Suite Française

"Bonjoooouuur, ya cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys!" 

                                             -- Groundskeeper Willie

Suite Française is a book that will be forever linked with its history: Irène Némirovsky, a Russian Jew whose wealthy family fled the Bolshevik Revolution, was a successfully transplanted French novelist when WWII first erupted. With her husband and two young daughters, Némirovsky left Paris for the French countryside ahead of the advancing German troops, and from her ringside seat, began writing a novel of the war as it was happening. The book that this eventually became consists of two of the five parts that Némirovsky had planned (her intent was to write it like the five movements of a symphony, and imagine that -- trying to plot out where the climax and conclusion will lie in the events that you are currently living) and it also contains appendices with her editing notes and correspondence. 

Paris had its sweetest smell, the smell of chestnut trees in bloom and of petrol with a few grains of dust that crack under your teeth like pepper. In the darkness the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence. Everyone looked at their house and thought, "Tomorrow it will be in ruins, tomorrow I'll have nothing left.”

The first part, Storm in June, opens on several Parisians who realise that they may have put off fleeing the city for too long: the Germans are approaching; the train stations are closed; the streets are choked with cars and people on foot; and many are left scrambling to pack the belongings they wouldn't want the invaders to get their hands on (so many heirloom linens!). All classes of people are shown, each with their own concerns and prejudices, but they will all eventually learn that the exodus is the great equalizer: when they reach villages that have no food or beds or gasoline, the tired and hungry masses would all fit alongside the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath (although the uppercrusts continue to feel their painful superiority over the lumpen swarms). This section also shows the great concern that many of these people have for their sons or other relatives in the French Army -- often from the point of view of people who had lived through the First World War. When Armistice is declared, there is relief that the refugees can return home and learn of the soldiers' fates.

War…yes, everyone knows what war is like. But occupation is more terrible in a way, because people get used to one another. We tell ourselves, "They're just like us, after all," but they're not at all the same. We're two different species, irreconcilable, enemies forever.

The second section, Dolce, is set in a rural village where the occupying Germans are billeted with local families. The youth and friendliness of the soldiers is stressed, and as all of the young Frenchmen are away as prisoners of war, unlikely friendships bloom. Class is again explored here, with life shown from the points of view of the nobility and rich landowners and simple farmers. Eventually, the occupying regiment is called away to the Russian Front.

After this come the appendices, in which Némirovsky makes notes about which parts should be shortened or amended, what her overall goals were (individualism vs communalism), and in her personal remarks describes the real life scene of the German army cutting short a celebration in order to mobilise to Russia -- the scene which essentially ends the novel. It was amazing to me that throughout Suite Française, the Germans were shown to be cheerful and respectful and fully human -- these are not the occupying Nazis that I'm used to from books like Sarah's Key and Half-Blood Blues; I marvelled at how Némirovsky could be so charitable, but I suppose it's more amazing that she didn't mention Jews at all in her book -- the very last of the appendices states she and her family were forced to wear the yellow stars despite having never been practising Jews and being baptised Catholic in France -- and in the end, she captured the universally French experience.

According to the included correspondence, Némirovsky was arrested in a roundup of stateless Jews (she had never applied for French citizenship) and after the last letter of hers is sent, there are a series of letters and telegrams written by her husband, trying to get anyone influential he can think of to try and locate her. Eventually he, too, is arrested and sent to a prison camp, and as is eventually revealed, he follows his wife to Auschwitz, where both were killed. The daughters survived the war -- hidden by their nanny -- and one of them had held onto the leather-bound notebook that contained this manuscript, not reading it until 2005 because she thought it was her dead mother's personal diary. 

On their own, the two completed sections of Suite Française don't feel like unfinished work -- they are well written vignettes that tell a story I hadn't heard before. Coupled with the appendices, they become an incredibly important eyewitness account, untainted by what we now know the Nazis were capable of. Maybe, just maybe, the cheese-eating surrender monkey thing is unfair.

As it happens, one of my grandfathers was in France during WWII (the other grandfather was this gentle, tiny man who, no matter how long the war lasted, couldn't convince the enlistment office that he was tall enough to join the fight -- sort of like Captain America). My Grampie who did fight, on the other hand, was a hard man who we didn't know very well, so it wouldn't have been likely any of us kids would have asked him about the war when we were little. Ken, however, once hitch-hiked over to Nova Scotia to stay with our grandparents for a while and he asked Grampie if he had any war stories, and the old man shut him down. 

I told my mother about that not long ago and she said, "I think I was the only person Charlie ever liked outside of your father; he would answer any question I ever asked him. Even about the war." This is what she remembered: Grampie was a half Mi'kmaq who enlisted in 1940, and as a non-white, he was segregated with other non-whites (which was very hard on him because one of the few things I knew about Grampie was that he was a nasty racist --ironic, yes). I don't know what he did in the early years, but when the Americans joined the war, Grampie's unit was sent down and blended with an American group of non-whites -- they were called "The Rangers" and were given the crap assignments. I don't think Grampie was there at D-Day (that would have been part of my mother's story, wouldn't it?), but he was with the American army as they liberated France and advanced on Paris. The two stories that she recalled: As the army was sweeping through a small village (not unlike the one in Suite Française, I'd imagine), they witnessed the locals executing one of their own -- with a guillotine. (Could that possibly be true?) And the other story: On VE Day, when all formal fighting was ended and Grampie's unit was sent out to enforce peace and look for survivors on the battlefield, he saw two men stirring in the dirt, obviously both wounded. As he approached, he could see they were a Canadian and a German, and as he got closer, he saw the Canadian reaching for something in his pack. Conflicted about whether to stop the Canadian, Grampie slowed his steps to see what was going to happen and watched in amazement as the Canadian pulled out a bottle of beer and handed it to the German. (And could that possibly be true? I wish Grampie was the kind of man who would have told us his stories himself.)

It's hard to know whether my grandfather was an SOB because of the war or just because. He had married my grandmother before enlisting and she was pregnant with twins before he left. Gone for five years, Grampie came back to two sons he didn't know and, apparently, he was always very hard on them. My Dad, on the other hand, was born in 1947 and treated as well as his parents could afford to. 

Meanwhile, my grandmother's brother, my Great Uncle Donny, had also enlisted and was sent to Germany. In 2005, with my father behind the scenes and pushing it through, a cenotaph was erected in Greenfield NS, and Donny was the only veteran of the Great War from this tiny community to attend its unveiling. We were all staying at my parents' house leading up to that event, and one evening, Donny told the following story with great ceremony:

The end of the war was coming and everyone could feel it. We didn't see any goddamn German soldiers anywhere we went and the boys were getting itchy to kill some of the bastards before the whole thing was done. One night, me and a couple guys come upon  a farmhouse and the Fraulein couldn't do nothing but let us in. We had been living on rations for weeks and we made her cook us up everything she had, and when she said she had no more, we went through her cellar and took more of what we wanted and smashed what we didn't. We slept there that night, and before we moved on in the morning, I had relieved her of this fine bolt action rifle (Donny unwraps a beautifully carved and engraved, antique rifle). After all these years, I want you to have it, Pat.

My Dad accepted the gun with great solemnity and replied, "One day, this will belong to one of my grandsons." (I'll let the stupid sexism of that remark pass by.)

Also listening to this story was my sister-in-law, Laura: mother to my father's oldest grandson and grand-daughter to a German-born man who fled his native country as Hitler rose to power; a conscientious objector who refused to be enlisted during WWII by the Canadian government and spent the war in a work camp. As much as Donny's story didn't sound to me like something to be proud of, it must have been even more uncomfortable for Laura to listen to -- I can't imagine she'll ever want her son to own that stolen gun and the fear and oppression it represents.

 I know we were the good guys in WWII, and I believe it was a war that needed to be fought, but I can't help but contrast my Great Uncle Donny's actions with those of the occupying Nazis in Suite Française -- and of course I understand the differences between the actions of an army that is in enemy territory and might be engaged in battle at any minute (Donny) and an occupying force that is trying to be friendly with the locals, but the terror that Fraulein must have felt with the boorish Canadians trashing her home is the most real part of that story to me. 

Great Uncle Donny (Donald Ray Robart 1921 - 2008)

Heart of a Dog

January 7th: Creature can now pronounce several words: 'taxi', 'full up', 'evening paper', 'take one home for the kiddies' and every known Russian swear-word. His appearance is strange. He now only has hair on his head, chin and chest. Elsewhere he is bald, with flabby skin. His genital region now has the appearance of an immature human male. His skull has enlarged considerably. Brow low and receding. My God, I must be going mad…

Heart of a Dog was written in 1925, in the relative Soviet calm between the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin, was banned before publication, distributed for 60 years in samizdat form, and officially released in 1987 (being made into a successful Soviet TV movie the following year). Apparently, in the intervening years, so little had changed for the average Soviet citizen under Communist rule, that Mikhail Bulgakov's satirical masterpiece was considered timely and relevant despite the delay in its publication.

Part Frankenstein and part Animal Farm, this book features a Bourgeois Professor -- surgeon to the Soviet elite; a man who wouldn't dream of giving up even one of the seven rooms in his apartment, despite the officially imposed multi-family crowding in the flats around him -- who takes in a stray dog in order to perform medical experiments on him. After transplanting the pituitary and seminal glands of a dead criminal into the dog, the Professor and his assistant are dismayed to watch the animal transform into a walking, talking man. Even worse, "Furball" is transformed into a loutish Bolshevik who knows and demands his state-sanctioned rights, and when the Professor fights back, Comrade Furballovich makes a complaint of counter-revolutionary thoughts against him to the secret police.

There are many levels to this slim story -- overtly a commentary on the New Soviet Man and eugenics -- with likely many levels going over my head. There were some ideas that I understood, like the Professor's response to Furball's views:

"You belong to the lowest possible stage of development," Philip Philipovich shouted him down. "You are still in the formative stage. You are intellectually weak, all your actions are purely bestial. Yet you allow yourself in the presence of two university-educated men to offer advice, with quite intolerable familiarity, on a cosmic scale and of quite cosmic stupidity, on the redistribution of wealth . . . and at the same time you eat toothpaste . . ."

And in the face of state-sanctioned brutality, and despite Furball's repeated destructive behaviours, this repeated message must have been a controversial one: 

Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion.

And when it is stated that the problem with Furball is that he is still a dog at heart, the Professor responds:

The whole horror of the situation is that he now has a human heart, not a dog's heart. And about the rottenest heart in all creation!

So, humans are the worst beasts of creation, and simply elevating the working class to a situation of "official equality" doesn't mean that there are not yet some that are more equal than others. Gotcha. Heart of a Dog is considered a comedy, but it wasn't really a knee slapper (I did laugh when Furball secured a position as a cat-catcher. When asked what he does with the dead bodies, he replies that they are made into fake squirrel-fur coats for the masses. Nice.) I can't imagine what it must have been like for those Soviets who had gotten their hands on a forbidden copy of this book during the dark days behind the Iron Curtain, and for them, I hope they got the chuckles that they sought.

Year of Wonders

We know that God sometimes has spoken to His people in a terrible voice, by visiting dread things upon them. And of these things, Plague -- this venom in the blood -- is one of the most terrible. Who would not fear it? Its boils and its blains and its great carbuncles. Grim Death, the King of Terrors, that marches at its heels. Yet God in His infinite and unknowable wisdom has singled us out, alone amongst all the villages in our shire, to receive this Plague.

Geraldine Brooks has a definite method and a definite style: Finding some fragment of true history (in this case the very real "plague village" of Eyam in England and its citizens), she expands the little that is known into a living, breathing reality. In 1665, the Plague was introduced to the village by an infected bolt of cloth and the rector -- Michael Mompellion in Year of Wonders and William Mompesson in real life -- made the courageous suggestion that the villagers close their borders (neither allowing visitors to enter or citizens to flee) in order to prevent infecting anyone else. The villagers agreed, and over the course of the next 14 months, about two thirds of them died.

In the afterword it states that one of the few letters that remain from William Mompesson mentions the maid whose tireless work the rector was ever grateful for, and on that basis, such a maid is the narrator of this book: a young widow named Anna Frith. I found Anna to be likeable and sympathetic, an excellent eye-witness to the tragedy, but there were queer inconsistencies -- some nearly anachronistic -- in her character. She was at first resistant to learn about herb-lore because women with such knowledge are often accused of being witches (and there is a dramatic witch-hunt scene in this book), but once she starts tending to the sick, she not only uses herbs but recites an overheard chant that calls on the seven directions and invokes the blessings of the grandmothers over the work. Although Anna had faithfully believed in Providence and the Will of God her entire life, she waxes philosophical about whether the Plague might not be a purely natural phenomenon. Although Anna's father had been a mean and abusive drunk, as she relates his entire life story to a friend, she realises how his own hard childhood had made him the man he would become -- and I really didn't buy this 17th century psychoanalysis. I also didn't believe that, knowing women in mines were considered bad luck, Anna would enter one for the first time in her life and attempt to dig out enough ore to prevent an orphan from losing her claim. On the other hand, Anna's goodness and generosity of spirit made me root for her, and no matter how implausible her efforts, I wanted her to succeed. In the opening scene of Age of Wonders, Anna states that she had lost everything in the preceding year, so I won't consider this a spoiler:

When I woke, the light was streaming through the window. The bed was wet, and there was a wild voice howling. Tom’s little body had leaked its life’s blood from his throat and bowels. My own gown was drenched where I’d clutched him to me. I gathered him up off the gory pallet and ran into the street. My neighbours were all standing there, their faces turned to me, full of grief and fear. Some had tears in their eyes. But the howling voice was mine.

As one might imagine, there is much loss and grief in this book and parts of it had me blubbering -- some might find it overwrought, but it was touching to me. There was also evidence of much research -- the everyday life and customs of the people were deftly explored. So much about this book was going so well, and then, there's the strange ending. 

I can see how some would find the ending to not be consistent with the rest of Year of Wonders, but I have to note, it is entirely consistent with what I've read of Geraldine Brooks: Caleb's Crossing and People of the Book both feature women narrators who seek knowledge that their families or society don't approve of, and they make decisions that may not seem to follow from what comes before. As this was Brooks' first novel, it would appear to be her first attempt at having a character make this leap, and having seen her write it more successfully elsewhere, I'm somehow more willing to forgive its clumsiness. This was interesting to me -- reading Brooks' first novel of this kind last -- because I can see all the same themes playing themselves out (and even note the "Mussulman Doctor" who might be the same who makes an appearance in People of the Book). I still need to read March before I can decide if I'm really a fan or not, because while I liked this book, I wasn't blown away.

I had lost my sunglasses this week -- which I always wear when I walk the dog -- so didn't like the one day I had to walk with a ballcap on instead. And, boy, was I glad I looked harder for them the next day: As I was walking along, first that scene above where the baby dies in Anna's arms overnight had me blubbering and sniffling, trying not to let tears spill from my eyes, and then after a few minutes (of listening time -- the scene happens a few days later), Anna's other son dies. As he's laying on his pallet, sick and trembling, he calls out, "Mummy, Tommy needs you" and at the mention of her dead baby's name, Anna's milk comes in and soaks the front of her smock. "It's okay, Jamie, Tommy's here with me, don't worry" -- I'm blubbering and grateful that no one is walking around me -- and then Anna tells her little boy a fairytale about a little boy who needs to be brave enough to enter a strange door and leave the world he knows behind. I was a wreck as these children died, and as always, I am grateful to any book that touches me like that.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

I understand that the following is in the afterword of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (and not included in the audio version I listened to):

If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this song sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions.
All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.
May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them.
May you find perfection, and know it by name.

That begs the question of intent so I'll explain that, having realised that I had never read any Christopher Moore despite his popularity, and seeing that Lamb appears to be his most enjoyed book, I downloaded it for a few laughs (and it was only a weird coincidence that I listened to it over the week of Easter). In the end, it didn't offend me, but it didn't really entertain me either.

The premise was promising: After being dead for two thousand years, Jesus' childhood friend Biff (born "Levi" but nicknamed for the cuffs upside his head his mama gives him) is resurrected by the angel Raziel in order to write a new gospel that would fill in the years missing from the New Testament. The beginning really worked for me -- Biff is a total doofus (hence all the cuffing from his mama) but even at six years old, Jesus (known as Joshua in the book -- the Anglicization of Yeshua) is a nearly normal kid -- playing games and interacting with his family -- but is always shown as moral and filled with grace; certainly always aware of his higher purpose (and able to resurrect dead lizards in a morbid but funny game). Anything that is known from the Bible of Joshua's early years is included, and although Biff is always on the periphery for yuks, nothing about Josh is ever mocked. Interspersed with the gospel are scenes of Biff in his modern hotel room, where he is guarded by Raziel (a heavenly being that is apparently equal parts gorgeous and stupid), and these scenes worked less well for me. Early on:

The angel has confided in me that he is going to ask the Lord if he can become Spider-Man. He watches the television constantly, even when I sleep, and he has become obsessed with the story of the hero who fights demons from the rooftops. The angel says that evil looms larger now than it did in my time, and that calls for greater heroes. The children need heroes, he says. I think he just wants to swing from buildings in tight red jammies.

So, that's the funny stuff, which sometimes descends into fratboy humour: There's one scene (can't quote it because I can't find it online) where Biff is talking to Bartholomew, the village idiot, who explains that he follows the Cynical philosophy of Diogenes -- trying to live a simple life free of possessions. "Oh, like the dogs?" asks Biff, pointing to the pack of canines that follows Bartholomew around. "Yes," he replies. "I'm even trying to learn how to lick my own balls." (When Josh hears about this conversation later, his only concern is that it might not be kosher.) Ha ha? That kind of joke happens a lot, and it may be hi-LAR-ious to some, but it was pretty ho hum to me.

In the middle section of Lamb, the years missing from the New Testament, Biff and Josh go in search of the three wise men who had followed the star to Bethlehem once upon a time -- and this was a total waste of an opportunity: anything could have been written about those years but what's in the book was dull and repetitive. The friends are trained in Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism -- learning useful tips like "love your neighbour as yourself" and how to multiply loaves and fishes -- but also, bizarrely, getting to know the Abominable Snowman, the ancient demon "Catch", the cult of Kālī, concubines and harlots. There was so much sex, so many Kama Sutra jokes, that it became pretty dull. But once again, I did appreciate that, while Biff was a horndog, Josh remained as pure as the angel Raziel had instructed him to be. 

They return to Nazareth after twenty years and act out the known Bible stories, right up to the Crucifixion. And again, although Biff continues to sharpen the sarcasm skills that he claims to have invented, the Josh portrayed is a believable Son of God, performing miracles and behaving honourably. But then the ending displays a real lack of courage: **SPOILER** Biff doesn't want his friend to suffer on the cross, so he sneaks Josh a poison that will mimic death -- hoping to revive him from his tomb once the coast is clear. This poison was shown previously to work within seconds, but Josh continues to suffer and his death is not quick. Suddenly, Biff spots Judas and realises he must have been the betrayer and he follows him and kills him, falling to his own death in the process. So if Moore is trying to plant the seed that Jesus was never really dead before he was entombed, I wish he had just committed to that. This "who knows what happened?", even having the narrator die before the big finish, felt cowardly after making it plain that we are to believe in Jesus' divinity all along. 

There were some laughs (I especially enjoyed Josh's face miraculously appearing on the matzos at Passover) and there was a surprising wealth of information about the religious practises of the region, and I really did appreciate that Josh wasn't mocked or have his divinity downplayed -- I honestly think it would be hard for someone to call this blasphemy -- but too many parts were boring or the wrong kind of funny to make me laugh. Meh.

Bartholomew  trying to learn to lick his own balls is a racier quote than I would usually use on goodreads, but I included it in order to give an honest flavour of what this book is like. The following wasn't appropriate for there, barely appropriate for here if it's ever read by anyone who knows me (ha ha), but it's a joke that struck me right:

When they were teenagers, Biff was talking to Josh about how he had accompanied a shepherd to watch over a flock, it being the custom to always send two shepherds in order to "prevent an abomination". Biff watched all night for abominations as the other shepherd spent the night "playing with his favourite sheep" behind a rock. Josh explained to him that that was the abomination. This was smile-worthy, but much later, the two are introduced to the Yeti and have this conversation:

Josh: "What is this thing?"
Gasper: "It's a Yeti. An abominable snowman."
Biff: "This is what happens when you fuck a sheep?"
Josh: "Not an abomination, abominable.” 

I'm sure that it wouldn't have been as funny without the earlier shepherding conversation, but as it is, it was a masterful play of the callback. (And a Yeti kind of does look like a man/sheep hybrid, no?)

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

“Let us pick up our books and our pens,” I said. “They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”

I really wanted to be m0ved by I am Malala: I am the mother of daughters in a free and equal society and when Malala's story first made the headlines, it hit home for me as a horrifying glimpse into the Talibanised society in which she lived. I wanted to know more of her story, was eager to read her memoir, but honestly, it's just not that well written. For all the world this book reminds me of those days when the newspaper's letters page is taken over by a high school Civics class -- so much earnest and opinionated writing that makes few compelling points. And this is with a ghost writer -- leading war correspondent Christina Lamb must have been constantly conflicted about when to maintain Malala's teenaged voice and when to guide her towards a more journalistic style. An example of the jumbled writing: 

The new girls had horrible stories. Ayesha told us how one day on the way home from Sangota she had seen a Taliban holding up the severed head of a policeman by its hair, blood dripping from the neck. The Sangota girls were also very bright, which meant more competition. One of them, Rida, was excellent at making speeches.

There was much interesting history included -- and I don't think Malala's story would be complete without explaining how the Taliban got a foothold in her beloved Swat Valley -- but for a memoir, it failed to find a coherent autobiographical balance: it was both too personal (talking about constant bickering with her brothers) and left so much out (there is mention of travelling with her father to make a speech or do an interview here and there, but suddenly a town is naming a school after Malala and Desmond Tutu is nominating her for awards and I had gotten no sense that she would have been famous at this point). Even after Malala was targeted and shot (an event that I thought was a random attack when it hit our headlines) and her father was asked to accompany her to Britain for further treatment, he said: "I cannot leave the area. I am president of the Global Peace Council, the spokesperson of the council of elders, the president of the Swat Association of Private Schools, director of my school and head of my family." I had no idea he was that important despite his history and his passion for education being major parts of the book. 

Some things that intrigued me that I would have liked to have read more about: the fear and distrust that the Pakistanis have for the Americans, initially after drone strikes that killed many innocent bystanders, but especially after the covert mission to kill bin Laden (it never occurred to me that anyone not involved in hiding him would have been opposed to whatever it took to root out bin Laden -- but of course we would have been going nuts up here in Canada if any other country subverted our autonomy like that); Malala's mother, despite being married to a dedicated educator, was illiterate and was at a school, finally taking her first reading lesson, at the same time her daughter was shot -- did she ever recommence her lessons?; by the end of the book, after the medical care and rehab is over, Malala and her family are settled in Birmingham, England for poorly explained reasons -- will they be returning to Pakistan or has Malala become too big to return to normal life?

The message of I am Malala is too important to be lost in the pages of a poorly written book -- which if it was simply rushed to print in order to capitalise on the small fame she received after the attack, well, that's understandable in our era of fly-like attention spans -- so I simply hope that Malala remains safe and carries on with her efforts to increase awareness for equal education all around the globe. Getting shot in the face by a terrorist didn't make Malala a hero, but where she goes from here just might earn her that status.

How interesting that Birmingham is apparently a hotbed of Muslim extremism. What must Malala be thinking?

Fire in the Unnameable Country

True to its name and as is clear to see, our country possesses an unfathomable geography. Unfathomable geography be damned, the unnameable country must be real because they're working invincible roundtheclock to invent it, depriving limbs lips ears, horsewhipping furiously for dream of curving and straight streets, edifices, architecture, yes, but also geography, whole rivers dammed and forded, pits dug, perished workers thrown into: let them cry out in joy, Quincy would yell, let them realize their place is here and nowhere else, planting spiders, cultivating webs, harvesting thread for wear or garrison.

I kept falling asleep while reading Fire in the Unnameable Country; I honestly couldn't get through more than 20 pages of it before my eyelids started drooping. And it's not because it's boring exactly, but with precisely zero science to back me up, I think that this book -- with its quasi-invented language and choppy style -- was engaging (and exhausting) a different part of my brain than what I ordinarily use for reading.

Recall, though I have yet to tell you…this book includes: thoughtreels; spidersilk; The Mirror; Black Organs; young men who handle raisins or blow pepper or eat raw onions like apples in order to connect with their creativity; young women who read thoughts on shortwave radios or loom hosiery or feed blood to dying ghosts; and a higgledy-piggledy overview of one man's genealogy -- and the lamentable history of the unnameable country in which he lives -- told by a character with glossolalia (someone who also happened to gestate in his mother's womb for 8 1/2 years and was finally born on a flying carpet). 

I read this book based on this article (which I only skimmed to avoid spoilers), but reading it now, it explains Ghalib Islam's process and intent for Fire in the Unnameable Country so I won't repeat it here. I do think, however, that he put some clues into this book like: 

he is not a political man, but a writer in the style of certain modernists for whom poetry is a description of the effects of war on language.

And:

let us no longer delay the inevitable…now that you realize the author was only designing another hoop-and-fire game for you to play, to jump through for his entertainment.

On this book's cover, Margaret Atwood invokes Calvino and Burroughs, but I was able to read If On a Winter's Night A Traveler and Naked Lunch without falling asleep -- this style is wholly the author's own. And it's interesting that it's Atwood on the cover -- according to that article cited above, she served as Islam's mentor during the writing of this book, which likely explains the many anti-American passages, like:

No, we could not love the Americans because they had imprisoned us with mirror-streets and spied on us with everywhere cameras of a counterfeit movie set; they had burned us with a deceptive phosphorescent fire, which resisted water, and had deprived us of the ability to earn an honest living and driven us to hidden organs of income.

This review is a favourable one that does a good job of explaining the art of Islam's effort and this review sums up my own reading experience:

Fire in the Unnameable Country is yet another of these wow-filled books by wildly ambitious, wildly talented new writers that are impressive to hear about as literary constructions but not especially enjoyable to read as actual novels. Islam has a lot to say, perhaps too much in this vertiginous first effort.

Caleb's Crossing

At first, when I gave out a Latin declension, father was amused and laughed. But my mother, working the loom as I spun the yarn, drew a sharp breath and put a hand up to her mouth. She made no comment then, but later I understood. She had perceived what I, in my pride, had not: that father's pleasure was of a fleeting kind -- the reaction one might have if a cat were to walk upon its hind legs. You smile at the oddity but find the gait ungainly and not especially attractive. Soon, the trick is wearisome, and later, worrisome, for a cat on hind legs is not about its duty, catching mice. In time, when the cat seems minded to perform its trick, you curse at it, and kick it.

Such is the fate of Bethia Mayfield: possessed of a keen intellect and a thirst for knowledge, but living in a Puritan settlement on Martha's Vineyard during the mid-1600's, this minister's daughter must watch uncomplainingly as her dull-witted brother, Makepeace, fails to grasp the education that their father intends for him (and him alone). At first, I feared that Caleb's Crossing would be too very much like People of the Book: in that novel, the author Geraldine Brooks leapfrogs backwards in time, making the point in every era that women must seek the knowledge that would be denied to them and that there is no greater historical villain than the white, Christian male (from Slobodan Milošević to Adolf Hitler to King Ferdinand of Spain). While I appreciate that this is a common progressive viewpoint, I grew weary of its belabourment in the last book and was, therefore, much relieved to discover that that wasn't the point of this book at all: although Bethia does yearn for the forbidden knowledge, she searches for and submits to God's will in every tragedy and disadvantage she experiences (including the disadvantage of her sex) and, as a result, this book felt much more subtle and empathetic. (And for some reason I feel compelled here to make clear that I don't personally submit to any fundamentalist religious views but rather appreciate that Bethia's character, in her time and place, did her best to reconcile her yearnings with her beliefs -- it was an authentic-feeling literary choice.)

Also similar to People of the Book, with Caleb's Crossing Brooks started with a sliver of historical fact, the actual person of Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, and expanded what the journalist in her could ferret out into a fully realised historical narrative. Knowing he was an actual person, I googled Caleb when I was about halfway done and found this portrait:

And I want to warn anyone who follows my path -- don't make the same mistake that I did and read the few lines that accompany the portrait because they tell all that is known of Caleb and, in a small way, ruined the narrative for me. (Which is why I don't want to give away anything at all that happens to Caleb here.)

When Bethia and Caleb meet in the wilds of the island as preteens and form a friendship based on teaching each other their very different ways of life, it is a meeting of equals -- Brooks doesn't hold either culture up as the superior, and throughout the book, there are advantages and disadvantages shown to each, and there are good and bad people in each community (with, for the most part, the people acting according to their sincere beliefs). That Bethia loves Caleb as a brother makes her the perfect witness and chronicler of his life -- a literary choice that was likely more interesting than if Brooks had straight-out told Caleb's story from his own point of view. 

More specifically about the book itself -- It is written in a diary form by Bethia's character and covers three periods in her life: her girlhood on the island; her young womanhood on the mainland; and from her deathbed as an old woman (which has the advantage of her being able to look back at the differences that then existed since the time of the King Philip’s War in 1675 that ended the era of peaceful co-existence between the English and the Natives). As a novel set spanning the turn of the 18th century, the language is somewhat formal but not off-putting -- just enough of a flavour of the era without needing to mentally translate anything. The description of the Puritan and Native settlements were interesting and evocative of the time. The characters were fully formed and consistently acted according to internal logic, allowing many (especially the dullard Makepeace) to evolve in a satisfying way. This is a really well written book, smart with heart, and I thoroughly enjoyed it; the slight whiff of dramatic irony inherent in Caleb's true history was successfully expanded into a lens on a fascinating time.

I'm going to allow myself to put the spoilers here that I didn't want to put on goodreads (so I suppose this is a warning). I have a "friend" on that site who read this book also recently and her review ends: SPOILER ALERT....SPOILER ALERT....SPOILER ALERT...SPOILER ALERT... One of the reasons I liked this book was that I was sure that Brooks would ruin it by having Bethia and Caleb become lovers, and she didn't, thank God and good sense. And that's an interesting point because while reading Caleb's Crossing, I got the sense that Caleb and Bethia would have been perfectly matched if their cultures would have allowed them to be together. And here's my own situation that I feared would be revealed in the book: When the story jumps ahead to Cambridge, Bethia says something like, "I suppose I should explain how I came to be on the mainland in my condition". She goes back to talk about living on the island and the one time that Makepeace confessed to a litany of sins in the weekly Meeting, ending with lust (a fact that thoroughly surprised Bethia because he had never shown interest in any girl). Soon after, their father dies in a shipwreck, leaving the siblings to live alone together, and I was sure, SURE, that Makepeace had lusted after his sister, and after having his jealousy provoked by imagining that Bethia loved Caleb, I was certain, CERTAIN, that he would rape her, making her pregnant, and forcing her to be exiled to the mainland. It felt like the inevitable path of the story and I would have HATED it -- so when it turned out that her "condition" was the result of her penny-pinching grandfather proposing to sell Bethia into indentured service in order to pay for her brother's education, it was both more satisfying and more horrifying than what I had predicted. 

Eventually, Makepeace wants to drop out of school (he never was a scholar) and arranged for Bethia's former suitor (the young man that their father had selected as a match for her) to buy out her indentureship as a prelude to their being married. Knowing that she wasn't happy with that arrangement, the Master of the school she works at lets Bethia know that his own son -- a 26 year old scholar/tutor at Harvard -- was also interested in courting her. She meets him and is overwhelmed by the prospect of a life with books and knowledge and stimulating conversations. Bethia is forced to choose between her father's selection (Noah Merry, a good-natured son of a farmer/mill owner who could provide her with a lifetime of plenty on the island that she so piteously missed) and the new opportunity (a fiercely intelligent man who is attracted to Bethia's mind, someone who wants an intellectual partner to accompany him through many more years of penniless student life in Cambridge and, perhaps, Padua); she needed to decide whether she would prioritize her heart or her mind -- and she chooses her mind. When Noah Merry does buy her freedom, while confessing that he loved another, he presents her with her indentureship papers, making her free to choose the scholar -- or no one at all. At this point is when I started to wonder if the author would throw Bethia and Caleb together -- he alone would have satisfied both her heart and her mind as they had long shared a love of the nature of their island home as well as their philosophical debates. I wanted the relationship to happen, but I also knew it couldn't have in that time (although the author said many times that Caleb could have passed for Spanish or Italian -- maybe they could have run off together?) 

Is it ever thus, at the end of things? Does any woman ever count the grains of her harvest and say: Good enough? Or does one always think of what more one might have laid in, had the labor been harder, the ambition more vast, the choices more sage?

And, of course, here is where I make it personal: I'm afraid I'm at the stage of counting the grains of the harvest of my own life and wonder at how I got here. School was always easy for me but I never had an intellectual fire; no thirst for learning, really. I went to University until it bored me (mostly because I didn't work very hard at it) and then later decided to make a practical choice and got a 2 year College diploma, which I've never put to use. Twenty years later, I haven't worked in decades, my children no longer really need me to be around all of the time, and I feel like I have squandered any gifts I ever had -- the labour could certainly have been harder, the ambition more vast, the choices more sage. I got married at 23, not because I needed Dave to take care of me for the rest of my life, but because it seemed the reasonable next step -- but what if I had concentrated on just me, on just the improvement of me, at that tender age instead? I don't know if anything would have been different -- I still would have lacked that fire, that purpose. And then there's my own daughters:

Kennedy just finished her first year of University, where she is studying Theater Arts and discovered a love for Art History (in which she intends to minor). I don't know if there are any two degrees that are more clichely "useless" than those, lol, but they are her passion and she has our full support (and I do mean that: I say "useless" to acknowledge the common perception only). Mallory, meanwhile, has confirmed plans to become a Museum Curator one day and plans to eventually get a PhD in History (another cliche, I fear) despite being an essentially lazy student, as I was. She, also, will have our full support in this. I was talking about the girls to my friend Beth the other day and she told me that her niece had gotten a degree in Psychology, and then realising that that was not a career in itself, she went back to College and got a diploma in HR Management as well, and is now on the path to success. I know that the newspapers are filled with hand-wringing about kids today getting useless degrees instead of practical training so I decided to share the story of Beth's niece with my girls -- in particular telling Mallory that museum curating is apparently a 2 year course at the college the niece attended. They were both nonplussed by the story and I don't blame them -- if there's one thing they somehow learned going through school it's that "smart kids" go to University and "dumb kids" go to College (despite the fact that their own mother has only a College diploma...) Mallory said that she wasn't looking at post-secondary just as training for a job but that she wants the years of learning, the specialised knowledge, that comes with a PhD. I do hope that's true -- Dave and I have nothing against the girls following their dreams; all we honestly want is their happiness. Don't they say, "Do what you love and the money will follow"? I also have to wonder to what degree our support reflects the fact that they are girls -- do we assume that one day they will both be married and have the support of their husbands if their own career dreams don't work out? There may be a bit of that, but since Dave's parents supported him when he went for a Theater Arts degree, we're probably more willing to encourage the pursuit of fulfillment over the pursuit of money alone. (And can also see how such a degree can be put to other uses -- there's always law school or politics for Kennedy...)

In the end, I suppose I married Noah Merry -- the good-natured, hard-worker who has provided me with a safe and comfortable life. Bethia shrank from that choice (before the option was removed for her) but, then again, I'm not Bethia. Would I have preferred to have married a man who challenged my mind? Dave's no dummy, but I learned long ago that he's not interested in discussing the things that inflamed my imagination (Quantum Physics, anyone?) My sisters-in-law all have careers (CGA, RMT, Speech Path), so couldn't I have worked on my own fulfillment while also raising a family? Like Bethia from her sickbed trying to imagine what might have happened had Caleb lived, I too must acknowledge that the what-ifs are a useless pursuit. And since I mentioned Caleb's death, here's the scant info that is known about the historical figure:

In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard University.

Cheeshahteaumuck, of the Wampanoag tribe, came from Martha's Vineyard and attended a preparatory school in Roxbury. At Harvard, he lived and studied in the Indian College, Harvard's first brick building, with a fellow Wampanoag, Joel Iacoomes. 

Cheeshahteaumuck died of tuberculosis in Watertown, Massachusetts less than a year after graduation. 

Apart from Cheeshahteaumuck and Iacoomes, at least two other Native American students attended the Indian College at this time. Eleazar died before graduating and John Wampus left to become a mariner. Iacoomes was lost in a shipwreck a few months prior to graduation, while returning to Harvard from Martha's Vineyard. Cheeshahteaumuck is believed to have been the only Native American to have graduated from the Indian College during its years of operation. These first students studied in an educational system that emphasized Greek, Latin, and religious instruction.

And there's the dramatic irony --  we can't know what did prompt Caleb to leave his traditional home and way of life to pursue a Classical educational, but for him to die within a year of graduation  (and for his cohorts to die -- or in one case drop out --before graduation) makes me wonder if the sacrifices could possibly have been worth the rewards. When Caleb dies in the book, having received through Bethia some secret words of his uncle the pawaaw (wizard), his final death song was incredibly poignant and touching; in the end, he knew where he belonged and to where he was heading; and that's the most that any of us can hope for, in the end.

The Midwich Cuckoos

We are all, you see, toys of the life force. It made you numerically strong, but mentally undeveloped; it made us mentally strong, but physically weak: now it has set us at one another, to see what will happen. A cruel sport, perhaps, from both our points of view, but a very, very old one. Cruelty is as old as life itself.

I'm sorry to say that The Midwich Cuckoos wasn't nearly as much fun as The Day of the Triffids, although it started out with a promising premise: After a small British village was mysteriously put to sleep for a day, it is eventually discovered that all of the women of child-bearing age are pregnant; even the virginal schoolgirls, modest widows and those who couldn't previously conceive. The all-male village elders -- a respected academic, the doctor, and the vicar -- decide that it must be a case of "xenogenesis" (changelings implanted during the "Dayout" by unknown forces) and that they must follow a course of "benign censorship" and not allow the outside world or their own womenfolk to know what is actually happening to them. These unquestioning vessels give birth to slightly strange looking babies who immediately exercise mind control over their mothers while the men sit back and wax philosophical. As the children grow up and become more powerful, the men wax harder.

I understand that this slim story has twice been made into a movie called Village of the Damned, the latest in 1995, but I honestly don't know how this dated material could possibly appeal to a modern audience. What woman today would willingly carry and give birth to an unknown entity? What group of women (including those virginal schoolgirls, older widows, the unattached) could be gathered together and told, "Well, this happened so we're just going to have to support each other and see it through" and have them accept it? What community, suspecting alien implantation, would want to just sit back and watch what happens? 

This book attempts to ask questions about maternal bonding and xenophobia and the treatment of minorities, but really offers no answers -- it never really answers the question of where the babies came from: what is this "life force" that arranged the "cruel sport"? There's quite a bit made of the idea that killing the children wouldn't be murder since they are, presumably, a different species, but that felt like a forced comparison to the similar argument that once allowed for the enslavement of Africans or the slaughter of the Native Americans: except in this case, the children were an invading species who were growing capable of wiping out humanity; surely we aren't meant to magnanimously accept them as the cuckoos in our nests?

A definite lack of fun and adventure in this book, and where it attempted to get deep, it grew dull and pedantic. 

Mind Picking : Careful What You Wish For

So, my Dad drove up from Nova Scotia again last week to buy another car that Ken had found for him to fix and flip (that makes two trips up in the last year, which totals...two trips up since they moved away 15 years ago). There was bad winter weather the whole way up and it took him a couple days longer than expected, and as tired as the old man must have been, Dad said he wanted to turn around and drive back home the same day. Seeing how disappointed Conor was to not get a visit with him, Dad asked Ken if Conor could miss a couple days of school, drive home with him, and fly back on Sunday. That was okayed and (despite my own girls and Ella and Ethan not getting any time with their grandfather) they were off.

That evening and the next day saw fine weather and they hauled the trailer across Ontario and Quebec without incident.

When they got to northern New Brunswick, however, Dad felt the car bouncing around and could see that a tie-down had come undone. He pulled way over to the side (this is a fast and well-travelled divided highway, large shoulders) and, just in case of some worst case scenario, he told Conor to get out of the truck and stand even further off the shoulder on the snowbank. Dad crawled under the trailer and was having trouble reaching the dangling end of the broken strap when, all of a sudden, a semi-truck went blasting past, his horn blowing and startling my Dad, who jumped and hit his head, hard, on the bottom of the trailer.

Cursing the truck driver -- "I'm over as far as I can go, why would he be blowing that *&^%%@ horn at me, etc" -- Dad laid back down, struggling to reach that dangling strap, and another semi zoomed past, his horn blasting. This happened a couple more times, my Dad getting madder and madder, his curses getting louder and fouler, and he scrambled out to see what was the trouble...and that's when he saw Conor...

...standing on top of that snowbank, pumping his fist like a lunatic, getting every truck driver going by to blow his horn. That's SO Conor -- he's nearly 12 but such an unabashed fan of big trucks and machines that he would have been having the time of his life, totally oblivious to what he was causing. The story is that Dad couldn't even get mad when he saw how much fun Conor was having, but I suspect that wasn't quite the case as Dad shoved the kid under the trailer to reach that broken strap himself.

And the lesson, of course, is that there are always consequences to showing favouritism: not a chance one of his granddaughters would have caused the head-bonks. As for Ethan...that's even odds.