The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obrent (2011)

I don’t know what to think of The Tiger’s Wife except the writing is extraordinary, nay uncanny in one so young (Obrent was 23 when she wrote it). I don’t think I’ve read such descriptive narrative. She draws with words; she colors with words. If she writes it, you can see it, simple as that. What did not impress me as much was the story, such as it is…a series of linked folk tales woven into the life of her the narrator’s grandfather. [4/11]

 

The Gate at the Top of the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (2009)

Deeply felt, and rather depressingly so. The author talks of a lot about loss, shimmering, heart-stopping loss–and less about hope. But it pushes through a hard, midwestern winter to finally come to rest in Spring. So I guess there is reason to surmise optimism. Within the protaganist’s story is a sub-tale of an adoption gone awry–that’s where the gate comes in. There are no winners n the adoption story: everyone loses–the birth parent, the adoptive ones, not to mention the little child, Mary Emma. [2/2011]

 

Beneath the Lion’s Gaze Maaza Mengiste (2010)

The setting is Addis Ababa in 1974, the year of the Communist revolution headed by madman Mengistu Haile Mariam. The book reminded me of the people we knew who had lived through the military revolt against the Emperor Haile Selassie and were members of the “Proletariat” who eked out existence in an Addis of 1984. I was riveted for those reasons and because I knew the locales, but Mengiste is a fine writer who makes this novel a page-turner. Long Live International Proletarianism, indeed!![12/10]

 

The White Tiger by Adiga Aravind (2008)

Winner Man Booker same year. The book is an allegory/description/condemnation of democracy in 21st Century India. The poor are still enslaved, the rich, still entitled. The plot revolves around a young man from the country who uses his wits—and murder—to rise to wealth and prominence in Bombay. He is facile and witty, and he paints a penetrating portrait of his country. [12/08]

 

The Whale by Philip Hoare (2010)

Hoare’s paeon to whales is rhapsodic at times, but human. He loves these big ol’ mammals, so big, so mysterious, and, yes, so loveable in their mystery and big-ness. He kinda made me love them too, but I had been primed by Ishmael. So their’s a century and a half of scholarship since Moby Dick. But do we really know that much more? Maybe the whales like it exactly that way. [11/10]

 

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864)

Can a good man make it in this vile world–this world of pettiness and greed and, well, searching for the “right” spouse? The good man here is Prince Mishky, naive, kind, democratic, epileptic (as was Dostoevsky) and loved by all except those who call him an idiot. The novel flowed, then clogged up, then flowed again. I liked total immersion in 19th C Russia.[8/10]

 

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880) July 27, 2011

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
July 27, 2011

Ivan, Dimitri, and Alexander–who’s not to love–each in his own way. I had 796 pages to learn how. This was D’s last novel and I think he wrote it over a decade. I did love, sort of, each of the brothers even though 2 out of 3 acted in unloving ways. His characters could have come out of the 21st Century–at least the stream of consciousness and some of the actions, although extreme, are eminently understandable. A woman wronged, testifies in court against the man who crushed her ego; a man who hated his father says he is guilty of his murder; a young boy from the wrong side of town takes on a pack of his schoolboy tormenters. Admittedly, his characters show the dark side more often than not. [7/11]

 

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)

Ah, Eilis, mo cuisle, you never knew what hit you.  Eilis from Enniscorthy, County Wexford, travels as a young woman to Brooklyn, therein to earn her keep and perhaps an education.   It’s up to us, dear readers, to figure out whether she has succeeded in either intent.  Colm writes tenderly of the human condition–not necessarily Irish, not necessarily female.  He makes a simple tale complex or is it the other way round? [6/10]

 

The Help by Kathryn Stockton (2009)

Tour de force.  Southern white lady writes novel told partly from black maids’ POV in their not-always-perfectly-grammatical voices..  This is the 60’s, and it is damned humiliating on a daily basis.  The blacks are not angels, and the whites are not (all) devils.  There is just not a hint of patronizing in this book.  But then again, I’m not a black maid in the 60’s.  [1/10]

 

Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

Ishamael, you can call me anytime.  MD is a tour de force of erudition packaged with beautiful words, words, words  in  framework of literary devices that a reader (or writer)  could only dream of.  Never mind the overarching play of good against evil, civilization against the primitive,  killing whales for oil, for God’s sake (plus ça change).  The writing is page upon page of careful, mellifluous description: of whale anatomy;  of whaling lore and practice in the 19th Century;  of irony, bawdiness, and sex;  of semi-colons. But it always come back to Melville’s writing, not only in the sense of the universality of his construction, but what author past or present could top “cabalistical contrivance” to describe Ahab’s ancient quadrant as he fixes longitude or the sun or whatever.  I don’t get everything,  but I’m smitten by this author.  No jokes, but many smiles, smirks, grins, and knowing nods along the way to Moby Dick’s revenge scene.  [6/2010]