Novels Now

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

Pages: 343
First Published: Feb 24, 2009
Genre: literary fiction
Rating: 5/5

First sentence:

Isaac’s mother was dead five years but he hadn’t stopped thinking about her.

Comments: Set in a small dying former steel mill town in Pennsylvania, this is the story of two young men (20yrs old). Issac, who is called the smartest person in town except for maybe his sister and had been expected to go straight to college after high school. But his mother dies, his father is in a crippling accident at work and his sister leaves for an ivy league school 3 months after their mother’s death, leaving him to stay with his father. The other is Poe, the legendary high school football player who could have gotten a football scholarship to any college but had always been a bad apple and had no interest in doing any more school, even if it was on a scholarship.

These two boys are strangely enough best friends, each other’s only real friend to be exact and one day there lives and those around them are changed forever. Within the first chapter Issac decides he’s hung around long enough, takes his father’s four thousand dollars of savings and leaves to head to California to go to school. Along the way he meets Poe who doesn’t want to come with him, but agrees to walk to the city limits with him. They spend the night in the abandoned steel mill and three homeless men arrive. Issac knows this is not going to be good and he tries to get Poe’s attention and says he’s going out for a leak. Poe knows what Issac is up to but he’s in the mood for a fight. Issac hears a scream, some thuds and more noises that sound like Poe. He enters through the back door to find his friend, Poe, being held at knife point while another man is obviously about to go at him. Isaac picks up a large iron ball bearing and pitches it across the room hitting the man square in the face and obviously killing him. This is how the story opens.

The book is told in a third person omnipotent point of view with each chapter coming from a selection of different character’s view point: the two boys, Isaac’s sister, Poe’s mom, the chief of police and occasionally Isaac’s father. The narrative takes a little getting used to as it feels strange to jump from one person’s head to another’s but it doesn’t take long to get used too as this is a page-turner from chapter one onwards. The writing is a delight to read, the characters become very real to the reader and the story of the lives and thoughts of these people in a dead-end situation all around is very compelling. These people do not lead happy lives and the book is somewhat raw in it’s telling but that only makes the characters more real. It is not ultimately a sad story though, as the characters learn about hope, love, friendship and redemption. I honestly didn’t know whether this was going to be a book I’d like but I have to say it’s the best book I’ve read this month.

I know it’s only January but I’ll be holding the other books I read this year up to this one as I choose my favourites of the year. Recommended!

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Pages: 290
First Published: Jan. 27, 2009
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: 4.5/5

First sentence:

Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the Panama Hotel.

Comments: Henry Lee’s wife has been dead for six months when he comes upon a crowd outside an old hotel that has been boarded up since the war years. The belongings of about 40 families that were sent to Japanese internment camps have been found in the basement. Henry remembers his past.

The book switches narrative from the present (well, 1985) to Henry’s past when he was a boy of twelve. He met a Japanese girl the same age and they became friends but Henry’s father was a staunch Chinese Nationalist and considered all Japanese the enemy since Japan had been attacking China for the last ten years.

This is a beautiful book. Beautifully written with a beautiful story to tell. It is a tale of friendship and enemies, love and hate, two very different families and the children who fall in love. Almost like World War II version of Romeo and Juliet. The story is bittersweet, hence the title, and the characters of Henry, his father, and Keiko, the American-born Japanese girl are fully realized.

I found the historical aspect fascinating. I often read World War II stories from a Chinese point of view and this was quite unique. The story was riveting and a page-turner that I couldn’t put down. I don’t usually read love stories, especially unrequited love, but the tale told here is simply beautiful and much more than just a love story.

The only quibble I have is that the author tried to present an unbiased point of view in regards to the Japanese internment camps and while he succeeded I would have liked a little more background on the “why?” of the situation for readers who know nothing of the Japanese atrocities of WWII. It was very briefly referred to but a little more information would have presented a truly balanced point of view.

In all, this is a wonderful tale and will be truly enjoyed by anyone who enjoys a good WWII story or Asian fiction.

He tugged out the photograph, tugged with trembling hands, and set it down on the bar top. And he looked at it and saw that it had faded. All the once-bright colors were vanishing, leaving only a trace of themselves, tinged with green, with the bluish green of the sky…when evening was coming…the sky behind Auror… - from The Road Home, page 237 -

Lev is 43 years old and forced to leave his rural East European town to seek work in London. He has been widowed (his young wife Marina having died from Leukemia) and must support his daughter Maya and his elderly mother who remain behind in Russia. Lev barely speaks English and is at first bewildered by London. But Lydia, a woman he meets on the train, helps him find a job working in a posh restaurant where he meets the sexy Sophie. Lev eventually finds lodging with an Irishman named Christy Slane who is also experiencing loss.

Then he looked at Christy, standing in the doorway, as though not wanting to come into the room, his hands held at his sides in a helpless way, and Lev was transfixed for a moment, recognizing something of himself in the other man, some willingness to surrender and not fight, some dangerous longing for everything to be over. - from The Road Home, page 77 -

He was gradually coming to understand that the Irishman’s loneliness was nearly as acute as his own. They were the same kind of age. They both longed to return to a time before the people they loved most were lost. - from The Road Home, page 80 -

Lev’s story is painful at times. He misses Marina - cannot seem to get past the loss of her - and struggles to save money to send home to his daughter and mother. His future seems hopeless and he misses his country and his best friend, Rudi - a gregarious man whose love affair with an American Chevy and his fondness for life make him immediately endearing.

Rudi was everything this story made him out to be - and more. He was a force of nature. He was a lightning bolt. He was a fire that never went out. - from The Road Home, page 277 -

It is largely Lev’s friendship with men like Christy and Rudi which elevates him past his grief and imbues him with hope. When Lev recalls a hiking trip with Rudi to an isolated cave shortly after Marina’s death, the reader begins to see there will be a future for him after all.

It was at this moment - with Rudi halfway up the ladder - that he heard himself whispering to his friend, “Don’t look down…don’t look back…” and he felt that he suddenly understood why Rudi had brought him here and that the thing he had to embrace was the idea of perseverance. - from The Road Home, page 127 -

The Road Home is a character driven novel about loss and identity. It is a novel which reminds the reader that the past must sometimes be left behind in order to move forward. Dreams are the fuel for overcoming obstacles in this story of a man who must leave his home in order to find it again. Lev is a dreamer and a romantic. He is a character who readers want to see succeed, a man whose flaws are surpassed by his kind and vulnerable heart.

Rose Tremain has yet to disappoint me - I’ve read Music and Silence (reviewed here) and The Colour (reviewed here) and found them both outstanding. Tremain’s novels are written with sensitivity and insight into the human condition - and The Road Home is perhaps her finest work.  This novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008.

Highly recommended.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Fiction
2009 Ballantine Books
Finished on 1/5/09
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)
ARC - Due out on January 27, 2009

Publisher’s Blurb

In 1986, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. The hotel has been boarded up for decades, but now a new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, memories take him back to the 1940s.

At the height of the war, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student, at the exclusive Rainier Academy. They forge a friendship—and an innocent love—that transcend the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family are evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Now Henry is trying to make sense of the past—to explain the actions of his nationalistic father; to bridge the gap between himself and his modern Chinese American son; to confront the choices he made many years ago. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable portrait of a couple whose story teaches us the power of forgiveness.

Jamie Ford is the son of American and Chinese parents and an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. An award-winning short-story writer, he lives in Great Falls, Montana. This is his first novel.

I received this book from the publisher back in August, but didn’t feel compelled to pick it up until after Christmas. What luck that it was my first completed book of the New Year; it’s a winner! I love the time period and location (a bit reminiscent of Gutterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars) and especially enjoy coming-of-age stories, so this was right up my alley. The narrative is set in 1986, flashing back to the years between 1942 and 1945 when Henry and Keiko are in the fifth grade.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is bound to be a popular selection among book groups, particularly those in the Pacific Northwest. I enjoyed the story, although at times thought it read more like a young adult novel than general fiction. The writing is occasionally simplistic and I finished reading the novel without a single lyrical passage to share. And yet, I couldn’t put this book down! I found Ford’s book much more satisfying than Sandra Dallas’ Tall Grass (another coming-of-age novel depicting the internment camps during World War II), particularly enjoying the references to Seattle’s jazz history, including that of Oscar Holden.

Here are a couple of photos from the author’s website. Go here to see more.

VJ Day in Seattle

I’ll be anxious to hear what others think of this debut novel.

‘Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it.’

Absolutely wonderful — I loved this book!!

Have you seen the movie 50 First Dates? It’s one of my favorite movies, and a very similar situation occurs in this book. A mathematics professor has only 80 minutes of short term memory due to a car accident, but he remembers everything clear as a bell that happened before his head injury. He continues to solve mathematical proofs and has an uncanny ability to know exactly where the North Star is in the sky, even when there’s no visibility. He is kind and has a great love for children. But, he remembers only 80 minutes at a time in the here and now. His sister-in-law lets him live in a cottage next to her main house, and she has hired a ninth housekeeper to cook and clean for the professor.

The housekeeper does her best to please the professor and works around his disability. She tells him about her 10 year old son, and he insists on letting the son come to his cottage after school, even though it’s against the cleaning agency’s rules. The professor writes notes to himself to help remind him of the housekeeper and her son. The boy and the professor both have a love of baseball, and the professor uses this to teach the boy mathematics. Soon a strong bond is formed among the three of them.

There is quite a bit of math in this book, and of course I enjoyed those references tremendously. I have an engineering degree, and mathematics has always been a love of mine. I don’t think you have to know math like I do to enjoy this book, but you will certainly appreciate the beauty of it a bit more if you do.

‘Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression — in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.’

Very highly recommended!!

2003, 2009 for the English translation by Stephen Snyder, 180 pp.
5/5

From wikipedia:

As a medical term, gigantism can refer to “pituitary gigantism”, which is due to prepubertal growth hormone excess. This is sometimes equated with acromegaly, but more precisely, an excess of growth hormone leads to “pituitary gigantism” (vertical growth) if the epiphyseal plates have not yet closed, but it leads to “acromegaly” (lateral growth) if they have closed.

Even before I emerged from my mother’s womb in 1953, people began warning my mother that the infant she carried was going to be huge.

I really enjoyed this debut novel — particularly the first 3/4 of it. Tiffany Baker has created a very extraordinary character in Truly Plaice. First called a ‘little giant’ by her teacher Miss Sparrow, Truly is the exact opposite of her very petite, pretty, and perfect sister Serena Jane. Teased and humiliated by her classmates and community, Truly actually copes fairly well with her large size. Her genetics have treated Truly unfairly, but there are some positives in her life as well. She has the love of three very special people in her life, and she is thus able to tune out the mean-spirited ones who torment her. Not afraid of hard work either, Truly only sometimes feels sorry for herself and tries to make the best of every situation she’s in. (I always think it’s best not to know too many plot points before reading a book so I’ll stop there to avoid spoilers.)

The book covers the first 35-40 or so years of Truly’s life, and as said previously, I very much enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book. I actually read through the first part very quickly, but I did feel that the last 1/4 of the novel dragged a bit. There are also some ethical decisions made by the characters that are quite controversial, and I’m not quite sure how I stand on those issues myself so my thoughts about the ending are mixed. However, I’ll definitely be looking out for Tiffany Baker’s next book. She is a promising new novelist who knows how to craft unique characters and a unique story.

A special thanks goes to Hachette Book Group for sending me this book for review. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is being released today (January 8th).

2009, 341 pp.

4/5

The Road Home
Rose Tremain
365 pages

Powerful

Rehana Haque is a widow with two children, Maya a strong willed 17 year-old girl and Soheil a 19 year-old boy who is also strong willed. As Rehana goes about her daily routine of cooking and caring for her children something is brewing in Bangladesh.

In March 1971, Rehana wakes up very excited one day, as she decided to throw her children a garden party and invite the neighbors. Rehana and her neighbor couldn’t have predicted that during the party a war would be starting. They hear loud noises and think perhaps it’s fireworks, but then realize that was wishful thinking.

In A Golden Age we see how one family copes during the Bangladesh War of Independence. With hope, passion, and heroism they help their neighbors and fellow man.

Tahmima Anam writes with poetic prose that makes her characters come alive. I felt as if I was living the war with them step by step. This is Anam’s first book and is to be the first in a trilogy. I can hardly wait for the next book to come out!

Very highly recommended!

5/5

Wonderful Southern Fiction

In 1939, at 31 years old, spinster, Laura meets Henry McAllen. After a bit of dating, they get married and start a family. Henry works for the Army Corps of Engineers, they’re in the city. This is great, because Laura is a city woman through and through.

One day Henry comes home with news, he has bought a farm in the Mississippi Delta and is quitting he job to farm. Of course this is quite a blow to Laura, Henry didn’t even consult her. The farmhouse has none of the conveniences that city folk take for granted such as running water, plumbing, electricity, etc. However, Henry is her husband, so Laura goes along with it.

After WWII Henry’s brother Jamie shows up at the farm. At the same time Ronsel Jackson returns home as decorated solder. He is the son of the black sharecroppers’ family living on the farm.

Ronsel and Jamie become friends, which is very risky in the Jim Crow south. This unlikely friendship is what brings this powerful novel to its grim conclusion.

Mudbound is told by each of the character’s own point of view. This technique works very well for this novel. Jordon was able to write each characters point of view so well, that it felt as if I was each character. She really enables the reader to get in side the heads of the characters.

Jordan’s prose sings! She makes the farm a kind of character itself and captures both its beauty and muddy short falls, exquisitely!

I highly recommend this book and can hardly wait for Hillary Jordan to write another novel!

5/5

When you have heard the story of how I got to Bangalore and become one of its most successful (though probably least known) businessmen, you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious twenty-first century of man. The century, more specifically, of the yellow and brown man. - from The White Tiger, page 4 -

Balram Halwai is the mocking, pathological narrator of Aravind Adiga’s Booker winning novel The White Tiger.  Born in the Darkness - the underbelly of India - and destined from childhood to be a servant, he tells his story in a series of letters over a seven day period to Wen Jiabao, the Premier of China. A self-described entrepreneur and philosopher, Balram explains how he has come to see himself as a white tiger.

The inspector pointed his cane straight at me. “You, young man, are an intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals - the creature that comes along only once in a generation?”

I thought about it and said:

“The white tiger.”

“That’s what you are, in this jungle.”

- from The White Tiger, page 30 -

It is this inner view of himself - a rare creature in a savage world - which drives him eventually to murder his master and take charge of his life.

Even as a boy I could see what was beautiful in the world: I was destined not to stay a slave. - from The White Tiger, page 35 -

Adiga has created a not wholly likeable protagonist to narrate the story of an India which is sharply divided between the very rich (and corrupt) and the very poor. The cynical voice of Balram jeers at democracy and uncovers the dark, corrupt world of the wealthy upper class. He pokes fun at China who despite their triumphs ‘in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don’t have democracy.‘

Adiga uses an analogy of roosters in the coop to describe the servant’s (or poor man’s) inescapable status in India.

They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. - from The White Tiger, page 147 -

But for Balram, there is a way out - one of his own making. He resists the pull of family obligation and loyalty to his master and plans his escape through cold-blooded murder.

[...] only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed - hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters - can break out of the coop. - from The White Tiger, page 150 -

Rage is what fuels Balram to break free of his caste and become a successful businessman. He takes his destiny into his own hands and does what he feels he must to become a free man. And in the end, he concludes there is really no difference between a man and a demon - only that one has woken up and the other is still sleeping. The message seems to be that there is no good anywhere in India. It is no wonder that Indians have been critical of this novel.

The White Tiger is an interesting story - one that is compelling and blackly humorous despite its negative message. It is a scathing commentary on the divide between the poor and the rich, the benevolent and the corrupt - but, it is ultimately just a very good yarn.

Recommended.

Read an interview with Adiga.

Red Dog Red Dog by Patrick Lane

Pages: 332
First Published: Sept 30, 2008 (Canada only)
Genre: literary fiction
Rating: 4.5/5

First sentence:

it didn’t take him long to bury me.

Comments: Whoa! This is one of those books that I wonder if I have the skill to put into words all that the book is. But I’ll give it my best shot. Set in the 1950s, mostly in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia (but also into Alberta, Montana and Washington) This is the story of a poor rural family and it’s dark secrets. It is a story of pain and suffering and redemption.

No time frame is ever definitively given in the book. We never know the year or the day and the narrative tells this family’s story from the mid/late 1800s up to the 1950s. We know the present time is the fifties due to clues in the writing, such as a reference to Elvis as a new singer. We can figure out the past dates as the story goes back to the great-grandparents of the modern characters. With no reference to the time, it can be unsettling as the narrative sways back and forth within chapters from an omnipotent narrator of the present to the narrative of a baby girl buried when she was just six months old. Alice, as she was named, was told stories by her father at her graveside his whole life and she has some connection to the spirits of the family from which she hears the family’s story. Also, unsettling, once it dawned upon me (about 1/4 of the way into the book) was the author’s non-use of any quotation marks, as if the narrators are telling you a story from the past, saying what he said and she said without actually having anyone speak. It is definitely a very compelling voice the author has chosen.

Also with no time reference one doesn’t really know the length of time that passes during the story of the modern characters, though the jacket flap tells me it is one week, which seems feasible to me. The main characters are only a part of the story, not really even the most important part. It is the past which developed this family into who it is and created the ones now living. The past is full of dark stories which show how the various characters became sad or violent while suffering and enduring, how the past continues on generation after generation. More of the past is written about than of the main modern characters but it is all relevant to the bitter and redeeming surprise ending.

The writing is beautiful. One could read passages aloud for pure enjoyment, and I did do this myself, which is a rare occurrence for me. The story unfolds slowly, and at times one may feel it is meandering away from a cohesive plot, but it always gets back on track and the reader realizes at certain points the meaning of those wayward sub-plots. I really enjoyed the book. It is very deep and certainly depressing but the characterization is portrayed brilliantly and the reader suddenly realizes they care for these people. If you are looking for a page-turning, linear, plot driven book this one is not for you. However, if you like to get inside the heads of people who live a tormented life (in one way or another) you will find this story very satisfying. In fact, I think this is the type of book that one would enjoy even more the second time around as hidden meanings would make one nod in recognition of where the story is going. I most likely will re-read this book again some day.

Sligo made me and Sligo undid me, but then I should have given up much sooner than I did being made or undone by human towns, and looked to myself alone. The terror and hurt in my story happened because when I was young I thought others were the authors of my fortune or misfortune; I did not know that a person could hold up a wall made of imaginary bricks and mortar against the horrors and cruel, dark tricks of time that assail us, and be the author therefore of themselves. - from The Secret Scripture, page 3-4 -

Sebastian Barry’s fourth novel opens in an Irish mental hospital with the voice of Roseanne McNulty who, in the 100th year of her life, has decided to write her memoir and hide it beneath the floorboards of her room. As Roseanne revisits the past, the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital is being dismantled due to safety concerns. Roseanne’s psychiatrist Dr. Grene is attempting to evaluate the patients to determine if they can be set free, or must be re-committed in the new hospital. The story alternates between Roseanne’s memories of her past and Dr. Grene’s written thoughts in the present. As the novel progresses, the mystery of Roseanne’s life unfolds and Dr. Grene uncovers a secret in his own life.

Barry’s novel covers the period of the Irish Civil War (1922-23), as well as WWII and is steeped in the history of the Catholic Church and the politics of Ireland. There is a magical quality to the novel with rich and mysterious characters (including a priest who plays a large role in Roseanne’s life).

Early on, the reader becomes aware of discrepancies in Roseanne’s memories and part of the tension in the novel is one of separating the truth from fantasy. What is real and what is false?

For history as far as I can see is not the arrangement of what happens, in sequence and in truth, but a fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth. - from The Secret Scripture, page 55 -

But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. - from The Secret Scripture, page 293 -

Barry’s writing is simply gorgeous. Lyrical and descriptive, the reader can hear the lilt of the Irish voices and see the desolate countryside of Ireland.

Always the deluge of rain falling on Sligo, falling on the streets big and little, making the houses shiver and huddle like people at a football match. Falling fantastically, in enormous amounts, the contents of a hundred rivers. And the river itself, the Garravoge, swelling up, the beautiful swans taken by surprise, riding the torrent, being swept down under the bridge and reappearing the other side like unsuccessful suicides, their mysterious eyes shocked and black, their mysterious grace unassailed. How savage swans are even in their famous beauty. And the rain falling also on the pavements outside the Cafe Cairo, as I tugged at the boilers and the machines, and gazed out through the fuggy windows with burning eyes. - from The Secret Scripture, page 125 -

The Secret Scripture is a novel about love and betrayal, truth and fantasy, sin and redemption … an intimate look at the history and religious politics of Ireland as it collides with one woman’s life. Barry is the consummate story-teller, weaving his fantastical account beautifully and creating a truly memorable character for literary fiction lovers.

Highly recommended.

The English translation was first available in 2008.

I pressed my hands to my heart. I felt dizzy again, as I always do when I step out of the shadow world of pointless watching and waiting and come face-to-face with reality. How much simpler reality is!

I can’t quite figure out if I like Sandor Marai’s novels or not. Earlier this year, I read Embers, and I also rated it 3.5/5. I thought parts of it were beautifully written, while other parts dragged. The monologues in that book went on and on and on… Also, the translation was from Hungarian to German to English, and I think something was definitely ‘lost in translation.’ Anyway, although I rated Esther’s Inheritance the same, I do believe I prefer it slightly. The translation of Esther is directly from the original Hungarian.

Just as in Embers, the crux of the novel is a confrontation. Esther is in her mid 40’s and lives only with a female relative. It seems that she (and much of her family) have been ripped off (in the nicest way possible) by Lajos the Liar. Now, several years later, he’s come back to visit, and we get the expected confrontation between them.

We hear the details of their past, learn about misunderstandings and miscommunications, and wonder if Esther is being suckered again by his charms or if Lajos really has some legitimate excuses. Just as in Embers, the ending didn’t quite satisfy, but I’ve begun to realize that maybe that was the point of both stories after all.

1939 [2008 for the English translation], 148 pp.
(3.5/5)

Tomato Girl is a heartbreaking novel of love, desire, and madness.

Ellie is in love with her father Rupert and just adores him. She loves spending time with him — especially when she can help him in the store he manages. Not only does Ellie’s father takes care of her when her mother is unable to, he also manages and cares for Ellie’s mother when she is in one of her ‘moods.’

Although Rupert loves his daughter dearly, he is also falling in love with the girl who brings in the tomatoes at his store. This has severe repercussions for everyone involved, not only leaving poor Ellie caught in the middle but also worsening her mother’s mental condition.

Pupek manages to make us sympathize with all the characters involved and thankfully, also provides other characters for Ellie to lean on in a difficult situation. Her best friend Mary, a concerned teacher, and a loving black couple all do their best to support Ellie. Tomato Girl really makes one realize there are consequences to every personal decision, and that all our choices will affect our family members as well.

While I liked the book, there is a magical element to the book at the end that I didn’t care for, and I sometimes felt Ellie’s voice was too old for 11, and sometimes I thought she seemed too young for that age. These are minor criticisms, though, and Jayne Pupek is certainly a promising new novelist.

If you’d like an autographed copy of this book, just comment on this post. All I ask is that you haven’t read the book yet, and that you’ll make an effort to read and review it on your blog in the next 6 months. (Sorry, I have to limit this to North America.) Winner: Lynne

2008, 298 pp.
(3.5/5)

This is the story of Ren. He is a 12-year-old boy living in the St. Anthony’s Orphanage somewhere in the woods of New England in the 19th Century. Ren is at that age where it’s unlikely he will be adopted by a family, even the ones that are looking for a little bit of cheap labor. You see Ren is different from the other boys because he only has one hand. And any boys that reach their 18th birthday at the orphanage are sent to join the army and an almost certain death. But every time someone comes to pick out a child, Ren doesn’t stop hoping.

Then one day, the unimaginable happens. A man comes to the orphanage seeking his long, lost brother. When the boys line up, the man walks right up to Ren, looks at his hand, and announces that he has found him!! And this is how Ren meets Benjamin Nab. The wild tale that Benjamin tells the priest isn’t even close to the truth, but Ren is excited to finally have someone that he can call family.

But Benjamin isn’t exactly who he says he is. With his friend and accomplice Tom, the drunken ex-school teacher, Benjamin shows Ren how they make a living. If it’s not a con-job, then it’s “fishing” in the local cemeteries (taking jewelry and items from the deceased). But when an opportunity emerges for the men to go to a town called North Umbrage, Benjamin is extremely reluctant. He has been in this town before and is afraid of the repercussions he will face if recognized. But the money they can earn stealing bodies from the cemetery for the local “Mad” Doctor is more than anyone can deny. So off the small rag-tag group goes….and then things really get wild!!

Tinti has shown in this debut novel that she really can tell a story!! Our one-handed little hero is smart, loyal and extremely courageous. He is the perfect protagonist for such an adventure. And an adventure it is! From conning farmers out of their horses to midnight grave-robbing expeditions, Ren is forced to take a good hard look at the men he is with and at the person he wants to be. There is also an extremely unique cast of characters that include a mysterious drawf that lives on the roof, a gentle giant who’s only talent is one of murder, an almost-deaf landlady this is kind and yet a little on the scary side herself, and the corrupt owner of a mousetrap factory and all his little minions.

But through all the escapades that Ren goes through, the real adventure comes from finding out who he really is. Throughout the story, bits and pieces of Ren’s history are revealed to the reader. When the explosive climax is finally reached, all the loose ends of the story are tied up nicely. Tinti has created a great adventure with this book. Although it isn’t marketed to the Young Adult set, I think it would be highly enjoyable to that age group…especially to boys. All in all, I was swept up in this child’s life and adventures and I would definitely recommend this book!

4/5

Hillary Jordan has written a very good debut novel that speaks on war, racism, marriage, and living off the land. The story is told by various narrators throughout the book. Henry and Laura are a white married couple who move to the Mississippi delta to raise cotton. Henry loves the land, but Laura misses city life and is deeply unhappy. She also has to live and deal with her racist father-in-law for the first time.

Hap and Florence are a black couple living on Henry’s farm as renters. Hap is a preacher, while Florence is a midwife who also helps Laura with some of her housework. Their oldest child Ronsel is in the military and serving in Germany, and when he comes back, he has to adjust back to a way of life that he is no longer accustomed to. He does find a friend, however, in Jamie, Henry’s younger brother. But, this doesn’t sit well with Henry and Jamie’s father, and trouble ensues.

This book all too painfully illustrates how much African-Americans have had to go through in this country. It does seem like the tide has changed with the historic election of our first black President, Barack Obama. I sincerely hope that this event will be the turning point in race relations in the United States.

(All along while reading this book, I was thinking it was going to receive a 4.5 rating, but then at the end something is stated by Jamie that I was deeply offended by, and I changed my rating to a 4. It didn’t ruin the book for me, but I think a better choice of words should have been uilized to avoid offending some readers.)

2008, 328 pp.

The rabbi shrugged. “Faith is hard, Rosa. Nonbelievers often speak of faith as if it were something easy, a cop-out from the really tough business of confronting a meaningless universe, but it’s not. It’s doubt that’s easy. - From The Believers-

When Audrey Howard meets Joel Litvinoff - a radical American lawyer -  at a party in London in 1962, she is a shy and unsure young woman. But years later, now married to Joel and living in New York City, Audrey has remade herself into a brash, foul-mouthed liberal who views the world cynically and lashes out at everyone around her. When Joel collapses from a stroke and lapses into a coma, Audrey is forced to face not only her out of control temper (and the consequences of it), but her loyalty to a serial adulterer whose shadow she has always lived within.

The Litvinoff family is a complex, rather dysfunctional group of people. Rosa, the youngest daughter, is struggling with her Jewish roots and lack of faith; Karla, the eldest daughter, finds herself in a loveless marriage and struggles to develop enough self-esteem to seek the happiness she is not sure she deserves; and Lenny, the adopted son, battles drug addiction. Despite the strong personality of their father, the Litvinoff children are really more influenced by Audrey - whose boredom with motherhood and barely concealed anger at the world (and her husband in particular) dominate their lives.

Zoe Heller has written a thoughtful and provocative book about politics and religion. Thematically, she explores how individuals discover themselves, while residing within a family whose beliefs threaten to suffocate their uniqueness. Heller’s ironic style and black humor are effective in teasing out the pitfalls of all belief systems - whether they be “politically correct,” religious, or socially radical. By choosing a mostly unlikeable protagonist (Audrey), Heller risks alienating her readers. But, instead, her ability to balance the character’s negative traits with the very real human emotions of fear, isolation, and grief allows for empathy.

I enjoyed the twists and turns of this cerebral novel which moves steadily forward as each character resolves their conflicts - both externally and internally. This is a book which will create great discussion  about the core beliefs individuals carry as they stumble through their lives.

Recommended.

The Impostor by Damon Galgut

Pages: 249
Finished: Oct. 28, 2008
First Published: Aug. 5, 2008 (6/1/08 in USA)
Genre: literary fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Reason for Reading: Received a Review Copy from Random House Canada.

First sentence:

The journey was almost over; they were nearly at their destination.

Comments: Adam Napier lives in South Africa just after the abolition of Apartheid. He has always been against Apartheid and now ironically he has lost his job to make way for race equality in the work place, losing his job to the black man he had been training. One time poet, he decides it is time to start writing again and he moves out to the Karoo, the empty countryside where he lives in a rundown shack of a house that his brother had once bought with the idea of fixing it up as a summer home. After only a few days he meets a man who once was a school chum of his as a boy, the man says he has always been his hero, but Adam cannot for the life of him remember him at all. He plays along and eventually starts going to the man’s ranch to visit him and his wife on the weekends. Many more things happen, but then I would be giving away too much to say just what.

This is a very difficult book to describe. It is the story of friendship and betrayal, of nature vs. man, of race relations and finding out just how far one will go to get what they want. The book starts off very slowly and really feels to be about nothing at all, at first. But by the second page I knew I was going to enjoy the book, I just wondered what it was going to be about and often found myself wondering that as the book progressed. The title. The Impostor, comes into play many times, and once one realizes what ‘impostor’ implies one is later again shown a different ‘impostor’ and it evolves throughout the book.

This is not the book for you if you want non stop action or a plot driven book. The book is more a character driven story where the characters are more important than what is happening. This is one of those books you read and think you like, then wonder if you really do, but in the end the story grew on me and I think the characters will stay in mind for some time. This book has definitely made me interested in reading some of the author’s other work. Perhaps I’ll next read The Good Doctor which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

Jars line my cellar shelves. Some are filled with fists of yellow-veined tomatoes. Others hold small onions and chopped leeks, white pearls floating in an opaque sea. Sometimes the light falls on a jar of boiled quail or the slick, dark meat of a rabbit. There are unexpected moments when I see the slit of an infant’s mouth, or the curl of a tiny fist behind the glass, and I run up the steps, back into the open light of sky. I gasp for air and tell myself the past is a distant thing, no longer able to reach me or hurt me. And yet, at times, it seems the past will always send its long thin fingers toward me, reminding me of all I want to forget. -From Tomato Girl, prologue-

Jayne Pupek’s debut novel, Tomato Girl, is not a story for the faint of heart…nor is it one which the reader will likely soon forget.

Set in the South, the book is narrated from the innocent point of view of eleven year old Ellie Sanders who is forced to grow up far too early. Ellie has learned to depend upon her father Rupert to guide her through the confusing maze of her mother’s mental illness. But when Ellie’s mother has an accident and Rupert introduces Tess (a girl who delivers tomatoes to the general store where Rupert works) to “help out” at home … everything changes.

Through Ellie’s eyes the reader meets the memorable characters who people the novel: Mary Roberts (Ellie’s precocious and practical best friend), Clara and Jericho (the black couple with love to spare), Sheriff Rhodes,  Miss Wilder (Ella’s lesbian teacher who tries to help), the frightening Mason Reed, young Tess (who threatens the security of Ellie’s family), Rupert (who flounders in his ability to provide emotionally to Ellie), Julia (Ellie’s very ill mother), and Baby Tom. Through Ellie the reader experiences the pain of loss, and the terror of living with a mentally ill parent.

This is a tough book to read. It is raw and far too real. But it is also beautifully written. Pupek has captured Ellie’s character perfectly - a young girl on the cusp of becoming a woman, but who is still wrapped in the innocence of childhood. Pupek never veers from Ellie’s point of view, skillfully revealing the workings of adult motivation through the eyes of a child.

There will be readers who will find this book too disturbing to read. Some scenes are graphic, disheartening, and completely unforgettable. Tomato Girl is a novel which will not go away once the final page has been turned. Pupek has created a character who like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird and Ruth Ann in Bastard Out of Carolina will tug on the reader’s heart and demand to be heard.

Recommended.

Breath by Tim Winton
2008, 218 pp.

Ugh. I thought this was about a teen boy surfing in Australia. I wanted it to be about a teen boy surfing in Australia. And it was, for about 150 pages, then it goes off into a weird and extreme area that I will not mention here. I feel ripped off because I enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book, but then to have to be subjected to…blech.

Pikelet and Loonie are two teenage boys obsessed with surfing. They meet up with Sando, a guy in his mid 30’s who coaches them in the sport and sometimes encourages them to go a little too far with it. Sando’s wife, Eva, was an extreme skier but now has a blown knee. Consequently, she’s bitter because her husband still gets to do what he loves and because he’s not spending any time with her. Breath is about pushing everything in life to the extreme to see how far one can go.

I’m giving it 2 stars because Tim Winton is a good writer and I enjoyed all but the last fourth (which totally ruined the whole thing for me.)

Here’s an example of a passage I did enjoy:

I will always remember my first wave that morning. The smells of paraffin wax and brine and peppy scrub. The way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing in air. How the wave drew me forward and I sprang to my feet, skating with the wind of momentum in my ears. I leant across the wall of upstanding water and the board came with me as though it was part of my body and mind. The blur of spray. The billion shards of light. I remember the solitary watching figure on the beach and the flash of Loonie’s smile as I flew by; I was intoxicated. And though I’ve lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.