*The Sentimentalists, by Johanna Skibsrud

9781554470785

Gaspereau Press Limited, 2009

218 pp.

The Sentimentalists is not a long book, but within its 200+ pages, the author examines the relationship between fathers and daughters as well as friendship and the often intangible and little-understood consequences of war. However, the main theme that carries through all of these topics is the imperfection and frailty of memory -- and the role played by the passage of time and circumstance in how and what we remember.

The basic story follows the narrator, a woman whose father can no longer live on his own.  She and her sister take him from his Fargo, North Dakota home, a structure "pieced together from two and a half aluminum trailers and deposited in a lot" to the home of Henry, the father of Owen, a childhood friend, in a small town called Casablanca in Ontario, "just twenty miles from the border of New York."  This little town was where the family spent many summer vacations when the narrator and her sister were children, and the group referred to Henry's residence as the "government house," after the flooding of his boyhood home caused by the course of the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the late 1950s.  In the present, for reasons of her own, the narrator/daughter has come back to Casablanca to stay with her father, where she attempts to gain some understanding of this man about whom she knows so little -- a man whose complicated and unspoken past in Vietnam interrupted the lives of his family, and who spent years trying to connect back to a more simple, less complicated past and the dreams that were part of it.

The first half of the novel is the basis for the main story, which doesn't really appear until about just past the halfway point of the book, at which point things began to get really interesting. In the meantime, there were several paragraphs scattered throughout the novel that made me have to stop, put the book down, and take some time to parse and mull over what I'd just read. After doing this way too often and getting frustrated at the lack of narrative flow this created for me, it dawned on me that I was seeing the poet rather than narrative writer in Skibsrud, especially in the ways she often opted for a more metaphorical bent:

Overall, I would have to say that it had come as a disappointment to live within the particularities of a life; to find that the simple arithmetic of things -- which I thought I had learned by rote, but was now unsure from whom, or what is was that had been learned at all was not so simple. That it was not, in fact, combination alone that increased the territory of living in the world. And that love did not, of its own accord, increase with time...And that there was nothing to do when it left you but bite your tongue and wait for its return. As though it were a small bird, which sometimes thought to wing itself across the city -- but would, almost always, thinking better of it, arrive again in a rush, to the sill. Oh, I would have waited like a dog for seven lifetimes for that bird to appear, if I knew that it would continue to come!  If I knew that it would continue to look in again with fondness at the small room, which it had thought to leave behind; at a life of knowing; of closeness, and foibles. Of regrets, misdeeds, and small, personal ecstasies.

This is not to say that I didn't like this book -- because I did, especially the last part. It's not that I don't appreciate the beauty of the English language in the hands of talented authors, because I do,  but I think this book would be most fully appreciated by an audience inclined to the more complex aspects of the writing craft, quite possibly by people who are writers themselves.  As for me, although I always ponder whatever it is I'm reading at the moment, sometimes the reading process in this case was just a bit more work than it needed to be, although I will say that toward the end of the novel, things picked up and became a little more straightforward, using less of the detail that tended to bog down the first half of the novel in parts and less effluvient language. One thing that still puzzles me is that I'm still not sure exactly why the author chose to set up the epilogue of the book the way she did -- it was quite an abrupt change -- but it is what it is. If anyone has figured it out, maybe you can clue me in.

Overall -- it's a fine first novel, sometimes a bit bogged down with what I would consider superfluous detail and metaphor, but one still worth the time you put into it, and one I'd recommend.   

sidebar:

I consider myself quite fortunate to have bought my copy early on in the book's lifetime (drawn in by the Vietnam aspect of the novel) before Amazon sellers brought the prices up exorbitantly.  Now, as it turns out, there's going to be another run to help keep up with the demand (from today's issue of Shelf Awareness): 

Douglas & McIntyre is publishing a trade paperback version of Scotia Giller Prize-winner The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud, which has been in short supply since it won the award last Tuesday. Gaspereau Press, the novel's publisher, prints and binds its books in-house, a process that cannot keep up with demand for The Sentimentalists. The first printing was 800, which is sold out, and the second printing of 2,300 is spoken for....Douglas & McIntyre plans to ship 30,000 copies of the new edition of the book by this Friday, November 19, from printer Friesens in Manitoba. Another printing of 20,000 will follow immediately. The book will be priced at $19.95.

The article goes on to say that the book is already available on the Kobo e-reader, and that Douglas & McIntyre is also planning to make it available for other e-reader formats as well.  So for those of you waiting, it shouldn't be too long.  

The Literary Blog Hop -- November 11-14

This week the question is the following:  What is the most difficult literary work you've ever read? What made it so difficult?

That's an easy one.  A few years back I read two books, both called Dictionary of the Khazars, by Milorad Pavic.  The trick was that one edition of the books was labeled "male" and one was labeled "female,"  and between the two books everything was the same except for one paragraph.  The difficulty came in trying to find the paragraph in question, and that meant reading line for line through both books.  The book itself is excellent, but it took so much time to find this one paragraph.  In case anyone wants to read it, I won't give away the show, but it was definitely a chore to finish!  I suppose I could have cheated, but I just couldn't do it.

*Needle in a Haystack, by Ernesto Mallo

my brief  review for this most excellent book can be found at the  crime segments portion of my online reading journal.  Pop on over if you're interested.

*The Wrong Blood, by Manuel de Lope

9781590513093
Other Press
2010
original Spanish title: Sangre Ajena, 2000; translated by John Cullen
288 pp.




The Wrong Blood  is the story of two women of different classes in Spain's Basque country: Maria Antonia Etxarri, the young daughter of a local innkeeper and Isabel Cruces Hernandez, who comes from a family of wealth and influence.  During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), their individual tragedies unexpectedly bring and then bind them together for the rest of their lives. Isabel falls in love with and marries an army captain, who is killed shortly afterwards, leaving behind not only Isabel but her unborn child. Maria Antonia, only a teenager, is raped when a group of soldiers take shelter at her father's inn. The local doctor, Felix Castro, is the central figure connecting them both. In the present, Miguel Goitia, law student and Isabel's grandson, is spending time at his grandmother's estate (which now belongs to Maria Antonia), a sanctuary of peace and quiet while he is preparing for his bar exam. His very presence there brings out memories of old wartime secrets that Miguel is not privy to -- and Castro is torn between telling him the truth about things or letting old memories lie dormant.  It is also a story about loss, grief, the nature of class distinction, and as Dave Boling, author of Guernica and one of the blurbers wrote, about  "... human survival at desperate times."

In terms of the writing, the direction of the plotline is a bit obvious once you begin reading, but that hardly matters in the long run.  I only rarely find an author whose prose is so eloquent that I want to read the book again just to appreciate its beauty. And considering this is a translated version, well, I can only imagine how absolutely wonderful it must be in the original Spanish.  The story is paced very well; it starts a bit slow, setting the overall tone immediately, while allowing the reader to absorb and appreciate small details that might otherwise be overlooked.  The sense of time and place is evoked largely through the use of flashbacks, which take the reader seamlessly and skillfully through the hardships of war into the present and back again, without causing any interruption to  the overall flow of the story. It is a book that will you find difficult to put down until the very end.

I recommend this novel to people who enjoy Spanish novels in translation, and who truly appreciate the beauty of the written word. It's definitely not a book for those who want something quick and easy, nor is it an action-packed novel that once you've read you'll forget, like so much fiction that's out there on bookstore shelves at the moment.. It's a book to be enjoyed slowly -- and kept on your shelf to visit again some day.

fiction from Spain

The Literary Blog Hop

I received an email today alerting me to the Literary Blog Hop at The Blue Bookcase, the "book review blog for bookish people.  To play along, you are encouraged to discuss the following:   Please highlight one of your favorite books and why you would consider it "literary.  Since most of what I read (with some exceptions) I would consider literary fiction, this seems to be right up my alley.  

My choice is Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room.  I would consider it as literary fiction -- it is a beautifully-constructed series of three smaller novellas encompassed within one book, and although each story is different, there are several unifying themes that link them all together. The titles of each novella not only reflect a role taken on by one of the characters in the context of the individual story, but as the narrator notes, they are the primary roles he's discovered exist in most relationships.   The tone established in the writing of the book as a whole is definitely understated, allowing the stories  to project the powerful emotion of the narrator across the novel.  As I noted in my review of the book, the narrator relates his story often as if he's watching himself from another vantage point,  so that sometimes he's speaking in the first person, and the telling changes to a third-person narrative, where "I" becomes "he."  It is a delightful reading experience and although not packed full of action, it's definitely a powerful novel.

*The Report, by Jessica Francis Kane

978155975654
Graywolf Press
2010
240 pp.


Based on a true story, The Report is a novel centered on an event which happened on March 3, 1943 at the Bethnal Green Tube station, which at the time also served as the local bomb shelter. Sir Laurence Dunne, the magistrate who wrote the report on the incident noted that “the stairway was converted from a corridor to a charnel house in ten to 15 seconds,” when one hundred seventy-three people died in a human crush on the stairs near the entrance to the shelter, asphyxiated to death.  There were no bombs heading for or exploding in London, so how did this happen?   The author, Jessica Frances Kane, has created a fictional account of that day and its aftermath in this splendid novel, which not only recreates this event, but asks some tough questions along the way that are in many ways still pertinent today.

The story begins with the arrival of a young man who has been trying to arrange an interview with Dunne for a 30-year retrospective documentary on the Bethnal Green incident.  It then moves backward in time and the major characters who are involved in the tragedy are introduced.  These characters are all too real, making it easy for the reader to become deeply involved in the story on a very human level as events proceed up to March 3^rd and then afterward.  The way the author has written this novel also provides a glimpse of the wartime problems and frustrations of those at the London homefront – the mistrust of refugees, the food shortages, the years of ongoing blackouts (one character remarked that her beloved baby sister had never even seen the moon in the night sky), the sheer endurance involved in trying to hold on until the war is over, etc., and the differences made simply based on where you lived in the city.  As events are slowly revealed and unraveled, the characters become much more developed and come into their own and their motivations behind their actions also become clearer.  They move on from that fateful night on to the aftermath, when individuals, families and the community are left to cope with their grief or other feelings about the tragedy, along  with the progress of the inquiry led by Magistrate Dunne. Interspersed with the core story of the event, the story also moves in and out of the present of 1973, where people have definitely not forgotten, and where many of them are still dealing with the impact of this singular event, especially Dunne.  

There are many realistic observations made by the characters that exemplify Kane’s excellent writing.  For example, in a scene set in 1973, Dunne notes of the young man who came to interview him:

 …talking to him was like talking to any young person about the war years; they spoke from a background of black-and-white pictures, while your memories were very much in color. They asked about the rationing, while you saw coupons. They spoke about the public morale, when what you remembered were the faces. Try as they might, they only heard a chord or two, while the whole symphony still roared in your head.

The author became interested in the story when she discovered Tragedy at Bethnal Green, 1943: Report on an Inquiry into the Accident at Bethnal Green Tube Station Shelter (Uncovered Editions) at the British Library bookshop, and then went on to read the full transcript of the inquiry into the incident at the National Archives. She relates in the Author’s Note at the end of the book that news of the terrible event was “kept secret for days” and that magistrate Laurence Dunne pursued an investigation, published a report, and then the government suppressed it until the war’s end.

 The Report is (unbelievably) this writer’s first novel and you would be hard pressed as a reader to read this book and not end up forming your own conclusions as to what really happened on that fateful night. It draws you in from the start and does not lessen its hold until the very end, not only because of the subject matter, but also because it is beautifully constructed. I most definitely recommend this book – and I hope it does well with readership. It is easily one of the best novels I’ve read this year. If you want to read a compelling work of historical fiction, this book is one that should not be missed.

*Acid Christ: Ken Kesey, LSD and the Politics of Ecstasy, by Mark Christensen

9781936182008
Schaffner Press, 2010
440 pp.

First, a huge thanks to the publishers who sent me this book as an ARC! 

Ken Kesey is probably best known to most people as the author of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) or for his crazy group, The Merry Pranksters, made famous  through Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), which, sadly I have not yet read (but I just bought a copy, so that will be rectified shortly).  In Acid Christ: Ken Kesey, LSD, and the Politics of Ecstasy, author Mark Christensen has written what he calls a “participatory biography,”  offering not only Kesey’s  story but his own as well in a parallel narrative – so that he could explain how Kesey came to affect his own life as he grew up in the 1960s and joined in the drug culture that was transforming America one tab at a time. One of the major questions Christensen seeks to answer about Kesey is why, after writing two excellent novels, he decided to “ditch” writing all together.

The author used a wide variety of sources and has obviously done his homework.  The sections on Kesey provide a wealth of information and insight, especially when Kesey himself is speaking (via interviews, writings, etc.), although I have to admit that I haven’t read much about Kesey prior to this book, so I have to take Christensen’s word for everything else. The other thing the author does well is to situate the book in time – there’s a great deal of background as the younger generations moved from the whole Beat scene into the era of the hippies, Timothy Leary, and the LSD explosion -- the positive effects of which Kesey believed would actually transform the nation. As the author notes, Kesey wanted to “coalesce the counterculture,” and “open the American mind and set it loose, unfetterered by the conventional constraints of the nine-to-five,” the requirement for which was a “national party in which the punch was spiked with the stuff of dreams.” 

As much as I liked the Kesey sections, the “participatory biography” thing didn’t work for me. Although Christensen’s accounts of his own life and his journey through the psychedelic era were interesting, I was disappointed that they took up so much space in the book. After all, this is a book about Ken Kesey, but there are long chapters about people that for the most part, had very little or no connection to Kesey. In fact, I’m still not sure about the author’s connection to Kesey, except that he was a friend of his brother.  There’s a lengthy chapter about Paul Krassner, another counterculture player, who did know Kesey, and who was actually the author’s first choice for a biographical subject, but when it comes right down to it, I wanted to read about Ken Kesey. 

I would recommend the book (with the caveat about some long and rather slow-moving sections about the author’s experiences), especially to people like myself who totally missed  the whole hippie, LSD, counterculture movement but are still interested in that time period.  Personally, I think that whole movement laid the foundations for much of what’s happened since in terms of grassroot effort, so it’s important to have an understanding of its key players, and Kesey was definitely one of them.

November -- continuing with the indie presses!

It's been a while since I've posted, due to travel and other slight interruptions to normal life, but in the meantime, I have been continuing on with reading books from independent presses, and have not been disappointed.  Today and through next week I'm on the west coast, in Seattle, where the crispy weather is conducive to curling up under a blanket and reading a good book.  And I've got a stack of them sitting here waiting for me!