Category: Modern Fiction

The Cellist of Sarajevo

By Steven Galloway

Published 2008

Read June 2020

The cellist of Sarajevo really existed.  He was playing his cello when twenty-two people lost their lives in a bombing outside his window while waiting in line for bread during the siege of Sarajevo.  He really played that song each of twenty-two days in a row in their memory.  This book uses three voices to describe fictional people living in Sarajevo during those twenty-two days.

Arrow learned marksmanship in school and shot in competitions with her teammates.  She had been pressed into service to kill snipers lurking in the hills who were killing residents while they went about their daily business.  During the time of this story she has been assigned to kill the sniper sent to silence the cellist.  We hear what she is thinking and feeling during this time.  Her voice is the clearest and most distinct of the three.  We are left, as was she, with the question—is she really different from the snipers in the hills?

We listen to Keenan’s thoughts as he ventures into the streets to collect water for his family and neighbor from one of the few water sources left in the city. He doesn’t want to expose anyone else in his family to potential death by sniper during these treks but also doesn’t know what would happen to them if he is shot. 

Finally we listen to the thoughts of Dragon, a baker who has lived in the city all his life and is mourning the loss of the majesty of the buildings and the vitality of its people.  His family is no longer in the city—he has sent them away for safe keeping.  He too ventures into the streets to collect food and water.

The voices of Keen and Dragon are less distinct from each other compared with the voice of Arrow.  They recount their terror when worrying about whether it is safe to leave the safety of buildings and barricades to cross the street when needed.  They recount the various buildings that have been lost during this endless struggle. 

There is no discussion regarding the parties engaged in battle nor the reasons for the siege.  The book is solely focused on these three people as representatives of those whose lives are in a sort of suspended animation as their city and its people are being slowly destroyed.

The book is mercifully short (235 pages) as each page describes the endless dreadful state of being for the three characters.  This reader read a Kindle version so the extent of progress in the book wasn’t as obvious as when reading a hardcopy.  At one point, this reader wondered if the book would ever end as the relentlessness of destruction and sense of doom was almost overwhelming.  Fortunately this reader did eventually break out of this feeling, did experience the ability of the characters to persevere, and did appreciate the author’s ability to show both endurance of the spirit and the enormity of what Sarajevo citizens endured. 

Christine Falls

By Benjamin Black

Published 2006

Read July 2020

This is the first book John Banville wrote as Benjamin Black and the second book of this Quirke series he is producing with this pen name.  Quirke is a melancholy, often drunk, pathologist who manages to get involved in trying to understand cases others think should be considered closed.  His inability to let them go reminds one of the character “Columbo” in the 1970’s TV series—always another question to consider.  But in this case, Quirke is a hospital pathologist, not a police officer, and in this book, no police are involved in the case at all except when they are called to deal with people that end up dead after Quirke connects with them to talk about this case he can’t quite leave alone.

In the opening chapter we meet Malachy Griffen, an ob/gyn doctor who practices at the same hospital as Quirke.  A sense of tension between the two is suggested in this opening scene which could be due to Griffen’s unexpected presence in Quirke’s office writing in a file.  Certainly this unusual situation is what peaks Quirke’s interest in the case.  We eventually learn that the tension is probably also associated with the unusual relationship between Quirke and Malachy.  Malachy’s father rescued Quirke from an orphanage when he was a boy and raised him as a son, actually showing parental preference for Quirke as a son over sickly Malachy.  Over the course of the book we learn more interesting and unusual details of their relationship which follow them to the present. 

An aspect that separates this series from other crime/mystery books is the language.  It’s not clipped but rather tends to be atmospheric and requiring involvement from the reader.  It doesn’t rely on short chapters that end on a cliff that compel you forward.  But you are drawn into the book to understand how the parallel story being told connects with the story Quirke is trying to dissect—which in this case requires involvement with living and, likely, lying people.

The time element of the story is not directly revealed, but it’s clearly not set in the present.  No cell phones are used and orphanages still exist, among other differences with current society.  These understated differences help pull the reader into this somewhat foggy world, shrouded in the gloomy weather, present but not explained melancholy of the characters, and likelihood of long-term deceptions that may never be fully revealed to the reader or the characters.  I look forward to reading more of this series. 

The Last Hundred Year Trilogy

Some Luck

Published 2014; Read June 2016

Early Alert

Published 2015; Read July 2016

Golden Age

Published 2015; Read Aug 2016

By Jane Smiley

When the first book of the trilogy was published, the following two were written and in the process of publication as well.  The series literally covers 100 years starting in 1920 and ending in 2020.  Each chapter of each book is entitled the year the actions in the chapter occur.

If you like family sagas especially those that start with rural or farming life this is a great set of books for you.  This reader plowed through them in pretty quick order (limited in part by availability of library copies!) and wasn’t disappointed.  This reader found the first book, Some Luck, to be the strongest.  Since it is focus on the first generation of the Walter and Rosanna Langdon family, it can spend more time with this set of characters and the primary setting in Iowa.  As the series progresses and the Langdon children and their cousins take a variety of paths off the farm, marry, have their own children and grandchildren,  there is progressively much more to manage and single year chapters and reasonable book lengths mean less focus on any single character. 

Jane Smiley has written a number of books both for adults and young people, short stories, books about writing, a book about Dickens, and has taught writing for a number of years so she knows the writing business well.  She can get into the mind of a two year old child, a young farm wife about to manage giving birth on her own, or a horse (Horse Heaven) with equal engaging believability.  Hopefully she will continue delivering.

Everybody’s Fool

Published 2016

Read June 2016

Chances Are…

Published 2019

Read June 2020

By Richard Russo

A look at the published/read information shows that this reader reads Russo’s new novels fairly shortly after their publication.  This has been true since this reader read Empire Falls in 2001 and promptly read his two preceding books.  This reader also read his memoir Elsewhere:  A Memoir which nicely confirms that Russo writes what he knows:  life growing up in central upstate New York after industry had left or was leaving and the trials and tribulations of being a teacher at a small college.

Everybody’s Fool is a sequel to Nobody’s Fool .  Nobody’s Fool  was made into a movie starting Paul Newman (who also showed up in a mini-series version of Empire Falls along with his wife Joanne Woodward).   Donald “Sully” Sullivan (Paul Newman’s character) returns in Everybody’s Fool along with other characters from the first book, all older and not necessarily any wiser.   There is a little bit of mystery and a lot of looking at this collection of flawed but sometimes loveable characters as they make their way through a Memorial Day weekend in their small townChances Are… is somewhat of a change of pace for Russo.  It’s neither set in a somewhat decaying town in central upstate New York nor at a small college nor does it involve teachers.  But it does involve men who are Russo’s approximate age so Russo once again writes what he knows.  Here three 66-year old men, who worked together in a kitchen at a small liberal arts college they attended, have gathered for a weekend at the same summer place where they were last together when celebrating college graduation.  There is a mystery again which is more predominant than usual for Russo novels (did his agent or editor indicate this was needed for sales?) this time about a female classmate who was also at that post-graduation gathering and who went missing thereafter.  All the guys had dreamed about Jacey as their girlfriend but she was always just a friend and it was clear that’s all there would be as she was engaged  to be married to someone none of them liked—someone in Jacey’s social stratum which was above theirs.  The chapters alternate between Teddy and Lincoln, two of the guys, and give both their pre-and post-college stories and their present experiences during this weird weekend.  The third character, Mickey, finally has a voice near the end of the book.  Mickey had drawn a small draft lottery number and went to Canada to avoid the draft, despite being conflicted about the decision.  Teddy and Lincoln had drawn higher numbers and avoided the Vietnam experience.  During the course of the weekend, the guys actually spend fairly limited time together and talk to each other even less (remember they are 66 year old men of an era and background that condoned not sharing with other

The Housekeeper and the Professor

By Yoko Ogawa

Published 2009

Read Feb 2018

It is highly likely that this is the only book this reader has read that was reviewed by a professor of mathematics and that the review was published in a peer-reviewed mathematics journal (Notices of the AMS, Volume 57, number 5 May 2010 pages 635-636). 

Why would a mathematics professor review a book of fiction that was a best-selling novel in Japan before being translated into English and also made into a Japanese film, TV show, a radio show, and a comic book?  The reason is that the main character is a former professor of mathematics who suffered a traumatic brain injury leaving him with an inability to remember anything that has happened longer ago that about 80 minutes and the title’s housekeeper title develops a certain kind of love of numbers through the characters’ association. 

This injury means he had to leave teaching and research and that his current life is fraught with difficulties.  Post-it notes pinned to his clothes help him remind him of essential information.  He lives in a small house on the property of his sister-in-law with whom he has limited interaction.  The sister-in-law hires a housekeeper to come to the professor’s house to clean and cook for him.  The housekeeper has her own life challenges as she is a single (never married) mother with a son of ten.  

The professor’s field of research was number theory and he remains fascinated with numbers and likely relates to them better than with others, especially now that he lives a very solitary life.  Each day the professor and the housekeeper go through a ritual.  He identifies her with a post-it on his clothes but since he doesn’t really remember her, he needs to relearn various numbers about her including shoe size, her age, etc. 

Over time he learns that she has a son to whom she returns only after he has finished his evening meal and she has cleaned up the kitchen.  He insists the boy come to the house after school instead.  The story describes the building of this trio’s relationship which includes the housekeeper and the boy discovering interest in numbers as well.  The other interest they share is baseball.  The professor’s favorite team is the Tigers, which is local, and his favorite player is Enatsu, an actual pitcher for the real Tigers team.  However, he retired in 1984, after the professor’s accident, but 17 years in the past.  The housekeeper and her son take the professor to a baseball game and try hard to keep the retirement of Enatsu a secret so he won’t be disappointed.

Reading the Japanese professor’s review in the math journal was very interesting for this reader.  He could comment on the cultural aspects (the unusualness of both hiring a housekeeper and single motherhood), the believability of the professor and especially his focus on numbers (not typical but not without precedent in this reviewer’s life), and the story of Enatsu.  In addition, this review provided the information at the beginning of this essay regarding the popularity of the book and the various media formats into which it has been adapted.  The reviewer also indicated that the translation into English is good.

This reader very much enjoyed the discussions of numbers and various math theories.  However, it isn’t necessary to know anything about math to enjoy this book.  As the math professor indicates in his review, there is little drama in the book.  However, there often isn’t substantial drama in the lives of many who live rich lives.  The focus of the novel is on the relationship that develops between the professor, the housekeeper, and her son and later includes discussion of the relationship between the professor and his sister-in-law.  

This reader highly recommends this short (192 pages) book that provides a quiet look at the impact unexpected relationships can have on people’s lives. 

Long Bright River

By Liz Moore

Published 2020

Read June 2020

Moore opens this book with a chapter called “List” which is simply that—a list of 52 people that ends with ”Our father. Our mother.”  The reader figures out quickly this is a list of people who have died of an overdose of an opioid—synthetic or heroin—and that many of the names in the list are very familiar to (or are family of) the narrator.   This chapter is nearly identically repeated as the next to last chapter.  In between are chapters titled “Then” and “Now”.   This rather long (492pages) book needs, or at least takes, a lot of pages to cover both the police procedural story that’s in the present and the family story that wraps around the characters and provides context for the present.  

As the “Now” opens, cop Mickey has found a dead woman while on duty and is relieved it’s not her sister Kacey who she hasn’t seen for a few months.  Kacey is an addict in the neighborhood in which the girls grew up and which Mickey currently patrols.  Like many others in the neighborhood, Kacey lives in various abandoned buildings in the area and supports her habit through prostitution.   Mickey isn’t happy that the death of this unidentified woman isn’t being investigated with vigor.  Over time, additional women are found dead and it’s clear a serial killer is in operating in the area. 

The “Then” entries amplify the girls’ diverging stories.  Mickey Fitzgerald and Kacey are two sisters who grew up in the Kennsington neighborhood of Philadelphia  with their grandmother, Gee,  after their mother dies of an overdose and their father has disappeared, presumably also dead (the opening “list” includes “our father”).    Mickey is the older sister and was generally introverted in high school. Although she showed promise for college education, Gee wouldn’t support application for financial aid and strongly discouraged Mickey from attending to avoid the realization that she wasn’t one of “them”, those in economic strata above theirs.   Mickey’s mentor in a community police program suggested law enforcement for a job/career.  She follows this guidance and becomes a beat cop in the Kennsington neighborhood, although her earnings allow her to move into a better area.  Younger sister Kacey was more outgoing which morphs into “wild”. She gets into drugs early, starts heroin by age 16, is kicked out of the house by Gee shortly thereafter and essentially begins a life on the streets.     Mickey chooses to stay in the Kennington assignment, in part, to be able to keep a watch on Kacey.

Moore uses her research of this real area to paint a rather dark picture of life of many in the neighborhood – living in various abandoned buildings in the once prosperous industrial area, trying to get clean but regularly failing, trying to manage their habit with various forms of opiates at various prices, turning tricks to get their fixes, trying to look out for each other but being limited in their capacity to do so when the next fix becomes mandatory. 

Mickey has avoided this life but is surrounded by it daily and her life is far from easy. She is a single mother.   Her job had allowed her to buy a small house she cherished but sold to move into a small apartment when her son’s father cut off child support which paid for his good preschool and daycare situation.  She seems to have few, if any, friends.   She engages her previous police partner, currently on medical disability, to help her with her off-the-books investigation, but the relationship is strained.  She is hiding her son from his delinquent father.  She has limited relationship with her family.  In a “Then” section, she attends Thanksgiving at a cousin’s for the first time in many years, without prior announcement, and is more tolerated than welcomed.  She’s being investigated at work for being away from the job several times without explanation (she was doing her own personal investigation of Kacey and the serial killer).  She’s not connecting well with her boss.  Her babysitter is unreliable.  Her hours are increasingly irregular as she pursues looking for Kacey.  Nothing is going very well for her.  But her situation is clearly better than Kacey’s.

The structure and style of the book kept this reader involved in this dark drama.  There are a number of plot twists that keep the reader a little off-balance which maintains the engagement.  Moore handles action well.  Simultaneously Moore has the reader considering this complex family and trying, like Mickey, to understand why the sisters’ paths are so divergent.  Mickey reminds Kacey that they had essentially the same childhood as their age difference is only two years—what led to the different choices they made?   Moore doesn’t supply the answer for these sisters or for others in their situation.   While the main mysteries are resolved, the ending leaves all of the characters in very uncertain but very real situations which keep the book firmly rooted in reality.  Job well done, Liz Moore. 

Elegy for April

By Benjamin Black (John Banville)

Published 2010

Read June 2020

This reader found a hard copy of Elegy for April in a Little Library on a road along a lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York State.  This reader was unaware that Benjamin Black is the pen name Booker Prize winner and Dubliner John Banville has used to write crime novels featuring a Dublin pathologist named Quirke.  Apparently Banville considers what he does as Black “a craft” and what he does as Banville “art” and he expects his Black books to remain in print longer than his Banville books ¹.    Well this reader is glad Banville created Benjamin Black and Quirke.

Quirke has some typical crime investigator attributes—-is single, drinks too much, and has family issues.  But he is single because his wife died when his daughter was a baby and he gave her over to his sister and brother-in-law to raise. His family problems are driven in large part because Phoebe, his daughter, didn’t know Quirke was her real father until just a few years ago.  Also, he really isn’t a crime investigator.  His job is a pathologist at a hospital, but he hasn’t been there for a number of weeks while he was voluntary checked into a facility to dry out, and he seems not to spend much time there since he checked himself back out.  When Phoebe contacts him to help her find a friend that’s been missing, he engages a real investigator in the local police department who is a friend.

Since the missing girl’s influential family is more worried about a scandal than finding her, a missing person’s report is never filed and the search for her is limited to Quirke’s poking around with some help from his detective friend.  The mystery is eventually resolved but the mystery seems more of an excuse to describe wintery Dublin, consider the relationship between Phoebe and her father, delve slightly into the troubled past of each Phoebe and Quirke, describe Quirke’s interactions with Phoebe’s friends, and touch on Dublin’s views on race during the time of the novel, sometime in the 1950’s when Bing is still popular.

A reader unfamiliar with “Bing” and the war in which April’s dead father was an officer will likely not readily place the timeframe of the story except to note that it’s pre-cell phone.  The timeframe of the story doesn’t really matter much as the dilemmas and conflicts touched on are fairly universal. 

While Banville may consider his crime novel writing a “craft”, he does note he’s pretty good at it¹ and this reader agrees.  His writing enables the reader to feel the wintery cold and wet of the Dublin winter, see the dark lonely streets on which Phoebe walks towards home, hear the sound of the empty wine glass Quirke has drained before ordering a second, despite his intentions. 

What a treat the Little Library box had for this reader.  Now this reader will be seeking more Black novels for more excellently “crafted” crime novels more about the characters and their relationships with others and themselves and maybe a Banville novel as well to see what his “art” is like. 

What a wonderful treat this visit to the Little Library provided.  ¹https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/booker-winner-drawn-by-appeal-of-black-magic-20080119-ge6meh.html

Lethal White

By Robert Galbriath (J.K. Rowling)

Published 2018

Read May 2020

This reader enjoyed reading the first four Harry Potter books with her family—reading them aloud to the kids while camping.  You know the books are engaging when the kids wanted to listen to the book over burning marshmallows in the fire.  This reader listened to the fifth book during long drives to see her hospitalized father.  And this reader likes crime investigation mysteries.  So Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) crime investigation books are perfect long-distance driving companions for this reader. 

This most recent installment of the Cormoran Strike series is the longest and was a perfect fit for a 24 hour drive fest.  This reader truly enjoys that the author takes her sweet time with the development of the twists and turns of the mystery plot while describing the daily challenges of Cormoran’s chronic pain driven by his prosthetic leg, Cormoran’s love life, the slow dissolution of Robin’s brand new marriage, and Robin’s joy of doing this investigative job especially as she goes undercover. 

This reader looks forward to more Cormoran Strike installments.   Likely they won’t be any shorter which is just fine with this reader. 

The Map of Salt and Stars

By Zeyn Joukhader

Published 2018

Read Nov 2019

Joukhader gives us two parallel stories of girls, eight hundred years apart, travelling from Syria across north Africa.  In the modern story, twelve year-old Nour, her sisters, and map-maker mother have returned to her mother’s home city of Homs in Syria, from Manhattan, after Nour’s father’s death.  Nour is the only one in the family who wasn’t born in Syria and she speaks little Arabic.  She does not feel at home in this land.  They become refugees and journey across north Africa in search of safety with family in Morocco.  In the ancient story, actually a fantastical story Nour’s father told her and she now tells herself, Rawiya, a sixteen year-old girl, tricks her mother into thinking she is going to a nearby town for provisions.  She actually disguises herself as a boy and takes her horse on a journey to find and become apprenticed to a famous map-maker.

The two stories parallel each other in the girl’s journey across Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco.  Interestingly, each part of the novel begins with a poem in the shape of a country the girls are crossing.  Each girl faces various dangers.  In the modern story, we don’t learn much about the political situation leading to the need for the journey but rather the author focuses on the personal story of what is happening during the journey and what the main character is feeling.  She has the condition/capability of synesthesia which drives her perceptions of various situations and feeling to appear to her in colors.  In the ancient story, the main character faces down various perils including battles with the great white roc—a legendary bird of prey- and giant snakes.  The contrast between the stories is that Rawiya is seeking (and finding) adventure away from her family while Nour is seeking safety with her family. 

At times this reader wished the novel focused on Nour’s story of fleeing Syria and encountering many obstacles on her journey.  Certainly the descriptions of Rawiya’s adverntures were beautifully written.   They just felt somewhat distracting from the “real” story of Nour’s family’s journey.  But that is likely due to this reader’s limited taste for fantasy.  It’s possible that remembering the ancient adventure story with its successes of Rawiya made it easier for Nour to to bear the real challenges her family faces.    And possibly it makes it easier for the reader to read about these challenges.  Joukhader is to be congratulated in using this interesting approach to tell get the reality of the flight of refugees read by an audience that might not readily choose that topic. 

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

By Olga Tokarczuk

Published 2009

Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

This translation published 2018 in the UK and 2019 in the US (different publishers)

Read May 2020

As the novel opens, our narrator has been woken by her neighbor (who she calls Oddball) requesting she help him investigate another neighbor’s cottage.  They find the neighbor (who she calls Big Foot) dead on his kitchen floor.  Oddball wasn’t able to reach the police yet (cellphone connecting to Czech 911 vs their Polish police) and he convinces our narrator to help him dress Big Foot and put him on the couch.  During this process they find a bone stuck in Big Foot’s throat, the probable cause of his demise.  They eventually are able to get their Polish village’s police on the phone and the police take over the case.

Our narrator disliked Big Foot as he was a frequent poacher in the forests.   We get a sense of our narrator quite early: “By now Big Foot had gone, so it was hard to feel any pity or resentment toward him.  All that remained was his body, lifeless, clothed in the suit.  Now it looked calm and satisfied, as if the spirt were pleased to be finally free of the matters, and the matter were pleased to be finally free of the spirt.  In this short space of time a metaphysical divorce had occurred.  The end.”

We eventually learn the name of our narrator, Janina Duszejko, although she insists on being called by her last name only.  She was once a structural engineer who built bridges before she became a teacher.  She is now semi-retired, living in a small rural community near the Czech/Poland border.  Only she and her neighbor “Oddball”, and  previously the now deceased neighbor “Big Foot”, stay on their hill during the winter.  Our narrator watches seven summer cottages for their owners during the winter.  She also teaches English at the local school a few days a week.  She spends her days pouring over the poetry of William Blake and “The Complete Ephemerides, 1920-2020”, the latter being her reference for building detailed astrological charts for people based on their birth date and time.  Her former student, who she calls “Dizzy”, meets with her regularly as they work on translating Blake from English to Polish. 

As the winter turns to spring and summer and the police investigate Big Foot’s death, two other locals are found dead:  the police chief our narrator calls The Commandant and a local fur trader and brothel owner, Innerd.  These deaths give our narrator more fodder for her letters and in-person requests to the police to consider that Animals have killed all these men to avenge the murders of their brethren by these hunters.   “I wish to appeal to the gentlemen of the Police not to shy away from the idea that the perpetrators of the above-mentioned tragic incidents could be Animals”. 

During this period we readers are treated to the narrator’s thoughts.  “The best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding”.  In fact the narration feels much more like a conversation the narrator is having with herself than one she is having with the reader.  An entomologist she calls Boros happens into her yard one day.  She gives him tea, allows him to stay a few days while he is waiting for his students to join him and then ““I raised the quilt and invited him to join me, but as I am neither Maudlin nor Sentimental, I shall not dwell on it any further.”  After a time, Boros eventually stops waiting for his students and moves on.

Readers will be glad this reader reveals no further plot elements of this interesting mystery as it unfolds more of our narrator’s story and thoughts.  For this reader, the mystery primarily provides our author a convenient excuse to continue drawing this special picture of our narrator.   She has had an accomplished past and now is semi-retired.  She is progressively isolated from those around her.  Her strident animal protection speech, her devotion to astrology, and her general isolated way of life make it easy for the village to dismiss her.  Her world is shrinking, especially as she lets her neighbors know she can’t be responsible for watching their cottages over the coming winter and she has to give up her teaching.  A man asks her what she has done in life and she remains speechless as she considers this question and answers only to herself:  “For people of my age,” she thinks, “the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there.”  So an interesting and convenient mystery provides a backdrop for this compelling look at a woman who remains vibrant in her thinking but increasing invisible to others.

Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature (awarded in 2019) for “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”.