Europa Challenge Update

I've read a bunch of Europas over the past few weeks and rather than write four long reviews I decided to just do quick recaps.

The Cemetary of Swallows, by Mallock. All over the place in terms of tone and style but compelling nonetheless, it tells the story of a Frenchman who murders an elderly man in the Dominican Republic, for reasons that no one understands. Mallock is also the name of the detective in this case, a friend of the murderer's sister. He starts his investigation in the DR where he encounters corruption, a house of amber and more, with just hints of the horrors awaiting him to discover back in France. The story then takes a turn to World War 2 atrocities and reincarnation. Along the way you'll be treated to prose both purple and page-turning, until this hot mess bumps its way to a pretty conventional ending. 2014. Translated from the French.


Seven Lives and One Great Love, by Lena Divani, is a light bonbon about a cat and the woman he
loves. A pretty white cat named Zach is adopted by a woman he worships for no discernable reason; she's not a very good cat owner, that's for sure. Anyway he remains devoted and tries with some success to win her affection and attention. This would be fun one for the beach bag. 2014. Translated from the Greek.

Margherita Dolce Vita, by Stefano Benni, is an older title that tells a coming of age story mixed with an anti-materialism message. Margherita is a dreamy teen who lives with two brothers and her parents and everything is peachy until the Del Benes move in next door with their black cube of a house and shopping-mall lifestyle. Things take a dark turn and Margherita must figure out how to save her family from the changes she sees coming- if she can. I liked this book and I think it would appeal to readers who like a little quirky in their literary diets. 2006. Translated from the Italian.

Revolution Baby, by Joanna Gruda, was my favorite though. This is a
quasi-novel about a Jewish Polish boy who is hidden during World War 2 and the Holocaust, in various places around France. Julek has a peripatetic childhood even before war breaks out; his parents, hard-core Communists, don't want to raise him and have him to live with Polish comrades of theirs. His mother takes him to France but sends him to boarding school, then sends him all over the countryside in an effort to keep him safe. Told from his perspective and in simple language, his is a story of alienation and the constant struggle to find a place for himself, find a family, find a place to call his own. The adult narrator makes no effort to contexualize what happened to his child-self so we have to read between the lines to understand and I like it when a book makes me work a little like that. I really loved this book and want to recommend it to everyone. 2014.

These are books 5-8 of the 2014 Europa Challenge! You can join this ongoing challenge at EuropaChallenge.Blogspot.com.

Review: THE DAYS OF ABANDONMENT, by Elena Ferrante

The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. Published 2006 by Europa Editions. Literary Fiction. Translated from the Italian.

A woman finds one day that her husband is leaving her. She's 38; they have two young children and a dog. The other woman is a 20-something the couple has known for years. At first, Olga, the scorned wife, thinks her husband might be having a passing spell of some sort. But soon enough it's apparent that it's permanent, that she's alone.

The book follows her descent into irrationality and anger, during which her life as well as those of her children is at risk. She sinks into a kind of sexual and physical morass, a loss of dignity from which one would think would be impossible to recover. The language is raw and unadorned, and I've heard that the original Italian is even rougher than the English translation. Olga's desperation and pain and anger and fright is hard to look at and hard to look away from. Early on, she confronts her husband, who wishes she wouldn't be so dramatic, so difficult:

Speak like what? I don't give a shit about prissiness. You wounded me, you are destroying me, and I'm supposed to speak like a good, well-brought-up wife?...With these eyes I see everything you do together, I see it a hundred thousand times, I see it night and day, eyes open and eyes closed! However, in order not to disturb the gentleman, not to disturb his children, I'm supposed to use clean language, I'm supposed to be refined...

This kind of thing works well in novels because it's cathartic for the reader, but of course in reality she'd be locked up for some of the things she does and says. It's not a revenge fantasy- she takes it all out on herself and the kids which are like extensions of herself, and the poor dog, a symbol of the whole family- but it's still violent, psychically and psychologically.  Nevertheless it's an incredible book that would certainly stimulate a lot of conversation and thinking about what it means to be a woman, a wife, a mother. Ferrante does not fetishize the family, or children, or middle class marriage the way many American writers do.  Olga puts herself first and views her children as parasites at the height (or nadir) of her crisis.  The whole family is in chaos. She hits bottom, but then she comes back up enough to see the daylight and a way out.

So yeah, I really enjoyed this but in a way it was like reading a particularly gritty crime novel, one that you can't put down even when it's ripping you apart. Maybe we need a new category for Ferrante's books, domestic thrillers. Or something. She's got a new book coming out from Europa out soon- watch for it, and read this in the meantime.

This is my 11th book for the 2012 Europa Challenge

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: The Goodbye Kiss, by Massimo Carlotto

The Goodbye Kiss, by Massimo Carlotto. Published 2006 by Europa Editions. Crime Fiction.

One thing you can say about the crime novels of Massimo Carlotto is that as dark and as violent as they are, they will make you feel better about your life, because nothing that's ever happened to me holds a candle to an ordinary day in the life of Mr. Carlotto's protagonists.

In The Goodbye Kiss we meet gleeful psychopath Giorgio Pellegrini, a career criminal who prances from one trainwreck to the next but always comes off without a scratch. The one-time revolutionary is back on the scene in Italy after some time in Central America and stint in prison and all he wants is respectability. To get it, he's willing and able to indulge in all manner of bloody, violent, nasty shenanigans. But the thing is, he's a lot of fun. Hilarious. I might be tempted to call him an unreliable narrator but the fact is he's scrupulously honest with the reader about who he is and what's he about, even when he's lying his pants off to everyone else.

Most of the book is taken up with a big heist he's planning, which he hopes will net him a hefty payday and bankroll his new "respectable" life. The only hitch is, he can't leave any witnesses. Along the way he plots with a veritable rogues' gallery of accomplices, amuses himself with various women who aren't always amused with him, and generally acts nice right up to the point where the bullets start flying and the bodies start piling up. It sounds grim, but it's a riot. And having just read Cooking with Fernet Branca I had to laugh when a bottle of the stuff turned up in this book under very different and for one character, highly unfortunate circumstances.

Which brings me to the only thing that doesn't make me laugh about Giorgio, and about Carlotto's books more generally- the way Carlotto's female characters are routinely degraded and tortured. I suppose one could say he's being all Stieg Larssonish about it, showing us the horrors perpetrated on women in order to expose them. So we get ample helpings of rape, prostitution, and other manner of violations against just about every woman in this and Carlotto's other books (at least the three I've read). But unlike Larsson, Carlotto's brutality isn't presented as fantasy porn. And the truth is, as badly as his women fare, they're no worse off than the men.

So, I really enjoyed The Goodbye Kiss. Giorgio is appalling- a horror of a human being. But Carlotto creates such a charismatic bad boy that his adventures are just a roller coaster good time. Turn off your inner feminist and come along for the ride!

This counts towards the 2012 Europa Challenge.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: Stoner, by John Williams

Stoner, by John Williams. Published 2006 by NYRB Editions.

The other day I was looking for what to read next and I remembered that I had this book Stoner on my shelf, and that it had been there for a while. I also remembered that a couple of my good book pals (Matt of A Guy's Moleskine Notebook and bookseller extraordinaire Michele Filgate) had read it and really enjoyed it, so I decided to pull it down and give it a try. A day and a half later I was done with this remarkable little book.

Stoner reads like a fictional biography of one William Stoner, born dirt-poor on a hardscrabble farm in Missouri. His parents send him to college to study agriculture and agronomy, but he becomes enchanted by literature and decides to abandon the farming life for an academic one. He marries a young woman from a well-off family but the marriage founders; he has a daughter, but her life is a sad replay of her parents'. His career never really takes off; his stubbornness and his love, late in life, for a fellow instructor doom whatever modest ambitions he may have had.

So the book is definitely kind of a downer (Stoner reminds me of Lily Bart, the heroine of Edith Wharton's depressing The House of Mirth, a woman not quite capable of the ordinariness she covets) it's also a luminous and moving novel about one man's life, albeit a quiet life filled with a steady stream of disappointments. What saves the book for me, and the reason I'm going to recommend it to readers of literary fiction, is that incredibly beautiful writing. His love affair with Katherine Driscoll represents the high point of his life:

In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being, to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity, he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented an modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.

Intelligence and heart are what characterize this lovely little novel. Equally beautiful passages can be found elsewhere, particularly about the other love of his life, his daughter Grace, ruined by her mother's anger and Stoner's own powerlessness over his wife. The story is very sad, no doubt, but it's also very beautiful and Williams' prose will hold your heart tight all the way to the end.

Rating: BUY

Stoner (New York Review Books Classics)
by John Edwar Williams

I'm a Powell's partner and receive a small commission on sales. 

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: Death's Dark Abyss, by Massimo Carlotto

Death's Dark Abyss, by Massimo Carlotto. Published 2006 by Europa Editions. Fiction. Crime Fiction. Translated from the Italian.

Death's Dark Abyss is sort of what the title suggests- a dark and gritty and violent tale of grief and revenge. Silvano Contin is a grieving widower whose wife and child were killed in a bungled robbery; previously a successful career man, he now ekes out a solitary, dreary living repairing shoes.

Fifteen years after the tragedy, he's miserable, bitter shell of himself; then one day he gets a letter from the lawyer of the man in prison for the crime, asking for Silvano's help in getting his client a humanitarian pardon. Raffaello Beggato, imprisoned for life, has cancer and asks to spend his last days at home with his mother. Silvano is plunged again into a new inferno of rage and decides to take his revenge against the man who destroyed his family.

It should be sort of obvious that this is not a feel-good story; it's the story of damaged, desperate and desperately unhappy people pitted against each other in a battle for the survival of their souls. It reads incredibly quickly; a slim volume of only 150-odd pages, I read it in two days and could barely stand to put it down the suspense gripped me so. Carlotto kept me firmly in a vise with his white-hot plot and irresistibly compelling characters.

Having said that though, I don't think I could ever read another one of his books! Although the journey was unforgettable, the violence present in the book, the edgy and somewhat misogynistic sexual content and the sheer misery of the characters made this my first and probably only foray into his world. Which is all not to say that Death's Dark Abyss won't have an audience. Fans of dark noir and crime fiction will love this; it will pull the right reader in like gravity. For me, although I do enjoy crime fiction, it was just a little too much.

Rating: If you like crime fiction, BUY.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from Europa Editions.

REVIEW: The Door, by Magda Szabó

The Door, by Magda Szabó. Published 2006 by Vintage UK. Literary Fiction. Translation.

I first heard of Magda Szabó's fascinating novel The Door on the blog Almost Insider; if you read literary fiction, you need to be reading Anni's wonderful reviews of interesting and lesser-known European books. As is often the case, her review caught my eye; eventually I was able to track down a copy of the book and sat down to read it a few weeks ago. Wow.

The Door is the story of a friendship between two very different women in post-war Hungary. The narrator, who is never named, is a young married woman working hard to make it as a writer; she hires Emerence, an older woman from her village, to be her housekeeper. But their relationship becomes a much deeper as Emerence becomes indispensable to the household and exacts a kind of fealty in return for her truly remarkable domestic service, even giving the couple a puppy trained to be dependent on her so as to occupy a central role in their lives.

Frosty at first, over the years the narrator's relationship with Emerence grows closer as Emerence slowly entrusts tidbits about her mysterious past to the narrator. The door of the title is the front door of Emerence's home, inside which no one is ever admitted. As Emerence ages and becomes concerned with what will become of her legacy, it falls to the narrator to take responsibility for the ailing housekeeper. The final barriers fall in a heartbreaking way that ensures no one's life will ever be the same.

The Door is a dense character study of these two women; by telling Emerence's story through the writer's eyes, Szabó shows the reader both women in great detail. We can tell a lot about the narrator by the way she thinks and describes herself and Emerence, and we see the community that forms around Emerence- the other women in the village, the dog, and more- and the narrator's exclusion from it, even as she comes to enjoy a great deal of professional success and celebrity. A moving and tragic narrative with little dialogue, told from the perspective of memory, shot through with regret and sadness and deliberately paced, The Door will appeal to literary readers looking for something slow and thoughtful. It's a little gem with its own special brilliance.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Graphic Novel Monday: Unholy Kinship, by Naomi Nowak

Unholy Kinship, by Naomi Nowak. Published 2006 by ComicsLit. Paperback.
Click here to buy Unholy Kinship via IndieBound.org. I'm an IndieBound affiliate and receive a small commission on sales.

Unholy Kinship is an eccentric and slightly disturbing little book about two sisters and the mystery surrounding their mother's illness, their father's death and the fate of the young women themselves. Younger sister Luca is the paid caretaker of her older sister Gae, struggling with an unnamed mental illness; their mother is dormant in an asylum, catatonic for years.

Before these tragedies befell the family, Luca and Gae's parents were psychologists deep in controversial research about the relationship between humans and primates; now, monkeys come to Luca in her dreams and speak to her. Are they real or a fantasy? Are Gae and her mother really sick or medicated into a stupor by the menacing doctors and nurses surrounding them? What's really going on here?

This short little book, easy to read in a sitting, is a trippy voyage down a strange rabbit hole. The dreamlike art does much of the work in creating the hallucinatory atmosphere; much of the book is washed out in grays, pinks and purples that make the reader feel only half-conscious, like someone just awoken from a deep dream. It also does most of the storytelling as it's rich in detail and little of the space is occupied by dialogue. A sort of somnambulist pall hangs over the story, and the women, as the most vivid and "normally colored" sequences are of the brief moments the sisters share outside their claustrophobic home.

Unholy Kinship is an unusual graphic read, and not one that I'd suggest to a newcomer to the genre; the experienced reader looking for something different might really enjoy Swedish artist and author Nowak's strange and not-entirely optimistic book. I enjoyed it but I can't say it was a favorite; what I liked best was that artwork. There is some sexual content but little profanity; religious figures are presented as creepy, ill-willed villains, and there's no happy ending. I'd suggest the book to fans of movies like "Donnie Darko" or the 80s TV series "Twin Peaks"- it's like an art-house film set to paper and panels. You might even want to play a little Angelo Badalamenti while you're reading.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, by Mohja Kahf

The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, by Mohja Kahf. Published 2006 by Carroll & Graf. Fiction.

The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf is a enjoyable and moving novel about growing up Muslim in Indiana of the 1970s. Khadra Shamy emigrated from Syria as a child with her parents; her family is very close and part of a conservative religious community including Khadra's African-American friends Hakim and Hanifa. The novel follows her life from adolescence to marriage to early midlife, from Indiana to the Middle East and back again as she sorts through questions of identity, religion and belonging.

I read Tangerine Scarf for my interfaith book club and I think that it was a great choice. It's accessible and provides a lot of cultural and religious information as well as some great characters and fodder for discussion. I expect our meeting next week will be lively and I found it more approachable than some of the older historical fiction we've read in the past.

I also found Tangerine Scarf to be bracingly honest- author Mohja Kahf doesn't sweeten Khadra for a non-Muslim audience, for, by example, giving her political opinions other than those she would most likely hold- even at the expense of (for me) robbing her of a little sympathy when it comes to her views on, for example, Israel. At one point Khadra forms a friendship with an Orthodox Jewish young woman and I had to cringe a little at some of her views even though they make sense given who she is. Khadra's discomfort with some aspects of mainstream American life and identity also struck me as honest and appropriate given the context in which she lives. At the same time, it also made sense to me that she and this young woman would find common ground, as she does with the Mormon family next door- all members of highly structured religions whose observance is as much a lifestyle as a matter of faith.

Having said that, I think Tangerine Scarf is also just a very appealing book about a decent, relatable young woman who deals with questions common to many:

But what if she'd been just a regular Muslim girl trying to make her way through the obstacle course-through the impossible, contradictory hopes the Muslim community had for her, and the infuriating, confining, assumptions the Americans put on her? A girl looking for a way to be, just be, outside that tug-of-war?

That tug-of-war is the center of the book, as Khadra moves between cultures, lifestyles and the different people in her life- who also ask tough questions of themselves. Kahf shows that no one's life is simple, however it may seem from the outside. I particularly liked how Kahf portrays the diversity in the Muslim world and while the book has obvious appeal to those interested in Islam it would also appeal to readers who enjoy character-driven coming-of-age stories with a strong point of view and clear focus. I think young adult readers would also enjoy getting to know Khadra and empathize with her questions about herself and her place in the world. In the end Tangerine Scarf grows into a moving portrait of a self-realization and self-actualization as Khadra learns to love life and herself and begins to balance it all out.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

Graphic Novel Monday: Maybe Later, by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian

Maybe Later, by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian. Published 2006 by Drawn & Quarterly.

Click here to buy Maybe Later via IndieBound.org. I'm an IndieBound affiliate and receive a small commission on sales.

Maybe Later is a charming volume by French artists Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian, whose normal modus operandi is to collaborate on both the art and writing of their famous Mr. Jean series. In this series, they separate and create individual journals in which they talk about their lives and their art.

I'm not familiar with Mr. Jean but I enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't spectacular or anything, but the I found the art funny and light and thought their self-deprecating humor was infectious. My eye isn't really good enough to distinguish the two styles and both journals are characterized by a similar style of loose line drawing. I found the yellow paper the comics are printed on a little hard on my eyes. As far as content, a running joke is their relationship- they're strictly business partners but they often discuss how people assume that because they work so closely that they must be close in other ways. They talk about how they collect stories from all over, how people tell them their stories and make assumptions about them.

As you might be able to tell, the stories contain some humor and sexual references that make the book appropriate for older teens and adults. Overall it's a fun book, not one of my favorites but worth a look if you're familiar with Dupuy and Berberian (or even if you're not) or want to get to know more about the French comics scene.

Rating: BORROW

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

Note: After this week Graphic Novel Monday will be on hiatus until I catch up on my backlog of books. See you back here in 2010!

Graphic Novel Monday: Klezmer; Book One- Tales from the Wild East, by Joann Sfar

Klezmer; Book One- Tales of the Wild East, by Joann Sfar. Published 2006 by First Second. Graphica. Translated from the French.

Joann Sfar's graphic novel Klezmer: Tales of the Wild East is a charming and funny book with a hopeful message. Set in pre-war Europe amid the shtetls of Eastern Europe, two groups of musicians meet independently and have some comic adventures; when they meet onstage, hilarity ensues.

Yaacov, a runaway yeshiva boy, meets Vincenzo, who was kicked out of his yeshiva for stealing. Yaacov takes a banjo he finds from some dead musicians. The two boys meet Tshokola, a Gypsy musician, and proposes starting a band. Elsewhere, Noah Davidovich, the sole survivor of a group of massacred klezmer musicians, takes up with Chava, a runaway singer grown weary of the confines of shtetl life. He plays harmonica and together they head to Odessa to seek their fortune. When the two groups meet, the Gypsy Tshokola surprises everyone with a unique "Jewish" story, and love is in the air.

Klezmer is a delight from start to finish, with Sfar's trademark wit and extroverted and colorful artwork. If you've read The Rabbi's Cat or its sequel you'll already be familiar with what to expect, but the rest of you will be in for a treat if you decide to make this your first venture into Sfar's exuberant, joyful world. The occasional profanity and sexual references make it appropriate for teens and older; most of Sfar's work is not appropriate for children, as delightful as it truly is. A fun comic romp and window into a lost world, Klezmer is a terrific book.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

GRAPHIC NOVEL MONDAY: Siberia, by Nikolai Maslov

Siberia, by Nikolai Maslov. Published 2006 by Soft Skull Press.

Click here to buy Siberia from your favorite indie bookseller.

Siberia, by Russian artist and writer Nikolai Maslov, is a beautiful, haunting work- the story of an average man that nonetheless touches universal themes of loneliness, confusion and alienation.

The work is autobiographical and covers Maslov's life from young adulthood and induction into the Soviet army through years in art school and earning a living. After growing up in a bleak Siberian village, Maslov joins the army and is stationed in Mongolia where he guards barracks, takes political indoctrination courses and just tries to survive the hostile, brutal realities of Soviet military life. Soldiers drink away their feelings and an afternoon wandering through the woods by himself to appreciate the beauty of the countryside earns Maslov "15 days in the can". After the army, Maslov returns to city life and goes to art school but continues to struggle with the grim realities of Soviet life, including family tragedies and the tragic past of the Soviet Union itself.

Although his storytelling is very fluid and his struggles are moving, what really makes Siberia stand out is Maslov's artwork. The book is drawn entirely in pencil sketches, at times shadowy and smudgy, at others, meticulously detailed and precise. I'm so used to seeing inked comics that Maslov's pencil sketches looked almost raw and unfinished to me- incomplete. As I read this book there were times I almost thought the pencil would rub off on my fingers! But coupled with the storytelling, the artwork becomes an appropriate, fitting and elegant accompaniment to Maslov's themes of alienation and hopelessness.

Siberia is a stand-out graphic memoir that would no doubt appeal to those interested in Soviet life, but it's a very hopeful story as well, and its very publication was something of a miracle. At the end of the book there is an epilogue detailing how Maslov approached a bookseller with drafts of the book and convinced him to give Maslov an advance to finish the work and get it published. Not a lot of graphic novels come out of Russia so Maslov's unusual, lovely book would be of interest to Russophiles as well as graphic-novel afficianados. Highly, highly recommended!

Rating: BUY


FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher.

Graphic Novel Monday: Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel. Published 2006 by Houghton Mifflin. Graphica. Nonfiction. Memoir. LGBT.


Fun Home isn't hot off the presses, but it's a book that I believe will be remembered as one that helped graphic novels gain respectability as a literary form at the beginning of the 21st century. It's just that good.

In Fun Home, writer and illustrator Alison Bechdel tells the story of her family; her father was a high school teacher/funeral home director and her mother an amateur actress. The family lived in an old Victorian house that Dad was constantly redecorating and renovating. Her parents were distant, self-involved people, whose relationship to each other is even more distant still than that which they have with their children, and the result is a disjointed, dysfunctional family, full of shame and secrets.

Bechdel's father's secret, which Bechdel believes eventually killed him, is that he was gay. Later, in college, Alison comes out as well, but her life as an out lesbian is very different than her father's closeted existence, and although she is able to extend empathy towards him after his death, she wonders how her homosexuality affected him. It's a very sad story, but also a story of redemption as Alison comes to terms with her father's death, with the reality of his life, and with the good that can be taken from their relationship.

And it's so beautifully told. Bechdel is a skilled storyteller with years of serial comics work behind her- her long-running strip Dykes to Watch Out For has been published in something like 15 volumes at this point, with a big compendium just released (The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For) this past November. In her series she created a funny, vibrant world with a motley cast of characters; in Fun Home she's taken it a step further in terms of accomplishment at the same time she's taken a step back into her own life and into a deeply personal story that really isn't funny at all. (The name comes from the funeral home that was the family business.) But she's written a literary, moving and wonderful autobiography nonetheless, layered with literary allusions and references, both written and visual.

Then there's her accomplished, expressive black and white artwork- her ability to communicate moods and emotions, and to create rich, 3-dimensional characters and settings out of mere pen and ink. You can probably tell I'm a big fan; I read her strip for years before this book came out, and I was thrilled to read a different, more serious kind of story from her. My expectations were not only met- they were exceeded brilliantly. There is a good deal of explicit sex and once again it's not a book for children, but it is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in graphic novels. At 232 pages it's also unusually long, but that should also tell you how involved and detailed the story is. As a graphic memoir, it's right up there with Maus and Persepolis, and destined to be a classic of the genre.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: The Translator, by Leila Aboulela

The Translator, by Leila Aboulela. Published 2006 by Grove Atlantic. Literary Fiction.

The Translator is a short book that can take a long time to read- but I mean that in a good way. It's a love story. Sammar is a Sudanese Muslim widow living in Scotland, working as a translator for a secular Scottish academic named Rae. Their relationship, convincing and sweet, develops slowly, but Sammar struggles because as a religious Muslim she can't marry a non-Muslim, and she won't have a relationship with him outside of marriage, so either Rae must convert or they must part.

The novel, told entirely from Sammar's point of view, covers a lot of ground. We learn about her marriage, her child, her extended family. We also learn a good deal about Muslim religious practice through Sammar's daily life and thoughts. Sammar is foreign in Britain and misunderstood in Sudan; author Aboulela draws a convincing, touching portrait of immigrant life and its complications. Supporting characters lend depth and alternate points of view. After a falling-out with Rae, Sammar returns to Sudan for a time, to reconnect with her family and to see if Rae will join her; this section of the novel is particularly emotional and poignant.

The Translator is beautifully written in a slow, literary style- it's definitely character-driven and not heavy at all on plot or action. But a few things happen nonetheless. But what? Does Rae convert? Do they get back together? I won't tell. You'll have to read this little gem of a novel to find out. For me, The Translator was a very satisfying, very enjoyable read.

Rating: BUY


FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

Graphic Novel Monday: Lone Racer, by Nicolas Mahler

Lone Racer, by Nicolas Mahler. Published 2006 by Top Shelf. Graphica.

Lone Racer is a graphic-novel short story about a nameless drag racer past his glory days who spends most of his time at the bar- his wife is ill and hospitalized, and he can no longer keep up with the game. Everything's become faster, more dangerous and more daring- and he's just become older. One of his bar buddies, a policeman, suggests they hold up a bank- but what follows isn't what you might expect.

What attracted me to this little book was the offbeat visual style and coloration. The driver, the other characters and the scenes are made up of some of the loosest, simplest sketching I've ever seen. The driver himself is just a collection of long lines and exaggerated features, especially his elongated proboscis. His wife is a shape under a sheet with a tiny, tiny head, perhaps a metaphor of her diminished status in the world. However diminished she may appear, she is a huge presence in the narrator's life and his love for her is what drives him, figuratively but literally as well. The book is slightly larger than quarter size and divided up almost uniformly into two horizontal panels per page with narration on top of each panel, giving it the feel of movie or television screens. The coloring is black and white except for the hero, who is colored in orange. Occasionally other elements of the scenery is orange as well, such a woman's legs, or tire marks on the road- elements that express movement. The hero is almost always in motion, either running or swinging his loopy, spaghetti-thin arms and body around a panel. Mahler's art definitely keeps the eye moving around the page.

I was surprised and taken aback by the ending, and the book ends up being a bittersweet meditation on redemption and the power of love- with the emphasis on sweet. With some adult language and sexual content it's another one for the grownups but I'd recommend Lone Racer as a quick, very enjoyable read.

Rating: BACKLIST


FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: Marie Antoinette: The Journey, by Antonia Fraser

Marie Antoinette: The Journey, by Antonia Fraser. Published 2006 by Anchor. Nonfiction.

I picked up Marie Antoinette: The Journey, by Antonia Fraser, on impulse at a library sale, after having seen Sofia Coppola's movie based on the book. But it wasn't just the movie tie-in cover that got my attention. The book is also pink. Pink is a girlish color, and it's an interesting choice for this lay person's history of one of history's most controversial and mythologized women. Just who was Marie Antoinette, born Maria Antonia of Austria, married at fourteen and executed at the guillotine at age 38, at the height of the French Revolution? A lioness or a lamb? A sexually promiscuous harpy or an undereducated, over-privileged girl of the upper-most upper class, shoehorned into a marriage and a political alliance she was ill-equipped to handle, who grew into maturity with motherhood, only to have her life cut short?

I don't know, but Fraser would have us think the latter. The book begins with Maria Antonia's, or, as she was known to her family, Antoine's birth, the last daughter of the imperious Maria Teresa, Empress of Austria-Hungary, so dedicated a leader that she continued to sign royal papers shortly following the delivery of her "small archduchess". Fraser describes Antoine's childhood as a mixture of pampered neglect and fierce obedience, right up to her marriage to the French dauphin. The alliance was political; Maria Teresa parceled off her children to various European capitals, with Antoine winding up in France, where there was no great love for Austria. Fraser describes her as lacking the education and maturity to fulfill her political role, and it would be some years before she fulfilled her biological role as a mother. In the meantime the young girl, now Marie Antoinette, indulged herself with clothes, music, friends and parties, spent money and generally enjoyed herself.

Once her children were born, she settled down, but then the French political situation started to deteriorate. This is where I started to lose track of events. The book held my attention much better when Fraser talked about the French royal family and their relationships; once the family of Marie Antoinette, the king Louis 14 and their two surviving children have to leave their home at Versailles and live at the Tuileries in Paris, their situation takes on real poignancy and from there it's all downhill. Fraser does a great job of making the reader feel the tragedy of what happens to this family, to how they suffer and to the cruel ironies of their dashed hopes and foiled plans, as well as the indifference of other European royals to their plight.

Fraser argues throughout that Antoinette's excesses- her dress bills, hair dressing, furniture and gambling debts, and other lifestyle expenses, not mention the expenses involved in maintaining a royal household- were nothing more than typical for a woman of her station. She grants that some of her actions were unwise, for example her patronage of the Polignac family, which would later contribute to public anger towards her. She tries to clear Antoinette's name concerning the infamous Affair of the Diamond Necklace, and refutes charges that Antoinette was insensitive to the plight of the poor, especially as France's economy worsened. She also argues that Antoinette was a loving and attentive mother, and, her love affair with the Swedish Count Fersen an exception, a faithful wife.

On balance, for me, a Francophile but no history expert, I found the book to be a pleasure to read and generally convincing. It is also clear through Fraser's strong voice and repetitions that she works her agenda of restoring Antoinette's image vigorously. I had trouble following the politics, but maybe that's just because I read the book at bedtime. The plethora of footnotes and extensive bibliography shows that Fraser, primarily known as a writer of fiction, did her research. And the book reads easily and fluidly, like historical fiction without the dialogue. It's no light read, but I'd recommend Marie Antoinette: The Journey to anyone interested in this puzzling, contradictory woman and the troubled times in which she lived and died. It would make a great holiday gift for the Francophile or royal-watcher in your life.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

Graphic Novel Monday: Escape from "Special" by Miss Lasko-Gross

Escape from "Special" by Miss Lasko-Gross. Published 2006 by Fantagraphics Books. Graphica. Memoir.

Escape from "Special" is a book that's a little tough to like, but even tougher to ignore. I say it's a little tough to like only because Lasko-Gross covers such emotionally volatile territory- the inner life of a young girl from elementary school to the beginning of high school- in such a raw and honest way, and using artwork that is both accomplished and dark.

Lasko-Gross's character, Melissa, is a troubled girl who feels alienated and different in school and at home, in the special-education classes she attends and in a family she feels doesn't understand her. She lacks interest in religion, which her parents think could provide her with a community but which she sees as boring and oppressive. Her alienation deepens as she enters adolescence and navigates the murky, difficult waters of friendships and growing up. She enters high school having found a group of outsiders like herself, but not without a certain lingering insecurity.

Escape from "Special" can be difficult reading at times, if only because Lasko-Gross is so honest about the pain of adolescence and the quiet betrayals of friends that can leave a vulnerable teenager humiliated and sad. "It takes so much energy to keep girlfriends," Melissa says, "One slip up and I'm 'weird' or we're 'in a fight.' They get offended so easily! I can't let my guard down, even for a minute." This is not a woman who's forgotten what it's like to be kid, or to feel different, or to feel let down by people she's trusted. Lasko-Gross's artwork is varied and often quite beautiful. When she focuses on Melissa she often uses a graphic style that underlines her isolation; other times, the panels are full of detail and contrast. Her panels are flexible and varied and give the story a lot of movement; Lasko-Gross uses closeups and panoramas skillfully to bring the story along and reflect its emotional content.

Lasko-Gross's book is about kids, but it's definitely not for kids, although I think some older teenagers would appreciate her emotional honesty and would be able to handle the mild profanity and sexual references. I probably would have loved to have had this book when I was fifteen or sixteen. As it is, I'm glad it's around now, for me and for anyone else who's ever felt like they needed to escape.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: The Rights of the Reader, by Daniel Pennac

The Rights of the Reader, by Daniel Pennac. Published 2006 by Walker Books. Nonfiction. Translated from the French.

The Rights of the Reader is a quick, impassioned read on a very serious subject- how to engage children in reading when they're young, and keep them engaged throughout their lives. It's made up of 50-odd mini-chapters charting a child's reading life from the young years through to early adulthood, taking aim at stereotypes of reading, readers and books, pitfalls of education and parenting, and more. It's a must-read for anyone who loves children and values education.

Pennac is a very well-known novelist in France, as well as a former teacher, so he knows of what he speaks, and he speaks with passion as he advocates for a pedagogy based on storytelling that transmits the love of literature and reading- reading for pleasure, reading because you enjoy reading, and discovering the pleasures of high-quality literature. To get there, he battles myths and stereotypes teaching that reading is boring, or inaccessible, or only for nerds and loners. He goes to what he believes is the root of the problem- low self-esteem and low expectations, on the part of students and teachers, but he really tackles the myths that students tell themselves which inhibit them and steer them away from reading. He talks about how students come to believe they're not smart enough for the "big books," or that they don't have time to read, or that reading is about coming up with the right answers to please a teacher:

A bad student is, more often than you might think, a kid tragically short of tactics. The students, alarmed by their own inability to give us [i.e. teachers] what we want, are quick to confuse "being a good student" with being cultured. School has washed its hands of them and they soon feel like outcasts from the world of reading. They imagine it's elitist and deprive themselves of books all their lives, just because they didn't know how to talk about them when they were asked to.

Pennac's prose, though often funny and engaging, packs a punch and left a strong impression on me. I plan to keep this slim volume close at hand and re-read it often. The end of the book is comprised on the ten "Rights of the Reader" along with Pennac's commentaries. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone involved with children and/or education. It's food for thought as well as action.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: The Bride Who Argued with God, by Hava Ben-Zvi

The Bride Who Argued with God: Tales from the Treasury of Jewish Folklore, compiled, translated and re-told by Hava Ben-Zvi. Published 2006 by iUniverse. Fiction. Short Stories. Translation.

The Bride Who Argued with God is one of those really special books that can be pored over, read a little at a time and just savored. Librarian and Jewish folk literature enthusiast Hava Ben-Zvi worked with the Israel Folk Archives, founded in 1955, to bring this collection of lively tales to an English-speaking audience. As Ms. Ben-Zvi explains:

The Israel Folktale Archives, part of the University of Haifa, served as my primary source and reservoir of tales, for which I am very grateful. I also used folk tales from various anthologies found in the United States.
The ingathering of Jewish immigrants after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 presented a unique opportunity to discover, gather, record and preserve tales from diverse Jewish backgrounds and cultures, yet sharing common Jewish religious and ethical traditions. This, therefore, became the goal of Israel Folktale Archives (IFA), founded by professor Dov Noy in 1955.
Israel Folktale Archives published a series of selected tales in Hebrew in their “A Tale for Each Month” series. For my present volume I have selected, translated and retold folk tales from that series, published between 1961-1978.

I believed that many of these mostly unknown tales ought to be translated to afford another window into Jewish culture for English speaking audiences. To translate and retell them I have read many versions of each story, sometimes revealing different physical and cultural environments. Conveying their essence, I hope I have made them interesting and accessible to a new generation of readers.

Reading this book was a real treat for me. I enjoyed the stories themselves and the accessible tone in which Ms. Ben-Zvi tells them; I also appreciated her extensive introduction and the explanatory "Author's Notes" which often appear at the end of each story. Other features useful for the lay reader include a glossary and discussion questions; scholars will appreciate the bibliography, the notes regarding similar and parallel tales held by the Israel Folk Archives and indices listing tales by country of origin, major tale types and major motifs.

Part of the fun of reading The Bride Who Argued with God is seeing stories I've seen elsewhere retold and learning a little more about their origins. For example, the very last story, called "Cruel Words and Feathers: A Yom Kippur Tale," about a town gossip, has been retold several times in children's-book form; one of those versions, Yettele's Feathers, by Joan Rothenberg (ISBN 9780786811496), is a favorite read-aloud story at my temple library. I enjoyed seeing this version in Ms. Ben-Zvi's book because I learned a little about the origin of the story (it appeared in The Jewish Child, in 1912) and I learned that it is associated with Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, which I did not know.

And the book has so many potential uses- parents could read the stories to their kids, librarians could read them to patrons or use them as the basis of ongoing programming, scholars could use it for reference and research, and so on. Jewish people could use it to become more closely acquainted with their folk tale heritage and non-Jews could use it to learn. Mostly though I think it's just a great treasure of folk tales and stories, great fun to read and great fun to have.


p.s. I will have the rest of my interview with Ms. Ben-Zvi on Friday. Come back then!

REVIEW: The Madonnas of Leningrad, by Debra Dean

The Madonnas of Leningrad, by Debra Dean. Published 2006 by HarperCollins. Literary Fiction.

The Madonnas of Leningrad is a brief, sweet treat of a novel. Being about Russia and being about women, it intrigued me right away. The subject of the novel is Marina, now an older woman, who survived the Siege of Leningrad and is now gradually fading to Alzheimer's disease. It's also about her daughter Helen and preparations for a family wedding in the present-day United States. The narrative goes back and forth between the past and present, between Marina as a vital young woman who must work tirelessly to save herself and her own family, as well as the vast treasures of the legendary Hermitage Museum, and her slow decline.

Unsurprisingly for a book about Alzheimer's, the overarching theme of the novel is memory. In the past, Marina constructs elaborate "memory rooms" in her mind, to save the layout and contents of the museum within herself. It becomes an almost sacred task as paintings and artifacts are boxed, stored and shipped, and it's unknown if they will return or if the museum, a treasure of Russian culture, will ever be restored. The Madonnas of the title are a reference to the many paintings and depictions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the beloved museum, and to Marina herself, alone and pregnant and her name a Russian variant of the Virgin's.

I liked this book very much. Dean does a nice job of pacing and unfolding the story, and I liked the alternating perspectives, Marina's and Helen's, on both the past and the present. The "memory room" passages were bittersweet with loss and nostalgia. Towards the end the family experiences a crisis, and while it is resolved in a way both satisfactory and poetic, I wish Helen's character had been a little more developed before the action started. I felt like Dean told only part of her story and dropped her too soon. Having captured so beautifully a past and a present tense, I would like to have had a sense of the future for this family, and Helen could have been its carrier. A minor quibble. The book would be a great choice for people who enjoy character-driven stories about women and families especially. I thought it was pretty terrific.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: Bitter is the New Black, by Jen Lancaster

Bitter is the New Black, by Jen Lancaster. Published 2006 by Penguin. Nonfiction. Memoir. Humor.

Okay, so something published in 2006, to which there have already been two sequels, is not exactly hot off the presses. But then again, like little black dresses and Jen Lancaster's brand of sarcastic self-depreciating humor, some things never go out of style.

Bitter is the New Black is Lancaster's first book, the beginning of her very successful series of memoirs; I reviewed the second, called Bright Lights, Big Ass, and her most recent book, Such A Pretty Fat : One Narcissist's Guide to Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie is Not the Answer, just came out. What makes her books so much fun is that she makes a big deal about how unlikable she is, or was- how frivolous, insensitive, self-centered, etc.- and then subverts that premise at every turn with her wit and candor. Nowadays Lancaster is a successful blogger turned writer, but Bitter takes us back to the days before her fame, when she lost her lucrative, challenging job in the corporate world, and had to not just find a new job, but find herself in the process. Out of work for much longer than she expects, she struggles with self-doubt and shame, with moving from stylish digs in a nice Chicago neighborhood to ever more and more squalid surroundings, finally being evicted from a place she thought she'd never even end up in.

The book is about what she learns through these transitions and how she bounces back. In the mean time though she makes you believe in the real humiliation and shame of losing everything, being unable to find work despite her considerable strengths, and having to face up to how her own behavior landed her in the hole in which she finds herself. But she does it with grace and a light touch and a sense of humor. When she agonizes over selling her purses on eBay to come up with rent money, or bemoans the mani-pedi-less state of her hands and feet, she reminds me a little, in a very silly way, of St. Augustine- "Lord, give me chastity," (or in her case, fiscal responsibility and healthy priorities) "but not yet." I think we can all feel her pain.

Anyway her books are fun reading for the beach or for a little spare time here and there. When I was unemployed for a pathetically long time after finishing my master's degree, I had some pretty bad bouts of self-loathing and self-doubt; I could so relate to her experiences. And I could smile at and with her pratfalls and struggles. She made me laugh, and she made me think. Not bad.

And you can find her blog here.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.