Tag: novel

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

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We start by meeting a group of people dedicated to swimming in a community pool. The habits of these people, told with no emotion, are detailed. The pool rules are detailed and lived by. The people, from all walks of life, have different reasons for being there. All are detailed for us.

A crack is found in the pool, and the reactions of the pool staff, specialists, and swimmers are all detailed. There are things that can be done, they don’t know what the source is, the cracks disappear for a few days, but then they are back. The unknown is making people uneasy, the swimmers start to find other places to go, only a few remain to the very end.  

Throughout, there is Alice – swimming and unperturbed by what is going on. 

The second half of the book focuses on Alice. She is being placed in a memory care ward by her family. The slow decline of Alice – from waiting by the door for her husband to pick her up to not knowing who is visiting is heartbreaking. At home her husband refuses to change the sheets or wash her nightgown, as he misses her.

The story – starting with the swimming pool – is about the decent into dementia. The impact a fissure in the brain, the specialists trying to help, the inexplainable coming and going of symptoms, and the inevitability of the disease. This unique way of bringing the story alive made it all the more moving by needing to make the connections in your own head shows the complexity of the disease.

Well written and thought provoking, I look forward to more from this author.

books, reading

The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis

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Another gem of a story that uses real life as a foundation.

Set within the famed art collecting Frick family, this is a story of differences – between those who inspire art versus those that appreciate it, between those with means and those without – and how they support and sometimes improve each other.

The tale is told from the view of two models, decades apart. First, a muse of the early 20th century known as Angelica. While modeling was considered sordid at that time, Angelica was always accompanied by her mother and believed herself to be a muse. She helped artists bring their vision to life. She began modeling to make sure that she and her mother were able to survive.

Veronica, a model in the 1960s, is also modeling to help her family survive, but times are different. Muses are no longer heard, and models are not valued except as ornaments. When speaking her mind, she is thrown out of the modeling job. 

As you hear each tale, interwoven expertly, we witness the cruel manner women are viewed and judged for their beauty, or lack of it, the lengths people go protect what they feel is important, without learning the whole story, and how cruel love can be at times.

Throughout you learn about the Frick family, its famed art collection and library, as well as the spirit that helped build it, all through a mystery that keeps you guessing.  There are murders, thefts, and intrigues throughout, to keep you guessing who you can trust. There is even a scavenger hunt – leading to a hidden treasure – just as the story is a treasure hunt leading us to the truth. 

books, reading

Hotel Cuba by Aaron Hamburger

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After the Great War in Europe there was continued turmoil, especially in Eastern Europe.  The Tsar fell, the Whites came, then the Reds, the Poles, and more. All that Jews in the shtetls knew was that life was dangerous for them. Getting out, however, was not easy. Isolationist throughout the world were closing the doors, especially to these Jews. When confronted with the choice to wait until something changed or board a boat to Cuba, Pearl and her sister Frieda go to Cuba.

The Jewish diaspora, however, seeks to help others and they were met at the boat and brought home to a Jewish organization that helped feed and house them until they found jobs. With Pearl’s skills as a seamstress, they were able to be placed with a Jewish couple that had a millenary shop.

While they are sisters, Pearl has been raising Frieda since she was responsible for her after their mother died in childbirth. Pearl also took over the tasks of her mother, making the home for the family, cooking for all her father, the cantor, would invite to shabbas. The responsibility for taking care of Frieda continued in Cuba, with Frieda dreaming of her fiancé in Detroit, and Pearl always being realistic about what work needed to get done.

Each sister has a role to play, as in any family. With the stress of trying to make it to America with the doors closing tighter every day, these become exacerbated. Pearl finally agrees to help get the money to pay for Frieda to be smuggled to the US. After this, Pearl is on her own for the first time. She works hard but misses her family. She pays to go to Key West, but is found and sent back. Through the people she meets there and those she meets back in Cuba when she is sent back, she learns to stand strong for herself and make her desires known.

A strong woman in that era is not looked upon nicely. Through her strength of character, she finds what she wants, asks for it, and to her surprise, she earns it.  The person who is most surprised is Pearl.

An interesting alternative to how to get into the US, and there is truth in the desperation of those trying to get out of Europe. While there are some easy guesses to make, I thought it was an enjoyable read.    

book-review, books, Family Drama, Middle Eastern, read around the world, reading

The world of Henna makes a mark

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Henna House / Yemen

Set in 1920’s Yemen, this is a story of a small but distinctive Jewish community in Yemen. There is a law called the Orphan’s Decree – if a Jewish child’s father passes away, even if there are other relatives, the government can take them away and place them in a Muslim home to be converted immediately. This law has stolen many children, and marriage arrangements for children as young as 2 have been made in order to try to prevent this from happening. It is in this world that we are introduced to Adela, the youngest girl in a Jewish family with a father seriously ill.  Adela’s mother, who beats her regularly, delayed the search for a suitable match, but at the age of 6, a high ranking official in the government has made it clear that he wants to take her as a present for his wife.

When Adela father’s condition worsens, the task is undertaken. After three failed engagements, Adela is considered “cursed” as tragedy befell all that agreed. Her father’s long lost brother arrives with his son Asaf in tow. An engagement is arranged. The child Adela begins to allow herself to fall in love with her betrothed. Her adoration of Asaf was mixed with confusion of his hiding his ritual side hair in order to ride horses, something forbidden by law for Jews.  The uncle and Asaf leave abruptly to seek greater fortune, with no goodbyes. 

Another uncle falls from grace and arrives with his family. He was a wealthy merchant that came to folly because of superstition over his wife, a famous Henna artist. It was rumored that she caused a woman to die because of the charms she wrote in the henna art that was drawn before a wedding. This brought the two families together and provided a sister for Adela. They became inseparable. Adela learns the Henna art over years of helping her aunt and cousin, which introduces her to a greater world outside her village. Marriage comes to the girls, and things that drew them together now pull them apart. Jealousy and deceit create pain for the entire family.

The lives of the two cousins represent the choices that Jews of that time were making – do you leave your home village, forsake the heritage you were brought up in and build a new fortune, or do you cling to the old ways while you build a future uniquely your own? Each avenue leads to peril, but some stories should not have ended the way they did.   

Henna is a way to create beauty for someone’s life. It is a celebration. When it is used for other things, then the magic can take on darker meanings. To mark someone with pain is to write your own tragedy. To receive the painful message on your skin may seem temporary, but the marks will remain forever. In order to release herself from the power of the henna, Adela wrote her own story. It is a story of emerging from a life that was existing in the past and arriving in a future that no one ever expected. Leaving the village in Yemen, where running water did not exist, and emerging from the dessert in Palestine at the dawn of a new country in the matter of months was as jarring as the reality that the Hani, her cousin found in Europe. 

The story, while slow to unfold, follows the speed of life in Yemen. The resolution and revelations near the end speed up as Yemen and Adela are thrust into modern times. The language is beautiful, and like a henna this left a mark. Family can be both salvation and destruction. Ultimately, the choices each girl makes leads them to their own futures.

African Experience, book-review, books, Family Drama, read around the world, reading

Baking Cakes and Burying Hoopies

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Baking Cakes in Kigali / Rwanda & When Hoopies go to heaven / Swaziland

Baking Cake in Kigali is in a similar vein as the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Meet Angel. She makes the most wonderful cakes. She has started this business while her husband Pius is a special consulting in Rwanda, rebuild the country after the genocide. They are not from Rwanda, they are Tanzanian. Angel and Pius are raising their five grandchildren. Three are their late son Joseph’s children. He had tested positive, but he was shot in a robbery. The other two are their daughter Vinas’ who died “from blood pressure.”  Pius and Angel are working so hard to provide for this second family, as so many grandparents across the African continent are doing.

Angel, who prides herself on being a professional person, faces the realities of life with grace and humility. The family lives on a compound for the many volunteers that have come to rebuild after the war. She takes people under her wing, and cares for them. Her main concern is to make people happy. We learn through Angel the difficulties that people face everyday. The status of women – the number of men being so scarce – pit them against each other as they look for partners. The unavailability of work leaving no choice but to sell their bodies in order to feed their families. Undercurrents through the country are the knowledge that you may have survived, but you are not sure if the person next to you was part of the massacre, or is somehow related to someone that was. Then there is the ever-present HIV.

This book takes on these difficult topics, such as the HIV crisis that has left so many grandparents raising children and the genocide with skill. While ever present, it is not maudlin or gratuitous. You see though different characters what it is like to be a child of a collaborator, to be the only survivor of a family, and the pain that remains as people try to move on with life.

All of this while you watch Angel go to HIV positive women that are being taught how to sew to keep them from selling themselves on the streets, buying fabric from women that are making their own patterns to survive, and standing in for a mother in jail for collaboration at a wedding. The wedding itself shows how the country is trying to heal – step by step learning to live together in the present with people from all over Africa, and the world, coming together – even the different groups that had been at war in Rwanda.

Through this empathy and openness to learning something new, Angel helps to heal hearts and make differences, both large and small for the whole community. There is hope for the country in what Angel is able to accomplish, which leads you to believe there is hope for the country in real life. Well worth the read.

I actively search for more stories with Angel and found When Hoopies Go to Heaven. The family has left Rwanda and moved to Swaziland. This installment is told from the point of view of the middle child of Joseph, Benedict.  Benedict is fascinated with all animals. Through his attempts to do the right thing, what he felt Angel or Pius would do, similar connections are made between different groups. While the changed POV was not as compelling as the first book, the same humanity and wonderful writing is found. I will continue to look for more books by Gaile Parkin for the pure delight in reading, and the added bonus of learning about different cultures. 

book-review, literature

By the Book

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Did you ever feel like you have heard a story before – often?  It seems as though there has been a number of “reboots” happening in the storytelling world. 

10 Things I hate About You is based on The Taming of the Shrew;

A Thousand Acres is King Lear;

The Lion King is Hamlet;

The Madwoman Upstairs is Jane Eyre;

The Lost Child is Wuthering Heights;

On Beauty is Howards End;

Bridget Jones’ Diary is Pride and Prejudice;

Clueless is Emma. 

Adding to this list is a retelling of one of one of my favorites – Persuasion.  By the Book, by Julia Sonneborn, as with many retellings, notes the book as a favorite of the protagonist’s (Anne with an E – a nod to another beloved book).  Though many names are similar, Lady Russell became Dr Ellen Russell, others are new to the telling.  As the original – Anne’s father cut her off when she didn’t go to law school, her sister Lauren’s attacks Adam as someone who would never be successful, and Dr Russell pushes that Anne follow her mentor’s footsteps to Yale’s MFA program. All these combined to put pressure on an impressionable young college woman that was not sure how to do anything other than fight for her books, her constant comfort.

With modern twists and turns that are inevitable in a Victorian love story, even if told in the 21st century, there is always comfort in knowing that all will end well.  Especially in the crazy COVID world we live in. 

Well written, a fun read that kept my interest.