reading list, I would have imitated the writer Helene Hanff, who threw a book against the wall, which disappointed her.

Marja Mills was a reporter for The Chicago Tribune.  The Chicago Public Library had chosen To Kill a Mockingbird as the first selection for the “One Book, One Chicago” reading program.  Mills’ editor asked her to travel to Monroeville, Alabama, and see if she could find enough information about the reclusive Harper Lee for a long feature story.

Mills wrote to Nelle’s sister, Alice, and politely asked if she could meet with her.  Alice, and later Nelle, began meeting with Mills, and a friendship gradually emerged.  Mills later moved into the house next door to Alice and Nelle.  The three women shared many of their daily routines.  Sounds great, right?  No.

The first thing that annoyed me was the insertion of Mills into the story.  I detest “new journalism” – ironically pioneered by Truman Capote a close friend of Harper’s when they were children.  Harper assisted Capote in researching his best selling work, In Cold Blood.  Lee detested “new journalism” – according to Mills in the early pages of the memoir.  The Lee sisters were always gracious and patient with Mills and gave her a unique insight into the lives of the two sisters.  The least Mills could have done was remove the tons of dross cluttering up this memoir.

Only available photo of Marja Mills

Secondly, I found the repetitious nature of her writing highly annoying.  After a couple of mentions, I began counting how many times Mills told the reader A.C. Lee – Nelle and Alice’s father – was the model for Atticus Finch.  I counted five times.  I also found her teasing very off-putting.  She would begin a story, then suddenly drop it, as though she was told that particular story was off the record.  She also mentioned a secret fishing hole the sisters enjoyed, but after mentioning how hard it was to find, she gave detailed directions to the spot.  Topping this list of complaints were a couple of chapters devoted solely to Mills personal situation, with only a mention she had to cancel a trip for coffee to a local fast-food restaurant.

Mills could have easily written a biography of Alice Lee, who played an important roll in the life of Nelle and in the friendship Mills was able to develop.  At more than 90 years of age, she continued to work as a lawyer in Monroeville.

My only hope is that Marja Mills has gathered enough information for a complete and authorized biography of Harper Lee, which was given to her on the proviso that the book not be published until after her death.  For all these reasons, Nelle and Alice each get a star for their charm, politeness, and hospitality toward Mills, so that helps Mockingbird Next Door reach 3 stars.

--Chiron, 5/30/15