“Daddy hadn’t meant to hurt her, she knew. Even Momma believed this, which was why she hadn’t called 911. And when the doctor at the ER had asked Lisette how her face had got so bruised, her nose and eye socket broken, she’d said that it was an accident on the stairs – she’ been running and she’d fallen.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 5, 2011)

This year’s editor of The Best American Short Stories 2011 is Geraldine Brooks, an accomplished journalist and fiction writer. She says of her selections “that the easiest and the first choices were the stories to which I had a physical response.” I would agree that the best stories in this collection are those that are most visceral and physical in nature. Ms. Brooks also states that “In the end, the stories I fell upon with perhaps the greatest delight were the outliers, the handful or so that defied the overwhelming gravitational pull toward small-canvas contemporary realism.”

There are twenty stories in this alphabetically arranged collection. About half of them swept me away and the other half didn’t move me as much as I’d hoped they would. Each year, I look forward to this collection with much anticipation and excitement. This year’s collection felt a bit below par in consistency and quality.

I agree with Ms. Brooks that the best stories in this collection are those to which I had a physical response. They tended towards themes of violence and/or grief. One such story is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In “Ceiling,” she writes about a man who realizes he is in the wrong life. He feels lassitude in his marriage which is superficial and without depth. He yearns for his college sweetheart who he’s built up in his mind as perfect. As Ms. Brooks states, this story “perfectly captures the yearning spirit of a man who has settled for the wrong wife, the wrong life, in the stultifying salons of Lagos’s corrupt upper class.”

In “Housewifely Arts” by Megan Mayhew Bergman, a single mother drives nine hours to visit her dead mother’s parrot because the parrot is so perfectly able to mimic her mother’s voice. The parrot has more of her mother inside her than the daughter does.

Nathan Englander’s story, “Free Fruit for Young Widows,” opens with a violent act and continues with acts of violence. The story examines the roots of violence as it explores the possibilities and rationales that make violence an appropriate act. Part tale of vengeance and part philosophy, the reader puzzles the situations as does the young son whose father is telling him the story.

Allegra Goodman’s “La Vita Nuova” is a haunting story of grief. A woman who is a children’s art teacher is left by her fiancé. She brings her wedding dress to school and lets her students paint all over it. The story is about the depths of grief and loss.

“Soldier of Fortune” by Bret Anthony Johnston tells about Josh, a high school freshman who is in love with his neighbor Holly, a senior. When Holly’s three year-old brother accidentally gets severely scalded by boiling water and the family has to spend weeks at the hospital, Josh takes care of their home and dog. He grows up during this pivotal time.

In “Peter Torrelli, Falling Apart,” by Rebecca Makai, a man and his friend, Peter, have known each other since high school. Both are gay and they initially bonded over that commonality. Peter was beautiful and charismatic and went on to become an actor. At one of his performances he has a meltdown and can’t work again. His friend gives his all to Peter getting nothing in return. The reader wonders why his friend would risk so much for Peter.

Joyce Carol Oates, in “ID,” tells about Lisette, an eighth-grader who is recovering from a shattered eye socket and broken nose incurred by a beating from her estranged father. Lisette lives with her mother, a black jack dealer in Atlantic City. Lisette’s mother has been gone for several days, leaving Lisette alone with no idea of when she’ll be back or where she went. The police appear at her school and ask her to ID a corpse that they think might be her mother.

George Saunders writes about prisoners who are used in an experiment where they are given psychoactive drugs that take them to the deepest recesses of their souls. “Escape from Spiderland” is about these prisoners, the experiment, and the feelings of ultimate love, eloquence and sexuality that these drugs render. The prisoners can be brought to the depths of despair and the height of exaltation and then returned to their baselines in a few seconds.

Overall, there are some very good stories in this collection and some that are just mediocre. The ones that stand out are definitely the ones that feel like a visceral gut punch and that pound on the reader’s psyche. Ms. Brooks did not want “small-canvas contemporary realism” but sometimes it is the small canvas that shows the most detail and beauty. One just needs to look at it from the right angle.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mariner Books (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Best American Short Stories
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Best American Stories 2010 edited by Richard Russo Our reviews of some of Geraldine Brooks’ novels: Caleb’s Crossing People of the Book

Partial Bibliography:

• The Best American Short Stories 2000 edited by E.L. Doctorow  (October 2000)
• The Best American Short Stories 2001 edited by Barbara Kingsolver  (October 2001)
• The Best American Short Stories 2002 edited by Sue Miller  (October 2002)
• The Best American Short Stories 2003 edited by Walter Mosley  (October 2003)
• The Best American Short Stories 2004 edited by Lorrie Moore (October 2004)
• The Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon  (October 2006)
• The Best American Short Stories 2006 edited by Ann Patchett   (October 2006)
• The Best American Short Stories 2007 edited by Stephen King  (October 2007)
• The Best American Short Stories 2008 edited by Salman Rushdie  (October 2008)
• The Best American Short Stories 2009 edited by Alice Sebold  (October 2009)
• The Best American Short Stories 2010 edited by Richard Russo (September 2010)
• The Best American Short Stories 2011 edited by Geraldine Brooks (September 2011)

“Who are we, really? Are our souls shaped, our fates written in full by God, before we draw our first breath? Do we make ourselves, by the choices we our selves make? Or are we clay merely, that is molded and pushed into the shape that our betters propose for us?”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAY 03, 2011)

What becomes of those who independently and courageously navigate the intellectual and cultural shoals that divide cultures? Is it truly possible to make those crossings without relinquishing one’s very identity?

Geraldine Brooks poignantly explores these questions in her latest novel, Caleb’s Crossing. The story is based on sketchy knowledge of the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk – the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College — and a member of the Wampanoag tribe in what is now Martha’s Vineyard.

This is truly a work of imagination since the sources on Caleb’s brief, tragic, and remarkable life are scant. The voice belongs to the fictional Bethia Mayfield, a minister’s quick-minded daughter who gently (and sometimes, not so gently) defies the rigid expectations of a Calvinistic society that demand silence and obedience from its womenfolk.

As outsiders, both Bethia and Caleb – who meet on the cusp of adolescence – quickly bond and form a lifelong friendship. On the sly, Bethia absorbs the language and the cultures of the Wopanaak tribe while out in the field; at home, she secretly absorbs lessons that are meant for her brother Makepeace.

Eventually, both serendipitously find themselves at Cambridge. Caleb’s Harvard education – conducted in the classical languages of Latin, Greek and Hebrew – is funded by rich English patrons as an experiment as to whether “salvages” can be indoctrinated into Christian culture alongside the dismissive colonial elite. Bethia goes along with Caleb and Makepeace as indentured help, striving to remain in close proximity to scholars and avoid her fate as yet another small settlement farm wife.

There are plenty of twists and turns, trauma and heartbreak, celebrations and sadness along the way; after all, Geraldine Brooks already has a reputation as an absorbing story teller who is able to imaginatively use history to fictional ends. And it would be unfair to even allude to some of these page-turning plot developments.

The themes, though, are fair game. This novel particularly shines when it touches upon matters of faith, which rely heavily upon John Cotton, Jr.’s account of his conversations with native islanders in the 1660s missionary journals (according to the author in her epilogue). The pantheistic view of the medicine men is placed in a high-stakes battle against strict and judgmental Calvinism time and again. Bethia muses, “It galls me, when I catch a stray remark from the master, or between the older English pupils, to the effect that the Indians are uncommonly fortunate to be here. I have come to think it is a fault in us, to credit what we give in such a case, and never to consider what must be given up in order to receive it.”

Ms. Brooks drums that point home – sometimes a bit too firmly, not relying enough on the reader to form his or her own conclusions. Still, there is intense observation in the “civilizing” of Caleb’s crossing to the world inhabited uneasily by Bethia. She reflects, “In that shimmering, golden light I saw the wild boy I had met here four summers past, no longer wild, nor boy. The hair was cut short and plain, the fringed deer hide leggings replaced with sensible black serge. The wampum ornaments were gone, the bare mahogany arms sheathed now in billowing linen. Yet neither was the youth who stood before me some replica of a young Englishman…” The story of Caleb and Bethia is part of an age-old battle of repressive and misguided individuals who callously use religion to assert dominancy, superiority, and control over others.

As a result, destiny and preordination wrestle as the boundaries of both cultures are movingly explored in a voice that may be described as “period language.” From the natural beauty of an early Martha’s Vineyard to the drafty dormitories of Harvard College, this fictional work includes a wallop of historical fact. Those who have thrilled to other Geraldine Brooks’ absorbingly told novels – March, Year of Wonders, People of the Book—will find yet one more reason to rejoice.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 99 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (May 3, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Geraldine Brooks
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:People of the Book An historical novel set on the adjacent Massachusette island of Nantucket: Ahab’s Wife, the Stargazer by Sena Jeter Naslund

Bibliography:

• Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
• March (March 2005)
• People of the Book (January 2008)
• Caleb’s Crossing (May 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Foreign Correspondence (1994)
• Nine Parts of Desire The Hidden World of Islamic Women (December 1994)

“Oh I don’t know, “Raz says. “The book is still doing what it was meant to do, or it will be, as soon as it goes into the museum. It was made to teach a lot more than just the Exodus story”…..”from what you’ve told me, the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You’ve got a society where people tolerate differences, like Spain in the ‘Convivencia,’ and everything’s humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize ‘the other’ – it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists… same old, same old. It seems to me the book, at this point, bears witness to all that.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Jana L. Perskie (MAY 10, 2009)

A book is the real protagonist of Geraldine Brooks’ latest novel, People of the Book. The author writes in the “Afterward” section that this is a work of fiction, inspired by the true story “of the Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. The haggadah is an illuminated manuscript which contains the traditional text of the Passover haggadah that accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic haggadahs in the world, originating in Spain in the 15th century. The author succeeds in creating a riveting account of the volume’s history, from its origins in Seville to a 21st century museum in Sarajevo.

What makes this book so precious, besides its age and great beauty, is that it is illustrated with numerous miniature paintings, much like the Christian illuminations of the Gospels. Jews, during this period, considered figurative art a violation of the Third Commandment, which prohibits the making of “any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth below.” Who was the talented artist who created this masterpiece and broke with tradition? And why?

When the mysterious book was discovered in Sarajevo in 1894 it was considered a miracle that it had survived, almost intact, for so many centuries – tumultuous centuries filled with violence. It was not destroyed during the expulsion of the Jews and Moors from Spain in 1492, nor was it burned during the Holy Inquisition, which began in 1498, when Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, targeted Marranos, Jews who had converted to Christianity. Large numbers of Jews then migrated to Venice, where they were expelled, once again, and their books burned, in the 17th century, but this Haggadah was kept safe. The treasure somehow survived and made its way, along with the “People of the Book,” to Sarajevo, where the Ottomans had initially welcomed them in 1565.

During the Dark Ages, the Muslim’s vast empire extended into Europe and southern Spain. Their culture was the “one bright light where science, art, and poetry still flourished.” Both Jews and Muslims were reviled, tortured and murdered by the Christians, and together, in places like Sarajevo, the two peoples could live in peace. Still, the book and its people were to experience much more brutality and bloodshed in WWI and WWII.

One of the most dangerous periods in the volume’s history was the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, an international armed conflict that took place between March 1992 and November 1995. The city of Sarajevo was under constant siege.

In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare book expert, is offered a job by the UN to conserve the Sarajevo Haggadah, after it is discovered intact, even though many had feared it had been destroyed during the heavy shelling of the city. Dr. Ozren Karaman, (a fictitious character, based on a real person), is chief librarian of the Sarajevo National Museum and professor of “librarianship” at the National University of Bosnia. Dr. Karaman, a Muslim, risked his life to save a Jewish book.

Hanna’s task is to prepare the fragile volume for an exhibition at a newly built museum. As she works, she finds clues to the haggadah’s history – an insect’s wing, a fine white hair, stains of wine and blood on a few pages, missing clasps, and a few grains of salt. She is determined to solve the mystery of the extraordinary object’s provenance. She and Dr. Karaman begin a tentative romance at this point. Hanna, a most appealing person, and an irreverent Aussie, has problems with relationships, both with men and with her mother. This is due to past events which occurred in Hanna’s childhood and provide an interesting glimpse into her character.

There are frequent flashbacks to medieval Spain, 15th century Venice, 19th century Vienna, Jewish communities near the Adriatic Sea in the 1940s, and to Seville in 1480, where the reader finally meets the illuminator who created the haggadah. We are introduced to the people who came into contact with the book throughout its history and protected it.

Geraldine Brooks’ characters are rich, colorful and well developed. Her recounting of the history surrounding the book is extremely well researched, and her own imagination is very fertile. The narrative is well written and the pace is fast. Ms. Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, March, which I read and enjoyed very much. But I was enthralled reading People of the Book. It is definitely a 5 STAR novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 323 readers
PUBLISHER:	Penguin; Reprint (December 30, 2008)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Geraldine Brooks
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and MAP
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Caleb’s Crossing Of possible interest: The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vanttrese Fangland by John Marks

Bibliography:

• Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
• March (March 2005)
• People of the Book (January 2008)
• Caleb’s Crossing (May 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Foreign Correspondence (1994)
• Nine Parts of Desire The Hidden World of Islamic Women (December 1994)