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Richard Wagamese–MEDICINE WALK

Sep 20th, 2015 by

Note: Richard Wagamese was WINNER of Canada’s National Aboriginal Achievement Award for 2012.

“Jimmy said Starlight was the name given to them that got teachin’s from Star People. Long ago. Way back. Legend goes that they came outta the stars on a night like this. Clear night. Sat with the people and told ’em stuff. Stories mostly, about the way of things…Our people. Starlights. We’re meant to be teachers and storytellers. They say nights like this bring them teachin’s and stories back and that’s when they oughta be passed on again.”—Eldon Starlight, the father

On a magnificent, clear night, perfect for passing on stories about people and their heritage, Franklin Starlight, age sixteen, and his father Eldon, from whom he has been estranged for nearly all of his life, sit smoking around a campfire in the mountains, as their stories, often sad, emerge to be shared.  Eldon, an alcoholic who is just days away from death, has persuaded his son-in-name-only to accompany him on his final trip “beyond the ridge.”  Riding Franklin’s horse, to which he eventually needs to be tied hand and foot as he sinks in and out of consciousness, Eldon shares his life story, and stories involving other people around him, in a final effort to connect with his son and to reconcile himself with his own guilt about actions that have haunted his past.  Young Franklin has been brought up by “the old man,” a white man, no kin, who has devoted his life to him, while Eldon Starlight, his real father, has lived many miles away and avoided all sense of responsibility since Franklin’s birth, losing himself in drink instead.  The old white man has taught Franklin everything he knows – about being resourceful on the farm, thoughtful toward others, respectful toward the land and its animals, and resolute in his actions – the Indian way – and, unlike the disengaged Eldon Starlight, the boy and the old man love and honor each other through their actions.

The novel that Ojibway author and storyteller Richard Wagamese creates from this outline is thoughtful and full of heart – and so gripping that it is hard to imagine any reader not being left breathless from the sheer drama of the writing and its overwhelming message.  It is a wondrous novel about stories, their importance in our lives and memories, their ability to help us reconcile the past with the present, and ultimately their power to teach us the nature of the world and our relationship to it.  Without didacticism or preachiness, Wagamese depicts the last few days in the life of Eldon Starlight whose stories lead to an unusual coming-of-age for son Franklin – at the same time that they may be a uniquely life-affirming experience for his irresponsible father. Stories about the natural beauty on the mountain and their respect for it accompany Franklin’s always-successful search for food as he leads his father “over the ridge.” Stories about Eldon’s past, including his relationship with Franklin’s mother, also emerge as Eldon tries to cope with the terrible aftereffects of the Korean War and his life afterward.

A boom man keeping the logs moving so they do not getting tangled.

Eldon Starlight’s best friend Jimmy Weaseltail is his constant companion from the age of thirteen, when Eldon’s own father dies and Eldon has to drop out of school and to work with fruit pickers, wood cutters, fish gutters, and tree planters. After work, he and Jimmy both love to listen to Eldon’s mother read to them – Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Robert Louis Stevenson – authors from whom they get most of their “book learning” when their formal schooling ends early.  Ultimately, Eldon and Jimmy work as “boom men,” helping to guide dangerous flotillas of logs down the river during logging season. Later, when Eldon and Jimmy sense that it is time to move on, they sign up for a Royal Canadian regiment.  After training across the country at Camp Petawawa, they head for the Korean War and their own battles at Pusan, a turning point for both of them.

Iconic photo of men dealing with the horrors of the Korean War

Since the reader already knows the outcome of Eldon’s death journey from the earliest pages of the novel, Wagamese performs an almost magical feat of keeping the reader intensely interested in the characters and their lives through the creation of parallel narratives.  These unpretentious and straightforward stories carry the novel in several different directions simultaneously.  The author focuses on five separate life-lines:  The on-going life story of Eldon Starlight, Franklin’s father, in the days leading up to their final journey;  Franklin’s early life as a child growing up on a farm with his white foster father, who has tried to teach him all the Indian lore he knows;  the day-to-day story of Franklin and Eldon as they journey through the mountains to Eldon’s chosen resting place, absorbing the lessons nature has to offer along the way; the experiences of Eldon and Jimmy in Pusan during the Korean War; and ultimately, Eldon’s life after the war and his first connection with Franklin’s mother.  Wagamese keeps all five plot lines moving forward smoothly without confusing the reader, at the same time that he withholds key information to develop considerable, on-going suspense about immediate outcomes.

Photo by C. J. Foxcroft, showing a nine-foot grizzly, relative to the size of an average man. Franklin must deal with a grizzly by himself during his journey.

In unaffected and straightforward language, Wagamese draws the reader into the lives of Franklin and his father Eldon, both lives quite different from what most readers have experienced, yet we feel involved and caring because of the universal values which Wagamese clearly believes unite us all.  At the same time, he also describes specifically Indian ways of life for Franklin, who “hears symphonies in wind across a ridge and arias in the screech of hawks and eagles, the huff of grizzlies and the pierce of a wolf call against the unblinking eye of the moon.  He was Indian.”  In riding to meet his father, forty miles away, he tells us that his horse “knew the smell of cougar and bear so he was content to let her walk while he sat and smoked and watched the land.”  His descriptions of catching trout without a fishing rod, and thanking nature for its bounty, are balanced by irony when he first sees his father, “his buttocks like small lumps of dough and the rest of him all juts and pokes and seams of bone under sallow skin.”  Ultimately, as Franklin accompanies the horse carrying his father through the mountains, he tells his father something he learned from “the old man”:  “Everything a guy would need is here if you want it and know how to look for it…You gotta spend time gatherin’ what you need.  What you need to keep you strong.  He called it a medicine walk,” to which his unredeemed father comments, blandly, “Hand us that crock.”

An Ojibwe boy named “Boy Chief,” painted by George Catlin in 1843. Mellon Collection

A novel which satisfies on every level, Medicine Walk does honor to its author and to the culture he is describing at the same time that he is brutally honest.  A magnificent novel – one of the best of the year.

ALSO by Wagamese:  STARLIGHT    and    INDIAN HORSE

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

The painting of a “boom man” may be found here:  http://tim-ber.blogspot.com/

The horrors of the Korean War are seen in this iconic photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/

C. J. Foxcroft’s photo of a nine-foot grizzly bear, relative to the height of an average man, is from https://www.pinterest.com

George Catlin painted a portrait of an Ojibway “Boy Chief”  in 1843.  It is part of the Mellon Collection.  https://en.wikipedia.org/

MEDICINE WALK
Fiction, Review, Aboriginal Nations, Native American, Book Club Suggestions, Canada, Literary, Social and Political Issues
Written by: Richard Wagamese
Published by: Milkweed Editions
Date Published: 05/12/2015
ISBN: 978-1571311153
Available in: Hardcover

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Aboriginal nations, Book Club Suggestions, Canada, Literary, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

William Boyd–ANY HUMAN HEART

Sep 18th, 2015 by

Note:  WINNER of many literary awards during a distinguished career, William Boyd was SHORTLISTED for the IMPAC Dublin Award for Any Human Heart: The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart in 2004.

“We keep a journal to entrap the collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being…[but] the true journal…doesn’t try to posit any order or hierarchy, doesn’t try to judge or analyse.”

Life, as understood by Logan Mountstuart, is a series of random events, not events which are fated, controlled by a higher power, or the result of carefully made decisions. There’s nothing and no one to blame for whatever good or bad luck we may have in life. A person may choose to enjoy the good times, seek out happiness wherever possible, and live life to the fullest or sit back passively and just endure whatever happens. Logan Mountstuart is one of the former types, a man who recognizes that “Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary–it is the respective proportions of those categories that make life appear interesting.”

But Mountstuart also believes that one can look for and find the extraordinary within the ordinary. Through his personal journals, begun in 1923, when he is seventeen, and continuing to the time of his death in 1991, we come to know Mountstuart intimately, both as an individual, growing and changing, and as an Everyman, someone who participates in and is affected by the seminal events of the 20th century, after World War I. Because he is a writer, he is able to travel and to know other writers and artists of the period. When he meets Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemingway (whom he confuses with F. Scott Fitzgerald), Virginia Woolf, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh, and Ian Fleming, the reader has the vicarious fun of being there and meeting them, too, since Mountstuart, as a person, appears to be very much like the rest of us.

Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris, 1912, now in Art Institute of Chicago

He buys early paintings by Paul Klee and Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso draws a quick portrait of him and signs it. He engages in intellectual discussions about Braque, James Joyce,  the Bloomsbury group and others and keeps the reader aware of literary and artistic achievements of the era.  It is in his depiction of the historical moment that Boyd shines. By describing events through Mountstuart’s experience, he is able to give a human face to people and circumstances which have influenced our history, and his choice of small details, often unique, offers a new slant on some familiar events. Boyd is particularly good at showing simultaneous events–Franco at the gates of Barcelona while Hitler is entering Prague–and his explanation of Neville Chamberlain’s giving up of the Sudetenland resonates as an honest and even logical attempt to avoid the desperation of war.

Royal Navy Commander Ian Fleming, in His Majesty’s Secret Service

When Ian Fleming, who works for the Secret Service, gets Mountstuart a job in Naval Intelligence, the reader is introduced to the colorful world of the Duke of Windsor, as Mountstuart “spies” on him to make sure that the Duke’s German sympathies do not make him a pawn of the enemy.  As these passages about the Duke and his wife, the former Wallis Warfield Simpson, live and breathe their rarefied air, Mountstuart eventually comes to believe that the Duke and Duchess and/or their friends have arranged a nasty form of punishment especially for him, near the end of the war.  Post-war, Mountstuart continues to be involved with the world of artists and writers–and world events–eventually living in Nigeria before retiring to France.  His sojourn in New York City is most interesting for the “contact” he makes with artist “Nat Tate,” the subject of his previous novel, Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928 – 1960, which was Boyd’s experiment with an art hoax.

NAT TATE, Boyd’s previous novel, about a character who appears in this book, was an elaborate art hoax, and a delightful novel to read. See link below.

Entertaining and fast-paced, the novel’s more than five hundred pages, including nine diaries and a twelve-page index, speed along on the energy of the personal stories and the color of the world events in which Mountstuart and his acquaintances participate.  His belief that “life is just the aggregate of one’s good luck and bad luck”–that things simply happen–leads, of necessity, to a story which is not organized by a hidden, underlying theme. Befitting its philosophy, it is episodic and random, using the passage of time as its primary framework. Mountstuart himself accepts what happens to him, though it often saddens him, and he does not agonize over what he might have done differently–he does not believe that he could have changed things. In that regard he remains one-dimensional, but, in many ways an Everyman for the history of the times.  Fun to read, the book offers a new “take” on events which have shaped our own times, offering few, if any, lessons for the future, other than to live life, despite its ups and downs. As Mountstuart himself points out, life ultimately is a yo-yo, “a jerking, spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child.”

ALSO by William Boyd, reviewed here:  WAITING FOR SUNRISE and     NAT TATE, AN AMERICAN ARTIST,          SWEET CARESS,     RESTLESS (link to Amazon review) .      LOVE IS BLIND,    TRIO

Photos, in order: The book cover for this edition of this book, by Megan Wilson, is part of the Book Cover Archive:  http://bookcoverarchive.com/

The author’s photo is from  http://www.voanews.com/

Juan Gris’s portrait of Pablo Picasso, shown here, is now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago.  https://en.wikipedia.org/

Ian Fleming, who appears in this novel, was a Royal Navy Commander in His Majesty’s Secret Service, and he recruited Logan Mountstuart to help keep tabs on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who were Nazi sympathizers.  http://www.combatreform.org/

The cover for the Nat Tate book, reviewed here, appears on https://en.wikipedia.org/

ANY HUMAN HEART
REVIEW. Book Club Suggestions, England, Historical, Literary, Social and Political Issues
Written by: William Boyd
Published by: Vintage
Edition: Reprint
ISBN: 978-1400031009

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, England, Historical, Literary, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

Andrei Makine–A WOMAN LOVED

Sep 14th, 2015 by

Note: Andrei Makine’s Dreams of My Russian Summers was WINNER of both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis.

“[Oleg] knew [Catherine]’s political views, what she read, the personalities of the people she corresponded with, her carnal cravings (the ‘uterine rage’ derided by so many biographers)…her preference for riding astride a horse rather than side-saddle…Everything…except that often this ‘everything’ seemed strangely incomplete.  Perhaps the key to the enigma could be found in [her] naïve observation that: ‘The real problem in my life is that my heart cannot survive for a single moment without love.’ ”  –Filmmaker Oleg Erdmann on his film subject, Catherine the Great.

In a metafictional novel which ranges widely over almost three centuries of Russian history, author Andrei Makine, a Russian émigré who has lived in France since 1987, recreates the life of a young Russian author/filmmaker who finds that the concept of creativity in the world in which he lives must always bend to the will of someone else – the censors, a hired director, or the tastes of the public – if his work is to survive.   Oleg Erdmann, his author/main character, is the son of German parents who emigrated to Russia, where Oleg was born.  His father was never able to cope with the difficulties he faced as the head of an immigrant family in a country which did not admit him into its mainstream, and he spent most of his spare time escaping his personal problems by painstakingly creating a detailed model of a giant castle, elaborate and reminiscent of the castles from the eras of Peter the Great and his successors – the Peterhof, the Winter Palace, and the Oranienbaum.  Whenever serious problems would arise in his daily life, his father would say, softly, “This is all happening to me because of that little German girl who became Catherine the Great.”

Determined to write a screenplay about Catherine the Great, years later, Oleg goes way beyond the limits of the usual biography, questioning not only Catherine’s life and her decisions but also the very nature of love and how one achieves it, using Catherine’s lengthy affairs with over a dozen men to expand the scope of his screenplay into an examination of reality and imagination in life, love, and art.  To accomplish this, author Makine creates an experimental novel, its nature clear from the opening chapter in which a scene created by Erdman is being filmed for TV.  A great mirror divides a salon from the alcove behind it, and it is raised and lowered by a lever controlled by Catherine herself.  On the salon side, Catherine conducts audiences at her  desk, pen in hand, meeting and conducting royal business with the chancellor, ambassadors, field marshals, kings, and writers.  On the other side waits her naked lover of the hour.  The instant her audience is over, Catherine raises the lever (and mirror) and rushes to greet her lover, enjoying his favors, then scurrying back behind the mirror to the salon with split-second precision before her next audience begins and a new lover makes his way secretly behind the mirror.  As one envisions the timing necessary, the scene resembles a slapstick bedroom comedy.

Catherine the Great in her late thirties. Portrait by a follower of Giovanni Battista Lampi.

With no transition between this and other early scenes, new characters are added to the mix.  Catherine’s  list of accomplishments and her equally long list of lovers between 1752, when she was twenty-three and 1786, when she was fifty-seven, are inserted in the next chapter, followed by references to Oleg’s first film, his period spent on the blacklist, then the surprising rehabilitation of his reputation.  His current work, which is not identified by time period, but which we learn in Part IV is probably during the time of Brezhnev, creates a maelstrom of action and characters, all swirling, providing bits and pieces of information needed to put the entire novel into perspective, as Catherine rules through sex and violence – at least in Oleg’s film series, now being presented on Russian public television.  Just as the reader may become confused by the lack of a clear time frame for the various episodes at the beginning of the novel, Oleg fears that “his detailed research into the labyrinths of History was [also] making Catherine’s life seem impenetrable, ambiguous.” Still, he  “continued to hope that from the murky confusion of the archives a shining light would burst forth – some thrilling truth that went beyond History itself!”

The green Winter Palace in winter, where Catherine was most often in residence.

The death of Catherine’s husband, Peter III, estranged since the beginning of their ill-fated marriage when she was fourteen and he was sixteen, remains a mystery throughout, as does the paternity of her son Paul.  Was Tsar Peter III, murdered?  A bulletin issued by Catherine reads, “On the seventh day of our accession to the throne we were advised that the former Tsar, Peter III,  suffered another of his hemorrhoidal attacks…Aware of our Christian duty, we issued orders for him to be given the necessary medical attention…To our great sorrow, we learned that God’s will had put an end to his life.”  Later, the reader learns that “Peter III loves ice cream, and it is by promising him this dessert that his murderers lure him into the trap.”  Hemorrhoids or ice cream?  Take your choice.

When Catherine goes to visit the Crimea, Potemkin makes sure that the dilapidated buildings there look better than they really are by building inexpensive facades over the ruination. In 2013, the Russian village of Susdal (above) created a “Potemkin village” using Photoshop and plastic sheeting because President Putin was coming to visit.

Gradually, the background and the foreground come together  as the reader gains insights into Makine’s thinking while he continues both Oleg’s and Catherine’s stories.  Catherine’s entrapment within the duties of Tsarina, and her inability ever to leave Russia, fade into the background as Oleg and Eva Sander, who is playing the part of “the older Catherine” in the wildly successful TV series, become close and he begins to share his own background.  Reality vs. imagination merge as a main idea once again when Eva questions Oleg:  “You said that for the tsarina love was simply a theatrical performance.”  To which he responds that it was “a drama she acts in and applauds at the same time: I love and I am loved?  Age will make her more humble…[Her] whole life took place in this ‘as if’…no man ever loved her.” Eventually, Oleg and Eva travel from Russia through Germany and Switzerland into Italy, following the maps of Lanskoy, Catherine’s greatest love, as all the plot lines of the novel come together.  Both romantic and thoughtful, A Woman Loved stretches the boundaries of chronology and of the novel itself to make a final statement about fantasy and truth in matters of life, love and art.  (Gracefully translated by Geoffrey Strachan)

ALSO reviewed here: Makine’s  THE LIFE OF AN UNKNOWN MAN

Another Photoshopped covering in the “Potemkin village” created in the town of Susdal when Vladimir Putin was scheduled to visit in 2013.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://lechouandesvilles.over-blog.com

Catherine the Great, in her thirties, painted by a follower of  Giovanni Batista Lampi:  http://www.gogmsite.net/

The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg was Catherine’s primary place of residence.  http://stpetersburg-guide.com/

When Catherine goes to visit the Crimea, Potemkin makes sure that the dilapidated buildings there look better than they really are by building inexpensive facades over the ruination. In 2013, the village of Susdal in Russia created a “Potemkin village” using Photoshop and plastic because President Putin was coming for a visit.    http://imgur.com/

The photo of the facade with the cat in the Potemkin village of Susdal is from http://destinationeconomy.com

ARC:  Graywolf Press

A WOMAN LOVED
Novel. Fiction. Experimental, France, Germany, Literary, Russia/Soviet Union, Social and Political Issues
Written by: Andrei Makine
Published by: Graywolf Press
Date Published: 08/04/2015
ISBN: 978-1555977115
Available in: Ebook Paperback

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Experimental, France, Germany, Literary, Russia/Soviet Union, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

David Lagercrantz–THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB

Sep 11th, 2015 by

“Your phone’s buzzing.”

“It’s always buzzing.”

“How about answering it…?”

“Yes, yes,” Blomqvist muttered.

“Who’s that?” he asked, gruffly.

“Salander,” said the voice, and at that he gave a big smile.

“Lisbeth, is that you?”

“Shut up and listen,” she said.  And so he did.

Eighty million copies of the three novels in Stieg Larsson’s posthumous Millenium series have been sold since they were released in Sweden and then translated into almost every language in the world.  Most readers who began this series – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2007) – became instant fans of its main characters, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist, and went on to read all of the books.  Many also attended the three superb Swedish films made of these novels. Chosen by the heirs of Stieg Larsson’s estate to be the author of the first new Millenium novel in almost a decade, David Lagercrantz is a Swedish journalist like Larsson and his main character Blomqvist, but Lagercrantz is also a successful novelist, and it may be for these story-telling skills that he was selected to write the sequel to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Larsson’s last novel.  For Lagercrantz, the task of succeeding as the author of a new Millenium novel must have been intimidating, if not terrifying, with everyone who has ever read these novels looking for mistakes, changes, and signs that the main characters, Salander, a damaged and reclusive computer hacker, and Mikael Blomqvist, an investigative reporter and founder of Millenium magazine, might not be so intriguing in this novel, or that the plots might not be as full of suspense and wild excitement, or that Lagercrantz might not be up to the task as Larsson’s successor.

Time to stop wondering.  Here Lagercrantz’s skills as a fiction writer add to the novel, and while it may not have the raw energy – and sometimes sadistic violence – of Stieg Larsson’s novels, it is more polished, with a fine sense of plotting which allows the author to draw in the reader and draw out the excitement.  The plot here is more sophisticated in some ways, emphasizing computer hacking at the highest level – a break-in at NSA Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, which obviously requires close cooperation among the top security agencies of the US, Sweden, and other European countries if they are going to stop the hackers. No one knows who is responsible, but past history indicates that there may be several groups, some of whom are probably independent, some associated with Russia, and some associated with international organized crime.  This new hacking job threatens the safety of the world in new ways, however, since it involves research into a new kind of computer, one that replicates biological evolution on a digital level through a program which allows a computer to learn from its own mistakes and ultimately achieve “something with the intelligence of a human being, but the speed and precision of a computer.”  The plot, understandable and clearly explained, even for those of us who never studied advanced math or computer science, works because Frans Balder, the person who developed this program and who fears for the safety of the world, is someone the reader has come to know and to like.

Near dark on a blustery November day, Blomqvist walks to his office near the Maria Magdalena Kyrka, built in the 16th century

The brief telephone call in which Salander and Blomqvist speak, quoted at the opening of this review, comes at the halfway point of the novel, after the characters have been introduced and after the reader has enjoyed seeing brief glimpses of Salander in her own life, without any connection to Blomqvist other than occasional, often ignored e-mails.  Still a hacker, still a recluse, and still suffering from the horrific abuses of her childhood, all reviewed during this novel (which, by the way, also has a helpful list of past characters from the trilogy at the beginning of the book), Salander has a whole new set of personal problems associated with a particularly dangerous family member.  Blomqvist, whose Millenium magazine is less profitable than it once was, is dealing with takeover companies and a younger generation which does not share his intense interest in making the world “right.”  He is also drinking more.  In a wonderful stylistic move, author Lagercrantz occasionally alternates Lisbeth’s point of view with that of Blomqvist, showing how each is reacting to the same situation.

Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, is Lisbeth Salander’s favorite superhero.

To draw out the suspense involving the get-together of Salander and Blomqvist, Lagercrantz first refers to the incredible skills of an unnamed hacker, almost certainly Lisbeth, then creates a night-time scene of Salander alone with some files she has hacked from the NSA, and then, ultimately with an autistic child, the witness to a murder, with whom Salander has connected and from whom she needs to gain information.  In the past, Larsson has often compared Lisbeth to the Swedish children’s “heroine” Pippi Longstocking, a pattern which Lagercranz continues here, in spots, but Lagercranz also develops Lisbeth further by showing that her favorite superhero is Janet Van Dyne, “Wasp,” the opponent of the Spider Society in the Marvel Comics series, an image which takes on added significance here and explains why this book is entitled The Girl in the Spider’s Web and not The Girl in the Spider Web.

Schloss Elmau in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where Lisbeth helps two people find refuge from danger.

Lagercrantz includes a number of additional literary references here.  Oliver Sachs, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, with its references to autism and autistic children, receives significant attention when an autistic child, who may be a savant, must be protected after witnessing a murder.  Other research about autism and savants, and Lisbeth Salander’s particular insights into these, based on her own life experience, add to the reader’s understanding and the sense of the author’s direction.  Ultimately, two characters need to find a safe place to hide from criminals until the hacking can be cleared up, as Lisbeth helps to protect them.  However self-absorbed she may have seemed in the previous novels, she is more sensitive here, and anxious to protect the innocent. Her scenes with the autistic boy are among the best in the novel.  As the novel winds to a close, the author ties up loose ends and resolves a number of personal problems faced by the characters.  Though Blomqvist and Salander may not dominate the action as much as they have done in some past novels, the author is clearly getting to know them better and setting the scene for new action moving in new directions in future novels.  I, for one, will look forward to the next in the series.

The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson:  THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO,     THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE and  THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST

ALSO by David Lagercrantz:  THE GIRL WHO TAKES AN EYE FOR AN EYE,      THE GIRL WHO LIVED TWICE

The Swedish films made from these books are also reviewed here:  THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (FILM), with video trailer at end.       THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (FILM), with video trailer at end.       THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST (FILM), with video trailer at end.

Photos in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.larepubliquedespyrenees.fr

The Maria Magdalena Kyrka, built in the 16th century, is located between Blomqvist’s apartment and his office, a gloomy sight on a dark and blustery night in November.  https://commons.wikimedia.org Photo by Arvid V

Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, is Lisbeth Salander’s favorite SuperHero from the Action Comics, a factor which takes on added significance within her own conflicts.  http://marvel.wikia.com

The Schloss Elmau in Garmisch-Partenkirchen becomes a place of refuge for two endangered people whom Lisbeth wants to protect.   http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB
Reviews. Fiction, Book Club Suggestions, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Nordic Noir, Social and Political Issues, Sweden, Millenium, Stieg Larsson
Written by: David Lagercrantz
Published by: Knopf
Date Published: 09/01/2015
Edition: Millenium series, Larsson, Salander, Blomquist
ISBN: 978-0385354288
Available in: Ebook Paperback Hardcover

Posted in 6-2015 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Nordic Noir, Social and Political Issues, Sweden | No Comments »

Naja Marie Aidt–ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS

Sep 5th, 2015 by

Note: Danish author Naja Marie Aidt, who was born in Greenland and spent her early years there, was WINNER of both the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and the Danish Critics Prize for Literature in 2008 for her story collection, Baboon.

“People have got to stop their navel-gazing bullshit and write real stories.  What the hell is wrong with fiction?  The idea that it’s truer and more real to write about yourself is nothing but the unreflective extension of individualism and the childish self-centeredness of our stunted generation.  We’ve let ourselves be stunted.  There’s no will, no rebellion, or idealism in us.  No solidarity.  And now, apparently, we feel the need to spew our self-absorbed, narcissistic self-pity over literature as well.  It’s enough to make you vomit.”

The literary arguments expressed above by Jules, a friend of the main character here, certainly do not apply to this novel – well-developed fiction with a beginning, middle, and end; imagined characters who let us into their lives without making us feel that they are confessing the author’s own hidden secrets; and new renderings of broad, universal themes which have pervaded literature from its beginnings. The personality of Thomas O’Mally Lindstrom, the main character, was forged in his dysfunctional childhood with an abusive father and an absent mother, and he has never fully resolved many issues.  As he deals with the uncertainties of his current adult life, he reveals his inner thoughts, and though some unkind readers might think of his confessions as “navel-gazing,” they are the recollections of a self-absorbed main character as he tells his story, and not the hidden memories of an author.  Author Naja Marie Aidt, in fact, has made a bold move here in choosing a male to be her main character: her female characters, some with backgrounds similar to that of Thomas, are often stronger and more resilient than the males.

With a title which recalls a children’s game which is used to make choices, Rock, Paper, Scissors is filled with the interactions of people who have faced hard times and have somehow survived.  The novel opens with Thomas and his sister Jenny dealing with the death of their father in a jail cell where he has been awaiting trial on some unknown charge which would have brought a long jail sentence.  When they later go to their father’s apartment, neither of them wants anything as a memento, but Jenny decides to take his toaster, simply because hers is broken and she has very little money to buy a new one.  Later, when the toaster does not work, Thomas takes it apart for her and finds something surprising inside.  Throughout these beginning pages, the novel moves back and forth in time as Thomas, forced to think about his estranged father, obsesses about death – that of his father, of family members, and even of the unknown people he sees in the supermarket – and it is through this introspection that many of the details about his family background are revealed.

Baboon won two major prizes for  short story writer/poet Aidt when it was published in 2008.

Now financially comfortable, Thomas is ego-driven, impatient, and calculating, and his insistence that he does not want to have children has driven a wedge between him and Patricia, his long-time love.  At times, especially when he is drunk, he has visions and feels threatened, and occasionally his shockingly violent thoughts rise to the surface and take over.  When Thomas’s stationery shop is ransacked and trashed, shortly after his visit to his father’s apartment, the mysteries begin and Thomas becomes more fully developed, though not more admirable.  A new character, Luc/Luke, who was mentored by Thomas’s father, adds to the mysteries and the complications as Luke ingratiates himself with the family and with Thomas’s acquaintances.  Eventually, one of the novel’s female characters is assaulted, and another receives a strange, anonymous message, just five words long. Thomas becomes convinced all these events originate with whoever destroyed his shop.

Celan, popular among the literati with whom Thomas associates, was also a favorite of Thomas’s father, Jacques.

As compelling as the plot and Thomas’s psychology may be, the novel’s philosophical underpinnings and the universal themes which emerge from the conflicts are even more provocative.  Underlying the entire novel are questions of who we are as human beings, how much our futures as individuals evolve from our own actions and choices, and how much damage can be inflicted upon us by others around us.   Other events draw us in by mere chance, as we see in the random events which involve Thomas as he deals (or does not deal) with his own life and the people surrounding him.  At a critical point in the novel, Thomas’s long-time lover Patricia, his sister Jennie and her daughter Alice, Luc/Luke who was close to Thomas’s abusive father, and two of Thomas’s aunts, all meet to spend a weekend in the countryside together.  During this weekend, and on an earlier occasion, in which Thomas and Patricia spent an evening with friends, the great importance of literature in the lives of these characters is stressed, further emphasizing the idea of the imagined life vs reality. Celan, a favorite poet of Thomas’s father Jacques, is also a favorite of others here, and his work is featured at both of these get-togethers involving Thomas.

When Thomas’s extended family meets in the countryside, they do so at his aunt’s sheep farm near one of the highest points in Denmark.

A quotation from a poem recited by Thomas, Celan’s “Fugue of Death,” a bleak work about Germany and the fate of the Jews, is startling in its premonitions and adds to the haunting atmosphere:  “Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown / we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night / we drink and we drink it / we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined….”  As the novel progresses, the imagery and premonitions of death increase:  Even in the scene in which the family is reciting poetry and drinking, they are drinking tequila (presumably the mescal variety) with a dead, alcohol-soaked worm sloshing in the bottom of the bottle.

Filled with smart, crisp language; carefully described and introduced imagery; and occasionally lyrical passages, the novel owes much of its appeal in English to translator K. E. Semmel, who must have been challenged by the metaphysical aspects which parallel the narrative lines.  With contrasting themes of life and death, love and hate, accident and design, strength and weakness, selfishness and altruism, and reality and invention, the novel offers much to ponder on many levels. Ultimately, one is even forced to consider the question of whether the existence of an alterego is real or a protective fiction created by a damaged ego.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/

The cover of Baboon, which won both the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and the Danish Critis Prizde for Literature in 2008.  http://www.asymptotejournal.com

Celan’s poetry collection is from http://www.junglekey.co.uk

One of the highest places in Denmark is where Thomas and his family meet on a sheep farm for a long weekend of discussing literature and life itself:  http://www.summitpost.org/

ARC: Open Letter Books

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS
REVIEW. Denmark, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Psychological study
Written by: Naja Marie Aidt
Published by: Open Letter
ISBN: 978-1940953168
Available in: Ebook Paperback


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