Too Many Books, Too Little Time

You may recall that one short month ago I had nothing to read. On April 5 I wrote, “I need something that is going to transport me into another world and really grab me.”

Bringing Up the Bodies is proof that when we cry out in the wilderness, the [universe, God, karma, Yaweh, etc.] listens and responds. I have been grabbed and transported to the not-so-merry Olde England of Henry VIII, as seen through the manipulative genius of Thomas Cromwell, as seen through the literary genius of HilaryMantel.

My initial enthusiasm for the book arose from my interest in the story of Anne Boleyn but, as you will learn if you choose to readBringing Up the Bodies, the story centers more on Cromwell and his political machinations than that of Anne Boleyn. We all know her story – she stole Henry from Katherine and then lost him (and her head) to Jane Seymour.

As Cromwell – the narrator –  observes, “But look, never mind all this. Queens come and go.”

What we learn, something I never considered and may or may not be true (but does make a great story), is Cromwell engineered much of what happened between the autumn of 1535 and May 17, 1536 in order to (1) avenge the death of Cardinal Wolsey and (2) remove a few of his (Cromwell’s) enemies. Although in his role as Master Secretary you would think him securely placed - he had nearly unlimited access to Henry’s money, his correspondence, his secrets – Cromwell observes:

You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it’s like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you’re thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.

And he’s right to be wary, not only of the king but of men who profess to be his friends. At the end of the day, with Anne and her accused lovers tried and executed for treason, he overhears his friend, Thomas Wriothesley, say, “. . . if this is what Cromwell does to the cardinal’s lesser enemies, what will he do by and by to the king himself?”

Cromwell responds by exhorting his friends, “Drink my health.”

Oh, Mantel’s prose is so confident, her style so spot-on, that I struggled to remember that Cromwell  himself wasn’t writing the pages. I believe that she has probably captured the spirit of the man: brilliant, manipulative, loyal, acerbic, untrustworthy and, above all, complex.

I am thrilled to learn that this is the second installation to what is intended to be a trilogy. I hope Mantel’s at her desk, working on Part III, at this very minute!

Grade: A+

There is a wonderful audio edition of this book read by Simon Vance. You can listen to a sample here.

I’m about halfway through this book but, if I hadn’t been dealing with a small family emergency, I would have cancelled everything to finish it days ago. Is it as good as Wolf Hall? In my estimation, it’s even better. Knowing how this story ends doesn’t begin to detract from the drama and suspense. Hilary Mantel has outdone herself.

I believe it doesn’t go on sale until May 8, but I encourage anyone who enjoys good historical fiction to order a copy and clear your calendar. Personally, I’ll be sorry when I finish it!

I hate to be fickle – and I REALLY hate abandoning a book that I’m enjoying – but I’m about to switch horses (books) in mid-stream. Just as I’m getting to the part in Cleopatra where she and Mark Antony meet up, what should arrive in the mail but an advance copy of Hilary Mantel’s (author of 2009 Man Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall) new novel, Bringing Up the Bodies. I’m a complete sucker for the Tudors, and the story of poor Anne Boleyn, the subject of this novel, fascinates me. I’m still hundreds of pages from finishing Cleopatra, but I just can’t wait to jump into Mantel’s new book, particularly because her use of Thomas Cromwell’s point of view brings a fresh – and sinister – perspective.

Here’s an excerpt:

His relations with the queen as the summer draws to its official end are chary, uncertain, and fraught with distrust. Anne Boleyn is now thirty-four years old, a dark woman with a refinement that makes mere prettiness seem redundant. Once sinuous, she has become angular. She retains her dark glitter, now rubbed a little, flaking in places. Her prominent dark eyes she uses to good effect, and in this fashion: she glances at a man’s face, then her regard flits away, as if unconcerned, indifferent. There is a pause: as it might be, a breath. Then slowly, as if compelled, she turns her gaze back to him. Her eyes rest on his face. She examines this man. She examines him as if he is the only man in the world. She looks as if she is seeing him for the first time and considering all sorts of uses for him, all sorts of possibilities, which he has not even thought of himself. To her victim the moment seems to last an age, during which shivers run up his spine. Though in fact the trick is quick, cheap, effective, and repeatable, it seems to the poor fellow that he is now distinguished among all men. He smirks. He preens himself. He grows a little taller. He grows a little more foolish.

Tantalizing, isn’t it? I rarely accept publisher offers of advanced copies for review, because (1) they are often in genres such as fantasy, which I don’t read and (2) I don’t want to feel beholden to write a positive review if I don’t like a book. Because I enjoyed Wolf Hall so much, I accepted this offer immediately. I won’t tell you I like it if I don’t, but I anticipate this won’t be a problem.

I’ll get back to Cleopatra soon, I promise!

It’s been a tough few weeks, picking up one title, putting it down, managing the samples I’ve downloaded on my Kindle, asking, asking, asking what I should read next. And what I’ve settled on is a “blast from the past.”

If you haven’t read Margaret George, and you have even the slightest interest in historical figures, I cannot recommend her highly enough. In fact, it was because I recommended her highly to a friend that I remembered I hadn’t read The Memoirs of Cleopatra.

The first fictional biography I read by Margaret George was the outstanding Autobiography of King Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Sommers. This was truly my all-time favorite fictionalized biography, and I recently recommended it to a friend. You need to be a little careful when you recommend Margaret George, because she doesn’t write short books. Henry is 960 pages – and every one of them entertaining and enlightening. When my friend called me to thank me – profusely – for the recommendation, I was reminded much I love historical fiction in general, Margaret George in particular.

My second Margaret George book was Mary Queen of Scotland and the British Isles. This one is a mere 880 pages, but it resulted in my one and only “reading injury.” While reading a hardback copy of Mary I fell asleep (this is no reflection of the content of the book – only that I was teaching high school sophomores at the time and was pretty exhausted by the end of the day). When I fell asleep the book dropped, hitting my face and splitting my lip open. I have to admit, this did put me off large, hardback editions – today I am grateful for the size and weight of my Kindle!

I moved on to other reading material, but in 1998 George’s The Memoirs of Cleopatra was published. My husband bought me the 976 hardback edition as soon as it came out, and it sat on my shelf waiting for me for years. At some point it must have been donated, unread, to the library because when I realized that this was what I wanted to read now, it was nowhere to be found. Just as well – I’m sure I’m going to be much happier reading it on my Kindle!

So – here I am with a rainy day, an empty calendar, and 976 pages of Cleopatra. Gotta go – Heaven awaits!

Those of you who follow my blog may have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Quite frankly, I’m in a reading slump, one of those frustrating times when nothing I look at seems to be what I want to read.

When I finished Defending Jacob, I thought maybe I’d try another book by its author, William Landay. I picked up The Strangler: A Novel, Landay’s first novel, based in Boston in the 60s when the Boston Strangler terrorized the city. It became clear how much Landay has grown as a novelist, but wasn’t a book I could stick with.

Our book club book was Erin Morgenstern’s Night Circus, a fantasy that has received some great reviews. For book club books I have a strict “100 page rule.” No matter how bad the book, I have to give it at least 100 pages before I abandon it. I couldn’t make it past page 30. I have to say that many in my book club loved this book, but I’m not a fan of magical realism or fantasy. If I could have read and rolled my eyes at the same time, that’s what I would have done.

One of the things I love about my Kindle is being able to download samples, so when I gave up on Night Circus I went into a downloading frenzy, trying to find something to read. Among those that I sampled were:

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Erasure: A Novel by Percival Everett

Girlchild: A Novel by Tupelo Hassmen

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

Each of these books had either been personally recommended to me or had been well-reviewed in The New York Times or on NPR, but none of them captured my  interest.

Now I’m turning to you, my fellow lovers of reading, for recommendations. I need a book that is going to transport me into another world and really grab me. I need to get out of this rut. I need something fabulous to read!!

What would you recommend?

Years ago, when my daughter was in elementary school, she attended the school where I taught. I used to wonder how I would handle the situation if she ever became a disciplinary problem. The ramifications for my relationships with my peers, my employer, and the community at large seemed daunting. Luckily, I never needed to find out – she was a good student and well-behaved.

This is more or less the situation in which Andy Barber, the narrator and protagonist of William Landay’s new novel, Defending Jacob, finds himself, although the stakes are much higher for him. Andy is the Assistant DA for Middlesex County, an upscale community outside of Boston. A classmate of his 14-year old son, Jacob, is found murdered in a public park near the middle school his son attends. In the course of the investigation, Jacob becomes the prime suspect for the murder.

This novel is less a murder mystery – and I’m not going to spoil it by hinting at the outcome – than it is a study in family dynamics. Landay skillfully explores the impact that this accusation has on Barber, his wife, Laurie, and their son, as seen through Barber’s eyes.

For me, the choice of narrator made this an especially great read. There is no way that Andy Barber can be a reliable narrator – he’s too embroiled personally and professionally to be objective. Everything we learn about the crime is filtered through Andy’s telescopic lens: the Facebook chats that Jacob’s classmates use to discuss the crime, the thoroughness of the investigation, the character of the victim and, most of all, the objectivity of Neal Logiudice, the prosecutor put in charge of the case. It’s up to the reader to try to sort out what to believe and what is an attempt on Andy’s part to protect himself and his family.

If you decide to read it – and I recommend you do – don’t start it until you have the time to see it through to the end. This book is a real page turner.

Grade: A

Nathan Englander isn’t exactly a household name, but few writers of short stories are. That he has won prestigious awards – The Pen/Faulkner Malamud Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kauffman Prize to name just two – should indicate that maybe he should be, particularly considering he won the Pen/Faulkner at the tender age of thirty. His work has been anthologized in three separate editions of Best American Short Stories and appeared in numerous other publications, including The New Yorker magazine.

This is his second collection of short stories. In between he wrote the novel, The Ministry of Special Cases. I’ve just barely begun this collection, having read only the title story so far, but I’m pretty excited to know that seven more await me.

If the title of this collection seems vaguely familiar, it’s because Englander has riffed off of Raymond Carver’s famous “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Oddly, the substitution of “Anne Frank” in this particular story doesn’t change the original question: What do we mean when we talk about love?

The story tells of two Jewish couples, one American secular Jews, one Israeli Hassidics. The wives were best friends as girls before Lauren – renamed Shoshana –  and her husband moved to Israel and converted. This is the first time the couples have been together in twelve years, and initially the cultural and religious gaps appear almost insurmountable.

What finally draws them together is an unexpected decision to get high. By the end of the story, their inhibitions and mutual prejudice against each others’ lifestyles have been broken down and they are left to face that question: What do we mean when we talk about love?

Many people don’t care for short stories, but I’m in awe of an author’s ability to use so few words to construct a credible world, peopled by men and women that we feel we know.

I can’t guarantee that the rest of the stories in this collection will stand in comparison to this one, but I can’t wait to find out.

Adam Johnson could not have picked a more precipitous time to release his new novel, The Orphan Master’s Son. The December death of North Korea’s despotic leader, Kim Jong Il, immediately preceded the book’s January release, just as world attention was turned to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Johnson has pulled back the cover of secrecy that shrouds this country with a story that is part adventure, part romance, and part political nightmare.  It is also fully engrossing.

The book’s protagonist is the orphan Jun Do, who believes himself to be the son of the head of the orphanage in which he lives. The Koreanization of the anonymous American “John Doe” is on example of the subtle humor that infuses what is otherwise a story that fluctuates between the horrifying and the absurd.

The first section of the book gives us the “biography” of Jun Do, at least what he believes or, sometimes, knows to be true. The main function of this section is to set up the main story in Part Two: The Confessions of Commander Ga. This part forms the action of the story (but don’t worry, plenty happens in Part One) – the ups and downs of Jun Do’s experience in a society where the only thing you can be sure of is that you can’t be sure of anything.

I want to avoid any spoilers here – one of the things I most enjoyed about this book was the somewhat bewildering, always fascinating, development of the story. I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of that pleasure. Leaving the plot aside, there are a number of other reasons why you should get your hands on a copy of this book ASAP:

• Johnson spent six years researching North Korea and interviewing people who had defected from the DPRK before traveling there himself. It’s safe to say that he brings a great deal of knowledge about the culture and lives of the citizens of this shadowy country.
• There is a fine balance between the realistic , the horrifying, and the preposterous, although it isn’t always clear which is which. Sometimes they overlap, as when Jun Do travels to the United States and observes, “This was a family, start to finish, without wars or famines or political prisons, without a stranger coming to town to drown your daughter.”
• Jun Do is a hero you root for from beginning to end. That he projects an”everyman” quality in an environment that is, thankfully, so alien to American sensibilities is a tribute to Johnson’s skill in developing his characters.

This book has already been widely reviewed and cited as what will be one of the most important books of 2012. We all know how books that come out early in the year can be forgotten in the pre-Christmas rush of new titles. It will be a shame if that happens to The Orphan Master’s Son – it’s a book that deserves to be read and celebrated as original, captivating, and masterful. I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

Addendum: There’s a great interview with Adam Johnson about his experience  in North Korea and in writing this book on YouTube.

Grade: A+

While the events of 9/11 are never specifically mentioned, The Submission is the story of New York City’s attempt to construct a memorial to the thousands who died in a horrific attack perpetrated by Muslim terrorists.

The novel opens as the jury selected to judge submissions for the memorial come to a consensus on the design. The jury is made up of a variety of stakeholders: community leaders, artists, and a single family member of one of those killed in the attack. This particular juror, Claire Burwell, has lost her husband. Representing all the families that have lost loved ones, she plays a particularly vocal – and privileged – role in the final selection, and sways the jury to support her choice: a walled garden that includes a pavilion for contemplation, intersecting canals, and steel trees constructed from the salvaged scraps of the wreckage.

The rules require that the jury view the submissions “blind,” with no knowledge of the designer and his/her background. When the decision is made and the designer revealed, it turns out to be an American-born Muslim named Mohammad Kahn. Kahn, who goes by the nickname “Mo”, is a non-practicing Muslim; born, raised, and educated in the U.S.A.

As might be expected, the selection of a design submitted by a Muslim sets off a firestorm of controversy, and it is around this controversy that the story evolves.Waldman has brought in a wide variety of voices –  families of victims, politicians, Muslims, journalists – to represent the competing factions of the controversy, and it is in these voices that the tension and interest lie.

Anyone who remembers the outcry against the building of a Muslim community center near the site of Ground Zero has a pretty good idea where this story is going, but that doesn’t dilute the propulsion of emotion that Waldman builds through the first half of her story. She does an excellent job of representing all points of view and raising sides to the issue that were new to me and may be to you, also. If she continued to press points that had been adequately covered, sometimes bordering on redundancy, I believe it was only to bring resolution to the large cast of characters.

The writing is sometimes overwrought, and Waldman often stretches for metaphors that don’t quite work (my favorite: “She ate ramen noodles from the vending matching, their texture just a few molecular recombinations from the Styrofoam cup containing them.” Ouch!)

Nevertheless, the subject matter and points raised are compelling, the controversy one that will force you to re-examine your own biases. . . all in all, a good exercise in understanding others’ points of view.

Grade: B

Perhaps because I know that I will never travel to India – the very thought of it overwhelms me – I am fascinated by and addicted to books about India. Living in a neat and orderly Southern California suburb as I do, it’s hard to imagine a life among the crowds, noise, smells, and raw humanity that seem to embody modern India. While I was drawn to Last Man in Tower because of the location, as well as my prior experience reading this author, it’s an age-old story that could take place anywhere. Change a few details, scratch the cultural surface of this interesting cast of characters, and you have a timeless story of the consequences that accompany greed and temptation.

Aravind Adiga, the author, rose to literary prominence when his previous novel, White Tiger, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. In my estimation, he has surpassed the success of his earlier work with this new novel.

Last Man is the story of what would be a condominium co-op here in the United States. This six-story building, consisting of fifteen units and known as Vishram Society (Tower A), sits on the edge of a Mumbai slum. Its middle-class tenants have lived in harmony for many years. As the book opens we see how involved they are in each others’ lives, knowing family histories and habits in the intimate way that people living in close proximity often do. Muslims co-exist in harmony with Catholics, Hindus, and atheists; neighbors look out for and help one another in time of need, while tactfully refraining from meddling in each others’ business. If not always easy, life is companionable in the Vishram Society.

That is, until a real estate developer decides that he is going to offer the tenants an enormous sum of money (approximately $330,00 per family – the average annual income is about $800, according to the author) to sell their property to him. He plans to demolish the Vishram Society and construct a massive, modern new development.

Conflict arises when all but one tenant, Yogesh A. Murthy (known as “Masterji”), agree to take the deal. Masterji, a retired teacher, refuses to sell. As Dharmen Shah, the developer, and his “left-hand man”, Shanmugham (so-called because he does the things that “the right hand doesn’t want to know about”) mount pressure on the residents, we begin to see cracks in the neighborly relationships for which they pride themselves.

Adiga has done a fine job of developing this story and, by the time we get to a point of real conflict among the tenants, we actually understand and sympathize with both sides. Masterji is truly the “last man,” standing alone in bewilderment and frustration; his neighbors are forced to re-evaluate their belief in their strong morals and ethics. Even Shah has certain goals and beliefs that we understand, while we don’t necessarily condone his methods.

Along with the human side of this story, there’s an interesting and important examination of the collision between rapid economic expansion and the human toll that it takes.

Wryly humourous, thought-provoking, and engaging, Adiga has written a compelling and worthwhile novel of modern India. I highly recommend it.

Grade: A