“I hope they will leave some men behind, to make sure she doesn’t kill us in our sleep.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (APR 10, 2014)

Twenty-eight-year-old Australian author Hannah Kent spent time in Iceland while in high school, chosen because she wanted to see snow for the first time. She fell in love with this island country south of the Arctic Circle, and returned several times to do extensive research on Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be beheaded in Iceland, in 1829. Kent imagined the interior psychological states of various characters, especially the enigmatically alluring Agnes, and has successfully penned a suspenseful fiction tale that transcends the outcome. It reveals a complex love triangle and double murder, and a provocative examination of the religious and social mores of the time. Knowing the fate of Agnes prior to reading the novel won’t change the reader’s absorption of the novel. The strong themes hinge on the backstory and viewpoints that are woven in and reveal characters that go through a change of perception as the circumstances of the crime come to light.

Each chapter begins with official or private correspondence or testimony, which reflects the judicial process and established standards of the time, which was then under Danish rule. The title refers to whether the dead are fit to be buried on consecrated ground. Agnes is sent to northwest Iceland, to stay with the district officer, his wife, and two daughters, pending her execution. The family members are outraged at first, some more than others. The farmers in the area are also hostile to her. Over time, as her story unfolds, I became emotionally engaged with Agnes, and touched by the young cleric, Toti, Agnes’ appointed spiritual advisor.

Kent is a poetic writer, whose descriptions of a grim, harsh, bleak landscape and a socially rigid terrain are told with a striking beauty.

“Now we are riding across Iceland’s north, across this black island washing in its waters, sulking in its ocean. Chasing our shadows across the mountain.”

“They have strapped me to the saddle like a corpse being taken to the burial ground.”

“…waiting for the ground to unfreeze before they can pocket me in the earth like a stone.”

The restrained savagery and cruel irony reflects in those that persecute Agnes and accept the official story of her acts as gospel. The gradual overtures of Toti and certain members of the family were organically developed, allowing for tension and intimacy in equal measure. The slight stumbling block for me was accepting Agnes’ relationship with her lover, Natan, one of the men she is convicted of killing. I understand that very smart women can often make poor choices in men; however, Agnes was depicted as a self-contained woman. I had a difficult time accepting her bottomless apology for Nathan’s consummate cruelty and selfish barbarity.

Despite my tenuous acceptance of Agnes’ love for Natan, I did register the isolated, punishing terrain of 19th century Iceland, especially in the winter months, when loneliness was crushing, and reaching out for companionship a pressing need. The landscape came alive as a character, and Kent folded in an Icelandic Burial Hymn and bits and pieces of the Nordic sagas and myths, such as “I was worst to the one I loved best.” Poet-Rosa, who also loved Natan as passionately as Agnes, writes a bitter poem to her. (Interestingly, I have just read the first 80 pages of the Laxness novel of Icelandic sheep farmers, Independent People, in which a character named poet-Rosa is described.)

This is an impressive debut novel, easily read in a few sittings. The point-of-view shifts back and forth from third to first skillfully. By the end of the novel, I was able to answer the question of whether a condemned life can have meaning, and whether the person who is condemned can change the perceptions of others –for the better. I will be looking out for Kent’s next novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 699 readers
PUBLISHER:	Back Bay Books (April 1, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Hannah Kent
EXTRAS:	Interview and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve

Bibliography:

• Burial Rites (2013)

“She frightened me at every dawn the summer I stayed with her. She’d sit on the edge of her bed, long hair down, down to the floor and shaking as she brushed and brushed, shadows ebbing from the room and early light flowing in through both windows. Her hair was as long as her story and she couldn’t walk when her hair was not woven into dense braids and pinned around and atop her head. Otherwise her hair dragged the floor like the train of a medieval gown and she had to gather it into a sheaf and coil it about her forearm several times to walk the floor without stepping on herself. She’d been born a farm girl, then served as a maid for half a century, so she couldn’t sleep past dawn to win a bet…”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 21, 2013)

The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell is a small book but reads like a tome, with such literate and beautiful imagery that I was enthralled. The book centers around the mystery of the explosion at Arbor Dance Hall in 1929. The explosion killed 42 people, many unrecognizable in death with their bodies broken up or burned beyond recognition. Alma Dunahew lost her sister Ruby in the explosion and for years has been trying to discover the answer to what happened. Those years have been hard on her with several of them spent at the Work Farm in West Table, Missouri, due to her psychic breakdown caused by rage and grief. Many of the town’s most wealthy citizens want to put the truth of the explosion to the side and no one has ever been apprehended for the crime. They look at Alma’s ramblings about the explosion as words from a crazy person. The magnitude of the explosion was enormous.

“Just as full darkness fell those happy sounds heard in the surviving house suddenly became a nightmare chorus of pleas, cries of terror, screams as the flames neared crackling and bricks returned tumbling from the heavens and stout beams crushed those souls knocked to the ground. Walls shook and shuddered for a mile around and the boom was heard faintly in the next county south and painfully by everyone in the town limits.”

One summer in 1965, Alma’s young grandson Alec comes to visit her. It is to him that she spills the story of the dance hall and her theory about what happened that night. Going back and forth in time, the novel gives the reader vignettes about those who were killed in the dance hall explosion along with the story of Ruby, Alma’s sister. Ruby was a great flirt and what was called in those days a loose woman. She would love them and leave them until she found a real love with the banker, Arthur Glencross. Glencross was married and Alma worked as a maid for the Glencross family. She worked very hard to hide Arthur’s affair from his wife Corrine by carefully washing his clothing to get out smells and stains that would serve as evidence of his affair with Ruby. After Ruby’s death, Alma hated Arthur and this was evident in her actions.

Was Arthur responsible for the explosion? Or, could it have been the preacher Isaiah Willard who spoke of death and damnation to those who danced? He believed that “the easiest portals to the soul through which demons might enter was that opened by dancing feet. Evil music, evil feet, salacious sliding and the disgusting embraces dancing excused provided an avenue of damnation that could readily be seen and blockaded” He was heard to say of the Arbor Dance Hall during that summer, “I’ll blow this place to Kingdom soon and drop those sinners into the boiling patch – see how they dance then.” What about the hobos hanging around town? Those passing through with bad intentions? Someone with a grudge against one of the dancers? Who was it? Alma thinks she knows and tells her story to Alec.

Of the forty-two killed in the explosion, only twenty-eight were whole enough so that graves could be made for them. Most of them were not identified. The rest were parts buried in a pit. Alma’s grief was such that she “touched all twenty-eight and kissed them each, kneeling to kiss the fresh black paint between her spread aching fingers, said the same words to accompany every kiss because there was no way to know which box of wood held Ruby, or if she rested in only one, had not been separated into parts by crushing or flames and interred in two or three, so she treated every box as though her sister was inside in parts or whole and cried to the last.”

Woodrell’s style of writing is unique, sounding like I’d imagine the tenor of speech spoken in the Ozarks. At times it’s a difficult book because of the writing style and the subject matter. It is, however, stunning and has left me with a deep and abiding appreciation for this author’s work. I thank him for sharing his talent and vision with readers.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 117 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (September 3, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS:	Interview  and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Outlaw Album The Bayou Trilogy

Bibliography:

• Under the Bright Lights (1986) *
• Woe to Live On (1987; 2012)
• Muscle for the Wing (1988) *
• The Ones You Do (1992) *
• Give Us a Kiss: A Country Noir (1996; 2012)
• Tomato Red (1998; 2012)
• The Death of Sweet Mister (2001; 2012)
• Winter’s Bone (2006)
• The Outlaw Album: Stories (2011)
• The Maid’s Version (September 2013)

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

Movies from Books:

• Ride with the Devil (1999) (adapted from Woe to Live On)
• Winter’s Bone (2010)

“But there is no truth except truth in relation, and heavenly relation is composed of wheels in motion, tilting axes, turning dials; it is a clockwork orchestration that alters every minute, never repeating never still…We now look outward…we see the world as we wish to perfect it, and we imagine dwelling there.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (NOV 17, 2013)

Twelve men meet at the Crown Hotel in Hokitika, New Zealand, in January, 1866. A thirteenth, Walter Moody, an educated man from Edinburgh who has come here to find his fortune in gold, walks in. As it unfolds, the interlocking stories and shifting narrative perspectives of the twelve–now thirteen–men bring forth a mystery that all are trying to solve, including Walter Moody, who has just gotten off the Godspeed ship with secrets of his own that intertwine with the other men’s concerns.

This is not an important book. There is no magnificent theme, no moral thicket, no people to emancipate, no countries to defend, no subtext to unravel, and no sizable payoff. Its weightiness is physical, coming in at 832 pages. And yet, it is one of the most marvelous and poised books that I have read. Although I didn’t care for the meandering rambling books of Wilkie Collins, I am reminded here of his style, but Catton is so much more controlled, and possesses the modern day perspective in which to peer back.

I felt a warmth and a shiver at each passing chapter, set during the last days of the New Zealand gold rush. Catton hooked me in in this Victorian tale of a piratical captain; a Maori gemstone hunter; Chinese diggers (or “hatters”); the search for “colour” (gold); a cache of hidden gold; séances; opium; fraud; ruthless betrayal; infidelity; a politician; a prostitute; a Jewish newspaperman; a gaoler; shipping news; shady finance; a ghostly presence; a missing man; a dead man; and a spirited romance. And there’s more between Dunedin and Hokitika to titillate the adventurous reader.

Primarily, The Luminaries is an action-adventure, sprawling detective story, superbly plotted, where the Crown Hotel men try to solve it, while sharing secrets and shame of their own. There’s even a keen courtroom segment later in the story. And, there are crucial characters that are not gathered in the Crown that night who link everyone together. The prostitute and opium addict, Anna Wetherell, is nigh the center of this story, as she is coveted or loved or desired by all the townspeople.

The layout of the book is stellar: the spheres of the skies and its astrological charts. You don’t need to understand the principles and mathematics of astrology (I don’t), but it is evident that knowledge of this pseudoscience would add texture to the reading experience, as it provides the structure and frame of the book. The characters’ traits can be found in their individual sun signs (such as the duality of a Germini). The drawings of charts add to the mood, and the chapters get successively shorter after the long Crown chapter. The cover of the book illustrates the phases of the moon, from full moon to sliver, alluding to the waning narrative lengths as the story progresses.

“But onward also rolls the outer sphere–the boundless present, which contains the bounded past.”

Take note of the cast list at the beginning, which is quite helpful for the initial 200 or 300 pages. With so many vivid characters coming at you at once, it is difficult at first to absorb. However, as the pages sail (and they will, if this appeals to you), you won’t even need the names and professions. The story and its striking, almost theatrical players become gradually and permanently installed, thoroughly and unforgettably. From the scar on Captain Francis Carver’s cheek, to the widow’s garment on Anna Wetherell’s gaunt frame, the lively images and descriptions animate this boisterous, vibrant story.

Catton is a master storyteller; she combines this exacting 19th century style and narrator–and the “we” that embraces the reader inside the tale–with the faintest sly wink of contemporary perspective. Instead of the authorial voice sounding campy, stilted, and antiquated, there is a fresh whiff of nuanced canniness, a knowing Catton who uncorks the delectable Victorian past by looking at it from the postmodern future.

You will either be intoxicated by this big brawl of a book, or weighed down in its heft. If you are looking for something more than it is, then look no further than the art of reading. There’s no mystery to the men; Catton lays out their morals, scruples, weaknesses, and strengths at the outset. The women had a little poetic mystery to them, but in all, these were familiar players–she drew up stock 19th century characters, but livened them up, so that they leaped madly from the pages. There isn’t much to interrogate except your own anticipation. If you’ve read Colour, by Rose Tremain, don’t expect any similarities except the time, place, setting, and the sweat and grime of the diggers. Otherwise, the two books are alike as fish and feathers.

The stars shine bright as torches, or are veiled behind a mist, like the townspeople and story that behave under the various constellations. Catton’s impeccably plotted yarn invites us to dwell in this time and place. At times, I felt I mined the grand nuggets of the story, and at other times, it blew away like dust.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 230 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (October 15, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Eleanor Catton
EXTRAS:	2013 Man Booker Award Winner Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another big book set in New Zealand: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

Bibliography:

• The Rehearsal (2010)
• The Luminaries (October 2013) 

“Lots of TV is made-up pictures – like Dora’s, just a drawing – but the people, the ones with faces that look like you and me, they’re real.”

“Actual humans?”

She nods. “And the places are real too, like farms and forests and airplanes and cities…”

“Nah.” Why is she tricking me? “Where would they fit?”

“Out there,” says Ma. “Outside. ” She jerks her head back.

“Outside Bed Wall?” I stare at it.

“Outside Room.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (SEP 18, 2010)

Emma Donoghue is not afraid of making bold choices. Her first is the narrative voice she adapts in this novel: that of five-year-old Jack, a young boy who was born and has lived his entire life in an 11-foot by 11-foot room. One might think the voice would eventually become cloying or overly precious or manipulative or downright tiring. But it never does.

Jack is an innocent, an imaginative child, whose mother was spirited away by an abductor (called Old Nick) when she was returning home from her college library. She has lived in Room ever since – for seven long years – and gave birth to Jack, the son of her abductor, within Room (a sound-proofed, lead-lined backyard shed).  And she has tried her best to fashion a life for him there, creating innovative games — from the Scream (done once a day), to Labyrinth and Fort and Bouncy Bunny. Together, Ma and Jack have created characters out of all aspects of Room – Rug, Plant, Wardrobe, Stove – watch the world on their small T.V. set, and devote every ounce of energy to each other.

The horror of this confinement is racheted up through Jack’s simplistic view of the Room, which to him, constitutes the world. He hides in Wardrobe at night and times Old Nick’s visits by counting the number of creaks in the bed. He senses when Ma is “Gone”–depressed and withdrawn — and yet can’t quite reason out why. But Ma is more attuned to the threats: she knows that as Jack ages, he is in increasing danger and that his budding curiosity will eventually cause him fatal harm.

Eventually choices are made and freedom comes, but at a cost. And when it does, Ms. Donoghue develops some bold and powerful themes: is the Room we know safer than the World Outside? Is it better to have multiple choices or just a restrictive few? Are we all confined in a Room of our making – even when we choose freedom or have it thrust upon us – or will we eventually find the strength to break out?

As Jack yearns for the security and predictability of Room, Ma tells him, “I keep messing up. I know you need me to be your ma but I’m having to remember how to be me as well at the same time…” The scariest thing for Ma is the fear that Room has obliterated who she really is. And for Jack? The scariest thing is a world without being the core of Ma’s universe.

This riveting book – a book I easily place in my Top Five of the year – goes far beyond the victim-and-survivor tale. It’s an amazing and sensitive look about a mother’s love, a study of a “stranger in a strange land,” a tale that displays the power of survival, and an indictment of a society that has lost the ability to empathize with those who are hurting (Ms. Donoghue’s wickedly humorous look at the media and its over-the-top rhetoric is reason enough to buy Room.) Most of all, it’s a careful examination of how we can take the most heinous circumstances and painstakingly extract something of beauty and value.

I cannot praise Room enough. It’s a triumph of story-telling filled with crackling dialogue, thought-provoking themes, and a page-turning quality that won’t let you stop until you reach the last page.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2.179 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (September 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Emma Donoghue
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another unique narrative: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Bibliography:

• Stirfry (1994)
• Hood (1995)
• Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins (1997) 
• Slammerkin (2000)
• The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories (2002)
• Life Mask (2004)
• Touchy Subjects: Stories (2006)
• Landing (2007)
• The Sealed Letter (2008) Lambda
• Room (2010) Commonwealth Prize
• Astray: Stories (2012)
• Frog Music (April 2014)

Nonfiction:

• Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801 (1993)
• We Are Michael Field (1998)
• Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature (2010)

“There goes Mandela looking bemused in his trademark paisley-print outfit. Twenty years of incarceration and look, look where I find myself, his look seems to say, what I’ve been missing all those years cooped up in Robben Island.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns (OCT 11, 2009)

We meet the protagonist of The Boy Next Door, Lindiwe Bishop, when she is just fourteen. The white woman next door, Mrs. McKenzie, mother of Ian, has just burned to death. Set afire. It is Africa in the 1980s and Robert–Bob–Mugabe has just taken his oath, “… his hand firmly on the Bible…and so help me God…Zimbabwe was born.” This is the stage set, at the intersection of culture and identity (personal and national), in the opening pages of this delicate and beautiful debut novel.

That night Lindiwe lies in bed. “I wanted to find out low long you would have to burn to become just bone. I wanted to know if Mrs. McKenzie had burnt all night while I had been sleeping. I tried to think what I had been dreaming of. I wanted to know if something had happened in my dreams that should have made me wake up, draw back the curtain and see…what? Would I have seen her? Heard her? Smelt her? I tried to remember when was the last time I had seen her live, but I couldn’t see it, that exact moment.”

Within days the son, Ian, is carted off to prison. It is reported that he confessed to the murder. A year later he is released on lack of evidence. He returns home and Lindiwe quietly observes him from across her fence. “He came home today. We all saw him. He stood just looking up at the house. Mummy said he looked like a criminal. I didn’t think she was right about that.” Sabatini builds from this premise a striking relationship between the young Zimbabwean Lindiwe and the young white neighbor.

Lindiwe grows accustom to his presence and soon he is giving her an occasional lift to school, though out of her parent’s view. A friendship blossoms. Through the course of this novel we follow the interweaving path of Lindiwe and Ian for almost twenty years. Along the way we monitor the birth of Zimbabwe and watch it collapse and creep to the edge of civil war. We observe the destruction of families, specifically Lindiwe’s, torn apart by infidelity and political intrigue. Was her father a Rhodesian army officer and did he partake in atrocities? We watch as white racism is reversed and then surpassed in a nascent reign of terror that includes fleeing whites and politically opposing blacks. Mugabe, a distant, though fascinating character throughout the novel, strengthens his grip on the country and eventually includes Ian in his grasp. AIDs is evidenced and begins its horrific march across the continent. Yet, through it all, we trust the voice of Lindiwe, so masterfully does Sabatini draw her. We trust her observations. Her voice rings true. The reader is carried along in this narration in a deceptively fluid and deft manner. It is hard to believe this is Sabatini’s first novel, she is so adept.

Coming of age tales, novels of Africa, stories of AIDS and political malfeasance, all themes here, are well worn paths. Yet cliches are avoided in the novel. There is so much hope and beauty seen through the eyes of Lindiwe that we are never burdened by the complexities and horror of her life in a country spinning out of control. Though families and lives are destroyed, we are never set adrift in despair. Her voice is unburdened, her story one of control and aspiration.

Lindiwe and Ian survive the years. He becomes a photojournalist and gains international repute with his images from South Africa. She works for NGOs, and goes to University. While all about them crumbles they carry on. When they meet again after years of separation, they pick up effortlessly where they left off, like the two kids they once where. Ian spots her from a car and pulls over.

“If you want, I can drive,” she offers.
“You can drive?” Ian asks.
“Yes, don’t look so shocked.”
“I have to get used to you like this.”
“Like what?”
“Grown.”

Lindiwe has a secret and when Ian discovers it, their lives become inextricably fused. Their mixed-race relationship is subject to forces that are designed to drive them apart, even make them enemies. Yet, through trial and challenge, one after the other, they return, one to the other. Eventually they escape and set upon a new world and a new life, perhaps to be free and unburdened.

There is so much that is horrible about the world in which these two exist. Too often, modern fiction of this type bludgeons us with scenes of aching despair. But not here. Yes, their horrible world is portrayed. And yes there are scenes that we fear will creep up on us and pounce, yet the narration stops short of that. We are allowed to breath in the grace of these lives laced with hope and commitment. I look forward to Sabatini’s long career. She has much to say, and she says it so wonderfully.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 16 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (September 8, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Irene Sabatini
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More African novels: A Blade of Grass by Lewis Desoto Links by Naruddin Farah Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton More coming-of-age in difficult times: The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji

Bibliography:

• The Boy Next Door (September 2009)