The Fortress, Meša Selimović

I picked up The Fortress at a library sale over the summer. I had not heard of it, but the back cover said that Meša Selimović was "one of the most significant writers to emerge from Bosnia and Herzegovina," which was good enough reason for me to buy it. When I got home, I realized that I already had Selimović on my world books to read list, though the book I had noted down was Death and the Dervish. The Fortress is set in eighteenth century Sarajevo, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and was originally published in 1970. The narrator has returned to Sarajevo as the sole survivor from his military unit after serving in the war with Russia. The book follows his return to humanity, where he finds himself at the center of events that don't really have anything to do with him. He is shunned, accused of conspiracy, spied upon, but also finds love and friendship in places. He is left again and again to choose between two terrible options, or with no choice at all. I wish I knew more about Yugoslavia because I imagine the acts attributed to the local and Ottoman regimes in the book probably had parallels in then present day Yugoslavia. Even lacking that history, I found The Fortress interesting and moving.

The Story of a Child, Pierre Loti

I read The Story of a Child along with a short story, The Child in the House, by Walter Pater, for my reading around Proust book club. They were strikingly similar to one another - and also to Proust - in their approach to memory of childhood. As I tweeted while reading it, I would highly recommend the Loti to anyone who has considered reading Proust but would like to read roughly 150 pages rather than 4000+ pages. It doesn't have the descriptions of society, the cast of characters, the families across generations that you find in Proust. But Loti's descriptions of his memory of childhood is as evocative as Proust. Furthermore, Loti's narrative gives some examples of that idea of memoire involuntaire we think of as so Proustian. Of course we know that Proust didn't invent the idea of mnemonic associations, but it's striking because Loti's The Story of a Child was published some 15 years before Swann's Way. In conclusion, this is a lovely little book that made me want to visit all the locales in rural France described therein. It also made me want to try to reconstruct my own childhood in this manner. Perhaps this is a project for 2017.

Conveniently for anyone who wants to read it, The Story of a Child is available for free here.

The Blind Assassin, Ancillary Justice, In the Dutch Mountains

I'm killing three birds (books) with one stone (blog post) because I let myself get way behind.

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
Somehow or other, I reached age 40 without having read Margaret Atwood. In my head, I lump her with some other generally well-regarded, contemporary women writers who probably have little in common except that I haven't read them. (Also on this in-my-head list is Barbara Kingsolver, who when you google her, suggests Atwood as the second "people also search for" person, so maybe it's not all in my head?) I never gave Atwood much thought either way until a respected acquaintance recommended Oryx and Crake to me a couple years back. Several months ago I found a copy of it at a thrift store, so I picked it up. Then shortly after that I found a copy of The Blind Assassin at a thrift store, so I picked it up too. I was probably swayed by the Booker Prize winner status of the latter when I chose to read it rather than the book that had been recommended to me. In the end, I really liked it, but I found stretches of it a bit of a slog. (Or maybe I should say I really liked the end but found stretches of it a slog.)

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
About 70 pages into reading Ancillary Justice, my purse was stolen and I lost it. After my drivers' license and passport, it was the first thing I replaced. (While listing the things I had lost, I recommended it to the woman who took down my insurance claim over the phone. I subsequently recommended it to my stepfather, who was stuck at home with two broken arms, and he read it then promptly went on to read the two additional books in the series, which I was very tempted to do when I finished it too.) I don't read a lot of Sci Fi and when I try to talk about it, I often feel like a little out of my depth: how do I know if something is novel? maybe there are common tropes in the genre but I just don't know? (Who am I kidding, definitely there are.) But ANYWAY, this book kind of blew my mind in a couple specific ways: (1) the AI with no center -- the idea of a mind shared among several entities; (2) the use of she/her gender pronouns regardless of gender (because the AI can't distinguish well), which affected how I visualized the worlds. In short, I really enjoyed this and I would like to read the other books in the series.

In the Dutch Mountains, Cees Nooteboom
I probably should have written about this right when I finished it because I'm already having a hard time remembering it. I read In the Dutch Mountains over 3 days while I was waiting for my replacement copy of Ancillary Justice to arrive. It's a short novel I picked up at a used bookstore in LA without knowing a thing about it in order to check the Netherlands off my list. The blurb described this as a fairy tale, and parts of it were definitely fairy-tale-ish. The book is set in a fictional south of the Netherlands, a Netherlands much larger than the actual Netherlands, and narrated by a Spanish writer/roadbuilder, making it a somewhat odd representative book for the Netherlands. Apart from telling the story, the narrator went off on a lot of long tangents about the process of telling the story, which were part fascinating and part annoying. However, without them, the story itself would have been quite light.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Jose Saramago

I had hoped to check Portugal off my to-read list before going to Portugal earlier this month, but instead I carried this book around with me for nearly a month, on three different trips - including my trip to Portugal - and only finally finished it today. (I'm also 3 books behind in my short posts about books, but I wanted to get to this one while it was fresh in my memory.) The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was actually the third Portuguese novel I started. I tried Baltasar and Blimunda several years ago but had a hard time getting into it and then I started The Book of Disquiet earlier this year, but found it wasn't good subway reading making it difficult for me to read it at all. Anyway, I loved The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. It was slow going, and not only because I was reading it during a very busy month of my life -- it's very dense, but the language is beautiful and the text is uncommonly thoughtful. It was a bit strange to read because of the familiarity of the stories. I probably haven't read anything from the New Testament in more than 20 years, but I was once pretty familiar with it. This left me with the feeling of reading something I already knew but only faintly remembered. And, of course, there are differences. The most powerful and moving part of the book for me was when Jesus made God list for him all the people that would die in his name. There are lots of reasons, I'm sure, that this book angered the Catholic Church, but when I got to this section, I was floored. It reminded me a bit of the 200-page chronicling of murdered women in 2666. Though much less detailed and smaller in scale -- this only went on for maybe 4 pages -- the methodical listing of martyrs and their cause of death really drove the point home. I sort of feel like I have to go back and read the four gospels again now.

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.