Review of GO, WENT, GONE by Jenny Erpenbeck

4 Stars

This book focuses on the refugee crisis in Germany and confronts readers with the realities behind the mass migration of asylum seekers. 

The protagonist is Richard, a childless widower who has recently retired from his position as a classics professor.  Until reunification, he lived in East Germany.  His life is placid and routine until he takes an interest in the lives of a number of African refugees temporarily housed nearby.  He hears their stories:  how they left homelands racked by poverty and violence, how they make hazardous journeys across the Mediterranean, and how they are now trapped in a bureaucratic process which allows them to do nothing but wait though they want to work and begin creating new lives for themselves. 

Richard is a flawed person.  When he was married, he was unfaithful and did not always treat his wife with compassion.  He is self-absorbed and almost totally ignorant about life outside his academic interests.  At first, getting to know the refugees is just a research project for him.  Over time, he gains companionship and finds a new purpose for his life.  He becomes less self-centred and learns empathy; he learns “that one person’s vantage point is just as valid as another’s, and in seeing, there is no right, no wrong.”

The situation of the refugees is emphasized.  The problems that forced them to leave their homelands were often the result of European colonialism:  “the borders drawn by Europeans may have no relevance at all for Africans. . . . He was struck by all the perfectly straight lines, but only now does he grasp the arbitrariness made visible by such lines.”  Because of European Union immigration policies, the men become the responsibility of the country where they first landed (Italy) and so are unable to work in Germany.  Richard decries that the “endless streams of people, who having survived the passage across a real-life sea, are now drowning in rivers and oceans of paper” and concludes that “The more highly developed a society is, the more its written laws come to replace common sense.”  The men lose hope:  “A life in which an empty present is occupied by a memory that one cannot endure, in which the future refuses to show itself, must be extremely taxing, Richard thinks, since this is a life without a shoreline, as it were.”  The repeated words of one of the refugees are heart wrenching:  “I looked in front of me and behind me and saw nothing.” 

Though Richard is a privileged white European and the refugees are powerless black Africans, Richard comes to recognize the common humanity of all:  “the difference between one person and another is in fact ridiculously small” though we seem to separate ourselves because of “a few pigments in the material that’s known as skin in all the languages of the world.”  What is important is that underneath our clothing, “every one of us is naked and must surely, let’s hope, have taken pleasure in sunshine and wind, in water and snow, have eaten or drunk this and that tasty thing, perhaps even have loved someone and been loved in return before dying one day.” 

Because of his displacement as a child during World War II and his initial disorientation when Germany was reunified, Richard understands the “everlasting flux and the ephemeral nature of all human constructs, the sense that all existing order is vulnerable to reversal.”  The mass migration Europe is witnessing is not new:  “This movement of people across the continents has already been going on for thousands of year, and never once has this movement halted.”  Yet people apparently believe that “we’ve now arrived at the end of history, making it possible to use violence to suppress all further movement and change?  Or have the people living here under untroubled circumstances and at so great a distance from the wars of others been afflicted with a poverty of experience, a sort of emotional anemia?  Must living in peace – so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world – inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war?”  

The author reminds Europeans that they should not think they deserve their economic prosperity and privileged lives:  progress “is often based on quite different principles than punishment and reward. . . . Neither the material prosperity [in West Germany] nor the planned economy [in East Germany] could be explained by any particular trait of the German citizens in question – they were just the raw material for those political experiments. . . . But if this prosperity couldn’t be attributed to their own personal merit, then by the same token the refugees weren’t to blame for their reduced circumstances.”  And it’s senseless to deny refugees “permission to work while at the same time reproaching them for idleness.”  And isn’t it ironic that though the refugees cannot work, their arrival creates employment for Germans; in fact, one of their protests creates “half-time jobs for at least twelve Germans.” 

This book should prick the conscience of its readers.  How much do we know about what is happening in Africa?   How many of us even know that Africa has 54 countries?  (No, Nambia is not one!)  Do we regard asylum-seekers as threatening our way of life?  The novel is also a call to action because “There but for the grace of God, go I.”  For me, one of the most powerful statements in the novel is “only if [the refugees] survived Germany now would Hitler truly have lost the war.”  But even for those of us not living in Europe, the subject matter has relevance. 

Review of SEVEN FALLEN FEATHERS by Tanya Talaga

3 Stars

As I write this review, the residents of Kashechewan First Nation are being evacuated in what has become an annual ritual.  Promises to relocate the community have again come to naught.  This situation emphasizes how we do not treat our Indigenous people as equals; were it a white community of 2,500 people which was evacuated every spring, something would have been done to spare people the trauma of evacuations and disrupted schooling for children.

It is the education of Indigenous children that is a central issue in this book.  Between 2000 and 2011, seven Indigenous children died in Thunder Bay.  They had to leave their isolated home communities to pursue education.  The author tells the stories of each of the seven; their movements before their deaths are detailed.  What is not detailed is the police work because, in all cases, police searches for the missing and investigations after a body was discovered were cursory.  (In fact, in December of 2018, after the publication of this book, Ontario's police watchdog reported finding systemic racism in the Thunder Bay Police Service and revealed deficiencies in how the local force investigated the deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people.) 

The author focuses on the failure of government to properly address the education needs of Indigenous children.  Besides describing the current situation, she gives a brief history of residential schools which she shows to be an act of cultural genocide.  Teenagers are still required to leave their home communities for an education; in an alien environment, they become vulnerable.  The author argues that there must have been foul play in the deaths in Thunder Bay, that systemic racism led to whites preying on vulnerable Indigenous youth. 

The treatment of our Indigenous people is an important subject; the stories of these seven children need to be told.  Canadians need to educate themselves and become activists to ensure that Indigenous people are treated as equal citizens.  Unfortunately, I don’t think the writing in this book does justice to the vital importance of its subject matter.  The author is a journalist so I expected stronger writing and I found myself increasingly frustrated as I read. 

The author has a definite bias.  Having an opinion is unavoidable but I hoped that, as befits a professional journalist, there would have been some attempt to present a balanced view.  Even if readers were given a less one-sided perspective, they would still have seen “the racism, police indifference, bureaucratic ineptitude, lateral violence.”  The author’s bias against non-Indigenous people, presumably the book’s target audience, will alienate some readers.  To suggest, even indirectly, that all Indigenous people are good and all non-Indigenous are bad is to be unjust to all. 

For instance, it is emphasized that the staff at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School (“Indigenous run and directed, and staffed with Indigenous teachers”) is exceptional:  “Everyone on staff – from the teachers to the office workers to the Elders and the custodial staff – pitched in to look after the kids” (101). This evaluation is even repeated:  “They knew they weren’t just teachers or receptionists or janitors; they were also caring for the nearly 150 kids enrolled at the school . . . DFC staff did everything they could to be parents to their students” (255).  However when an inquest directed 25 recommendations to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, these are never outlined; the reader is only told that all recommendations have been addressed “as far as their capacity allows” (312).  An Indigenous support worker/ boarding parent leaves an inebriated young girl lying on a hallway floor without keeping close watch and that girl dies, yet the boarding parent is not considered negligent (189)? 

There are contradictions concerning boarding parents.  At the beginning, the author explains that “Boarding parents were given $500 a student, every month, to cover living expenses such as the roof over their head, snacks, and dinner.  The ‘parents’ were under no obligation to supervise the kids at night, eat meals with them, help them with their homework, or take them to any after-school activities” (27).  Fifty pages later, there’s a different explanation:  Boarding parents “need to ‘be responsible for the welfare and conduct of students while he or she is in your care.’ They need to discuss and set up ‘reasonable patterns of conduct and discipline with the students regarding meal times, curfews, access to the kitchen, telephone,’ and they are instructed to ‘treat the students as your own children and include them in as many family and social activities as possible’” (97).  And the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council thoroughly investigates prospective boarding parents? 

The book needs revision and editing.  For example, why is the same information repeated again and again, often within a few pages?  For example, “Rhoda King, Reggie Bushie’s mother, was told that her son was missing three days after he had disappeared” (208) is followed by “In fact, Rhoda King, Reggie and Ricki’s mother, did not know that Reggie was missing until October 29 – three days after he was last seen” (212) which is followed by “She had not been informed by authorities or the school that her son had disappeared until three days after he was last seen down by the McIntyre River” (226).

There are unnecessary details.  Why describe the area around the Air Canada Centre (49)?  Do we need to know that searchers “went to Walmart to unwind and then grabbed something to eat at McDonald’s” (38)?  At times, it seems that the author feels she has to include and explain everything, yet at other times, information is missing.  For example, the painting on the cover is explained but not completely (301).  I had never heard about the starvation experiments at residential schools (73), but they are mentioned only in passing.

Poor organization sometimes has the reader shaking his/her head:  the author explains how Norval Morrisseau met his wife and names his children and then launches into a description of his childhood (244-245).  Who can follow this:  “Coroners believe Kyle died of drowning.  They also noted Kyle consumed alcohol before he died and that while it was a contributing factor to his death, it wasn’t the cause.  [Kyle’s father] was full of rage.  ‘I was fucking mad.’” (263)?

Some statements make little sense.  “It is an old [Pikangikum First Nation] tradition to bury your dead in your front yard” (135)?  “[Elder Sam Achneepineskum’s] wisdom comes from the ten thousand lives he has lived” (275)?  “The rest [of the rivers] flow south to the Great Lakes and the urban centres that malignantly pock the turtle’s shell” (54)?  Yes, I understand that Turtle Island refers to North America, but every city is a malignancy?  So why would the author bemoan that “There was no McDonald’s or local shopping mall [in Pikangikum] and there still isn’t” (138)? 

Sentences are choppy and clunky:  “Norma spent the next several minutes pacing the halls.  Rhoda and Berenson King arrived and they went directly to the Elders’ room.  Norma paced in front of the room until she saw Alvin walking down the hallway with the chief.  She stopped him and asked if they had found Reggie.  He said they had.  She warned Alvin that the parents had arrived and were in the Elders’ room.  She told him she was going to find a more private room . . . They found an empty office . . . Norma was turning to leave when she ran into Josias.  She asked him to sit with the others in the Elders’ room” (224-225).

What’s with the diction and clichés?  For example, “People often threw eggs at him from moving cars or would holler Hollywood-style Indian war cries” (166) and “But it all came crashing down again in the 1980s, when he hit the bottle hard and burned through his money” (246). 

I feel as if it is wrong to criticize a book that discusses such an important subject, one which Canadians must face.  However, I have to be honest and state that I wish the writing were of much better quality so the reader can focus on the information and is not frustratingly distracted by the poor style. 

Review of LILLIAN BOXFISH TAKES A WALK by Kathleen Rooney

3.5 Stars

On the last day of 1984, 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish goes for a 10-mile walk in New York City.  In many ways it is a walk down memory lane as she revisits places that have been important in her life.  She interacts with a number of people she encounters but most of her time is spent in memories of her life in the city. 

Lillian had always wanted to be a career woman and she became a successful one:  she got a job in Macy’s department store and became “the highest-paid advertising woman in America.”  She was also a poet who published a number of books; in many of her poems she scoffed at romantic love but then fell in love at first sight.  Though she seems to have led a glamorous life and strived to enjoy life, she also had her personal struggles.  She points out that “Happiness and a love of fun are not coextensive, and their relationship may even be divergent.  If one were happy, then one might stay in with a book, say, and not go out hunting for fun.”

Lillian is a very likeable character.  She is intelligent, witty, and fiercely independent.  She has an indefatigable zest for life.  Even as an old woman, she enjoys meeting people of different ages and from various walks of life.  A rebellious streak means she doesn’t conform to expectations, though she is always graceful and dignified.  She believes that, “The point of living in the world is just to stay interested.”  One cannot but admire her as she emerged from a very difficult time, has maintained her enjoyment of life, and makes no apologies for “a life that privileged pleasure, poise, and politesse.” 

Having lived to an advanced age, she has learned some lessons which she passes on:  “it wasn’t that happiness led to humor, but more that humor could lead, perhaps, to happiness – that an eye for the absurd could keep one active in one’s despair, the opposite of depressed:  static and passive.”  She also advises, “’Do whatever you want.  Anyone who tells you you shouldn’t is trying to sell you something.’”

The book touches on a number of topics:  racism, the AIDS crisis, women’s rights, and ageism.  For example, though she was a great asset to Macy’s, once she became pregnant, she had to leave her job:  “the solid rock upon which my success was built turned out to be a snow heap and melted, melted.” 

She also realized that though she’d had a remarkable career, her successes “had done nothing to change [Macy’s] in any real way.”  The glass ceiling was intact:  she “was a novelty, not a paragon.” 

Books with older characters looking back at their lives appeal to me, and this one didn’t disappoint.  Its conversational tone makes it an easy read.  After a number of serious books, I wanted something light and charming.  This book is certainly the latter but it does have substance.

Review of THERE THERE by Tommy Orange

3.5 Stars

This novel explores modern Native American life with a focus on Urban Indians (the author’s preferred identifier):  “We know the sound of the freeway better than we do the rivers, the howl of distant trains better than wolf howls, we know the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete and burned rubber better than we do the smell of cedar or sage or even fry bread . . . We ride buses, trains and cars across, over, and under concrete plains.  Being Indian has never been about returning to the land.”  All twelve of the novel’s characters live in Oakland, California; besides this connection, they also have in common a search for identity.  Some have familial connections.  All make their way to a powwow being held in the city. 

The title refers to Gertrude Stein’s observation about Oakland when she returned to visit where she had grown up and found the city changed so much:  “so much development had happened there, that the there of her childhood, the there there, was gone, there was no there there anymore.”  What the author wants to emphasize is that the entire world of Native people has been erased:   “for Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it’s been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, unreturnable covered memory.  There is no there there.”

One of the characters, Dene Oxendene, starts an oral history project to tell “the Urban Indian story”, showing that Indians are not stereotypes:  “the whole picture is not pathetic, and the individual people and stories that you come across are not pathetic or weak or in need of pity, and there is real passion there, and rage.”  In many ways Dene Oxendene represents Tommy Orange.   His characters have Native blood but they are not all the same; some are honourable and some are immoral.  Even the reasons for going to the powwow differ; some go to honour their history and culture, some go to discover their heritage, and some see the event as a prime opportunity to commit robbery.  Natives do not share a single identity; one man notes that not knowing his tribe means “I’m as Native as Obama is black.” 

In one way or another, each of the characters, whether full or half-Native, struggles with what it means to be Indian in the modern world.  A 14-year-old boy, for example, googles “’What does it mean to be a real Indian’.”  Another man says, “I don’t know how to be.  Every possible way I think that it might look for me to say I’m Native seems wrong.” 

The novel examines the effects of centuries of subjugation and degradation at the hands of the white man.  (An Indian woman points out that a Cheyenne word, veho, “means spider and trickster and white man.”)  The white man came and said, “Look.  See here, the way it’s gonna be is, first you’re gonna give me all your land, then your attention, until you forget how to give it.  Until your eyes are drained and you can’t see behind you and there’s nothing ahead, and the needle, the bottle, or the pipe is the only thing in sight that makes any sense.”  Various characters struggle with alcoholism, depression, and unemployment.  The battles with alcohol are shown to be a way of coping:  “’There’s not some special relationship between Indians and alcohol.  It’s just what’s cheap, available, legal.  It’s what we have to go to when it seems like we have nothing else left.’”  And there is certainly a lack of cultural inheritance.  One character, for instance, learns about his heritage from the internet:  “And virtually everything Orvil learned about being Indian he’d learned virtually.  From watching hours and hours of powwow footage, documentaries on YouTube, by reading all that there was to read on sites like Wikipedia, PowWows.com.” 

The author suggests that stories are a way of reclaiming Native culture.  A young girl is told, “’And so what we could do had everything to do with being able to understand where we came from, what happened to our people, and how to honor them by living right, by telling our stories.”  Dene wants to collect Native stories because “’When you hear stories from people like you, you feel less alone.  When you feel less alone, and like you have a community of people behind you, alongside you, I believe you can live a better life.’”  Powwows serve a similar purpose:  “We made powwows because we needed a place to be together. . . . We keep powwowing because there aren’t many places where we get to all be together, where we get to see and hear each other. . . . The messy, dangling strands of our lives got pulled into a braid – tied to the back of everything we’d been doing all along to get us here.”

It seems that the author didn’t trust that fiction could convey his message clearly enough so he includes a lengthy prologue that highlights events in “a five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign.”  He describes the arrival of the white man with his weapons:  “The bullets were premonitions, ghosts from dreams of a hard, fast future.  The bullets moved on after moving through us, became the promise of what was to come, the speed and the killing, the hard, fast lines of borders and buildings.  They took everything and ground it down to dust as fine as gunpowder, they fired their guns into the air in victory and the strays flew out into the nothingness of histories written wrong and meant to be forgotten.  Stray bullets and consequences are landing on our unsuspecting bodies even now.”  Certainly this last sentence needs to be remembered when reading the climactic scene. 

The book is very powerful in its message, but reading it is not easy.  Just keeping track of the dozen characters is difficult.  Though I understand the author’s desire to ensure that his message is heard, I wish that he had been a little less heavy-handed with some of his passages.

Review of ASYLUM by Marcus Low (New Release)

3 Stars

This dystopian novel is set in the near future, in 2023.  Barry James is being quarantined in a secure facility located in the hot, arid Karoo desert of South Africa.  He and his fellow patients are suffering from pulmonary nodulosis, a lethal disease called the “new plague.”  Barry has been confined there for over three years; in that time he has cut all ties with the past because “looking back is madness.”  He is just waiting to die. 

After Barry attempts suicide, a psychologist suggests that he keep a journal.  His notebooks form the narrative core of this novel.  In a preface, the editors/compilers of these notebooks suggest that they be read “as a meditation on the psychology of illness.” 

This is not an action novel with a lot of suspense.  Barry describes his daily life which is a routine of eating, sleeping, taking medications, and staring out the window.  He is very lethargic so it is obvious that he is struggling with depression.  Occasional visits with Ms. Van Vuuren, the psychologist, or chats with Dr. Von Hansmeyer, the resident physician, provide some relief from the monotony. 

Barry’s only escape is dreams:  “They are the only way out of here – in those dreams anything is possible, any horror, any one, any thing, even snow.”  He sleeps so that he can dream:  “Dreams.  What bliss to close your eyes on this carnage, to slip into blackness and be swept away to another world.”  Barry describes his dreams in great detail; in all of them, snow is falling, as if he wants to inhabit a world that is a total contrast to his reality.  He comments, “even in the most bleak of worlds we’ll find something to hold on to . . . even if that is something as impossible as snow in this god-forsaken wasteland.” 

Barry is an unreliable narrator.  The effects of his medication often leave him unable to distinguish between reality and delusions.  Likewise, he is not above fabricating stories to tell the psychologist.  In the preface, the reader is told that the journals are “in effect an internal monologue that straddles the precariousness of what are essentially two worlds – one real and one imaginary.”

The book is an examination of the psychological effects of a terminal illness and isolation:  “We are sick and therefore we are isolated, locked up.  We must wait out our days here, and then die – so that the healthy ones, the ones we have forgotten about, may live.”  And the world outside the facility is not a haven either; there is a suggestion that the outside world is falling apart because of climate change:  “’The whole country is now nothing but army and private contractors protecting the rich.  And as long as they have these droughts and floods, nothing will change.  All downhill from here.’” 

I cannot say that I found this book unputdownable.  At times, it is tedious.  But, of course, that tediousness is a reflection of Barry’s daily existence.  It is thought-provoking and suggests that there may be no true asylum (shelter and protection) for us in the near future.  

Note:  I received a digital advanced reading copy from the publisher.

Review of A WOMAN IS NO MAN by Etaf Rum

4 Stars

This novel describes the lives of several women of a Palestinian immigrant family living in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In 1990, 17-year-old Isra leaves Palestine after being wed to Adam Ra’ad in an arranged marriage.  She hopes she will find love and have more freedom and choices:  “Surely she would have more control over her life in the future . . . in America, the land of the free, . . . perhaps she could have the love she had always dreamed of, could lead a better life than her mother.”  Unfortunately, her life is one of domestic servitude.  Having been taught that “obedience was the single path to love,” she tries to be the dutiful wife; she does what she thinks her husband expects and what her domineering mother-in-law Fareeda demands.  She bears only daughters and that causes tension between Isra and Adam:  “not only had she deprived him of a son, but she had given him . . . daughters instead.  She didn’t deserve his love.  She wasn’t worthy.”  Her inability to provide a male heir does not endear her to her mother-in-law either.

Eighteen years later, Isra and Adam are dead.  Deya, their eldest daughter, wants to go to college but Fareeda is insisting that she marry.  When Deya receives a mysterious message, she sets out to learn more about her mother whom she barely remembers.  She gradually uncovers secrets about her parents, secrets which help her decide how to shape her future.

The lives of the women show them to be virtual prisoners in their own homes.  Teenaged girls are married off even if they would prefer a career other than motherhood; women are expected to provide at least one son and are blamed if they do not do so; women are expected to raise children without assistance from their husbands; girls must obey their parents and when married obey husbands and in-laws; if husbands abuse their wives, the women are blamed and shamed into remaining silent. 

Characterization is strong.  Isra is developed in depth.  She is a quiet young woman; her mother shows her no affection but she finds comfort in reading and dreams of romance; she is taken away from everyone she knows to a new world.  Her hopes are slowly dashed as she realizes she will not get the love, freedom or respect she hoped she would find.  She starts to believe her mother was correct when she told her, “’there’s no room for love in a woman’s life.  There’s only one thing you’ll need, and that’s sabr, patience. . . . There is nothing out there for a woman but her bayt wa dar, her house and home.  Marriage, motherhood – that is a woman’s only worth.’” 

Isra has no life outside the home.  When Adam first meets her, he tells her he likes quiet women, but once they’re married he complains that she is not a conversationalist.  She wonders, “What did Adam expect her to say?  She did nothing besides cook and clean all day, her hand in Fareeda’s hand, never a moment’s rest.  She had nothing to talk about.”  Then when she asks if Adam could teach her how to navigate the neighbourhood so she could take Deya for a walk in the stroller, he becomes angry:  “’But there’s no reason for you to be out on Fifth Avenue alone.  A young girl like you on the streets? . . . Besides we have a reputation here.  What will Arabs say if they see my young wife wandering the streets alone?  You need anything, my parents will get if for you.’”  When Isra repeatedly gives birth to girls, her mother-in-law and husband withdraw from her so she becomes lonely and depressed.  Then she becomes guilt-ridden because she feels she is not being a good mother and fears that her daughters’ lives will be no better than hers.  There are times I found myself wishing she were less meek but then I would cringe at the consequences she faced when she did try to speak up for herself and her daughters.

Fareeda may seem like the villain of the novel but there are attempts to humanize her.  Her past is gradually revealed and it is clear she has been scarred by life:  “shame could grow and morph and swallow someone until she had no choice but to pass it along so that she wasn’t forced to bear it alone.”  Likewise, the men may seem to be the villains but they too are shown to be broken and unhappy.  Fareeda realizes that “the suffering of women started in the suffering of men, that the bondages of one became the bondages of the other.  Would the men in her life have battered her had they not been battered themselves?”  Adam wanted to be an imam but because he is the eldest son he is expected to help support the family; Fareeda constantly pressures him to do more so that he vents, “’All I do is work day and night like a donkey! “Do this, Adam!  Do that, Adam!  More money!  We need a grandson!”  I’m doing everything I can to please my parents, but no matter what I do, I fall short.’”  Khaled, Isra’s father-in-law, was the eldest of ten children growing up in a refugee camp so he too is a damaged person. 

At one point Isra comments that “the world pressed shame into women like pillows into their faces.”  She continues that shame “had been passed down to her and cultivated in her since she was in the womb, that she couldn’t shake it off even if she tried.”  This idea is emphasized through symbolism.  While still in Palestine, Isra studies a rug in her parents’ home:  “Spirals and swirls, each curling up in the exact same way, picking up where the last one ended.”  Isra’s home in Brooklyn has a similar rug:  “There was a pattern embossed across the edges:  gold coils with no beginnings or ends, all woven together in ceaseless loops.”  Sarah, Fareeda’s daughter, notices the pattern too:  “its embroidered lines spinning in and out of each other, again and again.”  This pattern suggests that women, regardless of the time in which they live, are repeating a pattern that has been laid down for them.  Fareeda, in fact, believes that “culture could not be escaped.  Even if it meant tragedy.  Even if it meant death.”   

All of this suggests a pessimistic outlook.  There is, however, some hope in the novel.  One woman does escape and make a life for herself.  Deya feels she has no choices but comes to realize that if she chooses to be courageous, she may be able to avoid repeating the pattern that the lives of her mother and grandmothers followed.  Though she shares much with her mother (a love of reading, feeling like an outsider in American culture), she may not have to live as confined a life as Isra led. 

This is an emotional, thought-provoking read.  The author was courageous to break the code of silence of her traditional Arab culture.

Review of THE SILENT PATIENT by Alex Michaelides

3 Stars

Alicia Berenson was convicted of killing her husband Gabriel but she refused to talk about the murder and has not spoken a word for six years.  Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, manages to get a job at the facility where Alicia is a patient.  He is determined to get her to talk.  Interspersed with Theo’s narration are sections from Alicia’s diary describing the time leading up to Gabriel’s death. 

The book is described as a psychological thriller but there is not a great deal of “edge of the seat” suspense.  There are a number of questions, however, which do keep the reader interested:  Why did Alicia kill Gabriel when she loved him and was happy in her marriage?  Why does she not speak to explain and/or defend herself?  Why is Theo so obsessed with working with Alicia?  And the short chapters add to the fast pace. 

 It is the implausibility of some of the events which I found irritating.  Theo arrives and is immediately able to have Alicia’s medication drastically changed?  His obsession with Alicia doesn’t raise any red flags?  A patient in a secure psychiatric facility can paint a painting and have it framed?  The plot twist that people describe as jaw-dropping requires that the reader be intentionally misled about a key element of Theo’s story about his marital problems.  Cheating the reader in such a way is like ending a story with “And then I woke up”!  And then there’s Alicia’s diary.  The entries are totally unrealistic because writers of journals summarize events and their feelings.  Alicia writes pages and pages of dialogue and describes scenes in great detail?! 

In many ways, this book is a character study.  For me, Theo is the most interesting character.  One of the first things Theo mentions is that “I became a psychotherapist because I was fucked-up.”  He admits to a marijuana addiction because he “has never learned to contain himself [and] is plagued by anxious feelings.”  He keeps repeating that “the answers to the present lie in the past.”  Then there’s a quotation included:  “The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it.”  Finally, there are statements like, “We were crashing through every last boundary between therapist and patient.  Soon it would be impossible to tell who was who.”  The question that kept me reading was what about his past is Theo not revealing?  He is certainly flawed so is he also a silent patient? 

The book is entertaining enough and a fast read, but any veteran reader of psychological suspense will probably predict the plot twist long before it is revealed.  The novel can best be described as a better example of escapist fiction. 

Review of JUSTICE DELIVERED by Patricia Bradley (New Release)

3 Stars

Carly Smith was a victim of human trafficking for six years.  Eight years after her escape, she counsels victims of substance abuse but decides she must return to Memphis, her hometown, because she has heard that Austin King, the man who tricked her and sold her into sexual slavery, may still be conning young girls.  Carly is determined to stop him.  Her search puts her into danger, but she hesitates to trust those who might help her, especially her brother-in-law and her ex-boyfriend, both police officers.  Her previous experiences with corrupt policemen, who at best turned a blind eye to human trafficking, have left her trusting no one.

There is a great deal of suspense in the novel.  Carly is in almost constant danger and soon other people, including her young niece, are threatened as well.  What adds to the suspense is the fact that there are several people who could be Austin King (a pseudonym) or who could be involved with him.  Carly has reason to be cautious in trusting people.  Later in the novel, the reader is given the perspective of Blade, Carly’s captor; including his point of view adds further tension because the reader knows he is intent on revenge. 

There are a number of villains in the book.  The identity of one comes as a surprise because there is insufficient information given about him to even hint he is involved.  The identity of two others is made too obvious with too many obvious clues.  A reader should be given subtle clues so he/she is not cheated by withheld information and is able to guess identities but not with total certainty.

Before reading this book, I had not heard of the writer so was unaware that she writes from a strongly Christian perspective.  In both the dedication and acknowledgements, she makes direct reference to Jesus giving her “the words”.  At the beginning the theme of forgiveness is introduced; on the second page, Carly is told she must forgive those responsible for her kidnapping: “’None of us deserve forgiveness . . . and it’s for . . . you.  If you don’t forgive . . . it will eat you alive’” (8).  The theme, however, is dropped before the end so anyone looking for thorough thematic development will not find it here. 

Romance is not a favourite genre for me, so the love stories (not just one but two) held little interest for me.  In keeping with the Christian perspective, the relationships are chaste, so sex scenes are not included. 

As a suspense novel, this book works, but in general it feels shallow.  It deals with human trafficking without really examining it in depth.  For example, why would people, especially if they have good reputations and are financially successful, become involved with a human trafficking syndicate?  Carly’s life as a sex slave is discussed only in terms of how she was physically punished if Blade found her uncooperative. 

This is not a terrible book, but I would have preferred more in-depth examination of human trafficking and less of the preachy tone.  Obviously, I’m not, as one character says, “’open to God’s prodding’” (301) because having a former addict, appropriately named Trinity, state, “’God is my best friend . . .  He had a good plan for my life, and I messed it up, but he’s gonna take my mistakes and make something good from them’” (30) made me want to scream.

Note:  I received an ARC from the publisher via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers programme.