Angle of Repose

Wallace Stegner

Winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner is a classic in American literature. It is the story of Lyman Ward, a wheel-chair bound retired history professor, writing the biography of his grandparents. Ward focuses specifically on his grandmother, Susan Ward, as he chronicles her life based on the articles she produced for prominent journals about her life in the West, her many illustrations, and the prodigious number of letters she wrote to her long-time friend.

The narrative unfolds through a two-pronged alternating time line. It opens in the late 1960s with Lyman’s routine and daily struggles with his disability. The time line then shifts to the 1870s through the 1890s as Lyman traces his grandmother’s early life, her immersion in culture and art, and her marriage to Oliver Ward, a mining engineer.  Ward scoops her up to live in various locations in the West in pursuit of one job after another, one vision after another. With each recurring failure, financial setback, and personal tragedy, Susan becomes increasingly disenchanted. Her marriage frays and her relations with her husband are strained.

Stegner bases the character of Lyman’s grandmother on the real-life historical writer and illustrator, Mary Hallock Foote. He cites copiously from her private letters, incorporates historical details of her life into the novel, and embellishes the rest. He portrays her as a refined Quaker who is more at home with the cultural and artistic milieu of New York than she is with living in a cabin in the untamed West. The novel moves slowly at times. Its strength lies in Stegner’s depiction of the challenges and hardships of life in the West during the late 19th Century.

The title, Angle of Repose, signifies the steepest angle of a dip at which loose materials maintain stability. It becomes a metaphor for the stability in Susan and Oliver’s marriage after decades of turmoil, disappointments, and tragedy. It also signifies Lyman’s understanding at the close of the novel that he needs to reach his own angle of repose by renouncing the resentment he feels toward his wife for her adultery.

The controversy surrounding the novel lies in Stegner’s verbatim incorporation of passages from Foote’s actual letters without seeking or obtaining permission to do so from her grandchildren. Furthermore, Stegner suggests the possibility that Susan had engaged in an adulterous relationship—one that her grandchildren vehemently deny and for which there is no evidence in any of her letters.

Stegner’s legacy, tarnished by his cavalier attitude towards his source materials, detracts from this otherwise commendable accomplishment.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

George Saunders

In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders, a professor of creative writing, analyzes and interprets a collection of seven stories by four Russian masters—Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol.

Each chapter opens with the text of the short story. Saunders then begins analyzing it, dissecting it, and interrogating it. He selects passages from each story, rewrites it in his own words, and compares it to the original to demonstrate the efficacy of the original. He asks questions about the reading and measures his reactions. He highlights details. He peppers his discussion with contributions and comments from his students, crediting them with broadening his interpretation of a story. He includes personal anecdotes to illustrate a point.

In addition to opening up each story with his analysis, one of the most fascinating elements about this book is seeing how Saunders’ mind works as he shares his insights about the reading. He interrupts the flow of the story to ask questions. Why did the author go this way and not that? Why did he include this detail? Where he is taking us? Such interrogations track Saunder’s mental progression as he reads and interprets the story and takes the reader along with him. He derives rules about writing from his close textual and structural analysis. He articulates the premise that what the author chooses to say in a story is just as important as what he chooses not to say. By showing how and why the story works, he hones our reading skills and identifies the tools that turn a mediocre story into a great one whose meaning can never be fully exhausted.

Saunders enthusiasm and genuine delight is infectious. He approaches each story with humility and openness. His generosity of spirit towards the literature and towards his students is palpable. His tone is conversational; his warmth, inviting. His approach is appealing, humane, and nonjudgmental. As he guides us through each reading, he repeatedly reminds us that this is his reading and that a good story is open to a variety of readings. He encourages us to read differently, walk slowly, ask questions, notice details, engage with the literature, and allow it to expand our thinking. Ultimately, he invites us to share his passion.

Beginning Middle End

Valeria Luiselli

Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli chronicles a mother-daughter journey that takes place after the mother’s divorce and the completion of her European book tour. The mother and her twelve-year-old daughter eventually head to Sicily.

The narrative unfolds from the mother/author point of view, exploring her interiority as she struggles with writer’s block. The plot is thin. The narrative meanders. The journey through Sicily incorporates a discussion of various topics, including classical mythology, the nature of memory, mother-daughter intergenerational bonds, family legacies, the impact of climate crisis, migration, the plight of refugees, time travel, the structure of a novel, reinvention, and an interrogation of beginnings, middles, and endings. The final section gives voice to the daughter as she writes to her grandmother.

Sicily is set against the backdrop of erupting volcanoes and creeping wildfire and ash. The Greek god Proteus, the shape-shifter, plays a prominent role throughout the narrative. The mother and daughter embark on a journey to return a small mosaic tile of Proteus to an ancient villa where it was found and appropriated by the author’s grandmother. At the time, she had disguised herself as a man so she could participate in an archaeological dig. After her deception was exposed, she absconded with the ancient tile depicting Proteus. This ancient tile triggers discussions about shifts in perspective, predictions, presentiments, the fluidity of identity, origins, and time travel. The words of Pliny pepper the narrative as the daughter enjoys reading his words aloud to her mother. The novel ends with a series of photographs documenting the journey and the people they encountered.

The three generations of women—mother, daughter, and grandmother—banter back and forth. The dialog between mother and daughter is authentic and entertaining. The daughter is witty, curious, astute, and intelligent. The writer’s grandmother is an ever-hovering presence in the background.

The novel’s strength lies in a narrative voice that is engaging, reflective, and prone to philosophical musings. The narrator creates a sense of immediacy similar to that generated by the stream of consciousness technique whereby her thoughts shift from one topic to another, unfiltered. The novel may not be for everyone because of its weak plot. But it is a perceptive exploration of the identity of three generations of women—those starting out; those drawing to an end; and those in the middle of life, situated between two generations, in the process of reinventing themselves and their relationships.

The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau

Graeme Macrae Burnet

The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau by Graeme MaCrae Burnet presumably focuses on Adele Bedeau and her mysterious disappearance. In reality, the novel is not about Adele since she has a minor role to play in the novel. Instead, the focus is on Manfred Baumann, an introverted, socially inept, and painfully self-conscious loner, haunted by his past.

Manfred, a bank manager, keeps a fastidious routine in his daily life. He eats in the same restaurant, sits at the same table, has the same drink, joins a poker game once a week, harbors a secret crush on the waitress Adele Bedeau, frequents the same barber, does his laundry on the same day ever week, maintains a regular appointment at a brothel, and is painfully conscious of his marginalized existence. Even the slightest deviation from his ritual generates panic and existential angst.

As a young teenager, Manfred’s brief relationship with a girl ended tragically. The event was investigated by Inspector Georges Gorski at the time. The incident with the girl continues to haunt Manfred and thwarts his relationship with women. When Adele Bedeau goes missing, Manfred comes under suspicion and is questioned by Gorski who intuits Manfred is withholding information. Eventually, Gorski connects Manfred with the young girl of twenty years ago and the missing Adele Bedeau. This does not bode well with Manfred.

The strength of the novel lies in the depiction of Manfred’s interiority. He is a tortured individual plagued with doubts about his ability to function normally. He questions his every move and interrogates the nuances of his speech and mannerisms. He analyzes how people react to him and engages in erratic behavior when convinced he is being watched and followed. Adele Bedeau’s minor part in the landscape of Manfred’s interiority is reinforced by the intentionally open-ended resolution in which the cause of her disappearance is never fully explained.

Burnet includes metafictional elements in the “translator’s afterword” in which he claims he is the translator of what turns out to be a non-existent French mystery. He gives the fictitious French author the name of Raymond Brunet, provides him with a detailed background, and ends his life by suicide. He also gives the “original novel” its own history by claiming the screen version has become a classic. These metafictional elements may or may not be interesting, but they add nothing to the narrative. One wonders why they were even included. 

The Tiger's Wife

Tea Obreht

Set against the backdrop of war in the Balkans, The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht tells the story of Natalia, a young doctor delivering much needed medicine to children across a war-torn border. During her trip, she learns her grandfather, a physician with whom she had a very close relationship, has died under mysterious circumstances. Natalia determines to discover the circumstances of her grandfather’s death.

The novel unfolds in a series of flashbacks of Natalia with her grandfather, their frequent visits to the zoo to see the tiger, and her grandfather reading to her from Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which was always in his possession. Natalia intersperses these childhood flashbacks with fantastical stories her grandfather told her, specifically, his recurring encounters with the “deathless man;” and his childhood recollection of a deaf-mute women who befriended an escaped zoo tiger during World War II. The disparate threads weave in and out throughout the novel, overlapping and shifting between multiple timelines while blending a realistic description of Natalia’s journey through a war-torn country. The elements of magical realism are provided by her grandfather’s folk tales.

The novel illustrates how a people, traumatized by war, cope with loss, grief, and destruction. They tell stories taken from their rich mythology and folklore, perform superstitious acts to ward off evil, and fabricate stories of the devil to explain mysterious happenings. By juxtaposing characters from folklore with realistically drawn figures from the village, Obreht blurs the line between reality and fiction to portray a people traumatized by war desperately adhering to their cultural traditions, including those of honoring the dead.

Obreht doesn’t tie up the different threads in a neat little bow at the novel’s conclusion. Instead, she leaves some of them open-ended and intentionally ambiguous since, just as is true in life, we may never get definite answers to the questions we seek because some questions are unanswerable.

An ambitious debut novel, reflecting a maturity and execution unusual for such a young author.  

Queen of America

Luis Alberto Urrea

Queen of America by Luis Alberto Urrea, a sequel to Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter, is a fictional biography that continues the story of Urrea’s great aunt, Teresita Urrea, known as the Saint of Cabora. Teresita was reputed to have the power to heal the sick and infirm by laying her hands. Because she ostensibly inspired Indian uprisings in Mexico and was wanted by the Mexican government, she had to flee the country and move to the United States.

The novel tracks Teresita’s movements in America, opening with Teresita and her father in Arizona. She marries for love, but when her husband violently abuses her and is incarcerated, she tries to forge an independent life for herself. She forms an alliance with a consortium that handles her travels and her money, financially exploiting her ability to heal the sick. She crisscrosses the country, living in Texas, California, St. Louis, and New York. She is treated as a celebrity and welcomed by high society wherever she goes, adopting the clothing and mannerisms, while simultaneously attending to the sick, the poor, and the needy who seek her help. She gives birth to two daughters, contracts tuberculosis, and dies in Arizona surrounded by family.

The strength of the novel lies in Urrea’s ability to capture time and place with vibrancy and sensory detail. Teresita’s navigation of the country by boat and train at the turn of the century allows for a vivid description of the American landscape, its cities, and the clothing and mannerisms of the people.

But this five-hundred-page novel has a plot that rambles. Its episodic nature consists of Teresita being tossed from one location to the next. She is portrayed as a victim who is more acted upon than acting. She lacks agency and is swept along by various men who take advantage of her abilities and exploit her gifts for monetary gain. It is only at the end of the novel that she finally asserts herself and refuses to acquiesce to their demands. Her behavior reflects the nature of the times she lived in when women were faced with very limited opportunities to forge a path for themselves independent of men. But it is disappointing to see the vibrant, lively young girl in The Hummingbird’s Daughter become the lackluster character she is in this novel.

Whistler

Ann Patchett

Whistler by Ann Patchett is the story of Daphne Fuller, a high school English teacher, and her favorite step-father, Eddie Triplett. Daphne is in her mid-fifties. She was nine-years-old when she last saw or heard anything about Eddie who mysteriously disappeared from her life after their car accident. She blamed herself for Eddie’s divorce from her mother.

The novel opens with Daphne and her husband at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her husband observes an elderly man following them. The man is Eddie Triplett. Although years have elapsed since he last saw Daphne, he recognizes her because of the resemblance to her mother. Daphne and Eddie reconnect and catch up on the news of the intervening years. Daphne finally learns the reason for Eddie’s disappearance from their lives.

Flashbacks from the past, including the car accident, are inserted in the present. What emerges from the narrative is the unshakeable connection between Daphne and Eddie, a mutual bond infused with an unconditional love and a respect that transcends time. They are able to pick up exactly where they left off more than four decades ago. Eddie then reconnects with Daphne’s sister and her mother, all of whom care deeply for one another.

One of the themes of the novel is how childhood memories impact our lives, and how they are reframed when we look at them through an adult’s lens. Daphne is able to contextualize Eddie’s disappearance from their lives when the cause is finally revealed—something she would probably not have been able to do as a child. Also, as an adult, she bonds with her natural father, treating him with the compassion and understanding that had been absent during her childhood. Additionally, she garners a greater respect for her mother for thriving in spite of the struggles and challenges she has had to face.

The title of the novel comes from a story about Whistler, a horse. He represents the transformative impact story-telling has on our lives and how stories can provide comfort even in the darkest of times. References to Whistler’s story appear intermittently throughout as a recurring thread connecting the past with the present.

This is a feel-good novel about the enduring power of love and the different forms it can take. The writing is beautiful, but a problematic issue may lie in the portrayal of characters. They are affluent, privileged, supportive of one another, well-adjusted, and so very, very good. Too much so, in fact. Their forgiving, tolerant, loving, considerate, and kind nature contribute to the warm, comfort food feel of the novel, but it may be stretching plausibility a stitch too far. Perhaps it’s all a little too pat, a little too good, a little too facile. Even their choice of names conveniently gives much away: Daphne Fuller whose cup of happiness is full to the brim; and Eddie Triplett as one of the three men who married Daphne’s mother. Tension exists but not between the characters. Tension is due to the inexorable march of time and our powerlessness to arrest it.

An enjoyable read with some reservations.

The Overstory

Richard Powers

The Overstory by Richard Powers is an ambitious, complex novel in four parts consisting of roots, trunk, crown, and seeds.

Roots consists of a series of extended, unrelated short stories in which each of the characters, unconnected to one another, is somehow linked to trees. In the remaining three sections, the characters’ lives intertwine as they become environmental advocates with an unflinching determination to save trees. They are convinced that the rapacious appetite for trees is hurling the planet toward self-destruction. They sabotage a lumber company’s machinery; block access to the forests; live on a platform high up in a tree to thwart attempts to cut it down.

The characters are an eclectic mix. Among them are a college student who becomes a staunch environmentalist after a near-death experience; a Silicon Valley engineer who makes millions designing computer games inspired by the Stanford arboretum trees; a scientist who discovers trees communicate with one another and who travels the planet collecting their seeds for preservation; a couple whose floundering marriage is saved by learning to identify the trees in their back yard. The different threads parallel one another, shift from one to the other in a dizzying pace, and eventually get tangled up together.

The narrative is replete with voluminous descriptions of trees in both poetic and scientific terms. Powers waxes eloquent about the majesty of trees and their invaluable contribution to the environment. His diction is Whitmanesque with its bubbling enthusiasm. His trees are so vibrant and alive that it is almost as if one can hear them chastising human beings for their self-destructive and short-sighted behaviors. His ability to personify succeeds to such a degree that we mourn with the characters when yet another giant redwood is felled.

Roots, with its strong character portrayals and interesting developments, is the strongest and most accessible section. The dizzying shifts in narrative threads in the remaining three sections can get confusing. The voluminous description of trees, while poetic and illuminating, leans towards heavy-handedness and tedium. And, finally, the brilliantly portrayed characters of the Roots section are regrettably replaced by pontificating mouthpieces in the remaining sections.

A disappointing second-half of the novel to what was a brilliant first half. Perhaps the book just wasn’t for me.

The Things We Never Say

Elizabeth Strout

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is the story of Artie Dam, a fifty-seven-year-old high school teacher, popular with his students, and recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award. He is married to a psychotherapist with whom he shares a twenty-seven-year-old son. Although he seems happily married, is devoted to his son, and enjoys his work, Artie is lonely and suffers from depression. The novel opens with him contemplating suicide. But a near drowning accident makes him realize he wants to live, so he abandons thoughts of suicide.

The setting is 2024, just prior to the presidential election. Artie worries about the future of the country. He feels even bleaker after the election and is convinced the country is on the road to self-destruction. To make matters worse, Artie learns his wife has harbored a shocking secret that involves him and their son. He debates whether to confront her but then decides against it. The atmosphere of secrecy turns his whole world upside down and he starts to engage in erratic behavior. He no longer trusts his wife, feels increasingly isolated from friends, and loses interest in his work. His unconditional love for his son and their unbreakable bond is the only thing that buoys his spirit.

Peppering the narrative are flashbacks from Artie’s childhood and marriage, which appear in intermittent spurts. His interaction with students, particularly his dealing with two troubled teens, shows him to be a caring, sensitive teacher with a genuine concern for their well-being. He struggles with the issue of free will and wonders to what extent our choices are shaped or predetermined by our circumstances.

This is a quick, easy-to-read novel that unfolds in a series of short vignettes shuffling between Artie’s recollections of the past and his life in the present. For some inexplicable reason, Strout encapsulates some of the passages in parentheses, as if they are an aside. These disrupt the flow and are intrusive, as is her occasional authorial commentary on the nature of human beings.

The bleak atmosphere that permeates the narrative is exacerbated by a political climate that appears threatening and corrosive. Artie’s conclusion that secrecy impedes honesty, communication, and understanding even among loved ones does little to alleviate his loneliness and isolation.

The Round House

Louise Erdrich

The Round House by Louise Erdrich takes the form of the extended flashback of Joe Coutts, an Ojibwe lawyer and tribal judge. In his first-person narrative, Joe recalls the year 1988 when he turned 13 years-old and lived with his parents on a North Dakota reservation.

The novel opens on a day when Joe’s life, the life of his parents, and of the entire reservation is turned upside down. His mother, a tribal clerk, is raped, brutally beaten, and barely survives the assault on her life. She manages to escape her attacker but is so traumatized by the experience that she withdraws into herself, refusing to describe what happened or to reveal the name of her attacker. When she is finally able to do so, the offender is temporarily arrested but then released due to a lack of evidence and because the labyrinthine laws that govern a reservation and its surrounding areas make prosecution all but impossible. When the offender is released, Joe decides to take matters into his own hands and execute vengeance. He is assisted by his closest friend.

The novel charts the daily activities of Joe and his three friends. They spend their days in bouts of beer drinking, searching for clues and evidence that will incriminate the culprit, spying on potential suspects, riding their bikes, and exchanging gossip about members of the tribe. Joe peppers the narrative with folklore and legends shared by elder tribal members.

A brutal act of violence catapults Joe in this coming-of-age story. The interiority of a thirteen-year-old boy is described with authenticity. While his hormones rage, he tries to stay focused on avenging his mother. Joe is buffered by family and a supporting cast of tribal members who suspect what he has done but who understand why he did it and are prepared to overlook his action. His determination to set things right has lasting consequences on his self-image, and on his relationship with his parents and friends

The narrative starts slowly but the pace accelerates at almost a break-neck speed during the second half. The characters are well-drawn and authentic, with each one speaking in a unique voice. What emerges from the novel is the close, loving bond between Joe and his parents and the cushion of support they receive from the tribe.

Erdrich does a masterful job of laying out the difference between justice and revenge. When justice fails, the all-consuming desire for revenge takes over. And this desire has long-lasting consequences on a teenage boy whose world has been torn apart and whose only wish is to piece it back together. The qualities of courage, resilience, and the determination to keep going in spite of violence, injustice, legal loopholes, and seemingly insurmountable challenges are what binds the family and the larger community together.

When Cranes Fly South

Lisa Ridzén; trans. Alice Menzies

Recipient of the 2024 Swedish Book of the Year Award, When Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies, is profoundly moving novel about Bo, an 89-year-old man reflecting on his life, his relationships, and his aging.

Bo lives at home with his dog, Sixten. He has a series of caregivers who appear on a rotating basis. They bathe him, prepare his meals, chat with him, and take Sixten out for walks. His son, Hans, shows up regularly to check on him and replenish his refrigerator with food and other miscellaneous supplies. Bo’s wife has advanced dementia and resides in a care home. She no longer recognizes him or their son. He talks on the phone with his friend, Ture. But his closest friend and ally is Sixten.

Bo’s major conflict is with his son. Because of his diminishing mobility, he can no longer take Sixten for the long walks he needs. So Hans has made arrangements for Sixten to be adopted by a family who will love him and take care of him. Bo resents his son’s decision. But more than that, he resents being powerless to prevent it.

The novel unfolds through Bo’s interiority. There is so much he wants to say to Hans but can’t bring himself to say the words. His daily routine of adult nappies, phlegm cups, and frozen meals is punctuated with vivid memories of the past. He conducts imaginary conversations with his beloved wife, Frederika. Past and present bleed into one another until a voice in the present shakes him out of his dreamlike trance and thrusts him back into reality. Each time he is jerked back to the present, he seethes with anger at Hans for threatening to rehome his beloved Sixten. As the novel progresses, Bo becomes increasingly incapacitated and determines to reconcile with his son before it is too late.

Through Bo, we experience his embarrassment, powerlessness, and frustrations at his inability to help himself. But unlike so many people, Bo is fortunate to have a team of conscientious caregivers whose daily journals punctuate the narrative. He is also fortunate to be surrounded by a loving granddaughter and a son who is doing everything he can to ensure his father’s comfort.

In spare, unsentimental diction, Lisa Ridzén captures the challenges of aging with its decline of memory, its diminishing mobility, and its reliance on others to perform even the most basic tasks. It is a profoundly moving novel about an elderly man recognizing his time is near and his desire to make amends with his son before it is too late.

A beautiful novel, highly relatable, and well-deserving of awards and accolades.

The Dream Hotel

Laila Lalami

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is a dystopian novel that comes disturbingly close to reality.

It opens when the central character, Sara Hussein, is detained at Los Angeles airport after returning from a business trip abroad. Because she had difficulty sleeping after giving birth to her twins, Sara had made the decision to install a brain implant (Dreamsaver) to help her sleep. An algorithm monitoring data from the implant records her dreams and flags her potential for violence. This potential for violence reflected in her dreams is deemed sufficient justification to incarcerate her at an all-woman retention center. Sara is required to await an evaluation period to determine whether or not she presents an imminent risk. And so her nightmare begins.

Combing the Orwellian world of omnipresent surveillance, monitoring, and thought police with the Kafkaesque world where the rules keep changing, where punishments are arbitrary, and where the sense of powerlessness and injustice permeate every aspect of life, Sara finds herself caught up in a labyrinth from which there seems to be no escape. Her short stay drags on for months and months. She proclaims her innocence throughout but to no avail. She is advised to keep her head down and obey the rules if she is to have any hope of getting out of there. She is allowed minimal contact with family and worries about her husband and children managing without her.

Sara’s guilt at being in the retention center prompts her to dredge up events from her past to try to ascertain where and why the algorithm flagged her as a potential criminal. Flashbacks from her past are peppered throughout. Lalami excels at capturing Sara’s interiority with her sense of frustration, anger, anxiety, humiliation, and powerlessness. Smatterings of emails, reports on the inmates, and excerpts from the corporate manual are inserted to reveal the operations of the system. The unsanitary conditions, the unappetizing meals, and the shortage of essential supplies are described in graphic detail. The pacing slows down when describing the repetitive activities in the center to capture the mind-numbing daily routines. Simple acts like watching an elderly woman outside her window as she waits for a bus constitute the highlight of Sara’s day.

What makes the novel so absorbing is Lalami’s ability to make this nightmare scenario vivid and plausible. Sara is an ordinary, law-abiding woman who gets tangled up in a terrifying web of unchecked surveillance, invasion of privacy, and intrusion into her innermost thoughts. She is deemed guilty until proven innocent. Lalami’s novel is a cautionary tale about technological control, data mining, and surveillance powers that proceed unchecked. What makes this scenario so terrifying is that it is, perhaps, too close for comfort.

Stone Yard Devotional

Charlotte Wood

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood is a quiet novel in which very little happens. Set in Australia, it unfolds in the first-person voice of a middle-aged woman who leaves her marriage and career as a species conservationist to live in a convent where she prepares food, cleans, and occasionally attends mass. She is not religious and has not experienced a religious conversion. Her decision to live in the convent is simple enough: she wants to escape life and lead a quiet existence punctuated by regular routines.

The novel proceeds at a slow, leisurely pace. The narrator’s quiet, meditative life is interrupted by three events: a horrendous plague of mice; the return to the convent of the skeletal remains of a murdered nun; and the reappearance of a childhood figure from her school days for whom the narrator harbors guilt for her participation in taunting and bullying the girl.

The narrator’s interiority includes flashbacks from her life; her assessment of her relationship with her mother; her mother’s death; her thoughts on guilt, forgiveness, redemption, and death. Her interiority is frequently interrupted by graphic details of the mice infestation. Mice show up everywhere: inside shoes, beds, pantry, hallways, and rooms. They can be heard scuttling under floorboards and in walls. They leave traces of their ubiquitous presence everywhere. Traps are set and mice carcasses are tossed into a ditch for burial. This plague of rodents is described in vivid, gruesome details.

The return of the nun’s skeletal remains and the delay in obtaining permission for her burial sets the narrator on a course of contemplating death and the meaning of sacrifice. The visit from her former school mate triggers feelings of guilt as well as an interrogation of political activism, grief, penance, atonement, and redemption.

The novel is restrained and meditative. The narrator has escaped from the world in a state of despondency. Withdrawn from the outside world, she explores her interiority, interaction with others, and with the factors which keep intruding in her seclusion. Although very little happens in terms of plot, and although it doesn’t offer any answers to some of life’s enduring questions, the novel leaves a strong, lingering impact after the final pages have been read.

Land

Maggie O’Farrell

Land by Maggie O’Farrell blends historical fiction, Irish folklore, and magical realism in an epic family saga which includes the family’s encounter with a mysterious copse imbued with other worldliness. The novel is ambitious and complex with several narrative threads. Set in the post-famine Ireland of 1865, it focuses on Tomas and his family.

Tomas works for the British as a map-maker, mapping the physical terrain and learning the place names from the locals. He is determined to ensure the map reflects the devastating impact of the great famine by recording abandoned homes and graveyards. The novel opens with Tomas and his ten-year-old son, Liam, stumbling into a wooded copse surrounding an ancient spring in rural Ireland. Tomas emerges from this encounter babbling incoherently and announcing his determination to stop working for the British and to map the land as it really is. His family convince him to return to work because they need his income to survive.

The novel’s progression is non-linear. It shifts back in time to Tomas as a young boy in the workhouse, his meeting with a young girl who later becomes his wife, their children, and their relocation to land near the mysterious copse. The novel then shifts further back in time to Ireland’s original inhabitants which tells of a young girl being sacrificed to appease the gods. She is buried in the copse with her dog. She wears her father’s ring, which is discovered years later by Tomas’ youngest son, Eugene. Eugene never speaks but seems to be endowed with a mystical understanding that transcends the material world.

Tomas’ children forge different destinies over the decades. Liam abandons the priesthood and returns from India to continue his father’s work as a map-maker. The eldest daughter runs away to Quebec to be joined years later by her sister. And Eugene lives a solitary life in the copse.

The narrative unfolds as a series of episodes shifting from one character to the next. The pacing is uneven. The diction is detailed, dense, and immersive. The perspective shifts from people, to animals, and to the land, itself. O’Farrell imbues the land with a life-like presence, describing it in luminous detail and capturing its enduring power of survival. The characters are drawn as distinct individuals. But we get to know them primarily through their interiority as there is minimal dialogue. This has the effect of distancing the characters.

O’Farrell’s disparate threads explore the themes of the exploitation of Ireland and its people by British colonialism; the suffering of the Irish; the conflict between Catholicism and indigenous beliefs; the subordination of women; the people’s connection to the land; and the land as a physical custodian of historical events. There is so much going on in this complex novel that the focus becomes muddled and confusing. The writing is lyrical at times, but at others, it is too dense and slows down the narrative.

An ambitious undertaking and, perhaps, not as successful as O’Farrell’s other novels.

Mother Mary Comes to Me

Arundhati Roy

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy is her memoir exploring her early love/hate relationship with her mother, her education in architecture, her writing, the success of her debut novel, and the political activism of her later years.

Roy’s mother was a pioneering feminist who advocated for women’s rights, supported women, provided them with protection and gainful employment, fought the establishment, started her own school, and was adored by the many people whose lives she touched. Unfortunately, she lacked the skills or the interest to be a good parent. She abused her two children, and subjected Arundhati to horrendous cruelty and verbal abuse.

Her mother’s cruelty toward her scarred Arundhati and had a lasting impact on her life. She leaves home at eighteen to forge her own path. Much of the memoir consists of a two-pronged approach: showering praise on her mother for her staunch advocacy of women and for her bravery in challenging legal restrictions on women; simultaneously struggling to understand why her mother withheld the same love and support from her own children.

Arundhati’s progressive political views thread the memoir. She is unafraid to take risks while speaking truth to power. She has been threatened and has even served a short time in jail for her political views. But she continues to speak loudly and clearly through writing that confronts the injustice, discrimination, othering, and violence perpetrated by the Indian government as it launches into fascism and Hindu supremacy. Her explication of the violence in Kashmir is especially disturbing.

The memoir charts the influences on Roy’s life and on her writing. It forms a rich tapestry of memory, her emergence as a writer, her political activism, and her complex relationship with her mother. She portrays the characters who drift in and out of her life with realistic detail. Many of them serve as inspiration for the characters in her novels. The narrative meanders at times, and the timeline is scrambled. But it is emotionally strong, rich in detail, and provides intriguing insight into the makings of an award-winning novelist.

Nonesuch

Francis Spufford

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford, set in London during the Blitz, blends magical realism with historical fiction.

The central figure is Iris Hawkins, a financial secretary with ambitions to transcend her class and a range of socially-constructed gender barriers. Iris gets sucked into a macabre plot to assassinate Winston Churchill with the goal of altering the course of history. The bizarre plot involves time travel, crossing boundaries in which time and space are warped, deciphering cryptic manuscripts, and releasing supernatural beings trapped in London’s statues. The plot, hatched by a fascist group harboring sympathies with Hitler, is led by Lady Cunningham (Lall). With the help and support of her love interest, Geoffrey, Iris finds herself in the unlikely position of being the only individual able to thwart the plot.

Against the background of London during the Blitz, Iris climbs rooftops, leaps on to statues, dodges entities/angels trying to capture her, and gingerly walks in a topsy turvy terrain where one misstep can lead to death.

The writing is densely packed, especially when Iris enters the fantasy realm. The magical/fantastical elements are hard to follow and feel overworked, making it confusing to keep track of what is happening. The characters are not particularly engaging or compelling. But where the novel shines is in its depiction of London during the Blitz. Spufford reconstructs London with the sounds, sights, and smells of relentless bombing, destruction, food shortages, and an exhausted population in immersive detail. The cliffhanger ending with its “To be continued” is disappointing.

Bad Bad Girl

Gish Jen

Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen began as a memoir, but, as Jen explains, because her mother withheld information about her life and kept little records of herself, Jen was obliged to fill the blanks in her mother’s life by using her imagination. The end result is a blend of memoir and fiction—in Jen’s words, “a forged truth.”

Jen writes about her mother’s early life in China, her move to the U.S., her education, her marriage, and her role as a mother of five children. The narrative is peppered with dialogue and commentary she imagines having with her now deceased mother. Her mother’s constant refrain of “Bad Bad Girl” is in reference to Jen and gives the book its title.

The heart of the novel is the mother/daughter relationship. Jen had a contentious relationship with her mother who not only withheld love and support from her eldest daughter, but also physically, emotionally, and verbally abused her, venting all her anger and frustration at her. Jen’s success and the many accolades she receives as an author are either ignored by her mother or dismissed in a perfunctory manner. At times Jen is angry, loving, forgiving, compassionate, and understanding of the challenges her mother faced as a new immigrant in a country which was so different from the country she left behind.

Although Jen has made a success of her life as a wife, a mother, and an author, she continues to be haunted by her history of trauma as she struggles to come to terms with her mother’s abusive behavior. She witnesses her mother’s favorable treatment toward her other children and wonders why she is denied even a modicum of affection and support. She oscillates between understanding her mother and seeking her acceptance and love while bitterly resenting her for the beatings and verbal abuse.

Jen acknowledges the possibility that writing her book is an attempt to make sense of her mother’s treatment. She attributes much of their dysfunctional relationship to the gulf between Chinese immigrants and their Americanized children. Unfortunately, she was the child to shoulder much of that tension. But through this blend of memoir and fiction, Jen manages to distance herself somewhat from her childhood trauma, contextualize her mother’s behavior, and elicit understanding and empathy for all the characters involved, including her mother.

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder

Nina McConigley

How to Commit a Post-Colonial Murder by Nina McConigley is a coming-of-age story of an Indian American girl in the mid 1980s. It unfolds in a series of brief vignettes told in the first-person-voice of Georgie Ayyar who lives in Wyoming with her American father, Indian mother, and older sister, Agatha Krishna. As a young brown girl growing up in America, Georgie has to contend with racism, childhood sexual assault, mockery, and marginalization. 

Newly arrived from India, her uncle Vinny, with his wife and son, move in to Georgie’s home for what is supposed to be a temporary stay. Georgie and Agatha are forced to share a bedroom. With their father’s extended absences working in oil fields, and their mother’s strong attachment to her brother, Vinny, the two girls remain silent when their uncle begins sexually assaulting them. Because the sisters want the abuse to stop and feel they cannot rely on adults to help them, they decide to take matters into their own hands and murder their uncle. When their uncle Vinny dies and is cremated, the girls assume their plan was a success.

Georgie’s voice throughout is irreverent, funny, and honest. She addresses the reader directly, weaving historical facts into her narrative, including the Challenger explosion, the Cold War, and President Reagan. She maintains a conversational tone throughout, peppering her narrative with quizzes readily available in teen magazines for girls. She builds suspense by announcing plans to murder Vinny Uncle before explaining why. Although she doesn’t dwell on describing the sexual assault, she depicts its long-term traumatic impact: it splits her in two with one part of her dissociating from the part experiencing the abuse; it severs her close bond with Agatha after the death of their uncle. Instead of this shared secret bringing the sisters closer together, it drives a wedge between them with Agatha increasingly distancing herself from Georgie. The surprise twist at the conclusion suggests the sisters have re-established their close bond.

Georgie’s interiority and the sisters many conversations about the deleterious impact of colonialism on the colonized suggests they see parallels with the sexual abuse they experienced from Vinny Uncle who “colonized” their bodies. They fight violence with violence. That they have survived the trauma and are shown as resilient adults at the conclusion of the novel suggests that although the scars of colonialism can never be erased, it is possible, nevertheless, to move beyond them.

Unfolding in a witty, confessional narrative voice, the novel takes an innovative approach to exploring the bond between sisters, racism, otherness, child sexual assault, and trauma.

Home

Marilynne Robinson

Home by Marilynne Robinson is #2 in the Gilead series. It is a stand-alone although it contains the same characters as those in Gilead. The novel is told from the perspective of Glory, the thirty-eight-year-old woman who has returned to Gilead to take care of her dying father. She is joined by her prodigal brother, Jack, whom the family has not heard of for twenty years.

The narrative consists of Glory’s flashbacks of her childhood; her conversations with Jack; her tender care-giving of her father; her attempts to nurture healing and reconciliation between friends and family; and extensive discussions about faith and the role it plays in our lives.

A very moving portrayal of unconditional love, familial relations, regrets, and forgiveness. Just as is the case with Gilead, this novel should be read slowly and savored.

This is Where the Serpent Lives

Daniyal Mueenuddin

This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin is structured as four interlocking novellas with common characters threaded throughout. The setting is Pakistan.

The novel opens with a young child abandoned by his family at the bazaar in Rawalpindi in the 1950s. The child, Yazid, is taken in by a tea stall owner where he lives and works for several years. Enterprising and intelligent, Yazid gains in popularity with customers who teach him to read and write. School boys from the privileged classes seeks his friendship. When the sister of his friend Zain is compromised, Yazid takes matters into his own hands. As a consequence, he has no option but to leave town, finding employment with an army colonel turned politician in Lahore.

The second novella tells the story of the colonel’s nephew Rustom as he attempts to revive the fortunes of the declining estate he inherited from his playboy father. He has to rely on local gangsters to enforce boundary disputes on his estate. He seeks advice from his cousin Hisham.

The third novella focuses on Hisham, his glamourous wife, and Yazid, who has become their trusted chauffer. This section includes the backstory of Hisham and his brother while studying in America, and the meeting with Shahnaz who initially dated Hisham’s brother but then set her sights on and married Hisham.

The final novella recounts the story of Saqib. Taken into Hisham and Shahnaz’s household as a young boy, Saqib is mentored by Yazid and gradually earns the trust of his employers. They assign him to grow cucumbers on a portion of their land. His use of modern technology is successful. His success makes him greedy, leading him to steal from his wealthy employers and to betray Yazid, who has been like a surrogate father to him. The novel ends with calamity for Saqib and his young family.

Spanning decades, the novel offers a panoramic view of Pakistan, exploring class, power, and corruption within all segments of society. Mueenuddin portrays bribery, theft, extortion, violence, and moral turpitude as norms. The setting is immersive, with its sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of Pakistani food, market places, villages, squalid huts, and luxurious homes. The characters are vividly drawn. However, the four novellas, although linked together by some of the characters, may have been better suited if considered as short stories. Put together, the novel seems to lack cohesion and presents a disjointed narrative structure.