1940s – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 THE PARIS ARCHITECT by Charles Belfoure /2013/the-paris-architect-by-charles-belfoure/ Sun, 08 Dec 2013 17:07:18 +0000 /?p=23580 Book Quote:

“Before I give you information about the project, let me ask you a personal question,” Manet said. “How do you feel about Jews?”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie  (DEC 8, 2013)

It is Paris in the spring of 1942. Paris, the glorious “City of Lights” is even more wondrous in the springtime….but not for the French, not in 1942. It is the second year of the victorious Nazi occupation, and the French are struggling to get by. There are economic problems with the payment of the costs of a three-hundred-thousand strong occupying German army, which amounts to twenty million Reichmarks per day; lack of food for French citizens – the Germans seize about 20% of the French food production, which causes severe disruption to the household economy of the French people; the disorganization of transport, except for the railway system which relies on French domestic coal supplies; the Allied blockade, restricting all imports into the country; the extreme shortage of petrol and diesel fuel; (one walks or rides a bike); France has no indigenous oil production and all imports have stopped; labor shortages, particularly in the countryside, due to the large number of French prisoners of war held in Germany. And then there was the Jewish problem.

Approximately 49 concentration camps are in use in France during the occupation, the largest of them at Drancy. In the occupied zone, as of 1942, Jews are required to wear the yellow badge. On the Paris Métro Jews are only allowed to ride in the last carriage. Thirteen thousand one hundred fifty-two Jews residing in the Paris region are victims of a mass arrest by pro Nazi French authorities on 16 and 17 July 1942, known as the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup, and are transported to Auschwitz where they are killed.

Parisian Lucien Bernard is a struggling architect, trying to make a name for himself. He is just trying to earn a living, gain some respect in his chosen field and stay alive. He hates the Germans but has little feeling for the plight of the Jews. Since the German occupation, all work has dried up unless it is for the Nazis.

As the book opens he is on his way to an appointment when a Jewish man is gunned down by a German soldier right in front of him. His main concern is that he not be splattered with blood because he has an important appointment with Auguste Manet, a potential client and wants to make a good impression. He also wants to arrive on time.

“Lucien had learned early in his career that architecture is a business as well as an art, and one ought not look at a first job from a new client as a one-shot deal but rather as the first in a series of commissions.”

This job has much potential. “Monsieur Manet had money, old money. He was from a distinguished family that went back generations.” And Manet was in an excellent position to obtain German contracts. Manet offers Lucien two commissions. He cannot take one without the other. One is for a large factory – to design a new Heinkel Aircraft Works, the other is to construct a secret room in which to hide someone. A room that will never be discovered no matter how well a house is searched; rather like the “priest holes” of yore. Lucien needs the money and wants the contracts that this relationship might bring. He accepts.

Lucien’s first hiding place is inside a Doric column. The actual work is carried out by a German named Herzog and another man. Both have worked for Manet for years and are entirely dependable. He begins designing more expertly concealed hiding spaces -behind a painting, within a column, or inside a drainpipe – detecting possibilities invisible to the average eye. But when one of his clever hiding spaces fails horribly and the immense suffering of Jews becomes incredibly personal, he can no longer deny reality.

Lucien’s Faustian bargain with the Third Reich is central to the plot. His moral dilemma between his art and his humanity leads him to decision making and life threatening choices. The architect is not the hero here. His actions are not heroic. He undertakes each “hidey hole” design project because he also receives generous monetary recompense and is awarded German engineering projects as a part of the bargain. The “heroes” are the individuals – a Catholic priest, a wealthy Jew, a Parisian fashionista and a German soldier, who, despite the risk of certain death, step up and do something/anything to thwart the actions of the Gestapo.

Lucien is a character who changes as the novel moves, but not without struggles and betrayals. What he is doing is very, very dangerous and there is one German who is determined to capture this man who tricks and deceives the Germans.  Lucien may be somewhat detestable in the beginning with his philandering, his off-handed anti-Semitism, and his greed, but he undertakes a monumental metamorphosis which strips the negative influences from his life and allows his true self to shine through. That may sound corny but it is true. In that aspect, The Paris Architect is a beautiful story of change and growth.

Charles Belfoure is an an author and an architect. Because of his architectural background and insight to the human soul and spirit, he has the ability to shape characters the same way he might craft buildings. The architect’s skill of seeing through to the skeleton of a building must have imbued him with the power to reveal the humanity in each of us.

Just a bit of historical information about the book. Mr. Belfoure has stated that he got his idea about the hidey-holes from Elizabethian England. Priest holes or hidey-holes were secluded or isolated places; hideaways. The term was given to hiding places for priests built into many of the principal Catholic houses of England during the period when Catholics were persecuted by law in England, from the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558. The effectiveness of priest holes was demonstrated by their success in baffling the exhaustive searches of the priest-hunters. Search-parties would bring with them skilled carpenters and masons and try every possible expedient, from systematic measurements and soundings to the physical tearing down of paneling and pulling up of floors. It was common for a rigorous search to last a week, and for the priest-hunters to go away empty handed, while the object of the search was hidden the whole time within a wall’s thickness of his pursuers. He might be half-starved, cramped, sore with prolonged confinement, and almost afraid to breathe lest the least sound should throw suspicion upon the particular spot where he was immured. Sometimes a priest could die from starvation or by lack of oxygen.

I was immediately immersed in this unusual novel and highly recommend it.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 46 readers
PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark (October 8, 2013)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Charles Belfoure
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More on fiction based on historical Paris:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

]]> THE TYPIST by Michael Knight /2011/the-typist-by-michael-knight/ Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:40:42 +0000 /?p=19997 Book Quote:

“Mittomonai translates roughly as indecent or shameful. I looked it up when I got back to the barracks. But I don’t think I understand what Fumiko meant, not right away at least, not until some time had passed. At first and for a long while afterward, I thought she meant the idea of such a celebration at the scene of such a tragedy, but now I think her meaning was more complicated than that.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  AUG 9, 2011)

Only those who fully venerate war can think of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a glorified event. Indeed, many fictional books that are set in post-Hiroshima reconstruction are filled with vivid, colorful and poignant descriptions.

So it comes as a surprise that Michael Knight’s The Typist is such a gentle book. It is devoid of precisely what one might expect in a book set in the wake of World War II: no brow-beating, no heart-wrenching, no intrusive authorial political statements.

At its heart, The Typist is a coming-of-age book. The protagonist, Pfc. Francis Vancleave (Van) has one claim to fame: he types an astounding 95 words a minute. That skill keeps him off the battlefield, where his days are filled with mind-numbing letters of dictation and paperwork. That is, until he comes to the attention of General MacArthur, nicknamed “Bunny.” Bunny conscripts him to keep company with his young son, Arthur, an isolated boy, who enjoys staging figurine battles with his large assortment of toys.

Van is a man who is marginalized by life. As a married man – and we initially know little about his marriage – he does not enter into the “sport” of bedding the panpan girls who “smoked and teased and sent young boys over with indecent propositions.” Unlike his roommate, Clifford, he is a straight arrow, freshly minted from Alabama, more of an observer than a participant. He is able to lose himself in the games of his young charge (would Hannibel outfox Napolean?) and fits in beautifully in Arthur’s isolated world.

There is an authentic simplicity in Michael Knight’s sparse writing, a puissance that might elude a less gifted writer. As Van searches for his own legitimacy, Mr. Knight provides him with the luxury of reaching it at his own pace. This is slow, effortless, luxuriant prose, prose that casts a spell, prose that doesn’t waste a word and refuses to erect artificial roadblocks to the story. As far as comparisons, one work that comes instantly to mind is Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer. There is as much power in what is not stated as what is.

A subtle theme of football runs through the book – and also in the magnificent story that precedes The Typist, called The Atom Bowl. MacArthur, in shocking disregard of sensibilities, holds a football game to rally spirit in what he dubs the Atom Bowl; “the players trotted out and suddenly the ball was in the air, the Giants kicking to the Bears in the city of Hiroshima, on the island of Honshu, in the occupied nation of Japan.” If there is any doubt of how Michael Knight expects us to read this scene, it is dispelled by the opening story. In it, a young boy interviews his “pawpaw” – the last surviving participant of the Atom Bowl. As his pawpaw relives these “gory days,” the boy asks him, “What about you? Did you ever feel guilty or anything?” The response: “For what?”

This small, quiet novel centering on a rootless man in search for something he only dimly understands packs a disproportionate wallop. By juxtaposing complex characters with an economy of language, Michael Knight has created a compelling meditation of a sliver of history.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 14 readers
PUBLISHER: Grove Press (August 9, 2011)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Michael Knight
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

The Boat by Nam Le

Bibliography:

 

]]> THE ADJUSTMENT by Scott Phillips /2011/the-adjustment-by-scott-phillips/ Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:51:07 +0000 /?p=19881 Book Quote:

The boss glowered at me when I walked into his office, his shoulders hunched and hangover tense, a condition that had to exacerbate the pain in his ribcage. Before he had a chance to snap at me I dropped the bag with the Hycodan on the blotter that sat atop his massive mahogany desk. “Instructions are written on the side of the bag.”

It was as though a state of grace washed over him just then. His musculature relaxed visibly, and he exhaled as though he’d been holding it in all morning. His torn ear got redder, his eyes brightened and he opened the bag like a little kid digging into his Christmas stocking. “Morphine. Hot Diggety”

“Isn’t morphine. Something new. Better than morphine.”

“The hell you say.”

“Fix you right up, is what the doc says.”

Without reading the directions he unscrewed the bottle top and tossed one into his mouth and crunched it.

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barkdsale  AUG 5, 2011)

The Adjustment, Scott Phillips latest novel, World War II veteran Wayne Ogden (from The Walkaway) returns to work in Wichita Kansas for Everett Collins, the rich, but lazy owner of Collins Aircraft. Although Ogden is supposed to be the head of the Publicity and Marketing Department, he spends more time finding women, alcohol and drugs for his boss and also helping the women get abortions that his boss has impregnated. Ogden is not above sharing in the alcohol and women despite having a very attractive and pregnant wife at home. He also likes going to the abortion doctor in Kansas City to see his favorite girlfriend Vickie.

This is not a book that everyone would enjoy especially since most of the men, including the main character, are not particularly likeable, or at least shouldn’t be likeable. You really need to check your morals at the first page and just enjoy the book for what it is. Many would also not find it funny, but it is very funny, again as long as you don’t let yourself be offended. Relax, it’s fiction. Wayne Ogden is not that good a person, but his treatment of his sleazy boss is fun to read as the excerpt above shows. If you haven’t read anything by Phillips, but have seen the movie The Ice Harvest, based on Phillips’ first book of the same name, you’ll get a sense of what to expect in this book. Overall, I really enjoyed Phillips style in the first person novel.

While still missing his days in the service and adjusting to his life at home, Ogden starts receiving strange messages, starting with this first one:

YOU SON OF A BITCH THIEF THERE’S BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS. ERUPOEAN LADYS ARE DELICATE AS FLOWERS.

Ogden figures this and the other messages he gets must have something to do with his time in the service when he was a supply sergeant with the Quartermaster Corps. Of course, true to his nature, Ogden used his time there to occasionally do what he was paid to do, but spent more time overseeing his sale of prostitutes, alcohol and other items. His skills honed in the service were now in use working for his boss Everett Collins. Nonetheless, this work often led him to meet some violent people in both jobs and he becomes concerned about what he may have done to result in these disturbing notes.

Up to now, the only thing I had read by Scott Phillips was a short story in Damn Near Dead 2. I had seen him speak at Noircon in November, 2011 and have since picked up a few of his books, including the free (with a donation of your choice) book, Rut issued by Concord Free Press. After reading The Adjustment, I’m glad I have more to read.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 4 readers
PUBLISHER: Counterpoint (July 26, 2011)
REVIEWER: Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Scott Phillips
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> NEXT TO LOVE by Ellen Feldman /2011/next-to-love-by-ellen-feldman/ Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:54:14 +0000 /?p=19606 Book Quote:

“They love one another with an atavistic ferocity, though, it occurs to Babe sitting in the sunporch, these days perhaps they do not like one another. But she is asking too much of them. Friendship, like marriage, is not all of a piece.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JUL 28, 2011)

“War…next to love, has captured the world’s imagination,” said the British lexicographer Eric Partridge in 1914. And indeed it has. in English classes, we rapidly become acquainted with The Naked and the Dead, All Quiet on the Western Front, For Whom The Bell Tolls, From Here to Eternity, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five…the list goes on and on.

But here’s what we don’t read about: the personal battles that are fought on the home front. We don’t get an upfront-and-personal look at the women behind the men and what war means to them…and to the children they create together.

Next To Love starts out very strong. We meet three childhood friends in Massachusetts – Babe, Millie, and Grace – whose men are on the cusp of going off to World War II. Ms. Feldman deftly juggles their stories and breathes life into their characters. Grace is the beauty who is married to the heir of one of the town’s most illustrious citizens and has a young daughter; Millie is married to Pete, the pharmacist’s son; and Babe is the feisty wrong-side-of-the-tracks gal who is in a committed relationship with an upstanding man who wants to become a teacher.

The period details are handled beautifully. Ellen Feldman summons up an age where instant communication (cell phones, Internet, etc.) did not exist and when lovers wrote their heart out in letters. It’s an age where women were divided into “nice girls” and “tramps” and men kept a stiff upper lip and talked about “honor” and “duty.” And it’s an age when the telegram is feared and one town can suddenly lose several of its beloved American boys overnight.

It’s also a time when there’s a clear divide between men and women. “The husbands speak the language of drills, marches, and officers who don’t know which end is up; the wives speak the dialect of carping landladies, dirty bathrooms and no hot water to wash their hair, and endless spirit-killing games of bridge. Since there is no common tongue between them, they communicate in sex,” writes Ms. Feldman. In this aspect, the book calls to mind another excellent one: Siobhan Fallon’s You Know When The Men Are Gone.

Profound change comes after the war. The novel takes on a lot in a scant 300 pages and the characters I had come to love in the first half begin to feel a little bit like stand-ins as the forces of history flow past. Yet Ms. Feldman’s riveting style keeps the reader in a “what’s next?” mode.

We are at their side as they try to understand the men who have been forever changed by the horrors of war; one of them has what would be called post-traumatic stress disorder today. We see the toll it takes on their young children who can only fantasize about the fathers they have never met. And we are on the sidelines of what is now familiar milestones: the way that black veterans are shuffled aside after the war, unable to participate in the new prosperity; the treatment of women as frivolous things, not worthy of jobs or deep thoughts; the bigotry against Jews, ironically, after a war where six million of them were callously murdered.

Ultimately, the book is focused on female friendship – at turns, courageous, poignant, and fragile. The friendships are not idealized, but rather portrayed to be sustaining, enduring, and nurturing. At its core, it is about survival through life, love, children, war, grief, and resurgence, delivered with just the right amount of drama and intensity.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 88 readers
PUBLISHER: Spiegel & Grau (July 26, 2011)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Ellen Feldman
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: As mentioned above:

Read our review of Ellen Feldman’s:

 

Bibliography:

]]> THE ASTOUNDING, THE AMAZING, THE UNKNOWN by Paul Malmont /2011/the-astounding-the-amazing-the-unknown-by-paul-malmont/ Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:15:30 +0000 /?p=19484 Book Quote:

“There have been rumors ever since Wardenclyffe was shut down that Tesla was up to something other than trying to create a new form of electronic communication. Something potentially devastating…I need you to help me find out what happened at Wardenclyffe. We need to know why the Nazis consider it a Wunderwaffe. A wonder weapon.”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (JUL 22, 2011)

The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown by Paul Malmont is a celebration of science fiction’s golden years via the pulp magazine ethos. Taking place in 1943, it recounts a story partially based in fact about how the guiding lights of science fiction’s heyday were brought together by the military and tasked with making science fiction real in order to defeat the Nazis. Virtually all the authors who were the mainstays of science fiction and fantasy from 1930’s through the 1960’s are there. Robert A. (Bob) Heinlein is the leader of the team that includes the young Isaac Asimov, under the direction of the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and Unknown, John Campbell. Heinlein, a graduate of the naval academy, was a prolific and talented writer who almost always got his science right. Asimov, the all-time most prolific writer of books in any genre appears as an earnest young writer in the process of earning his PhD in chemistry. L. Ron Hubbard is featured as are L. Sprague de Camp, Walter Gibson, and inventor/mad genius Nikolai Tesla among many others.

The center of the story is the quest for Nikola Tesla’s purported death ray that he thought caused the catastrophic Tungusta explosion which leveled 800 square miles in Siberia. The explosion is now regarded as having been caused by the impact of a meteor. Tesla, Edison’s rival, was the inventor of the radio and alternating current among many others. He is the perfect model of a mad genius, someone more bizarre and improbable than anything in fiction.

The novel is structured as a series of linked episodes echoing the structure of those novels serialized in the pulp fiction of the era. The pulps were soft cover magazines with short stories, serialized longer fiction, and articles that were printed on newsprint (hence the name, pulp, from the wood pulp source of the paper). The style and structure also recall serialized movies, likewise based on the pulps, shown in short segments in movie theaters up until the late 1950’s. Each episode here is more or less self-contained and many feature an improbable escape by the protagonist/heroes. The blending of fact and fiction is ingenious and great fun.

In one episode, Heinlein, Asimov, and Gibson escape from being trapped in the sub-basement of the Empire State Building by following the path of a buried river under Manhattan only to be swept away to finally emerge in the basement of 2 Fifth Avenue. Clive Cartmill’s prescient description of a functioning atom bomb as published by John Campbell in an issue of Astounding Science Fiction, gains attention by the FBI. A pair of thuggish FBI agents question Heinlein about Cartmill, Campbell, and the revelatory story. Their methods escalate to brutality when they are electrocuted by a lightning strike to their telephone. One of our science fiction heroes escaped from a cavern inside a volcano when it is erupting. He improbably escapes and coincidences just multiply.

The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown celebrates science fiction’s glory years and does so by echoing the style and content of pulp fiction from the time of World War II. The portions that deal with the wives, lovers and generally left-wing politics of the science fiction authors are a nod to modern writing. So, too, is the animated and perceptive description of the fans and the science fiction conventions. Anyone who enjoys or nostalgically recalls such classics of the genre as the Lazarus Long stories, by Heinlein, or Asimov’s Foundation Series will find a comfortable and happy home here.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Paul Malmont
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

The Chinatown Death Cloud

More Nikola Tesla in fiction:

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

Bibliography:

]]> PORTRAITS OF A MARRIAGE by Sandor Marai /2011/portraits-of-a-marriage-by-sandor-marai/ Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:50:08 +0000 /?p=16309 Book Quote:

“Love is a monstrous selfishness.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns  (FEB 22, 2011)

They say there are two sides to every story. In the case of Portraits of a Marriage, there are three. There is the story of the erstwhile housekeeper cum second wife, Judit; the pragmatic and loving first wife, Ilona; and there is Peter’s story, the husband of wife number one and wife number two, whom we find at the end of the novel, lost and destitute. It is not a complicated story, the one told here; nor is it particularly unique or poignant, though the story is laced with insight. The story told here, the story, as the title suggests, of a marriage, is told in straight-forward narrative, albeit from three perspectives, and set against the fabric of a damaged Hungary between the wars. It is an elegant and beautiful book, a rich tapestry on love, marriage and class. It is, as well, deeply psychological, almost Jamesianly so.

Sándor Márai (1900-1989) was unknown to me prior to this novel. A quick Wikipedia check informed me that I was not alone. Largely forgotten outside of his native Hungary, his work has only recently (since 1992) been “rediscovered” and now appears in over a dozen languages around the world. The entry noted that he is “now considered to be part of the European Twentieth Century literary canon.” The cover to this book states that it is a “new translation of a rediscovered novel by the great Hungarian writer…” A quick look at the copyright page informed me that the novel was originally published in Budapest, Hungary in 1941. Indeed, the book had the rugged texture of war-torn Europe, such as only, I assume, can be created in the midst of strife and chaos. In this way, the book reminded me of Suite Francaise, by Irène Némirovsky, such was the quiet and controlled nervousness and tension.

The book opens with a first-person narration. “Look, see that man? Wait! Turn your head away, look at me, keep talking. I wouldn’t like it if he glanced this way and spotted me.” We discover two women, one who’s voice is present, the other mute to us, sitting in the sun on a winter day eating pistachio ice cream. As the women visit, the narrator tells the story of the man who has just been spotted, Peter. The voice we hear is that of Ilona and she is now many years removed from the marriage which she describes. Yet, it is evident that she still loves him deeply. “Does it show I have been crying?…My heart still beats faster when I see him.” For this is the view of the marriage Ilona carries, a view of deep love for her husband, then and still.

Ilona outlines the marriage for us. We learn of their early years, of the birth and loss of a child, of the tensions of Peter’s business, his stoic and precise nature. “…he did read a lot, ‘systematically’–his favorite word–a little too systematically for my taste. I read passionately, according to mood.” That dynamic, Peter’s systematic approach to life, juxtaposed with Ilona’s passion, define the marriage. Eventually Ilona discovers that Peter’s heart belongs to another. The discovery is quietly and calmly confronted and the marriage dissolves. The abiding discovery of Ilona’s tale is her unconditional love for Peter. It is steadfast and complete, and when the marriage is over, she is herself less complete, less a person for love lost.

The second narration, Part II, is Peter’s account of things. It begins, much like Ilona’s, with a first-person observation. “See the pair just leaving, there by the revolving doors?…That woman was my wife. Not the first [Ilona], but the second [Judit]. We’ve been divorced for three years.” Peter, like Ilona, is accompanied by a friend, a foil for the unraveling of the tale. Of his marriage to Ilona, Peter confesses: “I lacked the courage to accept the tenderness of the woman who loved me. I resisted. I even looked down on her a little for it, because she was different from me–une petite bourgeoise.” We learn that Peter has been in love, for many years, with the hired woman of his parents, a young maid. This is the woman at the center of Ilona’s discovery. But his love is chaste. Prior to his first marriage, his affection for Judit is declared, deemed impossible and he subsequently leaves home and country. Upon return he marries a woman more in keeping with the family standard, Ilona. But Peter is incapable of love, it seems. “Is there anyone alive capable of surviving under the reign of terror called love.” With one exception. He loved his child, now lost. “Love is feeling without an end in view,” he declares. But with the child’s death, comes an “end in view,” and so is gone his love. He leaves the marriage and eventually marries the woman of his youthful fancy, Judit.

Judit’s story, another first-person narration, is the most complex and psychologically compelling. We meet her, along with a lover, long after her marriage to Peter has dissolved. “His problem was that he was bourgeois,” she declares without irony. She is in a hotel suite with her young lover and spinning her tale. Obviously, Judit, the erstwhile maid, has risen–clawed, is more apt–above her station and achieved her goal, that is, she is no longer a handmaiden, but a woman of means, a woman men long for. Of her early encounter with Peter, she relates, “The one day he asked to speak to me. He said he wanted to marry me–me, the maid! I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but at that moment I hated him so much I could have spat at him.” But marry him she does, as he is the vehicle by which she can achieve her means. But, as she says to her lover, “There was a time when I was in love with him, of course, but that’s only because I hadn’t lived with him yet. Love and being in love don’t go together, you know.”

There is one last story told, a brief account given by the man we meet in Judit’s bed. He escapes the war and journeys to America, where his path crosses briefly with Peter’s. It is a tidy approach and rounds out the tale, nicely tying up a few loose ends.

Although the novel is titled Portraits of a Marriage, it would be more accurate to call it “Portraits of Love.” The marriage is nothing more than the vehicle by which love might be exercised–and lost. Ilona’s love was Peter. Peter’s love was his child. Judit’s love was for breaking away from her petty origins, her poverty, and eventually the war; it was ultimately a love for a future of her creation. Tragically, all three lose what they love. The notion is summarized by Peter at the end of his narration: “You see, one day I realized that no one can help me. It is love people want…but there’s no one who can help with it, never.” (Translated by George Szirtes.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 3 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (February 22, 2011)
REVIEWER: Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Sándor Márai
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Casanova in Bolzano

Esthers Inheritance

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

]]> UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand /2011/unbroken-by-laura-hillenbrand/ Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:30:44 +0000 /?p=15632 Book Quote:

“This self respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind. Men subjected to dehumanizing treatment experience profound wretchedness and loneliness and find that hope is almost impossible to retain.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JAN 26, 2011)

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Lauren Hillenbrand, is the inspirational story of a courageous and resilient man, Louis Silvie Zamperini who, after flying a series of dangerous missions during World War II, spent over forty days stranded in the Pacific Ocean on a life raft with two of his buddies. They were scorched by the sun, buffeted by storms, and subsisted on a minuscule amount of food and water. Subsequently, Zamperini was captured and interned in a series of brutal Japanese POW camps where he was treated mercilessly by his sadistic captors. Miraculously, he emerged, battered and emaciated, but still alive. Little did he know that some of his biggest battles still lay ahead.

This work of non-fiction, told in five parts, is more than a biography. It is a depiction of an era when fighting took precedence over family, vocation, and education. The sacrifices made by “the greatest generation” were incalculable. Louie Zamperini, an enormously talented track star, had dreams of winning an Olympic medal. However, this son of Italian immigrants had to give up his promising future of athletic glory. Louis was drafted and became a bombardier in the air corps. He and his fellow airmen flew the B-24, known as the Flying Coffin because of its excessive weight, mechanical defects, and lack of maneuverability. The author provides shocking statistics about the number of fliers who died during training accidents because of faulty aircraft. “In 1943 in the Pacific Ocean Areas Theater…for every plane lost in combat, some six planes were lost in accidents.” A staggering “35,946 personnel died in non-battle situations, the vast majority of them in accidental crashes.”

Hillenbrand covers a great deal of territory. She places us in airplanes alongside the fighter pilots who are being attacked by the enemy; on the ocean with three marooned men who are starving, dehydrated, hallucinating, and on the verge of being devoured by hungry sharks; and in the prisoner of war camps, where a psychotic Japanese corporal, known as Bird, repeatedly unleashes his insane aggression on Louie. Bird, and others like him, beat, humiliate, and starve their American captives who are, according to international law, supposed to be treated humanely.

This book is a marvel of research. The author conducted countless interviews and consulted reams of documents, all of which she cites in her extensive endnotes. Some will find that the most harrowing part of the book is how close Louie came to self-destruction after the war was over. His experiences left him prone to nightmares, feelings of deep-seated rage, and alcoholism. Louie had to find a way to rebuild his shattered life.

Unbroken is not for everyone. Hillenbrand spends a great deal of time depicting grisly details about excruciating subjects. In addition, the book is a bit too long, and could have been edited with no loss of coherence. Still, anyone who is unfamiliar with the travails of those who left family and friends behind to serve in the Second World War will find this book both enlightening and wrenching. Unbroken is not just a disheartening depiction of man’s inhumanity to man. It is also a testament to the indomitable power of the human spirit to overcome even the most daunting challenges.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 623 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House; 1st Edition (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Laura Hillenbrand
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another war time biography:

Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

Bibliography:

]]> NEMESIS by Philip Roth /2010/nemesis-by-philip-roth/ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:19:11 +0000 /?p=12952 Book Quote:

” …there’s nobody less salvageable than a ruined good boy.”

Book Review:

Review by Helen Ditouras  (OCT 15, 2010)

“Tender” and “noble” are two words I have never used to describe a Roth character. In fact, Roth’s usual suspects are razor sharp with a mean streak of self-loathing to befit the most unlikable anti-heroes of the American literary canon. Not to mention, most of his characters are so self-obsessed and entrenched in complicated sexual proclivities that they seldom do the right thing. And much to the chagrin of my feminist friends, I’m amused, if not seduced, by these delinquent male protagonists, and look forward to their self-deprecating demise each and every time I encounter them.

Which is precisely why my love for Eugene “Bucky” Cantor bemuses me in a way I can’t describe. Cantor, the leading man in Roth’s latest novel Nemesis, is so decent, so likable in a non-Rothian way, that if you’re a stalwart fan of Alexander Portnoy or David Kepesh, two of the most deliciously depraved characters to ever grace Roth’s fiction, then Bucky Cantor materializes like Mother Theresa. And yet never before have I ached for such a character – identified with such a man whose nobility and innocence would have previously escaped me.

Is it the setting of this novel, 1944 wartime Newark, that makes the emergence of a character like Cantor so salient, if not, believable? Or, is it the raging outbreak of polio in Jewish Weequahic that brings all of these elements together? A child orphaned by the death of his mother upon giving birth, abandoned by his charlatan of a father, Bucky Cantor is saved by his wholesome grandparents who raise him with dignity and unmitigated devotion. Schooled by his grandfather – a kind, but indubitably, man’s man, Cantor appears in the first chapter of Roth’s novel as a hero of sorts. Especially to the children of Chancellor Avenue School, who worship Bucky as their beloved playground director during the summer of the polio outbreak. Unhinged by his inability to serve in the army due to his compromised eyesight, Cantor allots his time and affection to the Jewish children of Weequahic who compete for his love and approval. From standing up to a group of anti-Semitic Italian hooligans on the playground, to modeling his outstanding athletic prowess, Bucky Cantor is more than the local victor of summertime Newark – he becomes the center of these children’s lives. So when polio hits the Chancellor playground and ruthlessly stakes out the fates of these children, so begins the slow and agonizing decline of Roth’s most affable frontrunner.

What strikes me as sheer genius on the part of Roth, is the allegorical references to Europe’s Shoah that line the pages of this heartfelt narrative. Even while Roth makes references to Nazi-occupied Europe and the ongoing war, he is quick to evade any talk of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Instead, he redirects the readers to Pearl Harbor, or the calamity of polio, which like the Holocaust, swiftly and mercilessly wipes out the Jews of Newark. That Cantor is overwhelmingly haunted, page after page, with crippling doses of survivor’s guilt, only makes this metaphorical imagery more deliberate and nuanced. Like many survivors, Cantor rails against the wrath of God, who does little to stop the slaughter of Newark’s children. And his disbelief of God, which appears early on in the novel, intensifies as the narrative progresses, leaving Bucky more desolate, more pathetic, than possibly imaginable.

So, who was Bucky Cantor’s nemesis? Was it the rampant Anti-Semitism of the 1940s – so disproportionate in its ugliness – that forced Cantor to always “stand up for himself as a man and to stand up for himself as a Jew?” Or was Cantor’s unconditional allegiance to patriarchy the Achilles’ heel that forced him to view his own weakness as feminized and unacceptable. I would suggest, his penultimate nemesis was the polio outbreak of the 40s.

Making his indomitable nemesis, of course, God.

In all of this uncertainty lies the unadulterated beauty of Roth’s new novel – the resounding message that despite life’s malevolent blows, goodness does abound. And in the face of mankind’s cynicism, once in a great while, we are blessed to make the acquaintance of people like Bucky Cantor.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 61 readers
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (October 5, 2010)
REVIEWER: Helen Ditouras
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: The Philip Roth SocietyWikipedia page on Philip Roth
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

** Philip Roth appears in novel

Zuckerman Novels:

David Kapesh Novels:

Nonfiction:

E-Book Study Guide:

Movies from books:

]]> A FIERCE RADIANCE by Lauren Belfer /2010/a-fierce-radiance-by-lauren-belfer/ Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:48:24 +0000 /?p=10107 Book Quote:

“Anne Miller. Wife, mother, nurse. Weeks of medication, available on a day’s notice. Suddenly Jamie grasps the truth. Anne Miller was different from the other critically ill penicillin patients he’d treated. Different from Edward Reese and Sophia Metaxas. Different for one reason only: Anne Miller would survive. The first human to be rescued from death by penicillin.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUN 15, 2010)

A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer is a compelling novel. Comprised of several genres, this is a book to pick up and savor. I was kept riveted by a combination of history, romance and mystery. This mix makes for a thrilling ride that kept me enthralled throughout.

The era is 1941 through 1944. The book opens just after Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor. Our country has declared war and young men are being drafted or signing up for the military. Some of us can still picture this era. For those of you who are younger, let me give you a taste. Disease is rampant. There is no cure for polio, streptococcus infections, pneumonia, sepsis, cholera, tetanus or scarlet fever. There is a season for every illness and parents are frightened all the time that their children will die. Adults are frightened for their own lives. On top of that, our nation is at war and, other than sulfa drugs, which have limited curative ability, the United States has no medications to halt infection or disease for its own military.

Claire Shipley is a successful photographer for Life Magazine, the most popular news magazine in the nation. She has already lost one child to sepsis eight years ago. One day Emily fell on the sidewalk and cut her knee. A few days later she was dead. Her younger son, Charlie, is still living but Claire fears for his life at every turn. Claire is assigned to do a photo essay on penicillin, a new drug that is supposedly being developed. This miracle drug, developed from a green mold, is an antibiotic that supposedly has the power to stop gram positive infections in their tracks.

Dr. James Stanton is a physician who is at the forefront of penicillin’s so, in a sense, he holds the key to life and death. However, the supply of this drug is very limited and it is being produced in jars, bedpans and whatever other containers can be found. James meets Claire during the photo shoot and sparks fly. Theirs is a love at first sight but they don’t have much time because James is immediately sent to the war front. His job is to utilize the short supplies of penicillin on the injured servicemen.

Meanwhile, government agencies are becoming directly involved in the production of penicillin. Money is being allocated to institutes and scientists involved in its development. The pharmaceutical companies are ordered to cooperate rather than compete. The government declares that there is to be no patent on penicillin. Rather, it is to be developed by all private companies and utilized for wartime efforts.

James’ sister, Tia, is working on an alternative type of antibiotic, one that comes from the soil. The pharmaceutical companies get wind of this and start pouring their efforts into what they term “the cousins” to penicillin – alternative antibiotics that work on gram negative as well as gram positive infections. This is being done in secret. Claire gets wind of this and tries to get to the bottom of things. Now things get very interesting and the book becomes a real thriller.

I loved Lauren Belfer’s first novel, and A Fierce Radiance does not disappoint. She has done her research. I am usually not a great fan of historical novels, but this one is different than most others. It grabs you and may even rip your shirt in the process. I suggest that you buckle down for a satisfying read. You’ll be so riveted you may not be able to come up for air or find the time to sew the tear in your shirt.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 39 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper; 1 edition (June 15, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Lauren Belfer
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More break through in medicine fiction:

Wickett’s Remedy by Myla Goldberg

Bibliography:

]]> THE VERA WRIGHT TRILOGY by Elizabeth Jolley /2010/the-vera-wright-trilogy-by-elizabeth-jolley/ Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:38:41 +0000 /?p=10043 Book Quote:

“I have a corner seat in this train by a mistake which is not entirely my fault. The woman, who is in this seat, asks me if I think she has time to fetch herself a cup of tea. I can see that she badly wants to do this and, in order that she does not have to go without the tea, I agree that, though she will be cutting it fine, there is a chance that she will have time. So she goes and I see her just emerging from the refreshment room with a look on her face which shows how she feels. She has her tea clutched in one hand and I have her reserved seat because it is silly, now that the train has started, to stand in the corridor being crushed by army greatcoats and kitbags and boots, simply looking at the emptiness of this comfortable corner.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (JUN 13, 2010)

Although she wrote all her life, Jolley didn’t get her first book published until she was 53. Thereafter she published 15 novels, four story collections and four non-fiction books. The daughter of an Austrian mother and English father and a transplant to Australia from England, she became one of Australia’s most celebrated authors and won at least 16 awards. Yet by the time of her death in 2007, her books were out of print. This new edition of her acclaimed autobiographical trilogy brings these three novels — My Father’s Moon / Cabin Fever / The Georges’ Wife — together in one volume in the U.S. for the first time. The conclusion, The George’s Wife, was never before published here though it won major awards and accolades in Australia.

Having read My Father’s Moon and Cabin Fever years ago, I can tell you it makes a difference having the final volume, but even more – reading the books in one volume changes the experience. There’s a disjointed quality to Vera’s narration and a rhythm to the prose, which creates a deep intimacy when all three books are read together. The format also satisfies the build-up of suspense and relieves certain frustrations with Vera’s sometimes self-destructive passivity.

As My Father’s Moon opens in post-WWII England, Vera is departing with her illegitimate daughter, Helena, for a teaching position at a progressive boarding school, Fairfields. Her mother is distressed that she is taking the child, but then her mother is distressed at the whole mess Vera has made of her promising life. And thirty pages later, as if to underscore her series of bad choices, Vera is waiting at the end of a train line, having left squalid, abusive Fairfields and thrown herself on the mercy of a nursing colleague she hasn’t communicated with in five years.

Each of the ten sections focuses on an aspect of Vera’s life, which illuminate the story’s center – her wartime nursing (instead of the university her parents had hoped for) and her own naivety, self-absorption and insecurity. From Fairfield her perspective returns to childhood and boarding school, the wartime refugees her mother aided, a lesbian affair, a beloved neighbor whose warnings go unanswered, and pivotal incidents in her war experience. Fractured repetitions offer new depth, details or interpretations of events.

From her poor but bookish home life and the typical child’s impatience with her mother’s foreign accent to the casual cruelty of dormitory girls in a hidebound, lawless environment, which is uneasily echoed in nurses’ housing, Vera is flatly, musingly honest about her own failings and loneliness. At school Vera torments a girl she calls Bulge, for no more reason than physical antipathy. As a new nurse, she’s in thrall to a roommate who she keeps in cigarettes and spending money. Taken up by a doctor and his wife who move in moneyed, bohemian, dissolute circles, she feels herself uplifted, cosseted and loved, only to find herself seduced and abandoned.

As Cabin Fever opens Vera is a doctor in a hotel at a conference. And that’s about all we find out about that. “Memories are not always in sequence, not in chronological sequence.” Structured like My Father’s Moon in interconnected sections, Vera remembers Helena’s birth, her horrible, stultifying experience as a mother’s helper, her removal to the nursing home to have her baby and her extended stay there, all of it intertwined with wartime and childhood memories. Loneliness looms large, but there’s a fair amount of humor too as Vera limits her focus to getting through the day.

In book three, The Georges Wife, Vera makes the same mistakes all over again, longing for love. “I suppose I shall be lonely, Mr. George, I suppose that, one day, I shall have to be alone. I shall be lonely.” Taking a position as a servant to an unmarried brother and sister quite set in their ways, she has a second child. But this time there is no running away and no abandonment though Mr. George (as she still thinks of him) keeps putting off their marriage. She goes to medical school, and takes up with a strange couple not of her class – echoes of her postwar youth. But this time she gets her education and eventually emigrates to Australia with Mr. George.

From her perspective as a psychologist Vera does not spare herself: “I am a shabby person. I understand, if I look back, that I have treated kind people with an unforgivable shabbiness. For my work a ruthless self-examination is needed. Without understanding something of myself, how can I understand anyone else.” Of course, most of us could say the same if we were honest. Jolley says it in a trilogy of beguiling rumination, exploring a half-century of history through one woman’s very personal experience. Though largely tossed about by life, drifting into circumstances and relationships of least resistance, Vera finally gets a grip on herself and her future and perhaps that’s what maturity is all about, even if it’s still a lonely place.

Jolley’s prose is intimate, poetic and unflinching. The disjointed structure builds upon itself with an almost mesmerizing quality. Though less humorous than much of her fiction, the trilogy is a work of emotional depth and beauty, which will be enjoyed by anyone who likes to wrap themselves in compelling, artful fiction.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: Persea; 1 edition (April 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Elizabeth Jolley
EXTRAS: Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: See this one, for a contrast:

Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

And more by Elizabeth Jolley:

Foxbaby

Sugar Mother

Bibliography:

Non-fiction:

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