Note:Each year I enjoy looking at the statistics for this website to see which reviews have garnered the most interest.Reviews which have been on the site for several years have the advantage of popular recognition which newer books have yet to receive.This year, in a big surprise, the first twenty books, in terms of reader interest, are evenly divided.Ten books reviewed here are new to the site within the past five years, and ten books have had reviews on the site for six to ten years.
Here are the newer reviews, with links.The older reviews will be posted in a separate list:
“Maybe it’s not just the universe that expands and contracts,” [Leonard] said.“Perhaps the same applies to us…I feel myself getting smaller.I feel quieter and more…invisible.There is this palpable sense of physics; that my life is being pulled inwards.One thing has led to another and now I feel that if I don’t do something, I’ll just carry on some minor harmless existence.”
Leonard, now in his early thirties, has been a quiet person all his life.Even when he was a young school child, his mother often had to “take his side against ornery teachers who complained that they found it impossible to get through to him.”At parent-teacher meetings, his mother would explain that like his deceased father, Leonard “just lacked a Eureka face.”As he grew up, his relationship with his mother became a sort of partnership, one in which he kept her company during her late years.Her death left him virtually alone, the only child of two parents who themselves were only children.Leonard works by himself writing children’s encyclopedias, and he is not really interested in meeting new people – “nothing made him feel lonelier these days than the thought of spending time in the company of extroverts.”His only friend is an equally introverted young man, also in his early thirties, named Hungry Paul, considered his mother’s “sunfish,” a “large, lopsided, sideways swimming fish,” which she had seen at the aquarium and “adopted” because she knew nobody else would pick it as a favorite.His father has always been uneasy with Hungry Paul, feeling that he himself “had barely enough maleness to get him through his own life, never mind imparting it to a son.”Now an adult, Hungry Paul has no idea of what he might want to do with his life.He spends a couple of mornings a week filling in as a substitute mail carrier for the post office and makes occasional volunteer trips to the hospital to chat with patients, or simply to hold their hands.
Irish author Rónán Hession
With two main characters who have little to suggest that their stories will become the charming, funny, insightful, and un-put-down-able chronicles that eventually evolve, Irish author Rónán Hession demonstrates his own creativity and his own ideas regarding communication and its importance or lack of it in our lives.He ignores the generations-old traditions of boisterous Irish writing and non-stop action in favor of a quiet, kindly, and highly original analysis of his characters and their unpretentious and self-contained lives.In this way, he draws in his readers and makes them identify, however impossible that may seem, with two young men whose enjoyment of the small moments makes them less needful of communicating, especially with more worldly, socially active, and often less thoughtful people.For Leonard, the death of his mother leads him to begin an exploration of life; for Hungry Paul, the imminent marriage of his sister, with whom he has been close, inspires him to think about changing his own life.
“Sweet Roses” toffee
Surprises in the lives of these developing characters are so important that I will not discuss much about the plot for fear of spoiling some of the fun, but a few minor examples of the characters’ thinking reveal much about who they are.The author provides meaningful detail throughout, and the tempo of the action creates plenty of emotional drama and numerous “ah-ha” moments. On one occasion, Hungry Paul’s mother asks him to take a tin of Roses sweets to the nurses of the hospital on her behalf, and he takes off, so uninvolved in the task itself that he forgets the tin.He returns home, grabs the tin, and heads back to the hospital.On the way he discovers that the tin is a year out of date, and he is upset at the “injustice.”He changes course, goes to the supermarket instead, and in his quest for satisfaction from several employees regarding the out-of-date purchase, he stimulates the curiosity of several other shoppers who have also had disappointing experiences there. For the first time,Hungry Paul has a sense of leading a “crowd” – and he feels good about it.When the manager opens the tin to inspect the “out-of-date” toffees, however, everyone, including the interested shoppers, is shocked to discover that the tin has been reused, is not new, and contains something else entirely.Laughter erupts from the crowd, and Hungry Paul is so visibly disappointed that the manager is particularly kind to him, giving him an Easter egg in sympathy – he could tell “he was dealing with a man beset by tragicomedy.”Hungry Paul will have to wait a bit longer for another bright moment.
Bog Body, 2000 years old, located in the National Museum of Ireland
Leonard’s life as a writer of children’s encyclopedias also takes a turn during the novel.He falls for a young woman, the fire warden at the place where he works.They have a couple of innocent chats, and Leonard suggests that they have a lunch date – and a visit to the museum to see the “bog bodies” on display there.His date indicates that she is not sure if these “leathery old bodies in bits and pieces” have very much “romantic potential,”and, as she has several other issues on her mind, she decides to leave.“Leonard drifted into the exhibition, where he sat alone in a dimly lit room.Alongside him, a two thousand-year-old bog man lay prostrate in a display case, preserved in the pose he held at the very moment his life changed.”Later that evening, Leonard goes to visit Hungry Paul at his family’s house to play the popular Game of Life. “For Leonard the game had a new and special resonance,” as he had recently embarked on a new career direction, “had met and probably lost, the most special girl” he’d ever known, and now misses his mother.He shares his thoughts with Hungry Paul, and when Leonard mentions that his “date” had gone home before they had a chance to visit the bog bodies, Hungry Paul’s naively ironic reaction, as one might expect from him, is “That’s a pity – some of them still have hair, you know.”
Milton Bradley’s The Game of Life
Both characters continue to develop and mature, and the reader begins to understand them and identify with them – or at least Leonard – as the novel continues. With Hungry Paul, it is more likely that one will empathize with him, hope for his success, and feel happy if he finds a way to lead an independent life that satisfies him.The author sensitively creates these characters and makes the reader understand them by showing them living their lives and sharing their thoughts honestly.His characters take on lives of their own in ways rare to see these days, and I cannot remember when I have read a book which so thoroughly and honestly touched my heart. This debut novel makes me anxious already for Rónán Hession’s next novel. His writing is intelligent, memorable, real, and very funny.
Hungry Paul enjoys holding the hand of hospitalized Mrs. Hawthorne, “like Larkin’s poem, ‘An Arundel Tomb.’ “
“[My mother] thought anyone who was educated was unnecessarily difficult.An idler, a know-it-all, a hair-splitter.But I believed that the greatest knowledge lay in words…facts, stories, fantasies…What mattered was being hungry for [words] and keeping them close for times when life got complicated or bleak.I believed that words could save me.” – Trina
Set in tiny Curon in Italy’s South Tyrol, Marco Balzano’s latest novel brilliantly dissects the effects of words on individual lives, communities, and ultimately countries, and does so without even a trace of affectation or pretension. Here the author tells a dazzling history, and he does so by keeping things simple, letting the action tell most of the story, and keeping his characters and their problems very real.In 1923, Curon, situated near the head of the Adige River, about ten kilometers from the meeting point of Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, is part of an autonomous Italian province in the northern mountains.The hardworking farmers and herders of Curon do not speak Italian, however – they have always been German speakers.When Mussolini becomes prime minister in Italy in 1922, Italian suddenly becomes the required language for the entire area, and the requirement is rigidly enforced.Curon changes from being a German-speaking village in Italy, to a very reluctant Italian-speaking village under the control of the fascists.Years later, when Mussolini ultimately loses power and Hitler and his Nazis intrude, however, the village returns, once again, to speaking German.Language here becomes a primary weapon used by both the residents and the fascists in their attempts to control Curon, its geography, and its people, over the years, and by the time the novel ends, in 1950, all aspects of society have changed.
Author Marco Balzano
In straightforward language, speaker Trina describes her life in Curon, beginning in 1939, when she is almost forty, and flashing back to the 1920s, composing a vivid letter to a missing daughter about life in Curon from the spring of 1923 forward.It was in that year that the fascists marched on Bolzano, the biggest city in the South Tyrol, burning public buildings, beating residents, renaming buildings and streets, Italianizing people’s names, and even changing inscriptions on tombstones.Trina and her friends have just graduated from high school in Curon, and have no idea of what they will do for jobs.The fascists have occupied the schools, town halls, post offices and courts throughout the area, and “nothing is ours anymore.”Most importantly, the Italians under Mussolini now plan “to get the [Curon] dam project going again,” taking advantage of the river’s current to produce energy.Originally proposed in 1911, the dam, as planned, will drown their farms, churches, workshops, and pastures, but it will allow the fascists to turn Bolzano and Merano, the two largest cities in the province, farther along the river, into industrial centers.
Cellar/catacomb: “We piled up the wooden barrels…and sat on heaps of straw…to listen for sounds from outside.”
In the meantime, the residents try to survive their immediate issues, and when a local priest suggests that new graduate Trina consider teaching young children, Trina is happy to do this – primarily to impress Erich, an orphan who works for her father.Her teaching is done in secret, at night, and in German, and classes are held in a cellar-catacomb, hidden from their fascist rulers.After Erich is severely beaten and disfigured with knives, she and Erich decide to marry quickly.Time becomes compressed, and over the next few years (and pages), Trina has two children, daughter Marica, and son Michael.Many friends escape Mussolini’s threats and punishments by resettling in Germany, and when Germany annexes Austria, Erich’s sister and brother-in-law come from Innsbruck to visit to try to persuade them that they should all join in escaping to Germany.Erich and Trina, however, plan to stay at their almost desolate farm, and are publicly ridiculed and mocked.
Work on the dam at the lake continues.
Part II dramatically incorporates the war years, a time in which the plans for the dam on the lake and river expand and become priorities for the fascists.When war is declared, Erich, like other men his age, is drafted and sent to Albania, then Greece, leaving the flocks in Curon to be tended by the elderly, as Trina and Michael do the best they can to keep the farm alive.Still teaching informally, Trina notes that even language has changed.Where once the valley might have become a crossroads for people who tried to understand each other, now, “Italian and German were walls that grew higher and higher.By now, the languages had become racial markers.The dictators had turned them into weapons and declarations of war.”An injury leads to Erich’s return to Curon from war, and eventually he and the family go up into the mountains to avoid the German soldiers, finding refuge with several other families who are also escapees.
Even a meeting with Pope Pius XII does not end the plans for the dam.
Part III concerns the return of Trina and family to Curon after the war is over.By this time, nothing remains the same, and words do not help.Worst of all the changes is the dramatic forward progress made in the building of the dam, and the specific plans involving their farm.The site manager, “the man with the hat,” answers their questions, and the Curon Town Hall does hire a lawyer to help them.They also consult the priest and get a meeting with Pope XII.In all these cases, too, words do not help them, and actions of sabotage do not succeed.As the water rises higher, Trina realizes that her only alternative now is to accept the inevitable.“It took almost a year for the water to cover everything,” she notes.“Slowly, inexorably, it rose halfway up the bell tower, which from then on looked out over the rippled surface of the water like the torso of a castaway.” In simple, clear language, author Marco Balzano has created a gem of a novel which deals with essential themes related to power and compromise and choices and the ways people address the future – with words or with actions, or both.Words between individuals were not enough to solve the complex problems of Curon and authoritarianism, but they are preferable to war and bloodshed, and the bell tower of Curon, emerging from the water of Lake Resia, is a permanent visual reminder – at least for now – that times change, people change, and the power of words must always be in the forefront if society is to be “civilized.”
“The nightingale is the most important bird in literature. No mediocre poem without its nightingale, no good poem either. The nightingale sobs, the nightingale cries, the nightingale toots and whistles. For hundreds of years, poets have been dining off nightingales….I assume the subject of nightingales has been green-lighted and not censored by the greater part of our current German dictatorships.” – Ferdinand
Author Irmgard Keun firmly established her reputation in Germany in 1932, with the publication of the hugely popular pre-Nazi era novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, a celebration of youth and the fast life lived to its fullest. In 1950, almost a generation and a world war later, Keun published Ferdinand, The Man with the Kind Heart, depicting the aftermath of the war and the separation of Germany into two nations, East and West.“Ordinary” citizens of this time and place do not know what to expect in the future, what goals make sense in this destroyed society, and how to live a real life. These are some of the very real goals of main character Ferdinand Timpe.A former POW and fiancé of a girl who is almost a stranger to him, Ferdinand himself is not intrinsically very interesting, but author Irmgard Keun is such a high-powered, energetic writer, so wild in creating scenarios filled with irony, humor, and constant surprises, that once a reader starts exploring her novel, it becomes all-encompassing.Her tornado of images and actions never lets up, bringing even Ferdinand to reluctant life.
Nightingale, singing.
As the novel opens, Ferdinand has just been hired to write an article for Heinrich, editor of “an apolitical weekly paper called Red Dawn,” which has yet to produce a single issue.Ferdinand, after obtaining a 50-mark advance, then begins to explore some of the subjects he could write about – even including nightingales, though he knows nothing about them.Still, “the daily press likes it when authors write about a thing of which they have no knowledge.Profound ignorance persuades great circles of readers.” While considering a subject, Ferdinand catches a pickpocket who is trying to rob him.When he lets him go, his cousin Magnesius cannot understand why.For Ferdinand, people all over the world have been trying to destroy him, with big and small bombs, atom bombs, death rays, poison gas and other vileness.At this point, he even feels guilty about disappointing the pickpocket.He wonders if he should write an article about Magnesius, who is working with “non-ferrous metals,” then decides not to because “by his existence or the mere account of it, Magnesius could make militarists even of those who hated the war as much as the voice of their sergeant majors.” He then goes on to consider writing about actresses, animals (though the cockroach is the only one he knows well), a love story, or a story about barns.
Balloon with room at the bottom, a place of total privacy.
Subsequent chapters focus on several repeating characters, one of the most intriguing of whom is Johanna, a cousin, who has had an unknown number of marriages and relationships and who is now trying to convince a young man named Anton to be her “first true love.” Ferdinand’s large family of seven or eight brothers and sisters, in addition to parents, numerous cousins, aunts, and uncles, provides an unlimited number of associations and stories within stories here, to the point that Ferdinand can only dream of solitude. He reminisces about the POW camp where he was held and tried to appear cheerful and comradely to others, “but privately my thoughts were tangled and ugly. My only comfort was the hope that I was just as infuriating to others as they to me. And I always, always wanted to be alone.” To escape, he imagines “a little room attached to a balloon high up in the sky, [with] a bed with me lying on it,” along with a few essentials – drinks, cigarettes, and food. He even imagines staying up there for weeks on end, and regrets that at the present that’s impossible – he has a fiancée, Luise, who seems as ambivalent about him as he is about her. He knows that if he is to obtain the solitude he desires, he needs to find another suitor for her.
Bookstore with philatelic collection
Ferdinand has had many jobs, from an electrician to pub chef, tailor, car mechanic, actor, swimming teacher, ice-cream salesman, designer of rock gardens, breeder of canaries, cow milker, and ladies’ hair stylist. His happiest time, however, was as a bookseller in the old city of Cologne, where he inherited the bookshop and stamp collection of an uncle before the war, and where he tried to live as his uncle did – as a hermit. During the war, however, Cologne was heavily damaged, with ruins all over the city now, and the bookshop is destroyed. Moving to Bonn, he becomes a “cheerful adviser” for a business which specializes in the occult, clairvoyance, dreams, and even podiatry. He has his own office and becomes an expert in offering advice on virtually any subject, concluding that “most of my female customers haven’t come to me for advice at all, but for some affirmation of their good points [or] to dump their emotional garbage and use me as a type of human dustbin.” This gem of a chapter gives a view of life from several points of view in the postwar era, focusing on the love stories and needs of both women and men, and when his cousin Joanna comes to talk about her love for Anton, another story unfolds.
Irmkard Keun, 1931, when she was twenty-six
This book never quits, with non-stop characters, action, and observations about life, often satiric on the part of the author, though sincere on the part of the innocent main character. Clearly reflecting the author’s own character, independence, and refusal to accede to the powers of Nazism, her earlier novel, The Artificial Silk Girl (1932), is said to be for pre-Nazi Germany what Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) has been for Jazz Age America, celebrating everything the growing Nazi leadership rejected. When her books were banned and confiscated and her own life became endangered in 1930s Germany, she left the country, living under another name in other European countries. She then faked her own suicide and returned to Germany in 1940 under a false name, living there, undetected, until 1945. In 1950, when she published this novel of Ferdinand, she used Ferdinand as the icon around whom the still very real cultural and social conflicts in Germany revolved. The novel speaks for itself. There are no nightingales here.
The balloon with a room below, a place of total privacy, is an image which tantalizes Ferdinand. https://www.pinterest.com
Ferdinand loved the bookshop with philatelic collection in Cologne which his uncle left to him, his favorite occupation ever. https://stampauctionnetwork.com
The photo of Irmgard Keun, taken when she was twenty-six, is found on https://www.welt.de
“[Ultimately,] the river would flow on…long after the earth had closed in around the bones of the past, and the land would become what it always had been: a palimpsest, waiting for a new story to be told, which was always the old story, of love and loss and joy and grief.”
Stories both new and old surround the often wild river which flows through North Yorkshire, exerting an almost incalculable force on the lives of the residents of the village of Starome.Good and evil, happiness and sadness, all begin and end with the unnamed river, which becomes almost a character in The River Within by Karen Power.In the novel’s own opening quotation, Danny Masters drifts in the water, undisturbed, “his feet nudging the river bank, his arms lifted above his head as though relishing the summer warmth after the silt and gloom of the bone-cold cavern where he’d been lodged these past days.” The reader quickly realizes, with horror, that Danny’s return home is both real and symbolic – he is physically back in the village where he grew up and worked, but he has left the earth, spiritually, forever.Three friends – Thomas Fairweather, his sister Lenny (Helena), and Alexander Richmond – walking along the river bank, discover Danny’s decaying body.All have known Danny well, their lives and activities overlapping since childhood.
Wild river in River Moors National Park, N. Yorkshire.
Danny, who was not able to go to college, has recently returned home for a visit after undergoing training for the army, and he has spent some time with his vacationing friends after his return.All are stunned by the discovery of his body, as all have shared special, private relationships within the group and with Danny. A classic dark melodrama evolves, with intense, emotional scenes, as these late teens try to figure out who they are, what they believe, who and why they love, and how they deal with frustration.Both Danny and Alexander are or have been in love with sweet Lenny, who, at the time of the action, is hoping to marry Alexander.At the same time, life is changing for their parents, people like Venetia and her husband Angus, who have found that owning Richmond Hall, a large agricultural estate, does not provide enough income to keep the manor house updated.The trickle-down economic effect also makes its mark on Peter Fairweather, father of Lenny and Thomas, who manages the day-to-day finances of the estate.
In one room in Richmond Hall is a wood garland framing a panel with a “tangle of carved birds” by Grinling Gibbons
The stories of all these intersecting relationships evolve within short chapters told by Danny and Lenny,primarily in August, 1955, up until Danny’s death, with Lady Venetia Richmond, Alexander’s mother, also contributing stories throughout, providing background from the mid-1930s and through 1955.Alexander, as the son and heir of Richmond Hall, is a significant main character and drives much of the action, but he has no chapters in which he is the speaker.Instead, he is shown through the eyes of others, a complex character whose sometimes erratic behavior affects all of them, and whose own psychology is a constant mystery. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the fact that Lady Richmond, his mother, is a cold, undemonstrativewoman whose relationship with Alexander, has always been more formal – even distant – than what he needs for understanding his world.
Ophelia singing in the river, a painting by John Everett Millais, 1851-1852
While all the characters are are trying to live and understand their lives, death plays a big role, from the death of Danny Masters at the beginning of the novel, to the deaths of several other characters in the course of the action – through illness, accident, possible murder, and suicide.At no point does author Karen Powell or any other character draw obvious parallels with the action in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a comparison which appears in early reviews of this novel.The author herself does use a quotation from Hamlet, Act IV, as the single-sentence epigraph beginning the novel – “Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia” – referring to Ophelia’s drowning in the play – but she does not make any additional direct references to Shakespeare or Ophelia after that.Hamlet’s love story with Ophelia does find a few obvious parallels with that of Alexander and Lenny, but the novel is significantly different beyond that in terms of who dies, when, why, and even by whom.In addition, the scale of the deaths and what the reader/viewer learns from them are dissimilar. The novel is the world “writ small,” far from the more universal real world as Shakespeare portrays it, perhaps a deliberate irony.Two quotations featured on the back jacket of the book are what seem to confirm the author’s and/or publisher’s intent to draw parallels between this book and Hamlet, a comparison which draws the reader away from the author’s story and its implications, without adding depth or grandeur to it.
Author Karen Powell
Those who love romances, dark melodrama, and/or psychological stories will enjoy reading this one, which celebrates the emotions, feelings, and self-focused behavior of many of its characters. Stories long buried in the past emerge near the end, involving the background and death of Lennie’s mother, and the imminent deaths of both fathers – Angus Richmond and Peter Fairweather – creating a scenario in which the focus is clearly on their children and their actions.The concluding paragraphs feel compressed and omit details related to the growth of some characters’ feelings and motivations, and it is the Epilogue in which Venetia leaves the manor house for a cottage on the property below hers which provides some of the resolutions readers will be looking for.“Was that all a family amounted to? [she wonders].A jumble of furniture heaped up on the Great Lawn like abandoned props on a stage, the curtainless windows of her sitting room an empty backdrop? Soon developers would come to scrape the house from the landscape, making way for other lives.The river would flow on, though, long after the earth had closed in around the bones of the past, and the land would become what it always had been….the old story, of love and loss and joy and grief.”
At one point Danny finds Lennie picking black roses along the Stride.
Photos. The River at River Moors National Park in N. Yorkshire, where this novel takes place. https://www.dreamstime.com
In one room in Richmond Hall is a wood garland framing a panel with a “tangle of carved birds” by Grinling Gibbons. https://www.grinlinggibbonsphotos.com
Ophelia singing in the river, a painting by John Everett Millais, 1851-1852. https://www.etsy.com
Note: Each year I enjoy looking at the statistics for this website to see which reviews have garnered the most interest. Reviews which have been on the site for several years have the advantage of popular recognition which newer books have yet to receive. This year, in a big surprise, the first twenty books, in terms of reader interest, are evenly divided. Ten books reviewed here are new to the site within the past five years, and ten books have had reviews on the site for six to ten years.
6. Ian McEwan – The Cockroach. Posted October 14, 2019. (England)
Leonard, now in his early thirties, has been a quiet person all his life.
Set in tiny Curon in Italy’s South Tyrol, Marco Balzano’s latest novel brilliantly dissects the effects of words on individual lives, communities, and ultimately countries, and does so without even a trace of affectation or pretension.
Stories both new and old surround the often wild river which flows through North Yorkshire, exerting an almost incalculable force on the lives of the residents of the village of Starome.
