ancestry

Book Two for 2025: “Memory Wall Stories”, Anthony Doerr

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While wandering around in the library, I found this book. His two more recent novels, ” All the Light We Cannot See” and “Cloud Cuckoo Land” remain two of the most touching and fascinating novels I have ever read so decided to try what he started with, short stories. These stories do not disappoint.

The title of the book comes from the first of the stories. It is a combination of science fiction and paleontology. Via an operation to his head a young boy in South Africa possesses the memories of an old woman. Through her memories he learns of a her deceased husband’s interest in rocks and fossils. This allows him to make a discovery that changes lives. In the next story, due to the death of her parents, a young girl in Kansas has to move to Lithuania to live with her grandfather and makes a myth come true. The following story, “Village 113”, won the O. Henry Prize. It details what happens to one woman, a keeper of seeds for an entire village, when the Three Gorges Dam was built in China. Another story tells what happens to a couple in Wyoming when they desperately want a child but cannot conceive. The shortest of the stories, “The Demilitarized Zone”, is well about that–sort of. The final story, like several others, is about memory, in this case the memories of a Holocaust survivor, who like many who survive horrible events when others they know do not, wonders why her.

I liked these stories so much that I ordered his earlier collection of short stories, “The Shell Collector.” He has won the O. Henry Prize for short stories five times and the Pulitzer for “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in 2015. I keep wondering how he knows so much about so many places. His short stories and novels are set in countries all over the world. The research must never end.

Book One of 2025: “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store”, James McBride

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This is another great novel by one of my favorite authors. The book begins with the finding of a skeleton in a well in 1972. Since it is located near the site of an old synagogue, the police start to question a local, elderly Jewish man, Malachi, but get nowhere. Before they can come back to ask him more questions, Hurricane Agnes washes away the skeleton and many houses in the lower, wealthier part of town. When they do finally get around to hunting for him again, he has disappeared.

Then the novel goes back 47 years in this nondescript Pennsylvania town where the white people live in the lower, nicer part of town, and the Jews and black people live in or near an area called Chicken Hill, a poor area with little water and no plumbing. It is the story of a Jewish couple, Chona and Moshe. She runs the grocery store in the title, and he runs a dance theatre where he hosts dances, sometimes showcasing very famous musicians, mostly Jewish or black or Latino. It is also the story of some of their black neighbors, one of whom was Chona’s best friend in school, Jewish immigrants from Europe like Malachi, and a deaf black child, Dodo. When the state comes for Dodo because his mother has died and they think he should be institutionalized, Chona’s kindness and the courage of a local black worker, Nate Timblin, bring the black and Jewish people together to save him. While all this can be sad and serious, I also found myself frequently laughing. This novel reveals the quirks of all sorts of people, how they relate to one another, the dangers of racism, and ultimately the meaning of community, courage, and friendship and how much these things matter.

Book 45 for 2024: “How To Stop Time”, Matt Haig

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What would your life be like if you did not age like everyone else? How would others treat you, your family? Would they kill your mother because they think she is a witch? Could you love someone who grew old while you stayed young? Would you have to move all over the world to avoid detection?

These are the issue the narrator faces because unlike ordinary people, he does not age normally. At the beginning he is living in London as a forty-one year old history teacher but has been alive for centuries. He’s met Shakespeare, travelled the oceans with Captain Cook, and played piano at clubs in Paris.

One organization, the Albatross Society, hunts down and “protects” people like him. Their leader has one rule: do not fall in love. He is also convinced that certain groups want to find these non-agers and imprison them for research. What is factual, real? Does life have meaning without love?

Book 43 for 2024: “A Stranger in Olondria”, Sofia Samatar

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As a person who diligently never fails to finish a book I start, it is difficult to admit that I have finally failed to finish a book. I made it to Book Five and quit. Having already happily read two of this author’s other books, this failure comes as a surprise.

In this fantasy novel, the narrator’s quest to find the body of an illiterate girl from his own country (he has wandered far in search) whose ghost haunts his dreams became less and less appealing. Not sure why because I generally like fantasy novels. This novel does raise some interesting questions:

-Are burial/cremation practices so sacred that one must follow what is considered sacred in one’s culture or risk exile?

-Where is home?

Book 42 for 2024: “These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories

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This fictional work is based on the life of the author’s great grandmother. Written as a diary with specific dates, the narrator is not yet a teen when the novel starts. Her parents are wanderers, always looking for a better, new place. Sarah’s character is that of a tough, pioneer girl and then a woman. She can ride horses, shoot to kill, manage a ranch, do whatever it takes to survive. Much of it includes a rather accurate portrayal of life in Arizonan territories as well as Texas at the time including the prejudices of many of the white inhabitants toward the Spanish speaking people already there, fights with Apaches, and the hunt for Geronimo. It is not just the story of her own life, including her relationship with the Army Captain whose job initially is to protect a wagon train, but also portrays other people living in the Southwest during that time period.

I read this as part of a book club. Reactions to the book varied widely from those of us who thoroughly enjoyed the book to at least one person who insisted it is poorly written and viewed it as a romance novel. The rest of us did not. She used an audio book edition. After her descriptions, it appears the audio book does not correctly follow the book itself and is poorly done which may have contributed to her view of this work. I borrowed this novel from the public library and it was obviously well read because it was not in the best condition.

Book 41 of 2024: “Crazy Horse”, Larry McMurtry

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One of the saddest books I’ve ever read, this short piece of nonfiction details not only the life of Crazy Horse but also the demise of the traditional lifestyle of the Plains Indians. Crazy Horse has been the subject of endless legends and myths, many of which apparently have nothing to do with reality. He was not a chief; he often defied traditional Sioux customs. He was very much his own person. Among his people, he was especially known for his kindness and support of the poorest and weakest and for his prowess as a warrior. Crazy Horse died young due to not only white betrayal but also that of some of his own people.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in this particular period of US history. At the end is a comprehensive list of sources with notes about each one of them.

Book 40 for 2024: “If We Are Brave: Essays from Black Americana”, Theodore R. Johnson

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Johnson, a columnist for The Washington Post, notes that the US was founded on a set of ideals but for much of its history agreement on what those are ideals are has not existed. What are these ideals, who are they for? Today there is little agreement on much of this. There seems to be a lack of a common vision on what a democratic system is and should be and for whom. The essays in this book address these questions both today and from the origins of the country when only white men who owned land could vote. This book also discusses how different races in the country and the changing predominance of cultures affects the ideals people hold and the kind of country they envision for themselves.

As a Black man who is a retired Navy Commander, he also discusses his own experience, extensive research, and personal views. This short book is an excellent primer on how different races and cultures experience living in this country and their varying visions of the meaning of democracy.

Book 39 for 2024: “The Return”, Hisham Matar

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This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. The subtitle, “Fathers, Sons, And The Land In Between” indicates a bit of the subject matter–how sons and fathers relate, but in this case it is a tale of horrible grief and suffering when Matar’s father is arrested and imprisoned in the notorious prison of Qaddafi in Libya. For decades Matar tried to find out what happened to his father. There is no record of his death and no one knows what happened to his body. The book details the lives of his family and their search for news of, hopes he might be alive, and what happened to Matar’s father. To this day no one knows. In 2012, 22 years after his father’s kidnapping when Matar was 19, he returned to Libya to try to learn more, met with uncles who had also been imprisoned, some for 20 years. This is the tale of his family’s suffering and hope. It also relates in detail the horrors of Qaddafi’s reign, what happened to many in his most notorious prison, and the resilience of so many who managed to survive, including close relatives of the author.

Note: After Qaddafi fell, there was hope for a new, unified government. However, as of the present, Libya is ruled by two rival administrations and is a divided country.

Book 38 for 2024: “James”, Percival Everett

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If you ever read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, then you already know the characters in this new novel. If you have not read about Huck, then I suggest you might want to read Cliff Notes or some other synopsis of Twain’s novel. “James” takes its title from the name of one of the main characters, a slave who lives in Hannibal, Missouri. He is generally called Jim, but in reality prefers the more formal James. Basically, Everett’s novel is written from the viewpoint of James, e.g Jim. Most of the major events in Twain’s original novel are followed in this novel, but from James’ viewpoint. Huck, a poor kid, runs away to avoid his violent father and finds James hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. Together they live off the land, float in their handmade raft down the Mississippi River, mostly at night to avoid anyone seeing them, and meet all sorts of folks, including two men, who are criminals pretending to be European royalty. It is hard to imagine how a novel about the horrors of slavery could possess any humor, but this one does. It is a quick, enlightening, and entertaining read filled with “lessons” that do not seem to be lessons because they are so intertwined with the James’ story.

Book 36 for 2024: “The Storyteller of Marrakesh”, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

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A striking, foreign, young couple appear one evening in the Jeema of Marrakesh. The woman’s incredible beauty fascinates the observers. Suddenly, they disappear. Hassan, a traditional storyteller, invites those who observed the couple to tell what they saw and knew on that night as he presents his own stories to the crowd at the Jeema. His brother, Mustafa, has confessed to the crime of their disappearance, telling everyone he loved the woman whom he hardly knew. He is imprisoned for their disappearance. However, nearly everyone acknowledges that he had nothing to do with it. This novel presents all the different views of the couple, their disappearance, and what it means. Often observer stories contradict each other, raising the questions of what is truth, whose truth is factual, how can we know what is true and how do we define love. Hassan is determined in his quest which takes the reader through all these stories, Hassan and Mustafa’s childhood, the mysteries of the Sahara, and much more.