How the Light Gets In

How the Light Gets In

By Louise Penny

Thought I'd end 2022 with a return to Louise Penny's page-turning Armand Gamache detective series.
This one is set at just about Christmas time, to boot.

There are three conflicts going on in this one. The event that brings Gamache back to Three Pines is the murder of Constance Ouellett, a member of the once-famous Ouelett Quints -- the first documented case of a successful quintuplet birth in the world. Raised in the public eye by the government. Constance and her sisters retreated to privacy in their last years. But Constance could not retreat from the trauma of her past, and had taken to seeing a therapist in Montreal. This turns out to be Myrna, the bookshop owner of Three Pines. Constance visited her old therapist/friend in Three Pines in December, with plans to return for Christmas. When she doesn't, Gamache returns to the village.

He brings with him some baggage of his own. His once-right-hand-man, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is not with him. Instead, he's been transferred out of the Surete homicide division -- and, after a divorce from his daughter Annie following a return to addiction (Oxycontin), Gamache's life. Almost. Gamache is there in the wings, doing a little more than hoping for Beauvoir's recovery and return.

And then there's the "grand scheme", a plot by the head of the Surete and, it turns out, the minister of Quebec. It takes most of the book to learn what this scheme is; Penny is pretty heavy-handed on the foreshadowing and suspense. But it turns out that the two have for years failed to perform basic repairs and upkeep on Quebec's infrastructure, pushing it toward failure in the hopes they can pin the ensuing disaster on the Canadian government and ride a tide of independence fever to more power than they already have. The pair know that Gamache is working to foil them, and they are the ones responsible for the gutting of Gamache's department -- and Beauvoir's additction.

Gamache, though, has some aces up his sleep, too. And, once again, he outsmarts and outworks his opponents to victory. Don't think that's much of a spoiler. 

If mac'n'cheese is comfort food, the Gamache series is a comfort book. What fun to return to Three Pines and its cast of close-knit characters. Till next time... 

Wonder Boys

 Wonder Boys

By Michael Chabon

Wonder Boys was one of my favorite movies in my late teens and early 20s. It features Toby MaGuire,
Francis McDormand, Robert Downey Jr. and Michael Douglas. I'd always known it was based on a book, and came across it one day while visiting the library with some students and thought I'd check it out to see how well it conformed to the book.

It turns out, Wonder Boys is an ideal example of what people mean when they say a book is "cinematic". From what I could tell, the screenwriters of the movie barely had to change a thing. The dialogue, the scenes, the setting -- it was all there in the book. It was, in fact, just like watching the movie again. There were, of course, small differences. Grady Tripp's physique -- he's no small, svelte Michael Douglas in the book -- is one. We also learn much more about Grady's future-former wife, Emily, who, it turns out, is adopted, from Korea, into a Jewish family that moved full time out into the Pennsylvania countryside after the patriarch's retirement. 

I do wish I'd come across Chabon's book first. I think I would have liked it a lot. And it would have allowed me to create pictures of the characters in my head. As it was, all I could picture were Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand, and Toby MaGuire. All well. I need to read more Michael Chabon.

The Last Revival of Opal and Nev

 The Last Revival of Opal and Nev

By Dawnie Walton

This is the story of an interracial rock duo from the 1970s -- as well as the magazine-editor working to tell

their intertwined story. Nev is a British songwriter trying to find an electrifying partner when he stumbles upon Opal in a Detroit nightclub. It is Opal's sister who has the voice, but she who has the panache of a star. The two put out a record that is destined for obscurity until one night when their record label puts on a showcase of its talent headlined by their one hit-maker, the Bond Brothers. This southern-rock band attracts an audience of Hell's Angel-like bikers who are obscene and loud -- and riotous when Opal, who has been eyeing warily the Confederate flag the Bonds like to use as a prop at their show, reveals that she has stolen it and gathered it around her like a diaper. A picture of a wounded Nev hauling an even more wounded Opal out of the theater makes a splash in the Times and Opal and Nev ride the attention to a new record, fame, and a small fortune.

Oh, and the drummer for the band, Jimmy Curtis, is killed in the melee. He happens to be the father of the editor/reporter hoping to tell Opal and Nev's story ahead of a reunion tour, LenaSarah "Sunny" Curtis. The book switches back and forth between interviews with Opal and Nev, Sunny's narrative, and other bits of media, all of which are designed to make the book read like the "real" thing; there are even footnotes. In her research, Sunny interviews the sole surviving Bond brother, who claims it was Nev who told his drugged up former self that Opal had stolen his stars and bars and started the riot that night. It's a fact that has the potential to blow the Opal and Nev reunion tour up -- if anyone believes it. It also provides a window into an exploration of the role that race and gender play in the music industry (and world as a whole). 

All in all, I found this to be an engrossing book. I wonder, though, whether its realism adds to it or detracts from it. The series of events are so tied to real events that it sometimes felt tedious to re-read them. I was certainly ready for it to be done when it was over.

Wolf Hall

 Wolf Hall

By Hilary Mantel

I picked this up after hearing of Mantel's death. I'd picked it up before at my parents' house, and was
surprised to find its beginning pages far more interesting than I'd imagined. It follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell -- not the other famous Cromwell, Oliver -- during the reign of Henry VIII. It was a time of great societal change in England as Henry's failure to produce an heir with his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his wandering heart led him to an impasse with Pope Clement that ultimately produced the English Reformation. 

Cromwell's position of power in guiding these affairs was surprising given his "low" birth. He was the son of a blacksmith whose violent beatings sent the younger Cromwell fleeing to Europe, where he served in various armies. When he became Henry's master secretary, he became the first person without a "noble" birth to hold such a position, and it seems as though Cromwell's suspicion of a system that ranks people based on their ancestors parallels his thoughts about papal power. Mantel, I've read, has also reimagined Cromwell, who, though I'd never heard of him, was traditionally depicted as conniving and power-hungry. Mantel's Cromwell, meanwhile, is generous and tolerant and wise.

What struck me in reading the book was just how much a hold Christianity had on people back in the 1500s. Henry's excommunication and subsequent break with Rome seemed to cause an international crisis. Meanwhile, people are being burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. Everyone is so darn certain of their afterlife in heaven that they are willing to die for their support of this or that interpretation of religion. Then again, one wonders if we have now replaced religion with something else. Republicans across the nation, after all, have plotted violence against Democrats. Or maybe it is that people susceptible to religion are predisposed to follow blindly, though I know that is an ungenerous characterization. 

Whatever the case, I will say that by the end of this book's 600 pages, reading about the political machinations of 16th-century England became a bit...tedious. The problem with historical fiction is that the outcome is usually known. It seems like getting there could take fewer pages.

Olympus, Texas

 Olympus, Texas

By Stacey Swann

Finally got a school-year book under my belt. Been a bit slow going now that I'm back to work. So little
brain power left at the end of the day.

I picked up this novel almost solely based on the fact that it had an endorsement blurb on the front from  Richard Russo, whose Straight Man I still remember as laugh-out-loud funny -- and which I just learned is about to be turned into a television series. Go figure. Anyway, based on Russo's "Wildly entertaining" comment, I thought maybe this was a book in his vein of humor.

I can't say it was that, exactly. The book shines a spotlight on a prominent family in the tiny Texas town of Olympus. The family is dysfunctional. Peter, the patriarch, was in his past a serial philanderer who fathered several children with women other than his wife, June. She lives in a constant state of anger and wondering about whether the choice to stay with him was the right move for her and, more importantly, her family. One daughter, Thea, clearly thinks it was not. She has moved to Chicago in an attempt to escape her family and seethes contempt when around her mother. Others say it contributed to the horrific choice by her other son, March, to sleep with the wife of his brother, Hap, whose reputation as kind and forgiving some call a sanctimonious relic of his mother's silent suffering. And then there are Artie and Arlo, twins by Peter's affair with a spineless woman named Lee.

All of these issues come to a head when March, exiled after his affair, returns to town, which seems to set into motion an otherwise unthinkable tragedy. Arlo, jealous of his sisters newfound relationship, dares her to shoot at a faraway object in the river, which he knows to be her beau but which she thinks might be a rabid skunk. Before Arlo can reveal his subterfuge, the shot is taken -- and it hits its mark. Who is to blame, really? Peter? June? Arlo? March? And what does it mean to forgive? And what does it all have to do with the ancient Greeks?

I did appreciate this novel, though I will say it caught me at an inopportune time. The beginning of the school year is not a time to pick up a Greek tragedy, particularly if you are expecting it to be a comedy. Then again, maybe the difference between the two isn't as much as we all might hope.

Black Buck

 Black Buck

By Mateo Askaripour

This novel follows the rise and fall of Darren Vender. At the beginning of the novel, Darren, who

graduated valedictorian from one of New York's most prestigious high schools, is a manager at a Starbucks. Though he is told frequently by those around him -- his mother, girlfriend, friends, neighborhood personalities -- to "make something of himself" he is content to bide his time until an "opportunity" presents itself. And then one day it does. On a whim, Darren makes a sales pitch to a startup executive/coffee shop regular, which leads to a job offer at Sumwum.

Given the environment at Sumwum and what it does to Darren, it is unclear whether the new job represents a rise or a fall. Darren is given a new name, Buck, a nod to his previous employer, and, after passing hell week, embraces the culture of the company whole-heartedly. One by one, his ties to his past are severed. And then his mother dies of cancer that she hid from him for months. In a rock-bottom moment, Buck kicks out a long-time tenant for keeping the details of his mothers' illness a secret. 

And then Buck climbs back up. He begins mentoring other young people of color in the ways of sales as a way to better their lives. Soon it is a movement -- Happy Campers. In the book, all around the world, people of color help each other find and fit into sales jobs. Buck's friends come back. And then figures seeking revenge bring Buck down again. Or do they? He is set up to take the fall for a drug sale and winds up in prison. But he claims to be freer than ever before. 

This book was certainly engrossing, but grating at the same time. I appreciated the author's voice, particularly those moments when he interrupted the narrative to speak directly to the reader, as in, "Reader: Hell hath no fury like a white man scorned. Especially in the world of business. If you're going to do something to piss them off, be prepared for them to strike back sooner or later." But the ups and downs of the book were so predictable, it was like watching a slow-motion car crash. You knew trouble was only a page away. It made me anxious to read. I know it was satire, but it was also pretty fantastical. Satire only really works when it is grounded in reality, and I think this book veered a bit too far from it to be real. 

The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle

 The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle

By Christina Uss

There's really only one word to adequately describe this book, and its one I'm a bit loathe to use, but here

goes anyway: charming. I know -- cringe. But hear me out. It's true.

The eponymous girl in question is left at a young age on the steps of a religious order called the Mostly Silent Monks. Their ethos is that it is better to listen than speak, so they have reduced their verbal communication to a mere eight words, the most expressive of which is, supposedly, sandwich. All of this near silence suits Bicycle quite well, which worries her main caregiver, a retired nun named Wanda, because the young woman seems averse to friendships with kids her own age. Her solution: A summer stay at the Friendship Factory, which guarantees -- guarantees! -- three friendships by the end.

The prospect of spending time at such an institution is more than Bicycle can take, so she sets off on a cross-country bicycle trip to the Blessing of the Bikes in San Francisco, where she hopes she can befriend her bicycling hero, a Polish star named Zbig, and prove to Sister Wendy that she does need Friendship Factory. Her journey is filled with adventure. She meets a Civil War ghost named Griffin G. Griffin who decides to haunt her bike and ride back to his hometown in Missouri. She helps a cafe owner develop a business plan, rescues a racehorse from the Kentucky Derby, loses her bike, buys a new technologically advanced bike at an auction, escapes another Friendship Factory, and finally, finally makes it to the Blessing of the Bicycles, where Wanda is, finally, convinced that Bicycle can, indeed, make friends.

So, why charming? It's partly the steadfast earnestness of the narrator. It's also the fact that the author inserts just enough whimsy. The whole ghost-inhabiting-a-bike thing could be borderline stupid; but she makes it work. Sure, there are parts that are a little over the top -- a scientist studying luck is invited to a fictional country with incessantly bad luck -- but for the most part it all works. And it is so upbeat. Even the downs make you smile. It was just what I needed at this moment.

Hatchet

 Hatchet

By Gary Paulsen

We've been trying to get Kes to read some chapter books without much luck -- Harry Potter was a no-go --

until this one stuck. I'm so glad it did. I'd remembered the story from when I was a kid, and it was great to both share that with him and also to rediscover just what a lovely book it really is. It's not just the plot, which unfolds at a perfect pace, but Paulsen's writing. This really is a literary tale. I love the cadence of Paulsen's sentences, the way he uses repetition and mixes up the length. He's not just trying to get you to read on, he's offering an opportunity to savor the experience. We now have the whole Brian series out from the library. I am looking forward to digging into them all.

Nothing to See Here

 Nothing to See Here

By Kevin Wilson

I came across this book after beginning Richard Powers' new book, Bewilderment, which certainly lived

up to its name for the first hundred pages or so. I was bewildered why the author would create a story so sad and, more importantly, why I was still reading it. So I went searching for something more...comical?

Despite Jacqueline Woodson's claim that Nothing to See Here is "laugh-out loud funny" (according to the book jacket), I didn't find it quite that. It was funny more in an absurdist, Phish kind of way. Exhibit A, the premise: A powerful Senator has two children who catch on fire when agitated. That's right, their skin bursts into flames when they are upset. And there is much to be upset about. They were kicked out of the filthy-rich politician's home when they were five, their mother just killed herself and tried to get them to join her, and they've spent the aftermath living with two incompetent grandparents only interested in checks from their father. So -- lots of fire. 

Enter Lillian, the narrator of the book, a longtime "friend" of the kids' stepmother, who is more or less obsessed with getting her new husband the post of Secretary of State so she can have some kind of political platform herself. It becomes Lillian's job to take care of the kids, to keep them from bursting into flames in a public way so that the vetting process can go off without a hitch. Lillian, whose life has amounted to very little -- in no small part because she agreed to take the fall when this step mother was caught with coke at the fancy private school she managed to get herself into -- is an unlikely caregiver. But she sees her weirdness reflected in the two kids, Bessie and Roland, and manages to bond with them.

Lillian's voice is what makes this story work. She has some very interesting turns of phrase. As she readies herself for Bessie to burn, for instance: "‘Roland,’ I said, so quietly, so calm, like I was euthanizing a cat, ‘go get me a towel, O.K.?’” Like she was euthanizing a cat?! What a wonderful comparison. Perhaps this is what made Jacqueline Woodson laugh.

I'll definitely be checking out more of Wilson's work.

The List of Things that Will Not Change

 The List of Things that Will Not Change

By Rebecca Stead

The list referred to in the title of the book was bestowed on the main character, Bea, when her parents let her know that they were getting divorced. But this is no usual divorce; Bea's dad, it turns out, is gay, and the separation is beyond amicable. To the list her parents started -- they will always love her, etc. -- Bea continues to add as she grows. So the divorce isn't really the conflict that one might think it is. Rather, the conflict is Bea's own internal struggle to accept herself, to control her impulsivity, and to forgive herself for the mistakes she has made. The backdrop to all of this is Bea's dad's wedding to his new partner.

If this all sounds a bit too tidy and even a little cliched -- there is even a scene at the wedding where an estranged cousin causes an anti-gay scene -- it is. But Stead is a great writer who made even this predictable tale engrossing.

Harlem Shuffle

 Harlem Shuffle

By Colson Whitehead

The central character of Whitehead's latest novel is Ray Carney, and the book tracks his travails over two

decades as he "shuffles" -- maybe hustles is a better world -- between two worlds to make something of himself in 1950s and 1960s Harlem. The most visible, above-board part of this striving is a furniture store. But even that is tainted by the crooked part of his life; Carney opened the store with seed money from his father, a small-time crook who never broke the surface of straight life. Carney's work in New York's illegal life is as a fence, someone who takes stolen goods, mainly jewels, and turns them into cash for himself and the thief. Carney seeks a balance between these two worlds, but it is continually upset by his cousin-cum-brother, Freddie, who thoughtlessly brings Carney in deeper than he wants by connecting him to gangsters and, even worse, straight-seeming gangsters in the form of the powerful Van Wyck -- pronounced Wike, not Wick -- family. 

The book is, in part, an examination of exactly what it means to be crooked. In this version of Harlem in this book (and I have no idea how realistic it is), no one is clean. Not the neighborhood cops, who take money to leave criminal enterprises alone. Not the black elite members of the Dumas Club, the leader of which embezzles money from fellow members. And certainly not the wealthy white families who run the city, whose operations appear more like the mafia than a business.

It is also a story of the city itself and how it changed over time. The years '59, '61, and '64 are very specific, and align with key moments in the city's development. '64 is particularly poignant. It is the year of the World's Fair, of rioting in Harlem, of the growth of the World Trade Center building. From Carney's point of view, it's all a "shuffle", a shell game in which the rich, white elite move the cups in a way that makes you think you're winning, but who always end up adding to their piles of wealth and privilege. 

Whitehead is an incredible author. I don't know how he manages to take on a new voice, a new style with each of his books. This was one of those that made the world he imagined (even if much of it is real) alive for me. I felt like I knew Carney, and am a little sad our stories have now diverged.

Lovecraft Country

 Lovecraft Country

By Matt Huff

Set in 1950s, Jim Crow America, this genre bending -- or maybe blending is the right term -- follows the

travails of the Turner family as they seek to fend off a heretofore unknown secret society of white sorcerers known as the Order of the Dawn. One member of the Turners, Atticus, is the last known direct-descendant of one of the founders of the order, and this status makes him (or, rather, his blood) a sought-after tool for wizards hoping to advance their skills and standing. Chief among them is Caleb Braithwhite. 

The novel is told in a series of connected but nearly stand-alone stories that borrow from science fiction, pulp, and horror. It starts when Atticus, his father Montrose, uncle George (who happens to publish a travel guide modeled on the Green Book), and cousin Letitia are lured to a New England village at the heart of the order's power. Other adventures ensue: Letitia buys a house haunted by a one-time rival of Caleb's father; Atticus' aunt, Hippolyta, enters a machine that takes her to another planet; his nephew, Horace, is "marked" so that he animates statues around him, giving them murderous intentions; another aunt is given an elixir that, for a few hours at a time, turns her skin white. 

In the end, the Turners manage to remove Caleb from their life -- for the moment. The central theme of the book is revealed as Caleb Braithwhite stands on the side of the road, his powers stripped, begging the Turners to reconsider his punishment. He warns them that other members of the order are aware of Atticus, "And they'll be coming for you...they won't leave you alone until they get what they want from you. No matter where you go, you'll never be safe..." The Turners just laugh. Atticus responds: "What is it you're trying to scare me with? You think I don't know what country I live in? I know. We all do." In other words, whiteness itself is a kind of secret society, and the "horrors" Braithwhite brought into the Turners lives is no match for the real-world horror of Jim Crow.

Loved this book. It was just suspenseful enough to keep the pages turning but humorous/pulpy enough to keep it at bay. I read it in less than a week -- no small feat with school in session. It is now the basis for an HBO series, and I wonder how the tone of the live-action version matches the book.

1Q84

 1Q84

By Haruki Murakami

I've been with this book for quite a while. I remember that I was reading it before February break, when I

took a little hiatus for some cowboy lore. For the past few days, as I've been closing in on the finish, I've been doing my best to savor this latest Murakami world, unsure of what I'd do when it ended. Then again, do Murakami worlds really ever end?

The stars of this show are Tengo and Aomame. Tengo is pretty close to the derided "Murakami man" -- a loner with an older, married girlfriend who seems to wander haplessly but fairly contentedly through the world. Aomame, though, is different -- a strong female lead. It is she who starts the story off when, one afternoon, she is frustrated by a traffic jam on the highway and, at her taxi driver's suggestion, descends a set of emergency stairs off the highway. She makes it down fine, but she soon discovers that the world after that event is a little different than it was before. Police uniforms, she notices, are just a wee bit different. Different enough that she thinks she would have noticed, but not so different as to be a complete break from what came before. Other discrepancies emerge as well, and she decides that she is no longer in 1984 -- she is in 1Q84. It is confirmed when she looks at the night sky and sees not one but two moons shining down on her.

Meanwhile, Tengo's journey is a little more subtle. He is conversing with the editor of a literary magazine when his companion proposes something out of the ordinary. The editor has received a manuscript  -- Air Chrysalis -- with an extraordinary story but lackluster prose. Would Tengo re-write it so that it can be submitted for a literary prize? Tengo knows better, but he's read the story and something is drawing him to it. So he does the work and, sure enough, the novella wins the prize. Then it becomes a best seller. And one day, Tengo sees two moons too.

Oh, and another thing: Tengo and Aomame are pining for each other, and have been since they once held hands in a magical moment as 10-year-olds. They never spoke again, but very much want to get back to one another. Right.

So what's the deal with this 1Q84? It has some wonderful, mysterious, and, typical of Murakami, rather vague elements. The most important of which are the Little People. They were a feature in the book that Tengo re-wrote. And in 1Q84, they are real. What are they? Who are they? Are they good? Are they evil? We never really figure out. One thing we know is that they create chrysalises out of the air that house a kind of copy of living humans. Clones? Maybe. We also know that they play a central role in a religion of which the original author's father was Leader. And that Aomame, who as a side job worked as an assassin who murders serial abusers of women, kills Leader. It is this final act that, spoiler alert, finally brings Aomame and Tengo together and allows them to climb back up the fire-escape-cum-portal back to 1984. It takes 925 pages.

So, what does it all mean? The book is essentially about a book that brings another world to life. So it seems like a riff on a familiar Murakami theme about the nature of reality, that it is something we can create -- not just something that is presented to us. It is also, of course, a statement about the power of stories, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones our culture perpetuates, and the ones that can set us free.* 

925 pages. I will miss 1Q84.

*I forgot a detail about the moon. Murakami loves to insert musical references. In this case, lines from "Paper Moon" -- "It wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me." Again: Reality is what you make of it.

Any Other Name

Any Other Name

By Craig Johnson

This is one of the installments in the book series that inspired the Longmire TV show. It features Walt

Longmire as a beleaguered but talented Wyoming sheriff who tackles outsized crimes in small-town America -- in cowboy style. I saw this at my friend Chris Sickel's house during a February trip to Montana, and I thought it would be an apropos read. I was right.

In this particular Longmire adventure, Walt is lured outside of his jurisdiction to a neighboring county, where the wife of the sheriff there wants him to look into his death. It had been labeled a suicide, but she thinks its more. The book is heavy on foreshadowing, and we learn pretty early on that the wife isn't going to like what Walt finds out. It turns out that the reason for the sheriff's death hits closer to home than she imagined. Spoiler alert: her daughter was running a sex-trafficking ring out of the family basement. When the sheriff-father uncovered it, he was unable to either turn his daughter in or continue to look the other way. So he killed himself.

I can't say this was a great book. The plot was far-fetched to say the least, and there are lots of hard-boiled detective meets good ole Wyoming boy cliche and shtick. But it was entertaining. Might have to pick up another one next time I am out west.

String Theory

 String Theory 

By David Foster Wallace

I've been meaning to read this book since I discovered its existence several years ago, and, inspired by this year's Australian Open (now several months in the past) I finally requested it via interlibrary loan. The book contains a series of essays on tennis, including a reflection on Wallace's own time as a nearly-high-level junior tennis player and on Roger Federer's greatness.

The essays are without exception fun to read. I love Wallace's voice; his is an equal mix of cynicism, awe, and wit. And the vocabulary! The man loves words. Example: "Goran Ivanisevic is large and tan and surprisingly good-looking -- at least for a Croat; I always imagine Croats looking ravaged and katexic and like somebody out of a Munch lithograph -- except for an incongruous and wholly absurd bowl haircut that makes him look like somebody i a Beatles tribute band." He does this for pages and pages and pages. Katexic! And then there are the footnotes, with which Wallace famously experimented in his novels. He does here, too, and they often take up more of a page than the regular text.

I will say that the essays definitely repeat some of the same themes. One of which is that we mere mortal tennis players have no idea how good pros are until we see it in person. It would therefore be best to mete these out throughout the year. Perhaps one essay per major? This will be a good gift for Dad.

Norwegian Wood

 Norwegian Wood

By Haruki Murakami

Even after reading the book, I was a bit confused about the title. Music and art often play supporting roles in

Murakami novels, but putting a song in the title suggests it will take center stage. And while the song does appear several times in this story, I didn't quite get why the author would give it such significance. Then I read this New York Times review and the opening sentences cleared it up for me. It's the lyrics, silly: "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me." Which is the book in a nutshell. So I guess that's why I make my living teaching middle school and not writing book reviews. 

Anyway -- back to Murakami! Yes! The "I" in this story is a typical Murakami man, this time named Toru Watanabe. Like most of Murakami's main characters, he is a soul adrift and detached from the world. Despite his good nature and intelligence, he is inexplicably friendless in the busiest city in Japan. And he is haunted as he tries to make sense of a traumatic past.

The trauma in this story stems from the suicide of Toru's best (and only) high-school friend at the age of 17. It bubbles up when Toru, now studying at a Tokyo university, runs into his best friend's girlfriend, Naoko. The three were inseparable during their high school years -- a relationship that conjures Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki -- and become so again in this new stage of life, taking long walks on Sunday afternoons before Toru's shift at a record store. Naoko has a mesmerizing pull on Toru -- much like Murakami's effect on the reader -- and the two fall in "love". I put it in quotation marks because it is an attraction that seems to strive more  to make sense of their common friend's death than to take joy on one another.

Not long after they meet, Naoko moves to an sanitarium of sorts to recover from an unnamed mental illness. Toru visits her there, and, when he does so, enters an world separate from the seemingly inane drivers of "reality". This seems to be one of the central meditations of the book: Whether it is better to be of the world or detached from it. Symbolizing this choice is a relationship Toru develops with a fellow co-ed named Midori. As Midori explains after announcing her love for Toru: "I'm a real, live girl, with real, live blood gushing through my veins." In the end, Toru -- unlike many other characters in the book -- chooses real life.

I simply cannot imagine picking up a book whose sole plot is a love triangle. And that is Murakami's magic: It doesn't matter what he is writing about, his style and tone and mood draw you into world. Reading him is like being in a meditative trance. It's a place I haven't visited for a year or so, and I was glad, as always, to be back.  

The Odyssey

 The Odyssey

A Graphic Novel by Gareth Hinds

Erin picked this up as something she might use for a mythology club that'll be running at school beginning in a few weeks. Since I was between books, I picked it up to. Given that it is a graphic novel, I ripped through it in an evening.

I guess what struck me about it, other than the pretty-cool graphics to go along with the story, was just how familiar it all is. I have no recollection of ever reading The Odyssey, though I must have at some point in school. It just feels like something running in the background of our culture. Which is pretty crazy given how old this story is. It is kind of amazing to think that humans have been telling and retelling the tale of Odysseus' travels for thousands of years. 

It is an idea that connects back to Cloud Cuckoo Land, which was certainly on my brain as I leafed through this book. It is interesting how the reading of one book can color your reading of another.

A Burning

 A Burning

By Megha Majumdar

The literal burning of the title happens late at night at a train station, where shadows of men are seen

fleeing while one after another train car is lit ablaze. More than a hundred are left dead. 

Meanwhile, in a nearby slum, a young woman named Jivan is pondering this atrocity. When her previous Facebook posts on the incident fail to garner enough likes as she wanted, Jivan reposts a video of a weeping woman who declares that police were at the seen and failed to act and so isn't the state just as much a terrorist as the people who lit the flames in the first place.

Jivan, it is clear, is striving, hoping for more. She has dropped out of school for a clerk job at a fancy clothing store, where she brings home her family's first steady income in a long while. She wants to be seen, to be somebody. 

But, it seems, in modern India, Muslims are not destined to be somebodys.

Because, due to her post or some other motivation, Jivan is arrested for the crime that she has nothing to do with. The poor, Muslim girl becomes a scapegoat for the nation, a charade of justice that fools enough people. 

Along the way, Jivan's fall allows others to rise. There is her former physical education teacher, PT Sir, who parlays testimony as the accused's former teacher into a plum job with a rising nationalist political party. And Lovely, a hijra -- which, based on some quick research, I think is an Indian term for someone who is transgendered --  follows a similar path to a starring role in a new movie. Both make the conscious decision to quicken injustice for Jivan for a better life for themselves. 

There is a cruel irony running in the background. The nationalist political party to which PT Sir belongs, and which wins election amidst Jivan's trial, preaches service to the state, subordinating the self for the good of all. But is self-service that leads party leaders to doom Jivan to what they know is an unjust fate. It is a commentary not just on India but the facade of the zero-sum game that many seem to think they must play to get ahead throughout the world.

As a reader, I will say this was a difficult but mesmerizing one to get through. You are sympathetic to each character in their striving. But it is Jivan with whom your loyalty lies, and it is hard, at the outset, to imagine anything but justice coming her way. That it doesn't is a gut punch that will be a bit hard to recover from.

The Eye of the Needle

 The Eye of the Needle

By Ken Follett

I came across this book one evening after the kids had found and ransacked a box of books my parents' dropped off about a year ago. I was just off Cloud Cuckoo Land, and thought I'd give it a shot. It was a winner.

Set in England during World War II, the book tells the tale of a German spy whose codename is "The Needle" owing to his penchant for killing with a stiletto knife. As cover, he goes by Henry Faber. With D-Day approaching, German officials send Faber to East Anglia to assess the size of the army amassing there. What he finds is a ruse -- inflatable tanks, plywood planes, and half-built barracks designed to trick the Germans into thinking that the landing target will be Calais. Faber photographs the truth and sets about returning the information to Germany so it can better defend the true location, Normandy.

Standing in his way is Britain's Military Intelligence (MI), whose ranks have expanded to include the likes of Percival Godliman, a Medieval historian who served with distinction in the previous war. Godliman (whose name is, come on, a bit obvious) and his colleagues track Faber to a remote island off the coast of Scotland, where he awaits a rendezvous with a U Boat. But it is one of the inhabitants of the island, Lucy, who becomes the real hero. She and her husband, David, had sought refuge on the island four years before when a car accident on the couple's wedding night left David legless -- and humorless. When Faber shows up, they are initially just glad to see another human being, and Lucy especially so. She conducts a tryst with Faber, who becomes uncharacteristically smitten with Lucy and so holds off on killing her -- which becomes his fatal mistake.

Whoa, what a page turner this was! Full of fairly graphic violence and, toward the end, sex, this was more of a book than I bargained for. I'd picked it up expecting silly cliches, but by the end I couldn't put it down -- even though I knew what the outcome had to be. I might check out more Follett in the future.

Still Life and A Fatal Grace

 Still Life and A Fatal Grace

By Louise Penny

I read these two mysteries, the first in the Armand Gamache series, back to back, and they are blurred in my head. In the first, a beloved community member is killed by an arrow. The search for the perpetrator leads investigators to her house, which the victim had kept under wraps from even her closest friends for decades. The reason, it turns out, was that it had been covered in folk art that held the clue to solving the crime. In the second, a decidedly unbeloved newcomer to the community was murdered at a post-Chritsmas curling match in an unusual way: through electrocution. On ice. In a crowd. The subsequent investigation revealed it was the victim's daughter, who had endured enough suffering at her mother's hand and mouth that no one could blame her for the crime.

But it isn't really the plot that keeps me coming back to these novels; it's the characters that really draw you in. There's Clara and Peter, the resident artists, and Ruth, the curmudgeonly poet, and Oivier and Gabri, the owners of the Three Pines Bistro, and, of course, Gamache himself, a man of inscrutable integrity and kindness who is, we learn, on the outs from the rest of the Surete because of his attempts to hold a fellow officer accountable. It is this drama that weaves through all of Penny's books. This stuff is literary candy -- I'm looking forward to going back for more.

Cloud Cuckoo Land

 Cloud Cuckoo Land

By Anthony Doerr

This is a paean. Not only does Doerr say as much in his afterward, but so does a New York Times book

review. Seems like people really like to use that word when they can. So: paean. That much is clear. A paean (why not squeeze as many as we can in?) to books.

The book that this book focuses on is a fictional Greek myth called, as the title suggests, Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is one of several threads that connects the many characters and settings that inhabit this book. Chronologically, there is: Anna, who lives in an about-to-be-besieged 15th-century Constantinople; Omeir, who is drafted into the military machine about to do the besieging; Zeno, a motherless son of a Greek immigrant trying to make a life for himself in rural Idaho; Seymour, of the same Idaho town, who is also trying to make sense of his place in the world; and Konstance, who, in the 22nd century, on a spaceship that has embarked on a 500-year journey to an exoplanet the inhabitants of the Argo hope will be a replacement for the ravaged earth they left behind. 

It is, chronologically, Anna who stumbles upon Cloud Cuckoo Land while trying to discover ancient manuscripts for paying Italians. In doing so, she sets the rest of the story in motion. The book is one of two possessions Anna takes with her while fleeing Constantinople; the other is a snuff box with an image of Urbana, Italy. During her escape, Anna runs into Omeir, a harelipped outsider who does not speak Anna's language. Still, the two stay together and make it to safety, a feat that Omeir believes is owed to Anna's mysterious book. And so as his final act, Omeir, his wife Anna long dead, takes the book to the city on the snuff box so it will be safe for all time.

Four centuries later, Zeno is in a North Korean prison camp when he meets and falls in love with a classics scholar named Rex. The two are soon separated, but not before Rex teaches Zeno some of the old language. In their last meeting, Rex encourages Zeno to try some translating, which he does upon his retirement from a highway department job in Idaho. Not long after, a discovery of an ancient text -- which turns out to be Cloud Cuckoo Land -- is made, and, amateur though he is, Zeno sets about making a translation. Which somehow captures the imagination of a group of fifth graders who urge Zeno to help them stage a play based on the old story.

It never happens. That is because Seymour, reeling from the destruction of a forest that killed a beloved Great Gray Owl to build condos, brings bombs into the library during play rehearsal so he can exact revenge on the development company just a few feet away. Zeno dies removing the bombs from the library. Seymour ends up in jail, where he matures and works to atone for his crime. Eventually, he does so by bringing back the 5th-grade survivors and presents them with a bound copy of Zeno's translation of Cloud Cuckoo Land.

One of those survivors is an Australian woman who will become the great grandmother of Konstance, who, spurred on by her father's quotations from the book, pieces a full story together. This gives her the courage to break out of the Argo, which has become beset by a pestilence, when she realizes that it is not actually hurtling through space but in fact sitting on the Icelandic tundra as part of a corporate experiment. 

So it all comes together. The story helps give meaning to five lives and, we can presume, many more. A paean indeed.