first international giveaway of the year -- The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson

I'll be back to post what I think about this book shortly, but in the meantime, I LOVED this book so much I just bought a signed copy. That means I have my current copy available to give away.  There are no gimmicks, no this-many-points-for-doing-whatever, all you have to do for a chance for it to be yours is to leave a comment with an email address or your blog link.  International is no problem.  One week from today, January 20th, I'll be using random.org to select someone to take this book home & it will be off to the lucky person the following week.  Only one comment per person, please, to keep it fair.

Let me just say this about the book: for me, The Orphan Master's Son just set the bar for the rest of this year's reading -- I've never read anything quite like it and never expect to again.  I rarely ever give a book five stars -- this one is 5 plus.

Good luck!

The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain

9780345521309
Ballantine Books, 2011
320 pp

In early December, I selected Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast for my book group to read. While most of the group didn't share my enthusiasm toward that book, I loved it enough to read both versions.  During our discussion, one member of the group whose opinions I value started telling us about The Paris Wife, and she was so taken by it that I figured this book was something I really had to read.  You know those blogging memes that ask the question "Have you ever recommended a book to someone and they really disliked it?" or something along those lines -- well that's the situation here, but in reverse. With apologies to my friend Maxine, and feeling like a lone fish swimming against the current, I just wasn't all that impressed with this novel. 

McLain's book focuses on the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley, from their meeting to their decision to divorce, and then adds an epilogue with a phone call from EH to Hadley and then her learning of Hemingway's death thirty-plus years later.  The first part of the novel details their time together before their arrival in Paris, but the meat of the novel, of course, as in the couple's real lives, is found in what happens once they arrive there, told largely from Hadley's perspective, with a few entries from Hemingway's writing thrown in here and there so the reader can hear his voice once in a while. The Paris setting is something McLain writes well: the cold Paris winters, the shabby, cramped apartment the Hemingways called home, the Bastille-day celebrations where music playing outside kept them awake all night, the bohemian lifestyle of the artists in residence there, etc.  She also shows a changing Hemingway who once scoffed at the rich, but who later "saw a different kind of life and liked what he saw," as he moved from living the life of a poor, suffering writer to noticing that the "rich had better days and freer nights."  It is also very obvious that she's done a great deal of research in preparing to write this book.

My real issue with this book is this: if someone is going to write a novel in which the title character, "The Paris Wife," is the central focus, then that character should have some kind of personality. Instead, Hadley comes across as flat, a stick figure who even after finding out her husband is having an affair just sits and tries to wait it out. There's a scene where Hemingway and Hadley are napping one afternoon and Pauline, the future ex-Mrs. Hemingway #2, slides into bed next to Ernest and here's Hadley, describing her reaction:

"I was feeling so languid and so drugged,  I didn't even know Pauline was in the room until after she'd slipped under the sheets on Ernest's side of the bed. The afternoons were hot and we slept naked. I knew what was happening, and I also didn't want to come awake enough to feel it. I never opened my eyes...No one spoke or made any noise that would shake me out of my trance. The bed was sand, I told myself. The sheets were sand. I was still in the dream."

I don't know about you, but if a woman I knew was after my husband slipped into our bed while we were sleeping naked, I'd be a little pissed, and I definitely wouldn't be just laying there trying to ignore things.

Or try this one:

"He might ultimately fall out of love with Pauline and come fully back to me -- that was still possible -- but nothing was in my control. If I gave him an ultimatum and said she couldn't stay, I would lose him. If I got hysterical and made public scenes, it would just give him an excuse to leave me. All that was left for me was a terrible kind of paralysis, this waiting game, this heartbreak game."

Really? Does she really want him back after all of this?

All through this book Hadley  is depicted as a flat, paralyzed kind of doormat person who shows very little emotion.  I get it that she started out as Hemingway's number one supporter, staying out of his way, making it possible for him to write because she felt that was what he needed, but another woman is an entirely different ballgame. As I was reading this novel, I kept saying to myself "why doesn't she do anything?" Okay, she gets sad, but so what? Hadley's monotonal and one-dimensional portrayal is unforgiveable since the book is about her.  And the rest of the characters also pale against what is known about them in real life.  Zelda Fitzgerald's character is a bit steamrolled here; Scott Fitzgerald barely gets a mention.  It's almost as if the author sacrificed character to get to the story, which is already well known. Too bad, really, because in terms of story, she does well -- given the events, it's difficult not to feel some pity for Hadley, and it's also interesting in terms of learning about Hemingway's early career years, so fleshing out the characters would have made this a top-notch read. 

I'd say that if you have a keen interest in the Paris years, I'd recommend Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, where that time comes alive in terms of time, place and his relationship with Hadley. There's also Gioia Diliberto's biography Hadley, reissued last year as Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife.  I may have to dig that one out and reread it here very shortly. However, there are many ardent fans of this novel out there, so maybe it's just me. With hefty 4 and 5-star ratings behind this book, readers are finding something to love about it.

A reading challenge most suitable....one my husband will LOVE

Aieeeeeeee! This is perfect! My tbr pile is so freakin' huge right now that this challenge is perfect. My husband will be ecstatic. Guess which level I'm going for!  Here is the link to the challenge website as well as the rules:




Challenge Levels

Pike's Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Vancouver: Read 25 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Ararat: Read 40 books from your TBR piles/s
Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 50 books from your TBR pile/s
El Toro: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Everest: Read 100+ books from your TBR pile/s

And the rules:
*Once you choose your challenge level, you are locked in for at least that many books. If you find that you're on a mountain-climbing roll and want to tackle a taller mountain, then you are certainly welcome to upgrade.

*Challenge runs from January 1 to December 31, 2012.

*You may sign up anytime from now until November 30th, 2012.

*Books must be owned by you prior to January 1, 2012. No ARCs (none), no library books. No rereads. [To clarify--based on a question raised--the intention is to reduce the stack of books that you have bought for yourself or received as presents {birthday, Christmas, "just because," etc.}. Audiobooks may count if they are yours and they are one of your primary sources of backlogged books.]

*Books may be used to count for other challenges as well.

*Feel free to submit your list in advance (as incentive to really get those books taken care of) or to tally them as you climb.

*A blog and reviews are not necessary to participate.

*A progress site for reviews will go up in January and I will post the link in my sidebar for easy access.

Hand Me Down World, by Lloyd Jones

 
9781608196999
Bloomsbury, 2011 (US edition)
313 pp.

Two things: first,  a hefty thanks to the publisher for sending this to me via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.  It was supposed to have come some time ago, but oh well. It was well worth the wait. Second, I loved this book. It's one of those stories that sticks with you long after you've finished it.

There are a number of novels where the story is told in a number of different voices, but I do believe this one may win the prize for the largest number of narrators.  It is a bit reminiscent of modern television documentaries in which multiple people relate their experiences relating to a given topic; unlike television however, the story is not passive; it is one in which the reader has a job to do in  interpreting what's really going on  -- if he or she can find any reliability in the narration.   Each narrator has his or her own slant on the truth -- and what they say speaks not only to the situation at hand but also  to how they perceive and wish others to perceive them in the world each occupies.

 Hand Me Down World is the story of a young woman in Tunisia whose quest for her young son begins in the middle of the Mediterranean, where she is dumped by human traffickers and told to hang on to a buoy until someone comes to pick her up.  After a while it becomes obvious she's been duped, so she makes her way dog paddling onto the Italian coastline.   There she takes on the name Ines, and with only a plastic bag in which she keeps only a few meager possessions, she begins to make her way to Berlin where her son's father lives.  Her story is related by those with whom she comes into contact, and by Ines herself.   This cast of characters include a truck driver, an elderly snail collector, an ex-pat Parisian who calls himself Millennium Three,  a researcher from the UK sent to study the Roma culture in Berlin, and others that bump into Ines along the way.  After the book introduces all of these people (and a few more),  the most involved narrations begin with Ralf, an elderly blind man who hires Ines to view the world for him; Defoe, another lodger taken on by Ralf, and then there's Ines herself, whose account of things doesn't always coincide with what has already been said about her.  The novel is structured sort of like a detective story, where there are conflicts among all of the narratives for the reader to sort and then try to piece together in some coherent fashion. And then there's the Inspector, whose purpose I won't reveal here, but who serves as sort of a compiler of all of the stories.

 While the author explores Ines' search for her son and her experiences along the way, he is also able to veer off into other areas, especially the issues faced by immigrants trying to find a better life than the one they left behind, who often become "the real ghosts... those whom we choose not to see."  But even as he's tackling this issue in a big way, running through the novel is theme of identity, most obviously examined in Ines but also among all of the other characters.  There's also a great deal of thought offered about  living with  dignity instead of fear, a choice Ines and other characters have to consider in the hopes of having any kind of future.

While the prose may be a bit sparse in comparison to Jones' Mr. Pip, the pacing is good and appropriate for a novel like this one.  In the first part of the book,the reader is not stuck on any one character or situation too long as Ines makes her way through Europe. As Ines continues her journey, the story also moves along and doesn't dwell too long in one spot . The second half moves a bit slower as it boils down to the stories of only a few characters in Berlin, and then of course, Ines herself.   This part is not as quick to read through, but what makes it very interesting is how certain events are repeated and retold, offering a new slant on information received earlier in the novel.

I was very intrigued by this novel both in terms of structure and story; the multiple-voice approach is quite interesting and actually works well here as things are slowly revealed, little by little. Yet at the same time, just when I started thinking I had Ines figured out, the author throws in little curve balls that made me wonder if I knew her at all.  This line of thought carries throughout the book, and actually, I'm walking away from the book wondering how well I really know anybody.  If you're looking for a regular narrative story in linear format, keep looking -- this isn't the book for you. But if you want something intriguing that resonates long after the last page is turned, you might just want to give it a try. 

fiction from New Zealand

*A Walk Across the Sun, by Corban Addison

9781402792809
SilverOak/Sterling, January 2012
384 pp

 "You do the thing that's in front of you."

First, a very hearty thanks to the publishers, who sent me an ARC of this novel.  They asked me to hold off with my review until the book's release date, and wanting to comply with their wishes, I've been waiting a while to share.  My only prior familiarity with the illicit sex trade in India is the movie Born Into Brothels (2004) , and I have to admit that that movie was part of the reason I wanted to read this book.  But while much of the action takes place in India,  A Walk Across the Sun also goes beyond that country, as Corban Addison moves the action across several nations, involving young girls from different parts of the world. One of Addison's goals with this novel is to get the message across that the illicit sex trade is a worldwide phenomenon, limited not only to countries like India, but happening right under our very noses. As he notes in an interview, the UN estimates that the illicit sex trade brings in a profit of thirty-two billion dollars a year, just behind the profits of the illegal drug and gun trades.  He also notes that his objectives  in writing this book are to inspire his readers to : 1) learn more about the topic, 2) to  discover and support organizations that do "heroic work in this field," and 3) to "put pressure on people in positions of power" who have the ability to do actively do something about helping these girls.  Granted, illicit sex trafficking in young children is not a pretty topic, and this book may not be for everyone,  but it is a real and expanding international concern, one that needs to be addressed openly.  And Addison has made a good start with A Walk Across the Sun, his first novel.

The basic story begins with two girls, Ahalya Ghai (17) and her sister Sita (15), whose lives are overturned in the veritable blink of an eye.  The girls come from a very well-off family on the coast of India, and the story opens as they are making plans to attend a violin concert and go backstage to meet the artist.  But an earthquake triggers a tsunami off the coast of India and  catches the girls and their family off guard, killing all but the two sisters.  As they try to seek the haven of their school, an offer of a ride turns into a one-way ticket to Mumbai, where the girls are sold into a brothel.  As if things aren't bad enough, Sita is eventually sold off and taken away from India and from her sister.  In the meantime, Thomas Clarke, an up-and-coming attorney in Washington DC,   has suffered a number of setbacks in his personal life and career.  While traveling to visit his parents, he witnesses a child abduction and it turns his entire life around, ultimately sending him to Mumbai to work with a local NGO that helps with prosecutions of those who deal in sex trafficking there.  Ultimately Tom will be caught up in the search for Sita, and in the process he will be forced to enter the ugliness of the "shadow world" of the illicit sex trade.

Addison's intentions with writing this novel are good ones and he is very passionate about his subject.  As the story progresses, it gets harder to put the book down as the reader waits to see what is going to happen next.  In writing the character of Tom, he portrays a man who is in personal crisis mode; one whose work with the NGO offers meaning and purpose and allows him to finally find himself.  The underlying horrors of illicit sex trafficking are laid bare, but the author never gets into any gross detail that would undercut the seriousness of what he's trying to do here. 

It's very clear that Addison has done a great deal of research in preparation for the novel, but there are a few issues I found problematic.  First, although Tom's ongoing issues with his estranged wife Priya are offered as a counterpoint to the sisters' experiences, these scenes detracted  from my interest in the main storyline. I realize that this is a personal issue (I'm not a love story kind of girl), and that others may find these scenes as relief from the horrors of the sex trafficking, but I thought that if Addison's goal is to get people interested in this terrible reality, Tom and Priya's relationship was a bit of extraneous fluff that didn't really need to be there. Second -- is it me or did things happen a little too quickly -- and how is it that a young girl can be traced around the world but a local kidnapping victim couldn't be found? I think you might want to be prepared to suspend your disbelief in some cases. 

A Walk Across the Sun is lighter in terms of writing than my normal fare, but considering this is the author's first novel, it's  a good read, very approachable and Addison's passion for his subject shines through. While the subject matter may be difficult, and may not appeal to everyone, there is a reality out there that needs to be brought out into the open and made visible.  Bringing the human trafficking issue to the forefront in a less than in-your-face kind of way is where Addison is at his best.  I'll recommend this one to anyone who is interested in the topic.

January: starting with the new

Happy New Year to all from my home state of California, where I'm currently vacationing.  January is bringing with it several new books that I'm eager to read, and they are my priority this month.  My choice of titles begins with Corban Addison's A Walk Across the Sun, then the others that will follow include

Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, by A.S. Byatt
How It All Began, by Penelope Lively
Running the Rift, by Naomi Benaron
and
The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson


I'll also be working on other books, so you never know what's going to pop up.  My goal this year is to work harder on translated fiction from different areas of the world, so there should be a bit more than last year.

I'm hoping for a great year in books and am looking forward to seeing what everyone else is reading as well!

and as the curtain comes down over 2011,

 

it's once again time to close out the year in books. If you're so inclined, you can see everything that I read this year by clicking here.  

and now to the favorites list:
This year's books were, for the most part, so good that in some cases, it's definitely hard to pick just one favorite. So I'm going to give my top favorites:

Overall favorite book of the year:

 Dream of Ding Village, by Yan Lianke

  Top five favorite books of the year in literary fiction (not including my favorite overall book)

 The Thing About Thugs, by Tabish Khair

Jimmy the Terrorist, by Omair Ahmad

Kamchatka, by Marcelo Figueras

 Gods Without Men, by Hari Kunzru

The Raw Man, by George Makana Clark

Top five favorite crime fiction novels of the year:

  

 Ashes, by Sergios Gakos

Dregs, by Jorn Lier Horst

The Pledge, by Friedrich Durrenmatt

Black Minutes, by Martin Solares

Red April, by Santiago Roncagliolo

Top three speculative fiction/sci-fi/fantasy novels: 

Cold Skin, by Albert Sanchez Pinol

Pym, by Mat Johnson

11/22/63, by Stephen King

Top three nonfiction books of the year:

El Narco:  Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, by Ioan Grillo 

Clandestine in Chile, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

Classic Crimes, by William Roughhead

Favorite book of translated fiction:

Dream of Ding Village, by Yan Lianke

 Strangest good  book of the year: Death in the City of Light, by David King


Others worth mentioning for the year:

Hangover Square, by Patrick Hamilton
The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick deWitt
Misterioso by Arne Dahl
Death on a Galician Shore, by Domingo Villar
The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro, by Antonio Tabucchi
To Each His Own, by Leonardo Sciascia
anything at all by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes
That Deadman Dance, by Kim Scott


Here's to another good reading year, and above all to peace, health and prosperity to all.

The Raw Man, by George Makana Clark

9780224090469
Jonathan Cape, 2011
323 pp

"Stories want to circle back on themselves."

And in George Makana Clark's The Raw Man, that's exactly what happens.  Told in a reverse-chonological structure, The Raw Man captures not only the main character's family history, but it reveals bits and pieces of  Rhodesia's (now Zimbabwe's) turbulent history during the twentieth century as well.  It is a lovely book about the power of  storytelling, one which begs for reader participation:  the more you learn about the past, the more you want to revisit and re-engage with the present.    It is also a story about the power of blood and identity, one you won't soon forget after having finished the book.

The prologue of the novel, "The Owner of the Story," introduces the reader to house of the narrator, which is actually a metaphor for the novel itself.  It has twelve interior doors, which in passing through them, "you'll find yourself back where you began," a very appropriate beginning for a novel which travels back through different periods of time and links back to the present.  The house is inhabited by the story ghost of Sergeant Gordon, and conjures the smell of peaberry coffee, a lullaby, a garden ... all bits and pieces of Sgt. Gordon's story the house's owner learned from him in years of captivity together as prisoners of war.   As the narrator notes, " I built my house from borrowed memory, every detail as it was described by Gordon long ago in the complete darkness, three miles beneath the earth. "  The story ghost breathes life into Gordon's memories, so that they take form and come alive in the telling.  From the present, the story first skips back to October, 1978, going backward through Gordon's life, revealing scenes of  a very troubled Rhodesia from the 60s through 1980,  and takes a brief foray into the Africa of the 1850s.

The book is not an easy read in terms of subject matter -- the very first story is how Gordon, in the Rhodesian Army,  came to be captured and sent to the hellish copper mines as a prisoner, where on the first day in captivity he witnesses a dead prisoner being roasted on a spit.   But it is there that Gordon tells his stories, where his "life emerged from the darkness as a mosaic of disjointed details...," where his stories were committed to memory by the other prisoners, whose own stories had been lost after years of living in the mine.  His are tales of death,  fear and cruelty in a time of war, mistreatment of "lesser" people by outside colonial powers who've also marginalized and displaced whole societies,  and a family secret that at one point causes a father to hold a pillow over his newborn baby daughter's face. All of these short stories and more creep into the mix before the bigger picture is revealed, not just of Gordon himself, but of his troubled family and of other lives caught up in a very turbulent time in Africa's history.

As each piece of the story is told in a chapter of its own, it slowly begins to dawn on you that in some cultures, this is how history is passed on --  through memories and stories  handed down through the ages, an effort which  helps maintain the ongoing power of tradition and cultural identity that together  have the power to speak to a person's blood.  Sadly, as it also happens,these traditions can also be lost --  here, in the face of wars, cultural displacement and other factors tearing Rhodesia apart,  it  turns out, as one character notes,  that "we have lost our place in the world, and our stories mean nothing now," which is really not true if you think about it ... they just need someone to do the telling and someone to do the listening.

There is something very different going on here in terms of storytelling, and it works well.  In novels with a normal chronological and linear approach, the reader gets an idea that something's going to happen and the time spent reading is to get to whatever that thing might be.  In that sense, the reader is drawn along with the characters and the action of the novel toward an ending.  Here, going backwards, the reader knows that something has happened in the past that takes him or her  to the situation of the present, but it's not exactly clear what that might have been.   Each chapter takes the reader closer to Gordon's roots,  to uncovering his real identity, so that we don't get the full picture of who exactly Gordon is until everything has been exposed, taking us to a beginning.    In the meantime, as each segment of Gordon's life is revealed, there's this compelling urge to revisit the previous section to link things together.  While there's definitely a choppy, rather disconcerting feel to this method,  it works, definitely demanding active, rather than passive reading. It also  leaves  you a bit disoriented as  you're reading one section, wondering "how did we get here?"  and you feel you must  continue reading to find out.  This approach may not be to everyone's taste or liking, but it makes for a more intense and active reading experience.

The Raw Man is a lovely book, one that verges into the realms of the fantastical at times, but at the same time maintains a very realistic  feel as the author goes back through time, connecting disjointed memories into a more cohesive whole. What may be most problematic about this novel is that if you are unfamiliar with the history of the ongoing conflicts in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), it may be confusing trying to sort out who is on what side, or who are the good guys or the bad guys, or why one side is doing what they do, etc.  I wouldn't let that be a deal breaker if you're considering reading this book, but it can get a bit confusing sometimes.  I loved this book, and recommend it most highly.