Review: 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette'

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE
By Maria Semple
Literary fiction
December 2012
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 978-0316256193
                                                                                                                                                             
WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE could have gone in so many directions. Maria Semple's novel, told from various points of view and in emails, letters and journal entries, starts off in full-blown, glorious snark mode. The parents of a snooty Seattle private school's children have their knickers in a twist over the antics of fish-out-of-water Bernadette. She is a reclusive, misanthropic famed architect and mother of talented prodigy Bee. Dad is a Microsoft muckymuck who has one of the most-viewed TED talks ever.

Bee wants to see Antarctica as a graduation present. Because Bernadette cannot face people, she hires a virtual assistant in India to make the arrangements. Below their house, which is really a rundown former school, Audrey Griffin wants to hold a fundraising party for Bee's school. (Her son also attends.) The goal is to attract the best Mercedes parents, like one of the Pearl Jam band members. It doesn't have to be Eddie Vedder.

Audrey is a gnat to Bernadette. She demands Bernadette remove the rambling blackberry bushes from her yard before the party. The fact that it's winter and the hillside will lose its cover to battle erosion do not occur to Audrey. Then again, she's also the kind of parent who wonders what the principal is doing looking in her son's locker. After all, "don't they have locks on them? Isn't that why they're called lockers?"

Bee's dad, Elgin, is up against a tight deadline at work. His new admin assistant, Soo-Lin, is another prep school gnat, um, parent. Soo-Lin is a divorced single mother who attends Victims Against Victimhood meetings. Complications will, of course, ensue as lives become entangled.

It all gets to be too much for Bee's mother. So she disappears two days before Christmas. And Bee decides to find her. That's when the novel hits its true stride and the reader discovers its deep heart.

As the story begins, the satire and snark are delicious. Semple began the novel after moving to the unknown territory known as Seattle, and to someone who has watched the pretentiousness present in some Emerald City residents from the other side of the Cascades since before Microsoft, Starbucks and grunge rock existed, she is spot on.

But like all great novelists who use various forms of humor, Semple knows when to add layers of emotional depth. Bernadette has good reasons to do what she does, and few of the characters turn out to be as cartoonish as they may appear at first. There is a great set piece of sorts when the novel changes tone, a long letter Bernadette writes to a former colleague about her life as a MacArthur grant-winning architect and the birth of Bee. His response to the letter is nearly the same as the one that Semple received as she adapted to a city she now loves, after Bernadette has poured out her heart for pages:

"Bernadette, 

Are you done? You can't honestly believe any of this nonsense. People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society."

To see what Bernadette does next is not revealed until the end, and there is far too much tell rather than show in the revealing, but it is still a resolution that rings true emotionally and fits these characters just right.

Best of all, Bee is a delightful creation. A brilliant, intrepid daughter could be too twee a character, but Semple keeps Bee from going too far into that territory. Instead, Bee is a fully realized character who just happens to be the youngest of the main ones in this novel. And, just as Semple handles the various voices who relate the narrative, she also allows more than one main character to have her own journey of discovery.

These are characters worth knowing, and their story is one well worth discovering.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reposted with permission

Review: 'The Wandering Falcon'

THE WANDERING FALCON
By Jamil Ahmad
Literary fiction
October 2012 (trade paperback edition)
Riverhead
ISBN: 9781594486166                                                                                                                            

Most of what I know about the part of the world where Pakistan and Afghanistan meet is through Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. So you know I don't know much.

But I do know that when Daniel Dravot and Peachy tried to use their guns and wits to conquer the tribes in this mountainous, inhospitable region, the tribal culture initially worked for them, then against them.

This view of tribal culture, in which the individual may endure but does not achieve dominance, is but one of the conclusions reached reading another book that takes part in that high corner of the world. Jamil Ahmad, at age 80, published his first work with The Wandering Falcon after spending years in the area.

It isn't quite accurate to call The Wandering Falcon a novel. It is part fable, part character study of a way of life rather than one singular character and part a setting down in writing tales that have probably been told there for years.

There is a man in the book who is a wandering falcon. His parents are unfortunate lovers; she's the daughter of a tribal leader and he's a nobody. They ran away together, finding refuge for several years near an army fort. When her father's people eventually find them, the outcome is not good. Their child, the falcon of the story, survives. He's passed from mentor to mentor over the years. What he learns and how he became what he did is not told, however. He disappears for pages and pages.
But in between those appearances, the various stories provide a few clues as to how the people of the region may view life.

In one of the early stories, a tribe comes to grips with the newly enforced border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, not sure if everyone will be able to get across as they move their few animals to better grazing. The tribe's leader tries to negotiate safe passage with an army official, unsuccessfully. As he leaves, he adjusts his cloak. As he does so, his son realizes that the cloak is now an "ordinary covering for an old man". The "general" has lost his authority.

The general later reminds his son about a time they met another old man, who said the secret to his long life was eating raw onions:

What he told you that day was the secret of life itself. One lives and survives only if one has the ability to swallow and digest bitter and unpalatable things. We, you and I, and our people shall live because there are only a few among us who do not love raw onions.

As bitter as life is for the menfolk, it's worse for the women. They are property to be kidnapped, sold for a pound of opium, to be treated worse than a bear that does tricks. Malala Yousufzai would know the attitudes here well.

In all these stories within the book, the boy who is known as the falcon either does not appear or makes only a brief appearance. He could be likened to a bird that views the actions of these characters from a distance and without passion.

One character, a magistrate, in Ahmad's tales is disdainful of anything that is not a cold, hard fact. Telling rationales through fables, for example, serves no purpose in his world view. "Fables have no use here," he says. "Can a fable explain a death?"

Of course a fable can explain a death, a way of life and the dying of a way of life. Which is, perhaps, more to the point of The Wandering Falcon than anything else.

The Wandering Falcon is a finalist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. The winner will be named Jan. 25 in Jaipur. Also on the shortlist are The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif, The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash, translated by Jason Grunebaum, and Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission
Note: A version of this review first appeared on Daily Kos.

In Progress: 'The Rivals'

Daisy Whitney's first YA novel, The Mockingbirds, was a terrific novel on many levels: Alex attends a private school where adults look the other way when wrongs are committed. When she is date-raped, she discovers there is a vigilante group on campus, the Mockingbirds, that stands up for students who have been harmed.

The novel dealt with date rape, with victims not being believed, with friends and strangers sticking up for doing right by victims and with teens knowing what the right thing to do is, even if the adults around them do not. All of this was done in a fast-moving plot with complex characters to care about in a believable set-up.

The follow-up novel, The Rivals, deepens the stakes when Alex, now head of the Mockingbirds, is told about a possible prescription drug abuse ring. Students may be doping up to try to win a competition.

The complexity of the situation includes Alex not sure about who to tell what, including her fellow Mockingbirds and friends, as well as who to believe as she starts to ask questions. Early on, the who-to-trust aspect and how it affects justice is brought up as Alex wonders what's going on:

For a second, it strikes me as odd that two students here are so worried they'd be implicated that they'd come to me for help. But then again, maybe that's the point -- maybe they are the nameless victims we're supposed to protect. Maybe they're the ones who could get hurt by what's happening. But even so, I have to make sure I'm not being played.

Layers of deception will have to be unwrapped before this novel is done, methinks. So far, The Rivals is another winner.

Review: 'Brotherhood of Shades'

BROTHERHOOD OF SHADES
By Dawn Finch
YA Fantasy (Middle school)
October 2012
Authonomy (HarperCollins)
ASIN: B0095C3J6Q

When Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the church in England and wreaked havoc throughout the country as monasteries and other religious communities were pillaged, a small group determined to remain true to traditions they deemed necessary. The foremost tradition was to have three souls to mourn another's passing.
                                                                                                                                 
Documents gathered by a monk who saw visions of turmoil to come were given to a boy who had survived the illness that claimed the rest of his family. He made his way to a nunnery where knowledge from across the realm was to be hidden as their world collapsed. Grievously wounded, he was still able to deliver the materials.

Several hundred years later, another young teen dies in a hospital after being found starving on the streets of London. The homeless lad had no one to mourn him. But unlike the others solaced by the Brotherhood of Shades, this boy saw the spirits moving amongst the living. Now the teen, named Adam Street for where he was found, may be the one to fulfill a longstanding Brotherhood prophecy.

This is the setup to Dawn Finch's debut YA novel, a paranormal fantasy that involves the boy wounded during the Dissolution, the boy from the modern streets and a witch whose spirit has survived in her family for generations.

Adam has a guide to help him adjust. Toby D'Scover is the Keeper of the Texts. He takes care of the ancient documents and monitors current spirit activity around the world, and is the one to whom other members of the Brotherhood report unusual phenomenom. The fact there is more activity is but one of the reasons he suspects Adam may be the Sentinel predicted of ages ago. Perhaps he is the one who, with two others to help him, will defeat the resurgence of evil. But first he has a trial to survive.

Finch is superb at world-building in this debut novel, which could serve as the springboard for a series. But for that to happen, the writing will need to be more balanced between the expository writing that threatens to overwhelm the narrative and the action scenes. However, as a bonus, Finch, a children's librarian, adds an afterword with information and links about the real-world objects and places that figure in her story.

D'Scover is a particularly interesting character, with a fully developed past and present. He and Adam work well together. As dead guys, their ability to navigate the world is augmented by the addition of 14-year-old Edie to form a trio. The potential development of a relationship between the dead Adam and living Edie is a problem it would be interesting to see how Finch develops.

A note about the publisher: Authonomy is an online community developed by HarperCollins book editors.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Hello Gorgeous'

HELLO GORGEOUS: Becoming Barbra Streisand
By William J. Mann
Biography
October 2012
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 978-0547368924

Before Madonna, before Lady Gaga, before Nicki Minaj or any other performer of the past 50 years, there was Barbra. Hello Gorgeous is a well-structured look at how a quirky teenager who desperately wanted to become an actress became one, but not before becoming the toast of Broadway and a woman who didn't even realize the power of her gift -- that voice. That glorious voice.                        

William J. Mann, whose previous books include biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn and John Schlesinger, as well as novels, has put together bits and pieces of not only the legend, but also stories from people who knew her when. The result is a coherent and cohesive narrative of how Streisand became an overnight sensation after only four years.

Mann recounts Streisand's early acting classes and compares the myth to what he can document. He takes the same approach through her tutelage under her first boyfriend, actor Barry Dennen, who encouraged her to sing and who introduced her to music she later incorporated in early nightclub appearances. Two other friends helped Streisand with her distinctive makeup and fashion sense to cultivate the thriftshop look that became an early trademark.

Throughout, there is a consistent sense that Streisand wanted to be the best and do her best, although doing the same performance night after night after night soon grew tiresome in her first Broadway show, I Can Get It For You Wholesale. Streisand made a splash in that show and captured the heart of leading man Elliot Gould in her small role. Mann recounts the lack of warmth and support from her mother without making her a monster.

Between the show and her nightclub appearances, comparisons soon began between her and Fanny Brice. The convoluted path that led to her getting the role of a lifetime in Funny Girl is described chronologically and thoroughly. Even knowing the outcome and the bare bones of the myth, Mann's account makes for compelling reading.

Mann is careful about noting his sources, but part of his writing style does grate. When he refers to how Streisand or others must be feeling or how if something didn't happen on one night it happened on a night like this, the reader can be forgiven for pausing to question, well, how does he know? Because so much of this comprehensive look at Streisand's path to stardom is documented here with credit to primary sources, these narrative tics take away from the scholarship that was plainly involved.

Even so, Hello Gorgeous is an engaging look at a star and the era when she first blossomed.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Carnival for the Dead'

CARNIVAL FOR THE DEAD
By David Hewson
Suspense
August 2012
Thomas & Mercer
ISBN: 9781612183985

David Hewson's Nic Costa novels of Rome feature strong plots and strong characters. Among the strongest of the secondary characters is police pathologist Teresa Lupo. However, when she goes to Venice during Carnival to search for her beloved aunt, who is missing, she may be at her most vulnerable because she is out of her element.

Teresa's Aunt Sofia has always lived as a vagabond. Even Teresa's mother doesn't know the kind of details that families usually know that prove helpful in, say, missing persons reports. When Teresa contacts the police, she is met with little sympathy. Her aunt is a grown woman with no diminished capacity and it's Carnival. The police have a lot of other things going on.
                                                                                                                                                 
Staying at her aunt's flat, Teresa mets the neighbors, a young woman who makes masks for the other main occupant, an older man confined to a wheelchair. The owner is rarely there. The neighbors, although nice, especially for Venetians to Teresa's Roman mind, know little that is helpful. When Teresa finds an envelope slipped under the apartment door with a story, she learns that this and subsequently delivered stories are supposed to lead her to Sofia.

Hewson is a master at weaving these stories, which feature Teresa and other people she meets, with the real story of her search for Sofia. The stories include a British professor and a young Englishman who is a master baker, who both end up in Venice, and a woman who resembles Sofia's neighbor Camille, but with an odd need for nutrients in other people's blood. Carnival season and the narrow, twisty streets of Venice add layers of mystery to the novel; this is not the Venice of a traveller's delight, but rather a dark place where people's obsessions become overpowering.

The stories also feature the enigmatic Count St. Germain, who is based loosely on a real person who was as mysterious as the one in Hewson's story. Readers who know of a St. Germain through Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's groundbreaking series of historical paranormals or in Diana Gabaldon's stories will recognize this figure, even though he is not the same character.

When the stories Teresa has been receiving and her investigation merge into one storyline, there is the usual over-the-top action seen in most thrillers. But Hewson does make everything fit together without jamming it into place. And there is sweetness along with the bitter in the telling.

The main result of reading the novel, however, is to want to spend more time with Hewson's Nic Costa series and see Teresa Lupo back where she belongs.

The novel was not published by Hewson's regular publisher but rather by the Amazon imprint Thomas & Mercer.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Essay: Murakami's 1Q84 Book 3

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami is one odd novel. It's one of those odd novels that is far too long but that, once the end is in sight, a reader may not want to end.

That's because in Book 3, Murakami pulls out all the stops and goes totally sentimental. The song quoted at the beginning of this massive novel is the old standard "Paper Moon" -- "but it wouldn't be make-believe/if you believed in me".                                                                                                                    

After three books and more than 900 pages, that's what it comes down to -- believing in another person. In their very existence. And in the existence of a world where two moons hang in the sky.

In Book 3, which takes place from October to December in an alternate world that the heroine Aomame has named 1Q84, a cult is after both her and our hero Tengo. They have not seen each other since they were 10 years old. They've lived separate lives for 20 years. But now, the coincidence of the cult -- with Tengo ghostwriting a bestseller that actually betrays its secrets and Aomame killing the cult leader (albeit with his blessing), an operative named Ushikawa is trying to find them both.