John Henry Days, Colson Whitehead

It felt like it had been forever since I'd written up a book, so I just checked to see if I was up to date and I was not! I finished John Henry Days 3 weeks ago, but the 3 weeks since then have been busy. I was out of town for about half that time and before I went out of town I was doing things to prepare and since I got back I've been recovering and so I'm only getting to John Henry Days now, when it is not at all fresh in my memory. However, I really enjoyed the way this book was composed.

The main events of the book relate to the celebration around the issuing of a John Henry commemorative stamp, but it goes off on some tangents about the historical John Henry and more modern attempts to learn more about him (among other things). Going into the book, I had -- as probably many readers would -- only a vague idea of who John Henry was and what he did. The book not only counts on this, it plays it up. It opens with a series of recollections and hearsay about John Henry from supposed contemporaries or near contemporaries, all of which thoroughly contradict each other.

As to the composition that I enjoyed: Some books are like puzzles, with lots of little pieces that fit together to make the story whole at the end. This book was sort of like that, but not quite. It had some little pieces, but they were more like otherwise passing details from the main plot that were given an unexpected exposition. They didn't so much contribute to the events of the story as to give you a deeper sense of the characters' contexts (and the context the reader brings to the book as well).

The Dream of My Return, Horacio Castellanos Moya

The whole time I was reading this book (admittedly, not for very long because the book is very short) I kept thinking, "I love this book, but why???" Having finished it, I'm still not sure I can articulate what exactly I loved so much about it. 

Over Labor Day weekend, I was visiting friends in LA. They took me to the nice little Alias Books in Atwater Village, where I proceeded to scan the fiction section from A to about M (at which point we ran out of time and had to leave) looking for books from countries I hadn't read. I picked up two without knowing anything at all about them, including The Dream of My Return, which is to represent El Salvador.

It's a first-person narrative of a rather neurotic Salvadoran journalist living in Mexico City who is making plans to return to El Salvador as the civil war is on the verge of ending. Wild things that seem realistic and normal happen to him, he undergoes hypnotherapy, he overthinks everything. He's a cad, but relatable. I just liked him. And the book. It was just right. (It reminded me a bit of Bolaño, though I liked it better than the short fiction I've read by Bolaño (whose long fiction I adore). It made me want to go back to Mexico City!)

Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, Louis Begley

Before I get into my review, can I tell you the most crazy thing I learned from this book? It's that Emile Zola was maybe murdered for his support of Dreyfus. I had no idea!! (I hope this doesn't qualify as a spoiler? Sorry!!!)

I read this for, and then thoroughly discussed it with, my reading-around-Proust book club, so I'm not inclined to say a whole lot about it now. Prior to starting Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, my knowledge of the affair came primarily from reading Proust and Benjamin, and this book provided context that my other sources lacked. This was a thoroughly readable, just-in-depth-enough history of the events leading up to Dreyfus' arrest, his trials, the circumstances of his imprisonment, and his eventual exoneration.

On a side note: through much of the book, Begley draws parallels between the circumstances surrounding the Dreyfus affair and the 21st Century "war on terror," some of which seem a bit forced. Knowing what we do nearly 8 years later, I found it rather sad to read his preface, written on the eve of President Obama's inauguration, which focused on the prisoners at Guantanamo and the hope for them under the new administration.

Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton

I feel pretty dumb about this now, but I didn't realize Alan Paton was white until I googled him some chapters into my reading of Cry, the Beloved Country. I had a longish list of South African books I was considering -- titles by J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Foreigner, and Athol Fugard (whom I had also assumed was black for quite some time) -- and I thought to myself, maybe I should not choose a book by a white author to represent South Africa. Then I found a copy of Cry, the Beloved Country at a thrift store, and I thought, "perfect!" Joke was on me! At the same time, I had in the back of my head some faint memory of critiques I'd heard of the book. I couldn't remember any specifics, but having read the book now I can imagine what they were. (A certain elevation of Christian morals, a dose of "white man's burden" thinking, and just a general disposition toward conciliation, mainly.)

It's hard to read this book, nearly 70 years after it was originally published, and not reflect on the fact that the apartheid state in South Africa only strengthened in the decades following its publication. The book is hopeful, and you would like to believe that people would behave and come to mutual understanding in the face of tragedy, the way they did in the book, but history tells us this was not so. At the same time, this was published in 1948, at a time when European colonialism was firmly in place throughout Africa, and gave voice to some of its ill effects, bringing these to an audience that may not have been attentive to them before. It's hard to imagine what the book meant in its time.

The Vintner's Luck, Elizabeth Knox

I found The Vintner's Luck at a thrift store last week and bought it because I saw that the author was from New Zealand and that was a country I needed to read. A couple days later I started it and I quickly realized that the setting was early 19th Century France, not New Zealand. My early thought that the book might somehow still end up in New Zealand also seemed less and less likely as I read on. But I never said the books I read had to be about the countries they were selected to represent. So, although it was about a Burgundian vintner, I can now say I've read a book from New Zealand.*

This book was so unexpected at every turn. From the very beginning, things never went how I thought they would. It all started on like page 2 when an angel showed up. I didn't know this book was about an angel. (As I said, I got it at a thrift store and I knew nothing about it.) Quite unwittingly, I found myself reading yet another book that dealt with the difficulty of immortality. Anyway, the angel showed up, I was startled, and then everything continued to surprise me for another couple hundred pages. Every time I thought I knew how things would go, I was wrong. I know I'm dwelling on this, but it was striking! I know surprising isn't actually descriptive, so let's see: this book was lovely; the relationships were complex and fascinating; it dealt with love and aging and distance very tenderly; the treatment of angels and god and issues of the afterlife was interesting. It made me want to drink wine. I may have drunk some wine while reading it. I enjoyed it!

* Fwiw, a group of tourists from New Zealand do make an appearance at the very end of the book, but the fact that they are from New Zealand is utterly irrelevant to the plot.

No Children

I started this post about 9 months ago. At the end of 2015, I was writing quite a bit about the year that was ending: my travel, my reading projects. This was to be part of that year-in-review, under the title The Year I Came to Terms with Not Having Children or something. I got straight through the first part: the moment of realization, but almost immediately after that I got stuck. In the intervening time, I've opened it now and then and added little bits and taken away other little bits, but it hasn't actually changed much until today. Now I think it's time to accept that, even if I have more I might say on the topic, it's all really directed at myself anyway; that this is enough and I can just stop. So, here we go:

I can pinpoint the moment I came to terms with the idea of being childless. It was in July of last year and I was riding in a car with my dad somewhere in upstate New York. I had been restless for several months; or maybe years. I was thinking about selling my apartment, paying off all my debts, and moving somewhere cheap. I'd been floating this idea off and on for some time, and last summer it was very much on. Anyway, I was in the car with my dad driving through a lovely part of upstate New York and it hit me in a way it had never hit me before. I could sell my apartment and walk away from everything if I wanted. I could do whatever I wanted. I could move anywhere. I would never have to pay anyone else's college tuition. (For some reason the college tuition thing hit particularly hard; that was the singular thought that crystallized it all for me.) I realized that I only had to worry about getting myself by until, well, death and doing that didn't sound so hard. That may come off as selfish or morbid or both. But I felt like a huge weight was suddenly lifted off me.

I wanted kids. I was 23 when my ex-husband proposed to me and before I accepted, I said, "You know I want kids." I was married to him for 6 years. They were all financially insecure years and kids were always presumed to be in the future for us, until there was no future for us.

In the 10 years since we split up, I've been in a couple relationships, but mostly I've been single. The idea that having kids might not be in the cards for me (at least in the conditions I'd imagined: natural children who were the product of a relationship) first hit me around the time I turned 35. At the time, it was just one part of a larger life reevaluation. I realized I was not at all where I had expected to be at that age and decided to make some changes. The big change I made was going back to school for a master's degree, something I never thought I'd do. I figured that if my personal life wasn't where I wanted it to be, I might as well throw myself into my professional life. I told a few people at the time that I was starting to accept I might never have kids. I think I was testing the idea to see how it felt. The universal reaction at the time was that I was speaking too soon, that I had plenty of time. These days people don't say that. I'm 40 and very single (not in the 'dates a lot' way, these days, but in the 'doesn't date at all' way), so it's hard to argue with. When I still hoped I might have kids, I used to mentally give myself until 42 -- the age at which a former supervisor of mine got pregnant after marrying for the first time at 40 -- but turning 40 (in fact, being 39 and anticipating 40 on the horizon) seemed like a good enough time to just call it.

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

I've had Wide Sargasso Sea on my shelves for years. I picked it up at some point before I knew anything about it, maybe because of its inclusion on the (deeply flawed) Modern Library list of 100 best novels? I don't really recall. I do remember pulling it out several years ago as something to possibly read, then seeing its connection to Jane Eyre in the blurb and thinking I should probably wait to read it until after I'd read Jane Eyre, so I would have the proper context. (If by chance you don't know, Wide Sargasso Sea creates a back story for the mad Creole woman in the attic in Jane Eyre.) In 2011, when I decided to catch up on all the 19th Century English literature I had somehow missed, I finally did read Jane Eyre. I didn't particularly like it, which made me not particularly inclined to read Wide Sargasso Sea (though I do recognize the flaw in that logic). Anyway, my world books reading project gave me a reason to finally read it (Dominica: check!) and I'm glad I did. The prose in Wide Sargasso Sea was lovely. The tropics sounded wild and beautiful and lush and a bit scary. It made me want to go back to Guadeloupe.

A book like this presents a sort of conundrum: it's hard to evaluate it on its own; should one even attempt to do so? When reading it, I found I sort of wished I didn't know the Jane Eyre connection. Of course, if I hadn't known it, the significance of certain descriptions and events in the book would have been lost on me. How would the end have felt different if I didn't know the result of the fire she starts?

A quick update on what I'm calling my world books project: I'm up to 44 countries read (out of my count of 212, so about 20%). So far this year, I've read books from 18 different countries, though not all of these were first books from those countries. I feel like this is "not bad" -- or maybe even "pretty good" -- on both fronts.

The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson

I felt I had been neglecting my World Books project, so yesterday morning, I pulled out every book I owned from a country I had not read and stacked them on my dining table. I then reorganized them in various ways, ending up sorting them by continent/region. Africa turned out to be the biggest stack, mainly because I have six South African novels vying for my selection. (The Africa stack also included a Senegalese, a Sudanese, and a Guinean book.) The Europe stack included two novels by Tove Jansson (Finland) - this one and Fair Play, which I picked up together at a thrift store near my office, a Portuguese novel, and a Bosnian novel. The Americas stack included two books by Jean Rhys and To Sir, With Love. The Asia stack consisted of just one book: a Nepalese collection of short stories, which I decided to save for my busy travel season this fall. I had originally intended to read the Bosnian book (The Fortress by Meša Selimović), but it was the longest of the books and I thought I should pick something shorter because I also have to read a book club book this month. It came down to a choice between Jansson and the Sudanese book (Season of Migration to the North), and I chose The True Deceiver after reading the first paragraph of all my options. (This is the normal final step in my book selection routine.) When I decided to read a small book, I didn't expect to finish it in a day, but between three commutes, reading on my lunch break, and some final reading at home yesterday evening, I got right through it, so here we are:

This book was small and intense and strange. It's a story about two women, one of whom (Katri) insinuates herself into the other's (Anna) life, and the bizarre, tense, frenmity that forms between them. As a woman who lives primarily alone, but frequently has her home invaded by guests, I could really relate to Anna. The presence of another person makes you self-conscious about your habits and routines; you perform normalcy for the strangers in your home. The way Anna's world falls apart, while nothing about her life actually changes, felt true and a little bit scary. Are the worlds we create for ourselves so fragile? I suspect they are.

The All Souls Trilogy, Deborah Harkness

I've been accused -- probably justifiably -- of being a snob. I've been known to be dismissive of genre fiction. I've tried to be better and less judgmental. The All Souls trilogy was a total departure from my normal reading material -- one that made me a bit uncomfortable. Their genre could be described as historical fantasy with a healthy dose of romance. The central characters are a witch and a vampire. Aside from Roald Dahl's The Witches, I don't think I'd ever read a witch book, and I'd definitely never read a vampire book before.

While I'm not the kind of person who ostentatiously reads ~literature~ on the subway (I mean, I do read literature on the subway, but not for the attention it gets me, if you see what I'm saying), I was self-conscious reading these books on the subway. I knew it was dumb to care, but when I read standing over people, I wondered what they thought of the back-cover blurbs about vampires and witches. When I read sitting next to people, I held the book close. God forbid someone should read one of the vampire-witch sex scenes over my shoulder.

But, um, let's see... I enjoyed these books. I devoured these books. I couldn't put them down. I think I liked the first book, A Discovery of Witches, the least. Of all of them, it was the most formulaic and romance-ish (but without the payoff, wtf?!). The second book, Shadow of Night, nearly all of which takes place in the 16th century (and in which the protagonists finally consummate their relationship), was fun! The final book in the trilogy, The Book of Life, was my favorite, and I read it over a period of less than 36 hours. I was so sad when I finished it. Plus the books were smart. Not, like, overly so, but smart enough. I could read more books like this. What are they?

The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell

"Ugh, I'm so ambivalent about David Mitchell," is not a feeling I was aware I had until I got a few pages into The Bone Clocks. But I had that feeling to a greater or lesser extent (which I guess is to be expected when the feeling in question is ambivalence) until I finished it last night. "Too clever by far!" was a thought that kept going through my head. "One trick pony!" was another. It irked me the way Mitchell name-dropped characters and stories from his other novels*. But... but... I really liked the book. Mitchell may have one trick**, but he does it very, very well. He creates characters you really care about, even when they're despicable. The Bone Clocks' ending, I thought, was perfect! (And this is saying a lot because endings, in particular, are something that I've always found unsatisfactory in Mitchell's other novels.)

On a side note, I'm still stalling on writing about the All Souls trilogy, but this book occasionally reminded me of it: the discussions of the challenges that come with immortality, the second sight, the telepathic communication, references to Oc, and other unexpected commonalities kept coming up.

* I suspect a younger me would have actually liked this device and felt cool to be in on the secret. Has something changed about me? These insertions just felt heavy-handed and coy. (Especially the Black Swan Green one that called out the book's title!)
** If you've read Cloud Atlas, that is the trick I mean. To be fair, I've read 5 of his novels, of which I would say 3 use this trick, one sort of uses this trick, and one does not use this trick.