Class – Race – Gender – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.25 LOVERS AT THE CHAMELEON CLUB, PARIS 1932 by Francine Prose /2014/lovers-at-the-chameleon-club-paris-1932-by-francine-prose/ Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:05:02 +0000 /?p=25629 Book Quote:

“Dear parents,

Last night I visited a club in Montparnasse where the men dress as women and the women as men. Papa would have loved it. And Mama’s face would have crinkled in that special smile she has for Papa’s passion for everything French.

The place is called the Chameleon Club. It’s a few steps down from the street. You need a password to get in. The password is: Police! Open up! The customers find it amusing.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (APR 22, 2014)

Early on in Francine Prose’s richly imagined and intricately constructed tour de force, Yvonne – the proprietress of the Parisian Chameleon Club –tells a story about her pet lizard, Darius. “One night I was working out front. My friend, a German admiral whose name you would know, let himself into my office and put my darling Darius on my paisley shawl. He died, exhausted by the strain of turning all those colors.”

History – and the people who compose it – is itself a chameleon, subject to multiple interpretations. Ms. Prose seems less interested in exploring “what is the truth” and more intrigued with the question, “Is there truth?”

The title derives from a photograph that defined the career of the fictional photographer, Gabor Tsenyl: two female lovers lean towards each other at the Chameleon Club table. His is one of five narratives that punctuate the novel. The showcase narrative – written as a biography by the grand-niece of one of the participants – focuses on Lou Villars, a one-time Olympic hopeful and scandalous cross-dresser who crosses over to the dark side and becomes a Nazi collaborator. The other four narratives are composed of devoted letters from Gabor to his parents; the unpublished memoirs of Suzanne, his wife; excerpts from a book by the libertine expatriate writer Lionel Maine; and finally, the memoirs of a benefactor of the arts, Baroness Lily de Rossignol. Each narrative plays off the others and provides subtle suggestions that the other narratives may not be entirely accurate.

What is the truth of this intoxicating time, when artists of all kinds gravitated to the Paris scene and when war with Germany was an increasingly sober possibility? Francine Prose suggests that the truth is fluid. Reportedly, Lou Villars was inspired by a real person named Violette Morris. There are more than a few hints of Peggy Guggenheim in Lily de Rossignol and Lionel Maine bears a resemblance to Henry Miller. How much is fact and how much is fiction?

And once the reader gets over that hurdle, how much of what is revealed by the fictional characters is distorted through their own lens? How much of that is truth and how much is perception? Can we ever know the real person who lurks behind the mask? As Francine Prose writes, “The self who touches and is touched in the dark ,between the sheets, is not the same self who gets up in the morning and goes out to buy coffee and croissants.

I’ve said little about plot and that’s deliberate: the unfolding of the plot is for each reader to discover himself or herself. I will say this: the writing is exquisite and in my opinion, elevates an already talented contemporary writer to entirely new levels. The ending is breathtaking in its audacity. The setting – Paris in the late 1920s – is mesmerizing. The themes touch on universal matters: getting in touch with our authentic selves, crossing society-imposed gender barriers, understanding the fluidness of morality, searching for love and approval in dangerous places, making sacrifices for art, and discovering that history is not immutable, but changes depending on who tells it.

I read Lovers at the Chameleon Club directly after another very disparate book: Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird. Interestingly, both tackle the meaning of truth from very different yet unique angles. This is a stunning book and I enthusiastically recommend it.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 13 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper (April 22, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Francine Prose
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

More 1920s Paris:

Bibliography:

Fiction:

Teen:

Nonfiction:

]]> THE CUTTING SEASON by Attica Locke /2014/the-cutting-season-by-attica-locke/ Sat, 22 Mar 2014 12:47:00 +0000 /?p=26041 Book Quote:

“Later, two cops would ask, more than once, how it was she didn’t see her. She could have offered up any number of theories: the dirt and mud on the woman’s back, the distance of twenty or thirty yards between the fence and Caren’s perch behind the driver’s seat, even her own layman’s assessment that the brain can’t possibly process what it has no precedent for. But none of the words came.

I don’t know, she said.

She watched one of the cops write this down.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 22, 2014)

The past and the present are inextricably bound, and history is examined, re-examined, and refined within the context of a changing world of ideas, new evidence, and reform. Attica Locke demonstrated this in her first crime book, Black Water Rising, (nominated for an Orange Prize in 2009). Once again, she braids controversial social and historical issues with an intense and multi-stranded mystery.

Locke artfully informs Cutting Season with the dark corners of our nation’s past and the ongoing prejudices and failures to live up to the enlightened ideals of equality and justice. Her fiction tells the truth through an imaginative storyline, and she enfolds these issues and more in this lush historical novel of murder, racism, and family. The title of the book refers to the season of sugarcane cutting.

Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, a pre-civil war sugar cane plantation, Belle Vie, sits on eighteen acres of land, owned by the affluent Clancy family. The Clancys are descendants of William Tynan, who was hired by the federal government after the civil war to oversee the plantation. Tynan did such an outstanding job, he was eventually deeded the land.

Converted to a tourist attraction/historic preserve, with restored slave quarters and dramatic re-enactments of plantation life, Bell Vie is also a favorite setting for weddings and other festivities. Caren Gray, a single mother, manages everything at Bell Vie– the grounds, events, and personnel. Caren also has ties to the early descendants of the plantation, a complex history that unfolds gradually and evocatively. She is the great-great-great granddaughter of a slave named Jason who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and was never found.

Abutting the land to the west sits 500 acres of actively farmed sugar cane, also owned by the Clancy family and run by the Groveland Corporation. Since Groveland started managing the land, the families that worked there for generations were pushed out and replaced by migrant workers.

The book starts off with a bang, just like Locke’s earlier book did. On the border between Bell Vie and the sugarcane land, an employee stumbles on a murdered women, a migrant worker. When the local sheriff prematurely accuses a Bell Vie employee with a criminal past, Caren resolves to solve the crime herself. She subsequently learns that there have been sinister shenanigans involving Groveland, including support of the budding political interests of Raymond Clancy.

The atmospherics and setting of this novel, as well as the increasing tension and artful story, keep the reader attentive. Locke is not just skillful, but fragrant in describing the landscape of this largely provincial community. Her prose is sensuous and plump, and the visuals are ripe and resonant.

“…beneath its loamy topsoil…two centuries of breathtaking wealth and spectacle—a stark beauty both irrepressible and utterly incapable of even the smallest nod of contrition—lay a land both black and bitter, soft to the touch, and pressing in its power. She should have known that one day it would spit out what it no longer had use for, the secrets it would no longer keep.”

Like Locke’s first book, the plot is multi-faceted, with subplots often taking center stage and progressively weaving into the main intrigue. The theme centers on the uneasy link between the past and present, and how they must be reconciled. Caren’s desire to protect her child and expose corruption across echoes of time struck a deep chord in me.

The pacing is initially taut, although the characterizations gravitate toward standard. I was a bit disappointed in the relationship between Caren and her ex, Eric, because Black Water Rising’s main character, Jay Porter was so arresting—tilted, ambiguous, and most of all, unpredictable. The action between Caren and Eric is stilted, and feels convenient to the arc of the story. However, Caren’s voice is sensitive, intimate, and tenderly portrayed, despite being easily anticipated.

As the novel progressed toward the climax, Locke veered to formula. Perhaps she tried too hard to please readers of conventional genre. Cutting Season lumbered as it neared the final moments, becoming too ungainly and stitched together. The past and present fall into place too readily, yet I appreciate what Locke was trying to do in the juxtaposition of time and circumstance. Her intent was poetic; she strove for equanimity, but it got too exorbitant and contrived.

Despite these complaints, Locke’s talents are evident on every page. Locke’s sensual approach to language and narrative filters her flaws, mitigating them. The joy of reading comes from being absorbed in Bell Vie and the sumptuous layering of story. There’s a fine line between writing platitudes and conveying an awareness of racial issues and conflicts. Locke is generally nuanced, but she occasionally turned toward heavy-handedness, especially toward the finale.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 172 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 17, 2013)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Attica Locke
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> AMERICANAH by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie /2014/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/ Sat, 15 Mar 2014 14:43:29 +0000 /?p=25941 Book Quote:

“And she had ignored, too, the cement in her soul. Her blog was doing well, with thousands of unique visitors each month, and she was earning good speaking fees, and she had a fellowship at Princeton and a relationship with Blaine—“ You are the absolute love of my life,” he’d written in her last birthday card— and yet there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (MAR 15, 2014)

Americanah is a wonderful epic saga of love, hair, blogs, racism in America, and life in Nigeria. It takes place over a period of about 15 years and is primarily about a Nigerian woman named Ifemelu and her first love, Obinze. The meaning of the word Americanah is a person who returns to Nigeria after spending time abroad.

The main part of the story takes place in a hair salon in Trenton, New Jersey. Ifemelu is on a fellowship at Princeton and the nearest place to get weaves is in Trenton. As she is getting her hair done she goes back in time and the reader gets filled in with her life story.

Ifemelu grew up in poverty in Lagos. She managed to go to university there and won a scholarship to Wellson, a college in Philadelphia. She struggles with money and finds it very difficult to get a job. When she does work, she sends money back home to her parents. Ifemulu’s primary job is as a nanny. She describes the dynamics of her employer’s marriage as “she loves him and he loves himself.” She is introduced to her employer’s cousin Curt and Ifemelu and he have a relationship for quite a while. His being white and rich cause some difficulties for them.

Ifemelu cuts off all contact with Obinze despite the fact that they had planned to be together. She had made a choice to do something that left her shamed and abased and she is unable to tell Obinze about it. So, rather than tell him, she severs their contact. He is distraught and does not know what to do. He continues to write to her for months but there is no answer from Ifemelu.

Meanwhile, Obinze goes to London where he lives underground after his six month visa expires. He is working construction and continues to do this until he is deported back to Nigeria.

Ifemelu remains in the United States for 13 years and has a series of relationships with different men. Of significance besides Curt, who is white, is Blaine who is African American and a professor at Yale. Theirs is a long-term relationship that Ifemelu breaks off in order to return to Lagos.

Ifemelu has started a blog called “Raceteenth: Understanding America for the non-American black.” She writes anonymously about varied topics of racism that she encounters in the United States and the differences between being African American and a non-American black person. Her blog is very successful and brings her status and money as people make financial contributions to keep the blog going. She also does speaking engagements about topics she covers in her blog.

The book has many characters in it, each of whom we come to know and connect with. However, it is primarily about Ifemelu and Obinze, their lives and love. I found the book fascinating and very readable. It does not ever let go of the messages that the author seeks to provide the reader. Racism is a constant theme in the book as is life in America for black Americans and non-American blacks. I found the theme of blogging as a way to share knowledge very intriguing. Actual blogs are a part of the book.

Adiche is a wonderful writer. Her short stories, all of which I’ve read, have knocked me out. I plan on reading her other novels. I can see why this brilliant woman has received a MacArthur Genius Award.   Highly recommended

AMAZON READER RATING: from 511 readers
PUBLISHER: Anchor; Reprint edition (March 4, 2014)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> ALL OUR NAMES by Dinaw Mengestu /2014/all-our-names-by-dinaw-mengestu/ Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:57:05 +0000 /?p=25115 Book Quote:

“I had thirteen names. Each name was from a different generation, beginning with Father and going back from him. I was the first one in our village to have thirteen names. Our family was considered blessed to have such a history.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 13, 2014)

Mengestu’s third book—another about the immigrant experience—is his most accomplished and soulful, in my opinion. He returns again to the pain of exile and the quest for identity, as well as the need for a foreigner from a poor and developing country to reinvent himself. In addition, he alternates the landscape of post-colonial Uganda with the racially tense Midwest of the 1970s, and demonstrates that the feeling of exile can also exist in an American living in her own hometown. The cultural contrast of both countries, with a narrative that alternates back and forth, intensifies the sense of tenuous hope mixed with shattered illusions.

“I gave up all the names my parents gave me,” says the young African man, who moves to Kampala in order to be around literary university students. He has left his family in one country to seek his idealism in another. He meets a young revolutionary, an anti-government charismatic young man, who starts a “paper revolution” at the university. Neither is a student; both seek to realize their ideals. They become friends, and eventually, cross the line into danger and confusion.

The alternating chapters concern Helen, a white social worker in Missouri, who has never traveled far, not even to Chicago. One of the young African men, named Isaac on his passport, travels to the US, allegedly as an exchange student. Helen is his caseworker. Isaac’s file is thin, and Helen knows nothing about his history. They embark on a relationship that becomes more intimate, but yet creates an elusive distance. Mengestu explores the hurdles they face, as well as examining how these obstacles relate to Isaac’s past.

The restrained, artless prose penetrates with its somber tone, and the emotional weight of the story and characters surge from the spaces between the words. Mengestu’s talent for nuance was evident when, days after I finished the book, it continued to move me.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 9 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (March 4, 2014)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Dinaw Mengestu
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> BOY, SNOW, BIRD by Helen Oyemi /2014/boy-snow-bird-by-helen-oyemi/ Mon, 10 Mar 2014 13:41:58 +0000 /?p=25808 Book Quote:

“Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them and believed them to be trustworthy. I’d hide myself away inside them, setting two mirrors up to face each other so that when I stood between them I was infinitely reflected in either direction. Many, many me’s. When I stood on tiptoe, we all stood on tiptoe, trying to see the first of us, and the last. The effect was dizzying, a vast pulse, not quite alive, more like the working of an automaton. I felt the reflection at my shoulder like a touch. I was on the most familiar terms with her, same as any other junior dope too lonely to be selective about the company she keeps.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 10, 2014)

“Nobody ever warned me about mirrors so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy.” So begins the dazzingly imaginative and enigmatically-named new novel from Helen Oyeyemi.

But what happens when mirrors are not trustworthy? When Boy is really a girl? When a beautiful pale-skinned youngster actually shares the bloodline of the blackest of black individuals? When beauty is not truth and when truth is not beauty? When a mother or a grandmother is not a safe haven but something else entirely?

Helen Oyeyemi explores questions like these in her own imitable way, mixing a dose of fantasy with a dollop of reality. Her writing gifts, carefully honed in her startlingly good prior novel, Mr. Fox, are on display again here as she merges the real with the fantastical to create a canvas all her own.

The book’s curious title is a compilation of the names of three unique women: Boy, who escapes from her abusive rat-catcher father to settle in a New England town called Flax Hill; her strikingly attractive and widely treasured stepdaughter Snow; and the daughter she conceives with Snow’s father Arturo, named Bird. As the publicist’s blurb on this book reveals, Bird is “colored” since Arturo and his family have long passed for white.

The observant reader can pick up the threads of the Snow White fairy tale: the “evil” stepmother (who is perhaps more protective than evil), the removal of Snow White from the scene and particularly the “Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who’s The Fairest of Them All” query.

Who, indeed, is the fairest? Helen Oyeyemi writes, “”It’s not whiteness that sets Them against Us, but the worship of whiteness. Same goes if you swap whiteness out for other things—fancy possessions for sure, pedigree, maybe youth too…” Or, to put another way, nothing – not race, gender, or beauty – is valuable onto itself; it is we who place the value on these attributes.

Ms. Oyeyemi sometimes overplays her hand. The narrative (told by Boy in the first and third sections and by her daughter Bird in the second section) loses a bit of steam when Bird takes over. The metaphors on race become too concrete as the author tackles the unfortunate devaluing of persons based on shade of pigment; the writing is far more effective when the reader draws his/her necessary conclusions on the tyranny of the mirror rather than being lead there.

Still, Boy, Snow, Bird is so freshly-conceived – with writing that often leverages our mythic beliefs in fairy tales and soars into our subconscious – that it still manages to beguile. Ms. Oyeyemi is comfortable shattering many of our perceptions about race, gender, appearance, and family and does a masterful job of forcing us to confront our own mirror and ask, “Is the person reflected in the mirror a true representation about who I really am?”

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 15 readers
PUBLISHER: Riverhead Hardcover (March 6, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Helen Oyemi
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> BLUE ASYLUM by Kathy Hepinstall /2014/blue-asylum-by-kathy-hepinstall/ Sun, 09 Feb 2014 19:26:45 +0000 /?p=25635 Book Quote:

“Iris Dunleavy?” asked Mary. “Is she the plantation wife? She dresses so well for a lunatic. She had the most colorful flounces on her skirt the other night.”

Book Review:

Review by Judi Clark  (FEB 9, 2014)

This is Kathy Hepinstall’s fourth novel… and I’ve read all four, so obviously I like this author. She writes a different book each time and thus one never knows what will be found upon picking up her latest, although one can be sure it will be both literary and lyrical, no matter the tone and subject.

Blue Asylum takes place during the Civil War years on Sanibel Island on the west coast of Florida.

A judge finds the main character, Iris Dunleavy, insane essentially for hating and embarrassing her husband, “Wives were not supposed to hate their husbands. It was not in the proper order of things.” Her rich husband pays extra for her to be cured at the institution with the best reputation, the SANIBEL ASYLUM FOR LUNATICS which is managed by British born psychiatrist Dr. Cowell, who stubbornly believes that Iris is insane because a judge declared it. But Iris insists that she is not insane, that she was merely escaping from a hateful husband and cruel man. As she reveals her horrific story bit by bit, we can see that while she may not be clinically insane, she may have been crazy mad considering the decisions/actions she undertook (and continues to undertake).

She befriends the doctor’s 14-year-old son Wendell and another patient, Ambrose, who is suffering from something that happened during the civil war. She longs to escape and eventually does but with devastating effects.

I liked many things about this book, but I didn’t “love it,” at least not as much as I did The Absence of Nectar and Prince of Lost Places. But I did enjoy it immensely even though it is a little heavy handed on the message, not unlike her debut (and Oprah book club choice)  The House of Gentle Men.  Then again, given headlines such as Todd Akin’s comment on legitimate rape, it may be that heavy handed feminist historical literature is still necessary.

Hepinstall captures the historical detail of well and it is very visual as she sets a mood and imagery that plays out well both as metaphor and setting:

“Dawn broke soft and clean on the island of shell and marl and current. It was a day like any other, one more day in a season when marking the days was difficult, since the balminess was resolute and the birds were attuned to the tides, the tides to the moon, and the moon to the lunatics, under their crazy spell, waxing and waning in the accordance with the fluctuations of their madness and the depth of passions. A group of terns had gathered at the edge of a calm sea, and a single raccoon, caught after a daylight, skittered out of the dune vegetation and into the forest, leaving behind a loggerhead nest full of ruined eggs, shells broken and half-formed turtles spilling out in the sand.”

Hepinstall considers this a love story… and it is, but not the happy kind. This novel is an excellent choice for book clubs.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 139 readers
PUBLISHER: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 9, 2013)
REVIEWER: Judi Clark
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Kathy Hepinstall really humorous blog
EXTRAS:
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> THE TUNER OF SILENCES by Mia Couto /2014/the-tuner-of-silences-by-mia-couto/ Mon, 03 Feb 2014 12:45:16 +0000 /?p=24991 Book Quote:

“I was eleven years old when I saw a woman for the first time, and I was seized by such sudden surprise that I burst into tears.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (FEB 3, 2014)

The above opening line pulled me immediately into Mia Couto’s novel, The Tuner of Silences; it raised questions for me from the beginning and these didn’t let me go until the end. Mwanito, the narrator, reflecting back on the early years of his life, recounts his experiences while living in the company of three men and his slightly older brother in a remote campsite in a semi-desert. Couto, an award-winning Mozambican author, has written a novel that is part coming of age story, part family drama and part a kind of love story.

Mwanito’s mature voice recaptures covincingly the innocence of his childhood, his gradual awakening to a life that may be different from the one prescribed by his father, whose trauma and loss keep haunting him. In the tradition of African story telling, Couto’s narration moves with ease from realistic depiction of people and scenarios to fantasy, symbolism, mythology and the rich imagination of dreams. Set against the early years of post-Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique, Couto touches on questions of race and identity, of long held beliefs and traditions, and the uncertainties in the newly independent country.

After the sudden death of his wife, Mwanito’s distraught father takes his sons and flees the city for an abandoned game reserve far away. For him life as he knew it has ended and, he explains to his sons, “Over There,” beyond their camp, the world has seized to exist; it is a total wasteland. He declares the camp an “independent” land, names it “Jezoosalem”. Yes, the religious connotation is intended. Following the “renaming ceremony” of place and people, he, now Silvestre, rules “his land” dictatorially, his strict discipline not to be questions. The children live in fear of their father. No books are allowed or anything to do with writing; Mwanito is forbidden to learn: he is to be the Tuner of Silences. “I was born to keep quiet. My only vocation is silence…” he recalls his early experiences. Only he can calm the father’s anxieties. The family is accompanied by a raggedly looking ex-soldier who acts as a servant, security guard, hunter for essential meat supplies and, sometimes, friend to Ntunzi, Mwanito’s brother. Lastly, there is “Uncle Aproximado”, who lives at the edge of the game reserve, far away from the camp. He turns up from time to time to bring other essential supplies from “Over There.” His arrival is welcomed by the boys, who also wonder whether he steals, whether the father has escaped a crime, whether there is really a “wasteland” beyond the perimeter they are allowed to explore…

Mwanito, too young to remember his mother or anything from “Over There,” is a docile and dedicated follower of his father’s instructions. However, influenced by his older brother’s stories about their mother, Mwanito feels her presence in his vivid dreams, yet cannot define her features. Ntunzi, old enough to have been to school, pressures his younger brother to go against the father’s rule and learn to read, one letter at a time. “I already knew how to travel across written letters, as if each one were an endless highway. But I still needed to learn how to dream and to remember. I wanted that boat that took Ntunzi into the arms of our dead mother…”

Eventually, after years in isolation, Marta, the woman from the novel’s opening sentence appears, inadvertantly disturbing the life of each of the camp’s inhabitants and challenging the father’s enforced order. Marta’s presence is not quite as coincidental as it may seem at first, although some readers might find her involvement with the family and their secrets a bit too convenient. Still, she represents an important new conduit to the world outside, essential for the boys in coming to terms with their understanding of identity and other needs.

Mia Couto’s writing is engaging, his sense of place evident and with it the description of the abandoned game reserve in the semi-desert environment evocative. I found the story’s narrator Mwanito totally believable and in his childhood observations, his dreams, desires and wonderments very endearing. While his father may need him as the Tuner of Silences, the boy is a very astute observer of his surroundings. In his musings his language is gentle, poetic and rich in imagery. Silvestre, the father, by contrast, comes across as a tragic figure. In his inability to communicate, he isolates himself increasingly from his children. Unable to recover from his personal trauma, his clinging to a happier past with pseudo-religious rituals alienates his children and, rather than protecting them from the “wasteland Over There,” pushes them towards planning their escape if there is a chance. Given the place and the time frame the novel is set, I sense that Couto while personalizing his story very effectively, his novel also explores the deeper societal traumas and challenges that people in Mozambique have faced in their recent history. For me, this has been a thought provoking read.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Biblioasis (February 26, 2013)
REVIEWER: Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Mia Couto
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Partial Bibliography (translated works only):

]]> THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES by Sue Monk Kidd /2014/the-secret-life-of-bees-by-sue-monk-kidd/ Mon, 20 Jan 2014 17:46:58 +0000 /?p=25109 Book Quote:

“The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angle Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed. I know it is presumptuous to compare my small life to hers, but I have reason to believe she wouldn’t mind; I will get to that. Right now it’s enough to say that despite everything that happened that summer, I remain tender toward the bees.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (JAN 20, 2014)

Fourteen year-old Lily Melissa Owens has been a motherless child for ten years now. It fills her with anguish to think that she, at age four, had a hand in the accidental shooting death of Deborah Fontanel Owens, her own mother. Lily’s life has been shaped around this incident, and she has never ceased to yearn for her mother, (for a mother’s love), although her memories of the actual woman have been blurred by time. In fact, Lily has very little memory of that dark day’s events, and is totally dependent on her miserable, sadistic father, T. Ray Owens, for any and all accounts of her mom. The only person who shows her any affection is Rosaleen, a black peach-picker T. Ray brought in from the fields to care for his child.

At fourteen, Lily is extremely bright, loves to read and has a talent for writing. One of her teachers has encouraged her to think about a college education, although her father tells her she will be lucky to go to beauty school. On July 4, 1964, Lily’s birthday, she walks Rosaleen to town so the black woman can register to vote. President Lyndon B. Johnson just signed into effect the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Rosaleen feels pride in doing her civic duty, as does Lily in accompanying her. The two are harassed by three white men, one of whom is the biggest racist in town. When Rosaleen tries to defend herself, she and Lily are thrown in jail. In reality, back then in the American South, given what Rosaleen did to defend herself, and to whom she did it, she very well could have been beaten to death on the spot. T. Ray picks up his daughter almost immediately, and painfully punishes the girl. She manages to escape, though, and to break Rosaleen out of the hospital where she is recovering from her afternoon’s encounter with Jim Crowe.

One of the few mementoes Lily has of her mother is a small picture of a black Madonna with the words, Tiburon, S. C. on the back. Lily has saved some money from selling peaches at her father’s roadside stand, and is certain that if she and Rosaleen can reach Tiburon, she will find out about her Momma, and they will somehow be safe. And, sure enough, in Tiburon, S. C. Lily finds a connection between her Madonna picture and a trio of fairy godmother-like women – the calendar sisters May, June, and August Boatwright. These black spinster sisters live in a Pepto-Bismol pink-colored house, on a large tract of land outside of town. They keep bees, sell honey and other bee by-products, and their label, the Black Madonna Honey Company, is the same as the picture keepsake that Lily has from her mother. It is here that Lily learns, among many things, that “without a queen, the hive will die.” She understands that she must replace her own queen, her dead mother, or she will shrivel-up inside.

August Boatwright, Mother Figure, (with capital letters!), earth mother, and Madonna all-in-one, takes Lily and Rosaleen in without question, gives them jobs and a home – at least temporarily, until they can live and grow in an environment which will allow them to thrive. And along the way Lily will learn some basic truths, common for both bees and people.

All kinds of neat tidbits and facts about bees, their lives, habits, care, beekeeping in general, and honey production are woven throughout the book, and the details are fascinating. Each chapter is headed with a quotation about bees. However, as important and interesting as bees are as themes in The Secret Life Of Bees, sometimes the narrative is too sweet and sugary for my taste.

Sue Monk Kidd writes beautifully, lyrically, about a southern white girl’s unusual coming of age. However, the novel reads, frequently, like fantasy fiction. Now, I enjoy a beautiful story, especially when the author is as talented as this one, but I grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s, and the history I recollect is far different from this book’s version. I clearly remember what the times were like when President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and when Schwerner, Cheney & Goodman were murdered in Mississippi, and when Ms. Fanny Lou Hamer challenged white domination of the Mississippi Democratic Party. I was at the Democratic Convention in 1964 in Atlantic City, as a student delegate, when Ms. Hamer and her colleagues entered Convention Hall. Sue Monk Kidd’s bucolic Sylvan, South Carolina, and the little town of Tiburon, are poetic, magical places – in spite of rampant racism. One character is badly beaten, but not killed – she is actually able to walk out of the hospital within 24 hours. Another is unjustly jailed, but set free after a day or so – and not harmed? A strange white girl just moves in with a family of black women, in rural SC, and no one makes a helluva hullabaloo? And I shudder to think of a white teenage girl driving around in a car, in the front seat, with a black teenage male – in 1964 South Carolina. This would not be believable in many northern cities at the time – but it was unthinkable in the south. That poor guy would have never made it to the jailhouse alive!!

So let me stop here and say, that while I enjoyed reading this book, with its rich narrative and characters, it does read like a fairy tale. The hideous racism and violence of life in the US, north and south, is not depicted realistically in comparison to the beautiful, pastoral setting and peace of life with the Boatwright women. I do hope readers realize that much poetic licence has been taken here in terms of what this difficult period was like in US history.

It’s interesting to note, I think, that Lily’s ideal home, almost heaven, is depicted as being among black women. There used to be many white children, in the south, (and in the north), during the 1960’s and before, who received a primary source of love and care from black women, hired to work for their families. I am sure this warm, loving fantasy is not uncommon.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 1,862 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking; 1st edition (October 10, 2002)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Sue Monk Kidd
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
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]]> BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING by Dagoberto Gilb /2011/before-the-end-after-the-beginning-by-dagoberto-gilb/ Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:33:49 +0000 /?p=21957 Book Quote:

“The last time Ramiro Areyzaga was in Mexico was so long ago it was more like a fairy tale. . . A place of lush green shade, both a forest of trees and a jungle of huge waxy palm leaves, and a zocalo of marionettes and dancers, musicians and painters, with toys and balloons for the little ones and shawls for his grandparents. And of course the church, like none he’d ever seen, all the cool stone space, and God – which he never got over, so much so it stayed inside him, quietly, the rest of his life, like it was the word Mexico itself.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (NOV 9, 2011)

Dagoberto Gilb’s latest book, Before the End, After the Beginning, although a slight collection, is loaded with insight and humor. It’s a book about identity, about the tension between limiting factors outside our control– our race, our class, our gender – and our complexity as individuals.

The collection opens with a disorienting story, “please, thank you,” about a Mexican-American man struggling to regain control of his body after a stroke. Uncomfortably dependent on the hospital staff, forced to face his physical vulnerabilities with tasks as mundane as taking a shower or balancing a checkbook, his psychological vulnerabilities also come to the fore. All he sees around him are minorities persecuted by a white majority trying to keep them down. Everyone from his adult children to the hospital staff shake their head, bemused by his racial conspiracy theories, but as his body heals, so do the lifelong wounds of prejudice, at least enough that he can advise Erlinda, a Mexican janitor, to rise above the ignorance around her so that the wounds she endures on account of her race won’t fester and leave deep and putrid scars.

While sometimes, an illness forces us to recede into ourselves, often times, it’s through our relationship with others that we struggle with undesirable aspects of our identity. “The Last Time I saw Junior,” a hot-headed Mexican must face his former self when an old buddy comes around and manipulates him (once again) into helping him. In “Cheap,” a Mexican musician is forced to face both his fiscal and emotional frugality when the pursuit of an unfairly low bid by a local contractor causes him to face the exploitation of other Mexicans, who he tries to help.

“Willows Village,” explores the other side of help – dependency. When Guillermo moves from El Paso to Santa Ana in search of a job that will support his young family, he has little choice but to stay with his aunt, his mother’s sister, Maggy, who, according to his mother, was “an all-spoiled this and did-all-bad-that” who got away with murder on account of her looks. Maggy lives in a tract housing development, called Willows Village, with a kitchen “loaded up like a mall gourmet store” and a bedroom as “beautiful as any hotel.”  Her husband is gone for weeks at a time on business and so Maggy manages her loneliness by keeping an unfortunate friend, Lorena. In exchange for room and board, Lorena does the errands Maggy doesn’t want to do and accepts Maggy’s capricious generosity with a smile and appropriate gratitude. While Guillermo pounds the pavement in search of a job, his dependency on Maggy and his mother, on Gabe, the man who employs him for a time, frustrates him, and with the wine always flowing at the house, it’s inevitable that tensions and resentments will come to a head, exposing the line between need and reliance.

Gilb explores the fraught dynamics of attractive women financially dependent on men through the eyes of the males who actually love them. In “Blessing,” a young man sets out to visit his high-school sweetheart, now married to a much-older man. Sexually unsatisfied, she visits him during the night, which prompts him to flee her house in the morning, putting him in the wrong place at the wrong time. In “Uncle Rock,” a young boy deals with having a mother who is beautiful enough to attract restaurant owners and engineers, but not white enough to be marriageable. With a precocious understanding of the sexual marketplace, he deflects a professional baseball player’s advances in favor of a man with modest means who worships the ground his mother walks on.

Perhaps our most poignant search for identity is in the face of death. In “Hacia Teotitlan,” a dying man journeys home to a Mexico that he remembers as a fairy tale with glorious churches. He rents a room that is too small for his body, and vows to discontinue his medication, resigning himself to dying with the same resignation of a stray dog. While he may not have found what he was looking for, he walks away with new ways of expressing his innermost desire – to be well.

Each of these stories is a wonderful meditation on identity and the pain we endure in the struggle to create ourselves. In 2009, Dagoberto Gilb suffered a stroke; these stories are the product of his recovery. Although judging from the simple power of this book, I’d say it definitely marks a return to form.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: Grove Press (November 1, 2011)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dagoberto Gilb
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
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]]> THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES by Hector Tobar /2011/the-barbarian-nurseries-by-hector-tobar/ Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:53:58 +0000 /?p=21530 Book Quote:

“There were too many people here now, a crush of bodies on the sidewalks and too many cars on the highways, people crowded into houses and apartment buildings in Santa Ana, in Anaheim, cities that used to be good places to live. The landmarks of Scott’s youth, the burger stands and the diners, were now covered with the grimy stains of time and something else, an alien presence.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (OCT 17, 2011)

From the looks of it you could never tell that the beautiful Torres-Thompson home in fancy Laguna Rancho Estates, is on the cusp of unraveling. But look closely and you can see the edges of the tropical garden coming undone, the lawn not done just right; and these are merely the symptoms of greater troubles. For the couple Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson the country’s financial crisis has come knocking, even in their ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood.

Scott Torres once spearheaded a booming software company that went broke in the software bust. As the book opens, he is reduced to doing mundane work for a new software firm. The family is beset with enough financial insecurities that Scott and Maureen let go of two staff members in their hired help team—the gardener, Pepe, and the babysitter, Lupe. 

The one maid left standing, Araceli Ramirez, once only held cooking and cleaning responsibilities but now finds herself, much to her annoyance, occasionally watching the boys, Brandon and Keenan and the baby, Samantha.

As Araceli cleans and cooks, she silently watches the dynamics of the family unfold. One day, Maureen, tired of cutting corners from the lavish lifestyle she once knew, decides she will splurge on a new desert garden—one that will replace the decaying tropical one that gardener Pepe once so lovingly tended. The astronomical sum she spends on the landscaping is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Scott and Maureen have a heated altercation, witnessed by Araceli. The next morning, Araceli wakes up to find both her jefe and jefa (there’s a little Spanish left untranslated in the book, some of which can’t be made out just by context) gone with the baby. The boys are home alone with her. As it happens, Maureen and Scott leave independently each one assuming, through a set of coincidences, that the other spouse will be around to take care of the boys. Neither is; the boys are left completely alone for three whole days.

At the end of the third day, at her wit’s end, Araceli decides she will bring the boys to Los Angeles where she is sure their Mexican grandfather (Scott’s Dad) lives. The three set off on an adventure to find grandpa. Predictably they never do.

In the meantime, Maureen and Scott have returned home only to find the boys and the housekeeper missing. They immediately jump to the conclusion that the boys have been kidnapped. The police are called in and all hell breaks loose.

The fact that Araceli is an illegal immigrant complicates the situation tenfold and soon the case makes national headlines. After a series of adventures, the boys are reunited with their parents. But the case has by now developed a life of its own. Scott and Maureen for their part become the stand-in for rich, privileged folks who get constantly shown up as the poster children for bad parenting.

Then there’s Araceli. On the one hand she is worshipped by fellow Mexicans as the exploited, underprivileged Mexicana—someone who represents all the collective immigrant angst in the United States. On the other hand, there’s the flag-waving crowd—members of whom insist that Araceli needs to be deported if not permanently jailed for her crimes. As the book makes its way through to the end, Araceli decides to take some of these matters in her own hands.

The Barbarian Nurseries starts out with a good premise but at every stage it moves so predictably that one can see the ending coming way before it actually arrives. The author, Hector Tobar, won a Pulitzer as part of a team at L.A. times covering the L.A. riots. Unfortunately his journalistic brio doesn’t translate well to fiction. The Barbarian Nurseries has one coincidence too many woven into the story until it totally strains credulity. For example, when Maureen leaves home with Samantha and goes to a spa, the delays that hold her there for three whole days are really difficult to swallow.

Tobar does have keen insight into the various segments of the California narrative—the ultra-rich millionaires, the hired help, the immigrant psyche—but he falls short of weaving these narratives into a compelling story. One would have loved to learn more about Araceli’s past in Mexico, or even about Maureen’s Midwestern roots for example. But too often Araceli and her owners fall into clichéd stereotypes, for what people like them should say and do. Even the media circus that attends the “kidnapping” case drags on way too long.

To his credit, Tobar successfully raises some essential questions: about the act of parenting in these intensely wired times and about the place of immigrants in our larger social fabric.

The Barbarian Nurseries has been billed as the great contemporary California novel and it certainly has all the elements for one. Unfortunately its somewhat predictable story has the book degenerating into precisely the thing it derides the most — a sound bite.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 14 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER: Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Héctor Tobar
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
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