Review 1510: The Left Hand of Darkness

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Best of Ten!
Genly Ai, an envoy to Gethen from the Ekumen, a league of other worlds, has been waiting for an audience with King Argaven XV of Karhide for two years. Although he does not trust Lord Estraven, Argaven’s prime minister, he has understood the prime minister was supporting his efforts to gain an audience. But during a state parade, Lord Estraven tells him it is not a good time.

Genly’s disappointment makes him doubt that Lord Estraven ever had good intentions. When Lord Estraven hints that Genly should leave the capital, Genly ignores him. Soon, he learns that Lord Estraven has been banished from Karhide upon pain of death.

King Argaven encourages Genly to travel around Karhide, and he does so. The planet of Gethen is an ice planet, formerly called Winter by Ekumen, and Genly is constantly cold. He has trouble understanding the Gethenians, who are androgynous; when they are in heat once a month, they take on whichever sex is opposite to that of their partner. Genly has a hard time adjusting to the feminine side of the Gethenians. For their part, they consider him a pervert for always, as they see it, being in heat.

Eventually, Genly decides to leave the more primitive, indirect Karhides for Orgoreyn, an apparently more civilized and direct country, where he is welcomed. This state is much more authoritarian. Whereas in Karhide his presence was known, in Orgoreyn it is being kept secret from all but the government. Soon, the situation takes a turn he doesn’t expect.

When I first read The Left Hand of Darkness years ago, I thought it was about the best book I had ever read. Reading it again, I see no reason to change my mind except to say that others stand up there with it.

It is written as a set of documents, Genly’s story mixed in with records from other envoys and stories from the myths of various cultures on Gethen. It manages to explore many topics with its theme of light and darkness, including the effects on our lives of different sexual orientations. It’s really a masterpiece.

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Review 1509: Normal People

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In school, Marianne and Connell ignore each other. They come from different social backgrounds. Marianne is from a wealthy family, while Connell’s mother is the cleaner for Marianne’s family. Although Connell is popular, Marianne is bullied and ignored.

Away from school, the two become lovers. However, a misunderstanding about their relationship causes Connell to hurt her and they break up.

At college in Dublin, they meet again. This time, Marianne is popular with a set of bright students and Connell feels like an outsider.

Normal People is the minutely observed story of a friendship and an on-again, off-again love affair. It has been widely lauded, but it was hard for me to be interested in this story of two very immature people. The relationship is a long series of misunderstandings that separate the two but do nothing to teach them to communicate more honestly.

It’s not that I disliked this novel. It’s just that I found myself getting impatient while wondering where it was going. When it finally got there, the conclusion was underwhelming.

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Review 1508: The Gallows Pole

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In a remote Yorkshire valley in 1767, David Hartley and his brothers call together all the clippers in the area. Clippers have for centuries been debasing the coin of the realm by clipping edges off to make counterfeit coin. Hartley is already known as King David in the region for his control of the valley that his home lies above on the moor, but now he declares that they will all become rich by becoming systematic. All the people in the area will send him coins, and in return they will all get a portion of the proceeds. To make more money, he brings in a man called the Alchemist, who will make more convincing coins. Any man who refuses to participate is brought into line.

Within two years, this gang has caused enough disturbance in the local economy that an exciseman, William Deighton, is brought in to try to bring the Hartleys and their gang to law. James Broadbent, a member of the gang who thinks he hasn’t been rewarded enough, decides to turn informant.

On the one hand, this novel is at times lyrical, especially in evoking the landscape, and it is based on true events. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the subject or the brutality. There is a lot of fascination in our society with people who are essentially gangsters that I don’t share. Although Myers tells most of the story in a fair-handed way, he does seem to come down a bit on the side of the thieves, even as he recounts some crimes against innocent men. This book won the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize for 2018, but I’m not sure it’s the one I would have picked.

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Review 1507: Catch and Kill

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Catch and Kill is Ronan Farrow’s book detailing the NBC News investigation into claims of sexual harassment, abuse, and rape by Harvey Weinstein against numerous female actors and employees. This investigation resulted in Farrow’s New Yorker article that precipitated the Me Too movement. The book also details the obstruction of Farrow’s efforts to pursue the investigation by his own management at NBC, which turned out to have its own culture of sexual abuse and harassment and a system of cover-ups for this behavior.

Less well known is his story of surveillance by the Weinstein organization and of threats against witnesses and potential witnesses. Interestingly enough, he also mentions instances of similar claims against Donald Trump before his election, which, along with those against Weinstein were “caught and killed” by the National Enquirer and its affiliates.

Farrow is very open about his own not very helpful responses to his sister Dylan’s claims against their father, Woody Allen, and about his feelings of being spied upon as well as a certain amount of naiveté when NBC first began obstructing his investigations. This is an interesting account of a landmark moment in recent history.

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Review 1506: The Broom of the System

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We first meet Lenore Beadsman in 1981 as a 15-year-old on a visit to her sister at Mount Holyoke. There, three guys from Amherst invade the girls’ dorm room and more or less sexually assault them, except Lenore, who leaves. The point of this part?

We meet her again working as a receptionist in Cleveland and having an affair with her boss, Rick Vigorous. Her great-grandmother has disappeared from a nursing home along with a substantial number of patients and some staff. The manager of the home, which is owned by Lenore’s wealthy father, has been asked to keep the incident quiet, but he asks Lenore to contact her father. She is unable to reach him, however.

I tried hard to read this novel, which I know is considered brilliant and was recommended by my brother, but I just couldn’t get on the same wavelength with it. Though I know it was considered innovative in its time (1987), it seemed dated to me, both in its bizarre zany humor, which reminded me of A Confederacy of Dunces, Tim Robbins, or Richard Brautigan, and in its treatment of women. I read about a quarter of it but saw myself completely lose interest when the cockatiel started spouting break-up lines. The novel just seemed too ridiculous, and I also felt it wasn’t going anywhere. The hyper-intellectual dialogue seemed completely unlikely. It also seemed pretentious.

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Review 1505: Cold Earth

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Jimmy Perez is attending the funeral of Magnus, an old man who was a recluse for years, when the hillside above the cemetery collapses in a landslide, taking out a cottage further down the hill. Jimmy thinks the cottage is unoccupied, but he goes to check. There he finds the body of a woman, apparently killed in the slide.

While Jimmy’s team struggles to identify the woman, the coroner lets them know that the woman was already dead inside the cottage. She was strangled. Jimmy must call in his boss, Willow Reeves, from the mainland. He finds he’s thinking of her more and more.

When the team thinks they’ve identified the woman as the American owner of the cottage, they have another setback. She is at work in New York and has no idea who might be using her cottage. In any case, the dead woman was using her name when she crossed over to the island.

As usual with Cleeves, this was an interesting but difficult puzzle. I have to say that there was so little apparent connection between the victim and the murderer that it was almost cheating. Also, the novel seemed to conclude a little too quickly after the build-up at the end. Still, I enjoyed reading it.

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Review 1504: The Curate’s Awakening

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Thomas Wingfold is a curate who was brought up in the church but has never really considered what his beliefs are. When he is challenged by a cynical university man, George Bascombe, to prove that Christ even lived, he realizes he can’t do it. This sends him into a crisis of faith, during which he tries to form his own beliefs.

Helen Lingard is George’s cousin, a young woman who is described as someone who has never thought before. George comes to believe he can mold her thought to match his, in which case she might make a wonderful wife. However, Helen finds she needs someone to turn to when her beloved brother, Leopold, returns home in desperate trouble. After the curate begins preaching more heart-felt sermons about his search, she decides to confide in him.

This novel, written in 1876, is part of a trilogy called The Curate of Glaston, and it is meant to have a spiritual message. As such, it wasn’t a good choice for me, especially as it goes into great detail about Thomas’s conversations with his mentor and his sermons. It is perfectly readable, though, if you are interested in such a subject. I was, in fact, interested to find out what happened to Helen and Leopold, but although I tried very hard to finish this book, I couldn’t.

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Review 1503: The Battle Lost and Won

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The second novel in Manning’s Levant Trilogy, The Battle Lost and Won begins one day after The Danger Tree ended. Simon Boulderstone continues his leave after finding out that his brother Hugo has been killed. He tags along with Harriet and her friends for an evening in Cairo, but when he hears that the big push is coming up, he returns to his unit hoping to be in on the action.

This book continues the pattern of its predecessor by alternating the points of view of Harriet and Simon. Simon becomes more closely involved in the second battle of El Alamein while Harriet becomes more frustrated with her husband Guy. As usual, Guy occupies all his time with projects and saves none for her, nor does he agree to anything she asks for. He is generous with anyone but her. Without any job or other occupation, she gets dragged into the love lives of her flatmates Angela and Edwina.

Like many middle novels, this one does not have its own climax but works its way to the final volume. Still, I am interested to see what happens to Guy and Harriet, and to some extent, Simon.

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Review 1502: Wild Decembers

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Best of Ten!
Although the Bugler and Brennan families have been feuding for generations, when Mick Bugler inherits land in the mountains of Western Ireland near the Brennans, he and Joseph Brennan are disposed to be friends. They are, that is, until Bugler goes behind Joseph’s back to lease the field Joseph has leased for the past 15 years. Joseph must take a huge loss on dairy cows that he can’t feed, but that doesn’t seem to faze the wealthy Bugler.

As the situation deteriorates, Bugler keeps getting the best of Joseph, however inadvertently. Joseph’s attitude is egged on by the villagers, who don’t like Bugler. It doesn’t help that Joseph’s sister, Breege, has fallen in love with Bugler, unaware that he’s engaged to a woman back in Australia.

This beautiful, moody novel winds its way to an inevitable sad end. O’Brien’s writing is gorgeous and evocative. This is quite a book.

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Review 1501: Pachinko

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In 1932, 16-year-old Sunja is fascinated by Hansee, a debonair Korean who lives in Japan but visits her small village in Korea to buy fish. Sunja has an affair with him, but when she learns she is pregnant, he tells her he has a wife and children in Japan but wants her to be his Korean wife. While realizing she will disgrace her family, she does not agree.

Isak, a frail Christian minister, comes to stay at Sunja’s mother’s boarding house on his way to Japan, but he soon falls ill with tuberculosis. Sunja and her mother Yangjin nurse him back to health. When he understands Sunja’s predicament, he offers to marry her to give her child a father. So, the couple leave for Japan, where the novel follows the fates of them and their descendents for the next fifty plus years.

At the time of the beginning of the novel, Japan ruled Korea, and the Japanese treated the Koreans as second-class citizens in their own country. In Japan, the Koreans are considered dirty and lazy and are forced to live in ghettos. They are discriminated against, and most are not allowed to become citizens even if born there.

This novel is an interesting story about the difficulties Koreans had living in Japan. It is the type of novel that is more interested in what happens to this family, though, than in creating well-rounded characters. I liked it but did not love it.

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