Alentejo Blue - Wendy's Review

She wore her black slingbacks and a white cotton dress with blue flowers that matched the paint that framed the door. Alentejo blue. here she was, in a picture, in a moment, setting out for the rest of her life. -From Alentejo Blue, page 131-

Monica Ali's novella - Alentejo Blue - is a collection of moments lived by its vast array of characters. The Alentejo region of Portugal -located in south-central Portugal and known for its tiny, medieval villages - is the perfect setting for Ali's book, which seems to be a collection of interconnected, short stories. Ali is adept at exploring her characters' inner lives. The reader is gradually introduced to the inhabitants of the fictional town of Mamarrosa: Joao, an old timer who has seen the days of Communism and remembers the revolution of the peasants; Vasco, the baker whose obesity and compulsion with eating hides his painful losses; Teresa, a young woman who longs to break away from the village of her birth; Sophie and Huw, an engaged couple whose holiday to Portugal uncovers the deeper issues of their relationship; Elaine, a middle-aged English woman seeking meaning in her tired marriage; Stanton, the alcoholic writer living a shallow existence; and the Potts family, living a dysfunctional existence far from their home in England. As the novella unwinds, the reader glimpses the connections between characters and the main themes evolve.

There is a theme of "old" world vs. "new" - highlighted by the elderly, traditional members of the village vs. the youth and tourists. Change is in the air, but it is unclear whether it will be for the best, or will simply disrupt the flow of village life.

So we stay as we are and watch the shadows lengthen and smell the evening loaves being baked and fell the sun slipping low, blushing over our necks like the first taste of wine. -From Alentejo Blue, page 94-

Ali's lyrical prose transports the reader into the countryside of Portugal.

The plains spread out on either side. Here and there a cork oak stood grieving. The land rose and fell in modest dimensions. Now and again a gleam of machinery, glittering drops of water on an acacia, a giant eucalyptus shedding its splintery scrolls. Field upon field upon field, wheat and grass and fallow, on and on and on, and in this flat composition there was a depth, both sadness and tremulous joy. -From Alentejo Blue, page 163-

This novel was listed as a 2006 New York Times Most Notable book - and I think it is deserving of that honor. Ali is a gifted writer with great understanding and sensitivity to her characters - picking up Alentejo Blue was like relaxing into small town life, chatting with the neighbors and observing the ebb and flow of the days beneath a Portugal sun. I will be reading more of Ali's novels in the future.

Highly recommended; rated 4.5/5.

The Future of the NYT Most Notable Challenge

This challenge has been expanded to include other notable fiction and non fiction lists. Please go to the Notable Books blog to participate in this challenge in 2008.

The 2007 NYT Most Notable List is posted on that blog here.

Hope to see you there!!

3M's Challenge Wrap-Up

Thanks, Wendy, for a wonderful challenge!

I committed to reading ten and finished ten, though I did switch out some titles. I loved the top three, which were truly outstanding books. I'm really glad I read the middle of the pack, and I could have done without the last two.

Here they are, ranked in order of enjoyment:

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy


2. Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky


3. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie


4. The Translator by Leila Aboulela


5. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert


6. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers


7. Lisey's Story by Stephen King


8. Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano


9. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai


10. Everyman by Philip Roth

Suite Française - 3M's Review

Suite Française is the incredible incomplete set of novels by Irene Nemirovsky, a Russian Jew who had been living in Paris for 10 years before ultimately dying in Auschwitz. The preface to the French edition states that:

She dreamed of a book of a thousand pages, constructed like a symphony, but in five sections, according to rhythm and tone. She took Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a model.

Sadly, only two of the planned five were completed. In these stories, she creates such vivid characters and situations that it is a shame we never get to find out what happened to them. She was a fine writer. Her characters were so well-defined; I cared about the worthy ones and loathed the loathsome ones. Even in her description of the latter, there was humor to be found. Both good and bad die, and of course the question is always, "Why?" The accounts of the flight from Paris as the Germans descended on them during 1940 were chilling and frighteningly relevant to what could happen today. Then, during the section depicting the occupation of France, I was most surprised at her portrayal of the German soldiers, in which some could be seen as sympathetic.

Her two daughters had kept these stories in a suitcase for years, not even looking at them as it was too painful. When one of her daughters did finally take out the papers to type them, she found this wonderful, incomplete novel and it was published in France in 2004, sixty-two years after her death in 1942.

Highly recommended.

2006 for the English translation, 367 pp.
Rating: 4.5

Last Evenings on Earth - 3M's Review

Bolaño is a Chilean author whose book The Savage Detectives was also named to the most recent NYT Most Notable list. It seems to be getting a lot of buzz on many 'Best of 2007' lists. Although Bolaño died in 2003, some of his works are just now being published in English.

The settings of these stories are in Chile, Mexico, Spain, and many other countries. It has a very international feel to it. Bolaño's writing is fascinating. Without really enjoying many of the stories, I still felt compelled to read them. There is always something literary going on; perhaps that's why they intrigued me. However, many of the stories just had too much violence and seediness for my taste--otherwise the book would have had a higher rating from me.

I'm curious about The Savage Detectives, though, and I may try to read that one in 2008.

2006 (for the English translation), 219 pp.
Rating: 3.5

Skinner's Drift - kookiejar's review

Eva is a young woman who returns to the remote South African ranch she was raised on when her widowed father falls into a coma. While at the ranch, she reads her mother's old diaries which take her back to her childhood when she was witness to great violence, including a family secret that makes her question her place in the world.

Lisa Fugard seamlessly weaves the past and the present unfolding the events in a way that keeps you curious about the characters until the final page.

My favorite part was when the black ranch hand, Nkele buys his grandson a comic book, but feels the need to destroy it because it has pictures of AK-47s in it.

"He knew how it would end, who would be killed and who would be saved, and the ease with which 'AK-47' had fallen from the mouths of the children, tumbled out soft as the patter of rain, distressed him."

My only problem with the novel was that although the characters were interesting and their problems were intriguing, I was emotionally disconnected from them. It could have been my own problem, just coming off a reading slump, but I would only recommend this book to people who are fans of novels set in Africa or ones that deal with race relations.

This is my last book for this challenge. Of the 15 I finished specifically for the challenge, I'd have to say my favorite was "Apex Hides the Hurt", but my favorite off the entire list was "The Road". Thank you Wendy for hosting the challenge and thanks to all of my lit-blogging compatriots.

The Emperor's Children - Wendy's Review

"Well, then." Ludovic sat up against the headboard, cleared his throat. "As parents, we visit our complexes, whatever they may be, upon our children - our neuroses, our hopes and fears, our discontents. Just the way our broader society is like a parent, and visits its complexes upon the citizenry, if you will." - From The Emperor's Children, page 205 -

The Emperor's Children is an intellectual miasma about the superficiality of the privileged classes - and the subsequent collision of values between the haves and have nots. Set in New York City in 2001, the book explores the lives of five major characters: Marina - a rich and spoiled pseudo-journalist; Julius - a gay, confused free lance critic; Danielle - a television producer with attitude; Frederick "Bootie" Tubb - an idealistic and slightly creepy college drop out; and Murray Thwaite - a middle aged, liberal "emperor" who has made a name in journalism. The novel is narrated in alternating points of view and spans a period of half a year, tying together (with an artistic flair) the rather superficial threads of each character's motivations and lives. None of these characters is especially likable, but all are compulsively readable.

Messud creates a novel about the upper classes: their attitude of entitlement, their petty betrayals, their focus on power. In doing so, she reveals some interesting truths about humanity. I enjoyed her observations about higher education:

The Land of Lies in which most people were apparently content to live - in which you paid money to an institution and went out nightly to get drunk instead of reading the books and then tried to calculate some half-assed scheme by which you could cheat on your exams, and then, at the end of the day, presumably simply on account of the financial transaction between you, or more likely your parents, and said institution, you declared yourself educated - was not sufficient for Bootie. - From The Emperor's Children, page 55 -

...about raising children and giving them everything their hearts desire:

Murray Thwaite had little patience for this. He suddenly saw his daughter as a monster he and Annabel had created - they and a society of excess. - From The Emperor's Children, page 66 -

...and about high tech, computerized corporate America:

The company, it seemed, engaged in middle man activity, the procuring of rights - of abstractions - that permitted, elsewhere, the actual trading of information (also abstract) for huge sums of money. Which was, of course, itself abstract. It was a though the entire office were generating and moving, acquiring and passing on, hypotheticals, a trade in ideas, or hopes, to which value somehow accrued. - From The Emperor's Children, page 60 -

Messud has written a sharp, witty expose that intrigued me. Her writing is observant, her characters complex and well developed. Although this is not the type of book I usually enjoy, I found myself unable to put it down.

Recommended; Rated 4/5.

Wahoo!! I'm done!!

I met my goal of reading 12 notable books this year. Because I joined in June or July I set the bar low and I chose several "lighter" fiction books to finish off the last part of the year. My reviews (and other posts) are here.

I'll see a lot of you on the other blog. I also expect to be reading more of the 2006 notable books in between the 2007 books (and my usual airplane fare) because many of these reviews have interested me. It's great to be part of a group that reads good books.

One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson

One Good Turn is wonderful! From the very first sentence I was entranced by Atkinson's use of words and her terrific low-key sense of humor. I was surprised to find that the book is actually a mystery, but there is nothing genre-like about it, no standard investigation or even single investigator. I was further surprised to find that it makes use of characters first developed in another of Atkinson's books, again a genre technique. It doesn't matter as we learn what we need to know from this book alone.

The story begins with a "road rage" incident in Edinburgh involving a suspicious name-changing character and a beefy guy who wields a baseball bat. The incident draws together an interesting group of characters, but the story reads rather like strings spreading further and further apart, or perhaps more like a web built by a spider. Each chapter develops the story for one or two of the characters, and only near the end do the paths intersect, in a crazy, hilarious episode, rather like the punchline in a shaggy dog story.

The writing is superb. The insights into character are well-informed. The humor is delicious.

Digging to America, by Anne Tyler

Two families wait at the gate in the Baltimore airport for the same flight, which is carrying their newly-adopted Korean babies. One family, fully American, has made an event of it. Everyone is wearing labels ("Mom", "Grandpa") and the family is filling the waiting area, almost forcing out others, making a party of it. The other family is transplanted Iranian and has made no fanfare of the arrival of their new baby.

Bitsy, the American mom, eventually invites Ziba, Iranian mom, to join an invented "arrival" celebration of the two infants, and the two families are thus joined. The differences in the families pricks at the edges of each encounter, with members of both families trying - or not trying - to understand the other. Throughout the book the individuals seem unable to keep from generalizing, the Iranians finding the Americans laughable, crude, at times overbearing, the Americans finding the Iranians stiff, sometimes unresponsive, perhaps "too good" for them.

Ziba's mother-in-law, Maryam, is perhaps the most reluctant Iranian. She was at peace with her widowed existence, her proper life, and she has no need for the sometimes overwhelming assault of well-meaning friends. She is proper and polite, often seeming cold because of her reserve, so she does join the parties because it would be rude to refuse.

Although we get into the minds of almost all of the many characters, ultimately it is Maryam who takes center stage. Through her thoughts and actions we begin to understand how difficult it must be to live in such a foreign culture, unable to join it. She admits to herself, though, that she had differences in Iran as well, and we begin to grasp that it may not be so much the differences in cultures that affects these clans so much as the differences in individuals.

The book is so easy to read that it is easy to miss its complexity, its quiet effects on our thinking. I felt at times that there was too much generalizing but those who read carefully will see that the generalizing came from individuals rather than from Tyler herself.

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

Black Swan Green is a funny, insightful book about a 13-year-old boy, told in the language of a 13-year-old in England in 1982. The book spans one year of Jason's life, through the Falklands war and within the Reagan-Thatcher years, into a dip into the pond of "girls" and the unintended viewing of a coupling in the countryside, in the village of Black Swan Green (a village where there are no swans, black or otherwise).

Jason is addicted to contractions the like of which, the extent of which, I have not seen before. We go way beyond "could've" into "...our marines'll..." and "...with any luck, my strategy'd clear some spaces..." and "..the talk'd shifted..." and so much more. The contractions alone had me laughing right from the first page.

Jason, like so many adolescent boys (and girls), struggles most of all to fit in. He hides his propensity for writing poetry, turning in poems to a local magazine under a pseudonym, which later leads to his making strange and secret visits to an elderly woman living in the vicar's quarters, who offers advice about life - and poetry - that ultimately Jason takes to heart. Jason gets sorted this way and that from his mates, from bullies, from teachers and his parents, as he tries to find his place, and somehow emerges a little wiser and ready to be fourteen.

At first I found the book simply funny, and that was enough. Over time, though, I was won over by the compassion and sense of realness Mitchell gives to his hero. It's a lovely slice of England. And of adolescence.

One Good Turn reviewed by raidergirl3

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

New York Times Notable Book 2006

I like books like this: a murder mystery, with a seemingly unconnected cast of characters. The first half of the book is spent setting the stage and I felt like a juggler keeping track of all the people and motives and backstories. And then, gradually, people become connected and the story really picked up.

Jackson Brodie is the main character, I suppose, and according to the back cover, he was the investigator in Atkinson's last book, Case Histories. I would mention that it wouldn't be required to read the first book, as I didn't feel I missed any back story in reading the sequel, but I would be very interested in seeing what happens with Jackson next. Jackson witnesses a road rage incident that sets off the chain of events and characters. A meek writer, an obnoxious comedian, a dirty rich developer, his fed up wife, and a few Russian immigrants round out some of the characters, along with a tough female detective for Jackson to butt heads with.

Although it felt a little long, the action is continuous and a thread of humor is woven throughout so that I enjoyed reading it a lot. The summer arts festival in Edinburgh provides the background, and Atkinson kept my interest with so many different characters.

also posted on my blog here

Joy Completes Challenge!

I'm having difficulty posting, so here's my list of books with links for this completed challenge:

New York Times Notable Book Challenge

I will be doing a synopsis of the challenge at the end of the year.

Lisey's Story - 3M's Review

It had been over 20 years since I had read a Stephen King book. I used to love horror and love his books. I really, really did. That changed and I don't like horror at all now. I like scary, suspenseful stories-just not horror. I think I had convinced myself that surely there wouldn't be that much horror because he put so much of his wife/marriage into the story. I guess there probably wasn't as much as in his other books, but it was still too much for me.

Stephen King had said that he wrote this after considering what could happen to his wife if he had died in the car accident that he had. I do think he put quite a bit of himself and her into this story. I liked the beginning of the book very much, but then in the middle there was a little too much of the horror element for me. Lisey's husband Scott flashes back to a horror-full childhood. There were some crazy things that happen to Lisey as well that bothered me because I kept thinking, "How can he think of these things happening to his wife?"

Anyway, it was a good book to also use for the R.I.P Challenge, but I don't think I'll be reading another King book for awhile. If you know of one that is very tame, I might try it. Otherwise, there's just too much horror in King for this wimpy woman. I really wish I would have thought to read The Inhabited World instead.

2006, 509 pp.

Rating: 3.5

The Omnivore's Dilemma

"When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the potential foods on offer are liable to sicken or kill you." ~The Omnivore's Dilemma, page 3

This is not a book you should read if you are not prepared to take a long, hard look at what you eat. In this book the author leads us through four meals: industrial, big organic, sustainable, and The Perfect Meal.

The industrial meal follows a steer from birth, death to it's presumably winding up in a typical fast food meal. This section was very shocking to me and helped me to understand why animal rights people would be outraged at the treatment of these animals. It is horrifying. Worst of all, it's only for money. Obviously, it is of no benefit to the animal and it actually makes their meat less healthy for us to consume.

Big Organic farms are better in that the animals do not have steroids or antibiotics and are not fed animal by-products but the treatment of the animals is not more humane. As for organic produce, it may be more healthful(no pesticides, better vitamin content, etc.) but it is not without cost to the environment. In short: This method's heavy reliance on fossil fuels for processing and transportation makes it unsustainable.

As for the sustainable farm, the guiding principles that they follow are best outlined on their own site: Polyface, Inc.

I have to admit that this book has sparked an intense interest for me to find locally grown meat and produce and the metropolitan buying clubs. I had already been very interested in minimizing the processed food in my family's diet. I just didn't understand exactly how far the processing went.

The Perfect Meal is the one that Pollan hunts and gathers himself. He says that the meal is not perfect because it has the best taste. It's perfect because it is the one which caused him to work the most both physically and intellectually for his food. He knows where it all comes from and exactly what went into processing it and bringing it to the table.

I can't say that I enjoyed every section of this book. Some of it was difficult to read. But it was very eye-opening and worth the effort.(4.5/5)

Half of a Yellow Sun - 3M's Review

A beautifully told story of a savage civil war, Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun definitely deserves the 2007 Orange Prize and to be on the NYT Most Notable list.

"They sat on wooden planks and the weak morning sun streamed into the roofless class as she unfurled Odenigbo's cloth flag and told them what the symbols meant. Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future."

I resisted reading this book because I really just don't like war stories at all. I wanted to give it a chance, though, because so many bloggers had said they appreciated it. They were right; it's a very special book. Based on the conflict in Nigeria in the late 1960's, it not only depicts the horrors of war, it also hauntingly and lovingly depicts the lives of the participants. Apparently many of the characters were based on real people in Adichie's family history, and this authenticity very much shines through.

There were some content issues for me in the book, but I'm very glad I read this story. I look forward to reading Purple Hibiscus and other books of hers to come. If you decide to read the book (and I highly encourage it), afterwards you might want to go to her website http://www.halfofayellowsun.com where you can find a lot more information about the true story.

2006, 541 pp.
2007 Orange Prize
Rating: 4.5

The Road, reviewed by raidergirl3

The Road by Cormac McCarthy



Better late than never. I went back and read everyone's reviews last night after I finished, and I wish I had read it when everyone else did, because there are some things I would have liked to talk about.

My review is at my blog here, although I didn't review it so much as just make some comments. This book was so sparse and so well written, and as I'd read many reviews beforehand, I was prepared for the punctuation issues, or the lack, and it didn't bother me. I had a terrible pit in my stomach for most of the books, and tears at the end.

I'm glad I read it, and I won't forget it for a while. Could I do it? Could I survive like that? What exactly hapened in that world? So many questions to think about. Thanks for all the discussion that went on last spring - I enjoyed it last night.

After This, by Alice McDermott

After This is a beautifully written book. It begins and ends in a church, and takes us from the marriage of Mary, a 30-year-old woman, through the birth and growth to adulthood of the four children she has with her husband John. The working-class family lives on Long Island during the middle-to-late decades of the twentieth century, riding out the storms of change in the culture, their lives, and in their church.

Although religion is a big part of their lives, I wouldn't call this a "religious" book. Rather, McDermott shows how the church and the family's beliefs affect - or do not affect - how they live. Mary in particular takes her church's teachings to heart, lighting candles during the two wars she experiences, attending mass regularly, insisting that the children attend Catholic school. We watch, too, as John lies in bed with a slipped disk, thinking of how his life might end, how it might not be as he had imagined, in bed, tended by a priest, but may be as unexpected as falling down dead in the street.

We see segments of each family member's life in vivid color, with light sketches in between phases. Thus we are treated to details of a dinner conversation or a night with a lover and then we may not hear much of that person until he or she is much older. Yet it works. I didn't feel cheated. Many of the moments are deeply moving by themselves, the more so because the moment is not over-labored.

I couldn't help comparing this book to a couple I read recently by Anne Tyler, both of which covered much of the same era in our history. Tyler's books seem, to me, more mocking, more like throwing a veil between the writer and the subjects, while After This is more intimate and touching.

And what is "after this"? From early on I suspected it was "after life". What then? After all that Mary and her family has done and gone through, what then?

Eight down, four to go

More to keep myself straight than for any other reason, I am reporting that I have read eight of the twelve I committed to reading. I am well into the ninth and partly into the tenth (I always read more than one book at a time) so I believe I will reach my goal!

I think this challenge has been excellent because the books are not just anything you happen to like. These are all good books and worth our time.

The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

This book is Amy Hempel’s life work. Of course there is the odd story here and there that did not get in here but essentially this is it. In 404 pages she tells her own story in the form of short fiction, 49 stories in all. Most are shorter than most short fiction, one consisting of just one sentence and another just one page.

In this way, and in the language itself, these stories are much like poetry. All of them distill moments and thoughts economically, making much out of few words. Character is sketched in a phrase, and that’s all that is needed. Because of this depth it may take longer to read these seemingly simple stories than you might expect.

The elements also repeat themselves in a way similar to the film “32 short films about Glenn Gould”. We read about the lover of an artist, an artist who perhaps has many lovers. We hear about time in an institution. We read about dogs and cemeteries. Not once but many times, slid in between lines or used as the whole, layers or whole pies. I am sure that these elements come from Hempel’s real life, although the incidents probably did not happen to her exactly as written. In their way, skewed or direct, they tell us about this writer and the way she sees. It’s a beautifully-written book, full of images and feelings.

**Note to members of this group: If you would like to have this book contact me (judith at judithlautner dot net). I have registered it with bookcrossing.com so all I ask is that you make a journal entry there when you receive it (and preferably when you've read it, too). I'll be happy to ship it to the first person who asks, for free (outside the U.S. I'd want to split the postage).

Laura's Challenge Wrap-up

The New York Times Notable Books Challenge was one of the first I joined this year, egged on by challenge host Wendy (aka Caribousmom). I was a little embarrassed that I'd heard of so few of these notable books, and set about to correct that by reading a dozen of them. The books I read for this challenge were:

1. Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (read in 2006)
2. The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
3. Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
4. Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (completed 3/26/07)
5. Old Filth, by Jane Gardam (completed 3/31/07)
6. Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (completed 4/13/07)
7. One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson (completed 5/25/07)
8. The Translator, by Leila Aboulela (completed 5/28/07)
9. Alentejo Blue, by Monica Ali (completed 6/17/07)
10. Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury (completed 7/25/07)
11. Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes (completed 8/26/07)
12. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (completed 9/2/07)
13. A Woman in Jerusalem, by A.B. Yehoshua (completed 10/7/07)

Favorite Book of the Challenge: This is a real toss-up. I enjoyed Suite Francaise, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Road the most.

Least Favorite Book: One Good Turn. This crime mystery was a pretty light read compared to the others on this list.

What I learned through this challenge: Every one of these authors was also new to me, and many of them are from outside the United States. This challenge really opened my eyes to the wealth of great literature in the world, and has inspired me to continue seek out authors from around the world.

Laura's Progress Report & List

Here's my list!

Completed (with links to reviews):

1. Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (read in 2006)
2. The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
3. Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
4. Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (completed 3/26/07)
5. Old Filth, by Jane Gardam (completed 3/31/07)
6. Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (completed 4/13/07)
7. One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson (completed 5/25/07)
8. The Translator, by Leila Aboulela (completed 5/28/07)
9. Alentejo Blue, by Monica Ali (completed 6/17/07)
10. Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury (completed 7/25/07)
11. Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes (completed 8/26/07
12. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (completed 9/2/07)
13. A Woman in Jerusalem, by A.B. Yehoshua (completed 10/7/07)

Laura's Review - A Woman in Jerusalem

A Woman in Jerusalem
A. B. Yehoshua
236 pages

First sentence: Even though the manager of the human resources division had not sought such a mission, now, in the softly radiant morning, he grasped its unexpected significance.

Reflections: An anonymous woman is killed in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, and her body lies unidentified and unclaimed. A recent pay stub is found among her belongings, and a news weekly publishes an article, calling the company uncaring and negligent. The elderly owner calls on his human resources manager to uncover the truth and salvage the company's reputation.

The human resources manager, recently divorced, is dealing with problems of his own. But he has no choice. Researching personnel records, he discovers the woman was an immigrant from one of the countries in the former Soviet Union, and had come to the city for religious reasons. Although trained as an engineer, she was employed as a cleaning woman on the night shift. She was recently let go, but an apparent clerical error resulted in her continuing to receive wages. The human resources manager meets with her supervisor, learns some interesting details, and finds himself personally committed to locating the woman's family and making arrangements for burial. This becomes a journey of atonement and, while it was initially intended simply to clear the company's name, the human resources manager begins to view it as a personal quest, even though he did not know the woman personally.

Yehoshua's prose is terse and understated. The characters do not have names. Yet I found myself caught up in the story, sympathizing with the human resources manager, and mourning with the woman's family. I couldn't put this down and finished it in an afternoon. ( )

My original review can be found here.

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

An extraordinary book about the dust storms on the High Plains in the 1930s. This book takes us into the lives of several people who made up the "nesters" - farmers, along with cowboys, ranchers, doctors, teachers, and newspapermen. We follow the history of the plains from the early twenties, when land was free or cheap and hopes were high, when government policy fed the ambitions of the settlers, on into the 1930s and the worst of the storms.

It is clear from our present perspective that the horrors of the "dust bowl" were man-made. It took a few years and some gutsy thinking people to get that message out during the worst of it and to start the process that would lead to some recovery. Not that these plains have ever fully recovered.

Of particular interest are the extraordinary details. What the storms did to people, animals, buildings, and what happened on the rare occasions when it actually rained. While in the air (which was most of the time) the dust created such static electricity that people were afraid to touch each other. The touch could knock them across a room. The electricity shorted out engines and started fires. The dust destroyed just about everything it touched, killing the natural animal and plant population while bringing in insects that thrived on what was left. Millions of acres of land were left sterile, while the swarms of dust moved into the cities, over other parts of the country, and into the ocean. The storms even reached New York City and Washington, D.C. on occasion.

How the government responded is another fascinating tale, featuring a president who couldn't think of anything to do - Hoover - followed by one who did everything possible - Roosevelt. It's possible that the biggest hero of the time was the person who took on a new governmental position under Roosevelt, Hugh Bennett, and came up with ways to hold the soil down. He didn't stop there, of course. He took his mission to the loners who made up the plains settlers and convinced them that they had to work together to fight this thing.

The story is devastating and often heart-breaking. And so very readable.

A Woman in Jerusalem - A.B. Yehoshua

Title: A Woman in Jerusalem
Author: A.B. Yehoshua; translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin
Country: Israel
Year: 2004
Rating: A
Pages: 237 pgs.

First sentence: Even though the manager of the human resources division had not sought such a mission, now, in the softly radiant morning, he grasped its unexpected significance.

There was a lot of hope for the future of the Middle East when the Oslo accords were first signed. However, as many of you probably know, with both sides disappointed in the implementation of the accords, the fall of the Oslo peace process in September 2000 was marked by the start of the second Intifada, the second wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis since 1967. The violence did not begin to abate until the death of Yasser Arafat at the end of 2004, and the relative success of the Sharm el-Sheikh peace summit in February 2005. Marked by Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem and other cities, and Israeli military excursions into West Bank, Gaza, and other Palestinian settlements, more than 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were killed in a seven year period.

A Woman in Jerusalem, a novel by A.B. Yehoshua, takes place in Jerusalem around 2002. An immigrant woman is killed by a suicide bombing at her local market. Her body lies unidentified for a week, the only clue to her identity a bloody pay stub from a local bakery. After a tabloid newspaper article is written about the bakery's callousness towards her death, the human resource manager is sent on a mission to identify the woman and return her body to her family.

The only character that receives a name in the story Yulia Ragayev, the cleaning woman from the bakery who was killed. All other characacters are referred to by their positions: human resources manager, owner, office manager, consul, ex-husband, young son. It is a technique that works extremely well for the style of the novel. I especially liked the italicized inserts of the thoughts of random bystanders to the story line: the bakery's shift workers, Yulia's neighbor's, her mother's fellow villagers.

The story line certainly sounds dreary and depressing, but it is ultimately a story of hope and humor. The final scenes may not appeal to many readers, but I felt they were perfectly appropriate to the characters Yehoshua created. This is the first of his novels I have read, it will certainly not be the last.

The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin

The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a rare, beautifully-written book that explores a fundamental theme: where the choices we make in our lives take us.

Sukhanov, a 56-year-old art critic in Moscow in the mid-1980s, who long ago "sold out" to have a financially comfortable life in a country that does not respect true art, finds that his walled-off past is starting to invade the present. Little by little, triggered by incidents in the present day, he faces the choices he has made over the years. The wall does not come tumbling down neatly, brick by brick, but rather like it has sprung occasional leaks. Sukhanov races to repair the damage again and again, reasserting his stuffy, arrogant self each time.

The attacks from his past come in the form of dreams, both while he sleeps and when he is awake, and without warning. The drifting into dreams become more frequent, and eventually we begin to enter Sukhanov's mind ourselves, as the third-person narrative increasingly slides into the first.

While the dreams threaten to take over, the present does not stop trotting along, plunging Sukhanov into a world he had for so long tried to avoid. Assailed from the present as well as the past, Sukhanov eventually finds escape.

In addition to exploring Sukhanov's personal demons, Grushin brings us into the world of art, particularly surrealist and impressionist art. As other reviewers have noted, the writing itself is often impressionistic and nearly surreal. Just as the great impressionist painters were able to bring their visions to a diverse audience, so is Grushin able to paint so that we understand, and at the same time we sometimes gasp with wonder.

After This - kookiejar's review

This book truly was a 'challenge'. It was a challenge to stay awake long enough to finish it.

I know I shouldn't say things like that, but it's the truth.

Here we follow the courtship and then marriage of John and Mary Keane. They end up having four children and we see little vingettes of their lives as they move through the landscape of 50's and 60's America.

The children grow and struggle as we all do and people will continue to do until we are extinct. Therefore, what is the new ground being broken here? None.

What is gripping or interesting or thought provoking about this novel? Nothing.

Someone else, with a different perspective needs to read this and tell me I'm wrong, but until then I'm giving this book 4 yawns.

Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski

Metromix has posted this interview with Mark Z. Danielewski. In part, the interview explores his unusual way of relating the story:

Sam and Hailey, two teenage lovers, race through history and across America, while their distinct voices gather in a geographic fashion on different parts of the book’s pages, forcing the reader to turn the book, quite literally, upside-down and sideways to keep up. What to make of it? We spoke with Danielewski—who reads at Skylight Books on Thursday—during a recent sweltering afternoon in Los Angeles.

You’ve spoken about the “wonderful analogue qualities of paper, especially paper that is bound together in book form.”
Definitely. A book, I maintain, is still the most efficacious way of communicating and translating information. There’s an enormous amount of information available from a book. Images provide a certain type of information, but it tends to be just static information. You can see what Iraq looks like to no end in sight, but when you’re reading a book on the Iraq war, you’re getting a far denser amount of information.

There is some interesting stuff on Only Revolutions.

The Echo Maker - Wendy's Review

All the humans revered Crane, the great orator. Where cranes gathered, their speech carried miles. The Aztecs called themselves the Crane People. One of the Anishinaabe clans was named the Cranes - Ajijak or Businassee - the Echo Makers. The Cranes were leaders, voices that called all people together. Crow and Cheyenne carved cranes' leg bones into hollow flutes, echoing the echo maker. -From The Echo Maker, page 181-

Richard Power's novel - The Echo Maker - is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Award. Beneath a simple story lies complex questions about self and memory. How does memory define who we are? Is our sense of self and the larger world just a series of synapses and neurons firing or is it something bigger?

The novel begins with a horrific car accident along the Platte River during the annual crane migration. Mark Schulter survives the crash, but is left with a rare and devastating brain injury called Capgras Syndrome. Believing his sister, Karin, is really an imposter who is pretending to be his sister, Mark's recovery from his injuries takes the reader along a winding path of self-discovery, misidentification, conspiracies, and the complex and sometimes fragile nature of relationships. Powers constructs the novel around four major characters: Mark Schulter, his sister Karin, a renowned scientist named Gerald Weber, and Barbara Gillespie - a nursing home aide who is surrounded by mystery. It is not only Mark who struggles with his identity. Karin, a woman who has tried unsuccessfully to shed her past, finds herself searching to re-define it.

When Mark was himself again, she would restart them both. She'd get him on his feet, listen to him, help him find what he need to be. And this time she'd take him away with her, someplace reasonable. -From The Echo Maker, page 26-

Making herself over, personality du jour. Imagination, even memory, all too ready to accommodate her, whoever her is. Anything for a scratch behind the ears. Scratch from anyone. She is nothing. No one. Worse than no one. Blank at the core. She must change her life. From the mess of her fouled nest, salvage something. Anything. -From The Echo Maker, page 407-

Gerald Weber is shocked to discover that perhaps he is only defined by the way others perceive him - that perhaps his life's work is no more than a critics review: He'd let his critics convince him. Something had eroded, the core pleasure in his accomplishment. - From The Echo Maker, page 315-

This novel is meant to be read slowly - it is a thoughtful novel, and one that is challenging on an intellectual level. Powers deftly constructs a story which questions the very core of who we are and how self is defined - a fascinating treatise about what makes us human. The backdrop of Nebraska and its incredible crane migration - an astounding feat of migratory memory and ritual - is a fitting symbol of the novel's thematic content. With a surprising twist at the end, the novel is ultimately a satisfying read.

Recommended; Rated 4.5/5; read my original review here.

Wendy's Preliminary List

Books completed are highlighted in red. This is my preliminary list (subject to change of course!):

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Completed January 7, 2007. Rated 5/5)
Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky (Completed February 17, 2007. Rated 5/5)
The Translator, by Leila Aboulela (Completed March 23, 2007. Rated 4.5/5)
Only Revolutions, by Mark Z. Danielewski (DNF - horrible book)
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai (Completed March 16, 2007. Rated 4.25/5)
Old Filth, by Jane Gardam (Completed May 29, 2007. Rated 3.75/5)
Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (Completed March 5, 2007. Rated 3.75/5)
All Aunt Hagar's Children, by Edward P. Jones
Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury
Lisey's Story, by Stephen King
The Inhabited World, by David Long
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (Completed May 17, 2007. Rated 5/5)
The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud (Completed December 12, 2007. Rated 4/5)
Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (Completed March 26, 2007. Rated 5/5)
Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta (Completed May 22, 2007. Rated 3.5/5)
Digging to America, by Anne Tyler
A Woman in Jerusalem, by A.B. Yehoshua
Alentjo Blue, by Monica Ali (Completed February 22, 2008. Rated 4.5/5)
One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson
The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers (Completed September 6, 2007. Rated 4.5/5)
Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes (Completed April 30, 2007. Rated 4/5)