Category: Modern Fiction

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. 

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. 

Girls Burn Brighter

By Shobha Rao

Published 2018

Read Aug 2020

This premier novel from Rao, born in India but migrated to the US at age 7, depicts the story of two girls’ struggle to retain their “brighter” selves despite relentless abuse they suffer. Poornima’s mother has died of cancer and her father’s alcoholism keeps the family struggling to eat.  He uses a marriage broker to seek a husband for Poornima but his meager estate makes this difficult.  Savitha’s family is even poorer, living on and picking through the local trash heap.  Savitha ends up working for Poornima’s father’s weaving business and the two girls kindle a friendship that helps them continue to “burn brighter” despite the obstacles they encounter.   The novel alternates between the stories of the two girls. The two girls end up in “thrown away” situations for different reasons which won’t be revealed here and are separated. 

This reader listened to the novel.  The reader was generally breathless, except in dialog sections. This reading style became somewhat annoying to this reader.  The non-dialog prose may have prompted this approach as it was sometimes nearly over the edge as it describes the relentless abuse the girls suffer and the girls’ struggle to keep their “light burning” while on their quests.  Poornima’s  quest was to find Savitha.   Savitha’s quest was to escape her appalling slave-life situation.  Her quest also seems pretty hopeless. 

Despite the near implausibility of their quests and an editing issue with respect to timing, the book was engaging. This reader knew that the “finder” at the nearby train station they both encounter at different times was leading them to a human trafficking situation which turned out to be true.  But this reader certainly hoped their quests would be fulfilled despite the odds.  The book paints a very bleak picture of life for Indian girls growing up in this kind of village in this region—having no worth except to have babies (boy babies) and serve the husband’s family.  When this path can’t be achieved, the options are bleak at best.    Unfortunately, this situation is not limited to poor Indian villages but remains true for many women in many cultures throughout the world and even within certain cultural situations in the United States.  This was a sobering book to read during the summer of the 100^th anniversary of women achieving the right to vote in the United States.  Clearly the struggle for basic rights for women remains incomplete. 

Where the Crawdads Sing

By Delia Owens

Published 2018

Read June 2020

This book has been wildly popular.  This reader listened to it while on a summer vacation and understands the appeal.  It is a coming-of-age story. The person coming of age is a young girl abandoned by family and surviving on her own in the swamplands of North Carolina. It has lush language about the landscape. The young girl blossoms into a well-respected author despite many obstacles.  It has a murder mystery, the story of the investigation running parallel to the coming-of-age story.  The reader is engaged to root for the young girl during her struggles to both interact with and avoid society.   It is sweet but not sappy.  It’s a little unbelievable with regards to the ability of a girl of nine to actually survive on her own but as the youngest of a hard-scrabble family she had to learn some things before everyone left and the family from whom she buys gas has their eye on her.

So enjoy reading this book along with lots of other readers even if it’s not one that you  will discuss for many hours with a serious book discussion group.  We need some of these too, especially during these days of a seemingly unending pandemic and this one might provide some needed positive nourishment.

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.