The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World by Tracy Slater (memoir)

This memoir took me awhile to get interested in. Reviewing a memoir is always tough, as you really don't want to appear to say, "I didn't like the book, your life is dull".  So I tend to be a bit more forgiving in reading one because they are putting themselves out there for all to see (and review!).

As it begins, Tracy has an ideal Boston life, surviving her family drama but in style: writing, teaching, shoe purchasing.  She has friends, a home, and all is well.  At this point, in her descriptions I found her a little annoying, condescending almost, just in her tone.  I'm not sure what set off that alarm in me but I hit a point where I thought, "Should I bother continuing?"

Yes, I needed to. Because in an impeccable work of writing, she manages to show us how she changes once she starts her new job.  This job involves working as a sort of business liaison/etiquette expert for Asian businessmen on the brink of going global. They already know English, but the particular social cues and protocols still need some working out.  In a dull classroom, she tries to explain the differences in conversational approaches and other things that are so different in the US from Asia.

She immediately falls for Toru, a Japanese businessman, and he is similarly smitten with her. Their relationship starts fast and grows exponentially.  The art of this is we see her transform in her words: just simple word choices and phrases are different from the pre-trip Tracy.  So instead of her describing herself as having changed, we see it evolving already without being told.  I was really impressed with this: usually you have the memoir writer explaining their transition verbally.  She doesn't.  The explanation is visible as she simply talks about who she and Toru have become.

The biggest problem to meet them isn't their affection, but the division of society's lifestyles between her home place and his.  Knowing they are in this for the long haul, she has to imagine if she can leave her beloved Boston or if he should move with her.  It's not as simple as thinking "love conquers all".  There is more than geographical change: the culture change is much greater.  Japanese society often (not always) features women that are more passive and submissive than the upper-class, college-educated independent academic that Tracy is.  They are well-educated too, but the social niceties are more subtle- less forthrightness, less group activities, and even a way of keeping their eyes downcast in submission.  I could see how huge this variance would be for me, and I'm a mild person. Many women I know would be about as welcome as Godzilla with their American manners and abrupt and forceful personalities.

Fortunately, Tracy and Toru are willing to try and work it out.  Give and take. All those self-help book advice mantras are suddenly put in play.  Can they find a way to honor his family and retain her love of American culture? All or nothing?

As I read this, I wish it had pictures. Toru sounds so handsome, and Tracy (I saw her picture) is lovely.  I'd like to see them together.  So few memoirs feature pictures!   In any case, I really enjoyed exploring the ups and downs of their relationship. At one point, as they're sleeping, she realizes for once she can relax and simply "be".  That's something hard to find, that everyone wants.  Someone with whom they can "be".

And for emphasis, I have to repeat that the way she writes is so compelling regarding the personal transformation in her beliefs and attitudes. I can't wait to see if she writes more: I'd like to see her do this with a character and show us (not tell) how they change and grow.  It's a beautiful skill and one I don't notice often in a memoir.  The last few I've read were overbearing in their author's explaining themselves, as if they were defensive and being interviewed on Dr. Phil. This one flows much more naturally and more intensely simply by her use of events and actions rather than exposition.

Review copy provided to Amazon Vine

by GP Putnam's Sons, and releases today, June 30, 2015.

Bastards by Mary Anna King (memoir)

This is the year of the memoir. Really.  I've never noticed so many.  A few I started to get bored with, as they seemed like a lot of navel gazing.    (Except Bettyville by George Hodgman. GO READ BETTYVILLE!!!!!)

Now I knew from the back blurb this wasn't a happy story (the title was a clue too).  What I didn't know was how a memoir could take such a breathtaking pace from sadness to tragedy and back without feeling overwrought.  Mary Anna King tells her story with no pity: she just tells it like it happened, and there was a great deal that happened. From a child's perspective, and without a child's knowledge of how things are supposed to be (only perhaps an intuition), her and her siblings deal with loss after loss. Indignity, shame, addiction, and loneliness.  In the world they live in, pretty much the bad side of various towns in what would be considered the projects, most of the neighbor kids shared similar lives. Mothers with feathered hair and Journey playing solidly placed this in the 1980s.

But the kids:  That they went on to play and forge loyalties and simply exist is a testament to how tough these kids were.  I hate it when people say children are resilient, as it seems a cop-out to excuse unforgivable actions, and because my studies in childhood trauma disagree with that notion.  But these children truly are, even if their lives are forever marked.  They will deal with this childhood forever, no matter how much therapy or blocking out they can attain.

I had tremendous pain for the mother, a foster youth who ended up marrying early and having too many kids way too soon.  She was still a child and had no role model to teach her how to live.  I had no such feeling for Mary's father, a man who seemed devoid of compassion and responsibility.  But Mary, Jacob, and Rebecca earned my admiration for how they existed dependent on each other as there was no one else. They intuitively knew that they could be taken into the juvenile protection system at any time, and so were cautious and watched each other's back. At the same time, they resisted any charity thrown their way as they still were trying to develop self-respect.

The writing is crisp and spare: nothing embellished to enhance the horror.  Simple details reveal far more.  There's even a mini-script for an imagined play that Mary imagines between her parents, and she casts Michael Keaton and Sally Field in the three page script.  An unusual little bit, but a creative offshoot that was not pretentious or overdone.  It's also very fast: I couldn't put it down because so much was happening on every page.

The themes of family and poverty run throughout, as in many memoirs, but the finding of lost siblings is a different dimension. No spoilers, but these children had a bigger family than imagined.

And then there's Mimi, stepmother supreme. I would hope that I would be Mimi if in such a situation.  A composed classy woman who survived the Depression and knew what struggle was.  Sure, she had some big flaws, but the first part of the book I found her to be possibly the one thing that kept these kids going. Until they moved to Oklahoma with her.  I didn't want to be Mimi anymore.

 There's so much to say, and so much to admire, but as this author becomes known, I can't wait to read something fictional from her to see if that pace and spare style continues.

Special thanks to Amazon for sending this Review Copy.

Review by Amy Henry.

Bettyville by George Hodgman

"Nor is she sentimental. Inside a silver locket she has worn for years, a gift from my father, are the stock photographs of the strangers it came with."

Inside those two sentences George Hodgman has created an instant picture of his mother, Elizabeth. A writer, he's returned home to care for Betty as she begins that slow, desperate decline. To say she's eccentric isn't enough, so Hodgwell shows us via the visual. To say she's a spitfire doesn't even begin to describe her....she's a tortured soul who he finds moaning in anxiety in the afternoons but cracking jokes at dawn. The disparity between the humor and loneliness is familiar. But her loneliness is not one to be solved but to be reckoned with...just because he's come to town isn't going to change her nor the course of that lonely path.

Hodgman's own life is fascinating; how he interacts with her in her rural Missouri, far from his home in New York, is a testament to family duty combined with family love. Even while that family love may not be of the Hallmark movie-style. Small town life sounds really good in this, described faithfully, even in his loathing of Walmart.  I really liked how Hodgman describes events and people,  especially in this setting, and especially of his mother:

"By the time my mother realized that she was smart or saw she had the kind of looks that open doors, she had already closed too many to go back."

I loved that line. As a writer and a reader, it's perfect. Many, many like them appear in this book.

Between their conversations and recognition of themselves in each other, they find a new closeness different from his early years as an only child. Burnishing that relationship is a landscape many of us can't relate to: rural hills, church suppers, and the existence of "bric a brac". The times they drive together are poignant. On one eventful night, they accidentally hit a deer (whom Hodgman describes as "... deranged. It hated its life)  while driving fast in the dark to get her to a bathroom. "This is a woman who can treat the transmission of a common cold as a tragic twist of fate, but crash into a creature who you fear is Bambi's papa and you will encounter a soldier prepared the storms of Normandy."

And yet, despite her decline, it's not terribly sad.

Oh. Actually it is. It is sad. The loneliness she feels that he expresses is piercing. With a parent in the same position (and being a caregiver child myself), I ache at some of the familiar scenes. I read it fairly soon after reading "The Long Goodbye" by Meghan O'Rourke, another gorgeous and thoughtful memoir of the loss of a mother. Both underline the very seed of our lives, the child grieving the parent, occurring often long before their actual death.

But it goes beyond the idea of caregiving for a into a more intimate path of caring for ourselves.  Hodgman gives up a great deal to be with her, yet he also gains.  He sees the small town life from a different place than when he was a child.  Additionally, it touches on his struggles as a gay man whose parents don't really accept his identity.  Rather than anger, he reaches another point of acceptance tempered with disappointment. Who he is becomes the subject just as much as who Betty is.  The child not wanting to disappoint his parents, those of that older generation who prefer to avoid uncomfortable subjects, remains in the man who loves his mother for exactly who she is.  Even if she cannot fully accept who he is.  He's there for the long haul, regardless, as he says,

"I am staying not to cling on, but because sometime, at least once, everyone should see someone through. All the way home."

So, it's heartbreaking. You will need tissue. You will laugh. And you just might hope you get a chance to be there for someone, to be that "other piece" for someone when the puzzle is completely undone.  Most of all, you may find yourself marking up the book to highlight special quotes.

A few of these, just to illustrate his beautiful writing:

"People forced to live by conventions are always the first to enforce them. I think this applies to my mother. A practical investor, she bought stock in the usual choices because they ordinarily pay off without risk or pain. She never imagined they could betray her or that anyone close would break them.  Never a practical investor, I have always gone for the crazy horse."

"I think people who have always felt okay in the world will never understand those of us who haven't."

After I read this, I turned to the beginning to read it again. I've become an evangelizer for this memoir. My mother and husband have read it. My English professor has dibs on it next.  I am hoping it wins a National Book Award like Patti Smith did.  I hope it becomes as well known as Paul Auster's journals. I hope it gets a PEN award. Anything that will get people to read it and see that throughout love and loyalty is a simple connection to Little Debbies and a casserole left on the front porch.

If it interests you, the author's website features pictures of Betty, George's father, and some of the other family mentioned extensively in the book.  Oh, and pay attention to the cover: it features some little details mentioned in the book.

Review copy received from the Amazon Vine program.

Half in Shade, Judith Kitchen, Coffee House Press

originally published in "The Quivering Pen" 11/7/2012 with link
http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/2012/11/our-discarded-kodak-moments-half-in.html


Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate 
By Judith Kitchen 
Coffee House Press 
Reviewed by Amy Henry 

I became aware of a kind of triangulation: me, the photograph, and its subject(s). From temporal advantage, I found I could supply what my subjects would never know—the future. I found myself in a kind of time warp in which I knew more than my subject, but less about my subject.  My interest was not in uncovering a hidden narrative, or in enhancing a known story, or in revealing a specific character.  I wanted to ponder how each individual life was/is framed by circumstance, how we are sometimes called to act, and sometimes to merely reflect.

Judith Kitchen is going to convince you to dump your digital camera in the nearest garbage bin and head to the attic in search of boxes of old photos.  Because while technology now permits us to take better photos and delete the unflattering ones, it has stripped us of a heritage found only in the outtakes, the unflattering depictions, and the failed photographs that never make it into the family album.  Her collection of essays, Half In Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate, takes an intensive look at the intent behind 20th-century photography in general, with specific reflections on what any photo can tell us.  Hint: it’s usually more than we can “see.”  It makes us ask, before we click the shutter, what are we trying to preserve? 

Kitchen has researched scores of family photos and the notes attached to them, piecing together ideas both actual and fanciful about those depicted.  At times using a magnifying glass and at times using only her imagination, she studies the details of the photos that usually get lost, even if they are of someone we care deeply about. She notes that just the way someone folds their hands, or how their clothing is adjusted can be revealing about their character and life story. The placement of individuals within a group shot also can reveal friendships and feuds, and she seems to find the most telling of details in pictures that are considered the least important. 

Fortunately, she also shows us the photos that she dissects.  In one, “Double Exposure,” she studies a forgettable photograph of an old shop.  She goes beyond simply detailing the tin ceiling and phone booths in the back that a casual glance would miss. Instead, she notices the posture (one man had a bum leg), the status implied by a gold watch chain, and the contents of the cases.  Is it an apothecary?  Sure enough, it’s a drug store in Chicago in 1912.  Explaining what she knows about the characters in the picture, she then proceeds to play with the imagination…where is that man going, the one outside the door reflected in the glass, as he strides by on that sunny day?  Will he be in the War soon to commence? Kitchen can’t say, we can never know, and she leaves him to “disappear below the surface of the page.” 

The photographs and their notes, along with family diaries, are linked together by time as well.  Placing each person within their community and family, she also looks to place them in their geographical location in concert with the time period they were living.  This is most poignant in “Where They Came From, Where They Went,” leading us to contemplate her distant kin in Bavaria. A 1937 photograph shows a boy with his parents sitting formally at a table, fully facing the camera with frozen smiles. With the knowledge of what would soon come to pass in that region, Kitchen’s perspective on the photograph becomes a study of personalities more so than faces.  She notices details in what is on the table, how they are dressed, and what these tell us, before she then asks the reader the big question implied:

What will happen to them all?...it’s hard to decide if cousin Karl’s son is called Friedrich or Wilhelm. And what will it matter in a few short years when he will be called nothing at all, when there will be no one to call him? If he comes back, he will come back to a diminished thing…If he comes back, he will come with all he has seen clouding his eyes, carrying that lockstep method he’s learned to look away. If the camera catches him, it will catch the phantom of the man he might have been, staring emptily into a garden gone to seed.

Of course, it’s all conjecture…we have no idea what really happens.  But it leads us to ask, as she does, “What were their real lives? All the maybes hurl themselves at me.”  The “maybes” are investigated in this collection in a journalistic fashion, with as much research as to factual evidence as possible before Kitchen inserts her own speculation.  The overlapping of names and relations, expanding westward across the United States and back again, tells a story of both a family and a nation. 

Rather surprisingly, it can leave even the least nostalgic of readers wishing they had paid more attention.  The downside of film in the early years was that it was only for special occasions, so few photographs existed.  Then, when film photography became a household medium, everyone took gads of photos.  It often took many shots to ensure one would turn out, and many of the excess were left in boxes to deteriorate or get shuffled through family members (ironically, most people find them difficult to throw away, perhaps sensing value).  Kitchen believes that after an amount of time has passed, it’s these uncelebrated shots that are most telling. 

However, with today’s technology, digital photography seems more efficient, as it eliminates waste and offers editing options.  If desired, only the “ideal” shots are printed out.  Yet, ultimately, this editing capability can deprive us of the secret and flawed stories that may tell the most about the past we are intending to document.

Niagara Digressions by E.R. Baxter III

“The ideal reflecting pool is smaller, rather than larger…deep enough to suggest mystery and to sustain schools of minnows or other small fish so that these may be observed in the shallows.



Ferns, wildflowers, and grasses should be permitted to grow unmowed on some of the shore, trimmed grass in other areas….Mature trees, native to the region, not nursery ornamentals, should also be left to grow on the shores, establishing groves or small forests. There should be no artificial lighting.”

When I hit this section of E.R. Baxter’s new book, Niagara Digressions, I couldn’t help but think he was talking about more than simply viewing a landscape. The quote above felt more fitting in describing this book, a collection of stories, musings, and history by a writer who is unpretentious and honest. There’s nothing artificial or hyped up about his recollections, and there’s nothing showy in the famous names he drops.

As Eric Gansworth, who wrote the introduction, states, “this book, in its more unorthodox style, is closer to truth than most of those memoirs with which you might already be familiar. It’s an aesthetic representation of the way we really see our lives, if we are at all careful listeners and viewers, witnessing the way we perceive the world.” Baxter is all over the place (in the best way possible) in how he recalls events that were significant in his life, and ultimately, in the history of that region and even in literary culture. And the almost rambling path he takes isn’t annoying, it’s endearing. Better yet, he’s not one of those figures who nostalgically look back and whitewash realities that are easier forgotten. His voice is honest, and just as importantly, unadorned with anything extraneous.

In one part of the book, he speaks extensively about his Uncle Bill McCoy, cataloguing details of his life that tell their own story, right down to the personal effects left when he died. These included numerous photographs of his life at sea:

“Photographs: there are photographs of ships at sea, foggy, misty, too far off to be recognizable, street scenes, all taken from too great a distance to be focused on individuals, but more on the aggregate, picture of a lone man on a deserted street at dusk, almost half a block distant, nearly a silhouette, walking away.”

Somehow the description feels eerily poetic, filling out the stories he’s already told about Bill to make him both complicated and endearing. Besides colorful characters he’s known, and some especially dishy gossip about Ginsberg and W.S. Burroughs, he also speaks seriously about toxic chemicals in the region, the romantic life of red foxes, Shredded Wheat, dead foxes, the annoying habit of people who stir their coffee too long, and the beauty of flaws in old houses. The play between dead serious and wry wit is compelling, and makes you wish you could sit by a fire and listen to him talk. His reflections, like those found in the pond he described, can only have come through his personal perception. Yes, that’s obvious, but unfortunately, it’s rare. Few people can talk about life without whining or trying to instill some all-important message.

The title is based on his lifelong location on the Niagara River, and many, but not all, of the 'digressions' are from this location. From his website (http://www.erbaxteriii.com/), he explains simply the subjects about which he writes: "it all rises from here, originates, is foundationally from here, the place that increasingly these days becomes the imagined landscape I call home."


Ultimately, Baxter’s work here coincides with his vocation as a teacher. He wants readers to observe and think, to write well for having interpreted for themselves life around them. It’s fitting that when again, he discusses the reflecting pond, he asks, “Where are you in the picture, standing or sitting tentatively near the edge, staring down?”

Special thanks to Ted Pelton for the Advance Review Copy.

The Ice Road, Stefan Waydenfeld, memoir

An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom



Sticking with the apparent theme of Stalinist Russia and its aftermath, I found this memoir fascinating. It’s always more interesting to read a historical event in the voice of someone who experienced it, and the author Stefan Waydenfeld describes his experiences with detail and yet without bitterness.

Waydenfeld was the son of a doctor and a biologist, and their small town life south of Warsaw was pleasant and fulfilling. He expected to live as most teenagers, with a future at university, perhaps following in his father’s path as a physician. While they’d heard grumblings of the war, they were taken by surprise when Germany and the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939. Previously, Poland had a non-aggression pact with the USSR, which was ignored as the USSR felt the need to support Germany’s war machine (as it had yet to turn on them). A bombing campaign started over Warsaw on September 17, 1939, one that introduced Warsaw as well as some of the smaller towns outside to the reality of war.

At first, Waydenfeld, at 14, served as a volunteer who worked in shifts with others to stay up at night and warn of the Luftwaffe planes that would randomly attack. They’d use whatever means they could to wake up their neighbors. Then there was the fires to deal with, started by the bombs. At one point, he describes the people fleeing the cities on open rural roads, being specially targeted by German pilots who ‘strafed’ the area with bullets for no apparent reason other than to kill randomly.

For a small time, there was a bit of calm, and then suddenly, his family received deportation orders to return to Warsaw. A kindly officer took them aside, assured them that this ‘short train ride’ would be their chance to return. They were loaded like cattle into a train with their neighbors and what goods they could carry, but he discovered on the train, at dawn, that they were heading east, not west. Never trust a kindly enemy! They were being sent to Siberia.

In Siberia, the Russian officers seemed to stress to them that their new life in Kvasha was going to be a privilege, and that they would never leave. Work in this camp was part of Stalin’s famous Five-Year plan. A major component of this plan was the installation and maintenance of the “Ice Road”, a timber transport road made out of sheets of ice. Waydenfeld and his father worked to build this road by digging holes, retrieving water, and then spreading it in sheets in -40 C temperatures.

From here, we see how his family coped, and how they were able to exist in this environment and maintain hope and unity. Additionally, while at times he admits anger and disappointment, his tone is one of bravery and acceptance…he was not going to give in. Not knowing about the atrocities that had already taken place in Germany may have helped these people keep their positive outlook.

It’s a great story, and well-told. I was particularly impressed by the effort he employed to acknowledge certain families and people that assisted in their journey to help them in various ways. He never implies that it was his bravery alone, but credits those people who were sympathetic and willing to risk their own lives to help them in various circumstances. This is an excellent text for information about the time period, and it would be amazing if high school students had the opportunity to read this first-person account.

Special thanks to Debra Gendal of Aquila Polonica for the Review Copy.

Bosnia-In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip, Tony Fabijancic

If you are going to make a journey, you know it’s not going to be dull if your companion has a reputation for getting into fights. It could even be dangerous if you are travelling to a location still rife with racial and cultural tensions. Thus, it’s with great wisdom that Tony Fabijancic’s wife suggested his father go along as guide and possible referee on his journey to Bosnia. Why Bosnia?

First, Fabijancic’s father emigrated from Croatia, and the region has held his son’s fascination for a lifetime. But more intriguing is Tony Fabijancic’s obsession with understanding Gavrilo Princip, an obsession that leads him to research the cultural, political, and geographical influences of the former Yugoslavia-then and now. The result of that trip is Bosnia:  In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip.


I never knew Gavrilo Princip by name, only his identity as the man who started WWI with his assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. I didn’t even see how the event was that big of a deal; as noted in the book, assassinations in the area weren’t exactly unusual. Why was the impact so big? And why did Princip do it in the first place? It’s a subject I’d wondered about but never pursued.

Similarly, in the 1990s, when the Bosnian conflict headlined the news, I had no way to differentiate between a Croatian, a Bosnian Serb, or a Muslim Slav, or if Kosovo was a person or place. I hate to admit that before this book, I probably couldn’t have found B-H on a map; my knowledge being especially vague about Yugoslavia and the USSR. And while history at times can be boring, learning it from the personal perspective usually enlivens it. Thus, this book is far more powerful than its size would suggest. From the perspective of a road trip, with anecdotes and photographs that make the journey more personal, a reader learns the history of the region from Austria-Hungary’s occupation through the Baltic Wars, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, as well as the religious differences (Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox) and the racial divide that still fuels pride and conflict.

The author addresses part of the image that Westerners may have of the area: “Because of Bosnia’s reputation as an inherently violent place, filled with ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’, it finds itself squarely situated within the ambit of the Balkans, which have acquired derogatory qualities in the West’s wider social imagination.”

He meets a Croatian shepherd that still lives off the land with his flock for weeks at a time, a lifestyle that’s millenniums old. They drive through cities nearly abandoned, houses still showing the scars of bombings, villages with just a few old residents remaining, and long neglected cemeteries. The ethnic divides are still steep, and various regions still feel volatile to a nervous traveler. Some subjects are simply not safe to talk about, as Fabijancic learns. Even the character of Princip is conflicted: some view him as hero, others as a scar on their reputation. As the travelers retrace his journey to Sarajevo, where he ultimately succeeds in killing Ferdinand, they are able to see places where he had lived, socialized, and plotted. In uncovering the history of the Serbian lands, they simultaneously uncover the biography of Princip, the events of the assassination, and the trial that ensued.

At one point, they visit the bridge over the river Drina, a location famous in literature by Nobel winner Ivo Andric and also in history: in 1992 “hundreds of Muslims were herded onto the bridge and along the riverbanks, murdered and dumped in the Drina, turning its green waters red. Others were forced into buildings and incinerated alive.” This type of ethnic cleansing occurred on all three sides of the conflict, but the realization that this happened within my children’s lifespan is a bit staggering. The violence in the conflicts seems especially heinous.

This is not a dry read…it’s sobering but still amusing at times-it reads like a novel. It reminded me a bit of Andrzej Stasuik’s Fado although exploring a different region. This is the way history should be read-through lively narration and not dry data and charts. I am terribly enthusiastic about this book because it feels valuable-it doesn’t solve the problems there but by neutral observation it helps an outsider understand them, as well as the bigger picture of the brutality of mankind’s yearning for domination.  The photography should be noted:  the black and white images are stark and bring out the humanity in the faces shown.

Special thanks to Cathie Crooks of Canada's University of Alberta Press for the Review Copy.

Blood Knots Luke Jennings 2010 fishing, memoir, Britain

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2010, Nonfiction

Of Fathers, Friendship & Fishing

Luke Jennings memoir starts out as peaceful recollection of his early childhood and his drive to learn to fish. He recounts his upbringing, his fascination with the natural world, and his early fears while in the theme of angling across England. He speaks fondly of his father, as well as a country hand named Tom who helped him learn the intricacies, indeed, the art of fishing. Patience and observation are skills he learns that serve him for a lifetime.

What is the appeal of fishing? “On the surface, the answer appears simple: to catch a fish. You want to deceive a wild creature, take it from its element, marvel over it and return it to the wild. But that’s only part of it – what you call the ego element. The living, wriggling proof of your skill and cunning. Proof that, in the right circumstances, you can get one over the natural world.” It’s partly the hunt but also the mystery that draws him, “What I can’t explain is that…it’s the revelation – the opening and closing of the shutter on an alien world. The tall, mysterious chamber of green, speared with light but vanishing into darkness.”
As his life progresses, naturally it becomes more complicated. He forms friendships and looks to his future with a range of emotions. His British life is continually touched by historical and political events both past and present, and he finds his way trying to balance that knowledge and still maintain the childhood mystery. He always returns back to the pond or river to restore his outlook. He soon becomes acquainted with a larger-than-life figure, Robert Nairac, who influences his life as a friend and mentor, teaching him history while at the same time teaching him falconry. This influence can’t be minimized, and no doubt the violence that ends Nairac’s life is both shocking and somehow expected.

Throughout, however, the return to nature is much as Wordsworth describes-a function to restore peace. The book itself is peaceful, quiet almost, and the descriptions of landscape and people are detailed and revealing. The overall feel is just as soothing as a river, even when tragedy occurs. The author also is clearly devoted to fishing: he drops names of famous books and fishermen in British culture that may well be familiar to readers there. His description of fishing is not a hobby, but a lifestyle.  Conquering the wild indicates more than a subtle hint about his personality.

While I enjoyed it overall, a few times the quiet pace felt a bit numbing. It seemed repetitive in some of the descriptions of the ‘hunt’. The other thing, strictly a personal issue, is that I simply cannot comprehend ‘catch and release’ fishing. It is supposed to be more humane, but seems barbaric to me. If someone wants to fish to provide food, fine. But to hook a fish, possibly damaging its mouth and scaring it to death in the process, just to throw it back, seems kind of sadistic. I realize it’s the thrill of the hunt that Jennings explains, but I still don’t understand. I realize some hooks are not barbed, but still, it yanks on their body and they fight against it, perhaps damaging their gills or other fish parts, for what? Lastly, since it is a true story, I thought photographs of some of the locations and people might have been helpful.

Special thanks to Atlantic Books in the UK for the review edition.

Contest: Breaking Night by Liz Murray (memoir)

Thanks to Hyperion for sending an additional copy of the new memoir by Liz Murray, Breaking Night.  She's an inspiring young woman who went from homelessness to Harvard, and she chronicles her journey in this book.

I'm offering a new first edition hardcover of Breaking Night to a random winner, from the US or Canada only (sorry!), to be selected on November 5, 2010.  On that date, my own review for the book will post, and the winner will be notified.

The rules are typical:  followers can enter, leaving me an email address or some way to contact them in a comment below.  One extra entry is allotted if a commenter also tweets about the giveaway (just leave a link or your twitter ID).  The winner has 48 hours to respond with mailing information or a new winner is selected.  Please note:  you must be a follower of the blog to enter.

Special thanks to Hyperion for providing two copies, one for review and one for giveaway.

Nothing Left to Burn by Jay Varner

Jay's father, Denton, was the chief of a volunteer fire department in a small town.  His career started early, and he rose to be one of the town's most recognizable mascots.  He was known for his devotion to the community and his singular focus on both preventing and fighting fires.  It comes as little surprise in the reading that Denton's own father, Lucky, was an arsonist.   Jay describes growing up in such a volatile environment, where much of the community was clued in to the disparate activities of his father and grandfather.  It's clear that one man was trying to find redemption for the deeds of his father.

Memoirs are tough to read, and I imagine they'd be hard to write. You don't have the luxury of fiction to soften the blows or shine a more flattering light on yourself as you would a created character. Jay Varner even acknowledges that there would have been no way to write this fictionally-no one would be able to believe it all. After much thought, no doubt weighing the consequences, he decides to write the story of his family. What he exposes is painful and ugly and improbable, yet it rings true.

The history begins with Jay's return to his small hometown, complete with a new job as a journalist with the local paper.  The community appears amused by this latest generation of Varner, especially in that his beat includes reporting fires.  Jay alternates between present and past as he reveals his childhood, the death of his father, and his own changing face in the community.  At moments, when discussing his father's frequent absences, his words uncover the pain he felt at being secondary to the needs of others.  In discussing the procedures of writing obituaries and local fires and accidents, his words seem almost profound as he describes the numbness that envelopes him after he gets used to the frequent suicides and accidents.  He is meticulous in his details, and while it's not fiction, many twists still surprise the reader.  He clearly wants to find the link that would explain both men's fixations on fire, and yet their completely differing acts.  To the last page, astonishing details are revealed. 

And yet...as I said at first, memoirs are difficult because of what they reveal.  Perhaps because I've been reading a great deal about Siberia and the Holocaust, I feel a bit impatient with Varner's more childish complaints.  He repeats continually during the first half of the book how often his father abandoned him for others, and recounts in detail all the milestones of his life that his father missed.  It's clear that it caused him pain then, as well as now.  In the second half of the book, in the aftermath of his father's death, he still tends to focus on what he and his mother missed out on, and how the community shut them out. Not to minimize his pain, but his focus seems to be inordinately about his own disappointments rather than searching out their cause.  Towards the end, he does acknowledge that there must have been reasons for the strange behavior of his grandfather, but he doesn't go any deeper.

Since he was trained as a journalist, I would have expected him to cover both sides of his family's history, yet he admits most of his information about the past comes from his mother and his mother's family.  This omission seems a bit jarring, especially in that he clearly dislikes his father's family and spends a large portion of the text with a negative focus on them.  There isn't a single positive thing said about them, the focus being only on their crazy behavior and his sense of embarrassment of being connected to them.  While his memoir is undoubtedly gripping, I'm left with a sense that there's even more to the story.

Special thanks to Algonquin for the Review Copy. 

Blogger isn't permitting me to upload the cover photo at this time.

I Just Lately Started Buying Wings, Kim Dana Kupperman, memoir

Disaster and loss happens to everyone at some point in their life.  But in the case of Kim Dana Kupperman, it seems like she's had several lifetimes worth of grief in just a few years.  This is a collection of essays she's written in response to the various sorrows she's endured-the loss of a brother to AIDS, a mother to suicide, and a father to old age.  Mix in a vicious custody battle and a drug-addicted half-brother who complicates everything, and you get just a snapshot of her life.  She's had it rough, but none of the essays solicit pity.  Instead, she speaks in a no-nonsense voice with no embellishment, just her take on 'who' and 'what' happened to her.  She leaves the 'why' up to the reader.

In one essay, she talks about the 'arrangements' that must be made after a death-the practical aspects that are attended to in a haze of grief.  Specifically, what do you do with all that stuff?  Do you keep it?  What makes something an heirloom?  What defines a memory?  In all the loss she endured, she realizes:

"Later you touch and sort, discard or keep for another time all the artifacts that testify to a life that has passed...Eventually all these objects are not only handled more than once, they are packed into containers, some resurfacing on shelves or in drawers years later, others given to friends...So many things we once thought were useful and beautiful dissipate or are buried, as if there was no point in having them in the first place.  But in the act of letting go of them, there is a relief that they no longer have to be carried, cared for, or worried about."

How many people are willing to admit that carrying the momentos of life can be a burden?  It's this unflinching honesty that draws you in, and makes her writing more touching than if she simply summarized her losses.  Her unique voice is apparent early on, as she describes being the trophy in a bitter custody battle between her controlling but hypocritical father and her drug-addicted mother.  She tried to please both sides, eventually creating a sense of isolation in herself.  Regarding childhood, she states, "The miniature versions of who we become as adults are always available, if we pay attention.  As soon as I could write, I made lists and stories. And before understanding the power of words, I drew messages."  What she drew were subtle indications of her frightened isolation, and yet only one person realized her plight.

One of the most moving essays was of her life in France when the Chernobyl disaster occurred.  Her first reaction was to notice the wind blowing outside the window, and the implications of the poison heading her way was horrifying.  The thought of it consumes much of her concentration, yet five years later she travelled to Kiev, in search of the history of her grandmother.  There, she gathered stories of people who were there when the implications of the catastrophe were realized:

"I visited with a journalist who told me that in May of 1986, Ukrainian radio broadcasts recommended taking showers after outdoor excursions.  He walked his Afghan hound in the park, wiped off his shoes with a wet rag by the door when he came home, and showered in his clothes with the dog.  He never let on if he cried through any of this.  Or what he did with the towels after those showers.  Or if the dog lived."

It's in the course of her interviews that she realizes that while much is said, something is missing from their narratives:  "Perhaps we participate in acts of omission to shape memory into something manageable and safe.  Who has the room inside their psyche to remember everything, carry the weight of how things felt, and still get out of bed each morning?"

In all, this is a collection that begs for discussion.  Her matter-of-fact tone in dealing with dividing the ashes of a loved one, identifying a body, or reading old letters from her parents, is one that makes it easier to grasp just what sadness is faces all of us.  It'd be an ideal and unusual selection for a book group because the difficulties are universal.  Most meaningful, she ends this on a reflective note, a word of advice for others:  "My mother reminded me to care for memory as if it were my child."

Special thanks to Graywolf Press for the Advanced Review Copy.

The Sound of the Wild Snail Eating---Elisabeth Tova Bailey (memoir)

"...the snail had emerged from its shell into the alien territory of my room, with no clue as to where it was or how it had arrived;  the lack of vegetation and the desertlike surroundings must have seemed strange.  The snail and I were both living in altered landscapes not of our choosing;  I figured we shared a sense of loss and displacement."

Elisabeth Tova Bailey was in her mid-thirties when struck with a mysterious illness that soon led to her complete incapacitation.  Without knowing the cause, much less the cure or the course that it might take, the disease was a frightening visitor.  One day, a friend stops by with a rather odd gift.  A snail, from out in the yard.  First placed in a flower pot and eventually a terrarium, the snail becomes Bailey's constant companion.  Because of her lack of mobility and energy, much of her time was spent observing the creature.

You might think this would be dull, or worse, that you'd be stuck listening to someone bleakly describing their every physical complaint.  Not so.  This book has very little to do with health issues and far more to do with curiosity and resilience.  Bailey is not a complainer, actual details of her health are few and without self-pity.  She doesn't simply give up either, she makes clear she wants to fight this unknown assailant on her life. That she does so with the help of a small snail is astounding. 

The first surprise is that snails have a daily routine.  They have certain times to eat and sleep and travel.  They often return to the same place to sleep, and they sleep on their side.  (!!!)  As she watches the daily activities of the snail, she manages to study research on snails in general and in detail.  Turns out snail research is pretty deep...volumes have been written on every tiny detail.  As in:  snails have teeth, 2200+ of them!  Seriously, if they were bigger you'd think twice about stepping on one.  They also have a special talent for when the going gets tough in their little world:  they start a process called estivation.  It's not hibernation (they do that too!) but instead it allows them to become dormant when the weather goes bad, or they lose their preferred food source, etc.  Some snails have been known to estivate more than a few years.  The process of sealing off their little shell is fascinating, and a study in insulation.

Then there's the romance.  Researchers have studied that too, and I won't go into too much detail, but let's just say lady snails are not complaining about romance in their life!  Male snails really knock themselves out on the charm aspect.  So much of the research that is out there is fascinating, and Bailey sorts through it and shares the most interesting details.  This isn't just a science project for her, she sees parallels in her condition as well as the snail's.  Illness took her out of her social circle, and her life seemed slow and inconsequential.  And snails usually are a typical example of slow and inconsequential living:

"Everything about a snail is cryptic, and it was precisely this air of mystery that first captured my interest. My own life, I realized, was becoming just as cryptic.  From the severe onset of my illness and through its innumerable relapses, my place in the world has been documented more by my absence than by my presence.  While close friends understood my situation, those who didn't know me well found my disappearance from work and social circles inexplicable.

...it wasn't that I had truly vanished;  I was simply homebound, like a snail pulled into its shell.  But being homebound in the human world is a sort of vanishing."

What makes this memoir unique, besides her indomitable spirit, is that she doesn't push any sort of religious or spiritual agenda for her positive outlook.  There is no implied message, which is often a feature of such an inspiring book.  Her facts are based on solid research, and she doesn't waste words;  her prose is clear and precise.  Additionally, and this may be trivial, but the book is exceptionally beautiful:  little snail insignias, and designs,  poetic quotes, and the actual fonts and design layout make it lovely.

One word of warning.  Some inspirational "illness" stories often end up being the 'go to' gift choice for a sick friend.  I know of one gentleman, who, when diagnosed with a serious illness, received eight copies of Tuesdays with Morrie from well-meaning friends.  This is not that kind of book.  It would be a far better gift for a Type-A personality that needs to slow down in their hectic life, or a book just to savor for yourself.  It actually might make a great gift for a young person interested in science (the "romance" portions are tame).  In any case, this book made me want to reconsider how much of my hectic life could be slowed down to enjoy the smaller but ultimately relevant details in the natural world around me.

Special thanks to Kelly Bowen of Algonquin Books for the Advanced Review Copy. 

 This title releases in the US today, August 24, 2010.