October

*”The Tsar of Love and Techno,” by Anthony Marra (the author of “The Constellation of Vital Phenomena” in an earlier review) is really quite extraordinary. You have to pay attention, as it is a collection of interlinked stories that stretch across a century, a continent and a cast of characters tied together by an obscure 19^th-century painting. In the 1930s, a failed portrait artist in Soviet Russia is made to erase political dissidents from official images and artworks, beginning with his disgraced and executed brother. When he comes upon an antique painting of a dacha in a landscape, he subversively begins to draw his brother into it and into every subsequent picture he censors, a decision which echoes through the decades, threading together a variety of stories reaching from Leningrad to a Siberian city called Kirovsk to Chechnya and back again. The stories build on one another, and by the time they are tied together at the end we have become emotionally invested in the world of lies, compromises and betrayals that individuals can be forced into and find ourselves marveling at how they manage in small ways to restore some of what they have lost. It’s one of the few books I immediately felt a need to reread, just so I could fully experience the skill of this author in reminding us that love, family and humanity can survive even under a cruel and inhumane totalitarian system.

*My grandson, Darien Acero, turned me on to “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating,” by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, and I was totally captivated by this author’s short, intimate and inspiring personal story. While an illness kept her bedridden for an extended period of time, Bailey became entranced by watching a wild snail a friend had brought in from outdoors and put in a pot of violets at her bedside. She developed a sense of wonder in watching how this mysterious creature adapted to his new environment, which she subsequently enhanced by having him moved to new digs in a terrarium furnished with natural material, and, among other treats, a portobello mushroom for dinner and water in a blue mussel shell (under which he often curled up and slept). Bailey’s illness was long and debilitating, and, she says,” Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility.” The snail, who remained nameless, provided that welcome focus, and the author acknowledges they were “officially cohabitating.” Her snail observations came from a single year of her nearly two decades of illness, and she merged that story with her later scientific readings in an attempt to understand half a billion years of gastropod (slugs and snails) evolution. You may think you wouldn’t be interested in the daily life of a wild snail, but trust me, you would be you wrong. I could go on and on with all that I learned from this fascinating book, but instead think you should read it so you can have the pleasure of savoring the discoveries for yourself. Jack loved it. (J)

*Many of today’s immigrants who have made it to Europe are grappling with prejudice, poverty and unemployment. In Sunjeev Sahota’s engrossing “The Year of the Runaways,” we follow three young men and one young woman who have come illegally to England from India hoping to support their families, build their futures and escape the past, with no idea of what awaits them. Sharing a dilapidated house in Sheffield are Tochi, who grew up in an untouchable class and is subjected to both racial prejudice and his own countrymen’s class hatred, and Avtar and Randeep, middle-class boys whose families at home are sinking into financial ruin. Across town Randeep has a “visa wife,” Narinder, a pious Sikh with a spiritual desire to help someone in need, to whom he has to stay married for a year to be eligible for a visa. Although they share the same dreams, the men are suspicious of each other, often competing for the same hard-to-find jobs, and constantly worrying that their meager earnings will be stolen. We come to feel deeply the exhaustion of their daily grind – trudging from place to place seeking employment, facing rejection and contempt, having to do the worst low-level, backbreaking jobs like construction and sewer cleaning – just to merely exist. As one character says, “There is no peace. Ever. Just fighting for the next job. Fight fight fight.” I became deeply invested in these characters as I read, and my need to know what ultimately happened to them was not satisfied by the epilogue, set ten years later, which seemed to wind things up too neatly and hastily. If there’s another book about these people I will read it, as I found myself caring deeply about their futures and thinking about the current struggles of others like them all over the world.

In 2011, a wave of revolution spread through the Middle East from Egypt to Yemen as protesters demanded an end to tyranny, corruption and economic decay. Five years later, those utopian aspirations have not come to fruition, as in one country after another terrorists and dictators have risen to the top and old divides have deepened. Egypt has become a more repressive police state than ever, Libya, Syria and Yemen endure civil war, and the extremists of ISIS have spread chaos and crisis.   “A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS,” by Robert F. Worth, a former NY Times correspondent and bureau chief in Beirut, chronicles the legacy of what was once called the Arab Spring. We meet average Arabs who lived through the revolutions in each of these countries and share the struggles, both physical and intellectual, they face daily. In closing, Worth inspires us with the very moving story of the two Tunisian statesmen in their eighties whose brave camaraderie allowed their country to escape the terrible fates of its neighbors. The more I read about the Middle East the more complex I realize it is and the more futile and challenging our attempts to understand and shape some parts of it seem to be. It is vital that we as a nation understand this tragic story of hope and despair as we try to determine a strategy going forward.

In Don DeLillo’s “Zero K,” Jeffrey Lockhart arrives in the middle of the desert at a remote compound called the Convergence, a cross between a think tank and a state-of-the-art hospice. His billionaire father, Ross, whose younger wife, Artis, is in failing health, has invested in this secret compound where death is controlled and bodies are cryogenically preserved until a time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of utopian promise. Jeff is there to say goodbye to his stepmother as she surrenders her body. “We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?” These questions haunt this complex and challenging novel. Ross, most particularly, feels a need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world; Jeff is committed to experiencing life in the real world, to which the second half of the book is devoted. The book inspires us to fantasize about what might be possible, but at this point, even as wealthy people in our country invest millions in researching how to extend life, we are all still heading for the convergence.

The National Park Service turned 100 this year, so it was a perfect time to read “The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks,” by Terry Tempest Williams. It is a literary celebration of our national parks, an exploration of what they mean to us and what we mean to them. With the poet Jorie Graham as her muse, Williams explores the unknown territory of the twelve national parks featured in Graham’s poem, “WE,” including Grand Teton in Wyoming, Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota, Acadia in Maine, Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, Effigy Mounds in Idaho, Big Bend in Texas, Gates of the Arctic in Alaska, Gulf Islands in Florida and Mississippi, Canyonlands in Utah, Alcatraz in California, Glacier in Montana, and Cesar E. Chavez in California. The portraits that highlight the unique grandeur of each place are in part memoir, part natural history and part social critique. I kept bookmarking insightful – often inspirational – lines to quote, such as “To be an environmentalist is to be engaged in life.” In 1893, John Wesley Powell, speaking before the International Irrigation Congress in LA after hearing their plans to irrigate the millions of acres of federally owned lands in the arid West, said, “I tell you, gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.” In 1893! Or this from Stewart Udall, secretary of the interior from 1961-1969 – “Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature . . . but man is a part of nature, and this war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. A war against ourselves. Will we acknowledge this in time?” Williams concludes, “We can continue on the path we have been on, in this nation that privileges profit over people and land; or we can unite as citizens with a common cause – the health and wealth of the Earth that sustains us.” These essays are lyrical, thought-provoking and heartfelt. (J)

In a time of political turmoil it is fascinating to read about the Founding Fathers during the Revolutionary War, as they were at odds with each other in their personal relationships and on many critical issues, both political and military, including the strategy and leadership of the war. The focus of “Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution,” by Nathaniel Philbrick, is the relationship between Arnold and Washington and the four years that led to the notorious fall of one and the gradual emergence of the other as a true leader. Arnold’s victory in a viciously fought naval battle on Lake Champlain after a series of devastating American defeats brought him great acclaim, but Philbrick shows how the injuries Arnold subsequently suffered at the Battle of Saratoga set this great fighting general on the road to treason. I am compelled to share Philbrick’s take on Arnold, and you’ll understand why it sounds familiar – “The same narcissistic arrogance that enabled him to face the gravest danger on the battlefield without a trace of fear had equipped him to be a first-rate traitor. Arnold had never worried about the consequences of his actions. Guilt was simply not a part of his makeup since everything he did was, to his own mind, at least, justifiable. Where others might have shown, if not remorse, at least hesitation or ambivalence, Arnold projected unwavering certitude. Whatever was best for him was, by definition, best for everyone else.” Washington’s great strength proved to be his ability to rise above the petty politics of his time, a strength that remains relevant to this day. There are many details about various Revolutionary War battles and the strategy behind them in this book, but ultimately it is the personal and all-too human story of Arnold’s downfall that captures us.

I think of Liane Moriarty’s books as guilty pleasures – easy to read, amusing, insightful about marriage, sex, parenthood and friendships, and with plots that keep you wanting to know what is going to happen next. In “Truly Madly Guilty,” Sam and Clementine have a wonderful, if very busy and complicated, life, with two beautiful little girls. Clementine’s friend since childhood, Erika, and her husband, Oliver, a childless and very organized couple, invite them to a barbecue with Erika’s neighbors, Tiffany and Vid, whose larger-than-life personalities make the event seem appealing. However, two months later, a traumatic event that happened that afternoon keeps Clementine and Sam asking, “What if we hadn’t gone?” The reverberations from that day continue to resonate among the families.   The plot is a bit formulaic and less gripping than those in earlier books, but it’s still fun to read.

Mysteries:   There are many Cold War spy stories , but “Exposure,” by Helen Dunmore, is different from the norm, as it emphasizes the terrifying personal impact of being inadvertently drawn into the world of espionage. In 1960 London, Giles Holloway, laid up in the hospital after an accident, asks his coworker Simon Callington to return a top-secret file to Giles’ secretary. Despite his misgivings, Simon takes possession of the file, and thus unleashes a chain of events that result in his arrest for passing information to the enemy, threaten his family and may lead to the exposure of vital truths from his past. The tightly wrought plot brings home how the betrayals and paranoia of this fear-filled historical period could infiltrate every aspect of a family’s life. I enjoy the Peter Lovesey mysteries that feature Detective Peter Diamond and are set in charming Bath, England. In “Another One Goes Tonight,” two exhausted cops head to investigate one last call after finishing a long night shift, and their patrol car spins off the road, killing one and critically injuring the other. Diamond’s supervisor assigns him the case, hoping he won’t find the officers at fault, but instead Diamond discovers something worse – an elderly gentleman on a motorized tricycle was involved in the crash and has been lying on the side of the road for hours. He administers CPR, which not only keeps the gentleman alive but leaves the detective with an emotional link to the victim that impels him to launch a private inquiry. What he finds unexpectedly is a trail of uninvestigated deaths. The ending has what we all want, a satisfying surprise.