SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

In this short but beautifully compressed novel about writing, memory, and the Holocaust, French author Deborah Levy-Bertherat tells the story of Helene Roche and her great-uncle Daniel Roche, previously known as Daniel Ascher, and now known as H. R. Sanders, author of the Black Insignia series of young adult adventure novels. Divided into three parts which take place between September 1999, and July 2000, the novel focuses on Helene’s efforts to come to terms with her relationship with this much older family member, even as she is, herself, writing her thesis for a degree at the Institute of Art and Archaeology at the University of Paris. Helene has recently moved into a nearby garret apartment which her great-uncle has offered in an apartment building he owns nearby while he is off on one of his many travels. Not close to her uncle, she lives with her boyfriend Guillaume, a fellow student and a huge fan of the Black Insignia series of adventure novels which her great-uncle has written over the years. Ultimately, the reader stands in awe of the depiction of the creative process which the author presents, along with its responsibilities – and its inevitabilities. The true writer and committed chronicler of the past, wrapped in the atmosphere of another time, has no alternative but to follow his/her muse into the scenes and stories which have animated his/her own life, and as Levy-Bertherat shows here, relive and perhaps revise his/her own history in the process.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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