Old Ladies Read and More

Since then, in the 1930’s, the electron microscope has been developed, allowing scientists to see deep within the molecular structure of cells.  Living beings too tiny to see had their cell walls, nuclei, various individualized parts laid bare for analysis.  Genes, DNA, eventually whole genomes themselves were part of an intense transformation in the thinking of molecular biologists.

In The Tangled Tree, David Quammen painstakingly explores the changes of the last fifty years.  His hero is Carl Woese, a name that has not yet broken into the national consciousness but whose work is as astounding as Darwin’s.  Classification of living beings has always been the stuff of biology as scientists try to understand how life started four billion years ago and how forms are related.  In the 1970s Woese proved that there are three major classifications of life, not two: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes (our own category, all life that can be seen).  Quammen, in a friendly breezy style, makes us understand and care about why this was such an outstanding achievement.

But Woese  generated still additional excitement when he helped prove that heredity was not just vertical (like a tree) with traits passed down from parents to offspring, but moved sideways as well.  Cells were able to choose helpful parts from other cells, even of different species, and appropriate and replicate them.  Branches of the tree merged with other branches and mosaic was the image that finally emerged.

Quammen’s forte is explaining arcane scientific concepts to the general public and generating excitement about them.  As a non-scientist, I was on overload, but Quammen shifted my view on how life worked, and still does.  I won’t remember the names or details, but here are some general concepts that will stay with me from this extraordinary provocative book:

The ratio of tiny unseeable life forms to complex, seeable life forms is astronomical.  I am supported and constructed by an incomprehensible number of living invisible beings.  Some of their traits have been incorporated into my genome and are heritable.  Some of these other life forms are a part of “me.” 

In the 1960’s, scientists thought that all life derived from two kinds of bacteria, those with a nucleus and those without.  But no, they have since discovered that there is a third form, the archaea, which is different, and can live in inhospitable conditions such has boiling sulfur springs.  This realization has implications for finding life on other planets and understanding early life here when our atmosphere was hot and composed of hydrogen and helium instead of oxygen.

Evolution is not driven solely by mutations and inheritance (vertically) but by gene transfer, cells changing one another now (horizontally – think viruses or antibiotic resistance).

As always, I am impressed with the behind-the-scenes unpleasant arduous work that scientists do to tease out just one more small piece of information.  It is the accumulation of this patient research that leads to the scientific headlines that challenge our thinking about who and what we are.

There are lyrical descriptions of the English countryside, of sun and storms, of the talented falconers, but it is the bird, Mabel, that she returns to again and again.

“She filled the house with wildness as a bowl of lilies fills a house with scent…café-au-lait front streaked thickly with cocoa-coloured teardrops…two wild, wide eyes stare at me…scaled yellow toes and curved black talons…reptilian…snakes her small head from side to side…”

Raising and training Mabel becomes Helen’s life.  There is meticulous attention to the description of the hawk– how it moves, how its appearance (fluffed feathers, upside down head), expresses its emotions, what its eyes rivet on when outside, almost how it thinks.

These physical details are a large part of the book, but a story about raising a wild non-social animal in captivity and using it as a balm for human pain raises ethical issues.  Macdonald’s treatment of death in nature (the hawk is a predator and she a hunter) is straightforward.  Killing and death are integrated into life and not separable.  The emotion of human grief however is not easily pigeonholed and the pain of it suffuses and changes everything.

A third section, in addition to the descriptions of raising the goshawk, and dealing with her grief, is a synopsis of The Goshawk by T. H. White, author of The Once and Future King.  Although White did a terrible job of raising his hawk, Macdonald offers a sort-of homage to him, the author of a book that introduced her to hawking when she was a child, and who used his hawk, as she did, to try to overcome personal difficulties.

The attraction of the wild and need for the natural world are concepts that emerge from the story.  All are part of a whole and other living things need our empathy and respect, not attempts at mastery.

Our most recent visit was to the Honolulu Museum of Art where we viewed original paintings by Constance Gordon Cummings, a 19^th century adventurer and cohort of Isabella Bird.  We have also been to The Bishop Museum where we were allowed to see carefully preserved copies of drawings by the artists on Captain Cook’s voyage to Hawaii.

Cummings, a single woman, a wealthy privileged Scot, was both a talented painter and writer who travelled around the South Pacific, Asia and even Yosemite.  Of the several books she published about the South Seas, the one I read is A Lady’s Cruise in a French Man-of-War.  This charming travelog is written in the form of letters and describes details of everyday life in Tonga, Samoa, and Tahiti as they were in the mid-1800s. 

She tells how they made cava (by chewing a dry root then soaking the remains).  She describes jewelry (two or three large pearls fastened together with finely braided human hair).  She compares the huge stone memorials to those seen all over the world and asks the same question about how they could possibly have been transported. She disliked the “vulgarizing influence” of the white merchants and sailors “Proud was the man who became possessed of a pair of trousers, to be displayed alternately on the legs or arms”.  She approved of the missionaries who had Christianized the natives and driven out cannibalistic practices and night time orgies.

Cummings has also written a book about Hawaii, Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii, which can be read at the Honolulu library but is not available for circulation.  A good rainy-day project that I look forward to.

Odie, Odysseus, and three other children travel by canoe down the Minnesota River, each of them looking for a different kind of home. Setting the scene perfectly is the epigraph, a quote from The Odyssey, “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story.” 

Odie, the storyteller and musician of the group, is the instigator of this mythic, fairy tale-like adventure.  The four orphaned children have escaped from a school where Native American children were sent to be “civilized” but found cruelty and misery instead.  Only one of the four travelers is an Indian, symbolically mute. On the trip down river, they encounter their Cyclops who temporarily imprisons them.  They also encounter their siren, but she is more angel than wicked enchantress.  Finding the allusions to the Odyssey, the Wizard of Oz, other books and fairy tales is a large part of the fun of this novel.

For those with access to Spotify, there is a playlist of the songs played by Odie on his harmonica.  They were beautifully chosen to represent the time.  Some of the most reminiscent renditions come from the Library of Congress, sung by the likes of Woodie Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bill Monroe, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Quirky is overused when it comes to the world of Haruki Murakami, but for his novel After Dark it is appropriate.  Under the superficial oddness, however, something rock solid glimmers.  He is interested in people as self-contained individuals who are at the same time part of a collective entity.  Is there a time of night when the barriers between people are porous? 

Lonely Mari sees herself as second best to a beautiful sister.  Jazz trombonist Takahashi understands that he is a player who is only adequate.  Kaoru, running from trouble, fears she will never be safe.  Eri, the sleeping beauty, doesn’t care to wake-up and has been sleeping for two months.  Ordinary people meet after dark one night and help each other move towards connection and strength.

I didn’t realize that making playlists connected to books is a “thing.”  After Dark is suffused with references to jazz (Murakami used to own a jazz club) and sure enough, there is a playlist on Spotify.

For those not yet familiar with Murakami, there is a visual taste available on Netflix, Tony Takitani, based on a short story published in The New Yorker.  A lonely artist marries a woman with a compulsion to buy designer clothes.

Griffiths uses the story within a story technique to give depth and a hint of the supernatural to her novel.  It begins when Clare uses “The Stranger,” a Gothic murder mystery, to illustrate points to her creative writing class.  Excerpts continue throughout the novel.  Two murders at Clare’s college echo scenes from the short story.  She has lost one of her best friends plus the head of her department.  When Clare opens her diary to write about these terrible events, she is chilled to see someone else’s handwriting.

DS Harbinder Kaur of the Sussex Police Department, age 35, proud of her job, is unmarried and lives with her traditional Sikh parents.  She enjoys her mother’s excellent curries and puts up with her veiled inquiries about possible husbands and grandchildren.

Two smart women, Clare and Harbinder, gain each other’s respect as they try to figure out why the events of a ghost story have infiltrated their lives.

In a parallel story, a small bird, probably the same Satan, observes Pontius Pilate as he agrees to sentence three troublemakers to death in Jerusalem, a city ruled by Rome, another oppressive state with an autocratic ruler.

In the Moscow plot, Satan and several of his followers harass the writers in their luxurious club and take over the theater where they put on a black magic show that rains money.  The egalitarian communist comrades shove each other out of the way to grab as much as they can, but alas, the money turns to illegal foreign currency a soon as they leave the theater. 

The reader is introduced to the comic relief, Behemoth, a witch’s cat writ large.  He is an enormous black tom who walks on his hind legs and speaks, tries to pay to board the trolley, gilds his whiskers for the ball but refuses trousers (cats don’t wear pants), and enjoys cold double distilled Moscow vodka.

Midway through the novel, the two main characters, the Master and Margarita, are finally introduced to the reader.  He is a gifted writer whose extraordinary novel about Pontius Pilate has been rejected by the writers’ guild.  She, a woman whose privileged lifestyle is the envy of most of Russia, gives it up for the love of him.  When they are separated, Margarita, like Faust, makes a bargain with the conveniently present devil so they may become reunited.

At the same time, two thousand years earlier, Pontius Pilate is plotting with the head of his secret service to murder Judas.

Bulgakov has plenty to say about the Russian people and humanity in general. This provocative novel can be read as a straightforward story filled with magical realism and fantasy.  It can be read as a political satire so skewering the book could not be published during the author’s lifetime.  It can be read as a philosophical treatise exploring the collaboration between good and evil.

The Master and Margarita is found on the lists of great Russian novels along with War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov.  It is fun to take on the challenge of a “great” once in a while, but my reading buddy and I could not have done it without the help of the online resource LitCharts.  It provided chapter summaries and analyses, and enabled us to keep track of those long Russian names that keep changing.

During a time of winter famine, the band’s chief made an unpleasant decision.  Two old women of the tribe were to be left behind to give the younger ones a better chance of survival.  The women had been enjoying the help accorded to them as the oldest and least able members, but now they would pay the price of being perceived as weak.

It wouldn’t be a story if the abandoned women gave up, so we see them resurrect skills and memories of how to feed themselves and keep warm.  Wallis gives many details on how the natives sustained themselves in the hostile environment.  Athabascan stories often had morals and were used for teaching.  In this case, there are several.  The young are to value and respect the old; people will rise to the occasion when necessity demands; but also, in this frigid land, the old have the responsibility to continue to participate and be of service to the group.  Retirement is not an option.

At Shangri-la in Hawaii, Doris Duke’s magnificent collection of Islamic art, we saw a series of drawings illustrating these four-line verses with the words written in Farsi along the sides and a translation into old English along the bottom.

With Eternity, zealot, how long wilt us ply?   						     
From my thought, root and branch, I have long put it by.  
Drink wine, for there’s nothing its place can supply;  					             Each knot of perplexment after wine doth untie.   	

First the story must well up from the unconscious and clamor to be told.  Building on this necessary starting point which cannot be controlled, comes the work of turning the idea into a manuscript, which very much can be controlled.  He tells of hard work, physical and mental, discipline, patience, and the importance of reading widely.

Murakami’s novels contain elements of magical realism, but he may not think of them as such because unexplainable epiphanies are part of his real life.  When watching his favorite underdog baseball team, he saw the batter connect with a satisfying crack and at that moment his mind opened and he “knew” he would write a novel despite never having thought about it beforehand.

This engaging collection of articles published as chapters, such as “Who Do I Write For?” will appeal to the reader who has enjoyed Murakami’s quirky, inciteful novels.  It will also appeal to anyone who has ever thought about turning an idea into a novel, short story, or article – the would-be writer.

The plot, all of it, is told in the first paragraph.  Violet’s husband Joe has taken a very young woman, Dorcas, as his mistress.  When she tires of him, he kills her.  Violet, full of rage, tries to stab the girl in her coffin. Whew!  But this is not a violent novel filled with nasty characters; it is a heart-breaking tale about vulnerable struggling people.

The story is told from Violet’s point of view, then it is retold considering her upbringing.  The story is told from Joe’s point of view in the present, then retold considering his past.  The story is told from Dorcas’s point of view, then retold considering her childhood. All in gorgeous musical metaphorical language.  Individuals take turns playing solo, taking the lead.  Each time the plot, or theme, reappears, it is related slightly differently, underlining the major influence of the city and jazz.

We learn a lot about the black experience of the time – men beaten down by racism, women working at menial jobs, children searching for unknown parents; but the desire for love, completeness, and connection that emerges is universal.  When Joe and Violet, together again at the end, dance to music floating through the window, there can’t be a dry eye.

Throughout the book is the omniscient narrator who interrupts the plot to comment.  But can we rely on this narrator to tell us the truth? When the story is over, the narrator is not finished and speaks for an additional chapter.  Critics have different ideas about who or what this narrator is.  I would suggest that it is “book” itself as an object or art form that talks directly to the reader about the lack of one true reality and differences in interpretation.  No two people will read – or live – the same experience.

The ending of the novel is wonderfully ambiguous, “If I were able I’d say it.  Say make me, remake me.  You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look.  Look where your hands are. Now.”  Is the book talking to the reader?  Or to the lovers?

The stories are unrelentingly depressing.  It is even more painful to realize that similar articles can be read in Al Jazeera.  Together, they are a representation of a country in chaos.

Is this a collection someone should read?  It is very informative as news about Haiti is not easily found; if you like to read for information, you will get it.  Is it well-written?  Most of the stories are tightly constructed around one emotional incident, as a short story should be. 

Often, Danticat creatively broaches her subject by describing the aftermath of a horrific incident.  In “The Gift,” a woman meets her lover after an earthquake has killed his wife and small daughter and he has lost a leg.  He is wracked with guilt and remorse and can no longer be with her.  She goes home alone and pours a glass of wine from a special bottle they had put aside to enjoy together.  It has gone brown and rancid. 

My favorite story reminds the reader that amidst all the misery particular to a devasted country, there are also the normal problems of life.  In “Sunrise, Sunset,” a grandmother’s Alzheimer’s makes staying at home untenable at a time her daughter suffers from postpartum depression.  Is her dangerous behavior to the new grandson one of the last gifts she will be able to give her beloved daughter?

Danticat has used her talents to express anguish over the state of the country she was born in.  If the first step in solving a problem is to recognize it, she makes her reader do this in a vivid unforgettable way.  Read all at once, the collection is almost numbing in its sadness, but the individual stories are haunting and memorable.

Has he disappeared because of a love triangle?  Maybe it was because a British matron has ensured her daughter and her estate stay in “good” hands?  Not until the very end does Grant solve this mystery with its unexpected ending.

Sometimes when the tension in a mystery builds, I like to skip to the end and have a peek at “whodunit.”  I can then read in a leisurely manner and enjoy the other offerings, such as character and setting, and not gallop through the plot.  In this book, it was lots of fun to do that and enjoy the very discreet, almost imperceptible clues that Tey drops throughout her story.

She is one of those British authors whose intricate plots and comfortable English characters have made her one of the favorites in this genre. In the past, I would have easily given her an A+.  Now, there is a little twinge when I read about the privileged closed world of the British upper class.  I’ve been reading too much Morrison and Danticat.

His advice can be summed up easily – stay active, physically and mentally; involve yourself in social activities; be open to new experiences.  Savor all opportunities for pleasure and adventure.  Old is when we accept substantial limitations on what we can do.  True, some of his suggestions are dated (seniors should spend time learning to use the internet), but the general concepts in the book resonate.

The mention of technology made me wonder how often in the past the old might have turned to the young for information. Was it some oldster who advocated trading in the horse for a car, or like today, did the young lead the way?  We’re usually told that it is the old who pass on their wisdom, and President Carter laments that the young no longer listen, but maybe having knowledge go both ways isn’t that unusual – and something else to keep us young.

I also liked his comment that education should prepare us for a whole life, not just the working years.  Hurray for the liberal arts and being introduced to art, music, and literature, all interests that can stay with us for a lifetime, plus philosophy and sociology to help with lifelong community/political choices.

Following President Carter’s advice to find things that make us happy, I’m suggesting three light mysteries – to be read for fun.  And in the first, there is someone who agrees with him on staying connected.

She is the publisher of the philosophical Review of Applied Ethics, and it is this subject which forms the backbone of Smith’s novel.  The thin plot – straightforward and solved with a few phone calls and lunches – is the thread that binds the main character’s stream of consciousness.  Isabel muses on general philosophical problems such as overpopulation, what it feels like to be a fox, the purpose of statues, how easy it is to misjudge a situation.   Her focus however is on what one must or can do to help others in trouble and it is this which causes her to become involved in mysteries.  Despite her philosophical bent, she is a practical woman with a husband and two small children who volunteers in her niece’s deli.  In the novel we watch Isabel attempt to apply her philosophical principles to everyday life.

This is not a book for someone who wants a compelling fast-moving plot.  It is meant for the philosophers among us who enjoy a slow moving, thoughtful ramble with a small amount of mystery.  The novel is number eleven in the Isabel Dalhousie collection, one of McCall Smith’s many popular series.

Several mystery writers who have used her help as a “murder consultant” are also found dead; all have received a mysterious postcard saying, “We are coming for you.”  Three improbable sleuths, a home health carer from the Ukraine, an ex-monk who would like a girlfriend, and a retiree in a rest home join forces to solve the crimes.

This is the second in the Brighton England series starring DS Harbinder Kaur, the gay Indian detective who tries to keep the three new friends safe while the police investigate in this charming literary mystery.

In her imaginative novels, starting with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, she gave Sherlock a young wife, the brilliant talented Mary Russell.  Twenty years later, in The Murder of Mary Russell, she changes her mind and kills her off – or does she? 

This cozy mystery is full of feints and misdirection, starting with the title.  It is not Mary who is the main character, but Mrs. Hudson, the reliable motherly housekeeper who has been with Sherlock since his story started.  But why would such a respectable woman have a visit from an unsavory character claiming to be her son, telling tales of shipwreck and hidden treasure?

Doubly fun, this “historical fiction” creates a lively back story for one of the popular supporting figures in the Sherlock saga.

Do all cultures have the ritual of a toast?  Prost! Salut! Or the most recent that I have learned, Okole Maluna!  (Bottoms to the Moon or Bottoms Up).   

I think the answer must be complicated and I’ll let you think about it – but not during the next Cheers worthy occasion.

In The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, the thoughtless act of a friendless teenager brings the two groups together with an impact that upends their lives.

Alienation and loneliness are emotions not only the Somalis feel, but also the Burgesses when they move to New York, don’t like their work, get divorced, can’t stand one another, or disapprove of the other’s lifestyle.  Common problems are magnified by the long-lasting burden of the childhood loss. But family ties remain and when trouble comes, they draw together.

Juxtaposed with the Burgess family are the Somalis who also draw together in this land of confusion and strangeness where they have been forced to flee for their lives.  Americans tend to think immigrants should be grateful to be here, but the homesick immigrants often see things differently.  Americans are so individualistic (selfish). Children speak confidently (entitled and disrespectful). Strangers look you in the eye and smile (rude).  This section reminded me of Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar where the Muslim immigrants had similar observations.

Strout’s strong point is her ability to bring her characters to life.  When the novel was over, I felt that I knew the Burgess family very well.

Lamarr was born in Vienna and raised in a cultured middle-class family of Jewish descent who navigated the politics of Austria between the wars.  As a child, she loved to tinker with mechanical things and was stunningly gorgeous.  Which of those characteristics would dominate? It was interesting to see what in the culture, the times, her personal circumstances brought her beauty to the fore first, and then as opportunity shifted, her suppressed scientific interests reemerged.

Benedict struggles to hold the three distinct parts of the book together as the first section deals with the rise of the Nazis, the second, Hedy’s time in Hollywood, and the third her scientific achievements.  I found the book mediocre but was very interested in the questions it raised about historical fiction.  How much latitude is an author allowed in fleshing out facts to make a good story?  Is it disconcerting to have the made-up information woven so seamlessly we can’t tell fact from fiction?  I might prefer a Hamnet, where there is a starting fact (yes, there was a Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet) but the other personal information is obviously made up.  Maybe historical fiction works better if it is written about someone who lived centuries ago rather than decades.

Benedict is interested in women whose technological accomplishments have been marginalized. In Hedy Lamarr, she finds someone who is ignored not only because she is female, but also especially beautiful and a movie star besides. Three prejudices in one.

Susan Sarandon has produced a documentary, Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr Story, covering similar material plus emphasizing that Hedy’s patented information underlays the development of cell phones and Bluetooth.

But a different tune is sung, and Joe discovers in the tiny town of Llanffugiol the discordant notes of arson, murder, drugs, and pedophilia. When he heroically rescues a young woman from a burning house, his involvement is guaranteed.

Joe thinks to himself in metaphor and cliché and rambles when he speaks to others. “You played the cards the dealer gave you… knocked back by what felt like a Pearl Harbor attack out of a clear blue sky… unsteadiness of a round-the-world sailor finally hitting home.”  But when he thinks about his case, he succinctly gets to the point and helps the local constabulary solve the mystery.

It takes an alert reader to follow him and to keep track of the many characters in this intricate mystery.  Easy-to-like Joe heads a large, varied cast.

When the speaker later refers to retirement, we realize that his “day” is symbolic. People look forward to completing their work life and anticipate satisfaction and comfort.  But what happens when a person looks back and finds the disquieting fear that all effort was for the wrong thing?  Such is the plight of the main character in Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Stevens is the quintessential English butler who served at the end of World War I, when the grand houses were still occupied by the nobility.  He gave up all thought of a personal life to completely inhabit his role.  Service to a great man at the center of power, to someone working for noble things, was the highest achievement.  Now, both the great man and his reputation are gone; the idealistic world they lived in is gone; the woman who loved him is gone; and he is left alone to consider his past.

This wonderful story is told in the quiet restrained manner Stevens would have approved of.  In addition to a perfect tone, Ishiguro uses nature to echo the scenes.  When Stevens meets for the last time the woman he has frozen out, it is raining.  As he contemplates his remaining days, it is sunset.  Although the setting is of a time long gone, the fear of having wasted your life is universal. 

A book like this is my favorite kind – easy to read on the surface but thoughtful and perceptive.  Exploring the large questions of life in literary fiction is one of the best reasons to read.

Can fast foods be as addictive as cigarettes and cocaine?  Moss explores our genetics and what we are programmed to desire in food by eons of evolution. Storing fat for times of famine. Getting the most calories possible from the least effort. Variety (think leaves, bulbs, fruit, and the occasional rodent) to ensure all needed nutrients.

Fast forward to the ubiquitous availability of cheap sweet fatty foods in unending variety (New! Improved!).  I counted approximately fifteen kinds of Coca Cola along with orange, ginger, and garlic (!) being tested in other countries. Big Food deploys an army of scientists to figure out how to exploit natural desires developed over millennia.  As with other addictions, science is unable to say why some people are happy with one Oreo and others must have the whole bag, but will-power is not the reason.

Reading non-fiction for information, whether to keep up with new things or learn about the past, is an excellent reason to tackle a meaty book, magazine, or news article.

Written in 2020, it resurrects experiences from our own plague.  Woven into the story are the first intimations of a pandemic.  Next come experiences all too familiar.  Ruth is a professor and a single mother who must learn to teach online plus instruct and entertain her daughter who will miss graduation festivities as she leaves elementary school. Friends meet outside, two meters apart (this is England), bring their own wine glasses which they put on the ground to be filled.  Yikes! that is what we did as we worked to maintain social contacts.

This was a great story whose plot (even the title) echoes what we remember from that year – lockdowns, fear of illness, closing of public facilities, loneliness and suicide.  Is it too soon to read it?  The book did bring back the anxiety of that first year.

But I loved this series and binged this summer and fall and read all fifteen!  What makes a reader connect so strongly with one particular set of characters?  There is the occasional similarity – Ruth has only one child, a bright, lively daughter; she prefers ginger cats; she mentions some of the same authors I like; she even orders the same brand of ethically sourced toilet paper (maybe that is pushing it). I don’t think it is the similarities themselves but the attitudes and choices they represent. 

We term the mystery “cozy” because we are comfortable and at home in it.  We can relax–-a very valid reason to read a good book.

The structure is similar to a picaresque novel; the main character goes from experience to unrelated experience.  He has conversations with his father who has met and loves Donald Trump.  A new friend tutors him on the arcane knowledge of wealth producing hedge funds.  He discusses Salman Rushdie’s controversial works.  A favorite teacher instructs him on dream interpretation.

From this hodgepodge emerge some sad generalities. Thus “elegies.”  Americans present themselves as Christian, but they are really obsessed with making money and worship the dollar.  Too many Muslims take a literalist view of the Quran and use it to promote things such as child marriage.  Immigrants can’t adjust to a foreign culture they don’t respect.

To write his book, Akhtar experimented with form.  There is no plot, just a collection of events told out of sequence in first person.  Genre is mixed; fact and fiction are jumbled together. I don’t think it worked. The novel was too disjointed and unpleasant to read. To give credit where it is due however, his memoir format was totally convincing, and I was stunned when I realized that much of what I was reading was fiction.

For a twenty first century reader, it is a trite story.  Carrie moves in with her sister and her husband but finds them boring and obsessed with work. She meets a traveling salesman who pays attention to her.  He takes her to dinner, to the theater, buys her things.  Before long the inevitable (to us) happens and she moves in with him.  At his suggestion, she takes a small part in a local play, discovers her talent, and is on the way to fame and fortune.

Sister Carrie is an example of American Realism, popular at the time.  Dreiser has described how things are, not as they should be.  But his readers were scandalized, and the book had a rough reception.  Not only did Carrie succumb to temptation, but she wasn’t punished for it.

The most fun from reading this book was making comparisons with today. The men in the story think they will take advantage of Carrie, but she is the one who finds success and leaves them behind.  Such a view of strong womanhood was too much for the outraged 20^th century audience.  And the 21^st?

Although Carrie moves in with her lover, the word sex is never mentioned.  She is being pursued and the next thing we know they are sharing rooms.  Everything is left to the reader’s imagination. Compare this to Homeland Elegies (above) written two years ago.  The sex scenes are graphic and salacious. Way more information than I need to know.  Can we have something in-between?

Most interesting to me is that the two books written a hundred years apart, one by an atheist and one by a Muslim, share a main subject, the concern about materialism in our country.  Carrie only wants pretty clothes, a lovely apartment, nice things.  At the end when she has them, she is unhappy and lonely.  The drive to acquire and the self-indulgence of the average American are the main criticisms that also arise in Elegies.  Both it and Sister Carrie are concerned about the inequities of economic power. Dreiser, the railroad vs. laborers; Akhtar, Wall Street billionaires vs. laborers.

Decent Guido Brunetti, Commissario of the Venetian police, who both reads and dines well, is always a pleasure to visit. In this novel, he solves the murder of a building inspector, afraid of heights, who has apparently fallen from a scaffold.  At the same time, he struggles with the ethics of asking his wealthy well-connected father-in-law to interfere on his behalf to fix a personal problem with the city.

His other wives have not produced the two sons he demands.  Maybe someone younger, someone fourteen, would perform better.  Such is the opening of The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Daré. 

Fate intervenes and Adunni gets help from a trusted friend’s son to escape.  But the son is not the mother and once again Adunni is sold, this time as part of the slave trade still prevalent in the country. She becomes a maid to a rich family in Lagos where she suffers the abuse of the wife and predatory behavior of the husband. 

Mixed with the colorful sights and sounds of modern Lagos are the sometimes brutal superstitions of the past. Patriarchy is the rule. Although the setting is unfamiliar to a Western reader, the plot is the familiar quest whereby a young person overcomes many obstacles to achieve a goal.  Adunni’s goal is simple.  She wants to be a person with agency, one who has control over her own life, someone with a “louding” voice that will be heard.

The disadvantage of listening to the story was that the dialect and vocabulary were sometimes hard to understand.  The advantage of this beautiful reading by Adjoa Andoh was the lilt, emotions, little Nigerian songs which brought the character and setting to life.

The move to the US did not work out.  Her father, unable to deal with the racism of Alabama, abandoned the family and returned to Ghana.  Nana, the beloved brother and son was a sports hero until he was injured, became addicted to pain killers, and died of an overdose.  The guilty depressed mother who instigated the move is lost in grief.  Gifty, ten, is bereft.

She looks for solace in her Born Again, Evangelical religion and vividly remembers the feeling of being saved, when grace filled her body.  But where is God now?   Her quest becomes existential.  Is the transcendent kingdom to be found in faith or in the awe-inspiring abilities of the brains of the mice she studies and the brains and minds of humans.

Jane’s parents are quiet, cultivated, erudite people and she becomes like them.  Dolly’s mother lives by her wits always struggling for money, and Dolly, lively and vivacious, wanting the glamour of the good life, lives by hers.  These two women, a generation apart, opposite personalities, are forced together by family ties and responsibilities. 

The strongest point of the novel is the minute character studies of the two women. Plot is almost nonexistent; little happens beyond the normal progression of aging and what it entails.  The second strong point is the very appealing language – restrained, understated emotions, stereotypically British. The vocabulary is a stretch.

At the end, Brookner brings together her characters’ contrasting approaches to life with a slightly discordant discussion of Sleeping Beauty.  Jane has become an author of children’s books and gives lectures about women’s issues in fairy tales.  She sees that at heart she and Dolly are not so different in what they want, someone to care for and belong to. Maybe even an unsympathetic relative would do.

Filmed in the Piedmont of Italy, the movie follows some of the last of the rare Alba truffle hunters as they and their dogs sniff out the elusive underground morsels. 

This DVD is not for those who want blockbuster excitement.  It is a slow-paced thoughtful movie depicting a simple, independent lifestyle which spotlights the love between the hunters and their dogs.  Like The Mushroom Hunters I wrote about last time it contrasts the rural lifestyles of the pickers who spend their lives outdoors in the rolling hills with the luxury market of big city consumers.  There is a wonderful tasting scene where individual truffles in chardonnay glasses are being passed around by professionals who are sniffing and discussing their aromas.

At the end, we watched the credits roll so we could continue to listen to the hauntingly beautiful theme song.  No wonder we liked it!  We finally recognized Follow Me, the love theme from Mutiny on the Bounty, that movie with the gorgeous photography of the South Pacific.  And why was it appropriate here? beautiful countryside of a different kind?  the siren call of the elegant mushroom? the hunters calling their dogs for another adventure? 

When the music stops there is a pause, then gilding the lily are the night sounds of the truffle hunters’ woods and the lovely hooting of owls encouraging the hunters and their dogs to go out once again.

The book is fiction, but Frankel herself is raising a trans child. In her novel she uses several plot devices to explore the options available to such a family.  One, the truth can be told right from the start. This is a difficult road in our current society but avoids the weight of a serious secret and the fear of discovery.   Or, the physical identity can be hidden, and the child presented as a little girl, saving her the embarrassment of being very different in a culture that wants conformity in this area. 

But this is only a postponement, because dresses or not, at puberty the child will start to become a young man. Difficult decisions will have to be made about hormone therapy and eventual surgery when the child is just a teen and struggling with all the usual things as well.

Our culture sees gender as binary, either-or, male or female, but Frankel suggests the recognition of a third, in-between possibility.  In the story, the mother volunteers to work in Thailand and becomes acquainted with the concept of kathoey, or ladyboy, which allows more flexibility in how sexuality is expressed.

The elements of a novel such as character, setting, or plot are not what count here as it is all about the subject matter.  As a senior, I grew up in the 50’s when gay children, never mind trans, didn’t exist.  Although my horizons have expanded a lot since then, transgender sexuality is a subject I am barely familiar with.  It was enlightening to read about the changing views and possibilities connected with this issue.

We meet Klara when she is newly made, living in a store, waiting to be chosen as a best friend.  She is learning about her environment, and we see as she does in pixels and shapes. Josie, the human who chooses her, is a metaphor for the benefits and risks of technology in our lives.  She is especially intelligent and privileged but has a mysterious illness which brings a note of disquiet to the story.

Josie’s father, when he comes to visit, nicknames her Animal, an unsubtle commentary about one of the main issues.  Exactly what is the difference between Klara and Josie who have indeed become best friends?  Does the human have a special spark that the machine does not or is it just chemicals and programming for them both?

On the surface, this is a story about love, friendship, family and the choices that define who a person is. Underneath is the provocative question of how much we want technology, computers, robots, and AI to intersect with our lives.

A picker himself, Cook brings to life the underground world of the wild food forager. Often people at the edges of society, the pickers are the type who are proud of strenuous physical labor and know the forests well, down to individual trees.  Like migrant agricultural workers, they follow the porcinis and truffles because mushrooms do have seasons.

The antithesis of the rural poor who do the harvesting is the wealthy big city resident who dines (mycophagist) on morels air shipped overnight from the NW forests.  Cook gives us a taste of the gourmet restaurant business that supplies such fare.

In between is the buyer.  The author follows one as he sets up shop near the harvests, cultivates pickers, deals with competitors, gets to the airport (hours away from the picking sites) on time to ship his matsutakes to waiting high end restaurants.

There’s lots of detailed information. Did you know that wild mushrooms come in fluorescent yellow (chanterelles), scarlet (lobsters), black (trumpets) and colors in between? that they have teeth (hedgehogs)?

There is also a very evocative sense of the place where they grow.  “The home of the elusive wild mushroom. shot through with warm shafts of light when the sun is out…sent from the heavens and filtered through a million leafy stained-glass windows, …explains why the Pacific Northwest’s ancient forests are referred to as nature’s cathedrals.”

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For the tech challenged among us, a joke from Facebook, Sue Fitzmaurice’s column:

Some self-recognition here.  It took me a few beats but then I laughed out loud.