Category Archives: European
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Regardless of what is actually happening on the page (even brutality, sometimes tragedy), Michael Ondaatje’s writing is something akin to a velvety, soothing dream. In a perfect world, reading (or better yet, listening to … in this case, to the lulling voice of actor Hope Davis) the Sri Lankan-born, Canadian-domiciled Ondaatje would be done in an uninterrupted flow …
Anna, Claire, and Cooper are three siblings unrelated by blood. Their widowed farmer father creates his family, taking in young Cooper at age 4 after his parents are murdered then bringing newly orphaned Claire home from the hospital with his birthdaughter Anna when he loses Anna’s mother in childbirth. Sixteen years later, the father will shatter that same family.
Almost two decades since the fateful storm that tore her family apart, Anna reappears in a remote French village, researching the life and work of late-19th century French poet and novelist Lucien Segura. Anna is living a “quiet and anonymous time” in Segura’s home, content to spend most of her waking hours at Segura’s own kitchen table … until she goes out one day to explore her surroundings and brings home a lover who has an intimate connection to Segura and this manoir home.
Back across the Pond and across the continent, Claire is working in San Francisco for a lawyer, her job having to do with a different kind of research. Most weekends, she travels back to the family farm to see their father in Petaluma; she is the only child who returns home. By chance, out on assignment, Claire meets Cooper who in his adulthood has become a professional gambler; she will once again need to save him.
Time, narrative, histories are all seemingly borderless in Ondaatje’s novel. From the 1970s to 1990s to the decades leading up to World War I, Ondaatje intricately weaves together fragments from two families – separated at the very least by thousands of miles and almost a century, and yet overlapping in so many intimate details of their very existence.
For readers to know so much more than the characters is almost aching knowledge … and still we can never know enough. With prose so beckoning, so addictive, finishing an Ondaatje novel always comes with both satisfaction and want.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2007 Continue reading
The Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland
I’m probably one of the last readers on earth to have managed to avoid this international (posthumous) publishing phenomenon. I might as well confess right now that I never finished the Harry Potter series, either (made it through the first three with gritted teeth, but hey, at least I tried!). The Larsson trilogy, in large part thanks to the narrating prowess of Simon Vance, makes for entertaining (albeit somewhat uneven, often implausible) company on long runs … in fact, Dragon Tattoo got me through the Park City Marathon last month (the first 16 miles were gruelingly uphill!), and I admit I definitely got hooked (lack of oxygen – it’s up at 7,000 feet – might also have been a factor).
The original Swedish title for Dragon Tattoo seems far more fitting: in English translation, it’s Men Who Hate Women. Certainly, the male species isn’t particularly well-portrayed throughout the trilogy – but I’m getting ahead of myself …
Mikael Blomkvist, the journalist publisher of Millennium magazine, has made a mess of his career, finding himself charged with libel against a powerful corporate magnate, Hans-Erik Wennerström. While Blomkvist is waiting to serve his jail term, he’s summoned by a wealthy, aging businessman, Henrik Vanger, to solve a decades-old family mystery: the disappearance of Henrik’s beloved niece Harriet, long presumed dead. Harriet, it turns out, was also once Blomkvist’s babysitter.
Blomkvist is eventually paired with the eponymous ‘girl,’ Lisbeth Salandar, who was originally hired by Vanger Enterprises to do a background check on Blomkvist. Once he gets over his initial grumbling, Blomkvist realizes Salander is an unpredictable amalgam of immeasurable talents. She’s quite the enigma – a loner, socially inept, but brilliant beyond description. She’s been brutalized and victimized, but she’s managed to survive unspeakable horrors. Her tiny size belies her fierce prowess which proves well-matched against Blomkvist’s ego …
In part 2, Fire, which apparently retains its original title in English translation, Salander is missing through most of the book – a definite detriment to the story. The Wennerström affair has left Blomkvist dealing with the annoyances of being a major celebrity. Salander got so annoyed with Blomkvist that she’s taken a year off to travel the world. Back in Stockholm, Blomkvist is at a loss as to what he did to lose Salander, but he’s busy enough working with freelance journalist, Dag Svensson, who presents Millennium with a major sex-trafficking exposé. Svensson’s girlfriend is preparing her doctoral thesis on the same subject from an academic perspective. The two end up brutally murdered, and Salander is named the prime suspect. Blomkvist is convinced otherwise and is determined to prove her innocence.
Fire is the weakest link of the trilogy – overwritten with too many useless subplots and tediously repetitive enough to make you question if the iPod has gotten inexplicably stuck. The Swedish police are arrogant misogynists and/or blundering fools; private detectives and journalists don’t fare much better. Men do little than behave very, very badly. Worst of all, the whodunnit portion is so glaringly obvious by page 131 (in the hardcover edition), you can practically skip to the last chapter and save yourself a few hundred pages.
Which brings us to the conclusion, finally. Originally titled The Air Castle That Was Blown Up, Salander spends over half the book in a hospital bed. But a near-comatose, recovering Salander is better than missing from the page, which makes Nest considerably better than Fire, although still not on par with Dragon. Shot in the head and buried alive by her father and half-brother (dysfunction in this family knows no bounds), Salander is fighting for her life, while Blomkvist is battling her many detractors. This time the Swedish government and its ultra secret division of Swedish Security get flayed.
The final courtroom showdown, with Blomkvist’s sister Annika Giannini making mincemeat of liars, cheaters, murderers, rapists, and pedophiles, is delicious revenge, well peppered with blunt, curse-filled interjections from Salander. But before your reward, you’ll have to suffer through long bouts of tedious treading, including a strangely unnecessary stalking plot involving a pathetic miscreant who blames his desperate situation on being ignored by Millenium‘s editor-in-chief Erika Berger waaaaay back in high school.
All that said, Salander is ultimately worth the wading and wait. Will I miss Salander? Absolutely. She truly is indomitable. In one of the endless articles about Larsson, he recounts his neverending guilt over witnessing at age 15, the gang rape of a young girl whose name happened to be Lisbeth. He didn’t , or couldn’t, help her then. Decades later in his vivid imagination, he does allow her to save her own self, over and over and over again … nail gun and all! Literal justice indeed.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2008-2010 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, .Translation, European
Defiance: Resistance (Book 2) by Carla Jablonski, illustrated by Leland Purvis, color by Hilary Sycamore
The story of the brave Tessier children, begun in last year’s Resistance, continues here with the focus on the middle child, teenager Paul and his courageous tenacity. The year is 1943, and the German occupation of France is an everyday nightmare. “[T]o ensure their continued control, the Germans create a new and vicious police force: the Milice (French Military Police),” staffed with eager French volunteers ready to inform even on their neighbors. They’re also grabbing local citizens and shipping them to Germany for “compulsory labor” to continue the war effort. No one is safe.
In spite of German control, the Tessier children find “new forms of resistance.” Older daughter Sylvie quickly learns that her feminine charms don’t go unnoticed by the young, lonely German soldiers. Youngest child Marie is starting to understand that she can do more than just wait for Papa to come home. Paul continues to put up his anti-German sketches, distribute secret pamphlets, and run errands as necessary. And when the time comes to make a life-threatening decision, Paul doesn’t hesitate to help the Resistance fighters …
Together, these swift-moving graphic volumes of a planned trilogy present an excellent introduction to a lesser known chapter of World War II history. Choosing children to tell the story for children, Carla Jablonski and Leland Purvis strike just the right balance between pressing urgency and impending danger to both entertain and inform. The final installment will definitely be a title to watch for closely.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Tokyo on Foot: Travels in the City’s Most Colorful Neighborhoods by Florent Chavouet
During a term I spent as a grad student in Yokohama, Japan, I wandered every free afternoon through nearby Tokyo with camera in hand. Knowing my time was limited, I even planned out a detailed schedule for which neighborhood (Tokyo is sprawling!) I would go to when. I did eventually mount all those endless pictures into photo albums (that’s all we had back then in the 20th century), although I couldn’t tell you where they are now …
But no matter, because Frenchman Florent Chavouet’s recent graphic memoir is a huge improvement on my anonymous photos … and for those familiar with Tokyo at all, it’s quite the remarkable, humorous, highly colorful walk down memory lane, as well.
Chavouet lands in Tokyo for six months in 2006, accompanying his partner while she completes an international internship. With time on his hands, “I started to draw, with no particular goal in mind. Accompanied by my two most faithful friends, a lady’s bicycle and a folding chair, I went scouring the streets to see what my new surroundings looked like.”
Divided into chapters that highlight a specific Tokyo neighborhood, Chavouet opens each with that neighborhood’s kōban, the local police precinct building. Stations vary in size and staff, but most in unique personality – you really need to see to fully appreciate Chavouet’s fabulously insightful humor. Then comes a hand-drawn map of just the specific neighborhood – “admittedly quite personal in their details” – that serves as a guide to that chapter’s unpredictable illustrations that follow. From what Chavouet saw, did, ate – bugs, festivals, storefronts, a fake French mansion, random drinks and snacks – his illustrations catch perfect little details you’ll never find in any guide book. His myriad of people (especially those kōban dwellers!) caught in the midst of their everyday lives are undoubtedly the book’s highlight.
Chavouet manages to survive on less than ¥900 a day (less than $8 in 2006!) on his creative forays, although he chides himself for not learning nearly enough Japanese. “[A]ll that observing and sketching,” however, did help him “develop his own visual style.” By the time he’s back in his native France, he’s got an award-winning, fascinating book that surely makes for ideal reading for both armchair tourists and peripatetic travelers alike.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2011 (United States) Continue reading
Landing by Emma Donoghue
Had I not been so enthralled with Room, I don’t know if I would have discovered Emma Donoghue‘s many other titles, but I’ve definitely been enjoying reading newly discovered authors’ works backwards.
Take a look at the cover and you can probably guess what Landing is about. Yup, it’s a love story. But with Donoghue at the helm, you have to expect some unconventionality at the very least.
So the hand on the left belongs to Síle (pronounced Sheila) O’Shaughnessy of Dublin, Ireland, and the right to Jude Turner of Ireland, Ontario. Síle may be Irish-born and bred, but with an Indian mother, she’s not quite Irish enough for some people. At 39, she’s spent many years as a worldly flight attendant, staying well-connected via her “gizmo,” enjoying a rather glamorous city life when she’s on the ground. At 25, Jude – also a hybrid mix, of a Canadian father and an English mother – is a technophobic Luddite, runs a small village’s tiny museum, and has never had the need or desire to travel very far.
The two meet on a plane over a dead body (!) … Síle working, Jude hoping to survive her inaugural flight (another !). How much more memorable can love at first sight be? In spite of thousands of miles, die-hard habits, missing mothers, past and present lovers, doubting friends, Síle and Jude slowly work their lives together.
Interwoven with the pitter-patter inducing love story is a mindful look at immigration (“emigration sounded noble and tragic, immigration grubby and grasping”), from peripatetic parents criss-crossing the globe to their stay-at-home progeny facing re-invention and relocation. Falling in love outside your comfort zone means borders change, populations shift, cultures adapt, racism threatens, and strangers can become family.
Just a final thought … perhaps Donoghue writes part of her own immigration story here: Like Síle, Donoghue is Dublin-born, and now lives with her partner and their children in … London, Ontario. Love can land you anywhere …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2007 Continue reading
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
To reduce this rich, complicated, multi-layered story into a few sentences seems almost disrespectful … but try I must to offer a skeletal overview so I can share some of the best stuff …
Hans van den Broek, high-power equities analyst, is an eternal immigrant. Dutch-born and raised, London-employed and domiciled with British wife Rachel and their son Jack, Hans considers the family’s move to Manhattan as “good fortune” … until their brief American adventures unravel with 9/11, and Rachel and Jack too soon return over the Pond.
Alone in New York, Hans spends most of his free time with Chuck Ramkissoon, a charming, scheming Trinidadian transplant with grandiose dreams of creating a cricket empire. Part entrepreneur, part gangster, all poseur, Chuck takes Hans for the ride of this life … until Chuck disappears and re-emerges as a murdered corpse found disintegrating in New York’s Gowanus Canal on page 6. In the almost-300-pages that follow, Hans reconstructs and re-examines their unusual, entertaining, unclear relationship.
So now you get the gist, check out this 2009 PEN/Faulker-winning novel’s title, so cleverly fraught that whole reams could be written about just the single word. The most obvious reference is to Hans’ Dutch roots, that missing ‘s’ an homage to Hans’ own separation from his birth-country. [Author Joseph O'Neill, who is hapa Irish and Turkish, also spent time in the Netherlands, attending boarding school in the Hague.]
Consider Netherland also means ‘lower-land’ and ‘other-land’: Hans and family initially choose fashionable Tribeca in lower Manhattan to call home, until the hellish destruction of 9/11 moves them to the historic Chelsea Hotel; when Hans’ wife and son return to London, Hans is left in a netherland of loneliness and isolation, until he becomes a regular visitor in Chuck’s unique labyrinthine landscape, itself an outlying netherland of cricket fields, seedy buildings, international accents, and questionable business dealings.
As undeniably entertaining as Netherland proves to be, it’s also a sobering look at our 21st-century disconnect: For a brief time, Hans and Chuck convince us of their growing relationship, two souls thinking they recognize a kindred other. And yet, by story’s end, O’Neill will masterfully shatter such illusion, setting the characters adrift again, left searching with just a glimmer of hope of maybe finding and somehow connecting …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2008 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, British, European, South Asian, Turkish
No Biking in the House Without a Helmet by Melissa Fay Greene
You just know that a book’s going to be good if you’ve already guffawed and the type has started to blur (even though you’re trying not to get overly emotional) when you’ve barely even finished the introduction. Welcome to two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene’s latest title, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet.
The premise, so understated, is mind-boggling: “This book is one woman’s musings on the adventures of life with one man and many children.” That “one man” is hubby Don Samuel, who preferred to put the children to bed practicing his closing arguments – as a criminal defense attorney, he spends his days with some of the seedier members of society – over reading the predictable “Berenstain Bears” stories.
As for those “many children,” four are of the “homemade” variety (with birth years ranging from 1981 to 1992), while five more are “foreign-born” and arrived school-aged over the course of another decade, up to the arrival of the last two in 2007. You can do the math: It’s 2011, which means that Greene and Samuel are entering their fourth decade of parenting.
As the first four – Molly, Seth, Lee, and Lily – grew, as children inevitably do, Greene and Samuel, who so loved “the cumbersome richness of life, with children underfoot,” wanted nothing more than for the good times to continue. So, writes Greene, “When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers. We figured out how to stay in the game.”
At 42, Greene made her “first-ever appointment with a psychologist” to help her decide whether to have another child. She concluded, without much input from the shrink who “wanted to talk about every sort of unrelated thing,” that the final answer was no.
Then, when Greene was 45, a drugstore kit confirmed that she was pregnant. But she lost the pregnancy and was “overcome with grief and remorse.”
Eventually, at her hubby’s suggestion, she “typed the word ‘adoption’ [into her computer] … stopped grieving and leaned forward, beguiled.”
Given her journalist’s background, Greene first pitched an article to The New Yorker about medical issues related to adoption; she “did not conceal [her] personal interest in the story.” That research led Greene to Bulgaria in 1999 where she found the Greene/Samuels’ fifth child, originally called Christian: “not the perfect moniker for a nice Jewish boy,” the older kids humorously noted, and then renamed him Jesse. Jesse is ethnically Romany; the Romany are also known as Gypsies because (not unlike the way that native Americans came to be erroneously called “Indians”) the Romany were thought to have originated in Egypt when in fact they emigrated from northwest India a thousand years ago. [... click here for more]
Review: Christian Science Monitor, May 5, 2011
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, African, European, Jewish
Japan As Viewed by 17 Creators produced by Fanfare/Ponent Mon, translated by Shizuka Shimoyama, Elizabeth Tiernan, and Vanessa Champion
Here’s an uncommon venue for an East/West cultural exchange: manga across borders! Under the auspices of the French Institutes and Alliances in Japan, 10 French-speaking “comic creators” and seven Japanese manga artists wrote 16 chapters (two French creators worked together) inspired by their experiences visiting or living in various cities throughout the country.
Not surprisingly, as with Japan‘s companion title, Korea As Viewed by 13 Creators, this collection is uneven, ranging from the nostalgic, bittersweet, gorgeously rendered childhood memory of lost chances in Jiro Taniguchi’s “Summer Sky,” to a strangely insulting conversation between two friends condemning French ex-pats first, then Japanese customs and what they think are Japanese-specific characteristics in Joann Sfar’s “Waterloo’s Tokyo.”
The most standout chapter is not so much for its literary achievement, but contextual timing: Fabrice Neaud’s “The City of Trees” is a travelogue of the artist’s visit to Sendai (!). As he wanders the shopping centers, beaches, temples, and city streets, the immediate reaction is a realization that his detailed drawings are now historical remnants of places past, given the recent destruction of the coastal town by the devastating tsunami in March.
Other noteworthy chapters include Taiyo Matsumoto’s ”Kankichi,” about a young boy ostracized because he wants nothing more than to draw, who eventually saves his village with his artistic prowess, and Étienne Davodeau’s closing “Sapporo Fiction,” in which a Japanese fisherman goes to visit his “twin brother” for their 60th birthday and meets a French comic artist along his journey who uses his pictures in lieu of foreign words to communicate.
Readers might do better just reading single-author works, perhaps those of Jiro Taniguchi or Taiyo Matsumoto, for example. Both manga artists from this collection are highly recommended. That said, for newbies unfamiliar with any comic artists, this collection could certainly be a useful introduction which might lead to the next manga title. The more manga, the merrier always!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2006 (United States) Continue reading
Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators produced by Fanfare/Ponent Mon, translated by Vanessa Champion, Andy Milanesio, Andrés Moon
The idea is fascinating; so obviously simple yet undeniably clever. Six French graphic book artists were sent to Korea to be “completely immersed.” Six Korean manwha artists were also asked to participate. All 12 were given “complete carte blanche” to convey their individual views of Korea. The year was 2006, marking the 120th anniversary of Franco-Korean diplomatic relations.
Alas, the final product proves mixed, but perhaps that isn’t too surprising given the number of artists and the diversity of backgrounds and experiences.
The clear frontrunner is Lee Doo-Ho’s “Solgeo’s Tree,” a masterpiece of near-wordless perspective, both visually and literally: a painter creates a “marvelous painting” of a tree, but after his huge hands cradle a tiny still bird, he destroys his own work with the final pronouncement that “There is nothing more valuable than a life.”
The pine tree also looms tall in Lee Hae-Jae’s “The Pine Tree,” which shows a large, scattered family reuniting to mourn the death of the patriarch, poignantly narrated by a nephew whose memories give history to the family and their changing homeland. Vanyda’s “Oh Pilsung Korea!” is a cultural discovery romp for a pair of young hapa French Korean siblings as they make their first trip to their father’s estranged homeland. Guillaume Bouzard’s “Operation Zidane” comically depicts an over-the-top zany plot involving the French president and tiny pests in a mad dash to win the World Cup at any cost!
Other chapters vary – some are better than okay, some are hardly memorable, too many seem lost in translation (original languages are French, Italian, and Korean all rendered into English, although sometimes more clumsily than not), while a couple border on culturally insensitive at best. That said, the collection will definitely pique your curiosity, and hopefully encourage you to search out full-length works by some of the artists. Any excuse to read more manga and manwha always welcome!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2010 (United States) Continue reading
The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Real Princesses by Shirin Yim Bridges, illustrated by Albert Nguyen
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Artemisia of Caria
Sorghaghtani of Mongolia
Qutlugh Terkan Khatun of Kirman
Isabella of Castile
Nur Jahan of India
Happy birthday to the world’s most famous queen (still!) who turns 85 today, making her son the oldest prince-waiting-to-be-king in British history. Next week, on April 29, Queen E2 will be welcoming another princess into the family when Prince William makes a royal of Kate Middleton.
Let’s hope Princess Kate has some good role models as she figures out her impending future … someone in the royal inner circle might do well to share this refreshing Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Real Princesses with her! In addition to that fabulous title – no fluffy, wait-for-my-Prince-Charming, shrinking pink Disney princesses here! – this historic series covers the lives of six exceptional, independent women. Girl power all the way!
Written by award-winning Shirin Yim Bridges, illustrated by Albert Nguyen using a mixture of photographs, maps, period art reproductions, and original paintings, each of the six titles tells not only the story of a historically important woman-in-charge. but offers a pronunciation guide, a map of where she lived and ruled, as well as contextual information as to what she ate and what she probably wore. Presented in a chatty, contemporary tone to engage today’s younger readers, the series makes these seemingly faraway stories both timely and entertaining.
Move over King Tut and pay homage to Hatshepsut, Egypt’s first woman Pharaoh, who ruled (dressed in Pharoah drag with breasts bared!) for 22 flourishing years. Artemisia defied all gender conventions in ancient Greece and commanded great warships as an admiral. Sorghaghtani was instrumental in uniting and growing the vast empire claimed by her father-in-law, the great Genghis Khan.
Qutlugh Terkan Khatun survived numerous husbands, the last one who left her a Persian kingdom she ruled with renowned wisdom and justice. Isabella (a distant ancestor of our birthday royal … she was Henry VIII’s mother-in-law temporarily while he was married to her daughter Catherine) ruled equally with her King Ferdinand, and not only united Spain but also underwrote that fateful three-ship expedition led by Christopher Columbus. And Nur Jahan (whose niece would be memorialized forever in the Taj Mahal) ruled the Moghul Empire, all the while helping to better the lives of women!
Each book stands alone, but the six together pack a historical girl-power punch. A few minor quibbles: a bibliography or some sort of reference section would have been enriching, photo and art captions would have been appreciated, and some of the reproduced works seem graphically inappropriate for such young readers (eek! two men sawing a prisoner in half from the head down, complete with splattering blood!). And I did wonder why a few of our thinking princesses were so pale: if Artemisia was from what is now southwest Turkey, would she have been so blond and fair-skinned? What about a rather pink Hatshepsut in Egypt many millennia before sunblock? Hmmmm …
If the pictures seems a bit washed out, the writing thankfully is not. Bridges is sure to add the bad and ugly, as needed. Hatshepsut’s post-death mystery, Artemisia’s brutal war tactics, the horrors of Isabella’s Spanish Inquisition, and Nur Jahan’s behind-the-screens political machinations are all included.
Strength and accomplishment certainly came with high prices! Without turning a blind eye, Bridges shows history is filled with inspiring feminist lessons … and not just for princesses, either!
Next up: The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Dastardly Dames forthcoming in Fall 2011! Stay tuned!
Tidbit: Back when my teen daughter was a be-bopping little toddler, her favorite song was “Cinderella” – no, no, no, it’s NOT what you’re expecting. If The Thinking Girls ever needed a soundtrack, they’d do well with this one. I was just recalling how great the lyrics were, and this link landed in my inbox for which I am SOOO gleefully thankful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FHzp9d-l7k .
Readers: Middle Grade
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Biography, Egyptian, European, Indian, Mongolian, Persian, Turkish
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