In 1850, Lensinda Marten lives in an all-Black town in Canada north of Lake Erie. She is a healer, but she is puzzled when she is summoned to the side of a slave catcher who has come after a group of escaped slaves that are hiding on Simion’s farm. Puzzled because the man is dead. When she hears that an old woman, one of the escapees, has been arrested, she realizes she is wanted to write a story about the woman for the Abolitionist paper.
She goes to visit the old woman in jail and finds that she isn’t ready to tell her story. Instead, she wants to swap stories with Lensinda. In doing so, a history of cruelty is reveealed, and the two women find connections between each other.
Thomas says in the Afterword that he heard and read many stories about Canada’s history of slavery, its treatment of First Nations people, and the War of 1812, but he could find no story that did everything he wanted. So, he chose this method of telling several stories that interface.
Although I found the information interesting and the settings and historical details to be convincing, I’m afraid his approach didn’t work that well for me. Just as I was getting interesting in Lensinda’s story, the novel appeared to move away from her. There were quite a few characters whose connections aren’t immediately clear, and I kept getting them confused as we jumped from story to story. Eventually, the stories connect, but that wasn’t clear for quite a while.
I feel safe in saying that if I wasn’t reading Hungry Ghosts for my Walter Scott project, I wouldn’t have read it at all. It is absolutely brutal.
In 1940s Trinidad, Krishna lives with his family in the Barracks, run-down ex-military barracks that are leaky and filthy, where five families live in each building, one to a room. Krishna’s father Hans has aspirations for better and insists that Krishna attend school in the village, but there he is mercilessly teased and bullied by other students as well as teachers. Krishna and his cousin Tarak have begun to hang with two twin brothers, Rudra and Rustrum, who have a bad reputation because their father was a murderer.
Hans works for Dalton Changon, a prosperous man. Changon’s wife Marlee has recently noticed some disturbing changes in his behavior—a heightened paranoia and a tendency to hallucinate. Then he disappears during a night when there’s a terrible storm.
Marlee receives a threatening note, so she offers Hans a large amount of money to stay on the property overnight as a guard. He accepts, thinking to save a down payment on a house. However, soon he is involved in a torrid affair with Marlee, not even returning to his home when his wife, Shiveta, is hospitalized for an infected foot.
Meanwhile, Krishna, defending himself from some village boys who try to drown Tarak’s dog, injures Dylan Badree. Because Dylan’s father is a policeman, Krishna is put in jail and is only released after Marlee’s intervention. But the boys’ feud begins to go in evermore dangerous directions.
This book contains graphic descriptions of drowned dogs and murdered dogs and the killing of a rabbit. Everyone in it who seems like a good person either becomes bad or is victimized. The language of the book is impressive, but sometimes Hosein uses such obscure words that it seems pretentious. Hosein certainly describes a vivid world, but it’s not a place I wanted to be in.
Helen of She Read Novels has posted a note about Readers Imbibing Peril (RIP XIX), which I always forget about but usually participate in. As somewhat of a suspense novel, My Father’s House qualifies, so let this be the start of my participation this year. Most of the action is on Instagram at @PerilReaders, but I am not a great user of that.
My Father’s House is a book I read for my Walter Scott project, and it is also the first in O’Connor’s Roman Escape Line trilogy. It is based on the true story of the Escape Line, a group of people who helped captured soldiers and others escape from the Nazi occupation of Rome. In particular, it focuses on Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, one of the group’s founders.
After Rome is overrun by the Nazis, the Vatican gives Monsignor O’Flaherty a duty of ministering to British soldiers in Nazi captivity. Being an Irishman, he isn’t eager to do this duty. However, when he sees the condition of the men and the ease with which the Nazis break the Geneva Conventions, his manner to the Germans is such that he is removed from the duty. In this way, he comes to the attention of Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann.
O’Flaherty then decides to form a group to help soldiers escape from the Nazis. The group becomes successful enough that Hauptmann begins receiving threatening communications from Himmler.
Much of the novel centers around a Rendimento, as the Choir, the central group that runs the Escape Line, calls their missions. The group has planned its mission for Christmas Eve (1943), thinking that Hauptmann won’t expect it, but in the last few days, Sam Derry, an escaped British major who would normally run it, is incapacitated. They begin training Enzo Angelucci instead.
The main focus of the novel is whether the mission will be successful, but the narration travels around in time and person via transcripts of interviews of several of the participants. In some respects, this structure is interesting, helping you get to know the other characters, but they didn’t all have distinct voices, and you didn’t get to know them well. There is also the disadvantage that the approach tends to interrupt the building suspense.
I thought the novel was very interesting in its subject matter. I’d never heard of the Escape Line. However, as the first of a trilogy, I’m not sure how much more there is to say, even though no doubt there are many adventures to recount. I didn’t feel as if I got to know most of the characters in the novel, not even the Monsignor.
You might be wondering why I’m not posting as often as I used to. Well, the answer is that I got caught up with myself in reading, and instead of being several months of books ahead of myself, I’m only about two weeks ahead, so I decided first not to post on Wednesdays except for special reasons, and then a little later, when the situation did not improve, not to post on Fridays. This situation will be fluid, like it has been since I started blogging. If I get way ahead of myself again, I’ll start posting on Fridays. I like being ahead on my reading, because it allows me to choose more carefully the order of books instead of having to review the next book I read.
Anyway, the Chocolate Lady is always doing bloggy type activities where she joins with other folks, and I don’t usually have time. Plus some of them take some planning. But she is occasionally doing WWW Wednesdays (I don’t know what WWW stands for, and she doesn’t explain), which seemed like an easy thing to take part in. If you want to take part, you just have to answer three questions: What are you reading now? What did you recently finish reading? What will you read next?
What am I reading now?
Right now, I am reading a Dean Street book from their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint, Family Ties by Celia Buckmaster. This gives me an opportunity to lobby for Dean Street publishing more Furrowed Middlebrow books. I know they are tied up in estate issues now, but I hope they will reconsider closing down this imprint. If you want them to continue with Furrowed Middlebrow maybe send them a message on their Facebook page, and please comment here! I am only a few pages into this book, and so far it seems to be about eccentric family life in a village. I always enjoy relaxing with a Furrowed Middlebrow book!
Technically speaking, I am also reading Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz. I chose this book to read for the 1937 Club (coming up next week), but so far I just haven’t been able to hack it. It is supposed to be his masterpiece, and it is about a grown man who gets turned into an 11-year-old boy and put back in school. If that sounds juvenile, it is. I got into it about 70 pages and put it aside. Every time I finish another book, I look at it and say “Nah!”
What did I recently finish reading?
The last book I read was The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara, which is part of my Pulitzer Prize project. One of my habits, maybe it’s a foible, is just to check the library periodically to see which books in my projects are available and get them without reading what they’re about. And in fact, I do the same thing with all the books in my stack. At some point I have usually read what they are about but I don’t do that right before I begin reading them. Well, for this book, the timing was unfortunate, because it is a dystopian novel, and not only do I not usually read dystopian novels, but it seems like recently everyone is writing them. And, in fact, I had read three just in the past few weeks. Now, don’t get me wrong, one of them was wonderful, as you’ll find out when I review it. I didn’t have as positive of an experience with The Immortal King Rao, although I didn’t dislike it. You’ll have to wait for my review, which should be coming up in a couple of weeks.
What will I read next?
When I troll the libraries for my project books (online, of course), I usually try to get one for each of my projects, although often I cannot find the Walter Scott Historical Fiction project books there and have to buy them. (That means they go into my pile and I get to them a lot later. I should do something about that. The Bee Sting has been there for quite a while.) Last time I trolled, I ended up with The Immortal King Rao for my Pulitzer project and Real Life by Brandon Taylor and Prophet Song by Paul Lynch for my Booker Prize project. (I am still waiting for After Sappho by Shelby Wynn Schwartz to arrive for my James Tait Black Project.) I have read Prophet Song, so after I finish my current book, I’ll read Real Life. As usual, I have no idea what it is about. I hope it’s not dystopian.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think?
In 1950 Ireland, Soviet citizen Nikolai Lobachevsky has been working in the western bogs, trying to help a team survey the bog lands. He receives a letter from the Soviet government summoning him home to take up a “special assignment.” He knows that probably means execution, so he hides on a remote estuarial island.
Readers who look for a rousing plot aren’t going to find one here. Nothing much happens except for work and exact observations. First, Nikolai is helping with the surveying. Later, he helps farm seaweed. But he is homesick, and once he hears of Stalin’s death, he decides to return to Russia, taking a gamble that Malinkov, for whom he used to work, will pardon him for whatever sins he’s supposed to have committed.
I just felt meh about this novel, which I read for my Walter Scott project. It excels at descriptive passages, but it was hard to know Lobachevsky. Also, I am not that into strictly contemplative novels.
In 1883 Australia, the Wallace girls are at a wedding and Mathew Wallace is out working. Only six-year-old Denny and his mother are home when she sends him out to gather fuel. A huge dust storm comes up, and instead of staying where he is, he goes in the direction he thinks is home. And he is lost.
The family doesn’t realize he is lost right away, but when they do, Mathew takes off in the direction Denny went, along with Billy, his Aboriginal farmhand. Soon, almost everyone in the area is searching for Denny.
This novel doesn’t have a strong plot. Instead, it follows a mixture of characters during the search. There is Cissy, Denny’s headstrong sister, who joins the search; Constable Robert Manning, newly married, and his wife Minna; Foster, Manning’s superior officer, who ignores his trackers’ advice and follows the wrong trail; Karl and Bess Rapp, two painters who are traveling in the Australian bush looking for subjects to paint; and so on.
This is a beautifully written novel that shows insight into human nature and powerfully describes the Australian landscape. I read it for my Walter Scott prize project.
As I have just posted my review of News of the Dead, the last of the shortlisted books for the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, it is now time for my feature where I decide whether the judges got it right. The shortlisted books are set in 16th century Scotland; 8th, 19th, and 20th century Scotland; 20th century Trinidad, and 20th century Germany, California, and Switzerland. For this year, most of the entries were strong ones.
The book set in 20th century Trinidad, Fortune by Amanda Smythe, is the fictionalized story of a true one, a love triangle that resulted in a disaster. I felt that the characters in this novel were not very interesting and the setting not vividly described. Also, the writing was rather mundane. However, this book was the weakest entry on the shortlist.
The writing in The Magician by Colm Tóibín was not at all mundane. This novel is more difficult to evaluate in the context of my having to pick the best one, because I said only good things about it in my review, but it didn’t make as much of an impression on me as some of the others. A biographical novel about the writer Thomas Mann, the book was intuitive and meditative in tone and Tóibín’s writing is always excellent.
The winner this year was News of the Dead by James Robertson, and I’m guessing it was picked because of its scope. It tells the story of a remote Scottish glen through manuscripts written about a figure in the 8th century, a family in the 19th century, and an individual in the 20th, and how these people found refuge. It was well written, and I certainly found it involving and was unexpectedly touched by the second and third narratives. However, I wasn’t very interested in the first, about a supposed local saint.
Despite the three really good books in this year’s shortlist, it wasn’t difficult for me to pick my favorite because of the lasting impression it gave me despite being the book I read first, in August 2022. That is Rose Nicolson by Andrew Greig. It is set in the difficult times of 16th century Scotland, when people are still fighting about religion, about a young man’s love for an extraordinary young woman who is in danger of being thought a witch just because of her intelligence. I am a big Greig fan, and this was one of his best (although I might put in a word for his Fair Helen).
One of the things I like about my shortlist projects is that they bring me into contact with books and authors I probably wouldn’t encounter otherwise. Certainly, I would never have run into News of the Dead if not for my Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize project.
News of the Dead tells the story of one remote, secluded place—fictional Glen Conach—over the ages, mostly through a set of documents. The oldest is a book written in the middle ages about a Christian hermit the locals call St. Conach even though he’s not recognized as such by any authority. The Book of Conach tells the stories of lessons and miracles performed by the man, who died around 770 AD.
Another narrative is set in 1809 from the diary of Charles Gibb. Gibb is an antiquarian who has wangled himself an invitation to Glen Conach House ostensibly to study and translate The Book of Conach. His real goal, however, is to sponge off the Milnes, the current owners of Glen Conach House, for the summer. He rather cynically observes Glen Conach and his lady and daughter as they do him, at first. But slowly the situation changes.
The third narrative begins slightly pre-Covid and mostly concerns an elderly woman named Maja and her eight-year-old neighbor, Lachie, who likes to visit her. When Covid sets in, she decides to write him a letter telling the story of a girl who came to the glen as a child after World War II.
I did not have much patience for the stories about St. Conach, although it was clever how Robertson used variations of the stories to show how they change. It also, frankly, doesn’t reveal much about daily life except for superstition and wildness.
The other two narratives were a lot more interesting. Gibbs’s began at a fairly cynical level yet what we learn after it stops is surprisingly touching. And Maja’s story had me on the edge of my seat.
There were times when I wondered where this novel was going, but ultimately I found it a lovely examination of refuge. I also want to point out that all three narratives sound like they were written by different people, which they should in good fiction, and which is too often not the case.
It’s hard to know where sympathies might lie in this historical novel set right after the Restoration, in 1665. On the one hand, there is Richard Nayler (a fictional character), tasked with finding and taking to trial (or later, just plain executing) those deemed responsible for killing Charles I. A mighty task, but he performs it so zealously, not minding a dirty trick or two.
On the other hand, there are Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel Will Goffe (historical characters), on the list because they signed the King’s death warrant after an illegal trial. They have escaped to America, but Nayler blames them for the death of his wife (in premature labor after they broke in on a religious service on Christmas Day, deemed illegal under Cromwell, and arrested people) and is determined to catch them.
Robert Harris states that this hunt for the regicides was the greatest manhunt of the 17th century so we may assume that’s his motivation for the book. Although I’m not particularly interested in the Puritan period of New England history, certainly there are interesting things I didn’t know disclosed in this novel, like the history of New Haven. In addition, Harris depicts the wildness of New England at this time more vividly than anything else I’ve read.
Harris manages to raise the tension of the novel at the end, when Nayler, long after everyone else has lost interest, finally locates Goffe, but overall, I was too turned off by the deeds on both sides of the English Civil War (usually I favor the Royalists, but he shows just how brutal both sides were) to care much about these antagonists. I read this book for my Walter Scott Prize Project.
Fortune, shortlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize, is set in late 1920’s Trinidad. People have been jumping out of windows in New York, but there is an oil boom in Texas, and Eddie Wade foresees another one in Trinidad.
Sonny Chatterjee has oil seeping into the soil of his cocoa plantation, and his plants are dying. Charles Macleod of Apex Industries has been trying to get an oil lease from him, but he has seen the destruction caused by the large oil companies and refuses to let that happen to the land his father worked so hard to buy. However, Eddie convinces him that his smaller company will take more care and give Sonny a better deal, so Sonny agrees that if Eddie can come up with the $10K to get started, he can. The trouble is, Eddie has no money.
Eddie’s truck breaks down on the way into town, so he walks. Local businessman Tito Fernandes picks him up and trusts him instantly. Even though Tito is in serious difficulties because of his stock market investments, he finds the money Eddie needs.
The back cover of the novel makes clear that the fly in the ointment will be provided by Tito’s much younger wife Ada, and the affair that begins between her and Eddie. This novel is based on a real event—a fire in 1928. Smyth has changed the name of one historical person from Bobbie to Eddie, but it’s not clear just how much else is fictional. Certainly, I found the love triangle aspect uninteresting and unimaginative, but I guess if it really happened . . . .
The fact is that I didn’t actually care about any of these characters. Further, the writing is close to being spare, but it lacks the specificity and vividness of most spare writing, so I can only call it trimmed. It’s more mundane in nature. The setting itself occasionally comes to life but more often does not. I didn’t feel like I knew what it was like to be in Trinidad at this supposedly exciting time.
What? Me Read? 