Writing a novel based on four real murders (by poison) and their investigation, Nicaraguan author Sergio Ramirez recreates what has been described as “the most celebrated criminal trial in Nicaraguan history,” a case which author Sergio Ramirez uses to illustrate the conditions and social mores of the country as Anastasio Somoza Garcia is laying the groundwork for his eventual dictatorship in Nicaragua, beginning in 1936. Fellow author Carlos Fuentes declares that with this book “Sergio Ramirez has written the great novel of Central America,” which he says incorporates a “heart of darkness…the fullness of comedy, and the imminence of tragedy.” Fuentes compares Ramirez to Flaubert in technique, and calls this book “a true microcosm of Central America…[with] the action [also] reverberating in Costa Rica and Guatemala.” Ramirez (1942 – present) is not “just” the author of this novel, however. He has a history which gives him unique insights into the political situation in Nicaragua over the years, and this background shows in his literary attention to detail and his observations of the tensions and jealousies between the government, the police, and the army. The big questions is whether the person arrested for the crimes is, in fact, guilty, or whether he is being framed.
Read Full Post »
Book Expo America, held at the Javits Center in New York City for the past few years, opened its last expo there on Wednesday, May 27, 2015 – May 29, 2015. Next year it, and its companion Book Con (which is held on the weekend after Book Expo concludes), will move to Chicago for the Big Event(s). As always, the enthusiasm was high as booksellers, librarians, reviewers, publishers, agents, and other book professionals gathered to see and hear what the publishers have planned for the next six months. Talks, panel discussions, breakfasts with authors, individual meetings with favorite publishers, and autograph sessions in which fans can meet favorite authors and receive signed advance review copies of new books make the lines long, the aisles crowded, and the excitement palpable. Here are some of the international selections getting noticed.
Read Full Post »
Teddy Todd, age eleven in the opening quotation from the early pages of the novel, has a poet’s nature, and at times he dreams of becoming a poet and writer. Sensitive to the sights, sounds, and smells of nature, he seems to be on his way to a life of beauty, which may be attainable during his life of privilege within his large multigenerational family. This single moment in 1925, in which he feels his “exaltation of heart,” however, turns out to be the only moment of complete euphoria he is ever likely to experience. The “darkness” which his older sister Ursula says hides the “light” is already being felt by the adults in his life. By 1939, when he is twenty-five, he himself is on his way to war as a Halifax pilot, part of the Bomber Command in Yorkshire, on the first of seventy sorties for his country in which he and his crew kill hundreds of enemy fighters and civilians – and a few of his own men. This novel, author Kate Atkinson’s “companion novel” to her earlier Life After Life, reintroduces the Todd family, and Ursula, Teddy’s sister, who is the main character of that earlier book. The styles of the books are very different, however.
Read Full Post »
Antonio Munoz Molina, one of Spain’s premier writers, shows his intense psychological and atmospheric style in this short novel, a perfect introduction to this author for anyone who has not already read A Manuscript of Ashes, or any of Munoz Molina’s other works. In the latter important novel, the author’s scope is that of Spanish Civil War, the people it absorbed, and the subsequent dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. The present novel (which some will consider a novella), is of a much more limited scope – the life and love of Mario Lopez, an undistinguished worker in the city of Jaen, halfway between Madrid and the south coast of Spain. Mario, almost anonymous in his profession – a draftsman, rather than the architect he would like to be – is someone his wife Blanca considers a bureaucrat. She has, in the past, accused him of “settling for too little, of lacking the slightest ambition,” to which Mario has replied that “she, Blanca, was his greatest ambition, and that when he was with her he wouldn’t and couldn’t feel the slightest ambition for anything more.” How he and Blanca ended up married is one of the mysteries of the novel that develops as the action proceeds in its roundabout way through time and flashbacks, and as Mario reveals his feelings for Blanca, the only woman who has ever fully captured his heart but one he can no longer recognize as the novel opens
Read Full Post »
Kenneth Brill, the main character, is in a military prison in an unidentified location as the novel opens, feigning sleep as Davies, his interrogator from the Air Ministry, arrives to interview him in preparation for his trial for espionage. Brill emphasizes that he has served with honor during the war and has been almost single-handedly responsible for the camouflaging of a British airbase at El Alamein in order to protect it from Nazi bombs. His background as a former art student from the Slade, one of the best art schools in the world, helped him create a “stage set” of a base in the desert, drawing attention away from the real base in Egypt, near Libya, and attracting the attention of Nazi bombers away from the real base. As the novel opens, however, Brill has been caught painting a large number of landscapes of the farm area where he grew up, a few miles outside of London. While a reader might find this a seemingly innocent activity for someone who is been recovering from a gunshot wound for months, Davies quickly disabuses him. The farm area in the Heath, which Brill’s family has farmed for generations, is “shortly to become one of the biggest military air bases in Europe. That land has all been requisitioned by the Air Ministry” for a new aerodrome at “Heathrow.” Evidence from Brill’s past suggests he may be using the paintings to send coded messages to the Nazis.
Read Full Post »
