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.
Read Full Post »
Focusing on the attitudes and beliefs of four time periods, author Andrei Makine analyzes what it means to be human; whether an individual is important in his own right or as part of a community; what makes life worth living; what obligations, if any, an individual has toward other individuals; and how and why individuals expresses themselves in art, literature, or music. Main character Shutov’s favorite authors, Chekhov and Tolstoy, whom he often quotes, are from the early twentieth century, yet they have helped provide Shutov with the values he retains even at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Georgy Lvovich, known as Volsky, a character with whom Shutov has a life-changing conversation in Parts III and IV has survived the Siege of Leningrad in the 1940s, then has had to deal with the aftermath of the war and the communist crackdowns and mass arrests in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties. Shutov himself grew up in the mid-‘fifties but knows little about a life like Volsky’s, having left for France in early 1980 and lived a fairly anonymous life. His affair with young Lea, followed by a visit to St. Petersburg to a former flame, show him how much times have changed, and Shutov has failed to adapt to the times, not even acknowledging that adaptation might have some value. The novel, powerfully and passionately drawn, presents well developed themes about life, death, individuality, and the arts, and their significant changes during a century of historical and philosophical upheaval. Romantic and often heartbreaking.
Read Full Post »
Set in 1785, just four years before the French Revolution, Miller’s main character, Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer from rural Belleme in Normandy, arrives in Paris, hoping for a job which will allow him to put his skills to use in ways not possible at home. Interviewed at Versailles and hired by a minister there, he learns that his job will be to empty the Cemetery of the Innocents in the heart of the city of its entire underground contents, and with over twenty burial pits located within a small, enclosed area, the work will be “both delicate and gross.” Despite the unusual and unsavory subject matter, Miller is careful to recreate the human side of the story – to make the reader empathize with Baratte, to see how important the job is to him, to show how he longs for acceptance, to appreciate his desire for love, and to understand how good he is at heart – and even a job as putrid this one quickly involves the reader in the story and its historical setting. As Miller’s develops the story, his clever symbolism reveals simultaneously the state of mind of Baratte and the conditions in the country itself, as the reader observes the foreshadowing of the coming revolution through the eyes of Baratte. An unusual and beautifully written novel which shines new light on some of the elements which empower the oppressed and lead to revolution.
Read Full Post »
In this novel about a woman who works in Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), author Simon Mawer focuses on Marian Sutro, a composite character representing the fifty-four women who served in France between May, 1941, and September, 1944. Of those real women, thirteen were murdered by the Germans following their capture. Recruited to perform extremely dangerous duties, all these women were fluent in French and often bilingual, and all of them were willing to perform under extraordinarily dangerous conditions. Marian’s work takes her throughout much of France, from the drop areas in the southwest to Paris. Everyone she meets is a potential enemy and a potential traitor, and she must operate on her own most of the time. “The danger of Paris is a cancer within you, invisible, imponderable, and probably incurable,” she notes. Many different factions with many different goals operate among the allies in France, and additional dangers from the police, French collaborators, and the Germans, make every moment a trial, especially in Paris. Like his more serious literary fiction, such as The Glass Room, The Fall, The Gospel of Judas, and Mendel’s Dwarf, Trapeze is full of excitement, but unlike those novels, this one is an entertainment, with a “Maisie Dobbs” quality – historically focused and fun to read but less serious stylistically and thematically than literary fiction.
Read Full Post »
An author revered as much for the controlled lyricism of his prose as for his careful attention to details of the natural world, his uncompromising characterizations, and his ability to incorporate subtle symbols, Swiss author Jacques Chessex (1934 – 2009) was the first foreign citizen to win the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award. In this dramatic novel, he tells the story of Jean Calmet, a thirty-eight-year-old schoolteacher, whose physician father has just died and with whom he has had a fraught relationship. The youngest of five children, Jean both loved and feared his father, with good reason, and he is glad that his father has been cremated, rather than buried. “The doctor would be reduced to ashes. He could not be allowed any chance of keeping his exasperating, scandalous vigour in the fertile earth,” Jean thinks. “Make a little heap of ashes of him, ashes at the bottom of an urn. Like sand. Anonymous, mute dust.” As the family gathers to choose an urn, Jean meditates on his father’s relationships with the whole family, and especially on his own chances for a life of his own. With no emotional resources of his own to sustain him, even by the age of thirty-eight, he is a completely lost soul, someone ready to become a victim of others, if not himself.
Read Full Post »
