I feel sure most of us have etched in our minds those horrific scenes on t.v. during and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. The intensity of what we were viewing was unrelenting for days and the consequences and aftermath has gone on for years. Sheri Fink, a physician herself, has done extensive research into the disaster at Memorial Hospital and the subsequent charge of murder that was brought against Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses who were on duty at the hospital for the 5 days during and after the hurricane. This book is the result of Fink's research and was chosen in 1913 as one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times.
For 5 days the staff and patients at Memorial Hospital waited for evacuation while the city, state of Louisiana and federal authorities conducted what now looks like an unprepared and incompetent scenario of bickering and poor organized efforts of rescuing the oppressed population of New Orleans. Memorial, meanwhile operating with a skeleton crew and without electricity, was left to fend for itself, as its parent company, Tenet, was dithering without a plan or a helicopter contract. As the hurricane raged and then departed, the temperature in the hospital rose to an unbearable level coupled with heavy moisture which intensified as the days went on and worked on the emotional level of patients, staff and the families and in some cases pets who were sheltering at the hospital. Along with the rising contaminated water, the staff had to contend with roving bands of looters and addicts looking for drugs and food.
Doctors and especially nurses acted with heroism under the stress of sleep deprivation and the deteriorating condition of their patients. This is their story and Fink tells it in admirable detail. The central issue in the wake of the disaster is one of ethics and religious conviction. Overworked doctors and nurses under the direction of Dr. Pou were put in a position to make life and death decisions for a group of patients in palliative care with Do Not Resuscitate orders on their charts. When Dr. Pou made the decision to inject a number of these patients with morphine and a sedative, was she acting with mercy and euthanizing the dying or was it a question of murder? This is what the DA's office in New Orleans investigated. Forty-five corpses were found in the chapel of the hospital and many of these were not given the choice as they faced death.
Fink does a thorough examination of all sides of the moral issues involved as the city began to build its case again Dr. Pou. She writes plainly and without exaggeration as she wades through the conflicting stories and evidence in the case. Who can judge what choices people make under duress in a dreadful natural disaster such as Katrina. As Fink states toward the end of the book:
"Sometimes individual medical choices are less a question of science than they are of values. In a disaster, triage is about deciding what the goals of dividing resources should be for the larger population.......The larger community may emerge with ideas different from those held by small groups of medical professionals."
As a result of Katrina, hospitals all over the country have had to reexamine their response to catastrophic disasters. Five Days at Memorial has played its part in this reexamination. I highly recommend Sheri Fink's book to all readers. It will provoke thoughtful discussion and moral examination of our values.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Thursday, December 18, 2014
LAST FRIENDS by Jane Gardam (fic)
This book is the third of a trilogy of superbly written books by Jane Gardam. I recommend that you begin by reading "Old Filth" followed by "The Man in the Wooden Hat" and finally the above book, which would lose its relevance if read before the previous two.
All three books are tales told from the viewpoint of older characters looking back on their lives and how they mesh with each other's stories. The stories range from the twenties through modern time and mainly involve three people, Edward Feathers Q.C. and his wife Betty and Terry Veneering, a handsome womanizer. The first volume is about Edward Feathers, Old Filth of the title, which is an acronym for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong." The second book is about Betty who has a fling with Veneering, and finally the current book tells the story of Terry Veneering. The setting of the first two books is Hong Kong and through coincidence, or not, the principals all end up living in the same small village in the west of England.
"Last Friends" opens in Dorset in a village filled with the dotty type of characters that can only be British. One of my favorites is a somewhat confused old dear named Dulcie who rattles around in a large cold house. She along with another eccentric elder called Fiscal-Smith are the last friends of the title.
As the book goes on, the reader discovers the real story of Terry Veneering who up to this point has presented as a sophisticated upper class Oxford graduate. Contrary to his public persona, Veneering comes from a very poor Teeside mining town where his mother, Floorie supports the family by delivering coal and his father turns out to be a damaged Russian acrobat and even perhaps a spy. Veneering is of course, not Terry's real name. His mother is one of the more interesting characters in the novel.
Jane Gardam is an exceptional writer and these novels are funny and satirical, yet she gets to the real crux of her characters' beings. I might have giggled my way through these novels, but I also realized that there were some real truths about people and relationships to be found in these pages. I enjoyed all three books very much, perhaps the first two more than the third.
All three books are tales told from the viewpoint of older characters looking back on their lives and how they mesh with each other's stories. The stories range from the twenties through modern time and mainly involve three people, Edward Feathers Q.C. and his wife Betty and Terry Veneering, a handsome womanizer. The first volume is about Edward Feathers, Old Filth of the title, which is an acronym for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong." The second book is about Betty who has a fling with Veneering, and finally the current book tells the story of Terry Veneering. The setting of the first two books is Hong Kong and through coincidence, or not, the principals all end up living in the same small village in the west of England.
"Last Friends" opens in Dorset in a village filled with the dotty type of characters that can only be British. One of my favorites is a somewhat confused old dear named Dulcie who rattles around in a large cold house. She along with another eccentric elder called Fiscal-Smith are the last friends of the title.
As the book goes on, the reader discovers the real story of Terry Veneering who up to this point has presented as a sophisticated upper class Oxford graduate. Contrary to his public persona, Veneering comes from a very poor Teeside mining town where his mother, Floorie supports the family by delivering coal and his father turns out to be a damaged Russian acrobat and even perhaps a spy. Veneering is of course, not Terry's real name. His mother is one of the more interesting characters in the novel.
Jane Gardam is an exceptional writer and these novels are funny and satirical, yet she gets to the real crux of her characters' beings. I might have giggled my way through these novels, but I also realized that there were some real truths about people and relationships to be found in these pages. I enjoyed all three books very much, perhaps the first two more than the third.
Monday, December 8, 2014
THE DISAPPEARED by Kim Echlin (fic)
"The Disappeared" is a love story filled with yearning and sadness. It is a beautifully written book, and Echlin writes with a unique and individual style and an economy of words. Her sentences are brief yet filled with description and mood, very much like poetry. This novel was a best seller in Canada.
Anne Greves, a young Canadian girl loves with an obsessiveness that is reminiscent of the narrator in Pamuk's book, "The Museum of Innocence." She meets a Cambodian young man named Serey who has been sent to Canada to further his education in Montreal. Serey is an accomplished jazz musician who pours his longing for his country and family into his music. Anne herself lost her mother when she was a baby, and her father while kind is distant and wrapped up in his work; so there is a hole in both their lives that needs filling which speeds the comfort they find in each other.
The novel is set in the mid 1970s, and as the situation in Cambodia worsens, Serey feels the need to return to his home country to search for his parents who were most likely victims of the Cambodian genocide. Between the years of 1975 and 79, 1.7 million lives were lost in the killing frenzy of Pol Pot. Serey leaves Anne behind and becomes one of the disappeared.
Eleven years go by, Anne goes to University, enters into other relationships and tries unsuccessfully to forget Serey. One day watching a news story about Cambodia, she is convinced she spots him in a crowd. Impulsively, she leaves behind her life in Montreal, flies to Phnom Penh, and makes it her mission to find Serey.
Echlin writes of Cambodia so realistically and sensually that the reader feels she/he has entered another world, a beautiful and exotic one that is filled with the suffering and depravity fashioned by the Khmer Rouge. It is country trying to regain meaning and its footing in the world.
Anne finds and loses Serey three times, refusing to give up the life they have fashioned for themselves. She is helped by some lovely gentle Cambodians and an ex-pat Canadian doing charity work among the wounded. Anne writes this story as a memorial to Serey, just as Echlin has dedicated the book to Vann Nath who entreats her to "Tell Others."
I highly recommend this book for its superior writing, though the story is a painful one of a young woman's determination to find the man she loves and a story which depicts the cruelty and madness of the killing fields.
Anne Greves, a young Canadian girl loves with an obsessiveness that is reminiscent of the narrator in Pamuk's book, "The Museum of Innocence." She meets a Cambodian young man named Serey who has been sent to Canada to further his education in Montreal. Serey is an accomplished jazz musician who pours his longing for his country and family into his music. Anne herself lost her mother when she was a baby, and her father while kind is distant and wrapped up in his work; so there is a hole in both their lives that needs filling which speeds the comfort they find in each other.
The novel is set in the mid 1970s, and as the situation in Cambodia worsens, Serey feels the need to return to his home country to search for his parents who were most likely victims of the Cambodian genocide. Between the years of 1975 and 79, 1.7 million lives were lost in the killing frenzy of Pol Pot. Serey leaves Anne behind and becomes one of the disappeared.
Eleven years go by, Anne goes to University, enters into other relationships and tries unsuccessfully to forget Serey. One day watching a news story about Cambodia, she is convinced she spots him in a crowd. Impulsively, she leaves behind her life in Montreal, flies to Phnom Penh, and makes it her mission to find Serey.
Echlin writes of Cambodia so realistically and sensually that the reader feels she/he has entered another world, a beautiful and exotic one that is filled with the suffering and depravity fashioned by the Khmer Rouge. It is country trying to regain meaning and its footing in the world.
Anne finds and loses Serey three times, refusing to give up the life they have fashioned for themselves. She is helped by some lovely gentle Cambodians and an ex-pat Canadian doing charity work among the wounded. Anne writes this story as a memorial to Serey, just as Echlin has dedicated the book to Vann Nath who entreats her to "Tell Others."
I highly recommend this book for its superior writing, though the story is a painful one of a young woman's determination to find the man she loves and a story which depicts the cruelty and madness of the killing fields.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
THE BLESSING by Nancy Mitford (fic)
Nancy Mitford, the eldest of the famous Mitford sisters, is known for her brilliant books of social satire. Her most famous being "Pursuit of Love," and "Love in a Cold Climate." These books and characters are thinly veiled accounts of growing up in her eccentric and unique English family. In her writing, Mitford carries on the long and penetrating British tradition of poking fun at social mores, perfected by Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, P.G. Wodehouse, et al.
While "The Blessing" is not as widely read as her other books, it has all the flavor of the best of them. I wonder if this book could be written today in our age of political correctness and woman's lib. Rather than seeing it as the social satire it is, Mitford might be lambasted for presenting old-fashioned ideas of woman and national traits. Instead, we are more tuned to expecting similar observations on t.v. from Saturday Night Live and numerous sit-coms.
"The Blessing" was written in the mid 20th century and presents a hilarious picture of the foibles of Americans, English and French socialites and want-to-be's." Grace Allingham, an upper class English rose meets an aristocratic French soldier during World War II. They fall in love, marry, produce a child, the blessing of the title, and are separated by the war for seven years. When they finally reunite, Charles-Edouard de Valhubert spirits Grace, son Sigi, and domineering Nanny off to the French countryside and then to Paris. The plot of the book is moved along by Sigi who has turned into a monstrous child unable to be reigned in by Nanny, a complaining old biddy who is frozen in her Englishness. There are all kinds of odd English, French and American characters floating in and out of the lives of the Valhuberts.
It turns out that Charles-Edouard has a weakness for pretty women, Grace is jealous, Nanny is trying to control the household and Parisian high-society is full of gossips and dinner parties. Sigi has perfected the art of causing just enough trouble to keep him spoiled and in turn doted upon by both parents and those who are trying to impress his parents. Through his meddling, Sigi eventually causes his parents to separate by playing one off the other. Never fear, he does get his comeuppance.
This is not a book to be taken seriously, but as an enjoyable satire, full of typical British humor where pretentiousness is revealed as buffoonery, and all's well that ends well. I laughed my way through it and not for a minute found it dated. Penguin vintage books reissued it in 2011.
While "The Blessing" is not as widely read as her other books, it has all the flavor of the best of them. I wonder if this book could be written today in our age of political correctness and woman's lib. Rather than seeing it as the social satire it is, Mitford might be lambasted for presenting old-fashioned ideas of woman and national traits. Instead, we are more tuned to expecting similar observations on t.v. from Saturday Night Live and numerous sit-coms.
"The Blessing" was written in the mid 20th century and presents a hilarious picture of the foibles of Americans, English and French socialites and want-to-be's." Grace Allingham, an upper class English rose meets an aristocratic French soldier during World War II. They fall in love, marry, produce a child, the blessing of the title, and are separated by the war for seven years. When they finally reunite, Charles-Edouard de Valhubert spirits Grace, son Sigi, and domineering Nanny off to the French countryside and then to Paris. The plot of the book is moved along by Sigi who has turned into a monstrous child unable to be reigned in by Nanny, a complaining old biddy who is frozen in her Englishness. There are all kinds of odd English, French and American characters floating in and out of the lives of the Valhuberts.
It turns out that Charles-Edouard has a weakness for pretty women, Grace is jealous, Nanny is trying to control the household and Parisian high-society is full of gossips and dinner parties. Sigi has perfected the art of causing just enough trouble to keep him spoiled and in turn doted upon by both parents and those who are trying to impress his parents. Through his meddling, Sigi eventually causes his parents to separate by playing one off the other. Never fear, he does get his comeuppance.
This is not a book to be taken seriously, but as an enjoyable satire, full of typical British humor where pretentiousness is revealed as buffoonery, and all's well that ends well. I laughed my way through it and not for a minute found it dated. Penguin vintage books reissued it in 2011.
Monday, November 24, 2014
THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE by Orhan Pamuk (fic)
Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006 and subsequently wrote this novel. Pamuk has been rightly praised for his meticulous writing style. This book has been beautifully translated from his Turkish to English by Maureen Freely.
This is a story about a love that lasts a lifetime, an obsessive love by a 30 year old man named Kemal for Fusun an 18 year old distant cousin. The story takes place in 1975 in Istanbul. I have never been to Istanbul, but after reading this book, I felt as if I knew the city intimately. Pamuk even includes a city map of the area where the story takes place; Pamuk is good at placing the reader in a city he so obviously loves. The 70s was an interesting decade all over the world, and in Turkey the youth were breaking away from old family traditions and identifying themselves as European, that is, if they came from the privileged wealthy class.
Kemal who is from a wealthy family is engaged to Sibel, also a child of privilege. She is educated, fashionable and part of the same social circle as Kemal. It would seem they are destined for each other. Then one day by chance, Kemal enters a shop where the strikingly beautiful but lower class Fusun is working. It was love at first sight, a passionate absorbing love that began to interfere with Kemal's daily life. Their affair begins almost instantaneously. They begin to meet in an old and unused apartment that belongs to Kemal's family. The uneducated and virginal Fusun is very unlike the modern Sibel who takes sexual relationships in her stride as part of the youthful revolution she sees around her. To Fusun, this relationship must end in marriage, while Kemal, as much as he is obsessed with Fusun, still is thinking like a Turkish man of the times. He is convinced he can marry Sibel and keep Fusun as his mistress.
This situation is bound to cause trouble, and thus the novel progresses drawing the reader into Kemal's growing obsession and his inability to control the situation. Fusun leaves Kemal, his relationship with Sibel falls apart and in the year it takes for Kemal to find Fusun, he descends into a depression that almost undoes him. He finds himself retreating to the shabby apartment and collecting souvenirs of the affair, assembling a museum, glorifying his trysts with Fusun. He begins drinking heavily and watching the single channel t.v. vacantly. He loses all ambition and leaves the family business to his brother to run.
During his year of searching for Fusun, Kemal is driven around the city by the family's chauffeur in his father's old 1956 Chevrolet which at that time was a symbol of wealth in Turkey. Thus the reader is privy to all the scenery of the coastal city on the Bosporus as well as the endless driving through the different sections of Istabul. Without going into the further details of the story, I can say that after he finds Fusun a further eight years of unfulfilled passion go by. Kemal and Fusun become enmeshed in a strange dance of manners and mixture of old and new social mores. Kemal's obsession begins to weary and grate on the reader. This part of the book could have been made shorter without losing the thread of the story or the sense of the characters. I began to long for the end and resisted the temptation to skip ahead to see where this story was leading.
Orhan Pamuk likes to insert himself into his novels and he does so in this story as well, so he enters the story as a character who is a family friend. It is a little disorienting to the reader, but charming, as it makes the story more real. The other characters in the book were equally realistic and I felt I knew these people very well and that I was living life with them as I read along.
While I got into the plot and lives of the characters and loved touring though Istambul back in the day, Kemal's obsessive personality got in the way of my total enjoyment of this novel, and I was happy to move on when I closed the last page.
This is a story about a love that lasts a lifetime, an obsessive love by a 30 year old man named Kemal for Fusun an 18 year old distant cousin. The story takes place in 1975 in Istanbul. I have never been to Istanbul, but after reading this book, I felt as if I knew the city intimately. Pamuk even includes a city map of the area where the story takes place; Pamuk is good at placing the reader in a city he so obviously loves. The 70s was an interesting decade all over the world, and in Turkey the youth were breaking away from old family traditions and identifying themselves as European, that is, if they came from the privileged wealthy class.
Kemal who is from a wealthy family is engaged to Sibel, also a child of privilege. She is educated, fashionable and part of the same social circle as Kemal. It would seem they are destined for each other. Then one day by chance, Kemal enters a shop where the strikingly beautiful but lower class Fusun is working. It was love at first sight, a passionate absorbing love that began to interfere with Kemal's daily life. Their affair begins almost instantaneously. They begin to meet in an old and unused apartment that belongs to Kemal's family. The uneducated and virginal Fusun is very unlike the modern Sibel who takes sexual relationships in her stride as part of the youthful revolution she sees around her. To Fusun, this relationship must end in marriage, while Kemal, as much as he is obsessed with Fusun, still is thinking like a Turkish man of the times. He is convinced he can marry Sibel and keep Fusun as his mistress.
This situation is bound to cause trouble, and thus the novel progresses drawing the reader into Kemal's growing obsession and his inability to control the situation. Fusun leaves Kemal, his relationship with Sibel falls apart and in the year it takes for Kemal to find Fusun, he descends into a depression that almost undoes him. He finds himself retreating to the shabby apartment and collecting souvenirs of the affair, assembling a museum, glorifying his trysts with Fusun. He begins drinking heavily and watching the single channel t.v. vacantly. He loses all ambition and leaves the family business to his brother to run.
During his year of searching for Fusun, Kemal is driven around the city by the family's chauffeur in his father's old 1956 Chevrolet which at that time was a symbol of wealth in Turkey. Thus the reader is privy to all the scenery of the coastal city on the Bosporus as well as the endless driving through the different sections of Istabul. Without going into the further details of the story, I can say that after he finds Fusun a further eight years of unfulfilled passion go by. Kemal and Fusun become enmeshed in a strange dance of manners and mixture of old and new social mores. Kemal's obsession begins to weary and grate on the reader. This part of the book could have been made shorter without losing the thread of the story or the sense of the characters. I began to long for the end and resisted the temptation to skip ahead to see where this story was leading.
Orhan Pamuk likes to insert himself into his novels and he does so in this story as well, so he enters the story as a character who is a family friend. It is a little disorienting to the reader, but charming, as it makes the story more real. The other characters in the book were equally realistic and I felt I knew these people very well and that I was living life with them as I read along.
While I got into the plot and lives of the characters and loved touring though Istambul back in the day, Kemal's obsessive personality got in the way of my total enjoyment of this novel, and I was happy to move on when I closed the last page.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
THE WRONG MOTHER by Sophie Hannah (fic)
I have not read a Sophie Hannnah mystery before, but she has her followers who await each book with anticipation. I found the book has an interesting plot and could have been a much better book than it turned out to be.
The story opens with the death of Geraldine Bretherick and her young daughter. Nearby a journal was found that may or may not belong to the dead woman. What the journal reveals is a woman stressed out with the demands of motherhood and the boredom of keeping house. She may or may not have murdered her daughter and then committed suicide. A second plot line involves Sally Thorning who is the narrator of the story. Sally, also in a moment of stress, trying to juggle the demands of work and raise a small daughter, becomes involved in a brief affair with a man she knows as Mark Bretherick, who may or may not be the husband of the dead Geraldine. Somehow Sally finds herself in the middle of a police investigation and proceeds to become more interested in solving the mystery than attending to her work and family. This leads to big trouble for Sally.
The beginning of the book is interesting and shows promise. To my disappointment, the characters are never well-developed and their actions and dialog do not ring true. I gather this is not the first time that Sophie Hannah has written about the stress of motherhood. Is it really as difficult as she makes it out to be? Not only did I find the main characters uninteresting as people, but the police on the case appear to be woefully incompetent, at times buffoonish.
Monday, November 10, 2014
ROOM by Emma Donoghue (fic)
Emma Donoghue is a brave writer to take on such a difficult topic told through the eyes of a 5 year old precocious boy named Jack. "Room" was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was picked as one of the year's best books by "The New York Times." It won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and I understand it is soon to be made into a movie.
"Room" is the story of a young university woman who was abducted at 19 and kept prisoner for seven years by an obviously demented man whom we only know as Old Nick. She and the young child she bore were kept in an 11 by 11 foot room which became their whole world. This world is everything to Jack the narrator who calls his mother, Ma. The reader soon feels the claustrophobia of being a prisoner and living in fear. Despite this fear, Ma has made an environment for Jack that shields him from the ugly truth of his world. She invents games for him to play and devises exercises for him to keep him healthy. Jack has no playmates other than Ma, and he has invented an imaginative country where objects become friends and all have names. He is secure without knowing his mother is living in horrifying conditions. Both Ma and Jack are dependent on Old Nick who knows Jack is his child, but doesn't want to see him. Jack is sent into the cupboard whenever Old Nick enters the room. As the author is Irish living in Canada, I was deep into the story before I realized it takes place in America where there have been several real life long term abductions which recently have been in the news.
The second half of the book takes place in what Jack calls The Outside. If I go further into the plot it will be a spoiler. But I can tell you that new characters enter the story including Jack's grandmother.
On one level the book is a study of what happens to the psyche of someone kept prisoner for a long period of time, deprived of human interaction,and in the case of Jack someone who has never known another person besides his Ma. On another level it is a testament to the love between a mother and child. And in yet another level it is a story of society's inability to fully understand what being a solitary prisoner can do to a person and the long term stress it produces.
Emma Donoghue has written a terrifying yet absorbing story which is full of hope and the power of love. It is a memorable tale that will stay with the reader long after the final page is read. She is a masterful writer, and I highly recommend this book to all readers. Reading groups will find much to discuss and contemplate.
"Room" is the story of a young university woman who was abducted at 19 and kept prisoner for seven years by an obviously demented man whom we only know as Old Nick. She and the young child she bore were kept in an 11 by 11 foot room which became their whole world. This world is everything to Jack the narrator who calls his mother, Ma. The reader soon feels the claustrophobia of being a prisoner and living in fear. Despite this fear, Ma has made an environment for Jack that shields him from the ugly truth of his world. She invents games for him to play and devises exercises for him to keep him healthy. Jack has no playmates other than Ma, and he has invented an imaginative country where objects become friends and all have names. He is secure without knowing his mother is living in horrifying conditions. Both Ma and Jack are dependent on Old Nick who knows Jack is his child, but doesn't want to see him. Jack is sent into the cupboard whenever Old Nick enters the room. As the author is Irish living in Canada, I was deep into the story before I realized it takes place in America where there have been several real life long term abductions which recently have been in the news.
The second half of the book takes place in what Jack calls The Outside. If I go further into the plot it will be a spoiler. But I can tell you that new characters enter the story including Jack's grandmother.
On one level the book is a study of what happens to the psyche of someone kept prisoner for a long period of time, deprived of human interaction,and in the case of Jack someone who has never known another person besides his Ma. On another level it is a testament to the love between a mother and child. And in yet another level it is a story of society's inability to fully understand what being a solitary prisoner can do to a person and the long term stress it produces.
Emma Donoghue has written a terrifying yet absorbing story which is full of hope and the power of love. It is a memorable tale that will stay with the reader long after the final page is read. She is a masterful writer, and I highly recommend this book to all readers. Reading groups will find much to discuss and contemplate.
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