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2023, July 2023

Book Titles: “What’s in a Name?”

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By Carole Reedy

Myriad factors enter into the success and sales of a book: the popularity and marketing reach of the author, the book’s jacket and design, the reviews, length, friends’ recommendations, and, of course, the subject, style, and focus.

Add to that list the title of the book.

Authors generally prefer to create their own titles, but since publishers take part in the financial risk and success of the book, they, too, have input. Based on market research, a publisher may have a better insight into reader expectations than the author. Of course, a well-established, proven-popular author may have more influence in the final decision than an unknown writer.

Authors themselves may change their title decisions as the process of publication proceeds. Usually, the author starts with a working title but is certainly not wedded to it. Books go through several metamorphoses before the final sentence is penned, so honing the working title is likely.

Titles can reflect the subject and general ambience of a book. They can be clever, funny, explanatory, or express a feeling. The title is the first thing a reader sees or hears and is significant in swaying a reader to purchase and read a book.

To understand the process of choosing a title, let’s look at actual titles of famous novels to understand how they were named and even re-named.

Often authors derive their titles from other sources familiar to their readers. The most popular seem to be the Bible, Shakespeare, poetry, popular phrases within or outside the book, or the names of particular characters. The idea is to attract attention to the book by conveying the essence of the book and the intentions of author in a succinct phrase.

Inspired by the Bible

The Grapes of Wrath, the title of John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is a reference to a passage in the Book of Revelations that reads, “So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great wine press of the wrath of God.”

The title is also a phrase from the first stanza of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the lyrics penned by Julia Ward Howe in 1861 to what was until then a military marching song called “John Brown’s Body.”

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.

The title was suggested by Steinbeck’s wife Carol, and the author deemed it a worthy choice.

The title East of Eden, another Steinbeck novel (1952), is a symbolic re-creation of the biblical story of Cain and Abel woven into a history of California’s Salinas Valley, a popular location for Steinbeck’s novels. The title refers to Genesis 4:16: “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden” (King James Version).

Inspired by Shakespeare

The title Remembrance of Things Past, the approximately 1,250,000-word novel by Marcel Proust, could also fall into our “Inspired by Poetry” category below. The first English translation of the title (by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, 1922) was derived from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Proust wrote his 1913 seven-volume masterpiece in French, with the title À la recherche du temps perdu, which more directly translates into In Search of Lost Time. Proust did not approve of Moncrieff’s, title although he made no attempt to change it. He felt it did not accurately convey his intended meaning of memory as involuntary rather than voluntary. Proust did, however, praise Moncrieff’s translation of the first volume, Swann’s Way, possibly the only praise he ever handed out to a translator of his works.

The working title David Foster Wallace originally used for his thousand-page magnum opus Infinite Jest (1996) was A Failed Entertainment. The novel is partly based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the ultimate title refers to Act V, Scene 1, when Hamlet holds up the skull of the court jester Yorick and says

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is!”

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (1962; film version 1983) is a dark fantasy novel featuring two 13-year-old best friends and their nightmarish experience with a carnival. The title is taken from MacBeth Act 4, Scene 1, when the witches predict the outcome of the play:

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

A most appropriate title for Bradbury’s novel, as it teeters between fantasy and horror. On his 80th birthday, Bradbury enjoyed the writing process as much as ever before. “The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was 12.”

Inspired by Character Names

J.K. Rowling named the first book of her blockbuster Harry Potter series Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Scholastic, the publisher, felt children might reject a book with the word “philosopher” in the title and changed it to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1998).

The Great Gatsby (1925) was originally titled Trimalchio in West Egg by the author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The publisher thought the title too obscure (Trimalchio was a character in the Satyricon of Petronius, a Roman writer in the late 1st century CE), and suggested a change. All agreed, and the book came to become one of the most beloved pieces of American literature.

Mrs. Dalloway (1925). The perfect title for this classic stream-of-conscious masterpiece written by Virginia Woolf, which takes place one day in 1923 in the life of the title character. The working title for the book was The Hours.

Fifty years later author Michael Cunningham wrote a highly regarded novel with exactly that title. It relates the stories of three different women – Virginia Woolf, on the day in 1923 she starts writing Mrs. Dalloway; Laura Brown, a depressed American housewife who is reading Mrs. Dalloway in 1949; and Clarissa Vaughn, who (sometime in the 1980s or 90s) is hosting a party to celebrate her friend Richard, a poet and novelist who has just received a lifetime achievement award but is dying of AIDS.

The film The Hours, starring Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughn, came out in 2002 (a British film titled Mrs. Dalloway was released in 1997, is a faithful retelling of the book and starred Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Dalloway); The Hours was turned into an opera by composer Kevin Puts; it debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in November 2022.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) is known for colorful characters in his trove of novels and writings. His unique style incorporated linguistic technique to invent characters whose actions were reflected in their names (Mr. Bumble, Scrooge).

In all, Dickens created 989 characters, and many more individuals, for his books. No wonder he titled many of his works with the main character. Among those are some of his most beloved works: Nicolas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit, Barnaby Rudge, and Edwin Drood.

Inspired by Phrases (often from the text of the book) and/or general theme

Ayn Rand at first chose the title The Strike for her monumental classic novel Atlas Shrugged (1957), her last and longest book and one she considered her magnum opus. However, she thought perhaps that title revealed too much. Her husband actually suggested the title we know, which refers to a conversation between two of her characters. One personage notes that the greater the effort Atlas made, the heavier the world became and the best one can do is “to shrug.”

Faith Martin’s DI Hillary Greene series, about a British detective who lives on a narrowboat, originally had “Narrow” in all the titles: A Narrow Escape, On the Straight and Narrow, Narrow Is the Way, etc., but the titles were changed when a new publisher took over. In place of “Narrow,” the word “Murder” was used to reassure the readers they were getting a murder mystery (Murder on the Oxford Canal [2004], Murder of the Bride [2006], etc.) The new titles seem to be selling better than the originals.

Inspired by Poetry

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934; film version 1962, TV mini-series 1985), is the fourth and final novel by the formidable jazz-age writer. It was not well-received by critics at the time, but time proved them wrong. The title comes from John Keats’s poem “Ode to a Nightingale”:

Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874; film versions, 1967, 2015, among others) bears a title drawn from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1750), which was inspired at least in part by the death of the poet Richard West in 1742:

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

In a review of the 2015 film (The Guardian, April 15, 2014), British writer and journalist Lucasta Miller tells us that the title of the book is an ironic literary joke; in his poem, Gray is idealizing noiseless and sequestered calm, whereas Hardy “disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot … he is out to subvert his readers’ complacency.” (Note that “madding” means “frenzied” in this context.)

When the Title Comes First

Many authors have the title for their book ready before they start writing. In the words of Jhumpa Lahiri, “Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book of the same name. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story.” Beloved Irish author Frank McCourt is supposed to have said – perhaps about his memoir Angela’s Ashes (1996; film version 1999), “I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.”

To close on a lighter note, here’s a quote from everyone’s favorite humor writer, Dave Barry: “It isn’t easy, coming up with book titles. A lot of the really good ones are taken. Thin Thighs in 30 Days, for example. Also, The Bible.”

2023, February 2023

A Twist of Time

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By Carole Reedy

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.
— Dave Eggers, prolific writer and editor

Science fiction writers aren’t the only storytellers who work with the themes of time and space. Novelists, too, are beholden to time to create the masterpieces of literature we so deeply enjoy. In fact, writers of all genres magically engage readers through their philosophical treatment of the phenomenon of time. The authors here hail from one of three centuries and from five different cultures: French, British, American, German, and Polish. Their works, at the time they were written, were all revolutionary in style and structure, opening the door for future generations to understand and explore the context in which we live, evolve, feel, and observe.

We can never say enough about the mysterious ascendancy of time.

MARCEL PROUST
Topping the list of writers with a penchant for time and memory is the quirky, charming bon vivant Marcel Proust. Best known for recollecting his past after tasting a delectable madeleine, his seven-volume novel (more than a million words) still fascinates readers throughout the world and challenges and mystifies academics.

À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (1913-27), Proust’s masterpiece, translates to English literally as In Search of Lost Time. However, the popular and dominant translation of Scottish Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff titles it Remembrance of Things Past, a subtle but significant difference.

Proust’s memories are involuntary, sparked by a smell or taste. They do not come bidden by a conscious search. Moncrieff’s title is inspired by and taken from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30, “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past.”

Proust’s tome has mesmerized readers for more than a century. And even though it is set in early 20th-century France, the behaviors, emotions, and habits of the characters remain recognizable today. Proust’s mastery of language and nuance is unmatched. The prose is among the most beautiful ever written.

From an early age Proust suffered from asthma, which remained with him into adulthood. He spent the last three years of his life in bed, writing all night and sleeping all day. He died at age 51 in 1922 from pneumonia.

VIRGINIA WOOLF
The highly acclaimed British writer Virginia Woolf has been the focus of literary roundtables, college theses, and book club discussions for nearly a century. She was the forerunner of the stream-of-consciousness genre in which her characters observe their everyday surroundings in search of an understanding of life. The style is evident for creating an almost dreamy, trancelike state that welcomes the reader into new worlds.

Recently the Met Opera from New York presented a new production called The Hours. The drama is based on the 1998 novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham, which itself is based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) as well as Woolf’s life. Both books are among my favorites. The novel The Hours is a literary masterpiece in its juxtaposition of time and place.

Mrs. Dalloway is one of Woolf’s most enchanting works, and I believe it to be a perfect novel. The action is reduced to the course of one day in Mrs. Dalloway’s life, but it tells the story of a lifetime of experiences and emotions. The enigma of time.

Another of Woolf’s popular novels is To the Lighthouse (1927). Here the reader accompanies the Ramsey family to Scotland, a place they vacation regularly in the summer. But once again, with the twists of time, the story of a woman is told through the eyes of others as well as her own. The Scottish landscape functions as a significant character in this novel, which scrutinizes a woman’s life and relationships.

Sadly, as is the case with many persons of genius, Wolff suffered from bipolar disorder and depression. At age 59, she walked into the River Ouse in Northern England with a pocketful of rocks and drowned.

OTTESA MOSHFEGH
This 40-year-old American novelist has recently captured the attention of readers of all ages. Ruthless and bold in her craft, she painstakingly takes us on her characters’ searches for resolution and peace. The emotional development, upheaval, and final settlement of her main characters is only hesitantly revealed through the author’s singular unfolding.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation appeared on many best-seller lists in 2022. The sleep-induced self-cure of the protagonist develops slowly, making for a fascinating journey. Since I was completely satisfied with the novel, I then searched for this young innovative writer’s previous work.

Death in Her Hands (2020) caught my attention as it was tagged as a mystery, a genre among my personal favorites. Yet here is a completely different take. The action is disclosed to the reader exclusively from the point of view of the main character. All is auspiciously resolved in the end despite, perhaps, the reader’s doubt!

Fortunately, Moshfegh is young and undoubtedly is churning many ideas that will make their way into new novels for her demanding fans.

THOMAS MANN
Thomas Mann suggested to his readers that once they finished his novel The Magic Mountain (1924), they read it again. Those who have done so claim it is the most magnificent novel ever written, and many more agree.

Although he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, principally for Buddenbrooks (1901), a novel based on his own family, it is The Magic Mountain that brought Mann continued fame over the years. It continues to be named one of the best novels of all time.

Apart from the themes of life and death, Mann returns often to the subjective nature of time and our own perspective. In The Magic Mountain, the main character, Hans Castrop, comes to visit his cousin in a sanatorium, falls ill, and spends seven years there himself. The two engage in philosophical arguments about time: does “interest and novelty dispel or shorten the content of time, while monotony and emptiness hinder its passage”? The relationship of time and space is a continuing debate.

Mann lived a long interesting life, in both Germany (his home), Switzerland, and the US. Wartime conditions in Europe, especially in Germany, were the impetus for his relocations.

To know more about this highly regarded writer, I recommend a 2021 novel written by famed Irish author Colm Tóibin called The Magician, which is based on the life of Thomas Mann.

OLGA TOKARCZUK
Take the opportunity to watch interviews with this surprisingly bubbly personality. Despite the serious nature of her subjects and writing, Tokarczuk has a contagious sense of humor. The obvious mutually respectful relationship with her English translator, Jennifer Croft, manifests itself in the superb results of this successful team.

Tokarczuk, a clinical psychologist, is a serious writer, evident in the recognition of her work by the Nobel committee in 2018, when she was awarded that coveted prize for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”

Her book Flights (2007) is a favorite. She won and shared with her translator the Man Booker International Prize for it in 2018. Judges for the National Book Award, for which the novel was short-listed, offer this description: “Brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time.”

Tokarczuk’s epic novel, The Books of Jacob (2014) transports the reader over seven borders and five languages, starting in 1752 with the 18th century Polish-Jewish religious leader Jacob Frank, then evolving to the persecution of the Jews in the 20th century. It is her revelations of the past that prophesize and thus advance the pursuit of solutions to present-day problems.

At 61, this politically and socially aware author is active in rights of equality and respect for minorities.

Coincidentally, just before submitting this article I began reading Out Stealing Horses (2003) by Per Petterson. On page 6, I ran across this poignant note: “Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.”

2023, January 2023

The Unfinished List of 2022

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By Carole Reedy

“Can anything be sadder than a work left unfinished? Yes, a work undone.”
— Poet Christina Rossetti

Upon finishing my top-ten list of best books of 2022, a nagging sense of incompleteness remained with me. Happily, I’m remedying it this month by augmenting my Top Ten Reads of 2022 (published in the December 2022 issue of The Eye) to include the following six unforgettable novels.

Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
Unlike many readers, I’m not an automatic fan of Kingsolver’s books, but this treasure from 2022 – a modern version of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield – has been given the praise it richly deserves by a majority of critics and reviewers. Yes, it is as good as her novel The Poisonwood Bible (1998), to answer the frequently asked question.

Here, however, the venue is changed from Dickens’ dark, sooty, deprived 19th-century England to the heart of Appalachia in southwest Virginia. We follow a young boy through an adventurous though drudging life, without the guidance of responsible adults, in a depressed land and state of hopelessness.

The opioid crisis features prominently in this tale set in the late 20th century. Kingsolver keeps us on our toes until the very satisfying end.

Two by Ottessa Mosfegh: Death in Her Hands, Eileen
After reading the popular My Year of Rest and Relaxation, I craved more of the same descriptive writing that allows us to enter the interior world of Moshfegh’s women characters.

Death in Her Hands (2020) could be described as a mystery, though the plot and solution come more directly from the mind of the elderly main character than the action. This character, in the manner we’ve come to expect from Moshfegh, drifts from thought to thought until a solution is revealed.

The novel Eileen (2016) involves yet another anomalous character. Moshfegh can be tedious, but in the end, this is what gives life and meaning to her characters.

The Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
This book from 2005 is one you’ll want to take your time with. Read a chapter a day and then re-read the supple passages.

The location is Europe, and the time is the 1930s. Follow the author over mountains and through valleys from Holland to Constantinople. Let your mind roam as you savor each word. Although this book is described as a travel memoir, it’s also an interior life explored as we observe an 18-year-old developing into a man.

The title comes from “Twelfth Night,” a poem by Louis MacNeice.

Mouth to Mouth, by Antoine Wilson
Words that came to me upon finishing this delightful read: sharp, clever, winding, hip. The mystery overtones give the novel a compelling, often surprising, story and plot.

I won’t spoil a word of it by attempting a summary, but know that the book has been compared to works by Patricia Highsmith and that it was one of Barack Obama’s favorites of 2022.

The Hours, by Michael Cunningham
You might wonder why this 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel appears on my list 25 years after publication. In 1998, I had just moved to Mexico and everything was fresh, foreign, and invigorating, so much so that my reading habits shifted from novels based on the English/Anglo experience to those exploring Hispanic/Indio culture. As a result, I never read The Hours.

Recently the Met opera debuted a new work based on this 1998 bestseller. Before attending the event, I felt compelled to read the book and also see the 2002 movie, starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianna Moore.

The story of three women revolves around the life of writer Virginia Woolf, who lived from 1882 until her death from suicide in 1941. Streep in the film depicts another of the women who is referred to as Mrs. Dalloway by her friend Richard, who is dying of AIDS. Kidman won an Oscar for her role as Virginia Wolff and Julianna Moore also has a significant role in this marvelous intertwining of lives.

Both the novel and film are complete in plot and character development and satisfying throughout, evoking strong emotions.

Sadly, the opera version didn’t capture the jarring passion of the novel or the film. The music seemed unable to convey and sustain the life frustrations of the characters, although the three sopranos – Renee Fleming, Joyce Di Donato, and Kelli O’Hara – are among the best of our time. In addition, my friends and I found it difficult to listen for more than three hours to an opera sung mostly in the soprano range. We were actually thrilled when the tenor entered the scenario.

The opera itself was the idea of Renee Fleming, who brought it to the composer Kevin Puts. The production itself was brilliant in its juxtaposition of the three women’s stories as they alternated and shared the stage.

I do think this is the first time I have read a book, seen the movie, and experienced the opera all in the space of one week!

Next month: Onward to reading selections for 2023.

December 2022

It Was A Very Good Year: Best Reads of 2022

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By Carole Reedy

The incomparable Maria Callas said once of an opera, “An opera … becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I have left the opera house.”

I would use the same words to describe the way I feel about the books I read this year – each is unique in style, structure, and content. All of them enrapture and engage, while giving us food for thought long after we’ve finished reading. They are lush and contain all we hope for in a reading experience.

To Paradise, by Hanya Yanagihara
After turning the last page of this book in March, I knew it would be my top read of 2022. As with her earlier masterpiece, A Little Life (2015), Yanagihara dissects and analyzes while elaborating on the world she creates for the reader.

Yanagihara’s newest story is divided into three parts set a century apart. The first part starts in 19th century New York City, but not the New York we think we know. Yanagihara has designed a new entity out of the territories of the US following the Civil War. As a result, life is very different.

A century later, we are taken to Hawaii, and then a century after that to a new dimension. Although this is a lengthy book, you won’t need a list of characters or a family tree before you begin. As the flow and tension of the writing consumes you, the characters become evident in their placement in history.

Great Circle: A Novel, by Maggie Shipstead
I heard about this book through my book grapevine, which includes readers of all ages and backgrounds. Published in 2021, here’s a book that is widely admired and loved. And little wonder. The two stories at the center, one present day and the other 50 years earlier, are centered around strong women characters.

The current-day heroine is an actress, the counter heroine an airplane pilot. Their lives parallel in many ways, and the juxtaposition makes for a compelling, enjoyable, and even educational read.

The Marriage Portrait: A Novel, by Maggie O’Farrell
This historical novel arrives with great anticipation on the coattails of O’Farrell’s beautifully rendered Hamnet (2020) and it is a worthy successor. In The Marriage Portrait we live and empathize with the 16-year-old Lucrezia de Medici who lives her life in the lush Italian Renaissance world with all its conventions and excesses.

O’Farrell’s novel is said to have been inspired by the Robert Browning poem “My Last Duchess,” just as the author’s previous novel was based on the life of Shakespeare and his play Hamlet. O’Farrell relies on poetic justice to weave the intricacies of this story and period with a flair and sensitivity rarely found in historical novels.

Lessons: A Novel, by Ian McEwan
For me, this is McEwen’s magnum opus. In his lifetime’s worth of novels he has blessed us with a constellation of style, length, and personages. This surprisingly lengthy (449 pages) novel simply follows the story of a man across all the upheavals of time and history.

Through the characters we experience decades of disruption and tragedies brought about by war and man’s flaws. It is beautifully rendered and said to be quasi-autobiographic.

Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart
Shuggie Bain, the young boy in the novel of the same name (2020), was the creation of Douglas Stuart based on his own life. There are few writers who can so adeptly transport us to an alien world and also break our hearts. In this book, Stuart generates an empathy rarely experienced by readers. I felt it a privilege to be taken into Shuggie’s sphere and life in 20th century Scotland.

This second novel is equally worthy. Here the teenage Mungo suffers the trials of poverty and being different in a society struggling with religious conflict. Once again, Stuart’s lyricism captures the essence of this world and brings it clearly into our hearts and minds.

Hell of a Book, by Jason Mott
While awaiting the world to return to normal as the calendar changed from 2021 to 2022, I read this novel by an author I didn’t know, but I knew immediately it would be on this list at the end of the year.

We book enthusiasts love to read about books, publishing, and even the whirlwind author tours. While telling this story, the author takes us on a double journey, with the writer/protagonist performing the tasks expected of his publisher, but also tackling the ghosts of his past.

Watt deservingly won the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction for this most engaging novel.

Babysitter: A Novel, by Joyce Carol Oates
This is the Joyce Carol Oates I love, a novel reminiscent of her 70s masterpieces. It is frightening in its spot-on depiction of a rich suburban housewife and her emotionally charged, rash decisions. Every fiber in your body wants to shout “Don’t do that!”

A supporting sub story tells of another suburban nightmare: the threat of a serial killer in the midst of a closed, pristine community. As always, Oates tightly knits the daily chaos of our modern world into a compelling story, a talent she’s mastered over the years.

Oates has been writing for more than 50 years and has produced more than 100 written works, from short stories and essays to many of our favorite novels. Her early novels – Them (1969), A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967), Expensive People (1968) – and a couple of decades later, We Were the Mulvaneys (1996) and Blonde (2000) have assured her a prominent place in the history of American literature.

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, by Alan Hochschild
Published in 1998, this is the sole nonfiction book to make my list. To me, it reads like a novel in its detailed plot and character development.

The story is told through main characters who are involved in the corruption and dismantling of the Congo by imperialist Europeans in the late 19th century. It is probably one of the most disturbing books I have read, depicting the greed and divisiveness of white men in their attempts to protect the status quo and their white empires. King Leopold II of Belgium desired exceedingly to head an empire, and the jealousy he feels toward his counterparts and cousins in other European countries who had their own empires leads him to take over the Congo, depleting the area of its valued ivory and rubber, making the rich even richer and the poor dead.

Alan Hochschild also has described the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War in his recent well-regarded book, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (2017). He depicts the Americans who traveled to Spain to participate as freedom fighters against the dictator Franco. Both books are fine examples of how fact and history can entertain as well as educate.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh
This author’s name seemed to come out of nowhere, and now you see it everywhere. Justifiably, the waitlist is lengthy at the Chicago Public Library to obtain any of her novels, including her book of short stories, Homesick for Another World (2017). Moshfegh’s attraction is her style, which I would describe as “patient.” In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, published in 2018, as in her novels Death in Her Hands (2020) and Eileen: A Novel (2015), the protagonist’s dilemma is resolved only after a careful and thorough rendering of the situation.

This book isn’t quite as easy-going as the title suggests, and the approach is even more complicated. What appears simple is complex, as the writer takes us slowly through each step of the protagonist’s recovery.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a name to remember. She’s an American of Croatian and Persian descent. I am sure we will see more of her work in the future.

Trust, by Hernan Diaz
As I wrote this entry, I coincidentally received the news that Trust had won the Kirkus Prize for Fiction for 2022 (Kirkus is a commercial book review service that covers an enormous range and number of books).

Trust comprises four manuscripts, in varying states of completion, that explore the capacity of money “to bend and align reality.” There is a novel-within-a-novel about a Wall Street tycoon who benefited from the 1929 stock market crash and his wife, who ended up mentally ill in a Swiss sanitarium; the partial memoir of a second Wall Street tycoon; scraps of some diaries by the wife of this second tycoon; and a long memoir by the ostensible ghost writer of the second tycoon’s memoir. Kirkus recognition is often heavy on plot, short on praise, and never gushes. Here’s what they say about Trust:

“The novel overall feels complex but never convoluted, focused throughout on the dissatisfactions of wealth and the suppression of information for the sake of keeping up appearances. No one document tells the whole story, but the collection of palimpsests makes for a thrilling experience and a testament to the power and danger of the truth—or a version of it—when it’s set down in print. A clever and affecting high-concept novel of high finance.”

The four-part novel is clever but not manipulative. And it is thoroughly enjoyable.

Now, on to another year and the anticipation of new books. What joy!

2020

Writing in Mexico:
Female Authors, Fantasy, and Femicide

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

Last month, the New York Times profiled a “new vanguard” among the women writers of Latin America (October 9, 2022, “For Latin American Women, Horror and Fantasy Capture Everyday Struggle”). Make no mistake, though, book critic Benjamin P. Russell, warns – the fantasy he’s talking about is not the magical realism we have known and loved from Columbian Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967), Chilean Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits, 1982) or Mexico’s own Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate, 1990).

Magical realism integrates the magical or supernatural into a realistic setting (although you can easily argue that the magic overtakes the real in Like Water for Chocolate!). The magical elements serve to comment on how the real world works – often very badly. In Like Water for Chocolate, Tita falls in love at first sight with Pedro; however, Tita is her mother’s youngest child, and is expected to stay single and care for her mother until she dies. Mom makes Pedro marry Tita’s sister. Esquivel uses Tita’s magical ability to incorporate her emotions into the food she cooks to comment on the injustice of her loneliness. While magical realism can include death and destruction, the very fact that it combines magic and realism, that it makes the magic “real,” means that it does not lend itself well to depicting true horror and evil.

From the Magic to the Unusual

But there are women writers who have no qualms at taking on true horror and evil. Russell points out that a “conspicuous number of women writers are using fantasy, horror and the unfamiliar to unsettle readers and critique social ills” throughout Latin America, with half a dozen authors from Mexico. The critic finds the trend unsurprising, given the widespread “frustration against restrictions on women’s rights and rising gender violence.”

Russell quotes the work of literature professor Carmen Alemany Bay, from the University of Alicante in Spain, in defining this work as the “narrative of the unusual” (narrativa de lo inusual). Fantastical and horrific elements are presented realistically, Bay says, but leave the reader to decide “what is possible and what is not.” Calling these novels magical realism is “a big, big mistake,” she says. “They may contain elements of magic, but that isn’t the foundation.”

For the most part, evil is possible in the narrative of the unusual. And what is more evil than femicide, the killing of women because they are women? Half of all femicides happen in Latin American countries; homicide is the leading cause of death for Mexican women aged 15-25. In absolute numbers for 2020, Mexico ranked second with 948; Brazil was nearly double, with 1,738. (The Eye has regularly covered domestic violence and femicide in Mexico.)

Among the female Mexican authors of novels of the “unusual” are two who have directly addressed femicide, violence against women, and systematic abuse and discrimination. Their themes are remarkably similar, the integration of what is fantasy and what is reality is seamless, and they both have a talent for depicting their settings and characters in extraordinary language redolent of place and time. For your reading pleasure, each has been rendered in English by remarkably skilled translators.

Brenda Lozana: Witches (2022)

Brenda Lozana, born in Mexico City in 1981, was recognized in 2015 by Mexico’s National Council on Culture and the Arts (Conaculta), the annual Hay Festival of Literature & Arts (held at Hay-on-Wye in Wales), and the cultural promotion organization the British Council as one of Mexico’s most important authors under the age of 40. By 2017, she made the Hay Festival’s list Bogotá 39, the most important new authors from Latin America.

Her novel Witches, translated by Heather Cleary, is really two intersecting stories – that of Feliciana, a curandera (healer) modeled on María Sabina, the Mazatec traditional healer and shaman from Huatla de Jiménez in the Sierra Occidental in northern Oaxaca, and Zoe, a Mexico City journalist who has come calling to report on the death of Feliciana’s mentor and cousin, Paloma. Paloma is a muxe, a man who takes on the appearance and obligations of a woman; referred to as the third gender, they are widely accepted in Zapotec culture, especially in the Isthmus. Paloma, originally a curandero named Gaspar, has transferred to Feliciana the family’s healing abilities, in particular healing through the use of language. The healing power, however, is usually handed from male to male, leaving Feliciana – like Paloma – in an ambiguously gendered position.

Since neither Feliciana nor Zoe speaks the other’s language, the story proceeds in two different voices. Here is what Feliciana sounds like:

It was six at night when Guadalupe came to tell me they had killed Paloma. I don’t remember times or dates, I don’t know when I was born because I was born like mountain was, go ask the mountain when it was born, but I know it was six at night when Guadalupe came to say they killed Paloma as she was getting ready to go out, I saw her there in her room, I saw her body on the floor and the shine for her eyes on her fingers and I saw her hands they were two in the mirror and the shine was on both like she had just put it on her eyes, like she could get up and put some on mine.

Zoe, of course, sounds completely different:

I agreed to write the article about Paloma’s murder because gender-based violence sends me into a rage. I couldn’t take the unending stream of news stores about femicide, rape, and abuse anymore—or the sexist jokes I’d hear around the office, for that matter. Any situation or remark that targeted a woman or someone who identified as one would set me off, and I wanted to do whatever I could from the trench I’d dug at the newsroom. Plus, I wanted to meet Feliciana. I was fascinated by her. When I took the assignment, I didn’t know any more about her than anyone else did: I new she was the legendary curandera of the Language and the most famous shaman alive. I knew that the words she used in her veladas, the ceremonies she performed, had miraculous healing powers, and I knew the stories about the artists, writers, directors, and musicians who’d traveled halfway around the world to meet her. The professors and linguists from other countries who’d gone to see her in the mountains of San Felipe. I knew that books, films, songs and paintings had come out of these visits—I didn’t know exactly which ones, but I knew they existed. I received a photo of Paloma lying on the ground in a pool of blood next to a bed draped with a peacock throw.

Together, Feliciana and Zoe tell each other their stories, their worries and fears, their traumas with violence against women, their desires for independence.

Fernanda Melchor: Hurricane Season (2020)

Fernanda Melchor, born in Veracruz city in 1982, was, like Lozano, named one of the most important Mexican authors under 40 in 2015. Hurricane Season won the Anna Seghers literary prize and the International Literature Award of the Haus de Culturen (both given by Germany), and was short-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2020.

Hurricane Season tells of the murder of the Witch of a tiny, cinder-block town called La Matosa, outside the city of Villagarbosa (Melchor’s stand-in for the city of Veracruz). The story is told by four people who know Luismi, an ex-lover of the Witch who also happens to be a trans woman who does traditional healing. Luismi’s cousin Yesenia thinks of him as a sexual deviant; Brando is a porn addict who can’t decide whether he wants to have sex with Luismi; Norma is a pregnant (by her stepfather) 13-year-old; Luismi’s mother takes Norma to the Witch for an abortion, which turns out poorly. These four voices surround the murder with clues to the crime, the identity of the Witch, and the abysmal context of life in La Matosa. Melchor’s language ranges from the brutal to the languid, it piles up in ever-lengthening sentences, and is never less than precise and deeply evocative. Here is the opening of Hurricane Season:

They reached the canal along the track leading up from the river, their slingshots drawn for battle and their eyes squinting, almost stitched together, in the midday glare. There were five of them, their ringleader the only one in swimming trunks: red shorts that blazed behind the parched crops of the cane fields, still low in early May. The rest of the troop trailed behind him in their underwear, all four caked in mud up to their shins, all four taking turns to carry the pail of small rocks they’d taken from the river that morning; all four scowling and fierce and so ready to give themselves up for the cause that not even the youngest, bringing up the rear, would have dared admit he was scared, the elastic of his slingshot pulled taut in his hands, the rock snug in the leather pad, primed to strike anything that got in his way at the very first sign of an ambush, be that the caw of the bienteveo, perched unseen like a guard in the trees behind them, the rustle of leaves being thrashed aside, or the whoosh of a rock cleaving the air just beyond their noses, the breeze warm and the almost white sky thick with ethereal birds of prey and a terrible smell that hit them harder than a fistful of sand in the face, a stench that made them want to hawk it up before it reached their guts, that made them want to stop and turn around. But the ringleader pointed to the edge of the cattle track, and all five of them, crawling along the dry grass, all five them packed together in a single body, all five of them surrounded by blowflies, finally recognized what was peeping out from the yellow foam on the water’s surface: the rotten face of a corpse floating among the rushes and the plastic bags swept in from the road on the breeze, the dark mask seething under a myriad of black snakes, smiling.

October 2022

Storytelling: From Fairy Tales to Magical Realism

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By Carole Reedy

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
— Albert Einstein

STORIES
“Man is the storytelling animal,” says the master storyteller himself, Sir Salman Rushdie. During a prestigious, nearly half-century career, he has published 12 novels, among which the most famous are Midnight’s Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1988). Two children’s books and 13 nonfiction and essay collections complete his writing career thus far. His next innovative storytelling will be Victory City: A Novel, to be published February 9, 2023. It is described as an Indian novel styled as a translation of an ancient epic.

The oral history of storytelling most likely goes back to the Bronze Age, but written stories are the focus of modern man. Writing down stories allows them to become static so that they can be read again and again, and thus relegated to history.

Stories help us to remember, imagine, and solve problems. In addition, they evoke empathy and provide us with many hours of thoughtful enjoyment. All these advantages apply to fairy tales as well as to fine literature.

FAIRY TALES AND MAGICAL REALISM
Fairy tales derive from the folklore of a culture, the first iteration of an oral tradition in the form of a short story. As populations became more literate, however, fairy tales appeared in written form intended for an adult audience. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the enjoyment of fairy tales extended to children.

The first formally published fairy tales were those of Charles Perrault, written in 1697, for an aristocratic French adult readership. Among Perrault’s most famous are “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” Perrault is often recognized as the creator of the modern fairy tale.

Fairy tales throughout the world vary. Those from Europe have become staples in literature in most countries, especially for children. Besides those of Perrault, you will find the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, from what is now Germany, and the stories set down by Danish author Hans Christian Anderson.

MEXICAN FAIRY TALES
Mexico’s culture is filled with folklore that translates into colorful fairy tales for children and adults. Here are a few recent ones that will engage children of all ages.

Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales (2018): A New York Times bestseller, also named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, this richly illustrated and relevant story is based on Yuyi’s own experience of bringing her son and the gifts of their culture to a new place.

The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes, by Duncan Tonatiuh (2016): Tonatiuh is an award-winning author and illustrator. Here he reinvents one of Mexico’s most cherished tales, that of the two majestic volcanos overlooking Mexico City and Puebla, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. The love between the princess Izta and the warrior Popoca creates the setting for this famous retold legend.

Also by Sr. Tonatiuh is a migrant’s tale, Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale (2013). This illustrated story tells of Pancho, a rabbit who travels with a coyote in search of his father who has crossed the border for work up north. It is an excellent way of increasing children’s understanding of the struggles and hardships of the people who need to cross borders.

Worth mentioning here as an aside is the marvelous children’s book, Danza, also by Duncan Tonatiuh (2017), which relates the story of Mexico’s Folkloric Ballet and its incomparable founder Amalia Hernández.

The Secret Footprints by Julia Alvarez (2000): I must mention this tale even though its origin is Dominican, not Mexican, because Alvarez is a well-known novelist of adult books, most notably How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (2010). In the Time of the Butterflies: A Novel (1994) is a fictionalized account of the four Mirabal sisters (the butterflies), who sought to overthrow El Jefe, the repressive dictator General Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.

The children’s book, The Secret Footprints, is a reinvented legend from Dominican folklore of the ciguapas, creatures who live in the sea with feet that are on backwards so humans cannot follow them. It tells of an encounter between one ciguapa named Guapa and a human boy.

Present Day Fairy Tales
Fairy tales continue to be written for adults today. Edited by Kate Bernheimer and Carmen Giménez Smith, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (2010) includes work by some of our most distinguished and beloved authors: Joyce Carol Oates, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Cunningham, and Neil Gaiman, among others. I keep it available on my Kindle to entertain while on trains, planes, and automobiles!

MAGICAL REALISM
Magical realism reminds us of fairy tales with its mixture of dreams, imagination, and perceived reality. Here are some notable authors writing in this style:

Gabriel García Márquez has mastered the art, most notably in his best-selling One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967, English 1970), in which the ghosts and spirits of Colombia’s history abound.

Yann Martel in The Life of Pi (2003) gives us a book about inner strength and creativity seen through animals on a raft in the ocean with the protagonist.

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Present Day Fairy Tales
Fairy tales continue to be written for adults today. Edited by Kate Bernheimer and Carmen Giménez Smith, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (2010) includes work by some of our most distinguished and beloved authors: Joyce Carol Oates, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Cunningham, and Neil Gaiman, among others. I keep it available on my Kindle to entertain while on trains, planes, and automobiles!

MAGICAL REALISM
Magical realism reminds us of fairy tales with its mixture of dreams, imagination, and perceived reality. Here are some notable authors writing in this style:

Gabriel García Márquez has mastered the art, most notably in his best-selling One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967, English 1970), in which the ghosts and spirits of Colombia’s history abound.

Yann Martel in The Life of Pi (2003) gives us a book about inner strength and creativity seen through animals on a raft in the ocean with the protagonist.

In his Kafka on the Shore (2002), famed Japanese author Haruki Murakami combines dreams and pop culture.

Chilean Isabel Allende has become one of the most famous Latin American writers. Her most popular work is The House of the Spirits (1986), which follows three generations of a family in which Chilean political history and dictatorship play important roles.

To end – as this article began – with a quote from Sir Salman Rushdie from Midnight’s Children, a novel filled with magically realistic moments:

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems – but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

July 2022

Anticipation: Fall 2022 Fiction

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By Carole Reedy

Tis the season for anticipation, which according to Balzac is the most reliable form of pleasure. The creative efforts of our favorite writers will fill bookstore shelves and Kindle apps starting this September – here they are!

Shrines of Gaiety: A Novel, by Kate Atkinson (September 27)
Devoted readers of Atkinson have followed the adventures of Jackson Brody with each selection in this series, but Atkinson has given us so much more. Her best-selling and highly acclaimed novel of 2013, Life After Life, followed the various alternate lives of protagonist Ursula Todd throughout the 20th century. A God in Ruins came in 2016 as a kind of sequel that brings to life Todd’s deceased brother.

This time the year is 1926, the place London and its Soho jazz clubs. We’re taken into both the world of the glitterati and the contrasting underworld of the era. This book is unlike anything Atkinson has done before, which is what keeps us coming back.

I Walk Between the Raindrops, by TC Boyle (September 13)
Short stories are TC Boyle’s niche, although over the past 25 years I’ve found his novels to be among the best I have read. In fact, The Tortilla Curtain (1995) remains among my top 10 novels.

I Walk Between the Raindrops is the name of a short story as well as the title of this new collection. You can get a sneak preview of his writing by reading the story version, which appears in The New Yorker magazine July 30, 2018, fiction issue.

Each one of the engaging stories in this collection is filled with Boyle’s usual satire and wit.

Lucy by the Sea: A Novel, by Elizabeth Strout (September 20)
Strout set a high bar for herself and her readers with her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Olive Kitteridge (actually 13 short stories, 2008) about the life of a retired schoolteacher. Olive Kitteridge (the protagonist) hails from the fictional, apparently nowhere, town of Crosby, Maine, and her ruthless honesty permeates each chapter. The book captivated readers worldwide.

A miniseries starring the versatile Frances McDormand received mixed reviews, with accusations that the character was portrayed as one-dimensional, though I thought it quite satisfying.

Strout also has been lauded, although with less enthusiasm, for her series of books based on her other protagonist, Lucy Barton. Strout’s latest takes place during the recent pandemic lockdown, Lucy quarantined with her ex-husband in a small house by the sea. It has been described as “poignant and pitch-perfect,” with human connection at the heart of the story.

Best of Friends: A Novel, by Kamila Shamsie (September 27)
Shamsie’s newest novel examines the different worlds and friendship of two women raised in Karachi in the first years of Benazir Bhutto’s reign and continues over three decades, when they both live in London. Loyalty and principle are guideposts woven into their lives, causing conflict and reconciliation.

Best of Friends is probably Shamsie’s most intriguing novel to date, even though Burnt Shadows (2009) and Home Fire (2017) are major achievements. In Best of Friends, we travel with her characters across the globe and live through significant world events. These provide vehicles for the actions of her complex characters. You’ll find it hard to put down.

Bad Angel Brothers, by Paul Theroux (September 6)
Over the years we’ve been the fortunate recipients of Theroux’s adventure tales via his fiction and nonfiction writing, all based on the many miles he’s traversed on our planet. From The Old Patagonian Express, The Mosquito Coast, and The Great Railway Bazaar of the 1970s to his recent Mother Land (2017) and On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey (2019), Theroux has dedicated his life to observing, experiencing, and writing.

Now in his 81st year, he brings us yet another psychological thriller involving two brothers at odds and the prospecting of gold and precious metals in the mines of Mexico, Alaska, Africa, and Colombia. Another feather in Theroux’s cap. Although his early books are my favorites, I’m eager to read his latest.

The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell (September 6)
After transporting us to Shakespeare’s world in her previous novel, Hamnet (the story of The Bard’s young son, 2020), versatile wordsmith O’Farrell now takes us to the 1550s and the royalty of Renaissance Italy, exploring the life of a young woman forced into an unwanted royal marriage. Loyal followers of O’Farrell are accustomed to her ability to envelop us in different worlds and centuries. This is my most anticipated book of the season, along with the Barbara Kingsolver novel next on the list.

One reason the novels of O’Farrell are favorites among avid readers is her versatility. The places, themes, and characters vary book to book, as does her style and tempo. My personal favorite is This Must Be the Place (2016).

Demon Copperhead: A Novel, by Barbara Kingsolver (October 18)
Move over Charles Dickens! Popular 21st century author Kingsolver has created a modern David Copperfield, called Damon Fields, whose life parallels our favorite Victorian boy. He is mockingly called Demon and Copperhead for the golden locks inherited from his father.

When I first saw the title of Kingsolver’s new novel, I thought she had returned to the theme of biodiversity so popular in some of her previous works. But I was pleasantly surprised to see it’s actually a retelling of perhaps the most loved work in English literature. Yes, it’s a tome, 560 pages to match Charles Dickens’ creation, whose first edition counted out at 624 pages. Some of our favorite delightful Dickens’ characters are also reimagined for a savory touch.

Kingsolver has taken on the challenge of showing us how little progress has been made in addressing socioeconomic poverty over the past 172 years (the autobiographical David Copperfield was published in book form in 1850, a year after the magazine serialization).

Kingsolver’s version also explores the dark world of poverty, this time in rural Appalachia where Damon grows up in an atmosphere of abuse, addiction, child labor, and foster care, though eventually he finds the kinder side of humanity.

A sense of humor and a talent for artistic expression, with the mandatory bit o’ luck, seem to save both David and Damon. True heroes both, as also could be said of their creators.

Nights of Plague, by Orhan Pamuk (October 5)
The Nobel Prize winner of 2006 is publishing his latest novel this October after controversy in Turkey upon its publication there in 2021. Pamuk was accused of “insulting Turkishness.” But, he says, “In Nights of Plague, which I worked on for five years, there is no disrespect for the heroic founders of the nation states founded from the ashes of empires or for Atatürk. On the contrary, the novel was written with respect and admiration for these libertarian and heroic leaders.”

According to The Guardian, PEN America has reported that at least 25 writers were jailed last year by the Turkish government, the third-highest number globally.

The story takes place on the imaginary island of Mingheria (between Crete and Cyprus), the 29th state of the Ottoman Empire, where Muslims and Orthodox Greeks struggle to live together. Conflict, plague, and murder merge to make this century-old story too close for comfort.

The Passenger (October 25); Stella María (November), by Cormac McCarthy (Boxed set of the two novels available December 6)
I admit to not being a fan of McCarthy, but feel it’s my duty to list his new books due to his extreme popularity. He has been named one of the best American writers by reliable critics, in the company of Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon. McCarthy, however, has stated he prefers the company of scientists to writers.

The books tell the story of siblings Bobby and Alicia Western. Their stories are told eight years apart, first Bobby’s and then Alicia’s.

The publisher says “These extraordinary novels are unlike anything Cormac McCarthy has written before, and while both should be read and experienced separately, they represent two sides of the same narrative coin. We are extremely proud to be publishing the remarkable, inimitable work of Cormac McCarthy.”

Said to be the publishing event of the year – perhaps I will give McCarthy another chance.

March 2022

Intrepid Women Writers of the 21st Century

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By Carole Reedy

“Some things work far better in imagination than in reality.”
Lauren Willig, author of historical fiction

The word “intrepid” is often used to describe explorers and travelers, but anyone who breaks out and moves beyond the norm to discover the mystery of humanity also deserves this classification. The women in this article do just that. They have committed to dedicating their lives to the written word and our amorphous world.

These books are big and bold and unsettling. When I finished reading the masterpieces written by the women below, I sat and stared into space for a moment, absorbing the beauty and fierceness of their creative abilities, of how they weave a narrative with flair and conviction about who we are and who we may become.

Olga Tokarczuk
I first saw an interview with this Nobel Prize winner in 2020 at the prestigious Hay Festival (streamed rather than live due to the pandemic). I had read several of her novels, including the philosophic Flights (2007), and thus was expecting a staid, serious woman. Instead I saw, seated with her translator Jennifer Croft, a woman who looked 40 rather than her actual 60, bouncing in her chair, animated, often smiling and joking, and with a funky hairstyle.

Here’s a woman who writes historically about life, literature, and philosophy, books like Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) and Flights. Her novels, written in a distinct narrative style, tackle the most onerous of philosophical subjects with determination and hope.

From the Booker Prize-winning Flights, a taste of this philosophy:

Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that—in spite of all the risks involved—a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.

Fresh off the press is her thousand-page The Books of Jacob (first published in 2014 in her native Polish, in English in 2021). It begins in 1752 in what is now western Ukraine and ends in the middle of the 20th century in eastern Poland, where a family of Jews is hiding during the Holocaust. The story is that of historical figure Jacob Frank, leader of an heretical Jewish sect and whose unusual practices were controversial.

The translation of Tokarczuk’s text to English is a daunting task. Consider that in Slavic the word order varies significantly, and is more complicated than English. Tokarczuk’s translator, Jennifer Croft, won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Flights. Croft says that “The words of the text are the embodiment of its past, and its sentences, on the other hand, lead the way to the future.”

In its review of this much-awaited novel, the Wall Street Journal recognized the diversity and command of Tokarczuk’s writing: “Ms. Tokarczuk is as comfortable rendering the world of Jewish peasantry as that of the Polish royal court.”

Hanya Yanagihara
After turning the final page of Yanagihara’s newest, 600-page-plus novel, On Paradise (2022), I felt as I did 40 years ago as I closed the cover of the final installation of Marcel Proust’s million-word tour de force Remembrance of Things Past (7 volumes, 1913-27), wondering “What could I possibly read now that I have read the final, definitive word on humanity?” This too is Hanya Yanagihara.

Her unusual structure, deeply creative approach to history and society, and the emotional prices paid by her finely wrought characters contribute to this literary success.

The novel takes place over three centuries (1893, 1993, and 2093) in a North America unrecognizable to us. We’re surprised and fascinated by the enormous shifts in society’s norms, the principal players developing in the most unexpected situations as we follow the families and individuals across the centuries.

Perhaps most important, though, is Yanagihara’s descriptive flowing style, which allows the reader to traverse a seamless constellation of emotions.

Elizabeth George
Multitudes have thrilled to the travails of Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers over the past 20 years. George’s sharply drawn characters and her ability to create an atmosphere of order and resolution among the chaos of murder cases in London’s criminal justice system is why we yearn for more. Her skill in depicting the shifting mores of the various populations that make up Great Britain keeps faithful readers awaiting each new book in the series.

George’s latest novel, Something To Hide, just published in January 2022, involves investigation into a shocking and extremely sensitive issue: FGM, or female genital mutilation. The contrast of the painfully serious practice of FGM and the effect on some women in predominantly Nigerian and Somalian communities of London is a fresh approach for George, although she’s always been a keen analyzer of Britain’s class system.

Fans of Lynley and Havers will be reassured to know they skillfully navigate the horrors of this disfiguring practice and those whose lives are forever destroyed by it.

Although George is an American, she has been lauded for her insight and accuracy in setting her novels in the British Isles.

Jennifer Clement
We who live in Mexico have great respect and affection for fellow Mexican-American Jennifer Clement, president of PEN Mexico from 2009 to 2012, followed in 2015 by a term as the first woman president of PEN International. During her tenure she brought attention to the safety of journalists in Mexico and spearheaded a change in the law, making the killing of a journalist a federal crime.

Clement, along with her sister Barbara Sibley, is founder of Poetry Week in San Miguel de Allende.

Prayers for the Stolen (2014) was praised by prestigious publications and readers on both sides of the border. Recently, it was made into a film, Noche de Fuego, which has been nominated for best foreign language film for this year’s Academy Awards.

The movie itself depicts only the first third of the book, which takes place in a mountain village in the state of Guerrero where narcos dominate the lives of the inhabitants. The book goes on to examine life in Acapulco, ending up in Mexico City.

Don’t look for happy endings in Clement’s books, but rather the reality that surrounds the disenfranchised. One of my favorite books of hers is Widow Basquiat: A Memoir (2000), a portrayal of Clement’s friend Suzanne Mallouk, MD, the painter and psychoanalyst who was muse and lover of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the brilliant artist who died at 27 from a heroin overdose. Basquiat was part of the graffiti movement in New York and well known by his alter ego, SAMO. Today his paintings sell for millions of dollars.

Bernardine Evaristo
She is a dynamo. There’s simply no other way to describe her. Although only recently in the limelight for her Booker-prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other in 2019, Evaristo has been on the scene for years, fighting sexism and racism going back 40 years to when she and her drama school friends heckled London theater performances.

Evaristo is the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize, and her Girl, Woman, Other was named by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year. Of note: when the novel was nominated for the Booker prize, it had not yet found a US publisher. The book itself is a remarkable tour de force, following the lives of 11 Black British women, as well as a non-binary woman, centering around a theatrical production and the playwright who reflects on her relationships with these women.

Evaristo’s latest book Manifesto, published in February 2022, is a memoir about her years of struggle to be recognized in the sacred halls of literature. Her story is one we can all applaud.

February 2022

Enduring Novels of Unrequited Love

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By Carole Reedy

“The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, of anything else that we cannot define.” E M Forster in Aspects of the Novel

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche felt that the state of unrequited love was preferable to that of no love at all, saying “indispensable … to the lover is his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference.”

However debatable that idea, we’ve all experienced unrequited love at one time or another, and the feelings it evokes have provided novelists fodder over the centuries, starting with Dante and Beatrice in The Divine Comedy.

Here are a few literary gems that center on unrequited love. All remain as fresh as the day they were written.

Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham (1915)
Listed first among these noted authors is Maugham’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece about the disabled Philip Carey, who falls in love with a waitress who subsequently treats him cruelly. The story follows Philip from the struggle with his disability as a teenager in an English vicarage to his studies in Heidelberg, a short stint as an artist in Paris, and then back to England where he meets Mildred, the beginning of the pain of unrequited love.

Maugham actually had more success writing for the theater, although today he is best known for his novels. Of Human Bondage was written when he was 23 and finishing medical school. When he was refused an advance on the manuscript, he put the book aside and concentrated on his successful career writing for the theater. Maugham himself didn’t think he had the technical ability to be a good writer, but he tells a good story, which is the key element of any good book. Of Human Bondage was finally published in 1915 and to this day remains one of the most popular and best-selling novels by an English author.

The Course of Love: A Novel, by Alain de Botton (2016)
This is de Botton’s second novel, following his first success, How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel (1997). As a philosopher, writer, editor, and journalist, he has been compared to Julian Barnes, Woody Allen, and Donald Barthelme, all both smart and ironic. De Botton is also a founding member of The School of Life in London and a new institution, Living Architecture.

This novel, which received rave reviews, follows the life of a married couple from first passion through the predictable challenging years that come. It is a truly Romantic novel, exploring the longevity of love over a lifetime.

According to The New York Times, “The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton’s name in the mid-1990s … Love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods, and insecurities to the page.”

Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante, published in 2005
For me, this novel evoked an intensity of emotion more pronounced even than Ferrante’s famed quartet, The Neapolitan Novels. The pain and subsequent actions of the “abandoned” protagonist are impeccably portrayed. Shocking but understandable. Is she unreasonable or incredibly sane? You decide.

Ferrante remains voluntarily sequestered from publicity in the noble attempt to attract readers based on the quality of the writing rather than publicist hype. I hope her identity remains a secret, as it adds another layer of enchantment to her books.

Another of her noted books, The Lost Daughter (2008), has been made into a movie directed by and starring Maggie Gyllenhaal; it is available on Netflix.

Heartburn, by Nora Ephron (1983)
The always-entertaining Nora Ephron brought us hours of poignant laughter during her career as a writer and observer of our times. In Heartburn, a novel based on her tumultuous marriage to and break-up with political journalist Carl Bernstein, she expertly blends a range of emotions expressing her state of being with a variety of recipes.

Adam Gopnik speculated in The New Yorker on her decision to include recipes: “In Heartburn, the recipes serve both as a joke about what a food writer writing a novel would write and as a joke on novel-writing itself by someone who anticipates that she will not be treated as a ‘real’ novelist.”

Ephron has a talent for converting the apparently tragic to the absurdly comic.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver (1981)
Not a novel, but the short stories in this collection are among the classics in modern literature. The title of the collection is also the title of one of the stories. You may recognize this title from Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 film Birdman, in which the central character is an old Hollywood actor who is mounting a Broadway play named for and based on Carver’s story.
Carver is consistently praised by critics for his succinctness and veracity and for his ability to relate a broad range of emotion in few words. These stories about love pass the test of time.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen (1818, published posthumously)
A somewhat different twist on unrequited love in this, the last of Jane Austen’s six published novels.
In this one the protagonist, Anne Elliott, discards her love interest based on some rather bad advice from a friend, an action she lives to regret. It all turns out well in the end, as do a majority of Austen’s novels, most of which include some form of love gone wrong.

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
“Singular, intelligent, and beautiful” are words that have been used to describe this Booker-Prize-winning novel by Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017. The praise is well deserved, and this book in particular is a favorite among readers.

The heartbreaking story of a butler in post-WWII Britain who receives a letter from the housekeeper of two decades past, this short book is filled with the ambience of the period, and of the war with its fascist-sympathizing aristocrats. But the story that moves the narrative is that of the relationship between butler and housekeeper, and the regret of unrequited love.

In 1993, the book was made into a popular movie starring Antony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez (1985, Spanish; 1988, English)
Another winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1982) graces this list. Márquez hails from Colombia, where he had homes in both Bogotá and Cartagena, in addition to Paris and Mexico City, where he died in 2014. During his long life, he not only wrote novels, he also studied law and was a journalist. Márquez also was a friend to many famous people and politicians, including Fidel Castro.

The love story of Florentino and Fermina in Love in the Time of Cholera spans a lifetime and is one of Marquez’s most beloved novels, demonstrating that over the years love is not fluid, but ever changing.

Magical realism (the mixture of fantasy and fact) permeates his creations. In his own words, Márquez tells us, “In Mexico, Surrealism runs through the streets. Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America.”

Márquez was influenced by many other writers, among them Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and especially William Faulkner. In the 1960s, Márquez lived in the colonia San Ángel in Mexico City, where he wrote his famed One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).

2021, December 2021

Year Two of Covid:Literary Favorites of 2021

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By Carole Reedy

This second year of the pandemic has given us another opportunity for many hours to ponder our fates and read new literary selections. When asked what makes a good book and, of the good ones, what makes a book great, Salman Rushdie, the thought-inspiring and entertaining writer, replied:
“What I look for in a book is a voice that sounds fresh, a relationship with language that feels exciting, and a vision of the world that enlightens or challenges me, or, just occasionally, changes the way I see the world in some degree. When I find at least one of those things, then that’s what I’d probably call a good book. When I find all of them, then the adjective ‘great’ may come to mind.”

Keeping in mind Rushdie’s analysis, I’ve chosen ten books I feel meet those criteria. Coincidentally, they’re also among the most entertaining reads of the year. The first two books I would place in Rushdie’s “Great Literature” category, the rest just slightly less than great.

CROSSROADS: A NOVEL, by Jonathan Franzen (2021)

Franzen’s masterpiece is so compelling it could win all the major literary awards next year. What makes that probable? Exactly what Rushdie’s formula dictates.

We discover Franzen’s 1970s American family, the Hildebrants, as if through a microscope, every movement of their lives together and their individual emotional states and thoughts detailed in this 600-page stunner, the first of a trilogy to come. As we’re drawn into each character’s world, our own reactions and a slight shift in perspective add to the sheer enjoyment of the language and provocative twists with each turn of the page. I seldom need a dictionary when reading a novel, but Franzen’s books are exceptions.

THE MAGICIAN: A NOVEL, by Colm Tóibin (2021)

After reading Tóibin’s story of Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann’s long life, a friend said to me, “The masterpiece written by Tóibin about Thomas Mann’s life is infinitely more compelling and introspective than any of Mann’s well-respected novels.” And I have to agree.

Tóibin took on an enormous responsibility when he sat down to write a novel based on the 80 years that Mann graced our planet. Mann basked in the limelight during his life, which encompassed two wars over two continents. But the outstanding characteristic of this grand tribute lies in the life beneath the exterior, delving into the inner workings of his mind and heart.

Similar yearnings and emotions are reflected in Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer, also appearing below on this list. In both cases, it is heartbreaking to read the pain these men suffer for emotions they feel which, at the time, are in conflict with society’s norms and must therefore remain hidden and nrequited.

SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO: A NOVEL, by Lionel Shriver (2021)

Only a writer as adept as Lionel Shriver can make us chuckle about death and, especially, suicide. When do we say enough is enough? The aging couple in Shriver’s latest novel has devised a plan for leaving this life when body and soul dictate.

Shriver creates several scenarios of the manner in which the end might come about for the couple and the various consequences that might arise. As always, she doesn’t leave a loose thread hanging or a conclusion sloppily rendered.

Shriver in each of her novels explores, dissects, and delights in a modern-day problem/challenge/fad/concern that is unique to the human condition. I’ve never been disappointed in her rendering or treatment of our delicate mentality.

THE GIVER OF STARS: A NOVEL, by Jojo Moyes (2019)
THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK, by Kim Michele Richardson (2019)
These two novels are similar in subject, characters, and history, but vary in their treatment. The overriding topic is books and reading, which would capture the interest of any reader of this column. Both novels are based in fact, taking place during the 1930s depression era in rural Kentucky, where an FDR government initiative is being enacted: books delivered to rural areas on horseback by librarians.

These women are brave, tenacious, and strong (even if they start out a bit weaker) pioneers in the advancement and acceptance of women’s physical strength and determination.

I paused before opening each of these books, as I wasn’t familiar with the writers, the situation, or the geography and sociology of the area. Though I was doubtful, I decided to give them a try. Once immersed, I saw that I’d rushed to judgment and had happily been proved wrong.

The difference between the books is in the storytelling and characters. Moyes concentrates on four women who fight the terrain, customs, and mores of the area in their pursuit of dispensing knowledge. Each is unique in style and the manner in which she handles her job and the resulting dissent. But in the end each triumphs in her own way.

Richardson takes a different approach, with one woman front and center. Also woven into the narrative is the phenomenon of the “blue people.” Here’s a fascinating historical twist to the story – as if these dedicated women needed any more problems!

ARCTIC SUMMER, by Damon Galgut (2014)

What Tóibin accomplishes in his in-depth analysis of Thomas Mann, Galgut parallels in this beautiful portrayal of the admirable yet suffering author E. M. Forster. Instead of 80 years, however, Galgut concentrates on a more specific time and travel period, when Forster lived in India and Egypt.

Forster is a gentle man, even more so when compared to his British comrades, his love deep and yet impossible.

On November 3 of this year, Galgut deservedly won the prestigious 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise: A Novel, also one of my favorite reads of the year.

HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead (2021)

This time around, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Whitehead gives us a whirlwind tour of 1960s New York, specifically to honky-tonk Harlem. We see it all through the eyes of small-time crook Ray Carney, who delights us with his subtle criminal, yet seemingly normal, life in the colorful barrio.

The characters surrounding him in his pursuit for a comfortable life for his family are painted in brilliant color with shades of sepia. They are quirky, frightening at times, occasionally astute, downright funny, and never stereotyped.
It was pure delight to accompany Ray on his “just a bit bent” adventures with friends and family, to whom he demonstrates uncommon loyalty, and to his enemies, with whom he gets even eventually with demonstrated patience.

HOMELAND: A NOVEL, by Fernando Aramburu (2020)

Off to another country across the ocean, to a time in the near past and a culture little-known to most of us. Basque Country is an autonomous region nestled in northeast Spain on the border with France, where long-standing conflicts take place in its struggle for independence. Homeland is a story told over several decades of two opposing families who prove to us the futility of wars and maybe even of principles.

Interesting that the reader comes to understand the motives and reactions to situations that at first seem alien, but in the end prove to be not so distant. The delicacy of human emotions seems constant regardless the culture or era.

The true stars of the novel are the matriarchs, their strength and pain. There isn’t much joy in this novel, but it reflects the deep rage, sadness, commitment, and existential challenge of the family in a remote section of Spain. The plot weaves through past and present to offer a full picture of the struggles of the region. You can watch an excellent, though less satisfying than the book, serial version of the story on HBO, called Patria, also the title of the book in Spanish.

THE IMMORTALISTS: A NOVEL, by Chloe Benjamin (2018)

The premise behind the story is one of our grand metaphysical questions: would you like to know the exact date and time of your death?

In other hands, the telling could have come off as trite and manipulated, but Benjamin guides us through the separate but intertwined lives and deaths of four young siblings who visit a fortune teller to discover the timing of their future demises. The author, perhaps wisely, leaves us with more existential questions at the end of each life than when we’d first joined them many years previously; possibly that was her intent.

THE RUTH GALLOWAY MYSTERY SERIES by Elly Griffiths

Druids, detectives, archaeologists, extramarital affairs, and digging up bones are among the elements that make this one of the finest mystery series published in this century.

Ruth Galloway is our hero, a prominent forensic archaeologist bone expert who teaches at the University of North Norfolk in England. She is sought after by local detectives seeking to solve murders that involve buried treasure … the treasure usually being a body found deep in an archeological dig.

Fourteen books make up a series in which we connect with the emotions, frustrations, and decisions of the main players, who are engaging and beautifully drawn. The ease with which we’re able relate to the characters is what sets this series apart from others.

Griffiths doesn’t go into elaborate contortions to develop or resolve her crimes, as many modern crime writers feel they must do. The plots are challenging and often humorous, without stretching for a clever solution. An additional plus is the pleasure these books bring in learning about the history and geography of the English countryside.

Try the first and see if you’re hooked. I recommend reading the books in order, as the characters are fleshed out over the series and various scenarios. Start with The Crossing Places (2010). I predict the books will bring you great pleasure in the post-pandemic (we can hope!) year ahead.

We’ve been graced with a plethora of fine novels from this and previous years. As always, I look forward to 2022 for more literary gems from old friends and new writers. We close this year encouraged by the always poignant words of the admirable Rushdie:

“The future of fiction is assured. The novel will survive and thrive.”