Lory
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. As articulated by Schlitz, Joan's voice is alternately funny, fierce, and vulnerable, as she bravely – but very naively – makes her way from an oppressive family to employment that has its own risks and challenges. The unusual exploration of clashing minority religions (Joan is Catholic; her employers are Jewish) is sensitively done, and the historical setting is fully and convincingly realized. Many facets of history and culture are seamlessly integrated, from the chapter titles taken from real works of art that Joan might have seen, to the origins of the Baltimore school founded by progressive Jews where Schlitz works today as a librarian. A pleasure from beginning to end.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. his slim collection of three stories by Rosemary Sutcliff takes us to three different historical settings – tribal Wales, Roman Britain, and ancient Greece – with the author's characteristically vivid sense of place and time. In each story, a pair of young people forges bonds of loyalty and friendship that go against custom and circumstance.
I enjoyed all the stories, but the third one, “A Crown of Wild Olive,” was the one that stood out for me. This tale of an Athenian boy and a Spartan boy competing in the Olympic games was subtle and gracefully written, and gave a true sense of what such an experience might have been like. The ending brought the stories to a close in a poignant and thoughtful way.
Throughout, sensitive line drawings throughout by Victor Ambrus complement the text beautifully. This is a small delight for fans of Rosemary Sutcliff and historical fiction, and I'm glad it's been brought back into print.
The publisher, Paul Dry Books, is one that I had not come across before, and I'm intrigued by its eclectic, intelligent list. Heather, Oak, and Olive is the latest entry in the “Nautilus” series of reprints of forgotten classics for young people. Definitely worth a look, if you're interested in discovering treasures from the past that go beyond the everyday bestsellers.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse doesn't quite reach the summit of great nonfiction, but it's still an absorbing story with a factually respectable basis. In 1897, a woman surfaced with the wild claim that her father-in-law, a London merchant, was actually the fifth Duke of Portland, an ultra-rich, ultra-eccentric aristocrat who was leading a double life. This meant that her son was the the heir of the childless duke...and so a frenzied legal battle commenced, to be played out over decades on a very public stage. Corruption, madness, fortune-hunting, identify theft: it's all here, in a plot worthy of a Wilkie Collins novel.
In fact, all the ingredients for a fantastic stranger-than-fiction narrative are present, but I was left just slightly unsatisfied. The large cast of characters (identified and listed as such in the front matter) is hard to keep track of, as many don't have enough personality to be memorable. The device of announcing some startling turn of events but then abandoning it for another narrative thread was also confusing, and some obvious questions were not addressed for too long – where was the evidence of the movements of the duke and his supposed alter ego, for example? I was also a bit skeptical of the scenes that go into certain characters' inner thoughts and experiences without apparent basis in diary or letters, though these are unobtrusive and plausible enough.
Still, I don't want to dissuade you from meeting the Dead Duke and his manifold associates. You'll be immersed in a colorful, and dramatic slice of Victorian and Edwardian life, and learn about an example of media frenzy that rivals any to be found in our own times. (Whole companies were created for the purpose of floating shares to speculate on the outcome of the case, and fortunes made and lost in the process.) You'll be grateful for the author's scrupulous research that turned up important elements overlooked for many years, putting together a puzzle left unsolved by history. And you'll be tantalized by the still-unknown motive that sparked the whole spectacle. As it delves into the mysteries of the human mind and heart, The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse gives a fascinating window into an era that in many ways is not so far from our own.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. I found this novel a fascinating window into a time when the world had been shaken by one war but was not yet foreseeing the next, when social and artistic certainties were being questioned in all sorts of ways. The main characters belong to a Bohemian artistic circle centered around an expatriate English composer living in the Alps, and the first part of the book introduces us to his extremely unconventional menage, including a brood of children by various wives and mistresses. The “nymph” of the title is one of these, Teresa (known as Tessa), a waif type who suffers from a silent passion for another, younger composer, Lewis Dodd, who loves her as well but doesn't yet realize she is his perfect mate (she's only fourteen!).
When her father dies, Tessa's comfortably unkempt and eccentric world is invaded by the forces of conventionality and good breeding in the form of her cousin Florence, who comes to rescue the children and take them away to be properly educated. When she takes Lewis as well, though, the trouble begins. Back in England, the children can't be forced into the mold of proper society, and Lewis starts to feel the prison bars closing in too. A startling denouement left me with the feeling that Kennedy didn't quite know how to finish off the situation she had gotten her characters into. I could have wished for a more complex conclusion to a work that started off in such a promising way.
Just before things unraveled so unsatisfyingly, there were interesting intimations that the struggle between Tessa and Florence reflected a larger, almost mythic battle. Stories have always been woven about how the conflict between the forces of nature and spontaneity, life-giving but formless, and the civilizing, domesticating impulse that is meant to tame and channel those forces in a positive way, but which threatens to harden into a deadening mania for control. The Constant Nymph shows how the tales of nymphs and enraged goddess-wives live on in our own times, as those ancient forces still slumber within us all. How do we deal with them in the modern world? It's an interesting question, but one that Kennedy didn't quite answer.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. After receiving Ilana Garon's book in a giveaway courtesy of the author and River City Reading earlier this year, I flipped through it and then put it back on the shelf. When I finally picked it up again, I raced through it in less than 24 hours. Do yourself a favor and don't wait so long to read this memoir of four years spent in two tough high schools in one of the toughest areas of the country. It will open your eyes to some of the painful realities of our broken educational system, yet it's also a joyful testament to the bond between teacher and student that is one of our most universal human experiences.
Ilana (I can't think of her as “Miss Garon”) writes in a voice that is honest and searching and real. She focuses each chapter on one or two of her students, portraying them with all their endearing and infuriating qualities intact. Her love for them is powerful but unsentimental, and she doesn't paint herself as their savior. As she makes clear, the lessons of teaching go both ways. There are big problems in her school and its neighborhood – drugs, gangs, teen pregnancy – and her achievements may seem tiny in comparison. But even small victories, for both teacher and student, gain significance when the stakes are so high.
Interspersed with these fairly traditional character studies are journal entries that Ilana sent to her friends and family while undergoing some of her most harrowing and frustrating teaching moments. These are presented in email format, complete with subject lines like “Weapons of mass destruction” and “Can't we please get through ninth period without a race riot?” It's an unusual and effective way to bring some immediate, raw experiences into the more consciously crafted and reflective chapters. (I'm including this post in the “Nontraditional Nonfiction” category of Nonfiction November for this reason.) Frequently dealing with violent and explosive situations, they don't necessarily try to impose order or meaning on them, but just tell us “this is what is happening to me right now,” giving a window into the writer's world.
Ilana is modest about her own qualities, but clearly she has a core of strength and enthusiasm that's enabled her to carry on with a task that has felled many lesser mortals. (After taking two years off to do a graduate degree, she returned to teaching and also writes an “Urban Teacher” blog for Education Week.) I hope she'll share more of her experiences with us. I for one would welcome more “teaching lessons” from this talented writer and dedicated teacher.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. With their small size and brightly colored cloth covers, Slightly Foxed Editions resemble jewels in book form, a literary treasure chest. And here is treasure indeed. Each book contains a memoir of a singular individual, revealing many facets of human nature in all its richness and complexity. Most are reprints, revived from the archives of the past for a new generation of discerning readers. While some are attached to well-known names like Rosemary Sutcliff and Graham Greene, many are from authors who have lapsed into obscurity.
In the latter category is Country Boy, a moving yet supremely unsentimental account of a boy's life within an English farm laborer's family just over a century ago. Deep feeling and clear-eyed observation merge to create a memorable, distinct picture of that vanished world and of the brave, struggling souls who inhabited it. The country life is neither idealized as a pastoral Arcadia, nor demonized as a hotbed of vice and squalor, as certain novelists would have it. Both the beauty and the drawbacks of traditional rural life are described in calm, quiet prose that brings a place and people vividly before us, with few judgments but many telling details.
Most memorable to me were the passages in which the author describes his longing for something different, a way into the wider world revealed to him by the scraps of literature he was able to pick up within his severely limited existence. How he treasured and sought and ultimately used these to grow into something more than the fate he was born to forms a narrative as gripping as that as any novel. For those of us who value reading above nearly all other pleasures and benefits of life, he articulates experiences and feelings that we can share no matter what the circumstances of our birth or upbringing.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. My library, sadly does not have ANY of Sharp's adult books, but I was able to track down a not-too-garbled e-book of The Gipsy in the Parlour through Open Library. The title, cover, and Victorian setting of this one intrigued me, and I was not disappointed. It was another humorous, breezy read that yet had subtle depths of insight and observation.
At the beginning we're introduced to the marvelous Sylvesters, a family of Devonshire farmers and their formidable women who are waiting for a fourth bride to be brought to their home. Also present is our unnamed narrator, a child relation who is there from the city on one of her much-cherished holidays. It's through her perspective that we see the ensuing events, and Sharp skillfully manages to convey her naively mistaken impressions, though the more jaded eye of adulthood gradually comes to a different interpretation.
As the bride Fanny becomes the “gipsy in the parlour,” putting off her marriage to go into a dramatic decline, and the narrator becomes her “little friend” and ally, the parallel phrase of “cuckoo in the nest” comes to mind. How the parasitical Fanny is eventually dislodged makes for a slyly comical story with a host of marvelous characters. I especially adored the quietly heroic Charlotte, oldest of the Sylvester wives, but you'll have a wonderful time with all of them.
I also loved how Sharp artfully renders the Devonshire speech patterns without resorting to impenetrable dialect transcription.
It's a brief novel that left me certainly wanting to read more Margery Sharp. And so I'm off on the hunt again...
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. This small guide to meditation within a Christian context starts out by explaining how meditation can help us recover ourselves when we can hardly breathe due to stress and anxiety: “Meditation is the royal art of remaining free under all the changing conditions of our lives.” Indeed, it has become almost a necessity in today's world, when we feel ourselves standing on the edge of an abyss. But how to begin?
In brief, clearly-written chapters he goes on to describe the conditions necessary for meditation, such as the creation of inner calm and the strengthening of our will. A second section covers some of the forms of meditation: at different times of day, in connection with loved ones who have died, and so on. Finally he gives examples of how the “I am” statements from St. John's gospel can become a subject for meditation. Rather than prescribing a single way of working, he conveys principles that can be applied in our individual lives in a way that is useful and meaningful for us. Each one who starts out on this path has to find his or her own way; it is a lonely road, but one that leads to our true self.
Having had the privilege of meeting and working with Rev. Baan, I am so pleased to find his gentle wisdom captured in this little book, and highly recommend it to all who seek a guide on the path.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Even though I very much enjoyed Nelly's story as a novel in itself, I didn't find it quite worked as a convincing extension of Wuthering Heights, which remains an astonishing singularity in fiction. At the same time, I don't think it would work as a standalone either – readers need to at least be very familiar with the plot of the earlier novel, or they will be baffled by certain references. The drawback of that is that readers who are looking for a repeat of the passion and drama of Wuthering Heights will not find it here, and might be disappointed.
If you can accept it on its own terms, though, you might be absorbed by this version of Nelly's story as I was. The characters touched my heart, the story drew me in, and the language was unobtrusively artful. I'm very much looking forward to whatever Alison Case writes next, and I hope it's going to be a true original this time. She clearly has much to offer.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. An acclaimed historical novelist gives us yet another beautifully told story drawn from history and legend, this one based around the Biblical figure of King David. She grounds and humanizes the myth in vividly imagined portraits of the people who surrounded David, making her central character the prophet Natan. As Natan strives to understand and reconcile his own perceptions and memories of David's conflicted nature, other voices also come to life, most memorably the women whose lives were touched and sometimes broken by David's powerful divine mission. As these fell away in the latter part of the book, I found that it lost focus somewhat, but I was still absorbed in the rich, complex portrayal of a man with a destiny that was sometimes greater than he could bear.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Here's the latest posthumous publication from one of my all time favorite novelists and essayists, the Canadian literary magus Robertson Davies. Davies was a voluminous diarist who kept multiple journals of his private and working life, and to publish them all would be a massive task (an online version is in the works). In this volume the editors have selected and interleaved about half of his output for the years 1959 to 1963. This was an important period of his life that included both a major failure — his play “Love and Libel” flopped in New York — and a significant new step — his appointment as Master of the new Massey College of the University of Toronto, and his involvement in its founding and construction. As opposed to the retrospective view of a memoirist or autobiographer, the diarist doesn't know what is coming next in his story, and this gives it an immediacy that is very engaging. Though I was personally more interested in the theater portions of the diary than in the details of college funding and furnishing, I still read it from cover to cover with great appreciation for this glimpse into the life of one of the most intellectually stimulating writers I know.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Galvanized came to me courtesy of Green Writers Press in Vermont (an exciting new publishing company about which I'll be telling you more very soon). It arrived at the perfect moment, since my intention is to focus on poetry and drama during this month for my Reading New England Challenge, and I was looking to explore some contemporary voices of the region. I was so glad to meet a new-to-me poet through this marvelously rich and rewarding collection, which gathers selections from seven volumes of poetry published between 1991 and 2014, along with thirteen new poems.
Leland Kinsey's Vermont roots go deep, as his Scottish ancestors settled there in the 1800s, and he grew up on the family farm. The hard work of rural living forms the bedrock of his poetry, which often deals with seemingly prosaic actions and events: repairing a chimney, making pickles, pulling weeds. Violence and injury are not uncommon motifs – one poem is descriptively titled “Small Wounds and Minor Ailments”; another begins “The whitewashed walls were smeared with blood / the day the bull rampaged inside the barn” (from “Surviving Bulls”). Kinsey's spare, restrained style embraces and contains these extremes of experience, both the sensational and the mundane, while delivering insights that are visceral, unsentimental, luminous and raw.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. If you're tired of seeing the same books from the same big-name publishers hyped everywhere, and would like to discover some quality under-the-radar fiction that not everyone knows about, I have got something for you. Hidden View by Brett Ann Stanciu is a true hidden gem, a novel with a distinctive and haunting voice that taps into universal, archetypal themes while being grounded in a very particular place.
The voice belongs to Fern, a young woman who became pregnant and married at nineteen, and now finds herself and her young daughter trapped on a failing Vermont hill farm with an increasingly distant and brutal husband. When her husband's brother returns to claim his inheritance, love, fear, desire, and pain mingle explosively.
If this all sounds too depressing and maudlin for words, it isn't – and that's in large part what impressed me so much about Stanciu's writing. Yes, she unflinchingly portrays the difficult realities of Fern's life, but most of all she makes us feel the presence of Fern herself, the strength of her essential being that endures in the face of hardship and finds joy, wisdom, grace in this most unlikely of places. Through the precious, painful gifts of motherhood, by the cultivation of growing things, in her awe and wonder at the natural world, she grows toward the light and we suffer and grow along with her.
Fern is no saint, and she doesn't always make smart choices, but her story is all the more riveting thereby. Stanciu has shown how modern people in an ancient landscape struggle to make their way against the forces of nature and their own demons, trying to find and save what is of value in themselves and the land. It's a story and a message that deserve to find many readers who will love this brave, piercingly honest novel as much as I do.
For fans of stories about nuns, the protagonist is one of the Sisters of Bethany, an order based on the idea that the woman taken in adultery, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha) were the same person. Much detail about convent life, combined with a rather lurid story about Sister Lise's infamous past. As in some of her other books, Godden writes in a distinctive style, which often shifts tenses and moves from one character's point of view to another. Most interesting to me was the way she brought out the story of one character that none of the others were privy to, making sense of and humanizing her – but it was sad that this remained a secret only known to the reader.
I loved the setting in an Indian hotel, and some of the supporting cast were marvelous, but I found the central characters (a very young woman and her abusive husband) extremely annoying and their story too melodramatic. Not one of my favorites of Godden's novels.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Though written in French, Déon's The Great and the Good is mostly set in 1950s America – we meet the protagonist as he sails for the East Coast university he'll attend on a Fulbright scholarship. Though not wealthy, his mother has paid for his first-class passage so that he will make connections with “the great and the good,” and so he meets the people who will haunt him for the rest of his life. A drunken professor, a haughty aspiring actress, and a South American con artist and his beautiful sister become the true instruments of his education in the sorrows and sufferings of the heart.
With glimpses of Cold War government machinations, the Bohemian squalor of Greenwich Village, and the experimental theater scene, Déon gives us a wry and ironic portrait of postwar America from a foreigner's point of view. For me the weakest link was the central love story – the object of our young hero's passion remained curiously null and featureless to me, and his attachment to her felt more like a narrative necessity than an actual relationship.
I did think that The Great and the Good would make a terrific film, along the lines of Brooklyn, and the weakness in characterization could be offset by some well-thought-out visuals. Michel Déon died in December, an icon of the French literary scene with more than 50 books to his credit, only one of which had been translated before Gallic took him up. Now that he's finally being published in English, let's hope we might see some of his works hit the big time.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. I'm not a fan of the term “vegan,” which sounds like its adherents come from another planet, nor of defining an eating style based solely on what it doesn't include. So Jessica Murnane's positive, joyous approach to “plant-based” eating appealed to me from the start. Eating should be fun and delicious as well as healthy, she maintains, and her recipes provide a very doable path to achieving that. The basics for cooking novices are provided, with simple but well-thought-out recipes for dishes like Red Lentil Soup and Spicy Broccoli Rice, and introductions to some less familiar ingredients like miso, sumac, and tahini.
For those with more experience, there are also some more complex and interesting recipes to try, like Roasted Carrots with Sprouted Lentil Tabbouleh, Creamy Mushroom Lasagna, and a non-dairy version of Saag Paneer. The dessert section looks particularly scrumptious, with some creative combos like Almond Butter and Blueberry Cookies and Honey Peppermint Cups. All the recipes are gluten-free, but nuts are used plentifully.
Along the way, Jessica shares her own journey from subsisting primarily on candy and diet soda (and having some serious health problems) to being a “wellness ambassador” who wants to encourage everyone just to try eating at least one plant-based meal per day. She provides information on the health benefits that may be experienced from taking such a step, and also on such topics as eating plant-based in social situations or in restaurants. You can easily skip these portions, if you just want to cook, or you can sample them at will according to your areas of interest.
Her engaging and nonjudgmental style makes her easy to relate to, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Beautifully produced and photographed, this is a book that goes all out to tempt you to sample the joys of plant-based eating, and I expect it will succeed with many readers.
Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to review this delicious book. See the tour page for more reviews and information, and learn more at the HarperCollins book page.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Closely following The Fellowship, a splendid group biography of the Inklings, comes this new collection, a fine companion volume for those looking for more on CS Lewis and company. A student society founded in 1982 with the aim of grappling with “the rich relationship between Christianity, culture, and the imagination, including literature,” the Oxford CS Lewis Society has had hundreds of talks given under its aegis throughout the years. What a delight it must have been for an Oxford student sympathetic to these themes to be able to belong to this club and participate in its activities.
Much of the material produced for the club has never been published, but in this volume we are privileged to read a pithy but very rich and deep selection, encompassing essays on philosophy, theology, and literature in the first half, and memoirs of the Inklings in general and CS Lewis in particular in the second. Some highlights for me included Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, giving an appreciative reassessment of one of Lewis's less popular novels, That Hideous Strength; Peter Bide's memory of how he married Lewis and Joy Davidman, setting straight the record which has been rather sentimentalized and distorted by fictional treatments; and Owen Barfield himself, who outlived almost all his fellow Inklings, brilliantly analyzing his relationship with Lewis and teasing apart their intertwined opinions.
Each reader, however, will find his or her particular points of interest, whether in studies of the esoteric fiction of Charles Williams, considerations of the relationship of WH Auden to the Inklings, or personal reminiscences of Lewis and his family and friends. Framed by a Foreword and Afterword that put them into the context of the origin and history of the Society, these diverse contributions give a welcome taste of the many ways there are of encountering and understanding Lewis and the Inklings.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Win a copy on my blog (through July 7 2015)! A moving and compelling novel that demonstrates the power of stories to reveal and heal our innermost souls. Highly recommended for fans of fairy-tale fiction.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. I was struck that although the jacket copy emphasizes this as a novel that shows the devastating effects of war on children, the destruction of the family comes about not truly through war (something else could have caused a similar trauma), but through the selfishness and narcissism of the children's mother. Evacuation isn't even necessary for them to be separated, as she shuffles them off to boarding school as fast as possible so she can pursue her own proclivities. Her need of them as ornaments and reinforcements for her own self-image is sharply portrayed, forming a devastating, disturbing portrait of a woman utterly without self-knowledge or caring for how her actions affect those around her.
Members of a privileged class, the children remain somewhat elevated above the worst deprivations of wartime, and certainly far above what children on the continent were suffering. I found them quite unlikeably spoiled at times, as they threw fits about trivial things like having to sleep in a different room than they were used to or having to share a desk with another child in an overcrowded school. But such “poor little rich child” problems were ultimately signs of their deeply insecure, unstable foundation, their lack of real mother-love.
It's a sad, bitter story, one I wish had ended differently – not necessarily in a happier way, but in stronger and less fragmented way. The characters still haunt me even as I'm frustrated by how they dissolve into sketchiness, and I'm glad to have read this book even if I can't wholeheartedly recommend it. It casts light on a side of Streatfeild's writing life of which I would otherwise have remained ignorant, and which brings an interesting dimension to her sometimes one-sided tendencies.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Kassi Underwood, May Cause Love (2017)
At the age of nineteen, Kassi Underwood had an abortion. She was a directionless college student, drinking too much and pursuing a road-to-nowhere relationship with a drug dealer in the absence of her childhood sweetheart from her Kentucky home town. Abortion seemed the only logical, the only compassionate option, yet she could not let go and move on. Her choice continued to haunt her, especially after her ex had a child with another woman. How could she find peace, go through the grief and pain that the world told her she either shouldn't be feeling or was feeling for the wrong reasons? How would she get through to the other side without losing her mind?
One problem was that it was so difficult to find other women who were willing to talk honestly about their abortion experiences, even though according to statistics they should be walking around everywhere. Kassi desperately needed to feel she was not alone, that she was not the only person who had terminated a pregnancy without wanting to either subsume herself in religious shame or toe a feminist party line. But those voices seemed to be silent, including her own.
I was sorry about the abortion, not necessarily because I'd made the wrong choice, but because other voices had been so loud that I hadn't been able to hear my own. Nineteen years of listening to the schizophrenic collective conscience about girls and pregnant people and motherhood and money had filled my head with opinions that did not belong to me.
Why was I here? Because I had quit running. Because you can run from grief and sorrow and responsibility and rush headlong into a new relationship or a new city or stalwart friends who will love you while you run, but if you want happiness, if you want love, if you want to become the figure you see in the distance, the future self calling your name, if you want to live the life you chose, one day you will have to stand still and hold all of it – scorched heart and broken brain, bones and skeletons of the past, the black wave of grief and the lucid thoughts of forgiveness.
Thanks to the publisher and to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to review May Cause Love. For more stops on the tour, click here.
For information from the publisher, HarperCollins, click here.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Ever since Betsy Bird put this long-lost Newbery honor book from 1934 at the top of her list of underrated middle grade books I've been dying to read it. And lo and behold, sometimes dreams do come true! Three years later, it's back in print thanks to the fantastic folks at Paul Dry Books, with an afterword by Betsy herself.
Set in ancient Crete, The Winged Girl of Knossos starts out with a thrilling scene in which our heroine, Inas, goes deep sea diving for sponges – just for the fun of it, not because she needs the work – and the action doesn't let up from there. She also takes a dramatic turn in the bull ring, helps out her friend Princess Ariadne who has inexplicably fallen for one of the boorish Greek captives, and comes to the rescue of her father Daedalus who is causing a stir with his outlandish inventions (including hang-glider-style wings that permit humans to soar with the birds). Danger abounds, but so do moments of beauty, artistry, and lyricism.
Overall, this is a rediscovery that no fan of children's historical fiction, adventure stories for young readers, or Newbery-award books should miss.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. After I read five out of the six books on the New York Times list of “Six Books to Understand Trump's Win,” I thought I might call it quits. The final book seemed to have such a dry and dull angle on the topic, and would probably be full of political-science jargon that I couldn't comprehend. What would it add to my understanding after I'd been through so many different angles already?
Well, I decided to give it a try, largely because it is a very short book (only 124 pages plus notes), and I'm glad I did. Far from being beyond my comprehension, it served as a helpful guide for this political ignoramus, explaining and defining terms and movements in a completely lucid way, while not shying away from the real-life ambiguity and uncertainty that keep politics such a tricky business.
The very term “populism,” for example, can be a slippery one, meaning slightly different things to different people at various times. But in general it can be characterized as a mindset that pits “the people” against an “elite.” This is not the same as socialism (working class vs. capitalist class), but a broader and more murky worldview. Nor is it a conservative movement. In fact, populism can exist on both the right and the left, and as the elites of both ends of the political spectrum have become more calcified, populism has drawn its support from the dissatisfied denizens of both sides. The difference, author John B. Judis argues, is that left-leaning populists simply oppose an elite, as in Bernie Sanders' campaign against the 1%. Right-wing populists add opposition to another “out” group: immigrants, Muslims, Mexicans, etc., as amply demonstrated by Trump's own campaign rhetoric.
Today, with the explosive rise of populism in the United States and Europe, we have an unprecedented situation: a movement that previously fizzled out against the stronger forces of other political parties and ideologies, now has a chance to be in a position of power. What will it do with this opportunity? It's already caused a chaotic challenge to the prevailing “neoliberal” consensus, in which impossible-to-maintain economic structures keep going as if there were no tomorrow. It often seems bitter and mean, especially when campaigning against refugees and immigrants, but it does raise important questions that are not addressed by the upholders of the status quo. I don't know where this journey is going, but I do feel glad to have more of a grasp on some of the underlying causes and trends that are affecting us all right now.
Judis didn't actually think Trump would win, not realizing that his vulgarity would be an asset in the final reckoning, rather than a liability. It would be interesting to read his views about the past year's events, and where he thinks American populism stands now.
For me, though this small book answered many questions, it raised many more. Who are “the people” anyway? And is it good to pit ourselves against an elite that, while it does embody much that is selfish and even evil, also bears the fruits of our cultural heritage: intellectual striving, art, and so on? Do we really want to drag society down to the lowest common denominator? Is there another way, a way of integration rather than opposition? When will we recognize that our enemy is ourselves?
Such questions probably seem naive and idealistic, and may not belong in a political discussion. Yet I can't help feeling that in setting up all these left-and-right, you-and-me, inside-and-outside opposites, we're missing something essential about ourselves: that the human being is not only a duality, but a trinity, and it's in the dynamic middle that our true potential lies.
So, as I come to the end of this particular journey of trying to understand, I have encountered much that is alarming and baffling, but also much that inspires me to keep asking these unanswered questions, to keep trying and searching, keep believing in a future that often seems impossible. Humankind has been through so many changes, and yet change is still hard for us to navigate. What yet-unmanifested reality is trying to speak to us through these phenomena? Each of these books has given me some piece of the puzzle, but the wholeness remains beyond my grasp. Still, I've not yet given up the quest, and am grateful for what I've gained along the way.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. A copy was received for review purposes from the publisher. No other compensation was received, and all opinions expressed are my own.When I was living in a community with adults with developmental disabilities, one of my colleagues told me he had been inspired to take up this work by the writings of Jean Vanier, founder of the international L'Arche movement. I was intrigued, because I had never heard of the man or the movement, and I wanted to learn more.
So I read Becoming Human, as an introduction to Vanier's philosophy. In this brief book, he presents ideas about the human condition, our experience of loneliness and belonging, captivity and freedom, and the difficult but necessary path to forgiveness. Behind every word is woven his experience of living together with the so-called “disabled,” who have been his most radiant teachers of what it means to be human.
This experience is not often explicitly described, and given my interest in this realm specifically, I found that somewhat disappointing. When Vanier talked about how one or another of the residents of L'Arche had been transformed by love, I wanted more details. What were the day-to-day practices, what were the steps of the journey?
But that is not really what the book is about. More a description of general principles than of particular examples (though some powerful ones are given), it's full of gentle, timeless wisdom that deserves to be slowly pondered in relation to one's own life. Thus is the fruit of the spirit developed, in patient dedication to the way of self-knowledge, and Vanier was clearly a humble but very dedicated servant of this impulse.
I still wanted to know more about L'Arche and its founder, so I was delighted when the opportunity came to review a new publication, Jean Vanier: Portrait of a Free Man, fresh off the press from Plough Publishing House. This biographical work by a longtime friend of Vanier's has been translated from the 2014 French edition and updated for the English version. It's about as up-to-the minute as such as book can be, as it concludes with an epilogue written in January, 2019, and Vanier died just a few months later.
The beginning of the story goes back a full century, though, with Vanier's father Georges and his baptism-by-fire in the First World War. His heroism and ensuing life as a diplomat – as the Canadian ambassador to France, among other things – indelibly shaped the life of his young family, including the third child, Jean. A childhood spent in the public eye, moving around with no settled home, with parents strongly committed to moral and civic causes, was an unusual and in many ways not easy upbringing.
There are more surprising twists and turns to the story, which you may discover if you read the book for yourself – finding out how this boy from a privileged background chose to share his life with the poorest of the poor, the ones most excluded and shunned by society: the intellectually disabled. In the process he found wealth unknown to those who pursue merely worldly success; and even more remarkably, was able to share it with many others who joined or merely heard about his community.
His strong Catholic faith, which he shared with his parents, had much to do with it. Vanier was committed to following Christ, and he found that his way led into this form of poverty. But it was not a way of penitence and sorrow, nor of narrow sectarian religion, but a gateway into joy, happiness, and the abundance of love that embraces all faiths. This is what he found when he spontaneously decided to move into a dilapidated house with two disabled men, to create a home together with them rather than to found an institution. This impulse of joy is what continues to mark the L'Arche movement, which has spread so amazingly worldwide from that one small household, to this day.
It's a beautiful story, and I found it moving and inspiring. My only quibble, once more, is that I wanted more specific details. I know from personal experience that it is not easy to create such a community, and to keep it going through the tempests caused by our human failings, however much one may believe that we are all rooted in the spirit of love. How did they manage? What are the practices, not only the principles, that support such a movement? What were Jean's personal trials, suggested but never thoroughly explored?
But again, that's not really what this book is about. As the subtitle tells us, it's a portrait – really just a sketch, as that is all that can be given in less than 150 pages. It's not enough to convey all that I would like to know, but sufficient to give an impression of a remarkable man and his amazing journey through life.
The wisdom I most appreciate as I grow older is not found in the evolving of great thoughts and mind-expanding innovation; it's found in the expression of kindness, of the compassionate heart that brings new life into a deadened world by offering a space where the other person can become him- or herself. This wisdom is in its essence so simple, so basic, that we can easily overlook and dismiss it, as we do the “simple” folk who walk unseen in our midst. But at times there appears a person who becomes its representative in such a way that we can clearly perceive its healing power.
Such a man, as this book convincingly portrays him, was Jean Vanier. Even if we are not among the thousands who were directly affected by his work, who experienced him face-to-face, we can be glad to know that such a person existed, and try to learn from his example.
The temptation to revisit the world of Sherlock Holmes proves irresistible time and time again, and so I picked up this latest pastiche of the great detective's adventures (this author's fourth). While the use of a real-life antisemitic propaganda piece from 1905, along with other incidents and characters from history, was interesting, the way all the pieces were put together with the slightly-off revisioning of Holmes and Watson left me unconvinced. For me, the rendering of Watson's voice was too different from Doyle's, although as this adventure was purportedly from an unpublished diary that could perhaps be attributed to lack of revision and editing. In any case, even the repeated use of phrases like “You know my methods” did not do the trick to make me think I was reading a “real” Sherlock Holmes adventure.
Oddly enough, I found myself thinking this would work better and be more fun as a graphic novel. Some good visuals would take away the necessity for clumsy verbal description, and speed up the pace of the story, which drags at times.