“I am lost, adrift, stumbling through a world I do not understand. I hear a rustle in the undergrowth and can’t decide if it’s a jaguar stalking with ominous restraint or an LBJ scratching for worms. I find succulent globes of fruit but don’t dare touch them for fear of poison…. I hide from human voices, words I cannot understand. I am as stupid as a child….”
Jenny Dunfree gets her first hint of some of the difficulties she will face during an ornithological research project in the San Blas Islands, off the coast of Panama, when the ticket agent at the airport refuses to sell her a one-way ticket. Insisting that she does not want to return the following day, Jenny is unable to convince anyone at the airport that she will stay on Sugatupu for an extended period of time. Her duties, funded by a foundation, are to study a nest of harpy eagles, a rare species, and keep notes on their behavior, their feeding habits, and any eaglets which may appear. Ex
hausted when she finally makes her way to Sugatupu by canoe, she is immediately accosted by a young boy who drags her through the night-time forest to the village meeting house. There, she must list her genealogy for the village elders. They do not want her name, just that of her family. In fact, she is not allowed to tell her name, nor is anyone else allowed to ask it. “Without a name, do I have a soul? Am I a real person?” she wonders.
Jenny is expected to appear at the village meeting house every Saturday evening, without fail, though she does not speak the Kuna language of her Indian hosts, and most of them speak little or no Spanish. Living as isolated as possible from the rest of Panama, the Kuna Indians have their own culture, thousands of years old, and the biggest influences (and some of their biggest problems) have come from missionaries who have wanted to change their beliefs about the world, impose a new system of morality, redefine the nature of good and evil, and educate the Kuna children in missionary schools away from the island. They love nature and believe in a spirit world which includes all animals, plants, and even rocks, and they understandably resent the intrusions of those who would change their ways
of life. Before long, Jenny is making friends among some of the community’s male leaders, several of whom speak rudimentary Spanish, though the lives of the women, who remain at home all day working and taking care of the children, remain beyond her.
Because Jenny obviously appreciates nature, which is the basis of all the Kuna beliefs, she is watched over and often protected by the Kuna. She has no knowledge of how to deal with the animals and snakes that she may have to face, and she is rescued on several occasions. These islands have also been recognized as a dropping point for cocaine, and Jenny has become friends with a white man who sometimes shows up to chat with her, armed with a pistol. As her research work continues, she becomes more and more convinced that the eagles that she is observing are not harpy eagles at all, a fact that could jeopardize the whole project.
Author Louise Young, herself an ecologist who began working in the San Blas islands in 1996, had intended this book to be a National Geographic-style travel piece in which she used the v
oice of an “armchair anthropologist,” but she says she eventually found that a fictionalized anthropological framework worked better. “Fiction became my tool to muscle stick-figure stereotypes into the array of personalities that inhabit all human communities,” she says. Her characters are, in fact, often stereotypes, but she succeeds in creating a broad picture of the Kuna culture she is depicting because the culture itself is so interesting. It is twenty-five-year-old Jenny who is the biggest stereotype, a woman with an advanced degree who is depicted, primarily, as an over-emotional woman, and only secondarily as an ecologist, anthropologist, and scientist. Jenny has no real understanding of her mission at the outset, and she often appears to be romantically attracted to a number of the village men, disregarding any sense of detachment about her supposed role. She cries 
a lot, frequently uses the kind of profanity common among young college students, smokes dope with visitors to her camp when she has the opportunity, and is “saved” on a regular basis by the men who feel the need to protect her.
Eventually, Jenny learns how to cook from the village women, observes their maturation ceremonies, experiences their healing practices, and learns about death and how they view it. The novel becomes deeper as it progresses, and the reader’s fascination with the culture grows. Ultimately, it is Jenny’s respect for the culture and beliefs which make the novel work. Though it is clear that some aspects of the culture of these islands will inevitably change, the author’s own work there as a “cultural guide” and technical advisor to a women’s cooperative will help preserve the essence of their way of life.
Notes: The author’s photo appears on her Amazon Author page.
The map of Panama, showing the San Blas Islands on the Atlantic coast, is from: www.tropicaldiscovery.com
The women of the San Blas Islands are famous for making molas, elaborate cutwork of abstract designs from nature, which they use on the front and back of their blouses. The lobster mola, shown here, is from the Museum of Quilts and Textiles in San 
Jose. Molas are made by piling up individual layers of colored cloth, in this case at least nine different layers: “Working with only a razor or a small pair of scissors and a needle and thread, [the maker cuts through layers until she reaches the color she wants, and then hems around it], creating some of the most intricate stitchery found anywhere on earth. She is never permitted to waste scarce material on trial and error methods, so she must submit to a very high level of discipline in her work from the start. The qualities, displayed on her body for all to see, are concrete evidence of her ability.” www.turq.com
Author Louise Young, whose own quilt work is in museums, gives tours to the these islands. www.molatour.com Her blog is here: www.redroom.com.
Personal note: I have been to Panama, and I have seen these molas at crafts shows and fairs in Panama City, They are extraordinary! I have some that I bought fifteen years ago, and they are as beautiful today as the day I bought them.
twenties to her present life as a heavy-drinking mother of three who despises him for dominating and controlling every aspect of her life. The more angry she has become and the more passionate she has been in her rebellion, the more dramatic Gil’s portraits of her have become, with a recent one selling for six figures. Irene, who gave up her PhD studies when she married, is far more flexible, easy-going (and actually irresponsible), than the controlling Gil, and it is she who is closer to the children, who range in age from thirteen to six.
, and even violent, with the children and with Irene; Irene is emotionally unable to leave him, though she says she has not loved him for the past six years. She finds solace in drink.
h, as always, includes motifs and patterns throughout the novel which add to its significance, and here the use of shadow is pervasive. Gil often escapes to the Minneapolis Institute of Art just to sit and contemplate a painting there by Rembrandt, the master of shadow. The painting is a fine, detailed portrait of Lucretia, who, according to Livy, chose death over dishonor when she was raped by the son of the ruler. The portrait shows her in the process of disemboweling herself in front of her father and husband. By contrast, the gift paintings given by various tribes to Irene’s thesis subject, painter George Catlin, when he painted the chiefs, were all one-dimensional and contained no shadows at all. Catlin himself, however, was told that he brought shadows to the tribes when their lives changed for the worse through the introduction of European inventions (and disease). The differences in artistic preferences and styles are visual reminders of the differences in thinking and personality between Gil and Irene. In the most obvious shadow symbolism, the family spends a 
moonlit night outside in the snow playing shadow tag. The lack of shadows is symbolic in the conclusion.
time. He says he must inoculate all the employees in the bank against this disease and decontaminate all the documents and money that an infected man may have touched. He explains how he will give each person two different medicines and shows them how to roll up their tongues for the first liquid so that the medicine will not hurt their teeth or gums. After one minute, he gives them all the second liquid. Two minutes after that, sixteen victims, writhing in agony, have fallen unconscious, and twelve of them die, poisoned with cyanide. The physician then removes the day’s receipts and disappears.
described here, under Gen. Shiro Ishii. Any one of the Pingfan soldiers could have committed these murders, though Gen. Ishii himself has “lost his memory” about the people who worked for him in Pingfan. Who was really responsible for the cyanide poisoning in the bank becomes a big question in the followup to the biological weapons investigation. The reader quickly discovers that officials on all sides and at all levels have colluded in a cover-up about these weapons, and even the newspapers and reporters have been complicit.
the murder, and others. Each tells his own horror story regarding the bank robbery, after which he blows out his candle, creating a darker and darker atmosphere for the succeeding “Candles.” When the final narrator blows out his candle, the participants are sitting in blackness, waiting for ghouls to appear and the abyss to open.
liloquy, talking over the other characters and interrupting their sentences to include his own thoughts. It is a uniquely powerful technique which requires the reader’s “willing suspension of literary expectations,” and it can be both exhilarating and challenging. The author does not always distinguish between his real people and his ghostly shadows, and often a reader may be unsure who is speaking–or why–during these long “canons,” a sometimes frustrating experience. And occasionally the language becomes so dense it suffocates the reader under its own weight. A remarkable section described as The Ninth Candle (“The Thirty-Six Wounds of a Second Detective”) contains “five acts” within the section–more an opera than a play or novel. The cumulative effect of Peace’s complex and self-conscious technique may irritate those who are just looking for a good mystery, but the book contains many delights and is often thrilling for those who can ignore the uncertainties, appreciate the story and the history, and just enjoy the imaginative approach and broad thematic scope.
earlier translator/poets treat this epic as the monument of Greek culture that it has long been considered–a lengthy poem from three thousand years ago intended to be sung by traveling bards as a way of preserving their culture and religion. In the opening of Fitzgerald’s memorable translation, for example, the bard calls on the Muse for help, praying:
was ideally suited to be a bard, a profession fit only for villeins, wandering masterless men who live at the pleasure of their landed betters, as my father reminded me when I broached the idea. He and his men would say things like, ‘We are here to live the stories, not compose them!’” And then Odysseus imagines himself as bard, intoning “Sing, Muses, of the wrath of god-like shit-for-brains, hereditary lord of the mighty Coprophagoi [excrement eaters], who skewered a number of other men with his pig-sticker and valued himself highly for so doing,” a raw parody of the earlier, more poetic translations.
an often arrogant man who loves killing, acts cruelly, and even makes mistakes, a real man whom Athena abandons for part of the narrative.
Iliad, written by the gods before the Trojan War, in Agamemnon’s cabin on the ship. Gods and goddesses flit in and out, take the appearance of humans, play tricks, and have love affairs. Tightrope walkers, Alexander the Great, and even the doctors and nurses of a sanatorium appear and disappear.
ver achieved the popular success he deserved, either in his own time or throughout the twentieth century. In this decade, however, virtually all his novels have been reprinted in both Europe and in the US, and he is finally beginning to be recognized for his astute observations about his times and for his insights into the minds of his characters. Many of his novels contain autobiographical elements, and Hangover Square (1941), often considered his best novel, is no exception. Seriously disfigured in an automobile accident when he was in his twenties, Hamilton became an alcoholic at an early age, and drinking to excess is a constant motif in his novels. A man who apparently wore his heart on his sleeve, he also developed passionate but unrequited attachments to beautiful women, in this case using actress Geraldine Fitzgerald as his model for Netta.
the main character here, is out of work, his partner and best friend Bob Barton having closed the business to move to Philadelphia. Like the other unemployed and under-employed people he associates with, he lives on the fringes of the entertainment business–part-time actors and actresses, managers, producers, and movie makers who party long and hard, their gaiety fueled by massive quantities of alcohol. Each morning-after is spent in “Hangover Square.” As one of George’s friends remarks, “If only you could have your morning-after first, and your night-before afterwards, the whole problem of drinking, and indeed of excess and sin in life generally, would be simplified or solved.”
ss accepted and glossed over by all of George’s associates as “dead moods,” these episodes have become more frequent and more serious in the past year. Though George says he has had them all his life, they “had not been so frequent, so sudden, so dead, so completely dividing him from his other life. They did not arrive with this extraordinary ‘snap.’” Nor did they demand that he kill anyone.
as a murderous utensil with which she might wound indiscriminately, right and left.” He is so desperate for her attentions, however, that he allows himself to be degraded, always hoping that she will see him for the person he really is. His other self recognizes how merciless Netta is and has begun to demand, during George’s increasingly frequent “dead moods,” that he kill her in order to protect himself.
rve her jolly well right,” he rationalizes. “All her life she has had things too much her own way.” Netta and her lover have subjected George to an emotional “death by a thousand cuts,” and his alterego has had enough.
has also garnered raves and five-star ratings on Amazon. My review is here: 
base for strategic defense against possible USSR aggression, many students, often from poor families, were accepting the chance to study in East Germany at the University of Leipzig, then returning home with their socialist and communist messages.
anonymous, now middle-aged ex-student who is living in contemporary Reykjavik, he tells us that he has often wondered whether the police would discover the truth about “the man in the lake,” consoling himself that everything happened so long ago that “what had happened no longer mattered.”
e developed than they have been in this series up to now. Erlendur, dour and seemingly unemotional, is still dealing with his drug-addicted children–daughter Eva Lind and son Sindri Snaer–his son now “clean,” and his daughter, who has suffered a miscarriage and undergone rehab, now back on drugs. Soon Erlendur, who survived a traumatic divorce many years ago, begins a chaste friendship with a woman to whom he is strongly attracted, one of the few people with whom he feels comfortable enough to talk about the past. An episode from his childhood, which he shares with his son, explains why he is so driven to investigate missing persons cases, and he begins to emerge as a “real human” with understandable complexities. Sigurdur Oli and his wife also have issues which elicit the reader’s sympathy, while Elinborg adds a happier and sometimes comical note with the publication of her first cookbook.
eric and filled with the dark stories which envelop its numerous Icelandic characters, the novel reflects main character Erlendur’s terse style, his abbreviated dialogue, and his no-nonsense approach to life. Author Indridason develops suspense about the old murder and its connection to the students from the outset and builds it carefully, as bits of information gradually arise in both the present and the past plot lines. The point of view of the mysterious student who has talked about the murder at the beginning keeps the suspense high, and as all the students come to terms with the differences between their idealistic expectations and the reality of their lives in East Germany, their increasing desperation becomes understandable. A first-class mystery set in an unusual time and place, with complications and plot twists far different from those of most other novels, The Draining Lake is an exciting continuation of this series and the characters who keep it fresh.
and China. Hubris, and the sense that their military power could not be realistically challenged, however, led to Britain’s lack of military preparedness and the astonishingly quick takeover of Malaya and Singapore by the Japanese in 1942, handing the British what Winston Churchill called “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.” Author J. G. Farrell recreates these traumatic days in Singapore as the final novel in his “Empire Trilogy,” which, like 
continuing strikes, labor unrest in rural areas, challenges to the government coming from the communists, and the influx of immigrants from other countries who raise the “threat” of a “melting pot” culture. The outbreak of war in Europe has made the demand for Blackett and Webb’s rubber supplies a high priority for Britain’s military cars and planes (not to mention commercial uses), and Blackett and Webb are poised to capitalize by manipulating prices, withholding product, attempting to form a monopoly, and evading the law as they cut down good trees in order to keep prices high, claiming the replanting costs against profits. The families’ personal fortunes and personal prestige are more important to them than the future of the war effort, however patriotic they regard themselves. Associating with generals, the leaders of society, and local governors, the company’s representatives are busy planning their elaborate jubilee celebration. Even as the Japanese are attacking from the north, Walter Blackett continues with the jubilee parade preparations, while also trying to arrange the perfect commercial marriage for his daughter Jo
an.
el, Farrell handles innumerable plot lines (and battle lines) with assurance and historical accuracy, illustrating the reality of history within the context of the everyday lives of the not-very-sympathetic merchant princes of Singapore. Many of the younger characters, like young Matthew Webb, the heir to half the firm, are naive, and his previous background working for the Committee for International Understanding, a group associated with the League of Nations, has not prepared him for the cutthroat dealings of Blackett and Webb on the world stage. His attraction for a Eurasian woman is genuine, though his expectations are unrealistic. Walter Blackett’s daughter Joan, on the
other hand, trained by her father, is the consummate manipulator, a woman who will do anything to advance her own (and her family’s) greater wealth. Her brother Monty Blackett is a fool, so out of touch that in any other society he would be summarily dismissed as irrelevant.
and as these escape from Singapore–or fail to escape–it is sometimes difficult to decide whether to be glad or sad about the fates of the characters we have followed for about five hundred pages. Ultimately, Farrell’s own progressive world view shines through brightly, illuminating the problems of colonialism and its self-centered adherents.
development, careful research, and lack of romance that it becomes its own genre, closer to fictionalized biography than to the blood and thunder bodice-rippers that sometimes characterize “historical fiction.” This novel is realistic, with no compromises of actual history for the sake of story, but it succeeds in being lively, often humorous, filled with exciting scenes, and peopled with fascinating characters from Henry VIII to Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.
The novel opens in 1500, with the brutal beating of Thomas Cromwell, then fifteen, by his father, a blacksmith and brewer, who has abused him severely just “because he can.” The action then moves forward immediately to 1527. Thomas is now a lawyer in his forties working for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the Lord Chancellor, having spent many years working in Europe, where he came into contact with the banking establishment of Florence and the workings of the papacy. Wolsey’s primary duty, assigned to him by King Henry VIII, is to find a way to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, who has lost six sons and is now too old to give him a male heir. Henry has already had a number of mistresses and has settled on the young Anne Boleyn, sister of one of his previous mistresses, as a future bride, someone who might produce a son for him. The machinations of the court, the clergy, the kings of Europe, and Henry and his advisors are complex as they vie for power on an international scale, try to manipulate Pope Clement and his papacy, plot to outmaneuver each other, form the most influential alliances, and try to stay in power in their own lands as th
e Reformation looms.
mwell eventually becomes the king’s chief minister in 1532, he manages to find a way to get Henry’s marriage annulled, and the rest, of course, is history. The novel ends while Cromwell is still acting for Henry, helping in the dissolution of monasteries, and does not suggest his own eventual fate.
