If you have read War and Peace, you know Tolstoy is adept at painting scenes of battle and depictions of the men who fight them. His understanding of If you have read War and Peace, you know Tolstoy is adept at painting scenes of battle and depictions of the men who fight them. His understanding of both the thrill of going into battle and the incomprehensible nature of man to kill others offers the reader a unique opportunity to see and feel what a battle in the 1870s would have been.
(view spoiler)[Our narrator is a by-stander, not a soldier. He accompanies the military to see the battle, after having spent the evening in company with his friend, Captain Hlopov. The captain is a seasoned soldier, understands warfare, and is not excited about the upcoming fight; but the young officers around him are anxious to engage. I could not help making the comparison in my mind to the exuberance of the Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War, chasing the "glory" of war in the beginning and then finding out about the realities of war in the end.
Two officers sat by the wagon, playing cards on a canteen box. I listened with curiosity to the conversation of the soldiers and officers, and attentively watched the expression of their faces, but could find absolutely no trace of the anxiety I myself experienced: jokes, laughter, and anecdotes, expressed the general carelessness and indifference to the impending danger: as if it were quite out of the question that some of us would never return along that road.
As they set out on the battlefield, our narrator observes:
Nature seemed to breathe with pacifying beauty and power. Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth, under those immeasurable starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the passion for exterminating their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men, ought, one would think, to vanish at the touch of Nature: that most direct expression of beauty and goodness.
These are the questions we cannot help asking as well--about any war, at any time. The overall impression we are left with is that of senseless loss and utter uselessness. The raid makes no real difference, except in the lives of those who are lost forever, and yet the men return from this bloody melee to the sound of singing and tambourines, immersed in the joy of winning, having learned nothing. (hide spoiler)]
This story, published in 1942, was a contribution by Steinbeck to the effort to mentally shore up the countries under invasion by Germany at that timeThis story, published in 1942, was a contribution by Steinbeck to the effort to mentally shore up the countries under invasion by Germany at that time. In a town, in a country that is almost without doubt meant to mirror Norway, a conquering invasion force is subjected to the unfaltering resistance of a free people.
The plot is fairly predictable, because we know how the Nazi’s operated during the war when met with resistance. The characters are more stereotypes than individuals, although Steinbeck does manage to make the invaders mostly humans rather than monsters. They are, in fact, soldiers following orders in a situation that they neither understand nor control.
At one point, one of the soldiers laughs hysterically and says “the flies have conquered the flypaper,” and this would pretty much sum up the purpose of the story. You may win the battle with sheer force, but the minds and hearts of free people will continue to fight until they have won the war.
Not sure what to say about this novel. It was interesting to me in spurts and I enjoyed learning something of a figure in history that I had never heaNot sure what to say about this novel. It was interesting to me in spurts and I enjoyed learning something of a figure in history that I had never heard of. Mila Pavlichenko was a Ukrainian/Russian sniper during World War II. She had 309 kills to her tally at the end of her military career. She was apparently a small and dainty lady, who physically defied the image of a killer, albeit a sanctioned one. In 1942, when Russia was suing desperately for help from the U.S., she was sent here on a goodwill tour and made fast friends with Eleanor Roosevelt.
Much of the story that takes place in Washington, D.C. is obviously fabricated. Most of the story that takes place in Russia is based on fact, or at least on the real Pavlichenko's memoirs. In fact, the part of the book that interested and held me was that which dealt with the Russian war and her role in it, so I suppose I leaned toward the historical and not the fictional in this one.
My first Kate Quinn was The Alice Network, and I thought it was marvelously done. This one was okay, but I never felt fully involved in any of the characters, with the exception of Lyonya. For some reason he seemed to spring off the page for me, while Mila and Kostia failed to really do that and Alexei seemed almost a caricature. I'm sure some people are truly Snidely Whiplash, but I don't usually buy into a character who is pure evil without redeeming qualities, because my experience is that that is not how real people are.
I have another of Kate Quinn's books on my Kindle, but I think it will be a while before I am ready to venture out with her again....more
I never thought to read this novel because I know the story too well from watching the movie countless times. It is one of my favorites…that Luke smilI never thought to read this novel because I know the story too well from watching the movie countless times. It is one of my favorites…that Luke smile that Paul Newman perfected, that vivid depiction of the cruelties of the chain gang, the proof that unmitigated power, even over criminals, is a bad thing. In fact, there is very little to separate the criminals from the guards in this book, which put me in mind of The Shawshank Redemption (another movie I have watched too, too many times.
Ah, but this is not a movie review, it is a book review, and this book is stupendous. The descriptions are riveting, you can hear those chains rattling, you can feel the sweat trickling off the brows of these men, and you can feel the stifling air in the box. I think the reason there is a great movie adaptation of this book is that Donn Pearce wrote a great book in the first place.
Luke is a petty criminal, sentenced to two years for decapitating a street full of parking meters while intoxicated. He is also a war hero. But the line between hero and criminal is very thin, and it may be that Luke deserves punishment for crimes other than those he is charged with. The crime he is not guilty of is thinking of himself as a hero. He knows he is flawed, but he also knows no one can take who he is away from him unless he lets them, and that sense of individuality is the source of all his troubles. You just know from the beginning that he is not going to do an easy two years and wave goodbye.
The characters here are strongly delineated and the plot line is tight and perfect. The descriptions of the environment are completely realistic, and you know Donn Pearce did not come to his understanding of this world through library research. He’s got some experience with incarceration, the nature of prison life, and the conventions that helped the men make it through days that must have seemed both endless and repetitive.
If you are one of the few people on this planet who has never seen the movie, I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you want a glimpse inside a 1950s power trip, read this book. If you don’t mind gritty and realistic looks at the underbelly of society, and how it beats down the human spirit, you couldn’t do better than this.
This was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral prinThis was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle. It was as if God had decreed this characterless entanglement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption.
William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea is, without doubt, one of the defining moments in Southern history. Doctorow picks the march up as it leaves Atlanta and cuts through Middle Georgia to Savannah, the sea, and then the Carolinas. The battles and the ravages of war are chronicled very realistically, and the novel has a cast of characters, both real and fictional, who cover the gamut of those affected by this bit of Civil War hell fire.
Among the most interesting are a field surgeon, a Confederate soldier masquerading as a Yankee, a freed slave girl who passes for white, a black photographer and, of course, Sherman himself. Wrede Sartorius is the field surgeon whose ice-water reactions to the war were a bit unsettling, as if he did not feel anything. His clinical interest in his patients appears to be the only interest he has, remaining as apathetic to them as individuals, as he is to others who come into his sphere. In contrast to Wrede, we have Pearl, a freed slave girl who passes for white, and shows an uncommon degree of sympathy for the distraught widow of the man who fathered her. Arly is a Confederate soldier who is awaiting execution for sleeping at his post when the Yankees come into town and cause him to be freed to fight again. His method of survival is to change uniforms and pose as a Yankee soldier, and he follows the marching troops until he meets with Calvin Harper, a free black man from Baltimore who is traveling as a photographer's assistant.
Each of these characters has a fully developed story within the story, with myriad smaller characters coming and going as the march proceeds. It was Pearl’s journey that pulled this story into a solid tale for me, as so many of the other characters came and went, serving almost as vignettes of what the war was doing to so many lives, but she remained central from the beginning to the end.
It is hard to imagine how these people survived the destruction and death around them and then managed to pick up any of the pieces and carry on with meaningful lives. Sherman was undoubtedly a brilliant general, pursuing a strategy that was designed to put an end to the war and cripple the society beyond any recovery. He did what he intended, but this novel is as much the story of the lives he touched as of his own. Interestingly, Doctorow does not paint him as hero or villain, but as a bit of both, which I suspect falls somewhere near the truth.
John Campton is a renowned painter, an American living in Paris for years and more French than American in reality. His ex-wife has married a very weaJohn Campton is a renowned painter, an American living in Paris for years and more French than American in reality. His ex-wife has married a very wealthy banker, and the two of them vie for the love and attentions of their only son, George. Although Julia, the ex-wife, is also American, George was born on French soil, so he is of dual citizenship.
At the beginning of the story, Campton is planning a trip for himself and George, a chance to spend some private time together, but before they can embark on their journey, hostilities reach a breaking point and World War I erupts as Germany invades Belgium. Campton considers his son an American, but the French have him on their military roles and he is conscripted into the French army.
What ensues is a story full of sorrow and enlightenment as George and his father navigate the changing, and sometimes conflicted, feelings toward the cause before them. As the casualties begin to pile up and people begin to understand the nature of the conflict, Campton must struggle with his desire to keep his son safe and his realization that this war and its demanded sacrifices belong to every man, and most particularly to every Frenchman.
The killing of René Davril seemed to Campton one of the most senseless crimes the war had yet perpetrated. It brought home to him, far more vividly than the distant death of poor Jean Fortin, what an incalculable sum of gifts and virtues went to make up the monster’s daily meal.
What is the most unique about this book is that we follow the war, the loss, the effect through the eyes of a father. There are so many other books that show us the war from the soldier's point of view, but this is the angst of the ones who cannot participate and can only watch as all they love is put at risk. We are walked through Campton’s attempts to understand his son’s experiences and developing attitudes with only secondhand information to draw on.
He says he wants only things that last—that are permanent—things that hold a man fast. That sometimes he feels as if he were being swept away on a flood, and were trying to catch at things—at anything—as he’s rushed along under the waves… He says he wants quiet, monotony … to be sure the same things will happen every day. When we go out together he sometimes stands for a quarter of an hour and stares at the same building, or at the Seine under the bridges. But he’s happy, I’m sure… I’ve never seen him happier … only it’s in a way I can’t make out…
This is Edith Wharton at her best, as she deftly tears apart the surface of these two people and shows us everything that lies beneath. All the secondary characters, as well, are fully drawn and engaging, down to the elderly landlady who loses her son and then her grandsons to this spreading horror. And, while men die in droves, Americans in Paris wait and watch for America to understand what is at stake and enter the fray.
While reading, I thought of other novels I have read that have brought WWI home to me. All Quiet on the Western Front and Testament of Youth came to mind, and I felt Wharton was a significant addition to the canon, for she reveals yet another side of the horror. However, this novel is more universal than that, because it also deals with the intimate relationships that bind and separate people, the petty jealousy that prevents sharing and the small moments of understanding that create bonds that are unbreakable. So that, in the end, you might learn to see life, not only from your own view, but from that of others.
What did such people as Julia do with grief, he wondered, how did they make room for it in their lives, get up and lie down every day with its taste on their lips? Its elemental quality, that awful sense it communicated of a whirling earth, a crumbling Time, and all the cold stellar spaces yawning to receive us…
What an excellent work of art this book is. As I have often said, Edith Wharton is one of the great writers. I am in awe of how she can deliver, over and over again, books that leave such an impression upon the heart, the mind, and the soul. I will not be forgetting this one.
The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting. Like the Wild Geese of Ireland they were used and spent liThe road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting. Like the Wild Geese of Ireland they were used and spent like coins by one army after another.
The Civil War was a bloody and costly affair to the men who fought it, and a source of despair for most of our nation's families, who lost their fathers, brothers and sons, but there is another side to the war, and that is its effect on the women who were left to fend for themselves in a world that was unkind to the lone woman. Adair Randolph Colley is one such woman, and Jiles portrays in her a person of wit and intelligence and courage that is astounding.
The war was hard on every state in the South, but in Missouri it was exceptionally violent and cruel. Missouri was a divided state, with as many Confederate as Union sympathizers, and as the war wound down, the atrocities on both sides of the conflict toward the innocent citizenry was appalling. Gangs of marauding men scoured the country, killing at random, and in what is a little explored aspect of the conflict, women were imprisoned for feeding or caring for their own male relatives.
During most of the war, the Colley family has managed to remain neutral and continue to farm their acreage. They have never held any slaves, nor do they have combatants on either side of the conflict. But, the depravity of the Union militia finally catches up to them, and Judge Marquis Colley, Adair’s father, is taken prisoner, the house burned and his three daughters left to their own devices. In an attempt to secure his freedom, Adair, barely 18, travels to the headquarters of the Union army and is there falsely accused of spying and herself imprisoned and sent by train to St. Louis.
Jiles' descriptions of the prison and its inhabitants are vivid and visceral. But, she also brings a kind of poetry to her prose.
The fireplace leaked a slow red light, and the bar shadows lined the opposite wall like thin soldiers or the wraiths of the prisoners gone before.
In St. Louis, we meet another pivotal character in Jiles' saga, Major William Neumann, who has been charged with running the ladies prison, and understandably hates his job. He is a decent man caught in an untenable situation. It is through conversations between Adair and William that we begin to see all the layers of Adair's personality emerge.
Just as she gives us vivid images of the prison, Jiles is equally descriptive of the natural sights in her novel, painting visual scenes that play in your mind like a movie trailer.
Sometimes she walked alongside Whiskey and Dolly in the grassy valleys. The horses drifted along either side of her, grazing. Their lips moved without sound and it seemed they were talking to the earth in a long, complex conversion. On the high barrens of the ridges, the wind tore at her hair and sent her shawl and strands of her black hair streaming behind her. The horses walked beside in protection. They spread the wings of their souls on either side of her. They drank of the air, and Adair walked lightly along with them.
I loved this image of the horses spreading "the wings of their souls". It made a particular scene in the book all the more distressing for me.
Adair is such a strong, reliable, and honest character. We can believe her, and we do, and others see this quality in her as well, but we also see her become a person who will do what is necessary to survive. When we first meet her, traveling down the road with her sisters to seek the freedom of her father, she has dressed her sisters and given them hats, and the imagery is almost clownish and playful, despite the seriousness of the situation. This purity and childishness is not meant to last for long. This is not a world in which anyone is allowed to keep their innocence or naivety.
What makes this book exceptional for me is the grounding it has in the actual history of the time. Jiles has carefully researched her subject, and she opens each chapter with an excerpt from documents of the time detailing the horrors that faced these very real people, in the words of those who experienced it.
The first excerpt is from a letter written by Asey Ladd, a Confederate soldier who writes
Dear Wife and Children; I take my pen with trembling hand to inform you that I have to be shot between 2 & 4 o’clock this evening. I have but few hours to remain in this unfriendly world. There are 6 of us sentenced to die in retaliation of 6 Union soldiers that was shot by Reeves men.
With that harrowing letter, we are warned that this will be a tale of a difficult time; a time that requires strong people; a time of precarious survival. Then Jiles goes on to write a character in the guise of a young girl, who is up to the challenge. I thought of Mattie Ross in True Grit, Ivy Rowe in Fair and Tender Ladies, and Ruby Thewes in Cold Mountain. Adair Randolph Colley belongs to this group: unforgettable women, strong women, survivors....more
They want me to open my heart and tell them the story of a life lived in cages. They want to hear about all the cages I have lived in, as if I were aThey want me to open my heart and tell them the story of a life lived in cages. They want to hear about all the cages I have lived in, as if I were a budgie or a white mouse or a monkey.
In the days of apartheid in Capetown, South Africa, Coetzee gives us the story of Michael K, a bullied, downtrodden young man, who finds himself in the middle of a civil war he does not understand. His mother, who is dying, wants to return to her home in Prince Albert, and Michael rigs a cart and sets out to take her there, navigating his way through checkpoints and troops without the necessary papers. The mother dies en route, but that is just the beginning of Michael’s struggles to survive in a society that makes no sense and will not allow anyone of Michael’s ilk to live a simple or happy life.
This is a story of isolation and loneliness. Michael becomes so much the secluded individual that he loses any desire or ability to co-exist with other people. The dangers are innumerable and unidentifiable. They come from both sides of the conflict, and no one is likely to be allowed to exist without choosing a side, but Michael is slow and naive, almost childlike, and he cannot even understand the dynamics of the conflict. Even the kind people he encounters befuddle him.
As we begin to wonder if any individual has purpose in such a society, Michael also grapples with what his existence means, and Coetzee asks the question in captivating prose:
Every grain of this earth will be washed clean by the rain, he told himself, and dried by the sun and scoured by the wind, before the seasons turn again. There will be not a grain left bearing my marks, just as my mother has now, after her season in the earth, been washed clean, blown about, and drawn up into the leaves of grass.
A little more than halfway through the novel, Coetzee switches from the story we have been seeing exclusively in a third person voice from Michael’s viewpoint, to a first person voice of a medical officer tasked with Michael’s care in an internment camp. It seems to me that Coetzee wished to show us the human face of the opposition and demonstrate how difficult it would be to separate the players into strictly good and evil camps. This doctor is struggling, as well, with making sense of the system he serves.
I wanted to say, “you ask why you are important Michaels. The answer is that you are not important. But that does not mean you are forgotten. No one is forgotten. Remember the sparrows. Five sparrows are sold for a farthing, and even they are not forgotten.”
I felt acutely the helplessness of Michael’s situation and the attempt at self-preservation that takes the form of self-destruction. Michael rejects any interaction with society, either those who share his position or those who claim authority over him. While we are never told that Michael is black, or for that matter that the doctor or soldiers are white, we instinctively know this to be so. Michael’s deformity that is the source of ridicule and derision, we are told, is his harelip that he has had from birth, but it is clear to me that we are meant to see that it is in truth his color, his class, his position in society that are his handicaps, and just like his physical deformity, they are not of his making or in his control. I found it interesting that more than one character in the novel asks if any attempt was ever made to correct Michael’s deformity, and when told “no”, they each remark how easily the correction could have been made.
When I began this novel, what struck me right away was how little I knew about 1979 Kurdistan. I wonder if I even knew Kurdistan was a place or the KuWhen I began this novel, what struck me right away was how little I knew about 1979 Kurdistan. I wonder if I even knew Kurdistan was a place or the Kurds a people back then. I imagine my mind would have still been focused on Southeast Asia and the sorrow of coming out of the Vietnam War.
Gian Sardar draws on her own intimate knowledge of the place and the people in writing this novel, which follows the trip of an American girl, who is a photographer, on a visit to the country with her Kurdish boyfriend, ostensibly to attend a family wedding. It is a frightful place to be at this time, and the fright I felt for her and for this family was quite real. You could tell the story was grounded in actual experiences and memories, some of them Gian’s own, and some those of her own Kurdish father and her American mother.
It isn’t a perfect novel. At times it is too slow, and at other times too repetitive in its efforts to impress upon us the danger that is around every corner. There were moments in the book that didn’t feel quite real, or maybe the right word would be genuine. Most of those had to do with the romantic angle. I am not a fan of romance novels, however, so this might have worked perfectly for someone who is. What did work marvelously was Sardar’s connection to the area itself. The descriptions of the terrain and the culture were beautifully written and often fascinating. The Kurdish characters felt very real to me, as did the fear and the sense of foreboding that were present from the moment the couple landed on Iraqi soil. I have one other objection, but it would be impossible to account for it here without a spoiler, and I try very hard never to ruin a book for any future reader, so I will just count that one silently.
The point in selecting this novel was to read something outside my normal reading preferences. This was a different culture, a different genre and a different time period than I usually choose, so it filled the bill. It was a perfectly satisfactory read, and earns a 3.5 star rating, which I rounded down....more
WOW. I wasn't expecting that. Well done Ms. Taylor. This short exchange of letters, at the outset of World War 2, between German and American friends WOW. I wasn't expecting that. Well done Ms. Taylor. This short exchange of letters, at the outset of World War 2, between German and American friends and business partners, is chilling indeed....more
Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.
The inimitable Nevil ShuteLike some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.
The inimitable Nevil Shute has an impressive resume as both a writer and an aeronautical engineer. His intelligence shows in his writing, his attention to detail, his understanding of the mechanics of war, and his knowledge of wartime operations. But what makes him a great writer is his ability to tap the souls of his characters, breath life into them, and imbue them with all the heroism and weaknesses that war can reveal.
Alan and Bill Duncan are Aussie boys, raised on the sheep station of Goombargana, and sent off to fight for England in World War II. Janet Prentice is the feisty and capable Wren who falls in love with Bill. The way these three lives wrap around one another unfolds like a Shakespearean tragedy. If you make it to the last page dry-eyed, you are a stronger person than I am.
The story is about the war and, of course, the effect it has on everyone involved, but it is also about the capricious nature of chance, the tricks of fate, the small misses in life that separate misery from happiness and failure from success. I could not help thinking Shute must have seen life and love vanish from him like a wisp of smoke at sometime in his own life in order to portray so perfectly what that kind of mercuriality would feel like. Not one of the lives we see play out in this book would have been the same had there been no war, but would they have been better or easier? Those who go to war will tell you they never felt so alive as when they were so threatened with death.
I love Shute. Everything I have read of his has been better than the 5-stars I was allowed to give it. I had not intended to read this right now, having just read Pied Piper, but Bob convinced me it would be stupid to push this off so that I could read something I could not be assured would be as satisfying.
My conclusion: I am going to let my friend, Bob, pick all my books from now on. ...more
Paulette Jiles has become one of my favorite and most trusted authors. So, it is with a great deal of surprise and regret that I say that I simply couPaulette Jiles has become one of my favorite and most trusted authors. So, it is with a great deal of surprise and regret that I say that I simply could not connect with this book. Simon, himself, was a fairly bland and uninteresting character, or perhaps just one that didn’t ever develop a distinct personality for me. I wanted to care for him, but truthfully never did. I had the same problem with his love interest, Doris.
There is nothing objectionable about the writing style or the scene Jiles sets for us. I enjoyed the historical elements and the immediate post-Civil War era is always one of interest. It was also a clever device to allow us to view this world through the eyes of a musician, who would have access to a variety of places and social strata that an ordinary discharged soldier would not have. I kept having the nagging feeling that much more could have been done with this.
Jiles does, obviously, know music, but I also wondered if her penchant for including musical details might have slowed the book in places where movement was needed. I also know a little about music, and I found it hard to imagine the “lovers” learning a song together in a crowded room and still being able to trade whispered endearments without being detected.
In fact, my major complaint about this book would be the romantic thread that runs through it and makes up the bulk of the plot. It is unrealistic. Jiles does not persuade me that this is a possible two-sided infatuation. Too much also depends on just the right outcome, when the wrong outcome would be much more feasible. I was sometimes reminded of the old tv westerns where the villain shoots everyone on sight except our hero, with whom he stops to chat instead, or maybe he just runs out of bullets. ...more
Just when you think you might have read every story possible about the treatment of Jews during World War II, some remarkably talented author will proJust when you think you might have read every story possible about the treatment of Jews during World War II, some remarkably talented author will produce a book that addresses a new and different experience. Then you realize the variations are endless, myriad, just like the souls caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust, because when 11 million people die, there are 11 million stories that could be told.
In Emuna Elon’s novel, House on Endless Waters, Yoel Blum is an Israeli writer whose publisher sends him to The Netherlands to promote his latest release. Although his mother was Dutch, she always made him promise that he would never go there, so he feels a bit of guilt stepping off the plane into a country that is his birthplace but has always been forbidden to him. What he discovers in Amsterdam is that his mother had another life before the war than the one he knows of, and that much of what he has believed all of his life is not entirely true.
The story is told in two timelines, not an unusual device, but Elon does it is what seemed to me a very unique way. The timelines run almost parallel to one another, so that we might be in the past with Sonia and in the present with Yoel in the same paragraph. It sounds as if it might be confusing, but I did not find it to be at all. In fact, it made the two characters seem more closely connected and gave the book a flow that is often missing in a dual timeline story that bounces between the two stories from chapter to chapter.
Besides being deftly written, this story was entirely engaging. There were moments in which I found myself breathing shallow breaths in anticipation of the next event. Sometimes familiarity with the history of the period can make the most shocking cruelties seem all too commonplace, but Elon knows exactly how to make you feel, rather than just know, what is occuring. She never overplays her hand, rather she allows it to sneak up on you, just as it did on those who were engulfed in it.
In the end, the novel raises many important questions. Some of them have been asked over and over again, without getting any closer to an answer. Why did no one see where this could go? Why did Jewish leaders comply so readily with each step in the process, right up to the bitter end? What would you do if you found yourself in this situation? To what extent would you go to save your child? Who would you sacrifice to protect yourself and yours?
Whatever was, was. Those waters have already flowed onward. Sonia tells Yoel early on. But what we discover, with Yoel, is that the waters that have flowed have changed the terrain as they passed. The past informs the future. We are altered by it, and everyone touched by this becomes a different person than they would otherwise have been. Not all waters are cleansing.
Thanks to Atria Books and Emuna Elon for allowing me an advanced copy of this marvelous book....more
Tribulation Periwinkle has gone from her home in the North to Washington D.C. to be a nurse for the wounded soldiers of the Army of the Potomac. She dTribulation Periwinkle has gone from her home in the North to Washington D.C. to be a nurse for the wounded soldiers of the Army of the Potomac. She describes, in what reads like a diary of recollections, her trip from home to D.C., her arrival at the understaffed hospital, where she is thrown into the care of dying men, and her own subsequent illness that takes her back to her home again.
Several of the vignettes are quite poignant, recounting the suffering and dying around her. She also tackles the attitudes and treatment of the black servants that work in and around the hospital, and who receive as harsh a rejection from these Northerners as they might have expected from the South, which gives Alcott a forum to advocate for more than Abolition, but also for fair treatment of these newly freed men.
This is a quick read and an important one. Louisa May Alcott writes fiction, but it is informed by personal experience, and her own nursing of soldiers during the Civil War makes this a very realistic depiction. An early advocate for rights for both women and blacks, Alcott is a voice of the future and a glimpse into the past. ...more
It takes a particular skill to write a dual time period novel and make it work seamlessly. It is something Susanna Kearsley does very well. Too often It takes a particular skill to write a dual time period novel and make it work seamlessly. It is something Susanna Kearsley does very well. Too often in such novels the switches between times seem jarring to me, but with Kearsley this is seldom the case. I suppose you could say her books are somewhat formulaic, but she researches her historical era well and includes some actual figures from the time, which adds authenticity.
In Bellewether, the setting is the Wilde House, a New York colonial home that is being turned into a museum because it was once the home of a famous Revolutionary War pirate, Benjamin Wilde. Charlotte (Charley) Van Hoek has been hired to curate the museum, and she becomes interested in a local tale about Benjamin’s sister, Lydia, and a love affair she had with a French prisoner of war who was housed in her home and murdered during the French and Indian Wars. I enjoyed that the time she selected is not one that is often covered and that her characters behaved in ways that would have been appropriate to the time.
When I read this kind of novel, I generally enjoy the historical elements more than the present-time ones. It is evident that this is a well-researched history, with every element ringing true, but I found the modern-day story held my interest as well.
Of course, if you are expecting to close the book and come away with something profound or life-changing, this isn’t the book to read, but if you are just looking for a book that is fun, holds your interest and takes you out of the everyday world for a while, this would be just the right choice. ...more
By the flow of the inland river, Whence the fleets of iron have fled, Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver, Asleep are the ranks of the dead: UnBy the flow of the inland river, Whence the fleets of iron have fled, Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver, Asleep are the ranks of the dead: Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment-day; Under the one, the Blue, Under the other, the Gray
One of the hardest wars to understand, for me, is the American Civil War. Perhaps it was unavoidable, but it never seems that way. It is so easy to stand outside of it and condemn the South, but the South was a collection of people, and each one held his own beliefs and motivations and emerged with his own scars, and many were swept up in it by geography, without choosing.
I have stood at the grave of Varina Davis, the wife of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America, in Hollywood Cemetery and admit to not giving her more than a passing thought. She was never quoted, or more than mentioned, in Ken Burns’ epic Civil War series and she has been confined to obscurity over the years. Charles Frazier did a marvelous job of lifting her out of that obscurity and giving her flesh again.
One forgets sometimes that historical figures were men and women, who ached and suffered and made huge mistakes that they came to rue or lucked into being heroes because they were positioned at just the right place in just the right moment. Another aspect that escapes us is how very young some of these people were. J.E.B. Stuart was 31 when he died. For me, that puts his strutting heroics in an entirely different light. But, I have wandered off subject, it is Varina’s youth that I meant to address. A seventeen year old married to a man twenty years her senior, who did not entirely agree with his position but shared his station. I find it amazing that she ever found a voice of her own.
There were parts of this novel that pulled at me and wrapped me up in the narrative and parts where I drifted away. It is written in a unique voice, beginning as a conversation between Varina and James Blake, a black man who had been rescued as a boy by Varina and who spent much of his early years in her home as if one of her children. It progresses from that to a more narrative style, which I admit to liking much better, but then bounces back and forth. Perhaps this is the only way to tell the story as he wishes to, because Varina is looking back and she already knows the lessons she has learned and the price that has been paid.
There are moments during the narrative when the genius of Frazier emerges. I felt myself fleeing the burning South and traveling through the devastation that Sherman had left in his wake. One cannot help wondering how anyone managed to survive and rebuild their lives when so little was left intact.
Frazier understands his material, and Varina is a three-dimensional character. If you cut her, she bleeds. Having endured the destruction of her world, Varina also sees the slow erosion of her family as well. A mother to six, with only one alive at the time of her own death. I hope the real Varina Davis was as strong and resilient as he has painted her to be, and I hope she felt the remorse as well.
then one morning the world resembles the wake of Noah’s flood, stretching unrecognizable to the horizon, and you wonder how you got there. One thing for sure, it wasn’t from a bad throw of the dice or runes or an unfavorable turn of cards. Not luck or chance. Blame falls hard and can’t be dodged by the guilty.
He understands life itself, as well, and that much of what we know or feel is in aftermath.
How everyone grew up then, one way or the other, whichever side of the skin line you chanced to be born on. Children don’t judge their own lives. Normal for them is what’s laid before them day by day. Judgment comes later.
I believe this is so, and couldn’t help wondering myself at what age a child stops taking what comes as what is and starts recognizing the abject injustice of the life he leads, or recognizing the unearned privilege that has been gifted to him.
And, all things end up in the past, but a circumstance, such as this war produced, makes the past seem a visible door that is closing in your face.
Don’t ever forget me? Don’t leave me? The instant passed so fast, and when that happens, it goes for good and all you have is a slow lifetime to speculate on revisions. Except time flows one way and drags us with it no matter how hard we paddle upstream.
Imagine all the memories that you carry with you when you realize you have witnessed evil, perhaps witnessed it for a lifetime, and just turned the other way. The main reason I find history so compelling and so important is that sometimes we have to look the worst headon to keep it from happening again.
I’ve never forgotten that girl, and I wouldn’t want to. Remembering doesn’t change anything--it will always have happened. But forgetting won’t erase it either.
I think this is the best thing Charles Frazier has written since Cold Mountain. I suppose that will always remain his masterpiece (and what wouldn’t any of us give to have ONE masterpiece inside us?), but this is another worthy, well-researched effort. Frazier has an emotional connection to the Civil War era that breathes life into his writing. I’m glad he decided to revisit it....more
This beautiful and quite short novel was the perfect distraction for me while I sat on hold for two hours today waiting for my turn to talk to someoneThis beautiful and quite short novel was the perfect distraction for me while I sat on hold for two hours today waiting for my turn to talk to someone at Social Security. It is primarily the story of one day in the lives of two people during the Blitz in England. Harriet Marsh, a forty-something widow, is enlisted as a fire-watcher to fill in for a disabled friend and the boy on the cathedral roof with her is Jeremy Fisher, a young man in his twenties and new to Coventry. When the cathedral is bombed, the two of them escape together and set out in search of Jeremy’s mother.
To say more would give away plot, and I always strive to never do that. What I can tell you is that by the end of the novel you feel you really know both Harriet and Jeremy, just as they come to know one another. What can you know or feel about a person you have just met when they share a moment in time with you unlike any other you have ever experienced? Does the attachment last beyond the moment? Can a memory form an attachment in itself? What is there to cling to when your world and everything you own is destroyed before your eyes?
Helen Humphreys is a powerhouse writer. She can pack more into 200 pages than many authors are able to put into 600. Her works are always sprinkled with tidbits of wise observation that make you nod your head in agreement.
Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.
Harriet does not like the idea of the story bleeding through into real life. She trusts a story, and doesn’t trust real life. But what makes her trust a story is the knowledge that it will stay where it is, that she can visit it but that there is no chance it will visit her.
I have surely used reading over the course of my life to escape reality, to lessen loneliness and to sink into a world that felt more real than anything going on in my own. Which reader doesn’t understand that part of the thrill of the book is that you can experience danger and be in none, feel heartache without suffering the betrayal, travel the world without leaving your doorway?
She has been happy with the rhythm of her days. It is not as though she’s greedy for happiness, but she wishes that she’d been able to recognize it completely when she had it.
Goes without saying that I have experienced this. You cannot reach my age without wishing you had lived a little more fully in some of the ordinary wonder that you took for granted.
The end of this book was poignant and unexpected, another thing Humphrey’s does well. I closed the last page a bit grateful to the bureaucracy that kept me holding, for without it I would not have slid this little gem off the shelf and had such a pleasant experience today....more
”The forest does not change its place, we cannot lie in wait for it and catch it in the act of change. Whenever we look at it, it seems to be motionle”The forest does not change its place, we cannot lie in wait for it and catch it in the act of change. Whenever we look at it, it seems to be motionless. And such also is the immobility to our eyes of the eternally growing, ceaselessly changing history, the life of society moving invisibly in its incessant transformations."
Doctor Zhivago is about nothing, if not about change, transformation, upheaval and survival. Set against the background of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, Doctor Zhivago is a love story between a man and his wife, a man and his mistress and a man and his country. It catalogs the atrocities and the progressions of a political system that seeks to destroy the individual in the name of saving the masses. But, more importantly, it catalogs the attempt of one man to reconcile the ideals of his heart with the realities of a Marxist society. (view spoiler)[That he dies of a heart failure seems appropriate to me on so many levels. (hide spoiler)]
The story encompasses, in the life of its title character, all the possibilities of love and suffering open to humankind. The desertion of Yuri Zhivago by his parents (one by leaving and one by death) starts Yuri on his fated journey into a world where partings become commonplace, but where heartache never ceases to accompany them. The love story between Zhivago and Lara is so deep and poignant that it takes your breath at moments.
I was moved by the beauty of the writing, the stark imagery, and the character development that extends itself to even the least significant characters. Pasternak is a poet, and the entire book is a poem, as lyrical as the life’s blood he pumps into his protagonist’s veins.
“They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.”
He details the effects of the political changes around him and he seems to lament most of all the loss of personality, of independent thought, of individuality.
The root of all the evil to come was the loss of confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they must sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were being crammed down everybody's throat.
Too often when you have loved a book and then see the movie, or have loved a movie and then read the book, there is some disappointment you cannot help feeling toward one media or the other. David Lean did a remarkable job of bringing to life on screen a book that is truly epic in its scope and its meaning. I am pleased to find that this is one time when the movie and the book complement one another perfectly. I approved of the changes that the movie made to both the beginning and the ending of the story--it served to hold the story together in a very cohesive manner and lost nothing of the impact or importance. (view spoiler)[Eliminating the third “wife” from the tale seems to be an improvement to me. I found it hard to imagine Zhivago cohabitating with another woman and fathering children with her after having loved both Tonia and Lara. It somehow diminishes his love to have this third lover. (hide spoiler)] Minor objection when you consider the fine quality of the book at large.
If you have never seen the movie, you should see it. If you have never read the book, you are missing something unique and remarkable....more
The Lost Garden is prose that sings like poetry. Helen Humphreys brings so much emotion and soul to her writing that you feel the angst of her charactThe Lost Garden is prose that sings like poetry. Helen Humphreys brings so much emotion and soul to her writing that you feel the angst of her characters, their loss, their sorrow, their hope.
Gwen Davis flees war-torn London for an estate called Mosel in Devon. Mosel has been requisitioned to be used to grow food for the war effort, and Gwen, a horticulturist, is put in charge of a group of volunteers for the Women’s Land Army who are to work the gardens. Shortly before leaving London, Gwen’s mother has died, and she is at loose ends and alone in the world.
Along with the Land Army women, there is a troop of Canadian soldiers who are bivouacked at a house on the estate. The CO, Captain Raley, is another person caught in suspended time, and someone who will figure prominently in Gwen’s experiences at Mosel. One of the other volunteers, Jane, is grappling with the reality of a missing fiancé. All are caught in the limbo that is created by war.
When Gwen finds an abandoned garden, meticulously designed, carefully hidden and quite intentionally so, she awakens something new within herself. She adopts the garden as her own project and attempts to unravel the secret of how the garden came to be and who created it.
I feel something that at first I’m sure is fear. But no, that’s not it. What I feel is a kind of unreality. I am a ghost. I have wandered back in time, or forward, and I have disturbed this sleeping place with my presence. The one thing I can clearly feel, the one thing I know above all else is that I am the first person to have been here in a very long time.
Her attempts to connect with the lost someone who created the garden result in a myriad of connections for Gwen, but most importantly one with herself, a she struggles to make sense of her life and the war that has shattered her world.
The thing with war is this, we cannot change ourselves enough to fit the shape of it.
There were so many profound passages in this book that I kept stopping to write them down so that I would never lose them. There is a conversation between two of the characters about poetry that was stunning. And this comment about writing:
When a writer writes, it’s as if she holds the sides of her chest apart, exposes her beating heart. And even though everything wants to heal, to close over and protect the heart, the writer must keep it bare, exposed. And in doing this, all of life is kept back, all the petty demands of the day-to-day. The heart is a river. The act of writing is the moving water that holds the banks apart, keeps the muscle of words flexing so that the reader can be carried along by this movement. To be given space and the chance to leave one’s earthly world. Is there any greater freedom than this?
Gwen finds a secret garden, long abandoned; learns what it is to love, what it is to have a friend, and what it means to be a part of life instead of a spectator. In sharing her story, we find a secret garden as well, a garden of words and thoughts that flower, bloom and germinate in our minds and settle into our hearts. The book is a gift....more
“Thou art everywhere, but I worship thee here; Thou art without form, but I worship thee in these forms; Thou needest no praise, yet I offer thee t“Thou art everywhere, but I worship thee here; Thou art without form, but I worship thee in these forms; Thou needest no praise, yet I offer thee these prayers and salutations.” The prayer for the sins of human limitations.
When I was planning my year of reading and mentioned including this book, scores of people told me how wonderful it was and that they were excited for me. I now understand why I got that reaction. This is what an epic novel ought to be: characters that sing, a plot that twists and turns and always surprises, a foreign culture that you feel completely immersed in, history, over the top adventures, and of course, love.
Have you ever seen the movie Secondhand Lions? Well, the first part of this book feels like a real life version of the spectacular tale Garth tells Walter about Hub. Ash is larger than life, but then he is very lifelike. We believe in him and his abilities, but he isn’t always right or always able to pull it off, or always cool headed; what he is is always true to himself, filled with an innate courage, and blessed with the luck that only the gods can bestow.
Perhaps what makes this expansive book work so beautifully is that India of this era is such an expansive country, containing ancient places and ancient people of different religious and cultural backgrounds. M.M. Kaye lived in the country and knew its people, and her understanding of the complicated minds involved is always evident. I completely appreciated that none of the three distinct groups, the Hindi and Muslim natives nor the British Christians, is portrayed as either pure, innocent or evil.
This book spans India during the time of the Raj, and explores the parts and pockets that have not yet succumbed to the British influence. It centers on the royal houses, Ranas, Ranis, and Maharajas who are still in control of territory and bow only in appearance to the rule of the foreigners, then it sweeps into the problematic world of Afghanistan, where cultural miscalculation is deadly. What makes it special and completely believable is that the main character, Ash, is a Brit who was raised as a Hindi until he was twelve. He is truly part of both worlds and he understands India in a way that his peers do not, which enables him to go and do what it would normally seem a British soldier could not. All of the Indian characters are marvelous and we get to see an intimate side of both the Hindu and the Muslim nationals.
The novel takes a turn about midway, and it almost seems like we leave one book behind and enter another. It is done seamlessly, it is part of the plot that has already been established, but it has a feel and a significance that overpowers the first half of the book for me. There is a dedication at the beginning of the book that lets me know how important and close to the heart Mary Margaret Kaye held this portion of her tale.
The writing itself is beautiful throughout:
The years that had once seemed to drift by so slowly were now passing with ever-increasing swiftness, like a sluggish train that pants and jerks and puffs as it draws away from a station platform, and then, gathering speed, rattles forward faster and faster on the iron rails, eating up the miles as time eats up the years. And Ash, sitting cross-legged on the mud floor and gazing unseeingly at a white-washed wall, looked back down the long corridor of those years and saw many Zarins.
With the beauty of her writing, we readers look down that corridor and see all those Zarins as well.
It cannot be said of every 950 page book that nothing should or could have been edited out, but that was exactly how I felt about this one. Every word, every description, every nuance is deftly included and adds to the vision of this time, this history, this country, and these people.
The second half of this book, that was set in Afghanistan felt eerily like it might have come from the headlines of the 21st Century.
”...you know as well as I do that I must go on with it as long as there is a ghost of a chance that even at this eleventh hour reason may prevail; because Afghanistan is no country to fight a war in–and an impossible one to hold if you win.
I’m always finding examples of lessons we ought to have learned from history but fail to. This book was written in 1978, so I couldn’t help thinking these were events in which the past might have informed the future, but seem to have been ignored. I wonder if it isn’t because we always believe the other guy just didn’t do it right and we can do it better.
One of the best series of books ever written about India is The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott, and it was interesting to me to find that Scott was Kaye’s literary agent. The Raj Quartet is unforgettable and truly amazing. This book comes the closest to touching it of anything else I have ever read set in this period of India under British rule. From just a historical perspective it is a no-miss read. And, if your idea of a great book is an all-encompassing love story, gird your loins and dive right in, for it is surely that!...more
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