Category: book reviews / recommendations

The trouble when a book has received or been nominated for nearly every imaginable prize is that it’s often hard to judge the book on its own merit. Cynic that I am, I started reading The Known World with the expectation that, somewhere down the line, I’d find something that would confirm my suspicion of the enormous attention it garnered. Fortunately, I was wrong. This is an extraordinary book.

Jones takes an odd footnote in the history of slavery (the existence of slave-owning black families) and delivers a compelling novel, one that goes beyond the oddity to reveal insights about human nature. The story of Henry Townsend, a former slave who becomes a slaveowner himself, is told in a succession of brief scenes, interspersed with research notes.

Set in fictional Manchester County, Virginia, the novel opens with Henry’s death and follows the events that result from it, through the eyes of a number of characters: his parents, his wife Caldonia, his former master William Robbins, and so on.
Jones’ spare prose often mixes the matter-of-factly with the kind of detail that can break your heart. Witness how, after a wedding, a bride is presented with this gift:

About three o’clock, after matters had quieted down some, Belle went out to where her maid was in the backyard and returned with a slave girl of nine years and had the girl, festooned with a blue ribbon, stand and then twirl about for Winifred. “She’s yours,” Belle told Winifred. “A woman, especially a married one, is nothing without her personal servant.” All the people from Philadelphia were quiet, along with John Skiffington and his father, and the people from Virginia, especially those who knew the cost of good slave flesh, smiled. Belle picked up the hem of the girl’s dress and held it out for Winifred to examine, as if the dress itself were a bonus.

At times The Known World is quite difficult to read, perhaps because of the distance Jones puts between him and his material. But this is a necessary choice, given the complexity of the story and the bleak subject matter. At the same time, he is deeply attuned to the contradictions of human nature and to the moral compromises we make in order to survive in the world.

Regardless of how poorly people pronounce your name, I bet you didn’t have to be called “Fritzy, Fritzy Dumb Ass” by a receptionist at the doctor’s office. So you can imagine the kinds of stories that Firoozeh Dumas relates in Funny in Farsi, her memoir of growing up Iranian in Southern California. “As I stood up for this most linguistically original version of my name,” she writes, “I could feel all eyes upon me. The room was momentarily silent as all these sick people sat united in a moment of gratitude for their own names.”

Funny in Farsi is a collection of essays, each centering around an anecdote or a milestone in Dumas’ life. Many of these are hilariously rendered tales of how her family struggles to fit in and grab a piece of the American dream for themselves. There’s her mother, Nazireh, who holds a Koran at the top of the doorframe for her family to walk under on their way to Sin City. There’s Uncle Nematollah, who visits for a few months, binges on American junk food, then decides to lose weight by wearing something resembling a moon suit and jogging around the block. “Unable to understand English, he had apparently forgotten the international meaning of stares as well,” Dumas says. There’s Aunt Parvine, who thinks it’s perfectly alright to teach her niece how to swim by throwing her in the deep end of the pool.

The real hero of this book, however, is Dumas’ father, Kazem, a Fulbright scholar and oil engineer who immigrated with his family shortly before the Islamic Revolution in Iran. One comes away from this book with nothing but love for a man who, despite his very recent acquaintance with the game, decided to enter Bowling for Dollars, a man who thinks having samples at Price Club qualifies as “eating out,” a man who feels it’s too boring to make hotel reservations in advance.

Dumas is occasionally quite perceptive about what it’s like to come from a country no one had heard of. “Perhaps it’s like driving a Yugo and realizing that the eighteen-wheeler can’t see you,” she writes. She’s equally perceptive about what it’s like to come from a country people have heard of only in the context of the revolution and the hostage crisis.

In Berkeley, people were either thrilled or horrified to meet an Iranian. Reactions included, “So what do you think of the fascist American CIA pigs who supported the Shah’s dictatorship only to use him as a puppet in their endless thirst for power in the Middle East and other areas like Nicaragua.” Sometimes, mentioning that I was from Iran completely ended the conversation. I never knew why but I assume some feared that I might really be yet another female terrorist masquerading as a history of art major at UC-Berkeley.

Some of the stories seem a little out of place, such as “Judges Paid Off,” about Dumas’ trip to the Bahamas, which seems entirely off-topic. And, at times, Dumas’ attempts at international rapprochement come across as syrupy. For instance, when neighbors are friendly to her, she says, “If someone had been able to encapsulate the kindness of these second-graders in pill form, the pills would undoubtedly put many war correspondents out of business.” Or “I believe peace in the Middle East could be achieved if the various leaders held their discussions in front of a giant bowl of Persian ice cream, each leader with his own silver spoon.”

But, despite these missteps, the book is enormously engaging, and I found myself laughing out loud several times. A recommended read, even (or maybe especially) for those who’ve never had to be called Dumb-Ass.

In Andrea Barrett’s Ship Fever men and women with a passion for science try to escape the confines of their gender or social position to practice what they love, and while they’re not always successful in doing so, the insights they come by illuminate the arguably greater mysteries of the human heart.
In “The Behavior of the Hawkweeds” a woman uses a letter written by Gregor Mendel about his experiments on peas and hawkweeds to woo a genetics professor, who in turns uses it to dazzle his students, but the story behind the letter often remains unappreciated, just as Mendel’s work was during his lifetime.
In “The Littoral Zone,” we witness a couple of scientists’ unexpected love affair while on a work retreat. Barrett is masterful in her exploration of the ways in which the couple seeks to justify leaving their families.

Nothing that was to come–not the days in court, nor the days they moved, nor the losses of jobs and homes–would ever seem so awful to them as that moment when they first saw their families standing there, unaware and hopeful. Deceitfully, treacherously, Ruby and Jonathan separated and walkled to the people awaiting them.

The collection consists of modern-day tales as well as stories about science in less enlightened times. In “Rare Bird,” set in Kent in 1762, a woman who is fascinated by aquatic anthropoids is rebuffed in her attempts to disprove a widely held theory about the “hibernation” of swallows.

Christopher is glaring at her. [Sarah Anne] knows what he’s thinking: in his new, middle-aged stodginess, assumed unnecessarily early and worn like a borrowed coat, he judges her harshly. She’s been forward in entering the conversation, unladylike in offering an opinion that contradicts some of her guests, indelicate in suggesting that she might pursue a flock of birds with a net.

Sarah Anne has much in common with the protagonist of “Birds With No Feet,” a naturalist who seems to be kept from making much of his finds around the world by his social station back home in pre-revolution America.
In nearly every story, Barrett weaves an impressive amount of scientific information, but the result is never forced or heavy or dull. She has a talent for mixing historical figures (Gregor Mendel, Carl Linnaeus) with fictitious scientists, and making the result not only plausible but entirely engaging. Perhaps the only false note in this otherwise dazzling collection is “The Marburg Sisters,” in which the point of view (going from one sister to the other to ther first-person plural) felt a bit contrived.
Still, Barrett has produced a remarkable collection, full of intelligence and grace. Ship Fever is one of the best collections I’ve read in a while.

If you’ve ever gathered at a friend’s house to talk about a novel, relished the conversation, feasted on the food, even made a wise crack about a comment you found inane, you’ll delight in Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club.
In the eponymous book group, one man and five women meet once a month to discuss one of Jane Austen’s six novels. Jocelyn, who leads the discussion of Emma, is a middle-aged dog breeder who enjoys playing matchmaker to her best friend, Sylvia. As in the book she cherishes so much, there’s a Mr. Knightley somewhere for Jocelyn, if only she opens herself up to a twenty-first century twist. Allegra, who chooses Sense and Sensibility, is a talented jewelry designer on the rebound from a troubled relationship with her gay partner. Prudie is a high school French teacher who is fond of quoting en francais. She picks Mansfield Park for discussion. Grigg (yes, with an ‘i’) is a recently laid-off tech worker and sci-fi fanatic. “The first thing you noticed about him was his eyelashes, which were very long and thick. We imagined a lifetime of aunts regretting the waste of those lashes in the face of a boy.” Grigg has started reading Jane Austen at the suggestion of Jocelyn, and his selection is Northanger Abbey. Then there’s Bernadette, the lovable, older member of the club, who seems constantly distracted and rambling but is altogether perceptive. She discusses Pride and Prejudice. And lastly, there’s Sylvia, best friend to Jocelyn, mother of Allegra, and recently separated from Daniel. She picks Persuasion.
Fowler’s humor and her sense of irony come through in scene after scene. When Grigg’s dad, worried about the boy’s closeness to his sisters, shows him a magazine with a scantily clad woman on the cover, Grigg is more fascinated by the spider that holds the bra in place. When Allegra talks about her lover’s ease at making up a story about a parachuting accident, we are told that Allegra was impressed because “Anyone who could lie as effortlessly as Corinne was someone to keep on the right side of. You would want her lies told for and not to you.” But the lies do indeed turn out to be told to poor Allegra.
As in Austen’s novels, there are plenty of break-ups and hook-ups, but since Fowler’s book is set in modern-day California, there are quite a few refreshing twists to the tale. And, as in Austen’s novels, the political world around the characters in The Jane Austen Book Club seems to have little bearing on their lives. Witness how the events of September 11 are referred to: “A year earlier, Dean could have accompanied [Prudie] to the gate, held her hand while she waited. Now there was no point in even going in. ”
Fowler’s sense of characterization works well with the female members of the club, though it seems to come a little short with Grigg. He never quite comes into a voice fully his own. Even the chapter that revolves around his discussion of Northanger Abbey is told largely from the point of view of the other women, as though he were a spectator.
The novel’s structure (one chapter for each discussion of an Austen novel) is rather clever. Soon, however, structure seems to get in the way. After the epilogue, there’s a brief synopsis of all six of Austen’s novels; a section on Austen’s family’s reactions to her work; chronologically sorted comments on Austen by everyone from Charlotte Bronte to Vladimir Nabokov; and mock book club questions written by the characters themselves (the meta book club.) If this sounds like a lot, maybe it is.
Despite this, the book has much to recommend it. It’s a great take on the culture of book groups, an homage to Austen, an engaging story, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

Few books have the power to make you want to turn to the stranger sitting next to you on a train or in a coffee shop and say, “Here, you have to read this.” Rachel Cusk’s The Lucky Ones is that kind of book. Told from the point of view of five different characters, Cusk’s incisive prose takes you inside the heads of people haunted by their relationships with children. In “Confinement,” the opening story, Kristy, a pregnant inmate who is likely innocent of the arson charges against her, spends the last few hours before her delivery wrestling with the prospect of a life spent away from her baby.

She made herself small. For a moment she herself was the baby and the child inside her took on a strange authority, the primacy of an unlived life. It seemed to her then almost as if the baby had the power to free her from herself. In this small room where the light behind the bars wore the sad pallor of a winter afternoon, of a day slipping by unlived, untasted, in this place where everything existed in a single dimension of fact, it was a miracle that this transference was possible.

Kristy’s case takes a turn for the worse when her lawyer, Victor, hands over her files to a young, indifferent associate, Jane. Jane makes an appearance in “The Way You Do It,” the story of two couples, a single woman, and a new father, all dealing with parenthood–desired or sidelined, fulfilled or wanting. Cusk is masterful in her nuanced examination of how a new baby has changed the lives of the yuppies in the story, particularly Martin, the new father.

It should have made no difference but it did — in his chest there was the feeling of a gash opening, a scar that he saw would never mend, because no matter how carefully he stitched it up it lay across a part of himself whose motion was fundamental. Now that the baby had come his life would be lived against a mounting force of limitation.

The next story, “The Sacrifices,” is told in the first-person and concerns two filial relationships: the narrator and her mother, and the narrator and her husband’s son from a previous relationship. In “Mrs Daley’s Daughter,” the reader is again introduced to Josephine, one of the women in the skiing party, who comes home to visit her mother after having a baby, but there is no comfort from the meeting. And in “Matters of Life and Death,” we witness a husband and wife’s difficult adjustment to the baby in their lives.
Cusk’s view of parenthood, devoid of the customary saccharine, is rather bleak and, for some people, also quite authentic. Her prose slices through each family portrait, revealing insights sometimes dimly perceived but never fully exposed. I know it’s still early in the year, but this collection (or novel, if you believe the cover) is my favorite so far.

I have to say I was relieved when I started reading Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft: it’s a hell of a lot less depressing that A Gesture Life, which I had a hard time getting through, both because of the subject matter of comfort women, and because of Franklin Hata’s attitude about them. In a way, though, the protagonist in Aloft is also a bit maddening.
Jerry Battle is a middle-aged man who’s got a lot on his hands: his son, who has taken over the family business, threatens to run it into the ground; his daughter is pregnant, ill, and refusing treatment; his father is unhappy at the retirement home (who wouldn’t be?) ; and his girlfriend is thinking of leaving him, so what does he do? He spends a lot of time aloft, on his newly purchased plane. You want to bring him down and whack him on the head. But one of the things I admire most about Lee’s work is his ability to empathize with his characters, even when they’re unlikeable, and this ability is in evidence here as well: Battle ended up growing on me.
Those readers who come to this story expecting some mention or meditation on race will probably notice that Battle is Italian-American, that his late wife was Korean, that the man who sells him the plane is black, etc.) To me, though, Lee seems more preoccupied with class than race in this one–references to the middle-class life abound.
Lee indulges in long sentences that meander yet manage (mostly) not to lose the reader. I did wonder whether that stylistic choice was appropriate for Battle but I suppose eventually I sort of attributed the cadence to the character and forgot about it.