Devastated by the sudden death of her father when she is in her early thirties, author Helen Macdonald finds herself lost, overwhelmed, and dealing with a “kind of madness.” She and her father were especially close. They had loved walking for hours in the woods of Hampshire, and she had always wanted to become a falconer. Her parents, sympathetic, had even allowed her, after much pleading, to accompany a group of falconers hunting with goshawks in the field when she was only twelve. In this brilliantly described and vivid depiction of the meaning of life and death, Macdonald connects with readers in unique ways as Macdonald trains a huge goshawk to come to her hand, hunt, and live a relatively wild life, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who will not be changed by this incredibly moving work: “In my time with Mabel, I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known…what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it…Their inhumanity…has nothing to do with us at all.”
Read Full Post »
Ellen Meister, author of Dorothy Parker Drank Here, the second novel in a series in which the ghost of Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967) is a main character, has set this novel at the Algonquin, where Parker’s spirit still resides, thanks to the fact that Parker once signed an old guest book on display in the Algonquin’s Blue Bar. Her signature, like those of other Round Table members, guarantees that her spirit will not leave the earth until it has decided it wants to go. Within this context, the author tells a story in which the main earth-bound character – in this case, Norah Wolfe, a young assistant producer of a TV talk show – is trying to contact Ted Shriver, a real person whom she believes is staying at the Algonquin. Dorothy Parker, lonely in her ghostly life, wants to persuade the Ted Shriver, who is dying, to sign the special guest book and keep her company at the Algonquin after his death. All the others from the Round Table have followed the white light to meet family and friends on the other side, something Parker refuses to do. Writing this as pure entertainment, the author pulls out all the stops, juggling these plot lines and keeping them moving in surprising ways. She plays on the reader’s interest in the characters and their connections to books and writing as she also develops an atmosphere which crosses timelines. With a light, sure touch, she puts together some hilarious visual scenes which beg to be filmed, and it is easy to imagine her sitting at her computer with a grin on her face as she writes.
Read Full Post »
In this stimulating experimental novel in which Israeli author Gail Hareven plays with the boundaries of reality and fiction, truth and lies, Aaron Gotthilf’s book, Hitler, First Person plays a key role. Whether or not an Aaron Gotthilf really existed and whether or not his book was real is irrelevant to the writing of Hareven’s book and its themes. Most readers here will probably agree that a fictional depiction of Adolf Hitler as a “real,” and presumably sympathetic, human being would too small a gesture to “advance our understanding of the horrors of the twentieth century” in any meaningful way, but the idea that it might is just one of the many twists, turns, ironies, tours de force, and even dark-humored reversals that take place in this extraordinary novel. To tell her own story, Hareven creates another author, Elinor Gotthilf from Jerusalem, who is a cousin, once removed, of the “Aaron Gotthilf” who wrote one of the most controversial novels ever published, a book published and circulated in Europe, but never released in Israel. One of the world’s most important Holocaust researchers described this book as a “vile piece of filth not worthy of relating to.” Hareven’s approach to her novel is thoughtful and literary, despite the novel’s surprises and reversals. She incorporates a broad artistic and philosophical history within its structure, and though the novel contains some elements of a mystery novel, these are subordinated to the stories and experiences of the people, especially Elinor, who live within the novel and grow (or not) from their actions as they confront their own hatred during their search for justice and truth.In my Favorites List for 2015.
Read Full Post »
When Chinese author Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, controversy swirled. Mo is able to publish his works in China because he works within the existing communist system and is considered part of the establishment in China, while other talented Chinese writers are prohibited from publishing without serious censorship, and in some cases feel they must leave China in order to write from the heart. In this novel, Mo’s speaker is Tadpole, also known as Wan Zu or Xiaopao, who writes letters to his Japanese teacher, Sugitani Akihito, from 2002 to 2009. Sugitani has taught a writing class to Tadpole and others in Beijing, and on one occasion, Tadpole takes him to meet his Aunt Gugu, a woman who has worked as a rural obstetrician for more than fifty years. Gugu, a fearless woman who has seen and done it all – before, during and after China’s “one-child” policy – serves as a model for Sugitani’s writing class, and he suggests that the class write about her. One student decides to write a novel about Gugu’s life, and Tadpole decides to write a play. As he works on his writing project and reports to the sensei over the next few years, Tadpole recreates all aspects of Gugu’s personal and professional life, beginning in 1960 and continuing to the present. He vividly reconstructs several historical periods, from the famine of the late 1950s through the country’s efforts at population control, stressing the emotional effects of these policies, not just on the population but on medical personnel themselves. The immediacy and honesty of Tadpole’s writing to his teacher, and the powerful personality of Gugu herself combine to expand the issues of population control from the small community in Gaomi County, where they all live, to the population at large. The world “writ small” inevitably becomes the world “writ large.”
Read Full Post »
In the opening salvo of this riotous and darkly humorous collection of interconnected vignettes, French author Yasmina Reza sets the scene for her exploration of love and marriage, family and home, romantic satisfaction and dysfunction in modern France. The often huge gap between what people, including the reader, see from the outside and what the characters are really thinking creates opportunities for great irony and delightfully witty exchanges as the author, also a successful dramatist, reveals her characters through small, everyday details and animated conversations. Each of the twenty vignettes is limited to six or seven pages, and the author’s witty and rapid-fire presentations lead to each vignette having its own punch line and thematic development. The pure delight of reading Reza’s wonderfully controlled and lively prose (artfully translated by John Cullen), grows as the reader discovers that the characters in one sketch often appear in other sketches, too, leading to a broad picture of several families, their friends, and their lovers, as seen from several different points of view. Robert Toscano, whom we meet in the opening scene, and his wife Odile, for example, each have two separate vignettes, and reappear in each other’s lives, while Odile’s family – her father, mother, aunt, and Robert and Odile’s children – also have their own points of view which broaden the focus. Ultimately, each sketch becomes an integral part of the overall depiction of time, place, and character, and this collection begins to resemble a novel.
Read Full Post »
