Becky's Books –

Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming (near Yellowstone) where he lives with his wife and two daughters.  One day he’s driving high school age daughter, Sheridan and her friend, Julie Scarlett, home from school, but they come across some men fighting each other with shovels. These are Julie’s father and uncles. It appears their mother, Opel Scarlett, age 75, has gone missing. 

In Plain Sight
By C.J. Box 
2006 / 
Read by Donald Chandler; 8h 23m
Rating:  A / thrille
(# 6 in Joe Pickett series)

This is not to say she’s missed, the curmudgeonly old tightwad, but she’s central to the Scarlett family getting a lot of business taken care of. The Scarletts have been in Twelve Sheep County, Wyoming for a long time and they have a lot of land and cattle.  With Opel absent, her projects are in limbo and the ranch is in danger of losing a lot of money.

But a lot of people had grudges, too.  And her own family probably has the worst grudges, but this last time it was a neighbor who got so mad he picked up her tiny body, swung it around, and tossed it into the river. She hasn’t been seen since, 

It’s been several days now and neither Opel nor a body have appeared. Two of her sons have been feuding anyway and can now now blame each other for this, too. It almost goes without saying the ranch is worth a lot of money and someone would inherit it.  Meanwhile, there appear to be a couple of new tough looking strangers asking questions. And is Joe’s daughter seeing a ghost?

After a full five months of Opel missing, the snow melts, new fawns come out to play, and there’s no progress on the murders which occurred. Also of note, Joe’s strange neighbor-buddy Nate Romanowski is still gone and there are FBI agents are poking around. Something about a truck found behind the penitentiary whose owner was killed in Mississippi.  

Asked for my one-word opinion I said “Delicious.”

This is probably the most difficult novel I read all year, at least so far. That said,  it’s also one of the very best – maybe it is the best. Let me define “best” here.  I’ve already read it two times at least – first because when I got to the second half I realized there was something important going on that I was missing and I started over. Second because when I finished I knew I should have read that half again, too – this time I kind of missed Chapters 3 and 4.   So I started over and it didn’t take me nearly as long and pieces fit better this time.  It could still stand another reading but that would be for the study of some aspect.  (This is the way I read The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie – I “finished” the book but I didn’t know how I got from point A to point C – like “what happened there in the middle?” 

Time Shelter
By Georgi Godspodnov, 
Translator; Angela Rodee (Bulgaria)
2022 / 304 pp 
Read by Jeff Harding: 10h 19m
Rating: 9.5/ literary fiction –   
(Both read and listened) 

For starters, what does using the word “best” in a book review, blurb, or description, mean? To me it says this book made me think; it challenged me intellectually. In many cases it made me laugh. The book made me ponder more than “Who Done It?” or “How does it end?”  There’s a level of understanding beyond “What’s it about?” I usually have to take breaks when I’m reading something as rewarding as this – I just have to relax and clear my head for awhile – an hour or two maybe – or more. I can usually not read into the wee hours because I’ll miss a lot and have to reread the next day. These books last longer because, as Godspodnov says, “The end of a novel is like the end of the world, it’s good to put it off.” P/ 299. LOL!

Olga Tokarczuk the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature (for The Books of Jacob) described “Time Shelter” as  “the most exquisite kind of literature, on our perception of time and its passing, written in a masterful and totally unpredictable style.” https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/what-everybody-is-saying-about-IBP-2023-winner-time-shelter

I’ve read two of Tokarczuk’s books, The Books of Jacob (won the International Booker in 2022)  and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (nominated for the International Booker Prize) and I thought very highly of both (links are to my reviews on this site).

But on with Time Shelter, “What is it about?  Um … it’s about this nameless writer-guy in Bulgaria, Godspodnov?), the 1st person narrator who created a character named Gaustine. Gaustine teaches him about the realities of memory, forgetfulness, dementia, and Alzheimers, etc as they travel through the decades of 20th century history. Yes, the name of the “invented character” is Gaustine, as in the very historical St Augustine, of course, or as in Augustine of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and he’s a psychologist specializing in memory disorders. 

Our unnamed narrator is ambling along through life losing bits of his memory as is to be expected. But then he meets (or invents) Gaustine somewhere who has been studying this very thing for some time.  It seems people remember the past in stages. The first to go is that which is most of your time in the now. Then goes the time about a decade back and after that it’s the prior decade.  

Gaustine is trying out an experimental treatment whereby his clientele, victims of Alzheimers and dementia, live in a. clinic with their floor being fitted out to meet the decade in which their mind is living. .  

Gaustine is concerned about the people who acquire dementia of some kind, so he creates a clinic to specialize in their treatment. He convinces our unnamed narrator to assist in the creation of this place by is to collecting all the decade-specific objects of the 20th century he can find and use them to decorate the rooms of the clinic. This will help trigger the memories of the patients.  This all takes place at some point in the 21st century (current day?) so the first decade is the 1990s and the oldest date they go back to is September 1, 1939; the invasion of Poland by Germany and the start of WWII. 

This is literary fiction of the highest sort, beautifully written and brimming with philosophical and literary ideas as well as central to the plot development. The plot is tangled and certainly not specifically linear. I suppose in a way it’s historical fiction – or maybe it’s a-historical fiction. 

“The theme is memory – the tempo is andante.” I believe that has to with Mozart, but in Time Shelter Gospodinov uses that quote right off on page 11, the first page of the actual narrative. And he uses music to enhance the memory of his clients.  Here’s a playlist and some resources for the novel: 

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/georgi-gospodinovs-time-shelter-playlist-the-prize-winning-novel-in-12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Shelterc

https://www.musicandliterature.org/features/2017/8/17/conversation-with-georgi-gospodinov

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Uprising_of_1876

Santiago Nasar, a young man running his father’s ranch, is going to be killed.  He lives there on the cattle ranch with his mother and the cook.  He dreams a lot –  about bird shit and almond trees, symbolizing death?  He woke up to bells and dreaming of a wedding.  But the Bishop is arriving. Santiago has guns – lots of guns, but they’re never loaded inside th house.  It’s a rule. 

Chronicle of a Death Foretold: A Novel
By Gabriel García Márquez,
Translated by Gregory Rabassa
1981 / 128 pp
Read by Bernardo de Paula: 2h 53m
Rating: A-  / classic 20th Century Guatemalan Lit 

The narrative is nonlinear! Sometimes the narrator reports the death as having already happened, as being in the past. Other times he reports the death as coming up with people predicting it, as being “foretold” by various citizens throughout the day. Santiago is happy and peaceful as he goes through his day.

The night before there was a wedding and wedding party and the groom took his bride home but returned her to her family the next day becasue he says she was not a virgin. She is beaten by her mother until she reveals the name of the guilty man. Her brothers vow to avenge their family honor. 

 Mom sees him in white and thinks that he’s going to die. It’s a premonition of some sort but Mom ignores it as it’s because of the pomp of the Bishop coming.  There are many people who “know” Santiago is going to be killed, but they don’t say anything each for his own reason. One woman actually wants him to die. 

These are the best comfort books I’ve ever read – in the top 10 anyway and that’s really something after having read all 24 “No.1  Ladies’ Detective Agency” books. That’s since 1999 when they hit the stores and were mentioned in a review I read.  (I got it on that old 5-books free shipping plan – lol.) And then I bought them as they came out, either in paperback, hard cover or Audible.  (There might have been one in Kindle.) 

From a Far and Lovely Country
by Alexander McCall Smith
2023  (249 pp) 
Read by Lisette Lecat 10h 15m
Rating: 10 / for the fun 
(#24 in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) 

My first three books in the series were paperbacks, my 4th and 5th were hard covers but by the time I got to the 6th I was reading these via Audible. Now they offer the Audible version the same day the hardcover is released and there might be a movie set to open shortly.

I remember the old days when a normal new release first came in hardcover and that lasted about a year prior to the release of the paperback. We  simply had to wait, unless we were willing to pay 3 times the paperback price.  (Confession – a few years after I started teaching there were a couple authors I just had to get – skip the wait.  Prime was a huge money saver for me – I had that paid for by March on shipping costs for books alone. (I figured that out at the time.) But about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency;
first; for those new to the series, the stories are not really mysteries, although the title of the series certainly sounds like it is. Lots of lesser crimes occur, though, I only remember one murder 
 

From a Far and Lovely Country starts at a somewhat slower pace than the prior books in the series, But it’s not too long before you’re reading about several cases or story lines. And there are ongoing motifs of various kinds,  modern vs old-fashioned, women’s place in society, technology, corruption, “The trouble with the world is …” Many of them boil down to the Seven Deadly Sins,  pride, greed and envy.  Some of the traits promoted are honesty, humility, kindness, tolerance and love.  

The book opens on Precious’ birthday, but it looks like no one remembers and this is disappointing to her. Also disappointing is the awareness that she has gained both pounds and sizes.  

One of the themes is “how important is it?” To start out no one has remembered Mma Romatswe  birthday and that bothers her in some way and there’s something about a couple of birthday disappointments.

But she has to work so her cases at ths moment are:
1. A woman now from America has African heritage along with the French and German. This woman is looking for information about her African family – if there is anybody left.
 
Another case involves  a woman whose husband seems to be cheating on her. It’s found out that he’s spending a lot of time at a “dance hall for singles,” aka The Evening Club.” (LOL!) It gets a bit twisty. 

The stories just move along powered by the characters and their ways. Violet Sepotho has been a recurrent aggravation since volume 6, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies. She’s around here, but in the background anyway. And Clovis Anderson, the original detective of this bunch, makes an appearance via shared memories and a book. Mr JLB Matekoni, Precious’ husband, and Charlie, a part-time mechanic and apprentice detective have somewhat larger rolls here and Grace Makutsi. assistant to Precious, is certainly around.

First – I stole a poster:

More Novellas – November 3, 2023

Here’s another novella read late Nov 2:

Chronicle of a Death Foretold: A Novel
By Gabriel García Márquez

Post 1 – the opener with -7 Novellas, read the last week in October and posted 11/1/2023

I just caught wind of this a week or so ago, let it settle for a few days and then started in because Halloween and Novellas go together – imo.  I’ll keep it going through November and then see what comes up.  I really enjoy a good novella – it’s like they’re condensed so they’re more potent – like condensed milk- the water is evaporated out and it’s sweetened a tad – a little goes a long way – it’s comprised.

First, I needed a definition and according to Wikipedia “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association defines a novella’s word count to be between 17,500 and 40,000 words; at 250 words per page, this equates to 70 to 160 pages.”  
https://iapwe.org/word-count-separates-short-stories-from-novelettes-and-novellas/

Also – they allow for a 20% leeway.)  I can live with that but a couple of mine may be over the line one way or the other.   

Okay … so … 

I read the first 5 on my list this past month: 

Bartleby the Scrivener 
by Herman Melville 
1853 (40 pages)
Read by Stefan Rudniki  
1h 48m
Rating 10 / classic lit
(Read and listened)

Bartleby is creepy (good Halloween stuff)- and I’m not sure about the Nameless Lawyer, either. I’m okay with Melville, though.  
************

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 
by Robert Lewis Stevenson 
1886  / (141 pages – 1st edition) 
Read by Paapa Essiedu
Rating: 10/ classic gothic horror (novella) 

Embarrassed to type this, but I’d never read it nor watched any movies of it.  I kinda sorta knew what happened but that’s not the whole story – good for Halloween. Stevenson is okay – 
********

Foster 
by Claire Keegan
2023 / (62 pages) 
read by Adolfe McMahon 2h 9m
Rating 10 / literary novella (Ireland)

Published this year! Last year a novella by Keegan made the 2022 Booker Prize list. I read it and was wow’ed. In this one a 6-year old girl is taken to a neighbor farm to stay while her mother has another baby.  

*******

Western Lane 
By Chetna Naroo 
2023 /149 pp 
Read by Maya Soroya 4h 21m
Rating: 8 / novella 21st century lit

Another Novella on the Booker Prize Short List which I read anyway –  (see why I did this?)  The mother of an immigrant  family in London dies and it affects an 11-year old girl and her father very badly. They get very involved in the sport of squash. 

*******

We Have Always Lived in the Castle 
By Shirley Jackson 
1963  (146 pp)
Read by Bernadette Duane 5h 32m
Rating: 10 / classic horror novella 

I read this every couple years because it’s so perfect.

*****
Actually I often have The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, 1898) in here, too but I can’t do all of them every year.
*******

And these I read earlier this year: July 2023: 

Crime 101: a Novella 
by Don Winslow
2022 /
Read by Ray Porter. 2h 5m
Rating A / novella
*(crime stories get ratings of A-F)

Highway robbery, jewel heists, on Route 101, the California coast.

And January 2023: 

The War of the Poor
by Eric Vuillard 
2021 / 75 pages (!) 
Kindle version 
Rating: 9.25 / historical fiction
Mark Polizzotti (Translator)

Brilliant historical fiction concerning the life of Thomas Müntzer, a German theologian opposed to the Church as well as to Martin Luther. He got the peasants to protest and the princes rose up against them. Hundreds died and the Wars of Reformation began. (I really should read this again.)

************

And that’s it for the 2023 –  7 Novellas – I think I have some in my pile for November proper – or maybe it’s December. 

This is somewhat short to be a “novella” but it seems to be more than a short story.  Bartleby is a copier for Melville’s unnamed 1st person protagonist, an attorney. who works with real estate/Wall Street types. I usually read short stories and novellas in anthologies, but this was on a list of novellas (and it is sometimes called due to the complexity) and I’d always kind of wanted to read it. Because of the date, I think of it more like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or something by Dickens (look at the date).

********
Bartleby the Scrivener 
by Herman Melville
1853 
Read by Stefan Rudniki  1h 48m
(Read and listened) 

Bartleby is strange creature about whom it seems not much is known – he’s almost anonymous when he’s talking to you. He shows up at Lawyer’s office after he sees an advertisement for employment. Lawyer hires him. Too bad, Lawyer, you are now stuck with him. Bartleby starts making copies of letters and so on but after a number of weeks, he decides he “would prefer not to” do that.

The two characters with any depth at all, Bartleby and his unnamed boss, the Lawyer, are fascin-ating and drawn with great attention to detail, but at some point both of them are pathetic, really.  As it turns out, Bartleby “prefers not to” much of anything while Lawyer would prefer he left and seeks ideas as to how to get this to happen.

This may be a bit short for a novella, but I’ve always kind of wanted to read it.

Here’s a fine article/review – *with annotations* about what Melville was doing.
https://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/10/herman_melville_s_bartleby_the_scrivener_an_interactive_annotated_text.html

This is a great story for Halloween reading, but I’ve avoided it since Junior High because it’s horror – or that’s its reputation.  And I’ve always been  nervous about horror. Then there are the movie versions which I also avoided for the same reason.  Besides, it took me ages (and ages) to appreciate 19th century English literature because the language is so different. Usually, translated works are so much easier to read because they use a more contemporary form of English.  

**********
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 
by Robert Lewis Stevenson 
1886  / (141 pages – 1st edition) 
Read by Paapa Essiedu
Rating: 10/ classic gothic horror (novella) 
**********

But here it is at Audible! Yay!  I could hardly resist, this being Halloween and all. And then there’s  a “November is Novellas” challenge by Cathy 247 so I’ll have one more for that. I do enjoy a good novella – the essence is all concentrated and understated. 

Anyway, Gabriel Utterson, a legal investigator, gets curious and then involved in the strange doings of his friend Dr Jekyll and a guy named Mr Hyde. Utterson heard a tale from his cousin, Enfield, and it looks like it might lead to the blackmail of Jekyll, but Jekyll wants him to back off.  Okay but then one of Utterson’s clients gets beaten to death and Utterson has evidence it was Hyde but then suspects Jekyll.  And so the story goes with evidence piling up and the doctor taking some kind of drug or elixir or drug for his nerves.  There’s a great deal of tension as Jekyll has to do battle with himself. Excellent story – kind of like Gogol’s The Nose in some way, but I’m not too sure why.

Just fyi, but really I looked it up for mine; I had thought Stevenson was American – ha!  He did spend a fair amount of time in the States and I think I visited some of the several sites in California which are named for him. Stevenson’s life was very interesting: 

Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child’s Garden of Verses” (everyone had that last book.  My copy was a Little Golden Book. ) 

“Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse,[1] Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44.[2]

“A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson’s critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018, he was ranked, just behind Charles Dickens, as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.[3]”

There’s much more about Stevenson at: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson

And here’s about this story: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde

I read Claire Keegan’s book Small Things Like These (2021) back in July of this year because it was on the Booker International List.  I wondered how a novella could be on that list, but then I read it and I wondered no more.  I rated it a 10.  🙂  My review is here –

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Foster
by Claire Keegan
2023 / (62 pages)
read by Adolfe McMahon 2h 9m
Rating 10 / literary novella (Ireland)
*******

So when Keegan’s new book, Foster, was mentioned somewhere – ??? –  I checked and found it at the library.  (Yay!) 

 After church one Sunday morning our nameless narrator, a young girl about age 6 or 7, is taken by her father to the home of the Kinsellas where she will be fostered for awhile. The term is open. A few days later a neighbor comes about a wake being held for a local man.  This is harvest season so sometimes this happens.  

At the wake our poor girl is invited to the home of another congregant “to help some poor soul,” doncha know, but the real reason is so that the new woman can quiz her about the goings on at Mrs Kinsella’s  home.

 “Is she given money?” “Does she drink at night?” “Are they playing cards much?” “Butter or margarine?”
“Does she skimp?” “Are the child’s clothes still hanging there?” There’s a bit of growing up to do here.  

Foster had nowhere near the impact on me Things Like These had, but that was on the Booker Prize short list last year. At 114 pages it’s the shortest Booker winner ever. She’s written 4 books and I’ve read 2 of them – I look forward to more from Keegan.

After giving it a wee bit of thought, I consider this a novella. The Sci-Fi awards people are very specific (but give a 20% leeway) about their categories. Novellas “have a word count between 17,500 and 40,000 words. At 250 words per page, this equates to 70 to 160 pages.” https://web.archive.org/web/20090319043837/http://sfwa.org/awards/faq.htm

*******
Western Lane 
By Chetna Naroo 
2023 /149 pp 
Read by Maya Soroya 4h 21m
Rating – 8 / novella 21st Century lit
*******

So 149 pages is a wee bit long, but it fits. Also, I think with a novella there’s to be one basic plot or story-arc, no subplots, no backstory, just a few memories. A short story likely focuses on one incident, novella might have the one plot, but involve several incidents. Finally, a novella is usually a pretty straightforward story focusing on personal emotional growth of some kind rather than on any big social theme or family saga. Western Lane I’ll give it some leeway.

Western Lane’s main character is Gopi, an 11-year old girl of Indian descent who lives with her family in London, grieving their recently deceased mother. Gopi has two older sisters who are also bereaved, but it seems it’s her father for whom the loss of his wife is overwhelming. And he can’t raise 3 girls on his own working as a self-employed electrician. A friend suggests the sport of squash which is popular and the family has been playing casually for years and Gopi seems to have a talent for it.  

The problem is that Gopi’s father escapes into his daughters’ training as does she. He becomes consumed by the girls’ progress as it seems Gopi might be headed for competition level. This helps to an extent but it can also be a path to denial when he seems to start “communicating” with Mom, seeing her in the living room and so on. Gopi calls her uncle, Dad’s brother, who comes with his wife from Edinburgh and they try to sort things out. A wrinkle lies in the fact that the son of the white owner acts as coach, but he and Gopi get attracted to each other. 

It’s a great story, very sensitively told with Gopi’s emotional health being primary, but with a lot of concern on many sides, for Dad.   

 I finished The Bee Sting only because it was on the Booker Prize Short List for 2023 and I’m trying to get them read before November 26, the date the winner is announced. Again, I wasn’t any too happy with it for a number of reasons and imo it’s the weakest on the Short List. That how Murray’s 2005 Short Listed book Skippy Dies (2005) (only the 1st couple paragraphs of my review on this link, but it’s still there) was and I was disappointed with that, too. 

*******
The Bee Sting
By Paul Murray 
2023/ (738 pages per Amazon) 
Narrated by a cast 26h 10m
Rating:  7 / 21st Century Irish Lit 
*********
Here’s my very brief spoiler-free intro to the plot, characters, structure, writing style, etc.  There are a lot of reviews online if you want to peek at them, but I don’t look except to see very generally “what it’s about” until after I read the book.  

The main characters of this contemporary Irish tragic-comedy are the Bankes family of four who live in a small city outside of Dublin, Ireland. Dickie and Imelda are the parents of Cass and TJ who are ages 18 and 12 (?). Frankie’s own father is still a part of the family, but his mother and older brother, Frank, are deceased.  Imelda’s only family-of-origin contact is Rosa, an older housekeeper. Dickie operates his dad’s car dealership while Imelda, his wife, stays home worrying, shopping, fixing her make-up and gossiping. The past haunts her. The future is catching up with Dickie.  Most of the plot concerns those two. Cass studies for exams and college with her best friend Elaine while TJ plays video games with his buddies.  Everyone is on their phones a lot. The dealership has been having rough times since the recession of 2008 and since Dickie took over.

We get the individual point of view of each family member in their 1st, 2nd and 3rd person narratives.  The 2nd person is usually talking to himself or thinking. For example, “He won’t call at all! But you know that he will. And when he does, what will you tell him then?” 

The structure is loosely chronological and it alternates between the main characters plus a couple more. Also the narrative switches in and out of flash-backs when the character is remembering something. The flash-backs are sometimes several pages long. 

On top of that the story moves from the separate childhoods of Dickie, Emelda, Cass and TJ to the current time (2023?), but it doesn’t do that chronologically so we find out in Chapter 25 why (someone) was acting like that in Chapter 12.  It’s like 4 jigsaw puzzles, lightly sorted. 

The plus side this book has excellent character development. Murray is a master of the skill. Except for the minor characters, these folks are so well-drawn, detailed, alive, and complex they seem to breathe,    

Also although it doesn’t really get going until at least half way through the book, the tension builds smoothly with perfectly placed twists to give the reader a good jolt.          

Okay – all that good stuff – what went wrong?   It starts out very slow. Chapter 1 is long and very much about the teens, Cassie and her best friend  Elaine, plus TJ, Cassie’s younger brother. There are bits about the parents and a few other adults but it’s basically social commentary for too many pages, dwelling on how parents affect their children in the teenage years and vice versa.  (I’m reminded of Jonathan Franzen here – long books concerned with the social issues affecting the generations of a family or two.) 

The Barnes family, previously quite prosperous, is having serious financial problems and their children are scared and ashamed. Cassie and her best friend Elaine are both very bright but they’re growing up in an age of pot and sex and iPhones and so on – it’s distracting – lol.  TJ and his friends are learning, with their own timing, about girls and so on.  But it’s the parents who have the real problems with money (like bankruptcy) and sex (and infidelity). And then there’s Morris, (Dave’s father who set up the auto dealership decades prior) comes to town to be honored. This is an embarrassment to his son who inherited the car lot which is going broke (2008 recession or not).  

A few paragraphs into Chapter 2 the book seemed to look up, promising some magical realism or light post-modernism anyway. A fairy tale originally told by Rosa, but retold by Imelda seems meaningful to The Bee Sting as a whole, but Murray’s novel is so long and complex plot-wise, I don’t remember what the traveling man, locked door and fairies was about!  There are other dreams in the book, this is a literary device which I just personally don’t much care for.

I’ll be finishing the Booker Prize Short List this week. Other than Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, which is not even available to me except in paper versions, I have only one book to go and then I’ll see if I can make a guess as to which will win. Meanwhile I’ll read a novella and relax for a bit.

Here’s book #3 of 6 in my quick run through the Booker Prize Short List (and other lists ?)  for 2023.  This one is about 200 pages in length, so short it could be another novella. The author narrates it herself which is often a drawback, but sometimes, like here, it’s works out nicely. It works in part because the protagonist’s situation is complex including her apparent paranoia, OCD,  grandiosity, inferiority complex, and some kind of depression all of which end up with her being an unreliable, narrator reminding me of My Year of Rest and Relaxation ~ by Ottessa Moshfech (my review on site).

Study for Obedience
by Sarah Bernstein 
2023 / (208 pp)
Read by the author 3h 59m
Rating: 9: 21st century lit

This story has an unnamed woman as 1st person narrator, but as she says about half-way through the story, “Names are secret,” and, “One always assumes guilt.”

 At some point the reader begins to think the woman is at least a studious introvert, but then it becomes apparent she’s also suspicious of almost everyone and she has some with some OCD traits thrown in as well as some anxiety issue and an active imagination.  Do I have to say this? She’s not a terribly reliable narrator- lol.She reminds me a bit of Ottessa Moshfegh’s protagonist in Eileen (2015).   But at the same time I found her to be kind of pleasant, in her own way. OCD,  grandiosity, inferiority complex, and some kind of all of which end up with her being an unreliable narrator –  in this she reminds me of  My Year of Rest and Relaxation ~ by Ottessa Moshfech https://mybecky.blog/2018/11/30/my-year-of-rest-and-relaxation-by-ottessa-moshfech/

Her eldest brother (one of many older siblings) calls and asks her to come stay with him, to serve as his housekeeper while he gets accustomed to his wife being gone- they’re newly separated. He has moved to a country in the distant north and from where their ancestors lived. Our protagonist is unemployed at the moment so she figures she can do this; she’s always been the caretaker of her elder siblings. So she flies north to join her brother in a place she says their ancestors were from, but she isn’t saying where this is.

Her brother picks her up in his luxury car, takes her to his lovely home, explains some things, and then leaves for a few days of business. With him gone, the woman is alone in a big, beautifully kept house, a manor or an estate it seems.  

She goes to town for some groceries, but she finds she’s unable to communicate except by using basic hand signs. She tells us she’s very good at languages, but isn’t sure these people understand English. The town folk don’t speak to her. She doesn’t know the value of their money and she can’t read the names on some mail she sees. She wants to thank to the people of the town because it’s so pretty, but has no way of doing this except to volunteer the way her brother did. This gets some real troubles started. 

 To me she sounds paranoid with some traits of OCD, but her brother and the townsfolk seem to have some or issues, too. There appear to be a lot of secrets. Brother left money for her and he telephones her, is not happy about her language problem.  He tells her how he loves the people and the natural beauty of the place so he wants to stay and become a part of it.

After a few days she ventures into town again and finds the people still reticent and she’s not letting them or the reader know anything more, not the country she’s in, nor any real clues about that, not her name, not their money they use; she does the shopping by pointing and handing the clerk some bills . She carefully does not say anything which will identify her. This feels very odd.  

A paraphrase from about … “The world is terrible and she’s being obedient and she’ll be released soon and there will be retribution.” –  that’s her thinking at one point and it’s not much of any kind of spoiler.  .   
This is a wonderful haunting book and I’m going to have to read it again because I never got the Kindle version –

This is the second book of the Booker Prize Short List I’ve read in my rush to get them read by November 26 Paul Harding is also the author of Tinkers which won the Pulitzer and I read back in 2010 or so. I and the the book buds from a a now defunct reading group so admired that novel. He wrote one book between the two, Enos, which  explores the descendants of Tinkers’ main character. 

This Other Eden 
by Paul Harding 
Jan 2023 (202 pages) 
Read by Edoardo Ballerini 6h 8m
Rating: 9.5   /historical fiction 
(both read and listened)

Now his new book, The Other Eden, has been Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize (to be announced 11/26)  as well as the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction (tba 11/15). .Both The Other Eden and Tinkers are slim volumes, novellas really, with The Other Eden weighing in at a mere 202 pages and Tinkers with only 191 pages.  (Fwiw, there’s a leather-bound version of Tinkers available at Amazon.)   Looking up the information on Harding at Wikipedia, I see he worked with Marilynn Robinson and Barry Unsworth and yes, I really see a strong connection to both. 

For background on the story Google “apple island Maine” and find a whole treasure trove of the history with some book reviews thrown in.  (Apple Island is Harding’s renaming of Malaga Island.  

I was only listening to the book until I get to places I wanted to hear again or to names I didn’t know exactly what the narrator was saying and it took me all of 30 minutes to break down and get the Kindle version.  I had the Audio from the library (lucky me) but I wanted to follow along with the Kindle so I could see spellings, so I could check back and reread those two lines without having “rewind.” 

The Other Eden is totally different from his prior works and it introduces all new characters. This novel is set in the 18th to 20th centuries and north a ways, on the isolated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine.

This is fiction folks – it’s closely based on a true story, but the names are usually changed and I’m sure there were things Harding did to give it a fine story arc and it’s certainly a literary rendition.

In 1782 Benjamin Honey, a formerly enslaved man, and his Irish wife Patience, whom he had met en route were looking for a place for themselves, and whatever descendants they might have, to settle.  They came upon on an isolated island which becomes, over time, one of the first integrated towns in the northeast. Along with his hopes, Benjamin was carrying tools and a variety of apple seeds so he learned how to be an orchard keeper and they named their little island Apple Island. Patience brought children into the world to feed, clothe, and comfort.
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Before long a few other families came bringing more children to clothe, feed and protect. Later, a Civil War vet named “Zachary Hand to God Proverbs” built a house in a tree, Esther Honey raised her son alone.

And the people struggled and endured hardship alongside others from other places and with many skin tones as well as many different ideas, but their own lives. Then a well-intentioned, but racist teacher comes and tries to help them in many ways. And a girl from Ireland lands a job with a nearby (off island) family but meets one of the young men. Meanwhile, Maine wants in on the tourist trade which will not be attracted to a place where an integrated (and poor!) community exists nearby.

“Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory and like nothing you’ve read before. These are the stories that we never believed could be told, until Jonathan Escoffery told them.”  That’s from Marlon James, another Jamaican writer who was educated at the University of Minnesota and won the Booker back in 2005. This was for A Brief History of Seven Killings,  I loved that book and my review is on this site at https://mybecky.blog/2016/04/18/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james-x2/ . 

If I Survive You
By Jonathan Escoffery 
2022 /  (272 pages)
Read by Torian Brackett 8h 1m
Rating: 9 / contemp immigrant fiction 

If I Survive You is the debut novel of Jamaican author Jonathan Escoffey who, like Marlon James, was educated at the University of Minnesota and whose debut novel made it to the Short List for the very prestigious Booker Prize. (Winner to be announced November 26.) 

This delicious novel consists of 8 separate but interwoven short stories told in a generally chronological order, and sometimes featuring different members of a slightly extended immigrant family.  (In other words. it “reads like a novel.”) 

Every year in the US the “new release” shelves have a dozen or so very good immigrant novels. This seems to have gone on since the Europeans started settling here.  (Can I call it a diaspora?)   I always enjoy a really good immigrant story no matter who’s coming to the US. 

The title of the book, If I Survive You, is wonderfully ambiguous because who in the world is/are “You”? At first it seems as if Trelawny is directing the comment to himself, the first person narrator who frequently talks or thinks to himself, asking and telling himself different things about the world and family. .  

The “Survive” part of the title is that as Trelawny’s stories unfold, they seem like one real, and almost existential, struggle after another both for him and for his family.  Kids from school, neighbors, parents, and then bosses, girlfriends, teachers, general buddies, the 2008 economy, and scam artists of one sort or another all present serious problems. His older brother, Delano, along with their father Topper, present some real difficulties for Trelawny and then there’s his cousin Cukie. Too often Trelawny has to survive Miami itself what with the weather and the hurricanes which tear through the coastal city disrupting the family’s lives, their home, and threatening the land itself. Surviving all this is neither simple nor easy.

The thing is, it’s never a sad book although quite unhappy and frazzled in places. Escoffery shows a joy in telling the stories in which he displays his talent for characterizations, word play with some ironic kind of humor thrown in. Yes, there is a lot of tragedy in the stories, but it’s never really “tragic” feeling.   

The opening story, In Flux, is a great kick-off for the following eight stories, Trelawny is about age 5 or 6 and has trouble fitting in with the kids around Miami as he was born shortly after his parents and brother immigrated from Kingston Jamaica where political violence had become a norm. There are many immigrants in Miami and they brown ones, like Trelawny, almost always speak Spanish; but not Trelawny. Jamaica’s official language is English, but they also speak a patois and have a distinct accent; but not Trelawny. So is Trelawny Black or White? It’s not the same distinction as it is in Jamaica, but in the US it’s considered quite important to virtually everyone.

Trelawny’s voice is the voice of the younger son of an immigrant couple from Jamaica who came with their first-born, Delano. Trelawny is born in south Florida where they buy a run-down house and fix it up a bit – see it blown to bits by Hurricane Andrew. 

It’s a nicely structured novel, with the essentially stand-alone stories ordered to create a loose story arc stretching over 30 years or so. But I think they are much better read in order

Torian Brackett does an excellent job of narrating – it added to my enjoyment.

Over the next 6 weeks or so (for as long as it takes or until November 26) I’m going go be reading the Short List of Booker Prize Nominees from which the winner will be chosen on 11/26. I’ve done this before, but this year I’ve not read any of them until today. I did glance through the info and noticed that they’re shorter than usual and that 3 of the nominees are named.”Paul,” Paul Harding, Paul Lynch, and Paul Murray – lol.

I’ve not read any of the books nominated for the Booker International prize 2023, but I’ll give myself until the end of the year. The winner was We’ll see. If a book is not available in English in any format I’m not going to try to get it – like ordering from Winnipeg or something, a friend in London? And it’s fine if I get them read by November 30 because I’m very curious.

Anyway – just letting you all know what I’m up to.

I read this years ago but it’s occurred to me lately that I might enjoy rereading some of my favorites. So then came October and I love reading holiday books from now until the first week in January. I prefer holiday mysteries, but a horror for Halloween is fine.   Checking my blog I see that I’ve read it 3 times with the last time being over a decade ago.  Oh well.  

We Have Always Lived in the Castle 
By Shirley Jackson 
1963 
Read by Bernadette Duane 5h 32m
Rating: 10 / classic horror novella 

And then (!) Novellas in November was announced on more than one blog site – sooooo….. lol. I’ve read a lot of novellas this year and they and a couple more could stand a rereads.

To me, if a novella is good it is VERY good! The thing is the themes and characters are not all spread out across 400 pages, they’re condensed into 200 pages or fewer. So I have to read a bit more slowly and carefully and they often deserve a reread or two.

Anyway, with We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I remembered the basics of the story, but there were still some important “details” I’d forgotten (or never really caught the meaning of). After I finished this time I checked online for various reviews and analyses. I’ve never done that with this book.  Interesting to fine that mine aren’t the only ideas to have – lol.

Reading a 3rd time or more means what I’m really doing is studying the book. My 1st reading is usually for the basic plot and some characterizations. The 2nd time is for better appreciation of the literary value, but not usually getting too specific. And the  3rd time I generally focus more on one aspect, like “What happened to the ball in Underworld by Don DeLillo? – or “Who is Hazel?” in Pale Fire by Nabokov? – With We Have Always Lived in the Castle it was really just “What happened and why is this a classic?” because it had been so long since my prior read.   Fwiw, I had to read Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses twice just to figure out what happened – back to back readings, fwiw.  (That’s a GOOD book.) 

Anyway – if you’re interested see these excellent discussions of the book or aspects of it.  

Literary Ladies Guide – (basic analysis)
https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-analyses/analysis-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle/

The Ultimate Guide to We Have Always Lived in the Castle – (intermediate – themes, devices, psychologies) 
https://www.lindseyenglishtutoring.com/vce-resources/an-ultimate-guide-to-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle

Flavorwire Author Club: Shirley Jackson’s Haunting Final Novel, ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ (focus on women characters): 
https://www.flavorwire.com/447850/flavorwire-author-club-shirley-jacksons-haunting-final-novel-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle

Reading The 4th Turning by Neil Howe and his Universal Theory and Ideas I got to wondering about “theories of everything” in general and came upon this older book.  I’m lightly familiar with Ken Wilber’s ideas and yes, I have problems with them.  I’m pretty secure in my own beliefs. 

A Theory of Everything:
An Integral Vision for Business,
Politics, Science and Spirituality
by: Ken Wilber
Read by: Fajer Al-Kaisi, 5h 50m 
2014  
Rating: 5 / psychology, spirituality 

Wilber is fairly well known from the New Age ideas of the 1970s. He’s not necessarily universally acclaimed but he is still getting published. That said, he has plenty of critics (including moi). But he has some interesting things to say in this book and in his other later works where he applies these earlier theories in many areas. Basically, I find that too many of these psychology/philosophy ideas are simply new ways to divide up the world and we need more ways to connect with compassion.  

Overview and writings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber

His is a set of “complex, cutting-edge theories that integrate the realms of body, mind, soul, and spirit” –  Okay fine – but it seems to me they end up dividing humans into “more evolved” and “less evolved” based on the extent to which their ideas mesh with Wilber’s. (Over-simplified: more compassion equals more advanced.)   

From Carol Gilligan comes some much more recent ideas on moral development which is another example of dividing ourselves so that some groups are labeled “higher” or “more developed.”    (Wilber is not mentioned.) 
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-carol-gilligan-theory-and-a-woman-s-sense-of-self-5198408

I really wanted to make this book last longer but it’s already almost 1000 pages (or 34 hours of listening) so I had to let it end.

The Running Grave 
by Robert Galbraith
Read by Robert Glenister – 34 hours 14m
Rating; A+ / thriller 
(# 7 in the Cormoran Strike series) 

Instead of music lyrics or poetry this time Galbraith uses the I Ching for epigraphs.  I think most of them mean something in relation to the narrative of that chapter, for instance, “6 in the 4th place means the finest clothes turn to rags all day long. Be careful.”  

chttps://strikefans.com/the-book-of-changes-in-the-running-grave-part-one/

Check out the above site for LOTS of info about The Running Grave and all the Cormoran Strike books. It’s a fabulous collection for the series which includes synopses, location maps, and character lists – including one of recurring characters and one for characters specific to an each book.  There are only some graphics missing. but not the page they would link to.  (I haven’t had time to thoroughly check this out but I’ll be getting to it.)

The Running Grave took more time to read than the equally long The Ink Black Heart (#6 in the series).  I think The Running Grave may be darker and more intense as well as having a few more characters and a somewhat more complex plot .(That would keep a reader busy!)  It keeps going deeper into new and darker levels.). So I didn’t get really involved with the book until about Chapter 32.

The story starts in 2016 with an inquiry made by Sir Colin Edensor, the father of Will Edensor, a possibly autistic young man whom Sir Colin believes is being held captive by the Universal Humanitarian Church, which is a cult, in his opinion. It’s been this way for four years, but now that Will’s Mother is dead, Colin really wants to know how Will is.

 Strike and Robin take the case and set out to do some investigating and undercover work and thus begins the unraveling. Around page 200 (20%?)  or so the plot and tension thicken as reader comprehension begins to click in.   As is becoming usual for me – as I neared the end I slowed down because I really don’t want the story to end.

 This addition to the series is as good as any of the prior novels of the series. It’s Galbraith at her peak, but it’s sordid and somewhat gritty. I look forward to the next one but it will probably be a couple years – she’s got to be due for a long serious break. Then she can get on with the next 3 originally planned Strike novels: