“[A famous mathematical conundrum], the P= NP problem, basically asks whether it’s more difficult to think of the solution to a problem yourself or to ascertain if someone else’s answer to the same problem is correct…Only if you can prove that there are no legitimate answers other than the one offered, can you say that this is the only solution to the problem.”—Manabu Yukawa, physics professor

Mathematical genius Tetsuya Ishigami and his equally brilliant friend Manabu Yukawa, from the physics department at Imperial University in Tokyo, are at the heart of Keigo Higashino’s complex and satisfying murder mystery from Japan.  From the outset the reader knows who has killed a loathsome and terrifying bully;  the big question is whether or not the person will ever be caught. The victim, Shinji Togashi, has been divorced from Yasuko Hanaoka for five years, but he has constantly haunted her, wanting money, pushing her around, and making life miserable for her and her teenage daughter Misato.  When Togashi threatens his stepdaughter Misato, she strikes out, and when he retaliates, his death is swift.  Panicked by the outcome, Yasuko and Misato become willing participants in a “solution” offered by their shy and overweight next-door neighbor, professor Tetsuya Ishigami, who has heard the commotion.  All of them believe that Togashi deserved to die, but only Ishigami, the mathematical genius, can think clearly under the circumstances.  Knowing that “he would never be this close to so beautiful a woman ever again,” Ishigami asks Yasuko to “Trust me.  Logical thinking will get us through this.”  He takes over.

When Togashi’s nude body is later discovered under the Shin-Ohashi Bridge, it is difficult to identify.  The face is smashed, and there are no fingerprints or teeth to allow for easy identification.  When he is eventually identified through other means, Yasuko and Misato have air-tight alibis.  Police Det. Kusanagi feels that something is not quite right, however, something he discusses when he visits the physics professor Yukawa, his long-time friend.  Yukawa often offers friendly lessons in pure deductive reasoning and provides logical direction for Kusanagi and the police.

Yukawa, sometimes called “Professor Galileo,”  has also known Ishigami since they were students at the Imperial University.  On a visit to Ishigami’s apartment after the murder, they begin to chat, and Yukawa sums up the basic problem of the murder investigation.

“The investigators have been fooled by the criminals’ camouflage.  Everything they think is a clue isn’t…[it] is merely a breadcrumb set in their path to lure them astray.  When an amateur attempts to conceal something, the more complex he makes his camouflage, the deeper the grave he digs for himself.  But not so a genius.  The genius does something far simpler, yet something no normal person would even dream of, the last thing a normal person would think of doing.  And from this simplicity, immense complexity is created.”

Meanwhile, the daily lives of the characters continue – with Yasuko working at a small Benten-tei luncheon shop, Misato going to school, Ishigami teaching his classes, Kuniaki Kudo inviting Yasuko out to dinner, Ichigami and Yukawa chatting about problem-solving, and Kusanagi following various characters in an effort to figure out who the killer is.  Eventually, Yukawa even suggests that Ichikawa keep tabs on Yasuko and report on her actions, one of the ironies that pervade the novel.

The chess-like maneuvering between the two geniuses – Yukawa and Ichigami – greatly resembles that of Sherlock Holmes and Prof. Moriarty, even to its clipped dialogue, but  this novel has a love interest to keep things more realistic and more fun.  The reader develops some empathy for Ishigami and for the hard life that prevented him from pursuing his doctorate, and its entrée into academia.  His shyness, his unattractive appearance, and his lack of communication skills, allow the reader to appreciate how the plight of Yasuko and Miyato has offered him a chance, at last, to feel like a man.  The remainder of the characters, however, are flat, and while some, like Prof. Yukawa, are not exactly “typical,” in that few mysteries feature characters with his level of brilliance, he is not a character one comes to know.  Yasuko, the victim’s ex-wife, a former club dancer who now works in a lunch shop, is so shallow that it is difficult to gain any understanding of her – she is someone who is considered pretty but not much else.

An unusual “police procedural” in that the police seem to be free to follow their own instincts with little interference from their superiors, The Devotion of Suspect X works its way up to a surprising climax and resolution, one which few will expect, proving exactly what Yukawa has said all along, that the genius will do something that no normal person will ever think of doing, and from this simplicity will come immense complexity.  Clever and unusual, this novel is a step above the traditional mystery in its concept, execution, and logical underpinnings, a welcome addition to the genre.  The carefully composed details and slow unraveling of the action keep the reader thinking on more than one plane – not just about whether the killer or killers will get away with the murder of a person who is no real loss to society, but about the interactions of human beings and the discovery of what is real, as opposed to camouflage.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://asianmediawiki.com

The Shin-Ohashi Bridge, near where the victim’s body is found, appears on http://pictures.traveladventures.org

A homeless encampment, with its variety of characters, along the side of the Sumida River, is featured here:  http://www.sumidacrossing.org

A small lunch shop like the one where Yasuko works may be seen here:  http://midtownlunch.com

“Ah, old age. The twilight years – that delicate phrase. Twilight my foot – roaring dawn of a new life, more like, the one you didn’t know about. We all avert our eyes, and then – wham! You’re in there too, wondering how the hell this can have happened, and maybe it is an early circle of hell and here come the gleeful devils with their pitchforks, stabbing and prodding.”

Now an eighty-four year-old Dame Commander of the British Empire for her services to literature, Penelope Lively is nothing short of an inspiration. Always firmly rooted in the real world, her recent novels and main characters have followed her own path into old age. Her (mostly) good-humored acceptance of its inevitable indignities and the insightful and sometimes ironic commentary made by her elderly characters, keep the reader aware that old age, however challenging, is not necessarily a catastrophe to characters who possess grit, determination, and a sense of independence.

Many readers will find How It All Began the best novel Lively has written so far, primarily because the characters and their issues sound so familiar to those of us approaching (or having reached) senior citizenhood. With characters who comment with wry humor and occasional puzzlement about their lives while dealing with their latest crises, the novel also features graceful prose, sparkling dialogue, and a thematic heft which is rare in current fiction. Lively’s writing is witty, clever, and often lighthearted, but it is never casual and never takes itself for granted. Her prose style often resembles a perfectly constructed musical composition in which individual characters have brilliant solo turns, followed by remarkable duets in which they try to communicate with each other. New themes and motifs, as the characters’ lives change, are reflected in changes of tempo and rhythm in the prose. Ultimately, they lead to a resolution in which all the thematic motifs come together successfully but never really “conclude.” As the author says, “An ending is an artificial device; we like endings, they are satisfying, convenient, and a point has been made. But time does not end, and stories march in step with time. Equally, chaos theory does not assume an ending; the ripple effect goes on, and on…[the stories] spin away from one another, each on its own course,” as they do here.

The novel opens with the impressionistic description of the mugging of Charlotte Rainsford, age seventy-eight, who is thrown to the ground when her purse is stolen by a teenager. Her subsequent recovery from a broken hip at the home of her daughter and son-in-law begins the cycle of change from which ripples radiate for the rest of the novel. Though Charlotte and her deceased husband were both brilliant and charismatic teachers, their daughter Rose is much more staid, working part-time as a personal assistant to Lord Henry Peters, an elderly former history professor who spends his time doing obscure historical research, trying to convince himself and others that he is still “relevant.” Rose’s need to stay home with Charlotte at the beginning of her recuperation leads Lord Henry to contact his niece, Marion Clark, a divorced career woman, who comes to Lord Peters’s estate to fill in for Rose. Marion, a successful interior designer, is having an affair with Jeremy Dalton, the married father of two, who feels no qualms about betraying his wife. When, in the first ten pages, Jeremy’s wife Stella discovers a revealing text message from Marion on Jeremy’s cellphone, however, “The Daltons’ marriage broke up, [all] because Charlotte Rainsford was mugged.” And when the disabled Charlotte decides to continue to teach reading to immigrants one day a week, she invites Anton, from Kosovo, to come to Rose’s house for tutoring. This introduces yet another series of changes and complications. Sir Henry’s attempt to write a TV series begins a final set of widening ripples.

Throughout the novel, Lively has a great deal of literary fun, creating a vibrant display of the varied prose styles required by her characters. Sir Henry’s language and writing are stuffy, pretentious, and pompous. By contrast the limited grammatical skills of the immigrant Anton are balanced by his insightful and honest comments about life and learning in England. Rose is realistic and unimaginative, while Jeremy’s wife Stella’s exaggerated sense of her own misery gives her speech a nervous, hysterical quality. Jeremy’s conversations show him to be egotistical and demanding, while Gerry, Rose’s husband, is introverted to the point that he and Rose seem to live parallel lives, rather than intimate ones. The author reveals all these characteristics through the characters’ speech patterns, showing how our personalities and thinking are reflected by the way we formulate sentences in response to the sometimes random events which happen in our lives.

Always a voracious reader, Charlotte realizes that throughout her life “she [has] read to discover how not to be Charlotte, how to escape the prison of her own mind, how to expand, and experience. Thus has reading wound in with living, each a complement to the other…She is as much a product of what she has read as of the way in which she has lived.” Ultimately, she decides that the reason Anton, a bright accountant in his own country, is unable to get a job in that field in this country is that he has never learned the narrative patterns of the English language through stories, as she has. She quickly introduces him to children’s books with adult themes, gradually increasing the difficulty and the content. Soon Anton is being “built by books,” gaining verbal skills and connecting pieces of information which will enable him to change his life.

As Charlotte puts herself into the mind of Anton and the other younger characters, she also sees how much she herself has changed in the decades since she was their age. “You are on the edge of things now, clinging on to life’s outer rim,” she tells herself. “You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not – life has been lived but it is all still going on, in the mind, for better and worse.” As she thinks of who she is and how she got there, she notes that “The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system…That evanescent, pervasive, slippery internal landscape known to no one else, that vast accretion of data on which you depend – without it you would not be yourself.” Delightful in its individual stories and ironic complications, How It All Began will leave thoughtful readers awestruck by Penelope Lively’s insightful commentary on the random nature of events which can change our lives, on the aging process, and on language and learning, .

ALSO by Penelope Lively:  MOON TIGER and   SPIDERWEB

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Clara Molden on the day of her honors by the Queen is from http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Hyde Park, a place where Anton says the city can “breathe,” appears on http://deep-travel.blogspot.com

Anton and Rose visit the Victoria and Albert Museum’s ceramics collection:  http://www.vam.ac.uk

The book How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen, by Russell Hoban, is one of the books that Charlotte uses to teach Anton how to read.

The symbolic dead tree on Hampstead Heath, where Rose stops to rest, is the same one she and her children used to climb on when her children were young.  “Amazing – all those years ago, and it’s still here.” http://kathyamen.net

“ It dawned on me last night..that what was [really] called for was initiative. Auf den Fuhrer zuarbeiten. Working toward the Fuhrer. It’s the watchword of the age…Who’s to say the [arrested man] isn’t guilty? A little time with us, and I’m sure he will confess.”—Detective Franz Teuben

Dan Vyleta’s The Quiet Twin offers a unique perspective on the growing menace of National Socialism in Vienna, in 1939. Using an ordinary apartment complex and the events which affect the seemingly ordinary characters who inhabit it as a microcosm for the terrifying realities which are about to come, Vyleta creates an almost unparalleled atmosphere of fear and dread. An absorbing literary novel, which never loses its way as it progresses, it is ultimately a horror novel which out-horrors almost all others, not only because of the awful events which unfold, but because the unfolding action feels so casual and so domestic in the context of the residents’ lives. And that is the whole point. Throughout the action, each character decides in a moment of crisis, that “just this once” s/he will ignore the promises made to others and the values which have always been paramount in civilized society in favor of what works best for himself/herself at that moment. The result is a societal compromise of epic proportions, one which allows the Nazi menace to take hold. The word “Holocaust” never appears, though the psychological horror, political horror, sociological horror, and moral horror come to life in new ways as the action in this apartment house unfolds.

The murder and disembowelment of Prof. Speckstein’s old and much-loved dog is but the first event in a series of murders affecting the entire apartment complex, none of which, according to Zuzka, the niece of the Professor, have ever been reported in the newspapers. Zuzka, who is a hypochondriac, has persuaded her housekeeper to contact Dr. Anton Beer, another resident of the building, and bring him to see her for her health issues. Dr. Beer quickly discovers that Zuzka is more interested in her romantic health than in her physical health. When he arrives there at night, however, Zuzka takes him to the window of her room and has him look out at the courtyard behind them. There, he can see the private lives of many of the residents through their windows: Otto Frei, a young mime who practices at 3:00 a.m., the foot of a possibly imprisoned woman visible through his window; Anneliese, a hunchback, the ten-year-old daughter of an abusive drunk, with whom Zuzka “talks” in sign language; an amputee survivor of the Great War, who rarely leaves his apartment; an English teacher with an active “social life”; and an Asian musician who plays the trumpet.

Gradually, the reader learns about the private lives of the other major characters, including Dr. Beer, newly single, with a wife who has left him; Zuzka’s uncle, Prof. Speckstein, who is now working as a Zellenwart, a public spy for the Nazi party, having been tried and convicted of the rape of a young girl; Zuzka herself, the twin sister of Dasa, who died a decade ago; and ultimately, the sadistic Detective Teuben, working for the Party, who has decided that he must have the invalid twin sister of the mime, Otto Frei, as his lover.

As new and grisly murders unfold, the tension escalates. Various characters are thought to have been responsible for the murders and/or the disposal of bodies, and some even confess to them through their imaginations. It is here that Vyleta really shows his creativity. At the beginning of each section of the novel, he tells a brief (italicized) story about a real, famous person from the past, revealing parallels to the sociopolitical atmosphere in Vienna in 1939. Peter Kurten, at age nine watched his uncle slaughtering dogs, and then went on to become a serial killer himself in the late 1890s. Carl Grossman, another serial killer, developed a unique way to dispose of the bodies of his victims. Fritz Haarmann became a police informer before his arrest and later execution for serial murder. Psychiatrist Albert von Shrenck-Notzing studied paranormal phenomena in the late nineteenth century, especially the ability of people like “Eva C.,” who could create ectoplasmic materializations. Significantly, Schrenck-Notzing was also a researcher into the phenomenon of “suggestion-induced falsification of memory.” Herbert Gerdes created the 1936 film “Erbkrank: the Hereditary Defective,” filmed inside a German mental institution and shown in all five thousand German and Austrian theatres as justification for the extermination of the patients. All these direct parallels between past and present make the action especially vivid and horrifying.

The action comes to a head when Prof. Speckstein, the informer, is “persuaded” by his superiors to have a party in his apartment. A murder takes place, but no one reports it. Some residents are blackmailed, and the ominous future plans for still other characters, with whom the reader is sympathetic, become clear. The author is especially clever as he reveals the fates of all the characters. Though Otto Frei and his sister are twins, and Zuzka and her sister Dasa are twins, the real “twins” of this novel’s title are all the individual characters who have “quiet twins” – completely different selves in private from what is known in public to everyone else, including sometimes the reader. As Vyleta continues his characters’ lives through to the conclusion, their private lives become more understandable, and more pathetic. Ultimately, the lack of real communal values, combined with fear, leads to opportunistic decisions which affect all the other characters in the novel.

Occasionally some characters re-enact events they have imagined or actions they have heard about but may not have committed, creating some confusions about the “real” murderers, but the novel is a powerful exploration of how vulnerable unthinking people can be in the hands of manipulators. Ironically, each person’s own “quiet twin” enables him/her to survive within this fraught environment, even at the expense of neighbors and friends. Thoughtful, beautifully constructed, historically astute, and absolutely riveting to read, this is one of the best books I have read on the events leading to the Holocaust.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://www.lancette-arts-journal.ca

Eva C., a real character about whom there are many mysteries in this novel, is shown here with an ectoplasmic materialization on her shoulder in a photo by psychiatrist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. http://en.wikipedia.org

The same medium, Eva C. is shown with a “light manifestation” (and a materialization on her head) in another photo by Dr. von Shrenck-Notzing:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Medium-Eva-Carriere-1912.jpg

The final photo shows serial murderer Fritz Haarmann, far left, in 1924:   http://en.wikipedia.org

“The final price tag for this railroad [through southern Kenya] would be staggering even to the British Empire.  Once England had spent this much on a colony, it could not possibly let things continue as before, the tribes puttering around naked and hunting, the animals roaming free, the minerals lying untouched beneath the ground…Onto this wilderness would be mapped the straight and exacting lines of money and steel.”

In this readable, exciting, and historically enlightening novel with two separate plots, Audrey Schulman accomplishes an incredible feat.  She makes the individual plots totally compelling and uniquely character-driven as they shift back and forth in alternating chapters, always leaving the reader panting for more, anxious to reach the conclusion and a hoped for resolution of the plots.  What is most seductive about the novel is that the plots take place in two different time periods and settings—one in Kenya in 1899, and the other, in Virunga National Park, on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, in 2000.  In the first plot a man from Bangor, Maine, responsible for building a railroad from Mombasa to Kisumu must deal with two large and bloodthirsty lions, reportedly over nine feet in length, as they repeatedly attack and kill railroad workers;  in the second, a young scientist with Asperger’s Syndrome is responsible for securing a vine, consumed by mountain gorillas, which dramatically reduces the incidence of both stroke and heart disease in their species.  If Max, the researcher is able to obtain samples of the vine, a pharmaceutical company will, among other benefits, provide armed security to ensure the survival of the gorilla population in Virunga National Park.

Somehow Schulman manages to connect these two disparate plots in the conclusion, leaving the reader wholly satisfied on several different levels: the two hypnotically revealing stories; the historical insights she provides into the two different time periods and locations;  the two uniquely depicted main characters – one a man at the turn of the century who regards himself as “different,” and one a woman of the twenty-first century with Asperger’s Syndrome; and the thematic development which spans an entire century.  By setting the novel in Africa, where the human species itself is thought to have evolved from earlier hominids, the author focuses on humanity’s most basic questions – what it means to be truly human and whether humans have a responsibility toward other species and within their own species.

Jeremy, a timid graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic, is plagued by persistent migraine headaches and has long been dominated by his mother, and when he has the chance to go to East Africa after experiencing a catastrophic social embarrassment at home in Maine, he jumps at the chance.  “This was the land where he would start afresh,” he thinks.  In charge of the entire Tsavo River project and over seven hundred men, he is daunted by this plan to build the “lunatic line.”  Much of this construction is done in Europe with huge cranes, but the Tsavo job, which he will run, will be done by hand by African natives and imported workers from India, all of whom work cheaper and many of whom will die from natural threats like wild animals, and diseases, especially malaria.  When two monster lions begin to attack Jeremy’s men, even as malaria is affecting up to twenty-five percent of the others, the atmosphere of the work camp reaches new lows.  The timid Jeremy must pair up with one of the local Africans to try to kill these two lions, who are so powerful that they have managed to kill two people, twenty miles apart, during the same evening.

In Rwanda, Dr. Max Tombay is an ethnobotanist with Asperger’s Syndrome, an “Aspie,” as she calls herself. Though she is able to focus very narrowly for long periods of time, she is unable to reach out to others, uncomfortable with interactions involving touch and with face to face conversations, and unable to deal with uncertainties, preferring instead, repetitive tasks which she can do alone.  At times lonely to the point of being suicidal, Max has no idea how to achieve the only kind of closeness she can tolerate, since it is so different from the norm.  When she accepts the job at the research park made famous by Dian Fossey, she comes into contact for the first time with mountain gorillas, and she (and the reader) discover just how much her way of thinking and her approach to life resemble those of the endangered gorillas.  A fictional group of violent rebel soldiers, known here as the Kutu,  which depends largely on child soldiers, operates out of the Congo and constantly threatens the gorilla population.  A drought has caused widespread starvation among the local population, and one massacred silverback gorilla can supply enough meat to serve an entire small village for a week.  Max must deal with threats like these as she searches for the mysterious vine, known only to the gorilla population, which could eliminate or reduce strokes and heart disease in the human population.

Those who have been to Kenya are probably well familiar with the stories and legends about the Tsavo lions, originally described by Col. John Henry Patterson, the real man who built a railway bridge across the Tsavo River in 1898 – 99.  Patterson’s The Maneaters of Tsavo, published in 1907, inspired both Denis Boyles (The Man-Eaters Motel and Other Stops on the Railway to Nowhere, 1991) and Philip Caputo (Ghosts of Tsavo, 2002), who have continued to examine this story of the two enormous, maneless lions who killed an estimated one hundred thirty-five humans.

Schulman effectively uses this well-known story to provide an African context in which the introverted Jeremy can face his personal demons, away from his dominating Maine family.  The story of Max Tombay, in Rwanda, is equally fascinating, and even more unusual, as Max discovers that her status as an “Aspie” makes her uniquely qualified to understand the gorilla population with which she deals, and she makes the details of Asperger’s Syndrome completely understandable in the context of her story.  Though the novel is more a dramatic and beautifully realized adventure novel than it is heavy-duty literary fiction, it is flawlessly organized and executed and is a thrilling book to read.  Its unlikely coincidences and the romantic conclusion are just small distractions in this well crafted novel which will keep many readers reading into the early morning hours.

(There’s an amazing gorilla video following the photo credits.)

Photos, in order: The author ‘s photo by Debi Milligan appears on http://www.ucsusa.org

The Tsavo Lions from the Field Museum have been reconstructed from the pelts which J. H. Patterson had at his home.  The photo after it is an old photo of J. H. Patterson with one of the lions, propped up immediately after it was killed.  Its enormous size is obvious.  Both photos appear here:  http://en.wikipedia.org

The gorilla eating is from http://dududiaries.wildlifedirect.org

The map of the Virunga area, with Virunga in orange along the border of Congo and Rwanda comes from http://dududiaries.wildlifedirect.org

National Geographic has posted an important video about the rebels’ overtaking of the Virunga National Park in October, 2008.  http://news.nationalgeographic.com. Attacks continue in this area to the present.

The gentle nature of the gorillas may be seen in the following amazing but controversial video.  The gorillas visit this camp two or three times a year, without warning. No one who sees the video can doubt the peaceful nature of these animals if they are not disturbed, but some object to the fact that these gorillas may have become so habituated to humans that they no longer fear the very real hunters who are decimating their population.  The tours do, however, provide dollars which may help protect the gorillas for a while  longer.

“I speak of a love that brings sight to the blind. Of a love stronger than fear. I speak of a love that breathes meaning into life, that defies the natural laws of deterioration, that causes us to flourish, that knows no bounds. I speak of the triumph of the human spirit over selfishness and death.”

It is easy to see why this novel, published in the author’s native Germany in 2002, has been such a resounding popular success there for the past three years, with booksellers giving it rave reviews, hand-selling it, and in one case even telling customers “they can bring it back if they don’t like it…[and] get their money back, no questions asked. Nobody has ever returned it.” Word of mouth and book club interest has done the rest, making the book a huge best seller. Newly translated into English, the novel is now available here, and it will be interesting to see if its story “travels” as well to the US and UK.

Jan-Philipp Sendker’s The Art of Hearing Heartbeats pulls out all the stops. Set in Burma (now Myanmar), it is the consummately romantic story of an abandoned and traumatized orphan boy, Tin Win, whose adoptive mother and the monks at the local monastery slowly enable him to make connections with the world beyond. It is both a look back at the past and a look forward into the future, as the boy’s story develops and he learns to love. The novel is also a triumph over adversity, as two characters, one blind and one crippled, movingly overcome their “handicaps” and no longer see themselves as any different from anyone else. The blind character learns to listen to the world so carefully that he can find people by listening for their unique heartbeats. The crippled character has a voice so beautiful that people come for miles to hear her sing. And it also a novel of suspense, as Julia Win, the young American daughter of Tin Win, searches for her missing father, traveling into rural Burma in search of the writer of a love letter from almost fifty years ago, which Julia has found among her father’s effects. Throughout the novel, the involvement of Burmese astrologers and helpful Buddhist priests add another dimension, both magical and mystical, to the thinking of the Burmese characters. Stories within stories within stories keep the love stories swirling and the sense of otherworldliness growing.

The basic story line opens with U ba, a Burmese priest, approaching Julia Win in a tea house in the rural mountain village of Kalaw, in Burma, telling her that he has been awaiting her arrival for four years. Startled, since Julia does not know him, she wonders, at first, if he represents a scam, since she has just arrived from New York, searching for her father, who disappeared four years ago. Soon, she is learning her father’s background from U ba, a rewarding experience, since even her own mother never knew anything about Tin Win’s life before he was twenty years old. Born on a Saturday in December, an astrologically disastrous day, Tin Win had entered a hostile world in which both his parents rejected him because the local astrologer had told them that “the child will bring sorrow on his parents.” Later abandoned, he was taken in by a neighbor and schooled at the monastery.

Time in this novel is not linear, with Julia suddenly remembering and retelling one of her father’s stories about a strict king who made his son study, morning and night. Then the prince falls in love. His friendship with a crocodile introduces imagery which continues throughout the novel and expands the love theme and its connection to place. Another early diversion from the main story occurs with the story of U May, the abbot of the monastery to which Su Kyi, Tin Win’s adoptive mother, takes Tin Win in an effort to coax him out of his emotional darkness. U May’s own love story parallels in many ways the story which eventually grows up around Tin Win, a sad story with symbolism (or sense of foreboding) on several levels.

U ba’s stories of Tin Win grow with the introduction of Mi Mi, the young girl he loves, and the novel becomes almost a morality tale, with many statements about the nature of life and love: “Love has so many faces that our imagination is not prepared to see them all…because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities – for good as well as evil – onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable.” A poem by Pablo Neruda asks us, “How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or only one?/…What does it mean to say ‘for ever’?” Another adage asserts that “Life is a gift that none might disdain…Life is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined.”

The stories are told with detail which keeps them fresh, but they are recited at us by a good storyteller, primarily U ba, the action not being recreated in a way which makes the reader feels s/he is actually participating directly. This makes the novel seem “talky” – conversational – and leaves the burden on the reader to imagine it and make it feel lively and personal. Some of the plot feels operatic, and on a couple of occasions, I thought of Mimi in La Boheme as a parallel to Mi Mi in the novel. With all the aphorisms and commentary about life and love, the novel sometimes has a moralistic, ponderous tone, which is certainly in keeping with the lessons being given by the monks but which many readers prefer to glean for themselves from plot elements which ideally illustrate themes more subtly. Cliches of romantic writing abound. Still, Sendker’s descriptions and his setting in Burma, a country which few readers know, lend a sense of atmosphere and mystery to the novel, and his often lyrical approach to the points of view of Tin Win and Mi Mi creates a charming romance which will keep many readers fascinated.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://meng-gemeng.rtl.lu

The photo of Kalaw, by Kristina Koukkos,  appears on http://www.theexpeditioner.com

The Schwedagan Pagoda and the Golden Buddhas, which Julia visits, appear on http://wanderinground.wordpress.com and on http://www.heybrian.com/travels/myanmar/shwedagon.php

The map of Burma/Myanmar is from http://www.divetheworldburma.com

A Burmese road sign for a teahouse, here:  http://www.tripadvisor.com

“You can’t see the change in something if you don’t know what it looked like in the first place, but if you stay out here long enough, you’ll understand.  I’m only a beginner myself, but I’ve been round long enough to know that things interconnect—deaths and dreams, watercourses, tracks and plants.  Everything.”—Emily Tempest to Police Sergeant.

Newly appointed Aboriginal Community Police Officer Emily Tempest has returned to her roots in Bluebush – in the Northern Territories of Australia –  after more than ten years spent traveling the world.  The daughter of Motor Jack, a white geologist/gold prospector and an aborigine mother, she grew up in her mother’s culture until she was a teenager and has always felt more comfortable there, despite the educational programs and travels which later took her all over the world.  Having returned to live with “her” people when she is in her twenties, she continues to resent the intrusions of the “civilized” white world and the damage it has caused to the natural world venerated by the aborigines.  Having won their claim to their ancestral lands (in author Adrian Hyland’s previous novel, Moonlight Downs), the community, Emily notes, has  “taken the first tentative steps to independence: built a few rough houses, put in a water supply, planted an orchard…and started a cattle project, [and] there was talk of a school, a store, a clinic.”  Life seems to have improved somewhat from the previous novel, at least as far as physical comforts are concerned.

Hyland himself spent many years living and working with the indigenous people in the Northern Territories, and he vividly recreates aborigine family life, which is still nomadic and hand-to-mouth in many communities.  The young people are easily attracted to alcohol and drugs, readily available in towns, more than they are to schools and to the traditional values of their elders, and the unemployment rate is stratospheric.  In this second novel in the Emily Tempest series, little seems to have changed in the racial attitudes of the “whitefellers” toward the aborigines, with many police investigations, as Emily quickly sees, guided more by what investigators still expect than by what any evidence actually shows. A smart woman, as hard as the local rocks and geological strata that have attracted opportunistic miners from all over the world, Emily can also be as quixotic and mysterious as the spirits which she and her people believe move in and out of their lives, keeping the forces of nature in balance.  “Say what you like about me and my mob,” she announces, “there’s one thing you can’t deny: we’re survivors.  You can kick us and kill us and drown us in bible and booze, but you better get used to us because we’re not going away.”

Filled with atmosphere, local color, and nonstop action, the novel opens with a gruesome attack at Green Swamp Well, in which a drunk, elderly prospector is found with his hammer embedded in his throat.  Another prospector, also drunk, found asleep near the body, is arrested.  When Emily discovers that the dead man is Doc, an old friend of her father whom she has known since childhood, and that the supposed killer is Wireless, another old friend, she is determined to help.  Doc believed that Martians, devils, the CIA, and missionaries were all out to get him, but he was an educated former employee of the Geological Survey, and his shack is filled with books, files, and hand-drawn maps.  He had been recreating mysterious geological formations in his backyard, and he and Wireless had been arguing about Zeno’s Paradox.  Both have lived by their own rules, and Emily believes that Wireless, who remembers nothing about the killing, will die if he is shut up in prison.

As the mystery of who killed Doc, and why, develops, the author introduces characters from the past, and a variety of new characters who appear and reappear throughout, each trailing his/her own story behind.  Danny Brambles, a fifteen-year-old aborigine, has problems with alcohol and drugs, and he cannot seem to stay out of trouble, but Emily believes that if he rejoins his family in the bush that he will develop the inner resources he needs to stay clean and become productive.  Doc’s brother, Wishy Ozolins, his wife, and their three well-individualized daughters play a role and show their family dynamics, and when Wishy claims Doc’s files, he is perturbed that a major file on the Snowball Earth Theory is missing.  Emily’s lover, Jojo, who has been doing research on the endangered bilby in the outback, reappears periodically, always offering support without infringing on Emily’s need for independence.   Sgt. Bruce Cockburn, Emily’s boss, shows his ignorance of other cultures, expressing his feelings of superiority as he directs investigations or fails to investigate the important issues when Emily feels that “Something’s out of place. Something’s wrong.”  His family, too, plays a role in the action.  An assortment of other characters, many of them working on mines, expands the focus on the geology of the area and the conflicts between the educated and uneducated, the whites and the blacks, and the men and the women.  As morally bankrupt entrepreneurs gravitate to the gold and mineral wealth of the area with their strike-it-rich schemes, it is those with strong ties to family and culture, it seems, who are most likely to survive.

Hyland does not sugar-coat any aspect of life in the outback.  His characters are coarse, and the action and language are sometimes even coarser.  Shootings, explosions, rock falls, attempted murders, a brutal rape, and chase scenes take place even as the author is raising questions about conservation, environmental threats, and the serious problems facing indigenous communities.  Aspects of the supernatural, and characters’ occasional dream sequences, exist side-by-side with earthy scenes of brutality and ignorance.  The novel wanders freely, introducing such a variety of different characters, their interactions, and subplots that it is sometimes difficult to identify the main themes and main plot line.  Even Emily herself is sometimes so unpredictable in her behavior that she is difficult to figure.  Still, for those interested in this fascinating setting and its close-up on those aborigines who must exist in close proximity to a completely alien world and way of life, it offers new insights and understandings and does so with enthusiasm and respect.

ALSO by Hyland:  MOONLIGHT DOWNS (known in the UK as DIAMOND DOVE).

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://www.perthnow.com.au

Rock formations like these were studied by Doc.  http://goaustralia.about.com

Doc gave Emily a fossilized trilobyte, pictured here, which she eventually gives to Tiger Lily, his niece.  http://www.etsy.com

Dingo Springs is the site of some of the action in the novel.  http://www.pedal4prostate.com

The photo of aboriginal children, by John Donegan, accompanies a story about them here:  http://www.theage.com.au

The endangered bilby, a rodent studied by Jojo, may be seen here:  http://www.squidoo.com

“Like most people [Stella] felt ambushed by time – but since it had to be, there were certain advantages, she saw. The old and the young are washed to the margins of life – unessential and dependent. They share only the opportunity for untrammelled observation. And for Stella observation had been her way of life.”

Setting her novel at the end of the twentieth century, Penelope Lively begins Spiderweb (1998) by presenting a sociological picture of the west of England and the once-remote counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, which are now attracting new residents from “outside.” A letter from Richard Faraday to Stella Brentwood regarding a property in Kingston Florey in Somerset, inserted in the midst of this picture, describes a cottage for sale and its pluses and minuses, and indicates that Richard has been helping Stella find such a property to purchase. We know nothing about either of them except that Stella was best friend of Richard Faraday’s wife Nadine from their college days. Gradually, the reader learns more about Stella, a sixty-five-year-old, newly retired social anthropologist and teacher, who filters all the impressions one gains about the village and its people through her own experience. When she buys this cottage, she approaches her new village not as a new member of the community, but as an academic and specialist in social structures.

Stella has never married, not because she did not have opportunities but because she has been completely driven by her interests in other cultures and her desire to stay on the move, professionally. Excerpts from her diaries, including one from her stay in small village in Egypt in 1964, suggest her approach: “My many expensive years of education have left me quite unequipped for life in this mud village with two transistor radios, one moped, one petrol-driven engine and two hundred people, many of whom cannot write their names. What it has given me is the urge and the ability to cast a cold eye upon them and their way of life. Do I find this uncomfortable? Of course.” The parallels to the life about to unfold for her in Kingston Florey are obvious.

Other contrasts evolve between Stella’s past life and family background, her education, her friendships, and her professional excitements and the lives of her neighbors: old Mr. Layton, born within a mile of where he now lives in a “stumpy cottage of cob and thatch”; Stan, the odd job man; Tory and Linda, busy IT consultants who live with their kids in a neighboring cottage, but only on weekends; Miss Clapp at the Animal Rescue Center, who tries to find the perfect dog for Stella; and especially her next-door neighbors, the Hiscox family. Mother Karen Hiscox gives new definition to martinet, a pathological control freak who terrorizes her totally ineffective husband, her disabled mother, treated almost as a prisoner, and her teenage sons, who have problems of their own. The boys run wild whenever they can escape their mother’s clutches, and in their paranoia they see Stella’s interest in them and their activities as hostile. Stella, however, continues to believe that “West Somerset would cheerfully bare its soul to her…She had only to get talking at a bus stop or supermarket check-out, share a table in a pub, stop to chat at a filling station. Her credentials were instantly apparent: agreeably spoken, no spring chicken, origins uncertain, but that’s what you expect these days.”

The internet has yet to make its appearance in Kingston Florey, and, now that she has retired and become a homeowner, the independent Stella must find her excitement and mental stimulation in her everyday life in the community, in her phone calls from friends, and in her memories of the past, including past loves.  She tries hard, but her brain will not quit long enough for her to allow her emotions to flourish. She gets a dog from the rescue agency, but the dog adores her and will hardly let her out of its sight, and she finds herself uncomfortable with such overwhelming love. She has a suitor, but she cannot disconnect him from what she knew of him in the past, even judging the elegant restaurant to which he takes her: “Food is more than meets the eye…it usually has ritual significance…[it says] the resources of civilization are available [here]. Mud and muck there may be, but immunity is available for those with discrimination.” She compares this man to the love of her life, a journalist she met in Malta many years ago, and the man in the Orkney Islands who begged her to marry him. Ultimately, she realizes that her life, like “this place” is a “web,”and its connections may also bind and destroy.

However annoying and difficult Stella might be to know in “real life,” she is earnest in her personal (though perhaps flawed) approach to life, and naive about how to connect with her feelings. She is even reluctant to admit she has feelings, but she recognizes that something is missing from her life, despite all her professional success. She cannot help remembering admonitions from people who have been close to her, such as Nadine, who has told her, “You’re the cat that walks by himself. You’re on the edge always, looking on. Interested. But…Detached…You’re not like the rest of us. How do you do it?”

The author, in creating a gossipy and initially cheerful commentary on village life, makes us empathize with Stella, even as we are ready to throttle her, sympathize even as we recognize she is perhaps hopelessly obtuse. We see her actions with a kind of dark humor, even as we may feel guilty for feeling judgmental about her. The reader recognizes elements of foreshadowing given by the author and understands many of the social issues which underlie the behavior of the local people around her, but Stella, the anthropologist, is not privy to this information and has no way of ever learning it. Ironies, such as these, give the story a kind of resonance and universality which broaden the scope far beyond the limitations of Kingston Florey and offer commentary on what it takes to be a “successful” person. Stella, at sixty-five, has squandered her chance to experience a full life, at least by the standards of most of the rest of the world, and whether she is or can be truly happy is not clear. Whether or not she really cares is an even bigger question.

ALSO by Penelope Lively:  MOON TIGER and    HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.listal.com

Stella and the love of her life once spent a weekend in the nearby town of Watchet, shown here:  http://exmoorencyclopedia.org.uk

Watchet is near the former home of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is memorialized in this statue by Alan B. Herriot, showing the mariner holding the dead albatross:  http://4umi.com

Stella had thoughts of creating a border of diascia in part of her overgrown backyard, as her friend Nadine once did.  This photo by Carol Casselden shows such a border.  http://www.gapphotos.com

Note: The fictional town of Kingston Florey may have been inspired by the real Somerset towns of Combe Florey, home of Evelyn Waugh (and where Auberon Waugh still lives), and Kingston St. Mary, only four miles away.

“I am the ghost of everything we lost. I speak, but no one hears. I close my eyes when I look out windows. The hollow rat-tat of guns echoes between empty buildings, trees grow between the stones, breaking a city already broken. The wild dogs starve.”—Marianna

Told by Marianna, a young woman who has lost all sense of “home” as a result of the more than ten years of warfare she lived through in her homeland of Lebanon, this impressionistic psychological novel begins with her dreams of “before the war was real.” Romantic images of her mother “wander[ing] outside, smelling the ghostly jasmine in the dark, and Daddy open[ing] another old book under a lamp” overlap with images of her grandparents lighting the candles on a Christmas tree while sweet wine boils on the stove. Marianna herself often picked thyme with a young friend, visited ancient sites with her family, walked along the seashore in Beirut, and shopped in the souks. Summers were special, as the family vacationed in the countryside, where they harvested lavender, picked figs, and enjoyed the terraces that ran through fields filled with poppies, daisies, and heather.

Now the war is “real,” however. Years have passed, and the old reality she yearns for remains only in her dreams. Marianna, now eighteen, is in another place, America, her father’s birthplace, where, she believes, “nothing can be beautiful” and where she looks “inward to the night, to my dream self who had promised that this time I really had gone back home to my true life.” The warfare she experienced in Lebanon, which began in 1975-76, when she was seven, is now thousands of miles away, but she has been unable to cope with a new life in the US. A recent hospitalization has made her body stronger, but it has had little effect on her psyche, serving primarily to make her family aware of the fact that she must be watched constantly.

Focusing almost exclusively on the four people in this family, on their friends, on those who died in the war (between 1975 and 1990), and on Lebanon itself, author Patricia Sarrafian Ward recreates the psychological damage which the war in Lebanon has created for this family. Herself an exile who arrived in the US from Lebanon at the age of eighteen, the author provides vivid images of Marianna, the speaker, trying to cope, first, with her older sister Alaine’s dramatic and emotional escapes from the war and then with her own traumas as both Alaine and Marianna lose their way psychologically, the very underpinnings of their lives destroyed. Neither parent seems to know what to do with their troubled daughters, hoping, apparently, that time and family love will effect cures. Their father, an American academic, is somewhat distant, and their ineffective though loving mother, part Armenian (her family having escaped the genocide in their own homeland) has always felt a bit different.

Through flashbacks their lives in Lebanon unfold. Alaine, the older daughter, picks up bullets, shrapnel, and the other detritus of war, including a gas mask and canteen from a dead Syrian soldier, creating a collection of memorabilia in her room. She sneaks out at night, runs away periodically, and becomes sexually precocious. She cuts herself. Marianna, sometimes assigned to watch her older sister so she will not run away, seems to have a greater sense of stability, but she, too, eventually shows some of the same signs, as “the awful weight of everything I do not understand about the world sank into me.” Other friends and members of the family also exhibit signs of trauma, one son determined to avenge the death of his father, an old woman running away from the protection of their house because she fears the family will abandon her, people making up stories to hide real causes of death, Marianna’s family refusing to leave when they have the chance to do so. As Marianna herself says, for her the war was “other people’s business.” Eventually, however, “The world grew smaller, until there was only my room.”

Some of the specifics of the war do intrude briefly into the narrative, though the focus is almost exclusively on this family, and as the time frame moves back and forth, and even slips into dreams and fantasies, it is often difficult to establish a historical chronology of the war. At the outset, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have formed militias, the PLO is established, and guerrillas attack. Eventually, Syria invades, Israel bombs Beirut to combat the Palestinians, a multinational force (of the US, France, Britain, and Italy) tries to establish some sort of order, and a suicide attack against the US and French headquarters leads to the deaths of three hundred US and French soldiers. Sunni Muslims and Shi’ias have their own militias, the Socialist Druze sect allies itself with the Soviet Union, Christian militias try to protect the long Christian traditions of the country (which the Syrians oppose), and the civilian population is squeezed by all.

Patricia Sarrafian Ward writes a dramatic and harrowing story of Marianna and her sister, one of whom (Alaine) acts out her problems primarily while the family is in Lebanon, and one of whom (Marianna) does so primarily after they emigrate to the US. Their destroyed concept of “home” underlies their problems, and it is not, of course, until each is able to see new possibilities for their lives that any reconciliation can take place. The story, though complex in its time frame, is relatively simple in its prose style, with lovely lyrical descriptions of nature and the changing seasons alternating with short, sometimes abrupt, sentences propelling the action along as Marianna tries to process what is happening in her world. The novel is somewhat monochromatic, however, with Alaine and Marianna representing the primary focus, and there were times that I longed for a moment of humor or change in tone. The girls’ lack of overall perspective on the action, due to their youth, may be partly responsible for this, and it may also explain the depiction of their parents as seemingly ineffective and even indifferent as the crises evolve. A few signs of hope arise in the conclusion, leaving the reader to hope that the novel is not as autobiographical as it sometimes feels.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.citypages.com.

At this point, I introduce a photographic website from which I have taken all the remaining photos of Lebanon.  It’s an extraordinary website with 86 separate pages and hundreds of photos, both recent and historical, and I encourage everyone who reads this review to take a look at it.  It shows more about Lebanon than any other site I have found.   I have not been able to find a way to contact the website owner, but I hope he will see this and contact me via the e-mail address given in the About page (see tab at top of this page), so I can thank him.  http://www.habeeb.com

Pigeon Rock along the Beirut waterfront is here:  http://www.habeeb.com/lebanon.photos.17.beirut.html

The red-roofed houses in the Lebanon countryside appear here: http://www.habeeb.com/lebanon.photos.01.lebanese.homes.houses.html

A family escaping the bomb damage.  The man in front is wearing only flip-flop sandals on his feet.  See:  http://www.habeeb.com/lebanon.photos.45.html

For me, this iconic photo of an old man with a suitcase sums up this war and all other wars. http://www.habeeb.com/lebanon.photos.44.html

The map is from http://articlesofinterest-kelley.blogspot.com

An interview with the author is here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/azad-hye/message/437

“Hemingway: What are you writing?

Quinn:  Grim stories about political exiles in Miami buying guns to send to Cuba.  The grimness is redeemed by my simple declarative sentences.

Hemingway: Remove the colon and semicolon keys from your typewriter.  Shun adverbs, strenuously.”

William Kennedy’s latest novel in the Albany Cycle, his eighth, continues the story of several families from Albany, New York, during the heyday of its infamous, politically corrupt “machine.”   Focusing on Daniel Quinn, a newspaper reporter who is the grandson of the Daniel Quinn who reported on the Civil War in Quinn’s Book, and son of the now-senile George, a “hail-fellow-well-met” charmer with connections to seemingly everyone in Albany, this novel begins in August, 1936, when Daniel is a child.  Peering over the banister of the front staircase in Mayor Alex Fitzgibbon’s house, Daniel sits quietly watching as his father brings a piano (origins unknown) into the Mayor’s house.  Cody Mason, a pianist specializing in Harlem “stride,” is about to put on a private show with the young Bing Crosby.  Daniel Quinn is overcome by the passion of this music.

Only six pages (and twenty-one years) later, Quinn, an experienced reporter, is in Havana in March, 1957, hanging out at the El Floridita bar and hoping that its most famous patron, Ernest Hemingway, will show up.   Quinn has just quit his job at the Miami Herald, and is working on a novel, he says, but before Hemingway appears, Quinn meets and falls hopelessly in love with Renata Suarez Otero, a secret supporter of Castro’s revolution and a gunrunner determined to outst Fulgencio Batista from power. Renata and many of Castro’s other supporters believe in Santeria and in the power of Chango, the warrior king of kings venerated by traditional Cubans, and she is so committed and so passionate about what she is doing that she is described as being “from another dimension, perhaps life itself, equally ready for life or death.”

These two opening scenes, the arrival of Hemingway, his boorish attack on a tourist, and Quinn’s interview with the young Fidel Castro establish the narrative tone and atmosphere for this novel, which focuses on two revolutions, the Castro-led revolution in Cuba and the slightly later revolution in the US in the 1960s regarding civil rights.  Using the life of Tremont Van Ort, a black pool hustler with two-tone shoes, as a point of focus for the Albany “revolution,” the author concentrates the action on June 5, 1968, the day that Robert Kennedy is shot.  That day a race riot breaks out in Albany:  “This was not your ordinary race riot, but a spontaneous exercise in anarchy, the aim being not reciprocal death among racial antagonists but multicolored and miscegenational chaos.”

The chaos of the race riot parallels in many ways the seeming chaos of much of the narrative. Though Kennedy is much too good a writer to lose sight of his thematic focus completely, the many characters, the often complex backstories of each, the unexpected shifts in time through generations, and even Quinn’s dreams make the story line difficult to absorb, at times.  In addition, some of the most important explanations for what is happening are deliberately withheld until nearly the end of the novel.

The novel, however, has many scenes of wit and charm, and even more which are full of power.  The local color with which William Kennedy imbues settings in both Cuba and Albany keeps the reader enthralled and reading onward, even when almost overwhelmed with questions about the action.   Quinn visits the Hotel Nacional and Montmartre casino, owned by Meyer Lansky, and the Sans Souci, owned by Santo Trafficante.  He is warned about the dangers to himself because of his associations with Renata, and he accepts the red and white “Chango beads” given to him by Narciso, an aged Santeria priest.  He travels to Santiago and into the Cuban Sierra, and he observes the atrocities committed by Batista’s army.  Throughout, Quinn believes himself to be following in the footsteps of his grandfather, also named Daniel, who was fascinated by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a Cuban planter who freed his slaves in 1868 and fought a ten year war against the Spanish in Cuba.  He imagines himself writing a future novel about Castro, similar to the book which his grandfather wrote about Cespedes and the Mambi.

In the Albany sections, which are more emotionally resonant, the author creates some unforgettable characters:  Reverend Matthew Daugherty, a Franciscan priest, whose actions in opposition to the Albany political machine have led to his virtual silencing; Quinn’s father George, now senile, who, when driven to the Elks Club to spend the day so Quinn can work, wanders off into an old neighborhood, now completely changed, and tries to relive his memories;  Tremont Van Ort, an alcoholic who finds himself sought by a Black Power activist, who wants him to kill the Mayor; and an assortment of prostitutes, drug bosses, and musicians.  In this section, like the Cuba section, Quinn also sees himself writing a novel -  this one about the race riots, and especially about Tremont.  The final seventy-five pages unite the two sections and explain some of the long-lived questions about everything that happened in Cuba when Quinn visited in 1957.

The autobiographical overtones of this novel about revolutions, both social and political, may be partly responsible for the meandering feeling of the narrative.  William Kennedy himself, stretching his literary legs after his discharge from the army, lived in Puerto Rico (not Cuba) for a number of years, and he became close friends with the iconoclastic Hunter S. Thompson (not Hemingway).  Upon his return to Albany, he was an investigative reporter for the Albany newspaper, exposing the corruption of the local “machine.”  A sense of realism, honed by Kennedy’s journalistic career, pervades Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, but the novel is also highly literary, filled with repeating images, symbols, dreams, and music to enliven the action and broaden the scope.  His humor and irony add considerable warmth to the novel, and for many readers those qualities will more than outweigh the sometimes wooden characters and wandering narrative.

ALSO by William Kennedy: IRONWEED

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://articles.philly.com

Young Bing Crosby from 1958 is on http://derbingle.blogspot.com

The El Floridita is now home to this bronze version of Ernest Hemingway, lounging at his favorite corner of the bar:  http://members.virtualtourist.com The bar sign itself appears on http://twilightlounge.wordpress.com

This 1959 poster of Fidel Castro may be found on http://cille85.wordpress.com

The song “Shine,” sung by Bing Crosby (and the Mills Brothers) echoes and re-echoes throughout the novel.  “Konidolfine” has posted the song and some old photos:

“My husband and I are like two strangers who happen to meet coming out of a clinic where they have received treatment involving some physical unpleasantness. Both embarrassed, reading each other’s minds, conscious of an uneasy, embarrassing intimacy, wearily groping for the right tone in which to address each other.”

Hannah Gonen is only thirty when she makes this observation about her husband Michael. A young woman living in Jerusalem in the late 1950s, she has been married for ten years to a man she pursued and married when she was in her first year at the university and he was a graduate student. Michael, who describes himself to Hannah as “good…a bit lethargic, but hard-working, responsible, clean, and very honest,” eventually earns his PhD. degree in geology and begins work at the university, but Hannah, who has given up her literature studies upon her marriage, soon finds married life—and Michael himself—to be tedious. Her only child resembles Michael in personality, a child rooted in reality, who “finds objects much more interesting than people or words.”

Writing in short, factual sentences, which come alive through his choice of details, author Amos Oz, often mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate, recreates Hannah’s story of her marriage, a marriage which may or may not survive. Hannah and Michael married in 1949, shortly after Israel gained its independence, and the author often uses Hannah’s battles for independence and control of her life to reflect the growing pains of a new land, determined to defend itself and protect its integrity. As their family backgrounds unfold, the personalities of Hannah and Michael and their behavior within the marriage are seen in a wider context. Hannah, who yearns for excitement, draws on her rich store of childhood memories and often escapes into a dream world. Michael, hard-working and pragmatic, remains a geologist, firmly connected to the earth.

After their child is born, a year after the marriage, it is Michael who usually takes care of him and washes his diapers. Hannah, mired in depression, says she is “contracted, withdrawn into myself as though I had lost a tiny jewel on the sea bed.” Gradually, she becomes more and more unstable, more and more depressed and hysterical, until she makes herself ill, a condition which she sees, ironically, as offering her some freedom. “I had lost my powers of alchemy, the ability to make my dreams carry me over the dividing line between sleeping and waking,” she explains. Despite Hannah’s self-pity and hysteria, Michael, the logical, reliable, unexciting husband retains his composure, so much so that Hannah wonders, “When will this man lose his self-control? Oh, to see him just once in a panic. Shouting for joy. Running wild.”

As the marriage and Hannah’s sanity appear to deteriorate, the author’s use of symbols gives depth and universality to the story. Hannah often imagines a glass dome over herself and her family, and wishes only that it remain transparent, not cloudy. She remembers the childhood games she played with Arab twins in her neighborhood, bossing them around, and she now fears they will wreak their vengeance on her. She imagines warships and a search for Moby Dick on the Nautilus. Even the changing seasons parallel Hannah’s state of mind, with much of her story taking place in the autumn.

Rich with imagery and dense with symbols, this novel, first published in 1968 and recently republished in paperback, depicts two characters who deal in different ways with crises in their lives and marriage. Though the novel is set in Jerusalem about fifty years ago, the issues with which these characters are dealing are as pertinent today as they were then, and the emotional implications are as affecting . Psychologically true, the novel achieves rare universality, even though the reader may not empathize completely with Hannah, who is so often self-indulgent, or Michael, who, though reliable and honest, has so little imagination. Beautifully realized, My Michael, which shows Hannah’s possessiveness and need for control even in the title, depicts an immature woman who does not know who she herself is when she joins her life to that of someone else.  Whether she and Michael learn to move beyond themselves is for the reader to decide.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Natalia O’Hara, appears on http://www.praguepost.com

The photo of Jerusalem at sunset is from http://grahamsdownunderthoughts.blogspot.com

The painting of “Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin, 1950″ is by Ludwig Blum (1891 – 1974), known as the “Painter of Jerusalem.”  It is part of an exhibition held at the Museum of Biblical Art in New York from October 28, 2011 – January 15, 2012. http://mobia.org

ALSO by Amos Oz:  A PANTHER IN THE BASEMENT (on my list of All-Time Favorites),   SOUMCHI,    and         THE RHYMING LIFE AND DEATH