This is another novel I would never have struggled through if it were not on the list for the book club discussion. Set England in 1908-09, the 42 chapters trace the lives of various individuals and families who interact at Howard’s End, an estate in southern Hertfordshire. There are intriguing marital infidelities related in the delicate language of post-Victorian English prudishness.There are family secrets, conflicts, betrayals, and estrangements brought about by introspective, hypersensitive personalities and a willingness to take offence at any perceived slight. One character seems to experience what is known as synesthesia, a crossing of sensory input signals, as she hears music in the scenes of the Oder River, and sees elephants on listening to Beethoven, but this interesting phenomenon is never developed further.
There are probably many readers who have enjoyed the lyrical prose and the time-set efforts of the characters to bring meaning to their lives, but I am not one of them. To me the endless ethereal conversations with long asides to the reader conveying the author’s perspectives, become boring and confusing. A lot of sentences in quotation marks go on and on without letting the reader in on the secret of who is talking. Admittedly, there is some development of a consistent plot, almost totally absent for the first 200 pages, in the latter chapters.
This is no A Passage To India, Forster’s later most famous novel, which I really enjoyed. I await enlightenment from the book club members about what is so great about this one.
This modern crash course on skin care was discussed in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. I have long been skeptical about the need for a dozen or more products with fancy names lined up on the washroom counter or in the shower, and got this book hoping for confirmation of my skepticism, a form of what psychologists call confirmation bias. The American physician author does not disappoint in this regard, trashing an industry that is largely unregulated and regularly makes ludicrous claims for expensive products.
The focus is largely on the role of the skin biome, the 1.5 trillion bacteria that live on the average human’s skin, feeding on dead skin cells and oils produced by sebaceous and apocrine glands. The author does not take showers or baths, but does cleanse his armpits and groin regularly, and washes his hair and hands frequently. He does not seem to have become a social pariah as a result of neglecting to wash the rest of his skin, travelling extensively and interviewing a variety of experts in dermatology, microbiology and the cosmetics industry, and his girlfriend has apparently not abandoned him. There is also discussion of the later beneficial effects of skin exposure to a wide variety of environments early in life.
There is a lot of compelling information about the harm done by overzealous use of soaps, detergents, shampoos, moisturizers, toners, anti-aging agents, and a variety of other products with enticing names and vague inventive promises thought up by advertising gurus. There is a fundamental difference between soaps (solid products made from lye and animal fats and packaged in paper) and liquid detergents, also commonly but falsely called soaps, made from byproducts in the fossil fuel industry and packaged in plastic from the same industry. We all constantly emit up to 1000 distinctive volatile compounds from our skin, that apparently allow trained dogs to detect Parkinson’s disease and some cancers. I was skeptical of these claims when they first were made several years ago, but the evidence is becoming compelling. This ‘volatolome’ may be as uniquely individual as a fingerprint. Will this some day be used in law enforcement identification of suspects?
The aptly titled ‘Lather’ chapter exposes the 3 billion dollar annual skin care products industry in the U.S. for the fraudulent rip off of gullible consumers that it is. It certainly leads to questions about the wisdom of allowing unfettered capitalism. Admen shamelessly prey on the vanity, fears, hopes, and perceived need to conform to an impossible standard of beauty of everyone who does not like the wrinkles, creases and blemishes they see in the mirror. A host of additives, including stem cells, vitamins, collagen and enzymes do nothing for skin health; some have entirely fictional names made up to sound impressive. Years ago, a friend doing a postoperative shave on the Canadian president of Proctor and Gamble asked for the patient’s shaving cream. The patient claimed that he never used any because of all the chemicals Proctor and Gamble put into it to stimulate hair growth; such is the blatant hypocrisy and cynical manipulation of marketing in much of the industry. It is worthy of a Michael Moore documentary; from his slovenly unwashed appearance, I somehow doubt that Moore patronizes the cosmetics industry.
The writing is straightforward prose sprinkled with bits of wry humour and the subject is well researched. There is no complicated medical or scientific jargon that would be difficult for someone with a limited education to understand. There is no discussion about the major problem of itch associated with systemic diseases that occupied a major portion of my research career in a past life, but that is really only a very minor and personal criticism of this insightful book. A more substantive criticism is the exclusively American focus in discussing legal and regulatory issues.
Will I change my skin care routines after reading this? Already, more than twenty years ago, hearing a rant from Danny Finkelman (Finkleman’s45s, CBC radio)I stopped using shaving cream; he pointed out that there was no basic difference in the effects of shaving cream and soap. I doubt that any shampoo is better than soap for my sparse hair. I will continue to sparingly use insect repellant and sunscreen on my exposed hide as necessary. I may be more careful in checking the labels on soaps and deodorants. I may also experiment a bit, but in the interest of domestic tranquility, I am not going to give up showering.
As a well-written iconoclastic eye-opener of relevance to everyone with an interest in the health of their biggest organ, this is a great read.
An Atlantic review is the stimulus that got me interested in this modern scholarly review of the most ubiquitous drink in the modern world, written by a New York professor. More than you ever needed or wanted to know about your morning cuppa, the book nevertheless leaves out much about the world of coffee. There is no mention of the different decaffeination processes, the different chemical composition of different coffees, nothing about the modern genetics, or the additives in such brands as Swiss or French vanilla.
What there is is a recital of thousands of historical facts in short simple sentences of dry humourless prose. Most of these relate to the historical development of the global coffee trade, the oppression of Salvadoran coffee workers, the duplicity of the United States’ imperialism in Salvadoran politics, and the history of the Hill’s Brothers family enterprise there. The author seems at times to be more interested in the history of El Salvador than the history of coffee.
Weaving in a whole chapter on the first law of thermodynamics as understood in the mid 1800s is a real stretch. There is considerable hyperbole about the importance of coffee in global affairs. “The early United States took shape as a political and economic project around the coffee trade, as commercial interest used coffee to build the national economy and foreign policy makers used it to stabilize and later increase the power of the United States in the world.”
Another sobering quote: “In 1859, the U.S. Department of Agriculture made an investigation into adulterants and dyes in coffee and found lead chromate, barium sulphate and burnt bones.”
Erudite and extensively researched (140 pages of notes, a 78 page bibliography, and a 54 page index in the ebook edition) there is no doubt the the author knows his subject well. But I don’t think he knows his readership. This may become a reference tome for courses on international trade, Latin American history, and agriculture, or industrial relations, but I can’t recommend it for the general public.
This historical novel somehow got on my reading list for reasons I have long since forgotten. The forty five chapters alternate between third person narrative accounts of Eva Gardiner in 1915-1919 and the first person person singular voice of Charlie (Charlotte) St. Claire, in 1947. The former is based on the real life of a lowly English teen recruited to the real life Alice network that provided intelligence about German war activities and plans in occupied European countries. The latter is a purely fictional wealthy American college student drawn into the hunt for a lost childhood cousin who may or may not have survived WWII in France. In an unusually long and detailed eight page Author’s Note, Quinn gives the reader some information about what parts of the story are historically accurate (a surprising amount) and which characters and happenings are fictional.
The themes of female bonding and loyalty in the face of horrendous risks and hardships, separation and estrangement, the cruelties of war and the depravity of some ‘collaborators’ all come through loud and clear. The plot twists are intricate and although there are too many coincidences, readers will not feel lost in the complexities. Lines from Baudelaire’s poems are woven into the story, as are several real historical figures such as Edith Cavell. Fragile psyches of ex-military personnel who have witnessed the unspeakable horrors of war and lead to further violence, addictions, and suicides seem to be universal hangovers from all wars.
There are some unrealistic scenarios such as sudden violent but consensual sex as an outlet for anger directed at the partner, and Evelyn Gardner’s constant guilt and self reproach for betrayal under torture. The melodramatic encounter with Madame Roufanche in the abandoned real life hamlet of Oradur-sur-Glane seems like a weak attempt to instil some suspense into a tale of pathos and unending misery. In most novels, as here, eyebrows seem to always be far too bushy and too mobile.
There are so many historical novels centred on wars that it seems like a literary genre of its own. This is one of the better ones, but not as good in my estimation as Kristen Hannah’s The Nightingale. Even if they tend to exaggerate the despicable acts of cruelty, they serve to remind readers of the horrors of all war. And it seems to me that an historical novel set in peacetime would be difficult to write and likely boring to read.
I have no idea where I read the review that made me decide to download this novel from the library but I wonder if the reviewer was a paid relative of the author or the publisher.
The glass hotel is a fictional luxury establishment on a remote inlet in northern Vancouver Island, owned by a criminal New York financial guru modelled after Bernie Madoff. The action spans the globe with billionaires and their lifestyles described in rich detail, along with the down and out itinerant addicts who try to make a living writing music scores, producing music videos, and performing in seedy bars and hotel lounges.
There are more time shifts and minor characters than I could possibly keep track of. Whimsical musings of many characters include ‘shadow world’ what-ifs, and several seem to live in their own fantasy worlds and hallucinations. To be fair, the self-justifying denials of those involved in a sixty five billion dollar Ponzi scheme and their later lives in various prisons are entertaining and realistic- what we have come to expect from white collar criminals. But the description of the downfall of Alkaitis, the doppelgänger of Bernie Madoff, is no better than that of the real Bernie Madoff as carefully documented in Erin Arverdlund’s book, Too Good To Be True. (I have not seen the 2017 TV movie adaptation, The Wizard of Lies.)
To illustrate how unrealistic some of this story is, at the end, the cook on a container ship reminiscences about her life for eight pages after she falls off into the Atlantic and promptly drowns.
First a note about the length of books. I downloaded this one from the library on CloudLibrary. It shows it as 420 pages. My wife downloaded it using the library Libby ap, which shows it as being 609 pages. I have no idea how many pages there are in the paper edition, but it seems to me to be an average length novel- probably a little over 300 pages, depending on font and page sizes, and the layout. Perhaps the time it takes the average reader to get through a book is a better metric- in this case, I would guess about ten hours.
In 2015, the neonatal son of a neo-Nazi white supremist couple dies after being cared for by an experienced black labor and delivery nurse. I won’t give away the details of the intricate supremely well-designed plot, but the unrecognized and unacknowledged biases of all of the characters will force the reader to consider their own biases. The suspense of not knowing the fate of the black nurse and the white supremist thug is maintained until the very end. If you can anticipate the surprising but realistic twists in the last few chapters, you should be writing mystery novels, not just reading them.
The action is set in New Haven, giving me the extra pleasure of recalling my three years there, including at Yale-New Haven and West Haven hospitals, (but not the fictional West Haven Mercy Hospital.) The details of the hospital routines, the actions of the medical and nursing staff, and the stresses of dealing with unexpected emergencies, especially in obstetrics and paediatrics, are all spot on. I hesitate to relate my own disastrous experience in obstetrics but here it is. My first delivery, as a third year medical student, was a term stillborn to a haemorrhaging lady who had been trying to get pregnant for six years, the same night as her husband died suddenly of a pulmonary embolus. No wonder I still hate obstetrics fifty two years later.
The story is narrated in the voices of the main characters, with abundant dry humour, provided principally in the character and observations of the white female public defender of the black nurse. The legal maneuvering and intricacies are equal to anything from John Grisham. The paranoid conspiracy theories preached by the white supremists are no less absurd than those promulgated by some Trump supporters. Much of the dialogue is politically incorrect and jarring but fits the characters.
So many great quotes and astute observations. From the labor and delivery nurse: “Babies are such blank slates. They don’t come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don’t like. They don’t come into this world with anything, really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver.I wonder how long it takes before the polish given by nature gets worn off by nurture.”
From the public defender: “When you start to see the seedy underbelly of America,…..it makes you want to live in Canada.”
And just what does “flesh coloured” advertising of Bandaids or panty hose say to a black person?
Once there is widespread recognition that there is no biological basis for the existence of different races of Homo sapiens, a day may come when even use of the words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’and the plural of the word ‘race’ in relation to humans will come to be regarded as quaintly anachronistic based on misconceptions, like the 17th century word ‘miasma’ once used to explain epidemics. I can dream.
Such prolific novelists as Picoult seldom produce anything that gives the reader much food for thought, but there is lots of that here. Like Jeanine Cummins for American Dirt she has been criticized for “cultural misappropriation” but her keen insights into the complexities of relations between people of different skin colours are quite rare and laudatory. We are endlessly bombarded with media stories about supposedly racist incidents and racism accusations are at times unwarranted or overblown. But the issues as of today are real and need to be addressed urgently.
A great read that I will recommend to my book club.
I like to read books without paying any attention to the reviews of others, although with paper editions the laudatory praise on the jackets are hard to ignore. I got this one as a library ebook, and have not read any reviews of it, reading it only because it is to be discussed in our book club in two weeks.
In Elkins Park in eastern Pennsylvania, a grand old house changes hands four times in the time that the male narrator grows from being a toddler to his mid fifties, in the latter half of the twentieth century.The members of the blended families and the servants all relate their memories of the good times and the conflicts that developed over the years around the house.
There is a combination of mystery, drama, romance and coming of age all related in straightforward prose. Some of the developments seem quite unrealistic such as a mother abandoning her children to just disappear by travelling to India. Some characters are almost caricatures, such as the cold, distant real estate developer, the extremely self-centred, cruel step-mother, and several characters whose social skills seem to be limited to inflicting guilt trips. There are also more introspective self-analyses and doubts, contrived personality conflicts, and flashbacks to childhoods idealized by faulty memories than can be reasonably expected in one small set of characters. Everyone seems to be insecure, willing and even anxious to take offence at the slightest perceived negative comment. The time shifts back and forth in different chapters can be confusing.
The writing is fluent and sometimes almost poetic. Insights into mental processes at different stages of a life and responses to circumstances are realistic. A good quote: “There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.”
I found this book to neither convey anything profound nor to be particularly realistic and enjoyable. I will await the insights of the book club members.
In the 1970s, a cannibalistic serial killer psychiatrist treats patients in the Baltimore Asylum for the Criminally Insane. If your taste in crime fiction is for something even darker, maybe you will be satisfied with the lad who drops the severed head of his mother on the collection plate at church, or the serial killer who skins (“harvest the hide”) his large female victims to make costumes and clothing. This cult classic is the first of five such books by Thomas Harris featuring the now infamous psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, whose name has become synonymous with ultimate evil in popular parlance and in cinematic circles.
But there are also very vivid lovable characters including the junior FBI student Clarice Starling and her mentor and Sectional Head at Behavioural Sciences, Jack Crawford. The fast-paced story in sixty-one short chapters is filled with plot twists guaranteed to keep readers engaged. Those twists are so complex that it is difficult to believe that even the author could keep it consistent. But he ties them all up neatly and leaves no threads unravelled at the end. That such monster serial killers as depicted here exist is easy to forget as most of them are fortunately locked securely away in such institutions as Ontario’s Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in Penetanguishene, formerly known as the Ontario Hospital for the Criminally Insane. But they are out there and thrive on attention – think Karla Homolka, Paul Bernardo, Michael Rafferty, Robert Picton or Colonel Russell Williams.
Jurisdictional disputes between the FBI, the Justice Department, various other federal bureaucracies, and the various levels of state and local law enforcement agencies are shown in details that are probably very realistic, but inevitably impede investigations. But if I, with limited expertise in anything, know that the assertion that bilirubin is the main colouring agent in stool is completely wrong, I wonder how many factual impossibilities other more knowledgeable individuals will detect in relation to moth entomology, haberdashery, cooking, basic criminology and psychology, and police procedures .
I was drawn into the chase, hoping for the success of Clarise Starling, in spite of the revolting subject matter. I have not watched the Hollywood adaptation nor will I read the further novels featuring Hannibal Lecter. A small dose of darkness is enough to last a long time. Next, I will read something more upbeat.
On an early dawn walk, I found this wet, dew-soaked book abandoned on the same lakeside park bench where I had found The Moscow Cipher over a year ago. But unlike The Moscow Cipher this one is a well researched, true spy story, and stranger than any novelist could ever dream up. Thomas: Harris’s Hannibal Returns is another book that I found deserted outdoors , although I can’t recall what park bench it was on. A friend whose whole career was as a counterintelligence agent around the world suggested that perhaps that park bench is a ‘drop’ for some local secret agent network. If so, I have interrupted their communications two or three times. More likely someone just likes to read spy stories in the fresh air. But who would leave any deserving book to the elements on a park bench? At least as far as I know, no one followed me home.
Eddie Chapman was a British bank robber, extortionist and philanderer, associating with the criminal gangs around Soho before WWII. After diving out the window of restaurant on Jersey Island where he was entertaining his latest lover to escape from the law officer who showed up, he was imprisoned by the Nazi occupiers. Taken to various mainland sites, he eventually volunteered to work with the Nazi Abwehr secret service. Between 1942 and late 1944, he was variously in England (parachuted in at night twice), occupied France, Quisling’s Norway, neutral Portugal, or at sea. He was trusted by his Nazi handlers and later by the British MI5 and MI6 spooks, providing radio information of apparently great strategic value to both sides. But much of the information was meant to deceive, and he was a master at deception. His handlers were obliged to arrange for prostitutes to satisfy his unbridled libido. He was paid by both those whom he betrayed and those he helped, but money was never a major motivation to him. Rather, he was one of those interesting totally amoral human beings who was also absolutely addicted to taking risks.
The world of double agents, espionage and counterespionage is laid bare in fascinating detail. It is enough to make any reader paranoid and suspicious of the real motives and activities of close friends and casual acquaintances alike. The moral dilemmas faced by wartime leaders, such as feeding the Germans false information about where their V-1 rockets were landing, which would result in an adjustment by them to aim at different population centres, are difficult to resolve.
After the war, when back in his British criminal element, Chapman attempted unsuccessfully to write a book about his role in the war. But like my espionage friend, he was prevented from doing so by the legal and political establishment. (There is no Statue of Limitation in the Official Secrets Act applicable to those holding state secrets) That was probably just as well, because Eddie Chapman, like some current politicians, seemed to be constitutionally unable or unwilling to distinguish truth from fiction.
The detailed Nazi radio codes provided in the Appendix, which I cannot decipher, are enough to make me wonder about why this book was left on a park bench. Perhaps my suspicions are unfounded.
Better than almost any spy or crime novel, this is a fascinating well researched and well written book.
I am not sure how this title got on to my wish list, but I am glad that it did. My Kentucky daughter says that it is mandatory for many school English classes in the southern states. It is told in the first person singular by a young boy who like the author eked out a living with his family in the remote foothills of the Ozark mountains in northern Oklahoma in the 1920s.
The story of Billy Colman’s deep longing for two coonhounds, acquiring them, then the fantastical stories of their hunting adventures is both far fetched and entertaining. The deep understanding and love between a boy and his dogs can probably be best appreciated by a farm boy who loved dogs and hunting as much as I did, but even city folk should be able to understand the deep affection that is tenderly portrayed. In some ways this is reminiscent of the adventures of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, in a bit more modern setting. Sex is barely mentioned and women play only minor roles, except for BIlly’s overprotective mother. The outcome of her latest pregnancy is the only dangling item left to the reader’s imagination. Religious beliefs are not a major factor in the story, and are treated as mystical whims.
The very different personalities of the two Redbone hounds, Old Dan and Little Ann, are strikingly different but their loyalty to Billy never wavers. Their adventures and feats of courage are really quite unrealistic, but the reader will get caught up in them and wish them luck. The scenery is described beautifully, and although the family is strikingly poor, the childhood is portrayed as a happy carefree one. The significance of the old Indian myth of the red fern is revealed only in the last chapter but is a great finishing touch to a great story of love, loyalty, connections to nature, and coming of age. A great yarn that took me back to my own coon hunting days, albeit in a very different setting.
The thesis in this thought-provoking book is neatly summed up on page 4 of the Prelude. “….picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished.” Then, ominously, “Say a Homo sapiens specific virus…picks us off but leaves everything else intact.” But it also goes into great detail about what the world was like before we arrived on the scene, and how our existence has altered that.
The author is a science writer whose Harper’s article about life around Chernobyl after the meltdown got me interested in this tome. Packed with obscure, often counterintuitive observations, it is nevertheless highly speculative and full of depressing facts about the harm we have done to our home planet and other life forms that we share space with. This includes the Africa-sized three million tons of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Dump, the long-lasting effects of petrochemical pollution, climate change, and reduction of biodiversity everywhere.
If we were to suddenly disappear, explosion of petrochemical storage facilities would dump massive amounts of toxic waste into the atmosphere and the oceans, and radioactive waste from unmaintained reactors and storage sites would harm every other species, but mosquitoes and fish might become more plentiful. Our newest buildings would collapse before some ancient structures. Birds would stop killing themselves by the millions in collisions with glass windows and buildings.
The topics discussed include a broad range from archeology to all kinds of biology, ecology, astronomy, physics and chemistry. The writing is largely humourless and dry, and I found some ‘what if’s’ so unlikely as to be hardly worth our speculation. That includes the discussion of a virus that is so specific as to wipe us out without touching any other species. Such a virus cannot logically develop as it would self-annihilate, contrary to everything we understand about evolutionary science. In discussions about crumbling concrete under the influence of freeze-thaw cycles, there is no recognition that there are differing grades of concrete, some designed to specifically counter such effects. And concrete is at times equated with cement. I cannot pretend to understand the engineering jargon used to describe the crumbling of the Panama Canal after we depart nor much of the astrophysics.
The author makes a powerful argument to limit the birth rate of Homo sapiens to one child per fertile female to reduce our population to at least nineteenth century levels to reduce the harm to our home planet, but does not discuss the sociological effects of that, as seen in China. And I am bored with speculations about somehow removing ourselves to some other planet after we have destroyed this one, as I will not be around if/when that becomes a possibility.
A depressing read that nevertheless delivers important information for planners and public officials to consider, this book should be consulted before undertaking major projects affecting large populations. But it is of limited use for everyone else, though stuffed with interesting facts that could be used enliven a faltering cocktail party conversation with almost anyone.
Part biographies of billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman, part true double murder mystery story with no definitive conclusion and part insight into the interesting world of Toronto Jewish wealth and philanthropy, this is a fascinating read. The couple were brutally murdered in their mansion in a posh area of North York, on December 13th, 2017.
The author is a Toronto Star investigative reporter. As such, one would expect him to be critical of the police investigations, and he does not disappoint. But in this case, the deficiencies of the police attempts to solve the crime seem to be glaring lapses as they, from the start, developed tunnel vision and only after six weeks admitted that their initial conclusion about the nature of the crime was wrong. That admission was forced by the findings of the private investigators hired by the family.
Barry Sherman was an interesting character, a 77 year old self-assured workaholic, atheist, philanthropist, and risk-taker who parlayed a modest start into a multibillionaire dollar empire, with the generic drug company Apotex responsible for much of his wealth. The vast fortune available to those willing to cut corners in the pharmaceutical industry is well documented in Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies and in Gerald Posner’s Pharma. But Sherman also funded many other risky enterprises, won and lost millions in hundreds of court battles, and eschewed conspicuous wealth, driving old cars, travelling in economy class, preferring fast food outlets to fancy dining, and wearing tattered old clothes. Although he is sympathetically portrayed as a highly moral philanthropist, he apparently had no qualms about starting up a Florida plant to produce tons of fentanyl during the opioid addiction epidemic.
Honey was an equally interesting contradictory character. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she drove a ten year old battered SUV, preferred old clothes to the new designer outfits that she bought and hoarded, pushed herself to physical limits in spite of severe arthritis, and enthusiastically supported many Jewish philanthropies. Their marriage seemed to be a happy one, although Barry at one point joked about hiring a hit man to knock her off. In contrast, the lives of their four children, and Honey’s sister and her children have been marred by addictions and endless conflicts among themselves and between them and the victims.
There is no definitive finger-pointing by the conclusion of this book, published in mid 2019, but it is clear that the author believes that the killer(s) were known to the victims. Conspiracy theorists have weighed in with many unlikely scenarios. Although the Toronto police continue to be tight-lipped about the case, they have acknowledged that they have a theory about the killer(s), but there have been no arrests. I suspect they just haven’t enough evidence to convict. But if you really need to believe in a conspiracy theory, you could do worse than propose that some corrupt senior politician standing to gain financially- there are lots to choose from- has bribed an equally corrupt senior police official to not pursue the investigation or lay any charges. Stay tuned.
This seemed like a timely novel for our current situation. In the Algerian port town of Oran, an epidemic of plague results in a huge death toll, mandated lockdown, isolation of the town of 200,000, and social stresses. The parallels are indeed very impressive with the separation of family members, endless debates about what authorities mandate, economic collapse, and individuals introspectively questioning the meaning of their lonely lives. But there are also striking differences that we should appreciate. With personal letters prohibited due to fear of disease transmission, the residents are forced to use limited access to telephones and telegraphs for communication, in the age before email, the internet and FaceTime, and many had no means of communication with separated loved ones at all.
There are other parallels to more recent social history. A priest, in a long sermon, calls the plague God’s punishment for the evil deeds of the townspeople, like evangelicals calling AIDS his punishment for homosexuality in the 1980s. The daily fluctuations of the radio announcements of the number of deaths and corresponding fluctuating moods of the populace seem familiar in the age of Covid, but in 1947 no one had the TV talking heads and self-proclaimed experts on social media mouthing off ad nauseum. The other obvious parallels include anxieties about shortages, hoarding, and some folks’ interpretation of the pestilence as fulfillment of ancient prophesies. Information fatigue sets in as the epidemic drags on, and all emotional responses become blunted. “No one experienced great feelings anymore, but everyone experienced banal feelings.”
Camus inserts much of his absurdist philosophy and a hint of his anarchistic political leanings into the story by discussing his views as the dissident ‘narrator’s opinion’. Only toward the end do we find out who the narrator is.
There is a strong theme throughout the story of the meaning of separation, whether by death or by enforced quarantine. In an undated Afterword by Tony Judt, he makes the case that the whole story is an allegory for the trials of the French during the Nazi occupation, something that was not obvious to me at this chronological and geographic remove.
The writing style is reminiscent of Faulkner- baroque, ornamental, and polished with long esoteric discussions about the nature of good and evil, religion, and the purpose of living by all the characters all of whom are threatened by, and in proximity to, death. Part III consisting of musings about flattening emotional ranges and fading memories of those one is separated from, was a bit confusing, vague and disappointing to me.
An interesting, timely reminder that the challenges that we face with Covid-19, and the varied responses, are far from unique in history. Although this story is fictional, there is nothing unrealistic about it. I quite enjoyed it.
I am not sure why this novel got on to my wish list, but it did and I downloaded it from the OPL when it became available. In a remote cove on the west shore of Newfoundland’s Bonavista Penninsula, (apparently in the late 1700s, although there are no dates discussed) both parents and an infant daughter die in short order, leaving a ten year old boy and an eight year old girl to fend for themselves for at least eight years. They trade furs and fish for provisions from a ship that stops by twice yearly, never sure they will survive until the next visit.
As the pair enter into puberty, their sexual awakening is described in reasonably delicate language at first but then becomes more graphic. Although possibly realistic, considering their ignorance, illiteracy and isolation, many readers will be repulsed by the description of their conflicted and befuddled activities.
Newfie idioms and primitive language is used liberally by the Newfie author, to great effect in conveying their simple unique way of life. There are few characters to keep track of, and as a peek into the early subsistence culture, this is probably an accurate portrayal. The ending is abrupt, leaving the reader with questions about the fate of the protagonists. That may be a good strategy if the author is planning to write a sequel.
I have mixed feelings about this dark and sinister tale. Do not read it if your at all prone to depression. I understand that the author’s earlier novels are more upbeat.
My wife sent me to get this fictional autobiography from the library for her book club discussion. As I walked home with it and realized that it was a first person singular fictionalized autobiography of the American poet and novelist Joy Davidman and her friendship/romance with Oxford professor C.S. Lewis, I decided to read it too. C.S. Lewis was a staple of my teenage reading- not the Narnia children’s chronicles, but everything he ever wrote in defence of Christianity. Mere Christianity was practically a fifth gospel according to my parents and The Problem of Pain, Miracles, The Screwtape Letters, and Surprised by Joy were required reading. Lewis’ death on November 22, 1963, was mourned in our house more than that of JFK who was killed the same day. Only much later did I find critical flaws in his superficially persuasive eloquent arguments for Christianity.
C.S. Lewis was the quintessential mid-twentieth century insular Oxford academic, buried in books, set in his ways, shunning and fearful of intimacy, brilliant but blinkered to the realities of the rest of the world. Joy Davidson was a troubled abused atheist, who, like Lewis and St. Paul had a sudden conversion experience to Christianity that changed the rest of her life. Relating that mystical experience in a letter to Lewis led to their long friendship/romance and eventual civil and then religiously sanctioned marriage, the latter only after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
As a love story this is unusual, based as it is on mutual interests in classical literature, writing, mysticism and mythology, as well as religious beliefs. Their greatly embellished imagined conversations are filled with platitudes about God’s will and the mysteries of His ways, especially after Joy is diagnosed with terminal cancer. The expressed fear of death seems incongruous with their deep faith in a better life to follow, but this contradiction is integral to almost all religious beliefs. The risible rigid hypocrisy of the Church of England’s refusal to sanction the remarriage of a divorced person fortunately eased before I was remarried in Huron College’s chapel by an Anglican priest.
Neither protagonist was any saint. Lewis was a chain-smoking, heavy drinker, friend to many but fearful of intimacy or commitment to anyone. Davidman was an insecure libidinous divorcee escaping from an abusive marriage who practically begged prudish Lewis to have sex with him (and failed until after her diagnosis of terminal cancer and their belated church- sanctioned wedding). She was always complaining about being broke but still managed to find money for travel, fancy clothes, and endless quantities of whiskey, sherry, and beer. Neither seems to have paid any attention to any issues outside of their white Western culture.
There are some minor discrepancies with the lengthy fawning 1988 biography, Jack. A Like of C.S. Lewis by his friend and fellow-writer George Sayer, which I read years ago. I was surprised that it was not acknowledged by the author in her Suggested Further Reading.
As a reflection of the times in white academic Britain, the real characters of Lewis and Davidman, and the conservative religious views of the era, this is an enlightening read. As a novel of friendship that became a romance, I suspect women will enjoy it more than men will.
The Seattle mother of a transsexual child relates this engaging fiction about a family with five boys, the youngest of which from age five feels that he is a girl and acts like modern American society expects girls to act. The bedlam of a family with five boisterous boys under ten and the exhaustion and frustrations of the parents is shown with hilarious episodes, very abundant wry humour and double entendres. There is some suspense until close to the end as there is doubt about whether or not the child will complete the transition to being a girl anatomically as well as outwardly and psychologically or revert to being a boy. The settings are realistic, in Madison, Wisconsin, Seattle, and a remote medical clinic in Thailand. Refreshingly, in spite of being set largely in modern America, there is not one word about politics. The author must have spent time in Bangkok to have described the crowds, smells, and makeshift sidewalk markets with vendors of exotic foods as accurately as I recall them from spending one week there.
The father in the family is an aspiring novelist who also imagines unlikely lengthy fairy tales to tell the children as bedtime stories that they listen to together well into their teens. But the fairy tales become an allegory for the trials and troubles of the whole family trying to cope with the trans kid’s problems. There is a none-too-subtle earnest plea for tolerance, acceptance, and understanding of not just LGBTQ children but also of the difficulties that their families inevitably encounter. Gender role stereotyping is thoroughly trashed, while the binary Western attitudes about gender identity are contrasted with the more accepting culture of Buddhist Thailand. There is extensive metaphysical pondering based on Buddhist philosophy in the later chapters that I failed to comprehend completely and I doubt that I am alone in that.
The writing style is eloquent, the characters are easy to keep track of, there are no loose ends, and no plot twists are entirely unrealistic.
This is a timely enjoyable read with a potent message. In spite of dwelling on gender identity, the message is not at all about anatomy or the deployment of various combinations of appendages and orifices to express love or just for erotic satisfaction, but about gender discrimination, tolerance and respect for people with different lifestyles, and ultimately, love.
My wife got this book from the library because it is on the schedule for her ladies book club. When she decided to abandon it, she suggested that I try as I was running low on readily available new books. If only to prove a point, I read to the end, although if I had not been in lockdown, I would have given up after a few pages.The author was a well-known Pulitzer prize-winning American-Canadian novelist, playwright, poet and feminist who died in 2003.
The first person singular narrator is an aspiring novelist, married to a family physician in Orangetown, north of Toronto (read Orangeville), shaken by a daughter who leaves for university then suddenly and inexplicably takes up the life of a mute street beggar in Toronto, in 2000. So far I have not revealed any of the implausible plot that is not revealed on the jacket.
Fond of angry feminist man-bashing,(while denying being angry) the narrator seems to lump almost all men except her husband into one evil cohort of misogynistic beasts. There are abundant reasons for women as a group to rail against the oppression and unequal treatment they have suffered throughout history, but feminists do themselves no favour by denying that there are many decent men in the world. To be fair, she does a good job of pointing out the many discriminations women experience that are not obvious to most men, such as a (male) literary reviewer selecting only male writer’s works to review. And she has an editor of her novel insisting on making a man, rather than a woman the hero of the story. It is easy to see the appeal of this writing to large numbers of downtrodden, systemically-disadvantaged women, but ‘the lady doth protest methinks.’ As a good friend (a lady) said when discussing this writing, “Stop the whining.”
The rabid feminism is only a minor part of why I did not like this book. There is endless nostalgic, melodramatic, self-pitying, introspective self-analyses. And I am really tired of fiction writers writing about other fiction writers writing about writing. The mostly one-word chapter headings, all conjunctions, made no sense to me, even when I tried to unscramble them, even though they are apparently in some profound way, the very essence of life. Most of a chapter is devoted to the seemingly very difficult but (to me) banal task of picking out a scarf in a row of boutiques in Washington, D.C. The attempts to seem erudite fall flat. “Whenever, and for whatever reason, these words fall into my vision, I feel my breath stuck in my chest like an eel I’ve swallowed whole.” “This thought pulsed in my throat.” My understanding of basic human anatomy and physiology is insulted.
A longtime Washington Post syndicated columnist delivers more than any commoner would ever need to know about America’s Supreme Court. She also reveals more than any one would ever need to know about the devious, power-hungry, back-stabbing maneuvering of most people inside the D.C. beltway. That is true unless you are a member of that peculiar oxymoronic species, Scientifica politico, better known as the common wonk, or the closely related species that the author belongs to, the Papyrus novus scriptor. Both species are widely distributed, but tend to migrate to capital cities.
There are far too many assistants, associates, deputies, chairs, undersecretaries, and chiefs and combinations of those titles for most readers to keep track of, perhaps inevitably in a town full of big egos with a fondness for fancy titles. There are also too many agencies, boards, bureaus, committees, commissions, institutes, offices, departments and secretariats some of which are identified only by acronyms even the first time they appear, as though the reader should be familiar with hundreds of them. This is a very inside-the-capital expectation, as I discovered on moving to Ottawa.
This is an exhaustively researched endeavour without any obvious author biases or judgments. In the final chapter she provides her personal thoughts about the characters, including Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who, along with at least two other women, accused him of sexual assault, with no definitive conclusion. I believe Ford’s account as she had nothing to gain except loss of privacy, vulgar insults, and death threats, by speaking up. Is it possible that both witnesses were truthful- only if he committed the assaults in an alcoholic blackout, which seems almost certain to me. But he also had ample reason to be disingenuous and evasive as he had maneuvered to become a Supreme Court Justice since his days as a drunk, privileged high school jock and Eli. Yale University provided me with a great educational experience, but it’s Law School seems to excel in producing unscrupulous, ambitious lawyers and politicians.
None of the politicians come out of this looking morally untainted, except two or three female senators who obviously agonized over how to vote. That ultimate partisan control freak, Mitch McConnell, created the vacancy by blocking consideration of Obama’s nominee before the 2016 election. Well past her senatorial best-before date, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein withheld vital information from both sides in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, to the detriment of getting at the facts. Most senators seemed more concerned about being re-elected than about making a decent moral choice. The frightening White House restraint on the FBI investigation, imposed by Don McGahn, counsel to Trump, made their investigation into Dr. Ford’s allegations a complete farce that Trump then touted as vindication of Kavanaugh’s innocence.
The amoral viciousness of Washington partisan politics was tragically and succinctly stated by Vincent Foster who, mercilessly hounded by Clinton opponents, wrote “Here ruining people is considered sport” shortly before shooting himself in the head. Then the ever-hovering lawyers and conspiracy theorists started debating the cause of his death, blaming the Clintons.
The liberals’ prediction of dire consequences of Kavanaugh’s appointment may be overblown. There is a long history of judges disappointing the politicians who appoint them, as both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have already done. But there is no doubt that the image of high court justices acting impartially, like umpires calling balls and strikes, is a myth. Judges are human, with faults and sometimes extreme biases like the rest of us. And there has to be a better way of picking fairer umpires without destroying so many trees; the papers for review by the senate judiciary committee alone ran to 780,000 pages. And no one should trust octogenarian umpires.
It is easy to be critical, biased, and smug from this distance, but I really do believe that our system of governance, for all its faults, is better that theirs.
My interest in U.S. politics derives in part from having two daughters and two grandchildren living there. If nothing else, this book shatters any delusions that they are living in a democracy. I would recommend this read only if you have some similar interest in the chaos theory in action called American politics.
Another Father’s Day gift, this one, appropriately, is from my theatre arts teacher/daughter. The Harvard English professor certainly knows his Shakespeare, and is selective here in discussing his plays about tyrants. He notes that all the tyrants are well before Shakespeare’s time since he would risk his life if he criticized more current tyrants. The included tyrants are in Henry VI (parts I-III), Richard III, Macbeth, King Lear, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus, in the order in which they were written.The ruthless pursuit of power for power’s sake is depicted in all of these with brutal realism.
Shakespeare’s insights into the masochistic, and narcissistic personalities of tyrants developed over his lifetime and are still highly relevant and cautionary. “A tyrant does not traffic in facts or supply evidence. He expects his accusations to be enough.” “What he actually wants is loyalty and by loyalty he does not mean integrity, honour or responsibility. He means an immediate, unreserved confirmation of his own views and a willingness to carry out his orders without hesitation. When an autocratic, paranoid narcissistic ruler sits down with a civil servant and asks for his loyalty, the state is in danger.” This is as close as Greenblatt comes to criticizing current leaders, but it is not hard to see the relevance to Trumpland.
Much of this discussion could be viewed as an expanded Playbill for the tragedies discussed.There is absolutely no humour in this dry treatise. There is also no “About the Author” as though he thinks he must be so well known that everyone in the English world knows all about him.
This will be a valuable book for dedicated Shakespeare buffs. If you are going to see any of the plays discussed, it would be useful to read the relevant parts in advance.
This bizarre modern novel is narrated by various characters, and covers a time span from the recent past to far into the future. A fifteen-year-old New Yorker leaves on her own to find the Iowan father she has never met. He is less than welcoming but she stays and gradually falls in with a ragtag group of radicals, criminals, and animal rights activists. When she is the narrator, she resorts to comparing her real life with that which she imagines she would have had if she had stayed in New York.
A plot to free hundreds of thousands of layer hens housed in horrible conditions is slowly developed and deployed lead by ostensibly public inspectors and auditors of the massive factory farms, along with secret inside informers. Let’s just say that not everything goes as planned, all because of what happens in Barn 8. Conflicts between the conspirators and conflicts within farming families forms much of the story line.
There is an undercurrent of condemnation of amoral unfettered capitalism and selfish greed and the seemingly inevitable decline of the of the human race. Far into the future, the hens are doing fine while we have become extinct.
I have fond memories of dozens of free-range White Leghorns (neighbours raised Rhode Island Reds that lay brown eggs which we thought, perhaps with a subconscious racial bias, to be inferior). Ours were usually penned most of the year and climbed or flew into wooden nests lined with straw to lay their eggs. We went to gather eggs from these twice a day, 24/7. When she stopped laying eggs, the axe as guillotine awaited. Still I find it as easy as Unferth to believe that White Leghorns have individual personalities and communication skills and deserve better lives than they are ever afforded on modern factory farms.
The writing is precise and scenes are described vividly. The writer’s imagination is ingenious. One quote to illustrate this: “… outside the barn, insects were rubbing their instruments, tuning up, playing the preludes to millions of songs that sound to the human ear like the author-less plainchants, a chorus of Dark Age petitioners, though each cricket song contains variations that make it unique.”
In places, there appear some apparently disconnected bits that must have some deep literary significance that totally escapes me, such as the long question and answer section towards the end.
I can’t recall where I read the review that persuaded me to borrow this book, but I quite enjoyed it. I am quite sure my nephew, the owner of a huge chicken farm operation would not.
The Passionate Reader 