Month: October 2020

The Thing Around Your Neck: Exquisite Short Stories

The Thing Around your Neck

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published 2009

Read Oct 2020

This reader continues to find this author quite remarkable.  In Half of a Yellow Sun, she enabled this reader to better understand the challenges faced by the Nigerian peoples following being “made” into a country by lines drawn by Europeans for their convenience and the Biafran war.  In Americanah she explored the challenges of encountering what it means to be “black” in the US and the issues associated with trying to return to your native country’s culture after spending years studying abroad.  In both cases the characters engaged the reader deeply.

This reader describes this collection of twelve short stories as exquisite.  In each case the story is a human one with universal themes, but the intersection of cultures, usually Nigerian and American, provides a unique perspective to each. 

The End of the Affair–Greene Classic

The End of the Affair

By Graham Greene

Published 1951

Read Oct 2020

Many of Greene’s works have been adapted for film and this book is no exception. This story, set in London during and after WWI, was adapted as a movie twice:  one film was released  in 1955 and one in 1999.  An opera based on the book premiered in 2004. 

We meet our protagonist and narrator, Maurice Bendix, about two years after the end of his affair with Sarah, the wife of a civil servant.   He recounts the story:   Maurice had been interested in writing a story about an administrator in the government so met Sarah and her husband, Henry.  Maurice and Sarah carried on a passionate affair that lasts about two years.  Bendix tells us he knew the affair was coming to an end, driven in part by his jealousy, but he did not expect the abruptness of the ending which occurred after his house was damaged by a bomb in 1944 and he was nearly killed. 

The story now moves forward:  Maurice remains angry with the ending of the affair.   He encounters Sarah’s husband, Henry, on the square on which both of their residences lie.  Over drinks, Henry takes Maurice into his confidence that he thinks Sarah may be having an affair.  Maurice privately hires a detective without Henry’s knowledge to determine the identity of this new lover to appease his own jealousy.

The detective obtains Sarah’s diary which explains the end of the affair and her new love interest. The second half of the book relates Maurice’s handling of this information and the events that follow.

Greene converted to Cat holism at age 24 and several of his books have strong Catholic themes.  This is the fourth of those novels.  In this one, the characters struggle with the question of believing in God, a struggle Greene also shared prior to his conversion and again later in life.

Greene was both a “popular” and “literary” author.  Greene’s literary talents are well displayed in this book.  Making the main character and narrator a writer is especially interesting as he relates Maurice’s approach to his work and the challenges he faces in his writing while being in mourning for the affair and while he struggles with questions of faith.  This novel demonstrates Greene’s ability to weave a classically interesting tale of an affair with philosophical questions that remain impossible to completely answer and to keep both topics fresh despite the passing of nearly seventy years since the book’s original publication. 

Clock Dance: A Family Story

Clock Dance

By Anne Tyler

Published 2018

Read Oct 2020

This reader found this book in one of several Little Free Libraries this author frequents and to which this book will return for a new reader.  You can find a Little Free Library near you here. 

This reader has enjoyed each of the Anne Tyler novels that she has read.  They deliver stories of believable and (not overly) flawed people doing regular life things in an imperfect world.  Tyler welcomes the reader into the world of her characters and provides them a taste of the imperfect and real lives they lead.  Problems usually remain unresolved although the characters are not untouched.

In Clock Dance, the reader spends some time with central character Willa in 1967, when she is in fifth grade and her mother has left the family again for some unknown period of time; in 1977 when she is a junior in college and her boyfriend  Derek is about to graduate and wants her to quit school and marry him and move to California;  in 1997 when her husband Derek makes an aggressive move in traffic to soothe his road rage and manages to die in the accident that results; and finally in 2017 when she gets a call from Baltimore asking her to come to take care of a girl the caller thinks is Willa’s granddaughter while the girl’s mother is in the hospital.

We spend most of our time with Willa in 2017 as she and current husband Peter answer the request to come to care for Cheryl, the daughter of Denise, Willa’s son’s ex-girlfriend.  Cheryl isn’t her granddaughter but the caller didn’t know that and Willa responds anyway.  The readers are treated to living with Willa and Peter and Cheryl and her dog, Airplane, during the summer that Denise is recovering from a broken leg due to a stray bullet from an unknown gun.    We meet characters in Denise and Cheryl’s neighborhood and we learn about Cheryl’s approach to living with a single mother.   We learn about Willa and Peter’s marriage in 2017 although we don’t know when they married or anything about their life together prior to the here and now of this story.

This reader appreciates Tyler’s choices regarding what to tell us, what to show us, and what to leave unrevealed.  Her endings are never abrupt nor do they tie the ends together—what happens next for the charactersis appropriately unclear.  This reader looks forward to finding more Anne Tyler books in Little Free Libraries and in public libraries and to savoring more of Tyler’s stories of people and the families and friends who share their lives. 

Bruno: Chief of Police–Crime, Culture, and Food

Bruno:  Chief of Police

By Martin Walker

Published 2008

Read Sept 2020

Martin Walker is quite an interesting fellow.  He’s currently Senior Director of the Global Business Policy, a private think-tank for CEO’s of major companies, and Editor Emeritus of the United Press International, and Senior Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars…. among other things.  He’s been a journalist, a broadcaster, and historical scholar and he has written widely in various formats.  

 Fortunately for this reader and fellow Bruno, Chief of Police  fans, he finds time to write about Bruno, a policeman who lives in a small village in South France.  Bruno, a former solider, has found his piece of heaven in St Denis.  He’s built his own house out of an abandoned shepherd’s cottage, he hunts, he  owns a dog, he organizes parades and firework displays for the village, he gardens, and  he cooks beautiful and simple meals. 

He also solves crimes.   Martin Walker has given us a series of Bruno books in which the policeman deals with a major crime while tending to the needs of the village and cooking wonderful meals. This NY Times article about Walker will likely engage your interest in Martin Walker and his Bruno series: 

In this first installment, Bruno must deal with the murder of a local elderly North African man who had served in the French army during WWII.  There is a swastika carved into his chest.  He’s paired up with a young policewoman from Paris to delicately investigate this politically charged situation.   Walker confronts the reader with some messy details of French history during WWII providing the reader with both some French history, an interesting mystery, and some French culture of the region.

This reader stumbled on this series in a Little Free Library and reported on The Devil’s Cave which is the sixth novel in the series that currently contains sixteen entries.  This reader did not find it important to read the two books “out of order” although it might be nice to progress through them in the order written.   This reader looks forward to more adventures with Bruno cooking, engaging with the residents of St Denis, and solving crimes. 

South Pacific: It’s About the Waiting

Tales of the South Pacific

By James A. Michener

Published 1947

Read Oct 2020

Although this reader had never actually seen a stage or film version of Rogers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific”, three songs jumped into her brain immediately when this book was selected as a book for this reader’s book discussion group:  “Some Enchanted Evening”, “I’m Going to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair”, and “Bali-ha”.  This reader is happy to report this book is quite engaging and serious and not at all what this reader was expecting from the familiar songs—a light romantic comedy. 

When first released (the book in 1947 and musical in 1950), memories of World War II remained fresh in readers and viewers minds.  The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the musical won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.   The musical was adapted for the screen twice:  for the big screen in 1958 (the film was a blockbuster) and for TV in 2001.   What accounts for this appeal in the late 40’s and 50’s and what accounts for the familiarity for even this generation?

James Michener was 40 when he enlisted in the US Navy.  He was sent to the South Pacific. He earned the rank of lieutenant commander and had various assignments.  He began compiling his observations about his experiences during that time.  Michener begins his book “I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific.  The way it actually was.  The endless ocean.  The infinite specks of coral we called islands.  …. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting.  The waiting.  The timeless, repetitive waiting. But whenever I start to talk about the South Pacific, people intervene.” 

 Michener’s book (his first of over 40) is a collection of related short stories told, after the introductory piece, in approximate chronological order.  Each chapter is a complete story in itself and characters from one story carry into other stories.  While the stories can be read individually, knowledge of previous stories provides more depth of understanding of aspects of the story at hand.   The author makes clear who is narrating in each story.  Most of the stories are narrated by an officer who completes a range of assignments supporting various commanding officers.   In each case, the reader feels as though the narrator is speaking directly to him/her.

The stories are about the people who serve on the islands on which equipment and supplies were landed to support various campaigns and where airplanes and PT boats landed and were repaired.  They are about the US Seabees who build the beaches on which the Marines and Sailors land to take control of the island and the airstrips that are used by US Navy airplanes of all sizes that fulfill various purposes:  bombers, dogfighters, scouting, etc. They are about the officers who have a variety of roles including supply officers, doctors, nurses pilots, communications officers, and recreation officers (this one focused on enabling “the waiting” to be bearable).  They are about the men who sweat in the hot humid climate and try to stay sane while waiting for the call to action.  They are about the coast watchers who provide the Navy vital information regarding the movement of their Japanese enemies.  They are about the nurses who are officers but who generally have backgrounds more like the enlisted men, with whom they are forbidden to socialize, than with the male officers.  They are about the officers that engage their men to build an airstrip in the middle of a jungle in 15 days and they are about the officers that disengage their men through arbitrariness and disinterest in their needs.  They are about the French plantation owners and their native and Tonkinese (North Vietnamese) workers that live on the islands.  They are about the entrepreneurial Tonkinese who gladly sell the sailors and marines what they need across a wide range of goods and services.  There several love stories, two which are a large focus of the musical. (The three unforgettable songs that are in this reader’s brain are related to these love stories.) The stories confront prejudices borne by the Americans regarding the various people living on the islands.   (The musical confronted this issue directly as well.)  The stories are stitched together by the recurring characters and how their experiences impact them.  The stories lead from the pronouncement of a group of admirals to take a particular island through the development of Plan Alligator to the strike on the targeted island and the aftermath of that battle.

Although not written as historical fiction, it serves as such to those reading it in 2020.  An indicator of good historical fiction, according to this reader, is that the reader is motivated to learn more about the subject.  Michener’s book had that effect on this reader.  Michener’s book provides the human face to that part of the war and gives it life that “regular” history books and TV programs using film from the time don’t provide.  This reader has a new appreciation both for the magnitude of the undertaking of the war in the South Pacific and the lives of the peoples involved.  And those songs will remain firmly embedded in her brain.

Go Went Gone: How Do We Deal with Other

Go Went Gone

By Jenny Erpenbech

Translated from German by Susan Bernofsky

Published 2015

Read Sept 2020

The protagonist, Richard, is a recently retired classics professor.  He is somewhat disoriented in these early days of retirement when the highlights of his day may include a trip to the urologist.  On a walk in a nearby square he sees a “tent city” occupied by what he discerns to be African refugees.  He becomes interested in how his German government is dealing with them and he decides to do a “study”.  By the time he has formulated a long list of questions for the refugees he hopes to interview, the refugees have been placed in several living situations including a wing of a nearby nursing home.  He visits there and begins a relationship with several of the refugees.  Their names are complicated for him so he identifies them (only to himself) with names suggested by his classics background—Apollo, Tristan, Olympian, Thunderbolt-hurler.  Over the course of the story he learns about German law regarding refugees, including the agreement with the European Union countries that only the country of original entry into the EU can grant asylum. Most of these refugees from various African countries entered after their (usually overloaded) boat landed in Italy.  Italy has no work for them so they have come to Germany in search of work.  Since they have no official status in Germany, they aren’t allowed to work.  As these refugees are black, they encounter racial prejudice as well as the barriers of their refugee status.

The title Go Went Gone is an interesting one as it applies to several aspects:  Richard’s academic career is gone (he is retired);  his wife is gone (he is now a widower); his lover is gone (she’s left him), the country where he was born and raised (East Germany) is gone (being now part of unified Germany); the refugees’ ability to work for a living is gone (no legal status = no right to work); the refugees’ ability to stay in Germany is going (once their cases are heard they will be deported to Italy); the refugees are endeavoring to learn German and are learning how to conjugate verbs in this new language (although most speak several other languages). 

The author’s depiction of Richard’s disorientation as a new retiree is very realistic based on this reader’s own experience—feeling a loss of identity and associated worth, feeling of isolation from former colleagues, feeling that days are endless in the absence of work. The disorientation is amplified by the loss of his wife and his lover.   A positive aspect of retirement is noted—absent external expectations from the department, university, or other career responsibilities, reading and writing can feel freer and new veins of thinking are available even in texts previously well explored.    Similarly his consideration of the impact of the reunification on the geography and societal aspects of his neighborhood and life as a result of Germany’s reunification are considered more closely now. 

The story provides the reader much opportunity to consider regarding refugees and immigration—who should be allowed to work/what barriers are appropriate for non-citizens to their ability to make a living/contribute to society;  what is the appropriate definition of “citizen” and who has the right to make that definition; are immigration laws truly seeking to protect job access for citizens or are they seeking to prevent “others” from crossing borders; how did political borders get drawn—why and by whom; who has the right to define “other”. 

There are no simple answers and the author doesn’t suggest there are.   The book’s ending is appropriately not the ending of the story for Richard or the refugees he’s met.  The courses of all their lives remain uncertain– as is the actual case for all of us.  What is clear is that the flow of refugees/immigrants has always existed and will continue to exist as people flee war/political issues and/or seek a better life than they have where they are.   Borders are man-made.  Arguments over borders are man-made.  The constant flow of people away from strife will continue to challenge people to decide how they will accept “others” into “their” space.