A Lickle Bit of Caribbeana

When I'm on vacation in the Caribbean, I always try to pack among my books at least one that is either set in the region or written by somebody who hails from there--preferably both.  This trip I was lucky to have two newly published books to choose from.

The first one I read, A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez, is a fairly straightforward work of non-fiction that moved me to tears twice in the first chapter when I test-drove it at home, so it was a clear choice for my suitcase.  I'd read little Alvarez in the past--her first novel and one collection of poetry out of her nineteen published works--and this one is by far my favorite.

Her family was exiled decades ago from the Dominican Republic during the terrors of Trujillo, but in recent years Alvarez and her husband bought a coffee plantation in her homeland as a means of creating sustainable agriculture and jobs in a rural area where it was much needed and could be an example to other enterprises. One day while visiting the plantation, they encounter an underage boy from Haiti named Piti and over the years they become close, prompting Alvarez to promise that she would attend his wedding when the day comes.

Fast forward to 2009, when, back in Vermont, Alvarez gets the urgent call from Piti, simultaneously reminding her of her promise and informing her that he's getting married. In two weeks.  In Haiti. At the same time she is scheduled to appear at a literary conference.  But as she goes on to say, "Sometimes a conscience is an inconvenient thing to have, and costly. But not to follow it exacts an even greater cost, having to live with the hobbled person you become when you ignore it." Thus, between Piti and their own resources, they contrive to figure out a way to make it happen, including finding an escort who can take them up-country where the wedding will take place.

Despite having grown up in the DR, Alvarez had never crossed the border into Haiti and despite everything she had read about, she and her husband were utterly unprepared for it: the stripped & barren land, the abject poverty, the undercurrent of menace, the feeling of impossibility that anything other than a large-scale international intervention could make a difference (and this was all before the earthquake that further devastated the poorest nation in the western hemisphere). "Truly one of those environmental and social-justice conundrums; what should come first: the eradication of poverty or the forestation of the land that might allow for agriculture so that hunger can be eradicated?"

And yet...and yet...Alvarez is able to see, appreciate, and even convey to the reader the unexpected beauty hidden that somehow isn't tampered down amidst the pockets of despair. The incredible sense of hospitality, the joy and pride the entire community feels for Piti. The rewards of patience. The "investment plan" of sharing what you have now, with the knowledge that the community will take care of you in your own time of need. They successfully cross back into the DR, but only after some hair-raising encounters and bribes for Piti's new-but-undocumented wife and baby to get pack the various checkpoints.

After the earthquake hits, though, Alvarez and her husband are compelled to do the journey again, and this is what makes them an extraordinary couple, putting themselves on the line for coworkers who have become like family.  For it is in returning that they learn the true meaning of family, loyalty, and the resilience of the human spirit.  I can't recommend this book highly enough--it's a nice companion piece to something like Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, as it's much more emotionally involved book, and Alvarez is an astute and honest observer of the world she travels through. 

NB: This memoir was published by Algonquin, one of my favorite small publishers, at the end of April this year and I received an ARC of it from my sales rep.

Book Reviews: Two travelogues

Here are two very different kinds of travel books written by two very different types of writers.  With one of them, the author immerses himself in the local culture and with the other, the authors mostly skim across the surface of local culture, choosing to spend as much time among other tourists as possible.  And by the by, only one of the writers is any good.  Is it any surprise, then, which of the two books I liked better? 

Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost is a travel memoir that I read on vacation last month.  Troost is both a funny and gifted writer, with a real talent for keeping up the pace, making wry social & political observations, and both educating and entertaining the reader.  I loved his two previous books, which are tales of his living in the South Pacific, and while I have never traveled to that region myself, after becoming a devoted traveler to the Caribbean, I recognized many truisms of life in a tropical not-first-world country. 

Let it be said now that I know very little about China other than pervasive Western perceptions that may or may not be purely stereotypes.  One of my best friends lived in China teaching English after college graduation, but that's pretty much as close as I've gotten to knowing anything about the culture. Having read Troost's book, I am as equally convinced of China's enviable position at the forefront of world economics & growth as I am knowing that I will probably never want to travel to "the real China" any time soon.  For someone who considers herself a traveler at heart, this was a disconcerting realization. And I know that's unfair for me to form this opinion from somebody else's biased  (western) persepective, but since I don't actually have enough time or money to travel the world at leisure, I have to prioritize somehow--and if that means not traveling to a country with serious issues regarding both human and animal rights, not to mention a distinct lack of healthy air, so be it. 

A few excerpts from the book, to demonstrate both Troost's humor and my reasons for distaste...

"At the gate, a sign informed us that old people (sixty to seventy years old), students, and maimed person would have to pay only 50 yuan to clim Tai Shan.  Not too many mountains offer a discount to the maimed, by Tai Shan does (91)."

"Waltzing, as it turns out, is very popular in China, and even President Hu Jintao himself was on the university waltzing team back in the day. I was unaware that waltzing was also a competitive sport, but in China the government, in an effort to overcome the rising rates of obesity that occurred as more Chinese eat Western foods, has mandated that school kids will now be forced to waltz.  lucky for the Chinese, Hu Jintao was not a squaredancer (314)."

Warning: the following passage about the Siberian Tiger Park is very disturbing and features something we in the US would call animal torture (and yes, before any apologists flame me, I understand that it is probably no worse than the lives of chickens in the US who are fated to be part of the farm factories, but at least most people don't laugh about that).

"One of my fellow tourists [a Chinese tourist] approached her with some money.  The woman dipped her hand inside this crate of live chickens and attached it to a four-foot stick, before handing it to him.  The man took the fishing pole with the dangling chicken...and lowered it out over the tigers.  A tiger leapt up and shredded a wing.  The chicken wailed. Oh, the fun we have in China. He lowered the chicken again. A tiger shredded a leg.  The chicken screamed.  Everyone laughed.  Because this is funny in China.  Slowly, painfully, piece by piece, the chicken was shredded into oblivion (371-372)."

I think that passage pretty well sums up why, if I ever go to China, I will not try to see the "real China." A package tour will do just fine for me.  Reading of Troost's experience in China was very disturbing in many ways, and while he realized that a lot of his discomfort was a result of his own cultural bias (though he lives in America, he is a half-Czech half-Dutch citizen of Canada), he knew very soon and with great conviction that China was not a country he wanted to raise his family, which is the purported reason for the book.  Though I did not love this book like I did his first two, I still highly recommend it for the armchair traveler.

And on the opposite side of the travelogue spectrum, we have Letters from the Caribbean: Sailing in the West Indies by Andrea & Ian Treleaven.  Andrea and Ian are a New Zealand couple who sailed from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean and then spent a few seasons sailing up & down the Caribbean island chain and then hit the Great Antilles and parts of Central America, where they spent most of their time seeking out other Australian  & New Zealand sailors rather than trying to experience the local culture.  The color photographs in the book are overall quite good.  The writing and the editing, however, leave much to be desired.  They get the names wrong of various places: they refer in one photo to the Pitoms of St. Lucia, rather than the Pitons; Cocoa Point on Barbuda instead of Coco Point; they mis-label the Lighthouse Reef resort as the Cocoa [sic] Point resort, they misspell the Spanish word for eel, from which the island of Anguilla takes its name; they refer to part of the USVI as St. Johns instead of St. John; and so on.   No telling how many other mistakes are there that I didn't catch because I am less familiar with islands not considered part of the British West Indies.

I bought this book because I so loved Ann Vanderhoof's An Embarrassment of Mangoes, a travel memoir of a Canadian couple who sail from Toronto down to Trinidad and back, and along the way immerse themselves as deeply into local customs and traditions as possible.  Well, Andrea & Ian ain't got nothin' on Ann, let me say.  The prose is tedious and repetitive and there is no real narrative.  It strains my credulity to realize that this is their second book, which means that their Letters from the Med sold enough copies for a publisher to take a chance on this book.  At the end of the book, they say they took away three things from their long voyages in my favorite part of the world: "the colours, and then the fantastic sailing conditions, followed by how fit and healthy we felt throughout."  Well, congratulations--you've just visited over 20 countries and not a single item specific to any of their cultures was worth mentioning in your epilogue?  Are you sure you're from New Zealand and not a typical American? I'm sure there are plenty of people like Andrea and Ian sailing the Caribbean, but I hope they don't all write books about their experience.  They remind me very much of sailors I've met in Tortola, Nevis, Antigua whom I didn't much like.  To be fair, they probably wouldn't much like me, either. 

If, like me, you are a true Caribbeanphile, buy the book for the photographs but skip the text. Like the stereotypical beauty pageant winner, it works best as a coffee table book, just sitting there and looking pretty.

Last Month in Review: June 2011

Thanks largely to my summer vacation, I was able to get a LOT of books read in June.  Although I didn't quite average one book per day of vacation, I still managed quite a bit:

1. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.  Remarkable little work of non-fiction.  Review here. 

2. We the Animals by Justin Torres.  What an extraordinary debut--puts me in mind of Junot Diaz, with its peculiarly harsh but beautiful prose and its edginess.  Review is possibly forthcoming.

3. These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan.  Another re-read, but Aidan is the best writer of Jane Austen fanfiction there is.

4. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson.  Audio, and another re-read.  Review here (sort of).

5. The Submission by Amy Waldman.  Another good debut novel.  Review here. 

6. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by David Levithan and John Green.  Very good.  Review here. 

7. The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji.  Another winner.  Review here. Probably my favorite book this month.

8-10. The Three Weissmanns of Westport, The Bee-Loud Glade, The Imperfectionists, reviewed together here. 

11. Ladies and Gentlemen by Adam Ross.  Short story collection.  Pretty good.  Review here.

12. The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant.  Excellent.  Tough.  McCarthy-esque.  Review here. 

13. The Paris Wife by Paula McClain.  Pretty good, an easy read, mostly reinforcing my opinion that Hemingway was a real piece of shit.  I will not be reviewing it.

14. The Demon's Surrender by Sarah Rees Brennan.  Third book, concluding her  YA trilogy.  I loved it but I probably won't review it--I left my copy of the book behind to donate to the local library since it was a hardcover, and it's difficult for me to review a book without a copy in hand. 

15.  Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost.  Review forthcoming.  Another funny and thought-provoking travelogue.  Sorry, but I don't think I'll be planning a trip there any time soon. (Edited to add: review is here. )

16. The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta.  His forthcoming novel this fall is a strange suburban tale of the Rapture Great Disappearance.  Review to come.

17. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake.  Fairly engrossing tale of women during World War II on both sides of the Atlantic.  Probably won't review it, though. 

18-A and 18-B are a couple of also-rans: there are two books that I read about half of but just couldn't bring myself to finish, so I figure together they count as one book.  One of them is Graham Greene's The Comedians, which I bought because it's set in Haiti but I'm afraid his writing style wasn't enough to hold my attention, even though it's hard to imagine anything set in Haiti as boring.  The other is Chuck Palahniuk's book, Damned, coming out this fall.  Who wouldn't want to read about a 13 year old in Hell who begins all of her diary entires, "Are you there Satan? It's me, Madison," and who remakes the cast of The Breakfast Club in the underworld.  Well, apparently I wouldn't.  A little too self-aware and self-referential for me to finish reading it, but I may go back to it one day.

With Greene I apparently prefer the film versions of his books.  With Palahniuk I apparently like the idea of reading his books more than I actually like reading them. 

Literary Blog Hop: Where would you rather be right now?

I'm very pleased that my friend Robyn's question was this week's jumping-off point for book discussion.  Sponsored by The Blue Bookcase each week, today's topic is:

What setting (time or place) from a book or story would you most like to visit? Eudora Welty said that, "Being shown how to locate, to place, any account is what does most toward making us believe it...," so in what location would you most like to hang out?  

Since Welty is a favorite writer of mine and from my adoptive state of Mississippi, I thought this would be easy to answer, but I'm afraid it's not.  As a person with white skin, I could drop into many places and times and still have a relatively privileged experience--less so than a white man, certainly, but still.  Lots of people romanticize various periods of the past, but I'm not sure I'd want to visit any time period (at least not for very long) where I was still thought of as another person's chattel (or where anybody could be considered someone else's chattel, for that matter).  I'd love to visit Pasternak's Russia, Wharton's Italy, Welty's Mississippi, Tolkien's Middle Earth, Montgomery's Prince Edward Island, Austen's English countryside, Rowling's Hogwarts, Elizabeth Peters's Egypt, Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana, Bill Bryson's Australia, and so many more places.

But tonight, in the midst of a nasty snowstorm, I'm going to cut through all of the socio-economic and political ramifications of place and say that where I'd most like to be right now is on a sailboat with Ann Vanderhoof and her husband as they meander through the Caribbean.  They're a couple from Toronto who traded in their fast-paced lives to sail from Canada down to Trinidad and back.  Twice.  Their two memoirs/cookbooks track their experience and I heartily recommend them to anybody who wants to feel the warm tradewinds on her face and scent the jasmine and nutmeg on the evening air.  They're exactly where I'd like to be right now!!!  What's more, unlike most travel writers who just stick to the glossy brochure version of these mostly third-world islands, they get off the beaten path, beyond the tourist hotels and the Photoshopped beaches, to see how the other half lives.  They make friends with the locals, learning their food and their recipes and the culture.  They get down & dirty cleaning conch shells with Grenadian fishermen; they clamber over hill and dale in the Dominican Republic to catch goats (who graze on rosemary and are thus more delicious than goats who live in town) to put into a stew; they "shuffle and whine" at a Trinidadian Carnival, getting drenched in beer and sweat and possibly other bodily fluids.  If you are an armchair traveler and want to experience the Caribbean, you couldn't do better than to pick up one of these books!

You've got to pick a memoir or two...

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen by Jennifer Steil, published by Broadway Books. What starts as a 3-week course teaching journalism to a group of greenhorn reporters in Yemen quickly evolves into a year-long stint as editor-in-chief of the English language newspaper, The Yemen Observer. Bewildered and smitten in equal measure with her new surroundings, Steil faces obstacles as varied as stampedes, kidnapings, and suicide bombings. But what intrigues this intrepid journalist the most is her status as "third gender" -- as a Westerner, she is free to mingle with either men or women in a country where the sexes are still strictly segregated (even at wedding ceremonies, the bride and groom are not permitted to be with each other). This memoir is both instructive and engaging, teaching this reader, at least, much about Yemeni food, culture, customs and government as Steil encounters them for the first time. A fascinating read.

The Spice Necklace: My Adventures in Caribbean Cooking, Eating, and Island Life by Ann Vanderhoof, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Everybody who knows me knows that reading, travel, and eating are my three greatest passions, and I can’t recall the last time reading a book made me as happy as this one did, as it fed all three. Unlike many travel & food writers who never stray beyond the glossy tourist areas, Vanderhoof is the real deal, seeking out and sharing the best, most authentic, down-home island recipes and experiences—whether it’s scampering after thyme-grazing goats on a Dominican mountainside, or pounding out conch with Grenadian fishermen, or learning how to “whine & shuffle” her way through a Trinidadian Carnival covered in mud, paint and sweat (and possibly other bodily fluids). I swear, you’ll scent the nutmeg wafting on the breeze as you read this book, the next best thing to sailing the West Indies yourself!

More mini book recs

Here are four book recommendations that are new (or new-ish) in paperback. Good reads at a good value!




HOME by Marilynne Robinson. Set in the same small Iowa town and peopled with minor characters from her Pulitzer prize-winning Gilead, Home is another powerhouse of a novel. Quiet but intense, she gives us a generous portrait of one family and the ways they deal with loyalty, desertion, and betrayal, set within the particular framework of the patriarch’s faith. Robinson takes a harder look at religion and simultaneously treats it with more generosity and respect than any fiction writer I know. A very fine piece of work. I was very pleased when Robinson was awarded the Orange Prize for this novel.



TWENTY CHICKENS FOR A SADDLE by Robyn Scott. This wonderful memoir tells the story of a girl and her family who move from New Zealand to Botswana so her parents can renew their childhood ties with Africa. Robyn and her siblings are homeschooled by their iconoclastic mother, much to their society grandmother's dismay, with occasional visits with their father to his medical clinics in the bush to round out their education. She chronicles her family's (mis)adventures with warmth and humor, and it's clear to see that the daily frustrations of living in such a remote area (in rather close quarters) are more than balanced by the fierce love the family has for each other and for their adopted country. A fantastic read for armchair (or real) travelers!

GOURMET RHAPSODY by Muriel Barbery. This new novel from the author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a foodie's delight. The gruff, pretentious food critic from the previous novel is on his deathbed in this latest offer, and chapters alternate between his own memories of food that changed his life and his family's not-so-charitable memories of him. From reading of his first taste of oysters to his reminiscences of a summer spent on a remote Greek isle, I don't think I've ever drooled over a book so much. Be sure to have something yummy on hand while reading to satisfy the intense food cravings that Barbery's writing evokes!

I couldn't resist sharing part of the oyster passage: "I bless the day my tongue discovered the intoxicating, almost erotic, velvet-smooth caress of an oyster slipping in after a chunk of bread smeared with salted butter...Between these two extremes--the rich warmth of a daube and the clean crystal of shellfish...the divine mouthful has become a religious act for all."

THE CONDITION by Jennifer Haigh. Haigh's newest effort showcases her special talent of peering deep into familes, dysfunctional or otherwise, to explore their inner workings and complicated bonds. Her clear-eyed perception gives the reader a double portrait of the McKotch family, both in their early days and after the children have become adults themselves, unmasking family secrets along the way. Nobody is better than Haigh at depicting the ties that bind or the myriad ways they can unravel, and she shows with heartbreaking accuracy just how childhood misunderstandings and grudges can harden over time to breed resentments that might be beyond forgiveness.

Anguilla Day 3

Our cabana at Elodia's

Woke up early to get to Geraud’s Bakery by 6:30 am to get best selection of pastries. Brought them back to eat on the balcony where we saw a large storm go by and then a vivid rainbow. Packed up and headed to Shoal Bay East around 9:00. Chose Elodia’s to hunker down for a few hours, but nobody was there. A passerby said someone would be there around 10:00, but by 11:00 with still nobody there, we started to fret about our chair & umbrella usage. Eventually somebody came and we started a tab with her. Around 1:00 we broke away from our reading to have lunch. $10 hamburger and $8 hot dog, plus a couple of Presidentes. Good food, nice & casual, barefoot atmosphere. After lunch we walked up toward Madeiriman’s and were glad we weren’t staying at Ku because it looked so busy with chairs & umbrellas. I think we would consider Shoal Bay Villas in the future, though, if we didn’t want to return to our home on Meads Bay. Then we retraced our steps and walked toward Upper Shoal Bay and enjoyed the wilder waves and the wind. Very castaway feeling around that point.

Relaxing with a book at Elodia's for lunch

The unbelievably gorgeous Shoal Bay East

After that we headed to Bankie Banx's place, Dune Preserve,on Rendezvous Bay and got there around 3:00, but though there were lights on, we didn’t see a soul. According to the Carimar book they should have been open until 4:00, but perhaps they’ve added Tuesdays to the “closed” roster. Oh, well. Remembering that a few people on various travel forums had declared the rum punches at Ferryboat Inn to be the best on the island, we backtracked back to Blowing Point instead. We sat there for a while, drinks in hand, admiring the view across to St. Maarten. The rum punch was very, very good. In fact, I'd say that it was the best I'd had on Anguilla and perhaps second only to the superlative rum punch served by the Long Bay Hotel on Antigua, where we were married.

For dinner we selected Blanchards. Like most other Caribbean-philes, I’ve read A Trip to the Beach, which I really enjoyed upon first reading but with distance from it, I feel much ambivalence. Honestly, I think the tone in that book is just short of being patronizing to Anguillians. But I also knew I probably wouldn’t consider my first trip to Anguilla complete without eating at the place that brought the island so much notoriety (plus they were offering the US $45 prix fixe, too!). The atmosphere was truly lovely (once you get past the distractingly bad art from their son hanging on the walls) and our table was pleasantly situated on the level closest to the beach. Service was gracious and attentive. For ambience, I’d have to rate it second after Veya, in fact. The food, however, I’d have to rate behind every other place we had dinner on the island. It wasn’t bad, by any means. It’s just that every place else was so much better in comparison, and when you take into account the price, I’d have to rate Blanchards overall at the bottom rung of our dinner experiences on both Grenada and Anguilla (except, perhaps, Roy’s). DH went with the prix fixe: spring rolls, Calypso chicken, and Key lime pie in a glass. All were good. I opted for two small plates – a salad and the samosas, which were both good – and the cracked coconut, which is their signature dessert. Again, good, but not special.

So what was noteworthy about the meal? The staff was very warm and accommodating, the garden atmosphere was cool & pleasant, and the rum list is, apparently, the most extensive in the world. We were much surprised to learn that there is a rum from Tennessee, my husband’s home state, on the menu. However, we were shocked and displeased to note that the same rum, El Dorado, aged 12 years from Guyana, that we ordered for US $10 at Veya was US $22 at Blanchards! I’ve read more than once that people think that the food is not as good when the Blanchards are not on island, and I can’t speak to that, but I do suspect that the restaurant is resting on its laurels a bit, and that compared to other places we’ve dined on Anguilla, the prices felt, well, extortionate. US $200 for one prix fixe meal, two appetizers, one dessert, bottled water, and three cocktails. However, and I can’t stress how much I loved this, Blanchards was the only restaurant that bans smoking. I never thought of myself as a cigarette Nazi before, but I may have to re-evaluate. If there’s one thing that can ruin a meal faster than anything for me, it’s having cigarette smoke waft in my direction while I’m trying to eat. Big, big kudos to Blanchards for taking the plunge and making the smoke free commitment.

Finished reading Netherland. Interesting for the most part.

Also, right before we left for dinner, security dropped off a package for us that had been left for us by a friend whose advice on various travel forums has always been indispensable. Though we’ve not yet met, HowardC has been extremely generous in his time answering my endless questions about Anguilla. He and his wife left for us a bottle of wine to enjoy as well as an out of print book that he thought I might like. Howard, thanks! You’re the best!

Another beautiful sunset

Some books to consider...

The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost. Troost is following in the footsteps of my favorite travel writer, Bill Bryson, providing readers with a narrative arc that is equal parts humor, philosophy, self-deprecation, and actual information. When his girlfriend, Sylvia, takes an NGO job, they move to Kiribati, a nation of tiny coral atolls lying forgotten in the South Pacific. What he imagined would be two years of ease in tropical splendor, writing the great American novel, turned out to be two years of arduous sweating in tropical squalor, where subsistence wealth isn’t an oxymoron so much as a way of life. You’ll never look at fish, dogs, or beer the same way after reading this book, and if you’re like me, you’ll be chomping at the bit for more.

ONE FOOT WRONG by Sofie Laguna. Hester Wakefield is without a doubt the most unfortunate and pitiable child I’ve ever encountered in the world of literature. Kept imprisoned by her unbalanced, zealously religious mother, she has only fleeting contact with the outside world, and the only life she knows is one of torture, pain, and abuse of every imaginable stripe. She meets her first and only friend when she is banished to an asylum and from there she makes halting steps towards recovery. This book is almost relentlessly dark and certainly not for the faint of heart, but readers who stick with it will discover an ending that practically defines poetic justice and a character whose haunting life will resonate long after the book is put down.

What I'm reading now...

In a nod to Nick Hornby and in an effort to get by with a small(ish) blog, I'm just going to list the books I've read recently or am reading now.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a laugh-a-minute.  The Bennet daughters form the Pentagram of Death!  Darcy thinks Jane has been stricken by the Satanic plague!  Lady Catherine de Bourgh is the nation's pre-eminent defender and lady of the Deathly Arts!  This book was pure-dee entertainment and I'm glad I read it.  Though the vomiting and those Most English Bits were a bit much.  I know, right?  Something over the top in a Jane Austen/zombie fanfiction is so highly unexpected!

An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof.  

I've actually read this book a few times before, but it always makes me happy so I'm revisiting it to get in the mood for my upcoming trip to Grenada.  Sure, this book has all of the obligatory recipes for conch and coconut shrimp, as well as the tales of peril on the high seas.  But unlike so many other travelogues written about living and/or working in the Caribbean, this author and her husband really got into the local groove of whatever island they were on--volunteering, going to political rallies, exploring every inch of the islands, befriending locals, joining in the various Carnivals and Jouverts and other festivals, and in general becoming a part of the community everywhere they traveled.  Makes other books, such as one about opening a restaurant on Anguilla, seem backwards and colonial.  

Random House sent me a copy copy of Olive Kitteridge that I finally read this weekend.  I hadn't realized that it's actually a novel of connected short stories where the titular character is only occasionally the protagonist.  This way we get a fuller version of Olive, a woman of a certain age who lives in a small coastal town in Maine--she's complicated and ornery, smart & sharp spoken, weary of fools and wary of change.  Her influence over the town is both distant and far-reaching, as she taught seventh-grade math to most of its denizens.  She's respected but not well liked, but she surprises everyone, including the reader, with her periodic bursts of insight and compassion.  Definitely an interesting read, this book should please both short story readers and those who prefer novel-length fiction.

Last weekend I went down to Memphis to visit my two best friends and over the course of the weekend I got a few books read.  I read Zoe Klein's forthcoming Drawing in the Dust from Pocket Books on the way down there.  It's a story that combines archaeology, religious fundamentalism, romance, and ghost stories in modern day Israel.  Fun, frothy, and easy to read, it made my day of travel much less tedious than if I hadn't read it.  Don't worry--the cover of the advance reading copy is quite pretty, showing a woman's hair blowing in the breeze with the desert blurred and faded in the background.  I'm not sure why it's not been "unveiled" yet, but there you go.  Fans of The Red Tent and People of the Book will probably find much to enjoy in this debut novel.

Of  April and Oliver, the least said, the better.  One night after an uncalculatedly large dose of caffeine, I read this book straight through.  I wanted to be able to fall asleep.  But short of that, I wanted to be able to care for April, one of the most messed-up characters I've read about in a long time.  But the book was more like a trainwreck--in between wanting to slap her, I couldn't stop reading to see what self-destructive thing she would do next.  I'm being admittedly a bit harsh about it, but I suspect that fans of Jodi Picoult's The Pact will find much to recommend it.  We can't all like the same things, alas.  What a dull world that would be!

Scent of Sake by Joyce Lebra.  This well-researched first novel tells the story of Rie, a woman born into a sake-brewing dynasty in early 19th century Japan.  A bright young girl with natural business acumen, Rie bristles under the extreme sexist mores that dictate her behavior.  Saddled with a boorish husband, she discovers ways of quietly undermining his power.  Little does she realize, however, that as time goes by she demands the same sort of sacrifices from her family and employees that she herself was forced to make, effectively becoming just as domineering as the men against whom she was rebelling.  An interesting read.

I did finish reading two wonderful books that I've mentioned earlier in this blog.  One was just as good as I hoped it would be and the other was just as good as I'd remembered it (isn't it nice when that happens?).  Stephen Fry's wonderfully funny book about visiting every state in the US was a delight.  And finishing Without Reservations was like saying goodbye to an old friend.  I hope that one day when I'm on my own again that I'll have the courage to pick up and travel like she did.  

 

What I'm reading now...

LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL by Emily St. John Mandel

Mandel's debut novel, which is intense and subtle in equal measure, has left me completely dazzled.  Lilia, abducted by her father at the age of seven, grows up to be a wanderer, utterly incapable of forming lasting attachments or understanding the concept of home.  When she quietly leaves Eli behind, he traces her to Montreal, where Lilia's past and present collide in one mysterious young woman whose training as a tightrope walker stands in sharp counterpoint to her unbalanced mental state.  Ultimately this is a novel about urgency and restraint and about both the tragedies and rewards that we reap when we try to push beyond the limits of meaning and understanding.  Mandel resists the temptation to tie all three storylines up too neatly, leaving a couple of them to unravel as they may, and I think we can expect great things from this author in the future. 

It's from a small publisher, Unbridled Books, which has been quietly making good books for the reader for I don't know how long, but which came to my attention a little over a year ago when they published Margaret Cezair-Thompson's The Pirate's Daughter.  We picked that book for our First Editions Club in December 2007 and now I hope to pick Last Night in Montreal for our June 2009 selection.  Ms. Mandel is incredibly young--she looks like she would be carded non-stop for a night out on the town--for having turned out such a fine, sensitive first novel.  It's not just the careful details she crafts for each character, it's also what she chooses to leave in shadow, crediting the reader's own imagination, that sets this book apart.  I can't wait for the book to be published so that I can put it in the hands of as many readers as possible.  

And now for something completely different...

Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry, oh, how I love thee!  I was sadly unaware that Mr. Fry had come to America to visit every last state, filming and writing as he went along, and thus was not able to become his fangirl.  I've admired his humour for years and now that Harper Collins is publishing the US edition that accompanied the BBC series he filmed, I can enjoy his writing, too.  This book won't be published until December 2009, so you'll probably see me mention it from time to time as I dip into it throughout the year.  It's tempting to read the book straight through as I started to do, but I think I'll change that.  For one thing, one runs the risk of busting a gut, as they might say in my old home state, from too much consecutive laughter.  But also because it's nice to have to look forward to (I'm the same way when people give me gift certificates for things--I'll put off using them just so that I can have the pleasure of anticipation).  So now I'll apportion perhaps one or two states to read, every few days.  It won't last until December, certainly, but it will get me through the dreary, muddy months of what passes for early spring in New England.  

On a side note, was anybody else holding dear to the hope that the Harry Potter movie franchise would be casting Fry as Professor Slughorn and Hugh Laurie as Rufus Scrimgeour?  Wouldn't it be lovely to see them onscreen (sort of) together again with the super-duper special effects budget that Warner Bros has lavished on HP?  Say what you will about the Harry Potter movies (and I've said plenty, believe you me.  Although Prisoner of Azkaban was, like Elizabeth Bennet's teeth, tolerable, I suppose), they sure do provide the pleasure of seeing so many of the great actors of our time--Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, (Dame) Maggie Smith, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Richard Griffiths, Julie Walters, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton, Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Brannaugh, Robert Pattinson (heh--just kidding.  I was checking to see if you were paying attention!), really the list does go on a bit...

Anyway, the series would have been the richer for my casting preferences but nobody asked me.  I find that *that* is increasingly what is wrong with the world today.