In this autobiographical novel, author Vaddey Ratner has accomplished what every novelist hopes for—she has created a main character and family so vibrant that every reader will truly feel “replanted” and rooted in a different place – Cambodia – where they then share every aspect of these characters’ lives and hopes for the future. Telling the story is Raami, an engaging seven-year-old child of a large and loving Phnom Penh family, which also includes her nanny, cook, and beloved gardener. Together they inhabit a lush, lovely, and endlessly fascinating natural world which offers constant visual surprises and inspires the stories, tales, and poems Raami relates here. Many of these poems and stories have been written by her father, a man she adores, and they infuse her whole life with the magic and beauty of words, offering hope and inspiration even through the atrocities she eventually witnesses when the Khmer Rouge take over the country. Directed by revolutionary officers and moved from village to village at the whim of the Khmer, the family performs menial labor as they try to hide their background, dealing with starvation, disease, exhaustion, killings. It is her memory of her father’s stories which keep her sane. Beautifully written, totally involving, and eventually uplifting.
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Fans of the previous five novels in the Quirke series by “Benjamin Black,” the pen name of Booker Prize-winning author John Banville, will celebrate the publication of this sixth novel of the Dublin-based series, set in the 1950s. Continuing all the main characters from previous novels, Black spends little time rehashing the sometimes sordid history of their relationships. Instead, he picks up where he left off with A Death in Summer, with few references to the characters’ backgrounds from previous novels. Quirke become involved with an investigation at the beginning of this novel when Victor Delahaye, the main partner in Delahaye and Clancy, an old company with a flourishing automobile repair business, invites the young son of his partner Jack Clancy to accompany him on a sail. Young Davy Clancy hates sailing, and has no idea why Jack, whom he does not know well, makes such an issue of having him as the only passenger. This trip does not make Davy like sailing any better. When he and Delahaye are far from land, Delahaye pulls out a gun and kills himself. Another death occurs shortly afterward. Those who have read the previous novels may be less enchanted with this one than those who are coming to it “fresh.”
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Posted in 9-2012 Reviews, Austria, Biography, Book Club Suggestions, England, France, Historical, Literary, Non-fiction, Social and Political Issues, Ukraine on Jul 30th, 2012
Considering the esoteric subject matter, the hypnotic charm of this biography comes as a complete surprise. Though I had expected the book to be good, I had no idea how quickly and how thoroughly it would engage and ultimately captivate my interest. Through this sensitive author/artist, the reader shares the quest for information about five generations of his family history, delights in the discovery of his family’s art collecting prowess, and thrills at his ability to convey the charms of a collection of 264 netsukes from the early 1800s. Despite the sadness that accompanies the Anschluss in Vienna and leads to the loss of the family’s entire financial resources, the novel is far from melancholic. Ultimately, he connects with the reader, who cannot help but feel privileged to have been a part of this author’s journey of discovery.
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Daniel Silva, who was a journalist for years before he became a novelist, has always taken care to create plots that relate directly to current political and historical realities. In this novel Silva goes way beyond the facts that we all understand from the media, elucidating the complexities and the heartfelt commitments of both the Arabs and the Jews to preserving “their own” piece of the land in what is now Israel, and especially Jerusalem. Allon is restoring “The Deposition of Christ,” widely regarded as Caravaggio’s finest painting, working at night in the Vatican, when the body of a female curator in the antiquities department is found beneath the Michelangelo-designed dome of the basilica. While this is being investigated, Allon learns from Shimon Pazner at the Israeli Embassy that Hezbollah, aided by Iran, may be planning a major attack on some Israeli site in Europe. Eventually, these two plots coincide, but not before Silva has explored the complexities of the financial dealings at the Vatican; the personal alliances within the Vatican and within Rome itself; the financial and cultural interconnections between the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Iran, and the antiquities market; and the extreme actions suicide bombers are willing to commit to advance their agenda. No compromise seems possible in dealing with any of these issues as the reader becomes newly aware of the increasing tensions of the area and the unlikelihood that any solution, other than war, will be the result.
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It is difficult to think of Alice Thomas Ellis, the pen name of Anna Haycraft, without also thinking of some of her equally talented contemporaries – Beryl Bainbridge, whom she mentored, Penelope Fitzgerald, Muriel Spark, Jane Gardam, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Penelope Fitzgerald, and others – all of whom also wrote brilliant, often satiric, darkly humorous, and psychologically astute novels about women and families, primarily in the 1970s and 1980s. Ellis’s first novel, THE SIN EATER (1977), pays homage to the Welsh tradition of the sin eater, someone who would come to the household of a recently deceased person, and enact a short ritual in which s/he would “eat” the sins of the deceased so that s/he could then safely pass on to a happy afterlife. In this novel, the Anglo-Welsh patriarch of an old family is dying in Llanelys, and his children and their spouses gather at the estate to await the end. Stunning imagery, delicious turns of phrase, and lively dialogue make the narrative sparkle. In PILLARS OF GOLD Ellis writes some of the wittiest dialogue ever, crafting a hilarious tale in which one of the neighbors is missing and the neighborhood does not want to report her absence to the police for fear of being wrong. Then a body matching the description of the missing woman is discovered in a nearby canal. More satire of contemporary life.
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