Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman by Alice Steinbach

I found this September read for my book club mildly interesting with a few annoyances. Perhaps the teacher in me came on too strong, but I think the “adventures” she recounts were more an excuse for paid vacations and free travel than learning things as she proclaimed in her preface. Steinbach had an idea for a book, and convinced the publisher to bankroll these trips. If not, she got in a lot of traveling on the tax payers dime.

After all, how much could she learn arriving halfway through an eight-week course on cooking in Paris – missing all the basics – and then leaving a week before the class concluded? The trip to Havana was another example. She went there to study the art and architecture of Cuba, but spent most of her time in clubs and bars dancing and listening to local musicians.

Not that the book is entirely without merit. I loved the chapter on her visit to Winchester and a gathering of aficionados of Jane Austen. She really did learn something, and so did I. Even this adventure had a minor annoyance. She proclaimed she loved Austen, whom she had read since she was twelve. Then she frets about matching Emma with Mr. Darcy – too big a mistake for anyone who read Austen more than once to make! She did become adept and turning away questions about arcane details in Austen’s novels.

If I had never visited Florence, Italy, her chapter on this magnificent city would have done nothing to make me start planning a trip there.

Another chapter I really enjoyed was the adventure set in Prague. Mostly this one revolved around Czech literature and writers. I also got a tip on an interesting novel, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal. This novel is one long sentence. I also picked up some ideas for exercises in my creative writing class.

Her relationship with a Japanese man also intruded a bit too much into the story for my tastes. Not only did he show up twice, but she felt compelled to include letters updating him on her adventures, as well as some comments which hinted that the relationship was more than mere pen pals.

If I were reading this book on my own, I would have skipped some of the chapters after a couple of pages. But, since my book club was reading it, I felt I should slog through. The opinion of the club members seemed decidedly mixed. (3 stars)

--Chiron, 10/3/10

Truth: Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough to Tell by Ellen Douglas

Ellen Douglas wrote eight novels when she published this memoir in 1998. As the dust jacket says, “Douglas is the pseudonym for Josephine Haxton, whose family roots extend back to the earliest days in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. These four tales describe her search for details of her ancestors. Sometimes she meets with talkative relatives who surprise her with some interesting information. Others stonewall her search, because she used the information from previous interviews in her novels and changed some important details.

This work should interest those who enjoy the historical aspects of fiction. Douglas talks about how she could use some people and incidents from her investigation in her next novel. Her meticulous search of records and memories of her family – and those who knew her family – adds a lot of weight to these tales. She readily admits when she will have to fill in gaps.

The most interesting of the four stories – “Julia and Nellie” – tells the history of her paternal grandmother, Nellie, and her friend, Julia, and a cousin, Dunbar (Dunny). Her prose has a soft and gentle quality – musical, enchanting, and absorbing. “I am sure now that I remember my grandmother and Julia—and Dunny, too—on the gallery at The Forest on a long, hot summer afternoon. I recall an embrace and then the two women in intimate, quiet conversation. I hear their soft voices, Julia’s pitched a shade lower than my grandmother’s, the voices, it seems to me now, of ghosts, alive only in my head and only for the time left to me to remember them. I remember the call and response of those voices as I might remember music—the oboe making room for the flute and then meditatively answering—and, like oboe and flute, they speak with deep emotion, but wordlessly.” (81)

One incident in particular eluded her best efforts to uncover details. In 1861, an unknown number of slaves were tortured and whipped, and some were executed, because of a plot to kill slave owners as soon as “Mr. Lincoln and his army” came to Mississippi. Several “gentlemen of the county” served as judges, jury, and executioners. No newspapers reported the event, no record of any burials exist. The only evidence Douglas uncovered involved lists of slaves “interviewed” about the plot.

I most definitely need to track down some of those novels. (5 stars)

--Chiron, 9/26/10

Chef by Jaspreet Singh

Confusion best explains my feelings about this novel. Chef tells the story of Kip, a retired soldier in the Indian army, who served as a chef for General Kumar, a hero of the Wars between India and Pakistan. Kip is the son of a military hero, and Kumar named him as an apprentice cook to fast-track him to a military career as an officer. At first he learns from the General’s cook, Chef Kishen, but after Kishen’s suicide, he takes over General Kumar’s kitchen. Most of the story involves flashbacks. The novel opens fourteen years after Kip leaves the army. He recounts his memories as he travels by train to prepare a wedding feast for the daughter of General Kumar.

Food plays an integral role in this story – Jaspreet compares almost everything to ingredients, recipes, and dishes. Kishen and Kip find particular delight in adapting Indian, Pakistani, and foreign dishes to the tastes of Kumar and his staff. Jaspreet writes, “Most important things in our lives, like recipes, cannot be shared. They remain within us with a dash of this and a whiff of that and trouble our bones” (4). This pretty much sums up the novel, since Kip – and most of the characters -- carry secrets all over the map of the disputed territory of Kashmir.

It has always been my custom to circle words I do not know when I am reading. Then, when I come to a stopping point, I look them up and write the definition in the margin. I started doing this in Chef on the first page, but after a dozen pages or so, I gave this up.

If this novel has a flaw – one common among many “ethnic” novels – it is because of many, many terms completely unfamiliar to me. I could only work out a few from the context. I gathered most were ingredients and dishes peculiar to the Indian sub-continent and the area of the Kashmir/Pakistan border. Other than that, I had no idea how those ingredients fit into the story.

If I decide to read this novel again, I think I will try and find a dictionary of food for the Indian Sub-continent. (4 stars?)

--Chiron, 9/20/10

Blind Descent by James M. Tabor

I heard about this book on NPR, and it sounded like another Wild Trees by Robert Preston (see my review here), but it did have a few differences. Tabor has an interesting subject about a place and activity I could never hope or want to experience. With my fear of heights and tight spaces, extreme cave diving and giant redwood climbing are definitely not for me.

Blind Descent tells the story of two teams of cave explorers searching for the deepest cave on earth. Tabor reminds us that the tallest mountains, both poles, and the deepest depths of the ocean have been explored, while the subterranean world presents an “eighth continent,” which remains virtually unexamined. He compares “cave divers” to all these great adventurers – Scott, Amundsen, Neil Armstrong, Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay.

The American team, led by Bill Stone, explores Cheve Cave in Mexico, while a Russian team, led by Alexander Klimchouk, tackles Krubera on the Arabika Mastiff in Georgia, the former Soviet Republic. These two men have diametrically opposite personalities, and both teams believe their respective caves are the deepest. The story starts slowly – spending a bit too many pages on the personality and relationships of Bill Stone, to my mind – but it does pick up once we get past all the quirks of the two team leaders.

These men and women face incredible obstacles – raging waters, strange microbes, falling rocks, water-filled “sumps” (flooded tunnels), and darkness for weeks at a time. Also, even minor injuries often prove fatal, because it might take days to return to the cave entrance. Furthermore, these two caves were in remote areas, so help was not nearby. Even if a rescue could be attempted, stretchers carrying injured cavers often don’t fit through small spaces and cracks in the cave walls.

James Tabor is not Robert Preston, who has experience writing for The New Yorker. This interesting story could benefit from some detailed drawings of some of the equipment they used to descend into these “super caves.” Preston supplies a few drawings of the giant trees.

The idea of climbing mountains and diving these dangerous caves might appeal to some – but most definitely not me. The great mountaineer George Leigh Mallory said he climbed, “Because it’s there.” He attempted to scale Mt. Everest three times, and may or may not have reached the summit in 1924. He never came back from that attempt. I do not understand this sentiment, but thanks to Preston and Tabor, readers – even timid ones like me! -- can vicariously experience these great adventures. (4-1/2 stars)

--Chiron, 9/17/10

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow

Some of the best fiction published these days comes from smaller presses. Although Algonquin Press of Chapel Hill is a subsidiary of Workman Publishing, it still seems like a small press to me. Their cutting edge fiction, with its thrills and surprises, is most definitely difficult to put down. Amazing arrays of interesting characters, together with masterful prose, have become hallmarks of Algonquin.

In The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Heidi W. Durrow has continued the Algonquin tradition of fine fiction with a mesmerizing story, dream-like at times, and made from equal parts of recollection and repression of horrific events. She has created a wonderful cast of intriguing and well-rounded characters. Each chapter is like a piece in the puzzle. Slowly, the reader makes the outline of the picture, and bit by bit, fills in all the blank spaces.

This novel won the Bellwether Prize. Barbara Kingsolver, who founded the Bellwether Prize for fiction in support of social change, writes on the website, “Fiction has a unique capacity to bring difficult issues to a broad readership on a personal level, creating empathy in a reader’s heart for the theoretical stranger. Its capacity for invoking moral and social responsibility is enormous. Throughout history, every movement toward a more peaceful and humane world has begun with those who imagined the possibilities. The Bellwether Prize seeks to support the imagination of humane possibilities.” Durrow richly deserves The Bellwether Prize.


Rachel’s mother, Mor, is a blue-eyed, blonde Danish woman, who met and married her father, Roger, a Black American soldier while he was stationed in Germany. Shortly after a divorce, Mor’s death occurs, and Rachel finds herself caught between two worlds. She leaves Chicago to live with her paternal Grandmother, Doris, who wrenches Rachel from the white world of Mor into a traditional African-American world.

Girl revolves around Rachel’s attempt to adjust to the changes in her life. She runs into conflicts everywhere – black girls tease her because of her blue eyes; white children tease her because of her hair. But she has friends, especially Brick, who witnessed the “accident” which took Mor’s life. He guards this secret until he can tell Rachel. His story – along with Rachel’s repressed memories – finish the tapestry of this tragic tale.

Brick travels across the country to find Rachel. He finally meets up with her in Portland, Oregon, and they become friends before she knows his real identity and what he knows. Durrow writes,

For weeks Brick wondered how to approach Rachel – how to tell the story he’d promised to tell. He often joined her for lunch with Jesse. They would each get a slice of pizza or a sandwich at the deli and then eat in Pioneer Courthouse Square watching people go by.

Rachel never talked about herself. When Brick asked her where she lived in Chicago, she said she couldn’t remember. The way she shut off – her eyes went blank; her voice went low – he knew Chicago wasn’t a memory she visited often. He would have to find the right moment to tell her the story he’d promised Roger he’d share. (211)

This first novel is so stunning, I can’t wait for Durrow’s next work. Who said books and the novel are dead? As long as Algonquin Press continues to discover new writers and turn out fiction of this quality, readers will have plenty to occupy themselves during those quiet moments when curling up with a book is the only remedy for what ails a body and a mind. Five stars

--Chiron, 9/7/10

Lust, Violence, Religion: Life in Historic Waco Compiled by Bradley T. Turner

When I arrived in Waco in August of 1993, I had only vague notions about the city that would become my home. I knew it was the home of Baylor University.

Bradley Turner has assembled a collection of essays which fills gaps in my knowledge of the colorful, amusing, and sometimes disturbing history of a town that became the thriving city it is today. Whether someone has spent an entire life here, or merely arrived last month, Lust, Violence, Religion will shed light on the evolution of Waco.

Organized around events and social institutions from prostitution to the story of the circuit riding preachers and the establishment of religious denominations, the full gamut of life on the Brazos becomes vividly clear. While the essays are a bit uneven, several of them really stand out. Numerous interesting “then and now” photos of locations mentioned in the text add to my interest in the stories.

The second essay, “Waco Undressed,” relates the story of the “oldest profession” legalized in the late 19th century in Waco. The red-light district on Second Street, dubbed the “Reservation,” thrived until 1917. Threats from the Army to close the new military base, Camp MacArthur, caused the city to shut down the sex-trade. Meticulous research of city records showed these businesses provided a substantial amount of income for the city barely fifty years young.

The most startling essay concerns William Brann, the founder and publisher of a local paper known as The Iconoclast. He began a war of words with Baylor University, which divided the city into factions. When it turned violent, several people, including Brann, died in the conflict.

The history of Cameron Park reveals the generosity of the Cameron family, who donated this peaceful and beautiful Waco landmark. It also uncovers a terrible side of Waco’s history during the Jim Crow era. African-American citizens were barred from using the park despite the fact that the Cameron family “stipulated that the land be used exclusively as a public park for the ‘pleasure of the people’ of Waco.”

The final essay on protests against the War in Viet Nam provide interesting contrasts to my own college years in the late 60s. The photos and essay on the tornado of 1953 only begin to hint at what must have been a terror-filled 35 minutes. Newspaper articles and ads show how the community came together in the cleanup after the storm.

However, the most powerful – and horrific – stories of early Waco relate shameful lynchings and murders, especially that of Jesse Washington in 1916. Some disturbing photos may not be suitable for all readers, but those pictures graphically demonstrate the inhumanity engendered by racial prejudice. The fact that Jesse Washington proved to be innocent adds a bitter conclusion to the essay.

All in all, Lust, Violence, Religion: Life in Historic Waco provides a more than worthwhile history of the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly of early Waco. 4 stars

--Chiron, 9/03/10

Songs of Enchantment by Ben Okri

I first encountered Ben Okri in a post-colonial fiction class in grad school – oh how I miss those days of nothing but reading, writing, and discussing great literature! We read The Famished Road, which won the Booker Prize in 1991. I really loved that book of magic spirit children and an interesting West African culture. Road currently sits on my list of books read long ago and due for a re-read.

Songs of Enchantment also has the magic of spirit children, -- and many of the same characters from The Famished Road -- but this novel goes way over the top. It reads like magic realism on steroids. Virtually the entire novel has visions, dreams, spirits, and all sorts of supernatural doings.

Reading Okri's work requires getting accustomed to the style, but it does take on a lyrical flow. Unfortunately, the symbolism, cultural references, and allegorical elements of Nigerian history eluded me. This book needs to be read in a group setting – a graduate school class, for example – or with a dictionary of West African mythology.

Songs tells the story of Azara, a spirit-child, and his family in a Nigerian village. This example of a passage represents the style of almost the entire novel. Azara and his father have walked into the forest. The child’s father comments, “The forest is dreaming” (24), and they decide to go home. Suddenly they find themselves beset by strange sounds.

“We ran into a quivering universe, into resplendent and secret worlds. We ran through an abode of spirits, through the disconsolate forms of mesmeric dreams of hidden gods, through a sepia fog thick with hybrid beings, through the yellow village of invisible crows, past susurrant marketplaces of the unborn, and into the sprawling ghomind-infested alabaster landscapes of the recently dead. We kept pushing on through the inscrutable resistance of the moon-scented air, trying to find the road back into our familiar reality. But the road eluded us and we troubled the invisible forms of great trees with our breathing, and the spirits of extinct animals with our fear. Our heads pulsated with an infernal violet heat” (25).

I think I might do some research and give this one another try, but right now, only the poetic language and the flow save it. 3 stars

--Chiron, 8/27/10

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards

Sometimes a book we read loses something over the years, and sometimes, a book loses nothing. However, once in a great while, a book comes along which ages like a fine wine kept at exactly the right temperature. Since I first read The Book of Ebenezer Le Page back in the early 80s, I have thought about it many times – when I worked with my friend Bob (this was the first book he recommended I read), both times when I saw the PBS special, Island at War (a fictional account of the German occupation of the Channel islands from 1940 to 1945), and when my book club recently read The Guernsey Literary and Potato-Peel Pie Society (a memoir of a woman who lived through the occupation). Many of the incidents in the last two appear in Edwards’ fictional memoir. The patience, independence, and cleverness of the islanders showed through in all these works, but G.B. Edwards’ work has the distinction of the voice of an islander who uses his own patois – mixed in with some German, French, and curious phonetic transcriptions. A helpful glossary appears at the end of editions I have seen.

I loved this book then, and I am even fonder of it now. My book club meets this coming Thursday (8/26/10), and I can’t wait to hear what the others thought of it.

Not much information about Edwards has survived. He was a teacher of literature, and no one knew about this novel until the manuscript turned up after his death. Edwards is seated in the picture at left.

Ebenezer Le Page was born and spent his entire life on the Island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands group off the coast of France, which became the only British territory occupied by the Germans during World War II. He tells the story of the island as it struggled with World War I and its aftermath, through World War II and the occupation, and on into the 60s and the changes wrought by that turbulent period. Ebenezer is a kindly gent, but he does edge toward the curmudgeon in his later years, trying to deal with automobiles, tourists, banks, and television.

I did not so much read this book, but rather sat and listened by the fire as an old timer told me of his life. He says, as he explains his book to a friend, “‘I have tried to put down the worst as well as the best, but you got to read between the lines’” (374). The honesty, the humor, the passion, the folly, the hard work, the play, all have the feel of immediacy and truth found in few books. Ebenezer writes, “I didn’t want to wake up and find myself dead” (369), and “‘It take all sorts to make a world, my boy; or you, for one, wouldn’t be allowed to live in it’” (335).

Ebenezer has and recalls opinions of others on everything, and one of his funnier moments came in a talk with his friend, Paddy, who worked as a tour guide for the islands. “The most to be dreaded was widows on the loose. Once her husband is dead, a woman gets a new lease of life,’ he said: ‘and she knows all the tricks. Middle-aged couples was easy: the husband did what he was told, or she had to keep watch on him. In either case the woman had her hands full. The lonely hearts was a bloody nuisance’” (311). Ebenezer has his opinion of women, too. “A man got to be careful what he say to a woman; or she will turn it upside-down and inside-out and use it as evidence against him” (186).

Ebenezer always had a thoughtful streak, and really kept his cards close to his chest. But he did pour everything into his book. He writes, “I doubt everything I hear, even if I say it myself; and, after things I have been through and seen happen to other people on this island and known to have happened in the world, I sometimes wonder about the existence of God: but I know I am Ebenezer Le Page” (143).

This novel requires a leisurely read. The prose is mesmerizing, and a reader can easily become lost in the mind of Ebenezer. I forced myself to put it down at critical periods to relax and reflect on what happened in the last section I read. Sometimes, I would go back a few pages and re-read before jumping into the next chapter. I will read the story of Ebenezer Le Page again one of these days, and I am sure it will only continue to improve. (5 stars)

--Chiron, 8/22/10

The Last Estate by Conor Bowman

One of my favorite works from the Middle Ages is the poem “Lanval” by Marie de France. Lanval, a handsome, courageous, but penniless knight of King Arthurs’s Round Table, has been ignored by his fellow knights. One day, he meets an incredibly beautiful, fabulously wealthy woman, who has traveled for the sole purpose of making Lanval her lover. She also has magic, and grants Lanval anything he wants or needs, on one condition: he must not reveal their love for each other.

Conor Bowman’s novel, The Last Estate, has almost this same situation set in France before, during, and after World War I. Christian Aragon lives on an ancient vineyard with his parents and older brother, Eugene. Hopes for the success and continuation of the vineyard lie with Eugene, who volunteers for the French army and is killed in the early days of the war. Christian is a studious boy but a poor imitation of his older brother in the father’s eyes. Christian does not want to work in the vineyard -- he wants to go to school and study. Then he meets Vivienne, an incredibly beautiful woman.

Bowman has captured James Joyce’s cynicism of religion along with Albert Camus’ deep introspection into basic existential questions.

Many passages reminded me of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, especially when Christian struggles with fire and brimstone religion and the desires of the flesh as he teeters on the edge of adulthood.

Christian’s relationship with his father and mother and his school mates – girls and boys – recall many of the scenes of emotional turmoil found in Camus’ A Happy Death and a posthumously published, unfinished novel, The First Man.

Now, add into this mix a thrilling trial and a completely unexpected climax, and the reader becomes immersed in a story that is touching, passionate, erotic, and thoroughly fulfilling in every respect. This is one of the finest novels I have read this year, and believe me, I am having one tremendous year of reading!

The Last Estate is due for publication this month. Do whatever you have to do to get a copy of this novel. 10 stars out of five

--Chiron, 8/15/10

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

One of my all-time favorite books is Homer’s Odyssey. Unfortunately, I thought this might be a book about that foundation stone of Western literature. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love cats – I have two now, along with three predecessors now in kitty heaven.

This book is really dull. The prose is stilted and awkward, and I got the point from the “Prologue.”

I was also annoyed by some rather careless errors. For example, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Homer of ancient Greece was blind. Also, Grizzly bears are not black, but rather a variety of shades of brown. These kinds of errors really annoy me. Don’t waste your time. 1 star for a cute cover.

--Chiron, 8/10/10

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I read this back in the 60s when it was all the rage, and I failed to see the point. Of course, I have undergone countless changes since then, so I thought the time had come to give it another try. Good move. I have an enormous, new-found respect for this novel. It confirmed some things I believed and taught me quite a few new things. Every reader should bring something to the story and take away new insights.

The Siddartha of the title, born into a Brahmin family around the time the Buddha first emerged in the 6th-5th century b.c.e., senses dissatisfaction with his life. Like Gautama Buddha, Siddhartha’s family had amassed great wealth and lived a privileged lifestyle. However, both young men decide to leave all that behind and explore the world. Siddhartha becomes an ascetic and encounters Gautama Buddha shortly after he achieves enlightenment. He reveres the Buddha but does not become a follower. Rather, he leaves on another journey that will have profound effects on his life. Siddhartha meets a number of teachers during his journeys, and each one adds lessons to his life.


Numerous passages struck me, but this one had particular significance. “One can convey knowledge but not wisdom. One can find wisdom, one can live it, one can be borne by it, one can work wonders with it, but one can neither speak it nor teach it” (111). This statement represents Siddhartha’s great discovery. He recognizes the achievement of Gautama Buddha, but he senses each person has to travel the path alone and discover -- for him or herself – Nirvana. This idea mirrors an identical idea of Krishnamurti, who became a great teacher, and then walked away from his followers telling them they did not need him.

My version of the book has extremely helpful introduction and notes by Robert A. F. Thurman, who teaches Buddhist studies at Columbia University. These long end notes provide explanations for some of the more esoteric philosophical terms and ideas expressed by Hesse. Do not skip them!

We all meet people, learn things, gather insights, experience epiphanies, but assembling these into a coherent personal philosophy can be elusive for many of us. Knowing what to accept, what to reject, what to hold for further examination is a complicated process that requires an open mind and a great deal of patience. This central lesson of Hesse’s novel made my reading more than worthwhile. Deep down, I knew this, but seeing the effect it can have is an epiphany in itself. An inspiring and thought-provoking novel everyone can enjoy. 5 stars

--Chiron, 7/30/10

Walks with men by Ann Beattie

I once pretended to be a stringer for a local paper and wheedled my way into an interview with Ann Beattie an hour or so before a reading. I have always loved her short stories, and this short novel marks my return to her work after another of those inexplicable absences I mention from time to time.

I must say this novella – barely over 100 pages – is quite a disappointment. It is a strange story, with odd characters, moving through life as if in a daze. The narrator, Jane, is an especially egregious violator. She never explains most of her decisions -- even her introspection at the end of the novel left this reader wholly dissatisfied.

Jane lives on a farm with a musician/hippie after graduating from Harvard. She travels to New York City to receive an award and meets Neil, a Svengali of sorts. Neil wants to “teach” Jane to live in the big city and move about in his upper class circle. I will only add to this that Jane learns, and so does Neil. But a lot of unusual things happen along the way.




I am going to have to put this one aside for a while. Let it percolate a bit, and come back later. The prose is vintage Beattie, so it is worth the read. 3 stars

--Chiron, 7/25/10

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang

Novels about college English professors hold a special place in my reading life. Richard Russo tops the list with Straight Man, and Jim Harrison’s The English Major has a tight hold on second place. This new novel by the director of the Iowa Writers Workshop will surely find its way onto this list.

The story revolves around an intense professor of poetry at a midwestern college. Students fight to get into her class -- even though many are reduced to tears at her caustic comments or her lack of attention. Roman desperately wanted to be her student and receive her approval.

The novel will hold a great deal of interest for aspiring writers, because it thoroughly examines the psychology of writing poetry and the relationships between writers and readers – especially readers who are close to the writer.

One of the drawbacks of reading and reviewing “advance reading copies” is that I can’t quote from the novel. The prose is so fluid and almost magical, I feel as if the words have become a river and they carry me along on a journey of exploration. Pick it up in a bookstore and begin to read the opening pages. You will walk out with a copy.

The only flaw is an occasional penchant for conversations with a level of intensity that made it hard to follow who said what. When I hit one particularly difficult scene, I began to notate “R” for Roman and “B” for Bernard. Despite this minor inconvenience, I strongly recommend this novel due out in September. Before writing this review, I ordered her first two books, Inheritance, a novel, and Hunger, a novella and collection of stories. I can’t wait to read them. 4-1/2 stars

--Chiron, 7/24/10

How to Survive a Natural Disaster by Margaret Hawkins

I love “discovering” new writers, and first novels thrill me. I felt that when I read Hawkins’ The Year of Cats and Dogs. Better yet, every member of my book club loved it, too. However, when I come across a second novel by a writer like Hawkins, a sense of apprehension comes over me. I approached reading How to Survive a Natural Disaster with that sense of foreboding. Oh, me of little faith! Hawkins has equaled her success with this second effort.

The novel has an ensemble cast of quirky and wonderfully interesting characters. Roxanne, a divorced, single mother of the brilliant April, Roxanne’s mother Jacklyn, Roxanne’s second husband Craig and their adopted daughter May, and last, but certainly not least, Phoebe, a neighbor who edits textbooks at home and who has some mild psychological problems. Then, the animals, all with quirks and secrets of their own – Mr. Cosmo, the three-legged weimaraner who seems a bit psychic and Bill, Phoebe’s faithful companion.

Each chapter belongs to a different character, and the star of this series is undoubtedly Roxanne. She has the longest chapter (about 25 pages) a quarter of the way into the story, and when I finished it, I immediately turned back and re-read it. This chapter could almost stand on its own as a short story. The psychological self-examination by Roxanne -- and all these characters – is exactly the kind of novel I love reading. I also thoroughly enjoyed the (sometimes) minor differences in interpretation of events and perceptions regarding the other characters. All the people that inhabit this first-rate story have a solid, realistic quality about them – some are better humans than others – but they all ring true as clear as a digital recording.

The “natural disaster” occurs about three-quarters of the way through the novel. With 50 some pages left, I felt the ending might be a bit too long. But as I made my way through the final chapters, I began to see the importance of those pages describing how the event affected all of them. I began thinking about tragedies – specifically Shakespearean tragedies – and the way he gave the final lines to the most important character, which hints at the future. In this context, most of the ending words and thoughts fall to one person – Phoebe. This epiphany made all the difference, and the ending became powerful for me.

Don’t be tempted to look ahead as you read, because two of the chapters consist of only one line each, and if you read those, it might spoil the ending. Scheduled for publication in early October, move Hawkins to the top of your reading and collection lists. 5 stars

--Chiron, 7/21/10

The First Man by Albert Camus

When Albert Camus met his tragic end in an automobile accident in 1960, he left behind this unfinished manuscript. His wife, Francine, decided its incomplete state, with lots of marginalia, notes, and interleaved sheets, would tarnish her husband’s reputation, so she decided against publication. When Francine died, responsibility for Camus’ literary estate fell to his daughter Catherine. She struggled with the decision, and rejected the idea of destroying the manuscript of about 144 pages with little or no punctuation, and with only the barest evidence of any revision. In the 1990s, at the urging of some scholars, she agreed to publication. The English translation appeared in 1995. I, for one, offer a most hearty thanks to Catherine for her decision.

This highly autobiographic novel offers many insights into the formative years of Camus. The death of his father -- when he barely passed his first birthday -- his strict upbringing by his timid mother who deferred to his martinet of a grandmother, to his early education and rescue from a life of poverty by a beloved teacher who recommended him for a scholarship to the lycée, and ultimately to his search for information about his father, appear with a warmth and nostalgia I have not experienced in any of Camus’ other works.

In fact, so many things in his early life strike me as startlingly familiar. For example, on his vacation, young Jacques Cormery frequently visits the local library,

“Thursday was also the day Jacques and Pierre would go to the public library. Jacques had always devoured any books that came to hand, and he consumed them with the same appetite he felt for living, playing, or dreaming. But reading enabled him to escape into a world of innocence where wealth and poverty were equally interesting because both were utterly unreal...illustrated stories that he and his friends passed around until the board binding was gray and rough and the pages dog-eared and torn, was the first to transport him to a world of comedy or heroism where his two basic appetites for joy and courage were satisfied” (244).

Jacques sets off for the lycée with the encouragement of a beloved teacher, and he experiences an epiphany similar to that used by James Joyce in the last paragraph of the Dubliners story, “Araby.” Jacques and Joyce’s young boy realized they are on the edge of new experiences and are about to put their childhoods behind them.

The manuscript has numerous passages with a bit of awkwardness, and footnotes hint at Camus’ indecision about diction or deletion, inclusion, or expansion of some information for the final version of the novel. But he deals with all the major issues found in all his works – life, death, religion, punishment, colonialism, prejudice, and family relationships. Camus always makes me think about all these topics.

If you are unfamiliar with Camus, this novel is the perfect place to start – a literary and philosophical buffet of his life and beliefs. The First Man represents a most important addition to the literary canon of existentialism. 5 stars

--Chiron, 7/17/10

The Broken Teaglass by Emily Asenault

Jonathan Sanchez – the owner with his wife of The Blue Bicycle Bookshop in Charleston, SC and a good friend – recommended this book when I was last in his shop about 8 months ago. I am sorry I took so long getting to it! This is the first book I bought on his recommendation, but he is now in that trusted circle of friends from whom I will accept suggestions without question.

Arsenault has written a neat, tidy little who-dun-it. I know! I am contradicting myself! Only four books separate this and the Chandler where I declared I did not like this genre. Without reading the dust jacket too closely – which I usually do – I started reading it. I was intrigued from the first page, and after about 25 I stopped and read the dust jacket. Lucky I swerved from my usual habit on this occasion.

The story involves two 20-something recent college grads who take a job for lack of anything better at a dictionary company as lexicographers. Samuel Johnson defined a lexicographer as, “A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.”

The disappointing part of this book is that these young people aren’t more enthusiastic about what surrounds them in their jobs. I think it would be fascinating work. But then I love dictionaries and words. One sentence near the end struck me: “Don’t hate words. Hate the people who misuse them.” (347)

One jacket blurb compared it to A.S. Byatt’s Possession. While I wouldn’t go that far, this was a delightful, witty, and entertaining book. I read it in two afternoons. Arsenault’s prose has a fluidity about it. Only one minor “bend” in the story prevents me from giving it five stars, but I do give it high praise. Excellent reading for a hot, lazy, summer day. 4 stars

--Chiron, 7/12/10

So Long as Men Can Breathe by Clinton Heylin

Not at all what I expected – I guess I should have looked at it a little more carefully before buying. Sometimes those of us who love books and reading as much as I do have our “auto-buy” module switched on when we see a title, an author, or a dust jacket that strikes us in a particular way.

The book was useful, and I am glad I added this bit of arcane knowledge to my bank. Heylin tells the story of the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I always thought they were published under his direction, but apparently not. The author offers a plausible explanation for Shakespeare’s distance from the original collection.

Not for the everyday reader, but certainly for any professional who cares about Shakespeare as the grteat writer he really is. 4 stars.

--Chiron, 7/12/10

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Imagine a whale – a great blue whale – then imagine examining every cell of the body of that whale. Following the whale is a 20 pound striped bass. Every once in a while, the striper passes near the eye of the whale, but it is hardly noticed. As we approach the tale of the whale, the striper appears and accompanies us during the last of the examination. That striper is the end of 2666. Furthermore, there are all sorts of threads and lines trailing off from the whale. These all lead to other novels by Bolaño.

This massive – 900 page – work is a puzzle of the first order. It begins with the story of four literature professors. Three of them hail from Turin, Italy, Paris, France, and Madrid, Spain. All independently discover and become obsessed with Benno von Archimboldi. They begin to appear at conferences, and slowly gather a tight-knit yet enthusiastic group of followers. Liz Norton, from London England, joins the obsession and becomes a close friend of all three.

Benno von Archimboldi disappears, but remains in contact with his publisher. Eventually, he becomes wealthy and is shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The professors decide to try and track down Archimboldi. They end up visiting a mysterious German in a Mexican prison accused of the murders of six women. This is part one (of five) of the novel.

Part two involves the life story of a Mexican pharmacist who is a book collector and also obsessed with Archimboldi. He appears briefly in part one to help the three critics. This book is his life story.

Part three is about a man named Fate. It details the death of his mother, and his confusion and lack of concern parallels Camus’ The Stranger. I am not sure how this part fits into the overall novel. I will have to read 2666 a second time, and take much more detailed notes. I think this book is an allegory for the whole novel and a philosophical discourse on fate – lower case.

Part four is a catalogue of crimes committed in the fictional town of Santa Theresa, Mexico. During the 1990s, 343 women were strangled, stabbed, raped, and mutilated their bodies dumped in various places around Santa Theresa – actually a stand-in for Juárez, Mexico near the US Border -- where 300 plus actual murders took place. Only a handful were ever solved, largely due to the incompetence, corruption, and lack of concern of the police. This part was difficult to read, and I kept asking myself why I was reading all this horror. However, I could not stop, even though I felt I would only read one more case.

Part five, entitled “The Part about Archimboldi,” details the life of Hans Reiter, born in Germany in 1920, Wehrmacht soldier on the eastern front, who survives the war and becomes a writer. He changes his name to Benno von Archimboldi because he believes the American and German police are looking for him. “Reiter” in German means “riddle.” Archimboldi, Hans Reiter, and Klaus Haas – the prisoner in Mexico -- are all described as tall, blue-eyed, blond Germans.

All these threads are carefully and cleverly woven into a thick, thick hawser that ties this story together. The novel is a gigantic puzzle, and will require at least one more reading to get a full grasp of its true meaning.

Roberto Bolaño died at the age of 50 in 2003. He frantically tried to finish the novel before he died. He considered it his masterpiece. The prose is engaging and the book is difficult to put down. The hyper detail Bolaño employs in his story is also curious. Sometimes he will use three words or phrases to describe something. For example, when Archimboldi began his search for a publisher, he notes one

“in Cologne, a house that from time to time published some novel or volume of poetry or history, but whose catalog mainly consisted of practical manuals that might just as easily provide instruction on the proper care of a garden as on the correct administration of first aid or the reconstruction of the shells of destroyed houses” (793).

The story has many, many digressions that seem to trail off the main story line, but the purpose of some became clear when I finished the novel. One digression is the story of a “shadowy Swabian writer…who knew quite a bit about contemporary German Literature” (18-22). He tells the four professors about meeting Archimboldi. The story is five pages, with only commas for punctuation. Bolaño wrote this in the style of someone trying to piece together the memory of an event he knows is of supreme importance to the listeners. Some of the other digressions trail off into art, literature, mathematics, and even Greek mythology. One interesting digression involves Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a 16th-century painter known for his bizarre portraits entirely formed by fruit, vegetables, plant material, and the occasional insect.

The characters also dream – all of them, all the time. A dissertation might be the best place to explore the significance of these dreams to the story line. Here is a fragment of one of the shorter dreams. Florita Almada is a television psychic who has visions of some of the murders:

“Sometimes she dreamed she was a schoolteacher and she lived in the country. Her school was at the top of a hill with a view of the town, the brown and white houses, the dusky yellow roofs where the old folks sometimes settled to gaze down on the dirt streets. From the schoolyard she could see the girls on their way to class. Black hair gathered in ponytails or held back with bands. Dark-skinned faces and white smiles. In the distance, the peasants worked on the land, reaped fruit from the desert, tended flocks of goats.” (456)

This truly is an epic masterpiece. It ranks up there with Joyce’s Ulysses and Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, incidentally by a reclusive writer who only contacts his publisher by mail. I want to read more of Bolaño, but I will need a seriously long break before I dive into more of his work. Ten stars out of five.

--Chiron, 7/10/10

Mama's Promises by Marilyn Nelson Waniek

I discovered this poet at the AP English Literature grading session in Louisville, KY this past June. The poem “The Century Quilt” had all the qualities of poetry I like to read and emulate. Most of the poems in the collection share these qualities. The poem is long, but the first two stanzas provide a good idea of Waniek’s work:

My sister and I were in love
With Meema’s Indian blanket.
We fell asleep under army green
Issued to Daddy by Supply
When Meema came to live with us
She brought her medicines, her cane,
And the blanket I found on my sister’s bed
The last time I visited her.
I remember how I’d planned to inherit
that blanket, how we used to wrap ourselves
at play in its folds and be chieftains
and princesses.

Now I’ve found a quilt
I’d like to die under;
Six Van Dyke brown squares,
Two white ones, and one square
the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks.
Each square holds a sweet gum leaf
Whose fingers I imagine
Would caress me into silence. (37)

Another good example of a clever, humorous poem is “A Strange Beautiful Woman”:

A strange beautiful woman
Met me in the mirror
The other night.
Hey,
I said,
What are you doing here?
She asked me
The same thing. (1).

A few are a bit obtuse and long, but I think a second reading might repair that view. So, I will hold back a star until I come around to these again. Four Stars

--Chiron, 7/7/10

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

In Tracy Chevalier’s latest novel, Remarkable Creatures, she has, once again, set her deft hand to drawing characters, situations, and landscapes to enthrall the reader.

This historical novel tells the story of Mary Anning, a poor girl during the Regency period in England. Her father, a cabinet maker, ekes out the barest of a living for his family. Mary has a unique talent for spotting fossils along the shoreline of southern England. She befriends Elizabeth Philpot, a spinster banished from London to Lyme Regis. Elizabeth, distraught at her removal as a “poor relation,” begins to wander the beaches and finds some interesting fossils.

Creatures is in opposition to Jane Austen’s stories with happy endings. In fact, Elizabeth chides her sister for living in the unreal world of Miss Austen. Elizabeth and her sisters – poor, unattractive, ungainly – have no hope of a good match, but they have learned to live with the disappointment, burying themselves in reading, gardening, and fossil hunting.

Mary and Elizabeth charge into the new, masculine world of paleontology and discover new species. Ironically, these women, “fossilized” by society, become famous for their fossils. The author also uses Brontë’s term, “creature,” to refer to the women in the story lending a double meaning to the title.

In the novel Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chevalier captured the feeling, atmosphere, and language of 17th-century Holland. She has done the same with England in the opening years of the 1800s. The chapters alternate narrators between Elizabeth and Mary, and Chevalier accurately voices Elizabeth, an upper class woman who is painfully aware of her circumstances and place in society, and Mary, the eldest daughter of a family struggling on the precipice of financial ruin and the workhouse.

Elizabeth says, “‘You must pardon my sister, sir,’ I said now. ‘Just before you arrived she had been complaining of a cough. She would not want to inflict her illness on a visitor’” (74). Right off the pages of Pride and Prejudice!

Mary, on the other hand sounds like this, “It weren’t just the money from selling the croc that changed things. It was knowing there was something to hunt for and I was better at finding it than most – this was what were different.” (111)

Unlike most of Austen’s Regency women, Mary pursues her passion regardless of the whispers of the townspeople, while Elizabeth is a bit more reserved, she does, on occasion, get her hackles up – a bit like Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice.

For fans of Austen and Brontë, or readers interested in the early days of paleontology, or for those interested in period pieces set in 19th century England, or those who simply love a great story, this novel has something for everyone. Five stars.

--Chiron, 7/5/10