Long Overdue Review
tags:
book review
Looting of archaeological sites is big business in a thriving art and antiquities black market. When a desperate foreign government hires Desiree Jacobs’s security company to stop the hemorrhage, she runs afoul of a deadly art-for-drugs operation. Tony Lucano risks his rising career in the…
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leave a comment Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
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Book Review, Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
Imagine a map of Santo Domingo large enough to spread over northern New Jersey. Or at least, Paterson. Not quite invisible. Transparent, but not clear, unevenly clouded. Like a giant table cloth dropped from the sky, blood stained and frayed, thickening as it descends like…
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Review of Tinling Choong’s novel FireWife: A Story of Fire and Water
tags:
Book Review, women's fiction
{Published by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 2007, $21.00, 206 pages.} Tinling Choong’s debut novel tells the story of a woman named Nin who lives as a dutiful daughter and wife. Beneath her respectful demeanor, Nin copes with an overwhelming feeling of guilt: she holds…
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2 commentsSetalux by Simona B. Lenic - a review
tags:
book review, fantasy fiction, young adult
I’ve bought this in Italy because I wanted to check what is going on in the Italian literary scene at the moment, and because the cover was beautiful. It also helped that the book was advertised as “The Italian Harry Potter”! It turned out to…
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The Last Elf by Silvana De Mari - a book review
tags:
book review, children's books, fantasy fiction, silvana de mari, the last elf
I’ve read this in two days, lying on the beach and enjoying the sun on my skin. It was a perfect summer reading. Not those silly, frivolous books that people associate with summer. But something that can keep you glued to it, for hours and…
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The Tygrine Cat by Inbali Iserles - a book review
tags:
book review, cats, children's books, fantasy fiction, Inbali Iserles, The tygrine cat
The first thing I noticed while I was reading this book is the way it flew so easily without me even noticing it. It’s the kind of story that grabs you from the beginning and won’t let you go till the end. Even though I…
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Philip K. Dick: American Original
tags:
book review, literature, science fiction
Whats this? Philip K. Dick has been admitted to the pantheon. Four of his novels will be re-issued by the Library of America, alongside American masters such as Melville, Hawthorne, Roth, et al.
As a longtime fan who for decades has bent peoples ears about the literary merit of Philip K. Dick, I am as proud today as if a good friend were chosen for this honor. With one major misgiving: The Library ignored three of his very best books.
The Library chose four mainstream Dick novels: The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The latter three are excellent choices. (The first, Man in the High Castle is an odd choice, given it was one of Dicks early novels and not his strongest.) But for some reason, the Library dismissed the trilogy he completed near the end of his life: the so-called VALIS trilogy (VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
The reason why is probably best summarized in a recent New York Times article, in which Charles McGrath dismissed the VALIS trilogy as Dicks Finnegans Wakea book thats more fun to talk about than to read.
When I read that, I almost spit out my coffee. (I also take issue with McGraths description of Blade Runner as the best film adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel. Perhaps he hadnt seen the movie since the 1980s. It has not aged well.)
Then I calmed down and wondered: Am I just too much of a fan? Have I become such a PKD nut that I find enjoyment in a science-fiction Finnegans Wake?
Actually no. I recently re-read VALIS, and recalled why Dicks books have always moved me so deeply. It is not the mobius-strip weirdness that Hollywood finds so compelling (wow, what if robots became so human-like that we couldnt tell the difference?) On the contrary, it is the fact that Dick used these storytelling loops as a springboard to explore the nature of reality, and in particular, the questions of what it means to be human. Philip K. Dick was a spiritual seeker trapped in the science-fiction genre.
In 1974, after years of drug abuse (mostly amphetamines to fuel his writing), he underwent a mystical experience that he described as an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind. He quit the drugs that had fueled his hyperactive writing. He wrote a moving elegiac novel dedicated to the friends he had lost to drugs (Through a Scanner Darkly). And then he wrote three books (The VALIS trilogy) in which he tried to deal directly with the topics he had touched upon all through his career: Is there a divine consciousness, and if so, how does it manifest itself in us, or to us?
Contrary to McGrath, the trilogy is straightforward and pleasurable to read. True, there are narrative quirks such as a character named Philip K. Dick, and a familiar-seeming writer named Horselover Fat. But such old-fashioned meta-fiction tricks hardly equal the linguistic labyrinth that is Finnegans Wake. The VALIS trilogy compares better to reading Philip Roths Patrimony after having enjoyed the narrative hide-and-seek of the Zuckerman series. For once, the author has dropped his artifices and is telling it to you as straight as he can. The result is stark and deeply moving.
By no means would I suggest Philip K. Dick compares to Philip Roth. A speed freak, he probably never slowed down enough to give structure or style a second thought. But whatever his faults, he was a writer with a stunning imagination, a durable gift for storytelling, and a deep longing for answers to the eternal questions. His VALIS trilogy has the tragic beauty of a lifelong seeker who is finally coming to the end of his search.
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Globe and Mail review
tags:
book review, Globe and Mail, review, Shelf Monkey
Ooch, painful. Not an out and out slam, and getting in the Globe at all is a coup. But when the reviewer says he didn’t get the point, well, that smarts like a wet towel on the ass.
Here’s the review.
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Planet Reese, by Cordelia Strube
tags:
Book review, Cordelia Strube, Manitoba, Planet Reese, Winnipeg, Winnipeg Free Press
Cordelia Strube is a realist, in the most extreme sense. Not for her the provincial world of traditional CanLit, where horrific events classically occur through the gauzy mist of nostalgia, in a tiny Newfoundland community where the inhabitants are untouched by world events.
Strube rejects this clich, embracing Canada as it exists in all its healthcare fiascos, climate change, and shortsighted government policies. Her Canada is one overrun by doughy cretins, unable to see beyond their own greed and consumption, and after six novels, Strube holds claim to being a premier purveyor of feel-bad Canadian literature.
Planet Reese continues this trend, beginning with its protagonist Reese Larkin at the lowest depths of despair, and seeing how much more punishment one man can take. It is more or less a retelling of the Book of Job, except far funnier, and holy salvation at tales end appears exceedingly unlikely.
Reese is an environmentalist beset on a multitude of fronts by the plagues of the 21st century. His wife has taken their children, and only communicates through a social worker. In order to prove he can hold down a real job, he has taken a position with a marketing/phone centre, a thankless, repulsive job and only the desperate or truly nave can stand it, and even they never last.
Making matters worse, he accidentally kills an innocent man on a plane, and is thereafter mistakenly heralded as a hero for thwarting a presumed terrorist attack. Overwhelmed with guilt and shame, his days are now filled with news reports of domestic abuse, murder, and environmental degradation, and for some reason he cannot find himself a comfortable mattress or a good, cheap pair of shoes.
Reeses manic rage at being ostracized for caring about the planet forms Planet Reeses blackly comic heart. A Quixotic figure, even Reese is surprised by his cynicism, unable to even enjoy a documentary on Christopher Reeve without thinking about the money involved in trying to mend a severed spinal cordmoney that could be sent to seventeen month-old babies in North Korea or Iraq or Afghanistan.
Strubes refusal to sugarcoat the insanity of the Western worlds insatiable quest for the perfect chair and mattress may serve to dissuade a reader from visiting Planet Reese. It is a valid criticism of the majority of Strubes past output that too much hopelessness can be hard to take.
Yet Strubes fondness for her put-upon characters is such that Planet Reese remains entertaining even as Reese digs himself a psychological hole so deep he cannot competently function in life. Bewildered at how anyone could rest their head on a hundred dollar pillow when stick-thin Ethiopian children and stacks of corpses were in the news, Reese sets himself up for the kind of self-destructive breakdown good literature excels at.
When you no longer hope for signs of intelligence, compassion or kindness, Reese howls, are you safe from harm? Strube doesnt provide an answer, but in asking the question, she has ensured that Canadian fiction will remain relevant to the perils of our age.
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My First Book Review
tags:
book review, Manitoba, Shelf Monkey, Winnipeg, Winnipeg Free Press
My novel Shelf Monkey has it’s first official printed review, and, well, it’s not great. Not bad, but not great.
Check it out here.
Am I right to be concerned? I think I will lose sleep over this.
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Book Review of The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak; Viking 2007; 357 pages
tags:
book review, elif shafak
Before I heard Elif Shafak speak at the very first PEN World Voices festival in New York City in April 2005, I had not been aware of this authors work, nor of her courage.
That April in New York, Shafak spoke on two panels: one was entitled, The Way We Live Now: Who Wrote the book of sex? The other was Crossover Artists: Writing in Another Language. Shafak writes in Turkish and English. I was attracted to this discussion topic because I had just spent the previous summer teaching Chinese language at my alma mater, Beloit College, in the Midwest. The title of the second panel attracted me because while learning Chinese, I wrote short stories and short essays in Chinese. And while teaching Chinese, I wrote my own short, dramatic dialogues for the students because they had requested supplementary material for further practice. Writing creatively in an acquired language remains one of the most profound experiences of my life, yet I have had no serious opportunities to discuss and digest what this experience means for me. Thats why, at the World Voices festival, Shafaks example as a threshold writer provided a much-needed sense of solidarity.
But it was Shafaks candid discussion of sexuality in the Middle East that provoked my interest in reading her fiction. Her comments ranged from Ottoman Empire books on sexuality to the Sufi mystical tradition of Islam that is very much open to discussions of eroticism. Shafak said, The interesting thing that happened in Turkey is that in the name of modernization, secularizing, and Westernizing ourselves, we cut our ties with the long tradition of eroticism, erotic literature, and especially homoeroticism. This comment interested and excited me most because I had graduated from Columbia University in 2002 with a Masters in Chinese Literature, and throughout that program I was amazed at how much erotica we were reading in our Pre-modern fiction class, including titles such as The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Carnal Prayer Mat, and What The Master Didnt Speak Of. Through study and discussion, it eventually occurred to me that a post post-modern consciousness, might at first assume that these days we are more progressive in our attitudes toward sexuality just because we live the outcomes of the Feminist Movement and the continuing struggles for Gay Rights. But if a reader digs deeper, she will discover cultural and literary traditions out there that could be informative on matters of sexuality in ways that post-modern minds may not have thought of. Shafak is very keen at pointing out the negative consequences of creating historical divisions.
Now I am recalling a discussion Ive had with grad school friends of mine. On occasion we speculated about Bisexuality in the Chinese concubinage. Among our group were those who defined their sexual identity as anything ranging from Lesbian to Metro-sexual to Poly-amorous, even a Retro-sexual; we were friends who studied culture, literature, and language who dared to entertain the wildest hunches. For instance, in a wealthy Chinese household, the man typically chose one wife to sleep with for that evening, according to however his whims guided him. He would order a servant to go to that wife, prepare her with pampering and a foot massage. This wife would beam. In the traditional literature, drama erupts due to the rejected wives disappointments and jealousies. And in our little discussion groupthese centuries later and miles awaywe came up with this question: well, what if it wasnt really like that? What if the wives who were not chosen to sleep with the husband for that evening did, in fact, sleep with one another? Wouldnt that solve a whole lot of issues? Or would that just fan the dramatic fire?
Its impossible to prove any such thing really happened, and we wade in the dangerous territory to impose certain assumptions on other times, places, cultures, etc. But the whole point is the fascinating dialogue that such speculation opens up, a dialogue between Now and ThenMr. Past taunting Ms. Present, and Ms. Present teasing Mr. Past. All this helped us to conclude that celebrating erotic traditions helps us riff on the themes of sexuality in its colorful variations without feeling alienated from the past.
Elif Shafaks fiction gives me strength and energy to write about this now. Colorful options that provide comfort are the kinds of considerations that Elif Shafaks work invites. Because she is a woman from a threshold culture and because she embraces tradition and modernism with humor and grace, her fiction offers much food for thought to a cosmopolitan mind.
Recently, I finished reading her latest novel The Bastard of Istanbul. Now, not only do I appreciate a sense of solidarity with this author, but I am welcoming all her work into my life and cherishing all it can Teach.
Now. What if we learn brutal truths about our families pasts? What if we learn about the atrocities from which we are all descended? Are we victims? Are we perpetrators? Arent we all suffering the consequences? Once we gain knowledge of the truth of our past, what should we do with that knowledge?
Shafaks novel is a sweeping family saga that handles these tough questions.
The story revolves around the revelations of two young women: Asya Kazanci, who is fatherless and Turkish, and Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, who feels exiled as an Armenian American, so she journeys to a foreign land. When Asya and Armanoush meet, their bond provides striking illustration of human connectedness. Transcending our hang-ups seems possible here. What hang-ups? Well: History. Identity. Community. Family. For starters
The story begins with a nineteen-year-old Istanbulite woman, the seductive Zeliha, lying on an examining table about to have an abortion. She hears the call to prayer as the anesthesia starts working. When she comes to, she learns that the abortion could not be performed. She still has the fetus inside her because when the doctor tried to do his work, Zeliha shrieked with such horror that the doctors and nurses abandoned the procedure. Zeliha decides she will keep her baby girl, even though the city she lives in is hostile toward bastards.
If that opening isnt absorbing enough, by the time readers get to page 53, Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, an Armenia exile, is asserting the taboo proclamation, I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915. These words spoken by Barsamand similar claims made by other charactersincluding the ravings of a bitter djinn who induces a memory trance in the thoroughly affecting Pomegranate Seeds chaptergot Elif Shafak into trouble with Turkish nationalists. Come on guys. Be real. Article 301 is for the birds!
But, back to the story.
The sensually-rich saga unfolds in chapters named after ingredients: Cinnamon, Garbanzo Beans, Sugar, Roasted Hazelnuts. Gathering around for mealtimes, one ingredient might trigger a memory or sensation, might open an opportunity to tell of something that once was or something that once wasnt. But all the ingredients are vital for a sweet surprise later in the text. Shafak is a generous with her sensual writing; she hoards nothing and all are welcome to enjoy desserts prepared by Armenian and Turkish grandmothers alike. But beware of bitter and poison.
Some scenes take place in Istanbul while others take place in Arizona and San Francisco. Shafak handles the geographical shifts smoothly. Reading her work makes transition feel effortless.
A brother of five sisters leaves Istanbul to study in America. Mustafa meets Rose. She is a young, embittered divorce, originally from Kentucky, who has a daughter by her ex-husbandBarsama member of a huge Armenian Catholic family. Of Rose, that family says,
Rose had no multicultural background. The only child of a kind Southern couple operating the same hardware store forever, she lives a small-town life, and before she knows it, she finds herself amid this extended and tightly knit Armenian Catholic family in the Diaspora. A huge family with a very traumatic past! How can you expect her to cope with all this so easily?
Shafak writes as gracefully about family discord as about family unity. An example of unity is the comfort prompted by the Armenian grandmothers knitting.
Grandma Shushans knitting affected the family like group therapy. The sure and even cadence of each stitch soothed everyone watching, making them feel that as long as Grandma Shushan kept knitting, there was nothing to fear and in the end, everything would be all right.
This is a story of how the Armenian Diaspora survives through collective spirit, how the Turkish cope with learning the truth. To ease all distress, Shafak becomes like Barsams Uncle Dikran who eases his nephews distress by telling him a storymore like a long jokeabout what happens when an Armenian visits a generous barber. In Shafaks world, stories ease distress. Tell stories.
The crux of the narrative opens fully in the chapter entitled Pine Nuts. In this chapter, Asya translates Armanoushs story for her four Turkish-speaking aunties. While the American girl is re-telling the story of Armenian genocide that has been erased from the womens Turkified memories, the Turkish version of the television show The Apprentice is airing in the background. This scene reveals that the complexity of these characters situation extends to communities and cultures beyond the characters in the story. This chapters dialogue raises the question, who all is responsible for erasing memory? But Shafak gives the screw another turn by forcing us to ponder, what does it mean to remember? But in this scene we see a young woman traveled from the U.S. to Turkey in search of her Armenian identity telling a Turkish family a fact about their history; meanwhile, a purely American knock-off television show provides somewhat distracting and odd-ball background noise. These are the kinds of techniques Shafak employs to tell this edifying tale. Readers come away from The Bastard of Istanbul with admiration for this writers courage to confront atrocities of History and the hard questions we have been gifted. Though this novel forces readers to confront tough questions, it also offers most satisfying surprises that are as bitter as they are sweet.
There are so many sophisticated ideas packed in this novel. I hope that it sells as well, or better, here than in Turkey; I hope readers groups, book clubs, and classrooms welcome this important tale to their discussion tables. I hope families read it together and talk about it around the dessert table while eating ashure. As the celebrating Istanbulites would say, Serefe!
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Fuchs, Michael Stephen: The Manuscript
tags:
book review, MacMillan New Writing, Michael Stephen Fuchs
MacMillan New Writing 2006, 348 pages [amazon]
The meaning of life is out there, a Usenet rumor has it, hidden on the web at an unregistered IP address, on a protocol no one uses, waiting for some genius hacker to stumble on it. Such, at least, is the purport of Michael Stephen Fuchs’s interesting but uneven technothriller, The Manuscript. The text that gives the book its title was purportedly written by 19th-century explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton after he stumbled on the answers to life’s riddles in the mountains of Argentina. It’s being sought in the present century by a host of people, most of them heavily-armed baddies, most of them more interested in profit than enlightenment. Among those hunting for the manuscript are Fuchs’s protagonists, a quartet of twenty-somethings who are vaguely dissatisfied with the trajectory of their lives: Dana Steckler, a graduate student in medical ethics at Thomas Jefferson College; her friend Miles Darken, a sysadmin with his own Bersa .380; Miles’s cyber-acquaintaince, intelligence agent Celeste Browning; and chemistry student turned high-tech drug dealer FreeBSD, the genius hacker who manages, after all, to find that hidden IP address.
Continue reading at book-blog.com
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