literature

Book 15 for 2024: “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”, Muriel Barbery

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Before reading this book, I thought of French society as relatively egalitarian. Apparently, it is not if this book mirrors reality. One main character Renee, 54, lives and works as a concierge in a high class building containing eight, large, luxury apartments which the residents own. As she tells her story, she notes that this is her 27th year at this job. She describes herself as “short, ugly, plump”. She rarely says anything nice about herself or any of the residents. She notes she is uneducated, insignificant. She has one friend, Manuela, a cleaning woman originally from Portugal. Renee thinks it is her duty, her lot in life, to pretend to be something she is really not, a person totally lacking in intellectual and artistic acumen. She runs the television to make the residents think she watches mindless melodramas when she is actually reading Tolstoy as well as all sorts of literature and Marx, history, well every genre. After all, her cat is named Leo for a reason. She goes to art galleries, listens to all sorts of classical music, is basically an intellectual in the true meaning of the word, but works very hard to hide this, because she thinks she must stick to her station in life as she sees it. This works until one resident dies and a wealthy Japanese man buys the deceased man’s apartment. Both he, who notes her cat is named Leo, and a young girl, the other main character who lives in one of the apartments and plans to commit suicide and set their apartment on fire, suspect Renee is not as she appears to be. I do not want to give it all away, but this is a book with many life lessons, including that adage about not judging a book by its cover.

Ovid

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This is poem two for National Poetry Month. A friend wrote a poem following the prompt to write a poem about a book the writer has not read for a long time. She wrote about The Scarlet Letter. My poem is about the book, An Imaginary Life.

The Roman Emperor Augustus saw Ovid’s poetry as subversive,

a power threat. He exiled Ovid to a remote corner of the Empire,

somewhere over by the Black Sea, the Carpathian Mountains,

among the destitute, the superstitious, people who did even know

how to read or write. They believed in witches, feared ghosts, saw

evil in everything and everyone different. Different equaled

death.

Paid to host Ovid, the village leader teaches him to ride horses

bareback, hunt, become stronger. Ovid transforms from a weak

revolutionary who hates this place to one who sees the barren

beauty, wanders in the forests, plants a wildflower garden,

survives.

While hunting, they see barefoot tracks in snow, tracks

of a feral child, a boy. Ovid fears for him, finds him,

rescues him. An accident occurs. The villagers blame

the boy, want to kill him. He and Ovid escape,

wander far into the northern wilds, into

infinity.

Book 10 for 2024: “The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice”, Elizabeth Flock

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This book raises these questions: Can women gain true safety and equality without violence? Can we end misogyny without fighting back?

The book details the stories of three women, one from Alabama, a woman from northern India, and a Kurdish fighter in northern Syria. All use a form of violence to overcome abuse and mistreatment they have experienced and see other women experiencing. The author personally interviewed all of these women and others close to them and visited them repeatedly.

The first is Brittany Smith, who shot the man who had raped her and was trying to kill her brother. Her story details how Stand Your Ground laws work for men, but often fail for women, especially in areas of the US South where men are protected by their beliefs in a male Code of Honor.

The second is the story of Angoori Dahariya, a Dalit woman, from Uttar Pradesh, India. Fed up, she creates a group called the Green Gang (they wear green saris) dedicated to defending poor, under caste, female victims of abuse. Note: Dalit refers to the lowest caste.

The third is the story of Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a Kurdish fighter in the female militia that fought ISIS in northern Syria. She and many others follow the teachings of Ocalan, a Kurdish leader imprisoned by the Turks for leading the Kurdish militia who for years have fought the Turks for independence. He teaches equality between men and women and women’s rights, which is anti the general cultural beliefs in this area of the world. Note: Ocalan is labeled a terrorist by many.

Book Eight for 2024: “Being Heumann”, Judith Heumann

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Judith Heumann contracted polio as a child and was subsequently confined to a wheel chair. Doctors suggested to her parents that they send her off to live in a place for the disabled. Having escaped Nazi Germany, her parents were horrified and refused. There were no laws protecting disabled people when she was a child. Her parents, especially her mother, fought for her to go to regular school. This is how her story begins as she tells it. The rest is the story of her activist life.

When the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was passed, it took months for Section 504 regulations to be signed into law. At this time the author was a young woman living in the SF Bay area. She lead a days long sit-in at the federal building in San Francisco. When this did not work, she went to DC. The entire book is her account of her life as an activist for the rights of disabled persons, beginning with her childhood, her becoming a certified teacher after attending college, and her endless activism for Section 504 and the ADA.

This is an important book for anyone interested in the history of civil rights for the disabled.

Books 3-5 for 2024: “Happening”, “The Young Man”, “Simple Passion”, Annie Ernaux

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In the last few days, I’ve read three books by Annie Ernaux who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2022. Although she is a major writer in France, I had never previously heard of her. Since the local library possessed none of her books, I drove to Claremont and checked out all of her books that were available. The publication dates range from 1974 to 2022.

Most of her books defy categorization. The librarian helped me find them because some were in fiction and some nonfiction. From just reading them, it is impossible to determine whether what I’m reading is real or imaginary or a combination. She writes about women’s lives mostly and issues that only women experience.

“The Young Man”, copyright 2022, tells a detailed account of a love affair between a young male student and a 50 something woman, thirty years older than he. They meet on weekends often at his apartment, make fervent love, visit sidewalk cafes, wander. The narrator notes that people sometimes look askance at them in a way they never view an older man and a younger woman. She finds love making helps her write, “Often I have made love to force myself to write.” At the end of the book are photos of Ernaux over the years (she was born in 1940) and a detailed biography.

Next I read “The Happening”, (2001) a detailed account of a young female student seeking an abortion when it was illegal in France. She manages to hide her state from most people including her parents. She finally finds an elderly nurse, but later experiences complications and ends up in the hospital where a young doctor, who thinks she is just some poor woman off the street, treats her badly. When he discovers she is a university student, he finds her and apologizes. It seems mistreating the poor is okay but not someone from his own class status.

Then I read “Simple Passion” (1991), a short (64 pages) detailed account an illicit love affair between a young, married man from Eastern Europe and the narrator. The telling part of this story is the narrator’s (the author?) obsession with this man she calls A. She waits for his calls 24/7. She thinks about him every waking moment and dreams about him at night. I kept thinking of myself and many women I know who have become obsessed with some man to their own detriment.

A a writer, I find her work totally fascinating in its extreme courage. She writes in detail about experiences few would dare to even talk about, but many experience and keep silent. Much of it is autobiographical, an even great demonstration of bravery. Who dares tell the truth of many of our own experiences? Very few of us.

One Book a Week-54: “On A Night Of A Thousand Stars”, Andrea Yaryura Clark

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For decades I have been a bit obsessed with Argentina and its history. When the horrible events described in this recent novel occurred during the military dictatorship in the 1970s, I closely watched news and read books about it. Later, I hosted an exchange student from Argentina and visited him and his family. Therefore, when I saw this novel on the new books shelf of the local library, I checked it out.

At a polo match in New York, a wealthy Argentinian diplomat and his wife and daughter meet a woman from his college days. She says things about him and his past that upset him and cause his daughter, Paloma, to wonder about her dad’s past, about which she knows little. When they go to Argentina on a trip related to his diplomatic duties, Paloma decides to investigate. She meets a local university student whose parents had disappeared (as thousands did) during the military dictatorship. He is part of an activist group searching into the disappearance of close family members during the dictatorship. He decides to help her with her research into her dad’s past. This creates a chain of events that upsets everything she knows and endangers her life.

If you want to read a heartbreaking love story, learn more about a brutal period in Argentinian history and some Argentinian customs and lore, this is the book for you. I went back and reread some of it twice.

One Book a Week-34: “If I Survive You”, Jonathan Escoffery

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After reading about this book and its author in a recent issue of the Sunday “Los Angeles Times”, I saw it while wandering around the local library and checked it out. Although the author’s work has been published in various magazines, this is his first book.

This collection of short stories reads like a novel because the characters in the stories are either identical or related from Trelawny and his brother Delano to their ill-fated cousin, Cukie, all of whom are the descendants of Jamaican immigrants living in or near Miami, Florida. Sometimes excluded because they are Black, they face other challenges, e.g. Trelawny because people cannot figure out what he is ethnically or racially due to his complexion and hair, light and only somewhat curly. All struggle to discover who they are and where they belong, if anywhere.

While many of their experiences remain heart wrenching, Escoffery has the ability to also make their stories funny. I kept think of some works by Sherman Alexie whose stories are both horrifying and hilarious.

Note: The next three books will remain anonymous and no blogs about them because they are for a project and I cannot report about them. I will be blogging poems and essays about other topics.

One Book a Week-17: “Olive, Again”, Elizabeth Strout

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Never having read the first book about Olive, the book that won the Pulitzer for Strout, I did not know what to expect. As I read, I often laughed out loud and then later thought, “What!” Olive is quite the character, sometimes almost blunt to the point of cruelty, sometimes unexpectedly considerate and kind, and always strongly opinionated about things I did not expect. She also has the ability to sometimes look at herself accurately and question herself, which would seem to be a good characteristic. Olive goes on in spite of numerous setbacks, mishaps, and illnesses, including the realities of old age. Strout’s portrayal of some of these realities seems stark, almost brutal. Yes, it’s accurate and she’s good at it, but I kept thinking, “Do I really want to read this?” If I get like this, they can just shoot me. But they won’t.

National Poetry Month: 1: The Kingdom of Trees

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An essence within the heart of trees

allows them to communicate

with other trees to

-aid each other when disturbed

-send secret signals, warnings to other trees

-express pain, sympathy.

The kingdom of trees now cries

worldwide in pain,

watching each other’s murders.

land laid naked, nature destroyed.

Note: I wrote this poem last year. It is published in the anthology, “Writing Through The Apocalypse, Pandemic Poetry and Prose”,

Editor: Marcia Meier

One Book a Week-13: Blue Desert, Celia Jeffries

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As an ardent reader who prefers what are usually referred to as literary novels and serious non-fiction, few books impact me deeply and emotionally like this one has. As soon as I finished it, I reread parts of it several times, then sat silently stunned.

After her family moves to North Africa for her father’s work, an 18 year old British girl, rescued by a Taureg leader, is believed dead by her family until she resurfaces years later at a Catholic “home” run by nuns in North Africa. She re-enters British society, marries, leads a relatively “normal” life while keeping a secret for decades. When she receives a telegram, “Abu is dead”, everything changes. Her past comes rushing back in unexpected ways.