Harriet's Corner
The Bi-Monthly Newsletter of What to Read
Issue #12
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Greetings Everyone.....
OK...I know, I am late in getting this newsletter out...but I have a great excuse. I had shoulder replacement surgery....and although I had plenty of time to read, it was difficult for me to type. But now I can type so I can share with you some of the books I read while I was recuperating.
The keystone of my recovery was spending a week in Mexico. We happened to be there during 'Semana Santo"...Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday. So there I was, sitting at the beach during this holy time for Mexicans, reading the most politically incorrect anti-religion book imaginable! You may love "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris or you may hate it, you may agree with him completely or you may think that he is totally nuts...but this book WILL make you think and make you question many assumptions we as a society hold. It can also provoke stunning discussions..... so watch out my book club members, because I think this has to be my next selection. Mr. Harris' thesis is that not only has religion outlived its useful life, but that it has become the main source of the world's discord, terror, war and death. As such, we not only have a right, but a duty to break one of society's taboos: our silence on one another's religious beliefs. We can no longer afford to be respectful and tolerant of other people's religious beliefs just because they are beliefs. Those unquestioned beliefs can spell doom for the world....people use their beliefs in and their personal relationships with Jesus, Allah, Yahweh or whatever one chooses to call the god-like figure, to behave in the most hateful and "unchristian" manner. I do agree with some of the critics who assert that Harris comes across as a zealot.....but in a way, that gives a balance to the religious zealots he disdains. This is a timely book which raises very important questions.
My recovery was definitely hastened by the joy of reading "My Life in France" by Julia Child written with her grand-nephew Alex Prud'Homme.....maybe not hastened, but it sure kept my mind off of my shoulder! What a pleasure to be transported to Paris of 1948 when a "rather loud and unserious Californian" who was 36 years years old, six-foot-two and without one word of French, disembarked from the ship with her rather urbane, sophisticated husband who was 10 years her senior. She describes in detail her first meal in France just hours after landing. It was a simple sole meuniere served with a Pouilly-Fume, then a green salad with baguette and for dessert a fromage blanc and cafe filtre. This meal challenged her Pasadena-bred ideas of food....and began the quest that ended up with the Julia we knew and loved. Mr. Prud'Homme, who finished compiling all of his interviews with Julia just after her death, was able to maintain that very special voice that was Julia Child....conversations filled with her corny exclamations and wry observations. We learn about post-war Paris and Marseille, Julia's experience at Le Cordon Bleu, the pains of producing her first cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", her joys of discovery and pleasures of her life with her erstwhile companion and supporter, husband Paul. This is an outstanding book so very evocative of its specific time and place. As Julia said: "The pleasures of the table, and of life, are infinite---toujours bon appetit!"
While we are on the subject of France, I want to tell you about a book that is the antithesis of the joie de vivre of Julia Child's book. "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky is a fascinating story of Parisians during World War II. As the Germans were getting closer to Paris, the residents of the city began to flee in panic, of course, thinking that their city would be bombed. (Little did they know that their government would surrender at its first opportunity!) Nemirovsky was acutely aware of class distinctions and focuses her novel on five different families across the social and political spectrum of 1940 Paris. She gets to the heart of the matter by stripping away all the accoutrements of daily life and leaves people with their own strength (or weakness) of character. For some it is integrity and generosity...and for others it is a void, an emptiness that was filled with material riches. What makes this book truly unique, besides the talents of Ms. Nemirovsky, is the author's perspective. Ms. Nemirovsky wrote these first two novella of what was to comprise her suite of five, in 1941. Without knowledge of how this would all play out, but with a sense of her own numbered days, she writes as events unfold...not with the more than half century perspective with which we view this history. This gives an urgency to her characters and events and a palpable fear of the unknown. Her breadth of vision is often compared to Tolstoy and 'Suite' would certainly have been an epic had she been able to complete it. Irene Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1943. Her two daughters were hid throughout the war carrying with them a case with their mother's manuscripts. Thinking that these were journals, the daughters never opened the case because of the pain it would cause. Finally convinced to do so, they found these two novellas of her suite. Although the story of the author and manuscript could in itself make a book, this novel transcends that history. This is truly a masterpiece....a masterpiece cut short.
Okay, now we will leave France for awhile and go back to the Middle East....stop the eye rolling and groaning, this book is really different. "The Attack" was written by Yasmina Khadra, who also wrote "The Swallows of Kabul". This is a pseudonym for Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer who wrote under his nom de plume in order to avoid military censors. He currently lives in the South of France (ok...so there still is a French connection). His books are politically themed fiction. In "The Attack" we are in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian mess. The main character, Dr. Amin Jaafari, is a man caught between two worlds. He is a Bedouin Arab who has struggled to be accepted by the Israeli society. He is a renowned surgeon. He lives in an exclusive Te Aviv suburb. His worlds collide one night after spending hours helping victims of a suicide bombing when he finds out that the Israeli police have identified his beautiful, secular Arab wife as the bomber. After pulling himself out of a destructive depression, he sets out to answer the big question: why? Dr. Jaafri heads to the Palestinian Territories to try to find the group who recruited his wife. He couldn't rest until he filled in the blanks between the woman he loved and thought he knew and the fanatical suicide bomber who brought so much misery and destruction in her act. The author is economical with his words...however they are powerful words. This story is an even-handed presentation of the two sides of what appears to be an endless conflict.
In Julia Alvarez's new book "Saving the World", two women living two centuries apart each face "a crisis of the soul". Ms. Alvarz's present day Alma is a writer suffering a serious case of writer's block. Her husband sets off for the Dominican Republic, her country of birth, on an environemntal mission which ends up being a front for an AIDS clinic. Alma does not accompany him because she is obsessing over her book...which she cannot write because she has become fascinated by the story of Dona Isabel Sendales y Gomez a spinster director of a Spanish orphanage in the eighteenth century. Isabel agrees to take twenty of her orphans on a medical expedition with Dr. Francisco Balmis. The boys were to be vaccinated with cowpox and then travel by ship to Central America in an effort to prevent further smallpox outbreaks. Isabel accompanies them worrying whether it was right to subject these boys to the vaccine and the perils of multiple sea voyages. In fact, this eighteenth century part of the story is based on fact. It is really fascinating to learn of the expedition and the risks so many people took to provide the vaccine against smallpox....something of course in our lives we just take for granted. Alma and Isabel's stories run parallel as both women try to save "their" men from defeat and disillusionment. Isabel's story to me was way more compelling...as was the character of Isabel. Alma comes across as a bit of a whiny woman until about half way through the book when she begins to find her inner strength. The final pages leave one with that ever present question of whether the means can be justified by the ends.
So this is really interesting.....I wrote the following review after I read the advanced reading copy of this book.....well, just after the book came out, the author, 19 year old Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarism.....she apparently lifted phrases from some young adult book. Then the publisher recalled all the books which of course made the prices skyrocket on Amazon. Then, we read that she plagiarized from yet another author.....The last I heard, the publisher is having her rewrite the plagiarized passages and then will reprint the book......stay tuned.....this all may change by the time you receive this email. I'm not sure how I feel about recommending a books that may or may not be reprinted...not to even mention the ethical questions involved in plagiarism.....I just found this all very interesting coming on the heels of the James Frey/Oprah explosion.....what has become of the staid publishing business?
“How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life”
So I picked up a reading copy of this book because the cover had beautiful Indian designs and colors. I was expecting another in the long line of fabulous fiction that has been coming out of India during the past few years……Boy, did I ever not get what I had expected! This is a hilarious, coming of age, chick-lit book written by a 17 year old Indian girl who was a senior in high school when she wrote. Opal, our protagonist, has been programmed since age two to do all the right things to get into Harvard. She and her parents were certain that she was a shoo-in until she had her interview. The first question the Dean asked Opal, was what does she do for fun. Fun? That never entered into her parent’s plan. Needless to say, she self-destructed during the interview and the Dean’s parting words were for her to get a life. This book satirizes everyone; from the over-achieving, obsessed Indian parents to the geeks, jocks and perpetually shallow in-crowd in a surburban New Jersey high school. It is a biting look at stereotypes that made me laugh out loud. Definitely a departure from my usual selections…but this one pretty much selected me. This book made yet another cross-country plane trip fly right by!
So the weird part of all of this is that the book is so autobiographical that one would think there would be absolutely no reason to copy someone else......Ms. Viswanathan's parents are Indian doctors who emigrated to the U.S., she does go to Harvard, etc. etc.
Opal Mehta aside, my next newsletter will be some lighter summer reads and a few highly recommended Writers' Conference selections.
Until then....happy reading! |
