"Dear Life" by Alice Munro Set to Music

  “Dear Life” is the titular story of Alice Munro’s 2012 collection.  Actually, it is not a story so much as a memoir.  It first appeared in The New Yorker in the September 19, 2011, issue as a “Personal History” with the subtitle “A childhood visitation.”  You can read it at:(http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/19/dear-life).

In Dear Life, the piece is the last entry, one of the four prefaced with the following short note:  “The final four works in this book are not quite stories.  They form a separate unit, one that is autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact.  I believe they are the first and last – and the closest – things I have to say about my life” (255).  The four pieces give snapshots of the narrator’s childhood in a small Canadian town and evoke a girl’s coming of age — her efforts to articulate an identity of her own. 

As was noted in The New York Times, “These ‘not quite stories’ do not force their contents into tidy shapes, like some of the “real” stories in this volume; instead they have a flexible, organic shape, opening out to encompass Ms. Munro’s unsentimental thoughts on life and art and storytelling”  (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/books/dear-life-stories-by-alice-munro.html?_r=0).

In regard to Munro’s thoughts about life and fiction, it is interesting that the “Dear Life” in the short story collection omits the last paragraph of The New Yorker’s version:  “When my mother was dying, she got out of the hospital somehow, at night, and wandered around town until someone who didn’t know her at all spotted her and took her in. If this were fiction, as I said, it would be too much, but it is true” (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/19/dear-life). Truth is stranger than fiction?

Earlier in the piece Munro makes another statement about life versus fiction:  “Roly Grain, his name was, and he does not have any further part in what I’m writing now, in spite of his troll’s name, because this is not a story, only life” (307).  A reviewer in The Guardian noted, “One is stopped short by "only life" with its implication that fiction can be – and do – more.  Roly Grain reminds us how Munro's short stories work.  She has a gift for introducing characters who seem walk-on parts but who redirect and transform narrative. . . . If Roly Grain had not been inconveniently real, she would have handed him a story and let him run with it” (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/29/alice-munro-dear-life-review).

When asked about how she came to choose the title “Dear Life,” Munro said, “Those words are very wonderful to me because I heard them when I was a child, and they had all kinds of meaning. ‘Oh, for dear life!’ would just mean that you were kind of overwhelmed with all that had been required of you.  I liked the contrast between that and the words ‘dear life,’ which are maybe a joyful resignation, but when you say ‘dear’—the word—it doesn’t bring up sadness. It brings up something precious” (http://www.vqronline.org/vqr-portfolio/interview-alice-munro).  She seems to view her childhood experiences as precious; certainly her recollections of life in southwestern Ontario were crucial to her writing. 

Now a young Canadian composer, Zosha Di Castri, has set “Dear Life” to music.  The concert entitled “Echoes of Childhood” will premiere at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre later this week (http://www.cbc.ca/books/2015/09/young-canadian-composer-sets-alice-munros-dear-life-to-music.html). 

Reviews Archive: "Road Ends" by Mary Lawson

In the category of books everyone should read are three by one of my favourite Canadian authors, Mary Lawson.  All three are set in northeastern Ontario where I lived for years.  Anyone who hasn’t yet discovered her has three wonderful  5-Star books to read.  Below are plot summaries of Crow Lake (2002) and The Other Side of the Bridge (2006) and my review of her most recent novel, Road Ends (2013).

Crow Lake

This novel is set in northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. For the farming Pye family, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur.

Centerstage are the Morrisons, whose tragedy looks more immediate if less brutal, but is, in reality, insidious and divisive.  Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt’s protégé, her fascination for pond life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world.  Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope but seems blind to the state of her own emotional life.  And she thinks she’s outgrown her siblings—Luke, Matt, and Bo—who were once her entire world.

This is a universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harboured and driven underground.

The Other Side of the Bridge

Two brothers, Arthur and Jake Dunn, are the sons of a farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming.  Arthur is reticent, solid, dutiful and set to inherit the farm and his father’s character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know – the family misfit. When a beautiful young woman comes into the community, the fragile balance of sibling rivalry tips over the edge.

Then there is Ian, the family’s next generation, and far too sure he knows the difference between right and wrong.  By now it is the fifties, and the world has changed – a little, but not enough.

These two generations in the small town of Struan, Ontario, are tragically interlocked, linked by fate and community but separated by a war which devours its young men – its unimaginable horror reaching right into the heart of this remote corner of an empire.

Review of Road Ends

5 Stars

 Mary Lawson’s third novel focuses on the Cartwright family: parents and eight children.  It is narrated from three perspectives: Edward, the father; Tom, the eldest son; and Megan, the only daughter. Edward, the town’s bank manager, hides in his study reading about cities he dreams of visiting and ignoring the family that is disintegrating around him.  Tom, in the depths of a guilt-ridden depression because of the death of a friend, has abandoned his career as an aeronautical engineer and seeks only solitude.  Megan, after looking after the family for 15 years, escapes to England.

Each of the three protagonists has a conflict between duty and dreams.  Edward is in a marriage which has brought him children he did not want; he wants to see the world but has to remain an armchair traveler.  Unfortunately, because he isolates himself in his study, his children flounder, especially since his wife/their mother is increasingly unfocused and forgetful.  Tom had dreams but an unexpected death derails him and now he wants only peace which becomes more difficult to find in the chaos that overtakes the family.  Megan wants to start her own life after years of taking responsibility for the family and succeeds in making her way in London, but her family is never far from her thoughts.  It is a conflict experienced by many: wanting, because of love and a sense of duty, to do the right thing and wanting, with a great sense of guilt, to escape the sacrifices required by that love and duty: “How are you supposed to stop loving someone you love” (231)?  One of the characters comments, “Love was not an idea; you couldn’t choose to get it or not get it any more than you could choose to catch or not catch flu” (268).

One of the strengths of the novel is characterization.  All of the protagonists are flawed.  At times they become oblivious to the needs of others because they are driven by concerns of their own.  For Megan, “leaving home, living her own life, that mattered” (16).  For Tom, peace is paramount: “This was exactly what he’d been afraid of, the way one thing led to another, the way you got sucked into things, the way your painstakingly, designed routine . . . all in solitude, solitude above all, could be shot to hell and you’d be in it up to your neck, you’d have no control over anything, there’d be no end to it, no peace, and he couldn’t handle it, he just couldn’t handle it” (43 – 44).  Edward retreats to his study and its books because he wants to broaden his “very narrow life” (192).

Nonetheless, none of the three is totally heartless.  Megan may seem selfish at times, but she looked after her family for 15 years - even her father acknowledges, “’I dare say you’ve earned [your freedom]’” (16) – and her family is never far from her mind.  Tom wants no one “making any demands on him” (151), but he is unable to disregard the distress of his brother Adam.  Even the self-absorbed Edward is humanized when the reader comes to understand that he has struggles of his own and that he is capable of compassion and forgiveness.  This detailed and realistic portrayal of characters cannot but draw in the reader.

I lived in the part of northeastern Ontario in which Lawson has set all her novels, and I can attest to the fact that her descriptions are accurate. A review in the National Post stated it perfectly: “[Lawson] can justifiably lay claim to an oeuvre as well as a personal geography. If the part of Ontario west of Toronto is [Alice] Munro country, then the area northwest of New Liskeard and Cobalt — where her fictional towns of Struan and Crow Lake are roughly located — may well end up being dubbed Lawson Country.” 

As the title Road Ends suggests, a sadness permeates the book and, indeed, more than one character faces grief and loss, but that does not mean there is no hope offered.  Again, more than one character comes to realize that one road may end but there is another that can be taken.

I loved Lawson previous books, Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge, and I loved this one as well.  I found myself totally enthralled.  It is a beautifully written story of duty, sacrifice and family love which will remain with the reader for a long time.

Review of "The Illegal" by Lawrence Hill

   4.5 Stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  I hesitated to read it because I heard it was about a marathon runner, and running is not a sport in which I have much interest.  I’m glad I overcame my reticence because the book is about so much else and, considering the news from Europe, proves to be so timely.  The book is about undocumented refugees and the uncertainty they face:  will they be accepted, persecuted or deported?

Keita Ali is a refugee from the island nation of Zantoroland; he has to flee because his father was a journalist critical of the dictator ruling the country and because he is a member of an ethnic minority.  Dissenters and members of the minority are routinely tortured and killed so many escape to Freedom State where they live in AfricTown, a makeshift settlement of shipping containers.  Freedom State is the island nation closest to Zantoroland; its economy was built using slaves from Zantoroland, and though slavery was abolished, the descendants of those slaves are marginalized, and undocumented migrants are deported to the country from which they fled.  Keita is an elite runner who hopes to use his talent to win his freedom and citizenship in Freedom State, but he ends up running from authorities and running to save a family member. 

Zantoroland and Freedom State (with its wonderfully ironic name) are fictional countries separated by the fictional Ortiz Sea in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  Undoubtedly, the author used invented countries so they can represent any number of actual countries.  Zantoroland could be Cuba or Vietnam or Mexico or Syria and Freedom State could be the United States or Canada or any number of European countries.

The characters are many.  There are villains:  corrupt politicians, power-seekers, money-launderers, torturers, and thugs.  There are also the good people who are willing to subvert the laws in order to assist those labelled as illegals.  The reader will find him/herself cheering for the latter.  The major characters are realistic, possessing both good and bad traits.  Lula DiStefano, for example, helps refugees by providing shelter and food in AfricTown, but she also exploits them to her benefit.  Rocco Calder is a minister in the corrupt government of Freedom State but he struggles with his role.   Viola Hill and John Falconer are both ambitious, in-your-face investigative journalists, but they are determined to expose some unpleasant truths

The book examines serious issues, especially the treatment of refugees and undocumented immigrants.  I loved Viola’s argument that “it was fair to accuse somebody of doing something illegal but not to say that they were illegal” (71).  The novel also touches on racism, ageism, discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, the tenuous position of mixed-race people, global inequity, and the hypocrisy of the richest nations not acknowledging that their economies owe much to the marginalized.

Despite its seriousness, the book also has comic relief.  Often it stems from the antics of Viola Hill and John Falconer as they relentlessly pursue the truth, making many uncomfortable in their willingness to ask incendiary questions.  There are also the tongue-in-cheek comments about Canada:  “The tenth [runner] was a Canadian.  But he didn’t really count as a Canadian, because he was black and born in Kenya. . . . Canada, all the way across the world, had been smart about recruiting the immigrant, giving him Canadian citizenship.  Now the country of snow and ice had a chance to win a medal in the next Olympic marathon” (126).

And there is suspense and romance.  Will Keita be able to win the races and get sufficient money in time to rescue a threatened family member?  Will he be able to elude the marathon agent wanting money from him?  Will he be able to avoid the authorities who want to deport him?  Can Keita really trust Lula and Ivernia to help him?  Should he have a relationship with Candace who hides from him her occupation in the service of Freedom State? 

Marathon running serves as a perfect metaphor.  Keita runs to freedom in Freedom State, but he ends up running from imprisonment in that state.  Citizens of Freedom State run from the truth about their government and its deportation policies.  A marathon is a long endurance test.  Refugees undertake marathons (three-week journeys on overcrowded fishing boats) to escape Zantoroland but then run figurative marathons every day, trying to avoid the deportation raids.  An elderly woman must survive a six-month administrative marathon in order to keep her independence. 

One element that bothered me is how the villains tend to reveal all when they think they have nothing to lose.  This happens a couple of times (354, 372).  The confessions of an important figure (349, 360) are also made to two people at very convenient times.  Such plot manipulation is a weakness.

In the end, the conflicts are tidily resolved.  All loose ends are tied up.  But, like all good literature, this book will have a lingering effect.  It raises moral issues that people should consider and debate.  The novel is set in 2018 but its moral questions are relevant to the present.  

15 Novels Inspiring Recent/Soon-to-be-Released Films

Both CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/books/2015/09/the-tiff-2015-reading-list.html)

and Chapters/Indigo (https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/page-to-screen/coming-soon?s_campaign=Indigo:Social:Twitter:Books&s_campaign=Indigo:Social:Twitter:) have compiled lists of recent/ soon-to-be-released films and tv movies based on books.  Here’s my list of 15 interesting novels which have been adapted into (recent or soon-to-be-released) films.

London Fields – Martin Amis  (Film starring Billy Bob Thornton)

In this murder mystery, the murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction.  The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts.  Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch?

Room – Emma Donaghue   (Film starring Brie Larson)

The narrator is five-year-old Jack, a child born into a 12’ x 12’ room, the only home he’s ever known.

His mother, kidnapped seven years earlier at age 19, has created a world for her son that is rich in play and learning, all the while anticipating the day they might make their “great escape.”

The Danish Girl – David Ebershoff   (Film starring Eddie Redmayne)

The Danish Girl portrays the unique intimacy that defines every marriage and the remarkable story of Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history, and the woman torn between loyalty to her marriage and her own ambitions and desires.

The Dressmaker – Roasalie Ham  (Film starring Kate Winslet)

After twenty years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child.  She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave.  But Tilly decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses prove irresistible to the prim women of Dungatar.  Through her fashion business, her friendship with Sergeant Farrat, the town’s only policeman, and a budding romance with Teddy, the local football star whose family is almost as reviled as hers, she finds a measure of grudging acceptance. But as her dresses begin to arouse competition and envy in town, causing old resentments to surface, it becomes clear that Tilly’s mind is set on exacting revenge on those who wronged her.

Into the Forest – Jean Hegland   (Film starring Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood)

Set in the near-future, Into the Forest focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.  Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them.

The Price of Salt – Patricia Highsmith   (Film starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara)

Therese Belivet is a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job.  Her salvation arrives one day in the form of Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover.

Beasts of No Nation – Uzodinma Iweala    (Film starring Abraham Attah)

Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country.  Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.  While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started—a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family still intact.

A Tale of Love and Darkness – Amos Oz   (Film starring Natalie Portman)

A Tale of Love and Darkness is the story of a boy who grows up in war-torn Jerusalem, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many.  The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother’s suicide.  The story of a man who leaves the constraints of his family and community to join a kibbutz, change his name, marry, have children.  The story of a writer who becomes an active participant in the political life of his nation.

The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge – Michael Punke   (Film starring Leonardo DiCaprio)

Frontiersman Hugh Glass enters the employ of Capt. Andrew Henry, trapping along tributaries of the Missouri River.  After surviving months of hardship and Indian attack, he falls victim to a grizzly bear.   Glass appears to be mortally wounded.  Initially, Captain Henry refuses to abandon him and has him carried along the Grand River.  Unfortunately, the terrain soon makes transporting Glass impossible.  Even though his death seems certain, Henry details two men, a fugitive mercenary, John Fitzgerald, and young Jim Bridger to stand watch and bury him.  After several days, Fitzgerald sights hostile Indians.  Taking Glass's rifle and tossing Bridger his knife, Fitzgerald flees with Bridger, leaving Glass.  Enraged at being left alone and defenseless, Glass survives and embarks on a 3,000-mile-long vengeful pursuit of his betrayers.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs   (Film starring Asa Butterfield)

A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar.  They may have been dangerous.  They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason.  And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

The Septembers of Shiraz – Dalia Sofer   (Film starring Adrien Brody and Salma Hayek)

On a September day in 1981, gem trader Isaac Amin is accosted by Revolutionary Guards at his Tehran office and imprisoned for no other crime than being Jewish in a country where Muslim fanaticism is growing daily.  Being rich and having had slender ties to the Shah's regime magnify his peril.  In anguish over what might be happening to his family, Isaac watches the brutal mutilation and executions of prisoners around him.  His wife, Farnaz, struggles to keep from slipping into despair, while his young daughter, Shirin, steals files from the home of a playmate whose father is in charge of the prison that holds her father.  Far away in Brooklyn, Isaac's nonreligious son, Parviz, struggles without his family's money and falls for the pious daughter of his Hasidic landlord.

The Light Between Oceans – M. L. Stedman   (Film starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander)

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast.  To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.  Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately, but Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world.

Brooklyn – Colm Tóibín   (Film starring Saoirse Ronan)

In Ireland in the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey cannot find work. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go.  Leaving her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady’s intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation.  Slowly, however, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of her new life.

The Martian – Andy Weir   (Film starring Matt Damon)

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.  After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.  But Mark isn't ready to give up.  Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next.  Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

The Family Fang – Kevin Wilson   (Film starring Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman)

Annie and Buster Fang have spent most of their adult lives trying to distance themselves from their famous artist parents, Caleb and Camille.  But when a bad economy and a few bad personal decisions converge, the two siblings have nowhere to turn but their family home.  Reunited under one roof for the first time in more than a decade and surrounded by the souvenirs of their unusual upbringing, Buster and Annie are forced to confront not only their creatively ambitious parents, but the chaos and confusion of their childhood.

(All book descriptions are from www.amazon.ca.)

2015 National Book Awards Longlist - Fiction

Today the National Book Awards fiction longlist was announced.  Here are brief plot summaries (from www.amazon.ca) of the ten books on that list.

A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball

In this dystopian tale, a man, suffering from amnesia and known simply as the “claimant,” with the help of a mysterious woman, must relearn how to function in society.  At first the lessons are basic and literal—this is how a chair is used, here is how to greet a stranger—but they grow in difficulty and complexity.  But soon, urged on by unpleasant dreams, he discovers the truth behind his state.

Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

This début novel is about a circle of people who find solace in the least likely of places as they cope with a horrific tragedy.  Everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.

This novel was also longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, though it didn’t make the shortlist.

Refund by Karen E. Bender

This is a collection of short stories that explore the ways in which money and the estimation of value affect the lives of her characters.  The stories reflect the contemporary world - swindlers, reality show creators, desperate artists, siblings, parents - who try to answer the question: What is the real definition of worth?

The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

This début novel follows a black family living in Detroit during the city’s economic collapse.  The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years.  Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father.  The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs.  But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage.  The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and shapes—their family’s future.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

This book is an examination of a marriage and also a portrait of creative partnership.  Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives.  And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets.  At the core of this novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.  At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness.  A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.  With stunning revelations and multiple threads, Groff delivers a novel about love, art, creativity, and power.

Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson

This collection of stories gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear.  In six stories, Johnson delves into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal.  For example, in “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And the title story depicts two defectors from North Korea who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson

Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D’aron Davenport finds himself in unfamiliar territory his freshman year at UC Berkeley.  Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond.  Caught between the prosaic values of his rural hometown and the intellectualized multicultural cosmopolitanism of Berkeley, the nineteen-year-old white kid is uncertain about his place until he becomes friends with Louis, a “kung-fu comedian" from California; Candice, an earnest do-gooder claiming Native roots from Iowa; and Charlie, an introspective inner-city black teen from Chicago.  When D’aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, the four decide to do a “performative intervention” to protest the reenactment.  Armed with youthful self-importance, makeshift slave costumes, righteous zeal, and their own misguided ideas about the South, the four descend on Braggsville. Their journey through backwoods churches, backroom politics, Waffle Houses, and drunken family barbecues is uproarious to start, but will have devastating consequences.

Honeydew by Edith Pearlman

This is a collection of twenty stories.  The title story involves an affair, an illegitimate pregnancy, anorexia, and adolescent drug use, and the interior life of young Emily Knapp who wishes she were a bug. "The Golden Swan" transports the reader to a cruise ship with lavish buffets-and a surprise stowaway-while the lead story, "Tenderfoot," follows a widowed pedicurist searching for love with a new customer anguishing over his own buried trauma.  Various other characters are encountered:  a special child with pentachromatic vision, a group of displaced Somali women adjusting to life in suburban Boston, and a staid professor of Latin unsettled by a random invitation to lecture on the mystery of life and death.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition.  There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.  Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.  Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.

This book also appears on the 2015 Man Booker Prize shortlist.

Note:  I reviewed this book on August 10.

Mislaid by Nell Zink

In 1960s Virginia, college freshman Peggy falls for professor and poet Lee, and what begins as an ill-advised affair results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage.  Mismatched from the start—she's a lesbian; he's gay—Peggy eventually finds herself in crisis and runs away with their daughter, leaving their son behind.  Estranged from the rest of the family, Peggy and her daughter adopt African-American identities and live in near poverty to escape detection.  Meanwhile, Lee and his son carry on, enjoying all the social privileges their gender, class, and whiteness afford them.  Eventually the long-lost siblings meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings that culminate in a darkly comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.

The finalists will be announced on October 14 and the winner, on November 18.

Review of "The Hanging Girl" by Jussi Adler-Olsen

3.5 Stars

Department Q is back.  Carl, Assad and Rose are joined by an additional member, Gordon.  This time they investigate a case from 17 years earlier.  Alberte Goldschmid was found hanging from a tree on Bornholm, one of the Danish islands.  The policeman, who found her body and became obsessed with discovering who was driving the vehicle that hit her, commits suicide but not before bequeathing the case to Department Q.  The investigation has them delving into a sun-worshiping cult from whose centre, the Nature Absorption Academy, people are disappearing. 

This is the sixth Department Q novel, and I would advise readers to read them in order since each one adds to character development.  As in the previous books, we learn a bit more about Assad’s mysterious past though not all is revealed.  Apparently there are four more books to the series.

The book excels at showing the road an actual police investigation takes – with twists, turns, and dead ends.  This does not make for a fast-paced story, but ensures a more realistic plot.  What also unifies the plot is the theme of jealousy.   The reader sees several examples of how people react to a perceived threat to a relationship.   The resolution does have some surprises, but logic is not sacrificed. 

As in the other books in the series, there are humourous touches.  The banter between the members of the department continues.

If you have not already discovered this Danish mystery series, do check it out.  As Queen Elizabeth II says in Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, “Can there be any greater pleasure . . . than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two . . . “?

2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Shortlist

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced today; the two American books I have already reviewed on this blog.  Here are brief descriptions (from www.amazon.ca) of all six finalists:

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (Jamaica)

On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven gunmen stormed the singer’s house, machine guns blazing.  The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others.  Little was officially released about the gunmen, but much has been whispered, gossiped and sung about in the streets of West Kingston.  Rumors abound regarding the assassins’ fates, and there are suspicions that the attack was politically motivated.

A Brief History of Seven Killings delves into that dangerous and unstable time in Jamaica’s history and beyond.  James chronicles the lives of a host of characters – gunmen, drug dealers, one-night stands, CIA agents, even ghosts – over the course of thirty years as they roam the streets of 1970s Kingston, dominate the crack houses of 1980s New York, and ultimately reemerge into the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s.

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (Great Britain)

U. is a talented and uneasy figure currently pimping his skills to an elite consultancy in contemporary London.  His employers advise everyone from big businesses to governments, and, to this end, expect their 'corporate anthropologist' to help decode and manipulate the world around them - all the more so now that a giant, epoch-defining project is in the offing.

Instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer-zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions, zombie parades.  Is there, U. wonders, a secret logic holding all these images together -- a codex that, once cracked, will unlock the master-meaning of our age?  Might it have something to do with South Pacific Cargo Cults, or the dead parachutists in the news?  Perhaps; perhaps not.

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria)

In a Nigerian town in the mid 1990's, four brothers encounter a madman whose mystic prophecy of violence threatens the core of their close-knit family.  Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990's Nigeria, in the small town of Akure.  When their strict father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing.  At the ominous, forbidden nearby river, they meet a dangerous local madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings.  What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact - both tragic and redemptive - will transcend the lives and imaginations of its characters.

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota (Great Britain)

This is a contemporary epic about a year in the life of a group of young illegal immigrants living and working together in the north of England.  Three young men from very different backgrounds come together in a journey from India to England, where they hope to begin something new:  to support their families; where they can, to build their future; to show their worth; to escape the past. They have almost no idea of what awaits them.

In a dilapidated shared house in Sheffield, Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his life in Bihar.  Avtar has a secret that binds him to the unpredictable Randeep.  Randeep, in turn, has a visa-wife in a flat on the other side of town, whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes in case the immigration men surprise her with a visit.  She is Narinder, and her story is the most surprising of all.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (U.S.)

“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon." This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family - their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog - is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before.  And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father.  The novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.

Note:  I reviewed this book on August 2.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (U.S.)

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition.  There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.  Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.  Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.

Note:  I reviewed this book on August 10.

The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on October 13.