#38 - Anthills of the Savannah

Because we had been reading a lot of Can Lit in our book club, and a lot of short stories to boot, I put forth Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah as our April selection. Over the years, my post-colonial reading has declined dramatically, and it was one of the goals of having an Around the World in 52 Books challenge -- to end up reading more non-Canadian fiction. Alas, it was probably a good thing that I decided to actually make dinner for The Vicious Circle Book Club, if only so they'd forgive me for choosing such a dense, complex novel.

It took me six tries just to get passed the first few chapters, and we decided as a club that once you got to page 40, the book became readable, and you were somewhat home free. With respect to construction, it's the most post-modern novel I've read in a long time: perspective switches from first, to third, from character to character, and the narrative often circles around events, moving back and forth in time, just assuming the reader will keep up. Here's where we bring out that old po-co staple -- that a lot of African fiction follows more oral than narrative traditions, but I'm not sure I'd make the sweeping generalization that Achebe was setting out to prove that -- maybe it more like he was trying to reflect the impossibility of telling a story, a straight forward, this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, kind of story, when your world is in utter chaos.

Set in the fictional West African nation, Kangon, three old school friends, Sam, Chris and Ikem, Western-educated men living among the upper echelons of society, must redefine their relationships now that Sam has become His Excellency -- the country's dictator. As Chris, one of the main characters says, "I have thought of all of this as a game that began innocently enough and then went suddenly strange and poisonous." As the rest of the novel unravels, the story is strong: Sam wants to stay in power, and even though there's an uprising "in the north" against him (which is a product of deep misunderstanding and miscommunication), lifelong friends Chris and Ikem, now the Minister for Information and the editor of the national newspaper respectively, bear the brunt of Sam's fall from grace and are fired, forced into hiding and fighting for their lives.

Because characters are "witnesses," the novel changes form on the drop of a hat -- you can be in the first person with Chris in a meeting, then be reading some whimsical treatise by Ikem, listening to Beatrice, Chris's girlfriend, speak pidgin English with Elewa, Ikem's girlfriend, and then be in the middle of some strange scene involving non-doctors and other visiting dignitaries from all of their time in London. Structurally, narratively, the novel makes little sense, but the story is so powerful and the writing so excellent that instead of writing the book off as "bad" per se, I spent a long time trying to unravel why Achebe chose to tell it this way.

There are moments of pure grief in this novel. Acts of senseless violence, struggles that seem utterly relevant now, especially in light of what's happening in the Middle East and in Northern Africa. There's also an element of futility to the story, and the strength, the power in the continuation of life comes from the female characters. This was not something that went unnoticed by our book club -- we all really loved the character of Beatrice, and I even went so far as to suggest that I probably would have found the novel easier if the entire book was written from her point of view. But easy isn't the point, life itself isn't easy, and living in a nation that's having violent growing pains isn't a story that can be told in traditional ways. In a sense, Achebe's novel proves that our "canon," the Western tradition, isn't necessarily up to scratch when it comes to the complex and difficult "isms" surrounding the characters in this novel. I could think about it for weeks and not unpack it completely. And, if I were still in school, I think I'd be very happy to write a long, complex paper about it.

Kerry does an awesome job of recounting our discussion from the other night.

What's Up Next: I'm devouring The Elegance of the Hedgehog. It's delicious and delightful and utterly engaging. I'm almost through and I only started last night! And then I've got a long list of library books AND a beautiful friend who knows me so well sent me Roddy Doyle's latest book of short stories -- I couldn't resist, I've already read the first 5 pages and can't wait to read the rest. I adore him. So, I've abandoned Off the Shelf for now, but only because I needed a break. I was reading far, far too many mediocre books (with the exception of Julian Barnes, natch) and needed a breather. But I will go back. I am determined to read every single damn book that's perched there, just to say that I did. Stubborn, yes. I know.

#19 - In The Time Of The Butterflies

When tackling this whole "off the shelf" challenge I have consigned myself to this year, I've been judging books by their page length, which, in my reading world, translates to how long it'll take me to get through it. In the Time of the Butterflies, from start to finish, clocks in at 324 pages. That's about three hours for me -- so maybe a day and a half in baby time. But GOOD GRIEF this book took me forever to read because I just couldn't get into it.

While I have no doubt it's an important novel -- the weight of the language, the heavy-handed metaphors and sentences dripping with meaning, tells me as much -- and the history that forms its central plot, the murder of the Mirabel sisters in the Dominican by the ruthless dictator Trujillo, is actually really fascinating. But the book does not, in my mind, "[make] a haunting statement about the human cost of political oppression."

In a way, this is women's history. The novel centres around the 4 sisters and their daily lives -- their marriages, the birth of their children, and it's a domestic novel for the most part. And all the while, the four sisters are charging forward with a revolution. I just wish there was more revolution in the book and less meandering. I wanted to know more about the revolution and less about ribbons. I know that's probably quite sexist of me, that the fact that these were women revolutionaries challenging the male-established dictatorship means the novel should necessarily include discussions of the domestic, but it slowed down the action to a crawl. And by telling the story from all four of the sisters' points of view, Alvarez manages to disjoint the narrative so completely that you only get a fraction of each of their lives. Personally, I would have preferred the novel centre around Mirabel, the most dynamic and active of the four sisters. But, I didn't write this book.

First published in 1994, I think this book suffers a little from the trappings of the time -- long-winded and overly descriptive, I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine goes to see The English Patient (let me just state, for the record, that I loved both the book and the film), rolling her eyes the entire time in boredom. At least I think that's what happened -- I think that might be the only episode of Seinfeld that I've actually seen from start to finish. Annnywaay, she just doesn't get what the big deal is, and I feel that way about this novel. It's a national bestseller, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and blah de blah, accolades and great blurbs. Yet the book failed to keep my interest and over and over again I found myself not wanting to finish. It was written at a time when long, flowery sentences and the cult of Gabriel Garcia Marquez was going strong. And the importance of the novel, the politics, the very real struggle, the incredibly tragic murder of these four women, gets lost within the precious nature of the prose, the inevitable storytelling that never seems to actually tell a story but circle around it, planting pretty flowery sentences along the way.

Overall, I was disappointed, and found myself just wanted to get to the end, to see how they die -- and then, of course, it all happens off stage, which made me furious. They died violently, brutally, unnecessarily, and Alvarez should have had the bravery to write it. Instead, the book simply stops and then switches perspective again, heads back into its dreary narrative and tries to cover it up by describing their dead bodies as the remaining sister, Dede, identifies them. There's no power to this narrative; the power is in the truth of the events themselves, and Alvarez coasts along because of it. I know it's harsh but, again, books should stand the test of time, prose shouldn't feel dated, and a story of such importance should actually read that way, and not hold itself up on some bronzed pedestal.

READING CHALLENGES: Off the Shelf, and Around the World in 52 Books. Alvarez was born in the Dominican, and I usually really love Caribbean literature, but not so much in this case.

#15 - I Curse The River of Time

Per Petterson's I Curse the River of Time remains a novel about endings throughout its elegant telling of Arvid's final days with his mother, who is dying of stomach cancer. Yet, it's also a novel of disillusion, of abandon and of deep discontent. At 37, Arvid's on the cusp of being divorced, and has never truly quite found his place in the world -- if my mother were still alive, she would tell me this is a typical novel of someone suffering from "middle child syndrome." Something she referenced quite often, in jest, when referring to her place in her own family.

Unable to face the fact that his wife, partner, of the last 15 years no longer wants or needs him, Arvid reverts into childish behaviour, following his mother to their summer cabin in Jutland after discovering she's dying. Interspersed with the awkward and complex time he spends with his mother away from their father and the life they had both known for almost 40 years in Oslo, Arvid's erratic actions are explored in context of his earlier life -- when he was an ardent communist, a factory worker, a member of the peuple -- and how his convictions, as well as his strong beliefs, are also changing in lieu of both his age and where he is in his life. There's a lovely passage near the end of the novel that explains, perhaps, in part, his reluctance to let go of his marriage, of his beliefs, of his relationship with his mother despite the fact that each of these things are willfully being taken away from him:

...but when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore nothing to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant that you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realize that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.

In a way, Petterson's novel explores the death of communism itself through this character -- in his own disillusionment with the fact that it didn't succeed in Russia, that the wall came down in them middle of the action, and that Arvid has worked for many years, not as a proletariat, but in a lovely bookstore -- something that has made him extremely happy. Yet, he can't let his party platform go, he feels guilt over his own disillusionment with the politics, with his own failure to move forward beyond his university beliefs.

His complex relationship with his mother also underlines all of his actions. When he tells her he won't be going back to the university because he wants to become a full-time communist, she slaps him -- a gesture of frustration over his childish ways, of his inability to fully command his life in an adult way, of never being quite "old enough" but always being "too old" in her eyes.

This rich, complex relationship, as are many situations between mothers and sons, underlines everything that Arvid does in life. He can't seem to get her attention in the same way as his other three brothers, one of whom died tragically. She tells her best friend, Hansen, that he's not entirely a grown up, and this is tragically reflected in his actions towards the end of the novel when it becomes glaringly apparent that she won't live much longer. And still, Arvid's almost selfish ways impinge upon the way his mother chooses to live out the end of her life -- it's his divorce, his troubles, his lack of understanding why his world falls apart around him, that is the most tragic aspect of the novel.

Yet, Arvid's unhappiness, his inability to truly move beyond the earlier parts of his life that have consistently defined him, even loosely, remain grounded in a very real, very cognizant sense of place within the novel. Petterson dutifully explains Arvid's routes, where he walks, how he drives, the churning of the sea as he crosses the passage to his mother's summer home. All of the very real places one goes in one's life -- the train to work, the roads the flat sits above, the myriad of things that happens on the way somewhere (a man having a fit, a neighbour on a bicycle). To force the reader to realize, I think, in a way, that even if Arvid can't come to terms with his life, like the passage above illustrates, his life simply goes on anyway, even if your wife doesn't love you anymore, even if your mother is dying, even if the wall comes down.

Overall, it's a brilliant novel, it sort of reminded me of Mothers and Sons, even though those were short stories, in the exploration of the relationship -- but it's more a book about a mid-life crisis, not your typical "bucket list" bullsh*t, but a very real crisis of consciousness when everything that you once stood for, that you felt worth saving, that you felt worth protecting, has changed and you haven't. And you simply can't understand why the you that was the same last week isn't quite right for this one.

It certainly makes you think.

READING CHALLENGES: I already have a Norwegian entry for 52 Books, and I didn't even take this off the shelf, so that's zip for the reading challenges. But yay! to #15, I guess?

#12 - Purple Hibiscus

Purple Hibiscus is an assured and impressive debut from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: what a difference between it and the other first novel that I just finished reading, The Very Thought of You. There are none of the first novel jitters in Adichie's work: the plot and pacing are excellent; the story crescendos at exactly the right moment, her prose is bright, lively and interesting; and, layers upon layers of fascinating observations exist between the essence of "family" and the breakdown of the "state" as Nigeria becomes subjected to a military coup.

Kambili and her brother Jaja, along with their mother, Beatrice, live in constant fear of their father, Eugene, a complex, difficult and deeply religious man. His Catholic faith sustains him, but it also represses his family, creates a power vacuum, and ultimately results in some of the most gut-wrenching violence (not related to a crime novel) I've read in a long, long time. Eugene rules his household with an iron fist, one clasped entirely to a rosary, and when his wife or children stray -- whether it's to talk to or see their "heathen" grandfather or to not become first in their class -- the consequences are dire. The children, aged 15 and 17, live in constant fear of their father's fists, his belt, his whip, and there's no telling exactly what will set him off. Set against his rigid rules and regulations, Kambili and her brother find a few weeks of freedom when they go to visit their aunt, Eugene's sister, Ifeoma. The time they spend with her changes them forever.

The backdrop of the family drama is set against a military coup happening in Nigeria. It's fascinating that Eugene, so brave (he runs a newspaper as well as owns a number of factories that make food) in his intentions to resist the powers of the regime. He refuses to bribe the police officers, sends his newspaper editor into hiding, and remains incredible generous to the people who work for him. Yet, when it comes to his family, he simply can not see that subjecting them to the extreme Catholic values that he believes, in his heart, will save his and their souls, through the violence and an extreme restriction of their basic human rights echoes the very nature of dictatorship. I think this dichotomy, for me, strikes a cord that resonates throughout the entire novel.

Kambili can't speak without stuttering, doesn't smile, lives in constant fear of her father's punishment, but she also loves him, as a daughter would. Her father's violence whether it's towards her, her brother or her mother, is simply another facet of everyday life. In a sense, I think this is why her voice feels so much younger than 15 -- she's suspended in a strange, awkward childhood, and only begins to blossom when she stays with her aunt and sees how normal teenage girls act. Kambili's a lovely character -- bright, intense, open, honest -- and when you feel her father's blows upon her back, you want to cry out for her to run away, to fight back, and when she finally does, it's a revelation.

There's so much to love about this novel, the setting, the way Adichie uses traditional language, the explanations of food, of their daily lives, and the rich landscape soiled, in a way, by the corruption that's all around. Violence, at home or by the state, is an everyday part of life, yet Kambili can still see the beauty in a simple, special purple hibiscus. It's an impressive thing to not have your spirit broken -- something I admire intensely about this book, and something that I strive for in my own everyday life. And even when things are truly, truly horrible, there's still a goodness in Kambili that can't be broken, scarred maybe, but even those find a way to heal eventually.

READING CHALLENGES: Around the World (Nigeria) and Off the Shelf.

WHAT'S NEXT: I'm on "A" from my 1001 Books shelf, so I started reading Emma this morning. I love that I have spread out the Austen to read in my lifetime. I would be sad if I had already read them all. I'm exited I still have three to go.

#6 - Blue Shoes and Happiness

My Zombie Survival Guide daily calendar tells me that a motorcycle is the best way to flee an infested area, which could be problematic for me as I have never driven a motorcycle in my life. Oh well. That has absolutely nothing to do with Alexander McCall Smith's Blue Shoes and Happiness, which is the seventh book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series with Mma Ramotswe and her cast of likable characters. The calendar makes me laugh, that's all.

It's a breezy, delightful series, and I'm actually reading In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (#8) at the moment and expect to be finished it today, they're such quick books to get through. I had three of the series on my shelves, one I had already read, and so I decided just to power through the other two. I love how Mma Ramotswe isn't a traditional detective, while she may be traditionally built, and how the cases do not involve bloody murder of the Mo Hayder kind (although I do adore Ms. Hayder) but are instead more like moral lessons. Sure, there are mysteries to be solved but they are generally addressed through common sense and communication, traditional Botswana (I think?) values, and the essence of good for the sake of being good, no ulterior motives:

Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk. And even if that did not solve problems, at least it could put them off for a little while, which we sometimes needed to do, we really did.

My thoughts exactly. A good cup of tea, a warm muffin, and a comfy chair and most problems can at least be mulled over, if not completely solved. In Mma Ramotswe's case, she drinks her beloved bush tea, in my case, it's decaf earl grey with the milk poured in first (and I couldn't give a toss what Christopher Hitchens would say about that -- it was the way my British grandmother taught me to drink tea and it tastes the best when the hot water scalds the milk, it just does). The point being that it is in the drinking of the tea that humanity comes together, not the making of the tea, although I would agree with Hitchens that finding a decent cup of tea in America isn't easy.

Annnywaaay, I'm off topic, entirely with this post, rambling on about zombies and Christopher Hitchens. There's not a lot to say about these novels, just that I adore them, adore the characters and can't wait for the TV show to come back on, because it's delightful too. What's also nice is that McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe, which puts him on the map in terms of my Around the World in 52 Books, and the African settings of these books always make me want to travel to that continent, just to experience life in a different way. So I've knocked off a couple of challenges with two short novels, and haven't quite decided what my shelves will bring forth next in terms of what I'm in the mood to read.

#62 - Calling Out For You!

When I was babbling on about all of the Scandinavian mysteries I've been reading lately, Melanie, over at Indextrious Reader, tweeted about her favourite, Karin Fossum. So I scanned my shelves and happily discovered I had an Inspector Sejer mystery, Calling Out For You! at the ready. I might as well call this my Mystery Christmas for all novels in this genre I've been reading, and I'm pleased that I can cross Norway off my Around the World in 52 Books challenge with Fossum as well, and the translation by Charlotte Barslund is one of the better that I've read -- far less clunky than all of The Girl With novels and, on the whole, Fossum's a much more skillful novelist than Camilla Lackberg.

Calling Out For You! (the exclamation point seems a bit, well, tedious) finds Inspector Sejer solving a heinous crime involving the brutal murder of an Indian woman, the newlywed wife of a middle-aged farm equipment salesmen who was truly looking forward to welcoming his wife to his country, his home. Gunder Jomann, quiet, reserved, lonely, takes the biggest risk of his entire life and simply decides to go to India. Upon his return, the very day his new wife Poona was set to arrive, his only sister ends up in a terrible car accident and he can't collect her from the airport. Tragedy ensues -- Poona doesn't arrive. Instead, she's found bludgeoned to death in a field outside of town.

Fossum's careful not to lead you entirely in the right or wrong direction. There's a mystery to the mystery -- who actually killed Poona and why -- that's inferred but not entirely delineated by the end of the novel. It's a character-driven book, you feel emotionally connected to the Gunder, the distraught, decent man who ultimately suffers unspeakable tragedy. And the detective work is straightforward, simple, to the point. There isn't the driving plot that you'd find in the The Girl With books, but that's okay, there's a decency to Fossum's characters that's very real. Setting doesn't play as an important part in this book the other mysteries I've read by authors from this part of the world (that was the only thing I truly enjoyed about The Ice Princess). But you get the small-town, everyone-knows-everyone, feeling throughout the novel, which always contributes to the shocking nature of the crime.

I flew through this novel, primarily because I truly, honestly wanted to know who did it -- and it was VERY hard not to cheat. Ever since I was a little girl, I've read the last page of the book sometimes even before the first and it's an especially hard habit to break with mysteries. I don't want to spoil it but then I absolutely just have to know. In this case, I managed to be patient, but mainly because it was such an easy read, and didn't take too long to get to the end. Any longer and I wouldn't have been able to stand it.

READING CHALLENGES: Around the World in 52 Books and The Off The Shelf Challenge. Two birds with one book, yet again.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I can't decide: AS Byatt or Dennis Lehane. I suppose it'll be up to what concentration levels I can manage this evening upon retiring for the long, long night as the RRBB eats, sleeps, eats, sleeps, eats, sleeps.

#57 - Little Bee

I am of mixed mind when it comes to Chris Cleave's Little Bee. On the one hand, it's an interesting novel that deals with important political issues; on the other hand, overall, I didn't find the novel entirely plausible. Cleave has definite talent writing characters in voices that are atypical -- female characters that read well, but there's just something that rings false. I felt especially this way about Little Bee herself, that she was perhaps a bit too precocious for her age, but when you factor in what she'd been through (horrific, awful events in her home country of Nigeria; unspeakable violence and two years in a detention centre in England after stowing away in a boat), maybe it's not so inconceivable that she would be wise beyond her years. Yet, it all didn't sit quite right with me.

So, the plot of the novel revolves around two women, the aforementioned Little Bee, an asylum-seeking refugee from Nigeria who was subjected to an horrific experience of seeing her entire family destroyed by oil men; and Sarah, the wife of Andrew, a couple who met Little Bee on a beach on a fateful day that would change their lives forever. When Little Bee is finally released from the detention centre after spending two years essentially in jail as the British government evaluates her refugee claim, the only people she knows are Andrew and Sarah, and so she makes her way to them, which sets in motion a series of events that have tragic consequences.

And it's not just the plot that felt forced but the relationship between the two women was awkward in many ways. I kept comparing the novel in my head to Dave Eggers's What is the What, and to Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, both novels that have protagonists that go through unspeakable horrors, but both of these novels just pull it all together in a way that doesn't make the reader feel as though the situations are jammed in just to make a point. Granted, it's an important point -- or an important book -- and you can't fault Cleave for his research or how hard he worked to create the voice of Little Bee. But how he chose to wrap her story within that of Sarah's and how their lives are intertwined just doesn't work. Further, there's a fairytale element to the penultimate action that rang false and the end of the novel was quite flat compared to how hard he had worked to set up the situation from the start of the book. I didn't believe the drama -- and this book is ALL about dramatic situations that forever change people's lives.

Overall, as much as I was looking forward to reading this book, I am not at all sure what I think or how I feel about it. I want to like it A LOT because I believe strongly in fiction that pushes the boundaries and tells important, political stories. But in a way, I don't think they should be shoehorned in when they don't fit the characters or the voice that's actually telling the story. I wanted more for Little Bee -- and I wanted more from the book. But maybe I'll feel differently if/when I think about it some more.

Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World. It's a chunky, chunky book so I probably won't finish it in a day but we'll see how many hours my RRBB spends awake tonight.

READING CHALLENGES: The Off the Shelf Challenge -- I think I've had this book on my TBR pile ever since it came out almost two years ago. Also, Chris Cleave is British, so that counts too for Around the World in 52 Books -- he can be England.

#53 - The True Deceiver

Trying to read more books published by NYRB remains one of the never-ending "should-do's" on my reading life. I admire just about everything about the publishers: the packages they create, the books they choose to publish, the authors they choose, and the quality of the writing. Yet, I never seem to get around to reading, well, ANY of them. So, I was pleased when our book club, The Vicious Circle, picked Tove Jansson's The True Believer as a monthly pick.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki, and she was an illustrator as well as an author. She grew up spending the summers on the Gulf of Finland, in a small fishing cabin, and the setting of The True Deceiver seems absolutely informed by the time she spent in that kind of an environment. The setting is stark, snow-filled, cold, and austere. The novel opens, "It was an ordinary dark winter morning, and snow was still falling." The darkness isn't frightening, it's not meant to create the Let the Right One In kind of environment, it's a fact of life, a season to get through -- life still goes on, groceries need to be delivered, dogs need to be walked, boats need to built. I like how Jansson creates the setting, it informs and layers the story but it doesn't overwhelm the novel.

The story revolves around two women who live in the small village. A strange, awkward girl named Katri Kling who lives above the general store with her brother, Mats (whom everyone thinks is simple but is truly just quiet and introverted). And Anna Aemelin, a relatively wealthy (as compared to the people in the rest of the village) children's artist who is a bit of a recluse. From the beginning of the novel Katri has a plan -- she wants to gain an "in" with Anna, she has a very specific, calculated plan to ingratiate herself into her life, and nothing will stop her from getting her way. The entire village thinks the girl is strange. She has a gift with numbers and with honesty, and so many people come to her for problems: is so-and-so cheating on me, was I charged too much by the grocer, is blah-de-blah taking advantage -- the villagers are ashamed to ask for Katri's help but they continually do it. With this premise, she begins to be helpful to Anna. There's just one difference, Anna didn't ask for Katri's help, and doesn't necessarily want it. She lives in her own kind of blissful ignorance, like the dark of winter, Anna closes herself up in her house, illustrates her woodland characters, idealizes the childish way she has of creating a world in the undergrowth of the forest, and wishes she could do it differently, but change isn't something that comes naturally to Anna.

Eventually, Katri and her brother move in with Anna, into her house. Gossip starts. But as with anyone who sets out with a plan, things go astray. And the spareness, the sparsity of Jansson's prose nicely echoes the setting. Her words are cruel when they need to be, sparingly kind in places, but always clean, if that makes any sense -- she's an incredibly clean, crisp writer, she sort of writes like the snow itself, cold, but melts when the temperature reaches a certain point. The title refers, naturally, to Katri, but it's also pointedly about Anna, as well -- deception when it comes to yourself, deception concerning another person, they are both themes that run from beginning to end. What's simple doesn't always seem so, and telling the truth, and then recognizing the truth about yourself, both happen to these characters by the end. Overall, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this novel, I read it quickly, in every spare moment I had, and I do have them these days, not necessarily to write long blog posts, but to read at 2 AM when the RRBB is breastfeeding. It's very easy to balance a book on The Breast Friend, let me tell you, as long as it's a teeny paperback. I'm having a little more trouble with my giant hardcover copy of The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell.

Also, Jansson was born in Finland, which means I can use this book for the Around the World in 52 Days challenge I do every year. I am sure I have managed about six weeks in total, but, still, I don't think I've ever read a Finnish author before. And I am sure I would read more of her books in a heartbeat considering how much I loved this one.

#15 - The Wig My Father Wore

I had wanted to finish either The Wig My Father Wore or The Third Policeman by St. Patrick's Day as my monthly "themed" reading. Oddly, both books are truly absurd, which is why I only finished one of them. I'm not sure if absurdist fiction is necessarily for me -- in a way, I don't like to be confused or feel like a story is convoluted just for the sake of making a point. Sure, I read Beckett in university and enjoyed it at the time but these days I just don't have the concentration it requires to read something that deems the absurd a necessary plot point. Hence my abandonment of The Third Policeman.

And while Anne Enright's The Wig My Father Wore dips its toes into the same kind of storytelling, there's at least somewhat of a plot to keep you motivated. Grace, the novel's protagonist, opens her door one evening after work (she's a producer for a Dating Game-style show in Ireland) to discover an angel on her stoop. Stephen lives with her for a time. They have cryptic conversations and an even stranger love affair all the while he's changing her body -- literally.

There are parts to Enright's writing that are almost unbearably beautiful. Grace finds herself in a difficult time in her life -- her job's in peril and her father's dying -- and it seems the angel has come along at just the right time. He helps her to come to terms with her life, but he also comes with a bit of havoc (imagine your body disappearing before your eyes, imagine!), and as Grace looks back at her childhood, at her father's strange, inappropriate wig, the story makes sense.

But often, aspects of this book just don't come together in the same way, and its far too convoluted for my tastes. Imagine a chicklit scenario (young woman trying to find herself working for a dating television show), with a bit of Legion (except he's not a wicked angel, but someone in between trying to earn his wings), and BBC Drama (the dying father) thrown in -- the book simply doesn't make sense.

It's a shame because I adored, adored The Gathering. I felt like all of Enright's formidable talents, her sharp perception, her angst with family life, was put to good use. In The Wig My Father Wore any good will I had about the former book is lost the moment I reread sections where Stephen the angel attempts to become a contestant on her dating game show. I mean, really? That said, I marked more than one passage as I was reading, especially the more domestic sections with her mother.

But in this one sentence, squeezed my heart as well: "I woke up grateful and sick with grief, as if I could not carry my heart anymore; it had burst and spread, like an old yolk."

Keep those sentences and toss back the rest.

WHAT'S UPCOMING: Still going to trudge to the end of The Third Policeman, if only because it's on the 1001 Books list and I hate not finishing books. There's always something good in them, even if it's just one sentence that sticks with me. Then I'm going to read for work, and maybe finish the third Stieg Larsson galley that a friend sent over. It's awesome. I think the charges he's anti-feminist are bollocks, BTW.

Whew, that's enough rambling for today.

READING CHALLENGES: Enright's Irish, so that's one for Around the World in 52 Books.

#11 - The Girl Who Played With Fire

So, being in the book business and all means that sometimes it's a good idea to read something everyone else reads. That can be an incredibly painful experience (see: Twilight and The Da Vinci Code), but sometimes the masses, they surprise you. Sometimes, the masses just get it right (see: The Book of Negroes) -- which is exactly the case with The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stiegg Larsson.

I could not put this book down, I kid you not. It's a traditional "good whack on the head" Swedish mystery starring a politically charged magazine editor, Mikael Blomkvist, a brilliant but psychologically damaged computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, and the cops -- each racing to solve the same case. The murders in question, a couple, one a journalist and the other a PhD student, and a lawyer, happened relatively at the same time and all evidence points to Salander, wait, let me rephrase, all circumstantial evidence points to her, which is the point that Blomkvist and Lisbeth race towards, proving her innocence. Of course, they come up against many obstacles along the way, and it all makes for very good reading.

Larsson's internationally bestselling books have surrounded me while on the subway. And I resisted. I tried as hard as I could to ignore all the good things people were saying. All the recommendations, and it's not as if this review is free of criticism. There are elements to Larsson's writing that betray his journalistic roots -- he uses way, way too much extraneous detail and often digresses to make points, get out a history or fill in details that are simply unnecessary. I think, had he written the whole 10 books as he planned before his untimely death, a lot of this would have cleared itself up. You learn from doing -- novels don't need to be 500 pages long unless they're Russian, right?

But I like the characters so much, Salander's damaged but brilliant, which is always a good combination in a mystery novel. Blomkvist's principled and determined, and he reminds me of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, a character I enjoy so very much because he's simply who he is, if that makes any sense. He's just well written, and that's the way I feel about Blomkvist too. Also, there are twists I didn't expect, and that does not happen often. On the whole, it's no wonder that so many other crime novelists are feeling a bit of a pinch -- the entire world seems to be reading these books, and I don't blame them.

Oh, and I'm pretty excited that I can use this as perhaps the one and only Around the World in 52 Books entry for 2010, as Larsson's Swedish and that totally counts. So much for not having reading challenges this year.

WHAT'S NEXT: I'm going to finish Invisible Man for Black History Month, try to squeeze in a little Zora Neale Hurston, although I'm not sure what to read of hers since I've already read There Eyes Were Watching God and my experience of that book (when I read it) was so perfect that I don't want to ruin it with a reread.

#67 - Little Black Book of Stories

Have you ever noticed I generally start all of my reviews with some long, rambling introduction? Today will be no different.

I'm reading about 4 different books right now (What Should I Do With My Life, The Law of Dreams, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life; can you sense a theme there?), including the only one I've finished so far, A.S. Byatt's engaging short story collection, Little Black Book of Stories. Monday was spent in transit (doctor's app't, to and fro from work), which ensured I had a few spare moments to read (and by spare I mean an entire hour in the middle of the day waiting for the damn doctor).

We were at a birthday party this summer when the sister of a friend of mine was telling me the book that she had most enjoyed reading so far in 2009 was A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. As I don't have a copy that book in my possession, when I found this book just sitting on my shelf, I thought, "yes, that's it for this week." Because if you can't have THE book why not at least try A book by one of the year's most celebrated writers?

Comprised of five lengthy short stories, Byatt's expansive imagination coupled with her never-ending quest to aptly describe human saddness (or longing, that might even be a better word), the book reminded me a little of Too Much Happiness. Every single character in the stories has been marred emotionally by their lives -- happiness isn't expected and nor is it gained. Life is rough, untidy, difficult and downright miserable in places. But because Byatt's an exceptional writer, the undercurrents running through each story, the little bits of lives that exude joy, are there as well. She also has some lovely fantastical elements in each -- the stories themselves tend a little toward fairy tales for adults.

My favourite of the five would have to be "Body Art": an aging doctor released from an unhappy marriage but not his religious convictions finds himself entangled with a young (apparently almost-homeless) artist charged with "brightening" up the ward. Universal questions like how and why is art important to a life are, of course, raised, but the unlikely relationship between the two resonates even more. The central tale, "A Stone Woman," has lovely fantastic elements, and "The Pink Ribbon" too -- even if that story is achingly sad (it too reminded me of Munro, specifically, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain").

On the whole, this collection was far more satisfying to read than Nocturnes. Because, holy cow, what a snoozer of a book that was.

READING CHALLENGES: Cleaning Out My Closet -- a book from the dark corners of my bookshelf, for once. And because this book just feels so British (along with A.S. Byatt being born in England), I'm tagging it for Around the World in 52 Books too. My only reading challenge for next year? To keep up with all of my other reading challenges. Or maybe even finish one or two.

#63 - Nocturnes

Even before finishing the first story in Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, I had a sinking feeling that I shouldn't have started another book of short stories so soon after finishing Too Much Happiness. Overall, Nocturnes reads and feels like a bridge -- not a structure that connects two pieces of land, but that instrumental section in a song that marks a transition. The entire book feels like something Ishiguro has written in between major works. I missed the exacting, perfectly balanced narrative from Never Let Me Go, and had a hard time believing the characters in many of these stories. In places, the dialogue seemed forced, pitched in because it needed to be there and not because organic and/or interesting things were happening within the scene. And two of the middle stories were so, I don't know, cliched and almost forced, that I almost didn't finish the book. The last story, as I detail below, was a saving grace.

Sometimes, stories about music and the people who play and/or create it, never capture the true essence of the experience. You always feel as though it's not real -- the bands are made up, the musicians are made up, even when the author uses actual music to ground the story in some form of reality. In a sense, a lot of these stories read like those "ripped from the headlines" episodes of Law and Order where they take a real scene, Puff Daddy and J-Lo involved in a shoot out at a club, use no-name actors and tack on a murder to take the whole drama up a notch. Overall, this collection felt a bit like that, not utterly authentic, and I was disappointed because I firmly believe Ishiguro to be one of the world's best living writers.

The first story, "Crooner," follows a young guitar player who has emigrated from an Eastern block country to Italy where he's making a living. He meets a very famous singer, a kind of "great one" who came up in the days when crooning lead to fortunes being made in Vegas at a time when the original Ocean's Eleven was released into theatres. The aging crooner hires the young guitarist to accompany him as he serenades his wife. The performance, for many reasons is bittersweet, but the contract between the young and the old, their very different lives, what the crooner meant to the young man (who grew up with his mother listening to all of his albums), is poignant. Things are never as they seem, lives are never what they appear, and music doesn't always have the meaning it suggests.

The other three, and especially "Come Rain or Come Shine," are somewhat forgettable. There's a ridiculous element to that particular story ("Come Rain or Come Shine") that I didn't find believable, and despite liking the main character, a fellow who teaches English in Spain (who's kind of trapped in this transitory life), not a single secondary moved beyond a level of caricature. The tenuous connection to music wasn't enough to keep me interested in the mess the this fellow finds himself in as he visits two, married, university friends. Yet, even when I don't find the situation or the characters particularly engaging, I can still respect Ishiguro's talent -- a bad Ishiguro story is still better than most. There just didn't seem to be enough emotional consequence in any of the stories to keep me interested throughout the read.

The other story worth mentioning, the very last piece in the book, "Cellists," that was, by far, my favourite of the five. A young cellist starting me make his way in the world finds himself a teacher in an American tourist. They develop a deep and lasting teacher/student relationship over the course of a summer. She's running away from a relationship she can't quite decide if she wants to be in or not, and he's trying desperately to live up to both his talent and his potential. They each take something different from one another: she believes she's a genius, like him, and he believes his work is getting better simply through the power of her words, her explanations of what's wrong with his playing.

The narrator of this story, a bandmate and friend of the cellist, tells the story with a detached sense of wonder, in a way -- he sees the cellist years later, better dressed, nicely groomed, and is reminded of the strange summer they spent together. The last paragraph of the story might just be the best of the entire book -- it's pitch perfect in its assessment of both what happened to the cellist and how potential, or any kind of gift really, can easily slip away. It was utterly, heartbreakingly, authentic.

READING CHALLENGES: Ishiguro was born in Japan (even though he's lived in the UK since he was 5 or something), so I'm counting it as Around the World in 52 Books, which might just bring me to, oh, five books read for that challenge this year. Pathetic!

#31 - Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

When I first started to work at Random House, I spent a lot of time getting to know the lists. It's not something that happens organically until you've worked at a publishing house for a while, and so I spent a lot of time combing through blogs getting to know the books. One of the first authors that I discovered was Alexander McCall Smith, and I started to read the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, quite simply because Sarah W had said so many nice things about the series that my curiosity was piqued. But the books are so short and easy to read, which meant that I devoured about six of them before feeling like I'd eaten too much candy: a little upset in the stomach but still somewhat high on the sugar.

Then, the TV show came along and I was worried, at first, that they wouldn't be able to capture the spirit and essence of the books. They did. Completely. Which meant that this weekend as the show came to a close, I was left without my weekly dose of Mma Romotswe. Well, that just won't do, so I picked up McCall Smith's latest book, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. And it's just as sweet as the six or so other books I've read. The central mystery revolves around Mma Ramotswe discovering the reasons why a local football (read: soccer) club keeps losing matches, fixing up Mma Makutst's love life (oh Phuti!), and figuring out what strange noises the little white van is making and why. The themes that are present in each of the other novels are present: a strong moral sense, defining people by how they are treated and treat one another instead of their social and/or monetary status, simple solutions to complex problems. What's also present is Mma Ramotswe's particular talent of coming to conclusions that are both full of common sense and sassy smartness that you wish you had a No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency to figure out your life.

If I have one (slight) criticism, it's that all of the books are essentially the same: local mystery, personal problem (either Mmas) that needs sorting, and larger life lesson. Yet, this is the very sameness I craved this week while feeling terribly unwell. Familiar characters, familiar situations. The experience of reading these books is akin to watching every episode of ER or Law & Order. And I know a lot of the repitition is for the people picking up the series halfway through...so really, it's not a true critique of the novels themselves.

The book was delightful, I mean, of course it was -- it was just what I needed this week and my only complaint was that I read it too fast. Yesterday as I was waiting for the very late TTC, I finished this book, read the P.S. section of Bonjour Tristesse, and bemoaned the fact that all of my electronic reading gadgets had run out of juice. There's nothing worse than being a reader caught with no words to feast her eyes upon.

READING CHALLENGES: AMS was born in Zimbabwe. And he's actually the first African novelist I've read in ages for my Around the World in 52 Books challenge.

NOT WORTHY OF A FULL POST NOTE: I also read #32 this week -- Pillow Talk by UK chicklit author Freya North. The story was sweet, and I'm not going to lie, there were places where I actually teared up, even if I did get a little embarrassed by a couple throbbing members along the way.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge.

#30 - Bonjour Tristesse

Francoise Sagan published Bonjour Tristesse when she was just eighteen years old. Precocious, intelligent and hideously spoiled, the novel's heroine, Cecile, leaves Paris to spend the summer on the coast of the Mediterranean with her father and his mistress, Elsa. As Cecile describes, "The first few days were dazzling." Romance floats by on a boat carrying a young man named Cyril, and the two begin a love affair. Her days are carefree until her father, a bit of a playboy who has never settled down, invites a friend, Anne, to come and stay with them as well. 

Anne and Elsa are as different as two women can be, and what starts off innocently soon morphs into a love triangle that Cecile manipulates from her position as daughter, lover and friend. Spoiled and used to getting her own way, Cecile isn't happy with a very specific turn of events so she does everything within her adolescent power to impose her will upon the adults. Her childish actions have very grown up consequences, and not a single person on that dazzling vacation walks away unscathed. 

The novel is short, succinct, and the narrative style reminded me a little of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Cecile's own short fallings are endearing, and the entire book makes you long for those days when you were foolish enough to act upon your feelings every single moment of every single day. The P.S. section in my copy contained an interview with the author as well as a truly captivating essay about driving -- just perfect for the start of summer when all I can think about is taking a road trip and spending hours in the car just driving, not really caring if I get anywhere in particular. 

READING CHALLENGES: Sagan was born in France, so that takes care of that country for Around the World in 52 Books. Reading her novel made me long for Paris, because it was just about a year ago that I was there with Sam. Also, Bonjour Tristesse is on the 1001 Books list, so that's two challenges with one short page count (130!).

#29 - Brooklyn

Weeks have passed since I finished reading Colm Toibin's ridiculously fabulous new novel, Brooklyn. When the book arrived in the mail, I let it sit on my desk for a couple of days because I knew it was one of those books that once I started reading, I wouldn't be able to put it down. Both of Toibin's previous books were equally excellent but Brooklyn is hands down my favourite. In fact, I'm going to say that it's probably the best book I've read so far this year. 

Eilis has spent her entire life in the village of Enniscorthy where she spends her days taking bookkeeping classes and her nights being ignored by local boys at local dances. She lives in the shadow of her successful, poised, well-dressed older sister Rose, who has built an existence for herself in the small town with a good job and a passion for golf. When a priest from Brooklyn comes to visit and offers Eilis the chance at a new life -- a job, a place to stay, a world away from Enniscorthy -- and she takes it. After all, both of her brothers have left to make their fortunes in England, and Rose does nothing but encourage her to take the chance. 

In Brooklyn, Eilis finds herself, she works hard as a shop girl during the day, and continues to learn bookkeeping at night. Simple goals, but all within reach. And her life truly opens up when she meets Tony. Her homesickness has passed, and despite the moral strictness of 1950s America (not to mention Ireland), Eilis actually feels happy until tragedy brings her home. Everything is different now. Eilis is different, changed, more confident, schooled, and experienced, which leads her to a crossroads. Does she stay in Enniscorthy or does she return to Brooklyn, to Tony?

The story reads overtly simplistic when you think about it -- a coming of age tale, an immigrant's experience -- but Toibin's skill at telling it remains unwavering throughout. His language, his ability to cast the characters, to explore their emotional situation without ever having them openly express an emotion stunned me. What more can you ask of a book than it be a well told story with well developed characters who make a choice that ultimately defines their life in the end? How many young girls emigrated, found themselves away from home, unhappy, and then surprisingly ensconced in a new life that widens their world? 

Eilis doesn't always make the right decisions. Her human flaws are always apparent. Yet, her story has you engaged from the very moment the novel opens with the simple action of her watching Rose come home from work. If anyone out there has read and hasn't fallen completely in love with this novel as I have, I will swear right now that we can never be friends. 

READING CHALLENGES: I'm counting Toibin as my Irish entry for Around the World in 52 Books. It's also #1 so far in terms of the 30-odd books I've read so far this year...

#28 - Under the Skin

The closest book I can compare Michel Faber's truly creepy, utterly addictive novel Under the Skin to would be Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I've been classifying it as speculative fiction, a book that takes place in a world that looks very much like our own, but slowly reveals itself to be very, very different. Isserley spends her days hunched behind the wheel of a slowly-breaking down vehicle trolling for hitchhikers along the A9 highway in Scotland. Her world is skewed, not only from the giant glasses she wears, but also because of her strange occupation. Little spears in the seat of the car sedate the hitchers once she's determined whether or not they'll be missed, and their bodies transported back to a farm where others of her race wait to process the "vodsels."

Slowly over the course of the narrative you learn that Isserley, although she refers to herself as a human being, is quite different from the rest of us who define ourselves by that term. Her body mutilated so she can appear as close to normal in the "vodsel" world atop the earth, she's in constant pain and her job takes its toll. I don't want to give away too much of the plot because Faber's ability to unwind the story over the course of the novel remains its strength. The further along you get, the further you realize how troubled Isserley is -- both physically and psychologically.

The only other book by Faber that I've read is The Crimson Petal and the White, which, to this day, remains one of the most frustrating reads I've ever suffered through. The book sprawled all over the place, tumbled along for almost 1,000 pages (or at least it felt that way), and never came to a satisfying conclusion. The exact opposite is true of Under the Skin. The narrative is crisp and almost cinematic, you feel your own legs cramp as Isserley spends yet another day behind the wheel trolling for her victims. You shake your head as they get in the car. You feel even worse after the book finally reveals exactly what happens to them once they decend into the depths of the world underneath the farm.

To say this book wasn't what I was expecting would be an understatement. And it's it just wonderful when that happens?

READING CHALLENGES: Under the Skin is on the 1001 Books list, so it'll count towards that challenge, and Michel Faber was born in The Hague, The Netherlands, so that's one for Around the World in 52 Books too.

#15 - The House of Spirits

Having never read any Isabel Allende before, and knowing how beloved (and lovable the author is; she came into the office about a year ago and wowed everyone) her novels are worldwide, I had earmarked The House of Spirits as a book I assumed I would devour. Yet, I found my attention drifting almost from the beginning and had to work really hard to finish all 433 pages of the book. The epic story of a South American family (Chilean, I'm assuming) who cope with decades of excess followed by the political turmoil that threatens to completely destroy them, it's no wonder the novel is included in the 1001 Books list. It absolutely deserves to be, it's a book full of the wonder and magic that often accompanies Latin-American fiction (dare I say magic realism, dare I? I know, it's painful to do so, I do hate those generic descriptions) and chock full of the kind of strong, independent female characters that are ever-so lacking in the list as a whole.

But as I'm coming to find in my old age, I like cynical, swift prose. Maybe cynical is the wrong word, maybe detached would be better. Regardless, I can see the irony in my even writing this because (as the fellows in my writer's group can attest) I write long, complex and fruity sentences. The longer the better. Annywaaay, Allende's talent for creating gorgeous and alive worlds, from weaving political and social messages into her prose, and for writing love in ways that rival García Márquez cement her place as one of the greats working today. A story of three generations, the novel begins simply, with the arrival of a very special pet (a dog) under very special circumstances. "Barrabás came to us by sea," writes Clara, the spiritual child who eventually marries and whose children end up leading incredible lives.

The story spreads out then as complex as the family tree that serves as its roots. But Clara remains its heart, even as she ceases to grace the pages in her human state. And just as every heart needs a body, the big house in the city that she called home centres the novel in a particular place (that's not to say that a good part of the action doesn't happen in the Trueba's country home; it does). Clara's husband, the formidable and furious Esteban, balances out his wife's more esoteric characteristics and together they live a long (and for the most part happy in a way) life raising their children, and then their grandchild, Alba.

Time winds its way through the pages at first on the edges as the way of life for the family changes little until the country forces change upon them. Communism rises and then falls. Then a dictatorship comes along and destroys what good might be left (as the narrative makes clear), forcing people to flee and the old ways to be lost forever. Through it all, through the rise and the fall of the Truebas, Allende's passionate writing never feels forced, but to me, I wonder if it's all necessary. All of those words, those many, many words. However, I'm going to temper my writing about the book by the fact that my head is foggy, my concentration bogged down by medication and a distinct lack of focus. None of this remains the book's fault. And not once would my sluggish reaction to the book convince me not to pick up another of Allende's novels.

READING CHALLENGES: Two birds with one stone time: The House of Spirits is on the 1001 Books list and its author Chilean, so I'll count it towards Around the World in 52 Books too.

#12 - Ignorance

The last Milan Kundera book that I read was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. At the time I was living in Banff, Alberta with about six other women in a townhouse that had no furniture barring a really old, uncomfortable couch. We all slept on the floor in sleeping bags, worked awful jobs, drank too much and climbed many mountains (literally). I loved that book. But more I loved the experience of reading that book in that particular time and that particular place. In a way, it's like Melanie pointed out in the comments here a few weeks ago, sometimes the books just choose us.

Kundera's Ignorance takes these themes, or maybe ideas would be a better word, of time and place and how experience is tied explicitly to both, and explores them through two characters returning to their homeland after an extended absence. Irena and Josef run into one another in an airport, both having emigrated from their homeland (Prague) years ago, by chance. They make plans to have lunch the next day to catch up. For both, the return home is bittersweet, political regimes have changed, they've both moved on with their lives, had families, spouses, entire existences outside of the people they've left behind.

Is this right, if I say, "to coin a phrase"? -- "You can never go home again." The saying feels true for so many reasons. The time and the place will never be just the same again, it'll always be tempered by our particular experiences, and the philosophical implications of such, and that's what happens to both Irena and Josef. They feel the need to explain themselves: why they left, why it took them so long to come home, and what their lives turned out to be in their adopted countries. It can't be an easy thing, coming home after years away when everything is different, older, changed, and you somewhat expect it to be the same. Not because of a conscious realization that change didn't or couldn't happen while they were away but more so because it's impossible to imagine how much could be different.

Lives move so slowly in a way. Age catches up with people. Time turns hair gray and adds infinite bits and pieces to memories. But if you go ten, twenty years without seeing a member of your family or your friends, the awkwardness of the reunion will always remind you of how ignorant you are of the day-to-day occurences in their lives. There's no judgment in Kundera's novel about the impact of change for these two characters, in a sense, the narrator's merely observing the moments where they realize the implication of their emigration. For a girl who's always thinking of what it might be like to live somewhere different, it was an interesting book to read, a little bittersweet, and more than a little sad, but wholly fascinating.

READING CHALLENGES: One of the books from the 1001 Books list so I'll cross it off from there. Kundera was born in Brno, Czechslovakia, which is now the Czech Republic, so I'll add him to the Around the World in 52 Books challenge too. It's interesting, to read a book that's about returning to a place that has utterly changed since the collapse of communism. The book honestly made me want to go to Prague and isn't that just the point of my armchair travelling reading?

#4 - Babylon Rolling

Shall I be honest? I mean utterly, unflinchingly honest? I almost put this book down after the first page after the prologue. Amanda Boyden's second novel, Babylon Rolling starts off with a love letter of sorts to New Orleans, beleaguered already prior to Katrina and devastated afterwards, and it's touching if a bit affected, the use of the pronoun "we" and all that, and then the book itself carries on like a thunderclap before a storm. She's a powerful writer -- there's no denying it. When I finished the novel on the way home, there were tears in my eyes.

Now I'm going to digress. I know I'm sick of how much I've been talking about The Wire lately so I can only imagine how sick the rest of the world must be (listen me, the world, pshaw). For someone who doesn't live in the middle of a raging gang war or a city almost overrun by crime, I always feel there's an authenticity to The Wire that could be horribly misplaced. It's an ivory tower appreciation for something I have never experienced; the "realness" of it makes me feel like I'm involved in some way in the defeat of human society, if we're being honest. 'It's not a war,' The Wire keeps reminding us, 'because no one wins.' And this theme, the decay of civilization, in a way, pervades much of Babylon Rolling: people cheat on their spouses, horrible and traumatic accidents happen, dope slingers and their gangster counterparts reign in some corners, and tragedy seems to define a place that hasn't even seen the worst of it, the hurricane hasn't even hit yet.

But I felt like Fearius, the self-given nickname of a young boy christened Daniel, whose voice is written much like the dialogue in The Wire, wasn't as authentic as I would have imagined he could and/or should have been. So I found him and his bad grammar and his lack of punctuation and his misapprehension of vocabulary a little off-putting in ways that I would have never criticized had I watched him in the television show. Yet, the other characters, some mentally challenged, others simply lost, were so completely whole that it kind of made up for Fearius's terribly annoying everythingness.

I loved Cerise, a 70-year-old grandmother who loves her husband so fiercely she endangers her own life to save him, and her voice broke my heart all over the place. The simplicity and wisdom from which she lives her life is inspiring. The troubled marriage of Ed and Ariel reminded me a little of Tom Perrotta, and their actions not only underscored the main themes of the book, but they heightened the whole sense of troubled America in microcosm. But like Fearius, I felt Philomenia was a little over the top at times. The idea that all of these people live on the same street and that so much happens to them felt contrived, a little too Crash for me. But I can't say I didn't get caught up in the story and I can't deny that there's a powerful strength of voice to the book. I'm glad, too, that I didn't put the book down after the first few pages. It certainly showed me, didn't it?

READING CHALLENGES: Babylon Rolling is one of my Cleaning Out the Closet challenge books. That's one down and 19 more to go, and since Boyden was born in Minnesota, I'm counting this book as the United States for Around the World in 52 Books too. I'm sure as sh*t not going to get stuck reading so few countries this year. It's not exactly cheating to knock off all the easy ones first, is it?

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Blogging "The Fall of the House of Usher" for 1001 Books, I finished it too this evening. And reading? Who knows. I'll wait until something calls for me.

#3 - In a Free State

The last thing I expected this morning was to get caught up in V.S. Naipaul's truly excellent In a Free State. I woke up early, as I usually do, crawled out of bed, grabbed my book and cuddled up under the duvet on the couch. My RRHB slept. I read. He slept. I read more. He woke up. I crawled back into bed, fell asleep for a bit, and then finished the book. What a perfect lazy day before the craziness of real life picks up again the moment the alarm goes off tomorrow morning.

The last Naipaul book I read was A House for Mr. Biswas way back in second year university. I was captivated but that never brought be back to Naipaul. My post-colonial reading in later years turned back to Canadian, I left university, did my M.A., and never picked up another of his books. Another of the surprises that I found on my shelf, I must have ordered this book back when 1001 Books came out. In a Free State was first published in 1971 and it won the Booker that year. Bookended by two diary-like travel journals, the collection contains two short stories and a novella, from which it takes its title.

The first story, "One Out of Many," follows a servant brought to Washington from Bombay. One day he steps away from his employer, leaves everything behind in the cupboard where he was sleeping, and becomes an illegal immigrant with an under the table job at a local restaurant owned by a fellow countryman. The story explores themes of alienation as Santosh makes his way in the United States, and slowly he discovers that he'll need to leave almost 100% of his old life behind to survive.

This idea, of the cost of freedom and the impact of the realities of immigration, is carried forth into the second story, "Tell Me Who to Kill." Leaving everything he knows behind, the narrator picks up and heads to London with the intention of giving his brother a better life, a life of studies, so he too can become "something." He works hard, saves his money, and then as so many stories go, makes a bad decision that ruins everything. Told through flashbacks as he takes the journey to his brother's wedding, the story becomes alive through his rich dialect, the obvious affection he feels for his brother, regardless of how he disappoints him, and the necessity of change when faced with adversity. It's a crushing and heartbreaking story.

"In a Free State" inverts the situation. Here a white, homosexual man has come to Africa to serve the government,under ideals of serving for the greater good. Away from the safe collective where he lives, Bobby attends a seminar and then must make his way back during a time of political upheaval. His passenger, the wife of a British journalist named Linda, makes pleasant enough conversation to begin with, but it soon becomes obvious she isn't happy either on the journey or in Africa. As their trip becomes even more arduous (they miss their curfew and are forced to stay at a ramshackle colonial resort), the polite nature of their relationship disintegrates. Armed with a sense of misapprehended colonial idealism, Bobby soon finds himself in all different kinds of trouble, some of his own making and much as a result of the political situations, and it's damning. Like in the first two stories, Naipaul explores themes of alienation and separation, of family and work, of place and displacement.

I couldn't put this book down. It's a book I'd love to study. A book that reminds you how words can sever a problem from its root, pull it apart and set it down in a way that makes you see things more clearly, even if in the end, for all three protagonists, little changes despite how hard the world presses up against them to force their currents in a new direction.

READING CHALLENGES: In a Free State is on the 1001 Books list, and so I'll cross it off there. But Naipaul was born in Trinidad, so I'll count this book on my Around the World in 52 Books list as well. It's actually a perfect book for that challenge. The landscapes, from the unknown African country that's the setting for the novella to Egypt, from London and Washington as seen through the eyes of those who settle and are not born there, there's an interesting sense of place that grounds the entire collection.

COMPS AND OBSERVATIONS: I couldn't help but think of Blood Diamond when I was reading "In a Free State," not because the stories are at all similar (it's a terribly mediocre film in the end), but because when Bobby speaks to an African man in the book, he uses that patois that Leo uses at the beginning of the film: "Who your boss-man? Who?" As Naipaul describes the country as it slips from colonial to post-colonial rule, I kept hearing, "T.I.A. This is Africa, right?" from that scene at the bar. In terms of comps, for much of the story, I kept thinking of Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," despite the fact that it's obvious that Bobby and Linda are not at all lovers, their conversations have that same read-between-the-lines feel to them and the dialogue is excellent.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I picked up Amanda Boyden's Babylon Rolling while my RRHB was using the computer. Fingers crossed I'll finish it tonight, which means I'll have managed to finish 7 books while I've been off for vacation. Not bad indeed!