You hammered the iron that lay on your anvil instead of dreaming about working silver.
Continuing from where I left off with my January book post, these are the books I read in February
6. A Single Swallow, Ling Zhang.
7. Erasure, Percival Everett
8. The Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan
9. The Giver, A Play, by Eric Cobie
10. Order of Good Cheer, Bill Gaston.
11. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender.
12. The Right Sort of Man, Allison Montclair.
13. The Giver, Lois Lowry.
I have not read a great deal of Chinese Literature, but I have read enough literature in translation to recognize that much of my struggle is related to cultural differences in literary style. I initially picked up Ling Zhang's A Single Swallow last fall, became bogged down, and put it aside. Although this attempt was more fruitful, and my headspace was more clear, I continued to struggle until I was well into the novel. Reading this novel after reading The Vaster Wilds was probably not the best choice, timing-wise, as I found that novel much richer and far more compelling. But this was good.
The story basically takes place in two villages in China during the Japanese occupation at the end of World War II. It is told from the perspective of three men, ghosts really, three men who have agreed to meet again at a certain place, a place where they made a pact, upon their deaths. As each man arrives, they begin to share their stories. The stories told here are of the war, and at the center of that, of a particular girl/woman, Ah Yan, also known as Swallow. The novel is told from the perspective of these three men, two American, one Chinese, but aside from the brutality of the war, the story is also the story of Ah Yan. We never learn her story directly from her, only from the men's view. They each believe they love her. They each see her differently, and none of them really ever bothers to get to know her for who she truly is. That is both frustrating and also far too realistic. After all, how many of us truly see others as they are, apart from our own expectations and desires of who we wish them to be. The astute reader does, in fact, get a very complex and well drawn portrait of Ah Yan however, although it takes some patience with the rather clunky conceit and a willingness to piece together the rather scattered pieces of the puzzle. It was a good novel, not an easy novel, but also a novel I will not forget anytime soon.
I had wanted to read more by Percival Everett since I read The Trees in 2022. A friend wanted to see the movie, American Fiction, and I admittedly wanted to see it as well, but I wanted to read the novel first. And so I read Erasure. I'm glad I did. I loved the novel. It is hilariously funny and also painfully sad. Erasure is an incredibly intelligent novel, filled with literary and cultural ephemera, angry and yet also tender. It feels like the author had too many ideas to corral, and yet despite this, the novel works. I also liked the movie, which is obviously based on the novel, and yet different, as it would have to be. I read a review somewhere stating that the protagonist, Thelonius "Monk" Ellison was far more likable in the movie than in the novel, whereas I found the opposite to be true. From my perspective the Monk of the book is compelling, complex, interesting, understandable, and yes likable, even when he wasn't very likable at all. Whereas the movie Monk was a too-bright, and yet clueless, man-child. A more popular trope I suspect. The movie was brilliant, but I also loved the novel. I was drawn to its depth and its wit. I loved it even when if floundered around in too-muchness. I loved it even as it made me squirm. It kept bringing the more recent novel by Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan, to mind, a novel I read last summer and which also addresses the issues facing writers who are also people of color. I need to be reminded that liberal pretentious are all too often just as damning as more conservative tropes. When these reminders are also wrapped in a brilliant story, the piercing is softer, but the arrow head drives deeper. I will be reading Erasure again.
Then I moved back into the ongoing Robert Jordan Wheel of Time saga with The Path of Daggers, volume 8 in the series. It is not the kind of book, or series for that matter, where I dive deeply into the prose, where I am drawn to underlining and copying-out, yet the quote at the top of this post is from this novel: astute, to the point, apt for much of life. I do think the writing and the story as a whole grows stronger with each subsequent volume, at least in terms of the themes and complexities of the characters and the world that is portrayed as a whole. At the same time I was experiencing a bit of series fatigue as I read this volume, so it was perhaps not my favorite. In many ways I can see why other readers rate this as one of the least interesting of the volumes and although Jordan is a good writer, this novel somehow slightly misses the mark. It feels transitional, and I think very small shifts, such emphasizing Rand's story more, then setting up the other stories as rippling stories around this story, may have made the novel feel more compelling. Not that I could write a novel, or have taught Robert Jordan anything. What is good about this novel is that it plays into the idea that the big battle, "the quest", is only one part of the story, and equally important but often less noted, is the way the process of the quest and the changes in the world affect the growth and development of the characters themselves, some of whom evolve and grow, and some of whom settle more firmly into their hardened shells. I also struggle with Jordan's portrayal of gender dynamics, and I am not alone in this. There are powerful women in this world, but Jordan's portrayal of this world seems to revolve around a wall between men and women, each blaming the other for everything wrong with the world. I am however wondering if this is, at least partly, a device used to show the brokenness of this world. If so, it remains clunky. Given the high level of sophisticated foreshadowing that occurs in these novels, this may be something that reveals itself over time. Either that, or it is just a weakness in the narrative. This is not the novel who seek adventure and grand contretemps and yet it is an essential part of the development of the whole. Anyway, I will be back to the series, but this volume did prompt a short break.
After a series of novels, I needed something short, and so I picked up The Giver: A Play by Eric Coble, based on the novel or the same name by Lois Lowry (which you will notice I also read later in the month). I read The Giver shortly after it first came out in the mid 1990s, and it has since become something of a classic, frequently showing up in middle school, and perhaps some high school curriculums ever since. I know quite a few younger adults who read the book in school, and some young people as well, which leads me to think it is still relevant. Well, the subject matter is relevant, but it is nice to know the book is also read. I think the book remains important because of its clear delineation of the very fine line between a utopia and a dystopia, and a constant reminder of the dangers that arise even when even good people with good intentions try to control behavior to force a given outcome.
But back to the play, and the book. I was initially less impressed with the play than I remember being with the novel. It got the point across, but I thought it was somewhat simplistic. Nonetheless I looked forward to the production of the play at the local Clarence Brown Theater. I am not reviewing that here, but I found it slightly problematic, although quite a few of my younger friends, more recently acquainted with the book, loved it. I decided to reread the book, which I did. It is well-written and fairly predictable, but I still think it is a good book for its intended audience, which I am assuming is 12-13 year olds, give or take. Big philosophical questions are introduced in this story about a profoundly dystopian society that believes itself to be a humane and utopian one, questions that could open up profound discussions about philosophy, human rights, and what it even means to protect children from pain, or the nature of pain, life, and love itself. The book provides an approachable setting to introduce ideas that have plagued philosophers for centuries, and with which we still struggle. (In this, and the entire subject of utopia/dystopia, see also Jordan, ongoing). In this case, as reading matter, I prefer the book to the play. But that is really not at all surprising if you've been following my thoughts on reading.
Bill Gaston's novel The Order of Good Cheer has been patiently waiting on my bookshelf for some years before I finally picked it up, thinking it would be a good travel book. And so it was. The novel alternates between two parallel stories. One is the eighteenth century story of a winter Samuel de Champlain spent in Nova Scotia battling sickness and scurvy; the second tale is the modern tale of Andy in Prince Rupert, fretting over the return of his lost love. The prose was beautiful; there are a multitude of contrasts and similarities between the two stories, waiting for the discerning reader, but the author subtly weaves them all together without belaboring the point. I was particularly taken with Andy's story, the young man who lives far too much in his head, but then I would be, wouldn't I? An excellent novel, but for me, ephemeral.
I found reading Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake to be an emotional roller coaster. The first section of the book was incredibly sad and difficult, not difficult on an intellectual level, but emotionally. I did not expect it. The blurb perhaps made this story seem lighter than I found it. The book is classified as magical realism, and although I can see that interpretation, I think it is too limiting an idea. The magical realism provides a metaphoric framework for exploring emotion, empathy, and connection. In this sense, the novel is quite brilliant. Admittedly my understanding may say more about me than it says about the book. I see this novel as a deeply felt exploration of love and loneliness, of what it means to be human, about connection, and empathy, and how empathy alone can be just as isolating as the lack of it, about our ability to see and be seen, and our ability to hide from what we fear.
The novel is the story of Rose Edelstein and her family. The story begins as Rose is approaching her 9th birthday. She is beginning to become aware of the emotional contexts of the world around her, as opposed to as reflections of herself. She is beginning to empathize and process emotions. The conceit of the book is that she accomplishes this through food, that the emotions of the people preparing the food become evident to Rose as she tastes the fruits of their labors. This is very interesting because the device maintains a separation between Rose's inner life, herself, and her experience of the outside world. This proves very difficult for Rose. She is experiencing and attempting to process emotion she cannot handle or fully understand. She has no one to help her. In fact, I would go so far as to say that although she is loved, she is also emotionally neglected. She is an emotionally oriented child in a family that is not that is landlocked emotionally, a family that do not only not express their own emotions outwardly, but who suppress these same emotions within themselves. She is constantly told she is too clingy — read sensitive, emotional needy. My heart constantly went out to the young Rose, but I can also admit that where I saw neglect, others did not. So perhaps this is open to interpretation. Or perhaps this is exactly the point, including the various interpretations we, the readers, take regarding Rose and her family.
Rose is also the younger child in a family who already has an older extra-needs child (on the spectrum?), a boy who is a scientific genius but completely emotionally disconnected, and who shuns and avoids personal contact on most levels. The father is accomplished, caring, but closed off. It is eventually revealed that he has shut off some part of himself due to fear. The mom is something else altogether. She reminds me of Penny Blair, the mother in Ann Packer's novel The Children's Crusade, although this book was written before Packer's novel, and this book is more deeply literary, more deeply philosophical, and in many ways unbearably sad. Both mothers are women who are yearning to be filled up, as if they are looking for something outside themselves to validate their existence. Lane, the mother in this novel, scares people off with her neediness, her intensity. Lane's deep and almost desperate hold on her son, her sense that he offers an answer to her own longing, is particularly poignant, given that it shows both a deep connection while at the same time draining her son of energy to be present, and perhaps fueling his need to disappear.
Rose upset me because of the way she felt disconnected from her family. She was feeling these emotions she had no way to process, and no emotional guidance. She had no role models either for healthy family relationships or for friendship. Much of the novel, from Rose's perspective at least, is brilliant, told from a deep inner hollowness, the voice of a person who has intentionally hollowed herself out to avoid pain, only to find that this process only creates a shell of a life. Rose wants connection, wants love, yet she is forced to empty herself because the emotion she possess no foundation in how to process the emotions she takes in. She does not really begin to discover connection until she is into adulthood. In the end, Rose does learn to reach out, and I ended up feeling hopeful for her, although the novel is ambiguous at best. It is also remarkably compelling, not so much like Packer's novel as mentioned above, which is much more accessible in many ways, but more reminiscent of the way Harukami Murakami's novel, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, is also confusing and compelling, constantly pulling the reader forward, seeking resolution. Like Murakami also, both novels are fabulously written, although otherwise nothing alike. Highly recommended for those who want to be challenged and engaged, even if that means being somewhat uncomfortable.
The last novel is The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair. It is a very British cozy mystery set in post-war London, featuring two women who set up a matchmaking service and end up solving a mystery when one of their clients is murdered. It was a perfectly refreshing bit of fluff and I look forward to exploring this series further.
And so ends February. More to come.