Review of THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead

3.5 Stars

Set in a segregated 1960s reform school in Florida, this novel focuses on two black teenagers.  Elwood Curtis works hard and earns such good grades that he receives an offer to attend college classes while still in high school.  Unknowingly, he hitches a ride in a stolen car and ends up being sent to the Nickel Academy where boys are routinely subjected to brutal punishments:  night-time beatings, solitary confinement, and rape.  Some boys even disappear after being taken “out back.”  There Elwood meets Turner who becomes his best friend.  Turner, serving his second stint, tries to teach Elwood how to survive.

Elwood and Turner are foil characters.  Elwood is an idealistic young man who greatly admires Martin Luther King Jr.  He wants to maintain a sense of dignity above all else:  “There are big forces that want to keep the Negro down, like Jim Crow, and there are small forces that want to keep you down, like other people, and in the face of all those things, the big ones and the smaller ones, you have to stand up straight and maintain your sense of who you are.”  Because he believes in and works for justice, he calls out petty thieves and defends victims of bullying:  “If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest.  That’s how he saw it, how he’d always seen things.”

Turner, on the other hand, is very street-smart.  He knows how the world works and advises Elwood to do whatever it takes to survive:  “you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course.”  He is sceptical, even about the civil rights movement:  “you can march and wave signs around and change a law if you convinced enough white people.  In Tampa, Turner saw the college kids with their nice shirts and ties sit in at the Woolworths.  He had to work, but they were out protesting.  And it happened – they opened the counter.  Turner didn’t have the money to eat there either way.  You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.”

Nickel Academy serves as a microcosm of the outside world:  “’In here and out there are the same.’”  The arbitrariness of arrests and punishments is emphasized:  “no one had ever seen [Nickel’s handbook of rules of conduct] despite its constant invocations by the staff.  Like justice, it existed in theory.”  Racism is sanctioned because it benefits whites; Nickel boys, for example, perform odd jobs for whites in the community, and merchants sell food that was designated for the black boys at the school.

Whitehead is at pains to emphasize how the treatment of the boys is just part of the racism that has plagued the country:  “Their daddies taught them how to keep a slave in line, passed down this brutal heirloom.  Take him away from his family, whip him until all he remembers is the whip, chain him up so all he knows is chains.  A term in an iron sweatbox, cooking his brains in the sun, had a way of bringing a buck around, and so did a dark cell, a room aloft in darkness, outside time.  After the Civil War . . . the white sons remembered the family lore. . . . The Florida Industrial School for Boys wasn’t in operation six months before they converted the third-floor storage closets into solitary confinement. . . . The dark cells remained in use even after two locked-up boys died in the fire of ’21.  The sons held the old ways close.  The state outlawed dark cells and sweatboxes in juvenile facilities . . . But the rooms waited, blank and still airless.  They waited for wayward boys in need of an attitude adjustment.  They wait still, as long as the sons – and the sons of those sons – remember.”

The above quotation illustrates my problem with the novel:  it often reads like a non-fictional account with a journalistic tone.  (The author acknowledges that the story is heavily based on the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida.)  Third-person narration is used and that distances the reader from the characters.  Certainly, the history lesson I quoted above emphasizes the feelings of the writer as opposed to the feelings of the young boys.  The horrors they experience are seen but not felt as compellingly.  It is impossible not to feel moral outrage, but a strong emotional connection is missing. 

There is no doubt that the book tells an important story.  Considering the treatment blacks still receive from the police and the criminal justice system, the book is very timely.  I just wish that the tone were less flat and that there was more showing and less telling.   

Review of 10 MINUTES 38 SECONDS IN THIS STRANGE WORLD by Elif Shafak

3 Stars

The novel is set in 1990 in Istanbul.  Tequila Leila, a 43-year-old sex worker, is “inside a metal rubbish bin with rusty handles and flaking paint.”  Her heart has stopped beating and her brain is slowly shutting down.  In the ten minutes during which her brain continues to function, she flashes back to her early life in eastern Turkey.  Interspersed with these vignettes which explain how Leyla Akarsu came to be a prostitute are the back stories of the five friends who comprise Leila’s surrogate family.

The first part of the novel which outlines Leila’s life from birth to death is a great read.  We see a child/ young girl who has few options.  Her father becomes increasingly religious and he restricts the movements of his wives and his daughter; he expects the women in his household to be silent and docile.  After being sexually abused by a relative, her fate seems sealed, especially when she refuses to be the obedient daughter her family expects.  

Leila’s five friends are all social outcasts whose lives show the treatment received by the marginalized.  Among these friends are an illegal immigrant, a dwarf, and a transfemale.  All are drawn to Istanbul, but none are greeted with open arms.  The book does not paint a positive picture of humans:  “No one should try to philosophize on the nature of humanity until they had worked in a public toilet for a couple of weeks and seen the things that people did, simply because they could.” 

The second part of the book was a major letdown.  Leila’s five friends set out to make sure that she has a proper burial and is not left in the Cemetery of the Companionless.  This section, full of slapstick, descends into farce.  Their devotion to their friend is commendable but some of the behaviour is totally ridiculous.  This section left me wishing that the author had ended the book at the end of the first part with its perfect last sentence:  “They never failed to recognize a sad woman when they saw one.”

Shafak is known as an advocate for the rights of women, minorities, and LGBT people.  In this novel she also draws attention to sexual violence against women and children, hoping to draw attention to the problem and encourage the Turkish government to take action.  Unfortunately, the government is investigating writers who write about difficult subjects.  That fact alone means her book should be read. 

Review of FIVE WIVES by Joan Thomas

4 Stars

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the impact of that devastation on human life on earth have recently been in the news.  Five Wives examines the devastating impact of missionary zeal on the people living in the Amazon.

The novel is based on Operation Auca, the mission of a group of American Christian evangelists in the mid-1950s.  Their aim was to convert the Waorani, an isolated Indigenous people living in Ecuadorian Amazonia.  Five male missionaries decided to make contact and were killed.  Among evangelical Christians, the five men were seen as martyred heroes.

The focus of the book is the wives of the missionaries, especially Marj Saint and Betty Elliot, and Rachel Saint, the sister of the team’s pilot.  We learn considerable background:  how Marj and Betty met their husbands, how Rachel came to be involved in the mission, how the women reacted to the deaths of the men.  There is also a contemporary subplot involving Abby, the granddaughter of both Marj and Betty.  Abby is not proud of her family’s legacy because of how they “’went to someone else’s country and said to people, your ways are wicked, our ways are good’” (31).

There is a long cast of characters so it is occasionally difficult to remember who is married to whom.  A chart at the beginning of the book would definitely have been helpful.  Fortunately, the major characters are sufficiently developed that identification becomes easier.

Initially the women are subservient to their husbands.  Women aren’t even allowed to sing aloud in church.  When the men and their wives have a meeting to discuss making contact with the Waorani, Marj understands, “This is not a meeting to discuss the risks and vote yes or no; this is a meeting to brief the girls.  The plan is glorious and complete, it’s an extravagant bird in full flight” (185).  The women are expected to accept the plan, even if they disagree and think the men are being hasty.  The men think only of the glory that awaits if they succeed and give little consideration to the consequences for their families should they fail.  After the men are killed, the women must decide for themselves if they should continue to be involved in the mission.

What amazed me is the single-mindedness of some of the missionaries.  They believe that God is behind all events and that even the simplest of things can be God’s message which must be interpreted.  Their faith leads to a form of blindness because events which most people would see as warnings are viewed as positive signs from God.  When God seems to be ignoring her, one of the wives concludes that “God had a new contract with her, the contract of silence” (331).  When the missionaries are killed, Betty views the killing of the men as “’a marvellous indication of God’s love and purpose.  It seems clear that God has moved a step closer to redeeming the Auca’” (278).

There is an element of blindness and hubris in the missionaries’ belief in the superiority of Christianity which is even seen in the name they give the Waorani; they call them Auca, a pejorative name meaning “savage.”  Non-Christian cultures are seen as valueless:  “They always talked of how they would change the Indians, what they would bring to the Indians, but they didn’t think of what the Indians would bring to them” (340).  More than one person on the mission wears a “breastplate of righteousness” (315).

Contact annihilates the Waorani and their culture.  Exposure to disease leads to deaths.  The tribe is restricted to a protectorate (reservation) comprising 8 percent of Waorani land.  That land, oil companies are free to exploit so one Waorani says, “’Thirteen days of oil for America ruined Waorani lands’” (350).  It is only after Waorani culture has been virtually destroyed that Abby learns about “The hunting taboos that protect certain animals.  The songs celebrating the bounty of the forest.  The way individuals from clans far away are recognized by their footprints in river clay.  The warfare rituals, the sharing rituals” (372).  There is such irony in a Bible finally being translated into the Waorani language, “the fulfillment of a dream cherished by three generations of Operation Auca families” (357), because by then only a few elders speak the language and not many of them can read.

The author shows different approaches to Christianization.  Betty, for example, asks, “Was it possible to reach people’s souls, and turn them over to Christ, and leave the people otherwise as they were?” and has “a lot of ideas about accommodating the gospel to native ways” (350).  Rachel, on the other hand, is totally unbending; she is determined to break their itinerant lifestyle.  She wants the Waorani to raise beef cattle so they will give up eating wild meat:  “’And anyway, if they live in one place, the game is going to peter out pretty shortly’” (325)! 

What is amazing is that the author manages to arouse sympathy and antipathy for both women.  Betty is an intelligent woman who questions the way Christian missions operate yet still has “faith that terrible and even bizarre tragedies are planned and carried out by God’” (15).  Rachel is a bully who forces the Waorani to live as she sees fit; even her nephew recognizes that the Waorani needed protection from her (350).  Yet this same woman raised five boys while she was just a girl herself and had her heart broken twice (130 – 131).  The flawed and layered characters are a wonderful element in the book.

 

The son of one of the missionaries realizes “that his family’s story always sounds better in the US.  You tell it there and people are moved to tears” (352).  My hope is that people are indeed moved to tears but not just because five men died; the impact of missionary zeal on the Waorani left me feeling devastated and reflecting on the treatment our Indigenous people received.

This book is so timely, perhaps influencing people to think more about First Nations reconciliation.  I understand why the novel won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.

Review of END OF WATCH by Stephen King

2 Stars

Sometimes I wish I were less of a Type A personality.  Because I had listened to the first two books in the Bill Hodges trilogy, I just had to listen to the last instalment, even though I was not particularly impressed with Stephen King’s foray into detective fiction.  I wish I had walked away.

The book begins with Bill and Holly being told about a suspicious murder-suicide case linked to Brady Hartsfield, the Mercedes killer.  The woman who was murdered was one of Hartsfield’s victims in Mr. Mercedes; she was supposedly killed by her own mother who then committed suicide.  Brady had a fascination with suicide and in the past encouraged others to end their lives, so Holly thinks of him as a suicide architect and wonders whether Brady might have a connection to this case. 

The problem is that Brady suffered a traumatic brain injury and is unable to leave the hospital where he has been for years.  Since this is a Stephen King novel, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Brady has acquired supernatural abilities; telekinesis and mind control.  He is so adept that he can hijack the bodies of others to do his bidding and even destroy someone’s consciousness and replace it with his own.  Brady is also able to convert a child’s game on a cheap game console into a brainwashing program that hypnotizes people into committing suicide.

Can Bill and Holly and Jerome figure out what is happening and put a stop to Brady’s dastardly plan?  Yikes!  It’s as if King gave up on writing a detective thriller and returned to the supernatural/horror genre he is best known for. 

Besides requiring readers to accept paranormal abilities, King also expects readers to ignore so many other flaws.  As in the previous books, Bill, though he is a retired police detective, continues to hide critical evidence for law enforcement.  Then he and Holly set off to a remote location in a snowstorm for what can only be called a suicidal confrontation.  The climactic scene is over the top in terms of gore and in terms of how much physical injury people are able to survive.  It’s like watching a Rambo movie.

A friend had suggested I give Stephen King’s detective fiction a try since I was not impressed by his other fiction.  Well, I read all three of King’s crime novels and am now going to walk away.  I would not recommend them and certainly hope that King, considering the end of this trilogy, won’t attempt a Pete Huntley trilogy. 

Review of RABBITS FOR FOOD by Binnie Kirshenbaum (New Release)

4 Stars

Forty-three year old Bunny has suffered from depression virtually her entire life.  During a New Year’s Eve dinner with friends, she has a serious psychotic episode and is hospitalized.  The novel focuses on her time on a psychiatric ward where she encounters others suffering with mental illness.  Bunny (and, to some extent, her husband Albie) must make decisions concerning her treatment.

The book has a third-person narrator, but there are also first-person sections where Bunny writes short pieces based on writing prompts like “a shoebox” and “a business meeting” and “a pair” and “a hat”.  Bunny often uses these creative writing prompts to describe events from her past so they help to develop her character.  It is in one of these 300-word pieces that we learn about what happened to Bunny’s best friend, an event that has had a major impact on Bunny. 

This is not an action-packed narrative; it is a sensitive portrayal of chronic depression.  Bunny has tried different therapists and various drugs and drug combinations to little effect.  She feels misunderstood because few people know what it’s like to be her and “what it’s like not to be taken seriously, having no idea how it is to feel ashamed of who you are.”

Some suggestions as to contributing causes of depression are mentioned, though it is repeated that “Despair can’t be monitored like blood pressure or measured in centimeters like a tumor”:  “It’s often genetic, this disposition of melancholy” and “It is all too apparent:  wounds never heal, but rather, in a torpid state deep inside the medial temporal lobe of the brain, grief waits for fresh release” and “a lack of attention that might well have been a contributing factor.  A contributing factor.  One.  One of many.  Because it’s never just one thing.”

Bunny describes herself as “a headache of a person who is not easy to like.” Living with a depressive would not be easy, but I found myself growing to like her.  I loved her insightful and sarcastic comments.  When an extended family member has a child and everyone carries on “as if the parents had actually done something extraordinary,” Bunny only says, “’The earthworm is impressive because it impregnates itself.’”  When people are excited that a child has begun to walk, Bunny comments “’I’d be excited if he were flying.  But walking? No.’”  When friends are “engaged in passionate discourse about balsamic vinegar,” she comments, “’Excuse me . . . but do any of you really give a shit?  I mean, you’re going on about balsamic vinegar like it matters.  Does it? . . . Does it really matter?’”  This is a perfect response to such a vapid conversation.  Even if one does not like Bunny, it is important to remember what she mentions at the end of the book:  “People who are not easy to like, they have feelings just like nice people do.”

I found myself feeling a great deal of sympathy for Bunny.  Her family does nothing to help her; her sisters want an explanation for her depression:  “Whatever the reason, they want to be assured that it was her own damn fault.”  She has experienced loss in her life.  She is in pain:  “Bunny’s pain has no place.  She hurts everywhere.  She hurts nowhere.  Everywhere and nowhere, hers is a ghostly pain, like that of a phantom limb.  Where there is nothing, there can be no relief.”  She engages in self-harm because “Only when she hits herself or pulls her hair or bends her finger back or bites the inside of her mouth can she experience the pleasure of pain found and pain released.  It is the only way to be rid of the pain that is Bunny.  She is the point of pain.”

The author has bravely written about the complex topic of mental illness.  Her protagonist may make people uncomfortable, but her pain is heart-wrenching.  This is a novel well worth reading for its insight into depression. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE FAMILY UPSTAIRS by Lisa Jewell (New Release)

3 Stars

The story is narrated from multiple perspectives and alternating timelines.  In the present, Libby Jones turns 25 and learns she has inherited the mansion in which her parents were found dead when she was an infant.  Also in the present, we are given the viewpoint of Lucy, a homeless woman with two children, living in France.  When she realizes that Baby has turned 25, she decides she must return to London.  The final narrator is Henry who explains the past - what happened in the mansion when people moved in with his family.

On the plus side, the book is a quick read.  The short chapters make it easy for the reader to put down the book and later pick up the narrative.

On the negative side, there is very little suspense.  There is mystery, a lot of unanswered questions, but an experienced reader will have no great difficulty figuring out what happened and who is who.  For me, the first real instance of suspense occurs in Chapter 39, well past the midway point of the book.  Obviously, I didn’t read the same book as the many people who have described the book as twisty.

What is annoying is the purposely vague narration.  Why does Lucy refer to the child found in the mansion as Baby?  Lucy of all people would know the child’s name.  Why does Lucy say “her name is fake” when it’s not?  Henry is obviously an unreliable narrator but his constant withholding of information becomes annoying after a while.  Even the title is misleading because though people do move into the mansion, they do not live separately from the household.  If they did, the plot would not develop as it does.

A major element that is missing is an explanation for Henry’s parents allowing six people to move into their home and take over their lives.  Because we do not have the perspective of the parents, I found their behaviour difficult to accept.  Can people be so naïve and blind?  A teenaged boy understands what is happening but adults don’t?

There is much that is unrealistic.  For years, people cannot be found and then they are all easily found?  How inept can police investigators be?  At least four deaths are never thoroughly investigated.  The ending is somewhat unbelievable and rather gimmicky.

The book is entertaining, but it’s not a thriller.  The mysteries unravel predictably and too conveniently. 

Note:  I received a digital galley of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of BROKEN MAN ON A HALIFAX PIER by Lesley Choyce (New Release)

3.5 Stars

I knew I’d like this novel from its title.  I just had to play my Stan Rogers CDs as I read. 

Charles Howard, 55, has lost virtually everything, including his job and savings, and is basically destitute with no prospects.  One foggy morning in Halifax, he meets Ramona Danforth, a retired actress with a generous trust fund.  They end up taking a drive to Stewart Harbour on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore, a fishing village to which Charles has not returned since his high school graduation.  During this visit, Charles makes discoveries which complicate his life.   

In many ways this is a love story between two middle-aged people.  Such a romance is inevitably more complex than a relationship between young people because each partner comes with baggage.  What is not always clear is why Charles and Ramona continue to stay together when very serious complications arise.  From the beginning they choose to stay and support each other.  Charles, for instance, has always had commitment issues:  “It fit the story of my life.  Get involved.  Make a commitment.  Then walk away.”  Ramona has also had difficulty committing to another:  “’Like I said, over and over, I would get close to someone and then suddenly just walk away.  It would always be that easy for me.’”  We are to believe that these people fall in love immediately and, despite their previous unwillingness to commit to another, they are now commit to the other even when very serious complications arise?

There are some sections of the novel that are humourous.  Rolf, who lives in a fishing shack next to the one Charles has inherited from his father, is the source of much of the humour.  The snappy banter between Charles and Ramona when they first meet also adds a light-hearted tone. 

I like books where the protagonist is dynamic.  That is definitely the case with Charles.  He sees himself as a “work in progress, a project undergoing repair.”  He learns about himself:  “I had cultivated a powerful ability to shut off my emotions.  A handy trick, I suppose, but I wondered now at what cost.”  He also realizes that “there was no such thing as a life without consequences.  Every little thing – or big thing – you do in life sends out ripples in the pond that keep getting wider and wider.”  Ramona is also dynamic; she learns to forgive. 

For me, the setting of the novel is part of its charm.  I’ve visited Nova Scotia several times and it remains one of my favourite places in Canada.  It is obvious that the author is very familiar with the province.  His descriptions left me tasting the salt of the Atlantic. 

The novel is very easy to read because of the writing style.  Though the book touches on some serious topics, it never bogs down.  Some events just seem inevitable; Brody’s story, for example, ends in the only way it could. 

I’ve learned that Lesley Choyce has written over 90 books.  Why have I not read him before?  I will certainly be checking out some of his other fiction. 

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.