The Secret River, by Kate Grenville

Curious story. A kind of historical fiction that I can live with.

In 1806 William Thornhill, illiterate waterman, is convicted of theft and sentenced to hang. By paying for letters pleading his case to be sent to authorities, he manages to get his sentence commuted. He is sent to New South Wales (now Australia), along with his wife and small children, to live out a life sentence there.

The system in New South Wales allows Thornhill to work his way out of his life sentence. He is still "branded" as a former convict but is able to be free on the continent. Working on the water again, he discovers a piece of land that is fairly remote from any kind of civilization, and he covets that land. In time he moves his family there and they take on the task of creating a home and growing food, while he continues to run his boat.

Throughout this time he encounters "savages". There is a conflict, because they were there first, although they don't tend to have the same concept of property ownership. Thornhill and eventually his convict workers push against the land, forcing it into submission. He even makes a kind of peace with the savages, an uneasy one.

His wife Sal is strong and capable but not in love with this land. Thornhill is deeply in love with his wife and struggles with his two loves: the land and Sal. Eventually the savage situation comes to a head, an ugly and violent one. Throughout the book the tension is almost unbearable. In a way the ultimate "resolution" was almost a relief.

I read The Fatal Shore years ago. It impressed me with its details of convict life in early Australia and the settling of the continent at the expense of the aborigines. I remember life for the convicts being harder than indicated in this book, but there were different settlements. I have no reason to doubt the details in this book, written by an Australian writer and praised by fellow Australians. This fiction story fills out the story I read so long ago.

There Is No Me Without You, by Melissa Faye Greene

Greene brings home the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia in this book, by making it personal. She doesn't spare us the statistics, which are too large to be comprehensible, but she intertwines the numbers with the names. A small sample of names, drawn mostly from the orphanage created by one woman, Haregewoin Teferra.

Haregewoin is already on the wrong side of middle age when she loses her grown daughter, one of only two. She has known grief before, with the loss of her husband, and the loss of her daughter drags her down to an unrecognizable state. So when she is approached by a Catholic organization to take in and foster a couple of AIDS orphans, she initially can't see why she would do such a thing. But then she realizes that the priest is handing her a lifeline, bringing more children into her life when she desperately needs them. From then, she can't say no.

She takes children into her little compound, comprised of a small brick house and some metal shipping containers, surrounded by a wall. A day hardly passes when there isn't somebody at the door with another child. And Haregewoin has enough love for them all. For she is that rare person who loves deeply, who touches everyone with that love. For some time she survives with help from her other daughter Suzie (sending part of her paycheck), from donations from other friends, and from whatever she can dig up. When she is approached by an organization to adopt out some of her children, she moves into a different stage financially.

She begins to obtain more funding and more children, and is able to secure better accommodations. But money continues to cause her distress and soon the number of children has become so large that she no longer recognizes each by name. Through this detailed description of Haregewoin's life and work with orphans we learn that "even saints aren't saints", that having a passion for children is not enough.

We learn, too, how it is that millions in Africa have simply been written off because drug companies are unwilling to allow them access to effective AIDS drugs at reasonable cost and how politicians unfortunately back the drug companies. In other words, the AIDS crisis in Africa is as much a tale of greed as anything else.

Surprisingly, at least to me, it appears that the genesis of AIDS and its later spread have had nothing to do with sex. There is a lot of information in this book. There is also a touching story of one woman, along with brief stories of many of the orphans she saved. It is therefore highly readable and a way to bring some perspective to a problem so huge our minds can't take it in.

There is No Me Without You - Wendy's Review

Haregewoin had one color photo of Atetegeb holding her baby. She enlarged this photo until its lines turned all pastel and soft. She framed it and centered it on the wall above the sofa. She framed a smaller black-and-white photo of Atetegeb and Suzie as teenagers laughing together. Under the lass she placed a slip of paper upon which she’d typed the words from a pop song: “There is no me without you.”

A child cannot live without a mother or father. A mother or father cannot live without the child. - from There is No Me Without You, page 134 -

A widowed, middle-class woman grieves for her daughter who dies horribly from AIDS. More than a year later, depressed and still mourning, she enters a church to request a hut in the cemetery near her daughter’s grave – she has decided to go into seclusion and live out the rest of her life in grief. Instead of seclusion, however, the priest offers her something different – to become a foster mother to an orphaned teenage girl whose mother has died from AIDS. The decision to accept the priest’s offer is a turning point for Haregewoin Teferra and her life begins again.

She had lost her daughter. And God sent her these precious children. - from There is No Me Without You, page 259 -

There is No Me Without You is Haregewoin’s story told by award-winning journalist Melissa Fay Greene. When Haregewoin took in her first orphan, her heart was opened to the plight of her country’s children. Thousands of Ethiopians were dying from a virus with no cure, and leaving behind their children who were shunned because of fear. The options for these children were few – many ended up on the streets, starving, selling sex for food, or dying from the same disease which had taken their parents. Haregewoin Teferra was an angel of mercy. Very quickly she found her small home filled with children who had no other place to go.

Greene provides the historical backdrop for the AIDS pandemic in Africa which later made its way to every country in the world. She explores the variety of theories about why AIDS arrived in the human population…the most compelling of these being the theory of serial passage – that a weak pathogenic virus is strengthened through mutation of the virus as it is injected from one host to another. In the case of AIDS, unsterile injections of vaccines in third world countries may have been the genesis of the disease whose roots have been found in African monkeys. I was shocked to learn that even as late as 2000, there was an estimated thirty to fifty billion unsterile injections occuring per year…even though a single-use autodestruct disposable syringe had already been developed. Why were these new syringes not being used? Of course, the reason is money.

Global health experts agree that safer needles are a crucial step toward eradicating the iatrogenic spread of diseases, but where will the funding come from? WHO’s budget is insufficient and the big donors are not coming forward. - from There is no You Without Me, page 84 -

Greene reveals the incredible poverty and poor delivery of medical services which has allowed AIDS to continue killing people by the thousands in Africa, while in the United States people are surviving the disease because of access to life saving drugs. She examines the greed of the pharmaceutical companies who initially charged upwards of $15,000 per year for the latest AIDS drugs, while production costs for those drugs were somewhere in the range of $200. Patent protection contributes to the inability for poor countries to acquire the medications needed to save their communities. When GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) patent on AZT expired in 2005, generic drug makers were able to provide the drug for $105 per year, a marked decrease from GSK’s price of $3893.64 per year. Despite the ability to now provide generic first line AIDS drugs to patients, multinational drug companies continue to fight for exclusive patents on the second line drugs…a move that makes them out of reach for poor countries.

The statistics Greene shares with her readers is stunning and heartbreaking; the numbers staggering:

• 81% of Ethiopia’s people live on less than two dollars a day; and 26% live on less than a dollar a day (page 12)
• By 1999, UNAIDS estimated that 33 million people around the world were living with HIV/AIDS and that 16.3 million people worldwide had died from the disease. (page 113)
• In 2000, AIDS had killed more than twenty-one million people, including four million children. More than thirteen million children had been orphaned by AIDS – twelve million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Twenty-five percent of those lived in two countries: Nigeria and Ethiopia. (page 20)
• By 2000, Ethiopia had the world’s third-largest HIV/AIDS-infected population, trailing only India and South Africa. (page 117)
• Spending on health per person in Ethiopia in 2002 was two dollars per year – across all of sub-Saharan Africa during that time, it was ten dollars per person per year (page 14)
• In 2005, Ethiopia had 1,563,000 AIDS orphans; and 4,414,000 orphans from all causes – the second highest number in Africa (page 268)
• In 2006, 4.7 million people were in immediate need of lifesaving AIDS drugs, but only 500,000 had access to them. During that time, sixty-six hundred Africans were dying each day of AIDS. In Zimbabwe, a UNICEF report stated that every twenty minutes a child either died from AIDS or was orphaned by the disease. (page 25)

The hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic in Africa are the children who continue to be orphaned by this disease. They are also the most innocent of victims – often being born HIV positive because their mothers are ill with the disease.

In North America and Europe, it had been discovered that triple-dose combination therapies, beginning twenty-eight weeks into a women’s pregnancy, could reduce transmission of HIV to the baby by 98 percent and save the mother, too. Public health campaigns, counseling, prenatal care, and ARV therapy for HIV-infected pregnant women in the United States reduced childhood infections to below 2 percent of births. In 2002, the number of new cases of pediatric AIDS was ninety-two.

And in 2003, fifty-nine.

But fewer than 10 percent of HIV-positive pregnant women in Africa had access to these drugs.

So, in Ethiopia, the number of new pediatric cases in 2003 was roughly sixty thousand. - from There is No Me Without You, page 214 -

In light of these kinds of statistics, Haregewoin’s mission to help the children of her country is even more poignant. Greene’s writing is compelling. She intersperses the facts with beautiful descriptions of Africa and its people. She captures the stories of individual children with a tenderness which made my heart ache. Many of the children mentioned in the book go on to find homes in adoptive families. Some do not.

Perhaps the strongest element of this book was Greene’s portrayal of Haregewoin herself. No one is perfect, but it would have been easy for Greene to place Haregewoin on a pedestal – make her into a saint. Instead, Greene describes Haregewoin’s weaknesses, struggles and ultimate triumph through a lens of honesty. Times were not easy. Choices made were not always the right ones. And yet, imagine stepping forward to take on what Haregewoin Teferra took on. She was essentially a volunteer who lived, breathed, and slept her mission of saving children. Sadly, Haregewoin passed away from natural causes last year. Her work, however, continues to live on.

There is No Me Without You is another one of those books which is hard to read. It is painful. At times it made me angry. There seems to be no end to the suffering in Africa. And yet, it is also a book which is important to read. There is hope within the pages – a glimpse of the humanity and kindness that can overcome the worst of situations. And for that reason, it is a book I recommend.

Katrina's Review: Fun Home by Alison Brecdel

I spotted this in the library, a graphic novel-cum-memoir (two challenges in one!).
Alison's father can be abusive, he struggles to restore their home to Victorian perfection, and he is a closet homosexual (a fact she doesn't learn to she comes out herself). Her mother reveals her fathers secret affairs, including those with young boys and the babysitters in a revealing letter in an attempt to acount for Alison's sexuality.
From this perspective Alison looks back at her childhood and her own developing sexuality, along with her relationship with her father before his death/suicide.

Wendy's 2008 Challenge List

November 8, 2008 - Officially COMPLETED the 2008 Challenge. There are several books on my alternates which I may still read this year...but I'm counting this one done for now. I will be participating in 2009, but will wait until December to create my goal list!

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This year I way overextended myself, choosing 20 books from the NYT Most Notable list. I will be very lucky to read 15 of those before 2007 closes out!

In 2008, I'm going to be a little smarter and more realistic. I'm choosing 8 books to read from several lists on this site.

My preliminary list (subject to change):

1. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Moshin Hamid (from PW Best Books - 2007 and NYT Most Notable-2007) - Completed January 11, 2008; rated 4/5; read my review.
   
2. The Gathering, by Anne Enright (from NYT Most Notable-2007) - Completed March 9, 2008; rated 4.5/5; read my review
   
3. Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Veda (from NYT Most Notable-2007) -Completed September 30, 2008; rated 4.5/5; read my review
   
4. After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (from NYT Most Notable - 2007) - Completed October 28, 2008; rated 2/5; read my review.
5. The Secret River, by Kate Grenville (from ALA Most Notable - 2007) - Completed October 13, 2008; rated 5/5; read my review.
   
6. Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo (from NYT Most Notable-2007) - Completed June 7, 2008; rated 4/5; read my review
7. On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan (from NYT Most Notable - 2007) - Completed August 11, 2008; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
8. The View From Castle Rock, by Alice Munro (from NYT Most Notable - 2007) - Completed September 28, 2008; rated 4/5; read my review.
   

Alternatives:

Zoli, by Colum McCann (from Christian Science Monitor Bests - 2007)
Heyday, by Kurt Anderson (from Christian Science Monitor Bests - 2007)
There is No Me Without You, by Melissa Fay Greene (from ALA Most Notable - 2007)
Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson (from NBCC Best Books- 2007 and NYT Most Notable-2007)
The Septembers of Shiraz, by Dalia Sofer (from 2007 Christian Science Monitor Best Books AND NYT Most Notable-2007)

The Secret River - Wendy's Review

They call this Broken Bay, Blackwood said. River comes in yonder. He pointed ahead, where Thornhill could see only confusing stretches of water and thickly forested headlands. Best hidden river in the world, Blackwood said with satisfaction. Never find your way in nor you’d been shown like I’m showing you.

Looking inland, where gusts of wind scraped at the water, Thornhill strained to find that secret river. -From The Secret River, page 100-

Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River was short listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and won the 2006 Commonwealth Prize. Once you’ve read this harrowing and gorgeously constructed story, you will understand why.

Set in the early part of the nineteenth century, the novel tells the story of William Thornhill - a boy born into poverty along London’s Thames River who learns to steal early on to ensure his survival. Illiterate and quick to anger, William must learn to sustain himself in the face of hunger and cold. He finds his strength as a waterman, paddling hard against the unforgiving waters of the Thames, and turns away from towering spaces of Christ Church.

It was a place with no charity in its grey stones for a boy with the seat out of his britches.

He could not understand any of it, knew only that God was as foreign as a fish. -From The Secret River, page 10-

Then one day, Will gets caught stealing lumber. After a short trial, he is found guilty and sent to a penal colony (along with his young wife Sal and their infant son) in New South Wales. This new land is as beautiful as it is foreign.

For every one of the years of his life, this bay had been here, filling its shape in the land. He had laboured like a mole, head down, in the darkness and dirt of London, and all the time this tree shifting its leathery leaves above him had been quietly breathing, quietly growing. -From The Secret River, page 80-

For William, the vast and unsettled landscape of New South Wales becomes a place where he believes his dreams may grow.

A chaos opened up inside of him, a confusion of wanting. No one had ever spoken to him of how a man might fall in love with a piece of ground. No one had ever spoken of how there could be this teasing sparkle and dance of light among the trees, this calm clean space that invited feet to enter it. -From The Secret River, page 106-

As Will and his ever increasing family begin to scrape out a space of their own along the secret river, there seems to be only one thing standing between Will and his dreams: the native people.

Grenville shows the wide gap between English and Aboriginal cultures…and the tremendous misunderstanding fueled by an inability to adequately communicate. Her prose is magnificent as she describes the land of Australia and gradually builds the tension between the characters, before bringing the novel to its inevitable and devastating conclusion. I was completely absorbed by this historical piece of work which is evocative, poetic and pulsing with the life of a time far in the past. It is a novel which explores the moral wilderness of a man in parallel with the physical wilderness of a new country. It is a story about choices, dreams and sacrifice. A pioneer tale which translates well in today’s environment of cultural divides and racial differences, The Secret River is a must read.

Highly recommended.

Laura's 2008 Challenge List

In 2007, the NYT Notable Books Challenge was my introduction to the world of reading challenges, and I read 12 books from the 2006 NYT Notable Fiction list. I can’t resist Wendy’s 2008 Notable Books Challenge, which is so flexible as to allow reading from several different “notable books” lists. However, I also have several challenges and projects going, so I have only chosen books that were already on my TBR pile. Of course I reserve the right to add to or change this list over time!

2007 NYT Notable Books:

• What is the What, the Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, by Dave Eggers (completed 3/18/2008 - review)
• The Gathering, by Anne Enright (completed 4/2/2008 - review)
• Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson (completed 7/13/2008 - review)
• The Septembers of Shiraz, by Dalia Sofer (completed 7/20/2008 - review)
• Brother, I’m Dying, by Edwidge Danticat (completed 7/23/2008 - review)

2007 ALA Notable Books:

• The Secret River, by Kate Grenville (completed 2/3/2008 - review)

2007 Kiriyama Prize:

• The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (completed 2/28/2008 - review)

Laura's Review - The Secret River

The Secret River
Kate Grenville
334 pages


Set in Australia in the early 1800s, The Secret River is the story of William Thornhill, a London riverboat driver sent to Australia after being convicted of a crime. He is accompanied by his wife Sal, who acts as his "master" as required by law. During his twelve month sentence he finds work on a riverboat and, after serving time, buys his own boat and becomes an independent businessman running goods on the river Hawkesbury. Like many "emancipists" of that time, he also stakes his claim to a large parcel of land. The only problem is, the native people claimed it years before. The white settlers demonstrate remarkable hubris, assuming they have a right to the land and shoo-ing the startled natives away.

William embraces life as a free man, but Sal longs for home. When he buys a 100-acre parcel, he extracts a promise from Sal to stay for five years. She believes they will then return to London, but William never takes his part of the bargain seriously. Sal notes each passing day by marking a tree with a knife. "The unspoken between them was that she was a prisoner here, marking off the days in her little round of beaten earth, and it was unspoken because she did not want him to feel a jailer. She was, in a manner of speaking, protecting him from herself." (p. 150) The book's title comes from this and other unspoken secrets between the couple. As time passes, more and more goes unspoken: the size of the native camp on their land, the details of atrocities between whites and native people, the prejudiced and often violent behaviors exhibited by their neighbors. But Sal is no fool, and is well aware of the escalating tensions and the danger to her family.

Grenville keeps a low- to medium-grade tension running throughout the novel. Some of the tension comes from the very act of survival in the Australian wilderness, and the stress between William and Sal. But the primary conflict is direclty with the native people. While William demonstrates a growing awareness of the natives as human beings, as it says on the book jacket, "to keep his family safe, he must permit terrifying cruelty to come to innocent people." The book's denouement portrays the Thornhills' lives years after this "terrifying cruelty." It is somewhat disappointing, as it's unclear how he and Sal resolved their differences. But the outcome is probably quite true to that period in history. This is a memorable book, well deserving of its Commonwealth Prize and Booker Shortlist recognition. ( )

My original review can be found here.

Amy's List

I have finally come up with my list of Notables to read for 2008. I will definitely be reading these:

• The Space Between Us - Thrity Umrigar (Kiriyama)
• The Archivist's Story - Travis Holland ( PW)
• The Madonnas of Leningrad - Debra Dean (ALA)
• The Septembers of Shiraz- Dalia Sofer (CSM, NYT)
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid (NYT and PW)
• What the Dead Know - Laura Lippman (PW)

And I would like to read these if I have time:

• Brother, I'm Dying-Edwidge Danticat (NYT and NBCC)
• The Gathering -Anne Enright (NYT)
• The Ministry of Special Cases- Nathan Englander (NYT)
• Fieldwork - Mischa Berlinski (PW)
• In the Country of Men - Hisham Matar (NYT)
• The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan (ALA)

The Inheritance of Loss - Laura's Review

The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai
324 pages

First sentence: All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.

Reflections: The Inheritance of Loss won the Booker Prize in 2006. The novel is set in India during the 1980s, and the plot centered around political conflict. I'm sure if I had more knowledge of the situation in India at that time, I would have appreciated the novel more. Kiran Desai's prose is lyrical and beautiful. It was her writing that held my interest.

I failed to identify with most of the characters. Each of the main characters is an outsider: for various reasons they are not in their home country or have spent so much time away from India that they feel out of place. For example, two elderly women who spent extensive time in England, ensure they always have on hand "familiar comforts" such as English foods and clothing. This I could relate to, having spent 4 years away from my home country. Although it was a fantastic experience, many times I felt like an outsider and knew I would never be fully part of the local community. I've been surprised to feel even more of an outsider since returning "home." Living abroad changes you in many ways. It's made me stronger and more thoughtful, and increased my curiosity about other cultures. Unfortunately there are few I can share this experience with so it remains a somewhat hidden part of who I am ...

The original review can be found here.

Black Swan Green - Wendy's Book Review

The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or a Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. -From Black Swan Green, page 291-

Thirteen year old Jason Taylor narrates a year of his life in this original coming-of-age story set in a sleepy English Village in 1982. A sensitive, imaginative youth who struggles with a persistent stammer (referred to as 'Hangman'), Jason captures the essence of adolescence with all of its pain, humor and budding sexuality. Mitchell's brilliant writing plunges the reader back in time to the adventures of youth...such as the joy of spending a Saturday exploring forgotten paths through the woods and playing in abandoned barns.

In 1982, Britain found itself embroiled in the Falklands War, and Mitchell weaves this through the novel, using it as a backdrop to the undercurrents of domestic unrest within Jason's home.

A Pyrrhic victory is one where you win, but the cost of winning is so high that it would've been better if you'd never bothered with the war in the first place. Useful word, isn't it? -From Black Swan Green, page 115-

Mitchell's novel pulls the reader into its pages with remarkable characterizations and spot on dialogue (although to be honest, as a non-Brit reader, the dialect took a bit of getting used to). Even the character's names are unique, such as Squelch Hill, Gilbert Swinyard, Pete Redmarley, Miss de Roo and Mr. Inkberrow. Dawn Madden, tough-as-nails and sexy, and her power hungry boyfriend who embody the cruelty that lurks in all childhoods; and the magnificent Eva Van Outryve de Crommelynck are just a few of the many characters who materialize in living, breathing form. When Madam Crommelynck meets Jason for the first time and discovers his age, she says:

"Ackkk, a wonderful, miserable age. not a boy, not a teenager. Impatience but timidity too. Emotional incontinence." -From Black Swan Green, page 144-

I fell in love with Jason Taylor - perhaps because he writes poetry while still trying to keep up with the town bullies, or maybe because of his wry humor, or possibly due to his fine vision of what is important in life. At any rate, this is a kid that snatches the reader's heart and hangs onto it until the end.

At once both searingly honest and outrageously funny, Black Swan Green is a must read.

Highly Recommended. Rated 5/5 when read in March 2007. Read my original review here.
To find more reviews or have a discussion about this book, visit The NYT Most Notable Blog.

Favorite Passages

Down the hollow, round the bend, I came across a thatched cottage made of sooty bricks and crooked timber. Martins were busy under its eaves. PRIVATE said a sign hung on the slatted gate, where the name should go. newborn flowers in the garden were licorice allsorts blue, pink, and yellow. Maybe I heard scissors. maybe I heard a poem, seeping from its cracks. So I stood and listened, just for a minute, like a hungry robin listening for worms. -From Black Swan Green, page 70-

A bolt slid like a rifle and an old man opened up. His skin was blotched as a dying banana. He wore a collarless shirt and braces. "Good Afternoon?" -From Black Swan Green, page 142-

I dip my fountain pen into a pot of ink, and a Wessex helicopter crashes into a glacier on South Georgia. I line up my protractor on an angle in my Maths book and a Sidewinder missile locks onto a Mirage III. I draw a circle with my compass and a Welsh Guard stands up in a patch of burning gorse and gets a bullet through his eye. How can the world just go on, as if none of this is happening? -From Black Swan Green, page 106-

The Road - Wendy's Book Review

He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. he raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God. -From The Road, page 10-

Cormac McCarthy just won The Pulitzer Prize for The Road, a novel of profound bleakness and beauty which almost defies definition. I was worried about reading this book, which has garnered praise but has also been described as dark and depressing. It is dystopian literature which I usually avoid because the genre always struck me as so pessimistic. That being said, The Road blew me away and will make my list for one of the best books I've read in 2007.

The story appears to be a simple one: a father and his young son are traveling along a road somewhere in America after a devastating event which has killed almost every living thing and left the world in a gray haze of floating ash and weird weather. There are "bad guys" and there are horrors; there are moments of sheer terror which seem to be nightmares instead of actual life. Layered beneath this story is a larger story - one about a boy and his father and the love they share, one about faith and hope and the will to survive. It is heartbreaking and beautiful and written in an unembellished language which somehow makes it that much more powerful.

I found myself compulsively turning the pages, unable to stop reading the story. I would lay the book down, and then pick it up only moment later. Just a few more pages. McCarthy carries the reader along on this journey, looking for the hope around every curve in the road, holding their breath, wondering if God has survived the devastation after all.

McCarthy uses metaphor and symbolism throughout the novel - the fire which the boy carries inside him (is this spiritualism? hope? humanity?), and the road itself - to just name two. This is a deep book, one that deserves to be discussed and thought about. It is certainly worthy of the Pulitzer.

There are some wonderful reviews of this book out in the blogosphere. You can go to the New York Times Most Notable Book Blog here to read several in one place, and to take part in some interesting discussions of the book.

Highly recommended. Rated 5/5 when read in May 2007. Visit my blog to read my original review.

The Inheritance of Loss - Wendy's Book Review

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 3 -

Kiran Desai has written a novel of depth and complexity, filled with multiple characters and beautiful, lyrical prose which explores such themes as colonialism, illegal immigration and political strife. I will admit to being somewhat overwhelmed at times due to my ignorance of Indian history, class systems and politics. In fact, this book forced me to do something I seldom do - research the history of the time and geography of the area. What I discovered is a country which is vast in its scope and complicated in its history. For those readers with extensive knowledge about this region, Desai's book will resonate. For those like myself who do not have that knowledge base, this novel will lose some of its power, but is worth reading anyway.

Desai artfully weaves together the stories of several characters, moving from the present day (1980s) to their past histories without a glitch. She examines life in the town of Kalimpong, a hill town nestled in the lower Himalaya of West Bengal, where cultures collide. Kalimpong has a rich history and was the site of violent riots between the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) and the West Bengal government between 1986 and 1988. Desai's novel drops its characters into the midst of this chaos and allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the vast cultural rifts between the people.

The novel centers around a retired Judge, his granddaughter Sai, the cook, the cook's son Biju and Gyan who is Sai's tutor. All these characters are flawed and seeking fulfillment, and all experience loss as the tale unravels. The Judge, a surly and unhappy man, has little love in his heart for anyone except his dog, Mutt. He is filled with hatred for other Indians, wishing instead he had been born English. Biju also experiences this ambivalence for his own people which seems spawned by his experience of rejection and racism as an illegal immigrant living in America.

The habit of hate had accompanied Biju and he found that he possessed an awe of white people, who arguably had done India great harm, and a lack of generosity regarding almost everyone else, who had never done a single harmful thing to India. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 86 -

Biju's father (the cook) has sent his only son to America to seek a better life. The cook hopes for contentment and dignity which he believes will come with Biju's success.

He imagined sofa TV bank account. Eventually Biju would make enough and the cook would retire. He would receive a daughter-in-law to serve him food, crick-crack his toes, grandchildren to swat like flies. Time might have died in the house that sat on the mountain ledge, its lines grown indistinct with moss, its roof loaded with ferns, but with each letter, the cook trundled toward a future.
- From The Inheritance of Loss, page 20 -

Sai, having come to live with her grandfather after her parents die, imagines a life of love.

Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 3 -

Finally, Gyan who tutors Sai longs to be part of the political changes. A Nepali who feels torn between his attraction toward Sai and his cultural roots, Gyan is perhaps the saddest character in the book.

He wasn't a bad person. He didn't want to fight. The trouble was that he'd tried to be part of the larger questions, tried to become part of politics and history. Happiness had a smaller location, though this wasn't something to flaunt, of course; very few would stand up and announce, "Actually I'm a coward," but his timidity might be disguised, well, in a perfectly ordinary existence situated between meek contours. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 299 -

As The Inheritance of Loss unfolded, I was struck by the depth of the prose. Desai reveals the rigid adherence to the class system in simple ways, such as when a maid tells her employer the story of falling in love with a Rai although she herself is a Sherpa.

Before one knew it one could slide into areas of the heart that should be referred to only between social equals. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 75 -

Desai uncovers the pain of being an illegal immigrant by allowing the reader to see through Biju's eyes as he struggles to find work, sleeps in a basement with rats nibbling on his hair, and longs to return to his homeland.

The issues of colonialism and globalization are constant themes in the novel. It speaks to Desai's gift as a writer that she tackles these immense issues with ease using eloquent prose.

Tenzing was certainly the first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 171 -

This Sai had learned. This underneath, and on top a flat creed: cake was better than laddoos, fork spoon knife better than hands, sipping the blood of Christ and consuming a wafer of his body was more civilized than garlanding a phallic symbol with marigolds. English was better than Hindi.
- From The Inheritance of Loss, page 33 -

I found myself falling into the rhythm of this novel, absorbing the flavors and sights of a foreign land and striving to understand its people. There are so many facets to The Inheritance of Loss, it is hard to categorize it. I believe Desai has written a novel which fully encompasses the Indian experience. I was touched by how the characters sought out their dreams and futures by looking outside their culture, religion and country when perhaps the answers lay closer to home. Desai touches on this as well at the end of the book when Biju, who is now far less innocent, contemplates the steady stream of immigration from India to America.

This way of leaving your family for work had condemned them over several generations to have their hearts always in other places, their minds thinking about people elsewhere; they could never be in a single existence at one time. -From The Inheritance of Loss, page 342-

Kiran Desai has written an exquisite novel which is deserving of the Booker Award and its place on the New York Times Most Notable Fiction list. This is a novel to be savored for its stunning prose, complex characters and finely captured sense of place.

Recommended. Rated 4.25/5 when read in March 2007.

Read my original review here.
To read more reviews or discussions on this book, please visit The New York Times Most Notable Book Blog.

The Madonnas of Leningrad - Wendy's Book Review

Whatever is eating her brain consumes only the fresher memories, the unripe moments. Her distant past is preserved, better than preserved. Moments that occurred in Leningrad sixty-some years ago reappear, vivid, plump, and perfumed. -From The Madonnas of Leningrad, page 5-

As the Nazis advanced on Leningrad in 1941, the staff of the Hermitage Museum began evacuating their treasured art, packing up more than 1.1 million objects, but leaving the empty picture frames hanging on the museum walls as a promise that the art would some day be rehung. When the Nazis lay siege to Leningrad, the Hermitage staff and their families (more than 2000 people) were forced to live in the museum's basement in horrific conditions. Many starved before the siege was over. Debra Dean's novel The Madonnas of Leningrad is set during this dark moment in history.

The main character of Dean's stunning novel is an elderly woman named Marina who is slowly sliding into the final stages of Alzheimer's Disease. As the disease advances, Marina's memories of the siege which she has buried for years begin to surface and Marina slips from the present into the past. Dean's portrayal of a young girl surviving the conditions of war is beautifully wrought. She shows us how Marina - with the help of an older woman named Anya - builds a "memory palace" in her mind, recreating the museum and all its gorgeous works of art - a place where the many Madonnas hang in exquisite perfection.

"They don't teach this in school anymore?" Anya asks and clucks in dismay. "When I was a girl, we made memory palaces to help us memorize for our examinations. You chose an actual place, a place worked best, but any building with lots of rooms would do, and then you refurnished it with with whatever you wished to remember." -From The Madonnas of Leningrad, page 68-

The Madonnas of Leningrad is a radiant novel about the tenuous nature of memory, the power of imagination, the endurance of love, and the sad descent into Alzheimer's disease. Written with a strong sense of place with many fine details of art and the museum itself, Debra Dean's first novel is a treasure.

Highly recommended. Rated 4.5/5 in May 2007. Original review may be found here.

2007 ALA Notable Books

The American Library Association (ALA) Notable Books List began in 1944. The judging panel is guided by the RASD Board of Directors statement of purpose and list of criteria for Notable Books. The 2007 titles were selected from books published between November 2005 and November 2006.

2007 ALA Notable Book List:

FICTION

Beautiful Dreamer, by Christopher Bigsby (St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne)

The Madonna's of Leningrad, by Debra Dean (Morrow)

The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai (Grove/Atlantic)

The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig (Harcourt)

The Secret River, by Kate Grenville (Canongate)

The Attack, by Yasmina Khadra - translated by John Cullen (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese)

The Girls, by Lori Lansens (Little, Brown)

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf)

The People's Act of Love, by James Meek (Canongate)

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (Random)

Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, by Haruki Murakami

Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, by Sam Savage (Coffee House)

NON FICTION

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel (Houghton)

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan (Houghton)

The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth, by Tim Flannery (Grove/Atlantic)

There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children, by Melissa Fay Greene (Bloomsbury)

Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present, by Peter Hessler (HarperCollins)

Breach of Faith: Hurrican Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City, by Jed Horne (Random)

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave The World Impressionism, by Ross King (Walker)

Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert (Bloomsbury)

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips (St. Martin's)

The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire, by Tom Zoellner (St. Martin's)


POETRY

Famous, by Kathleen Flenniken (University of Nebraska)

Burning Wyclif, by Thom Satterlee (Texas Tech University)

William Henry Harrison and Other Poems, by David R. Slavitt (Louisiana State)