Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – Book

From a Google Image Search – Finger Guns

You know the story. Boy meets girl. Girl and boy spend time together, grow up together. It’s a love story – no, not Romeo and Juliet, not that kind of love story, It’s complicated.

In Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Sam Mazur and Sadie Green meet at a hospital. Sam has already experienced two traumas that would mess up anyone’s mind. Sadie has a family member in the hospital so has a fair bit of trauma in her life also. Her sister had cancer, but it has responded to treatment and Alice is there for more routine reasons. Sadie is getting ready for her Bat Mitzvah. Sam is tuned into his own grief. He lost his mother in a car accident and crushed a foot in the same car accident. Sam and his mother had moved from New York City to Los Angeles after a bizarre accident in that city seemed like a warning of danger. Moving obviously didn’t work. Sadie only spends time with Sam reluctantly at first, but they become close friends for a while. When Sam learns that Sadie is counting her time with him as community service for her Bat Mitzvah he is hurt and angry. They lead separate lives until Sam runs into Sadie at a train station.

What Sam and Sadie have in common is gaming. Sam’s Korean grandfather owns a pizza shop with a Donkey Kong machine he hoped would attract customers. Sam had permission to play as much as he wished. Since Sadie kept getting kicked out of her sister’s hospital room, Sam and Sadie played computer games, passing Sam’s laptop back and forth.

This may not be a conventional love story and it is not, despite the title, a literary novel. It is however a great gamer story and there is love and betrayal, and anger, and possibly undeserved blame. There are relationships, there is the passage of time, and there is more trauma.

My own gaming experiences are limited to the maligned “shooters” which Sadie and Sam find unartistic and antisocial. The games I played were Pac Man, Snood, and Space Invaders, shooters all. Sadie’s favorite game was Oregon Trail. In college she had as her professor Dov, a young Israeli game designer who had created and successfully marketed a popular game.

Sadie and Sam eventually create a game called Ichigo – a game with a child lost at sea who must be rescued. The game has beautiful graphics and becomes iconic. Sam’s college roommate Marx Wantanabe, is a wealthy guy with amazing social skills. Marx provides upfront money and resources for Sadie and Sam while they code and look for an engine that will drive the graphic results Sadie pictures in her mind. Marx and Sadie share a love of art and literature, especially Asian art and Shakespeare. These gamers are all very young, they drop out of college for a semester to create Ichigo. By the time they are out of their twenties, they are financially successful which seems to affect their lives very little. Love and friendship are far more difficult to maneuver through though.

You can enjoy this novel as a story. The characters are immersive. Or you can enjoy this book as a blueprint to reach gamer stardom. It’s a coming-of-age-story with a twist. It’s also a success story. I am still waiting for eye surgery, so I am still reading on Audible which I am getting used to. It doesn’t put me to sleep anymore. Although I am too old to be the intended audience for this book, I still enjoyed it. We all have a bit of the entrepreneur in us along with a taste for romance. For me the relationships seemed more like they were mapped out by a game creator than offering the personal involvement with love that readers can sometimes experience. There was always a distance between even the characters who did get intimately involved. Not my favorite book ever, but I looked forward to listening each time I got the chance.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride – Book

From a Google image Search – WHYY

I hesitate to write about The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride because so many readers already have done so, but I do like to obsessively keep track of the books I read. Besides, there are things to say. I know, that’s what Julia Roberts said in Notting Hill. Now you all know that I have watched that movie too many times.

McBride’s tale takes place in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1936. The fact that his points, and there are points, intersect with where we are now in the twenty-first century is both surprising and rather shameful. James McBride is a musician and a writer of fiction, a rare crossover. He won a National Book Award in 2013 for his novel, The Good Lord Bird.

We are not surprised that Jews and Black folks were American scapegoats in 1936. Hitler had just begun his awful politics in Europe and many Jewish people, perhaps already aware that they were about to be persecuted once again, left Europe to settle in America. Black folks have been persecuted continuously in America. As the tale begins some work on the Pottstown water system turns up a mezuzah and a human skeleton at the bottom of a hole where there is a connection to the local water reservoir. The rest of the story tells us how the mezuzah and the body got there.

Moshe had wandered down to Pottstown from New York City. He was a Jew who loved to party. He opened a theater, invited Klezmer musicians, and sold tickets to people to come in and dance. He became well-known to other agents who also booked musicians, and he had a brother, Isaac, who ran a very successful theater operation in Philadelphia.

Moshe also owned the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. He married Chona, a beautiful woman who was not considered marriageable because she had a disability. Chona loved the other people who were their neighbors on Chicken Hill, even though they were black folks. They were her customers at the grocery store which she ran after her marriage to Moshe. Many of the Jews from Chicken Hill had moved to town, but Chona refused to leave Chicken Hill or to close the grocery story. She knew that human warmth and loyalty were worth more than social climbing. Her customers loved her and were protective of her.

In 1936 in America, people who were immigrants themselves from all over Europe looked down on Jews and considered Black folks a threat. These were the times when Germans chanted “Jews will not replace us.” We heard this refrain recently in America in Charlottesville when Trump was President #45. It was given a more general scope when some chanted “You will not replace us.” The only Americans indigenous to this continent are not European immigrants and yet the chant of “blood and soil” was also transplanted from Europe as if there are Americans who can authentically lay claim to being the “real” Americans (hint: they mean white Christian Americans).

If you read Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste, or Matthew Desmond’s books, Eviction, and Poverty by America, these authors speak of their belief that countries tend to need scapegoat groups, untouchables so to speak, for reasons such as holding onto power and hoarding money. Jewish and Black folks are our scapegoats in America, although not necessarily for the same reasons. They are easy to target because they stand out, one based on religion and the other based on skin color. These groups cannot easily hide or blend in with white or Christian Americans. Many of us are disgusted by this tendency, yet we see that these biases are kept alive by stereotypes, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. This prejudice ties those early Hitler years to present-day attitudes that persist in America. In contrast to the supportive relationship between Jewish and black people in McBride’s book, there are attempts made in this century to divide these two groups, to make Jews targets of hate and to turn black folks into people to be feared.

Chona often needs to see a doctor because she has seizures. The only doctor in Pottstown is white and he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Everyone knows this because he also has a limp. Dr. Roberts went to school with Chona, and he has always desired her. In a key moment, Dr. Roberts sexually abuses Chona as she lies unconscious from a seizure in the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Dodo is the nickname of a child rendered deaf from a stove that blew up in his home before he became homeless. Chona and Moshe have taken Dodo in, and Dodo sees what Dr. Roberts does to Chona. Soon he finds himself committed to a local institution for homeless, deranged, and disabled people. Dodo is a black child. Nate, his wife Addy, and the entire black community of Chicken Hill are touched when Moshe and Chona take on this good child.

Thus begins a chain of events that comes to a head on the day of the Memorial Day parade. Besides the plans for rescuing Dodo, another problem is addressed on this same day. It is related to the question, “Why is there a bullfrog in the mikvah?” The rescue of Dodo from the clutches of a monstrous man called Son of Man and the institution at Pennfield, and the explanation for how the mezuzah and a dead body got in the hole with the town’s water pipes depends on events that happen on this same chaotic Memorial Day occasion. It’s a great story that also highlights how little we have learned about our common situation as humans on this earth. Social commentary and social justice occur all in one fell swoop of the pen of James McBride. We should heed the lessons this tale teaches us with humor and also with its descriptions of shameful human behavior. You may end up saying along with Dodo, “Thank you, Monkey Pants.” I listened on Audible and since this book is full of dialects it was a pleasure.

Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter – Book

From a Google Image Search – Columbia School of Arts

Today there was a powerful earthquake in Morocco and the internet tells me that over 1000 people are dead. We live in a world where existential events seem to be occurring with frightening regularity. And I have just finished reading a book called Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter which perfectly echoes the instability of the present moments of our life on this planet. It doesn’t read like a book about climate change, but extinctions are the bass line that runs through Leichter’s amazing fiction book.

My mind got tangled in the time shifts. What would a family tree of these characters look like? “Terrace” is the first chapter of the book, It describes the home and the relationship of Ann, Edward, and Rose. It’s a tiny space until Stephanie, a coworker of Ann’s, enters their lives. Stephanie was born with the odd ability to enlarge the space around her. As Stephanie tries to deal with her own separateness, as she carries the blame for her sister’s death, as she crashes through the lives of those around her, as she is betrayed over and over by Will the world keeps changing. Relationships don’t last. Couples who seem well-matched part. Trout go extinct, Salmon. Shrimp. Crows. This is a story of climate change and how it might affect people. “People are dropping like flies,” the author tells us. “It’s the latest trend.”

From the “Terrace” to the “Folly” to the “Fortress”, which is both a person and a place, to the “Cantilever” this is a unique work of fiction – fascinating, disturbing, brilliant, confusing – with time and space all bolloxed up, making it difficult to tell who is related to whom and where anyone is.. There is a story of a Queen, a King, and a Hermit created from the ruins of a folly encountered at a funeral attended by Ann’s mother and father. Ann’s mother wrote about extinctions. Her father was a professor of medieval history. Lydia and George, Ann’s parents are separated when George is seduced by his graduate student, Patricia. It’s complicated but engrossing. Do the relationships matter, or just the extinctions? Perhaps the relationships exist so that extinctions have some meaning and so that there is a sense of time.

Anyway. Mind Blown. I am still listening to books (waiting for my eye appointment). I had to listen twice. I loved this book. Perhaps you will too. It ends in the new suburbs in space. It ends almost at the end.

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay – Book

From a Google Image Search – Barnes and Noble

At the heart of the novel The Housekeepers by Alex Hay, is a heist for the ages. The prime mover of this elaborate theft is the indomitable Mrs. King and her somewhat shady but loyal friends and family. Mrs. Bone may be not quite the thing in the eyes of polite society, but she has turned her small business into a big business and owns property all over the city of London. Her intuitive understanding of finance and human needs has made her a very rich woman. Lucky for Mrs. King, Mrs. Bones is a friend, and she loves a challenge.

It’s 1905, no high-tech assistance can be tapped to help this author with this massive operation that uses lower class ingenuity and connections to fight a class system that would never offer up justice through a biased legal system without some incontrovertible proof. There is a document which must be found before there can be any true justice. So far plenty of clandestine searching has not unearthed this single essential piece of evidence. Once Mrs. King is fired as the housekeeper at the Park Lane mansion further searching is stymied.

Mrs. King’s bold plan depends on finding talented people and spreading around the eventual proceeds of the theft. Mrs. Bone provides the upfront money, but not without misgivings. This extravagant heist is not about greed; it’s about revenge and family. Some other horrific clandestine business turns up as the heist progresses which gives the surprisingly straight-laced Mrs. Bone her own reasons to complete Mrs. King’s plan.

Are the details of the heist believable? Who cares. Suspend your disbelief and just enjoy this delightful British novel where the tables are turned in an age when upward mobility was nearly impossible, and the best of the lower class put one over on the worst of the upper class.

Since I listened to this book on Audible the accents the reader used for the various characters enhanced the fun and the satisfaction of the final victory but, as usual, made it difficult to know how to spell the characters names. Fortunately, most of the names were quite simple as befitted the lowly status of the characters, who were anything but lowly in character. Very enjoyable and a fine example of how “girl power” might have functioned in times that granted almost no rights to women.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton-Book

From a Google image Search – Shondaland.com

For me the jury is still out on Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. Our first impressions when we finish a book may change with time, either increasing or decreasing our favorability rating of the book. The title comes from the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, and I must say that Shakespeare understood human nature and would most likely have not been shocked by these folks. I will also say that if you plan to be evil you should at least be good at it.

Lady Jill Darvish and the newly knighted Sir Owen Darvish own the property and the farmhouse where Jill Darvish grew up. It is near the New Zealand town of Thorndike. A recent avalanche has made it more difficult to access the farm and the land, although not impossible if you go in through the national park land adjacent to the property.

This hard-to-reach piece of land ends up hosting an astonishing array of people and machines. An American, Robert Lemoine, made an offer to buy the property, without the farmhouse, before the avalanche. He’s a billionaire who says he wants to build a bunker to survive the coming climate apocalypse. Some people are disgusted by this display of wealth, others feel that it’s a dumb plan because supply lines will become problematic, but almost all people who are aware of the project are curious about what the bunker will look like. But does a bunker project require armed security guards? What is Robert Lemoine really up to?

Birnam Wood is a collective of environmentalists. They are gardeners who plant crops on any untended land they can find, and they are sometimes guerilla gardeners, planting on land owned by others without their permission. The group attracts young idealists who travel light and live cheaply. They meet regularly to plan their stealth planting operations. They sell the produce they grow to help finance tools, seeds, and transportation. The group also accepts donations. We meet two young women who are the current leaders of the group, Mira, and Shelley. When they learn about the land at the Darvish farm, cut off as it is from the world, it seems an ideal place to do some real farming. When they meet Robert Lemoine, who still seems to want to buy the property, and who in fact says he has bought the property, he wants them to come to the land and farm it. He even deposits upfront money in the Birnam Woods account, ten thousand dollars.

What could go wrong?

Of course, I cannot tell you the details, but a series of chain reactions is set in motion which would do justice to any book by George R. R. Martin. After all greed is one of the seven deadly sins and, in one way or another it affects every character in this novel. Again, I had to listen on Audible until my eyes get corrected, and the story flew by. The connection to Shakespeare I found rather tenuous although Macbeth and Robert Lemoine have a few things in common.

Did the author go overboard on the complications involved in her plot? Did it have to end the way it did? Was the ending much too abrupt? The way the author contrived to get the entire cast of characters all together on a property that was cut off by an avalanche should interest any fiction writer. I enjoyed it but did I love it? Time will tell.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese – Book

From a Google Image Search – Chicago Review of Books

There have been two books by beloved fiction authors published recently that are set in the same area in India, along the southwestern coast. Salman Rushdie’s offering, Victory City, is a mythic fantasy that is inspired by the site of an ancient and fallen civilization. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese is set in the years from 1900 – 1977 as a family saga and an exploration of how the effects of a hereditary condition affect the fortunes of the family. Verghese, who also wrote the best-selling novel Cutting for Stone, is known for the medical stories he tells.

The Covenant of Water takes place in the watery landscape that is known today as the state of Kerala. We begin in the years of British occupation, although this is not a story about imperialism and winning independence. India does win free of Britain during this period, but the novel is the story of a family living on a property known as Parambil. A very young woman is contracted to wed the owner of Parambil and we share her trepidation as she travels along the waterways that provide transportation throughout the area. She is a Christian woman and is marrying a man who belongs to the same church of St. Thomas. Her husband lost his wife to childbirth and the child lived. He gives his twelve-year-old wife time to grow into the relationship.

Big Ammachi is the name that this child-woman becomes known by as she becomes the stable and enduring center of the family. She discovers that many of the members of this family she has married into suffer from an aversion to water. This is a big deal in the watery world they occupy. When those who are afflicted get into water they become disoriented, and grievous accidents and drownings cause beloved family members to die early. The family keeps a family tree that records the tragic path of destruction that “the Condition” has left behind. There is no science to explain this type of hereditary situation in 1900, and in fact the physical basis for this condition is not known until we arrive in 1977 near the end of this book.

In a parallel story we have the promising doctor, Digby Kilgore, in India but from Scotland, who is beginning a career in surgery. He is partnered with a doctor addicted to alcohol who leaves all the Indian patients to Digby while he treats the very few white patients who are admitted into a separate ward. Digby falls in love with Celeste, the talented wife of this addicted surgeon who should have already lost his right to practice medicine. Their passion leads to a fire that changes Digby’s life forever. With his burned hands he knows his time as a surgeon is over. Connections he has made as a surgeon lead to the next chapter of his life which becomes intwined in the life of a man who builds a compound for lepers. He falls in love again with Elsiamma the beautiful wife of Philipose, Big Ammachi’s grandson. Eventually this connection leads to finding the cause of “the Condition.” Mariamma, who believes she is the child of Philipose and Elsie, learns about her true parentage when her life crosses the life of Digby Kilgore.

Besides offering glimpses into a part of the world we were basically unacquainted with, we get a sense of the slow development of our store of information about disease and the hereditary roots of it. Science cannot offer insight until the tools that allow observations inside the body have been invented. And the brain is almost impossible to study humanely while we are alive, at least this was true before modern imaging and is still true to some extent. It took three-quarters of a century to trace the origins of this one disease, which affected so few people that the discovery of its roots was almost stumbled upon by accident. If Mariamma had not decided to become a doctor the discovery may have been delayed even longer.

There is an aspect of both Rushdie’s Victory City and Verghese’s The Covenant of Water that gives them common cause besides geography and that is the focus given to women, their victories, and their heartbreaks. Pampa Kampana, the woman who creates Victory City, ironically never gets to rule it. She does, however, establish that women will one day give up entering the fire, as her mother did, when their husband dies. Since the women in The Covenant of Water are rarely affected by “the Condition” and since Big Ammachi did not have this genetic defect she forms the backbone of her family and her village, offering warmth and love to all who inhabit her world including “Damo” the elephant who often visits and who Big Ammachi once caught looking into her kitchen with his big old elephant eye. Romance is also a part of Verghese’s story, although even the happiest of unions face tragic circumstances. Even the lepers are treated lovingly and the research on leprosy makes possible the research on “the Condition.” This is a long novel, but following at least three, possibly four generations of one family takes time and we learn that, simple or fancy, life makes unsung heroes and heroines irrespective of economics.

Victory City by Salman Rushdie – Book

From a Google Image Search – American Kahani

Salman Rushdie, prolific and celebrated author, was born in Mumbai (Bombay) India. He was born to Islamic parents but became an atheist. One of his early books was The Satanic Verses. It was considered sacrilegious by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran who issued a fatwa on February 14, 1989, requiring the faithful to seek out Rushdie and kill him. For many years Rushdie lived in hiding in London under the protection of the British government. The Ayatollah died without lifting the fatwa, so it was never rescinded but Rushdie felt secure enough to live freely in NYC for many years. On August 12, 2022, standing on the stage at the Chautauqua Institute in New York Rushdie was attacked by 24-year-old Hadi Matar who stabbed him multiple times with a knife before security and participants were able to apprehend him. Rushdie was severely injured and lost the use of one eye.

Victory City is the first book Rushdie has published since his near-death experience. Salman Rushdie is back on home turf with this book. His heroine, as a nine-year-old girl, sees her mother walk into a fire to die as custom required of widows. She is shocked that her mother would chose the fire rather than stay with her. But she is given a gift from the goddess Pampa who she is named for. She is given two gifts by the goddess. She is gifted with long life. She is also gifted with the magical ability to sow seeds and grow her own city.

The goddess tells her, “You will fight to make sure that no more women are ever burned in this fashion, you will live long enough to witness both your success and your failure, you will see it all, tell its story and then you will die immediately. Nobody will remember you for 450 years until they unearth your verses.” (not an exact quote). It turns out that knowing your future often brings both joy and pain.

First Pampa Kampana spends years reaching her maturity in the cave (mutt) of a spiritual teacher and sexual predator, Vidyasagar. Fortunately, Vidyasagar studies for long hours as he memorizes all the holy texts, but he occasionally finds time to rape Pampa. The monk seeks the answers to two questions. The first is whether wisdom exists or there is only folly. The second question is to find out if there is such a thing as Vidya or true knowledge, or only many different kinds of ignorance. His goal is (ironically) how to ensure the triumph of nonviolence in a violent age. Although grateful for learning the contents of the holy books, she never forgets the humiliation she suffered when she was helpless to fight back.

When Pampa Kampana is eighteen two cowherds arrive at the mutt. She sends Hukka and Bukka Sangama out to sow the seeds of her city. She names the city Bisnaga or Victory City. Since her city is peopled by people who have no personalities, who know no history, who don’t know their identities, Pampa Kampana whispers to fill the minds of each individual in Bisnaga. It is a city created by magic.

Magic is one of the best aspects of Rushdie’s writing. The existence of magic allows him to be a great storyteller in the Eastern manner. This book does not have Islamic roots; it celebrates Hinduism but as myth more than religion. It’s interesting that Pampa Kampana’s life and the life of Victory City are exactly 247 years, the same as the life of the American Republic (probably not an accident). There is plenty of commentary on the rise and fall of great cities, or great empires. Why are empires successful and why do they fail? Is failure inevitable?

In our world we have no magic that we know of. We live in non-magical times. We can’t blame the gods and goddesses for our failure. We have only ourselves to blame. Still, a good story entertains us and makes us think in new directions. Victory City is an engrossing tale of magic and life that centers around a female heroine who builds a great empire, which is quite rare. Salman Rushdie is writing again and that is cause for celebration.

Theresa, et al by Jean Hackel – Book

From a Google Image Search – Amazon – the ratings are from readers on Amazon

A rather chilling abortion story has been written by Jean Hackel in her book Theresa, et al. When Theresa decides to have an abortion the Dobbs decision has not yet turned abortion laws over to the states. Abortion is still legal. Theresa goes to the wrong clinic however, and winds up in the hands of some women who have formed an abortion vigilante group. Theresa’s mother, a very devout Catholic, who honors her religion above her children, allows a fanatic named Lucy Meyer to come into her home with some of the militant women from Maureen Haig’s church. Theresa is living in her family home while her husband is on active duty in the armed forces. Theresa is shocked that her mother pretends that she (Maureen) does not seem to see that these women plan to stop her daughter from completing a personal choice about her pregnancy. They eventually kidnap Theresa.

“Theresa sat on the bed, her back against an iron-spindle headboard. Both of her wrists were attached to the grillwork. Her feet were tied together with fabric to prevent kicking. Lucy sat down on a wooden chair at the edge of the bed.” (p. 132)

There are many repercussions from this violent and criminal act. Could this really happen? Perhaps it already has but this may also be a graphic way to discuss forced birth and the effect it may have on women, families, and even children.

Where were the authorities in this situation? There were eventually many agencies involved, but Theresa got no justice. On top of all the pain of. being a victim, Theresa’s husband is injured by an IED on the way home to her and when he finally gets to a hospital in the states, he has a tough recovery ahead. Since the hospital is in Alabama, when Theresa is found in Minnesota where her own family lives, Woodrow (a great guy) takes her to stay with the Coles who are Charlie’s family. From her cold, judgmental mother she enters the sphere of a warm and loving family, and her life begins to normalize. Turns out though, that justice is far harder to come by given the strength of the “pro-life” movement. Quite a timely novel, which calls to mind The Handmaid’s Tale, although it is completely original.

Violeta by Isabel Allende – Book

From a Google Image Search – Houston Chronicle

Isabel Allende set some of her books in California, showing glimpses of the lives of Americans who migrated from Central and South America. Violeta, the main character in Allende’s eponymous book, lives in an unnamed country in South America, in a city that is named Sacramento, echoing her California stories. (The internet tells me there are 31 cities named Sacramento.) Violeta lived for one hundred years and is able to portray the instability of the government in her country against her own ability to stay successful in business. She never fell afoul of the various governments or regimes that ruled her country, especially the authoritarian or military governments, which often expressed their power by executing key figures and their supporters from the previous government. Violeta Del Valle and her family knew how to be invaluable to government while staying out of politics.

Violeta was also lucky with the people who surrounded her, her extended family. Violeta tends to turn those who are close to her into family members. Her governess from Scotland, Josephine Taylor and Josephine’s lover Teresa Rivas, a bohemian social activist, are loyal to Violeta. Teresa has family in Patagonia, Chili with a farm. When the country’s democratic government is overturned, Violeta escapes danger by going to the Rivas farm. Teresa’s family becomes Violeta’s second family.

Miss Violeta has a series of husbands and lovers. Her first husband is a German immigrant from a wealthy family who is so engrossed with the science of artificial insemination of farm animals that the relationship with his wife just kind of fizzles out without offspring. Although, when Violeta wants a divorce, it doesn’t prove easy to make that happen.

Julián Bravo, a swashbuckler, takes up quite a few of Violeta’s 100 years. If her last romance fizzled, this romance sizzles. It turns into more of an addiction than a love story. Julián lives at the edge of adventure, crime, and political disaster. He doesn’t want children and is irate when Violeta is pregnant with his son. Their relationship is tempestuous and toxic, but Violeta can’t give him up. They also have a daughter, Nieves. They never marry. After Violeta’s daughter moves to America with her father, Nieves falls into the traps many modern children have fallen into. Throughout the tragic moments of Nieves’ life, there is a man who steadfastly keeps Violeta informed about her daughter. Ray Cooper is an ex-convict; he is now a detective. He comforts Violeta and they enter into a calm long distance relationship that satisfies both of them.

Violeta is not a novel full of literary techniques and esoteric symbolism. Allende give us a woman who is simply telling the story of her 100 years to her grandson, Camilo, in a letter, a really long letter. Violeta’s story does not need literary poetics. She is a businesswoman. We get to live her life through her as she experiences a century of worldly events that are not so much history as events that touch her life and the lives of the people she loves. She is a strong woman, and she understands how to earn and keep money. At the end of her life, she meets another man, this time from Norway, who should be boring but isn’t. I always like where Isabel Allende takes me. This time she takes to a remarkable life of a remarkable woman. Does it have elements of autobiography? Hard to say unless you know Allende very well.

Babel by R. F. Kuang – Book

From a Google Image Search – Orange County Register

Science fiction and social commentary are for all practical purposes in love and married to each other. Writers of sci-fi may build worlds but they generally have something to address in the actual world we occupy. In her book Babel: or, The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution, R. F. Kuang creates a new world right on the nineteenth century campus of Oxford University. England runs a bit differently than it does in our histories. In Kuang’s novel England runs on silver and language, and the whole system is run by translators.

The eight-floor high tower of Babel sits on the Oxford University Campus and only translators and their professors are allowed inside. Students enter on the first floor and work their way up to the eighth floor where their language skills allow them to make powerful decisions that keep the Empire running smoothly.

Although the quality of people’s lives is affected by the silver/linguistics technology, England is otherwise the same colonial power as history records. Wealthy Brits believe that other nations on other continents are full of savages with primitive intelligence and backward customs, even in the case of a culture like China which existed for centuries before the English arrived. China opened its doors to trade for a brief period in the nineteenth century providing England with much coveted Chinese tea, but England is running out of the silver it needs to keep its wealthy citizens happy. China is not willing to mine silver for England or let England mine China’s silver. England plans to secretly flood China with opium to make it a quiescent nonentity. Surprise, surprise. China figures out this secret plan and does not agree with it.

Because the silver effect is controlled with word pairs from two different languages and by the etymological connections between the meanings of the paired words, this system does not work without the translators. All translators must have a firm grasp of Latin and Greek and at least two other languages. One of the languages must be English. Students must study for three years before they get to work in the silverworks on the eighth floor.

In order for word pairs to function the words must not both be in common use. As the age of discovery and colonization begins to connect nations words that once belonged to a single geographic region become popular in common use across many nations. This makes it more difficult for England’s translators to come up with unique pairs. Suppose you want the sewer system throughout the country to function well and the rivers to stay clean, the drinking water to stay potable. Silver bars with the correct word pairs can make this happen if you happen to live in an elite neighborhood or an important village.

As England looks around the world for more esoteric languages, they find ways to parent children with native women, or they seek out talented children and they place them in the homes of wealthy sponsors or professors and offer them all the comforts of a wealthy life while they force these children to learn Latin, Greek, and English. They must also retain proficiency in their native language. What happens when these children grow up and attend Babel to become translators is the crux of this novel and the part where social commentary comes to the fore. How do you think children from nations Brits feel are inferior are treated at Oxford? Where does violence come into the picture?

R. F. Kuang’s novel is complex, perhaps a bit too complex. The action should reach a crescendo at some point, but the intensity seems to be tamped down to a sort of monotone. The social commentary is clear, but it ends too abruptly in a simple epilogue. Will the actions the central characters finally choose have the desired effects? The author does not really answer that question. Does heroic sacrifice work as an alternative to violence? Will any of the voracious appetites of the wealthy be kept under control? The book is interesting, and the characters affect us much as the characters in Harry Potter do, but the book needs to go on to the aftermath for a bit. Perhaps there will be a sequel. It was an interesting read. The book has echoes of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver Trilogy, except that he is a small g “god” of sci-fi.