THE LOST TUDOR PRINCESS by Alison Weir (non-fic)

Like all of the historical books by the prolific Alison Weir, this book is meticulously researched.  Weir makes history come alive. She is an expert in Tutor England, and if you have read and enjoyed her other books on this infamous family, you will want to read this one.  It covers the life of Lady Margaret Douglas who was the niece of Henry VIII. It was impossible to have grown up Tudor and not be involved in numerous plots. Luckily for Margaret both King Henry and her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I were in the end forgiving of her many falls from grace.  That is not to say, that Margaret didn’t suffer mightily.  She bore and lost a number of children, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London more than once.  Her son, Lord Darnley, was married against the wishes of Queen Elizabeth to Mary, Queen of Scots.  This took a deal of scheming on Margaret’s part.  Like all the Tudors, Margaret was a brilliant woman.  An ill-advised early love affair ended in disaster, but there exists a wealth of poetry written by Margaret and her lover, Thomas Howard. Throughout her life, Margaret remained optimistic and active in society.  She remained faithful to the Catholic faith and lived on the edge of danger most of her life.
Alison Weir has written an interesting and lively account of a woman who has largely been lost to history.  I highly recommend this book to all who love English history and the Tudor period.

WAKING LIONS by Eyelet Gundar-Goshen (fiction)

This book held my interest from start to finish.  A neurosurgeon has been more or less banished to a small desert town in Israel after a professional disagreement at his hospital in Tel Aviv.  He is married to a police detective and has two sons, none of whom are happy in their dusty outpost.  Late one night after a long day at the hospital, he is letting off steam in the desert by driving fast and recklessly.  Unfortunately, he hits and kills a man in a deserted area.  Thus begins a plot which tangles him in a web of lies to his wife as he desperately tries to extricate himself from  a blackmail  scheme where he is forced to treat illegal Bedouins who are being exploited by unscrupulous employers. The story revolves around attraction and love, guilt, morality, privilege, and touches on all the problems and politics we are grappling with in the modern world.  All the while, Eitan’s wife is working to solve the desert murder.  
This is a terrific book and one of the best I have read this year.  I highly recommend it to all readers and reading groups.  There is much to ponder.

THE PUNISHMENT SHE DESERVES by Elizabeth George (fiction/mystery)

Faithful readers of Elizabeth George will be happy to meet up once again with Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his sidekick Sergeant Barbara Havers. It is hard to believe this is the 20th book in which this duo has appeared.  Most of this book belongs to Barbara Havers who is the star in solving a crime in Shrewsbury, a market town on the border with Wales. Besides the local crime they are sent to solve, a large chunk of the book is devoted to the drinking habits of their superior, Chief Inspector Ardery. It is always fun to witness the relationship between Lynley and Havers who couldn’t be more unalike.  Though I must admit while I was wild about George’s earlier detective fiction, by the end of this too long book, I was becoming weary of both characters.  The last few books in this series have disappointed me.  Perhaps it is time for George to move on and begin a new series.

NOTES FROM THE HYENA’S BELLY by Nega Mezlekia (NF)

A memoir of growing up in Ethiopia, this book was written early in 2000.  If you are unfamiliar with Ethiopia and its history, this book will send you to your computer looking for more information on one of the oldest societies in the world.  Nega Mezlekia describes growing up as a mischievous boy who often got into trouble with his friends.  We learn about his schooling, his rebellious teens, and as the country falls into chaos and revolution, his experience of joining a terrorist militia group.  His family’s life falls apart after the murder of his father and the tale of their survival falls on Nega’s shoulders and forms him as he grows into manhood.  Reading this book, piqued my interest in a country rich in tradition and history. It is a fascinating look into a land that is among mankind’s earliest civilizations.

ASYMMETRY by Lisa Halliday (fiction)

I enjoyed this first novel by a new writer.  It is intelligently written, and as its title infers, it involves two disparate stories leading the reader to ponder on their connection.  The first section takes place in Manhattan just as American is becoming involved in the Iraq War, and is reflective of Halliday’s own life experiences, though the author denies it is anything more than fiction.  An aspiring writer meets  a famous and respected older author, falls under his spell and begins an affair with him.  The older author resembles Philip Roth with whom Halliday was at one time involved.  Alongside this is the story of an Iraqi-American man who is detained at Heathrow Airport in London while on his way to see his brother. The contrast of two different cultures and the experiences of the two main characters form the central issues of the novel.  Both stories illustrate unequal powers between men and women, war and its victims. The clever way the stories connect is brilliant and thought provoking. I highly recommend this novel for its originality, outstanding writing and thoughtful issues. It would make a good choice for a reading group.

THE UNRULY CITY by Mike Rapport (non-fic)

In “The Unruly City,” historian Mike Rapport presents three cities, New York City, London and Paris and the events which changed their citizens and the face of each city.  Roughly covering the period of unrest between 1765 and 1795, the author integrates and entwines this dangerous time of revolutionary thought and its rapid spread across the European continent and the Atlantic Ocean.  Rapport covers all aspects of city life, commercial, architectural, academic and governmental. We may be familiar with both the French and American revolutions, but it is important to recognize the profound changes that the events in these two countries had on London and England itself. I recommend this book as a well-written, interesting read of how events take on a life of their own and move men to greatness as well as failure.

THE PARIS SECRET by Karen Swan (fiction)

This is through and through a summer beach read.  It has the potential to be an interesting plot but is spoiled by the poorly drawn characters who seem only to care about bling and high fashion.  The author lovingly describes every designer article of clothing her characters are wearing including the designers of each piece. The actual plot, of some important paintings which were stolen in World War II and have only come to light, is readable.  But, the book is marred by the unreality of the characters and the neatly tied up ending.  The only positive I can say is that if you are looking for a light read, you could do worse.

MUNICH by Robert Harris (fiction)

The excellent Robert Harris has written another well-researched and fascinating novel.  It is September 1938 and Neville Chamberlain is going to Munich to meet with Hitler in a last ditch effort to halt the inevitable war on the horizon. Hitler is about to invade Czechoslovakia, and the PM has to decide whether to turn a blind eye and perhaps save England.  The history is well known, but what would happen if there was an underground plot to assassinate Hitler at the same time by Germans who wish to save their own country from slipping into a moral quagmire.  Hugh Legat, private secretary to Chamberlain, is caught up in the affair when he meets up with an old Oxford classmate who is in the center of the intrigue. Harris handles the plot with deftness, and though we imagine we know the outcome, it is still full of suspense.  I highly recommend this book, and by the way, if you haven’t read Harris before, his books are not to be missed.

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL by Anthony Bourdain (non-fic)

I never read this book when it came out at the turn of the century, though it had been recommended to me by several friends.  Because of the recent sad death of Chef Bourdain, I decided to pick it up.  It doesn’t matter that it was written some time ago; it is still fresh and interesting.  It is an eye-opener into the inner recesses of the kitchens of high end establishments and perhaps even your neighborhood bistro.  I highly recommend you read it if you haven’t.  It is timely, informative and may even make you think twice before you order that well-done piece of tuna or steak.

JULY BOOKS

GOLDEN HILL by Francis Spufford (fiction):   The English writer, Francis Spufford, has interests which range far and wide.  This time he has chosen to write his first novel, setting it in New York City some 30 years before the Revolutionary War.  This is an intelligent, picaresque novel which moves apace filled with accurate details of colonial life and brushes with the law. The appealing rogue at its center is the subject of town gossip and speculation.  The reader is left guessing until the end when he is really is.

MERIVEL by Rose Tremain (fiction):  Rose Tremain is a favorite writer of mine.  Her historical fiction is accurate, entertaining and intelligent.  Robert Merivel was a character in her novel “Restoration.”  Here he is again in 1683, 15 years older, still practicing sensible medicine and still a confident of King Charles II.  This is an older novel written in 1989, but is sure to please as the reader follows Sir Merivel’s adventures in Paris, England and Switzerland.  It is not necessary to have read “Restoration” to enjoy this book.  I highly recommend it, and any novel written by Tremain.

PRINCE CHARLES: The Passions ans Paradoxes of an Improbable Life by Sally Bedell Smith (non-fic./biography): Bedell Smith has made a study of Britain’s Royals, and here she presents a fair and balanced portrait of Prince Charles, a man who has been dissected in the popular press, sometimes fairly, but often misunderstood.  I believe I now have a clearer picture of what makes Charles tick and especially how his upbringing affected every aspect of his life.  I may not like him more, but I am surely more sympathetic to Charles and respect him more for reading this well-presented biography. There is more to the man than just his difficult public life with Diana, Princess of Wales. I highly recommend this book.

GLASS HOUSE by Louise Penny (fiction/Mystery):  Summer is a great time for reading mysteries and Penny’s next to latest book is now in Paperback and will not disappoint. This time it seems that Gamache, who has been promoted to Chief Superintendent of the Surete du Quebec, is involved in a necessary deception which almost loses him his job.  Recommended as an entertaining anytime read.

BOOKS OF INTEREST

WAKING LIONS by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (Fiction)
VARINA by Charles Frazier (Fiction)
TWO SISTERS by Anne Seierstad (Non-fiction)
PRIESTDADDY by Patricia Lockwood (Non-fiction)
THE MARS ROOM by Rachel Kushner (Fiction)
THE LAST NEANDERTHAL by Claire Cameron (Fiction)

June Books

As I mentioned to you last month, I am cutting back on my reviews, but will continue each month to give thumbnail blurbs and recommendations for recently read books.  I will divide this into books read and books that may be of interest.

This month’s reading:

A CRACK IN THE WALL by Claudia Pineiro (fiction)
Pineiro is a well known Argentinian writer.  Architect Pablo Simo is trapped in a lackluster job, his home life is a mess.  Much of his day is spent daydreaming about the sexy office secretary.  He is drawn into a heinous crime and cover up that leads to a very interesting ending.
Highly recommend as a different type of mystery with a highly imaginative plot.

THE WANDERERS by Tim Pears (fiction)
This is the second book in Pears’s trilogy of life in rural England leading up to World War I.  The first book, “The Horseman," was reviewed here previously.  It continues the story of Leo Sercombe, a Devon farm boy who has a reverent and mystical relationship to horses.  I didn’t enjoy this second volume as much as I did the first, but I still recommend reading it if you have read and enjoyed the first book.  I am looking forward to the third volume.
Recommended.

A HIGHER LOYALTY by James Comey (non-fiction)
James Comey, the former head of the FBI, has written a timely account of his interaction and subsequent firing by Donald Trump.  He begins the book with an account of his years serving the federal government under George Bush and through the Obama years.  Interestingly it brings back the often tense moments and mistakes of the Bush administration that many of us have forgotten, as well as the constant drama of the present administration.  Comey makes an effort to be bipartisan and goes to great length to expose his own shortcomings.
Recommended.

ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL by Sarah Vaughan (fiction)
This novel is a page turner.  It weaves the past and present of the couple at the center of the story. He is a well-known and respected parliamentary minister who is charged with rape.  His loyal wife grapples with the attendant publicity and her inner battle to remain supportive.  At the same time, the backgrounds of the barrister prosecuting the case as well as that of the victim add to the suspense.  The book is well-written and the characters are interesting and fully drawn.
Highly recommended.

BOOKS OF INTEREST:

CALL ME ZEBRA by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (F)
SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD by Jasmin Darznik (F)
TWO SISTERS by Asne Seierstad (NF)
ALTERNATE SIDES by Anna Quindlen (F)
THE PUNISHMENT SHE DESERVES by Elizabeth George
THE OVERSTORY by Richard Powers

LENIN by Victor Sebestyen (NF)

The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror

Victor Sebestyen has done a massive amount of up to date research on Lenin, and has written a fascinating, readable, and balanced book about the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a man who had a monumental impact on Russia and subsequently, the world.

Lenin, whose birth name was Vladimir Ulyanov, was born April 10, 1870.  His family were upper middle class and money was never an issue.   As a child he did not show any special talent toward leadership, indeed, he kept to himself, was quiet and had few friends other than those who were, like him, mad about chess.  Lenin was studious and always earned grades which placed him at the top of his class.  While still a young boy, his older brother, Sasha, became involved in an underground terrorist group dedicated to overthrowing the Tsar.  He was jailed and summarily executed.  This act changed the course of Lenin’s life.  In his young adult years Lenin studied law and practiced for a short while.  Emulating his beloved brother, Lenin soon joined radical underground groups in the St. Petersburg area, and it was here that his talent for organizing and leadership evolved.

Lenin was well-known to the Tsarist Secret Police, and before long was arrested and spent a year in jail and three years in Siberia.  By 1900 when he was released, he was a marked man and fled to Western Europe where he moved about living in Paris, London, Geneva, Munich and Finland, organizing uprisings and strikes again the government of Russia.  He did not return home until 1917 when the revolution he masterminded was at last underway.

The adult Lenin possessed the same attributes as most strong totalitarian leaders. He was unable to compromise, believed in himself, was singularly determined and had a strong will.  He thought of himself as an idealist, but held that the ends justified the means.  That meant lies, manipulation,repression, and condemning large populations to starvation and death were all justifiable in order to establish the communist state.  Lenin only ruled Russia less than seven years, yet he completely changed the government and course of Russian history.  Lenin was a great orator and was able to sway crowds, inspiring in them optimism and hope.  He offered simple solutions to complex problems.

In opposition to his public persona, Lenin led a quiet domestic life.  He adored the outdoors and was happiest when hiking through the mountains, walking and swimming.  He was forever writing and formulating political tomes.   He married Nadya Krupskaya, and they remained a devoted couple even though he carried on a lifetime affair with Inessa Armand.  They all apparently lived in harmony frequently sharing outings and holidays.  Inessa and Nadya were as devoted to each other as they were to Lenin.  Inessa had several children with a former husband and these children remained close to Lenin and Nadya until their deaths. (a little factoid:  Lenin’s cook at one time was a man named Spiridon Putin:  Sound familiar? He was Vladimir Putin’s grandfather.)

The cult of Lenin in Russia began after an unsuccessful assassination attempt on him.  Lenin was eventually brought down by a series of strokes which left him incapacitated and unable to make decisions.  This is where Stalin steps onto the stage, but that is a story for another time. Lenin died in 1924 and his body was preserved, his mausoleum visited by millions from all over the world.  Winston Churchill famously said, “For Russians, their worst misfortune was Lenin”s birth; their next worst, his death."

I enjoyed this book immensely and could go on for pages. I highly recommend it to all readers. It is beautifully written and it is a period of history we would all benefit from knowing more about, especially given the state of our world today.

THE THIRST by Jo Nesbo (fiction/thriller)

I thought I was Jo Nesbo(ed) out after I finished this latest Harry Hole thriller.  But, I read a review of his latest book, “Macbeth,” and I might have to reconsider.  “Macbeth” is part of the reconfigured Shakespeare series, in which authors write a contemporary novel based on Shakespeare’s original.  I reviewed Anne Tyler’s “Vinegar Girl” which is part of the same series.  The thought of Nesbo taking on “Macbeth” is too juicy to ignore.

At any rate, “The Thirst” follows the same formula that has made Nesbo famous, lots of gore, angst, murders, and Harry.  In this book Harry is married to Rakel and his step-son, Oleg is a police intern and has shaken off his addictions, Harry though, maybe not.  Harry’s workmates are also here with all their hangups.  Early in the book, we meet the murderous villain, this time a vampire-like killer who wreaks havoc with some specially made steel dentures.  Enough said.

If you are a fan of Nesbo and Harry, this will not disappoint.  I still think “The Snowman” is his best.
Enjoy.

PACHINKO by Min Jin Lee (fiction)

“Pachinko” was a National Book Award finalist as well as one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017.  The story spans the years from about 1910 when the Japanese occupied Korea until the end of the 1980s.  The author has given us the story of four generations of a family who lived through the two World Wars, the Cold War and the Korean War and the effects these events had on ordinary people.
The story opens in a small fishing village, Yeongdo, on the southeast coast of Korea. There, in an arranged marriage a young girl named Yangjin weds a good man who has a double disability, both a cleft lip and a club foot.  Despite the difficulty of making a living, the couple had a happy marriage, especially when a daughter, their only child, was born.  It is this girl, Sunja, who is the center of the novel.  The family remained desperately poor, and more so when the father dies early on.

The young Sunja was an innocent and naive girl, and she was attracted to a well dressed Japanese man who came back and forth to her little village, though we are never quite sure what his business there was.  He took notice of Sunja in the marketplace, and then took advantage of her.  As these these tales often go, it wasn’t long before Sunja found she was pregnant.  Hansu was married with a family back in Japan, and what’s more he was a powerful member of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia.  In a strange way, Hansu loved Sunja for her purity, and though he could not convince her to leave with him, he continued to secretly follow her whereabouts and support her in ways she was unaware of.  He appears again and again throughout the book, never losing his love for Sunja.

One day a young Korean Christian missionary, Isak, en route to join his brother in Japan, stays at Yangjin’s boarding house.  Sensitive to Sunja’s condition and the shame and rejection she would bring upon the family, he offers to marry her and bring up her child as his own if she will join him in Osaka.  It is the story of this family which is the centerpiece of the novel.  Because the story follows four generations in the Baek family, it is not possible to give a plot summary, of this well-written book, rich with detail.  Poor and forced to live in the Korean ghetto where they were known as Zainichi, the first generation faced discrimination and often brutality.  Feeling shame the women worked hard to make and sell kimchi in the marketplace. Three strong steadfast woman kept the family intact and close. Though they longed to return to Korea, they could not because of occupation and war.

Sonja and Isak had two sons and these men became very successful but by different pathways. Noa, the oldest, longs to be Japanese and eventually changes his name and moves to Nagano where he passes for Japanese, his wife and children unaware of his roots.
Mozasu, the second son, who was never much of a student, becomes wealthy by running and eventually owning Pachinko parlors.  Pachinko is a game similar to vertical pinball. Wildly popular, they are everywhere in Japan, noisy and full of people at all hours.  In the past, it was a path out of poverty for the many Koreans who ran them. Inevitably they were targets for the Yakuza.

Mozasu’s son, Solomon, faces different challenges.  He is a modern child, educated in America, with a degree in business.  Sadly, he discovers that working for a British investment bank does not shield him from discrimination and even sacking, when he is considered redundant after completing a large deal for the company.

Min Jin’s characters are strongly drawn and realistic.  Family ties, the role of women, the shame and struggle of being an immigrant, are all themes which run through the book.  I enjoyed the novel and highly recommend it as a great read as well as a bit of history one may not be familiar with.




 

THE DEAD HOUR by Denise Mina (fic/mystery)

This is an early Denise Mina thriller, written in 2006, and continues the story of Paddy Meehan who works the graveyard shift for the Scottish Daily News in Glasgow.  Paddy appears in a previous book, “Field of Blood,” which I haven’t read, but this novel stands on its own as an enjoyable read.  Paddy is young, tough and feisty.  She more than holds her own in the rough nightly news room and with the police at the local precinct. She comes from a large and poor Irish family, and she wrestles with her share of guilt about her weight, her snacking, and her relationship with a sleazy detective on a case she is following for a news story.

Paddy’s job entails chasing down police calls with her driver in case there is a lead she can make into a story.  The usual night news room stories are fairly dull, and when she stumbles upon a call in an upscale neighborhood, Paddy is sure there is more to the case than a simple domestic dispute. She becomes part of the case when she glimpses a battered woman behind the well-dressed handsome man who answers the door.  The woman quickly disappears from sight as the man smoothly puts off  the police, slipping them and Paddy hush money.  The exchange happens so quickly that it doesn’t register with her until she is warned to keep her mouth shut by the police.

Mina weaves dark nourish tales, and most of the action in this story takes place in the wet, gritty streets of nighttime Glasgow.  It involves murder, police corruption, suicide and drugs.  Mina’s characters are real and Paddy is unusual and likable.  The reader feels her pain and her struggle to do the right thing while trying to help support her family and especially her mother.

Finding an older Denise Mina book at a library book sale is a treat indeed.  If you haven’t read anything by her and you like mysteries, I recommend you give her work a try.  She writes well and realistically and her characters are always psychologically interesting and deeper than the usual crime novel sleuth.

THE HORSEMAN by Tim Pears (fiction

This beautiful story by Tim Pears completely mesmerized me.  I was back in Somerset and Devon, Thomas Hardy country.  The measured pace of each day in one year in the life of a country manor farm, and the mood that the author creates with his lyrical writing reminds me very much of the pleasure of reading Hardy.  “The Horseman” is the first of a trilogy of the West Country of England.

It is the story of Leo Sercombe, a 14 year old boy in the years 1911-12.  These years are the last before the Great War broke out, and Leo’s life parallels the calm before the storm.  We are reminded that though nature is calming and beautiful, it can also bring destruction, and the reader knows that despite the slow cadence of everyday life, something big is coming.

Leo is a silent observer, serious, honest and true.  He rarely speaks, yet takes in all around him, and in turn we see all through Leo’s eyes. School and book learning are something to be gotten through until real life begins.  He is the youngest of a taciturn family where everyone has a job and that job fills every minute of every day.  Everyone contributes his or her work which like a well-oiled gear keeps the large estate running smoothly.  The chapters are named by the months of the year and each is centered around a seasonal chore, whether it is preparing the ground for planting until it is time for reaping, or birthing animals, or the brutality of their slaying for food when they mature.  The quiet dignity of the farm workers and the cadence of their speech has a calming effect.

Leo is like a horse whisperer.  He has a gift that all recognize, even Lord Prideaux who sees a future for Leo that will eventually put him in charge of all the manor stables.  Only things don’t always go as one plans or wishes.  Leo’s passionate love of horses is equally felt by Miss Charlotte, daughter of Lord Prideaux. She also instinctively understands the animals and is a talented horsewoman.  She shares an unspoken bond with Leo, as if they are two sides of the same person, bound by their deep love and understanding of horses.  Their innocent relationship is misunderstood by others. The difference in their social classes dictates that they cannot overstep the boundaries they seem to ignore. The climax and ending of the book is very powerful, especially since events leading up to it are so peaceful.

This elegiac novel touched me deeply and I look forward to reading the others in the series.  I highly recommend it to all who feel a kinship with nature, love horses, and to those who love Thomas Hardy’s West Country novels.

& SONS by David Gilbert (fiction)

I enjoyed this book; I like the writing, and I especially liked the recognizable setting in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  Explaining the plot is not easy without giving away the climax of the novel, and there a number of characters with their own stories.  The novel largely focuses on one family, the Dyers, and opens with the funeral of Charlie Topping, the childhood friend of Andrew Dyer, a celebrated author.  Andrew Dyer has a cult following, a la J. D.Salinger, even to his sobriquet, A. D. Dyer.  His reputation rests mainly on his novel “Ampersand,” which won him the Pulitzer Prize and 50 years later is still being published. Chapters are introduced with letters from Dyer to Charlie from day camp and beyond.  They remained best friends through childhood, summer camp, their days at Exeter Academy and into old age.  Dyer’s novel has a lot to do with their days at Exeter, and this crops up throughout the book.  Philip Topping, Charlie’s son, newly divorced and a lost soul, narrates the story and is privy to all events even into the minds of the characters.  It works perfectly from a reader’s point of view.

Dyer, not surprisingly, is absent to his children, spending most of his time barricaded in his office writing.  His two older sons, Richard a former addict who has turned counsellor, and Jamie a free spirited documentary film maker who has drifted through life, are immersed in their own stories and arrive on the scene only when summoned by Dyer who is convinced he is dying.  Dyer and their mother divorced after 31 years of marriage when he had an affair which resulted in the birth of a third son, Andy who is now a teenager.  It is important to Dyer, for reasons the reader will discover, that he exacts a promise from his elder sons to look after Andy when Dyer passes on.  This family reunion orchestrated by Dyer is awkward to say the least.  His first wife, settled in a second marriage and living in Connecticut, is also asked to attend to the narcissistic “dying” man.

Readers familiar with Central Park and the museums of the East Side, will find much that is recognizable.  The setting adds to the enjoyment of the novel.  Gilbert is an accomplished writer who spins a good tale.  I recommend this novel to all readers.

AMONG THE LIVING AND THE DEAD by Inara Verzemnieks (memoir)

A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe

Of all the reading I have done on World War II, I had never given much thought to Latvia and its place during and after the war.   Inara Verzemnieks eloquent and poetic memoir about her search for her roots opened up an immigrant family’s story and shed light on a Baltic country I knew little about.

Inara was born in Tacoma, Washington.  Her childhood was an unhappy one until she went to live with her paternal grandparents.  Her mother was abusive and her father suffered from the effects of the war in Viet Nam and was a stranger to her.  All the love and warmth she received as a child came from her Latvian grandparents.  The ex-pat community of Latvians in Tacoma were committed to keeping up the old traditions and Inara was sent to summer camp every year where the children lived in cabins which were replicas of Latvian wooden farm houses; they sang Latvian songs, saluted the Latvian flag, ate Latvian food and learned traditional Latvian farming.  I have seen this before where immigrant groups in America keep strong traditions alive, but it is dying out as the older generation who brought these traditions die out.

After her grandparents die, the adult Inara travels to Latvia to satisfy the longing she feels to connect her to her grandparents story, a story they avoided speaking of.  She does this for a part of every year for five years.  Inara wants to find the "invisible cities, places constructed of memory.” On her first trip she says, “The road I must travel to reach my grandmother’s lost village is like tracing the progression of an equation designed to restore lost time.  Each kilometer that carries me from Riga seems to subtract five years.”  She travels to Gulbene, a rural farming community, in the northeast part of Latvia, close to the Russian border. There she meets her great aunt Ausma, the last of the old generation and the only one who can shine a light of Inara’s grandmother’s past.

It is difficult for Ausma to revisit the past and for a long time she resists it. She says, “Your grandmother’s stories aren’t my stories." Finally she relents and Inara and the reader begin to understand the complicated past of the Latvian people caught between Germany and Russia.  Inara’s grandfather never spoke of being conscripted into the German army, her grandmother never spoke about the perilous journey she took with young children across war torn Europe to land in refugee camp.  Gradually Ausma tells her the story of being sent to Siberia along with 200,000 Latvians after the war when the country became part of the Soviet Union.  There she was forced to perform hard physical labor.  Along with her family’s story Inara comes to see the thread that connects Latvia’s past to its present as a vibrant member of NATO and the European Union, a past that will never be erased, a past that contains both shame and glory.

Verzemnieks is a beautiful writer and tells a story that might be familiar to many refugee families.  Though it chronicles the past, it is connected to today’s world with its many families fleeing a torturous past, hoping for what can only be a better future. I recommend this book to all readers.

MANHATTAN BEACH by Jennifer Egan (fiction)

Jennifer Egan’s last book, “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Egan is an accomplished writer and one of my favorites.   Her writing is prosaic and small meaningful details add to the depth of the story.

When we first enter the story, a young, somewhat precocious girl named Anna Kerrigan is driving with her father to meet a shady character connected to the Brooklyn underworld.  It is winter, the year is 1934 and the man, Dexter Styles, will play an important role in Anna’s life.  In this small introduction to the characters, we right away catch a glimpse of the strong woman Anna will become.  The depression is on and it is inferred that Anna’s father has fallen on hard times after the stock market crash. The car they are driving belongs to another, and in desperation to feed his family and buy a wheelchair for Anna’s severely handicapped sister, he has taken on a job as a bag man for a crooked Union boss.

The book then leaps ahead to the early 1940s when the US had just entered the war.  Anna gets a job on the Manhattan docks which at this time are servicing the many warships that come and go.  Her father has disappeared, and Anna is the mainstay of her family, what little money she earns going toward making her sister comfortable. Egan is at her best making the world of the docks and workers come alive in vivid detail.  It reminds me of the ambiance of the old movie, “On the Waterfront.”  Soon tiring of her boring line job, Anna becomes fascinated with the divers she sees working on the ships underwater hulls. Through determination and strength of character, Anna manages to join the crew in work that is meaningful to her, as the only woman diver. She earns the respect of the men she works with. Anna’s life at this time is reflected in the many many cultural details that Egan includes for us.  We can see how the War is beginning to change women’s lives and their importance in the workplace.

Not knowing the fate of her father is the catalyst that drives Anna to find Dexter Styles again, with the hopes that he will provide her with the answer.  Styles is rich and has married into an old, wealthy and respected New York family.  He is an alpha male moving the society of his father-in-law.  Egan brings in some of the politics of the era and is fabulous at describing family dynamics and how the depression and war changed family structure forever.

I love the way Egan weaves the characters together as their relationships ebb and flow.  I love Anna’s relationship with her father, her sister, with Styles and the bosses on the waterfront, and how these characters affect and change Anna. As a character Anna is strong, resourceful, open-minded and clever.  Just the same she makes mistakes and because of this is a real human being.

I really enjoyed this book and felt I was part of the life of the Brooklyn, lower Manhattan and the busy docks that are no longer there in the same way.  I highly recommend this book to all readers.

LOUISA by Louisa Thomas (biography)

The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams

What admiration I have for Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of President John Quincy Adams. She was born in 1775 in London to an American father and English mother.  It wasn’t until she was older that she discovered that at the time of her birth, her parents weren’t married, though to all outward appearances they were.  It was a lively household of beautiful young girls, who grew up privileged, though their father was ever in debt.  They were accomplished, intelligent and trained in all the social graces.  Their father, Joshua Johnson was a buyer for an American firm in Maryland.  Because of his unsettled financial situation, at various times the family lived in France, England and America, and the girls were multi-lingual.

The first time Louisa met John Quincy Adams, she thought he looked ridiculous because of his unfashionable dress, his stiff manner and his poor social graces. He was a young diplomat in training and was equally as well-traveled as Louisa. Despite all, he was an attractive man, and if she wasn’t sure she loved him when they became engaged, she was sure she was in love by the time they married.

Louisa was a brilliant prolific writer and because of this we have a good record of her life and that of her husband.  She always kept a diary, was an excellent letter writer, and even wrote plays and fiction. She grew into an ambitious woman who was probably responsible for her husband being elected President.  In the early days of the American republic, politics were conducted undercover.  Men did not promote themselves or appeal directly to the public, and John Quincy considered his work to be a public duty.  The real power to pick a President was in the Republican Congressional Caucus.  Until 1824 the popular vote wasn’t even counted.  As today, Washington was full of gossip and jockeying for power.  But, politics as we know it usually happened during social occasions.  Since John Quincy was uninterested in playing the political game, and Louisa was socially adept, it became her task to make sure the right people attended their dinners and parties.

Before all this Washington life, however, Louisa had plenty of training, having lived all over the world as the wife of a diplomat. One of her favorite postings was in Berlin, Germany.  Her harrowing adventures fleeing across Europe from St. Petersburg to Paris in 1815, are worthy of a book unto itself.  John Quincy had left her alone in Petersburg with their son Charles as he was taking part in the Treaty of Ghent.  As Napoleon’s troops advanced on Russia, she made the decision to leave.  She arrived safely after many close calls under the roughest of conditions.  This trip changed her into a more independent self-confident woman as well as changed her relationship with her husband.

Louisa suffered numerous miscarriages as women did in those days, and she suffered from severe bouts of illness, some of them probably psychosomatic.  Life with John Quincy was difficult.  He was rigid, demanding and often absent.  He rarely consulted Louisa on major decisions, family and public.  It was a difficult life for an intelligent woman who was fully capable of being the equal of her husband.  Thus, she turned to writing and poured her soul into her diaries.  Despite his difficult personality, Louisa and John Quincy had a passionate marriage.  She also came to love and admire his parents, John and Abigail Adams, and kept up a warm correspondence with them, especially John.

Louisa died in 1852.  She did not have an easy life, and she lived through a most interesting time in history.  She wrote two autobiographical books.  One called “Record of a Life” detailed the early years of her marriage. The other she called “The Adventures of a Nobody.”  She was far from that.  And even though she was not recognized for all her accomplishments while she lived, as the author states, “She left us a voice.”

I greatly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to all readers.  It would be an excellent choice for a book reading group.

THE NINTH HOUR by Alice McDermott (fiction)

As I began this book, I was put in mind of the PBS program, Call the Midwife, but I wasn’t long into the book before it became a much darker tale.  The nuns in Midwife deal with the beginning of life, the nuns living in post World War I Brooklyn are dealing daily with death.  This is not a story of nuns abusing poor women, rather it is a story of the sacrifices good, often naive and dedicated women made by choosing a vocation with a Catholic order called Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor.  It is a complex novel of Irish Catholic life in the years after the war, and the effects of guilt and shame which were inevitably a part of Catholic life at that time.

“The Ninth Hour” opens with the suicide of a depressed subway worker named Jim.  He leaves behind a pregnant wife named Annie.  A wonderful, pragmatic and savvy nun, Sr. St. Savior arrives on the scene, takes over and does her best to have Jim buried in the Church (in those days, Catholic burial was denied suicides).  Though she fails in her effort to do this, she saves Annie’s life and that of the daughter Annie bore by finding her a place as a laundress in the convent.  The story then becomes a bildungsroman of Sally, Annie’s daughter.  It then follows her into mid-life and old age.

Sally grew into a happy, albeit, sheltered child who was fondly watched over by the kindly Sr. Illuminata, head laundress, while her mother worked.  There is plenty of interesting detail about life in the convent in this section.  When Sally mistakenly thinks she has the calling to become a nun, the wise Sr. Lucy who is well acquainted with life outside the convent, arranges for Sally to accompany the nursing nuns on their daily rounds, often tending to the sordid details of the sick and ill.  Sally soon discovers the nursing life,attending to bodily needs, is not for her.  Still unworldly, she decides to enter a novitiate of a more contemplative order.  Luckily the reader is not bound for another convent because, when Sally boards a train for Chicago, she meets up with a host of interesting characters who soon divest her of her money.  They are a cast worthy of a Dickens novel, especially one large, sweaty, vulgar woman who  is saved from being a caricature by McDermott’s fine descriptive writing. This was only part of Sally’s maturing.  She returns home to another secret which we readers already knew.  

The only part of the book that didn’t work for me, was that of hearing some of Sally’s story through the eyes of her adult children.  I would have preferred the story to just be told without their intrusion into the novel.

McDermott writes so well, the story holds the readers interest right to the end of the novel and Sally’s life.  She manages to give us happy along with the grim.  She presents a frank portrayal of convent life in a realistic manner. The nuns we meet are rounded human beings with flaws alongside their self-sacrifice.  McDermott shows us the effect that the belief in the need for atonement and indulgences can have on the formation of character.

I recommend this novel to all readers.  It is a well constructed and well written story of life in a Brooklyn that is long past.

THE HOUSE OF GOVERNMENT by Yuri Slezkine (NF)

This important book was a massive undertaking for the writer and the reader; it is hard to know where to begin and what to emphasize.  It is about the same size as "War and Peace” and it takes a dedicated reader to absorb all the information the author has compiled.  I put it down and took it up over the course of two months.  Slezkine has set out to write a history of the rise of Bolshevism and the history of the Russian Revolution by structuring the story around one building in Moscow, the massive apartment house which became known as the House on the Embankment.

The section of the book I enjoyed the most was reading about the early years of the Bolshevik movement.  Like much revolutionary thought, it began with young intellectuals, members of the class which eventually was overthrown as the movement took hold, and morphed into something entirely different.  The writings of Karl Marx were not particularly popular in Russia at the turn of the century, rather the early meetings took a millenarian cultish approach, religious in their Utopian idealism.  Early leaders of the movement hoped to inspire the oppressed peasant population to revolt against the Tzar and ruling classes, but it wasn’t until the equally oppressed working classes in the cities became fired up that Bolshevism took hold.  By that time the party was in the hands of Lenin, Sverdlov, and eventually Stalin.

After World War I, Bolshevik philosophy began to spread to other countries, but never took hold the way it did in Russia.  Five years after Lenin claimed the name USSR, the building of the House on the Embankment began. It was a time of rapid industrialization.   Boris Iofan, the architect, planned a building that eventually held 505 apartments and housed over two thousand tenants.  A muddy island area of Moscow, known as “the swamp” and home to a number of factories, was chosen for his grand design.  I found it amazing that this large labyrinthine building housed so many things that we think of as modern today. The building was completed in 1931.  It was like a town within a building.  Besides apartments, there was a theater, a cinema, workout areas and a pool, restaurants, childcare services, a health clinic, hairdressers and barbers.  It married convenience with housing and was a wonder of its age or any age.  As Bolshevism morphed into the totalitarian communist party which ruled the country through the 30s and onward, the apartments were reserved for the top members of the bureaucracy, the party elites, even Khrushchev lived there when he was a rising star.

During Stalin’s years of thuggish dictatorship, the occupants were cushioned and isolated from the reality of the outside world and the starving masses during Stalin’s failing 5 year plans. And then during the long years of political purges, reality hit home and the tenants came and went in the madness of a revolving door of arrests and power changes.  During those years, some 800 occupants disappeared, arrested during the night, never to be seen again.

Eventually World War II and the German invasions took their toll, the building survived, but its occupants were not so exclusive.  Then after the fall of the Soviet Union near the turn of the century, the House of Government had a make over and the newly rich moved in renovating the apartments and turning them into condominiums.  It is wondrous that so much history survived and some families are still decedents of original tenants.  It is still a desirable place to live and many apartments look down on a square that is famous for demonstrations.

The wealth of information and breath of research in this book makes it one of a kind.  It is an important book but not one read for pleasure.  It is a great resource and an important addition to one’s library.

SING, UNBURIED,SING by Jesmyn Ward (fiction)

In my opinion, Jesmyn Ward is one of the most gifted writers in America.  This is the second book of hers to have won the National Book Award for fiction. It was also listed as one of the NY Times ten best books of 2017.  “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is beautifully written, poetic in its cadences and in the voices of the characters who live along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.  As in her other two books, the people of the coast are crushingly poor and disadvantaged.  The setting is the same town of Bois Sauvage that was in her first book, “Savage the Bones.”

The story is told in three distinct voices, each narrating in the first person.  The most realistic and touchable of the three is 13 year old Jojo whose white father, Michael, is in an upstate penitentiary, known as Parchman Farm.  The inmates are expected to work on the land under very tough conditions.  Jojo’s black mother is an addict who neglects her children, though she isn’t devoid of feeling, but she has lost the touch of how to be a mother.  Jojo and his three year old sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Pop and Mam who is dying of cancer.

Michael is about to be paroled from jail and Leonie, the children’s mother, gets it into her head that she wants to take the children on a road trip up state to the penitentiary to pick up their father.  What a road trip it is.  Along for the ride is Leoni’s friend, Misty who adds to the stress by insisting they take a side trip into the back woods to pick up some drugs.  Throughout the trip, the children are forgotten occupants of the back seat, neglected and unfed.  Jojo does his best to care for Kayla, who responds only to him, and day and night will not leave his side.

Michael’s release adds confusion to the return trip, and with him comes the ghostly presence of a 12 year old boy named Richie who had been sentenced for stealing meat many years before.  Richie has some connection with Pop who became his protector when he was sentenced to the same prison.

The characters are all beautifully drawn and their relationships and hard lives all too real.  The lost souls who inhabit the novel along with the family are drawn from elements of voodoo and a mixture of African folklore and Catholic beliefs.  This requires the reader to step out of reality and understand how the real and supernatural are entwined.  I found this difficult, and I did not enjoy the book as much as I did Ward’s previous novels.  I still recommend the book for a look at the ongoing problems of poverty and race relations in the United States, and especially for Ward’s brilliant writing.

VINEGAR GIRL by Anne Tyler (fiction)

This book is part of Vintage’s Hogarth Shakespeare Project, in which a group of prominent authors have reimagined various Shakespeare’s plays and characters and placed them in our contemporary world.  Some of the the other authors  in the series are Jo Nesbo, Gillian Flynn Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, Edward St. Aubyn and a number of other equally talented writers.

Vinegar Girl is a take off on “The Taming of the Shrew.”  One would imagine this would be a difficult one as relationships between men and women are very different in our modern world. Or, are they?  In Anne Tyler’s capable hands, it would seem not so.

Tyler sets her story in Baltimore in a small neighborhood not far from Johns Hopkins where Louis Battista, an eccentric biologist, has his laboratory.  Louis is working on some kind of breakthrough project, and he is about to lose his top research assistant, a Russian named Pyotr, because his visa has run out.

To say the Battista family is eccentric is putting it mildly.  His elder daughter, Katherine, is a 29 year old elementary teacher, who freely admits she finds children irritating.  The younger daughter, Bunny, an augmentative 15 year old has decided to become a vegan. They all inhabit separate planets, circling around each other in a household that is out of control.  The house is messy and unkempt with papers and books everywhere.  Katherine prepares one giant meal on the weekend that lasts the week.  It is always the same meal, called meat mash.  In desperation to keep his assistant, Louis has an idea.  You have probably guessed what this idea is—marry off Katherine to Pyotr.  But not so fast, Katherine is cranky, somewhat odd, outspoken and certainly not interested in saving her father’s job by marrying man who to her seems unconventional and slightly strange, not to mention his choice of clothes.  On the other hand, the Battista household is so crazy that marriage could be the way out.

Luckily for the reader Anne Tyler has written a hilarious story peopled with oddballs.  Every little detail lends itself to the plot of the story, and she is able to stay true to Shakespeare’s comedy by writing a book that is fun, clever, light-hearted and enjoyable.

MOTHER NIGHT by Kurt Vonnegut (fiction)

I wouldn’t dare to review a book by the great Kurt Vonnegut, but if you are a Vonnegut fan and have not read this book (his third novel), you should give it a try.  It is different than his other books.  Or maybe I shouldn’t say that, as each of Vonnegut’s books are highly imaginative and individual, though each deals with a moral conundrum.

The story opens with an introduction by the author who states that he has been asked to edit the memoir of one, Howard Campbell, Jr. (this, of course, is also part of the fiction).  Vonnegut says in the introduction, “This is the only story of mine whose moral I know.  We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

We meet Howard Campbell as he awaits trial as a war criminal, in prison in Jerusalem. He is guarded by an 18 year old with whom he has struck up a friendship, and thus we gradually learn his story.  Campbell is an unassuming fellow, a playwright living in Germany, married to an actress, Helga, whom he adores.  Helga is the daughter of the Berlin Chief of Police.  The U.S. Secret Service, the OSS, decides that Campbell, because of his connections, is the perfect person to pass on information to them.  After he is recruited, he begins working with Nazi radio, broadcasting propaganda, moving in high German political circles, and passing on information to the Americans, most that he isn’t privy to.  As the Allied and Russian troops push into Berlin, Campbell’s wife disappears and is presumed dead.

We next meet Campbell 15 years later, living in Greenwich Village.  He leads a quiet, non-political life.  His chief friend is an artist living in the same building, who we later learn is working for the KGB.  It seems that both the Russians and the Israelis are interested in finding him.  Campbell seems to be a naif in the midst of a slapstick operation to capture him.  The operation is mixed in with a kooky group of American Nazis, called the Iron Guards, who regard Campbell as a great hero, and arrive on the scene ready to lionize him. The characters in this group are satirically hysterical.

Meanwhile, Campbell can’t seem to make contact with the officer who recruited him, and he is suffering from the weight of the responsibly for sending Jews to their death through his propaganda. What good is the information he helped the Americans with, if evil was caused by his actions?  This is his moral conundrum.  He makes the decision to surrender to the Israelis. The absurdity of his situation haunts him as he languishes in jail, baring his soul to his young jailer.

I read somewhere that this book was only issued in paperback, and turned out quickly as Vonnegut needed money for his growing family.  I think the book is a gem, and even these many years later, is filled with food for thought.

A LEGACY OF SPIES by John Le Carre (fiction)

I am a faithful fan of John Le Carre’s writing and was excited to learn he had another book out.  I can hardly believe that at 86, he is still turning out such brilliantly written novels.  If you haven’t read him before, this is not the book to start with.  Rather, it is last in a long line of espionage stories beginning with “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” with the unlikely-looking master spy, George Smiley, who brought us through the Cold War era right up to present day.

George Smiley has a relatively small roll in this current book, but nevertheless, he is there behind the wings still mentoring Peter Guillam, the narrator, now like Smiley, an old man. Guillam, long retired from the British Secret Service, has been commanded to London from his farm in Brittany to answer for irregularities in an old 1960s operation, known as Operation Windfall, in what was then East Berlin.  It seems that the children of two members of the Service, who lost their lives when trying to cross over the Berlin Wall, are threatening to bring the matter before Parliament.  Smiley has gone underground, and it is left to Guillam to sift through the murky past, digging up old dossiers and finding comrades, many of whom have passed on.  Memories are stirred up, most involving Alec Leamas, the covert spy who was working to find out information in the files of the dreaded East German Stasi.

Le Carre’s books don’t have a lot of fireworks and torture scenes as many thrillers do, rather they are filled with the dark angst of the characters who work in dangerous situations, often moles and double agents, who must come to grips with the shady business they are in. Le Carre is a master at creating suspense in a quiet way that is more bone chilling than any action packed movie you might see.

If you are a fan, you will not be disappointed in this latest book.  I highly recommend it for those readers already familiar with the many brilliantly written books by Le Carre. I hope it is not the last we have heard of George Smiley.

THE BONESETTERS DAUGHTER by Amy Tan (fiction)

This is an older book by Amy Tan who has become one of our most popular authors.  Having read a couple of her books, I find that they tend to follow a pattern which has been very satisfying for her readers.  What she does very well is present Chinese culture in Chinese/American families.  This usually means there is a tyrannical older mother or grandmother and younger members of the family who having been born here are trying to live like young Americans, following popular American culture.  What is not so good is that the books have familiar plots that have become somewhat tired.

Having said that, if you are a fan of Amy Tan, you are sure to enjoy this book.  Ruth is a first generation Chinese/American living in California who is ghostwriter for a publishing company of self-help books.  She lives with her partner who has two pre-teen daughters who sit around rolling their eyes and appearing bored.  The most interesting character in the novel is LuLing, Ruth’s immigrant mother.  LuLing is cranky, probably in early stage Alzheimers, and very much attached to her Chinese culture and superstitions.  The book is at its most engaging when it turns to the past and LuLing’s life in a rural mountain village.  She lived through the Japanese invasion and the Chinese Civil War.  Her mentor was a maimed woman whom she called “Precious Auntie,” whose own story plays an important part in the novel.  LuLing was sent to an orphanage run by missionaries when the war came to her village.  There is a mystery in LuLing’s past which accounts for her anger and discontent, and as her dementia seems to intensify, Ruth begins to unravel the secret of her mother’s past.

Tan writes well and parts of this books are enjoyable. The chapters dealing with modern day conflicts were less satisfying to me.