The Strange Library

 The Strange Library

By Haruki Murakami

By now, I've exhausted all of the Murakami at the local libraries except this one. It's quite short, and took

only an evening to read, so it wasn't quite the immersive experience I was looking for. But it certainly lived up to its title!

The novella tells the story of a man -- a Murakami man! -- who wanders into a library looking to check out books. He is directed to a basement, where and old man leads him into a labyrinth and demands he check out a book. The narrator, who was more in the mood to browse than anything, is incredibly passive and gives into the old man's demands, even when he is taken deeper underground into a reading room that winds up being a jail cell. The assignment there: Read two books on tax collection in the Ottoman Empire and pass a test on it to be released. At first, he complies, but then the person who brings meals -- delicious meals, it turns out -- reveals that all of this reading and memorizing is just to make his brain more tasty and delicious and that, whether he passes the test or not, his gray matter will become a meal for the old man.

Then a young woman appears. There's always a young woman, isn't there? And she helps him escape the library to safety.

Very strange. But not long enough.

The Borrower

 The Borrower 

By Rebecca Makkai

I picked this one up based upon the binge-worthiness of Makkai's most recent novel, I have some

questions for you. If Richard Russo's quip on the front cover is to be believed, this is her first novel. 

The protagonist-antagonist of this book is Lucy Hull, a children's "librarian" -- quotes because she never received her library science degree -- in Hannibal, MO, who develops a close relationship with one of her patrons, or borrowers, named Ian Drake, a voracious reader living under the strict thumb of a conservative Christian mother. So Lucy slips Ian books every now and again that she thinks he will like. Until.

One day, Ian gives Lucy a piece of origami as a Christmas present. When she unfolds it, she sees a testimonial written by Ian's mother about her son's participation in a gay-conversion therapy run by a prominent pastor. Lucy is horrified, and suddenly obsessed with her young friend's plight. So when she finds him camped out in the children's room of the library one morning after running away from home, she is torn about what to do. She half-heartedly tries to drive him home, but when it is clear he is jerking her around -- and that he DOES NOT want to go home -- she just keeps driving. And driving. And driving. To Chicago and Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Vermont. So now Lucy is the "borrower". 

The journey takes up the bulk of the book, and I will say it was a bit excruciating to read. I mean, it's such a horrible decision on so many levels and clearly nothing but doom awaits. And there are really no hints that anything else is coming. It's like watching a slow motion car wreck for two hundred pages. Things improved after a stop in Pittsburgh, where Lucy learns an important secret about her father, who nearly lost his life fleeing the Soviet Union, and it becomes clear that the trip is as much about Lucy rescuing herself as it is about her rescuing Ian. 

I will say that the ending was a bit too tidy and happy. Somehow, Lucy gets away with it. Which is just impossible. A kid goes missing for over a week, shows up again on a Grayhound -- somebody is going to jail. So that was disappointing. But, over all, a pretty good read.

A Great Reckoning

 A Great Reckoning

By Louise Penny

In my reading world, the arrival of December means an annual reunion with Armand Gamache and his

loyal cast of characters in Three Pines.

This edition finds the Gamaches living in Three Pines as Armand prepares to begin a new chapter of his career as Commander of the Sûretè Academy. I'm a little unclear about where this book falls chronologically in the Gamache bio, but I did read about how he took down the head of the police force, Franceour, who had been corrupt and filled its ranks with like-minded individuals. Gamache saw the academy as the training ground and ultimate source of this corruption, and his goal in taking it over was to right the ship, and restore order to the Quebec police force for years to come.

In what might be described as an act of arrogance, though, Gamache kept one of the most corrupt of the academy's faculty, Serge Leduc, on staff, and hired one of Franceour's right-hand men to join them. His reasoning was that the two might cancel each other out, and serve as living examples of the pitfalls of corruption. It didn't quite work out that way.

Shortly into Gamache's tenure, Leduc is murdered on campus. Gamache brings on his accomplice in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to serve as an independent witness to the investigation. Not surprisingly, he tries to peg the murder on Gamache. But just as he is about to make the arrest, Gamache, newly aware of just how twisted Leduc had been -- he made cadets play Russian roulette! -- proves his corruption and finds the real killer -- Franceour's former ally. Just in the nick of time, as per the usual.

So wonderful to be back in Penny's world again. She sure knows how to twist a tale. I found myself reading until well past my bedtime, which is just what I need this time of year. And after four -- five? -- of these books under my belt, the characters feel like old friends. Till next year...

North

 North

By Brad Kessler

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

 The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

By James McBride

At this point, I think I might have read as many McBride books as Murakami stories. He's an author who's work I know I will love, whatever the subject matter, and this was no different.

The book is set in 1930s Pottstown, PA, in the community of Chicken Hill. The area was first settled by Jewish immigrants, who in recent decades had been moving out as they tried to align their lives with the town's white residents and, in doing so, made room for increasing numbers of black people to move in. Moshe, a theater owner, and his wife Chona, though, are holdouts, largely because of the latter's insistence. Chona refuses to live her life by the "white" majority's rules, does not see moving closer to their environs as a step up -- and cannot understand Pottstown's division of people into classes and races. She grew up in Chicken Hill -- her father was its first rabbi -- and would stay there.

Part of the draw is The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, which, thanks to good business, Moshe is able to buy. The couple live above it, and it becomes something of the child that Chona herself cannot have. Monetarily, it is a losing proposition; but as a community center it is gold. It is not only a gathering place, but a social services network as well. And so, when a young Chicken Hill black boy, rendered deaf by a stove explosion that killed his mother, catches the attention of the state, who wants to put him in an institution where he will receive an "education", Chona and Moshe hide him. 

But then he is discovered. By Doc, an affable small-town doctor to local whites -- and a predator to the black and Jewish communities. When, in the middle of a seizure, to which Chona is prone, Doc begins to assault Chona, Dodo, the hidden boy, reveals himself and defends his adopted mother, an act that seals his fate to the institution. The community then must work together to get him back.

This, of course, is just one plot thread in the book. As a colleague remarked, McBride is a master of building these apparently different lines for hundreds of pages, and then bringing them all together at the end. Plot aside, though, this is a meditation on white power and privilege and the sickness it creates. It was a wonderful read. McBride's dialogue was particularly spot on and helped bring life and laughter to the characters.

I Must Betray You

 I Must Betray You

By Ruta Sepetys

Set in Romania during the final days of the reign of Nicolae Ceausescu, this book examines the toll that a society of spies takes on one another. The book opens with the main character, Cristian Florescu, "recruited" by the Romanian secret police. The quotation marks because he really has no choice. His recruiter, dubbed paddle hands because of the size of his digits, claims to have caught Cristian in the act of trading items (stamps) with a foreigner (a diplomat's son) in exchange for currency (a dollar). The first two are true, but harmless; it is the last item that could get Cristian, and his whole family, in trouble. Moreover, he is enticed by the promise of medicine for his beloved, ailing grandfather. And so Cristian, feeling he has no choice, becomes the thing he hates most in the world: an informer.

He is not alone. It's a society full of informers, and Cristian is left wondering who it was who informed on him. He settles on his once-best-friend, Luca. Meanwhile, his grandfather, sick though he may be, continuously reminds Cristian of the evils of a regime that relies on fear to subdue an entire population, much to the chagrin of his mother and father, who has become a silent shadow of himself.

There is light even in this grim world, though. Cristian kindles a relationship with a girl, Lilliana. But even this isn't safe. It turns out someone is watching them, and when word of specific details of their rendezvous get back to Lilliana, she assumes it is Cristian who revealed them. Is Cristian an informer? Yes. But not of this kind! And so once again, he is left enraged, searching for who might have given him up. He settles on his sister, but, it turns out, he is wrong. 

And then it all comes crashing down. All across Eastern Europe, communist dictatorships fall, and Ceausescu is the last. But it only comes after an uprising that is met with cruel violence, which brings Cristian and Lilliana back together -- but which takes the life of Christian's sister. It is only long afterward that he learns the truth: It was his own mother who spied on him.

I found this an interesting read, particularly when tension builds toward the end. It is a pretty chilling reminder of how lucky we are to live in a democracy, even if it is far less than perfect. 

Vacationland

 Vacationland

By John Hodgman

Some light-hearted reading for our road trip. This is a series of connected essays that basically tells the

story of John Hodgman's second homes. Strange. The first was a place in northwestern Mass inherited from his mother. The second is in Maine, a state with which Hodgman's has a strange love affair -- and which gives the book its title. 

I am writing this more than a month after finishing it, just as many of Kes' friends are heading to Maine on vacation, a destination that I find very strange. What appeal does Maine have for Vermonters? Their mountains have nothing on ours. And if it is coast you are seeking -- why not head to waters that are actually comfortable to swim in? Or go north to Canada, where you can actually get away from people and feel like your in Europe, what with all the French and whatnot?

Anyway, Hodgman is charmingly funny and just self-aware enough about his privilege to make this book readable. I can't say that much about it stuck with me, other than it was hard to believe that Hodgman was managing to make money off a story that is essentially about him having enough money to buy more than one house. Well done there. This is why I keep telling Erin to write a best-selling novel.