Mara and Dann (1999) by Doris Lessing

 Book Review

Mara and Dann (1999)

by Doris Lessing

   Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007, which led to an early "viral" moment of her nonchalantly reacting to the news.   When she won, the Committee noted that her bibliography included 50 titles and several genres.  Lessing had four novels on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, which was published just before she won the Nobel.  One of them, her 1979 book Shikasta, is from the science fiction portion of her bibliography, like Mara and Dann. 

   Mara and Dann flopped back in 1999- the New York Times called it flatfooted and tedious.  It's a picaresque about a brother sister duo who have to flee southern Africa in the far-future, after a new ice age has rendered the northern hemisphere uninhabitable. Unlike the New York Times, I enjoyed Mara and Dann, specifically the Audiobook.  Picaresque's are similarly well suited for the Audiobook format, since you are taken on a journey with the characters.    Lessing's future Africa, called Ifrik in the book, keeps the reader in the dark for the first portion of the book, these austere portions are the ones that work best.  As Mara and Dann work their way north the world becomes more familiar, and for me, less interesting.

 Still, I'd rather listen to Mara and Dann again before I'd listen to an Audiobook narrated by a precocious but confused adolescent living in difficult circumstances.

After Moondog (1995) by Jane Shapiro

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

After Moondog (1995)

by Jane Shapiro

South Orange, New Jersey

New Jersey: 12/13

   After Moondog is a sad divorced suburban mom novel.  The back flap says that three of the chapters first appeared as short stories in the New Yorker, and she's only written one novel since then, The Dangerous Husband, in 2000.   I frequently read novels about divorce, particularly divorces with young children involved, and ask myself what is wrong with these people.  You mean to tell me that you can't stick it out in your cold but comfortable relationship for 15 years to spare your children a lifetime of trauma?  Sure, I understand spouses who flee domestic violence or other, non-physical kinds of abuse, but usually in the world of literary fiction divorce is about one partner who is desperately unhappy for literally no reason, and another partner who either doesn't care or can't help the first partner. 

  People in these books move out to the suburbs, have kids without questioning why and then five years later they wonder why they are unhappy.  That's not just the characters in After Moondog, it describes at least 20 novels I've read for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.

  At least it means I'm almost finished with this chapter.  The only book left is Clockers by Richard Price.  I'm actually excited to re-read Clockers, even though I forgot that it is a 600 page book.

The Safekeep (2024) by Yael van der Wouden

 Book Review

The Safekeep (2024)

by Yael van der Wouden

   The Safekeep is the first 2024 Booker Longlist book I've read since they announced last month.  A now common experience is realizing that some of the books haven't been published in the USA yet, particularly galling since that includes two potential winners- the new Rachel Kushner book and Richard Powers latest offering.  Before the longlist was announced, I'd already tackled There There by Tommy Orange and Jim by Percival Everett in my book club.  Another nominee, Knockout by Rita Bullwinkle is my next book club pick.  I'm unlikely to read a new Claire Messud novel, which means there are only a half dozen or so books to look at from the longlist- with two of those not being out in the US.

  The Safekeep got a great review in the New York Times in May, with the subheading describing it as "tricky [and] remarkable."  That is code for "this is a really good book."  I think I put in on my library request list- both the Audiobook and the book itself.  By the time my request was granted, the Booker Longlist had been announced (end of July) and The Safekeep was on it.  Enough time had gone by that I was initially confused about the very nature of the book- thinking perhaps that it might be translated from Dutch and maybe nominated for the Booker International Prize instead of the Prize itself.  As I now know, The Safekeep was written in English by a resident of the UK but it is set in and about the Netherlands in the post-WWII era. 

   Describing a new release of literary fiction as "tricky" tells a potential reader that there is something going on with the plot- as simple as a third act plot twist or as complicated as something that experiments with reader expectations in a modernist/post-modernist fashion.   "Remarkable" just means that it is really good without being specific about how or why.  After listening to the Audiobook I agree with both descriptions, though I would add that I was half way through the listen before I really got on board- which itself is a sign of a good book- one that draws you in.

   When I started listening to the Audiobook I was immediately struck at how little I liked the protagonist Isabel- a young Dutch woman living alone in the house her family retreated to during World War II.  Her Mom is dead, leaving her alone in the house, which is promised to her older brother- a man-about-town type.  There's also a gay brother who left home as soon as he could, and a shy maid that Isabel enjoys bossing around.  Isabel's careful equilibrium is ruptured when she has Eva, feckless Louis' lay-of-the-month thrust upon her when Louis is called away on business and Eva has just lost her apartment.

   At the most basic level, The Safekeep is a spicy LGBT love story set in 1960's Netherlands- and it works at that level.  But then there is the "tricky" and "remarkable" part of it, which defies the format of a blog post.  I'll say this much- I wouldn't be surprised if The Safekeep makes the Booker shortlist. 

  

The Final Club (1990) by Tobias Wolff

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Final Club (1990)

by Tobias Wolff

Princeton, New Jersey

New Jersey: 11/13

I just assumed Tobias Wolff attended Princeton but that does not appear to be the case. This book was received so poorly it is left off his Wikipedia page- which I've never seen before today.  It's what I assume is a biographically based bildungsroman about a half-Jewish student who attends Princeton University in the 1950's.   At times it is hard to believe this is a book written about the 1950's, with the characters sounding like college students circa the Roaring 1920's.  The major theme is the narrator's attempts to fit in, or not, in the semi-hostile, semi-welcoming environment of Princeton.  Princeton itself is a major player- almost beyond the bounds of believe.  Speaking as someone who went through a private high school/private non-elite college/public law school experience in the minimum amount of time, I've found people who fetishize their college experience to be just as ridiculous as the small-town "peaked in high school" character, and there is nothing in The Final Club to change my mind.

 As a representative of the geographical area of Princeton it is a good pick, since the characters spend most of their time there, in terms of the 350 pages of the book.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019) by Sadiiya Hartman

 Book Review

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019)

by Sadiya Hartman

New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century, 96

  When the New York Times published their Best Books of the 21st Century last month I was excited to see that they had both Fiction and Non-Fiction, books in translation and books in English and books by both non-American and American authors.  To often lists like this are parochial- "Best American Novels of the 21st Century," for example or they are perversely limited to one TYPE of book- usually the novel, to the exclusion of other forms of literature.   The New York Times list isn't flawless- there is little or no representation of poetry- but overall it's a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, foreign and domestic.  I've read most of the fiction titles but few of the non-fiction picks.

   Hartman writes about the lives of so-called "wayward women" of the American urban core in the early 20th century- almost entirely focusing on African-American women who were judged by the system to be dangerous enough to be sent away to a reformatory for up to three years at a stretch for crimes like having a child out of wedlock or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time coming home from work.  Hartman blends the non-fiction of facts she has gleaned from 20th century court documents with fictionalizations of the women from those documents.

  

 As Hartman repeatedly points out, the oppression in these pages is not hypothetical, but represents decades of actual lives ruined in the name of social progress.  Almost of all the court proceedings she discusses took place without the women being represented by anyone- a lawyer, a social worker, and truly once you were taken into the system, a place would be made for you.   Hartman also convincingly makes the point that many of these women were the direct inspiration for the American popular culture that emerged from the jazz age.   Women like Zelda Fitzgerald became  immortal icons, while the black-girls who inspired her went to the reformatory (and Zelda also got institutionalized, let's not forget.)

  

Daughters of Shandong (2024) by Eve J. Chung

 Book Review

Daughters of Shandong (2024)

by Eve J. Chung

   A recent publishing trend I do appreciate are these historical novels that tell grandmothers/grandfathers story.  It's an approach that gives an Auto-fictional vibe to work that otherwise might be construed as genre historical fiction.  It's also great to see American authors who write books like this one instead of starting off with a bildungsroman about a character that resembles the author.  As a best-seller, it's fantastic and more power to it.  It's not particularly sophisticated beyond the concept itself- taking Grandma's origin story and turning it into a compelling work of historical fiction.  The experience itself: the wife of a wealthy local landowner is left behind with her two "worthless" daughters when the Communist's come to town, she plots her escape out of the nascent Chinese Communist state, is very interesting.

  As the author points out in her Afterword, in which she makes the "grandma's origin story" plot clear, she also points out that the major players in post-Communist victory China:  The Chinese Communist Party, the British, who governed Hong Kong and the Nationalist Government of Taiwan, all had their own reasons to keep the refuge misery caused by the Communist victory quiet.  You can add to that the United States, which was fighting the Korean War nearby, thus it truly isn't well documented or well understood.

  I can forgive Chung her concessions to appealing to a broad, YA level audience.  One point that Chung does not soften is the ingrained sexism/prejudice against daughters in Chinese civilization. It's not exactly something one can point out in polite society but it comes up all the time- Chinese families face a lot of pressure to produce a male heir and are daughters produced BEFORE sons are considered bad luck and worthless.  Not something I learned about from Daughters of Shangdong but it's rare to see a work of fiction that centers this practice so squarely in the narrative.   That's also either the greatest strength and or weakness- Chung's plucky grandma-as-a-girl narrator sees the world through the eyes of a strong American feminist circa 2020 alternately acknowledging subservience to and criticisms of the strong tradition of deference to elders in Chinese culture.   Surely a "historically accurate" narrator would not  have such a sophisticated critique.

Kraken (2010) by China Miéville

 Book Review

Kraken (2010)

by China Miéville

  I checked this 2010 fantasy novel out as an Audiobook after reading the book Miéville just published with Keanu Reeves.  Miéville has been on my list for years, but I'm not a huge fantasy guy, so I needed some kind of bump of interest to get me reading listening.  I also liked the fact that the narrator was John Lee- who has done many (all?) of Kazuo Ishiguro's Audiobooks.  He's probably my favorite English accent Audiobook reader.

  Thus, I didn't let the 16 hour listening time phase me.  I also checked out Miéville on Wikipedia after reading the Keanu Reeves book and realized that he has a degree from the London School of Economics and is known as a Marxist, which is just adorable!   Miéville is classified as fantasy because of the strong element of the supernatural that runs through his work, but it's a fantasy that is firmly grounded in the mechanics of contemporary social sciences.  For example, the character Wati, described on Wikipedia as a "living Egyptian afterlife familiar," is, in this book, a union organizers for the familiars union (the witches cat, for example), and that is one of the plot-lines in Kraken.

  In fact, Mieville's world-building of a contemporary (circa 2010) London resembles nothing as much as the street-fighting days of the early to middle 20th century in places like Russia before the Russian Revolution took hold and Berlin before the rise of Hitler.  London is endemically infested with various cults and supernatural criminals, fighting each other beneath the consciousness of the general public but on the radar of the London Police, who have their own supernatural crime unit.

  Kraken has much of what I actually like in fantasy- it's set in the "real world" with the exception of the supernatural plot elements, it draws not just from mythology but also social sciences like economics and sociology and it is written with consciousness of the actual history of any supernatural elements in the plot.  The Keanu Reeves book had similar traits, and I noticed some obvious parallels, specifically the significant role in both books played by inanimate objects imbued with a supernatural consciousness and the use of magic as a kind of practical fix-it to get out of sticky situations. 

  On the other hand its a 528 page "trying to prevent the end of the world" type plot and it was hard not to feel like the book was about 150 pages over-long.  While I, personally, enjoy the world-building exposition in Kraken because I find it interesting, it's hard to ignore the negative impact the exposition has on the plot mechanics of what is a glorified detective novel. 

Beautiful Days (2024) by Zach Williams

 Book Review

Beautiful Days (2024)

by Zach Williams

   Beautiful Days is the debut short-story collection by American author Zach Williams.  I checked out the Audiobook from the library after reading the New York Times review earlier this month referred to him as a "genuine young talent...who deftly palpates the dark areas of human psyche." while at the same time making many of the same points I've made here about the difficulty of writing about short-story collections.  My favorite was "Ghost Image" about a divorced dad type slouching towards the end of the world at  Disneyworld type resort.  I also liked "Wood Sorrel House," a riff on the Groundhog Day theme featuring a terrifying infant toddler and some fine descriptive work.   The Audiobook I read was well done- most of the stories (all?) feature a narrator/protagonist type with a single point of view expressed in each story, which makes for a good listening experience.  I wouldn't exactly recommend Beautiful Days to all and sundry, but if you are someone who likes short stories and edgy milieus then Zach Williams is going to be your guy!

Brat (2024) by Gabriel Smith

 Book Review

Brat (2024)

by Gabriel Smith

   I've run into people who join multiple libraries so they can get popular books faster, on the theory that people living in dipshit Arkansas aren't going to be interested in the latest- not sure if that actually works or not, but I think about every time I have to wait three months for the latest work of hot literary fiction. Such was the case with Brat by English author Gabriel Smith, which had the good fortune to be released at essentially the same time as the Charli XCX record of the same name.  He even faked an email which purported to say that Charli XCX named Brat after the novel, but that has been debunked.  Still, google this book and the first 10 returns on Google all mention the serendipity of sharing a title with THE album of the summer.

 The numbers haven't been great in the US- I imagine they are better in the UK.  Gabriel, who I surmise is the titular Brat- though the only reference is to a shirt his ex-girlfriend owned that had brat written across the front- is a writer, in his 20's.  He owes his publisher a novel, his Dad just died and his brother and sister in law want/need him to clean up the house for sale in the aftermath of Dad's death, Mom being in the later stages of dementia and confined to a home.

  Gabriel is grief-stricken, handling everything badly, and to make matters worse, large sheets of his skin are peeling off.  It sounds grosser than it actually is: the skin peels away to reveal...more skin. Gabriel haphazardly tries to figure out what is going on with his skin while he deals with a couple of neighbor teens with bad attitudes, a frightening deer-man who may or may not be stalking him with grievous intent, and his bitch sister-in-law.   There's also his Dad's marijuana grow in the attic to attend to, manuscripts and video tapes that change their content with every reading/viewing, black mold and a collapsing roof. 

  In the end there is plenty of atmosphere but only the loosest outline of a plot.  Smith is not concerned with a cohesive narrative, plainly.  It's a fun, hipster-type read and enough to keep interested in his next book, which is hopefully neither a short-story collection nor a memoir, but not a fantastic book.

On Such a Full Sea (2014) by Chang Rae Lee

 Book Review

On Such a Full Sea (2014)

by Chang Rae Lee

  I read Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee's 1994 debut as part of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list, where it is part of the New York/Manhattan chapter.  I enjoyed Native Speaker, so when I saw he had written a dystopian-fiction/literary fiction cross-over book a decade ago, I checked out the B.D. Wong narrated Audiobook from the library.   I enjoyed the listening experience and I guess I would call On Such a Full Sea an interesting failure- again my own feelings were echoed by the contemporaneous review in the New York Times, by now Pulitzer Prize winning author Andrew Sean Greer.  I actually wanted to quote his paragraph of the state of dystopian sci-fi, literary-fiction cross over circa 2014:

Colson Whitehead, Cormac McCarthy and Margaret Atwood (in her recently concluded MaddAddam trilogy) have all tackled this genre. Doris Lessing’s “Mara and Dann” is a classic, as is Anthony Burgess’s “Clockwork Orange.” Further back in time, one has only to think of Orwell, Huxley and Wells, even Jack London and Mary Shelley. -New York Times(paywall)

   Amazing that Greer would single out the MaddAddam trilogy at the expense of The Handmaid's Tale, but otherwise that's a good summary. I think you'd have to put Kazuo Ishiguro in there in 2024, but besides those two things.  

  If I had to focus on one reason On Such a Full Sea wasn't a hit, it would be the choice of the author to use a collective second person tense to narrate- as in the, story is told from the collective perspective of the citizens of B-more, a post collapse Chinese colony occupying the ruins of Baltimore.  The protagonist is Fan, daughter of B-more and a "tank diver"- someone tasked with maintaining the aqua-culture tanks that Bmore uses to cultivate fish which they then sell to the "Charters"- enclaves of wealthy post-Americans who exist largely cut off from both colonies like Bmore and the unorganized "counties"- which is a mild take on the Mad Max/The Road idea of society in the aftermath of a total collapse of government. 

  Fan's adventures start out after she leaves Bmore in search of her disappeared boyfriend, whose child she is carrying.  Because of the second person narrator, we never get inside Fan's head and her twin desires- to find her boyfriend hopefully via her brother, one of the few colonists who have been elevated to charter life, never separate out.   Time is a little imprecise because of Fan's adventures, but there is no denying that at the beginning of the book she knows she is pregnant, and by the end she is still pregnant and not one person has noticed, so we're talking a couple months tops. 

  But I thought the world building was interesting, and Lee is a no-doubt writer of literary fiction, so the overall quality level of the prose was very high. Not a book I would go around recommending, but I personally enjoyed the Audiobook experience.