Sing To It by Amy Hempel

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

One of those recent quiz things made its rounds in a book-related facebook group I am part of. A particular question asked who tended to blow up your “To Be Read” list. Well, that would be me. I keep undermining my own reading plans by bringing home random books from the library. Particularly ones from the New Books shelf. This was one of those. 

I hadn’t read any Amy Hempel before, although I was familiar with the name. Her short stories have been published in a variety of magazines and so forth. This is her latest collection, and consists of a couple of regular short stories, a bunch of vignette length stories (one or two pages), and a longer story that is not quite big enough to be a novella, but longer than the typical short story. 

That particular story, “Cloudland,” is a haunting tale of a woman who gave birth in an unwed mothers home, only to learn later that they didn’t adopt out all the babies: they allowed some to starve to death and secretly buried them in the apple orchard. 

Other stories which stood out were the opening one “The Orphan Lamb” which is a mere four paragraphs long, but gives a striking and disturbing picture of a bad sexual relationship, and “A Full-Service Shelter,” a story about working in an animal shelter. 

Most of the stories are more haunting than pleasant, about bad relationships, affairs, loneliness, grief. The characters are all damaged, but seeking to move forward anyway. 

Hempel is a good writer, and the stories have the virtue of seeming just a little too short rather than a little too long. The book itself is also less than 150 double-spaced pages, so it is a super quick read. It was a good contrast to some of the longer books I am working on right now, and of a totally different style. (Although some of the themes do correspond, so that’s an interesting link.) 

I didn’t really take notes on this one, just read it through in a few days, and enjoyed the writing. It’s worth a read, and I intend to seek out some of her older collections. 

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This is, without a doubt, the most unusual - and dark - book I have read this year. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but I will give it a shot. 

The central premise is that the protagonist, Ada, is an ogbanje, a “spirit child.” I discovered this concept earlier this year in Chinua Achebe’s book, Things Fall Apart. In the original Igbo mythology, such a child is a spirit, or a god if you will, and comes to the parents for the purpose (more or less) of breaking the birth mother’s heart by dying young. And then repeating the process over and over. It isn’t difficult to figure out the way such a myth would arise: in an era of high infant mortality, weak genes (or maternal malnutrition or whatever) could easily cause a string of infant deaths. Just the stories of Suzanna Wesley or John Donne or Gustave Mahler alone are filled with dead babies. 

In Freshwater’s version of the story, though, the ogbanje is a hybrid: a human child possessed or occupied by spirits/gods. For Ada, the problem is that she didn’t die - she lived, but tormented by the spirits which are part of her, but that she cannot come to peace with. 

The structure of the book is fascinating as well. There are multiple narrators, with distinctive voices. Much of the book is narrated by “we,” the plural voice of the spirits. Occasionally, Ada her self is heard, usually in the form of a diary entry or a poem, until she finds a voice at the end, which combines her with her spirits in style. The third voice is that of one spirit, who Ada names Asughara. This spirit is feral, animalistic, the personification of desire and darkness. The best I can do to describe the voices is that Ada is timid but recognizably human. We is more like a Greek chorus, with figurative, mythical, and serenely confident. Asughara is personal and lets us see more of Ada than even Ada herself, but is so much concentrated energy and malice and exuberance in one, that she seems other than human. (Which is, presumably, the point.)  

Asughara is “born,” in the language of the book, as the result of a trauma. Ada is raped by a boy at college, and Asughara separates from the We at that time. Asughara becomes the way that Ada can function sexually: Asughara is full of violent lust and desire, but uses sex to punish the men who sleep with Ada. (They deserve it, mostly, because Asughara chooses men who are used to using women.) Freud might describe her as the Id - and not a stereotypically feminine one at that. Even Asughara admits that her flaw is that she has no concern for the emotional consequences to others - even to Ada. 

There is one other spirit who separates somehow from the We, and that is the male spirit Ada names Saint Vincent. He is gentle in all the ways that Asughara is not, and presents an alternative to her dysfunctional sexuality. But, as he is male, he drives Ada to hook up with women, which isn’t at all what Asughara wants (although she tolerates it for Ada’s sake.) 

If this sounds a bit complicated and crazy, it is. And even more so as we see the battles raging in Ada. Asughara feels called back to the spirit realm, and the only way she can do this is by killing Ada - so she pushes Ada toward suicide. This part of the book is damn dark, and I wouldn’t recommend it for someone who is already suicidal. It got to me, and I don’t tend toward depression. (I have my other demons, believe me, and have been in some dark places related to circumstances, but suicidal ideation isn’t the direction my brain is wired to seek first.) 

Eventually, Ada has to find equilibrium in her own way, through the understanding of her ogbanje nature. 

In order to gain some understanding of the book, I think it is helpful to understand the author. Emezi identifies as transgender and non-binary...and also as an ogbanje. The book isn’t strictly autobiographical, but it is significantly so. The author has said that they used their life as the skeleton for the story. But even more than this, it is an emotional and psychological autobiography, a look inside the author’s psyche. For Emezi, the ogbanje explanation makes more sense and “works” better than either the Western psychology framework or the Catholic Christianity that they were raised with. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this because of my own background. I was raised in the “nouthetic counseling” subculture, which is similar (but not exactly) to the Catholic approach that Emezi describes in interviews about that book. For me, that approach was borderline abusive, as it ascribes pain and trauma and grief and all dysfunction to specific sin in the life of the one who suffers. It denies any biological or circumstantial basis for mental illness, and blames its victims for their own pain. Particularly as Bill Gothard taught it, it pretty well fucked me up during my late teens. (And that’s before you get to the lasting relationship damage in my extended family, but that’s a different post.) It took a while (and the process is ongoing) to retrain my brain to understand how and why I react - in a way that doesn’t require “spiritualization” of things - or heaping guilt on me for negative feelings.

On the other hand, I do believe in my deepest being that there is more to life and the self and the psyche than chemistry and electricity. I believe in - and have experienced and continue to experience - a spiritual dimension that is as much a part of me as the physical being that science can describe. So, while contemporary Western psychology has been helpful in understanding myself and my reactions, it isn’t all there is. 

Two things tend to make my understanding of Emezi’s experiences difficult. First, I am a Western person, raised in my particular culture. As such, I can only view Igbo mythology from the outside. (I use that word not as a pejorative, but in the same way C. S. Lewis and Joseph Campbell do. Myth isn’t necessarily untrue, it is just true in a way that isn’t necessarily literally, empirically, naturalistically true. Rather, it is true in some combination of psychological, metaphorical, spiritual, and ontological truth.) The second barrier is that I do not share Emezi’s psychological reality. True, I have conversations in my head all the time (my wife teases me because she can tell), and even arguments. But I never feel like someone or something other than “me” is in my head. I don’t even experience the “angel and devil on shoulder” dichotomy. (If I ever do, can I have Crowley and Aziraphale, please? Please?) So, I have never felt like in a way consistent with the experience of being an ogbanje. 

I couldn't resist.

That said, because of my own experiences, I can see how Emezi could find an Igbo explanation for their experience to be helpful and useful. 

Similarly, I really don’t have a framework to understand Emezi’s other identity experiences. I am strongly cishet, although I don’t fit our culture’s masculine stereotypes particularly well. I feel male...but like a male who loves violin, poetry, nature, suggleing, cooking, and cats. I was mistaken for gay a lot as a kid and young adult for that reason. (I literally laughed out loud when I read Alice Munro’s riff on sexual orientation in one of her stories.) The best I can recommend is the excellent Vox article they wrote about their transition surgeries. It gives an insight in their experience, and the pain and trauma that live in their psyche. 

In that sense, this book was disturbing because it gave a full-on immersion into a psyche which is totally unfamiliar, and occasionally terrifying, to me. I don’t mean that being trans and/or nonbinary is terrifying. I mean seeing into the depths of pain and trauma that leads to self destructive and cruel behavior, and the self-loathing and unwellness that drags one toward suicide. The problem, if it can be called that, is that Emezi writes so very compellingly of this. At several points, I was sure I was absolutely hating the book, and hating what it made me feel, but at the end, after I caught my breath, I had to admit that I admired and respected it. A book that is so real and takes you on that kind of journey cannot be characterized as anything less than outstanding. The writing does what it was intended to do. This is a book that will stay with me. 

In addition to my caution that the book may be a bit much for someone already experiencing suicidal thoughts (although, again, I’m not wired in that direction, so I could be reading this completely wrong), I should also mention that it contains psychologically (not physically) graphic rape and assault. There is a lot of sex in this book, and it can get graphic, although it is all completely necessary, and it is brief. 

The other thing that might be a trigger for those who are connected to the Christian religious description, is that Jesus (as “Yshwa”) is a character. He too occupies Ada’s head, although he is an invited visitor, not part of her, like the spirits. The problem is that Yshwa is a personification of the Problem of Evil. Why wasn’t he there during Ada’s rape - or the sexual assaults we learn she experienced as a young child? Why didn’t he prevent her mother from abandoning the family? Emezi grew up Catholic, so they know the theology and scripture well enough. What is most fascinating is the book’s conclusion about Yshwa: he too was a spirit violently dragged into a fleshly body. He was an ogbanje too. As a result, he knows all too well the pain of being human and being trapped in flesh, and does not want to repeat the experience. I certainly hadn’t thought of that view of things, I suppose. Yshwa is thus not a villain, or even close. He tries, along with Saint Vincent, to encourage Ada to travel a less destructive path. But Ada can never escape the effects of the religion she has imbibed, which taught her that the loss of her virginity made her unacceptable to Yshwa. (Not that Yshwa shares this belief - he may not be able to protect and comfort Ada, but he doesn’t condemn her at all.) I found this perspective on Yshwa to be fascinating. Some of my tradition may freak out, of course. And insist that the book is evil because it doesn’t insist on their preferred theology. I prefer to appreciate the unexpected version of our own mythology, which seems consistent with the mystery of incarnation. 

Because the book is so autobiographical, it is hard to know whether Emezi will be able to write additional books of this quality. I hope they are not a one hit wonder, because they write compellingly. 

***

Just a note on pronouns: I am using “they,” etcetera, because Emezi uses them on their website. The various articles on them are inconsistent, some using female pronouns rather than neutral. Since many of the sources are ones who do aim to use preferred pronouns, I assume that Emezi made a change fairly recently, and that female pronouns were previously acceptable to them. 

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

This book is part of out not-particularly-systematic exploration of the Newbery Award winners and honor books. Kira-Kira won the award in 2005. In addition, this book is part of my personal project as homeschool dad and aspiring decent human being to introduce my kids (and myself) to books written by non-white authors. 

Cynthia Kadohata was born in the 1950s in Chicago. Because her father was of Japanese heritage, he was unjustly imprisoned in a concentration camp in Arizona during World War II. This, and her experience of racial prejudice, influenced her treatment of the American experience in her books. 

Kira-Kira is her first childrens, or perhaps young adult novel. 

To start with, let me note that this book is achingly sad. The central event is the death of the narrator’s older sister from cancer. A dying kid is not the easiest topic to address, clearly, no matter how well written the book is, it is rough. (I particularly speak as a parent here, in that the death of a child is an unimaginable horror - even though I have friends who have experienced it.) In addition, the book looks at other rather serious and unpleasant realities. Racial prejudice - particularly in the American South. Exploitation of workers. Trauma in general. These are heavy topics for a kids book, and make for a book which isn’t exactly “pleasant.” 

That said, I have been thinking a lot about this book after listening to it on our most recent vacation. There are so many truly outstanding things about the work that make it a worthy Newbery winner - and a good choice to experience with kids. 

First, last, and most important is the voice of the protagonist, Katie Takeshima, the middle child in the family. I think the highest praise I can use here is this: it was easy to forget that this book is fiction, because Katie feels so incredibly real. She narrates the book throughout, and starts with memories as a toddler, progressing as the book goes on to her middle school years. She is utterly believable and human, never lapsing into “angelic” territory, being “wiser than her years” as a stand in for her adult self, or (and this is a huge thing) having some epiphany which makes everything better. She is, at all times, a human child, feeling fully human emotions - and ambivalence, and responding to trauma in the way we all tend to: with a mix of healthy and unhealthy reactions. 

In this sense, I think the cover blurbs and most of the online promotions rather gloss the point of the book. The title refers to a Japanese term for “glittering” or “shiny.” But the doomed Lynn means a deeper idea: the way that water, the stars, and human eyes shimmer and both reveal and conceal depths of meaning. This idea runs through the book, from Katie’s earliest memories to her determination to seek a positive future in the wake of devastation. In the blurbs, the impression is given that Katie takes this inspiration and is enabled to put her broken family back together. That’s not really the way it goes down. Katie and her parents all have to reconstruct their broken lives after the devastation of Lynn’s death. And Katie is as injured as anyone and has no magic that the others lack. Rather, they all have damage and yet a will to carry on. 

There are some particular moments which stood out in this regard. First, while it is obvious that Katie worships Lynn, who is (I believe) 4 or 5 years older, Katie also struggles greatly with living in Lynn’s shadow. Lynn is the “genius,” outstanding in school, beautiful, so very kind to her younger siblings, and the most promising of the kids. Katie is so very ordinary by comparison, and this reality dominates her life. 

The next moment is related: when Lynn becomes a teenager, Katie realizes that Lynn thinks of her as a “little kid,” not the equal friend that Katie believed she was. (And, to be fair, the way that the relationship worked before puberty.) This is where I believe the book is exceptionally realistic. There is no true epiphany or even reconciliation between Lynn and Katie. Their close relationship is never the same - even at the end. Life imposes changes, and our original nuclear family becomes secondary to our later bonds, whether friendship, marriage, or children. This particular transition was not entirely successful in my own family, and a lot of heartache has resulted from expectations that new spouses and children-in-law would become an extension of already dysfunctional family dynamics. 

Also highly realistic is the denial of catharsis when it comes to Lynn’s illness and death. Lynn never becomes the Victorian “dying angel,” a blessing to all around her. Rather, she is angry and difficult - she is a teenager dying in an unfair twist of fate, and she isn’t happy about it. She deals with her pain like most of us do. Sometimes by withdrawal as we lack the emotional strength to do more than survive, sometimes by lashing out at whoever we can. There is a devastating scene near the end where Lynn and Katie - once the inseparable Takeshima sisters - tell each other they hate the other. There is no cute reconciliation. They both are exhausted, as are the parents, and life goes on. They do talk again, but Katie remains haunted by what went down, and has no chance to really fix what she said, because Lynn is gone. Again, thoroughly realistic - painfully so. And, mind you, this is in the context of sisters who genuinely DO love each other and are trying. 

Like the children, the adults are human, flawed, and complex. There is a lot of nuance in this book, and Kadohata, despite telling the story from a particular point of view, shows empathy for the various characters and the way they are buffeted by circumstance. 

There are other hard realities in this book. The Japanese-American kids (in the 1950s) are never really accepted into white Southern society. Lynn’s white friends abandon her as it becomes clear she is dying. (They don’t even bother to come to the funeral.) The older generation never really gets a chance to integrate - even as they resist cross-race friendship and the real risk and vulnerability it would require. Medical bills threaten to bankrupt the working poor. The abusive labor practices continue - although unionization is on the horizon. Workers are indeed expected to wear diapers because toilet breaks are not allowed. Hard work and cruelly long hours lead to subsistence, not security. (Ah, the good old days of capitalism…) 

There are some more optimistic notes, however. Katie’s uncle, Katsuhisa, is a force of chaos and energy, who ends up helping Katie more than her own parents can. The relationship between Katie and Lynn is beautiful, even in its sad and troubling end. Katie does eventually make a real friend - a white girl who comes from poverty and deprivation herself and can love without judgment. 

The writing itself is very good, evocative of the best in psychological perceptiveness, and artistic in its descriptions. Kadohata somehow made aching sadness beautiful in the way only true artists can. 

One final thought: I hinted at this earlier, but I think the bravest part of the book is that Kadohata denies the very idea of “closure.” There is no true closure or catharsis in grief. This is true whether it is the loss of a person to death, the loss of a relationship, or even the loss of a community. (Such as my own losses of relationships and the loss of my faith community.) Life goes on. We carry on. But there is a hole which will never be filled. Katie (and her parents) will never be the same after Lynn’s death. And Kadohata makes that crystal clear. We don’t so much heal from trauma as we learn to compensate for it. Like a tree struck by lightning, we continue to live, but the scars remain, and our shape will never be symmetrical again. That’s life. And that’s being human. You can’t just make margaritas out of lemons. Kadohata gets this, and incorporates it into this book. This is not the voice of despair or depression - it is the voice of an optimistic realism. Even in tragedy, there is beauty. Indeed, beauty itself isn’t the lack of flaws, but, as Keats said, the presence of truth. 

***

As I often do, I want to mention the audiobook. The narrator on our edition was Elaina Erika Davis, a television regular, and frequent audiobook narrator. (Perhaps the most famous was Memoirs of a Geisha.) She seems rather at home both with Japanese words and with Southern dialect - a fascinating combination that was definitely necessary in this book. She had to strike a delicate balance, as the book itself notes that Lynn and Katie end up talking with a Southern accent, but most of the narration isn’t in dialect. Thus, most is read “straight,” with the southern accent used only where dialect is used in the book. 

  

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

Confession: I actually wanted to read one of Murakami’s other books, Norwegian Wood, but our library system’s only copy had gone missing. So I went with my second choice. In any case, this is the first Murakami book I have read. Since I do not read Japanese, I read the Jay Rubin English translation. (More about this later.)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a somewhat peculiar book. It definitely has the classical elements of Magical Realism - Murakami is considered a major figure in the Japanese version of the tradition. The story is in a modern setting, and deals mostly with real life and historical events. However, parallel to the “real” world is a supernatural, or perhaps metaphysical world which the characters inhabit. The fantastical elements run alongside the realistic ones, yet the characters seem to take the bizarre things which happen to them without much of a shock. As in most Magical Realist works, the supernatural element is never really explained. Much mystery remains.

The protagonist is Toru Okada, a rather unambitious youngish man, who is supported by his wife Kumiko. He has just quit his dead-end job, and isn’t sure what he will do next, other than search for their cat, who has disappeared. Soon, however, things start to go both wrong and crazy. Kumiko disappears, and her wealthy, powerful, and creepy older brother, Noburu, says she has had an affair and wants a divorce. But he won’t let Toru see or speak to her directly.

A psychic Kumiko hired to find the cat contacts Toru, and the psychic’s daughter alleges that Kumico’s brother violated her. Toru gets weird phone calls asking for him to have phone sex with the caller. He meets a teenage neighbor, and ends up having disconcerting discussions about death and trauma - and she helps him discover a dry well in an abandoned (and seemingly cursed) house nearby. Toru spends a couple days at the bottom of the well, and has some sort of a supernatural experience which leaves him puzzled, and also with a bizarre new birthmark on his cheek.

The old man who Kumiko’s family introduced him to - a veteran of the portion of World War Two which took place between Japan and Russia - dies and leaves Toru an empty box - delivered by a fellow veteran who tells Koru a series of harrowing stories about his role in the war.

Later, a mysterious woman sees him randomly, and recognizes his birthmark as identical to that of her father. She and her mute son recruit Toru into their psychic healing business.

Somehow, all of these are connected. The war in Manchuria, Noburu’s successful political career, Kumiko’s childhood trauma, Malta and Creta Kano (the psychic and her sister) and their stories, “Nutmeg” Akasaka and her mute son, the cat, and the cursed house. Everything fits together somehow, and Toru, who is one of the most passive heroes in literature, finds himself having to endure all of the fallout from these interconnected threads, and absorb all of the traumatic stories, before he can find his way out of the labyrinth.

Murakami uses a number of ideas, themes, and objects to tie the threads together. The title is one: a mysterious bird which sounds like the winding up of some toy or clock. Nobody ever sees it, but certain people can hear it before a momentous change in their lives - some catastrophe. It is never stated outright, but it is implied that the sound is Fate winding the gears of the universe, and that the characters are about to be carried along by events and destiny out of their control.

While the Wind-Up Bird may not be an actual bird, real birds are prevalent throughout the story, culminating in a family of ducks in the last section.

The book was originally a three volume set - and the divisions have been retained in the English version, although it is in one volume. These are, in order “The Thieving Magpie,” “The Book of the Prophesying Bird,” and “The Book of the Bird-Catcher Man.” Classical Music fans will recognize at least two of the references. The first is obviously Rossini’s opera, the overture of which figures prominently in the narrative. (Toru is a fan of classical, as is the mute man, and music runs throughout the book.) The last is a reference to Mozart’s opera, Die Zauberflöt, specifically to Papageno, the bird-catcher. The middle one is much more obscure, and I had to look it up. It references a set of piano pieces by Schumann, Waldszenen, “Forest Scenes,” which has a movement entitled “Bird as Prophet.” There are many more references that tie in with the mood or theme or character at a particular time. Apparently Murakami does this in his other books as well. For a Classical buff, the book is a bit of an easter egg hunt.

There are themes that run through the book too. Alienation is definitely the core idea. Toru becomes increasingly isolated as time passes. After his marriage, his life revolves around her. With the loss of his job and her departure, he sees very few people - and nobody really “normal,” in the usual sense. In the central turning points in the story, he intentionally isolates himself in the dry well, depriving himself of sensory stimulation in an attempt to access the metaphysical realm and push through the labyrinth that holds him.

Desire and power are also central to the book. Neither is viewed as particularly good, as both result in sickening results. Ultimately, however, Toru has to go beyond his default passivity and find the power in himself to seek his desire: to have Kumiko back.

Even objects end up connecting the threads. The cat is to a degree a metaphor for the life which Toru and Kumiko have built together, but it also connects the characters, and finds a parallel in the big cats at the zoo who are killed by the soldiers on the eve of invasion. A baseball bat connects a rebellion by Chinese troops, a murder in a Soviet gulag, an fight between Toru and a mysterious musician and magician, and a metaphysical confrontation between Toru and Noburu. Clothes take on significance. Baseball uniforms, military uniforms, a garish red hat, anachronistic fashions, Toru’s slovenly outfits, Nutmeg’s impeccable outfits, a dress at the dry cleaners, Kumiko’s abandoned clothes - all of these take on a significance in the plot.

The well too becomes a theme. The old man mentions a well to Toru, Lt. Mamiya nearly dies in one in Mongolia, and Toru must find his epiphanies there as well. The past and the present become less distinct as the book goes on.

It is difficult in any translated work to know exactly how much of the writing is that of the author, and how much the translator. Certainly, translation is an art of itself - and translation is by definition interpretation. Disentangling the work from its translation is perhaps an impossible task for those of us who are unable to read the work in the original. However, I think it is fair to say that the writing is excellent, which probably means that both Murakami and Rubin write well. I found the language enjoyable, the metaphors surprising yet fitting, and the mystery baffling. Despite its 600 page length, it seemed to go quickly.

I do have one quibble with the translation, however. Apparently, under orders from the publisher, Rubin cut about 60 pages from the book. You can find a summary of the missing material on Wikipedia - and you should definitely read that after you read the book. I really wish that the cuts had not been made. While you can guess at what is missing, it would have been nice to have had some of those gaps filled in. Just as one example, the story mentions that the cursed house was torn down - but the scene in which May and Toru watch it come down is omitted. In any event, I am irritated that financial constraints led to an unfortunate alteration of the author’s intended art.

Despite this, the book was enjoyable. Let me quote the opening, which is excellent.

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

There were a couple of other lines that I can’t resist quoting. One was from Lt. Mayima’s narrative of the war, specifically the run-up to hostilities.

Taking Outer Mongolia would amount to sticking a knife in the guts of the Soviets’ development of Siberia. Imperial Headquarters back in Tokyo might be trying to put the brakes on, but this was not an opportunity that the ambitious Kwantung Army General Staff was about to let slip from their fingers. The result would be no mere border dispute but a full-scale war between the Soviet Union and Japan. If such a war broke out on the Manchurian-Soviet border, Hitler might respond by invading Poland or Czechoslovakia.

Wait, what?! It is always fascinating to see a completely different perspective on an event that you think you understand. I mean, Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland and that started the war, right? Well, not from the Japanese perspective. With the American-centric, or perhaps Euro-centric point of view we learn our history from, the entry of Japan into World War Two is often an afterthought at best. But the world was indeed a powder keg in the aftermath of the first world war, between the humiliation of Germany and the crumbling remains of the Colonialist European empires, Japan saw a chance to become a world power - and go after longstanding enemies in China and Russia.

A note here may be appropriate: while this book isn’t non-stop horror (like, say The Garlic Ballads), there are some gruesome scenes of violence in this book, mostly centering on the war. Nobody is innocent either. The Japanese, Mongolians, Chinese, and Soviets are all brutal and horrifically cruel, given the upper hand. Fortunately, these scenes are brief. Still, they may stick with you more than you wish. Murakami makes a pretty solid argument for the stupidity of war. One might even say that residual collective guilt and trauma from the war reach into the present in this story in so many ways, the book might be said to be about that as much as the other themes.

Another fascinating line came in a series of letters which May (the teenager) writes to Toru, who never receives them. In one, she muses on the question of causality - she is basically David Hume, seeing no reason why the world should be logical or make sense. This is in contrast to her parents.

Those people believe that the world is as consistent and explainable as the floor plan of a new house in a high-prosed development, so if you do everything in a logical, consistent way, everything will turn out right in the end. That’s why they get upset and sad and angry when I’m not like that.

This one hits a bit close to home - I mean, the whole point of cults like the one my parents joined is go guarantee results. Follow the formula, and you are guaranteed things will turn out like promised. But the world isn’t like that - reality isn’t like that. And, despite being a definite Order Muppet (if you don’t get the reference, here is Dahlia Lithwick’s classic work on the topic), the order of MY life - and of my family - doesn’t fit. And that has, alas, caused a certain amount of upset and sad and angry.

The final line I want to mention is another one from Lt. Mayima’s story (which is told in pieces throughout the book.) He ends up involved with a ruthless Soviet prisoner with ties to the Secret Police, who advises him that if he wants to get out of the Gulag alive, he should avoid imagination. However, evil and cruel and loathsome this man is, he has a pretty good grasp on the realities of Stalinism. Marx had ideas, Lenin took a few of them and used them for power, while Stalin, who had little understanding of either, used what he grasped to multiply his own power. But here is the killer line:

The narrower a man’s intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in this country.

Damn. How true is that in our own country (and throughout much of the West) these days? That someone as ignorant and intellectually challenged as Trump could leverage a combination of general stupidity and incompetence with brilliant demagoguery into power is sad, but perhaps shouldn’t be surprising.

This line comes very near the end of the book, and it serves, to a degree, as inspiration to Toru. For much of the book, he has been puzzled by the psychic’s description of him and Noboru as polar opposites, as inhabiting different metaphysical worlds. It is Noboru’s obsession with power and glory which makes him an empty vessel, not really human, but reflecting what the demos wants to see. Although this book was written in the mid 1990s, Noboru seems to be a familiar popularist/nationalist sort. In contrast, Toru’s passivity and lack of ambition is his strength. He in his own way has to become an empty vessel himself to allow his true self to repossess himself, if that makes any sense.

One final thing I thought I might mention regards the criticism of Murakami from within the Japanese literary world. He has been accused of being “too Western” - or “not Japanese enough,” whatever that means. I am hardly equipped to resolve that question - although Murakami sure has sold a lot of books in Japan, not just abroad. What I can say is that to me at least, his writing has more in common with other Japanese or Japanese-born authors I have read than with, say, British or American authors. Sure, there is a difference between his writing and that of Junichiro Tanizaki (who Murakami cites as an influence) - but no more so than between a contemporary Brit and, say, E. M. Forster. I saw striking similarities in themes and styles between Murakami and Ishiguro as well. Whatever the case, I find such distinctions as silly as the dispute between the fans of Borodin and Tchaikovsky over who was more authentically “Russian.” Good music is good music, and good writing is good writing. Murakami writes well, and this book was good. I definitely want to read more.

***

Music, because of course.

 Rossini is fun to play - this one is a staple of youth orchestras for that reason.

Schumann is underrated in my opinion. Even if the Scherzo in his 2nd Symphony is proof he hated the 1st violins.




And, of course, Papageno's aria:



True story here: for years, the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra did an annual opera concert, where we had soloists associated with USC come up and do a concert version. (Recitatives replaced by narration, no sets, but usually costumes.) We haven't done this in a few years - I wish we could do them again, because they were a ton of fun, and my kids liked them. (Particularly Don Giovanni - go figure...)

Anyway, something like 15 years ago, we did The Magic Flute. The part of Tamino was sung by Kevin Courtemanche (he was a regular in our productions for a number of years.) He is a fine singer - I particularly remember "La Donna e Mobile" as a fine performance of his. But, I confess that as Tamino, during the scene when the maidens find him sleeping and extol his extreme beauty and manliness, it was really hard to keep from laughing. It wasn't his fault, of course - it is the injustice of the universe that short guys with bald heads get no romantic respect. (And, let's be honest, The Magic Flute is almost as silly as Cosi Fan Tutte...except it is trying so hard to be serious. Unintentional comedy factor: very high.) Anyway, this brought back memories of those good times. Kevin Courtemanche, if you somehow run across this post, here's a hello from Bakersfield, California. It was a pleasure making music with you back in the day. All the best.

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

This book is part of our not-particularly-systematic exploration of the Newbery Award and Honor books. It was an honor book in 2016. 

Sometimes, you are surprised by a book in a way you didn’t anticipate, and this was one of them. I believe this book is targeted more toward middle school kids rather than elementary, which makes sense, because it deals with some pretty heavy themes, and has a lot of darkness along with the light. My kids are pretty used to this sort of stuff, but your mileage may very. Sensitive younger kids might not deal well with the (all too realistic) physical and emotional abuse by a parent.

Here is the basic setup: Ada is a 10 year old girl who was born with a club foot. Because of her mother’s poverty, it was never treated. Instead, her mother, who never wanted children, and was furious at the fates when she was left widowed with two of them, viciously hates Ada, and imprisons her in their flat, not allowing her to speak to other people or go to school. Ada’s younger brother Jamie is “normal,” and is allowed to go to school. He is generally treated better than Ada - in fact, every fault in Jamie is punished against Ada - if he messes up, she spends the night under the sink. I’ll be blunt here: this is some pretty rough abuse in this book. I would say it was gratuitous, except that I have too much professional experience with abusive parents. I have seen worse. Definitely worse. And, as in real life, the physical abuse is less damaging than the psychological abuse.

So, World War Two breaks out, and London parents are encouraged to send their children to the countryside, so that they won’t get bombed by the Germans in the Battle of Britain. Mam is willing to let Jaime go, but insists that Ada stay. She has other ideas, however, and sneaks out with Jaime. The two of them are taken by train to a village in Cornwall, where nobody wants them - they are too dirty and ratty and unpromising.

The local head of the Women’s Volunteer Service decides to essentially force the two of them on Susan Smith, a local woman who has a...questionable reputation. To our modern minds, it isn’t too hard to figure out Susan’s issues, but back then, she described herself as “not a nice person,” and “not equipped to care for children.” As the story progresses, we learn her history, and why she is how she is. And (not much of a spoiler), she actually is a nice person - she’s more of a non-conventional person with some serious demons of her own to address.

As you might imagine, this situation is a disappointment to Jamie - the favorite child - and heaven on earth to Ada, who has never experienced tolerance, let alone love, before in her life. For her, the war is literally a lifesaver, allowing her to escape abuse and find a place for herself in the world - and indeed experience hope for the first time.

There is more, of course, and I risk spoilers if I were to get into the details too far. But I do want to address the subtext a bit, because I think it is fascinating.

Susan Smith, in addition to sharing a coincidental last name with Ada and Jamie, has a past. And not just any old past.

She is a lesbian, even though the book doesn’t explicitly spell that out. Anyone with a bit of perception can figure it out. (And that is exactly why a good number of Fundie Mommy Bloggers have their panties in an absolute knot about this book. Seriously, I Googled it, and a whole bunch came up before the more reasonable reviews of the book.)

The book brings this out gradually, and never explicitly. Susan mentions that she hasn’t been the same since her best friend (and housemate) Becky died three years ago. They essentially had (it is strongly implied) a “Boston Marriage.” Gradually, we learn that Susan was the daughter of a clergyman, who disowned her after she went to college and “changed,” and met Becky. Susan also mentions that she doesn’t actually dislike children, but since she wasn’t interested in marrying a man...she assumed she wouldn’t have them. It’s easy to read between the lines.

As it turns out, Susan is an excellent foil for Mam. If you think about it, Mam was quite interested in marrying a man, but didn’t want children. Her husband (as it turns out) called her “unnatural” and somehow either convinced or raped her into having kids. (We never find out for sure.) When he was killed in an accident, she was left with children she never wanted, crushing poverty, and no perceived future. That she took her rage at the universe out on Ada is sad and horrifying, but not that surprising. So there you have an interesting contrast: Susan wants kids but not a man, Mam wants a man but not kids. Again, this is pretty dang realistic - something the Fundies of my background aren’t really interested in acknowledging or understanding.

In fact, the Fundie Mommy Bloggers with their panties in a wad were almost equally horrified at both of these problems. A lesbian was a good parent? Horrors! A heterosexual woman didn’t fit the stereotype of wanting to be a mother more than anything in the world? That can’t possibly be true! Real women are perfectly willing - nay, eager! - to make babies the centerpiece of their lives and eschew a career and a life and a personality to do so. That’s God’s Perfect Plan for People With Vaginas™! So yes, totally subversive - and also totally realistic in my experience. People don’t fit into the neat little boxes at all.

It gets even worse! The author weaves a theme through the book which points toward tolerance - nay embrace - of innate differences and diversity which definitely subverts the Fundie insistence on conformity and rigid societal and gender roles.

Ada has her clubfoot - which is a congenital defect, correctable by proper treatment. But her mother blames Ada - it is the result of her moral failings somehow. (I can’t help but think of the Gospel of John, chapter 9...the religious establishment is SO determined to find a cause for non-conformity in the sinfulness of the person or parents…) But of course, we know (thanks to modern understandings of medicine and genetics) that neither Ada nor her parents are to blame for this - it is how she was born, and, while she is too old to ever be “fixed” completely, she can improve. But more than that: she is entitled to her own freedom, her own self determination, and her chance to be the best she can be. Thus, when her mother takes away her crutches, and attempts to reduce her to imprisonment in a room again, we know this is wrong, whatever the old superstitions may tell us. We instinctively know that Ada is entitled to live her own best life - even if her foot is never perfect. We cheer for her as she learns to compensate for her deficits and learns to ride a horse. We applaud as she finds her mobility and her independence. We cheer as she learns to read despite the way her mother has told everyone (including her) that she is mentally deficient.

There is more, though. Jamie may be the “favorite” child - although it turns out Mam doesn’t really love him either - she just uses him as a way to express her hatred for Ada - but he has his own dark secret. He is left handed. This causes his teacher to literally tie his left hand to the desk until it rubs raw. Susan flips out, and makes sure that doesn’t happen again. The teacher repeats the “traditional” line: left handedness was considered a sign of the Devil. Literally. Actually, let’s explore that one. Have you ever heard the term “sinister”? What does that term mean, and where did it come from? Believe it or not, “sinister” literally comes from the idea of left handedness. It is the opposite of “dexter” - the root of dexterity and dextrous. To be left handed was to be evil - because difference from the majority is evil, right? Right?

My mother is left handed, and she too grew up in a time when they used abusive methods to try to force left handed children into being right handed - or at least functioning as right handed persons in public. I heard the stories from her as a kid. On the plus side, she can kind of write slowly with her right hand. But she realized that she was left handed, and uses that hand exclusively for writing now. There was nothing evil about how she was born - and indeed created by God - she was just different.

This is ultimately the problem that Fundies and Evangelicals (my former religious tribe) keep running up against in the whole discussion of sexuality.

Reality doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your dogma. Particularly if it is the result of millennia of belief in the idea of female inferiority to males (perhaps a future post…) Ultimately, one has to either make adjustments to reflect new knowledge and new understandings - or one must (as one can see with the Taliban or the Saudi government) engage in increasing brutality to exterminate anyone who fails or refuses to conform to dogma.

A belief that left handed people had the sign of the Devil - and the endless attempts to force them into righthandedness - didn’t eliminate left handed people. It just caused them thoroughly unnecessary pain and trauma. And allowed the majority to experience the masturbatory pleasure of self-righteousness about how they were born “normal.”

If you want to understand how Fundies/Evangelicals are catastrophically losing the battle for hearts and minds over sexuality in general, this is a good place to start. They are bloodying themselves against reality, over and over again. I guess they can’t feel the pain because they are so intent on the pleasure their self-righteous spiritual masturbation gives them. (Although I suspect some of them are trying to drown out their own sexuality…) It isn’t hard to see the dogmatic teacher, willing to torture a child to make him conform to righthandedness in those who casually and flippantly decide to decree celibacy for all who are outside the majority. There is no limit to the pain and torture they will inflict on others, as they are smug in their “normalcy.”

There are other interesting facets to this book: the horrors and terror of war. The obvious connection of the Nazis - who tried to exterminate LGBTQ people along with ethnic and racial minorities as they devastated anyone who stood in their way - including British civilians. The exploration of grief, depression, and PTSD. Susan’s grief and recurring clinical depression (although that term isn’t used) corresponds well to Ada’s PTSD resulting from her abuse. Bradley handles these issues with an age-appropriate touch - while never actually naming them. After all, a person in 1939 wouldn’t have our own knowledge and terminology, but would certainly have experienced these universally human responses to trauma and abuse.

This book was a bit darker and heavier than I expected, but I think it was a good one for my kids. (And they can definitely handle this stuff - we have listened to and discussed plenty of darker and heavier books.) I can see why this book panicked Fundies: it directly challenges the idea that religious dogma justifies hatred and persecution of non-conforming human beings. For the exact same reason, I believe it was a good one for my children to experience - and I recommend it for other parents who want to explain these issues to their children. It is an empathetic and well written introduction to the concepts of non-conformity, superstition, and human thriving. It also is optimistic about the possibility of positive change, even as it acknowledges that some people - like Mam - are unable or unwilling to show basic human decency. And the best way to deal with those people is to stop them from harming others, and let them destroy themselves with their own hatred if they insist on doing so. And, of course, to rescue the victims of abusers (and abusive religions) and help them to thrive.

I can’t help but suspect that at least some of these self-righteous Fundie Mommy Bloggers who have their panties in a wad over this book will turn out to have LGBTQ children of their own. It will be (darkly) interesting to see how they respond. When it is your kid, shit gets real, and you can’t just enjoy your maturbatory fantasy that somehow you did everything “right” and your kids turned out cis-het, thus giving proof of your righteousness. No longer can they really ask “did my kid sin or did I sin?” without any personal consequence. At some point, they are going to have to choose their future. Will they re-evaluate their dogma? Or will they choose, like Mam, to alienate their own flesh and blood, and live estranged and without the love they could have embraced. I have seen it go both ways, personally and professionally.

Read this book. Discuss it with your kids. Choose love and not abuse. And embrace the spectrum of humanity that God (or Nature if you prefer) has created - seek to help others thrive rather than force them into your dogmatic view of conformity.

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

Kate DiCamillo does not appear to ever write the same book twice. And by that, I mean, the same sort of book. We first listened to one of her books five years ago, when we were at the beginning of our “see the National Parks” project. My second daughter, who was seriously into mice and rats at the time (and kind of still is even as a teen), introduced us to The Tale of Despereaux, which we loved. Later, we all (my wife included) listened to Flora and Ulysses, which has the distinction of featuring both a magical flying squirrel AND a Rilke poem. 

Raymie Nightingale is nothing like either of these books. Or like The Magician’s Elephant. In fact, it contains nothing that could truly be considered magical. Well, unless you count a re-appearing cat. But there was a whole song about that since 1893, so it hardly seems magical. (I like the kid friendly “Stray Cats” style version…) Instead, the book is about loss, trauma, and, above all, friendship.

It is not surprising that loss and trauma are themes. Really, DiCamillo’s books all seem to involve them. Bad things happen. Children get hurt. Life sucks. Except there is always a way to muddle on through. There are good people (and even rats!) There is hope, and friendship, and love. The trauma doesn’t go away, but resilience wins in the end.

The three tween girls in Raymie Nightingale are the title character (except her name is actually Raymie Clarke - the “Nightingale” comes from a book about Florence Nightingale which figures in the plot), whose father has run off with another woman and abandoned her and her mother; Louisiana Elefante, whose parents are dead so she lives with her impoverished and slightly wacky grandmother; and Beverly Tapinski, who never knew her father - he apparently had a fling with Beverly’s mother, who seems like a grown up Honey Boo Boo.

The three girls meet at a class for baton spinners. Raymie and Louisiana are there to learn - they want to win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition. Beverly knows how to twirl - it’s her mother’s claim to fame - but would rather sabotage the contest - and practice her lock picking skills. Beverly hides her insecurities behind a fearless bravado - and an outright rejection of her mother’s values. Louisiana is a real misfit - between the poverty and her ill health. Raymie’s trauma is the most recent, so she is really struggling with that for most of the book, which is told from her perspective.

The girls start out navigating the lessons (which are pretty nearly non-existent) and the teacher (who is halfway between a fraud and a lush), but end up becoming friends and co-conspirators. Raymie attempts to do a “good deed” within the definition of the contest by trying to read a book to a nursing home resident. This does not go as expected, with the woman deciding she would rather have Raymie write a letter complaining about the janitor playing too much Chopin. (No such thing! Heresy! Away from me, Satan!) And leaving her book there. After which shenanigans ensue. Likewise when Louisiana tries to rescue her cat from the clutches of the local shelter. I won’t give any more away.

As usual, DiCamillo’s writing is full of delightful turns of phrase, and some social satire that the kids probably won’t get. (Although my teens certainly did.) I would never call her books “sweet,” and certainly not “moralizing.” DiCamillo doesn’t have kids, but she seems to remember being one just fine, and is pretty non-judgmental about typical kid silliness and troublemaking. But she is also quite empathetic in her portrayals of older people. In this book, there is the older man who teaches Raymie how to rescue a drowning victim, an elderly neighbor who discusses the meaning of life (and whose death devastates Raymie), Louisiana’s grandmother, and two residents at the nursing home. I love that DiCamillo doesn’t turn away, but is honest about both dementia and the need for love. The three main characters are each unique, but memorable and believable.

One of the fascinating things about DiCamillo’s writing is how she manages to use fairly small words, aimed at younger readers, and yet create a depth of description of places, events, and especially emotions. Many addicts of purple prose could stand to learn from her technique.

As usual, this was an enjoyable book for both kids and adults. DiCamillo remains one of the most reliably good children’s authors in our audiobook rotation.

***

True story: my mom let me fall asleep with my walkman and classical music. I remember The Firebird was a bit much for sleeping, but Chopin...oh yes. It is impossible to pick just one favorite. But the Eb Nocturne #2 makes me feel like that little kid tucked in bed with his headphones.

Refuge by Dina Nayeri

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I put this book on my list after hearing the author interviewed on NPR last year. With the exception of the ending, I enjoyed it. I’ll talk about the ending at the end of the review, with an appropriate spoiler alert, in case you want to read it first. 

Refuge is a story of two generations of Iranian refugees and their experience in the Western world. It is also a story of a girl (and later woman) and her relationship to her flawed yet beloved father.

The protagonist, Niloo, is the main focus of the book, and much of the story is told from her perspective. The rest is told from her father’s viewpoint, as his experiences are separate from hers for much of the book. The book also switches back and forth from the present to flashbacks of the several meetings between Niloo and her father after they are separated.

Niloo’s father, Bahman, is an Iranian dentist - a successful, reasonably wealthy man. He is not religious, but loves poetry. He also is a (mostly functional) opium addict. Niloo’s mother is a Christian, and as such, comes into great danger as Iran’s politics become increasingly fundamentalist. She decides to flee Iran, and takes Niloo and her younger brother, Kian with her, leaving Bahman behind. He is unwilling to leave his good life (and his opium) for the likely poverty he would experience as a refugee.

Niloo and her mother and brother settle in Oklahoma (of all places), and they do okay. At least after a highly traumatic stint in a homeless shelter which leaves Niloo scarred. Niloo gets into Yale, meets and marries a Frenchman, Guillaume (Gui), and moves to the Netherlands where he practices law and she teaches and researches Anthropology. Kian pursues the study of food, and becomes a chef. Their mother muddles on, and does essentially fine for a first generation immigrant.

Bahman, meanwhile, remarries twice. In his attempt to divorce his third wife after she has a mental breakdown, he is falsely accused of treason, placed under house arrest, and basically held hostage by his third wife’s relatives who want his wealth. He finally decides he needs to flee Iran and become a refugee himself.

That’s the basic setup for the story.

In addition to the plot itself, the book examines Niloo’s interior life - and her troubled marriage. Gui jokes that she has her “perimeter,” a space to herself everywhere she goes, which she allows no one and nothing to penetrate. This is kind of her “safe space” so to speak, where she projects her fears and her rigid need for order and control. And she will not let Gui (or anyone else) in to that mental and physical space.

While living in Amsterdam, she discovers a meeting group of refugees, which becomes her focus during her spare time. It is this subplot that leads to a real life event which is fictionalized for the book.   

There are some uncomfortable questions raised by this book, and I think they are important. Nayeri essentially rejects the narrative that many of us Westerners, even those welcoming to refugees, prefer to believe. We expect that those who come here seeking refuge change themselves to suit us, and express gratitude. Nayeri counters with the assertion that seeing refugees (and immigrants generally) as fully human means according them the right to be who they are, without demanding that they become like us, or that they reject their own selves and culture to prevent us discomfort. Likewise, refugees did not ask to have to flee their homelands. In an ideal world, they would be able to live their lives in peace and safety in the lands of their birth (or choice). The evil that is in the world prevents that, and the trauma they already experience in being ripped from their lives is enough without us compounding it.

Nayeri also gives a human face to another uncomfortable reality of immigration: the loss of status that comes with changing cultures. I should mention Willa Cather’s excellent book, My Antonia, for raising the same issue. (Antonia’s father, a skilled musician, is dragged to America by his wife, and never adapts to going from respected artist to desperately poor farmer.) Refuge notes the issue in several characters. One goes from a highly educated college professor to near homelessness - nobody will hire a 60ish man to do manual labor, and all his education is worthless with marginal skills in languages other than his own. Likewise, Bahman cannot work as a dentist outside of Iran - his license is worthless, and he has no way of going through dental school all over again at his age. So what is there for him? Even on a smaller scale, I personally know a man who married a friend. His European license in a medical field won’t transfer, so he cannot work at the level he did over there without re-doing his education. It is a tough problem to solve, alas, and one that isn’t given enough credit. Instead, we kind of tacitly assume that refugees are the desperately impoverished sort, who should be grateful for anything at all.

I also want to mention the liberal use of actual quotes from Geert Wilders, the neo-Nazi far right Dutch politician. Nayeri didn’t need to make up these poisonous quotes - they are all too real. (And all to similar to the bilge vomited out by The Toupee Who Shall Not Be Named, Roy Moore, and Steve Bannon and his ilk.)

“You will not make the Netherlands your home,” Wilders says to refugees and immigrants. And the nativists in our own land (and apparently an awful lot of white Evangelicals too) say the same thing. “Go home, dirty brown people.”

This is pretty heavy stuff, and the book has a serious tone overall. But it isn’t primarily darkness either. There are many humorous moments, and the relationship between Niloo and her father is compelling.

When Niloo leaves, she is a little girl in love with her father. Bahman is indeed a good father. He loves Niloo to pieces, and they do all kinds of fun things together. He instills in her a love of poetry and adventure, and a sense of justice.

The problem is, Niloo only remembers this side of her father, being unaware of his addiction, and his sexism, and his other human failings. Thus, when she visits with her father (in Oklahoma, where he nearly overdoses on unexpectedly pure heroin, in Spain, where he lands in the hospital after combining heroin and adderall, and in Istanbul, where Niloo is irritated that her father gets along so famously with Gui), she suffers from the dissonance of seeing her idol as he ages and she becomes all too aware of his flaws.

Nayeri has said that Refuge isn’t strictly autobiographical in its plot, but that the complex relationship between Niloo and her father does have autobiographical elements. There is no doubt that Nayeri makes this relationship come alive. I couldn’t help but love Bahman, just as Gui does. He is frustrating, infuriating at times, but he is so alive and real and absolutely like some force of nature we all have in our lives somewhere. (Nope, not disclosing who…)

It is Bahman who is the source of most of the humor, from his imperfect - and hilarious - translations of Farsi idioms into English (About a good meal: “"This is good. Is wedding in my ass.") to his all too accurate assessment of kale (“What this is? Is like lettuce fell in love with a piece of fabric.”) to his astute observations about life (“Clerics and politicians, as everyone knows, have no appreciation for the individual and no ear for stories; they are blind to everything that happens in the quiet hours when nothing is happening. That is what makes them dangerous.” I wouldn’t want to suffer Bahman when he is high or in withdrawal, but the rest of the time, he would be a gas.

In contrast, Niloo is a difficult protagonist to like. I sympathize with how tightly wound she is - I can be like that too - but she is so self absorbed that she seems incapable of seeing the good of others around her. In this sense, Nayeri is an outstanding writer. The character that is most a stand-in for herself is written with no illusions as to who she is - as unflattering as that is.

***

{***SPOILER WARNING***}

It is this that makes the ending so frustrating to me. Let me say that I do not like it, but not because it is a bad ending, or bad writing. On the contrary, it is good writing, it is entirely consistent with the rest of the book, and it fits the characters well.

My problem with it is that it means that Niloo never becomes likeable, and I felt that instead of growing or changing for the better, all she does is take a step backward towards infancy, damages innocent people, and sets herself up for problems later.

In the end (here’s the spoiler), she leaves Gui (who is also a loveable guy, trying his hardest, and succeeding better than most of us ever will at listening, learning, and doing the right thing.) Niloo’s own demons prevent her from ever embracing him. Instead she uses, then discards him, without truly feeling any remorse. I mean, she knows she hurt him, but she never becomes aware really of how she has wasted a decade of Gui’s life, while he endlessly gives of himself to try to make it work.

Hey, I deal with failed marriages all the time. For the most part, there is fault everywhere. But there are a few where one party truly has been wronged. And it isn’t typically the one with an affair or abuse, oddly. In most of those, both parties have serious issues. Not that that excuses abuse, ever. It doesn’t. But it explains why a person might choose to be with a horrible person. It is the ones where one party (and often it is a woman) appears to have picked someone they never truly loved, and then proceeded to mentally abuse the spouse for not being the person they could love. I feel this is Niloo in this book. Gui was convenient. He represented her fantasy of success in the Western world. He gave her everything she asked for, or at least tried to within the limits of human ability. And she never gives back. Not really. She just uses him.

To use Nayeri's own words, Gui isn't allowed by Niloo to just be an ordinary, mediocre husband. To have his own needs and traumas. 

And then, at the end, Niloo has essentially retreated into the womb. She is with her parents again, living with them, and trying to recreate her childhood in some way. This is not healthy, in my view, and will ultimately lead to problems. Her parents are oldish, and they will eventually be gone. And Niloo doesn’t really have any other close relationships. When her parents are gone, she will be alone in a world without roots. I can’t see that ending well, and I wonder exactly what Nayeri intends by leaving the story with that ending.

I will grant that Nayeri does make excellent points about the refugee experience, and I don’t wish to seem to lecture refugees and immigrants in that regard at all. I am not pushing for assimilation - that actually happens pretty universally by the third generation anyway.  Hey, I lived in a largely minority neighborhood growing up, and I knew plenty of immigrants. My ancestors followed the same basic pattern too, for that matter.

The issue here to me isn’t the overall experience of immigration. It is the more personal. Niloo has her trauma, but she also has plenty of opportunities to make connections, both within the refugee community, and outside, and she seems intent on burning all the bridges and just retreating into the womb.

***

Okay, that said, I’ll return a bit more to the book itself. Notwithstanding the fact that I want to argue with the protagonist, I really do think this is a good book. It addresses some crucial questions, introduces characters you really care about, and sucks you into the story. 

I also want to mention here the excellent article Nayeri wrote about the same issues in The Guardian. Take time to read it. I believe the point that accepting refugees isn’t some heroic act. It is basic, elementary human decency. And if you can’t muster that up, sorry, you are a horrible person. Rather, if you want to go beyond the kindergarten level minimum ethical behavior, you have to grant the same options to those who seek refuge. The option to just be mediocre, to be normal, to be themselves. To have problems. To not remember to always be grateful.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Source of book: I own this.

Some friends of ours invited my wife and me to join their book club, appropriately entitled the Literary Lush Book Club. Because food and adult beverages are also important to the experience. I previously read (but was unable to attend for) The Master and Margarita, and finally participated in the meeting for The Island of Dr. Moreau. While my music and camping schedule interfere with perfect attendance, I do hope to at least read most of the books this year. In general, they tend to pick books that I would not necessarily have read on my own. The Goldfinch is a good example of that.

The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2014. Honestly, I have always thought of the Pulitzer as something for journalism and non-fiction, and, while those categories are important, there are also prizes for fiction, poetry, drama, and music.

The basic setup of the book is this: 13 year old Theo is visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when a terrorist bomb explodes, killing his mother among others. A dying old man hands him a ring, and points to a small painting, The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, which Theo puts in his backpack before finding his way out of the building through the rubble. From there, Theo lives briefly with a friend’s family, before his deadbeat dad and new girlfriend whisk him away to Vegas, where is is basically left to his own devices - and those of his new friend Boris, a Ukrainian immigrant who has traveled the world. The two boys get high and into trouble, unsurprisingly. Later, Theo’s dad gets drunk and dies in a car accident, and Theo finds his way back to New York, where he is raised by the business partner of the old man who gave him the ring. I’ll stop there, because there are plenty of crazy plot twists and developments that I would hate to give away.

 The Goldfinch by Frabritius. A pupil of Rembrandt, Fabritius was killed in the Explosion of Delft, when a gunpowder magazine blew, destroying most of the city - and most of Fabritius' paintings as well. A sad loss of artist and art.

In some ways, the book is a coming-of-age story with Theo as the protagonist. But in others, it is a tale of the painting itself. When the book ends, there are a number of questions involving Theo which are left unresolved, while the painting experiences a full resolution.

I would also describe the book as a bit of a modern day Dickens story, in the vein of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. In fact, the first half of the book is chock full of “easter eggs” that Dickens fans such as myself can discover. My wife pointed out the parallels between Pippa and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, although Pippa might also be compared to Emily in David Copperfield. There are also a number of references to Harry Potter, leading my wife to note that it looks like there is a generational divide there: from Gen Y onward, Potter will be similar to Shakespeare or Greek Mythology in that it will be a constant source of literary references that the reader will be expected to know. Which means I really need to read the Harry Potter books, apparently.

(I was 20 when the first Harry Potter book came out, so I was too old to read them at the intended age. By the time my kids were old enough, my wife read the books to them, so I just never ended up reading them. That is in addition to the fact that they were considered evil by the Fundie subculture my family was in, so I might have missed them back then. Even now, I think my kids’ love for the books freaks my mom out. Sigh.)

I do have to mention one more allusion which I thought was a nice touch. In order to return the ring, Theo has to find a certain address, and ring a green doorbell. I cannot but conclude that Tartt has given a nod to O Henry, and his delightful tale of adventure and coincidence, “The Green Door,” where a random advertisement leads to unexpected happenings. (That story is one of my favorites by O Henry - and I have read them all.)

Donna Tartt does write well, with many singularly beautiful and evocative descriptions. The book is quite long (962 pages in the paperback edition), but not long in the same way as, say, Tolstoy or Trollope. It does get a bit bogged down occasionally, particularly in the last 100 pages where it waxes philosophical. However, much of it flies by quickly, and few if any details are wasted. In fact, when I reached the end, I was surprised how many early details turned out to be important for either the plot or the character development. Tartt took her time with this book, and as a result, the book feels tightly written.

One of the choices that was interesting was the way that Tartt kept circling back to certain ideas and topics, which I believe to be tied to Theo’s PTSD and resulting obsession with his trauma. He keeps returning to the same thoughts, even as he wishes to move on, and thus Tartt brings us along with him in his spiraling inner life.

I think Tartt was really perceptive in her description of the various professionals tasked with making sure Theo is okay after the bombing. The vast majority of the adults seem rather clueless, and unfortunately, this is all too realistic. (One area I work in is in the Juvenile court system, on cases where children are removed from the custody of their parents due to abuse or neglect. There are lots of well meaning people, but all too often, the things done resemble, as Theo puts it, reading from the “checklist of Things to Say to Troubled Kids.”) What Theo needs more than anything (and that he gets from Hobie) is someone to talk normally with him, and just be a friend. I understand the need (and benefit) of professional help, and so on, but I think this is often an overlooked and underprovided need.

Looking back on my notes, I also jotted down an exchange between Boris (the Artful Dodger of the book) and Theo regarding Boris’ dad.

“He feels bad for leaving me so much alone. He knows is a holiday coming up, and he asked if I could stay at your house.”

“Well, you do all the time anyway.”

“He knows that. That’s why he thanked you. But - I hope you don’t mind - I gave him your wrong address.”

“Why?”

Because - I think maybe you don’t want him rolling up drunk at your house in the middle of the night.” 

Boris’ dad is just one of the picaresque underworldish characters that come into this book. There is a funny line about Horst, the stolen artwork dealer, who keeps chickens in his posh house in Miami - to shoot at. As Boris queries, “What kind of crazy thing is this for these people to keep chickens in Miami?” We might all ask that question.

Another line that made me smile was the term that Theo uses for his fiance Kitsey’s godmother, who swoops in to take over their wedding plans. “Wedding Obergruppenführer.” Yep, that was an official Nazi rank in the SS. And yes, it applies to certain sorts I am rather familiar with from my days playing weddings in a string quartet. (I still do occasionally, but less since having kids.)

There is also a fun scene in Amsterdam - although it could have taken place anywhere, honestly. Those of us who live in California certainly are aware of the little hole-in-the-wall hipster health food restaurant. One is spoofed here - although they really tend to self-parody.

“Food is so awful,” said Boris. “Sprouts and some hard old wheat toast. You would think hot girls go there, but is just old grey-haired women and fat.”

One final line caught my eye. Theo and Boris are having a bit of a philosophical discussion near the end, about the role of fate and/or providence in our lives, and the way seemingly bad things can have unexpected and unintended consequences, some of which are positive.

Theo counters Boris’ optimistic view:

“I believe this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’”

“Yes - but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?”

I’m kind of with Boris on this one.

The Goldfinch is an interesting book. It’s a compelling read, with an interesting story and good writing. It is a bit sordid in a way, with a lot of drug use, some language and violence, but an intentional minimum of sex. Theo pushes away intimacy of all kinds as part of his damaged psyche, and this is part of how the sexuality works. Things are always mentioned obliquely, whether it is his series of non-serious girlfriends as an adult, or what probably took place with Boris when they were teens. Like his trauma, Theo doesn’t want to go there or admit what he feels. But that is part of the point of this book. Theo is damaged, but you still root for him. He makes horrible decisions, but you still want it to come out okay. He will never be who you hope he could be, but he is still human and interesting.

I was not aware of this book before it was nominated as an option for our club, but I am glad I read it. It is definitely worth reading. As with many literary novels, be sure to stay with it for a while, as the slower first pages are there to set the stage. As one of our members memorably put it, he waits to decide if he is going to finish a book until he can see that it is transitioning from the first act to the second. By that point, one knows enough to evaluate whether the book will be worth finishing. I tend to agree with that. (With the caveat that a few “books” are so dreadfully written that you can discard them within a few pages just because of authorial incompetence. But most of those aren’t the sort I would be interested in in the first place.) Once it gets going, The Goldfinch is a combination of thoughtful literary fiction, and fast-paced adventure. Enjoy the action, but savor the lovely and evocative writing, and the thoughtful deeper ideas.

We discussed a lot more than this at book club, but that is a bit beyond the scope of this review. While long, this book did spark a very interesting series of discussions, and it was fun to see what everyone brought to the table.