Reviews and Comments

This collection of fantastical stories mystifies me, but it also fascinates. Calvino plays with concepts of time, evolution, origins of the universe and reality itself.

From "The Origin of Birds:"
"But instead, one morning I hear some singing, outside, that I have never heard before, Or rather (since we didn't yet know what singing was), I hear something making a sound that nobody has ever made before. I look out. I see an unknown animal singing on a branch. He had wings feet tail claws spurs feathers plumes fins quills beak teeth crop horns crest wattles and a star on his forehead. It was a bird; you've realized that already, but I didn't; they had never been seen before. He sang: 'Koaxpf . . . Koaaacch . . .', he beat his wings, striped with iridescent colours, he rose in flight, he came to rest a bit further on, resumed his singing."

Calvino goes on to describe how this story of the first bird is better told in comic strip form. I'm unclear what he's getting at...seems to be messing around with time and reality, although I'm not sure why. But it's very funny and I just like to immerse myself his in his fanciful tales and go with them.

One of my favorite things in the world is a well written, big fat book with a great story that I can't put down.

A car dealer in rural Ireland runs up against the 2007-2008 recession, his business is in trouble, and his and his family's lives start to implode. Dickie, his wife Imelda, and his children Cass and P.J. are forced to confront the lies they have been telling themselves and each other. Each of their lives changes dramatically, and merge in a surprising twist at the end that leaves the reader hanging a bit.

The integration of the stories of each of the characters is really well done. The chapters shift between the characters' points of view while successfully carrying the plot throughout the book. Each character's voice is distinct from the others and each personality is well realized.

This is about what happens when people, especially within a family context, choose not to communicate with each other, and how destructive that can be. The book is also pretty funny.

Disclosure: memoir is not my genre. That said, this book was a refreshing change from the dystopian novels I've been reading lately, and it's very funny. It also stands squarely in the tradition of Jewish storytelling.

The author's Grandmother Tonia lives and works in the cooperative farming community of Nahalal, Israel in the early 50s. She is an obsessive cleaner and buffer. She has a brother who is a businessman in Los Angeles, and who has a longstanding feud with one of her other brothers. To make his brother jealous, the L.A. brother sends a monster vacuum cleaner to Tonia, who locks it away forever. Shalev's narrative is the story of how that happened and why that story is so important to his family.

The family members have several different versions of every family story, and almost all of them are hilarious. Shalev explores how those stories can separate family members, and how they can bind them together. He also offers insight into why storytelling is so important in Jewish culture.

My primary criticism is that of most memoirs I have read: there are too many discrete stories with the same quality that start to feel repetitious. Most of us live lives as a series of stories, and it takes a special talent to select only parts of a life and structure them into an interesting read. By the middle of this book I started to feel bored. Things picked up a bit with a story about the narrator bringing a young woman to stay overnight at Tonia's house, but then drifted back to repetitious. Nevertheless, it is clear that these people were working hard to build their new country and had no time to write the stories down. They told them out loud instead. The stories were passed down through generations and give a richness and sense of community and connection to Jewish culture that are worthy of envy.

This is a book of ideas, short on plot and very short on character. Nevertheless, it's effective. The narrator has an acquaintance who is setting up a clinic for Alzheimers patients. Each floor is themed with a difference decade and the narrator is tasked with rounding up furnishings, music, clothing, and other items to fit each of the decades. The idea seems to be to surround the patients with things from their past that are familiar and that make them feel comfortable:

"The point of the experiment was to create a protected past or "protected time." A time shelter. We wanted to open up a window into time and let the sick live there, along with their loved ones."

But the rest of the world becomes captivated, and entire countries start to hold referenda on which decade they want their country (yes, the entire country) to recreate. Of course politicians, activists and business people are soon involved. People start wearing indigenous clothing, driving period cars, and reenacting important events from their country's history. But things begin to go awry and those participating are rudely awakened from their desire to go back to the past.

"In ever more detail, ever closer to the real events, sometimes even more real than the originals. And no one could discern which was real and which was likeness anymore...One will flew into the other and when blood is spilled, real, warm, human blood, people will applaud as if at the theater, while elsewhere red dye, extracted from poisonous cinnabar, will be taken for blood and they shall fly into a blind rage..."

Despite the lack of narrative, there is a lot to consider here. Like history, the past, and memory. The story is a metaphor for the nationalistic and populistic sentiments that are appearing globally today. In the U.S., there is a huge block of voters who want to go back to a time when our country was way whiter, way more Christian, and guns weren't licensed. Pre-Civil War? But the actual past is often different from the way it's remembered. History never stands still, and to imagine that you can create a perfect, static past to your liking is delusional. Gospodinov plays with ideas about history, the past, the future, and memory. There's a lot of dark humor and meaning is sometimes difficult to grasp. But if you allow yourself to be led by his humor and his agility with words and ideas, you will not be disappointed.

"How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one's equal must argue for one's equality, that one's equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premise of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree."

This reimagining of Twain's Huckleberry Finn from Jim's point of view manages to be both funny and utterly chilling. Everett's instinct for nailing the line between humor and horror is impeccable. Jim has learned to read and write by way of secret trips into Judge Thatcher's library, and in his dreams he debates Voltaire and Locke about slavery and race. But when he's around white folks, even Huck, he is careful to hide his learning under the disguise of slave dialect and behavior.

"Jim," Huck said.
"What?"
"Why you talking so funny?"
"Whatchu be meaning'?" I was panicking inside.
"You were talking'--I don't know--you didn't sound like no slave."
"How do a slave sound?"
He stared at me.

Jim runs away to avoid being sold and begins a hair-raising search for his wife and daughter who were sold while he was away. He meets lots of nasty and some nice people along the way. The climax of the book is shocking and unexpected, but immensely gratifying. James is a compassionate and brutal tale, and Everett has again written an undeniably important book about what it means and has always meant to be Black in America.

"You is a mystery to me, Jim, a sho nuff mystery."
"I reckon I is, Huck."
"First you want to go to Illinois where you kin be free and then you start collectin' books causin' they make you feel good. I swear I don't understand."

Anne Michaels knows how to write but not how to tell a story. I finished the book because I loved reading the stunning, poetic imagery; but I was utterly unable to keep track of the characters or plot in this choppy multi-generational mishmash. The book goes back and forth in time and place without transitions, starting with an injured WWI soldier. The passages are separated by large spaces and often it's unclear how they relate to the story:

"The thin pale cotton of Helena's nightgown, worn sheer wih sleep; the faint shadow of her bare legs.



The young soldier, not more than two arm lengths away, continued to watch him without speaking.



The shadow of the bird's folding and unfolding, like a silk scarf in the wind, wings against the sky like the turning of a page inside out, a message passing between them."


It was a bit like reading a book of epigraphs. Michaels seems to be looking at the instersection of the mystical and the scientific, but I'm not really sure since she focuses so heavily on images at the expense of plot. I became impatient with the book toward the end when a couple of new characters were introduced and I had no idea which of the earlier characters they were related to. Her writing is exceptional though, and she has written a lot of poetry. Perhaps she should stick to that.

"You are a journalist. You know better than I do that we can't win. You know the road to Hanoi is cut and mined every night. You know we lose one class of Saint-Cyr every year. We were nearly beaten in 'fifty. De Lattre has given us two years of grace--that's all. But we are professionals; we have to go on fighting till the politicians tell us to stop. Probably they will get together and agree to the same peace that we could have had at the beginning, making nonsense of all these years."

How prescient. Thomas Fowler is a British war correspondent living in Saigon in the mid fifties while the Vietnam War rages. The French are trying desperately to beat back the Viet Minh and the Americans are just starting to get involved. Fowler tries to stay non-partisan as he watches the war, and as he watches a mysteriously naive young American attaché steal his lover.

That awful phrase "all's fair in love and war" kept popping up for me. The eternal story of people and governments meddling, allegedly to noble ends, in other countries' and people's affairs always seems to end badly with the destruction of the other countries' and people's lives. Moral ambiguity and bad behavior abound. Fowler doggedly tries to sort out the political and military actions swirling around him. In a war where loyalties are constantly shifting it is nearly impossible for him to know who's responsible for the latest bombing or explosion. The shocking event at the end testifies to the primacy of self-preservation when everything is at stake.

I blasted through this classic in a few hours...couldn't stop reading it. Thrilling story, characters that I felt I knew well, even if I didn't like most of them, and very good writing. One of the best books I have read about war and it's terrible impact on aggressors and victims alike.