I Curse the River of Time, Per Petterson

I Curse the River of Time is Per Petterson’s newest title, and it feels different from his previous novels. For one thing, there is a different feel to the words, almost a jagged and sharp edge to the prose. While Out Stealing Horses was almost dreamlike in its beauty and simplicity, this has more of an abrupt edge to it. That became apparent to me in reading portions of it aloud (a cranky baby was resisting sleep) and the words felt chunky and awkward, the sentences long and meandering. Given the subject matter, the complicated relationship of a son with his mother, I think this simply underlines just how talented a writer Petterson is. The style fits the story.

The novel begins with the illness of Arvid Jansen’s mother, and her quick journey away from home to absorb her news. Arvid quickly follows. The telling is interspersed with flashbacks of Arvid’s life, from incidents in childhood to more recent times with his impending divorce. His mother is portrayed as a distant but loving individual, with a strong personality and an aloofness towards Arvid that is never formally explained. It is very much centered on Arvid and his inner feelings as he perceives her, rather than her personal motivations.

Much of what makes this novel fascinating is by what isn’t said: several significant events happen (a family death, her illness itself) that are not explored at all. Rather Petterson focuses on how those events affect Arvid and his mother. If he were to have explained every detail of those events a reader would likely be struck more by the tragedy and its details rather than by what Petterson is getting at, the more subtle change in relationships. It’s really very clever to read it that way. It’s almost as if those very dramatic events are secondary to who these people really are.

As a child, Arvid didn’t fit in with his family, despite his parent’s assurances of how much he was ‘wanted’ by them, and valued. On a dismal occasion when a stranger took him to be an outsider from his family,

 “But what I found out that summer…was that I could swallow whatever hit me and let it sink as if nothing had happened. So I pretended to play a game that meant nothing to me now, I made all the right movements, and then it looked as if what I was doing had a purpose, but it did not.”

There are allusions made to what might cause him to feel this way, and Petterson lets us wonder. As in life, he seems to want to tell us, there are no easy answers.  I have some personal suspicions why this may be, but I don't want to spoil the mystery for anyone else (and I could easily be wrong).

Arvid’s life is more complicated than most, especially in his relationships with women. Three significant relationships are explored, and all of them seem to have him positioned still in the childish role of needing affirmation. In considering his divorce, he thinks

“…there is just you and me, we said to each other, just you and me, we said. But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use.”

One of Arvid’s great desires is to be a good Communist, to help the ‘proletariat’ and his usage of that word rather than the more common ‘working class’ used by his Communist friends, infers he deems his calling in a more elevated sense than a true Communist might normally feel. While his parents had been in the working class themselves, his choosing it rather than pursuing college is his means to be different from them. A confusing choice for a man completely confused about who he is.

His feelings towards his mother are obsessive. He thinks of her often yet tries to appear distant and wants her to know he's separate:

“There was a before and after now, a border which I had crossed, or a river perhaps, like the Rio Grande, and suddenly I was in Mexico where things were different and a little frightening, and the crossing had left its mark on my face, which my mother would instantly see and realize that we were standing on opposite sides of the river, and the fact that I left her would hurt her, and she would no longer like me and not want me.”

Yet despite the chasm he imagines, he actually still seeks her out, chasing her even, not wanting to miss a moment of her attention and hoping for any kind of approval.

What I found especially signifcant was that while Arvid actively seeks his mother's blessing, he shows little concern for the rest of his family, to the point that his brothers and father remain on the periphery of his life (and this story).

The story is complex and requires a careful reading. Speeding through this one will offer no satisfaction, this one to relish and unravel. One thing that jumped out at me, and it had to be intentional, was that the character of Arvid Jansen is the same name as the main character in In the Wake by Petterson, where Arvid loses most of his family in a ferry accident (a horror suffered by Petterson himself). If that is indeed the case, then this book would serve as a prequel to In the Wake, and thus his story continues.  This is the fourth of the Petterson books I have read and own, and he continues to be one of my favorite authors.

Special thanks to Erin Kottke of Graywolf Press for the Advanced Reader's Copy. 

It is scheduled to be released in August 2010.

Things We Didn't See Coming, Steven Amsterdam

(I had a few days off earlier this month and got to do quite a bit of reading!)

This collection of short stories was released in February and is definitely going to get some big press. The author, Steven Amsterdam, is a native New Yorker who moved to Australia in 2003. He is youngish and it comes through in the feel of these stories: one unlike any others I can remember. I’ve read many collections before, but often it seems they are told by an older ‘voice’, usually an introspective older man or woman. In the case of my beloved Tim Winton short stories, the voice changes throughout to different people and different age ranges. These however have a snarky young voice, a male narrator, and it spins things around quite a bit as the topics are different as well. The pace is fast and the humor is biting. Amsterdam makes visual pictures of a future Australia that are brutal and painful and heartbreaking.

In “The Theft That Got Me Here”, a young man who lives with his grandparents, one of whom is suffering from Alzheimer’s, is greeted with a surprise:

…Grandma opens the door and she’s fine. She’s standing on her own, not holding the walls, nothing. She’s been off the map for six years and now she’s looking at me like a professor. Not speedy and scared, like she was on the last treatment, but simply there, her old self. And this isn’t me on drugs. It’s her on drugs.

In “Dry Land”, Australia goes through a rain cycle that doesn’t end. For years. All that dry, dusty outback becomes a series of lakes, and the rain never stops. People are forced to evacuate, and while they try to hold off, leaving becomes inevitable. The narrator observes that “Despite all the feelings we think we’ve got for our loved ones and our attachments, when push comes to shove most people figure out how to travel light.”

The author blurb on the back states that Amsterdam is a psychiatric nurse as well as an author. I’m certain that his experience in health care has made him more aware of the more subtle layers of fear and anger, those that he exposes so well in this collection. It’s not in the big details that he reveals them, but in the little details, the little inflections and asides. An unusual collection that is a fun read from someone we’re going to hear good things about!

(And since he IS in Australia, I’m counting this title in my Australian Author Challenge title count, so there! )

Special thanks to Lauren Helman with Pantheon for this Advanced Reader's Copy.

Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places, Bill Streever

As I read this nonfiction title, I kept wondering why science in high school (or college) couldn't have been this fascinating.  Maybe it's because school texts are so dry and politically correct.  I have no idea, only that this book made me wish I had paid more attention.

Simply put, this is fascinating.  Streever is a scientist/environmentalist/researcher who explores the science of weather, as well as the history of man's fascination with it.  This book compiles a year of research.  He begins outside of Alaska, studying a caterpillar that is so frequently frozen that it takes ten years to go from pupa to moth.  Ten years!  He has numerous anecdotal stories with some heavy science sprinkled in, such as how water molecules change amid temperature changes.  The pace is fast and snappy and makes all the details easily absorbed, without feeling like it's dumbed down or too deep.

One especially fascinating aspect of Cold is the stories of men and their search for the North Pole.  I'm not sure why, exactly, men throughout history have been so interested in traversing miles of brutal cold to get there.  He goes through notes and journals of many of these explorers, most of whom are spectacularly unprepared and most of whom die on the way.  So few actually did make it.  What's amazing is the descriptions of their journeys.  Death was always present and it seemed the life of their companions was pretty cheap, as they would just keep going as members died off.  See, I don't get it.  I'd be at the nearest plush hotel, with some hot cocoa and maybe brandy, in front of a roaring fire.  Why the cold? 

Streever weaves the unassailable facts of global warming into the book, never too preachy but not backing off with the clear evidence of disappearing ice and changing weather patterns.  He clearly cares about the issue and knows what he is talking about, as his facts are not biased or partisan in any way.  
One caveat:  this book is best read when you are warm, as the descriptions will have you chilled to the bone quickly. 

Special thanks to Kelly Leonard of Hatchette Group for the Advanced Reader's Copy.

Old Window in Norway

This was on Flickr, entitled "Everything Expires One Day" by Peymedia.  It's stunning and fits my old window theme, and it's a reminder to sign up for the Scandinavian Reading Challenge below!

The Humane Award

Thanks to Stacy from http://www.anovelsource.blogspot.com/ for the Humane Award for the blog.  I am honored and will use this as an excuse to purchase an exquisite dress and write an acceptance speech. 

I'm so excited!  Thanks!

WOW, A Handbook for Living, Zen Ohashi and Zono Kurazono

A Handbook for Living....

Normally I don't use this blog to review self-help books, but I found this book especially unique and useful.  Not your typical "how to live better" guide.

The format is the first unique element.  It's not written out in lengthy or wordy chapters, filled with anecdotal stories.  Instead, the pages have alot of white space, with quotes, simple suggestions, and questions to reflect upon. Rather than telling you, the reader, what to do, it creates a process in which you find your own solutions.  Meditation is key, and each section gives you points to ponder and apply.

For example, when trying to solve a problem, one question is "What state of conditions do you want to create?"  This way the suggestions and solutions are applicable to just about any circumstance.  Interesting graphics, all in black and white, accent the ideas.  Again, to use this book you will not be sitting down to read chapter after chapter.  Ideally, you would use one section, consider the questions, then put it down and meditate on what course applies to you.  Then it suggests you write down ideas to cement them in your mind. 

A few caveats: some of the suggestions and questions seem oversimplified at first, but really aren't to be dismissed.  Many pages have sections to add your own notes and comments.  Another thing I noticed was that many of the suggestions required the assistance of a friend or confidante in achieving.  That may work for someone with a good support system, but I couldn't help but think there are some things that we may not want to divulge.  After all, many of our stressors are deeply personal.

I think this would be helpful to anyone, from a parent to a businessperson, as the thoughts are open ended and the solutions are not keyed towards any one answer.  An especially good idea in it was to be a better listener, and listen to what others say, but even more to listen to what they don't say.  Their silence can be revealing.  It's unlikely that the ideas in this book will ever be out of date, because the simplicity of the text and ideas is universal.

Thanks to Rebecca at The Cadence Group for providing this ARC edition.

Giveaway! The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell 2010

In honor of the Scandinavian Reading Challenge below, I'm doing a giveaway of a fantastic new crime thriller by a Scandinavian author, Henning Mankell.  The title of the hardcover is THE MAN FROM BEIJING and it's a wild ride.  To read the review, you can click on the link on the left column under "previously reviewed books".  This giveaway is to encourage visitors to join the Scandinavian Readers Challenge (scroll down for details).

The rules:
To enter, you must be a follower, and leave a comment to this post that you are interested in the giveaway.  Please add your email or a way to contact you if you win.  One entry per comment. To up your chances of winning, consider the following options:

• If you join the Scandinavian Reading Challenge, you get an extra entry (total 2).
• If you link to the Scandinavian Reading Challenge on your blog and promote it somehow by mentioning it, you get an extra 3 entries. (just send me a link)
• If you copy my entire post regarding the Challenge with all the details and refer it back to my blog, you get an extra 4 entries.  (just send me a link)
• If you leave a comment in the comment box with your favorite Scandinavian author or title, you get an extra 2 entries.

I anticipate alot of interest as this title is hot right now.  Email me if you have any questions.  Ones who have already signed up for the Challenge are already entered in the giveaway.

On April 7, 2010, a random generator will select a winner.  Additionally, another Scandinavian title will be offered as a giveaway next week, so stay tuned!

I hope this isn't too complicated!

Scandinavian Reading Challenge, updated

The Black Sheep Dances is challenging you to its first

Scandinavian Reading Challenge 2010!

Updated to answer questions from participants.

Explore new locations and new cultural traditions, from the land that brought us LEGOS, Ikea and Carlsberg beer, among other essential treasures:

This challenge starts now and runs through December 31, 2010.

Don't know where to start?  Scandinavian authors are hot right now (even if the temperatures might be chilly).  Stieg Larsson, Per Petterson, Dag Solstad, Hakan Nasser, Henning Mankell, Linda Olsson, Arnaldur Indridason and Knut Hamsun all have great books to get you started.   Email me for titles if you get stumped.  Once a month I'll throw out some titles and some interesting trivia.

Reading goal: 

"Skal"  6 books before year end

Redo?

Leave a comment to sign up with your email address and goal.  Sign up as a follower as well.  I'll contact you and provide a badge for your blog if you wish (just ask).  Additionally, I'll have a sidebar widget listing participants by their name or blog name. 

Redo!

There will be prizes to all who complete the 6 book challenge.  Prizes not selected yet, but most likely a new book by a Scandinavian author.  Maybe a jar of herring.  Suggestions accepted!

EDITED TO ADD:  You can count books that you were already reading as of March 1, 2010 and any books started since then that fit the criteria of Scandinavian fiction   Please make sure your name is on leftside bar of particpants.

Some titles to get you started:

• Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
• Astrid & Veronika, Linda Olsson
• Shyness & Dignity, Dag Solstad
• Suggest via email your own favorite titles

      Email me with your titles as you complete them.  I'll keep a file of participants and titles read and if anyone wants to have a discussion or share thoughts on a title, let me know. 

A Time for Everything, Karl O. Knausgaard-Norwegian translation

"Can the nature of the divine undergo change, and can the immortal perish?"

The inside cover of this book, translated from the Norwegian by James Anderson, asks this very thought provoking question.   It's with that in mind that I started reading this epic novel.  By epic, I don't just mean huge.  Rather, it is a story that overlaps generations in an almost Biblical retelling of key events in history and in legend.  The premise is that a young man has an encounter with two angelic beings and thereafter makes a study of them and their interactions with mankind over time.

While I can say that Knausgaard writes beautifully, and his descriptions are layered and complicated, I can't say I enjoyed the book.  I have to confess I didn't get very far into it:  the retelling of certain events and the imagined interaction of Biblical characters struck me as creepy and slightly disturbing.  For example, while the Bible goes into very little detail about Cain, this novel expands greatly on him and attempts to change his persona greatly.  Some may find this fascinating, and given the current cultural focus on angels, perhaps they would enjoy this imagined telling.  It just wasn't my style.

Thanks to Jill at Archipelago Books for this Reader's Copy.  It can be purchased at Amazon.com or through Archipelagobooks.org.

Words Without Borders, translated literature collection

The World Through the Eyes of Writers


This anthology is an unusual collection of writing that contains poetry as well as excerpts of literary fiction. What makes it different from other anthologies is that each section is introduced by another author/writer who explains why they selected it for inclusion and how they were affected by it. All 28 of the sections have never before been published in English, and the contributors are diverse and eclectic. Produced by Words Without Borders, it continues their mission of shining light on translated works of literature.

For example, Ariel Dorfman introduces a section by Argentina's noted author Juan Forn, “Swimming at Night”. It’s a subtle expression of regret and knowledge combining to make a moving portrait of a man learning to embrace fatherhood. Of the appearance of his dead father in the living room, he asks “If you knew how many things I did these past years for your benefit, thinking that you were watching.”

Another is a short story by Johan Harstad of Norway, entitled “Vietnam. Thursday.” It is introduced by Heidi Julavits, who describes the impact as “an achingly lonely story [that] artfully deepens a flatscreen modern world into a 3-D portrait of the empathy one stranger experiences on behalf of another stranger, which becomes, in true transitive fashion, empathy flung back upon oneself.” The ironic image of the psychologist going home to ask questions of an anonymous online psychology robot is not one easily forgotten.

A poem by Etel Adnan is introduced by Diana Abu Jaber, and within it this stanza “those who cannot travel discover the geography of the body, there are also airports and harbors at the surface of our souls”.

This is a fascinating collection and one that may take some time to get used to, as the cultural differences and allusions are left in place for you to contemplate. It is available at Amazon.com and other bookstores. See also the Wordswithoutborders.org website for more literary translations, an online magazine and a reading blog with updates.

Non-Verbal Communication

Roughly 60% of communication is non-verbal?  How can that be?  Katey from Argentina at one of my favorite blogs posted this interesting link:

http://www.theargentimes.com/culture/art/speechless-can-actions-speak-louder-than-words-/

Her original post is at http://seashellsandsunflowers.blogspot.com/2010/03/argentine-hand-gestures.html#comment-form. 

The great discovery on this blog is a website where you can find a collection of gestures used around the world, created by the author of Speechless: A Dictionary of Argentine Gestures, Guido Indij.
The site is located at http://en.gestiarium.org/.  There's a button in the upper right corner to select a language if you can't figure it out.

Tech Support

I had to call in Tech Support for a network issue.  The technician looked so young!

The Man from Beijing, Henning Mankell

Can hate be hereditary? Does our DNA include code for revenge? Reading The Man from Beijing is likely to make you ponder these very questions. Mankell’s novel is a first rate thriller that goes beyond mystery into incredible historical narratives. It spans three continents (Europe, Asia and North America) and several generations, travelling from remote villages in China to the U.S. and the building of the rail lines of the West.

The novel starts with the grisly discovery of 19 dead bodies in a remote village in Sweden. The eerie crime introduces us to a three unique female characters: a detective working the case, a federal judge from Skane and a Communist Party member from Beijing. All three are linked in the complicated puzzle of the crime, one that originates more than 100 years before the murders.

The pace is brisk, the writing lean and the plot complex. At times I needed to pause and mentally regroup, just to get my bearings. This isn’t a quick or easy read because the author digs far deeper into historical details than most novels. Much of the story relates to experiences of men who have a little authority and who use it to demean and debase others. Additionally, there is no place for CSI style details in this, as the details of police work lie in the background behind the incredible story.

I really appreciated Mankell’s writing style because it didn’t get tied up in unnecessary details. He focuses on the narrative but also on the complex relationships between marriage mates and the inevitable changes that occur in friendships over time. The three prominent women are all powerful characters and do not show the typical neediness or passive aggressive tendencies that are sometimes portrayed alongside a strong will.

The only hesitation I felt in reading this was from a baffling string of terribly unlikely events that led to finding evidence and to solving elements of the crime. A few of these stretched any sense of realism away and left me disoriented, especially considering how well thought out the plot is. All in all, it’s a worthy read but requires a commitment and time to absorb the details of the various time periods presented.

Special thanks to Lauren Helman of Knopf for this Advanced Readers Copy.

Eucalyptus by Murray Bail

This is the third book I've read for the 2010 Aussie Author Challenge, and I had hesitated to start it because I had heard virtually nothing about it or the author.  Now I wish I'd read it sooner.  I still adore my Tim Winton, but I think I have a new almost favorite Australian author! 

First off, the word "subtle" kept coming to mind as I read this.  It's a simple story really, but beautifully told with a sort of sweetness to it, as well incidents of sharp wit that made me laugh out loud several times.   This is not a character driven novel, as the main characters seem sort of vague in hindsight.  The real focus is the plot, which is unusual without being pretentious or overwrought.  The story involves a widowed man who moves with his daughter to a ranch near a small town in Australia, bordered by a river.  He restores the property and begins planting hundreds of Eucalyptus, with almost no two alike.  His daughter grows up a beauty, and he decides that the only man who could be proved worthy of her would know the proper Latin name for each variety of tree on his land.  Thus the novel moves at an easy, river-like pace as suitors come and go.  We learn more about the daughter through her reactions than any actual description of her personally.  A few things happen seem a bit 'off' as read, but these are subtle foreshadowings of future events.

The descriptions of the location is beautiful.  All the more poignant to me as the part of California that I live in has a huge amount of non-native Eucalyptus that I've always despised.  I'm kind of liking them more now!   The simple lifestyle of growth and cultivation, and everyday hard work is appealing.  The writer's style is so subtle that much of the meaning is not said but implied.  He shows he's a great writer by exactly what he doesn't write! 

It's a great book that I highly recommended...

A Word about Magazines....Leading to Books

For some reason I find myself subscribed to more than thirty magazines, and I'm not sure how that happened.  I'm certainly not able to keep up.  But I did want to mention which ones I find especially interesting in terms of discovering new books, in order of importance.

The New Yorker:  this is a great magazine that appears weekly, with in depth articles, short fiction, and reviews of a number of books (not the mass market kind).  I've found selections from various authors such as Sherman Alexie and David Sedaris, which led me to look for their books.  They also feature great poetry excerpts.  A favorite...

Smithsonian:  The science journal isn't nearly as dry and dull as Discover.  The articles are not dumbed down, and they are long enough to get a real feel for what the topic is, from Hadrian's Wall to Forensic Astronomy (fascinating stuff).  The scope of articles is large and again, many great titles can be found in this monthly journal.

Kiwi:  This is for moms, with earth friendly tips and links to realistic parenting (yes, you have permission to build a fort rather than do dishes.  Sometimes.).  A great selection of unusual toys, multicultural crafts, and best of all, reviews of children's books that are not the typical selections.

Oprah:  She's a love/hate person for most people, but I've found some great titles in this magazine in her Reading Room section.  Without this feature, I would have never discovered Cloudstreet, Revolutionary Road (before the movie buzz!), House of Meetings, etc.  Not all her titles are mass market, and although I don't follow her book club titles (too depressing!), I do enjoy hearing comments on many of the other books.

Time:  I read this mostly for Joel Stein's column, but it's a great classic general news source.  The articles are a bit too short to be deep, but it makes for great general variety.  The Economist is even better.

Then there's the "don't bother" category:  New York Review of Books seems like overkill and leaves you slightly dizzy.  The Strand focuses on mystery titles exclusively, and seems formulaic.

Giveaway! Forest Gate by Peter Akinti

Forest Gate by Peter Akinti is a brand new novel from Free Press/Simon and Schuster.  It is described as:
"A shattering, poetic and raw first novel set among young Somalian refugees in the slums of London - beginning with a double suicide and ending with a rebirth."

Akinti is described as "a modern day Richard Wright."  This is a brand new Feb 2010 paperback release.  A great multicultural read to explore Somali culture as well as the concept of acclimatizing to a new culture.

Giveaway is open to followers only.  Leave your email address in the comment section (or if you'd prefer to keep your email private, leave a comment then get back to me via email).  I need an email address to contact you.  On March 21, I will use a random generator to select a winner.  Once contacted, you'll need to respond within 48 hours with a mailing address and I'll send it right out.  A review published to your own website would be appreciated but is not required.  Contact me via email if you have any questions.

Nonfiction: The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean (release date 7/2010 from Little Brown)

I have to confess I didn't pay much attention to chemistry.  Once the instructor talked about electrons, protons, atoms and the nucleus I usually turned on my Walkman (the cassette kind, now antique!).  It never seemed interesting because it wasn't something that related at all to real life.  If I had a teacher like Sam Kean, however, that could have been different.

Fast forward too many years, and now I'm engrossed in this nonfiction 'memoir' of the Periodic Table of Elements.  Like any good biography, this has scandal, lies, fraud, madness, explosions (!!!) and lots of name-dropping.  Kean explains just what the periodic table is, but in a format that reads more like a novel, with anecdotal details to liven it up.  Mercury pills were used by Lewis and Clark for their health?  Yep, and you can trace their path (um, at least their bathroom trips on their journey) by where scientists have found unusually high amounts of mercury in the soil.  The poet Robert Lowell?  Did lithium ruin his work by making him sane?    Who knew the lies and fraud and mind games played by scientists intent on getting a Nobel Prize! 

There's no getting around it, this is a book that makes you think.  It's not simple and it assumes you have a basic knowledge of science.  Some areas were over my head, but not for long.  Kean is a wonderful teacher with a sassy wise guy voice that livens up any of the deeper areas.

Special thanks to Kelly Leonard of Little, Brown (Hatchette) Books for this ARC.

The Waitress was New, Dominique Fabre

"I'm only a barman, and when I forget that, the world around me seems like a bunch of different movies running at the same time.  There are romance movies and sad movies, and if you pay attention most of their stories start to get all mixed together, till there's no way you can go on telling them to yourself.  It's like they're all chasing after each other..."


This excerpt shows the complications inherent in the life of the "simple" bartender.  Rather than being the nameless face behind the bar, important only in his quick delivery of a cocktail or beer, this novella by Dominique Fabre goes much deeper into the life of a very complex man.  The story takes place over only a few days, yet we see, in detail, the conflicts within him and within his profession in the upscale cafe Le Cercle, where he's worked some eight years.

There's an abundance of unique characters, from the black-dressed young man who covers his poetry books with paper to hide the contents, to the articulate, kindly man who argues with the Moon and on to the beautiful but betrayed owner's wife.  One of the underlying themes appears to be the pathological desire for order that Pierre, our fifty-six year old barman seeks.  From his keeping the restaurant functioning to the way he does his laundry, Pierre is the picture of routine efficiency mixed with constant self-analysis.  Yet his memories, that flood him often, reveal a past far from the orderly and efficient one he is living now.

This version is translated from the French by Jordan Stump and published by Archipelago Books. 

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka

Despite the title, there's much more to this novel than tractors.  It's really more of a fable about a family coming to a realization that the past, namely their history as immigrants from the Ukraine, never really goes away.  It begins with the death of the mother, a thrifty and conscientious woman with two bickering daughters.  Their previously eccentric father, an inventor of sorts, becomes increasingly unbalanced and ends up marrying a blonde bombshell from Ukraine, fifty years his junior. 

The storyline goes as you would expect it, and there are no real surprises.  The underlying theme of identity is emphasized with tragic and comic stories from their childhood.  At points it becomes a slapstick comedy of the strangest proportions with the lovesick old man and his embarrassed daughters.  Things seem to resolve a little easier than would be predicted, but with a fable they usually do.

This is a fast paced and witty read.  I didn't find myself particularly drawn to any of the characters, and much was left simmering at the surface without real depth.  To really enjoy this, I'd suggest having a map of Europe at hand, because much is made of locations and journeys.

After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld

Frank has returned to his childhood playground, a beach cottage near Queensland, to sort out his life after a devastating breakup, a relationship that inevitably ended when he became physically violent with his girlfriend. He loathes what he did, and runs to hide in a place that he thinks will comfort him. Once there, memories begin to eat at him, becoming so real that he turns his head and alerts to their arrival.


He can’t relate to his new violent streak, and tries to analyze what has happened since his mother’s death that turned him. Violence would have been more appropriate, more expected, from his father or even his grandfather, both veterans of brutal warfare in Asia. As the novel continues, the narration explores the experiences of both of those men in war and at home.

It’s oversimplified to say that war changed them, and Wyld doesn’t take us down that well-worn path. Rather, what makes this story complex is how it changed everyone else. Wives and girlfriends alternate between comforters and enemies, their every action subject to the random and unpredictable moods of their men.

“ Some fellas, they make the women lonely. Maybe it doesn’t apply to you, mate, but maybe that’s why you’re here”

Frank sorts through his memories while being befriended by a small girl and her pet carrot. A missing teenager and a grieving couple complicate his life while his coworkers rail against the Aboriginal natives that reside in the community. All the while his memories and fears creep up on him though he tries to ignore them. At one point, he makes a conscious decision to rid himself of tangible items to remove the memories that go with them:

“Makes things easier having less stuff. See, if I keep them I’ve got to find a place to put them in – probably in a box or something so they don’t get broken…And when you start to get older that sort of thing gets to be more of a problem.”

This novel focuses on the intimate details of these men and their lives in a setting of urbanization and change. Wyld describes subtle gestures and inner thoughts flawlessly, and invents these entirely new flawed characters like none I’ve read before. Her writing style reminds me of Tim Winton (my favorite author), with its focus on the Australian bush and seaside with their colors and plants and weather. An unexpected sweetness is found mixed in with the brutality of war. A really enjoyable story that makes me eager for her next book.

This novel was recently nominated for Best First Book in the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Special thanks to K. Freeman at Knopf/Random House for the Advanced Review Copy.

Day Out of Days, Sam Shepard...a short story collection

Day Out of Days
I felt a sense of guilt as I started reading this collection of short stories by Sam Shepard. It seemed as if I was reading someone’s journal, their diary, with all their personal ramblings being exposed to me, a stranger. I got over that, and went on to really enjoy this collection that contains very short stories, snippets of conversations, memories, poems, observations, and random musings. Shepard writes in the voice of a distant loner, hardened by truth and reality but still seeking, looking for a kind of lost artifact or talisman.

Some of the poems have titles, but most are simple and unadorned. Without the title (and sometimes without punctuation) you are left to figure out the point, and each reader could likely come away with a different impression.

Horses racing men
Mummies on the mend
What’s all this gauze bandaging
Unraveled down the stairs
Has come apart
In here
Something without end (p. 126)

In “Rosebud, South Dakota (Highway 83 North)” he describes a deceptively simple scene:

Lakota church, “Open to Anyone”, it says, but no one’s here. Not a single sorry soul. And it’s the Sabbath too. Imagine that. Sunday abandoned. Just constant wind ripping across the tattered yards and buried fences. Constant endless prairie breath. Like it’s always been. Now and evermore. Unrelenting. Raw. And could care less about the state of the Union.

Shepard’s subjects are dry, tired, lost, searching, guilty, sarcastic, sardonic, and grim. They inhabit truck stops, rest stops, desert paths and windy valleys. Remarkably, reading these doesn’t feel depressing or dispiriting. Instead, it’s almost like putting a story behind that stranger you noticed outside the diner’s plate glass window, or hitchhiking outside of town, or passing you on the open rural road in that old dirty Ford pickup.

Special thanks to Lauren Helman at Knopf for this Advanced Reading Copy.

Greetings Aussie friends!

I looked at my analytics for the blog and was amazed that over the last week almost half of the visitors are from Australia.  It appears that perhaps some class has an assignment on Tim Winton's short story "Wake" because there's been a ton of searches for it through Google and onto this page. 

Anyway, anything I can do to help with Tim Winton references or reviews, please make a comment.  I can dig up old reviews of just about every title he has.  I'm a huge fan.  I've started the Aussie Author challenge and have many books lined up, currently at work on After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld.  Very similar to Winton in style and tone.

Georg Letham, Physican and Murderer, Ernst Weiss

The classic symptoms of a sociopath are a wanton disregard for right and wrong and an inability to care about the feelings of others or the tenets of law or societal norms.  Most sociopaths can be defined fairly early in life by their behavior and attitude. 
With this in mind, I began what I thought was a story about a sociopath.  In Georg Letham, Physican and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, the main character Letham is a classically trained physician who specializes in research in the distasteful specialization of vivisection.  In the initial chapters he confesses his role in the murder of his wife with no apparent remorse.  In fact, he only did it because he needed her money and she refused to "voluntarily" die of her own volition.  He complains about his wife and his father, both of whom held the key to his financial betterment:

"Neither of them could give me what I yearned for in the depths of my soul, but there was one medicine that they could have given me to ease my suffering:  the original medicine, money."

Circumstances after the murder unravel and his perfect plan fails spectacularly.  He ends up carted off as a 'common' criminal to a life sentence, a fate made more demeaning by the extremely high opinion he had of himself.  As he acclimates to incarceration and is transported to a tropical prison camp, he explains more of his childhood and more of his relationship with his father.  He reveals in slow and painful detail exactly what his father did to make him a strong man, and suddenly the diagnosis of classic schizophrenic becomes vague.  Because while he clearly was influenced by his father's hateful and moral deficiencies, he never outright blames him or uses him as an excuse.  He accepts all responsibility himself for his crime and also acknowledges his own moral failure.  A true schizophrenic never accepts blame.  Throughout this first half of the book to this point, the reading has been complicated and painful;  the details were horrifying and unsettling.

However, in his new location in the tropics, a change occurs in his life that confirms that Georg Letham is no sociopath.  He is allowed to work in the medical field again, this time doing research to find a cure for the deadly Yellow Fever that haunts the tropical regions.  A parallel is drawn between the rats his father abhorred and tried forever to eliminate with Georg's efforts to find a remedy for this similarly persistent and deadly danger.  While his father was led into the depths of moral depravity because of his inability to control the deadly rodents, Georg rises morally by putting himself at risk for the welfare of others by trying to have some effect on the deadly disease.  Throughout the second half of the book we see him change, yet he never transforms completely.  That would be too easy and too unrealistic.

A fascinating part of the text is the medical aspects of the study of disease, and how diseases like Yellow Fever are transmitted.  This is a far more interesting way to learn about biology than high school science!  No details are omitted in the search for a cure, and Weiss never dumbs down the medical language.  Reading about the treatment of criminals in the early twentieth century as well as the service of military doctors and their dedication in this time period is absorbing.

This is not an easy read.  Details of the animal testing are gruesome. His own attitude is obnoxious, but changes to more of a snarky sensibleness as events progress.  His father's heartlessness is painful, and many events are described so brutally that you may cringe and have to put the book down for a few minutes.  One thing is constant:  Georg is honest even when it would suit him to be less so.  And despite the difficulties, this book is something you can't put down and certainly won't want to.

Special thanks to Jill at Archipelago Books for this review copy.  This translation from the original German text, by Joel Rotenberg, is available at Archipelagobooks.org or Amazon.com.

Skip, by David Newsom --- Art Photography

David Newsom is an amazing photographer, as illustrated in his photo diary of his brother Skip.  This small book features mostly photos with a small amount of text, discussing his brother Skip and his settling in the Tetons in Idaho.  Previously institutionalized, Skip finds life in the rugged mountains to his liking and these photos document his first day onward.
I know absolutely nothing about photography (I've heard of that old rule of thirds, but that's it).  I don't understand filters or lighting or even how to pose a subject.  What knocked me out about these photos is that they don't appear staged at all, these are literally snapshots of ordinary things that look extraordinary.
Clouds don't pose, do they?  If not, how do they appear so perfectly composed in the background of these shots?  The clouds and the untamed outdoors feature prominently in these, and Newsom makes them appear otherworldly, almost glowing.
"Laundry, 1998" is my favorite photograph, with a simple travel trailer, a black dog, laundry on the line and a large power line spool situated on the dark green grass.  All very simple things but composed to such incredible beauty.  The clouds rolling in above and the fence posts in the background appear to be approaching, almost like workers returning from the fields.  I can't explain how such simplicity can be so haunting.
"Dogfight, 2004" is another favorite, with a angry sky reflecting the vicious interplay between two dogs (one of them a German Shorthair Pointer, a breed that holds a special place in my heart).  The dogs appear to be in a field of thistle that looks just as angry as the dogs.  Ordinary subjects, astonishing moment caught.  I hope to find more books by Newsom, as just flipping through these photographs was relaxing and engaging.

Skip can be purchased at Percevalpress.com or Amazon.com. 

The 2010 Aussie Author Challenge, start here!

Challenge starts 1 January 2010 and ends 31 December 2010

2 challenge levels - TOURIST and FAIR DINKUM!

TOURIST - Read and review 3 books by 3 different Australian authors

FAIR DINKUM - Read and review 8 books by Australian authors (a minimum of 5 different Australian authors)

Go to http://bookloverbookreviews.blogspot.com/2009/12/im-hosting-aussie-author-challenge-sign.html for complete rules and sign up page.  There are also some great links to Aussie authors.

To suggest a few of my favorites:

• Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief
• Tim Winton's The Riders, Dirt Music, Cloudstreet, The Turning or Minimum of Two
• Robert Hughe's The Fatal Shore (non fiction)
• John Hepworth's WWII Drama, The Long Green Shore
• Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang

My Aussie challenge "to read" list includes:

• Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake and Jack Maggs
• Andrew McGahan's The White Earth
• Peter Temple's The Broken Shore
• Tim Winton's In the Winter Dark and Lands Edge (if I can find them and afford them)
• Kate Grenville's The Secret River
• Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda
• Eucalyptus