Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Fiction, 2007, 273 pages
Rating: 4.0 (4.0 Amazon)
Book Club: Naples Critics Choice - February, 2008
Summary: From Publishers Weekly
Ondaatje's oddly structured but emotionally riveting fifth novel opens in the Northern California of the 1970s. Anna, who is 16 and whose mother died in childbirth, has formed a serene makeshift family with her same-age adopted sister, Claire, and a taciturn farmhand, Coop, 20. But when the girls' father, otherwise a ghostly presence, finds Anna having sex with Coop and beats him brutally, Coop leaves the farm, drawing on a cardsharp's skills to make an itinerant living as a poker player. A chance meeting years later reunites him with Claire. Runaway teen Anna, scarred by her father's savage reaction, resurfaces as an adult in a rural French village, researching the life of a Gallic author, Jean Segura, who lived and died in the house where she has settled. The novel here bifurcates, veering almost a century into the past to recount Segura's life before WWI, leaving the stories of Coop, Claire and Anna enigmatically unresolved. The dreamlike Segura novella, juxtaposed with the longer opening section, will challenge readers to uncover subtle but explosive links between past and present. Ondaatje's first fiction in six years lacks the gut punch of Anil's Ghost and the harrowing meditation on brutality that marked The English Patient, but delivers his trademark seductive prose, quixotic characters and psychological intricacy.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Winter of our Discontent
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Fiction, 1961, 276 pages.
Rating: 4.0 (4.5 Amazon)
Book Club: FL Novel Night - February, 2008
Summary:
Google Books: A New Englander learns the bitter lesson that it is not possible to be a little dishonest
Atlantic on-line: In The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck turns for the first time in his versatile career to the East Coast for his setting and character. Bay Hampton, where on Good Friday morning his new story begins, could be any small seaport on Long Island or on the coast between New York and Boston. It is a village once famous for its Yankee skippers and sea-plucked fortunes, now being run by the new blood from Ireland and Italy. Ethan Allen Hawley, whose name echoes the past, is a gay, unaggressive spirit working as a clerk for Alfio Marullo; like his father before him, Eth has lost the acquisitiveness of his forebears, and with it what remained of family fortune. At the age of thirty-six all he has left is the old Hawley place, a couple of frankly envious children, and the nest egg of $6500 which his patient, pretty Irish wife, Mary, inherited from her brother.
The meaning of Good Friday was burned into Ethan as a boy, and it is ironic that on this day a series of small provocations -- a bribe offered and rejected, a fortuneteller at her cards, a remark of Mary's that prodded under the skin -- should startle him from his rut and even launch him on a new career. Eth lends himself to the conspiracy of events in such a human, doubting-Thomas way that before he knows it he is in up to his knees. He has two charming accomplices in Margie and Mary, the one tempting, the other pushing, and the gradual debasement of his honesty is absorbing and rather shocking to watch. It all happens to so effortlessly.
That his years at Harvard and his prowess in World War II should have left Ethan so feckless and so incompetent must be taken on faith; these phases of his career are touched so lightly as to be superficial, but what is genuine, familiar, and identifiable is the way Americans beat the game: the land-taking before the airport is built, the quick bucks, the plagiarism, the abuse of trust, the near theft, which, if it succeeds, can be glossed over -- these are the guilts with which Ethan will have to live in his coming prosperity, and one wonders how happily. John Steinbeck was born to write of the sea coast, and he does so with savor and love. His dialogue is full of life, the entrapment of Ethan is ingenious, and the morality in this novel marks Mr. Steinbeck's return to the mood and the concern with which he wrote The Grapes of Wrath.
Favorite Passages:
Steinbeck has a way with words. There are several passages which I marked as I was reading this book.
pg 51....(Ethan Hawley about Mary) When she had gone up to the bathroom, I put my note to her in my pocket. And I still didn't know. Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of an other? What are you like in there? Mary -- do you hear? Who are you in there?
pg 61.....(Ethan about Margie Young-Hunt) I had never seen her before. I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen. It's scary to think about. Point of reference again. When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people. Maybe that means ---hell, it's complicated. I agreed with myself to think about such things at night when I couldn't sleep. Forgetting to open on time scared me. ......
pg 70....(Ethan) I remember thinking how wise a man was H.C. Anderson. The king told his secrets down a well, and his secrets were safe. A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has a many version s as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure......
pg 257.....(Mr. Baker looking at Ethan after learning Ethan owned Danny's property) When the son of a bitch looked at me there was fear in him. He saw someone he hadn't known existed. It took him a moment to adjust to the stranger, but he was good. He adjusted.
pg 276...(Ethan after deciding not to commit suicide..about Ellen) I had to get back -- had to return the talisman to its new owner. Else another light might go out.
Fiction, 1961, 276 pages.
Rating: 4.0 (4.5 Amazon)
Book Club: FL Novel Night - February, 2008
Summary:
Google Books: A New Englander learns the bitter lesson that it is not possible to be a little dishonest
Atlantic on-line: In The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck turns for the first time in his versatile career to the East Coast for his setting and character. Bay Hampton, where on Good Friday morning his new story begins, could be any small seaport on Long Island or on the coast between New York and Boston. It is a village once famous for its Yankee skippers and sea-plucked fortunes, now being run by the new blood from Ireland and Italy. Ethan Allen Hawley, whose name echoes the past, is a gay, unaggressive spirit working as a clerk for Alfio Marullo; like his father before him, Eth has lost the acquisitiveness of his forebears, and with it what remained of family fortune. At the age of thirty-six all he has left is the old Hawley place, a couple of frankly envious children, and the nest egg of $6500 which his patient, pretty Irish wife, Mary, inherited from her brother.
The meaning of Good Friday was burned into Ethan as a boy, and it is ironic that on this day a series of small provocations -- a bribe offered and rejected, a fortuneteller at her cards, a remark of Mary's that prodded under the skin -- should startle him from his rut and even launch him on a new career. Eth lends himself to the conspiracy of events in such a human, doubting-Thomas way that before he knows it he is in up to his knees. He has two charming accomplices in Margie and Mary, the one tempting, the other pushing, and the gradual debasement of his honesty is absorbing and rather shocking to watch. It all happens to so effortlessly.
That his years at Harvard and his prowess in World War II should have left Ethan so feckless and so incompetent must be taken on faith; these phases of his career are touched so lightly as to be superficial, but what is genuine, familiar, and identifiable is the way Americans beat the game: the land-taking before the airport is built, the quick bucks, the plagiarism, the abuse of trust, the near theft, which, if it succeeds, can be glossed over -- these are the guilts with which Ethan will have to live in his coming prosperity, and one wonders how happily. John Steinbeck was born to write of the sea coast, and he does so with savor and love. His dialogue is full of life, the entrapment of Ethan is ingenious, and the morality in this novel marks Mr. Steinbeck's return to the mood and the concern with which he wrote The Grapes of Wrath.
Favorite Passages:
Steinbeck has a way with words. There are several passages which I marked as I was reading this book.
pg 51....(Ethan Hawley about Mary) When she had gone up to the bathroom, I put my note to her in my pocket. And I still didn't know. Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of an other? What are you like in there? Mary -- do you hear? Who are you in there?
pg 61.....(Ethan about Margie Young-Hunt) I had never seen her before. I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen. It's scary to think about. Point of reference again. When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people. Maybe that means ---hell, it's complicated. I agreed with myself to think about such things at night when I couldn't sleep. Forgetting to open on time scared me. ......
pg 70....(Ethan) I remember thinking how wise a man was H.C. Anderson. The king told his secrets down a well, and his secrets were safe. A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has a many version s as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure......
pg 257.....(Mr. Baker looking at Ethan after learning Ethan owned Danny's property) When the son of a bitch looked at me there was fear in him. He saw someone he hadn't known existed. It took him a moment to adjust to the stranger, but he was good. He adjusted.
pg 276...(Ethan after deciding not to commit suicide..about Ellen) I had to get back -- had to return the talisman to its new owner. Else another light might go out.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Miracle in the Andes : 72 days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Miracle in the Andes : 72 days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home by Nando Parrado
Memoir, 2006, pg 284
Rating: 5.0 (5.0 Amazon)
Book Club: FL - Lakes Library - February, 2008
Recommendation: I enjoyed the book. Once started, it pulled you in, even though you knew what was going to happen. For me, the questions about God--- Why did God let this happen?.....Why did some die and others live? How does God answer prayers? Why are some "not" answered? ----are questions I've asked at times in my life, just recently with my nephew Jonathan's death from leukemia. This book, in Nando's discussion of how he dealt with this tradegy, raised many of the same questions....and Nando discussed them from his view and others.
I read the book in 2 days, and then went back and re-read some of the passages that dealt with "Why did this happen?" and as important...."How do you go on after you return to the 'world'"?
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly: In October 1972, a plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes. Not immediately rescued, the survivors turned to cannibalism to survive and after 72 days were saved. Rugby team member Parrado has written a beautiful story of friendship, tragedy and perseverance. High in the Andes, with a fractured skull, eating the flesh of his teammates and friends, Parrado calmly ponders the cruelties of fate, the power of the natural world and the possibility of continued existence. "I would live from moment to moment and from breath to breath, until I had used up all the life I had." Parrado, who for the past 10 years has been giving inspirational talks based on his experiences, lost his mother and sister in the crash. Struggling to stay alive, his guide becomes his beloved father: "each [stride] brought me closer to my father... each step I took was a step stolen back from death." More than a companion to the 1970s bestselling chronicle of the disaster, Alive, this is a fresh, gripping page-turner that will satisfy adventure readers, and a complex reflection on camaraderie, family and love.
From School Library Journal: Adult/High School–In 1972, Parrado and his rugby teammates from Uruguay were flying to Chile to play a match against the national team. Crossing the Andes, the aircraft crashed on a remote, high-altitude, glaciated slope. This remarkable story of the survivors omits none of the raw intensity and brutality of their experience but is burnished by time, casting an analytical perspective on ways in which their subsequent lives were influenced by the ordeal. The many forms of courage exhibited and the sustaining power of love of family are the basis of the narrative as the group supported one another in a collective refusal to surrender to the mountain. Parrado credits their physical conditioning and the rigorous team ethic inherent in the sport as the foundation for the trust and allegiance that enabled the men to battle the odds. Reduced to the most elemental human needs and learning from a radio transmission that rescue efforts had been abandoned, they reluctantly realized that their only food source was the bodies of the victims. Parrado was respectful of the spiritual faith of those who clung to a belief in rescue, but put his energy into engineering a plan and acted as a leader of the expeditionaries who hiked through the perilous mountains to find help. A detailed chronicle of these events was presented in Piers Paul Read's Alive (Avon, 1975), but Parrado's memoir offers a reflective expansion of that work. Dramatic photographs are included
Favorite Passages:
pg 84....Nando talking with Arturo Nogueira, who suffered multiple painful fractures of both legs......"What good is God to us?" I replied.(Nando) "Why would he let my mother and sister die so senselessly? If he loves us so much, why does he leave is here to suffer?"
"You are angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child," Arturo answered. "The God who is supposed to watch over you and protect you, who answered your prayers and forgives your sins. This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond religion. The true God lies beyond our comprehensions. We can't understand His will; He can't be explained in a book. He didn't abandon us and He will not save us. He has nothing to so with our being here. God does not change, He simply is. I don't pray to God for forgiveness or favors, I only pray to be closer to Him, and when I pray I fill my heart with love. When I pray this way, I know that God is love. When I feel that love, I remember that we don't need angels or a heaven, because we are a part of God already."......
Memoir, 2006, pg 284
Rating: 5.0 (5.0 Amazon)
Book Club: FL - Lakes Library - February, 2008
Recommendation: I enjoyed the book. Once started, it pulled you in, even though you knew what was going to happen. For me, the questions about God--- Why did God let this happen?.....Why did some die and others live? How does God answer prayers? Why are some "not" answered? ----are questions I've asked at times in my life, just recently with my nephew Jonathan's death from leukemia. This book, in Nando's discussion of how he dealt with this tradegy, raised many of the same questions....and Nando discussed them from his view and others.
I read the book in 2 days, and then went back and re-read some of the passages that dealt with "Why did this happen?" and as important...."How do you go on after you return to the 'world'"?
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly: In October 1972, a plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes. Not immediately rescued, the survivors turned to cannibalism to survive and after 72 days were saved. Rugby team member Parrado has written a beautiful story of friendship, tragedy and perseverance. High in the Andes, with a fractured skull, eating the flesh of his teammates and friends, Parrado calmly ponders the cruelties of fate, the power of the natural world and the possibility of continued existence. "I would live from moment to moment and from breath to breath, until I had used up all the life I had." Parrado, who for the past 10 years has been giving inspirational talks based on his experiences, lost his mother and sister in the crash. Struggling to stay alive, his guide becomes his beloved father: "each [stride] brought me closer to my father... each step I took was a step stolen back from death." More than a companion to the 1970s bestselling chronicle of the disaster, Alive, this is a fresh, gripping page-turner that will satisfy adventure readers, and a complex reflection on camaraderie, family and love.
From School Library Journal: Adult/High School–In 1972, Parrado and his rugby teammates from Uruguay were flying to Chile to play a match against the national team. Crossing the Andes, the aircraft crashed on a remote, high-altitude, glaciated slope. This remarkable story of the survivors omits none of the raw intensity and brutality of their experience but is burnished by time, casting an analytical perspective on ways in which their subsequent lives were influenced by the ordeal. The many forms of courage exhibited and the sustaining power of love of family are the basis of the narrative as the group supported one another in a collective refusal to surrender to the mountain. Parrado credits their physical conditioning and the rigorous team ethic inherent in the sport as the foundation for the trust and allegiance that enabled the men to battle the odds. Reduced to the most elemental human needs and learning from a radio transmission that rescue efforts had been abandoned, they reluctantly realized that their only food source was the bodies of the victims. Parrado was respectful of the spiritual faith of those who clung to a belief in rescue, but put his energy into engineering a plan and acted as a leader of the expeditionaries who hiked through the perilous mountains to find help. A detailed chronicle of these events was presented in Piers Paul Read's Alive (Avon, 1975), but Parrado's memoir offers a reflective expansion of that work. Dramatic photographs are included
Favorite Passages:
pg 84....Nando talking with Arturo Nogueira, who suffered multiple painful fractures of both legs......"What good is God to us?" I replied.(Nando) "Why would he let my mother and sister die so senselessly? If he loves us so much, why does he leave is here to suffer?"
"You are angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child," Arturo answered. "The God who is supposed to watch over you and protect you, who answered your prayers and forgives your sins. This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond religion. The true God lies beyond our comprehensions. We can't understand His will; He can't be explained in a book. He didn't abandon us and He will not save us. He has nothing to so with our being here. God does not change, He simply is. I don't pray to God for forgiveness or favors, I only pray to be closer to Him, and when I pray I fill my heart with love. When I pray this way, I know that God is love. When I feel that love, I remember that we don't need angels or a heaven, because we are a part of God already."......
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