“Her eyes came open. Fully open. But she could no longer see the Abyssinian mountain that the Sabbath sun had turned like fire…
She could no longer see anything. She was blind.
For a long and disconcerting moment, she did not know who she was or where she was.  Only five to eight seconds later did she begin to realize that she had been dreaming.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (SEP 10, 2011)

Makeda is the title character of Randall Robinson’s astounding, thought provoking, and highly engaging novel. A blind retired “laundress,” Makeda’s life is anchored in her tiny, often sun-filled, parlour in Richmond, Virginia. Her modest circumstances, after a life of hardship, stand in stark contrast to her appearance and demeanor: at home, at church and in the market, she is usually clad in richly embroidered beautiful African gowns and she radiates wisdom and emotional strength, instilling respect wherever she goes. Some unknown visitors leave gifts for her, or speak to her as if she were somebody else…

Often, when she lifts her unseeing eyes toward the sun, her posture and diction change: she appears to have moved from one instant to the next – like a time traveller – into a far away place. She dreams “in pictures – color pictures, pictures of people, pictures of odd places – though she had never in her life seen a human soul…” she tells Gray, her youngest grandson, later. Recalling her dreams in great detail, she will only allow Gray, her “spirit child,” to share her secrets. “I remember at that point she said to me: Things are almost never what you, with your two eyes, can see them being. Sometimes they are less, but most of the time they are more. Worlds and worlds more, son.”

Makeda’s dreams, the “special ones,” take her to different places in Africa, regions that all have a special spiritual connection to African-American history. The dream stories are so vividly told, and, with each recurrence, grow in such intricate detail, that they pull the reader into those past lives just as much as Gray, letting us forget that it may be “just a dream.” Or is it? Is there more to it? Makeda knows where she has been and who she is in her dreams; did these places really exist at some time in the past? Is there surviving evidence of them today? Why those places and not others? What are the connections of those people to her own life and time? Many questions occupy her mind. Her curiosity grows to the point that she, after warning her grandson not to share his knowledge with anybody, instructs him to investigate any factual bases of what she tells him. Especially the amazing story of the Dogon people in Mali, West Africa, fascinates both: Dogon cosmology claims to have known about Sirius and his three stars hundreds or, maybe, thousands of years before science could prove their claim. Gray, by then a college student, will have to find a way to make this journey for his grandmother, and as it turns out, also for himself.

Robinson, recognized for his extensive non-fiction writing on topics that range from African-American socio-politics to international human rights, ventures with Makeda beyond any confines of a more traditional novel. The very moving account of Gray’s coming-of-age journey, the depiction of his close ties to his grandmother, set against the backdrop of the family’s difficult circumstances in nineteen fifties and sixties, represent by themselves a richly rewarding story. Yet, Makeda’s dream travels are more than a key for Gray’s own journey in search for identity and, eventual, love. They are like virtual spiritual doors that Robinson opens that lead us into his multi-layered vision of a broad-based African-American identity that, while recognizing its contemporary challenges, is intimately connecting it back to its African roots and its African historical and spiritual heritage.

To expand on his theme, the author introduces fictional and existing expert voices that speak to the young people in Gray’s college environment. For many students and readers, these are provocative and challenging propositions. For Gray, through the many talks with his grandmother, they are, more than anything, confirmation of his learning and evolving vision of his own role in life.

Robinson is an exquisite writer and stylist who brings the different narrative strands and themes harmoniously together and into one fascinating and enriching reading experience. I want to add on a personal level, that I found Robinson’s choices for Makeda’s “dream places and times” highly relevant for the themes of the novel. For me, they have been meaningful also as they reminded me of my own journeys of discovery into Africa and, especially of my very own very similar experience in Mali’s Dogon region.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 5 readers
PUBLISHER:	OpenLens; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Randall Robinson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker

Bibliography:

• Makeda (August 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America (1998)
• The Debt: What America Owes the Blacks (2000)
• The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other (DATE)
• Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land (2004)
• An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (2007)

“Even if I knew all the languages on earth, the rhymes of the most subtle poet, the most moving harmonies, if I had the precise brushstroke of a painter, no word, no sound or color in this world would enable me to describe the light that suddenly enveloped me. I saw it, I perceived its fragrance and heard its harmony though I was dissolved in its sweet crown of fire: a light compared to which the sun would appear opaque and pale, a light that permeated soul and body, dissolving boundaries, and emanated happiness and love, peace and fulfillment.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (MAY 9, 2010)

Saint Cecilia is listed in the Catholic Mass’ Commemoration of the Dead. Her feast day is easy to remember because it is the same day President Kennedy was assassinated: November 22. She is the patron saint of musicians and Church music because she is said to have sung as she was dying. According to hagiography, she was a Roman noble woman who converted to Christianity toward the end of the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.). An only child, she married a man, Valerian, who along with his brother preceded her in martyrdom for their mutually-held religion. Cecilia survived several attempted executions, but finally after lingering a few days, she, still young, passed into Church history. The verifiable information about Saint Cecilia’s life is quite sparse, and so a novelist has plenty of elbow room for embellishment. Linda Ferri’s Cecilia takes apt advantage of this opportunity for invention in the name of rounding out characters, time, and place.

This is a work of literary art that beautifully, poetically, expresses the insecurities, jealousies, astute observations, passions and changes that overcome this Roman girl both before and after her marriage. The novel follows traditional history by making Cecilia an only child for the very likely reason that other children had been born to her parents but had died either in childbirth or by the time they were five years old. Cecilia’s mother, Lucilla, suffers terrible grief at the loss of all her babies except Cecilia, and even an understanding, good husband and one child to love aren’t enough; she becomes an acolyte of Isis and spends her days and many nights participating in the elaborate feminine rituals in the goddess’ temple. From her, then, it would seem that Cecilia inherits a family trait for religious zealotry.

Her father, Paulus, is a deeply conscientious and sensitive man who is derailed from the healing arts into public office, as the Prefect of the Annona. And, for a time, as he admits at one point to his daughter, he allowed an ambition to rise higher make him into a liar, flatterer and betrayer. Yet, he has the introspective mettle to recognize that political ambitions cannot allow him to be true to himself or to help his ailing, obsessive, and perpetually mourning wife. From him, Cecilia has inherited an intellectual and and philosophical spark. Both her parents have contributed much to the type of person she becomes, yet, in Ferri’s version, neither of them will share her conversion (whether they did in reality is disputed by Church historians; some do believe that Cecilia adopted Christianity in great part because her parents were already believers).

Where Ferri’s tale most noticeably diverges from accepted tradition concerns Valerian. In Cecilia, the young girl who earlier begged her father to postpone arranged nuptials is eager for marriage once she sees this handsome young nobleman. But the two grow apart as he increasingly tends to political and business interests, and she sees in him a hard and avaricious heart growing colder toward her and others. This Valerian does not become a Christian. This Valerian wants nothing to do with a wife who would align herself with a foreign sect, give alms to the poor and worship Christ rather than the Roman pantheon of gods. Since Ferri presented Cecilia’s father (about whom so little is known) quite favorably, I wonder why she chose to change Valerian. If there was one thing about the book that disappointed me it was not being able to read about Cecilia and Valerian sharing the same dangerous faith.

However, perhaps Ferri thought she could make a stronger literary character of Cecilia if she was the only one in her family and circle of acquaintances who did convert. Yet, interestingly (and, actually, somewhat to my relief), the author also veered away from ending the book with a lurid description of how Cecilia supposedly perished. Instead, Ferri offers an alternative ending, or at least a delay of the Roman woman’s fate, by having Cecilia pray, “Lord, we must trust you with humility, accept your miracles: the dream you gave my father about my lifeless body, life that I wanted and that you wished to give me again.”

But perhaps it is we, the readers, who are being led down a merciful garden path when she adds, “Paradise is the lost garden. It is the garden.” Cecilia is a mystic, someone who has visions and who often dreams. She invites, no, challenges us to see where the line between reality and fantasy really lies. Not to mention that Cecilia, who lost many loved ones in her short life, seeks hope in the promise of eternal life (one of the reasons she is drawn to the Christians). Why shouldn’t her story read as though her life had continued, even if it hadn’t?

Cecilia is a saint from the beginning centuries of Christianity, but she, as with all who are canonized, was once a flawed flesh-and-blood person. She lived in a society where those who followed Christ were considered “atheists,” where those who would not renounce this new faith were tortured to death. In Ferri’s novel, newly-baptized Cecilia confesses her feelings of unworthiness. “Later I confided to Alexander that my faith is weak, that I was unable to speak to Jesus, and that I didn’t even have the power to make myself heard by my best friend.” Although Cecilia’s flash-present, flash-back structure does leave a few holes and can be confusing if the reader isn’t alert, it provides a fascinating look into the fragile but determined psyche of a young woman who first sought spiritual and soul fulfillment in her own Roman gods. But when something frightening happens, she is awakened as never before. She feels as though”…every nerve, every drop of blood brought to life by all that light — I a quivering little flame that rose, above the roof, toward the sky.”

This novel renders for the reader a portrait of love burning in a girl who searches for a way to let it shine its brightest. Her mother looked to religious rites to quench her sorrows, but Cecilia embraced a different God to release the light inside.

Cecilia is highly recommended, especially to those who look for and cherish novels about Imperial Rome, the early Christian church, and the mystical mind.

(Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions (April 27, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Linda Ferri
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt (none found!)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome by  Alberto Angela The Marcus Didius Falco Series by Lindsey Davis

Translated Bibliography:

• Enchantments (2005)
• Cecilia (April 2010)

“There are so many evils that pull on our children.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (APR 15, 2010)

If you are at all familiar with any of Anne Lamott’s books, Imperfect Birds will have a very familiar ring to it. It tackles the themes of addiction, spirituality, 12- step programs and enabling.

The novel is about Rosie,  now a 17 year-old adolescent who has her parents wrapped around her fingers. She is heavily into drugs and alcohol but is lying to her parents about the extent of her substance use, cheating on her urinalyses. She is a great manipulator and excellent with triangulation. Her mother, Elizabeth, and her step-father James, are at their wit’s ends. Rosie’s father, Andrew, died when she was a young child.

Elizabeth is a recovering alcoholic who has two years clean time. She has a feeling of emptiness and has never felt whole since Andrew died. Her rocky relationship with Rosie makes her feel fragile and distrustful of her own gut feelings. James is very grounded and tries to get Elizabeth to be more secure in her boundaries with Rosie and to trust her instincts, not to any great avail.

Rosie has two best friends, Alice and Jodie. As the book opens, Jodie has just completed three months at a rehab facility. They are all three using drugs and sometimes trading sex for drugs. They don’t use condoms and seem unaware of the dangers of unsafe sex.

Elizabeth doesn’t work outside the home. She and the family live in the vicinity of Marin County. James has a weekly show on National Public Radio and has published one novel. Up to this time, Elizabeth has considered herself his muse and now feels lost, her place in the family insecure. Marital stress is at an all time high due to Rosie’s lying, splitting and manipulation. Elizabeth, especially, is very enabling of Rosie’s behaviors.

The book discusses a lot about recovery and there is a lot of spirituality-centered talk in it as well. Elizabeth’s best friends are ministers and they are the ones that Rosie is referred to for counseling. Elizabeth, James, and their friends all used to drink together years ago and are all in recovery. Elizabeth is active in Alcoholics Anonymous. Additionally, she suffers from depression and is on medication for her psychiatric issues.

Rosie tests Jame’s and Elizabeth’s limits to the max. She breaks curfew, sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night, asks Elizabeth to withhold information from James, and generally lies, steals, and is rude, disrespectful and snide to both Elizabeth and James. She is a bright girl who is a whiz at physics who also reads Robertson Davies and Maria Rilke. Despite her intelligence, she has little or no insight about the extent of her substance problems.

The author does an excellent job of showing the strain and difficulties posed by a drug abusing adolescent. There is too much about spirituality for my taste, but this is to be expected in a book written by Lamott.

The novel very excellently shows the grip of addiction, the pain that it causes loved ones and the strains it puts on marital and family relationships. Lamott is the perfect writer to tackle a topic like this, a topic that is harrowing, frightening and life-threatening. This is a good book, one that every parent will benefit from.

* Editor’s note:  Rosie is the same character that appears in Rosie (1983) at age 5 and then in Crooked Little Heart (1997) at age 13.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Riverhead Hardcover (April 6, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Imperfect Birds
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anne Lamont Fan Page
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Made me think of this book: Blame by Michele Huneven

Bibliography:

• Hard Laughter (1980)
• Rosie (1983)
• Joe Jones (1985)
• All New People (1989)
• Crooked Little Heart (1997)
• Blue Shoe (2002)
• Imperfect Birds (April 2010)

Non-fiction:

• Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year (1993)
• Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)
• Traveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on Faith (1999)
• Plan B : Further Thoughts on Faith (2005)
• Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith (2007)

“We were complicated by our history, by the religion of our ancestors. There was beauty and wisdom and even solace in that. I no longer felt that I had to embrace it all—nor did I feel that I had to run away. I could take the bits and pieces that made sense to me, and incorporate them into the larger patchwork of our lives.'”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukoswky (JAN 26, 2010)

In Devotion, Dani Shapiro describes her quest to come to terms with the traditional Judaism of her father (which she abandoned), her late mother’s legacy of bitterness and anger, her fear that her only son might be damaged by his early battle with infantile spasms (a seizure disorder), and her inability to relax and enjoy the present, unfettered by neurotic worrying. She was deeply traumatized at the age of twenty-three when her father, who was only sixty-four, collapsed and died while driving his car.

Since she and her husband, Michael, are successful writers, Shapiro does not spend her days hurrying to a nine-to-five job and then rushing home to make dinner for her family. She is a novelist and homemaker who has the luxury of time, during which she can attend yoga classes, practice meditation, and explore her thoughts and emotions in depth. There is a New Age feel to Shapiro’s activities. She signs up for something called “Master Level Energy Work;” a woman named Sandra acts as a conduit between Dani and her dead father. Shapiro also dabbles in Reform Judaism (at one point, she dons her father’s prayer shawl and phylacteries), and consults advisors who impart wisdom that she tries to incorporate into her daily life.

Dani and her family live in rural Connecticut, and she admits that her son, Jacob, is barely aware of his Jewish identity. The author, who is in her forties, wrote this book to describe her existential crisis: “Something was very wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. All I knew was that I felt terribly anxious and unsteady. Doomed.” Although she claims that she was not clinically depressed, she says, “It seemed that there had to be more than this hodgepodge of the everyday.” Shapiro suffered from free-floating anxiety and dread, in spite of the fact that she had a loving husband, a healthy son, and a fulfilling career as a novelist and teacher.

Although Shapiro seems to be a thoughtful and goodhearted individual, Devotion comes across as a disjointed, repetitious, and self-indulgent work, in which Shapiro recounts her slow journey towards a more meaningful existence. She admits that she cherry-picked (“the smorgasbord approach”), choosing a little bit of this and a little bit of that to form a workable belief system. While in Venice, she purchased a mezuzah, prayed (to whom?) when the mood struck her, spent three days at a yoga and meditation center called Kripalu, another three days at the Garrison Institute (a former monastery), where she was guided by Sylvia Boorstein, a Buddhist.

Shapiro has some distinguished relatives. Her father’s younger sister, Shirley, was married for sixty-six years to Moses Feuerstein, who served as president of the Orthodox Union. His brother, Aaron Feuerstein, is the legendary owner of Malden Mills in Massachusetts. When his factory burned down in 1995, Mr. Feuerstein used his insurance money to rebuild the business, and in the interim and paid his employees’ salaries, with full benefits, for six months. It seems that Ms. Shapiro could have drawn inspiration from these two lives—those of Moses and Aaron Feuerstein. Doing acts of loving kindness for others and perpetuating a long-standing tradition of ethics and good works can imbue anyone’s years on earth with significance. Too much focus on oneself can create a void that is difficult, if not impossible, to fill. Ms. Boorstein said, “Everyone is struggling…..You have to go forward. And we all die in the end. So how to deal with it?” The answer is, of course, different for everyone. Some enter psychotherapy, others become deeply religious, and there are those who concentrate on their profession and/or families. Devotion implies that looking inward, with the help of mentors, may be one way to reach inner peace.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (January 26, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AMAZON PAGE:	Devotion: A Memoir
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Dani Shapiro
EXTRAS:	BookPage interview with Dani Shapiro
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Black and White

Bibliography:

• Playing with Fire (1990)
• Fugitive Blue (1992)
• Picturing the Wreck (1995)
• Family History (April 2003)
• Black and White (April 2007)

Nonfiction:

• Slow Motion (1998)
• Devotion: A Memoir (January 2010)