Unless

by Carol Shields.  Fourth Estate, 2002.

I think I enjoyed The Stone Diaries, but I had trouble getting excited about Unless.  (I didn’t notice until I was almost done with it that all the chapter titles were adverbs, with a few preposiitons thrown in for good measure; but what the titles have to do with the chapters themselves wasn’t obvious.)  Carol Shields was a woman writer writing about a woman writer (Reta Winters) writing about a woman writer (Alicia something or other) writing about…. you get the picture.  Except that Reta’s eldest daughter has inexplicably dropped out of college and started begging for a living on the streets of Toronto.  This is hugely disturbing to Reta, her husband Tom, and their two younger daughters.  (While I am sure it would indeed be very upsetting, I can think of lots of worse things that could happen to one’s child.  As Reta points out, she knows exactly where her daughter is and can go and see her whenever she wants, even if the girl refuses to talk to her.)  In the end, the reason for Norah’s rejection of family, friends, home, and education becomes clear and all ends “happily.”  I thought the ending was too pat, actually.

I did enjoy this little eponymous paragraph:

“Unless is the worry word of the English language.  It flies like a moth around the ear, you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence. Unless–that’s the little subjunctive mineral you carry along in your pocket crease.  It’s always there, or else not there…. Unless you’re lucky, unless you’re healthy, fertile, unless you’re loved and fed, unless you’re clear about your sexual direction, unless you’re offered what others are offered, you go down in darkness, down to despair. Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into the light, the reverse side of not enough. Unless keeps you from drowing in the presiding arrangements. Ironically, unless, the lever that finally shifts reality into a new perspective, cannot be expressed in French.  A moins que does have quite the heft; sauf is crude.  Unless is a miracle of language and perception,…. It makes us anxious, makes us cunning….But it gives us hope. (pp. 224-225)

It’s a book to be passed on, not one I would keep on my shelf.

She’s Come Undone

by Wally Lamb.  Pocket Books 1992.

I didn’t much care for this novel about an obese, disagreeable girl who eventually undergoes psychotherapy, loses weight and becomes a good person.  I don’t generally like books about unpleasant characters (think Gone with the Wind), and I didn’t find Dolores’ transformation very convincing.  In the first half of the book, she is really obnoxious, treating people worse than they treat her (which is badly).  Is it supposed to be the psychotherapy that turns her into a kind and generous person?  Or just growing up?  Anyway I finished the book because I liked her better in the second half, but I’ve already forgotten most of it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini – Riverhead Books 2007

I think it took me just three days to finish Khaled Hosseini’s second novel (the first being The Kite Runner).  I was very quickly swept up in the story of the humble but strong Maryam and the intelligent and beautiful Laila, the gentle Tariq and the despicable Rasheed, Afghanistan and the Soviets, the Mujaheddin and the Taliban.  It was very hard to put the book down.  I had read about the events in Afghanistan, but the novel allowed me to experience them firsthand, as it were, through the eyes of Maryam and Laila, the two protagonists, wives of Rasheed.   I experienced their shame and humiliation at his hands and at the hands of the Taliban, for whom women were no better than slaves, completely dispensable.  How else can we explain the utter disregard for them, as written into the laws once the Taliban took over:

You will stay inside your home at all times.  It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets. If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram, a male relative. If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten and sent home.

You will not, under any circumstance, show your face.  You will cover with burqa when outside.  If you do not, you will be severely beaten.

Cosmetics are forbidden.

Jewelry is forbidden.

You will not wear charming clothes.

You will not speak unless spoken to.

You will not make eye contact with men.

You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.

You will not paint your nails. If you do, you will lose a finger.

Girls are forbidden from attending school.  All schools for girls will be closed immediately.

Women are forbidden from working.

If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned to death.

Listen. Listen well. Obey. Allah-u-akbar.

(pp. 248-249)

Whatever possessed these people to think that they had the right to restrict the activities of their fellow human beings in such a way?  Some of the rules are so petty and stupid (If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will be killed.) that it makes the reader want to laugh, but it was no joking matter, and we see just how serious the consequences could be.  Through the eyes of the two principal characters, we experience the powerlessness of Afghan women.

Hosseini, writing from a female point of view, captures well his characters’ feelings and perceptions.  It always amazes me that a male author can so successfully portray feminine experience.

A very special book, very worth reading.

Silver Wedding

by Maeve Binchy

This short novel is classic Binchy.  It takes a situation (the 25th wedding anniversary of Desmond and Deirdre Doyle) and chapter by chapter looks at that situation from the points of view of the various characters: the couple themselves, their three children, their friends, other relatives, and the priest that married them.  Everyone’s life has its tragic aspect.  The husband and the three adult children are struggling to free themselves from their mother’s insistence that they pretend they are something they aren’t.  Deirdre herself believes that she must pretend to satisfy her own mother, which turns out not to be true.  Amazingly, it all works out in the end.  Not my favorite Binchy, but a good one-day read.

China Boy

by Gus Lee. Plume, 1991.

China Boy is the story of little Kai Ting, only son in a Chinese immigrant family in San Francisco in the mid-twentieth century.  The book is set during Kai’s eighth year of life.  His beloved mother has died and his father has married a cruel, abusive American woman whose apparent goal is to erase every vestige of Chinese language and culture from the home while breaking the spirits of the two children who are still living there (Kai and his older sister Janie).  (The reader has to wonder how the father could stand by and watch his wife abuse his children to such an extent.)

Kai, an undersized, weak child who inexplicably never masters either Chinese or English, is the punching bag of the other boys (and one girl) who populate the extremely rough neighborhood of the Panhandle, where the family lives.  The book tells the story of how a series of kind adults, mostly staff of the Y.M.C.A. where his father finally signs him up for boxing lessons, support and teach Kai how to stand up and fight for himself.

Many of the characters (such as Hector Pueblo, the Mexican mechanic who rescues Kai from a savage beating on the street; Mr. Barraza, the boxing coach; Mr. Punsalong, the multiracial boxer with a background of martial arts; Angie Costello, who takes it upon herself to fatten Kai up; and Mr. Lewis, the one in charge of the Y boxing program; Toussaint LaRue [Toos] and his mother; and the other friends that Kai makes in the neighborhood and at the Y) are skillfully developed into people we can imagine and would like to meet.  Unfortunately, Lee writes their speech so that someone learning English would never understand: e.g., “He’s muy rapido, you know, bery quick. Black boy get in his face and firs’ t’ree punches, firs’ kick, yo’ boy go lik’ dis and lik’ dat, so touch.” (p. 123)  or “China Boy, you’se jus a stupid fool ofa chink.  You’se standin here in my schoo’ yard, like ratfacedogshit. I’se gonna teach ya’ll some Fist City, China Boy….Gimme yo’ face…” (p. 183)  Since there is a lot of dialogue, an English language learner would have to really struggle to comprehend; and this is not a good model for speech, needless to say!

There is a lot of graphic violence and at least one truly evil character (the wicked stepmother).  It’s a good story, though–one though it  has been told many times before (e.g., The Karate Kid), never fails to entertain and inspire.

A Free Life

by Ha Jin (narrated by Jason Ma) 2007 BBC Audiobooks America

A Free Life chronicles the lives of Chinese immigrants in the United States.  Nan Wu was in graduate school in the Boston area when the Tiananmen Square event in 1989 prompted the United States to make it easy for Chinese students to remain in the U.S.  The book follows Nan, his wife, and their son as they separate (Nan goes to New York City, where he becomes a chef) and then reunite and move to the Atlanta area, where they buy a Chinese restaurant, the Gold Wok.  Nan considers himself a poet but rarely has the time or the inspiration to write.  In the end, however, he returns to his dream of writing poetry.

The book has an autobiographical feel to it.  I don’t know anything about the author other than that he, like Nan, grew up in China and now lives in the United States and writes in English.  Nevertheless, I constantly had the sense that he was describing his own travails and triumphs, especially where poetry is concerned.  Ha Jin is known as a writer of fiction, whereas Nan Wu resisted suggestions that he turn to fiction as “easier” than writing poetry in a new language.  A Free Life gave Ha Jin an opportunity to publish his own poetry as that of his character.

The style of writing is peculiar.  Jin says that Nan read dictionaries and learned idioms; another character in the book was always misusing idioms.  To me, the book sometimes felt like an ESL idiom textbook.  These textbooks present a group of idioms and then contrive a text which features all of them–with varying degrees of success.  That is how A Free Life often felt to me.  Idioms were used with abandon, but not always in ways that I, a native speaker/writer, would have used them, and sometimes in ways that seemed awkward.  Had I been Jin’s editor, I would have advised him to go easy on the idioms.  On the other hand, English is not the possession of its native speakers in America, England, and Australia only.  Sometimes a non-native writer can give the English language a delicious twist that becomes part of the charm of the book (I am thinking in particular of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy).

Another strange characteristic of A Free Life is how the chapters ended.  I expect a chapter ending either to provide closure to the chapter or to link to the following chapter in such a way that the reader will have a hard time putting the book down (think: The Da Vinci Code!).  Many chapters in A Free Life just stop…. sometimes on a note that relates neither to the chapter that is ending or to the next one.  I often felt that the book needed an editor to tighten it up.

Despite my complaints, I stuck with the book until the end because it gave me insights into the lives of immigrants in the U.S.–particularly Chinese immigrants–and because I came to like the characters and to want to know how things turned out for them.

Patience, Princess Catherine

by Carolyn Meyer.  Young Royals series.  Gulliver Books, Harcourt, Inc. 2004.

Vicki enjoys historical fiction, and we have been reading books in the Royal Diaries and Young Royals series.  Both series focus on historical princesses and queens.  In this series, we have already read Doomed Queen Anne, about Anne Boleyn.  Patience, Princess Catherine is the story of Catherine of Aragon, who at the age of fifteen traveled from Spain to England in 1501 to marry Arthur, the elder son of King Henry VII.  Arthur, a sickly young man, dies soon after their wedding, and Catherine sets her hopes on Arthur’s younger brother Henry, who was to become Henry VIII.  She waits for seven long years of humiliating treatment by Henry VII.  The title is apt, as Catherine must show great patience and will to achieve her destiny of becoming Queen of England.

Each chapter begins with a short section about the young Henry, who was six years Catherine’s junior.  This section is followed by a first-person account in Catherine’s voice.  The reader sympathizes with her plight as she stubbornly refuses to give up her goal, despite her lack of power, influence and money to support her Spanish court.  This book ends on a fairly happy note. although the Historical Note at the end tells the sad story of Henry’s eventual rejection of Catherine, whom he divorces and banishes to increasingly remote and uncomfortable residences when he decides to marry Anne Boleyn in the hope that she will provide him with a son.  Catherine, however, never agreed to the annulment of her marriage and never gave up her title of Queen of England.

Doomed Queen Anne, by the same author, tells the parallel story of Anne Boleyn’s single-minded pursuit of Henry, her determination to hold out for marriage and her belief that she could, unlike Catherine, produce a male heir to the English throne.  Instead, she gave birth to the daughter who would become Queen Elizabeth I.  After she too suffered a miscarriage, Henry quickly got rid of her and proceeded to marry four more women before he died.  He only managed to do this by breaking with the Catholic Church and making himself head of the Church of England.

This is an interesting period of English history, and Carolyn Meyer’s novels make it accessible to  readers both young and old.  Vicki and I are looking forward to reading Mary, Bloody Mary to learn about the life of Catherine’s daughter Mary, who eventually became Queen of England and restored Catholicism to England for the period of her reign.

Nights of Rain and Stars

by Maeve Binchy.  Read by Terry Donnelly. BBC Audiobooks America, 2004.

I’ve enjoyed everything I have read by Maeve Binchy.  She has a knack of creating characters that really appeal to me (along with some horrific ones), and she has done so again in Nights of Rain and Stars, which takes place not in Ireland but on the imaginary Greek island village of Agia Anna.  Four vacationers–two men and two women, from the U.S., England, Germany, and Ireland–become fast friends after witnessing a tragedy.  For a few short weeks, they become a part of the life of the village.  Vonnie, an Irishwoman who has lived in Agia Anna for thirty years, and Andreas, an old man who owns the taverna on the mountainside where the four first meet, mentor the four through some very difficult challenges.  While it’s a little too pat to be real, as with all of Binchy’s stories, I found myself eagerly suspending disbelief.  It isn’t my favorite Binchy–contenders for that spot are The Glass Lake, The Copper Beech, and Scarlet Feather–it’s certainly an enjoyable read.

The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett (abridged).  Penguin Audio 1989; read by Richard E. Grant

As a huge fan of the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters, I really enjoyed this historical novel, set in England during the period in the 12th century when King Stephen and the Empress Maud both claimed the throne of England and everyone else’s fortunes rose and fell depending on which of them had seized power.  (Brother Cadfael’s chronicles took place during the same period and also in a religious setting.)  Pillars has a host of interesting characters: Philip of Gwyneth, whose integrity and devotion to God run through the novel; the witch Ellen and her gifted son Jack; master builder Tom; Lady Aliena, a “modern” woman who overcomes numerous setbacks to achieve her goals; the despicable Bishop of Kingsbridge, Allerin Bygod (N.B. I have only listened to the book, so the spelling could be wrong) and the evil William Hammley.  Yes, the characters do tend to be a bit one-sided, but the story moves along nicely (unfortunately, this audio version is abridged) and along the way the reader gets quite caught up in the events of the time and also in the art of cathedral-building.  The book made me regret never having visited the Cathedral of St. Denis when I lived in Paris.  Richard Grant’s reading is excellent; I wonder if he also narrated the lovely story, “Brother Heinrich’s Christmas,” as it sounds like the same voice!

The Sunday Philosophy Club

by Alexander McCall Smith (narrated by Davina Porter; Recorded Books)

I am an enthusiastic fan of Mma Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, but it has taken me years to get around to reading Alexander McCall Smith’s other series, The Sunday Philosophy Club and its sequels: Friends, Lovers, Chocolate; The Right Attitude to Rain; and The Careful Use of Compliments. Although not quite up to the standard of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, this is a delightful series. The novels are billed as mysteries and the protagonist, Isabel Dalhousie, as a sleuth; but they aren’t really mysteries (any more than the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency stories are) and Isabel is a 42-year-old independently wealthy philosopher and editor of The Review of Applied Ethics. She is incorrigibly interested in the affairs of others and constantly getting herself embroiled in their business, much to the dismay of her friends. I think Isabel is McCall Smith’s way of pondering the common ethical questions we all meet in daily life (When is it okay to lie? What is our obligations to our fellow humans? etc.). Isabel’s niece Kat, Kat’s rejected suitor Jamie, Isabel’s no-nonsense housekeeper Grace, and the various characters who people the novels are portrayed in that marvelously succinct way he has. There is a love story entwined in the series which unfolds at a leisurely pace. I like Isabel very much, despite her tendency to meddle, and I enjoy the sense of place with which these novels are embued. They renew my wish to visit Scotland.