Author: whatmeread

Special Post! Best of the Week Retrospective!

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Cover for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De ZoetSome of my readers have asked me to list my favorite books of the ones I’ve reviewed, so I decided to announce a weekly favorite. Since I haven’t done that so far, I thought I would post this special message listing my favorites for every week since I started. My criterion is simply whatever book I enjoyed reading most of the ones I chose for the week. That is a fairly arbitrary decision, since some weeks have two or more strong candidates while other weeks have none as strong. Sadly, nonfiction will be at a disadvantage because even though I may find it interesting, it isn’t likely to pull me in the way fiction does, so you nonfiction fans should pay absolutely no attention to this list! Those are my two caveats for the list, so, here goes!

Day 81: A Whistling Woman

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Cover for A Whistling WomanI may have been less bemused by A Whistling Woman if I had known that it was the fourth in a series by A.S. Byatt, of which I have only read Babel Tower, and that long ago. Instead, I kept having the feeling that there was something I just wasn’t understanding. My impression was that it was about too many things, so I was relieved to find a review in The Guardian that criticizes it for having “too many ideas” and being an “over-ambitious jumble.” The intent of the series, says The Guardian, is to depict the social and imaginative life of Britain in the 1950’s and 60’s. Well, that is quite a job.

The title refers to a story published by a peripheral character about people on a perilous journey. On the way they meet creatures who are half woman and half bird and whose whistling cries are unbearable. The prince in the story has learned many languages and finds he can understand the creatures, so they tell him their tale. I don’t want to go into it further, but it is clearly a statement about feminism, which is logical since A Whistling Woman is set in 1968 and features several women who are struggling with their place in society.

The action focuses (if focuses is the word) around Frederica Potter, the host of a fashionable TV talk show; a protest movement against a university; a conference on body and mind; and the growth of a cult. Frederica is planning a show around the conference, where the scientists’ rationalism is pitted against the results of their experiments, which show that the brain is not built for reason but to make the body work. At an alternative therapy clinic, the psychoanalyst Elvet Gander is falling under the influence of his patient Joshua Ramsden, a schizophreniac, around whom a messianic cult is forming. Ramsden’s essential goodness is being muddied by his increasing psychotic episodes. Some outsiders are encouraging the students at the university to form an Anti-University, the sole purpose of which is apparently to protest.

In addition to being almost confusingly full of ideas and plots going in every direction, the book does not really echo my own experience of the times. Surely student demonstrations, at least in the States, were more meaningful and actually about something. Most of the ones I remember were about the war in Vietnam.

The book includes deep discussions of science and religion. It is interesting while offering almost too much to think about.

Day 80: Code to Zero

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Cover for Code to ZeroI usually enjoy a good Ken Follett thriller, but I have to say that in Code to Zero, I felt like Follett was phoning it in. The novel is set in the depths of the Cold War, January 1958. Claude “Luke” Lucas awakens on the floor of the men’s restroom in Union Station, D.C., with no memory. He is dressed like a bum and another bum tells him how much he drank the night before.

But Luke doesn’t believe he is a bum. When the other man offers to take him on a bender, he realizes he has no desire for alcohol and concludes he must not be an alcoholic. He also quickly discovers he has other talents, like the ability to lose a shadow.

We are soon lead to conclude that Luke’s search for his identity has something to do with the launch of the Explorer I rocket, America’s last hope for competing with the Russians in the space program. We almost immediately learn (although Luke does not know) that his activities are being monitored by Anthony Carroll, a CIA operative, whose agent was the “bum” who tried to get Luke drunk. After Luke shakes off his minder, Carroll feverishly tries to locate him.

These shades of The Bourne Identity are interleaved with flashbacks to the early 40’s, when Luke is a physics student at Harvard who wants a career in rocket science. He and his friends Anthony and Bern, his girlfriend Elspeth, and Anthony’s girlfriend Billie will later be entangled in the plot.

Luke’s search for his identity and the danger he is unknowingly courting are at first compelling. The flashbacks are much less successful, because Follett doesn’t seem very interested in establishing his characters’ personalities and getting us interested in them. The latter parts of the book dealing with Luke’s unconvincingly rapid success at discovering his identity and what follows after suffer from the same problems.

Day 79: A Mountain of Crumbs

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Cover for A Mountain of CrumbsIn A Mountain of Crumbs, Elena Gorokhova has written an engrossing memoir about growing up in Soviet Russia during the Cold War. What makes it most interesting, besides the details of life in such a different environment from our own, is how, while misunderstanding many things about Western culture and not being brought up with an accurate understanding of history, even of her own country, she still learns to doubt what she is taught.

Gorokhova’s upbringing is fairly ordinary, although she is both slightly privileged (her family has its own two-room apartment instead of sharing with other families) and disadvantaged (she has to earn her own way by merit since she is not the child of a peasant). However, from an early age her interest in learning English makes her fascinated with the world outside the Soviet Union. At the same time, her cynicism and disillusionment with her country grows.

Most of the book is about Gorokhova’s inability to live in lock-step, both with the state and with her own mother, so that she always feels like she is lying. As she says, “they (the state) lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know.”

The book is beautifully written in the first person as if Gorokhova is currently of that particular age rather than as if she were recalling her memories. (For example, when she is telling about when she is five, she narrates it as if she is five.) I can’t completely accept this style of narration for sections about her childhood, because the thoughts she claims to have are too sophisticated for a small child. In particular, I am struck by one comment she makes about thinking something is ironic. Five-year-old children don’t have thoughts about irony–it’s hard enough to get teenagers to understand what it is. However, the same narrative style works very well when she recalls her thoughts as an older child and young adult.

(As a side note, I have to contrast the chapters narrated by herself as a child with Jennifer Lauck’s wonderful memoir Blackbird, which at the beginning employs a narrative style that is absolutely convincing as the thoughts of a small child, allowing the reader to understand things that the child Jennifer doesn’t.)

I have one frustration with the book. Gorokhova describes so many misunderstandings about American life and so much anticipation and anxiety about going to live in the States that I would have liked a chapter about what it was like when she finally arrived. Instead, the book ends as she leaves Russia and contains a short epilogue about her life more than 20 years later.

Day 78: The Night Strangers

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Cover of The Night StrangersIt’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a real creepfest, but The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian is certainly one. The book is a combination of a ghost story and a thriller, and I don’t want to tell you what else.

Chip and Emily Linton move with their twin daughters to a small New Hampshire town after Chip has been traumatized by a horrific accident. As an experienced airline pilot, he tried to make an emergency plane landing on a lake, only to end up killing 39 people. The family moves thinking that Chip will recover sooner if he is away from people who know what happened, but of course that is impossible.

The Lintons purchase a historic house that hasn’t been lived in for awhile. The house has some strange things about it, for one thing a door in the basement that has been sealed with 39 carriage bolts.

Chip becomes obsessed with the door, and then he begins seeing three of his dead passengers. To the reader, it is not clear whether the house is haunted or whether Chip is losing his mind.

Some local women, all herbalists, begin to befriend the family. Some of them show an unusual interest in the twin girls. Soon we become aware that the history of the house is unsavory–and involves twins.

The story is uneven. At some points it seems to be going one way, at others another. Our dread rises, but we don’t know exactly which of two possible horrendous endings will come about or whether the Lintons can escape altogether. But if you appreciate a good psychological thriller and all-around creepy book, you’ll probably enjoy The Night Strangers.

Day 77: Wolf Hall

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Cover for Wolf HallBest Book of Week 16!

This is a good time to write about Wolf Hall, because I was thrilled to learn that Hilary Mantel’s sequel to it has just come out. My copy is arriving soon. Mantel is always an interesting writer whose work does not occupy any one genre, although her last few books have been historical fiction. Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize and was one the best books I read in 2010.

The novel looks at the political and religious machinations of Henry VIII through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from low origins to become Henry’s chief minister. Although Cromwell has traditionally been viewed as Henry’s “heavy,” recent historians have looked at his career more kindly, showing that his work as chief minister brought England into more modern statehood and that his changes created more order for government functions that were less controlled by the whims of nobility.

Mantel depicts Cromwell as a loyal man who cares for his dependents and works to reform England. He builds up a great household as he moves from the position of secretary to Cardinal Wolsey to work for the king. Later, after the Cardinal’s downfall, he slowly, almost imperceptibly, works to bring down those who furthered their own interests by destroying the Cardinal, including the rapacious Boleyns.

Cromwell is loving to his family and friends, completely faithful to the Cardinal and then to Henry, intelligent, able in many spheres of work, and decent. Mantel paints a charming pictures of his home life. In contrast, she turns the tables on Thomas More, venerated for centuries, showing him as a sadistic torturer of Protestants who is in love with his own martyrdom.

Cromwell meets Jane Seymour when she is a young, lonely lady’s maid to the queen, teased and neglected by the rest of the court, and feels pity for her. Later, after he is long widowed, he falls in love with her. The title of the book is the name of her ancestral home, Wolf Hall.

Mantel’s approach is understated, leaving the reader sometimes to connect the ideas. The details in this novel seem completely authentic, and Mantel handles the period brilliantly. She somehow manages to generate tension and suspense even about things we know all about, like what will happen to Anne Boleyn.

Day 76: When Rain Clouds Gather

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Cover for When Rain Clouds GatherMakhaya, a refugee from South Africa, slips into Botswana at the beginning of When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head. It is the mid-60’s, and Botswana is peacefully gaining its independence from Britain. It is a poor country with much unarable soil and primitive farming techniques.

Makhaya has some problems settling into the village of Gomena, not the least of which is that the corrupt local Chief Matenge will not allow him in the village. He gets a job with a white man named Gilbert Balfour helping teach the villagers new agricultural methods.

The book is sparsely written and very short. Its themes are the conflict between tribalism and the newer ways, about the political changes and changes in customs occurring in the 60’s in Africa.

I found the book interesting, especially the depiction of traditional customs, but I felt it required more knowledge of the situation in Botswana and South Africa in the 60’s than I had. More is implied than expressed, which is a part of its beauty but can also be frustrating. For example, Makhaya has just left prison in South Africa, but I guess we are supposed to know what he might have been in prison for. We believe it is for political reasons, but no details are provided.

Bessie Head herself was a refugee from South Africa who settled in Botswana. I’m sure the novel reflects both some of the problems she had in making a new life and the relief she felt in being able to settle into a relatively tranquil place.

Day 75: Doc

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Cover for DocThanks go to my friend K.C. for recommending this book. Writing a very interesting tale of a tragic life, Mary Doria Russell does a good job of staying true to the facts while fictionalizing what she can’t know in Doc, the story of Dr. John Henry (Doc) Holliday.

Russell begins with Holliday as a young boy, delicate, raised as a Southern gentleman and educated by his mother. Although he is frail, he shows much promise for his intelligence, grace, and wit, but his chances are hurt first by the Civil War, which ruins his wealthy family, then by the tragedy of his mother’s death caused by sickness and starving, and finally by tuberculosis.

Already by the time he sets off in his early 20’s for Dallas to work in a dentistry practice, he is ill. Shortly after he arrives, a major collapse in the world economy causes him to lose his job and casts him adrift to live as best he can. Gambling and the hope of starting his own practice bring him to Dodge City, and the Earps bring him to Tombstone for the famous gunfight.

Russell does a great job of depicting Doc: a soft-spoken gentleman with a wicked tongue, generous to his friends, profligate with his money, a fine pianist, and patient with his rapacious prostitute mistress Kate, who also fell far from a proud background.

Russell also fills out the characters of the Earps, especially happy, kind Morgan and the rather thick-headed, upright Wyatt. Bat Masterson appears as self-aggrandizing, responsible for falsely depicting Doc in the media as a hardened killer.

Russell’s approach is a little disorienting. She periodically changes her narrative style to sound more like an old codger telling a yarn and at other times sounds like she is writing a nonfiction biography. It is hard to tell whether she makes these style shifts purposely or has trouble removing herself from her source material. Although most of the book is chronological, she occasionally plays with time by going back to tell about a character’s earlier life.

Overall, Doc is a sympathetic, involving effort.

Day 74: A Caribbean Mystery

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Cover for A Caribbean MysteryAgatha Christie is one of the best mystery writers of the so-called Golden Age of mystery writing because she so skillfully sketches believable characters and plots. Although many of the Golden Age mysteries concentrate on perplexing puzzles such as figuring out railway timetables, Christie was much more interested in the personality of the murderer and his or her motivations.

A Caribbean Mystery begins after Miss Marple has suffered a serious bout of pneumonia. Her affectionate nephew Raymond has arranged a vacation for her on an island in the Caribbean, where she can recover. But of course her vacation isn’t as restful as her nephew had hoped.

She is only half listening to boring Major Palgrave when he offers to show her the snapshot of  a murderer, but just then he sees something and quickly begins chatting about something else. That night he is found dead, apparently of a heart attack.

Miss Marple is having grave doubts about that heart attack when the chambermaid reports that before his death the Major Palgrave did not have the heart medication found in his room. Shortly thereafter, she is found stabbed to death.

Miss Marple begins sizing up her suspects. Molly Kendal, owner of the hotel with her husband Tim, has been behaving oddly, having nightmares and reporting blackouts and feelings of paranoia. Years ago, Greg Dyson’s wife died and he married her cousin Lucky within a month. Colonel Hillingdon and his wife Evelyn appear close, but are they really? And are they as friendly with the Dysons as they seem to be? The elderly and wealthy Mr. Rafiel is too feeble to be a murderer, but his secretary Esther Walters is secretive and Miss Marple spots his attendant Jackson skulking around.

As usual, Christie does a deft job of quickly limning believable characters and a complex mixture of motives and red herrings in a brief novel that is fun to read. I spotted the killer quickly but still enjoyed the book.

Day 73: A Thousand Splendid Suns

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Cover for a Thousand Splendid SunsBest Book of Week 15!

A Thousand Splendid Suns is Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, about the love between two women set in the backdrop of the wars in Afghanistan. The novel begins in a time of peace with the story of the older woman, Mariam, who as a young illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man hero-worships her father and does not believe her mother’s warnings about him. When she is fifteen, she finds out the kind of man he is through a series of horrible events, beginning when she goes to the house of his legitimate family to ask him to take her to the movies. Her mother dies, and within days, her father’s legitimate family marries her off far away in Kabul to a much older man, Rasheed. Rasheed is kind to her at first, but when she cannot bring a child to term, he becomes abusive.

A neighbor of Rasheed and Mariam, Laila is 20 years younger than Mariam. She has been brought up and educated by her loving parents to be brave. She has always been in love with her childhood friend Tajik and they expect to marry, but Tajik’s family leaves the country during the war because of his father’s illness. Just as Laila’s parents are preparing to leave as well, they are killed. Rasheed, now in his 60’s, takes in Laila purportedly as an act of kindness and tricks her into marrying him.

Initially distrustful of each other, the two women soon each becomes the only person the other can trust as they lose all their rights under the government of the Taliban. Trapped in an abusive marriage, they must work together to survive.

Hosseini’s story-telling is absolutely compelling. The women’s existence is harsh, and he tells their story with compassion. The ending will leave you in tears.