A rural village schoolmaster, named Jacques, already sounds old, as this small novella begins. In actuality, he is only twenty-one, however, almost a boy, but one who has already seen too much of the sameness of rural life. He has returned to Contulmo, his rural village in southern Chile after college, to be close to his mother. His French father left them the year before to return to France, shortly after Jacques received his elementary teaching certificate from a college in Santiago. “I got off the train and he got on, boarding the very same car…I didn’t even get a chance to open my suitcase and show him my diploma.” Now Jacques sees no opportunities to broaden his view of life. He does get occasional translation jobs, translating French poetry into Spanish, but these poems are simple, “the things the people around here can understand. Poems by Rene Guy Cadou, village verses, not cathedrals of words,” like the monumental poems published in the Santiago newspapers. Though he is friendly with the local miller, who was his father’s closest friend, he himself is lonely and always sad. “Ever since Dad went away, I want to die.” His life changes when one of his students, a fifteen-year-old boy wants to have a man-to-man conversation with him, then asks outright if Jacques has been to the whorehouse in Angol, the next big town a train-ride away. The boy wants to know what it costs for a woman. Soon Jacques sets out with the miller to find the answer, a quest which produces answers to some questions he has not even thought to ask. On my Favorites list for the year.
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In the second of the three Laidlaw novels, written between 1977 and 1992, author William McIlvanney, considered the “father of Tartan noir,” continues a series that is so masterfully written that calling his novels “noir mysteries” underestimates their universal literary power for the reader. Though few American readers know of these now-classic novels, Europa Editions has decided to change that by reprinting all of them, and anyone who has ever enjoyed a noir novel or who loves mysteries is in for a rare treat. McIlvanney’s ability to describe, to connect even the homeliest and most ordinary details to the grand themes of literature, to create unique characters who linger in the memory, and to make his plots come alive, often with humor, is rare, if not unparalleled. Laidlaw, an iconoclastic police investigator is involved in trying to solve three murders that connect many different levels of Scottish society.
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Here Feiffer tries to do it all. Dedicating this graphic novel to writers Milton Caniff, Will Eisner, Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain and to film directors John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Howard Hawks, and their many classic films (Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce), Feiffer attempts to create a full-scale noir novel, with all its dark action and sad characters, and then bring it to life visually in black and white drawings for dramatic, rather than purely literary, effect. The result is an unusual and challenging novel, full of adventures affecting down-at-the-heels characters, plenty of violence of the “blam, blam, blam” variety, some grim humor, lots of “ha, ha, ha, ha” moments, twists and turns regarding plot and characters, and surprises galore.
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The constant machinations of the Vatican and its hierarchy as they played all sides during the post-war years of World War II emphasize the fact that the Nazi Holocaust – ruthless, coldblooded, and almost impossible to believe in its inhumanity – was only one of the horrors faced by Jews in the 1940s. The Holy See, dedicated to the Gospel of love and charity, and committed to working with the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden, became so involved in international politics and so protective of its own power and relationships within Germany and Italy that it contributed to another whole level of international abuse of the Jews. Pope Pius XII, who had been papal nuncio to Germany from 1917 – 1929, spoke fluent German and had long-standing relationships with all the members of the church hierarchy in Germany, and many of them accompanied him to Rome when he became Pope and stayed with him for the rest of his life. Their attitudes had been formed during their years in Germany, and many people there believed that the Jews’ goal was to destroy Christianity. The institutional anti-Semitism which worked its way into the church is one of the primary subjects of this dramatic and eye-opening novel by former priest James Carroll.
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In his newest novel, Haruki Murakami once again explores two of his major themes, alienation and isolation as they affect the life of a sensitive and introverted character. Tsukuru Tazaki, age twenty as the novel opens, has always regarded himself as “colorless” in relation to his group of four long-time friends, two young women and two young men who have been his constant companions throughout high school in Nagoya. His friend Aka has always had the best grades in school and is a ferocious competitor; Ao, a forward on the rugby team, was rugby captain in his senior year, and like Aka has an intense desire to win. One of the women, Kuro, though not beautiful, is charming, independent and curious, with a quick tongue to match her quick mind, while Shiro, the other woman, is tall, slim, and beautiful, someone who enjoys teaching piano to children but does not enjoy being the center of attention. Tsukuru has always been secretly attracted to her. His first year in Tokyo he does see his friends in Nagoya on vacations and they do telephone, but suddenly, without warning after his sophomore year, his friends inexplicably stop returning his calls and ask him not to call them again, events which leave him on the verge of suicide. Even after finally emerging from his suicidal depression, graduating from university, and beginning a job designing railway stations, he remains traumatized by these events from the past. Murakami creates a straightforward novel which captures the reader’s interest on the level of plot, while also fleshing it out with philosophical and metaphysical discussions, psychological insights, and literary and musical references.
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