Girls at War and other stories/Chinua Achebe/120 pp.

A group of short stories by Nigerian author Achebe. The collection includes some stories that take place during the Biafran War era, and others that take place in pre-war Nigeria. Many of the stories end, not with a resolution of the problem, but rather with a situation that acts more like a moral, making them seem like a native folktale. (In fact, some of the stories include the native gods of the region.) My only caution is that it is easier to follow the stories if you know a little about Nigeria and the Igbo or Ibo ethnic group that inhabits the region. Having read a book in the past year that deals with the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria made it a bit easier for me to understand some of the unusual figures of speech and the cultural and religious differences.

Secretly Inside/Hans Warren/99 pp.

Ed, a Jew in Nazi-occupied Holland, goes into hiding at a farm in the remote province of Zeeland, and gets entangled in the intrigues of the family that hides him.
The story that is there is well-written, but I just felt like it was incomplete, like this very short novel was actually the first part - the lead-up, if you will - to a longer work. The author does such a good job of creating these in-depth characters, and then all of a sudden the climax of the story is here, and the story is over. I enjoyed what was there, and the introduction, which tells of the author's own war-time experiences, makes me want to read more of his work.

Bossypants/Tina Fey/275 pp.

Tina Fey is one of the best writers Saturday Night Live ever had, the producer of the hit NBC show "30 Rock", a seasoned improv actor, and my friend Katie's secret lesbian crush. (OK, it's not really a secret; Katie told her husband she had a crush on Tina from the first time she saw her on SNL.) Bossypants is Fey's funny memoir of her childhood, her first forays into improv comedy, her stint in Second City and her run on SNL, how she got her own Emmy award-winning show, and (most importantly for her) the story of the birth of her daughter. She relays some of the wisdom she received from Lorne Michaels, executive producer of SNL, and answers some of the hate-mail she's received online. She explains how the whole Sarah Palin impression thing got started, and gives us behind-the-scenes glimpses into how SNL gets put together each week. All throughout, she maintains the quirky sense of humor that has made her such a success.

The Favorite Game/Leonard Cohen/245 pp.

I've always thought of Leonard Cohen as a songwriter and poet first (Every time I hear his name I get his song "Hallelujah" stuck in my head) so I was surprised to see that he'd written a novel. The Favorite Game was actually written and published clear back in the early 1960s, so it's not like Cohen just recently turned away from poetry to start writing straight prose. And, to be honest, in a lot of ways this book reads like poetry. Cohen's descriptions of scenery, a lover's body, even scenes of laborers in a brass foundry, are almost musical.
The Favorite Game is the story of Lawrence Breavman, a young Jewish-Canadian poetry writer who resembles Cohen in many ways. He avoids crowds and social situations; he wins a scholarship for his writing, but turns it down to work in the brass foundry at menial labor. He has trouble committing to one lover; when he finally finds a woman who not only arouses him physically, but also intrigues him emotionally, he leaves her to return to Canada to visit friends, and breaks up with her over the phone. Breavman's problem is that he creates ideal backgrounds for the people in his life; when the everyday or mundane intrudes on that ideal or fantasy it destroys his interest in the people and he separates himself from them. This book is partly about Breavman's struggle to realize that the ideal and mundane are both part of what makes up these people.

Personal Days/Ed Park/241 pp.

I enjoyed parts of this book, but there was a MAJOR issue I had with it. The book is divided into three parts: the first part reads like a regular story, written in 1st person plural - we did this, we saw that, etc.; the second part is written entirely in outline form - I.A.ii.b., etc. - a little annoying, but still fairly easy to follow; but the third part is written as one long, stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence. The premise (to the third part)is that a character is sending an email to another person; he's trapped in an elevator, the screen on his laptop has gone dark, and his period (full-stop) and return buttons don't work, so he's just writing everything as it comes to him, without going back and changing things. Plus he likes to go off on tangents unrelated to the action in the story. This is the kind of thing that, if it had happened toward the beginning of the novel, would have caused me to throw the book over my shoulder (figuratively, librarians! calm down!) and go read something else. But because I was already involved in the whole story, I wanted to find out what happened to everyone, so I had to struggle through to the end. As the character went off on each of his tangents, I kept thinking, "Wait! Where are you going? Come back here and tell me what happened to these guys!"
There were good parts to the story; puns and office romances and office nicknames like "Grime" and "Crease", and management doublespeak lie "There's no I in team", and other funny bits. Parts of the story reminded me of good episodes of "The Office". But the totally unnecessary changes in writing style completely threw me off, and by the end of the book I was just glad it was over.

Detective Story/Imre Kertesz/112 pp.

Antonio Martens was a member of the secret police in a dictatorship in an unspecified Latin American country. Now that the dictator has been overthrown, Martens is in prison facing trial for the torturing and killing he took part in. He asks for paper and pen to write with in his cell, and proceeds to relay the events surrounding the surveillance, torture and death of two prominent members of the nation's society - not as a means of atoning for his misdeeds, but in order to set the record straight on what actually happened and who is really to blame.
The story was difficulty to follow, due to the lack of concrete facts: we never know anything about the country or the government, aside from vague references to Latin America, "The Colonel", etc. An "atrocity" occurs, but the narrator doesn't explain what has happened. One of the torturers has, on his desk, a model of a certain "device" called the Boger swing; the description of the device, and what it is used for, is very vague, and it took me several pages before I realized they were talking about an instrument for torture. Nothing seems to be said outright; the author instead makes hints and vague statements, assuming (as he has his narrator say) that we "already know all about that".
The author, Kertesz, survived the Holocaust, having been imprisoned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a youth. There is an obvious correlation between the tactics of the secret police in the novel, and those of the SS during World War II. But there is also a less-evident correlation to the tactics used by intelligence gatherers today - the assumption of guilt followed by the gathering of "evidence" to prove that assumption; the idea that the situation we find ourselves in warrants the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" to prevent an as-yet unnamed "atrocity".

The Postman (Il Postino)/Antonio Skarmeta/112 pp.

After finishing all 1000+ pages of the Robert Jordan book, I decided to make a change of pace and read a few shorter books; the Atiq Rahimi book was one, and this short novel by Skarmeta is another. Il Postino tells the story of Mario, who fell into his job as postman by sheer laziness. His main job (almost his only job) is to deliver mail to the poet, Pablo Neruda; an unexpected friendship develops between the two men, Neruda acting as matchmaker between Mario and the lovely Beatriz, and godfather at their eventual wedding.
The novel does a good job of using Neruda to connect the residents of this small village to the events happening in late-1960s/early-1970s Chile - the election of the Marxist government and the overthrow of the Allende government a short time later.
Toward the beginning of the story, Neruda explains to Mario the concept of the metaphor, and from that point on I began to notice that the book is full of metaphors, similes and the like. One of the best things about the book is its use of these words to describe the sea, the village, Mario's beloved Beatriz, etc. The language and the flow of the novel very much have the feel of poetry.
Strangely, when the novel was adapted into a movie in 1994, the setting was changed to 1950s Italy - perhaps because the writer of the screenplay and the star of the movie, Massimo Troisi was Italian. I've never seen the film, so I don't know how the political situation was adapted to that time period and location, or even if they were in the movie. But while the book does include these political elements, the story has very little to do with those events; it is more about the relationships between Mario and Beatriz, between Mario and Neruda, and between Neruda and the villagers.

First Love and Other Sorrows/Harold Brodkey/223 pp.

A MULSA book sale remainder!

Originally published in 1958, this collection of short stories was reissued in 1988, and that's the edition I read and am reviewing. A St. Louis native who attended Harvard, Brodkey writes stories that seem almost autobiographical. His description of St. Louis locations, and of growing up poor (but formerly well-off), remind me of another St. Louis resident, Tennessee Williams.
I especially enjoyed the first story, "State of Grace", and all the stories that dealt with the narrator's sister/Laurie/Laura and her attempts to find a "good man" to "settle down with". Although the people have different names in each story, you can't help feeling that these are all the same people, and that they are somehow personally known by Brodkey himself.

Earth and Ashes/Atiq Rahimi/81 pp.

A very short, but very enjoyable read. (I started it at bedtime last night, and finished it during lunch today.) An Afghani village is destroyed by the Soviet army in retaliation for the (apparent) assassination of some of their troops. Dastaguir and his grandson, Yassin, are the only survivors of his clan; they set out to find Yassin's father (Dastaguir's son), to tell him of the tragedy.
Yassin has lost his hearing from the bombing; the way in which Rahimi describes how Yassin views this is especially well-written. ("The bomb was huge. It brought silence. The tanks took away people's voices and left." Then, "What do they do with all the voices? Why did you let them take away your voice? If you hadn't would they have killed you? Grandmother didn't give them her voice and she's dead." And "Grandfather, do I have a voice? [...] So why am I alive?"
The story is told in the second person, so instead of hearing how some man named Dastaguir is dealing with events, the reader is placed into the situation himself - "you" see this, "you" hear that, "you" tell people the story of your village being destroyed, and it makes the devastation so much more personal; your grandson is deaf, and you're coming to tell his father (your son) that his wife and mother and entire family are dead. So much of what we hear about what's going on in the Middle East is impersonal, statistics about how many died, what town was taken, what new strategies our troops are using to win over the locals. Even though this book was written (in 2000) about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, it personalizes the events that happened then, and what's happening now.

The Reader/Bernhard Schlink/218 pp.

Rachel already did a review of this book, so I'll try not to duplicate her efforts. A young man in 1960s Germany begins an affair with Hannah, a woman substantially older than himself. In addition to it being his first sexual relationship, the affair is significant because he spends hours reading to Hannah. One day he goes to her apartment and discovers that she has moved out and completely disappeared. Assuming she left without saying anything to him because she didn't love him anymore, the young man retreats into his studies and is unable to have any other close relationships for fear that those he becomes close to will leave him in the same way. As a college student he sees Hannah again, and discovers why she left, and what "the secret" is that caused her to leave.
The book is an easy read, well translated from the original German, with short chapters that allow you to read a few pages here and there, between other tasks. The narrator struggles with forgiving Hannah, and with his conflicting feelings for her.

The Shadow Rising/Robert Jordan/1006 pp.

Yes, you read that page total correctly; at 1006 pp., The Shadow Rising, Book Four in Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series, is also easily the longest book in the series. After temporarily meeting up in the coast city of Tear, our merry band of adventurers is scattered to various destinations: some to Tanchico to find the Black Ajah (the renegade members of the Aes Sedai), some to the Aiel Wastes, and some back to the Two Rivers, to protect their home village from the dual threats of Trollocs and the Whitecloaks.
The problem with a series like the "Wheel of Time", with (so far) 14 volumes, each volume at least 600 pages (often over 800 pages)- the problem, I say, is that there are so many things going on, so many characters in so many locations, with so many new words to learn and people to remember, that it gets a bit (more than a bit) confusing. Each of the three or four divergent plot-lines in this volume alone would be enough for the average fantasy novel; trying to weave them all together into one overarching story is quite a challenge - for the author and, unfortunately, for the reader as well. Don't get me wrong - Jordan has told a very enjoyable tale here; it just becomes so... overwhelming after a while. And to know that there are still (at least) ten more books (rather large books) to go before the entire plot is resolved, makes me question my ability to finish the series.

1985/Gyorgy Dalos/120 pp.

1985: What Happens after Big Brother Dies is meant as a sort-of follow-up to George Orwell's classic 1949 novel 1984. While the original was a warning about the dangers of unchecked government control and historic revisionism, and a prescient look at the Soviet Union of the mid- to late-20th century, the sequel by Dalos, written in Hungary in 1983, is a look at what might happen when such a totalitarian regime begins to crumble. A good knowledge of Orwell's book is absolutely necessary, as Dalos makes reference to "past events" and characters from the book constantly. There is also a series of rather unfortunate footnotes that start out adding information useful to the reader, but end up becoming rants by the narrator against his superiors.

amazon.com listing
deviantART review of the book

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich/Danilo Kis/135 pp.

A collection of seven loosely-connected short stories, each of which is a brief "biography" of a fictional figure in the creation of the Soviet Union and the Comintern. The stories, all set outside Yugoslavia (most in the Soviet Union, but one in Ireland and Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and one in Inquisition-era France), on the surface appear to be a statement on the violent excesses of the Soviet leadership in the Stalinist (and pre-Stalin) era; however, the book was published in 1976, and it is easy to understand that Kis was using the historic example of the Soviets to call attention to the activities of the secret police and government in Yugoslavia in the second half of the 20th century.
As mentioned above, one (seemingly) incongruous story takes place during the Inquisition in France in 1330. In the city of Toulouse (and all across France). Jews are being killed or forcibly converted to Christianity. Kis uses the story of Baruch David Neumann to show the ways in which those in power ignored (and often conspired with) the rabble's violent attacks on Jews.

Homely Girl, A Life and Other Stories/Arthur Miller/115 pp.

This short compilation of Miller short works includes just three stories: "Homely Girl, A Life", "Fame", and Fitter's Night". The shortest of the three, "Fame", is a possibly autobiographical look at how a popular playwright deals with his new-found celebrity. Random strangers approach him on the street, offering their unsolicited opinions of his work or gushing as if they were old friends. Rich people in restaurants think nothing of interrupting his meal to make him meet their friends. The key point of the story is when an old schoolmate recognizes him in a bar. The schoolmate, unaware of the playwright's celebrity, brags about his own success in life, but when the playwright is approached by a stranger asking for his autograph, the schoolmate completely changes his behavior, becoming shy and taking back an invitation for the playwright to join him for dinner. Success changes not only the celebrity, but also his relationships with those around him.

Oddly, the story I enjoyed least was the title story. A woman, treated badly in life because of her lack of physical good looks, comes to the realization that she doesn't need affirmation from others to feel good about herself.

The third story in the volume, "Fitter's Night", was the one I found most enjoyable. A pipefitter, working in the New York shipyards during World War II, spends most of his time (at work and at home) trying to land the easy jobs and find a way to avoid responsibility. But when he's forced into a repair job on a ship heading out to war, he realizes how important it is for him (and all his coworkers) to do the best job they can, because all these sailors' lives depend on the quality of his work.

The Great Hunt/Robert Jordan/705 pp.

This is the second book in Jordan's massive "Wheel of Time" series. Rand al'Thor, beset by Morgaine Sedai's claims that he is the Dragon Reborn, sets off with a group of warriors and friends on a quest to regain the Horn of Valere, which has been stolen by followers of the Dark One. The Horn has the magical quality of summoning heroes from beyond the grave to help whoever sounds the horn. In the meantime, Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne begin their training to become Aes Sedai; their training is interrupted when one of the Aes Sedai tricks them into being sold to a group of foreign warriors. Rand and the other warriors must retrieve the Horn, rescue the women, and stop the Children of the Light, a fanatical group of warriors who seek to eradicate anyone who is friendly to the Dark One (including, in their eyes, the Aes Sedai).
I enjoyed this book a lot. Jordan does seem to borrow from some of the other standards of fantasy fiction - the warriors called by the Horn are reminiscent of Tolkien's Shadow Host, and there are numerous references to the Arthurian legends. But the book is well-written and entertaining; if it weren't for information about the characters that you have to know from the previous book, this volume could stand on its own as a full fantasy tale. Jordan does a good job of drawing together parts of the story that were started earlier, helping the reader realize that all these seemingly unrelated events are all threads in the same tale's fabric.

Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories/various authors/576 pp.

Wow, I can't believe there have been no posts since my last one. As long as it took for me to finish this book, I thought for sure some other reviews would have been posted before I could review this one.
As the title implies, this is a collection of short stories, organized by their different points of view. As any English major worth his salt will tell you, point of view (POV) has to do with what relationship the story's narrator has to the events being related. Is the narrator recounting events that happened to him personally? Then he tells the story in first-person POV. Is the narrator recounting events that happened to the reader? Second-person POV is the route he takes. And so on. The anthology's editors go into much deeper division of the various points of view, including interior monologue, diary narration, and anonymous narration, but it all basically has to do with whether the narrator was directly involved in the events. The editors provide several examples of each type, and that's where my interest returns. (This was something that always got me in trouble in high school/college literature courses - I didn't care about things like POV and theme and so on; I just wanted to read the damn stories!)
The nice thing about this anthology is that it collects stories from a wide variety of time periods and cultures. While it leans pretty heavily on pre- and post-WWII America, we also have Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil", as well as stories by Poe, Chekhov, Maupassant, James Joyce and Joseph Conrad (including some lesser-known stories by these masters). One of my favorite pieces was Dorothy Parker's "But the One on the Right", which is a dinner party guest's inner monologue about her fellow guests. The collection even includes a story by long-time MU faculty member Tom McAfee, "This Is My Living Room".

The Eye of the World/Robert Jordan/832 pp.

As promised, this is a review of the first book in Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. (I read the prequel, New Spring first, although it was written later.)
Moiraine Sedai and Lan Mandragoran have spent much time searching throughout the land for the child who will become the "Dragon". In the backwater Two Rivers area, they realize they have found him when the village is attacked by evil creatures. The creatures target three teen boys specifically - Rand, Mat, and Perrin; Moiraine and Lan take the boys away, hoping to take them to safety at Tar Valon. The Eye of the World follows the group's journey, as the boys realize each of them will play an important part in saving the land from The Evil One.
I mentioned in my review for New Spring that that book assumed a knowledge of certain terms used throughout the series; luckily, many of those terms are explained in greater detail in this volume. There are also a series of maps of different areas of the land in which the story takes place, and the ever-helpful glossary at the back of the book.
I really enjoyed this volume (even more than I liked the prequel), so I think I will continue reading the series for a while longer.

Section of wikipedia article which explains the premise behind the series.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner/Alan Sillitoe/144 pp.

This is one of the best collections of short stories, by an artist I'd never heard of, that I have ever read. Sillitoe was born and raised in Nottingham, England, in a working-class family. At the age of 14 he left school and went to work with his father in a local bicycle factory. The stories in this collection mostly deal with families like Sillitoe's - poor factory workers living in cramped, dirty houses where the noise, soot and grime of the nearby factory is a constant part of their lives.
The title story is about a young man (Colin) who robs a bakery and is sent to a borstal, a sort of part youth prison, part reform school. The governor (warden) of the borstal gives him the opportunity to run cross-country meets for the prison track team; Colin is a good runner, and the governor thinks he will help him to win against a posh private school and get the borstal some good publicity. Throughout the race against the private school, Colin is way in the lead, but he stops running shortly before the finish line, intentionally losing the race to show the governor he is in charge of his own life.
"Uncle Ernest" is about a veteran of World War I who has suffered a mental breakdown due to his experiences in the war. There is an almost childlike innocence to him; when he meets two young girls at a diner, obviously poor and hungry, he offers to buy them something to eat. He continues to meet the girls at the diner, and the older of the two begins taking advantage of his innocence, getting him to buy them other things. Unfortunately, Ernest's motives are misunderstood by other patrons of the diner; they (and the police) assume he is a pervert, and warn him away from the girls.
I enjoyed all the stories in this volume, but I think my favorite was "The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller". Frankie is a young man of about twenty, who has the mental capacity of a younger boy; he acts as general (though he prefers to be called sergeant-major) in the neighborhood boys' skirmishes with other groups of boys. World War II is approaching, and Frankie assumes that when the war starts, he'll go to join his father's regiment; obviously, when the war does begin, he is rejected for service and ends up assisting the local civil defense patrols. This story is obviously at least partially autobiographical; Frankie addresses the narrator as "Alan", and Alan is a writer of stories about his old neighborhood. Sillitoe uses the story to reminisce about his own childhood and to express regret over having "moved on" to be a well-known writer who seems to have lost touch with his roots.
Reviewers have compared this book to The Catcher in the Rye, calling Colin a "British Holden Caulfield". It's easily one of the best collections of short stories I've ever read. Unfortunately, this copy of the book will not be going back into the MULSA book sale - it was missing a front cover when I got it, and has lost several pages since then. However, I note from MERLIN that there are several copies in the Libraries' collection: MERLIN

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof/Tennessee Williams/158 pp.

The second of a pair of Williams plays I read recently. "Cat" takes place in the bed/sitting room of Brick and Maggie Pollitt in the plantation home of "Big Daddy" Pollitt, Brick's father. Big Daddy is a rich man, owner of a huge plantation; the occasion that takes place in the play is the celebration of Big Daddy's birthday and his (supposed) clean bill of health from recent medical tests. All the family members (except Big Daddy and his wife, Big Mama) know that the medical tests actually came back positive for cancer, and they plan to gently break this news to Big Daddy.
The play chiefly deals with Brick's relationships with Maggy, Big Daddy, and Brick's brother, "Gooper" (Cooper). Brick and Maggie haven't slept in the same bed for quite some time, partly because of Brick's worsening alcoholism. Big Daddy wants Brick to overcome his alcoholism and general indifference to the world so that he can take over the running of the plantation, while Gooper and his wife try to get the plantation for themselves by making Brick look bad in front of Big Daddy and Big Mama. A subplot of the play is Maggie's questioning of Brick's relationship with his best friend, Skipper, who recently committed suicide; Maggie wondered if Brick and Skipper were homosexual lovers, and slept with Skipper to challenge their relationship. Her confrontation with Skipper is what resulted in his suicide, and the suicide is what has caused Brick's heavy drinking and general apathy.
Williams' handling of the interactions of this "Old South" family, his willingness to deal with topics like alcoholism, cancer and sexuality at such an early date, and the sometimes autobiographical nature of the story make this an interesting and entertaining read.

A Streetcar Named Desire/Tennessee Williams/142 pp.

This is the first in a pair of Williams' plays that I read. Blanche DuBois comes to stay with her sister, Stella, and Stella's husband, Stanley, in a run-down neighborhood in New Orleans. Written in 1947, the play documents the changing relationships among Blanche, Stella and Stanley, while showing the clash between Blanche, a member of the "genteel" Old South, and Stanley, a member of the new industrial working class. Stanley resents Blanche, who represents (to him) Stella's past and the "finer things" that Stella left to marry him. The action culminates in a surprising confrontation between Blanche and Stanley, ending with Stella siding with Stanley and having Blanche committed to a nursing home.