My Sister’s Keeper

by Jodi Picoult (Washington Square Press, 2004)

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been slowly slogging through Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Other Invisible Illnesses: The Comprehensive Guide. But I took time out to read My Sister’s Keeper, which I has been on my to-read list for a while (possibly not on this blog, but in my head). It took hold of me like some kind of flesh-eating bacteria. I could hardly put it down; I read the 423 pages in just a few days.

The book is the story of the Fitzgerald family–Brian and Sara and their children, Jesse, Kate, and Anna–and the lawsuit that Anna brings against her parents to prevent them from forcing her to donate a kidney to Kate, who suffers from a usually fatal form of leukemia. The story is seen from the perspectives of all of these characters, and also those of the lawyer and the guardian ad litem, a person appointed by the court to get to know the plaintiff, her family, and the situation in order that she might make an informed but objective recommendation to the judge. Each chapter is written in the first person from the point of view of one of these characters, at a certain point in time (or in the week or so between Anna’s hiring the lawyer and the verdict of the court), and each character has his or her distinct font. The reader is drawn into the stories of each character and comes to care about all of them.

The book raises a number of serious ethical questions (example: Is it right to conceive a child for the purpose of saving the life of another child?), and there may be no good answers. But Picoult gets you to ponder them.

If there was anything I didn’t like, it is perhaps that the (surprise) ending is a little too pat. (No spoiler here; you will have to read it yourself.)

Advanced non-native readers will not find particularly difficult language, and the chapters are mostly short, but it’s a really long book for a slow reader. On the other hand, if it grabs your interest the way it grabbed mine, you may find yourself reading faster than you usually do because you want to know what will happen next!

Death Comes to Pemberley

by PD James (Knopf 2012; eBook)

I love Jane Austen; I love Pride and Prejudice; and I love P. D. James, so it was inevitable that I would have to get James’ sequel to P&P.  It is several years after Elizabeth married Darcy; they are living at Pemberley with their two young sons, and Elizabeth’s sister Jane lives not far off, at a place called Highmarten with her husband Mr. Bingley and their children.  Just before the Darcys are about to host their annual ball, Elizabeth and Jane’s wayward sister Lydia descends upon the house in hysterics. On her way to crash the party with her husband, the despised George Wickham, and his friend Captain Denny, the two men had gotten out of the carriage and run into the Pemberley woods and had not returned, but shots were heard. Sure enough, Captain Denny is found dead, with Wickham kneeling over him and proclaiming his guilt. Surely an open-and-shut case! But not at all. James strings us along all the way to the end, dropping hints along the way but never revealing whodunit.

I especially enjoyed being privy to the inner thoughts of both Darcy and Elizabeth. James describes Darcy as shy, determined to do the right thing, and very much in love with Elizabeth.  She paints Elizabeth as good, but not completely immune to status and money, and as still somewhat  conflicted about Wickham. Other characters, whether known or unknown from Austen’s books, are convincingly portrayed.  Although it’s not a page turner (it falls short of James’ best Dalgliesh novels), I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

Corduroy Mansions

by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon 2009)

I love almost everything I’ve read by McCall Smith (despite wondering why, since his name is not hyphenated, his books are shelved under McCall in my local library, rather than under Smith). My favorites are the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, as read by Lisette Lecat, but I’ve read and enjoyed most (all?) of the Isabel Dalhousie series and one or two of the 44 Scotland Street series. (I didn’t like Portuguese Irregular Verbs, despite its delicious title.)

Corduroy Mansions does not appear to belong to a series, but it certainly could. Like 44 Scotland Street, it tells the various stories of the residents of one apartment building (or should I say block of flats, since this one is in London). Since people’s stories go on forever, constantly changing, until they die, McCall Smith (Smith?) would have enough material to keep going. In fact, several of the stories were left hanging at the end.  (How exactly will Barbara Ragg wreak vengeance on former lover Oedipus Snark? Will Terence Moongrove figure out how to drive his new Porsche safely before he kills himself? Will the obnoxious Manfred James  reappear to claim his stake in my favorite character, Freddie de la Hay [a Pimlico terrier]? etc.) I admit I had a little trouble keeping the four young female flatmates straight, and Basil Wickramsinghe did not play much of a role, although he obviously might in a future book. (Actually, I just checked the WIkipedia entry for the book and discovered that a second novel has already appeared! Also that McCall Smith published these two books online in serial form à la Charles Dickens.) Overall, it’s a sweet book and kept my interest over the few days it took to finish it (reading mostly on the bus on my way to and from work).

P.S. I’m one of the many people who has never heard of a Pimlico terrier before. I googled it, but all I find are references to this book, so I am beginning to suspect that A.McC. S invented the breed. Maybe it was an April Fool’s joke.

Purple Hibiscus

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2003)

I first heard of Chimamanda Adichie when I listened to her 2009 TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” In that presentation, she talked about how she grew up reading the literature of other cultures, e.g., British, but that she came to realize that the stories she needed to write should be about her own experiences as a Nigerian. That is what she does in this story of 15-year-old Kambili and her family: her father, Eugene, a fanatical Catholic and owner of a daily newspaper, who abuses his wife and children in the name of saving them from sin; her mother, Beatrice, who enables the abuse until she can put up with it no longer; her brother Jaja, who rebels openly against their father’s intolerant brand of Catholicism; her Aunty Ifeoma, Eugene’s sister, also Catholic but loving, liberal, and tolerant of diversity; Ifeoma’s three children, Kambili and Jaja’s cousins; and Papa-Nnukwu, Ifeoma and Eugene’s “traditionalist” (for Eugene, “heathen”) father. Kambili adores her father and does her utmost to please him, but he is not easily pleased; instead, he is enraged by the slightest infraction of the impossible rules he sets for his household. His children and his wife are required to be perfect at all times. He schedules Kambili’s and Jaja’s every waking moment, and a tiny slip brings a beating or worse. He is responsible for his wife’s miscarrying at least two babies. Still, Kambili makes excuses for him–even when he nearly kills her. Like so many abused women before her, she believes that she deserves the abuse.

Kambili and Jaja are given permission to visit Aunty Ifeoma and her children in a nearby university town–their first experience sleeping away from home. They experience life in a relaxed and loving home and slowly come to enjoy the freedoms they find there. Kambili even falls in love–with a young Nigerian priest, Father Amadi. Their priest at home in Enugu is almost as punitive as their father. A whole world begins to open up for her.

The story is told against the backdrop of a coup d’état which puts a brutal dictatorship in charge of the country, causing economic chaos. As much as we hate Eugene, we cannot help but admire his courage in speaking out against the dictatorship.

The book catches and holds the reader’s interest–I read it in about 3 days. An advanced English language learner could probably understand it well (especially one from an African country). The language is not difficult, but I frequently wished for a glossary of Igbo words (especially words for food), which would not have been difficult to provide and would have increased my appreciation of the book.

The Road

by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage Books, 2006, originally published by Knopf, 2006)

This was a thoroughly depressing book. A father and son trudge through a destroyed America. It is not clear what has burned the country, killed all the plant life and wildlife and most of the humans, yet left a few humans alive; but they must keep going if they are to survive the winter and avoid the marauding gangs who will kill and consume them if they catch them. It’s a kind of survival story (like Hatchet or My Side of the Mountain), but much grimmer. There is no clean place to return to; everything that was before, is gone now. Corpses litter the landscape and they find little to eat, wear, or use because everything has been ransacked before by others. Apparently the destruction, whatever it was, happened years ago.

The redeeming part of the story is the love and trust between the father and son. They are everything to one another. I guessed the boy to be between seven and ten, but he has been aged by the horrors he has seen and experienced on the road. He remembers nothing else. I kept hoping for something good to come out of it, although I couldn’t see how that would be possible.

The grammar is very simple, and most of the sentences are short. Most of the vocabulary is common as well, but then there will be a sentence like “He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings” (p 15).  There are a lot of sentence fragments, and for some reason contractions are written without apostrophes (e.g., didnt) and dialogue without quotation marks (that’s common these days). An English language learner who could ignore these things would understand the story at least as well as I did, but why you would want to read it is another question. It won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a movie, and I kept reading until the end, but I guess I prefer my fiction to more more uplifting than this was.

Shanghai Girls

by Lisa See (Random House 2009, 2010)

Narrated by Pearl, Shanghai Girls tells the story of Pearl and her younger sister May, born to wealth and privilege in pre-war Shanghai. At 21 and 18, Pearl and May earn their own money by modeling for “Beautiful Girl calendars”, wearing mostly western clothes and showing rather more skin than is proper for young Chinese women. They speak fluent English and Pearl has just graduated from college. She is in love with the artist who frequently paints them. Pearl and May do not respect their parents as good Chinese daughters should, but life is good and full of promise. At the beginning of the book, I rather dislike the two sisters. They are empty-headed and spoiled.

Abruptly, their world collapses. Their father has gambled away the family’s wealth and has promised Pearl and May as brides for the sons of “Old Man Louie” in Los Angeles, as a repayment for his debts. Pearl and May are forced to go through with the weddings, and Pearl even sleeps with her husband, Sam, but neither girl intends to show up to take the boat for California. However, the “Green Gang” comes after them on behalf of Old Man Louie as the Japanese are attacking Shanghai.  They barely escape with their mother and then undergo horrors as they try to distance themselves from the besieged city. In the end, after many troubles, they do end up in Los Angeles, but the promised wealth and beautiful houses turn out to be a pack of lies. Old Man Louie is relatively poorer than their family was. But there is no going back, as the Communists follow the Japanese in Shanghai. Pearl and May must make their lives in Los Angeles as best they can.

This is a great story, well written and with a lot of historical detail. I learned a lot and enjoyed it.  Advanced English language learners, especially Chinese students, will probably find it enjoyable as well.

Children and Fire

by Ursula Hegi (Scribner 2011)

The fourth book in the Burgdorf Cycle, Children and Fire tells the story of the young Thekla Jansen, who teaches the fourth grade at Burgdorf’s elementary school. A passionate and dedicated teacher, Thekla knows herself to be a good person with high moral standards and without prejudice against non-Aryans such as her former teacher and mentor (A Russian Jew who has converted to Catholicism) and her mother’s Jewish employers the Abramovitzes. Nevertheless, as the Nazis tighten their grip on power and begin to purge those who cannot prove themselves to be pure Germans, Thekla finds reasons to go along with the changes.  She thinks she can influence her students for the better, and she believes that the Nazis will not last. Too late, she realizes that she can scarcely recognize herself in the person she has become.

I would like to say that in Thekla’s place, I would have done differently–but I doubt it. Standing up to evil takes more courage than I think I have.

I still think that Stones from the River is the best of the cycle, but Children and Fire is a good, if quick, read.

All the Little Live Things

by Wallace Stegner (Viking, 1967)

This was not my first Stegner novel; I read and enjoyed Angle of Repose and maybe also Crossing to Safety, if I remember well, back in the days of the West Riding Book Club. I like the way he writes very much; it’s a pleasure to read him.

The narrator of this fairly depressing novel is Joe Allston, who has retired to California with his wife Ruth. Their son, Curtis, died in a surfing accident; Joe is still nursing his disappointment in and anger at Curtis.  Joe narrates the heartbreak of the past year: the destruction of the lovely hill they can see from their home by the owner who wants to develop it and make money; the hippie “student” who insinuates his way onto a piece of the Allstons’ land and then proceeds to turn it into a sort of free-love commune, mooching off the Allstons’ electricity and water and trashing their land; but most of all, the death of their neighbor Marian Catlin, who loves unreservedly “all the little wild things”, who radiates beauty and positive energy, who forgives everyone but who faces her death with courage and dignity–something Joe cannot do. He cannot accept her loss even though she has accepted it.

Joe’s reflections are starkly honest; he tells all, recognizing when he should have spoken or acted differently, recognizing when it is impossible for him to do what he knows he should do. These reflections made the book a sad read for me. I wanted Joe to be happier than he seemed capable of being. Approaching retirement myself, I couldn’t help thinking that the best planning cannot control all the inevitable annoyances and griefs that await us: the hostile neighbor, the hurtful thing we say without meaning to that alienates a friend, the decline and death of someone we love. Retirement, like life itself, is just more challenges and problems. We can’t escape them, no matter how we try.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump At Last

by Connie Willis (Bantam, 1998)

This quirky novel is classified as science fiction because it is predicated on time travel, but it’s totally unlike any other sci-fi book I can think of. Ned Henry, a 21st-century historian, is searching for an artifact known only as “the bishop’s bird stump” (after a while, I googled bird stump because I couldn’t stand not knowing what the thing was–but it turns out it wasn’t, after all, so no matter), hounded by Lady Schrapnell (!), who is bent on recreating Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before it was destroyed by German bombs in 1941 and so needs to know whether  the bishop’s bird stump was in the Cathedral or not when it was destroyed. It’s all quite confusing. Anyway, Ned travels to Victorian England to escape Lady Schrapnell and meets a fellow historian, Verity Kindle. They desperately try to undo Verity’s inadvertent mistake (carrying a cat forward in time), which could change the course of history.

There is a lot of technical discussion about drops (trips through time), the continuum of history, incongruities which can alter the continuum,  time slippage which occurs in the vicinity of an incongruity or a historical crisis point, etc.  Willis focuses on the question of whether history can be altered by minute changes in events or behavior. What would it take to tip the balance in a war, to avoid a catastrophe, to cause or prevent one’s meeting one’s own true love?  And if we fiddle with these things, can history correct itself? Will it? These are the questions the book’s characters try to answer as they stumble through time together and apart.

What I enjoyed most was the comical description of Ned’s flounderings through Victorian society, his commentary on the people and customs, and the weirdos he keeps meeting (naive Terence St. Trewes, crazyProfessor Peddick who will inconvenience anyone for a chance to go fishing, ditsy Tossie Mering and her ditsy mother, the almost-human bulldog Cyril and the time-traveling cat Princess Arjumand).

I tried reading this on the Nook, but my library eBook expired after only two weeks. At almost 500 pages, there is no way to read it in two weeks (unless one were on vacation). Disgusted, I placed a hold on an old-fashioned paperback and finished it that way.

Sarah’s Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay (St. Martin’s Griffin 2007)

First I saw the movie based on this novel. I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it if I had known what it was about. I usually avoid holocaust books and movies; they are too upsetting. But I was glad I saw it, and so when the opportunity presented itself to read the book, I took it.  Knowing how it turned out certainly did not spoil the experience–I was immediately drawn into the twin stories of Sarah and Julia and finished the book in just a few days, hardly able to put it down.

For almost half of the novel, Sarah’s chapters alternate with Julia’s. Sarah is ten, living in Paris with her parents, Jewish immigrants from Poland, when the French police, in an overly enthusiastic response to Nazi orders to round up and deport Jewish adults, arrest thousands of toddlers and children as well, separate them from their parents, leave them without food and water for days in the Vélodrome d’Hiver in the middle of Paris, and eventually send them to their deaths in Auschwitz. Sarah and her parents are taken to the Vel’ d’Hiv’; her four-year-old brother Michel hides in a secret closet in their apartment to wait for Sarah to return, which of course she cannot do.  Sixty years later, Julia, an American woman married to a philandering Frenchman, is investigating the story of the roundup for the magazine she works for when she discover,s to her horror, that the apartment that she and her family are planning to move into had been occupied by one of the Jewish families arrested in the roundup–specifically, it turns out, by Sarah’s family. As Julia’s marriage falters, she becomes obsessed with finding Sarah, or at least, with finding out what happened to her, since she was apparently never deported with the thousands of other children who were with her in the Vel’ d’Hiv’.

At the halfway point, Sarah’s story ends with her return to Paris, where she learns with finality how her brother died; but Julia’s story continues on for another 140 pages, as she struggles to decide between her husband and her unborn child while continuing to search for Sarah.

A wonderful book.