Fiction | Finding Identity in a War-Torn Spain

I recognized it too: it was Virginia's dog. "Haven't you got old, Oki!" I exclaimed. When I looked at the hills, time seemed not to have passed; when I looked at my mother or my face in the mirror, it seemed to be passing only slowly; but the message written on the dog left no room for illusions. Time was inflicting terrible damage, it was destroying life.

The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga is my translated pick for the Read Harder Challenge. The author was born in the Basque country and continues to write in his native language. Though I am familiar with its designation as a language, I don't know much about what "Basque" actually entails, geographically, culturally, or linguistically. From what I can gather, it is a rural language unrelated to neighboring Spanish or French. It is technically defined as an ethnic group, existing as regions in a handful of countries. Politically, they seem to enjoy some level of autonomy in their home countries, though, without going into extensive research, I get the sense it's a history peppered with frequent conflict surrounding political rights and cultural identities.

Anyway, back to the book.

It's 1999, and a fifty-something-year-old Joseba is recalling the first day of school back in 1957 when his friend David, the accordionist's son, is corralled by the new teacher into playing a tune during introductions. David, though, is now dead, and his wife Mary Ann presents Joseba with a small book written by David in his native Basque language—his memoirs, published with a 3-copy print run. Once Joseba reads it, these stories and memories of their native land, he is inspired to write his own book based on David's words, rewritten and expanded. It's a project born of love and shared experience, and especially the need to bring these stories to light, freed from the constraints of a dying language.

David's memoirs begin with his adolescence in Obaba, a rural village in Spain that, in the 1960s and 1970s, felt other-wordly; it had not yet caught up with the modernization of the rest of the country and rest of the world. David had a penchant for the rural life—a life of land and animals. It conflicted with the life being forced upon him—school in the city with other local boys, accordion lessons to preserve traditions. He much prefers life with rural friends and the horses at the country house often inhabited by his uncle Juan.

This escape to the country mirrors David's escape from the conflicts of real life, of the knowledge and realism that comes with growing up. It gets harder to ignore as he gets older, and in his later adolescence, David finds himself drawn into the residual conflict from the Spanish Civil War. Their town is very near Guernica, and the death and destruction that happened there is a memory still fresh on the minds of the locals. When a friend shares some found letters that involve David's father and his dubious role in the war, David struggles with the idea that his father was, and remains, one of the bad guys, causing the loss of innocence that he so desperately longs for. Once his eyes are open to the presence of these political sides—the us vs. them, or good vs. bad—still present in his community, it's all David can see, all he can think about. This intoxication leads him to declare allies and enemies and guides his actions and decisions that ultimately define his entire young adult life.

It is an interesting concept and structure—an individual's memoir written with another person's words. We have no way of knowing the "true" David, or how much of himself Joseba inserted in David's original stories. We can only rely on the words we can see and must trust that Joseba remained true to David's original work and voice. The book's actual author, Atxaga, depends greatly on environment to define his characters—landscape, history, individual experience. Much of the growth we see in David is dependent on his interaction with others, but not just those isolated interactions—how they connect to the larger world, informing or enlightening. The plot itself goes in unexpected places, though I'm not sure I could define any expectations I had in the first place. Though it certainly has a specific historical presence, grounded in the conflict and aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, I think it's ultimately the story of what shaped this one man, the things that defined him and constructed his identity.

Reading Roundup: Mysteries, Of Sorts

The Potter's Field by Andrea Camilleri is a fun book I picked up at a library conference last year. Since it has been sitting on my shelf, I've continuously forgotten it's a mystery. It's one in a series of mysteries, in fact—the Inspector Montalbano series, translated from Italian, of which there over a dozen titles. The Potter's Field is #13 in the series, one of the newer ones published in 2011. I can't even remember the last time I read a mystery, and I really think I should dig into this genre more often since I've always enjoyed it. (I distinctly remember back in the 8th grade, we had to read And Then There Were None for English class, and I sat in the back of Algebra class devouring the pages of Agatha Christie as my teacher rambled on about FOIL.)

Because I don't really read mysteries that often, I'm not practiced at writing about them, either! Obviously, I can only share the briefest plot summary. In this Montalbano installment, an unidentified corpse is found in a clay-rich field known as Potter's Field. In the midst of this, the Inspector is also tracking down what his deputy Mimi is up to as his behavior in the office has recently become insufferable. On top of that, there's another piece when a young woman reports the disappearance of her husband who apparently had family ties to an infamous mobster.

I'll stop there, but the writing is quick, straightforward, and witty. Montalbano is not afraid to throw a few expletives, and his procedures may not always be up to code. As I was reading, he struck me very much as that character who is sarcastic and a bit of a rogue, but entertaining enough to probably have his own BBC series. AND GUESS WHAT, HE DOES! It's technically an Italian series, but the BBC does air it in the UK! Colin and I don't agree on books (or movies or TV shows) very often, but I did pass this one along to him.

My second quasi-mystery is the well-known Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple. I actually knew nothing about the plot of this prior to reading; it was only on my list because it's seen a lot of buzz in the past year, so I thought it was worth picking up. To quickly set the stage for those of you who haven't already read it, it's about an eclectic family living in Seattle. Elgie the Father is a super-wiz at Microsoft, usually working, rarely at home; Bernadette the Mother is a one-time architecture great who once won a MacArthur Genius Grant but now doesn't seem to do much but complain; their daughter Bee, short for Balakrishna (see, eccentric family), once suffered congenital heart defects but now is 15 and totally fine and sick of that attention. Bee is brilliant and thriving at her sort-of hippy dippy school. The issues come when Bernadette, all "misunderstood-genius-woe-is-me," has to interact with anybody, because she is insufferable. There's a fight with another parent, a Russian mafia who may be stealing her identity, and a looming trip to Antarctica. None of these things bode well for Bernadette, so she just up and disappears.

This book was entertaining enough. I really enjoyed the style and structure that used notes, letters, and other pieces of evidence to tell the story (with a bit of Bee's narrative built in.). It was so madcap that I couldn't really ground it in reality, though. First of all, the setting was odd. It constantly felt like it was 1995, but then there are lines thrown in about iPhones and you remember it's supposed to be present day. There are references of Encyclopedia Brown and Friends reruns, but then we're jumping to TED Talks and Bing. I never really made peace with when this story is supposed to be. My biggest trouble, though, was Bernadette. UGHHHHH. She represents everything that drives me crazy about people. She's incredibly judgmental; she talks down to anyone she doesn't agree with; she complains incessantly just to voice her opinion. She is basically everything I strive not to be in life. As a result, I couldn't sympathize with anyone in this book. (I used to say, "I don't have to like the character to like the book," but now I think that is a lie; I do need to mostly like the characters.) Bee was the most interesting, but even though this story was from her perspective, I didn't feel very close to her.

This is exactly that kind of book that is going to catch on with a large crowd because it's quirky enough to make people think, "This is so quirky and I am so quirky for reading it so I love it," and look at that, it made me utter words of judgment when that's just the kind of thing I try not to do, so that is my point, UGH I'm done with this book. Great cover art, though!

Idlewild Round-Up

After what's seemed like a long, unintentional hiatus, I've actually made it to book club the past couple of months! The Friday night meetings are sometimes killer, as we often go away for the weekends, but I'm hoping that this summer will be low-key enough that I'm able to keep going. I always love reading the books in the summer when I don't have to think about anything else!

Our May selection was Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. The summary and introduction hyped this up as a hilarious, witty novel, but meh...it wasn't all that to me. The story follows Jim, a lecturer of medieval history at an English university. He's not really a grump, but he doesn't have a shred of optimism in him either. He's cynical and sardonic, almost in a pleasant way—which is where the comedy is supposed to come in. Jim feels like he's living in a world of crazy people, both inside and outside of academia.

Lucky Jim doesn't have much of a plot; rather, it chronicles Jim's encounters to make a sort of satirical statement on English society, particularly academia, in the 1950s. And that must be why it's lauded as such a hilariously trenchant novel; it was to the society in which it was written. For me now, it just sort of existed. We didn't have a ton to say about this one; everyone sort of enjoyed it but also didn't get a ton out of it. The characters were enjoyable, and at points it was a total entertaining farce (especially in the last third of the book). Amis didn't treat any of his women particularly well, either. I think I would enjoy this more on a second reading, as I would for any of Elaine Dundy's works, but I doubt I'll ever get to it.

Our June pick was a collection of short stories: The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon. We have never done short stories as a book club and thought it would be an interesting experience. Well, it turns out, calling this a "short story collection" is pretty deceptive. So the publisher calls it that, but really, this is more a series of vignettes focusing on the same characters. It takes you a couple stories to realize that you're reading about the same people, but as you get further in the book, the "stories" feel more like chapters as the running thread becomes more dominant. The overarching plot involves a Guatemalan literature professor, Eduardo, and his encounters with different characters—a brilliant student who suddenly leaves school, verbose Mark Twain scholars at a lit conference, a Serbian classical pianist who favors his gypsy heritage over classical upbringing, and, tying it all together, Eduardo's own Polish grandfather with a story of how it made it out of Auschwitz alive.

In most of the stories, you learn more about these characters than the narrator that ties them all together. In the end, you still feel like you don't know much about Eduardo; he's sort of lost, himself, and he keeps chasing after something or someone because that's what he does—it becomes his own sort of obsessive treasure hunt. And though you don't know much about it, ultimately Eduardo is the one this book is about, as he explores his own identity and history. I feel like the author was trying to do something really poetic and subtle and sort of self-indulgent that maybe a lot of people could think they identify with. Maybe it went over my head or maybe I just didn't appreciate it, but ultimately, it was just okay.

The Idlewild Discussion on Mental Illness and Spanish Politics

Right smack dab in between reading The Angel's Game and The Prisoner of Heaven, I read another book set in war-torn Barcelona for my book club—Carmen Laforet's Nada. [I'm done with reading about Barcelona for a while now.] Deemed "one of the most important literary works of post-Civil War Spain" and "one of the great novels of twentieth-century Europe," Nada is the story of an orphan, Andrea, who leaves her small town to attend university in the big, glitzy Barcelona. There, she's housed by poverty-stricken relatives that she only remembers from much brighter days gone past.

Okay. "Great novel of twentieth-century Europe" is quite the acclaim for this fairly simple story. In fact, it left us wondering from where this praise came—and to what exactly it was being compared. The author wrote this book when she was in her early twenties, and it sometimes suffered from what book club members called "writer's workshop syndrome." As in, that sentence sounds like it came from Creative Writing 101. I can't say I really noticed that throughout; I think I took this book at face value and didn't analyze it too much. I didn't love it, didn't hate it. I didn't think it remarkable, but didn't think it had anything too worthy of criticism.

Mario Vargas Llosa penned the book's introduction, and somewhere in there, he described this story as one that is plagued with sadness throughout (not his exact words, just to that effect). So naturally, I entered this believing, "Oh god, 270 pages of depression. Can't wait." But in actuality, I didn't read it that way at all. I'll give you a bit of background to explain why.

When Andrea arrives at her new home, she joins a family that is suffering from a lack of funds. In a nutshell, there's no money and conditions are dismal at best. And then you have the family itself. There's grandmother, the matriarch, who is old and feeble but always trying to take care of others. Her two sons who, post-war, have wandered off the path of ever being productive members of society; now they're just violent or sullen or confused, but grandma will never deem them anything except her "wonderful boys." You have Gloria, one brother's wife, who has some awkward relationship with the other brother but constantly suffers at the violent hand of her husband (though, of course, grandma still thinks she's great). And then there's one of grandma's daughters, who is possessive and manipulating and more than a little bit nuts. Actually, they are all nuts. I think that, really, in the most serious way, the entire family is suffering from various mental illnesses.

So you see how that dismal setting can foster an overall tone of despair. What gives light to the story, though, is Andrea. After reading the intro and the setting into which she had entered, I was afraid Andrea was going to end up mentally and emotionally weak, almost manipulated to a point of submission. That's not the case at all, though. Andrea is a strong character, and through her telling of the story, you get the feeling she's telling it with a bit of an eye roll and a tone that says, "My god, look at these crazy people I had to put up with." I actually read this story with a bit of humor. Much of that tone may come from the perspective—that Andrea's character is "looking back" on this part of her life, though that also makes you wonder how much is truth and how much is reflective exaggeration.

This story takes place in a post-Civil War Barcelona, which is somewhat described through the characters and their situations, but without a working knowledge of post-war society, it just spawned a lot of questions. Like, were these extremes we saw just norms of the time? The poverty, the domestic violence, the gap between rich and poor—were these all understood by readers at the time, making this just a story rather than a statement about a particular moment? So many characters are stuck in the past, or rather, defined by the past. But to them, it's recent; it's just life. To us, it's a reflection of a much broader history—social, economic, and political.

Despite this being a longer-than-usual post, it was actually our shortest book club discussion on record. It just felt rather straightforward. Not bad. Just simple. So like I said before, "great novel" may be somewhat of an overstatement, at least from our perspective.

Book Tour: The Prisoner of Heaven

As I mentioned last week, I was super excited to join a book tour of the latest in Carlos Ruiz Zafón's "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" series, The Prisoner of Heaven. So much so that I sped read through its predecessor, The Angel's Game, in about three days so that I'd be sure to be all caught up in time to read this one (which was, luckily for times' sake, about half the size of the first two in the series).

So, follow along with me on the timeline through Zafón's series. In The Shadow of the Wind, we're in a post-Civil War Barcelona where we meet characters whose pasts were made colorful by influence of the war. Jump to The Angel's Game and we're pre-war and with new characters, only encountering those we know in a time before the experiences we've shared. Now, in The Prisoner of Heaven, we hop back and forth, gaining a prologue to some characters we know and an epilogue to others.

This story follows Fermín, a colorful character from The Shadow of the Wind with an unending loyalty to the Sempere family and a troubled but mostly unknown past. We know he spent time in prison during the war, and when a stranger from Fermín's past shows up at the bookstore and leaves him visibly anxious, Daniel drags out all the dark details. Unfortunately, Daniel never expected Fermín's story to overlap with his own, revealing a very upsetting truth about his own family.

The Prisoner of Heaven has quite a different feel from the first two. Though it features the same characters we've met and the same mysteries we've followed, it feels more like a respite from the tense action of its predecessors. You can just look at its small size and figure out it won't feature the same type of expansive, winding plot. Instead, this is the book that links the first two together. It lacks the lingering, intense uncertainty that gave the first two such an eerie tone. Despite the simpler plot, you get the feeling that, in this one, Zafón is giving us important information to continue story.

I don't think this is a standalone novel to the same extent as the first two (and I know I keep comparing them, but because I see this one as a bridge between the previous two, I can't help it), though I do think you can read them out of order. Zafón hops around in time from book to book, creating a story that isn't dependent on proper chronology. It's a wonderful structure; because there are no linear restrictions, Zafón can take the story any place he can imagine. You're kept constantly guessing where the story is going to go. However, it's still an enjoyable story that gives more insight to a delightful character, and it's a must if you're already invested in the series. (Hint hint: go read them if you haven't!)

This post is a stop on The Prisoner of Heaven's TLC Book Tour to celebrate its paperback release. And you're in luck, because the tour has just started!

There will be many more fabulous bloggers posting their opinions in the coming weeks; the tour runs through April 11—visit the tour page to see the schedule and follow the discussion.

Fiction | Murder and Mayhem in Barcelona

Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind was hands-down one of the best books I read last year, and it wasn't until I posted about it that I learned there were more titles in this short series. I was given the opportunity to read the third in the series for an upcoming book tour (coming soon!), so I decided I must quickly get my hands on the second—there is just too much wonderful detail in these stories to even consider skipping it!

The Angel's Game is the second title in Zafón's "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" series, though it's only loosely based on the first. The setting is the same, and a couple characters overlap, but for the most part, we're taken on a new journey through pre-Civil War Barcelona.

In The Angel's Game we meet David Martín, a writer who has been penning silly but bestselling murder mysteries under a pseudonym, though this, he feels, is not his life's calling. His life feels at a standstill—trapped in a writing contract he doesn't want, unloved by the woman he loves. When a letter arrives from a mysterious French publisher, he's given the opportunity to write a real manuscript of substance—one that has the "power to change hearts and minds." But when David finds himself at the center of a number of unfortunate events, he begins to fear what he got himself into...and he's learning he can't easily escape. David finds himself mixed up into a decades-long suspicious death, the mysterious history of the abandoned mansion he calls home, and an editor who may not be what he seems.

I'm very glad that I read The Shadow of the Wind a year ago, so that the details are not fresh on my mind, because I wouldn't want to compare these two books. Their settings are so similar, but they each deserve to be judged on their own individual merits. The Angel's Game is much darker in tone and reads much like a murder mystery though it still contains the great elements of magical realism that make Zafón's Barcelona such an eerie, mysterious setting. I found this to be uberly creepy and utterly intoxicating, and despite its 500+ pages, I absolutely blew through it.

David is a character that you love to follow, and at certain points in the story I would stop and think, "Wow, this has come so far from the book's opening chapters. How did we get get here?" He seems to just be a guy getting caught up in what's happening around him, and while you want to be on his side, sometimes you as the reader are not quite sure what is real and what isn't. Actually, for a good portion of this book, I had this deep-set fear that it was going to end up like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a book I so enjoyed reading and then ended up despising, because nothing ever happened; it was just a plot with no point, no resolution—details but no real narrative. Luckily, Zafón did not disappoint like Murakami. And though you do question the validity of what is happening, at a certain point, you just don't care and you go with it.

Wonderful. Can't wait to read the next.

Fiction | Love and Loathing in Friendship

It has sadly been a loooong time since I've been able to attend one of my book club's monthly meetings. The last time I attended was in May! Thankfully, our beloved host bookstore survived the hurricane, and, thanks to my Goodreads friendship with another book club member, I was able to find out meeting details, despite the store having no power the week before it. So last Friday it was book club reunited! At last!

The book selected was Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, translated from Italian and published by indie bookstore favorite Europa. Ferrante has written three novels prior to this one, all apparently shorter in length, and this one is the first in a planned trilogy (more on that later).

My Brilliant Friend starts by introducing our narrator Elena, a woman in her sixties, who is reflecting on her 1950s childhood and adolescence with her best friend, Lila. Right off the bat as children, Elena and Lila are not much alike. Elena is good, while Lila is bad; Elena is passive, while Lila is aggressive. These dissimilarities expand as they grow up. Elena has to work hard in school, while Lila is naturally brilliant; Elena is plagued by adolescent awkwardness, while Lila matures beautifully.

Elena and Lila have a typical adolescent friendship, one that is littered with competition and animosity that runs (mostly) quietly below the surface. It's an accurate portrayal of the internal conflicts one has with a friendship, be it jealousy, competition, etc. You wish the best for your friend while at the same time hoping you come out on top; you're horridly jealous of her looks but you want to be seen with her. We hear the conflicts of Elena's friendship with Lila—thoughts of Elena's that Lila may never even be aware of—but they stem from Elena's own insecurities. Essentially, Lila highlights Elena's own flaws to herself and it causes Elena to both despise her and idolize her.

As a reader, I felt I never knew much about Lila's perspective, how she feels towards her friendship with Elena. We feel distant from Lila, even though we follow her day to day through Elena. Perhaps it's just a consequence of Elena's storytelling—she's writing about the effect the friendship had on herself, internally, and is less concerned on the thoughts and feelings of Lila. It's just another example of that selfishness found in friendships.

Growing up in the 1950s in a small neighborhood of Naples, Lila and Elena are severely limited as women by the society in which they live. Part of their friendship stems from their mutual distaste of the state of this society, but they deal with their frustrations in different ways. Lila is an aggressive woman and resorts to the same actions and behaviors she is trying hard to escape. To her, this is the only option because she would otherwise remain the passive woman she hates so much. Elena takes her frustrations out on her mother, finding her the representation of everything she doesn't want to become. Both reject the role for women in their society but have different solutions. Elena finds an escape with an education, while Lila plans to marry rich to get out of a society shaped by poverty.

Really, the very fact that they strive for a different kind of life is what makes Elena and Lila notable characters. Their world is so miniscule, encompassing only a few blocks, and it's one of those worlds that is easy to get sucked into because you know nothing else. It's illustrated perfectly when Elena takes a trip into city center that, though only a few miles away, feels like a foreign land to her. She comments on how quiet it feels. All she knows is a society where violence and fighting are the norm. Abuse and arguments are so commonplace that a world without that appears odd to Elena. The setting so strongly defines the characters' perspectives, and you wonder if it was, in fact, commonplace or if Ferrante paints such a small world to emphasize the characters own experiences. Because growing up, one's world is small and self-centric, anyway.

I was really disappointed to see that this was published so recently and that the next in the series is not out yet. Lately, I've found I don't have much motivation to continue series I've started for one reason or another (Sea of Poppies, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Hunger Games, Palace Walk). They've just lacked the something that makes me want to keep reading. But this ended in such a way that wasn't a satisfying enough conclusion. It's like a character-driven tv show, where you don't necessarily care what happens next, but you need to know how their everyday life turns out. There is more to these characters, and we've seen just enough of a peek into their futures that we want to know how they get there.

Fiction | An Enticingly Meandering Mystery

If you're having trouble choosing what to read next, if you just can't seem to decide what kind of genre you're in the mood for, CHOOSE THIS BOOK.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind is the strangest kind of book in the most satisfying of ways, because it's many types of books, all rolled into one. It's a love story; it's historical fiction; it's a crime thriller; it's a mystery. And overall, I found it completely magical.

In Barcelona, 1945, wounds from the Spanish Civil War are still fresh. The city has a gothic fog hanging over it which creates the perfect aura of mystery and turmoil for Zafón's tale. Daniel is the son of an antique bookseller. His mother has passed away, and he finds solace in a mysterious book found on a trip with his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The book in question is called The Shadow of the Wind by a little-known author named Julian Carax. As Daniel begins a quest to find other books by Carax, he stumbles upon a bit of a mystery—someone has been destroying every copy of every book by Carax.

I really can't conclude this summary in a more gripping manner than the back cover blurb: 

"Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets - an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love."

The pacing of this story is slow...twisting and turning in a delightful, delectable manner. We're learning as Daniel learns, growing as Daniel grows, discovering as Daniel discovers. We're experiencing the story through Daniel's eyes, but we're also getting to know Daniel. That's what this book is so good at—creating an intimacy with all the characters that you're aching to know what happens next, how they end up. We have this main character, Daniel, whose life has become so entwined with Julian Carax, a character we (and Daniel) only know through stories. And as Daniel fords through adolescence and learns more about Julian, their lives begin to parallel until their stories reach the same moment of truth, asking a bigger question of all—will our next decision determine the outcome or is it only a matter of fate?

But on top of this character study, we also have this thriller, this gothic mystery, dragging us along and slowly unraveling. The mystery is never too convoluted to understand and the outcome never too outrageous to predict. You're not just following one story; as I said earlier, this isn't a straightforward novel, and the subplots engage while revealing clues to the main story.

I hesitate to go into too much depth about this story here, because I don't want to give any spoilers to those of you who haven't read it. Even I avoided my usual concurrent Google searches while reading, because I didn't want to spoil a thing. Therefore, you're just going to have to listen to my recommendation and take note of my enthusiasm. [However, if you've read and are itching to discuss, comment away!]

I don't want to recommend this as a "beach read" because it has much more substance that what that label generally denotes. But in reality, it is the perfect beach read, because it's easy and gratifying and you'll be hooked to the blanket long enough to get a sweet tan.

The Idlewild Discussion on the African experience

I finally made it to a book club meeting. I've missed the past THREE, and my literary life has seemed so lacking as a result. For this month, we read The Shadow of the Sun by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Kapuscinski first spent time in Africa in 1957, when colonial rule was ending and countries were fighting for independence and learning to govern themselves. His career as the African correspondent to a Polish newspaper brought him back to Africa over and over again for the next 40 years as he traveled throughout the most poverty-stricken, destitute countries, delving deep into the "real," everyday experience in the Africa that is far off the radar. The Shadow of the Sun is a compilation of essays previously published, melded together to form a cohesive novel, that offers brief snapshots into different moments and locations in African history. Some is written as a memoir, some as a history lesson.

The best statement I took away from this book is this, Kapuscinski's introduction:

"This is...not a book about Africa, but rather about some people from there—about encounters with them, and time spent together. The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say "Africa." In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist."

This book just further confirmed that...I know nothing about Africa. Despite having close friends who have spent significant time in various countries, hearing their stories, seeing their pictures, it is not a concept I can fully wrap my head around. I can't imagine an area so vast and so lacking in resources. I took two main things away from this book: (a) Africa is hot. (b) The African mentality is completely contrasting to Western thought. For instance, the concept of distance is measured in time, but time is not the structured, independent variable it is to us. Stuff happens when it happens, on a schedule completely of its own.

If this book was trying to answer a question, I would say that question is this: Why is Africa the way it is? And similarly: Why is it so hard to change that?

I'm interested on your experiences with Africa. Ever been? Ever studied it? Read any other Africa-centric books?

What I've read lately...

I've read a few things over the last month that a) weren't compelling enough to post about individually, or b) I am too lazy to write about individually. Ergo, compilation post.

For my December book club meeting at Idlewild, we read Carlo Collodi's classic, Pinocchio. [Sidenote: this may be the worst NYRB cover in existence.] I was under the assumption that this book is very different from the Disney movie known by all. Well, it is somewhat different, but not in the extreme way I thought it would be. Many of the plot points were the same. However, this story is much darker—too scary for Disney audiences. The cricket's appearance is too brief to even warrant him the name "Jiminy," and Pinocchio is....ANNOYING. Collodi obviously wrote these stories as lessons on behavior to children, which were published as chapters in a weekly magazine. But when all the chapters are compiled into one book, the lessons get repetitive and Pinocchio becomes unlikable because he seems to never learn! [More points found here in this NYRB article that I never actually read.] It was a quick easy read, but, to be honest, I can't even remember what we discussed about this book because I was too excited by the pita chips and wine.

In Nashville for Christmas, I read Joy in the Morning, the other well-known work by Betty Smith. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is in my top 3 books of all time, so I'd been meaning to read this for a while. It's a lovely story of a young Brooklyn couple in the late 1920s who were just married and moved to the midwest where Carl, the husband, is a law student. Annie is immediately endearing, as she's uneducated yet bright and eager to learn. This book should be required reading for newlyweds because it's uplifting in a non-cheesy, unsentimental way—in a way that reminds you that things happen but you get through them. It's a simple story but it sucks you in with likable characters while throwing some important life lessons in there about enjoying the small things and stuff like that. Not too much to say about this besides it was highly enjoyable.

The World Reading Party's country for the month of December was Greece. After a long search for Greek literature that turned up little more than mysteries or chick-lit or really long novels, I opted for the Greek classic, Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. It's the story of a traveling Englishman who meets an elderly (if 65 is "elderly" by today's standards—my dad certainly would not like to think so) vivacious Greek man named Zorba who aims to live life to the fullest and drags our narrator out of his shell. Supposedly this is a book about the philosophy of life and contains some important message on how to live it—which may or may not be something along the lines of "live how you want." But the only lesson I got from this was, in a nutshell, "Eat a lot, drink a lot, and sleep with a lot of women." I've read comments that this book is the book for some people, but I guess I am not one of those people. It was just meh to me. I didn't even learn that much about Greek culture, which is my aim with this reading challenge, so boo on that.

The Idlewild Discussion on why Palace Walk reads like a European romance novel

Last night's Idlewild book club meeting was on the epic-ly long novel Palace Walk, which is part one of a literal epic—a three-parter titled The Cairo Trilogy for which author Naguib Mafouz won the Nobel Prize of Literature. The impression I get from this book is that some people find out amazing and some just find it "meh."

Initially upon finishing, and during book discussion, I generally found it "meh." Palace Walk focuses on one family living in Cairo before Egypt's Independence from Britain in the early 1900s (around the time of World War I). The father is domineering; the mother is submissive; the daughters race to get married first; the older sons try to build their own lives while really just following the path of male stereotypes of the time; and then there's little Kamal, the youngest, the most innocent, the ray of sunshine in an oppressive household (oppressive thanks completely to Papa Bear).

The book's 500 pages tell little more than that. It's simply a day-to-day portrait of ordinary individuals (or, as I'm guessing for the time, what would be middle- to upper-class individuals). The characters, with the exception of the eldest son, are all one-sided and completely stagnant in terms of growth or development. They each fit a stereotype. Al-Sayyid Ahmad, the father, is overbearing and harsh—the villain of the novel—but those are expected characteristics based on the historical setting. Likewise, the mother, like all other women in the story, have no role in society outside the home, as expected based on this society's treatment and opinion of women 100 years ago. To me this seemed somewhat soap-operatic, somewhat a European character novel. It seemed so full of stereotype that I felt it lacked authenticity. I didn't really learn anything about Egyptian society of 1917 beyond what I could have inferred from history lessons.

But,

• The father was the villain, but unlike Disney movie villains, we understood his mentality and his thought-processes. He wasn't just "the villain." Strict inside the home and lighthearted outside seemed to be his modus operandi. Points to the author for creating transparent characters. 
• Kamal just never matured in two years. Not sure what that was supposed to represent. Think this was mentioned in discussion but was probably distracted by wine/pita chips.
•  The daughters marry and become property of their husbands' home, thus virtually eliminating them from this story of Al-Sayyid Ahmad's household. Typical of society?
• Why has this not been a BBC or Masterpiece Theater production? Much discussion of this during book club.

I'm not too motivated to read the other two in the trilogy until reading some basic bios on the author. His politics seemed to so highly influence his writing that I wonder if all I mentioned early about the style seeming European and full of stereotypes was his method of criticizing Egyptian culture. Knowing this historical context makes the writing somewhat more interesting. [Apparently Mahfouz was stabbed in the back (literally, not metaphorically!) in the 90s by a fundamentalist because of his support of Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. And he was 82 years old!] Maybe this story was more "shocking" in the 1950s when it was written (thought it wasn't translated to English until the 80s), but it seems a little run-of-the-mill now.

Review: An eternity of unrequited love

Gail Hareven's The Confessions of Noa Weber is this year's winner of the Best Translated Book Award for Fiction. Originally written in Hebrew, this is Hareven's first novel translated into English, and it also won Israel's Sapir Prize for Literature. So basically what I'm trying to say is, this book has been given a lot of credit in the world of world literature.

The story itself is simple. On the surface, Noa Weber is the epitome of a successful, feminist woman. She's the author of a series of crime thrillers led by a strong, independent woman; she has a daughter whom she raised alone. But what Noa is hiding beneath the surface is that she's completely and hopelessly in love with Alek, a man she met when she was seventeen, the man who fathered her child, the man she will never get over.

The Confessions of Noa Weber serves mainly as a confession to Noa herself instead of one to anybody else. She is picking apart her life, analyzing her emotions, and trying to come to terms with her life and Alek. Noa is so self-deprecatingly honest that, though you want to shake her to snap out of it, you can't help but be intrigued by what she's saying. I know unrequited love is a common theme in literature, but this was the first I've encountered of this kind—the kind where the afflicted just accepts this burden rather than anguish about letting it go. It was somewhat fascinating, somewhat cringe-inducing.

Though I found the ideas interesting, I did yawn through a lot of the book. Noa is like that friend that just won't shut up about her boy problems and uses you as a backboard to pitch her theories on relationships. The first time around, she has fresh ideas and makes some good points, but once you've heard it for months and there's nothing new to say, you want to tell her to shut up and get over it. But, it does have compelling ideas and (what I think is) a unique perspective on a common situation. Noa Weber is an extreme case, but I think most people will find something relatable about her.

"With more than twenty-nine years behind us, I am entitled to believe that I am, indeed, special to him. That my perseverance has borne fruit, and there is a place reserved exclusively for me in his heart."

That's all we really want, isn't it?

Review: Latency in Jerusalem

Last month's Idlewild book club selection was School for Love by Olivia Manning, another in the NYRB collection. It's 1945 and Felix, a recently orphaned teenager, goes to live with a distant relative in Jerusalem to await passage back to England. Felix arrives at Miss Bohun's boarding house naive and free of biases; he still craves the attention given to him by his coddling mother but is forced to grow up and fend for himself. As Felix meets and interacts with an eclectic mix of characters, he learns that first impressions are not always accurate, personalities are not always genuine, and perhaps his mother sheltered him too much—all in all, his own learning in the "school for love." It's a coming-of-age story for Felix, but perhaps more interesting are the characters he encounters.

While Felix is the voice of the narrative, the story arguably centers around Miss Bohun. She's a miserly middle-aged spinster, devoted to her Christian group the "Ever-Readies" (as in, "ever-ready" for the coming of Christ) with intentions that are never as selfless and genuine as she would have them appear. She allows Christian duty to guide her actions though sometimes exhibits very un-Christian behavior. Initially, Felix champions Miss Bohun's perspective as she deals with other tenants and employees in the house.

The arrival of Mrs. Ellis, a young widow, to the boarding house causes a dramatic shift in Felix's thought processes. With another opinion present, Felix is caught between the incompatible Miss Bohun and Mrs. Ellis and finds himself questioning the thoughts and opinions of which he had felt so certain. As the discordance escalates, Felix matures and gains independence as he recognizes the flaws in those around him.

The story did not really blow me away, but it was enhanced by a fascinating setting. Jerusalem in 1945 was full of war refugees—people essentially just waiting to get somewhere else. You get the feeling that the people there, the way of life is very temporary. Conflict between Israel and Palestine was in the early stages, and, for the most part, Arabs, Christians, and Jews are peacefully coexisting in the same city. Environment and setting ultimately shape the mentality—thoughts and actions—of the characters. Unfortunately, the novel is extremely character-driven to the point that very little attention was paid to the political setting, which would have been interesting. But I guess that wasn't the author's point of focus.

Review: Notre Couer

Last night I attended my very first book club ever. It was at Idlewild Books, which is a great independent bookstore here in the city (I wrote about it on She Is Too Fond of Books' weekly Spotlight on Bookstores here). The book of choice was Guy de Maupassant's Alien Hearts from the NYRB imprint (a great imprint that's as compelling as it is pretty). I was no stranger to Maupassant; I'd read Bel Ami for a French literature class in college, but despite the analytical papers I wrote, I remember very little from it. One thing I do remember: Maupassant's works just scream "French," and this one was no different.

The premise of this short novel is pretty simple. It's high-society Paris at the end of the 19th century. André Mariolle is a rich, handsome young man that isn't really doing much aside from enjoying his place in society. He's convinced by a friend to attend an exclusive salon of artist- and intellectual-types, hosted by the magnificent Madame de Burne. She's the type of woman that every man falls in love with, but after an unhappy, abusive first marriage, she refuses to involve herself in any kind of  romantic relationship. Mariolle is determined to resist Madame's spell (a characteristic that initially intrigues her) but with nothing else to do, he quickly succumbs and devotes himself to loving her. Their subsequent affair starts off with a bang but quickly dwindles, leaving each to contemplate their own views on love and relationships.

Lots of people in the book group found this book boring and the characters unlikeable. I didn't really have an opinion when I immediately read it—it wasn't bad but it wasn't great, either. Once we discussed it, though, I liked it a lot more because I got more out of it. Maupassant didn't write this book for great in-depth character development; it's a book of ideas.

First of all, examine this setting: it's a society that's divided by class. Men hold the power, and women have very little of it. Artists and intellectuals have no real place—they're "bourgeois" but at least a little interesting. Associating with them when you're clearly in a much higher class is almost trendy. 

Then look at Madame de Burne: a miserable first marriage has left her jaded. Sure, she may get off on having all these men fawning over her, but she's honest from the beginning—no relationships, no love. If they keep at it, it's not her fault; she told them she wasn't going to fall in love. She's clearly wealthy and has almost a full-time job in entertaining and maintaining such an image and high-status. She flirted with a relationship with Mariolle, which seemed more of a personal experiment than anything—testing the waters to see if she could do the relationship thing. But in a time when women need to marry for status, she already has it and without a husband. So what would she gain from a marriage she's not really into? Nothing. She's in a good place, personally, so why rock that boat? 

Finally, Mariolle: love to him is just something to do. Maybe his heart is genuinely in it, but there's a point where it just gets pathetic and you can't feel much sympathy. Certainly a rejection will sting, but can it really be heart-breaking when your feelings were never reciprocated? He does, however, represent that feeling of hope when you're trying to get a relationship to go the way you want it. You justify actions and words, choosing to believe what you want to believe, with the hope that the person is going to suddenly change and love you right back.

It may not have been the most compelling story to read, but it had a lot there. It's a story that would translate well to any medium set in any time, because the emotions are universal and very relatable. Have you seen (500) Days of Summer? Because that is a case in point.