“Did it really happen?” I ask. Her smile fades, her lips pressed and thin. “Oh, it happened,” she says, her voice low and alive. “Don’t let anyone tell you it didn’t. It was, it remains, genocide.” The word spills from her mouth.

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (SEP 2, 2010)

With the one hundredth anniversary of the Armenian deportations only a few years away, author Mark Mustian has set himself a daunting task: to follow his character’s footsteps and to serve as his own gendarme, a guide in the wilderness. For the most part, he succeeds admirably.

As Mr. Mustian writes in the epilogue, “Genocide perhaps represents the ugliest of human deeds, the mass killing of often defenseless fellow beings…Saying it didn’t happen is a mere recipe for recurrence.”

The focus is on one gendarme – a 92-year-old Turkish man named Ahmet Kahn on the verge of senility with a non-operable brain tumor – who suddenly begins memories of events that he has previously denied or purposely forgotten. Side effects of his medication produce extraordinarily vivid dreams that transport him back to exquisitely painful times – to World War I, when he was a gendarme, charged with escorting Armenians across the border from Turkey to Syria. Many died from the grueling march and the lack of proper food and shelter and medicine.

Women, in particular, had a tough time of it: they were frequently used as the playthings of the Turkish men who have grown hard and bored and demand women to do their physical bidding before killing them. One woman captures Ahmet’s attention: her name is Araxie and her eyes are her exotica, one nearly turquoise, one greenish-brown. Ahmet falls head over heals for her, sheltering her from the excesses of the trek that become, for all intents and purposes, a true genocide.

Araxie demands of him, “Why not just shoot us all now? What is it about us you hate so?” And he must answer impotently, “I am only a small piece of the puzzle. I have a job to do. I did not ask for it, nor have I questioned its rationale.” As in books from the past – Sadie Jones’ Small Wars, for example, or the more famous A Separate Peace – Ahmet must eventually realize that his answer is non-satisfactory and that his love for Araxie outweighs the senseless slaughter.

The novel is divided into two portions: the present day, where Emmett Conn suffers through mental disorientation, hospital confinement and the coldness of his grown daughter, and the past, where Ahmet Kahn – same person – struggles to survive amidst swollen corpses, monstrous murders, and clannishness, duplicity, and trickery. As the memories swell in intensity, the reader must ask, “How much of his memory is true and how much is a product of extreme guilt? What happened and what didn’t?”

There are no clear answers. But as Mr. Mustian writes, “The point of the story seemed to be that to think is to forget, to filter from the mind the unnecessary, I have told myself this, repeated it to myself. I have called it our gift from God. This headstrong, heedless survival.” At the end of the day, love does survive…and so do the never relenting memories. Mr. Mustian states in his epilogue, “Decades on, even centuries on, our shared history remains vital…”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 8 readers
PUBLISHER:	Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (September 2, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AMAZON PAGE:	Gendarme
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mark T. Mustian
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More novels on the Armenian genocide: The Last Day of the War by Judith Clair Mitchell Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières And another holocaust novel: Lovely Green Eyes by Arnost Lustig Small Wars by Sadie Jones

Bibliography:

• Gendarme (September 2010)

“The difference between a fact and a secret was the slithery phrase: ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ ”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (SEP 1, 2010)

Early on in Monique Truong’s powerful new novel, Bitter in the Mouth, the narrator, Linda Hammerick, realizes her family is keeping secrets from her. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two. Those were the last words that my grandmother ever said to me,” Linda recalls. It will take many more years before Linda can discover what those secrets are but before then she must navigate a strained childhood in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina.

As Truong reveals slowly over the course of the novel, Linda is different from the residents of Boiling Springs in many ways but there’s one specific condition that we find out about right away: Linda suffers from synesthesia. This is a neurological condition where different senses can overlap. Linda suffers from a specific one where spoken words coming at her yield various taste sensations in her mouth. For example, she forever associates her teen crush with the taste of orange sherbet. Needless to say, this is a crushing disability made worse by the fact that nobody in town—including her own parents—can really comprehend what’s wrong. “Many of the words that I heard or had to say aloud brought with them a taste—unique, consistent, and most often unrelated to the meaning of the word that had sent the taste rolling into my mouth,” Linda recalls, “On my report cards, my teachers conveyed this undetected fact to my parents as ‘your daughter’s unwillingness to pay attention in class.’”

As Linda works her way through school, she manages her “incomings” with other strong tastes—namely cigarettes and alcohol. By the time she graduates from Boiling Springs High School, she is close to smoking a pack a day.

Despite the synesthesia, Linda’s giftedness surfaces anyway and she is easily the brightest kid in school—the Brain. At school she has a best friend, Kelly, who is herself struggling with a poor self-image and later, an unplanned pregnancy.

Linda’s relationship with her family is strained. Her mother, DeAnne, is especially distant and it isn’t very clear until the end why she is so. When Linda tragically is raped by a local landscaper, she is horrified that the incident doesn’t really register with her mother. It is this seemingly chilling indifference that forever turns Linda off her home and family. The only family member she is very close to is her granduncle, Harper Evans Burch, known to the family as Baby Harper. In fact, it is Baby Harper who offers Linda the shoulder she needs when she goes through life’s many ups and downs.

Unmoored by slowly decaying family ties, Linda jumps at the first chance she gets to leave home. Like her father, Thomas Hammerick, she goes to Yale and studies law. “I hadn’t thought about my refusal to return to Boiling Springs as a habit, but it was. Like biting my fingernails or smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, the act of not returning home had an ameliorative effect on my psyche,” Linda says. “It had begun with the idea, new and fizzy in my eighteen-year-old brain, that family was a choice and not fate. If that was true, then I chose not to have a family.” Soon Linda is settled in New York City working at a law practice, on her way to becoming junior partner, until tragedy strikes again.

She eventually returns to Boiling Springs and learns of the secrets from DeAnne. As much as this sounds like the stuff of melodrama, it is not. Monique Truong, whose debut was the sensational The Book of Salt, does a wonderful follow-up job with Bitter in the Mouth. Her writing is simply superb and she explores the weightiest of themes with ease.

The only problem with her new novel is that while the story might be completely different, the ground she covers here is not. The themes she explores in The Book of Salt are here again. This is not to imply that it diminishes Bitter in the Mouth as a novel in any way—but instead to say that one wishes the immensely talented Truong had taken some more risks and colored a little outside the lines. Evaluated by itself, Bitter in the Mouth is fantastic. But taken together with The Book of Salt, you don’t see much growth in the author’s range. Despite this minor quibble, it’s plenty evident that Monique Truong is extremely talented and her latest novel is an absolute delight.

One final thought about the book has not much to do with the book itself but with the timing of its release. Anybody who has been paying any kind of attention in the literary world is well aware of the release of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom on September 1. It’s just unfortunate that Bitter in the Mouth will be released exactly at this time. The immensely able Truong deserves loads more attention than she has received so far and the timing of this book’s release will, unfortunately, not help.

Bitter in the Mouth is an impressive feat especially given that her brilliant debut made it such a difficult act to follow. With her latest novel, Truong conclusively proves she’s no one-hit wonder.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (August 31, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AMAZON PAGE:	Bitter in the Mouth
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Monique Truong
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Book of Salt Also consider: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Bibliography:

• The Book of Salt (March 2003)
• Bitter in the Mouth (August 2010)

Co-editor:

• Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose (1998)

“Still on the subject of greed,” he said, “a sort of degradation of literary morality is under way. It could well be that your project, in itself, simply by the light it will cast on the arena of literature, will show how pathetic this drift is. What I’m referring to is the way that authors, nowadays, live for rivalry, going so far, I am told, as to write with the sole purpose of crushing their rivals. Literary prizes bear a large part of responsibility in this respect. Writing solely to outdo another writer—what a paltry ambition. Cultural creativity is beautiful and special because it offers a place to everyone. And to think there are people who would like to restrict it! They’ve made a covered market of literature, where a few best sellers take up all the room. By ‘they’ I mean the major publishers, the journalists who act like sheep, the wholesale distributors of culture.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (AUG 31, 2010)

A few months ago, someone told me he’d just finished one of the most amazing books he’d ever read. He was visibly shaken by the idea that he’d found the book by accident and could so easily have missed the book altogether. “What if I went through life without reading this novel,” he mused, and this was followed by another thought, “how many other novels as good as this am I missing?” From this point, the conversation moved on to the observation that readers are saturated by publicity for some books while others are quietly published and subsequently sink and disappear without a trace. This conversation came back to me when I read A Novel Bookstore, a book written by Laurence Cossé and translated by Alison Anderson. On the surface level, this is a mystery, but on a meta-level, A Novel Bookstore is an indictment of the cannibalizing publishing industry, the mass marketing of “taste,” and a subtle examination of fascism. All this in just around 400 pages. A Novel Bookstore plays out just like an excellent French film–great entertainment on a surface level, but yet some deep philosophical statements resonate in the background.

The novel begins with some rather mysterious incidents or “accidents” in which one man is intimidated and two people are almost killed. The connection between these three people gradually becomes clear. They are members of a secret committee of eight writers who select books for the new Paris book shop–The Good Novel. The bookshop is the brainchild of former itinerant bookseller Van and the wealthy, lonely, married Francesca, a woman who “wants to do something worthwhile” with her life. They meet over books, discuss their mutual passion and their belief in the ability of books to transform lives, and then Francesca offers Van, a man whose life “has been mainly characterized by mediocrity, drifting, flabbiness” a job managing the bookshop they will plan together. Both Francesca and Van are frustrated with the publishing industry and the way in which current trashy books are drowning out older titles that are dying in obscurity. They envision an ideal bookshop that will promote books for their merit alone, and this means going against the trend of selling the latest blockbusters. Together they devise a scheme to sell only “good” books, and then they wisely decide that they should have input from various sources to include a range of tastes. This leads them to invite several writers–mostly underappreciated and under-read–to serve on the secret committee. Each committee member must provide a list of six hundred books; these lists are then cross-matched and the book shop is stocked with the books from the final master list.

At first, the bookshop is an incredible success. Avid readers enthusiastically flock to the shop and sales soar, and for a moment it seems entirely possible that the bookshop may influence and alter the way books are presented and sold. But as the bookshop becomes successful, things gradually start to go wrong, and life for Van and Francesca takes a very ugly turn….

The novel is structured, for the most part, around Van and Francesca’s story which is told to a sympathetic and well-read policeman. There’s also a slow-brewing, anemic romance between Van and a young woman called Anis, and this side tale ranges from a distraction to an annoyance. I wanted to dump the smoochy bits and go back and hang out at the bookshop.

The novel dips into readers’ images of an ideal bookshop lined with wonderful titles they’d never heard of; one of the shop’s slogans is “All the books no one is talking about,”–a sentence that resonates with every reader who’s ever wondered how many masterpieces slip away unnoticed. Those of us who don’t leave home without at least one book (or two in case of emergencies) will be intrigued with the idea of such a wonderful bookshop, the salvaging of remarkable forgotten titles, and the skullduggery unleashed to destroy this independence. Here’s one scene from Francesca’s viewpoint that captures the experience of lingering inside this Aladdin’s cave of books:

“Every time she went by The Good Novel, the bookstore was full, and corresponded almost exactly to the vision she had had in her most confident moments, with its contemplative readers, capable of remaining motionless for an entire half a day , immersed in their reading, next to each other in silence, often standing–out of choice, since everything at The Good Novel had been arranged so that people could sit down, unless they had merely become distracted–and only the touch of madness in their eyes, characteristic of their addiction, betrayed their euphoria when, as it came time to leave, their gaze met that of one of the attendant priests, whether their arms were full of books or their hands quite empty, and they could hardly keep from dancing the moment they went out the door.”

Cossé’s entertaining novel skewers the publishing industry’s dictation of taste and control of choice and at the same time taps into the bibliophile’s deepest fears and greatest secret desires. I winced a bit at the idea of Van and Francesca deciding what was and what wasn’t “good” (which extrapolates into what is and isn’t sold) as I have problems with those who set themselves up as the “guardians” or “gatekeepers” of culture. There’s quite enough of that as it is, thank you very much, so I felt relieved when Van and Francesca decided that their tastes and opinions were not enough for stock selection, and so they subsequently and wisely added the secret committee to the mix. I was annoyed when the shelves of the bookshop were stacked with every book ever written by Cormac McCarthy and secretly wondered how many Simenon novels they planned to offer. By this time, you should get the idea that I was swept up in the story, so much so that in many ways it stopped being fiction and became the literary embodiment of all the frustration I’ve felt at having the latest blockbuster shoved down my throat for the umpteenth time on any given day.

I’ll admit that I found the underlying questions about the ethics of the publishing industry, the personalities of the authors on the committee, the statements regarding the difference books made to the lives of the various characters, and the bruised egos of rejected authors even more intriguing than the mystery of just who wanted to destroy the bookshop. I wanted to get back to those bookshelves, and even more importantly, I wanted a copy of that master list! I contented myself, however, with taking notes of every title mentioned. A Novel Bookstore is one of the many gems brought to readers from the small independent publisher, one of my very favourites, Europa Editions.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions; Reprint edition (August 31, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AMAZON PAGE:	A Novel Bookstore
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Laurence Cossé
EXTRAS:	The official website for A Novel Bookstore More thoughts from Guy Savage on this book and topic
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another novel about the publishing industry: The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer More Europa Editions favorites: A Kind of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth The Homecoming Party by Carmine Abate The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Partial Bibliography (translated books only):

• A Corner of the Veil (1996)
• A Novel Bookstore (2009; August 2010 in US)

“How do you survive the end of time? It is quite simple. By the time the universe is old enough and frail enough to collapse, humans will be able to do whatever they like with it…By then it’ll just be a case of wheeling one decrepit planet to one side of the universe while another one pisses itself sadly in another galaxy. And all this while waiting for the final crunch, as everything becomes everything else as the universe begins its beautiful collapse, panting and sweating until all life arcs out of it and all matter in existence is crushed into a single point and then disappears.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (AUG 30, 2010)

What makes Scarlett Thomas’ writing stand out is her gift of largesse–the narrator’s generosity combined with a brainy appeal that tunneled fluidly into my psyche. She is plainspoken and warm and yet finely cultivated. Thomas introduces esoteric principles as if it were the natural state of things. She can talk about Derrida and Darwin in a way that is effortless, intuitive. Her protagonist’s voice is addictive and honest; indeed, Meg’s thoughts mirror the everyday banter inside my head. Like an overlapping image in pictures, her voice became my voice.

Meg is stuck. She is stuck in a dead-end relationship with Christopher, while her lips sting from a memorable kiss with unavailable Rowan. She lives in a damp, asthma-inducing flat in Totnes, bogged down in a job writing reviews of science books, as well as ghost-writing plot-o-matic, genre sci-fi. The novel she began long ago is headed toward entropy. Every time she adds 800 words, she deletes 780 more. At present, Meg has 43 words, and just about that many £ left to her name.

At this time, Meg is reviewing a new science book by Kelsey Newman, who has written The Science Of Living Forever. Newman advances the theory of the coming Omega Point, which is the moment that the universe becomes so dense and full of energy that it will be able to simulate another universe, a new one that will never end, and one in which we will live happily ever after. Forever. Meg dismisses this hypothesis, but it lodges in her mind and lingers in her thoughts.

Our Tragic Universe is not a post-modern novel, despite the implications of the jacket blurb. Yes, there are big ideas and lots of brilliant concepts buzzing on the pages, and speculative philosophies layering the story. But the core of the novel is about love; second chances; the future; the fabric of the universe; how to knit socks; a dog named Bess; a beast from Dartmoor; and how to write a storyless story that may save your life. It is an accessible labyrinth, a compelling page-turner that frequently made me feel smarter than I am and more hopeful than I thought I could be. It is a journey of the mind and body, and there’s plenty of love and friendship and everyday twists and tangles.

My only (and very minor) complaint is that Meg, who is similar (in voice and sensibilities) to Alice, in Thomas’ earlier PopCo, thrashes far longer than Alice in her muddling inertia–a bit of navel-gazing. But she is gradually climbing out of her torpor, for the threat of failure has imposed itself on a woman who believes only in its spectacular opposite.

This book is alive with keen contradictions and spirited connections. These are characters you can relate to; they have problems that are infinitely human. The prose flows with reflective, radiant purity and clarity that will cast you under her spell and give you fairy wings to fly through the pages. The narrator’s tone is like the best friend you always wanted to have. Scarlett Thomas is a celestial storyteller–a supernova, a literary bodhisattva.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 8 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (September 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AMAZON PAGE:	Our Tragic Universe
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Scarlett Thomas
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Complete Review on Our Tragic Universe
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another fictional writer’s tale: The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer

Bibliography:

• Bright Young Things (2001)
• Going Out (2003)
• PopCo (2004)
• The End of Mr. Y (2007)
• Our Tragic Universe (August 2010)
• The Seed Collectors

Lily Pascale Mysteries:

“Her son had been killed, that was all she would say.  Killed. Nothing about how his laughter started somehow above his head, high and tinkly.  How he called sweets ‘breadie-breadie.’  How he grasped her neck tight when she held him. How her husband said that he would be an artist because he didn’t try to build with his LEGO blocks but instead he arranged them, side by side, alternating colors. They did not deserve to know.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (AUG 29, 2010)

A collection of short stories is one of my favorite genres for reading. It is rare to find a book of short stories that is consistent in quality. When I do, it is a rare gift. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck is just such a gift. It consists of stories about Nigeria and the United States, focusing on the clash of cultures and the cultural misunderstandings and prejudices that the protagonists face. This book also includes the short story that I consider my all-time favorite – “The Headstrong Historian.” I read it for the third time in this collection. I first read it in The New Yorker, then in the Pen/O’Henry Prize Stories of 2010. It gets better each time I read it.

“The Headstrong Historian” takes us to Nigeria where we meet Ngwambe. She is a woman who believes in the culture of her tribe but is also strong enough to stand up against it if necessary. Ngwambe ”is a strong-willed woman hemmed in by custom and circumstance, whose beloved son betrays her in an unimaginable way.” Nqwambe is widowed early and grieves the loss of her beloved husband. Despite her son’s betrayal, the betrayal of her husband’s brothers, and her search for ways to keep her culture alive during a time when colonization and “Christianizing the heathens” is booming, Ngwambe carries on. This story speaks to the strength of marital and inter-generational love and the power of a strong woman.

“A Private Experience” focuses on the clash between science and the old ways.  A retired professor of mathematics has not received his retirement pension in over three years due to government corruption.  While on campus to check once again to see if his pension monies have arrived, he runs into a man who may or may not be a ghost.  They discuss the Biafran war of 1970.  The professor thinks about his beloved wife who died a few years ago and who visits him regularly, more in the dry season than during the rainy one.  The professor lives in two worlds, the world of mathematics and science and in the old belief system of his people.

“On Monday of Last Week” is about Kamara, an educated African worker who comes to the United States to be reunited with her boyfriend after six years apart. Things are awkward between them.  Kamara takes a job as a childcare worker.  Her boyfriend’s mother is an artist, an elusive and spectral figure.  Once Kamara meets her, she asks Kamara about nude modeling.  Kamara gives this careful thought and when she returns to the house she says yes, thinking this is a special offer just for her.  However, it is a seductive come-on, used for most women who enter the house. Kamara feels heartbreak and shame.

The title story, “The Thing Around Your Neck” is an extraordinarily beautiful tale about an Igbu girl from Lagos who wins a Visa to the United States “where everyone has a house, a car and a gun.”  She goes to live with her aunt and uncle but leaves because her uncle makes inappropriate sexual advances towards her. As an excuse for his behavior, he tells her that the U.S. is a place of give and take.  She ends up in Connecticut, bitter and perspicaciously observant of American culture.  She sends money to her family but not letters.  The thing around her neck is tight when she tries to sleep but loosens once she’s in a relationship with a college boy.  The clash of cultures and the loneliness that comes on its tail is painful to read about.

In “The American Embassy,” a woman has lost her son to soldiers as a result of her journalist husband’s anti-government article.  She is waiting in line at the U.S. embassy to seek political asylum in the U.S.  While in line, she reminisces about her marriage, her son, and the events leading to her son’s death.  When it finally comes time for her to be interviewed by a U.S. embassy employee, she is unable to recount the political events leading up to her son’s death.  She feels she would be using her son’s death to her own advantage.  Towards the end of the interview, she turns around and walks out.

The book contains twelve stories, all top-notch and all dealing with the convergence of cultures, usually the United States and Nigeria.  Adiche writes so beautifully that I can not read her stories just once.  Painful though they are, I can see myself reading them again and again.  She gets the human predicament, especially the predicament of the poor, those with no options, and the contradictions between old beliefs and new ones.  She is also able to see the false beliefs that people take on when they think they are acculturated or part of the larger society.  She knows they are still outside looking in, and always will be.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 12 readers
PUBLISHER:	Anchor; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	The Thing Around Your Neck: Stories
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie website
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Official site for Half a Yellow Sun
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Purple Hibiscus Pen O’Henry Prize Stories 2010

Bibliography:

• Purple Hibiscus (2003)
• Half a Yellow Sun (2006) )
• The Thing Around Your Neck: Stories (2009; )

“I sat at my bedroom window after I changed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-coloured crisscross of mosquito netting. The bell-shaped yellow fruits hung lazily, drawing buzzing bees that bumped against my window’s netting.”

Book Review:

Review by Vesna McMaster (AUG 29, 2010)

From the first few pages this novel leaves no room for doubt as to how the narrative will unfold: the struggle of the “outside” and more natural world against that of domestic oppression and enforced sterility. As the book opens with a domestic crisis which overwhelms the narrator in its almost silent enormity, she retreats to her room.

The netting in the above quote is the perfect simile for the walls and boundaries, real and invisible, which surround the narrator. Whom do they keep out, and whom do they keep in? In an instant, we know from this passage alone that although they may keep the mosquitoes out, they also enforce a separation between the narrator and the leaves and bees: a separation decidedly unwelcome.

I found it extraordinary that the message was so clarion, as both the novel’s physical setting (post-coup Nigeria) and spiritual setting (stringently Catholic) are subjects I am personally completely unfamiliar with. I felt I ought to be reading the book with a full-scale guidebook to Africa, so laden is it with unknown phrases and concepts, scents, sounds and sights. It is proof of the superb writing that the unfamiliar and the unknown are in no way alienating, but entirely tantalising in a heady, spicy, dusty mix, making the uninitiated want to touch, taste and feel what the words set before us.

The narrator is Kambili Achike, a girl born to a wealthy family headed by her despotic and sadistic father, Eugene. Her fellow sufferers within the house walls are her mother Beatrice and her brother Jaja. Eugene is well respected within the community: he donates money to churches and the poor, he runs a politically subversive newspaper at tangible physical danger to himself and is seen as no less than a hero. At home he enforces his will on the inmates of the house without a chink of mercy, and with the help of torture and battery at regular intervals.

When the two children manage to escape from the immediate clutches of the household for a short while to Eugene’s sister, Aunty Ifeoma’s residence, the wheels of change start to turn. Ifeoma’s household is an almost pantomime foil to Eugene’s; they are poor but liberated, they have fun. Once they have put the initial chips into the glass coating that keeps the children from admitting their abuse to anyone (including themselves, mostly), there is no return and Eugene’s family starts to disintegrate.

While the physical world and settings may be unfamiliar to many readers, the central core of sadistic domestic abuse and subjugation transcends all cultural boundaries in its immediacy and intimacy. The psychological bullying from her father produces palpable physical effects on the narrator – she develops a fever in response to a crisis, or her legs feel “loose-jointed.”  When she gleans some approval, the joy and relief are also physically palpable: her mouth feels “full of melting sugar;” the abused’s gratitude for sops of “kindness’ shown to them by their abusers. The problems of the nuclear family are mirrored in the larger world, with the omnipotent bullies in power invading every waking and sleeping moment of their subjects, exerting almost complete control.

There is no doubt that in reaching an international audience, Adichie is acutely aware that many of her readers will be as unfamiliar with the Nigerian element (which is the core of the book) as I am. By an impasto technique with the symbolism and parallels, Adichie counters this problem by explaining the state within the country with reference to the domestic situation.

Both nature and the social structure join forces in elucidation. The sadistic “Papa” is the drying, dust-covering Harmattan wind, the (typically female) positive forces have moisture-laden imagery – again, juxtaposing sterility and fertility. This is a central theme both in the family life and at the State level. The narrator’s mother faces possible divorce and destitution for producing insufficient children, but the fault of this lies with her husband Eugene and his physical battering of his ever-pregnant wife.

One aspect that has been noted to be omni-present in this book is the prevalence of food. Its smells, textures, preparation, effect, quality, quantity, power, implications; some readers find it overwhelming. This insistence is directly tied to the sterility/fertility male/female theme. In Eugene’s wealthy household, food is plentiful and good, but there is no contact with the preparation of it, no knowledge of where it comes from. By contrast in the poor household of Aunt Ifeoma, food is scarce and takes a lot of time and effort both to procure and prepare, but appears to be relished more. (No prizes for guessing which is portrayed as the happier state). Most importantly, the enforced separation which the narrator has endured at home from the “womanly” dealing with food is shown as a type of disabling, a condition that debilitates, a sort of castration of abilities. Learning about food empowers the narrator much more than merely to the extent of being handy in the kitchen. It is as if her whole outlook on life changes (albeit incrementally) by learning how to peel a vegetable properly. In peeling it, she learns how to peel herself, to remove the casing to just the right degree.

This brings us back to the walls and boundaries we started off with. The uncrossable boundaries of the family life are admitting to the tyranny and abuse that is being inflicted. The narrator and her brother “speak with their eyes” to each other, as they dare not speak otherwise. As the status quo in the household starts to dissolve under the influence of external forces like Aunty Ifoema and Father Amadi, this method of communication becomes jammed, blocked. The change that heralds this blockage is one for the positive, but it involves great pain. The implication is that this pain cannot be avoided, nor will it ever be eradicated.

Here, we are taken back to the implied view on Nigerian politics Adichie is making. Kambili is not the only protagonist forced to embrace change. When the inspirational Aunty Ifeoma herself is targeted as a trouble-maker by the University authorities, she is extremely reluctant to leave the country which she loves but which tortures her, in favour of an alien one that will offer relative sanctuary from persecution. The argument is mooted in the household: if all the brains leave, who’s going to pick up the pieces? For this, there is no answer.

It perfectly mirrors the escape from tyranny on the domestic level. From the conclusions drawn there, one can only assume that the author sees this situation as inevitable. In the aftermath of the ultimate domestic collapse, the erstwhile victimised members of the family attempt to rebuild a life. They have however been permanently “expelled” from the state they had known hereto, and their efforts are uncoordinated and wandering. The lasting blame which lands on all of them, but particularly the mother (who has possibly been shown to have suffered the most) is drawn with such absolute precision that it is impossible to sidestep the implication that the wronged commoners will nevertheless carry the burden of their oppressors with them wherever they go. Through the telescope of the immediate and intimate, Adichie elucidates the political and cultural situation for outsiders.

But it seems that she has portrayed the abuser only too convincingly for some readers. Many reviewers opine that Eugene is “not all bad” and that the family’s love for him is “genuine.” In fact, the overwhelming majority of reviewers suggest that poor Eugene, he’s got terrible faults but he means well, bless him. This is both a frightening testament to how household bullies get away with what they do, and a homage to Adichie’s skill in portraying the process. Perhaps also it is a more reassuring reflection that the average reader is thankfully shielded from acute domestic violence, physical and psychological. Any “love” the abuser appears to show to his victims is self-directed, his good deeds in political and economic circles are all salves to his own background of abused childhood and repressed impulses. The abuser cannot see his family (and by extension, anyone who comes within his field of power) as anything but reflections and facets of himself. They have no rights or individual standing in his view, and as he forces his own view onto his victims, his view becomes theirs. This is not to say that Eugene does not suffer for his misdeeds: the disfiguring rash that keeps coming up is like a reflection of the myriad wrongs he has inflicted, which no amount of dabbing away with money will erase – and his body knows it, even if he doesn’t.

But by the very process that she has created to explain the Nigerian situation, is seems Adichie might have overdone herself. The excuses which so many readers see in Eugene’s behaviour make the politicians by implication less culpable, and the love of their subjects less conditional. I am sure Adichie’s message is that patriotic love should be conditional, and if the relationship between state and citizen turns abusive then those conditions should be enforced, even if the citizens feel pain and regret at the process.

In a final reinforcement of the parallel, Kambili’s hidden talent which emerges towards the end of the narrative turns out to be:  running. The symbolism is not veiled. From a domestic situation like hers, the best one can do is run, as fast as possible. Perhaps this is what the writer feels is the ultimate fate of the Nigerian people.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 84 readers
PUBLISHER:	Anchor (September 14, 2004)
REVIEWER:	Vesna McMaster
AMAZON PAGE:	Purple Hibiscus
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie website
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Thing Around Your Neck: Stories

Bibliography:

• Purple Hibiscus (2003)
• Half a Yellow Sun (2006)
• The Thing Around Your Neck: Stories (2009)

“Loyalty looks simple,” Grote tells him, “but it ain’t.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (AUG 28, 2010)

This is quite simply the best historical novel I have read in years, Tolstoyan in its scope and moral perception, yet finely focused on a very particular place and time. The place: Dejima, a Dutch trading post on a man-made island in Nagasaki harbor that was for two centuries Japan’s only window on the outside world. The time: a single year, 1799-1800, although here Mitchell takes the liberties of a novelist, compressing the events of a decade, including the decline of the Dutch East India Company and Napoleon’s annexation of Holland, into a mere twelve months. He plays smaller tricks with time throughout the novel, actually, alternating between the Japanese calendar and the Gregorian one, then jumping forwards and backwards between chapters. The effect is to heighten the picture of two hermetic worlds removed from the normal course of history. One is Japan itself (the Thousand Autumns of the title), a strictly hierarchical feudal society, deliberately maintaining its isolation and culture. The other is the equally hierarchical society on Dejima itself, comprised of Dutch merchant officers, a polyglot collection of hands, and a few slaves, whose only contact with the outside world is the annual arrival of a ship from Java. To these, Mitchell adds two more hermetic worlds: an isolated mountain monastery in the second part of the book, and an English warship in the third. Without spoilers, I cannot reveal how these connect, but Mitchell’s writing will carry you eagerly from one event to the next.

The author has the rare ability to work on three narrative scales simultaneously: small, medium, and large. He immerses the reader in local details — particulars of language, culture, medical practice, philosophy and prejudice, commercial procedures, gambling, debauchery, and the capsule back-stories of the lesser characters. He will set up nail-biting situations that last a chapter or so, but introduce some twist that suddenly turns everything around at the end. And he arranges the book in three large parts, each of which ends with a transformative moral decision.

There is a large cast of of characters, whose plethora of exotic names can be confusing at first. But these crucial moments are associated with three or four who stand out for their human interest and moral dimension. Part I focuses on Jacob de Zoet (probably based on the real life Hendrik Doeff, who wrote a book about his experiences). He comes to Dejima as a lowly clerk, but he is smarter than the others, more genuinely interested in Japanese language and culture, and an incorruptible man in a nest of swindlers. Although by no means omnipresent, he serves as the commercial, political, and moral touchstone of the entire novel. Part II centers around two Japanese characters. One is the interpreter Ogawa Uzaemon, Jacob’s principal link to the Japanese world; his formal reticence conceals secrets of his own. The other is Orito Aibagawa, a young midwife who already knows more than most doctors. Despite a disfiguring burn on one cheek, she has a beauty that is hard to resist. But her importance to the book is less as a figure of romance than as the center of a moral challenge that tests her (and indirectly Ogawa) to the utmost. Part III introduces the fourth touchstone character, the British naval captain John Penhaligon, whose decisions will prove pivotal as the book approaches its climax.

Those who know David Mitchell from Cloud Atlas will be aware of his stylistic virtuosity and his fondness for channeling popular genres ranging from the nineteenth-century adventure story to dystopian futurism. There are traces of many different styles here also, but amazingly they all fit into his account of a single place and time. There are no postmodern tricks; this is Mitchell’s most straightforward novel to date. He does have a fondness for writing in short one-paragraph sentences of less than a line long, which makes some of the book look like blank verse, though it reads more like the rapid exchanges of a screenplay. Against this, he can produce set-pieces such as the opening of chapter 39, beginning thus: “Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas, and dung-ripe stables…” And going on for a page and a half to end “…a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observed the blurred reflection of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. ‘This world,’ he thinks, ‘contains one masterpiece, and that is itself’.” And David Mitchell, in HIS masterpiece, gives us an entire world.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 96 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (June 29, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AMAZON PAGE:	The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	David Mitchell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Our review of Cloud Atlas Another MF review of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Bibliography:

• Ghostwritten (1999)
• number9dream (2001)
• Cloud Atlas (2004)
• Black Swan Green (2006)
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (June 2010)

“Everybody has some kind of scar, and I have already explained how I have come to have mine. Lines drawn across my face divide my horizons–mark the end of my childhood and the beginning of another phase–these fractions of my life blur together if I am honest now. ”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (AUG 27, 2010)

This is a short but pungent tale about crime, betrayal, passion, love, and a scar–both real and psychic. How juicy is that? Especially when you blend in the Côtes du Rhône-Villages wine made from the dark-skinned Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Cisault grapes. Throw in a pivotal love affair, a chateau, a virulent father, and an odious priest, and you have the crushing, pressing, and fermenting ingredients of a serious page-turner. The title refers to the legacy of the protagonist–the chateau, estate, and wine cellar he is set to inherit.

In a tiny village at the foot of the Dentelles Mountains, sixteen-year-old Christian Aragon is finishing up his education at the village lycée. The year is 1920, and his brother Eugene has already died in the Great War several years ago. His father (Papa) runs the wine chateau of Montmirail and expects Christian to honor his legacy and enter the family business. His mother has no influence on the racist, violent, and hateful rages of Papa, and Christian is often the beneficiary of undeserved beatings and mental cruelty.

“In the countryside, where the village is the kingdom and the child is the peasant, the father is king. The son is like a granite rock on the edge of a vineyard; his job is to reflect, and his destiny is to remain in that place forever.”

Christian is a headstrong, fearless young man who has experienced loss and deep sorrow. Besides the death of his brother, there was a boy, Couderc, who inflicted a large facial scar on him with a hunting knife. Cicatrice is the French word for scar, and for a time this became Christian’s sobriquet. Coudrec died of TB a year later, and Christian grieves for him. They shared an enigmatic glance the last time they met in the village square, right before he died.

Christian is psychologically advanced for his years; he’s a complex, self-willed, and passionate young man that hails the freedom of the spirit, the self, and the soul.
“I believe most of all in the inherent capacity man and woman possess to change.”
“…to become what we want, and to refuse to continue to be who and what we are if those manifestations do not reflect our own desires.”

Fate brings opportunity and a school trip effects a turning point for Christian. Desire leads to love and consequences, and a crime could bring ruin on Christian’s life and the life of his beloved, Vivienne Pleyben, his geography teacher. To add brimstone to the fire, the Jesuit priest, Father Leterrier, inadvertently learns of Christian and Vivienne’s relationship and tries to turn it into a sordid affair. Letterier is an obsessive fanatic and a hypocrite who is mired in his own secret desires and contradictions. He comes in twice a month to instruct the adolescents on moral welfare and “Holy Purity,” and delivers his sermons with a frightening zeal.

Christian does have a friend, George Phavorin, his father’s foreman, who offers indefatigable loyalty and fatherly love. His character is a striking contrast to Christian’s bully of a father.

The narrative is told by Christian in a solemn style that fits the times and setting. There is a mournful rim, but the tone is blended with the compelling and muscular verve of the protagonist. The final scene is foreshadowed with a hint of danger and a tortured suspense, and the ending is satisfying and messy, but strangely immaculate.

Conor Bowman is an Irish author who spent many summers in France. Like George Moore (1852-1933), he is a largely naturalistic writer that was obviously influenced by the French realist writers, like Émile Zola (1840-1902). However, there is a healthy dose of Romanticism in this tale that offsets the harsh darkness and pervasive pessimism of the former writers. This is his first novel published in the United States. I look forward to his next novel, The Redemption of George Baxter Henry.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (August 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AMAZON PAGE:	The Last Estate
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Dublin Book Festival on Conor Bowman
EXTRAS:	Publisher’s page on The Last Estate
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another that might be of interest: No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows

Bibliography:

• Life and Death and in Between: Stories (2004)
• Wasting By Degress (1998)
• The Last Estate (2008; August 2010 in US)
• The Redemption of George Baxter Henry (2008)

“Let’s say you had an opportunity to get your work in front of more people than you ever thought you’d reach, a chance to get more money than you thought you could ever get, but you had to compromise everything you thought you believed in. Would you do it?”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (AUG 26, 2010)

Struggling writer and coffee barista, Ian Minot, is frustrated and depressed. For one thing, he just can’t seem to write the kind of stories that will get the publishing world’s attention. After all, Ian knows, his life isn’t as glamorous as his Romanian’s girlfriend’s Anya Petrescu, whose travails under Ceausescu, has landed her an attractive publishing contract. In a snide reference to the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list, Ian points out that “Anya had recently been named one of American Review’s ‘31 Most Promising Writers Under 31.’ This year, I was too old to qualify,” he adds.

In fact, Anya’s future is on such a meteoric track that Ian is sure she will soon be dating celebrity authors like Gary Shteyngart or Malcolm Gladwell—not some wannabe like Ian Minot. Turns out that Anya does indeed leave Ian but she does so for another kind of celebrity author—Blade Markham. Markham’s memoir, Blade—a hard-hitting story about life in a gang and on drugs, has been selling like hotcakes especially after it won the endorsement of a famous talk show host (an Oprah-like celebrity).

Ian of course can’t stand Blade—he knows his success is not well-deserved, he believes Blade is all fake (he turns out to be) and Blade’s success just serves to reinforce the notion that success in publishing is not always related to talent alone. So one day, when a coffee bar regular whom Ian merely refers to as “The Confident Man” shows up with a copy of Blade tucked under his arm, Ian just loses it and kicks the guy out along with his book.

But Confident Man has some plans—and ideas—of his own. Ian’s violent hatred of Blade is just the fuel that Confident Man, aka Jed Roth, is looking for. He presents Ian with a scheme: take a book that Jed has written, make it Ian’s own, get it published (Jed, who has worked in the publishing industry will help with contacts), then reveal it’s a fake. This “twist,” Jed assures Ian, will get the book even more publicity—so much of it that eventually Ian will be able to get his own stories published without much fuss or delay. As crazy as the idea sounds, Ian is roped in. After all, he doesn’t have much to lose. And Jed Roth, who would like nothing better than to rub the publishing industry’s nose in its own filth (for many reasons of his own) has much to gain.

So what follows, is an amazingly tight caper that involves some wild goose chases and a plot that twists and turns to reveal the true color of people and situations as we go along.

Adam Langer’s work has always been clever and on the cutting edge and this one is no exception. For anyone following contemporary literature closely there are plenty of references sure to tickle the funny bone. Langer has even coined a special language centered on these literary references. For example, “Franzens” stand for a particular kind of eyeglasses favored by the author Jonathan Franzen. Author Michael Chabon’s hair is all the rage—anybody who has a wild mane of hair has a “chabon.” References to boxed reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and appearances on Fresh Air with Terry Gross also abound, and all these elements together serve as a delicious lampooning of the publishing industry as a whole.

There are some places when you can get tired of these little bits of cleverness—as in when Langer writes out Anya’s Romanian accent in italics. “She was sure that eff’ryone would hett eet, that refyooers would reep eet to shreds and call her a tellentliss leetle feek.” This is really funny at first but gets annoying towards the end after its novelty wears out.

What really elevates The Thieves of Manhattan is that it is also a novel about kindness and authenticity. It is a wonderfully paced and well-edited novel—a taut page-turner.

“Writing a book can be a profoundly optimistic act; expecting someone to read, buy, and publish it is always a phenomenally presumptuous one. Why would a marketing department put money behind anything you wrote? Why would someone you didn’t know spend twenty-five dollars to read your stories of small people leading small lives?” Jed Roth once asks of Ian. Langer’s new book shows us why. Despite all its clever contrivances, Thieves never loses its focus and in the end is a good dose of vibrant old-fashioned storytelling.

Not only is The Thieves of Manhattan a funny and wild caper, it’s also a touching story about Ian Minot—a small person leading a small life. Until of course, something very big happens to him.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 10  readers
PUBLISHER:	Spiegel & Grau (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AMAZON PAGE:	The Thieves of Manhattan
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Adam Langer
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Ellington Avenue Another writer things about a short cut to money: Dear Money by Martha McPhee

Bibliography:

• Crossing California (June 2004)
• The Washington Story (August 2005)
• Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat (January 2008)
• The Thieves of Manhattan (July 2010)

“Later, thinking back on the way my father recounted the story, it occurred to me that much of the language he used to describe the storm might have been applied to the act of a couple making love. He made the sound of the wind for me, then, and I pressed myself against his chest so he could wrap his big arms around me. I shivered, just to think how it must have been that night.

For some reason, my father liked to tell this story, though I – not my sisters, not our mother—was his only audience. Well, that made sense perhaps. I was his hurricane girl, he said. If there hadn’t been that storm, he liked to say, I wouldn’t be here now.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (AUG 24, 2010)

Joyce Maynard’s books are usually about love, loss, life, and resolution. This book is no exception. It is a lovely book that I’d like to have read while resting against a tree in a forest or while lounging in a canoe in a crystal still lake. It’s that kind of book.

The Good Daughters is about two girls, Dana Dickerson and Ruth Plank. They are called “birthday sisters” because they were born in the same hospital on the same day, almost nine months to the day after the great hurricane of 1949. Because of this connection, their families stay in touch as the girls are growing up. Usually they visit one another once or twice a year. The Planks own a large farm in New Hampshire that has been in their family for generations. The Dickersons are never in one place for very long.

Ruth grows up on the farm with four older sisters. The four other sisters all look alike, just like their mother. They are short, sturdy, strong girls who are close with one another and their mother. Ruth is tall and lean, built unlike her sisters or mother. Her father calls her “beanpole.” Ruth doesn’t think that her mother loves her like she loves her other daughters. Their relationship is stiff and difficult at the best of times. Ruth feels very close to her father and loves to ride the tractor with him or spend any other alone time she can get with him. Ruth is drawn to art and wants to be an artist when she grows up. She has an active imagination and loves to create stories in her head.

Dana’s parents are on the fringe of society and move around frequently. Her mother is a narcissistic artist and her father is absent more than present. He is full of get-rich-quick schemes that come to naught. Dana’s mother is almost six feet tall and blond. Dana has a brother, Ray, that is quirky and ephemeral. Neither parent pays much attention to the children. Ruth and Ray have a special relationship. Dana’s mother showers her with Barbie dolls and Barbie outfits which are about the last thing in the world that she wants. When Ruth comes to visit she likes to play with them. Dana is short and stocky, not built at all like her tall, lanky mother. Dana loves the smell of the earth and the Plank farm. She doesn’t like to dress up. Her idea of dress-up is clean jeans and a clean shirt. She wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress.

The book harbors a big secret that is obvious to the reader very early on. This secret, however, is not obvious to Dana or Ruth. As they grow up and become the women they were meant to be, pieces of the story fall into place more and more.

The story is told in the alternate voices of Ruth and Dana. Each chapter is told by one of the girls and is about their lives from their births in 1950 until they are in their 50’s. The reader is privy to their childhoods, first loves and relationships. We live with them through the Vietnam War, Woodstock, their love of the land, and their relationships with their families. It is a tender book that has its share of sadness and torment. Joyce Maynard knows how to write page-turners that are literate and strongly emotive. This is a wonderful follow-up to Labor Day.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 16 readers
PUBLISHER:	William Morrow (August 24, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	The Good Daughters
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Joyce Maynard Wikipedia page on Joyce Maynard
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More from authors like this one: A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein Every Last One by Anna Quindlen Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Bibliography:

• Baby Love (1981)
• To Die For (1992)
• Where Love Goes (1995)
• The Usual Rules (2003)
• The Cloud Chamber (2005)
• Labor Day (2009)
• The Good Daughters (August 2010)

Nonfiction:

• Looking Back (1973)
• Domestic Affairs: Enduring the Pleasures of Motherhood and Family Life (1987)
• At Home in the World (1998)
• Internal Combustion: The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City (2006)