Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Suddenly, clearly, he could see her, the way he had been able to see her at twenty, not her physical self at twenty, because in every sense she was more beautiful to him now, but he felt that old sensation, the leaping of his heart, the reckless flush of desire. He would find her in the house, cutting fresh paper to line the shelves or lying across their bed on her stomach writing letters to their daughters who were attending university in Paris, and he was breathless. Had she always been like this, had he never known? Had he known and then somehow, carelessly, forgotten? In this country with its dirt roads and yellow rice he discovered he loved her, he was her. Perhaps this would not have been true if he had been the ambassador to Spain. Without these particular circumstances, this specific and horrible place, he might never have realized that the only true love of his life was his wife.

This passage about Ambassador Simon Thibault's discovery of his life in the crisis of his assignment to a third-world country, is really what the entire novel Bel Canto is about. In the circumstances of the crisis set in motion in the novel's early pages, each of the book's central characters finds his or her own version of Thibault's insight. For some it is love of a person, for some it is some undiscovered or undeveloped facet of himself, but for all, it is finding something at the core which makes life rich and meaningful.

The book begins at a party. It is a birthday party thrown for a wealthy Japanese manufacturer that the unnamed South American country's administration hopes to persuade to build a factory in their nation. It is at the home of the country's under-appreciated Vice President, and the magnate is finally persuaded to come only when his favorite soprano is also invited to sing at the party. The assembled guests are mostly the elite of the country, as well as a few Japanese and foreign executives whose business might follow if the factory were to be built. In addition, a local priest with a profound love of opera has managed to receive an invitation through the intervention of a friend. The country's President should be there, but at the last moment cancels to stay home and watch his favorite soap opera. As the soprano finishes her final selection, the lights go out, and the party is invaded by a band of rebels intent on kidnapping the President and taking him hostage. In time they discover their mistake, and the novel unfolds as they improvise a backup plan with a house full of new hostages.

Ann Patchett will make you crave opera tickets, even if you have never wanted them before. She will make you see the myriad beauties in a single day, as you fall in love with her well-crafted characters. You will join with the characters in their dread and their denial. And at the book's close, you may well be breathless and haunted. This book deserved the Orange Prize and the other prizes and nominations it received. For me this was a 4.5. Marvelous.

The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve (1998 Shortlist)

In The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve tells a story of pain, jealousy, and passion. Her characters and their closest relationships--with siblings, with partners--are trapped in isolated and claustrophobic spaces. Shreve tells the story of the murders of two Norwegian immigrant women on Smuttynose Island off the coast of New Hampshire in the late 19th century. She explores the 19th Century events in the context of a contemporary photographer's trip to the island to capture the location for a magazine story about the killings. The photographer travels to the island in a small sailboat with her husband, daughter, brother-in-law and his girlfriend. In the course of her research for the photo-shoot, she happens upon a previously unknown document, a letter from the one woman in the family who survived the killings. Shreve alternates sections of this letter, which describes what led up to the murders and what happened on the night they occurred, with the main structure of the book which moves fluidly between the interactions among the family of the photographer and the details of the history of the murder as it was revealed in the trial. In this way, Shreve allows the painful unfolding of events in the two different eras to play out alongside one another.

The book is well-written, with effective pacing and moving detail, but the writing is not, in the end, remarkable. I enjoyed the book, I'm glad to have read it and would recommend it, but it never took my breath away. If three and a half stars were an option, that would be my true rating.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1997 Shortlist)

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood My rating: 4 of 5 stars

  And that is how we go on. He asks a question, and I say an answer, and he writes it down. In the courtroom, every word that came out of my mouth was as if burnt into the paper they were writing it on, and once I said a thing I knew I could never get the words back; only they were the wrong words, because whatever I said it would be twisted around, even if it was the plain truth in the first place. And it was the same thing with Dr. Bannerling at the Asylum. But now I feel as if everything I say is right. As long as I say something, anything at all, Dr. Jordan smiles and writes it down, and tells me I am doing well. 
While he writes, I feel he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me--drawing on my skin--not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end, but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-awake and watchful. It's like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord.
And inside the peach there's a stone.

In Alias Grace, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1997, Margaret Atwood tackles a historical mystery from a small town in Canada in the mid-19th Century. Did Grace Marks participate in the murder of her employer and his housekeeper/mistress or was she simply an innocent bystander taken hostage by the stable-hand who was convicted and hanged for the crime? The real Grace Marks was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison, and eventually Grace was released. Atwood approaches the events in the tale through the device of a young doctor, Simon Jordan, who comes to interview Grace in order to test methods of dealing with amnesia. The novel alternates between two points of view. Grace reflects on her current situation, as in the quote above, and also provides edited and unedited versions of the answers to questions Dr. Jordan asks her. The other perspective is the young doctor's. He struggles with big and small decisions about his own personal life, while at the same time trying to discern the truth about the crime Grace is accused of committing. Through these two lenses, the novel explores class issues, sex roles, the nature of memory, and the 19th century spirtualism craze, among other themes. The characters are well and sympathetically drawn. Grace is a strong, perceptive and appealing heroine. Her life history has made her both wise and circumspect in her dealings with those around her. Dr. Jordan is younger and more naive, and serves as a fascinating counterpoint to Grace. Atwood begins each section of the novel with selections from literature and from contemporary documents about the historical murder case. The book gets under your skin, and is very hard to put down. In some ways it is the most straightforward and accessible of the Atwood novels I have read, but that doesn't make it a simple book. It's a suspenseful and fascinating read.

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!

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

I have read a lot of Holocaust books in the course of my journey through the 1001 Books list. Each book has moved me, has added to my understanding of the time and place, of the experience of those whose lives were torn asunder by the large and small horrors. This book may be the best, though it comes at the subject more obliquely than many. The language, the psychological depth, the complexity together left me breathless. Here is my Goodreads review of Fugitive Pieces which begins with the book's opening passage:

Time is a blind guide.


Bog boy, I surfaced into the miry streets of the drowned city. For over a thousand years, only fish wandered Biskupin's wooden sidewalks. Houses, built to face the sun, were flooded by the silty gloom of the Gasawka River. Gardens grew luxurious in subaqueous silence; lilies, rushes, stinkweed.  


No one is born just once. If you're lucky, you'll emerge again in someone's arms; or unlucky, wake when the long tail of terror brushes the inside of your skull.

Let me begin by saying that whatever I type here, I will not do this book justice. You should read this book. I do not give 5 stars lightly, and this volume, which won the Orange Prize in 1997, had earned 5 stars in my mind by just a chapter or two in. In reading farther, I never felt the urge to revise my assessment. This book eases into your soul and takes up residence.

Let me start simply with what it is about. The book captures the experiences primarily of two men. The first, Jakob Beer, is found as a child hiding buried in mud at an archaeological site after fleeing the Nazis who have killed his parents. Only after he escapes does he realize that he does not know what became of his older sister. The Greek archaeologist who finds him takes him back to Greece, hides him, and then builds a new life with him as his godfather. The second man, Ben, takes up the story at the point of Jakob's death. He is a scholar inspired by Beer's work, and the Canadian child of two concentration camp survivors. The book powerfully chronicles the physical and psychological impact that the Nazis had on individuals and on the territories they occupied, but it does so in gemlike fragments--images, moments, dreams, the reflexive responses of individuals wounded in devastating ways by the horrors inflicted by men on their fellow creatures. Beer is a poet; one gift that the archaeologist gives him is the tradition of using of using language to meet the deepest human experience. As he hides in the house on a Greek hillside, he reads and absorbs the literary traditions of Europe's great ancient cultures. But he is given more. The archaeologist loves him deeply, teaches him to trust and to connect with people, and shares his own love of the earth and its records of truth. Geology is present throughout the book, and in the later sections meteorology is, as well, since Ben's scholarship looks at the impact of meteorology on historic events. And finally, romantic love and both its capacity and failure to transform and transcend the wounds of past experience is gorgeously explored in the lives of both men. The language of this book is remarkable, the themes complex and expertly wrought. There are times it is hard to breathe while reading it. This book deserves to be read and reread, as were many volumes on the shelves of Beer's home in Greece which Ben searches through after Jakob's death, seeking journals to take back to Canada to a mutual friend. It is too beautiful and too powerful to leave behind after a single reading.

Past Reads (Catching Up!)

I'm embarrassed to admit that the only Orange Prize books that I had read prior to joining this project were Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin and Zadie Smith's White Teeth. I also admit that the following is pretty thin, since it has been years since I have read either one, but wanted to get them posted for completeness...

What I remember about The Blind Assassin which I read years ago, is that I loved it despite reading it while I had a raging fever staying in a hostel while trying to attend a group therapy conference in Philly one year. I honestly don't remember at this point even what the book was about, except for a pair of scenes in my head, one involving a country house and one of the dark apartment where a woman meets her blind assassin lover. What I do know is that when read it, it instantly turned me into an Atwood devotee. I thought it was a brilliant and fascinating book. Reading Goodreads reviews of the book makes me feel better about having only a lasting impression rather than a memory for plot. Sounds like the plot itself is book within a book and the story of two sisters (in the house I am picturing) trapped in a society that did not appreciate their potential as women. I remember thinking it absolutely deserved the Booker Prize it won, which was what led me to it in the first place.

White Teeth was one of many amazing books that I listened to during my commute to the college where I taught in suburban Atlanta back in the years between 1996 and 2005. I remember loving this one as well. It was a wild tale of immigrants in England, told with emotion and humor throughout. Again, because it has been years, I haven't got the clearest memory of the book, but remember enjoying every minute of listening to this over-the-top tale!

The Poisonwood Bible

This is a slightly modified version of the review I posted for this book on my own blog: A bunch of people in my Around the World group were all reading The Poisonwood Bible together this week. As anyone who read about me being stuck in Australia already knows, I used this book as a reward for getting through Voss, and really enjoyed my reward. In the time I was reading it, I drove from Philly to Atlanta with a preschooler and a bulldog in tow. Now that I'm here, I'm helping out a friend with severe vertigo and a sheltie on chemo (who eats homemade food that is a little tricky to dish out, never mind make, when the world is spinning), so it's not exactly a great reading week. The preschooler had 5 vaccinations the other day, and is either sick in relation to that or independent of it, but that is probably the only reason I have actually already finished this book. She's sleeping much more than usual.

I loved the book. I read a lot of Kingsolver in the 90s and really enjoyed her work, but hadn't read anything she had written since. This was wonderful to read from page one, with chapters alternating between distinctive voices of 4 daughters and their mom narrating the experience of being dropped into the wilderness of the Belgian Congo of 1960 by a missionary patriarch with survivor guilt from his experience in the military in the South Pacific. You will grieve over what the "first world" has done to Africa and what one man's ego has done to his family as you follow the maturation of the women in this tale. Below is my Goodreads review.

My review: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book and the different voices of the women in this missionary family whose lives are variously transformed by their time in the Belgian Congo. Tragic naivete is replaced by different types and levels of insight in the 5 women. Kingsolver clearly loves the country and its people.

Another Challenge--I must be crazy! Beth's first post

I have just signed on for this challenge in response to a fellow "Around the World in 52 Books" challenge member's blog post today. I'm already doing challenges related to the 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die, the Pulitzers, the Nobel Literature Picks, and my own personal challenge to read my way through the Mann and Mann Booker various winner lists. But then I learned about the Orange Prize. I'd already been checking into what it is, and then I saw Pragya's post. I read a lot (roughly 100 books a year, mostly fiction, mostly literary fiction), and my goals this year are to do 100 books, from at least 52 countries, with at least 50 from the 1001 books lists, and at least 12 from the Pulitzers and Nobel authors. Now my goal will be to do at least one of the Orange Prize books each month (although I'm going to give my self a pass for January and count the very embarrassingly small number of books I've read so far from the list. I've read NONE of the new authors winners or short list books, so I have my work cut out for me.

In the real world I'm a psychologist in private practice (though I spent 10 years in academia and may go back), married at 41 to my college sweetheart and with a very enjoyable and exhausting 4 year old daughter now to show for it.

I'll be back soon to post reviews of the books I have already read. I will also be co-posting these entries on my own blog, which is where I review all those other books I'm gobbling away at, and sometimes make other random posts related to the countries my books or their authors are from.