SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

The first of Brazilian author Verissimo’s novels to be translated into English, The Club of Angels is a fascinating, carefully detailed, and darkly humorous study of ten deaths, the deaths of ten gourmands following their favorite meals. The men have been friends for more than twenty years, meeting once a month for sumptuous feasts together. They represent all levels of society and have achieved differing degrees of professional success, enjoying and respecting each other because of their shared love of food and their long friendship. Playing with the reader’s perceptions from the outset, Verissimo writes with tongue firmly in cheek, the ironies piling up as the deaths continue. His observations about life and death, about men and their friendships, and about our responsibilities, if any, to each other add depth to this unusual novel. The ending, which extends the concept of “orgiastic release” to its logical conclusion, will satisfy even the most jaded reader.

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One of the most original and delightful novels of 2005, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans is simultaneously a literary detective thriller, a parody of the detective story, and an anti-detective story. Taking its title (and one of its primary images) from Elizabethan writer John Dee, who wrote that if an orangutan were given enough time, he would eventually produce all the books in the world, the novel takes place in Buenos Aires, where an international group of Edgar Allan Poe specialists gathers for a meeting of the mysterious Israfel Society.Brazilian author Luis Fernando Verissimo creates as his narrator, a 50-year-old man named Vogelstein, who has led a cloistered life, “without adventures or surprises.” He believes that he has been called to the conference by destiny–“some hidden Borges”–and the convenient death of his cat confirms this belief. When a real murder occur, the speaker and Borges team up to solve the mystery. Hilarious, clever, and very literary. (On my Favorites list for 2005)

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Explorers of the New Century begins with a race between Captain Johns, a British explorer, and Tostig, a Scandinavian, as each tries to become the first man to reach the AFP, or Agreed Furthest Point. Mills creates obvious parallels between this race and the 1911 race for the South Pole between Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who became the first to reach the Pole, and the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who, with his crew, died in the attempt to return to his base. From the outset, the novel is full of anticipation and excitement, as the rival crews, who have never met each other, prepare to head south with their mule caravans hauling their supplies and equipment. Johns, his ten-man crew, and twenty-three mules blaze a trail across the scree; Tostig with four men and ten mules, follows a dry river bed, a more difficult trail. By involving the reader in the initial adventure, Mills sets him up so that when the dramatic revelation is made of what is motivating the trip south, the impact is doubly strong.

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Mma Precious Ramotswe, warm-hearted proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Gaborone, Botswana, is drinking tea at an outdoor café when she witnesses the theft of a bracelet. In her haste to apprehend the female thief and return the bracelet to the poor vendor, she leaves her table without paying her bill. The waitress hurries after her, accuses her of intentionally neglecting her bill, and then offers to “forget” about it if she pays her an extortionate fee. Mortified, Mma Ramotswe hopes that no one else has seen the waitress berating her. When the woman at the next table, accompanied by her two children, smiles at her, Mma Ramotswe is relieved that she has not seen the incident. Then the woman comments, “Bad luck, Mma…They are too quick in this place. It is easier to run away at the hotels.”

Distressed by what she sees as the significant loss of some of Botswana’s traditional values, Mma, a “traditionally built” woman, believes ever more fervently in setting a good example and upholding these values in her own life. . Mma Ramotswe is revealed to have a very deep secret, something she has not shared even with Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni.

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Setting this monumental family saga in Gaomi, in northeast China, where he grew up, Mo Yan, a member of the People’s Liberation Army who studied writing at their art academy, presents a realistic, rather than glorified, picture of life in China. Vividly portraying political and historical events—most of them bloody—over the course of the twentieth century, he portrays family life in rural China from the Boxer Rebellion to the Communist Revolution, the Japanese invasion, the Cultural Revolution, and the death of Mao. Shangguan Lu’s early marriage and domestic life unfolds through flashbacks. Through the developing stories of the eight daughters, their marriages, and their careers, the history of China from 1939 to the 1990s unfolds. Mo Yan’s novel is big, and it is important, the first really thorough portrait of rural life in China during the major historical movements of the twentieth century. His style, while often exciting is also brutally realistic and graphic in its violence. Though the author includes legends and cultural traditions as part of his picture of family life, the Shangguan family comes alive primarily through minute details.

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