The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

I'm way ahead on my trip around the world, so I am catching up on other reading. I just finished another Orange Prize shortlist book from 2009. This one focuses on the life of Nikola Tesla, a fascinating and brilliant man who was not fully appreciated in his lifetime. Here is my review from Goodreads:

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The six or seven minutes that follow—such a short time when one considers a day, a month, a decade—have the focus and brunt of years jammed into them. Imagining that one could boil the complexities of a lifetime, reducing them over a slow fire for ages until the drops left after dissolution have a flavor as rich and complicated as all mystery. Robert and I say nothing. Perhaps the darkness or the remove allows us to look at each other as honestly and for as long as we do. Perhaps it is the quiet of the night that allows us not to speak, or perhaps it is because what we are thinking is unspeakable.

I wavered between a 3.5 and a 4 on this one, but in writing the review and selecting quotes, I opted for the 4. The reason for my ambivalence is explained below. The Invention of Everything Else chronicles a week in the life of Louisa, a chambermaid at a New York hotel, and her brief friendship with the reclusive Nikola Tesla, who lives in one of the suites there. Through the novel we learn of Tesla's life, both its triumphs and disappointments. We are also introduced to the small circle of people in Louisa's life--her father, still pining for his late wife, his best friend, who is trying to invent a time machine, and a mysterious suitor named Arthur. I found the book a little uneven; I generally liked the sections that focused on Tesla more than those focusing mainly on Louisa's family. However, it came together increasingly successfully by the end. I was pleased with the way the novel succeeded in making me fascinated with and respectful for Tesla. Part way through the book, I hopped on Wikipedia to read Tesla's entry and see how much of the book is based on fact. Virtually all of the material about Tesla is true, and he had a fascinating, but in many ways tragic, life, most of which you can learn about in the novel. When I looked at which passages I highlighted to potentially use in this review, all came from the sections narrated by Tesla.
Here are a couple more, to give you the flavor of the writing.

On his career and its impact: Drawer #53 is empty, though inside I detect the slightest odor of ozone. I sniff the drawer, inhaling deeply. Ozone is not what I am looking for. I close #53 and open #26. Inside there is a press clipping, something somebody once said about my work: "Humanity will be like an antheap stirred up with a stick. See the excitement coming!" The excitement, apparently, already came and went.

On his relationships with people: Having lived in America for fifty-nine years, I've nearly perfected my relationships with the pigeons, the sparrows, and the starlings of New York City. Particularly the pigeons. Humans remain a far greater challenge.

And also: Katharine nods numbly, confused, the hook I planted already beginning to tug painfully as I slip away. Robert stands behind her, broadening his shoulders, stunned by my sudden change. It is my fault. Here is friendship. Here is love. I take a step away from it. The bicycle has turned the corner. There goes invention. I have to catch it.

And about his favorite pigeon: She is pale gray with white-tipped wings, and into her ear I have whispered all my doubts. Through the years I've told her of my childhood, the books I read, a history of Serbian battle songs, dreams of earthquakes, endless meals and islands, inventions, lost notions, love, architecture, poetry—a bit of everything. We've been together since I don't remember when. A long while. Though it makes no sense, I think of her as my wife, or at least something like a wife, inasmuch as any inventor could ever have a wife, inasmuch as a bird who can fly could ever love a man who can't.

This is a moving and fascinating book about a modern day idealist, with a vision far ahead of his time.

Molly Fox's Birthday

So I'm taking a break from my official world tour. I'm back in Ireland catching up on my Orange Prize reads for the quarter. I picked this novel for its length. I needed to get three Orange Prize winners or shortlist books read by the end of June, along with lots of others, and this seemed more manageable than many options. I'm glad to have picked it. It was a charming read, and it also left me with a little mystery to solve. In the novel, the protagonist mentions a man on a train who is holding a wild hare. The man and the hare are a preoccupation for her; she considers building a play around them. Having read The Year of the Hare not so long ago, I immediately made the association. I'm just not sure if the author did. I'll let you know if I figure it out, and if she did intend the reference, what I make of it after some reflection. While I research and ponder (and desperately try to finish all my other April to June reading--prognosis not good), I will offer you my Goodreads review of the novel: Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I have always understood the value of formulaic conversation and how it can make for real communication. Such exchanges can forge a link with someone when there is deep affection but no real common ground. Andrew, with his impatient intelligence, would never understand this. But I know Molly would agree with me. Her relationship with Fergus is built upon a similar visceral warmth, the childhood bond that has never been broken. Closeness of that particular type is perhaps only possible with people one has known all one’s life, when the bonds have been made before something in one’s soul has been closed down by consciousness, by knowledge; a kind of closeness that can coexist even with dislike. Perhaps this was something that Andrew could understand, perhaps this was why he was haunted by the thought of Billy, but I wasn't sure that I could explain it to him.

This is one of the reflections on life, relationships, art, and human purpose that fill Molly Fox's Birthday, a lovely novel from among the 2009 Orange Prize shortlist selections. I read it over a couple of days, and found myself eager to return to it, despite any real driving plot. The characters are insightfully drawn, and the language flows smoothly, creating beautiful images along the way. I am not a gardener, but I found myself wanting to plant some of the flowers Deirdre Madden described in passing. The story is the tale of a single day in the life of a playwright who is staying at a friend's home while she is away, struggling to begin a new play in the wake of a recent flop. The tiny details of the day prompt reflections on a myriad of topics--the most powerful of which is window friendship creates into another life, and the degree to which the window may be opaque--sometimes more than we know. The home is the home of the playwright's best friend--Molly Fox, a brilliant actress but also a shy and complex character. The occasion of her birthday prompts many of the reflections in the tale, and also provides a reason for several people to stop by--including Molly's brother Fergus, another old mutual friend Andrew, who is now a successful art critic and media darling. The tale also draws indirectly on the tensions of Northern Ireland, from which both Andrew and the playwright come, he a Protestant, she a Catholic. Molly is from Dublin.

I recommend this quiet but beautiful novel for a break in a frenzied schedule sometime when you need it!

Scottsboro - Wendy's Review

Even after all these years, the injustice still stuns. Innocent boys sentenced to die, not for a crime they did not commit, but for a crime that never occurred. Lives splintered as casually as wood being hacked for kindling. Young manhood ground to ashes. – from Scottsboro, page 1 -

Ellen Feldman’s novel Scottsboro is based on the trial of the Scottsboro boys where nine black youths were accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama in March of 1931. Eight of the nine were initially found guilty and sentenced to death. The case was later heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1937, and although the lives of the nine were saved, it was almost twenty years before the last defendant was freed from prison. The case has historical significance because for the first time, a mass movement of blacks and whites (led by Communists and radicals) was successfully able to beat the Jim Crow legal system.

Feldman’s fictional retelling of the story introduces the reader to a female journalist named Alice Whittier who gets assigned the story and travels from New York City to Alabama to interview the two women who made the accusation of rape: Ruby Bates and Victoria Price. Both women come from poverty and have been forced to prostitute themselves to survive. Alice feels some empathy towards Ruby, a woman who appears to feel conflicted about the lies she has told. During the actual case, Ruby testified against the boys in the first trial, then later reversed her testimony in the subsequent trials.

The novel unfolds primarily through the voice of Alice, although Feldman also gives Ruby a chance to narrate the story in some chapters. I found Ruby’s voice the more compelling of the two. She is uneducated and highly prejudiced, and yet she seems to have a social conscience. Her extreme poverty and ignorance drive her motivations early in the book. She later becomes a sympathetic character when she tries to do the right thing.

“Ruby Bates would have broken your heart,” I said. “When you see what her life has been like, you can understand why she did what she did. All she’s known is poverty and misery and deprivation.” – From Scottsboro, page 137 -

I expected to really love this novel and instead I found it oddly lacking. Perhaps it was my inability to connect with the primary narrator. Alice reveals little of herself and feels a bit cardboard as a character. At times I felt Feldman was using Alice more as a literary device to tell history, rather than a fully developed character with conflicts of her own. There were times I wished Feldman had chosen to eliminate Alice altogether and instead tell the story from the opposing points of view of Ruby and one or more of the boys.

Because this is an historical case and the outcome is known, I believe Feldman needed to give the reader something surprising or compelling to enliven the plot. Instead, I found the novel lacked adequate tension in order to keep me satisfied and involved in the lives of the characters.

Scottsboro explores the themes of racism, antisemitism, feminism and social justice. Readers who are familiar with the Scottsboro case will not find much new information within Feldman’s novel. The research is thorough and Feldman does an admirable job of laying out the case – but often the novel feels like a piece of non fiction rather than a work of fiction.

Scottsboro was short listed for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction.

• Quality of Writing:
• Characters:
• Plot:

Overall Rating:

FTC Disclosure: I received this book through Library Thing’s Early Review Program.

Laura's Review - Scottsboro

Inside the courtroom, rows of long windows ran along two walls. They were closed against the noise of the square, and the yellow shades were drawn, but midday light filtered through, cooking the air. An American flag and another for the state of Alabama hung limp on either side of the judge's bench. ... Instead of a jury box, two rows of chairs that swiveled and tipped to allow the jurors to make themselves comfortable were bolted to the floor. In front of each row, a brass pipe, also attached to the floor, served as a footrest. Spittoons stood at regular intervals, each surrounded by the familiar corona of hardened tobacco juice and saliva. (p. 208)

As the title implies, this novel is about the Scottsboro boys, a famous US civil rights case from the 1930s. A group of black men -- boys, really -- were accused of raping two white women on a train. The case was fraught with racism and questionable legal processes that denied the boys a fair trial. Appeals continued for several years. Author Ellen Feldman describes these events through Alice Whittier, a fictional news reporter, and Ruby Bates, one of the two white women. She paints a vivid picture of Alabama in the 1930s: the climate, the people, and the extreme racism.

Readers unfamiliar with the case will enjoy Feldman's ability to bring history to life. As historical fiction, however, it doesn't quite pass muster. The best of this genre (or, at least, the ones I've most enjoyed) go beyond the basic facts and delve deep into the historic characters, embellishing where facts are scarce. Scottsboro provides factual information comparable to Wikipedia's article on the Scottsboro boys. But Alice Whittier is one-dimensional; a vehicle to advance the plot and fill the time between trials. Her storyline was like a superfluous wrapper around the heart of the book. I wasn't interested in her romantic relationships, or the skeletons in her family's closet, because I knew them to be complete fiction. This would have been a better book had Feldman used an actual journalist in the story. Instead the result is something not quite history, and not quite historical fiction.



Cross-posted from my blog

Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman (Jill)

Scottsboro
By Ellen Feldman
Completed July 21, 2011

The Scottsboro case was one of many ugly marks in American history. During the 1930's, nine young black males were arrested for raping two white women in Alabama. Despite weak evidence and a wavering testimony by one of the women, each man was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair. The case was an international outrage and was the most tried case in American legal history. And it provided the background for Ellen Feldman's Orange Prize-nominated book, Scottsboro.

In the book, a young journalist, Alice Whittier, became fascinated with the Scottsboro case, and she convinced her editor to assign her to the trial. Alice was a feature writer at heart and didn't waste time trying to get a human angle. She met each of the nine accused and talked to the two alleged rape victims. Alice could tell that one of the women, Ruby Bates, was lying about what happened. She took personal interest in Ruby, trying to convince her to do the right thing. For Ruby, though, doing the right thing was not an easy thing to do.

The book followed the case and its first appeal, when hot shot attorney, Samuel Liebowitz, agreed to defend the men. Feldman painted a picture of racism, anti-Semitism and sexism that permeated the entire trial. It was downright nasty. As I read the testimonies and court exhibits, I hung on to every word and move by the attorneys, judges and spectators. It was court drama at its best.

I can't rave about Scottsboro enough. The Southern setting, social lessons and moving drama kept me at the edge of my seat. This is my first book by Feldman - but not my last. I highly recommend Scottsboro to anyone who likes to be riveted and moved by a great story. ( )

Laura's Review - Molly Fox's Birthday

In this quiet, contemplative book, an unnamed narrator spends a day reminiscing about her long-time friend, Molly Fox.

Molly Fox is an actor, and is generally regarded as one of the finest of her generation. (She insists upon 'actor': If I wrote poems would you call me a poetess?) One of the finest but not, perhaps, one of the best known. ... She likes the fear, the danger even, of the stage, and it is for the theatre that she has done her best work. Although she often appears in contemporary drama her main interest is in the classical repertoire, and her greatest love is Shakespeare. (p. 2)

The narrator is a playwright, using Molly's house as a retreat to work on her latest play while Molly is away in New York and London. During the course of a day -- which happens to be Molly's birthday -- she relives significant moments in their lives, and reflects on their relationships with friends and siblings.

The two met many years before, when Molly was cast in the narrator's play, and supported each other through the highs and lows in their careers and relationships. The narrator's older brother, Tom, is a priest who befriended Molly and may have counseled her through some difficult situations. Molly's brother, Fergus, suffers from undefined psychological difficulties precipitated by traumatic events in his childhood.

As the narrator putters around Molly's house, she recounts several events in her relationship with Molly, painting a clear picture but one that seems just a bit too cut and dry. I suspected there was more to the story than she was letting on, perhaps more than she was willing to admit to herself. I began to pick up on tiny clues to a deeper perspective. When Fergus drops in to visit Molly but finds only the narrator at home, he stays to chat and ultimately provides critical insight to Molly's character and history, casting entirely new light on everything that was revealed before.

This was a very interesting study of memory and point of view, and how personal experience shapes relationships.


Cross-posted from my blog

Review: Molly Fox's Birthday

Title: Molly Fox's Birthday
Author:  Deidre Madden
Published:  2008, Faber and Faber
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
Accolades:  2009 Orange Prize Finalist

It is June 21st and Molly Fox the acclaimed stage actress has lent her home to a close friend while she is in New York City.  Her friend, a play write who is struggling with writing her next play, is distracted and starts thinking about her friendship with Molly as she wanders around Molly's house noting items that are dear to Molly and begins to wonder if she really knows who Molly is and if anyone really understands the heart and motives of another.

I am going to state up front that this is one of the best books that I read this year.  At first appearances this book seems to be a slight and effortless read.  It takes place in one day and moves seamlessly from morning to night as Madden reveals the layers and depths of her characters through their relationship with the play write.  Her writing is creative and thoughtful as we discover who the characters are:

"Fergus was a dangerous man, with his tenderness and his charm and the deep and unending darkness of his mind that was an abyss into which Molly might vanish one day if she wasn't strong enough." (page 149, Molly Fox's Birthday)

and just when the reader and the play write have formed their opinion about a character - in this instance Fergus- we are given another layer and discover that we really didn't know who he was at all.

"Fergus was a man of wisdom and acute moral knowledge.  He had had the courage and insight to inspect his own life more closely than most dare to do, and he had compassion and forgiveness for those who had hurt him." (page 155, Molly Fox's Birthday)

The questions that this book challenges are interesting ones: how well do you really know those who you think are the closest to you? and what happens when they do something so out-of-the-ordinary that they seem like strangers? and will that change you?  This book leaves the reader thinking about the characters and pondering their own realtionships - fabulous.

My Rating: 5 out of 5
Note: I read the U.S. 2010 Picador edition

Laura's Review - Burnt Shadows

There was something she had learnt to recognise after Nagasaki, after Partition: those who could step out from loss, and those who would remain mired in it. (p. 149)

Burnt Shadows is a moving story of war and prejudice spanning more than 50 years and 5 countries. It begins in 1945 Nagasaki, just before the bomb drops. Hiroko Tanaka is 21 years old and engaged to Konrad Weiss, a German living in Japan. The reader has just enough time to appreciate her idyllic world and the promise of love, when suddenly everything changes. Hiroko survived; Konrad did not. The title comes from a description of the bomb's aftermath:

Days -- no, weeks -- after the bomb and everything still smelt of burning. I walked through it -- those strangely angled trees above the melted stone, somehow that's what struck me the most -- and I looked for Konrad's shadow. I found it. Or I found something that I believed was it. On a rock. (p. 78)

Hiroko leaves Japan for India, where Konrad's sister Ilse lives with her British husband James. Hiroko and Ilse become close friends. Hiroko marries Shajjad Ashraf, and in 1947 the Partition forces them to start a new life in Pakistan. They have a son, Raza, and remain friendly with Ilse and her son Harry. Hiroko is a constant presence, struggling throughout her life to come to terms with the impact of the bomb. The focus of the story gradually shifts to Raza, whose mixed ethnicity creates both opportunities and challenges. The final chapters are set in post-9/11 New York City, where a country built through immigration is suddenly seized by fear, and driven to conformity:

But then, things shifted. The island seemed tiny, people's views drunken. How could a place so filled with immigrants take the idea of "patriotism" so seriously? (p. 295)

There were several points where I was afraid the book might develop into one big cliché, but fortunately that never happened. In every era and every setting, Kamila Shamsie maintained a steady drumbeat of messages about war, race, and bigotry. And the ending was far from neat and tidy, clearly showing these issues will remain with us for a long time.




Addendum (27 July 2010): I lowered the rating by half a star. The first half of this book is very strong, but the second half is not as tightly written, and some of the situations are less believable. The overall theme and message had a strong impact on me, leading to an initial 4-star rating, but on further reflection, it didn't quite stand up to other 4-star reads.

My original review can be found here.

Laura's Review - The Invention of Everything Else

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian inventor who came to the United States in the late 1800s. The Invention of Everything Else is a fictional account of his friendship with Louisa, a chambermaid at the Hotel New Yorker, where he lived. Louisa lives with her father Walter, who works as a night watchman at the New York Public Library. One day Louisa's curiosity leads her into Tesla's room (which is to be cleaned only upon request). Tesla discovers her reading through some of his papers. Despite this, they become friends and Louisa learns a great deal about Tesla's life and work.

Meanwhile, Louisa's father spends most of his time with an old friend, Azor, who is working on a time machine. He lives in hope that Azor will be able to reunite him with his dead wife, Freddie. And a young man named Arthur has turned up out of nowhere, claiming to know Louisa from elementary school. They are attracted to one another, although it's not clear why. Arthur also pals around with Azor and Walter, assisting them with the time machine.

The story was rather disjointed. The sections describing Tesla's life and career were most interesting, and Tesla was a likable character. But the fictional characters and their relationships were not believable. Why didn't Tesla kick Louisa out of his hotel room when he discovered her rifling through his stuff? How did Arthur become so strongly connected to Louisa and Walter? Why did Louisa care for him, and why did Walter and Azor include him in their work?

I followed the story with interest, and had no problem suspending disbelief as Walter and Azor worked on the time machine. But overall, it seemed Samantha Hunt was trying to do too much with this book, and in the final analysis it just didn't all come together. This is a somewhat engaging read, but not what I've come to expect from Orange Prize nominees.



My original review can be found here.

Laura's Review - The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey

Jake is in his 60s, and has Alzheimer's. The Wilderness is told from Jake's point of view, allowing the reader to experience the devastating progression of his disease. At first, Jake has trouble finding the right word to describe an object. It's a mild inconvenience, but he can still hold it together in public -- for example, at his retirement party. Slowly, he begins to lose his short-term memory, putting objects away in the wrong places and forgetting what he is about to do, or what he has just done. However, his memories of the distant past are still clear, and he clings to those stories and images as a drowning man would cling to a lifeline.

Jake married a woman named Helen, and together they left London for "the wilderness" of Lincolnshire, Jake's boyhood home. They had two children, and lived near Jake's mother Sara and her second husband, an eccentric man named Rook. Life was not always easy for Jake and Helen: his career fell slightly short of his dreams, and creating a family was not as easy as they'd hoped. Sometimes they were there for each other; at other times they each found solace in someone else. The story of Jake's past is interspersed with moments from the present, in a kind of mishmash intended to reflect the wilderness his brain has become. As Jake's condition deteriorates there are more and more gaps in his short- and long-term memory. There was one scene in which some especially emotional events take place, and at the end it's revealed that this was all a dream, embodying many of Jake's regrets and wishes.

The Wilderness is a sad story, and very well-written, but also quite difficult to read. I found myself taking it slowly, trying to ease the pain. I can't say this was an enjoyable book, but it was definitely worthy of its 2009 Orange Prize nomination.



My original review can be found here.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Jill)

The Poisonwood Bible
By Barbara Kingsolver
Completed January 19, 2010

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver was the story of the Price family who lived in the Congo during the country’s quest for independence. The Prices, led by their patriarch, Nathan, traveled from Georgia to Congo on a Baptist mission. Nathan was hell-bent to convert the “savages” to Christianity, dragging his reluctant wife and four daughters to West Africa to fulfill his desire to be a Good Man.

The story was told by the four female Prices – and their views on Nathan were less than stellar. Only his wife, Orleanna, occasionally offered a different view of the man who was depicted so terribly by others. This brings me to my first wish for The Poisonwood Bible - that Nathan had his own voice. He probably would have remained a dispicable character, but I think it would have added more dimension to him.

My second wish for The Poisonwood Bible was for it to be shorter. This is often my gripe for books greater than 350 pages. For certain, Kingsolver did a great job keeping the story’s momentum to page 350. However, the last 150 pages or so were hard to read. A great tragedy occurred in the Price family, the climax was reached, but the story kept going. I felt the last 150 pages were Kingsolver’s attempt to tell more about Congolese history than the Prices’ story. Having read Kingsolver’s essays, I know she often is disappointed with the United States’ involvement in foreign counties. As I finished those last 150 pages, I couldn’t help but think those pages were written more to advance Kingsolver’s views than good storytelling.

So, a book needing more dimension, less pages and less political agendas would normally not be considered a good book by me, but that is not the case for The Poisonwood Bible. It was a good book, filled with lively characters, an elucidation of Congolese traditions and an exploration on what happens to countries bullied by larger powers. Kingsolver is a gifted writer, and I look forward to reading more of her stories. ( )

Who is going to win the Orange Prize 2009?

I have now read all six books short listed for the Orange Prize 2009. Overall, I wasn't very impressed with the quality of books which made the short list. I think that the judges this year must be fans of literary fiction, particularly books which are reflective and full of wisdom. I prefer great characters and a complex plot, so I didn't get much pleasure from reading the final six.

So who is going to win the Orange Prize this year?

Here are my thoughts on each book's chances.....


The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt



My review

I don't think this has a real chance of winning. Some people enjoyed it, and it does have some interesting literary devices in it, but overall it doesn't have the feel of a prize winning book.


Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden



My review

There is an outside chance that this could win the Orange Prize. Fans of literary fiction really enjoy this book, and lovers of general fiction (like me) do not find anything wrong with it. It is a nice gentle read, and it does have a great ending. If the judges are a mixture of literary fiction and general fiction lovers then they could well compromise on their favourite book by agreeing to choose this as a winner.



Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman



My review

I don't think this has a realistic chance of winning. There is nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't have that magic spark. It is a reasonable read about an important historical case, but I think it did well to get nominated.



Home by Marilynne Robinson


My review

I think that Home has a very real chance of winning the Orange Prize. Fans of literary fiction love this book, they rave about it being their favourite book of the year, and how amazing the poetic prose is. I didn't enjoy it at all, but I've a feeling that the judges do and so it will probably win.


The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

My review

This my favourite by a long way. The writing was so moving and thought provoking. It was in a league above the rest for me and I really hope that it wins, but I'm not that sure it will.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie



My review

Burnt Shadows has an outside chance of winning. The plot is very ambitious, and I don't think it quite worked, but everyone enjoyed it to some extent, and there were quite a few literary devices to please those judges. I wouldn't be overly surprised if this managed to sneak through to win, as not many books try to achieve the things this one does.



The winner is announced on 3rd June, and I really hope that The Wilderness wins, but if I had to place a bet I'd put my money on Home.

Have you read any of the shortlist?

Who do you think will win?

I look forward to hearing your opinions!