People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

This book is kind of messy. It’s the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an ancient Hebrew book used during the Passover Seder, and currently owned by and on display at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Most of the history of this book is unknown, though what is known is fascinating. Created some time in the 14th century in Spain and lavishly illustrated during a time when Jews traditionally did not illustrate their texts, the book was rescued from almost certain destruction at least twice by Muslim librarians and museum directors (once during World War II, then again during the Bosnian War), and once by a Catholic priest in the 17th century.

While the Sarajevo Haggadah is real, this book is a novel. Geraldine Brooks has created a fictional manuscript restorer named Hanna Heath, and more interesting, a fictional back story for the Haggadah itself, one that fills in all the gaps that are missing from the real story. Brooks uses information Hanna discovers during her restoration work as jumping off points for her chapters about the book’s (speculative) history. Thus for example Hanna’s discovery of a white hair in the binding leads to the story of the book’s illustrator who used paint brushes made of cat hair.

I loved the story of the Haggadah and of all the various people who created it, owned it, sold it, won it, hid it, and found it. What I thought was messy was Hanna’s story, which is not nearly as well done and is mostly just a big distraction. I think the idea of using Hanna as a framing device is a good one, but Brooks could have made her parts much simpler and shorter. It was like she couldn’t decide whether to write a book about Hanna or about the Haggadah so she did both and squished them together. Back in January 2007 I had a similar complaint about another book that uses the same device: The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble. Both novels incorporate stories from the past using the device of a book that ends up in the hands of a modern character. A better execution of this technique is in Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott (not exactly the same: Stott uses Isaac Newton's prism in place of a book).

Despite this flaw this was a really interesting book and kept me happy for hours. I am proclaiming it my first favorite book of 2009. The Web has lots of interesting information about the Haggadah (click here for the Wikipedia article and click here for a German site that has color images of each illustration.) Click here to go to Geraldine Brooks’s site and see a map of all the locations from the book. (Finally, a map! Hooray!)

(Book 7, 2009)

Shanghai Diary by Ursula Bacon

This was a random find on the non-fiction shelves in the library. The subtitle is "A Young Girl's Journey from Hitler's Hate to War-Torn China." I had read bits before about the Jews of Shanghai, a group of refugees who sought haven there because no where else would admit them. They were confined to a ghetto, but it wasn't a ghetto like those of Europe; they lived along side impoverished Chinese and enjoyed relative freedom of movement. They were extremely poor, lived in awful conditions, with rampant disease and hunger, but most of them lived through the war and they were safe from outright murder. Ursula Bacon's family traveled to Shanghai in the late 1930's and spent more than 10 years there before finally gaining entrance to the United States.

I couldn't exactly figure out her family. Originally from Breslau, they must have been highly assimilated and were also quite affluent before the war. The book is sprinkled with references to silver trays, stately homes, and governesses. Most of the holocaust era stories I have read have been from the point of view of poorer folks. I wish Bacon had written more about their earlier life but perhaps that would have shifted the focus too far away from the Shanghai story.

Bacon's writing is a bit young with a certain amount of adolescent philosophizing and "Oh, dear God, what to do!" kinds of interjections. She is overly fond of adjectives. But these are minor complaints. I was never bored reading this and my curiosity about this topic is renewed. While reading the Wikipedia entry on the Shanghai Ghetto I came across a reference to a documentary film with the same name. I see that Netflix has that so I am going to request it.

(Book 6, 2009)

Technical Difficulties

I guess you get what you pay for. My free web hosting service is down until Sunday afternoon; hence no photos or banners on my blog. Sorry about that!

Index of Books Read 2008

Books read in 2008, alphabetical by title. Use your browser search feature (usually Ctrl F) to find a specific author or title. Or you can search the whole blog from the Blogger search box at the top of the page.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Away by Amy Bloom
The Best Women’s Travel Writing of 2006
Body Surfing by Anita Shreve
The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak
The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup by Susan Orlean
The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Cleopatra’s Nose by Judith Thurman
Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten
Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill
The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
End in Tears by Ruth Rendell
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Gatsby’s Girl by Caroline Preston
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsen
The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott
Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
The Guynd by Belinda Rathbone
Him Her Him Again The End of Him by Patricia Marx
Icebergs by Rebecca Johns
The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce by Paul Torday
The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga
Kyra by Carol Gilligan
Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdordottir
The Likeness by Tana French
London 1945 by Maureen Waller
Mariana by Monica Dickens
Marie-Therese, by Susan Nagel
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
My Life in France by Julia Child
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves
Resistance by Owen Sheers
Run by Ann Patchett
The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri
Skeleton Man by Tony Hillerman
The Skinny by Melissa Clark and Robin Aronson
Thirty-three Teeth by Colin Cotterill
The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella
Voices by Arnaldur Indridason
White Nights by Ann Cleeves
Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy
Wizards, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

Yes, Happy Birthday

I was thrilled to find in Sunday's New York Times Book Review James Campbell’s essay “Happy Birthday Mr. Ripley.” He’s referring to Tom Ripley, wine connoisseur, francophile, gardener, art forger, and murderer, fictional creation of the late Patricia Highsmith.

Are there any better mysteries than these? The first Ripley book The Talented Mr. Ripley appeared in 1954. There followed four more Ripley books, the last one appearing in 1992. As Campbell points out, Ripley was 25 in the first book, so he’d turn 80 this year. (Highsmith aged Ripley correctly throughout the series; in each installment he is older and more interesting.)

In contrast to the overblown filler-stuffed doorstops currently gracing the library and bookstore shelves (see several of my recent posts where I complain and complain), the Ripley books are perfect little packages. My 1981 Penguin paperback version of The Talented Mr. Ripley (original price $3.50) comes in at 249 pages. In those pages not a word is wasted and Highsmith achieves what few authors manage to do; she creates a compelling, sympathetic psychopath. Once you meet Ripley you just love him. You root for him. You agree with him that he needs to kill Thomas Murchison. You are really glad he gets away with murder, and then gets away with it again and again. If you have not read these, please do so right away. You will find them a bracing tonic, like a tall glass of lemonade on a hot day. Happy birthday Tom! I hope you are alive and well and enjoying your retirement! (Patricia Highsmith died in 1995 so we either have to imagine Tom's eventual demise or believe that he will somehow live forever.)

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

I had heard that this book was good but that’s not true. It’s a silly book and a waste of time. Set in Victorian London, Silent in the Grave is a weird combination of a Sherlock Holmes story and a romance novel. The Holmesian detective, Nicholas Brisbane, rather than coming across as mysterious, instead seems robotic and off-putting. The female protagonist, Julia, is supposed to be clever and ahead of her time, but she just seems anachronistic. And for someone who is meant to be smart, she is awfully dense. It takes her a long time to figure things out and I think this is a deliberate ploy on the part of the author to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the action. This book is 506 pages of dithering (Julia) and glowering (Nicholas). Luckily I only read 109 of them.

The Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel

I hadn’t heard of this book until recently, but maybe you have. It caused a sensation when it first appeared a few years ago. The author of the book, Lily Koppel, is not the author of the diary. The red leather diary belonged to Florence Howitt, who wrote in it every day between the years 1929-34 when she was a teenager in New York City. Lily Koppel discovered the diary in a dumpster outside her apartment building in 2003, read it, located its owner who was then around 90 and living in Florida, and persuaded her to allow its publication.

Most of the book is a narrative of the years Florence kept the diary. Rather than use verbatim diary entries, Koppel has turned Howitt’s words into a coherent story of her life as a high school, then Hunter College student, though Koppel intersperses her narrative with short quotes from the actual diary. Florence Howitt was accomplished, beautiful, obsessed with art, literature, and romance (and in constant pursuit of all three), stylish, rebellious, brave; it all makes for great reading.

I wish Koppel had included more of Florence’s own words. She was an excellent writer, was editor in chief of Echo, Hunter’s literary magazine, and received her master’s degree in English literature from Columbia. In the early 1940’s she enjoyed a short career writing for women’s magazines, before she dropped out of sight to pursue marriage and motherhood. Koppel’s prose is more journalistic and not as compelling.

I really identified with Koppel’s delight in discovering this diary. I love to find cool old things at Goodwill or the St. Vincent de Paul society store, and I wouldn’t hesitate to climb into a dumpster if I thought it was filled with personal treasures from the 1930’s.

Here is a link to a wonderful video clip of Koppel and Howitt being interviewed by one of the morning news shows. But I never know how long video stays up and findable on the Web so maybe by the time you click this, the link will be broken; if that's the case, I apologize.

(Book 5, 2009)

More About Australian Crime Fiction

In my post about The Broken Shore by Peter Temple I bemoaned my lack of access to Australian fiction, especially mysteries. Karen C, in the comments, pointed me to this site: Austcrime. It's a collection of reviews of crime fiction available in Australia. It provides reviews of crime fiction set in Australia and written by Australians and also has interesting reviews of English, Irish, Scottish, and other crime fiction written in English. I like it that the reviews are detailed and not uniformly positive. Whenever I come across a site that contains only positive reviews I am suspicious. I think those sites must just be quoting the press releases. In contrast, it's clear that Karen and the other reviewers at Austcrime are carefully reading and thinking about the books they review.

To my disappointment, much of the Australian fiction that interested me on this site doesn't seem to be available in the U.S. I think I will end up using the site more as a way to find crime fiction from Great Britain and Ireland, which is more commonly available here. Nevertheless, it's worth checking out.