Last few weeks’ reads…

Books

Short reviews by Madhuri on books by Anne Watts, Keith Foskett, Bill Green, Philip Gonzalez and Leonore Fleischer, Jojo Moyes, Louise Candlish, Doris Lessing, Barbara Erakko Taylor, Sherman Alexie, Karen Armstrong, David Vann, Alec Le Sueur, Elizabeth Kim

Reading in bed

A Nurse AbroadA Nurse Abroad
Adventures in nursing, from the Arctic to the Outback

by Anne Watts

A good book by a fascinating woman (who looks nothing like the pic on the cover). A young nurse who qualified in 1962 had massive opportunities for travel and adventure, and this one lived that out in spades. The Outback, Italy, the Yukon, Vietnam, Vancouver, and more in between – this outdoorsy girl camped, loved, explored, and above all cared for all kinds of people with love and deep humanity. Her take on social milieus will feel a bit like she’s preaching to the choir, but in the times she lived in those milieus it was anything but – she was a voice in the wilderness – to put 2 metaphors in uneasily close proximity!

I was particularly touched to read of a concert by an American, Charley Pride, who came to Alice Springs particularly to sing for the aborigines – who were incredibly touched. And I had not known that one of my favourite musicians, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, is aboriginal and was born blind into poverty.

A richly textured and juicy story by an intrepid woman.

The Last EnglishmanThe Last Englishman
by Keith Foskett

A 43-year-old British writer and house painter walks the Pacific Crest Trail, and tells us all about it, in gritty and luxuriating detail.

I really enjoyed this book – kind of stretched out and settled in to it – trekking along with him and a cast of interesting characters with funny nicknames through snow and heat and height and low, with blisters and giardia, eating rattlesnakes and burgers and ramen noodles and icky campfire concoctions, and shouting at bears. The scenery is gorgeous and changeable, the citizens helpful, and it’s a great read.

Self-published, interior design not brilliant, could have used one more edit, but it didn’t really matter as it’s such a nice book.

Water, Ice & StoneWater, Ice & Stone
Science and Memory of the Antarctic Lakes

by Bill Green

A breathtakingly beautiful love letter to the Earth, from one who knows her tiniest components. A geochemist from a university in Ohio makes many journeys to Antarctica to study certain bizarre and intriguing lakes buried under ice. His descriptions of the elements and chemicals and their incredible dances, balancings, interactions, was at times too densely technical for me to follow, so I skimmed a bit, but I absolutely loved his utterly poetic take on chemistry.

My father was a chemist by profession and by passion (chemist in the American sense, not the British sense). He would have completely resonated with this book. I adored him, and his life had a great tragedy about it, so it was also sad for me to immerse myself in his world; but I did so appreciate the wonderfulness of how it must be to be able to see so intricately the Nature you are regarding! To know what the water is doing at a molecular level, to know the different kinds of water there are, and their fabulous properties, and how they comport themselves in different situations, and how they change state. (For example, the Antarctic is a desert – it never rains – making those lakes even stranger; and snow changes straight to vapour without ever melting. This is called ‘subliming.’)

The book wanders about in time a bit, from one expedition to another, to times in Ohio, to childhood memories, to a sojourn in Hawaii. But there’s a thread of mystery regarding the lakes, and we keep coming back to that.

He speaks of science and art and how similar they are. I just loved that. I think science was deeply romantic for my father.

A very classy read! It’ll swoop you up and take you far and bring you back in wonder.

The Dog who Rescues CatsThe Dog who Rescues Cats
The True Story of Ginny

by Philip Gonzalez and Leonore Fleischer

A sweet little read by a Puerto Rican New Yorker who had an industrial accident, became somewhat disabled, depressed, and then was rescued by a doggie who it turned out had a total mission to rescue and parent disabled feral cats.

Lotsa cats! A few more humans also got involved. The doggie is speculated to be an angel. It does make me wonder, why should angels be so rare? I can’t think of any reason. Anyway, here is one, and though the only reason I read it was because it had cats in it, I had to be happy about this little dog.

Still MeStill Me
by Jojo Moyes

Well, if you gotta be sick in bed, at least a good book helps a lot. This was just fabulous – interesting (to me) in every detail (the heroine loves vintage costumery) and with some experiences I could relate to.

A young English woman in a new relationship takes a job in New York as personal assistant to the beautiful young Polish wife of a super-rich businessman. All sorts of snobberies have to be navigated. The boyfriend left at home, a paramedic, meanwhile is given a pretty new work-partner…

The heroine, Louisa, is utterly likeable (in the first scene she is babbling confidences to the grim immigration guy at the airport) and, since I’ve worked in the houses of four or five aristocratic/wealth-encrusted families, I recognised some of the strangenesses.

I was moved to tears at least twice as Louisa somehow finds community even in the chilly life she has hired into. And, of course, shit happens… and we (and she) get to see what she’s really made of. It’s a really good, juicy novel, long enough to wallow in for ages, hard to put down when it’s over. I don’t normally like to read books set in New York City, just too much city for me, but this is mostly set in a posh old-money apartment building on Central Park, so it’s somehow easier to take.

I loved this quote at the front: “Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.” – Evictetus

The Second HusbandThe Second Husband
Be careful who you let into your heart and your home

by Louise Candlish

A juicy, satisfying novel. A middle-class divorced mum of two in a London suburb divides off a portion of her large flat so that she can take a tenant to make ends meet. Meanwhile her beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter is more and more angry, cold, and distant. The tenant is dapper, handsome, and charming, and the mum falls in love with him. They marry, and then… I won’t give the plot away!

I like this writer a lot – she’s a cut above the cheap thrillers that so abound these days. I particularly admired the way she resisted any temptation for a facile, sensationalistic ending, and brought things to a gentle conclusion. The characters were believable, the action involving.

There’s some nice scenery in France as well.

And I pondered a lot about snotty adversarial teenage girls (I’ve read a lot about them in fiction) and marvelled that I never remotely resembled that, way back then; possibly because my mother believed that teens needed mentors, not parents, and stopped invading my life completely when I was 15! Which left me free to make my own mistakes; and to struggle through as best I might. I’m not saying that is necessarily the best way – it was scary and difficult – but in another way she was always there for us. Anyway, the privileged girl in the story takes her stand, and we are both entertained and edified.

Under My SkinUnder My Skin
Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949

by Doris Lessing

Can a book be terse and lush at the same time? This would be that sort of book. I ordered it because I had so liked her memoir about cats, and I was not disappointed. (Somehow I never wanted to read her fiction, but I might try.)

Her wisdom is tempered, I think – though her originality and courage are not in doubt – by the unhappiness of her relationship with her mother. It has made her terse… hurt, really. But it’s such a part of her landscape that not much escapes it; and yet her descriptions of her love affairs can be vivacious and sensuous.

This is an unflinching book, a detailed look at a childhood in Iran and Southern Rhodesia between the wars, and a long relationship with communism, as a young woman.

The descriptions of the wild Veldt, the way of life in small towns and big cities, the dancing and music, mothering, childbirth, divorces and marriages, and a great deal about the political climate and the mistreatment of the natives by the arrogant colonialists – are evocative, detailed, intelligent, calmly colourful. A strong, bright book about lots of dimness – and a particular time and place. We are not so free of all those things now… though people no longer dance as a matter of course, day in and day out, evening after evening.

If you want a good chewy read, and Africa interests you, or early-ish communism, or a woman’s woman-life – it’s all here.

SilenceSilence
Making the Journey to Inner Quiet

by Barbara Erakko Taylor

An unusual book in a few ways. One, we get the feeling of a woman who really does find and accept and revel in her difference: she loves solitude. Second, she manages to point us in a silent direction, or leave us in a silent place, with a minimum of noisy preaching. This is basically a personal journey, done poetically.

Third, I only learned from looking at the back cover that she’s a Catholic. She doesn’t once go on about God or Jesus or faith or the Virgin Mary. This might be a first among Christians. (There are, however, some beautiful quotations from Christian scripture, but at first I didn’t realise it meant she was Christian.)

The book starts with a 32-year-old wife going into shock when get 37-year-old husband has a heart attack. He lives, but at first it seems he won’t. It’s a huge wake-up for the wife.

She turns off the radio in her car, for the first time.

And it goes on from there.

A series of vignettes and poems which tell a story in a spare and graceful way.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time IndianThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie

A beautiful young-adult novel about a kid from the Spokane reservation who goes off to a white school in a small white farming town. Great writing (the author has won awards) – raunchy, sassy, touching, heartbreaking, au courant.

Illustrated with excellent cartoons. A streamlined read that nevertheless goes very deep.

Through the Narrow GateThrough the Narrow Gate
A former nun reveals the intimate details of her life within the enclosed world of an austere religious order

by Karen Armstrong

When I saw this I thought Erggghhh… I dunno… but it turned out to be very interesting, especially towards the end.

A teenage girl has a Vocation and wants to seek God in austerity and sacrifice of Self. She also considers herself “lumpy and toothy” and thinks she’ll fail in the world. She becomes postulant, then nun, in a severe order.

She also has a bad dairy allergy – though nobody used those words then – and throws up at the sight of melted cheese. Her superiors make her eat double helpings. She ends up vomiting nearly every night, fainting, twitching on the floor; she is reprimanded for seeking attention.

The nuns have to treat each other with cool detachment – no friendships, no family contact. But the author notices that passionate attachments then happen with cats! And that the mortification of the flesh she is ordered to do, with a small whip, brings a suspicious degree of release. She is innocent – this is what makes her book touching – and oh so earnest. Poverty, chastity, obedience! She has no idea though what chastity is the other side of, because she has no idea what men and women do together.

In the end she’s a skeleton, unable to eat, still being chastised – though some “mothers” are kinder. But she’s also very brainy and is sent to Oxford to become a teacher.

This sends her careening in two directions at once.

The most touching part is the loving welcome the other college girls give her – taking her shopping immediately – when she finally renounces her vows.

I’d call the nun trip the “un-Osho Sannyas”!

All upside down and backwards!

God, whatever she is, is highly available through deep sensitivity to the body! Through love and hugs and cats too and food your body likes and joyful dancing! Oh yes! And if you want a retreat, there are retreats which give you a chance for more, not less, openness to sacredness, but don’t wreck your health! Or confuse your heart!

But I’m preaching to the choir here.

Caribou IslandCaribou Island
by David Vann

Such an amazingly good novel, I didn’t want it to end.

The writer is a young Alaskan who has won prizes for a previous book.

A detailed, empathic, nature-rapt, melancholic, insightful look into the relationships among a couple in their fifties, their two grownup children and their spouses, and a young pair of tourists.

The older couple are exhausted and bitter, the wife burdened with an unexamined childhood trauma, the husband, whose projects always fail, absolutely determined to (very impatiently) build a log cabin on a remote little island and go live in it. Although winter is coming, his wife wants to stay at home, and yet feels she has to go along with the increasingly unworkable fantasy.

I can only say that the author makes all these relationships show their cracks in a most evocative and poetic way, and we are gripped and admiring. The writing is spare, sentence construction quirkish, no quotation marks, and it absolutely gets the job done.

I ended up feeling so incredibly grateful for all the therapy I’ve had and all the meditation I’ve done, as I watched the agony of lives without these skills to guide them. And grateful for such gifted, thorough yet telegraphic writing. We are out there with them on that freezing island with the alder thickets and the wind and the stones and tents and piles of plywood and canned goods and stringy logs – .

The Hotel on the Roof of the WorldThe Hotel on the Roof of the World
Five Years in Tibet

by Alec Le Sueur

A really funny book! From the cover I expected piety but instead I laughed all the way through, with some soberer moments interlaced with that.

A young employee of a Parisian luxury hotel wants adventure so goes to Hong Kong looking for an eastern luxury hotel to work for. Instead he is sent to the Holiday Inn in Lhasa, established two years prior.

There three cultures meet weirdly! Grim, dogmatic, politically-minded Chinese, jolly, insouciant Tibetans, and bewildered, frustrated (and practical-jokey) westerners.

He spends five years there, and his adventures, and those of the hotel, make great comic reading. He says at the end that he avoided politics and religion as these are spoken of much better by other writers; but of course they keep butting in, and it’s easy to see where his sympathies lie.

I thoroughly enjoyed every page – the characters, the ‘Himalayan Hamsters’ (rats!), the scenery, the mishaps (oh so many!)

A different sort of adventure story, and really fun, and simpatico, and deftly and seemingly effortlessly done.

The Thousand SorrowsThe Thousand Sorrows
by Elizabeth Kim

When I was little my mother sometimes took me to town, just her and me, to go window-shopping. If we saw a child being scolded or dragged about angrily by its mother, my mother would say, “I just want to snatch that child up and LOVE it, and LOVE it, and LOVE it!”

And that’s how I felt, exactly, while reading this book. I wanted to love this person from the time they were a tiny mite seeing their adored young mother murdered by her father and brother (‘honour’ killing, which is like saying a lethal car crash is a ‘picnic in the park’), then in a loveless Christian orphanage in Korea, through their horrible childhood with fundamentalist Christian adoptive parents in the California desert. And through the PTSD that nearly consumed them.

Soldiers in Korea, doing what soldiers do – leaving sperm all over the place – did anyone tell them, did they have any idea, did they care at all, that the girl they had done their thing in was then going to be an outcast, shunned by her people, and quite possibly murdered; the child would be a ‘non-person’, hated and ignored; that abominable Korean patriarchal tribal law dictated this (the stupidity of this dictum sticks in my craw like anything – bringing in fresh genes only strengthens and brings intelligence!) Did they care that their child would either be killed or become a street kid or languish in a filthy orphanage? Patriarchy strews seed carelessly on the one hand, becomes jealous and controlling of the progeny on the other. Makes no humanistic sense (my opinion).

Anyway, the person who wrote this book is so lovely and bright and sensitive and writes so well – I was immensely touched. So-called grownups have a lot to answer for. There are passages written by the daughter of the author too which are just brilliant. It’s not a thick book and it flows easily, even as you are gagging on the injustices and foolishness of the people around the little girl who grew up to write so well.

Highly recommended!

Featured image by the author

Madhuri

Madhuri is a healer, artist, poet and author of several books, Reluctantly to Kunzum La being her latest one. madhurijewel.com

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