Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, Egypt, Ethiopia, Exploration, Historical, Kenya, Social and Political Issues, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda on Jun 7th, 2013
In Dark Star Safari (2002), author Paul Theroux travels along Africa’s east coast from Egypt to South Africa, through Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and other countries. Though he begins his trip full of hope, he discovers that life on Africa’s east coast, as seen here in 2002, is not what he remembered from his Peace Corps days. Then he had been a volunteer in Malawi and a teacher in Uganda, leaving the country just as Idi Amin came to power. Despite the political upheavals of the 1960′s, his memories of Africa during that time are good ones. In 2002, approaching his sixtieth birthday, he is determined to travel from Cairo to Cape Town, believing that the continent “contain[s] many untold tales and some hope and comedy and sweetness, too,” and that there is “more to Africa than misery and terror,” something he aims to discover as he “wander[s] the antique hinterland.”
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When Eirene Sklavos, a school-age child, sees Mrs. Bulpit for the first time, she has not even started to come to terms with the fact that her mother will be leaving her with Mrs. Bulpit indefinitely. Having traveled with her mother from Greece to Australia to escape the horrors of World War II, Eirene has already dealt with the death of her father, a communist fighting for what he and his wife believe to be a better world for Greece. Almost immediately after Eirene meets Mrs. Bulpit for the first time, her mother departs for Alexandria, where she plans to continue her political efforts. Alone in a foreign country, Eirene will have to learn the hard way who she is and where she belongs. She soon meets Gilbert Horsfall, a boy her own age, who is also living with Mrs. Bulpit, though his trip to Australia from England has taken much longer. His father is working in New Delhi; his mother is dead. He, too, has growing pains, and he, too, is a foreigner to Australia. The degree to which the two children may be able to help each other is a question for much of the novel, as are the effects of uncontrollable outside forces on their lives as they grow and develop. Written in experimental style.
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Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s third mystery to be translated into English continues the characters he introduced with The Keeper of Lost Causes and The Absent One, both of which topped of best-seller lists in Europe for almost a year. Carl Morck, the lead detective of these novels, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of a shootout several years ago in which one of his friends was killed and the other, a six foot-nine inch giant, was left a quadriplegic. Morck’s drinking does not help his attitude, nor does his unfortunate love life. Relegated to “Department Q,” created especially for him, and located deep in the basement of the Copenhagen Police Department, he is assigned the cold cases to keep him out of the way. A several kidnappings over thirteen years, involving the children of members of religious sects, becomes the focus of a series of investigations by Morck and his intriguing assistant, Assad. Though it is difficult to imagine any five hundred page mystery being more complex, this mystery is so well organized, and the characters and actions are so well integrated, that it is easy to see why this novel has won so many prizes in Scandinavia and why it has been so popular. The characters are all observed in action, with lively dialogue, as well as first person commentary, and whole episodes are devoted individually to each of the main characters and their associates. A good stand-alone.
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The earlier books that I have read by Australian author Elizabeth Jolley, while a bit more boisterous in some ways than the works of her contemporaries in England during the period (Beryl Bainbridge, Penelope Lively, Barbara Pym, Muriel Spark, Alice Thomas Ellis), seem to fit comfortably into the niche occupied by these other, better known authors, despite Jolley’s unconventional (and some might say outrageous) private life. With Foxybaby (1985), which follows Mr. Scobie (1983)… and Miss Peabody (1984)…, however, Jolley permanently separates herself from her peers back in England, writing a book in which nothing is sacred, with characters who are sometimes crazy, usually self-absorbed, unashamedly venal, and often bawdy. She is realistic, if not enthusiastic, in her depiction of sex in all its variations as salve for the souls of the lonely and the sometimes bored. Nothing about this book is dainty or subtle. Elizabeth Jolley is obviously having great fun taking advantage of the freer, more forgiving attitudes of Australia as she creates this over-the-top novel, filled with wild characters who “let it all hang out.”
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Living in an ethnically and religiously mixed neighborhood in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Nihil Herath is one of about a dozen children – Tamil, Sinhalese, Burgher, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Catholic – who take their cultural differences for granted. Nihil’s Sinhalese family is new to the neighborhood, but they fit in immediately with their neighbors, and under the leadership of Nihil’s mother, Savi Herath, they soon become the backbone of their little community. Using the Heraths and their four children – Suren (age 12), Rashmi (age 10), Nihil (age 9), and the energetic and irrepressible Devi (age 7) – as the linchpins of this saga of Sri Lanka, author Ru Freeman creates a lively neighborhood which represents virtually all the forces contesting for influence from 1979 – 1983, as the revolutionary Tamil Tigers decide to forego the legislative process and try to take over the country by force. Keeping the focus firmly on the children, who see and hear rumors of war, and the children’s fearful reactions to the increasingly dire news, Freeman creates a microcosm of the larger world and the devastation that is promised. Her characters, both the children and the adults who influence them, are lively and realistic, especially in their focus on the small, the personal, and the minutiae of everyday life as it begins to change.
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