Day 957: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

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Cover for Packing for MarsScience writer Mary Roach seems to be attracted to unusual subjects, as indicated by her previous books on the science about cadavers, the afterlife, and sex. She would seem, in fact, to be in large part attracted to subjects that others would think unpleasant, at least judging from Packing for Mars.

Roach starts out tamely enough by exploring the differences in how astronauts are chosen by the Japanese versus Americans. Then she logically moves into discussions of past research into the psychological effects of space travel and life without gravity.

Eventually, she gets down to the nitty gritty, for example, designing food for space, but also more, shall we say, earthy topics, such as waste disposal, farting in space, sex in zero gravity, and so on. Indeed, the chapter on food dealt largely with shit, which, since that was the subject of the previous chapter, was a bit too much.

Packing for Mars is well written, interesting, and sometimes amusing. It is perfect for people who like little factoids or like to dabble in science. It would not be my choice for reading normally (it was a book club choice), and I confess I got a little tired of descriptions of floating turds, and so on.

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Day 956: The Black Moon

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Cover for The Black MoonThe Black Moon is the fifth book in Winston Graham’s Poldark Saga. It is now 1794.

Ross and Demelza Poldark have weathered the difficulties of their marital breach, and the result is that Demelza is again pregnant. The feud between Ross and George Warleggan has been in abeyance, but in this novel George shows that he is even more of a villain.

The difficulty begins with a friendship. George Warleggan thinks that Geoffrey Charles Poldark, his stepson, is spoiled from spending too much time with his mother. He wants to send Geoffrey Charles to school or failing that, get him a tutor, but he compromises with Elizabeth by allowing her to hire her cousin, Morwenna Chynoweth, as Geoffrey Charles’s governess. While Geoffrey Charles and Morwenna are out on the beach, they meet Drake Carne, one of two of Demelza’s brothers who have come to the area looking for work.

Although there is quite a distance in their stations, Drake being the son of a miner and Morwenna the daughter of a vicar, Drake and Morwenna’s friendship gradually turns to love. Morwenna has no idea that George has been plotting an advantageous marriage for her—at least one that allies him with an established family of the area.

In the meantime, others are interested in the news from France. Ross hears that Dwight Enys’s ship has been sunk after a naval battle. He goes to some trouble to find out if Dwight is alive, both for his own sake and that of Dwight’s fiancée, Caroline Penvenen. Eventually, Dwight’s plight leads Ross into an even more hazardous venture.

Some foreshadowing of future events, possibly, comes with the birth of George Warleggan’s son Valentine. He is born under a black moon (an eclipse), which the local people believe is an ill omen. And perhaps there are small indications that he will not be a normal child. I don’t know, but I am interested to find out.

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Day 955: Family Roundabout

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Cover for Family RoundaboutBest Book of the Week!
It is 1920, and the Fowler and Willoughby families are about to be united by marriage. The Fowlers are an old county family, now getting a little shabby, while the Willoughbys are forces in the town, wealthy but not so genteel. Up until now, the families have held apart, but in this generation there are friendships between the children. Now, Max Willoughby, good-natured and charming, will marry the determined and managing Helen Fowler.

The two families are headed by widows. Ever since she married her husband, Mrs. Fowler has hid her true self, whom she wryly refers to as Millicent, behind a façade of vagueness and stupidity that she calls Millie. Although she never seems to make a decision or take charge of anything, everything seems to get done they way she wants it.

Mrs. Willoughby is made of sterner stuff. She manages everything, including the family business and the lives of her grown children. When she tries to manage Mrs. Fowler over the wedding, though, it’s like pushing jelly around. Everything gets done, just as Mrs. Fowler wishes it to. From the beginning of the marriage, Helen is more like Mrs. Willoughby’s daughter than Mrs. Fowler’s.

Endpaper
Endpaper for the Persephone edition

Other future partnerships seem foreseeable from the wedding. Anice Fowler gets engaged to Martin Newbolt, a poor but intellectual young man who works in his uncle’s book shop. We can see trouble ahead because of Anice’s unspoken rivalry with Helen. The youngest Willoughby, Oliver, finds himself attracted to his young sister Cynthia’s best friend, Judy Fowler, who is looking beautiful and grown up at the wedding. Then there is the already married couple, Peter and Belle Fowler. They have a young daughter, Gillian, but things are not looking good for them. Peter is sensitive and mild-mannered, but Belle is a self-centered, temperamental beauty.

Family Roundabout follows the fortunes of the Fowler family and some of the Willoughbys through almost 20 years, until just before the war. Although it has many characters, I found myself deeply interested in their lives and problems. This is a compelling novel about the everyday lives of ordinary people, with an ending that eerily contrasts what we know about the coming war with what the characters don’t know. Although I don’t usually lose this perspective with fictional characters, it made me wonder what happened to them next.

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Day 954: Americanah

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Cover for AmericanahIfemelu has decided to return to Nigeria after living in the United States for 13 years. She has just finished a fellowship at Princeton and broken up with her American boyfriend, Blaine. In preparation for leaving, she also winds down her popular blog about race in America. While she is getting her hair braided, she thinks about her journey to this point.

Ifemelu grows up in a Nigeria where, for the young, the only hope seems to be to leave the country. Her father has been out of work for years because he was too proud to call his boss “Mam.” A few fat cats, like the general supporting Ifemelu’s Aunty Uju, are unbelievably rich, but there is no opportunity ahead of them for the young middle class. Most of them dream about leaving the country.

In high school Ifemelu falls in love with Obinze, who dreams of going to the States. The two enroll in a college in Nigeria where Obinze’s mother is a professor. But the dorm’s lavatories aren’t working and the professors haven’t been paid in months. Eventually, they go on strike, and Ifemelu must return home to Lagos. When she hears Ifemelu is at loose ends, Aunty Uju, who is now living in New Jersey, suggests that Ifemelu move there to go to school and help her care for her son.

In New Jersey Ifemelu begins struggling to find work, for her scholarship only pays 75% of her expenses. It is in this time period that she does something that separates her from Obinze. She stops taking his calls or responding to him.

Obinze has his own problems. His lack of opportunity in Nigeria eventually brings him to England as an illegal immigrant. There he struggles along with menial jobs, giving kick-backs to work under other men’s names. He is about to marry a woman for citizenship when he is deported.

Much of the novel is about the difficult immigrant experiences of the two main characters (although we spend much more time with Ifemelu) and Ifemelu’s experiences of race problems in the United States. Ifemelu’s observations on her blog provide an interesting, sort of third-party, perspective. With all of the recent police shootings of unarmed black men that have happened lately, this is a  topic that is on everyone’s minds.

I went back and forth on how much I liked this novel. In Ifemelu, Adiche creates a good, strong voice and a believable, likable character. I was not so enamored of the love affair at the center of the novel. The coming of age section at the beginning of the book I found trite and a little tedious, but that is only about 60 pages long. However, the moral decisions at the end are more troubling, or in fact, that there is absolutely no thought about them, that’s what troubles me. I found very interesting, though, Ifemelu’s reaction to the changed Nigeria when she comes home.

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Day 953: The Glass Room

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Cover for The Glass RoomThe Glass Room is one of the books I’m reading for my Walter Scott Prize project. The novel is inspired by a real house in the Czech Republic designed by Mies van der Rohe. Most of the reviews of the novel, as well as the novel itself, have spent some time describing this house, and although architectural elevations appear before each section of the book, it helps to look at the pictures online when you’re trying to visualize the house.

Liesel and Viktor Landauer are recently married and have decided to build a modern home on a piece of property given to them by Liesel’s parents in the newly formed country of Czechoslovakia. Viktor wants a house that is open and will have no secrets, one of the ironies of a plot with many that I started to think of as mirrors. Viktor is excited at the beginning of what he sees as modern, changing times in the formation of the new country. But of course Czechoslovakia will not be in charge of itself for long, and in fact now no longer exists. Then we have the irony of the house itself, built for no secrets, that harbors many.

Viktor and Liesel’s marriage and day-to-day life are hardly at all the focus of this novel. We see Viktor getting a little annoyed at the depth of Liesel’s involvement with building and decorating the house, but otherwise Mawer actually spends very little time on them together. Instead, he focuses on their relationships with other people, Viktor’s with his mistress Kata and Liesel with her friend Hana. But World War II looms ever closer and eventually the family must leave the country, as Viktor is Jewish.

The book is divided almost exactly in half, the first half devoted to the building of the house and its existence as a family home. The second half explores its use by the different political entities that take it over, when it is never a family home, another mirror. First, it is a Nazi laboratory for attempting to identify physical characteristics of Jews and Slavs. During this time, Hana gets involved in a dangerous affair with one of the scientists. Next, it is a horse stable for Russian cavalry, then a physiotherapy lab for polio victims, and finally a museum.

The huge windowed glass room that makes up the living room, dining area, sitting area, and music room has at its heart a stone wall made of onyx. In the evening sunshine this wall glows and colors the room bright red. I think this is a metaphor—the clean, modern, uncluttered structure, one that may seem cold, is taken over by the unanticipated heart of the house, this red, for passion. I’m saying this clumsily, but one of Mawer’s focuses is the eroticism that is repeatedly evoked in these surroundings, not between Viktor and Liesel, but between other couples. At first, I was confused by why we know almost nothing about Viktor and Liesel together but dwell repeatedly on Viktor’s sexual relationship with Kata. But sex is one of the focuses of this novel, one of its mirrors. For example, in the icy surroundings of the lab designed for the most evil of purposes, Hana makes passionate love with Stahl, who later coldly discards her and even betrays her. Also, there is a tension between the openness of the house and a sense of voyeurism.

This novel was definitely not my favorite of the books I’ve read so far for this project. It is called a novel of ideas, but really it is so detached as to be almost cerebral. Yet, we are repeatedly entertained by descriptions of pubic hair or of how Hana’s labia just show beneath it. I found it unsettling and could understand a bit why the original owners of the house refer to the book as “probably pornography.” It is not pornography, of course, but the family is not buying Mawer’s stance that it’s a fictional story about a real house. They think it’s about them. Or perhaps they are afraid people will think it’s about them.

Despite this detachment from the characters, I still found some scenes toward the end of the novel touching. As for the rest, perhaps Mawer wanted to make readers feel like they were voyeurs. (See? Another mirror—the openness of the house versus voyeurism.) I am not sure, but I could have forgone some of the intense sexuality of this novel. There is another book by Mawer on my list, and I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. (Oh, dear, it just won the Man Booker prize.)

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Day 952: My Brilliant Friend

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Cover for My Brilliant FriendI think my reaction to My Brilliant Friend must be affected by all the hype it has received. That is, I put off reading it because I am often disappointed by novels that are wildly popular. Nothing can live up to the hype, and this novel doesn’t either, but it almost does. It is merciless in its clear-eyed look at the relationship between two frenemies.

The novel begins in the present, where Elena Greco looks back at her relationship with Lila Cerullo. Elena and Lila know each other from childhood. They are neighbors in a rough, poor neighborhood on the outskirts of post-war Naples. From the beginning they are wary, competitive friends. Elena admires Lila’s courage and in school grows to admire her fearless intelligence. But, as the second best in class, Elena finds herself competing with Lila and disliking her secondary position.

Both Lila and Elena are encouraged by their teacher, Maestra Oliviero, but when Lila’s parents won’t allow her to take the exam to enter the equivalent of middle school (I guess) because she has to work, Maestra Oliviero spurns Lila. She continues to study on her own for a while, even helping Elena with her Latin, but eventually, as she gets older, she avoids discussing Elena’s studies as it is too painful. Elena for her part finds herself increasingly isolated from most of her community, because there is no one with whom she can discuss the ideas she is interested in. Only Lila is capable of understanding them, and she begins avoiding these subjects.

Something else Lila and Elena would like to avoid are the Solara brothers, whose father is part of the Camorra crime syndicate. When Elena is a young teenager, the boys attempt to drag her into their car, but Lila stops them by pulling a knife. This action apparently endears her to Marcello Solara, who begins hanging around Lila’s house with the cooperation of her parents.

I can only guess that the effect of this series builds as the reader continues on with it. Certainly, the novel has a climactic ending that makes me wonder what’s coming next.

I felt that the emotions Elena expressed during the novel were immature, but then I had to keep reminding myself that the girls are only 16 at the end of the novel. Elena seems to be totally oblivious of how painful it must be for Lila to hear about her intellectual achievements, and Elena still continues to try to compete with her. Although Lila seems abrupt and dismissive at times, at other times she lets Elena know how she appreciates her.

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Day 951: Christowell, A Dartmoor Tale

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Cover for ChristowellR. D. Blackmore is best known as the author of Lorna Doone. I found that novel so enchanting that recently I decided to look for others by Blackmore. He is known, like Thomas Hardy, for his depictions of country life, his West England settings, and his personification of the countryside. But unlike Hardy, he is known for adventure plots.

Blackmore was a horticulturalist and fruit grower, as is his main character “Captain Larks,” in Christowell. Captain Larks is a middle-aged man living in retirement with his daughter Rose. Although they nominally live in the village of Christowell, Captain Larks only admits a few chosen visitors to his property, across the drawbridge over the Christowell River.

But the outside world is about to come in anyway, first through an accident. Dickie Touchwood, a young sportsman who is out ratting on Dartmoor, falls over a cliff and through one of Captain Lark’s greenhouses. Nursed by Rose, he decides he is in love with her. Another young man, Jack Westcombe, meets them while fishing in the river and also falls in love with Rose.

Captain Larks has some kind of shadow over his past to do with when he was in the military. Because of this, he refuses to meet Colonel Westcombe, Jack’s father, even though he clearly knows and likes him. Colonel Westcombe also seems at a loss for how to treat Captain Larks.

But the Captain has an enemy he does not even suspect. A red-faced man named Mr. Gaston is having him watched and has stolen some mail directed to him.

All of this activity is connected with Captain Larks’s former life. He finds that, instead of avoiding the issue of his past, the truth of it must come out.

Although there are many scenes of the rural life of Christowell, including a fascinating treetop dance, this novel also has plenty of adventure, featuring a dangerous housebreaker living on the moor, a threatened kidnapping and murder, a chase across the moor, and a horrendous storm. Some vernacular made it occasionally hard to understand, but in general I found it enjoyable.

Unfortunately, most of Blackmore’s books are out of print. I purchased an old used book in preference to reading a print on demand book. While looking for a copy, I noticed that the print on demand publishers have found a way to make more money by breaking up old novels into several volumes, often unnecessarily.

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Day 950: Arrowood

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Cover for ArrowoodArden Arrowood has returned after many years to her dying home town of Keokuk, Iowa. She has inherited her grandparents’ house, a stately old home on the banks of the Mississippi. Although she has yearned for home, it is the place of her family’s greatest tragedy, the disappearance of her baby twin sisters when she was eight years old.

Arden has been a troubled young woman, and she is hoping to make a fresh start in her home town. But incidents keep pointing her back to the tragedy. She has been contacted by the site owner of Midwest Mysteries, for example, who thinks the man believed to have kidnapped the girls is innocent.

link to NetgalleyArden has also been hoping to reunite with Ben Ferris, her best friend as a child and her first boyfriend. She is surprised to find he has joined his father’s dentistry practice. But then again, she herself has failed to complete her graduate degree in history and has a secret reason for having quit school.

This novel is atmospheric and gripping. Although it is not difficult to figure out that one character is a bad guy, the solution to the mystery has a couple of twists. I was reminded when reading this book of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Although I think Sharp Objects is the better novel, I enjoyed reading this one.

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