Author: Diane

The first group, Free America, libertarian, wants economic freedom without restraint. The second, Smart America, professional, socially liberal, wants a knowledge driven credentialed meritocracy. The third, Real America, working class, populist, wants respect for old fashioned values and reward for labor.  The fourth, Just America, wants equality for those who have been excluded from the American dream. This includes environmentalists seeking to protect the earth itself from the pressures of humanity. This perceptive description of 21^st century America was the strongest part of the book. 

The beginning, a recap of 2020, is strident and one sided – and who wants to live through 2020 again?  The conclusions Packer draws are vague although I am interested in his view that people are not upset about inequality of financial assets but are upset about being looked down upon. (Maybe so, but does he really think that people do not mind the obscene wealth of Bezos/Gates/Musk?  I have to draw a line there.)

Packer talks about how the pandemic exposed divisions so deep we could not rally as a united nation to overcome a common threat.  We have been here before – the Civil War and New Deal are examples. The last chapter tries to be optimistic; we lived through those things; we will live through this.  But his main prescription to bring us back to health was too obscure for me, and my sister readers, to find helpful.  Democracy requires the skill of “self-government” and we had better start learning and practicing it. (But what does that mean??)  Packer does point to the job ahead of us and has a neat phrase to sum it up: Make America Again.

Recently, this headline appeared in the local news. Maybe Packer is right.

His gamble at present is to join the pro-union startup newspaper, Thunder, whose purpose is to oppose giant Anaconda Mining which controls the town.  As Thunder’s editorial writer he battles with his well-known, well-paid equivalent at the Post, the company newspaper. Throughout the novel, the case for the union is well made and Doig gives a colorful portrait of the miners and bootleggers who inhabit Prohibition era Butte.

The language of the place and times, 1920, is fun and appropriate – “What’s on your mind besides your hat…popular as hotcakes…a ring-tailed wonder…hair peeked fetchingly under her ribboned bonnet…band struck up a tune – a schottische.”

When Morrie’s somewhat shady past catches up with him in the form of a lost trunk found and delivered, his independent minded wife Grace shows that she would fit in perfectly well with the activist protesting women of the 1920’s, and 2020’s.

Are they ancient relics or evidence of a current murder?  Often both are involved.  The stories contain just the right mix of down-to-earth scientific fact with the otherworldliness of Druid rituals, Iron Age beliefs and medieval curses.

Dr. Galloway personifies the modern woman.  She is a highly educated professional who loves her job and excels in her field.  She also worries about her weight, is somewhat estranged from her Born Again parents, and is a conflicted single mother who feels guilty about working.

Her first book, The Crossing Place, was excellent, but number five, Dying Fall, the most recent that I’ve read, was even better crafted.  Griffiths has learned to build tension and bring the story to a riveting climax.

In addition to great plot, characters, and setting, her books have some nice small touches. She refers to other authors I like – G.K. Chesterton who wrote Father Brown, the priest-detective mysteries, and Arthur Ransome who wrote the fairy tale that Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child is based on.  In A Room Full of Bones, the skeleton of the medieval bishop she is inspecting turns out to be female.  In Dying Fall, English King Arthur is found to have been black.  We are tutored in the history of Roman soldiers from Africa.  Griffiths likes language and tells us that an unkindness of ravens, like a murder of crows, is the specific word for a large group of them.

There are fourteen books in this series, and I look forward to reading them all.  Plus, there is an additional series.  This is one prolific writer.

He is forced by his family to leave the island and she, having nowhere to go, stays. He suffers the alienation of the immigrant and she, the devastation of war. How they find one another and reconcile with the past are the actions that drive this straightforward plot.

In between each chapter is a small exposition by a fig tree. Yes, a tree.  If you are surprised that the fig tree talks to us (and it has plenty to say) you would benefit from Shafak’s ideas about the oneness of life and the intelligence of non-human beings.  This charming device echoes, very appropriately, the chorus in a Greek play that comments on the issues raised by the action on stage.  It is also a symbol as its original happiness, then disease and death, and finally rebirth from a cutting reflect what is happening to the people.

Shafak is interested in several moral issues, many of which can be grouped around the long-term damage caused by war, long after the fighting is finished, both to people and the environment.  She wonders if genetic memory exists – in plants, animals and humans.  This was an easy-to-read story with provocative ideas, but I think the author brought up too many subjects and would have done better to focus on one or two.

We meet her when she is hustling some of her client’s super expensive no-lint napkins for her own cousin’s wedding, a skill recently learned from the Russian mafia.

Although Olga plans weddings, her own love life has stalled, and she is still single at 40 – until she meets Matteo at the local bar.  He is a bit seedy looking, but comes from her Puerto Rican neighborhood, and despite wearing socks with sandals, there is a certain something about him. 

Olga’s brother Prieto, a closeted gay politician, does his best for the old neighborhood until a pair of powerful developers discover his secret.  Because he tries to do the right thing, he is accused of having kindergarten ethics, a term that introduces one of the main subjects of the novel.

Brother and sister are especially close.  They lost their father to AIDS, and their mother, a revolutionary dedicated to Puerto Rican independence, left them with their abuelita while she went off rabble rousing.  Like Trees, this book has a chorus, in the form of the missing mother who reappears by writing untraceable letters to her adult children commenting on their choices. The contrast between their current posh lifestyles and their revolutionary, idealistic upbringing builds to a climax when Hurricane Maria barrels into Puerto Rico and their mother storms back into their lives. 

The novel’s title comes from the poem, “Puerto Rican Obituary” by Pedro Pietri.  “Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel All Died yesterday…waiting for the garden of eden to open up again under a new management…Olga died waiting for a five dollar raise…dreaming of real jewelry…” Not too long, easy to understand, and very powerful, the whole poem is easily found online.

Follett makes the building of a twelfth century cathedral into a fast-paced thriller.  The prior of an insignificant church in England wants to build something magnificent for the glory of God.  A master builder, desperate to feed his starving family, is looking for work.  Jealous church officials connive for power.  Civil war wages when the heir to the crown dies and greedy local officials force control with knights and swords. There are heroes and heroines and the devil incarnate.

The architectural design and structure of the church are often illustrated as the story progresses. The details of everyday life for peasants, monks, lords and bishops are vivid and well researched.  We learn what they wear, how their houses are built, and what they eat.  “They ate vegetable pottage, baked fish with pepper and ginger, a variety of ducks…posset to drink, made of ale, eggs, milk, and nutmeg.”

But this is a book that is obsessed with blood, sex and violence.  It both starts and ends with a hanging, told in colorful gruesome detail.  The heroine’s large breasts are described repeatedly.  Her rape is lingered over.  The book wallows in swords, slaughter and spurting blood.  The mood is often ominous and fearful.  

If this is typical of the thriller genre, I am not a fan.  Give me a nice cozy murder mystery where violence is a one-time thing often off stage, and the emphasis is on the puzzle of solving the crime.  In Pillars, lively action, sympathetic characters, and the details of medieval life are outweighed and spoiled by the repeated scenes of violence.

Shakespeare is never mentioned by name as this novel features the mother, Anne, or Agnes, as she is called.  There is little in the historical record and past critics have looked on her unfavorably – a woman pregnant at marriage whose husband left her for long periods.  O’Farrell updates the portrait and imagines a warm, strong woman secure enough not to demand her husband stay in the stifling environment of a small town and his father’s domination.  The love between her and her husband endures despite the hardships of separation and the death of a child.

The story is told in present tense giving immediacy to the death and grief but leavened with beautifully detailed flashbacks of happy times. There is Agnes’s courtship at her father’s farm by the previously bored young Latin tutor which culminates in the rhythmic movement of apples in the storage shed as they are jostled back and forth, back and forth.  There is the lovely church wedding, performed by her old friend the falconer priest where her impatient groom smiles happily; her mother, dead for some time but present for this event, gives her a sign of rowan berries; and Agnes, in her yellow gown, wears a crown of daisies, larch and fern made for her by her sister-in-law to be.

Side by side with these scenes full of life is the inexorable advent of catastrophe.  The fleas arrive, finishing their long sea journey packed in something beautiful; the son sickens, and his healer mother cannot help him; his father, home for the funeral, cannot bear to stay and returns to the London theater.

Four years later, there is a play about a father and son who communicate across realms, but it is the father who is dead and his son who is still alive. It is the first performance of Hamlet and Agnes is there to see her husband’s portrayal.

Monkey by Agnes Bushell is a grand, sweeping, Russian style novel that travels throughout that country in the mid nineteenth century. On an old estate with an overgrown garden there is a poet who has not received a letter from her son Nikolai for a year and is so worried she has taken to her room where she will see no one except a favorite granddaughter and is so frozen she can no longer write.

Family and friends devise plans to search for the missing son.  The bowels of Russia, its hovels, brothels, and gypsy encampments are searched, all with an eye towards the secret police who also want him because he too is a writer, and a subversive one at that.

An inkling that this is no ordinary search, and no ordinary young man, creeps into the story.  Elena Petrovna Blavatskaya, based on a famous Russian medium and mystic, appears.  She and her companion Fyodor Fyodorovich Fyodorov are swept into a carriage that magically materializes.  There is a seance where spirits cause mischief, and a fire is summoned.  A young woman who possibly married Nikolai (but where? when?) is rescued.  And so the search expands – into broader possibilities, time portals, astral planes, and parallel times.

Questions about the nature of being, the flexibility of time, the need for freedom are woven into the journey.  The friends have hope that Nikolai will be found, even if it is in another world and another time, and the search continues.   But the poet mother accepts that he is gone and at the end of the book writes her last poems.  Powerful and beautiful, they convey the deep emotions of loss and grief.  This is a novel that defies genre.  Is it historical fiction? fantasy? poetry? philosophy? history? 

Monkey, like Hamnet, addresses the concept of tragedy as the inspiration for art.  It also takes a philosophical approach, reminding the reader of how little we know about life and death, and how grand and encompassing life and the afterlife may be. Agnes Bushell writes from Portland, Maine, and Monkey can be ordered from Littoral Books.

Wanting to learn about their social behavior, scientists put tiny trackers on these clever mischievous birds, but the birds did not approve.  Within minutes, the group of five had figured out how to remove the first device that had taken the scientists six months to devise.  True, the birds couldn’t do it alone which was what the scientists had guarded against in their design.  But they cooperated.  Each magpie took the tracker off another – helping each other in a way almost unheard of in the bird world.  Just another example of how little we know about the complexities of life.

His older brother and guardian, Emmett, hopes the open road will lead him to a new beginning and second chance. The third, Duchess, views it as a chance for escape, possibly from his violent nature, and definitely from its results.  And Wooly, the fourth character, wants a road to take him home.

Alongside the physical road the boys travel is the philosophical road or direction taken in life.  Sometimes it is a choice and sometimes an accident.  Sometimes staying home is best; sometimes home is stifling.  The human desire for fairness, and the need for charity versus retribution are themes that emerge throughout the story, but any moralizing is lightly done. 

The main character, Emmett, is similar to Towles’ first famous character, The Gentleman from Moscow.  Although Emmett is working class, he shares a moral nobility with aristocratic Count Rostov as they are both honest, responsible, and resourceful.  Emmett willingly assumes the care of his young brother when their father dies just like the Count raises five-year-old Sophia when her parents are gone.

Many small seemingly unimportant details converge at the end of this ten-day travel saga.  The story is like a well-planned road trip when the unexpected happens.

The Lincoln Highway, built in 1913, was the first transcontinental highway in the United States.  It stretched from Times Square in New York City to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.  Eventually, it was replaced by numbered highways and finally superseded by modern interstates. In the 1990’s, the Lincoln Highway Association was formed to preserve and improve the remaining portions.

Evolution has started to go backwards.  Animals – and human babies – show characteristics of earlier times.  Government reacts to this by locking up pregnant women and treating them as scientific experiments.  Women are hunted by the government and betrayed by their neighbors. They are not allowed to have their children as they see fit.  Although written in 2017, this book about reproductive freedom could not have been timelier.

Adopted by idealistic white liberals, the main character has just received a letter from her Ojibwe birth mother inviting her to visit. She is four months pregnant, uneasy and uncertain, but decides to go. Meanwhile people are frightened and panicking about a bizarre evolutionary change that is not part of their world view. Religious institutions, as well as government, seek to assert control, and they focus on the women who are producing, or might produce, children who are different.

Federal Agent Falk returns to his boyhood home near Melbourne for the funeral of his best friend from school and his family, all found dead in an apparent murder/suicide.  As Falk returns to his old haunts, the town has not forgotten that, as a teenager, he was connected with the unsolved drowning of a girlfriend.  Is there a connection between the two events?  Falk finds a friend in the new sheriff and together they resolve these tragic episodes. 

This well plotted page turner touches on old loves, reputation in a small town, isolation in the Australian bush, domestic abuse, fraud and gambling, all of which come together to tell a rich and compelling story.

The dry, or the drought, is a character itself.  While Harper’s book is not about a “cause,” global warming is ever present.  It strikes Falk especially when he is walking near the river he swam in as a teenager.  Although he is close, he can’t hear the water and the silence disturbs him.  When he finally finds it, the river that used to be over his head is a trickle through hardpan, and the plight of the farming town comes sharply into focus.

This is not a series for someone who likes fast action.  The show starts slowly, moves slowly, and depends on the perfect timing and subtle British humor of its quirky stars. When one of the company finds something special, his joy in this simple success and the pleasure his friends take in his success is heartwarming.  In the final season, there is a nest of Roman gold coins, but the true treasure is the friendship, love, and support the group finds among friends and family. A just-right theme song adds to the charm.  

I watched all three seasons on Netflix disks, but some of our local libraries have the series as well.

The driving force of the novel is the threat of termination of their tribal status by the US government.  In the acknowledgements, Erdrich tells us that this section is based on letters from her grandfather as he helped the tribe stop termination which would rob them of their treaty rights and devastate their culture. 

In addition to this main plot are the coming-of-age stories of two young indigenous women and the man who loves them both.  There is the acerbic portrait of two young Mormon missionaries trying to convert the heathen.  The naïve white boxing coach wonders if he could make the sacrifice to become Indian if the woman he likes would have him.

The characters are well drawn, believable and sympathetic – even the ghost of the teenager who years after his death can’t leave his tribe. Native American beliefs and practices are effortlessly integrated into this five-star story with excellent plots, setting and characters. 

He can enjoy his comfortable retirement from teaching, sit at his breakfast table with plenty of toast, tea, and the newspaper.  Or – he can insert himself into one of the stories, maybe the one about refugees from Libya who are in limbo because of German bureaucracy. Or – he can join the group opposing any help at all for the unwanted refugees, seeing them as freeloaders not victims.

Richard is unhappy with himself because he has walked past the encampment of refugees whose signs said simply “We become visible” without noticing them at all.  He visits, begins to talk, helps where he can, becomes their friend.

At the end, to celebrate Richard’s birthday, there is a German style barbecue with potato salad and halal sausages.  Richard’s old German friends and his new African friends attend.  After dinner, they tell stories, some of happiness and some of sadness, which are shared and understood across nationalities.

This wonderful novel details the plight of refugees who have fled their home countries because of war time atrocities.  They have seen family members killed or have totally lost touch.  Lonely and homesick, they are living in Germany where they are unwanted and where the laws make it impossible for them to settle or to work.  While the setting of this particular book is Berlin after unification, it is also a universal situation that we recognize.

Her latest, Give unto Others, explores the obligation to do a favor for an old acquaintance and to choose between the rules and what is right.  Brunetti hadn’t particularly liked this person but was fond of her mother who was kind to his family.

Leon’s novels work because of her minute observations of how people behave – mannerisms, facial expression, tone of voice.  Here, we have the shameless deviousness of the Italian police as they affect all sorts of behavior to encourage people to talk to them.  Brunetti and his supporting staff do not disappoint in this easy-to-read appealing mystery.

The second section deals with changing attitudes about the place and function of a farm.  Previously, it was an attractive setting for a family home, plus a source of identity, pride, and fulfillment for the farmer in a job well done.  In the 1970’s, the purpose of the farm changed to making money and expanding; it was a business that was supposed to acquire bigger machinery, produce more crops, and make more profit.  Earl Butz is quoted.

In the last section, farmers awaken to the downsides of this perpetual growth. They notice the disappearance of common insects, birds, mammals and wildflowers, and realize this reflects an insidious loss of soil fertility and overuse of pesticides.  Fertility is not being replenished by artificial fertilizer or the practice of monocropping.  Industrial farming is not just an environmental problem, but a business one as well.  Continuing to spend down capital, in this case fertile soil, is not a sustainable business practice.

Rebanks details what he is doing on his inherited farm to rebuild his soil and forge a way of farming to integrate the soil’s needs with a productive cattle and sheep farm.  I have met the term “rewilding” in a previous book (Wild Silence by Raynor Winn).  Rebanks also uses “regenerative agriculture” and tells us this budding science is the only good thing to come from American agriculture. 

This thoughtful narrative shares many insights on the intersection of the wild and the planted, the necessity of animals on a healthy farm, the value of a farm to the community (not just food production.)  But it concerns me very much that this Oxford educated, knowledgeable, dedicated, more than energetic man cannot make a living from his farm.  His farmer friends (and of course this successful author) have other jobs to make ends meet. The need for sustainable agricultural practices and the economic plight of the small farmer aren’t news items, but Rebanks does an excellent job of focusing our attention on their importance.

Starting with this particular fire, Orlean moves to how fires burn in general, how arson is determined, the difficulties of getting an arson conviction. But the fire is just the starting point for this book about all things library. She details the history of the LA library building, its colorful staff, its place in the community, how people rallied to restore it after the fire, and the restoration of smoke and water damaged books.

Moving outward from LA, she discusses more general topics such as the targeting of libraries during warfare. There are the specifics of the magnitude of the shipping department for the interlibrary loan system.  There are intriguing small details such as the statistic that library users are 80% male; librarians are 80% female.   

Throughout the book is the evolving vision of what kind of information system a library should be.  A keeper of books?  Of course.  A partner with technology?  Of course, again, say librarians who call themselves “Wikipedians in residence.”  How many services such as job search assistance, seed storage, or marriage licenses are appropriate?  What about the homeless who are attracted to its warm safe space?

Throughout this meticulous, sometimes too abundant, amount of information shines Orlean’s respect for the impact of reading and books. She quotes an older librarian who tells her he is planning to move to Sri Lanka when he retires.  Has he ever been there?  No, “But I’ve seen the pictures and I’ve read the books.”

In Number 7, No Way to Die, fly fishing in Coos Bay Oregon is the setting instead of grape growing in the Willamette Valley.  Easley’s intrepid sleuth, Cal Claxton, saves a young surfer mistakenly convicted of murder.  Each of Easley’s books deals with a social issue, and in this one it is women’s rights, a subject dear to the heart of his daughter.

His most recent mystery, No Witness, tackles the issue of undocumented workers who commonly work in the vineyards growing the grapes and bringing in the harvest.  A young Latina is murdered outside her home.  Is it mistaken identity or has an innocent young woman discovered something nefarious in wine country?

In Work Song, Morrie returns, moves to Butte and gets a job as a librarian.  Once again, Doig’s love of books is apparent as he describes a spectacular out of place library full of gorgeous leather-bound editions.  The contrast between books and reading and rough farmers and miners is one of Doig’s favorite topics.  Morrie is soon embroiled in the conflict between the miners’ union and the powers of Anaconda Copper Mining.

Copper mining itself is the largest entity in the book; its descriptions dwarf the other characters and details of plot which seem paltry by comparison. In this case, Doig doesn’t have the skills of superb teacher Morrie, and left me bored with excessive details. However, my buddy readers who are more history oriented thought all that information was just fine.

Petrie has a story he wants to tell and through the fog of failing memory slowly dredges up details of an episode whose emotional resonance is still felt.  Lonely and abandoned by his parents he had tried to befriend a new student with “blood red hair” who was more of a misfit than he.  They shared an interest in chess, but it was their mutual connection to Egypt that drew Petrie to Ben-Zion Elefantin.  (I learned that Egyptians can indeed have red hair.  Ramses II was a redhead.)

The memoir of Petrie, once a successful lawyer, is appalling in its casual racism, antisemitism, and resistance to anything different. He belittles the Austrian cook who offers kindness to an old man until he learned she had earned a master’s degree in Europe, but even then…

But what is the compulsion to write this memoir?  What does Petrie want to bring from the past, from his subconscious, into the present?  At the end of this cerebral book, he says that he knows, and Elefantin knew, “the significant thing” about life.  Does he share it with the reader?  He does not.  Ozick ends her story with the words “We two kings,” and leaves it to the reader to ponder what truth or illusion the two chess mates knew.  An exploration of the truth of memory is appropriate for Ozick who turned 93 shortly after this novella was completed.

All three of the teenagers have additional problems.  One girl has been flattened by her mother’s suicide; the other has been molested by a stepfather and ignored by a mother who “didn’t notice;” the boy, once a promising football star, has been severely injured. The community of church is prominent in this black neighborhood, but is not enough to offset the damage of secrecy, lies, and betrayal.  An anti-abortion point of view emerges but is subtly done.

The Mothers is one of those books that hooks a reader at the beginning but isn’t so interesting as the story goes on.  I felt that Bennett kept expanding the story to include everything she wanted to say instead of developing a tight plot with nothing extraneous.

Detective Cal Claxton has a home in the hills of Oregon wine country and a law office in Portland where he does some pro bono work for just causes.  A young woman consults him about her mother, killed in a hit and run, who has left a strange will about her property development company. Before the book is finished, Claxton has made the acquaintance of the Russian mafia and pieced together a complex money laundering scheme. 

Love of coffee, gourmet food, craft beer, jogging, Native American activism, artist colonies, all add to the Northwest flavor.  But wait – Italian white instead of local pinot noir??  Easley redeems himself with Blood for Wine, where he rescues a pinot grower/vintner who has been framed for murder.  These mysteries, with their intricate plots, strong characters, and appealing settings, are a delight to read.

Easley has just won the Spotted Owl Award, bestowed annually for the best mystery book of the year by a writer in the Pacific Northwest.

The youngsters have recently lost their mother; their father, busy with two farms, the Big Ditch irrigation project, and the school board, is overwhelmed by housekeeping duties. A saucy ad in the paper catches his attention: “Can’t Cook but Doesn’t Bite.  Housekeeping position sought by widow.  Sound morals, exceptional disposition…”  Energetic, cheerful Rose, who whistles while she works, is soon settled into the household.

Her brother Morrie, dapper, highly educated, totally ignorant of rural farm life, accompanies her. Why he is in such an incompatible place is a mystery. Again, fate intervenes, and Morrie finds himself the teacher in a one room schoolhouse which is the hub of the far-flung community. Doig vividly depicts the difference a gifted teacher can make, the value of education, and the importance of the school in an isolated, rural locale.  Morrie Morgan, like Halley’s Comet, which appears in 1910 and stars in the story, appears suddenly, shines brightly, then travels on. He can be found again in two later Doig novels.

At the end, this well plotted book with an unexpected twist has a nice exploration of honesty as the best policy.  Are there times when silence, omission, is better? It is thirteen-year-old Paul’s answer that affects so many other characters and makes this a very satisfying novel.

After working in the merchant’s store for several years, he is ordered to participate in one of the last trade caravans into the East African interior, where trouble awaits. The cosmopolitan caravan is comprised of men from India, Arabia, and Africa, all of whom continually joke and trade barbs about their respective religions, superstitious beliefs, and knowledge of the world.  They were the internet of 1900.

The villages they visit are controlled by sultans determined to protect their small dominions. They demand tribute and treat the traders and each other with trickery and brutality. But these “savages” of the interior are no different from the more “civilized” ones the young Yusuf has met in the towns where those with money dominate others, children are kidnapped in daylight, and the poor eat bone broth for dinner.

Travelling with the caravan, Yusuf is awed by the beauties of the natural world, waterfalls, lakes, and mountains, and a possible meaning for “paradise” emerges. But in this lovely world people are tormented by swarms of insects whose bites cause illness and death.  Wild dogs and hyenas prowl; crocodiles attack and kill.

He returns to the safety of the merchant’s house with its beautiful walled garden but soon learns that it is a garden built on misery and despair and a less obvious danger lurks there. Gurnah prods readers to evaluate their idealized views about nature as paradise.

As he matures, Yusuf draws close to other slaves in the merchant’s household and is stunned to learn that some have worked off their fathers’ debts, could leave if they wish, but choose to remain. What exactly it means for a person to be free is the second major theme of this deceptively simple story. Is the freedom to have independent thoughts despite one’s lot in life enough – or must one have the ability to initiate change?

This is a novel steeped in Eastern culture not Western. Allusions to the Yusuf/Joseph story (both sold into bondage) are from the Koran, not the Bible. A big city is Bombay, not London. But good literature is universal. Some of the nuances may be missed, but the main ideas are understood.  The philosophical inquiry into the meaning of paradise and how to search for it make a provocative read.

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s later book, Gravel Heart, was the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The father, an immigrant, former professor of Russian literature, small time crook, lives in an enclave of other Russian Jews in a falling down condo rife with more than the usual Homeowners Association animosity.  At issue is a million-dollar budget, kickbacks, and a new white Lexus given to each board member. Bill’s investigative instincts kick in.

One of the things to like about this book is the main character who is at a transition point in his life and emerges successful. On the way, Bill shares his knowledge of Russian literature and love of good architecture and furniture design. One of the things not to like so much is the strong Russian Jewish “shtick” that underlies the story. Vodka and tragic poetry are ubiquitous. 

I was a little worried when I saw that the epigraph to the first chapter was a quote from Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal.  But when I read that the Russians pronounced the name Donal’d Tramp, I felt better.

In the story within the story, simple Aethon, in ancient times, sees a play about someone who escapes the world of men to join the world of birds who live in a city called Cloud Cuckoo Land where wine flows freely and honey cakes arrive on the backs of turtles.  Understanding this to be reality, he determines to find this utopia, and looks for a magician to turn him into a bird.  This charming tale, supposedly written by an Antonius Diogenes, is discovered, read, and loved throughout generations.  It is the delightful story that unites the disparate sections of our novel.

Five main characters live hundreds of years apart.  Two of them are young teens involved in the siege of Constantinople in the 1400’s.  Saracen (Muslim) Omeir with his special team of oxen has been conscripted to join the sultan’s attacking army.  Christian Anna, forced to work in a monastery embroidering linens for bishops, finds herself abandoned during the siege.  Seymour, in the present time, is a lonely idealistic boy whose best friend is an owl.  Orphaned Zeno grows up to fight in Korea where his love teaches him Greek.  Konstance, in the future, is headed for a new planet named Oph2 (off to) beyond the clouds. All these young people are touched by the power of Diogenes’ tale which is an homage to storytelling, reading, books, libraries, and librarians.

A few lines of his story pop up in the fifteenth century, a few more in the present, again in the future, and repeat. Not even the individual stories are in chronological order but shift back and forth.  Piecing their fragments together echoes what must be done with the ancient Diogenes folio which is found with pages mixed up and sections unreadable.

An additional joy of the book is spotting the allusions to real Greek literature, characters, and historical events, then teasing them out from the fictional ones. For example, the phrase Cloud Cuckoo Land comes from The Birds, a real Greek play, but it was written by Aristophanes, not Diogenes. I sorted out some of this with help from historically minded friends, but it is not necessary to the enjoyment of this compelling novel.

And finally, since the puzzle motif is so strong, I can’t help but think about Wordle, another word puzzle that is so popular (and addictive).  Maybe puzzles are in the air these days, or – (sorry for the pun) at least in the clouds.

Many thanks to all my sister readers who recommended this very excellent book with the strange title. 

Its structure reflects the lighthouse, the image of its title. Section one, bright and shining, pulses with optimism and life. It culminates in the exquisite dinner party where the Boeuf en Daube is perfectly done and Paul and Minta are newly engaged. For this brief moment, all are bathed in comfort, security and happiness.

But time passes and light disappears. The last section brings the darkness of grief, death, and war. When the children, grown now, finally achieve a trip to the lighthouse, it is not as they imagined it would be. As the book ends, it is Lily Briscoe the artist, less attractive, less socially adept, who emerges as the main character as she finds her way to balance and contentment.

Woolf’s stream of consciousness and deftly changing points of view put us inside the characters’ minds giving an immediacy and intimacy to their shifting reactions.  The rhythm of this echoes both the lighthouse and movement of the waves.  She paints a familiar picture of aristocratic life in turn of the century England, an opinionated scholarly man supported by a capable pleasant woman who is wife and mother with servants for the household duties. 

We never learn the Ramseys’ first names.  For him, I saw it as a sign of respect, and his power, for his guests to refer to him this way.  But her – she is “Mrs. Ramsey” even to friends who love her.  What does that say about her identity?

This wonderful book can be enjoyed on the level of its story, descriptions, and characters. For something a little deeper, there is symbol and metaphor. For something more serious yet, there are musings on the meaning of life by a brilliant author.  Or, maybe best of all, it can simply be experienced as a work of art created by an exceptionally talented artist.

Liselle is married to a white attorney who has just failed at his first bid for elective office. As the story opens, she, like Mrs. Dalloway, is planning a dinner party for that evening. Her former lover, Selena, troubled about homelessness, poverty, the ills of the world, has been hospitalized for mental health treatment twice and lives with her mother. The happiness the two had together has since eluded them, and now, they have a second chance.

Although the story takes place in one day, Solomon’s use of flashbacks and stream of consciousness enable her to easily switch back and forth between the thoughts of the two women over the intervening years. I was especially interested in what Liselle felt comfortable doing in society as half of a black lesbian couple compared to what she would do as half of an interracial heterosexual couple.

The language, aggressively younger generation, is somewhat off-putting.   This is a provocative read by a definitely not “old white guy” author – or white woman either. There may be overtones of Virginia Woolf, but Solomon has strongly made this story her own.

The conductor acknowledged that the composer was Russian but used the opportunity to condemn the oppression he had suffered as part of Russia’s anti-gay persecution.   We were then asked to stand in solidarity against oppression and aggression everywhere while the symphony did a rousing emotional rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem.  Nicely done.

The first section, reminiscent of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying follows them as they put their father’s corpse in a trunk, steal a horse, and look for the right place to bury him. The dry hills they pass through have golden grass, but it is the only gold left.

A flashback tells the mother’s typical story. Led by hope and promises of gold and land, she and two hundred other Chinese sail to California. When they arrive, they are given poor-paying, dirty, unsafe work in the coal mines. Father, born here but who “looks like them,” is assumed to speak their language and is hired as a liaison, teacher.  Success and luck do not follow the couple and they, like so many of the non-winners in the story of the West, sink into poverty and despair. The image of the tiger, usually a Chinese symbol of good luck, appears throughout the book, but it has turned ominous, and it is bad luck that stalks them, or at best, the indifference of the wilderness.

The parents have passed on toughness and self-sufficiency to their children who survive, find different paths, and separate.  One, identifying as male, chooses adventure. The other sister, looking for the warmth of home, chooses civilization. Eventually, the call of family, of belonging to someone, and being with others like themselves becomes strong. Their reunion tests the strength of those “family first” lessons.

Zhang gives voice to the Chinese prospectors, miners, and their families, groups of people generally missing from the romanticized stories of the American West.

Homeless in their 50’s, they choose to walk several hundred miles along the South West Coast Path in Cornwall, camping for months until they find a small place to live.

Wild Silence continues the story, telling how they manage afterwards. Immersion in nature during the months of the hike has slowed the progression of Moth’s disease and he enrolls in a sustainable agriculture degree program. Still traumatized by the loss of her home and business, Ray Winn hides in the house but is eventually motivated to write the story of their trip.

This lovely non-depressing book has much to offer. Most striking are the descriptions of the natural world. There are the plants and animals of Cornwall plus its land and weather. There is a short but difficult hike in Iceland in the shoulder season.  Saturday it is summer, but Sunday, their last day, is winter.  There are the glories and majesties of Icelandic mountains, the hardships of the trek, their relationships with much younger campers.

While in Cornwall, they are offered a neglected house and worn-out farm to restore and rewild. The concept of rewilding, or naturally bringing the farm back to sustainability, is very satisfying, and I enjoyed seeing with them the first buds on the apple trees, the new green of wildflowers and grasses, and the return of endangered curlews.

Winn paints inspiring pictures of nature, but it is the example of the couple’s emotional resilience that is most impressive. Suffering some of the hardest blows life can inflict, they find the agency to make creative personal choices that eventually lead them to active new paths. Moth Winn, nine years after his diagnosis, still manages the physical labor of the farm. Ray Winn, who never wrote before, has penned two best sellers.

The title of the first book, The Salt Path, which is so often referred to in this one, is reminiscent of Atlantic Ocean salt spray but also the original salt route through Germany. That route’s purpose, bringing a life necessity to many, echoes Winn’s feeling about the role of nature.   

The title of The Wild Silence underlines humanity’s need for wild places and the author’s intense concern over their disappearance. “There was a silence in the air, no bird calls, or insects buzzing, not even the gentle rustle of the seed heads of grass moving in the wind.  Just a hot, still, wild silence.  The silence of an empty land where no wild thing lived.”  Such is the description of the acreage they will bring back to life.

There is the feeling Winn has in Iceland, “…there was an overwhelming awareness of the earth gathering itself, preparing.  Rising toward the moment when it would shake like a wet muddy dog and then go about its business.  Rid for good of the annoyance of humanity.” (Oh dear, more Sixth Extinction.)  But optimistic resilient people that the couple are, they go back to the farm to wait for the growth of spring. There was no problem reading Silence without having read Salt Path. The beautiful story is well told and stands alone. 

A would-be bank robber inadvertently takes hostage a small group of people viewing a prospective new apartment. While awaiting rescue they begin to confide in each other, and the problems of everyday life are shared. A widow is lonely as New Year’s Day approaches; a long-married couple doubt if their marriage will continue; a young couple, pregnant, worry about their ability to parent. And then there is the white rabbit who shows up. Through this runs the thread of long past suicide – one that happened and one that didn’t.

This sympathetic portrayal of the problems of living doesn’t shrink from reality, but, at least this time, they are resolved happily.  A quote from The Merchant of Venice, that a character gets almost right, sums up its optimistic tone, “How far that little candle throws his beams. So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

And a quote that especially appealed to me,“Even if he knew the world was going to hell tomorrow, he’d plant an apple tree today.”