SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

A 56-year-old lawyer in Copenhagen, Irene Beckman discovers that after more than thirty years, she is being divorced. Her husband Martin has fallen in love with another woman, and the “light” by which she views her life has now been “altered.” Every aspect of her existence, which she has taken for granted, has changed, and she must now figure out who she really is. In the hands of Grondahl, this age-old story takes on new life as Irene reminisces about the past and how she met Martin when she was a 17-year-old au pair in Paris, tells about her parents and their relationship, mourns for her unknown twin brother who died at birth, shares stories about her children, explores her present life, and tries to plan for the future. Her “journey to self-discovery” takes on added importance when her mother, facing surgery from which she thinks she may not recover, gives Irene an unexpected gift and changes her life even more. Those who enjoy novels of self-analysis will love this one, which is leavened with dry humor but which also makes important points about how much we can expect a relationship to bear when the individuals involved do not truly know or reveal their “inner selves.” But it also makes the point that a relationship must not completely subsume the individuals, that there are private places and events which are also important, and that one must always be ready to begin again, if necessary.

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Julie Lekstrom Himes, in Mikhail and Margarita, writes an enthralling companion book honoring one of her favorite novels, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. In HImes’s novel, Mikhail and Margarita, Bulgakov himself is a sympathetic main character. Himes, like Bulgakov, a physician and writer, has traveled in Russia, and has spent a year doing research for this book, and seven years writing it. The resulting novel, remarkable in its ability to bring author Mikhail Bulgakov and his times fully to life for the reader, recreates Bulgakov’s “thoughts” so effectively that the reader feels as if the author has inserted actual autobiographical commentary. The story of a romantic triangle, the novel features Bulgakov himself; Margarita, an attractive younger woman; and Ilya Ivanovich, an official in Stalin’s dictatorship. Many overlaps with Bulgakov’s own novel, this novel develops at an extraordinary pace, both thematically and dramatically. Serious, well developed, and consummately literary, this is one of the outstanding books of the year.

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