A quick note and a question

Remember how the possibility of having an European book bloggers convention was mentioned a while ago? Well, the fabulous Jodie at Book Gazing has taken up the reigns, and she set up a survey to try and find out the time and place that would be most convenient to people. Make sure you fill it out, and if you want to volunteer to help organise things, that would also be very much appreciated.

Also - what are your favourite novellas? This question has nothing to do with the fact that I feel that I haven't been getting any reading done lately (Middlemarch, much as I'm loving it, is partially to blame here) and that things will only get worse as September approaches. Nope. Nothing at all. It's not like I'd try to trick myself into feeling that my reading was productive by reading short books. Never.

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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

It has finally happened! I’ve read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and you can sign me up for the Flavia de Leuce fan club. As most of you know, Alan Bradley’s novel is a mystery set in the 1950’s, and his sleuth is a precocious, delightful and chemistry-loving eleven-year-old named Flavia de Leuce. Flavia lives with her father and her two older sisters, Daphne and Ophelia, at Buckshaw, an old manor where de Leuces have lived for centuries. Flavia’s mother passed away when she was only a baby, while her father has been somewhat withdrawn since his return from WW2. To make matter worse, her two older sisters don’t exactly keep her company, except perhaps in the sense that Flavia devotes much of her time to planning and executing creative and diabolical pranks and thinking up ways to get back to them.

Considering her lonely existence, it’s not surprising that Flavia is much more excited than scared when a dead body is found on the cucumber patch of Buckshaw. Flavia is the one who discovers it, and when she arrives to the patch the red-headed man lying there is still only just alive. She hears his very last word (the Latin word“vale”), and declares the event “by far the most interesting thing to ever have happened” in her life. But the murder investigation isn’t all fun and games. You see, Flavia overheard that man arguing with her father in his study late the night before. The police don’t know this, but she can only imagine what will happen to her father should they find out. The only way she can save him is to make sure the truth is uncovered, and to ensure that the job is well done Flavia has no choice but to do it herself.

And so begins a mystery evolving poison, librarians, old boarding schools, WW2, dead birds, philately, and clever observations galore. My favourite thing about The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was probably how very perfect the tone was. Flavia is a wonderful narrator, and her descriptions of her life at Buckshaw create a delightful Adams Family-esque Gothic atmosphere, and with humour to boot too. Add a good amount of historical detail to the mix, and the result couldn’t have made me happier.

Another great thing about Flavia is the fact that even though she’s precocious, she’s not an unrealistic eleven-year-old. She knows a lot about chemistry and poisons of all kinds, for example (and she is prone to randomly yelling, “Chemistry! Chemistry! How I love it!” – how can you not love her?), but there’s also a lot she doesn’t know. She also very often struggles with her feelings, and her emotional maturity doesn’t seem to be quite on par with her intellectual development – which is not at all uncommon for gifted children. For example, her older sisters manage to make her cry by telling her she’s adopted, a classic trick in the how-to-taunt-your-younger-siblings book. Yet Flavia does fall for it, even though intellectually she knows better. I liked these little details, as they made her a much more believable character than she’d have been without them.

I also quite liked the de Leuce family dynamics – there’s a lot going on under the surface, and a lot that’s only implied because Flavia won’t really acknowledge it. She’s often sarcastic and even flippant about what’s going on with her family, but you can sense that there’s often real distress behind her remarks. Buckshaw is a house of silences: this is true when it comes to Flavia mother’s death, to how she and her sisters really feel about one another, to her father’s experiences in the war, and to Dogger, the gardener, who was prisoner of war in the Far East and who has “moments” ever since his release.

I like that there were plenty of hints of the wounds left behind by the Second World War – The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is not as revealing of post-WW2 concerns as, say, The Franchise Affair, but then again, it’s not actually a book from that period, plus it’s narrated by a child, who regardless of how intelligent she is will necessarily have a limited perspective. Nevertheless, the period detail was more than sufficient to make the historical setting more than merely decorative, which is something I was very pleased about.

Speaking of history, one of the most interesting things about Buckshaw is how the history of the de Luces was so tied up with the mansion. I kind of envied Flavia her knowledge of her family’s history going back centuries. Can you tell I’m someone who only got to know one of her grandparents, and not really as well as all that? If you go back more than two generations, I know nothing whatsoever about my ancestors, which sometimes makes me a little sad. This also makes stories about grandparents or ancient families, in which the characters have that sort of personal connection to the past, really appeal to me. Of course, I do realise how tightly this kind of thing is tied up with class. The de Leuces (or, say, the Wimseys) have been rich for generations, which is a huge part why they’re aware of their history. On the other hand, my own family has only been middle-class and even literate for two or three generations, and so no records exist. But it’s really not the social status or the money or the big house that I wish I had – it’s the sense of living history and the awareness of one’s personal ties to the past. I’d kill to know what the lives of my nineteenth-century female ancestors were like, for example.

Clever though it is, what appealed to me the most about The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie wasn’t really the mystery per se – but I begin to notice that this is often the case with me. I’m an unapologetic fan of genre fiction, but with mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, Gothic novels, fairy tales, and so on, it’s never really the specific genre elements that I love the most. It’s these book’s novel-ness, really. I love them for the same reasons why I love all literature: for the writing, the characters, the themes, the atmosphere, the ideas, the emotional resonance, the insight into other lives and what this can tell me about my own, and so on. Does this make me an unusual reader of genre fiction? Somehow I think not. Mind you, I don’t mean to say that I love these books despite their genre specificities, or that these aren’t important or interesting to talk about. I just mean that what makes a story work for me almost always transcends the genre it belongs to

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie may not be exactly life-changing, but it’s an immensely satisfying novel and an absolutely delight to read – which is just what I was looking for when I picked it up.

PS: I have to say that Flavia’s contagious enthusiasm for chemistry made me want to read a pop science book on the subject. Recommendations, anyone?

Favourite bits:

What intrigued me more than anything was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation—all of it!—was held together by invisible chemical bonds, and I found a strange, inexplicable comfort in knowing that somewhere, even though we couldn’t see it in our own world, there was real stability.

I wished I could hug him, but I couldn’t. For some time now I had been aware that there was something in the de Luce character which discouraged any outward show of affection towards one another; any spoken statement of love. It was something in our blood.
And so we sat, Father and I, primly, like two old women at a parish tea. It was not a perfect way to live one’s life, but it would have to do.

Reviewed at: Amy Reads (Thank you again for the book! You’re the best book elf ever.), Stainless Steel Droppings, What Kate’s Reading, If You Can Read This, Life in the Thumb, Chasing Bawa, Bermudaonion’s Weblog, The Book Affair, Bride of the Book God, Regular Ruminations, A Striped Armchair, Care’s Onlike Bookclub, Find Your Next Book Here, Geraniumcat’s Bookshelf, A Garden Carried in the Pocket, Coffee Stained Pages, Medieval Bookworm, Shelf Love, Necromancy Never Pays, Fyrefly’s Book Blog, Book-a-rama, The Indextrous Reader, Beth Fish Reads, Bird Brain(ed) Blog, Reviews by Lola, Word Lily, Fleur Fisher Reads, Stella Matutina, Rhapsody in Books

(Phew! I have to quit sometime, right? Just let me know if I missed yours.)

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A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass

A Mango-Shaped Space is the story of Mia, a thirteen-year-old girl from a small town in rural Illinois who has synesthesia. This means that for Mia, sounds, numbers and letters all have colours. But she knows better than to tell anyone about this: the first and only time she tried to, when she was in second-grade, she was called a freak by her classmates, and neither her teacher and the school principal nor her parents believed her. However, Mia’s synesthesia distracts her from her school work, and things are getting so difficult she knows she can’t keep her secret for much longer – even if she also knows that to reveal it will permanently change her world.

Ah, expectations. They are tricky, tricky things. I was really hoping I’d love A Mango-Shaped Space: first because the premise sounded so original and interesting, and secondly because both Shanra and Nancy did. But though the book has a lot of potential, ultimately it felt short for me. It saddens me to say this, but I didn’t find it more than average, less complex than I was hoping, slightly disjointed, and ultimately forgettable.

The first thing that disappointed me was the fact that I was expecting it to be a lot more science-y than it really was. I thought there was going to be more information on Mia’s synesthesia, and because the only thing I’d read by Wendy Mass before was her amazing (and very science-y) astronomy short story in Geektastic, I expected to learn some interesting neurological facts. Instead, the focus is more on how Mia experiences her synesthesia than on the facts themselves – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course. But then there are scenes involving acupuncture and the ability to see people’s pheromones in action; scenes which are, well, speculative at best. Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself, but I expected something different and much more solid when it came to the book’s use of science.

Secondly, I had some trouble believing the story sometimes. When Mia finally reveals her synesthesia (of course, she doesn’t know to call it that, but she describes the signs clearly enough), everyone remains sceptical, and nobody seems to have even heard of it before. I can believe this of Mia herself and of her peers – they are, after all, thirteen-year-olds. But when it comes to the adults in the story, it strains credibility that nobody would have the slightest clue what synesthesia is. I know synesthesia is quite rare, but I have the impression that despite its rarity it gets a lot of press, so it’s actually quite a well-known condition. Is this my BA in psychology speaking, though? Do people in general not have this knowledge?

Mia’s mother, who was a high-school science teacher before she got married, has no idea what her daughter is talking about. And neither does the GP Mia is initially taken to, nor the psychotherapist to whom he refers Mia. The psychotherapist says, confusingly, that she’s not a doctor because she’s not a psychologist. I could understand this if the distinction was between “psychiatrist” and “psychologist”, but in this case, I must confess I was a bit puzzled. Either way, she couldn’t possibly completely lack an education, could she? She suggests that Mia is only trying to draw attention to herself because she’s a middle child, and she seems to have no notion whatsoever that synesthesia even exists. It’s not that she’s heard of it but doesn’t believe Mia really has it. No, she seems to have no clue at all, which somehow I couldn’t bring myself to believe.

The condition Mia has is finally only given a name when her parents consult a neurologist from the University of Chicago, and knowing that what she has is not only identifiable but is also shared by others is a huge relief to Mia. I can understand this, but it seems to me that the story went a little too far to try to illustrate this point. On a relate note, A Mango-Shaped Space is set in a small rural community, and there are hints of class tension which are illustrated by the fact that Mia’s maternal grandparents never visit because they feel that their daughter “married down”. However, I felt that Wendy Mass took the supposed lack of knowledge of this small community a little too far. The fact that the characters aren’t city folks doesn’t have to mean they’ll all be ignorant, does it? Perhaps I’m being unfair, but the fact that it felt this way to me was enough to pull me out of the story.

Finally, I felt that A Mango-Shaped Space was trying to be two books at once. This is both a story about Mia’s synesthesia and about… well, something else that I can’t give away. It’s not that the two stories are unrelated, but they didn’t feel fully integrated either, and as a result the book meandered a little bit, as if it were being pulled in two different directions at once.

Having said this, I still found A Mango-Shaped Space quite moving at times. But possibly this is because there’s something that happens in the story that always gets to me. I can’t read about this kind of thing without crying my eyes out, and this book was no exception. Sadly, this makes it hard for me to tell how much emotional power the story actually has, because it could simply be that my vulnerabilities and personal associations got the better of me.

A Mango-Shaped Space is a well-written novel, and I won’t say it doesn’t have its charm. I seem to be very much in the minority when it comes to finding it lacking, so make sure you read some other opinions before making up your mind. Considering the quality of the writing and how much I loved Wendy Mass’ story in Geektastic, I’d still like to try her again someday. Hopefully I’ll be able to get on with her other novels a little better than I did with this one.

Other Opinions:
Libri Touches
Bookfoolery and Babble
Bookshelves of Doom
Books.Lists.Life
Sassymonkey Reads

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The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester

The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words (also published under the title The Professor and the Madman) is a gripping account of how a man who spent most of his life in a Victorian asylum for the criminally insane came to play a fundamental role in the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Simon Winchester tells the story of James Murray, Chief Editor of the OED for most of time it took to complete, and of Dr. W.C. Minor, an American army surgeon who fought in the Civil War but spent most of his life in England at Broadmoor Asylum (interesting bit of trivia: there he befriended Richard Dadd, a fellow inmate and the author of the lovely and unsettling painting “The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke”).

Dr. Minor suffered from what would most likely be diagnosed as schizophrenia today, and he was sent to Broadmoor after he shot and killed a man as a result of one of his paranoid delusions. These delusions would not leave him for the rest of his life – even while at Broadmoor, Minor persistently believed that he was kidnapped every night and forced to perform “lewd acts”, and that someone was trying to poison him and destroy his property. But despite his mental illness, Minor was an intelligent and educated man. Language and literature were among his main passions, and when he saw one of the ads James Murray and his team put out asking for volunteers to provide literary quotations to be included in the dictionary, he was delighted to help. Minor became one of the OED’s main volunteer contributors, and for many years he exchanged letters with Murray without the latter having any idea that he was an inmate at an asylum.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne was a great follow-up to The Secret Life of Words, especially because etymology was such an important part of the OED.I also very much enjoyed the chapters about the history of dictionary-making – and if this sounds like a topic that would be dry to non-language nerds, believe me, Winchester makes it interesting. It was fascinating to read about the evolution from prescriptive lexicography (with early dictionaries being lists of words deemed “worthy” of being included by a few representatives of the intellectual elite) to lexicography as we know it today. An ideal dictionary – and the OED is probably as close to that as it gets – includes all words, and defines them as simply and succinctly as possible. And as I learned in my lexicography class a few years ago, writing definitions is very definitely no easy task.

Another interesting aspect of the book were the sections on Victorian asylums and on nineteenth-century versus contemporary conceptions of madness. The Victorian asylum system was very far from ideal, but for most of his life Minor actually lived rather comfortably (he even had his own library at Broadmoor) and without endangering himself or others – if we leave the episode where he performs a, shall we say, unforgettable act of self-mutilation aside, that is. Of course, Minor’s social and economic privilege was a big part of the reason why he was allowed such a comfortable existence at the asylum. Also, unlike a modern patient, Minor wasn’t medicated, and though this no doubt lessened his quality of life, it was also behind the fervour with which he worked for the OED. If not for his condition, he probably wouldn’t have performed a task so colossal with so much tireless enthusiasm.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne was a very enjoyable read, and it made both my inner language geek and my not-so-inner lover of all things Victorian very very happy. Simon Winchester clearly has a talent for storytelling, and he makes Minor’s story almost as enthralling and suspenseful as a novel. However, there were moments where I couldn’t help but feel extremely annoyed and alienated by his tone, and if I had been in a grumpier sort of mood this might very well have ruined the book for me altogether.

I suppose this is a case of what Jenny recently called disagreeing with people you agree with. See, Simon Winchester really, really loves the Oxford English Dictionary. I understand: I agree that it’s an impressive work, and I’ve actually sat at the library and read through parts of it just for fun. (And I bet some of you have too). But Winchester loves it so much so that he tends to get extremely defensive when confronted with what he perceives as any unfair criticism of its worth – including commentary on the racism, sexism and imperial worldview it reflects. I actually do agree with Winchester that this doesn’t necessarily take away from the overall value of the dictionary, and as a lover of Victorian literature, I’m quite used to loving books that I also very much object to ideologically. Plus I’m not a fan of the idea of historical revisionism (i.e., editing the disagreeable bits out of older works), which I think equals rewriting the past and pretending it never happened – though I do think it’s unfair to pretend that a reference book and a work of fiction are the same when it comes to this. But anyway, I don’t want to do that – I’d much rather acknowledge these things and try to talk about them.

Winchester, however, goes a little further than objecting to revisionism: he’s not only extremely dismissive, but he attempts to deride those who even dare to start conversations about the Victorian worldview contained in the OED – which, as much as Mr Winchester squirms, is in fact very Victorianly sexist, racist, and imperialist. For example, he’ll offhandedly say things like, “modern scholars grumble about what they see as the sexism and racism of the work, its fussily outdated imperial attitude”. Really? They “grumble” about what they “see as”? Really, Mr Winchester?

Or even more tellingly: “There is some occasional carping that the work reflects an elitist, male, British and Victorian tone”. Clearly he’s trying to ridicule anyone who attempts to have conversation about these things. The choice of the verb “to carp” (or “wail”, which he also uses further on) is of course not accidental – it’s meant to paint those he disagrees with as whiny, childish, ridiculous, and not worthy of being taken seriously. His goal here is to take a stab at those annoying “oversensitive” people who are obsessed with “political correctness”; at people like me, pretty much. His carefully chosen verbs are a say of saying, “Oh, shut up. Nobody cares.” He’s more than free to think that these things aren’t worthy of consideration, of course. But I resent the fact that he can barely contain his bile, and that he resorts to ridicule to attempt to silence those he disagrees with.

Most disappoint of all is the fact that he’s doing here is really arguing with a strawman. Those who “carp”, “grumble” and “wail” don’t necessarily advocate historical revisionism or wish to burn the OED in an auto-da-fé. Unfortunately this is an attitude I come across often: it always saddens me when people immediately assume that anyone who tries to discuss the sexism or racism of older works must have censorship or moral righteousness in mind, or must be ignorant of and unwilling to consider their historical context. Personally I like to discuss these things, and I like it because I think there’s a lot to be gained from such conversations, and a lot to be learned about past and present alike. I really don’t mind that Simon Winchester doesn’t discuss this at length in relation to the OED, as an in-depth examination would clearly be beyond the scope of The Surgeon of Crowthorne. But what a pity that the few comments he did make were so venomous and belittling.

I’ll end this by saying again that I did very much enjoy this book, and that I learned plenty of fascinating facts from it. If I’m being repetitive, it’s because I suspect that I have a hard time making my posts as balanced as I mean them to be, especially when they’re about books I enjoyed except for one particular thing. That was the case with The Surgeon of Crowthorne, and if I went on at length about my one objection, it’s only because I think it’s important, and because I wanted to make sure I was explaining myself properly. But my annoyance with Winchester’s tone is certainly not the only thing I took away from this book.

Interesting bits:

Here was an inescapable irony of the Civil War, not known in any conflict between men before or since: the fact that this was a war fought with new and highly effective weapons, machines for the mowing-down of men, but at a time when an era of poor and primitive medicine was just coming to an end. It was fought with the mortar and the musket and the Minié ball, though not with anaesthesia and sulphonamides or penicillin. The common soldier was thus in a poorer position than any time before or after: he could be monstrously ill treated by the new weaponry, and yet only moderately well treated with all the old medicine.

But his [Dr. Trent’s] underlying theme was profoundly simple: it was an essential credo for any future dictionary-maker, he said, to realise that a dictionary was simply ‘an inventory of the language’. It was decidedly not a guide to proper usage. Its assemblers had no business selecting words for inclusion, on the basis of whether they were good or bad. Yet all of the craft’s early practitioners, Samuel Johnson included, had been guilty of doing just that. The lexicographer, Trench pointed out, was ‘an historian… not a critic.’ It was not in the remit of one dictator – ‘or forty,’ he added, with a cheeky nod to Paris – to determine what words should be used, and what should not. A dictionary should be a record of all words that enjoy any recognisable life span in the standard language.

Defining words properly is a fine and peculiar craft. There are rules – a word (to take a noun as an example) must first be defined according to the class of things to which it belongs (mammal, quadruped), and then differentiated from other members of that class (bovine, female). There must be no words in the definition that are more complicated or less likely to be known than the word being defined. The definition must say what something is and not what it is not. If there is a range of meanings of any one word – cow having a broad range of meanings, cower having essentially only one – then they must be stated. And all the words in the definition must be found elsewhere in the dictionary – a reader must never happen upon a word that he cannot discover elsewhere in the same book. Contrive to follow all these rules, and stir into the mix an ever pressing need for concision and elegant – and if the craftsman is true to his task a proper definition will probably result.

Other opinions:
Working Title
Sophisticated Dorkiness
DogEar Diary
Rebecca Reads
What Kate’s Reading
books i done read
An Adventure in Reading
Bibliofreak Blog

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Love by Toni Morrison

The beginning of Toni Morrison’s Love put me in mind of a Gothic novel: decayed old house, check. A slight touch of the supernatural, check. Old family secrets that are gradually revealed, check. Intelligent use of Gothic tropes to tell an unforgettable story, check. “So,” I found myself thinking, “This is what the rest of Mary Cat and Constance’s lives from We Have Always Lived in the Castle were like”. Heed and Christine, known as the Cosey Girls, are two elderly woman who hate each other and live miserably together in a big decayed house they never leave. Not too far off is a boarded up hotel, the once prosperous Cosey Resort. The exact nature of the relationship of these two women with its late owner, Bill Cosey, is only revealed as the story progresses, as are the events that led to the current state of affairs between them.

The story is set in motion by the arrival of Junior, a young woman in dire need of a place to call home. Through a non-linear narrative that uses multiple points of view, Toni Morrison tells a riveting story about lost love, intrigues and manipulation, class, gender and race, the civil rights movement and the history of “coloured businesses”, and sexual double standards. As the details add up, the story becomes increasingly layered and complex, truth changes shape, and what is really at the heart of Love is slowly revealed.

Bill Cosey, we are told early in the novel, was a man universally loved. He was loved because he managed to be reassuringly successful while working within a system that perpetuated injustice. He was known to be generous and not an unkind man, and yet—and yet the truth of what people were willing to forgive him becomes more and more difficult to accept as we learn the truth of the facts. I found myself constantly wondering, how did he get away with it all? Personal charm? The immense benefits (for someone like him) of what people are predisposed to believe when it comes to men and women? Or is it simply that he was a comforting example for those too despondent to be able to face the idea of having to fight segregation, especially after all the other fights in their lives? If Bill Cosey could do good in a cruel and segregated world, they may have thought, perhaps they could too. Of course, sooner or later everyone had to face the real cost of his success.

One of the main themes of Love, and one of the reasons why I connected with it so strongly, is gender, the hypocrisy of sexual double standards, and the social tolerability of sexual violence – be it when it’s perpetuated by teenage boys (who will, as they say, “be boys”), by men in positions of authority at correctional schools, or by those powerful enough to be able to acquire child-brides. Love reminded me a little of Tender Morsels in its questioning of traditional masculinity, of the role violence plays in it, and of the consequences this has for women and men alike – and needless to say, I loved it for it.

There’s a crushing scene in which a character saves a teenage girl who has been tied up and is being gang-raped at a party. This scene, though difficult to read, is a perfect illustration the unflinching honesty with which Love deals with the aforementioned themes. After he rescues her, this boy can barely look at the girl. He was moved to untie her and take her away because for a moment he couldn’t not acknowledge her humanity, but the truth is that he also can’t acknowledge it for too long, because not acknowledging it is part of the very identity he’s trying to adopt. And once the deed is done, he feels nothing but self-loathing for having failed to live up to a certain model of masculinity. As he very well knows, the consequences of this failure will have to be faced – in the form of beatings and the loss of any social status he ever had – before the day is even out.

The love the title of the novel refers to is not exactly what you imagine as you start reading it. The moment when all the pieces of the story fit together and everything becomes crystal clear is incredibly moving: this is a story about two people who were driven apart despite all the things they had in common; who grew to see each other as enemies rather than as victims of similar circumstances; who were stripped bare of the love that once united them. How different their lives could have been if this hadn’t happened. Most moving of all is the story of how their silence began – of what Morrison calls “the birth of sin”. Such a common misunderstanding for girls everywhere, and so absolutely lethal in its consequences.

I apologise for my vagueness, but as you can imagine there’s a lot about Love I don’t want to give away. But make sure you read it – this is a beautifully written, incredibly moving and very powerful novel. Somewhat to my surprise, it’s my favourite Toni Morrison to date.

I read Love along with three lovely book bloggers: Claire at Paperback Reader, Steph at Step & Tony Investigate, and Claire at Kiss a Cloud. Click over to their blogs to read their thoughts on the book.

Favourite passages:

The one time Sandler was invited to one of Cosey’s famous boat parties, he promised himself afterwards that he would never go again. Not just because of the company, although he was uncomfortable being jovial with middle-aged white men, one of whom was holstered; the well-to-do black men also made him feel out of place. The laughter was easy enough. And the three or four women stimulating it were pleasant. It was the talk, its tone, that he wouldn’t take. Talk as fuel to feed the main delusion: the counterfeit world invented on the boat; the real one set aside for a few hours so women could dominate, men could crawl, blacks could insult whites. Until they docked. Then the sheriff would put his badge back on and call the colored physician a boy. Then the women took their shoes off because they had to walk home alone.

Vida, in her tale of wickedness, had not said a word about Bill Cosey. She acted as though Heed had chased and seduced a fifty-two-year-old man, older than her father. That she had chosen to marry him rather than being told to. Vida, like most people, probably resented the child because she stayed married to him, liked it, and took over his business. In their minds she was born a liar, a gold digger unable to wait for her twelfth birthday for pay dirt. They forgave Cosey. Everything. Even to the point of blaming a child for a grown man’s interest in her. What was she supposed to do? Run away’ Where? Was there someplace Cosey or Wilbur Johnson couldn’t reach?

Fruit shook his head, mourning human stupidity and retrograde politics. Yet mourn was all he did. Regardless of her urging, “speaking to”—not to mention “punish” or “expel”—he never got around to. Yes, Fruit thought the Comrade a menace, but he could not tell him so. Yes, he believed the Comrade jeopardised their principled cause, but he could not confront him. The girl’s violation carried no weight against the sturdier violation of male friendship. Fruit could upbraid, expel, beat up a traitor, a coward, or any jive turkey over the slightest offence. But not this one—this assault against a girl of seventeen was not even a hastily added footnote to his list of Unacceptable Behaviour since the raped one did not belong to him. Christine did the racial equation: the rapee is black and the raper white; both are black; both are white. Which combination influenced Fruit’s decision? It would have helped if the other girls’ moans of sympathy for the raped one had not been laced with disturbing questions: What did she do? Why didn’t she…?”

It wasn’t the arousals, not altogether unpleasant, that the girls could not talk about. It was the other thing. The thing that made each believe, without knowing why, that this particular shame was different and could not tolerate speech—not even in the language they had invented for secrets.
Would the dirtiness inside leak?
Now, exhausted, drifting towards a maybe permanent sleep, they don’t speak of the birth of sin. Idagay can’t help them with that.

Other opinions: cardigangirlverity

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The 1930's Mini-Challenge: Final Round-Up

The 1930's Mini-Challenge has been over for about a week now, so it's time for a final link round-up and to announce the winner of the promised giveaway. If you missed the first link round-up, you can click over and get some great recommendations of books from, about, or set in the 1930's.

Because we have to start somewhere, let us start with the latter - with historical fiction set in the 1930's. Susi at The Book Affair read The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, a novel with parallel storylines, one of which is set in rural Ireland in the 1930's. Susi says, "I was utterly impressed by Barry’s style of writing and I found myself sympathetic towards the characters. And yet, a little nagging feeling inside of me keeps telling me that I didn’t love the novel as much as I loved others."

Ana T. at Aneca's World read Hemingway Cutthroat by Michael Atkinson, a fictionalised account of Hemingway's life in Spain in the 1930's. Ana had this to say: "While I found the beginning a bit slow there were still some humorous moments to keep me interested and after the action progresses to the murder investigation I was completely hooked. Not only because of the mystery itself but also because of all the information provided of the situation in Spain during that time." I know that historical fiction using real people divides opinions, but personally I'm intrigued.

Mee at Bookie Mee read Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mocking Bird, and liked it but with some reservations: "It is well written book full of gentle humor and I enjoyed reading it but there were very few things that made me want to pick up the book once I put it down. I wondered if the greatness of the book is mostly for the Americans. It seems to be The American book if you want to know about Southern US in 1930s. Is it great for nostalgic reason for the Americans? Is it as great looking from foreigner’s point of view who has completely different background and history? I wasn’t convinced."

She also read Will Eisner's A Contract with God Trilogy, an omnibus edition of three graphic novels set in 1930's New York, and she recommends it: "I encourage you to read all three of them if you can. Only then it would come full circle. In my mind all the little stories make one big tale of sadness and desperation, but also of hopes and luck. Like life itself.".

Trisha at Eclectic/Eccentric also has a graphic novel review to share - Incognegro by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece:"I went into this graphic novel expecting an education on race relations in the 1930s and what I got was an entertaining mystery which was also powerfully informative and moving."

Still on historical fiction, Shannon at Giraffe Days read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell and found that "what makes this story so beautiful and flow so well, is the prose. Told mostly in present tense, it shifts to past effortlessly, usually without me even noticing."

Finally, Sakura at Chasing Bawa reviewed The Einstein Girl by Philip Sington, a mystery set in 1930's Germany which surpassed her expectations: "The Einstein Girl brings history, science, war and the workings of the human heart together in a quiet, unassuming way which slowly unfolds and becomes a deep, sorrowful study of hope vs. reality."


Moving on to books actually written in the 1930's, Iris at Iris on Books read and enjoyed Noel Streatfeild's classic Ballet Shoes. Iris says, "There is one more thing I kept thinking about while I read this book and that was that I couldn’t help but feel that Streatfeild shows a lot more respect and understanding towards a children’s mind than most of the contemporary authors that I read when I was younger." I completely agree that Streatfeild shows complete respect for her young readers, and I love her for it.

And while we're on children's classics, raidergirl3 at An Adventure in Reading reviewed several Newbery Medal winners from the 1930's, including a biography of Louisa May Alcott, Invincible Louisa: "It seems to be a well researched book, and it is full of facts and people. The Alcotts moved around a lot, and were never very settled. It still reads well, but it feels like a scholarly biography and report about her life."

Stu at Winstondad's Blog read Blaugast by Paul Leppin, a Czech novel from 1938, and thought that it "show[ed] the darker side of the beautiful city of Prague at the eve of world war two" and was "one of the best books i ve read set in the pre war era".

Tea Lady at The Gliterring Burn reviews A Handful Of Dust by Evelyn Waugh and says: "This despair at modern life reminds me of another famous novel from the 30s, Brave New World. There is no mention of WW1, apart from a few sentences about a character being too young to have fought, but there is a feeling of the shock and numbness that often follows catastrophe. People are determined to enjoy themselves and yet have forgotten how."

Birdie at Birdie's Nest was a fan of The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (which I've been dying to get my hands on for ages): "This book is one that revels in its own language and the passage of time. It's beautifully written, by turns lingering and staccato. This is not a book to consume quickly on the beach. Rather, it would be more suitable to a rainy afternoon (or series of afternoons) with a pot of tea and no particular deadline. It is a beautiful book that deals with its difficult topics in a surprisingly candid, but never vulgar, manner."

Shannon at Giraffe Days also read Bowen's novel, and though she struggled with it somewhat, overall she was a fan: "This is a quiet, carefully paced story, one of intimate drama and slowly revealed truth. It’s a successful novel, and you feel taken care of while you read – you’re in the hands of a clever, skilled writer who draws poetic scenes."

Fleur Fisher at Fleur Fisher reads quite liked Sophy Cassmajor, a novella by Margery Sharp, though she wished it had been longer: "It offers both entertainment and food for thought before reaching a bittersweet conclusion. More please!"

Violet at Still Life with Books has this to say about Goodbye to Berlin, a collection of six short stories by Christopher Isherwood: "I felt quite sad to say goodbye to Berlin, and to Christopher Isherwood. I enjoyed his company as we navigated the cobbled streets, and he showed me, with his unerring eye for detail, a richly detailed snapshot of pre-war Berlin."

Carolyn at A Few of My Favourite Books shares a review of a lovely sounding Persephone title with us: Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson: "It is absolutely refreshing to read a book with at least half the characters being genuinely nice, good people (the other half are amusingly and increasingly out of control in meanness) and with a few small gentle romances that are quiet and unsentimental."

She also read Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, and found it both "lovely and amusing".

Bina at If You Can Read This reviews a favourite of mine, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, and gives readers the following advice (which I enthusiastically second): "If you haven´t read Cold Comfort Farm yet, make sure to move it up your tbr pile, it´s such a gem."

Speaking of Stella Gibbons, the delightful Nightingale Wood was a popular choice for this mini-challenge. Shannon at Giraffe Days found that "There’s a lot of detail here, and it’s a different prose style than what is common these days. I could quote lots of passages, there’s some wonderful insightful lines here and yet more wit, but you’d be better off reading the book yourself and getting the proper context.", while Christina at Christina Reads! "...was expecting the humor, but wasn’t expecting the serious and strangely touching passages. The characters all have flaws, most of which are dull and ugly rather than spectacular, so in one sense it’s hard to root for them. Yet even the least sympathetic characters have a little spark that made me pity and love them."

There was also more than one participant to pick up the Persephone bestseller Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. One of them was once again Christina, who found Miss Pettigrew "sweet, charming, and completely captivating from beginning to end.". And to Carolyn at A Few of My Favourite Books, the novel "...has such a sparkling upbeat view of life, it gets a jazzy happy tune running through the blood."

Fleur Fisher read a very intriguing Capuchin Classics title, The Green Child by Herbert Read, but sadly she wasn't a fan. She says: "The Green Child is a novel in three very different acts. And for me, although there was some lovely writing and much food for thought, the book didn’t come together as a whole."

Raidergirl3 at An Adventure in Reading reviews Tangled Webs by L.M. Montgomery, one of her titles for adults: "LM keeps a large cast of characters unique, interacting, and easy to follow. I enjoyed most of the storylines although some were predictable. LM has a few story lines that she follows, but I enjoy her books because of the predictability." I know exactly what she means.

Alex at The Sleepless Reader had a lot of fun with P.G. Wodehouse's Thank You, Jeeves: "...what follows is utter confusion and the most comical and twisted events imaginable. Be ready to LOL. Several times."

Alex's other choice for the mini-challenge was Stamboul Train by Graham Green, which she enjoyed for the atmosphere but fears might be forgettable: "...train trips have this out-of-reality quality that make them the perfect setting for a good story. I’m thinking of course about Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, but also Highsmith’s/Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and even the train scenes in Dr. Jivago and Harry Potter.".

Shannon at Giraffe Days reviewed another popular title, The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson, and enthusiastically declared it her "new favourite book".

And now for an American classic: Shelley at Book Clutter read All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren and was also very enthusiastic about it: "I humbly proclaim All the King's Men a masterpiece."


Because we can't talk about 1930's literature without mentioning The Golden Age of Detective Fiction, here's what our participants had to say about the mystery classics they read: Nat at In Spring it is the Dawn read The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and was a little let down: "Overall I didn’t enjoy the story as much as I’d hoped, but it was still worth reading for the experience. I’m also curious to perhaps try one of Dashiell Hammett’s books now, as Chandler was heavily influenced by Hammett and they are often jointly referred to as the masters of hard-boiled detective fiction."

Christina did read Hammett, specifically The Thin Man, and said, "I don’t want to spoil it, but the last line in the book is brilliant! Overall, I’d recommend this book to people who enjoy noir-type mysteries and dark, understated humor.".

Aarti at Booklust reviewed A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh and was "not really that impressed with this book." But she adds, "However, it is the first in what was a very successful series of mysteries surrounding Inspector Alleyn, so I will give Marsh another try.":

Raidergirl3 read another Mash title, Vintage Murder, and finds that "Marsh pales next to the Christie.". Speaking of Dame Agatha, she had this to say about Murder on the Orient Express: "Christie doesn't write a single extra word - this is tight, has all the clues, and the most excellent locked room case. The train is stuck in the snow, and someone has been murdered. Best mystery ever!"

Shannon tells us about Double Indemnity by James M Cain, a mystery from 1936: "This is a tight, intense crime drama, narrated by Walter with an economy of words and a fast, clipped pace that creates suspense and tension."

And now for another favourite of mine: Birdie at Birdie's Nest was a fan of the wonderful Dorothy L. Sayer's final Harriet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Busman's Honeymoon: "Sayers handles the newlywed lovers with humour and without ever descending into mawkish emotion. As a big time bonus (at least as far as this very nerdy reader is concerned) Sayers constantly refers to and quotes John Donne in the book. This sets my 16th/17th century fangirl heart a-pattering!"

Moving from pure detective fiction to a mystery/Gothic novel crossover, it's time for a Daphne du Maurier fest: Mel U and Jessica at Park Benches & Bookends both read Rebecca. Mel U says, "It entertained me, drew me into its world and made me sorry when it was over and some of the prose was wonderfully done. I enjoyed all of the minor characters and I was never able to second guess her plot developments.. And Jessica tells us, "Aside from a couple of places when I think I had to suspend disbelieve slightly I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was surprised by it in a very good way."

Jessica was also a fan of Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn, and was particularly impressed by its protagonist, Mary: "...what’s even more refreshing is that she never needs ‘rescuing’. Yes she is beaten and dragged about but she uses her own resources to get herself out of the situation, Jem never shows up to ‘save’ her. In this respect she would make a far better role model than a lot of modern heroines."

Finally, Terri B at Tip of the Iceberg read the same novel, and she had the following to say: "I particularly enjoyed the setting and the contrast the author creates between the sunny village of Mary's childhood and the stormy, windswept moors and stark coastline of Jamaica Inn. The decay and lurking evil are palpable."

Our only drama review was by Christina at Christina Reads!, who read Our Town by Thornton Wilder: "It speaks to the heart, even without any grand emotional gestures or life-altering messages. It’s written in prose, but for me it had the effect of poetry. Even if I never read this play again, I think it will stay with me."

We also had one short story review: Mel U at The Reading Life wrote about Dorothy Parker's 1930 "Telephone Call": "Parker was a very big contributor to the New Yorker and was known personally for her acerbic wit and we can see that in this story. I am glad I got to sample her work."

And last but not least, here are a couple of non-fiction reviews: Carolyn at A Few of My Favourite Books highly recommends Jessica Mitford's memoir Hons and Rebels: "Jessica offers a hilarious and enthralling view of her family and early married life. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year and if you’re at all interested in the Mitfords or what Britain was like before WW2, read it, read it!"

As for me, I read Virginia Nicholson's Among the Bohemians, which doesn't focus exclusively on the 1930's but does tell us quite a bit about the decade: "Virginia Nicholson is an intelligent, passionate and insightful writer, and I can only hope she’ll produce many more works of social history. If you’re at all interested in artists’ lives, in the early twentieth-century, in the Bloomsbury Group, or in Interwar England, then this book is for you."

And now for the winner of the aforementioned giveaway: Random.org has spoken, and Violet from Still Life With Books gets to pick a book of her choice from the ones that were reviewed for the mini-challenge. Congratulations, Violet! Just e-mail me your address and your book of choice and I'll have The Book Depository send it your way.

I believe that's everything. Many, many thanks to everyone who participated - I had a great time hosting this mini-challenge, even though as I had predicted my wishlist increased dangerously thanks to all your reviews. I'm thinking of perhaps hosting this again early next year, or maybe going back one decade and have a challenge devoted to the Roaring 20's. What do you think?

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White Teeth by Zadie Smith

White Teeth is a family saga set in (mostly) London and moving back and forth in time between the end of the Second World War and the 1990’s. The story focuses on three families: the Bangladeshi Iqbals, the Anglo-Caribbean Joneses, and the English Chalfens. Samad Iqbal moves to England after the war, and decides to look up the only person he knows in the whole of the British Isles, his old army friend Archie Jones. Achie, after a suicide attempt that takes place many years after Iqbal’s arrival but right as the novel opens, marries Clara Bowden, a young woman of Jamaican descent. Some time later, Samad and his wife Alsana have twins boys, Millat and Magid, who grow up with Archie and Clara’s daughter Irie Jones. How the lives of all three get wrapped up with Joshua Chalfen and his very English, privileged and academic family is probably best discovered in the pages of this book. Suffice to say that these three families are as different as they can be, and yet they’re also all disarmingly human, and have far more in common than one might imagine.

I won’t say more about the plot, because I fear I’d make it sound a lot more confusing and a lot less appealing than it actually is. White Teeth is a wild ride of a book, covering several decades and featuring a large cast of characters, but unlike what sometimes happens in novels with multiple storylines spanning a long period of time, all are equally riveting – and equally hilarious too. I knew White Teeth was notorious for being funny, but I confess that Zadie Smith’s humour surprised me. I read On Beauty a few years ago, which was absolutely lovely but a different sort of book altogether, and judging by the tone of that, I didn’t expect quite as much playfulness and hilarity here. That ought to teach me to quit expecting authors not to be this versatile.

White Teeth is not just funny; it’s also rich, layered, and dead serious even as it makes you burst laughing out loud. Plus it’s full of literary allusions, which are here not for the sake of making the author appear clever, but because Smith is clearly someone who absolutely delights in literature and language. They go from Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie by way of Yeats, E.M. Forster and P.G. Wodehouse, and they add further layers of meaning to what’s already an immensely rewarding novel. White Teeth reminded me of Midnight’s Children at times, and I’m sure this, along with the reference to Rushdie’s fatwa, is no accidence. Smith’s prose also reminded of E.M. Forster in the gentleness and kindness with which she draws her characters, and of Kurt Vonnegut in its tender and good-humoured examination of human folly. Furthermore, Smith is (very much like Vonnegut) an author who proves just how much potential for depth there is in comedy – a fact that sadly is still not universally acknowledged.

White Teeth is, among other things, a novel about multiculturalism – about all the ways in which diversity enriches humanity, as well as about all the potential difficulties it brings about. As I was reading it, I remembered an interview I read with Zadie Smith some time ago (sadly, I can’t recall where) in which she was asked if her decision to write multicultural fiction was a result of her own background. She answered that she hadn’t “decided” to write multicultural fiction – her books simply depicted the world as she knew it, and what seemed strange to her was that so many authors wrote books peopled solely by white characters. Needless to say, they don’t seem to get asked why they have “decided” to write novels that completely lack any sort of diversity.

I’m bringing this up because I thought it was an interesting and intelligent response, and also because it helps explain why the world she creates in White Teeth feels so absolutely natural. In any big city like London, there is so much diversity that you do have to wonder why many novels still don’t reflect this, and why it’s the ones that do that get pointed out. And just to be absolutely clear, my point here isn’t that authors who write nothing but white characters are being deliberately racist because they’re horrible, horrible human beings. What I mean to do, and what Smith’s response does so well, is draw attention to the fact that we still see white as the “default”, and that privilege really does determine how we see the world. Demanding more diversity in fiction is not a matter of “political correctness”; it’s a matter of expecting it to reflect the world accurately, because the world is not exclusively white. If we think about it, the fact that this seems to be the case in so many books, films or TV series is really what’s bizarre.

But back to White Teeth: for all the difficult and painful things it deals with – which include identity loss, racism, the consequences of clueless blind liberalism à la Chalfens, religious fundamentalism, violence, etc. – this is an immensely positive novel. Zadie Smith closely examines the causes of the anger, distrust and sense of misplacement that immigrant communities often experience, and she does so with humour and extraordinary insight. She contextualises all these problems into a wider social pattern that also includes class and social inequality, and she draws attention to the fact that when it comes to second or third-generation immigrants, often much is made of what are, in fact, universal quests for identity or classic acts of teen rebellion. For example, Millat joints KEVIN (the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation – yes, they are aware that they have an acronym problem) because he objects to how westernised and corrupt his own father has become, while Joshua Chalfen joins FATE, a radical animal rights group, to violently protest against his father’s work as a scientist. The obvious parallels between their two stories makes it clear that what we have here are simply two teenage boys rebelling against their families as they try to figure out who they are, rather than a case of Irreconcilable Cultural Differences Between the East and the West.

For a great example of how Smith uses humour to tell painful truths, make sure you read the final of the favourite passages I share at the end of this post. It’s long, I know, but I promise it’s worth it – it manages to be both hilarious and heartbreaking, and to make some excellent points about the relationship between racism and fundamentalism. But despite troubling stories like Mo’s, Millat’s or Joshua’s, Zadie Smith makes it all very much not a matter of “us” versus “them”. In the end, this really is a positive and optimistic novel. She tells a generous and kind story about people who are both very different and very much alike, and who mostly do the best they know how. And she suggests, hopefully and boldly, that we’re all going to be just fine.

Favourite passages:

‘Please. Do me this one, great favour, Jones. If ever you hear anyone, when you are back home – if you, if we, get back to our respective homes – if ever you hear anyone speak of the East,’ and here his voice plummeted a register, and the tone was full and sad, ‘hold your judgement. If you are told, “they are all this” or “they do this” or “their opinions are these”, withhold your judgement until the facts are upon you. Because that land they call “India” goes by a thousand names and is populated by millions, and if you think you have found two men the same amongst that multitude, then you are mistaken. It is merely a trick of the moonlight.’

Oh, there was a certain pleasure. And don’t ever underestimate people, don’t ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own, from delivering bad news, watching bombs fall on televisions, from listening to stifled sobs from the other end of a telephone line. Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt. Alsana sensed all these and more at the other end of her telephone line as the calls flooded in – 28 May 1985 – to inform her of, to offer commiserations for, the latest cyclone.

But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears – dissolution, disappearance. Even the unflappable Alsana Iqbal would regularly wake up in a puddle of her own sweat after a night visited by visions of Millat (generally BB; where B stands for Bengali-ness) marrying someone called Sarah (aa where ‘a’ stands for Aryan), result in a child called Michael (Ba), who in turn marries somebody called Lucy (aa), leaving Alsana with a legacy of unrecognizable great-grandchildren (Aaaaaaa!), their Bengali-ness thoroughly diluted, genotype hidden by phenotype. It is both the most irrational and natural feeling in the world.

The second reason for Mo’s conversion was more personal. Violence. Violence and theft. For eighteen years Mo had owned the most famous halal butchers in North London, so famous that he had been able to buy the next door property and expand into a sweetshop/butchers. And in this period in which he ran the two establishments, he had been a victim of serious physical attacks and robbery, without fail, three times a year. Now, that figure doesn’t include the numerous punches to the head, quick smacks with a crowbar, shifty kicks in the groin or anything else that had failed to draw blood. No: serious violence. Mo had been knifed a total of five times (Ah), lost the tips of tree fingers (Eeeesh), had both legs and arms broken (Oooow), his feet set on fire (jiii), his teeth kicked out (ka-tooof), and an air-gun bullet (ping) embedded on his thankfully fleshy posterior. Boof. And Mo was a big man. A big man with attitude. (…) These various people had various objections to him: he was a Paki (try telling a huge drunk Office Superworld checkout boy that you’re Bangladeshi); he gave half his cornershop up to selling weird Paki meat; he had a quaff; he liked Elvis (‘You like Elvis, then? Do yer? Eh, Paki? Do yer?’); the price of his cigarettes; his distance from home (‘Why don’t you go back to your own country?’ ‘But then how will I serve you cigarettes?’ Boof); or just the look on his face. But they all had one thing in common, these people. They were all white. And this simple fact had done more to politicize Mo over the years than all the party broadcasts, rallies and petitions the world had to offer. It had brought him more securely within the fold of his faith than even a visitation by angel Jabrail could have achieved. (…) He was tired of almost dying. When KEVIN gave Mo a leaflet saying there was a war going on, he thought: no shit. At last someone was speaking his language. Mo had been in the frontline of that war for eighteen years. And KEVIN seemed to understand that it wasn’t enough – his kids doing well, going to a nice school, having tennis lessons, too pale skinned to ever have a hand laid on them in their lives. Good. But not good enough. He wanted a little payback. For himself.

Other opinions:
Book Addiction
Shelf Love (Teresa)
Shelf Love (Jenny)
In Spring It is the Dawn
Bibliofreak Blog

(Have I missed yours?)

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Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Set in the early and in the late 1960’s in Nigeria, Half of a Yellow Sun is the story of how the lives of its three protagonists are permanently changed by the Nigerian-Biafran war. The story is told from the points of view of Ugwu, who at the age of thirteen goes to work as a houseboy for a man named Odenigbo, a university professor who’s also a passionate political activist; of Olanna, Odenigbo’s girlfriend and an educated upper-class young woman who leaves a life of luxury behind to live in the southern university town of Nsukka; and of Richard, a shy Englishman who moves to Africa to become a writer and who falls in love with Olanna’s sarcastic twin sister, Kainene.

Adichie alternates between these three characters’ points of view and moves the narrative back and forward in time, from the years leading up to the war to the time when it’s happening. This structure contributes to making Half of a Yellow Sun an extremely human and personal novel: it’s not the story of the Nigerian-Biafran war, but rather the story of how the lives of three human beings are disrupted by fear, famine, and unimaginable violence. Considering what Adichie has said about the dangers of a single story, I can’t imagine this highly subjective approach to be accidental.

The reason why these multiple points of view work so brilliantly is that these three characters are very different – they come from very different background, and they think, act, and respond to events differently, which only makes the narrative all the more personal, inclusive and human. And in addition to them, there are secondary characters that further contribute to contextualising the themes and ideas Adichie deals with here – nationhood, identity, forced boundaries, fear, class, racism, sexism, colonialism, political power games, personal relationships, betrayal, dehumanisation, and so on. The large cast of characters and the multiple storylines allow her to handle all these several complex themes seamlessly, and they prevent any of the characters from ever becoming either a stereotype or a poster child for a particular cause.

Even though Half of a Yellow Sun is told from a Biafran perspective, I thought Adichie made an honest effort to humanise all sides of the conflict. And by the way, if you have no historical background whatsoever when it comes to this war, rest assured that you’ll have no trouble at all understanding what’s happening. The short of it is that there are three large ethnic groups in Nigeria: the Yoruba, the Igbo, and the Hausa in the north (these only being three of over 250 groups with different languages and traditions, though). The short-lived nation of Biafra was created when, after a series of massacres in the north, the Igbo decided to declare independence and create their own country. The war that followed was a result of Nigeria’s successful efforts to put an end to their independence. Adichie makes all these complex political issues not only easy to follow, but also, once again, extremely personal. It’s hard to remain indifferent when you see the psychological impact of violence on characters you have grown to really care about; when you fear for their safety at the turn of every page. If reading Half of a Yellow Sun was at times an extremely distressing experience, I can hardly imagine living like this, in constant fear for your life and the lives of those you love.

Half of a Yellow Sun is an extraordinarily layered novel, and even if I sit here all day I know I’ll only be able to scratch the surface of everything it deals with. Furthermore, there’s quite a lot I simply can’t talk about without spoiling the story for you. But I wanted to share my thoughts on Richard’s storyline, which I thought was quite interesting. It can be summed up as “white guy learns to shut up”, but this might make it sound trivial when it’s really not – and Adichie tells it brilliantly. The story is about Richard without being about Richard, if this makes sense at all.

Richard grows from a clueless, naïve and slightly arrogant white man who dreams of speaking for a country he’s only just arrived to, and who gets defensive when his subtle condescension is pointed out to him, to, well, something else altogether. What makes him likeable from the very beginning, though, is that he’s not at all prone to thinking of people as categories. He’s much too aware of the humanity of those he meets, regardless of the colour of their skin, and he cringes at the casual racism of his friend Susan from the British Council – which of course doesn’t mean he’s above being guilty of subtler forms of racism himself. Later on, in the middle of the war, he shows two foreign journalists around and pities them for the stubbornness with which they cling to their pre-made ideas of what “Africa” and “Africans” are like. Even more importantly, he learns to listen, and realises that certain stories are simply not his to tell.

Richard’s story ties in with Ugwu’s, sadly in ways that are a bit too spoiler-y for me to write about at length. But I can say that I really liked how Ugwu’s story allowed Adichie to comment on class, and on the fact that simply treating someone as a human being can make a world of difference in how they perceive themselves and come to see the world. Ugwu is intelligent but uneducated when he comes to work for Odenigbo, and Odenigbo, who while not perfect is a man who does try to live by his leftist beliefs, simply treats him as a person. He talks to him, he encourages him to read, and he enrols him at school, all of which allows Ugwu to do something extremely important towards the end of the novel.

As you can probably tell by now, Half of a Yellow Sun is, among other things, a perfect illustration of the saying “the personal is political”. As subjective as the story is, this is still a good book to book to hit people who say that political strife in Africa is not the legacy of colonialism over the head with. And if you’re wondering “Does anyone actually say that?”, I’ve had someone tell me in a conversation that “It’s been decades now, so they’ve had more than enough time to get their act together”. Sadly, I kid you not.

Also, the fact that this novel doesn’t try to be the story of the Nigerian-Biafran War doesn’t mean that it doesn’t say universal things about war and its consequences. War truly does make monsters of people. There’s a devastating scene in which a character I loved and respected does something unspeakable. It put me in mind of the Milgram experiment, and of the fact that we shouldn’t underestimate what even the kindest people might do under certain circumstances.

Finally, what made Half of a Yellow Sun a shattering read was the fact that Adichie brilliantly evokes the uncertainty and fear that people who live through wars have to deal with on a daily basis. I can’t speak of this concretely without spoilers, but the ending absolutely killed me. And yet of course it had to end like it did, because so many real human beings have to live with that kind of doubt. The sorrow and frustration we experience as readers does not of course even begin to compare with the uncertainty that so many real people have to live with; with the horror of never knowing things that matter desperately; with having every last bit of fierce hope pour out of you as time passes and no answers come. But still, it’s a glimpse, and a glimpse of unimaginable horrors is the greatest weapon against indifference.

(Spoiler alert for the rest of this paragraph: In regards to making readers experience some of what the people who lived through the Nigerian-Biafran War experienced, I watched an interview with Adichie in which she said that this was the reason why she wrote Ugwu’s supposed death. It wasn’t really a plot device or an attempt to manipulate her reader’s emotions; it’s just that this really happened – people were presumed dead and their loved ones mourned them, only to have them walk into the living room one day after weeks or months of grief. She said she wanted to evoke those experiences in readers, and I think she succeeded brilliantly.)

Half of a Yellow Sun is a devastating but absolutely brilliant novel. I’ll admit that the violence gave me nightmares (something that doesn’t happen very often at all), but I can’t remember the last time I was this immersed in a book, or this strongly reminded that all those news stories we hear about vaguely are things that actually happen to real human beings. I think I loved this book even more than Purple Hibiscus, and some of you might remember just how much I enjoyed that. I need to get my hands on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection as soon as possible, and I hope she publishes another novel before too long.

Favourite passages:

He pulled her to him, and for a while Olanna did nothing, her body limp against his. She was used to this, being grabbed by men who walked around in a cloud of cologne-drenched entitlement, with the presumption that, because they were powerful and found her beautiful, they belonged together.

Ugwu moved closer to the door to listen; he was fascinated by Rhodesia, by what was happening in the south of Africa. He could not comprehend people that looked like Mr Richard taking away the things that belonged to people that looked like him, Ugwu, for no reason at all.

Edna came in crying, her eyes swollen red, to tell her that white people had bombed the black Baptist church in her hometown. Four little girls had died. One of them was her niece’s schoolmate. ‘I saw her when I went home six months ago, ‘Just six months ago I saw her.’
(…)
‘Oh, my God,’ she said, between sobs. ‘Oh, my God.’
Olanna reached out often to squeeze her arm. The rawness of Edna’s grief made her helpless, brought the urge to stretch her hand into the past and reverse history. Finally, Edna fell asleep. Olanna gently placed a pillow beneath her head and sat thinking about how a single act could reverberate over time and space and leave stains that could never be washed off. She thought about how ephemeral life was, about not choosing misery. She would move back to Odenigbo’s house.

If she had died, if Odenigbo and Baby and Ugwu had died, the bunker would still smell like a freshly tilled farm and the sun would still rise and the crickets would still hop around. The war would continue without them. Olanna exhaled, filled with a frothy rage. It was the very sense of being inconsequential that pushed her from extreme fear to extreme fury. She had to matter. She would no longer exist limply, waiting to die. Until Biafra won, the vandals would no longer dictate the terms of her life.

They read it too:
Ready When You Are, C.B, Maw Books, Farm Lane Books, Kiss a Cloud, Trish’s Reading Nook, Page 247, Another Cookie Crumbles, Giraffe Days, Fizzy Thoughts, Peeking Between the Pages, Violet Crush, Musings of a Bookish Kitty, Reading Adventures

(Have I missed yours?)

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The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings

The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English is, as the title indicates, a history of the English language. Specifically, it’s a history of the English lexicon, which is to say of the words that compose the language. Henry Hitchings mainly focuses on borrowings, which are foreign words that enter the lexicon and eventually cease to be considered foreign. And even more interestingly, he’s very much concerned with exploring what these borrowings tell us about the cultural and social history of English and its speakers.

I should probably tell you up front that I’m a complete linguistics geek: as an undergraduate I took linguistics classes that would give me no credits whatsoever just for the fun of it; I worked for a year as a research assistant in linguistics; I briefly considered betraying my first love, literature, for a career in the field; and so on. I’m telling you this because I suppose you should take it when a grain of salt when I tell you that this book is an absolute joy to read and immensely accessible – I’d say that, wouldn’t I? But then again, I really do think that Hitchings made an effort to make the book accessible. He avoids technical terms as much as possible, and he explains things in a way that tells readers without a background in linguistics everything they need to know.

More importantly, the reason why I think this book would appeal to even non-linguistics geeks is because his focus is very much sociological. The Secret Life of Words is as much a social history as it is a history of the English language, which is exactly as it should be, considering how closely tied up language and society are. It would be difficult to write a history of the English language that didn’t acknowledge that the fact that it absorbed words from so many different languages from all over the world is a direct result of colonialism. Hitchings doesn’t even try to – on the contrary, he’s immensely sensitive to the power relationships involved when different languages and cultures come into contact, and to how this will necessarily affect language.

What The Secret Life of Words does, then, is chronologically trace a linguistic archaeology of sorts: it starts with Celtic, Latin and Viking additions to the Anglo-Saxon lexicon; it moves on to the Norman Conquest and to contacts with other European languages and cultures; and it then traces centuries’ worth of imperial expansion and the impact this had on the language. Analysing when certain words were fist borrowed into English can tell us a lot; furthermore, the kind of vocabulary that is borrowed reveals what the main areas of contact between two cultures were. For example, it’s no coincidence that so many musical terms come from the Italian, while Dutch borrowings are mostly nautical terms.

Hitchings is also interested in the fact that linguistic assimilation can be seen as a tool of imperialism. Certain assimilated terms can show us that an appropriation and misunderstanding of, or even disrespect for, the word’s original meaning and cultural context took place. For example, he tells us that the word ‘pariah’ comes from a misunderstanding of the Tamil term “Paraiyar”. What English colonialists misunderstood was the nature of the role the drummers the word “Paraiyar” refers to played at the Hindu festival they watched; the current meaning of “pariah” reflects this erroneous cultural interpretation.

Another thing I liked was the fact that Hitchings takes on the ridiculous notion of “linguistic purity” and doesn’t hesitate to mock “the purists who believe all change is for the worse and pretend that the English word-stock can be set in aspic.” As any sensible person knows, language is ever-changing, and most attempts to resist change are little more than pedantry. Furthermore, pleas for “linguistic purity” often go hand in hand with a disturbing advocacy of cultural isolation, and with a smug sense of cultural or even racial superiority. The fact that Mussolini attempted to ban all borrowings from Italian and replace them with new, “purer” terms is very telling.

As much as I enjoyed The Secret Life of Words, there were two things that kept me from loving it wholeheartedly. The first was the fact that I felt a little excluded from the book’s intended audience. Hitchings would often address his readers directly and say things like, “We native speakers of English...” At one point, he acknowledges the possibility that speakers of other languages will read a translation of the book, but not that non-native speakers would ever read it in the original. If this sounds trivial to you, I highly recommend reading Jenny’s wonderful post on how feeling included in a book’s intended audience can absolutely matter. Jenny’s focus was on gender, but what she says goes for other things too. It seems to me that it’s always advisable for authors to avoid any clear indicators of who they think their audience is – it’s likely they’ll be wrong, or at least not completely right, which means that some readers will feel left out. And who would want that to happen?

Secondly, I regret to say that whenever Hitchings mentioned a Portuguese word, he either mistranslated it or failed to indicate that the term was dated – dated enough that I wasn’t at all familiar with the meaning he attributed it, and in addition to being a native speaker, I have studied the language’s history in some detail. “Tanque”, for example, does not mean “pond”. “Palavra” means “word”, not “talk”. The distinction might seem subtle, but it does exist. Ultimately these mistranslations are beside the point, as what really matters is the fact that these words originated current English terms. But noticing this made me a little wary, as errors in non-fiction always do. I need to be able to absolutely trust the author’s research, or else I keep wondering what else he could have got wrong. Are the things he says about other languages, of which I’m not a speaker, also incorrect?

But that aside, I really did enjoy The Secret Life of Words. It’s readable, it’s fun, it’s culturally sensitive, and it’s full of fascinating etymological trivia. If you’re a lover of language or of social history, then this book’s for you.

Interesting bits:

Borrowing is not a one-way street. (…) Russian borrowings from English include the slightly sinister biznismen, as well as dzhemper (‘jumper’) and vokzal (‘station’). The last of these is a corruption of Vauxhall, the name of an area in South London once famous for its pleasure gardens; a Russian delegation of the 1840’s stopped there and took this word, displayed on a sign, to be the generic name for a station.

Complaints about borrowings from French have been clamorous for much of the last millennium. We shall see a particular anxiety about them later when we look at the nineteenth century. To this day many people consider them pretentious. The standard argument has always been that Anglo-Saxon words are pure and French ones artificial, barbarous, and infused with the dark scent of depravity. But purism itself carried a whiff of the absurd. Much of what is condemn as wrong was standard in the past, and the very language that is now held as ‘pure’ is likely to have been imported in its time. What passes for vigilance is often just intolerance in disguise.

The radical philosopher Jeremy Bentham came up with the adjectives secretarial and exhaustive. The first author to use the word adventuress was Horace Walpole, who more famously coined serendipity, that once rare but now adored word for the faculty of making pleasant, unexpected discoveries, inspired by the old name for that teardrop of a tropical island, Sri Lanka. (…) Appropriately, we owe intolerance to the grammarian Robert Lowth, whose A Short Introduction to the English Language (1762) offered a narrowly prescriptive view of the subject – a first inspiration for all those letters to newspaper editors that fulminate against split infinitives and dangling prepositions.

Whenever war is raging, we assimilate new words. The atrocities of modern combat are neutralised with talk of friendly fire and collateral damage, terms eloquent only of the bureaucratic nature of the modern military. Euphemisms rub epauletted shoulders with detachments of management speak and pseudo-science – plus the odd blackly humorous item like gremlin. In this context the verb degrade means kill, while explosive device and physical package take the place of bomb and warhead. The noun incident is used of almost any unsavoury occurrence. Today’s army officers sound like business consultants, trading in impressive gibberish or fancy obfuscations. Violence is routinely disguised.

Some of the usages that seem distinctively American to speakers of British English are in fact British in origin. The habit of saying gotten instead of got reflects the standard British usage of a couple of hundred years ago. The preference for fall rather than autumn now seems distinctively American, but fall was used in this sense by Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle and John Evelyn, to name but three. Equally, saying I guess isn’t a Valley Girl tic, but a locution as old as Chaucer.

(Have you posted about this book too? Let me know and I’ll be glad to add your link here.)

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Off to a Festival

I'm off to a music festival this weekend, to see bands like The National, Vampire Weekend, Spoon or Grizzly Bear. Live music makes me happy like nothing else, and the last time I went to a music festival was three years go. As you can imagine, I'm ridiculously excited!

I'm taking The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley with me - I'm not sure how much actual reading will get done, but this sounds like a good summer festival sort of book, and I'm very excited to get to it at last. (As much as I'm loving them, Middlemarch and the Rosalind Franklin biography I'm reading will stay home, as I really can't imagine them working as vacation books).

I'll be back home on Monday, but I'll probably be too overwhelmed by exhaustion and dirty laundry to get online before Tuesday or Wednesday. I hope you'll have a wonderful weekend, and as they say, don't break the Internet while I'm gone! I'll leave you with one of my favourite songs by The National, Lemonworld.

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