Review of FREEFALL by Jessica Barry

2.5 Stars 

This was the book read for our latest book club meeting.  It was not one of our top choices and it is certainly not something I’d recommend to other readers or book clubs.

Allison Carpenter survives a plane crash in the Colorado Rockies.  The plane was piloted by Ben Gardner, her fiancé, but he dies in the accident.  Instead of waiting for rescue, Allison decides she must run because she is certain someone nefarious will be looking for her.  By the time authorities find the wreckage, fire has consumed it.  Though only the pilot’s body is found, authorities are convinced that Allison died.  In Owl’s Creek, Maine, Maggie is devastated by the news of her daughter’s death.  They had been estranged for the last two years and Maggie didn’t even know about Allison’s engagement to a wealthy pharmaceutical executive.  She has difficulty accepting her daughter’s death and begins researching her daughter’s life to learn as much as she can about her past two years. 

The novel is a quick read.  Short chapters alternate between Maggie and Allison.  The reader follows Allison’s struggle to survive during which she flashes back to her life over the last two years.  Conveniently, these flashbacks are in chronological order!  Maggie’s chapters show her actions after learning about her daughter’s fate; she too has flashbacks, mostly focused on the reasons for the estrangement. 

There are also a few brief sections from the point of view of the man who is pursuing Allison.  Though he is known only as The Man, he has almost superhuman abilities.  He knows exactly where to find the plane wreckage before authorities locate it and has no difficulty following Allison.  He even knows when someone assists her. 

And The Man’s behaviour is not the only thing that is unbelievable.  Allison’s survival is almost miraculous.  For example, she is supposedly injured quite badly with a gash on her left leg that goes “down to the bone,” yet she runs all night before applying rubbing alcohol to it?  Then there are the other illogical actions.  If you want to talk to someone, is the most logical option to simply hang around that person’s former workplace?  A person is killed in a motel room where the body would easily be found and there are no consequences?  The plot is shallow and full of predictable twists.  For instance, the first page includes such a description that gives such an obvious clue that the appearance of a person towards the end is not in the least unexpected.    

Allison’s predicament didn’t arouse my sympathy.  She just strikes me as vain and shallow.  She falls in love with Ben because he is handsome and rich.  Despite what her mother thinks, Allison seems to have few principles; those she has, she dispenses with to become Ben’s arm candy.  She lets herself be manipulated in such obvious ways.  I understand that the journey she undertakes is also a journey to find herself once again, but we are supposed to believe she lost herself so quickly?  Does she really believe she might be able to land a plane because she has seen Ben do it so often?!

There are elements that particularly irritated me.  Why, for instance, is everyone’s perfume or cologne described:  “There was a smell coming off him, something musky and citrusy” and “I could smell hair spray mixed with perfume. Shalimar” and “the faint traces of her perfume, bergamot and vanilla” and “that aftershave of his, a spicy musk undercut with the sharpness of citrus”?  What’s with the repetition that older people don’t understand technology:  “Most of my friends didn’t understand how the internet worked and only the most savvy had Facebook accounts”?  I dislike when novels rely on portraying police or other authorities as incompetent.  When Maggie is told that the coroner has declared Allison dead, she thinks, “It felt negligent to me, and reckless.  How could they declare my daughter dead without a single scrap of evidence?”  Exactly!  This would not happen.  And the author doesn't know that DNA analysis is used to identify bodies?  

The novel does have some depth in its exploration of a mother-daughter relationship and society’s expectations of females, but this is not sufficient to raise the quality of the novel for me.  There are just too many plot holes and too little verisimilitude. 

Review of THE SHOT by Sarah Sultoon

 4 Stars

Though set at the beginning of the 21^st century in London, South Asia, the Middle East, and Northeast Africa, this book is very topical especially because of the war in Ukraine. 

The book focuses on two characters who work for the same news organization based in London.  Samira (Sami) Nassar is a young, inexperienced graphics producer working the nightshift who aspires to become a field journalist.  Kris is the network’s star cameraman who has been to various combat zones.  Because Sami can speak some Arabic, she finds herself paired with Kris and sent to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan.  Sami quickly proves to have an instinct for stories which show the impact of war on ordinary people in the war-torn regions.  She sees first-hand the darkness of war but fails to see its impact on those with whom she works. 

Chapters alternate between Sami (first-person narration) and Kris (third-person narration).  The two are very different personalities.  Sami is idealistic, believing she can make a difference in the world by “giving voice to the voiceless, holding power to account, [and] shining a light into the darkness.”  Ambitious, she is anxious to prove herself.  Kris, the seasoned photojournalist, is cynical about what journalists can accomplish but finds himself unable to adjust to life away from combat zones.  Even after being injured, he yearns to return to conflict regions.  What Sami and Kris share are childhood traumas; though different in nature, these traumas become strong motivators which explain their choices. 

The novel is not an easy read because it depicts the horrors of war, especially its impact on civilians.  Bibi, Ahmed, and Yousra, three people Sami interviews, have stories of overwhelming loss which cannot but move the reader to tears.  But the book also focuses on the emotional damage suffered by war correspondents in the face of what they see and their helplessness to help the victims.  People can turn off the news, but Kris says, “’I can’t turn it off.  I can never fucking turn it off . . . I can’t even turn it down.’” 

The book suggests that the news industry is not always supportive of those who witness horrors while gathering news.  For example, journalists risk their lives to bring viewers images and stories of people’s suffering “only for the paymasters to look away when they brought home the evidence.”  Kris speaks of a tragedy he recorded:  “We told everyone about that, the world even screamed bloody murder, but nobody did a damn thing about it, not a one.  And the business made more money off my pictures than went to the relief effort.”  The author suggests that news companies want impactful stories without recognizing the cost to the people collecting those stories.  Since Sarah Sultoon is an award-winning journalist and international news executive at CNN with extensive experience in conflict zones, her perspective is enlightening. 

My interest never wavered.  The plot has considerable action and suspense.  Often I experienced a feeling that something was not right, but I didn’t always pay sufficient attention and so I was shocked by what is revealed near the end.  Of course, thinking back, I realize I shouldn’t have been because there are hints.  I think a re-reading would emphasize the author’s masterful subtlety. 

Promotional material for the book claims “You'll never look at a news report in the same way again.”  I agree.  When I look at war footage, I’ll be thinking of more victims than just those pictured.  This is a thought-provoking book which I highly recommend to book clubs because there is so much to discuss.  The book even ends with an invitation to the reader:  “But who is really to blame?  Where does the true fault lie?  You decide.  You’ve got all the facts now.”  I will be giving these questions more thought, but I do know for certain that this is one excellent book. 

Review of REMOTE SYMPATHY by Catherine Chidgey

 4 Stars

I picked up this book because it appeared on the 2022 Dublin Literary Award shortlist and the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist.  Set primarily in or near the Buchenwald concentration camp, the novel alternates among four narrators:  Dietrich Hahn, Greta Hahn, Dr. Lenard Weber, and Weimar citizens.    

SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn is the Chief Administrator of the camp; his story takes the form of taped interviews with an unknown person in 1954.  His wife Greta has ovarian cancer; her story takes the form of an imaginary diary kept during her husband's time at Buchenwald.  Dr. Lenard Weber is a part-Jewish doctor, the inventor of the Sympathetic Vitaliser for the treatment of cancer, who comes to treat Greta; his story takes the form of letters written in Frankfurt to his daughter Lotte in 1946.  Finally, there are chorus-like sections “From the Private Reflections of One Thousand Citizens of Weimar” which show the thoughts and reactions of the people living in the town around Buchenwald.

The book examines the human inclination to ignore evidence and lie to ourselves and others to avoid accepting the unacceptable.  Dietrich says, “People want to make us into monsters, but it’s easy to accuse someone else of atrocities to deflect attention from our own involvement – to salve your own conscience.”  Oh the irony:  he refuses to acknowledge his role in the suffering of camp inmates; he focuses on the stress of his job and his difficulties because of budget constraints.  He sees his depriving people of basic necessities as a sign of his doing a good job.  Because he is “the man responsible for those savings . . . I deserved a small percentage.  That was only fair” so he steals gold teeth fillings.  He further justifies his actions and casts aspersions on others:  “every single officer at Buchenwald skimmed off his share. . . . You see the corruption I was up against.  How impossible it was to run a decent sort of place.  My goodness, I wasn’t taking food out of anyone’s mouth.”  When atrocities are brought to his attention, he says, “Before my time, and not my area – I was merely in supplies” and “I was merely in administration.”  He avoids looking at things that might make him uncomfortable:  “like all the other officers, I preferred not to have to visit the compound unnecessarily; you risked seeing something.”  Everyone but he is to blame:  “As far as I was aware, for instance, every prisoner had his own bed and his own bedding; if Wolff shoved two or three inmates in together, that was out of my control.”  Even the victims are to blame:  “most inmate deaths weren’t due to mistreatment on the part of our men but the result of disputes amongst themselves, or the diseases they brought with them into camp, or indeed the scheming by the illegal communist underground to do away with undesirables.”

Greta also ignores what is going on around her.  She doesn’t ask questions about Josef, a prisoner who serves as her domestic.  She accepts that she can have whatever she wants made by skilled workers at the camp and takes pride in having “the finest craftsmen in Europe” available to her.  It is obvious that she may have some idea of what her husband does because she avoids walking near the camp.  She visits the Buchenwald zoo where she sees bears:  “I could see shreds of raw meat, bits of bone – the remains of their dinner, I supposed, but I decided not to look too closely.”  She initially accepts the explanation that the shrieks she hears are made by peacocks.  Only later does she start asking questions:  “are the cries of peacocks always the cries of peacocks?”   

Dr. Weber tries to convince himself and others that his machine does cure cancer though there is no scientific evidence that it does.  Of course, admitting that his machine is inefficacious could mean that Dietrich would have no reason to protect him.  Just as Dietrich refuses to believe that Greta is getting worse, Dr. Weber keeps trying to convince the Hahns and himself that she is improving.  Despite what the doctor sees in the camp, he refuses to think that his wife and daughter, who were deported to another camp, could be dead. 

The citizens of Weimar hear strange noises, smell smoke, and see signs of camp inmates being mistreated, yet refuse to admit what is happening at Buchenwald.  When one man is seen with a gash in need of stitches, they see this as “proof they were unruly criminals, Bolshevik sub-humans who couldn’t resist violent dust-ups amongst themselves.  It was proof they were in the right place.”  When they hear rumours of beatings, torture, starvation, and executions, they are dismissed because there have been no newspaper reports.  When Buchenwald is liberated by Americans and the townspeople are shown evidence of what happened in the camp, the citizens do not believe:  “This was not real.  The figure swinging from the gallows was a dummy filled with straw.  Those were animal bones in the oven.  And there must have been an epidemic; something that had spread so quickly it couldn’t be contained.  Dreadful, of course, but nobody’s fault.”  The townspeople do what Dr. Weber describes:  “’Maybe you stop noticing after a while.  Like a  . . . like a cracked windowpane that you always mean to fix but never do, until you just don’t see it interfering with the view any more.’” 

This book should inspire us all to ask some questions of ourselves:  To what am I turning a blind eye?  What lies am I telling myself?  What we walk past is what we tolerate.  Self-deception may make us feel better, but it doesn't make us innocent.

Review of BLACK CAKE by Charmaine Wilkerson

 3.5 Stars

This audiobook has been keeping me entertained on walks for the last few weeks. 

In 2018 in southern California, Eleanor Bennett has just died, leaving her adult children (son Byron and daughter Benny) a lengthy audio recording.  The estranged siblings get to hear long-buried family secrets; their mother begins her story in the 1960s on an unnamed Caribbean island.  But the girl at the centre of her story is not Eleanor but Coventina Lyncook, a young long-distance swimmer living with her Chinese father.  Eleanor’s recording narrates a story which connects Coventina and Eleanor and explains what happened to them over the last 50 years.  Byron and Benny come to realize how little they really knew about their parents.  Just as their mother’s black cake incorporates ingredients from around the world, they find connections and heritage in various places.

It is the story in the past that held my interest.  In the present time, Byron and Benny are both self-centred and immature.  Neither is communicative so both experience relationship problems.  The suggestion seems to be that their secretiveness is an inheritance their parents unwittingly passed to their children, but, unfortunately, this trait makes them seem selfish and not sympathetic.  I didn’t really care what happened to them.

This is a family saga but it has quite a few elements of a soap opera:  hidden/stolen identities, an undying romance, a long-lost child, a murder mystery, implausible escapes, and coincidental meetings.  Unlike a soap opera, however, the novel must come to an end.  That ending involves too much tying up of loose ends; characters who appear only in the beginning re-appear, and we even learn about the fate of Coventina’s mother who had abandoned her family when her daughter was a child. 

I know I’m not the only reader to mention another problem:  the number of social issues that are mentioned.  Domestic violence, racism, sexual identity, colonialism, sexual assault, police brutality, employment discrimination, and environmentalism are just some of the topics that are addressed.  Unfortunately, because the author seems to have had a checklist of issues, none are examined in any depth. 

The book offers several lessons.  One is that we all probably don’t know our parents as well as we should:  what sacrifices they made and what hardships they endured.  Another is that untold backstories “shape people’s lives, both when they are withheld and when they are revealed.”  And though we can’t choose what we inherit, we need not let our inheritances define us:  we can choose who we become.  The novel also had me thinking about the food that connects me to my past. 

This is not a literary masterpiece but is definitely entertaining and was a wonderful companion on morning walks.

Review of AMONG THE HEDGES by Sara Mesa

 4 Stars

I enjoy reading books by authors from around the world, though that means I’m restricted to those that have been translated into English.  Among the Hedges is my first encounter with its Spanish writer; I will definitely be looking for more of her work. 

Two people form a friendship, one which would be viewed with suspicion were it not kept secret.  Soon is an awkward 13-year-old girl who skips school and spends her days hidden by hedges in a park.  She meets a 54-year-old man whom she names Old Man.  Both are outsiders looking to be seen, understood, and loved.   Soon is wary at first but comes to see Old Man as harmless, kind, and honest though she knows very little about him.  But societal judgments and prejudices intervene because they are “an unacceptable, illogical pair.”

Soon is an outsider.  She doesn’t fit in at school where she is the target of teasing.  Her “real hangups” are “her plainness, the zits on her arms and her marshmallow body.”  She wants to be left alone because she doesn’t feel comfortable in groups.  Because her older brother has left to pursue studies, she also feels abandoned.  She is uncertain about her identity and place, and the onset of her sexuality leaves her uneasy.  Her life is so boring that when she writes in a diary, she embellishes:  “Recording the life she leads would be very boring” so she uses her imagination.  She knows that were she and Old Man seen together, “they would inevitably draw attention,” but the thought that people would speculate about the nature of their relationship “produces a strange thrill in her – the thrill of transgression.”  When her rebellion, her truancy, and her friendship with Old Man prove to be “unproductive,” she decides to “force a denouement” because “something has to happen”:   “she needs a story to tell.”  The consequences are not unexpected.

Old Man is a damaged but gentle soul.  His behaviour and speech patterns are odd.  He is obsessed with birds and the music of Nina Simone.  He knows that he can be annoying but becomes upset when people think “he’s bad and strange.”  Like Soon, he prefers to be alone.  Soon describes him as “methodical and organized” though “he doesn’t connect facts the way other people would, doesn’t measure cause and effect in the same way.  He considers things that would surprise others to be normal, and also the opposite, he’s surprised by normal things.”  He reveals little about himself; Soon learns “incidental tidbits” like he has spent time in a hospital but now lives alone though he doesn’t work:  “Faced with the slightest pang of discomfort or pain, Old Man always changes the subject.”

One person describes the two friends as “asymmetrical” and that’s a perfect description for them; neither navigates through society with ease.  So the book asks us to consider our attitudes to people who behave differently:  “The world would have to turn upside down for him not to stand out with his old-fashioned suit, his little glasses, his unkempt mustache, his arhythmical diction, and the damp, different gaze of the unbalanced.”  Old Man describes society’s need to require that people think and behave in acceptable ways:  “we’re like stuffed chickens!  They cut us open and empty us out and then fill us up with whatever they think is better, and into the oven we go!  Cooked to psychology’s order!” 

The book also asks us to consider what relationships are acceptable:  “When does a stranger achieve the category of potential friend, and when does he stay, merely, a potential danger?  Clearly, Old Man doesn’t fit in the category of friends that her environment wants her to have; rather, he’s dangerously close to the category of maniac or pedophile, but only because of his age and the fact that he doesn’t go to her school.” 

In many ways, this is not a comfortable read.  Throughout, the reader is in a state of anxiousness as s/he anticipates what will happen when the relationship inevitably comes to public notice.  The ending is both poignant and unsettling.  I was reminded of A Patch of Blue by Elizabeth Kata, another book about an unacceptable relationship.  Both novels are short but impactful.

Review of MY FACE IN THE LIGHT by Martha Schabas (New Release)

 3 Stars

This book just wasn’t for me.  I appreciate characters capable of self-reflection, but reading a novel about a character’s obsessive introspections is tedious.

Justine, nearing her 30^th birthday, is a fairly successful actress living in Toronto with her husband Elias.  While in England she sabotages an audition and decides that she is going to give up acting.  When a man on a train offers her a business opportunity that would allow her to stay in London, she eventually decides to abandon her life in Toronto though she doesn’t really know what she is looking for.  Living in London, she spends time reflecting on growing up with her artist mother and her marriage to Elias while meeting people who are also searching for their place in the world. 

Justine is experiencing an identity crisis.  She wonders whether she has ever lived authentically.  She sees herself as “an outsider dropped into a system that had been desired and put together by someone else.  That if I scratched the surface of my life, my nail would pierce a flimsy laminate and poke out the other end.”  She thinks, “It seemed equally implausible that I’d ever move through my life with the conviction that I was moving the right way and that my whole self was moving with me, that I wasn’t, unwittingly, leaving crucial bits behind.”  Like a character in a novel, “’She keeps thinking she’s just one move away from living in the right place.’”  She believes she has been acting, not living:  “I’d let acting wriggle its way into my life so insidiously and so completely that parts of my life and parts of my acting had become indistinguishable from each other.”  In essence, she feels like a “pitiable fraud.”

She definitely feels that her life has been designed by others:  “my whole existence was distracted, that nothing seemed of my own design.”  Certainly, it is her mother that steered her into an acting career.  Justine even hates that Elias gave her boots he chose for her rather than gifting her ones she had loved.  She is so focused on wanting to make decisions for herself that she resents a cosmetics saleswoman using the pronoun we and wants to do something to “force this woman to be herself”!  That woman makes a suggestion about a lipstick colour, but though it is flattering, Justine is “unable to let her win” and refuses to buy it.  Though we’ve all probably wanted to escape our lives at some point, Justine’s behaviour often comes across as petty and petulant.

Rachel, Justine’s mother, is an artist who has certainly scarred her daughter.  To say that she is non-maternal would be an understatement.  She is self-centred, impulsive, sexual, needy, and manipulative.  Her treatment of her daughter and others in her life is difficult to excuse.  Justine’s description of her mother as a “sick woman” is spot-on. 

Justine admits that “it seemed to take me more time to process the world and figure out how I felt about it” so the sojourn to London is an attempt to give herself that time, “cracking old habits, clearing out my closet and figuring out what to keep and what to discard.”  It does, however, take her an inordinate amount of time to realize that some relationships may seem “all-consuming for a time but [are] ultimately doomed to fail”:  something may seem “tragic and insurmountable in the short term” but sometimes “There is nothing to be done” except move on.  I kept wanting her to just get over herself and accept that “her suffering was not hers alone but one of many variations on a universal theme.”  Justine’s actions at the end suggest that she has decided what is important and what to leave behind.

Normally, I enjoy reading interpretive literature that focuses on journeys of self-discovery, but this one just didn’t appeal.  Perhaps the almost-total lack of action, the near-constant self-analysis, and the glacial pace are to blame.  Perhaps it’s my stage in life which makes me impatient with such intense self-focus.  Justine does indeed need “something acerbic and fresh that would knock [her] out of [her] head.”  It is not a bad book, but it had limited appeal to me.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.  Quotations may not be exactly as they appear in the final copy.

Review of A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN by Marina Lewycka

 3.5 Stars

Because of recent events in the Ukraine, I found myself looking for Ukrainian fiction translated into English.  My search uncovered this book by a British novelist of Ukrainian background.  Its quirky title appealed, and I discovered it appeared on the 2005 Booker Prize longlist and Orange Prize shortlist. 

The novel is narrated by Nadia whose 84-year-old widowed father Nikolai has fallen in love with Valentina, a 36-year-old Ukrainian divorcee.  Nadia has been estranged from her older sister Vera but the two join forces to stop the marriage and, when that doesn’t work, to have Valentina deported.  Nikolai is infatuated with the glamorous woman with “superior breasts,” but they believe Valentina has married Nikolai for the money she believes he has, so she can remain in Britain, and so her teenaged son can receive a good education.  The sisters’ visits to their family home show Valentina physically and psychologically abusing Nikolai who finds comfort in writing his history of tractors, passages from which are interspersed throughout the narrative. 

Many reviewers have commented on the humour in the book.  There is humour:  Nikolai describes his marriage to Valentina as a matter of balance, like finding the correct ratio between lift and drag in the design of an aircraft wing, and Nadia comments that Valentina “’has plenty of uplift but she’s a bit of a drag.’”  But I didn’t find the book side-splittingly hilarious because of the serious overtones.  There is some comedy in Nikolai’s being besotted with a much-younger woman, but Valentina’s treatment of Nikolai can only be called elder abuse.  The arrival of Valentina also brings “to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.”  These memories of life in Ukraine in the first half of the 20^th century are not in any way humourous.  I think one of Nadia’s comments is apropos:  “I had thought this story was going to be a knockabout farce, but now I see it is developing into a knockabout tragedy.”

Nikolai arrived in England after World War II as a refugee.  His memories of life in Ukraine include several events in Ukraine’s history:  Stalin’s purges, the Holodomor, Babi Yar, and Nazi occupation.  There is not a great deal of detail but sufficient to convey the nature of each catastrophe and to inspire readers to seek further information in non-fiction sources.  Certainly, one becomes aware of the complicated relationship between Ukraine and Russia.  Through the course of the novel, Nadia learns more about her parents’ history and comes to understand how they were shaped by history and how Vera’s pessimistic views of people’s natures originated in her experiences as a War Baby. 

What is impressive about the characterization is that though none of the main characters are likeable, they do arouse some sympathy.  For instance, Vera describes Valentina as “’a tart.  And a criminal.  But still, I had to admire her.’”  Nadia admits that Valentina is a complex person:  “slaving long low-wage shifts in the nursing home, behind the bar at the Imperial Hotel, toiling in my father’s bedroom.  Yes, she is greedy, predatory, outrageous, but she is a victim too.  A source of cheap labour.”  Valentina resorts to criminal activity to get comfort and security for her son but “’Women have always gone to extremes for their children. . . . Wouldn’t Mother have done the same for us, Vera?  If we were desperate?  If there was no other way?’” 

Nikolai has not always behaved admirably in the past, but Nadia comes to realize that he did what was necessary to survive.  Her father can be seen as a dirty old man, but it is impossible to ignore his loneliness and desire for happiness:  “I had thought there was a happy story to tell about my parents’ life, a tale of triumph over tragedy, of love overcoming impossible odds, but now I see that there are only fleeting moments of happiness, to be seized and celebrated before they slip away.”

When newscasts bring only catastrophic news from Ukraine, there are elements in this book that resonated.  I see Ukrainian refugees crossing into Poland at Przemysl where Nikolai and his family crossed as well.  I see the Ukrainian flag everywhere:  “two oblongs of colour, blue over yellow – yellow for the cornfields, blue for the sky.”  Were Nikolai to add another chapter to his book, he’d undoubtedly write about ploughshares being turned into swords again as war refugees once again flee Ukraine.  Please let there be more Peacetime Babies than War Babies.

Though it may be advertised as a comic book, this novel shows how history affects people.

Review of YOUNG MUNGO by Douglas Stuart (New Release)

 4.5 Stars

I read Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain, which won the 2020 Booker Prize, and was left in awe so I was excited to receive an advance reading copy of Stuart’s second novel.  Young Mungo is no less stunning and impactful.

The novel has two interwoven plot lines but both focus on Mungo Hamilton, a fifteen-year-old living in East End Glasgow in the 1990s.  In one plot line, Mungo is on a weekend fishing trip to an isolated loch with two men (Gallowgate and St. Christopher) his mother (Mo-Maw) met at an AA meeting.  The trip is intended to toughen him up; Mo-Maw says, “’That’s what ah wanted you to do this for.  Masculine  pursuits.  It’ll make a man out of ye.’”  From the beginning Mungo is not entirely comfortable; for example, Gallowgate means to give a friendly smile “but it was without warmth, and Mungo thought he saw a flash of menace cross his thin lips.” 

The second storyline shows Mungo’s family life and describes the events leading up to the fishing trip.  Mungo’s father is absent and his mother is neglectful.  Mo-Maw is away from home for long periods of time as she looks for a man to care for her; when she is at home, she drinks.  Hamish, Mungo’s older brother, lives with the 15-year-old mother of his daughter; he is the leader of a Protestant gang involved in criminal activities and violence against Catholics.  It is Jodie, Mungo’s older sister, who acts as a surrogate mother and looks after Mungo as best she can.

Mungo is a lonely, sensitive soul living in an environment where he does not fit in, surrounded as he is by toxic masculinity and sectarian violence.  He meets James, a kindred spirit.  They dream of finding somewhere they belong, but they must keep their relationship a secret because homosexuality is totally unacceptable and punishable by ostracism and violence.  To complicate matters, James is Catholic, and Mungo is expected to hate Catholics. 

Mungo is named after St. Kentigern, the patron saint of Glasgow.  He is aptly named.  He is a shy, gentle, kind person capable of “big, big love.”  He is full of self-loathing; he has been described by various people as “Idiot.  Weakling.  Liar.  Poofter.  Coward.  Pimp.  Bigot” so he has come to think of himself as unworthy.  He believes that he is to blame whenever things go wrong around him, going so far as to think of himself as “the ruiner of all good things.”  Despite his mother’s selfishness and neglect, he remains steadfast in his love for her:  “I don’t blame her.  I just try to love her.’” 

The relationship between Mungo and Mo-Maw is similar to the mother-son relationship in Shuggie Bain.  Mo-Maw, however, is not as sympathetic as Agnes.  Jodie describes how important Mungo is to his mother:  Mungo “was Mo-Maw’s youngest son, but he was also her confidant, her lady’s maid, and errand boy.  He was her one flattering mirror, and her teenage diary, her electric blanket, her doormat.  He was her best pal, the dog she hardly walked, and her greatest romance.  He was her cheer on a dreich morning, the only laughter in her audience. . . . her mother’s minor moon, her warmest sun, and at the exact same time, a tiny satellite that she had forgotten about.  He would orbit her for an eternity, even as she, and then he, broke into bits.”  Yet this woman abandons him, leaving home for weeks without letting him know where she is so he imagines she may be dead.  And she sends him on a fishing trip with two men she has met once at an AA meeting and doesn’t even know exactly where they’re taking her son.

The novel examines homophobia in an intolerant culture:  “There was nothing more shameful than being a poofter; powerless, soft as a woman.”  A man who rapes another man objects to being labeled a homosexual:  “’Call me that again an’ ah’ll knock ye out.’”  James’ father will let his son live at home only if he has a girlfriend.  Mo-Maw exhibits the same attitude.  Because Mungo has never had a girlfriend, Mo-Maw becomes concerned:  “Hamish had gotten a girl-child pregnant and she hadn’t ruffled a feather.  But now she stared into his eyes and she looked genuinely worried.”  A neighbour is a bachelor, a euphemism for homosexual, and after Mungo has shown him neighbourly friendliness, Mo-Maw lashes out, “’Stay away frae him, Mungo.  Dae ye hear?  Ah’ll be damned if ah raise a bachelor.’”  She sends her youngest son with two virtual strangers, one of whom tells Mungo that their task is to “Make a man out of you yet.’” 

Hamish also becomes obsessed with Mungo’s inability to conform to traditional cultural masculine norms.  Men are expected to suppress tender emotions (“It was foolish to say something sweet that the scheme could use against you later”) so they become, “knotted-up men” who resort to drinking away their sorrows and beating their wives because anger and pride are the only acceptable masculine emotions that can be expressed.  When Hamish’s gang steals and vandalizes a business, he insists Mungo attend, but Mungo’s concern for an injured gang member results in drawing police attention and Hamish’s ire:  “’The polis have been going door to door asking after us.  They want to know who’s been robbin’ the builders.  It’s only a matter of time afore some spiteful auld cunt grasses, and all because you couldnae man up.’”  Hamish also wants Mungo to be aggressive, threatening violence and worse if Mungo does not show up for a planned fight against a Catholic gang.  The losing gang members may retreat but they continue “bragging of their glories, screaming threats of retaliation . . . [keeping] their chests puffed out until they could be safe in their mammies’ arms again.”

The imagery is amazing:  “The man’s voice had a raspy quality, like he had a throatful of dry toast” and “he had ribs like the hull of an upturned boat” and “he was smacking his lips in agitation like a woman who couldn’t believe the price of milk nowadays” and “In their nylon tracksuits [the gang members] looked like so many plastic bags all stuffed together; a flammable noisy jumble of colour-blocking and sponsorship logos.”

The book includes a lot of working-class Scottish slang so readers will encounter words like cagoule, dreich, bothy, gallus, stour, haar, scunner, sleekit, boak, twitcher, ghillie, and uisge beatha.

This novel is not for the faint of heart; it is a raw and gritty, harrowing read.  Readers need to be prepared for brutal violence of many types.  I experienced almost overwhelming anger and sadness.  The only real scenes of tenderness and peace are those between James and Mungo when they find sanctuary from the violence of their daily lives in each other.  The sense of foreboding is so overpowering that I found myself having to take short breaks from reading. 

This is one of the most beautifully written heart-breaking books I’ve ever read.

Review of FIFTY WORDS FOR RAIN by Asha Lemmie

 2.5 Stars

I picked up this novel because its subject sounded so interesting:  the coming-of-age of a biracial girl in post-war Japan.  Unfortunately, the book was a disappointment.

When Nori Kamiza is 8 years old, her mother abandons her to the care of her grandparents.  What she receives is not tender loving care; she is kept hidden in the attic and given daily painful scrubs to lighten her skin and erase evidence of her African-American father.  Then the arrival of her half-brother Akira brings positive change because he becomes Nori’s friend and makes efforts to make her life easier.  However, Lady Yuko, Nori’s grandmother, has different plans for her granddaughter.  As a cousin to the emperor, she values family honour above all else, and Nori’s illegitimacy and skin colour are a disgrace and a threat to their imperial status.

This book belongs to the genre known as misery porn because one misery follows another relentlessly.  Nori experiences psychological and physical abuse, abandonment, loss, racism, and sexual exploitation – and that’s far from a complete list of calamities.  The back-to-back, over-the-top tragedies are reminiscent of those found in melodramatic soap operas.  What are intended to be surprises are not such if the reader is familiar with the plot lines of soap operas. 

The relationship between Nori and Akira does not ring true.  When he arrives to live with his grandparents, Akira is 15 years old.  Nori’s interest in him is understandable because she has spent two years locked in an attic with virtually no outside contact, but would a teenage boy who has a full life take such interest in a half-sister who is five years younger?  What also bothered me is that the relationship borders on the incestuous.  Nori’s nanny even thinks that her charge “has set her heart on something she cannot have.” 

Character development is weak.  Nori lacks depth; she is defined by her obsession with Akira and her ability to endure.  Yet all her adversity does not result in transformative growth.  So often she resorts to childish tantrums when she doesn’t get what she wants.  The choices she makes at the end suggest that she is acting out of grief and guilt to fulfill her brother’s purpose:  “I will rid [the Kamiza family] of fear and of hate, and fill it with humanity and love.  I will . . . help the powerless . . . I will restore true honor.” But in the process, she’s really going to allow someone else to experience the misery she endured as a child, the misery she has spent her entire life struggling to overcome?!  And this comes from a woman who totally forgot Miyuki and never tried to help her even when she was in a position to do so?

Having never lived in or visited Japan, I’m not certain how authentically the book reflects Japanese culture.  I had the impression that the author inserted references to things that non-Japanese would think of when envisioning the country:  geisha, sushi, wasabi and origami.  Shinto and Buddhism are Japan's two major religions, so would a family so closely related to the emperor be Christian?

The writing style tends to be repetitive.  Akira and Will are always smirking.  Nori is always biting her lip so hard she can taste blood, retching, and digging her nails into her palms. 

 This emotionally manipulative melodrama did not appeal to me.