Becky's Books –

I haven’t read a book by Anuradha Roy since God of Small Things back in 1999 or so.   I enjoyed that well enough and I don’t know why I haven’t read her more recent works.  Then Sleeping on Jupiter made the Long List for the Man Booker Prize (2015).  But it took a long time to get published in the US so I wasn’t able to read it and then I procrastinated.  Now it’s come up for a reading group.  (smile)

*******
Sleeping on Jupiter
by Anuradha Roy
2015/ 256 pages
read by Deepti Gupta 7h 45m
rating:   6
*******
The tale opens with the 1st person tale of Nomi,  a 6-year old girl whose family was brutally murdered when a group of guerrilla fighters attacked their village.  She is taken to an “orphanage” and then to an ashram.  There the guru whom everyone adores molests her and other orphaned girls  in really disgusting ways.

This section is followed by the story of four older tourist women visiting the Ashram and which is followed by Nomi again but as an adult visiting India and the Ashram along with a film crew.   These stories are interwoven regularly along with those of  a couple other minor characters.

Because we know early on that Nomi has been adopted by a family in Norway we know she survives – the tale is about betrayal,  revenge and closure along with Roy’s determination to enlighten her readers on the reality of child abuse in India.

Why did I give it such a high rating? –  It’s well written and there is a good supply of tension.  It’s simply disgusting imo.  I don’t think you need all those details and graphic descriptions to raise awareness.   Maybe it was there to impress the judges of the award givers – they seem to appreciate it going by the last few years.

What is with the Booker Prize judges these days?   Do they think gentle books are for wimps and that they have to choose the grittiest and most violent of the nominees to get attention?    Thank goodness this only made the long list – I’m reading it because it was chosen by a group.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind a good dose of violence in appropriate places and where the literary qualities of the narrative outweigh the brutality.  Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books of all time, but McGuire is no McCarthy.   He’s not even a Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings).

*******
The North Water
by Ian McGuire –   England
2016 / 272 pages
read by John Keating
rating – 4 – historical fiction 
(Man Booker Long List – 2016)
*******

What could be more violent than a whale chase in the waters off Greenland with bad-ass seamen of the 19th century?  Well – add a serial murderer to the crew and then what could be more violent? – Okay  – have said murderer also being a serial pedophile and child murderer.  With these as the low points of the novel there seem  to be no limits.    A Little Life by Hanya Yanahigihara is pretty bad but it’s graced and contrasted by such wonderful bonding between the friends.   We have none of those warm fuzzies in McGuire’s book.

A truly viscous guy named Henry Drax is on board a whaling vessel along with a illicitly rich doctor named Sumner who is taking a rest along with a lot of opium.  The year is 1859 and the waters are those around Greenland where there are icebergs,storms, seals, walruses, bears, and other men to cause pain and death.   The main  point is survival.

The book is historical simply because it takes place in the past – however slender the historical aspects presented.

And the book is literary because it has a theme which in 2017 we often take to be universal,  man’s basic instincts are about survival at any cost.   It’s not good vs evil,  it’s bad vs evil.   There are plenty of literary allusions scattered throughout  – Moby Dick,  Lord Jim, others.

All that said I really don’t like books which take place on old ships (although Moby Dickis pretty good),  nor do I enjoy books with so much violence in them (and Blood Meridian is excellent!) .  The brutality and violence here are not gratuitous because  brutality and violence are the main theme.  The rating is low.

Independent:  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/ian-mcguire-the-north-water-subtle-as-a-harpoon-in-the-head-but-totally-gripping-book-review-a6856011.html

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

What a great book to start the new year!   Truly,  it’s a brilliant satire which smacks everyone within range of any kind of racial issue in the US – an equal opportunity blitz of stings from the absurdist set-up to some very real problems.   As a result, it was the winner of last  year’s Man Booker Prize,  the only US author to ever win that little number,  in addition to other awards plus glowing reviews from all over the English-speaking world.   It was also the discussion book choice of two of my reading groups.

*******
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
2015/ 304 pages
read by Prentice Onayemi
rating – 9
*******

Mesmerizing and very funny I gave it chuckles and laugh-out-louds along with several nods to the serious reality of the unstated.

The story opens at the Supreme Court where the protagonist, identifying himself as “Me,”  is fighting for his right to own a slave and enforce segregation on his farm in an extinct southern suburb of urban Los Angeles.  It’s now just an area which used to be  called Dickens.   It’s extinct because the neighboring communities have, over the years, incorporated pieces of it into themselves.  “Me” lives on his family farm, known for great fruit,  where he grew up being home-schooled by his father.  When his father dies “Me”  inherits the place and grows melons and marijuana  with the help of  Hominy Jenkins,  his volunteer slave.  “Me” really wants the old Dickens back – but on his terms.

So our hero,  such as “Me”  is,  tries to reestablish the community as a segregated and slave-holdng community  beginning with Hominy Jenkins,  the last of the “Little Rascals, who has become “Me’s” very own volunteer slave.   He makes adjustments to the schools and re-orients the stores.   – Oh it’s interesting what all brought him to the point of  standing in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. .

Here are some reviews but really – don’t read them – go read the book!

NPR: – http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/388955068/the-sellout-is-a-scorchingly-funny-satire-on-post-racial-america

The Financial Times (by Simon Schama): https://www.ft.com/content/4b9f8a4e-3222-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153

Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/23/review-paul-beattys-the-sellout/

The Paris Review:  http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/05/07/our-thing-an-interview-with-paul-beatty/

I’m pretty happy with my reading except that I’d like to read a few more translated works than I did this year as well as a bit more non-fiction and works by women.  That’s how I feel now – I usually read what strikes my fancy and check the totals later.  But I could cut down on the getting-to-be-redundant crime fiction and look for something a bit more interesting.

Also,  I think I’ve discovered a way in which my records could be improved.   While comparing notes with my old friend Sue at Whispering Gums I see she split her totals into international (non-Australian) books, too.   I’ve only been keeping track of English or translated books – and that’s not counting books from  Nigeria or India or even Australia because those usually start out in English.    lol –   I’ve tried tags but keep forgetting.

I keep track in each month – click the little month in the menu at the top of each page to get a rundown of the reviews kept from that month.  After one year it goes by years. Because of the ongoing totals I can incorporate that pretty easily.  I think I could probably post my monthly summaries here as blog entries.

Anyone here have any resolutions for the new year?  –  (Anything I could use? –  lol)

Ah well – here’s to Health and Happy Reading in 2017!

I read 172  books read as of December 31, 2016.  My monthly totals ranged between a high of 21 in April to a low of 4 in  July.  Of the total 26 (15%) were nonfiction and 44 (25%) were by women authors and 16 books were translated into English.

The best of each category are listed below with links to my reviews.    These are not in any order.  Also,  if the book was a reread from a prior year it didn’t count in the “best of” list.

GENERAL FICTION:

** Note – this is NOT a Christmas Holiday book!  This is a “Father Christmas” book because the protagonist is named Tom Christmas and he is a priest with the Anglican church.  The month is May or something – springtime.   It took me probably 1/3 of the book before I realized that stockings were not going to be hung.

That said,  it’s not bad – the reason for the low rating is that I was irritated to find it was not the cozy holiday book I wanted.  Okay –  maybe I’ll try the next in the series later in the year although I doubt it.  I might rather  get caught up on Louise Penny.    I did finish though,  saving David Baldacci’s The Christmas Train for next year.

******
Twelve Drummers Drumming
by C.C. Benison
2012/400 pages
read by Steve West & Jean Gilprin 14h 5m
rating:   C /  cozy crime
*******

Father Tom Christmas, a  widower with a 10-year old daughter,   has moved to the Thornford Regis, a small town in rural England, to take charge of the parish there.   Alas,  within a few months a  dead body turns up in one of the ornamental drums at the fair.  The victim was a rather mysterious young woman possibly involved with drugs and the black arts but … everyone in town seems to have secrets.  And then another member of the community disappears.

One interesting structural aspect of the book is the alternating points of view between third person focused on Tom Christmas and the 1st person letters of his housekeeper.

Although the writing adequate and the plot pretty good in its own way, I’m not recommending it to mystery fans because it’s slower than usual for a good cozy and the reader slows it down even more.  There seems to be almost  no tension.

There were 12 planned Father Christmas novels but publishers have cut way down on publishing cozy mysteries so Benison’s series may be stuck at 3.

I read quite most of the Agatha Christie’s mysteries back in my early 20s, but I guess I must have missed a few.  So as I was browsing for Christmas books this year I discovered it at Audible,  checked that Christie really did write it (yes) and downloaded it pronto.

It took awhile to get used to this old-fashioned clue-based puzzler,  but I persevered and it worked.  By the end I was hooked and I may have to check out a few more old time books by her.

*******
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
by Agatha Christie
1938 / 272 pages
read by Hugh Fraser 6h 20m
rating  A++ / crime puzzler
*******

Simeon Lee is very old and very rich and there are several family members and their spouses who want to inherit.  But,  there are new people who also want to inherit in which case the will would have to be changed,  right?

So the mean and devious Simeon Lee sets it up so that the group gathered in his home on Christmas Eve all know he has a surprise for them.

And then he’s dead,  murdered, found  in a room locked from the inside. Ahhhhhh…..

Motive, motive who’s got the motive? – They all do.  There is the son who stuck around, dutifully minding his father’s wishes – and he has wife.   There’s the son who left home to wander the world and has only recently turned up.  There’s a third son who left the business,  but is married and lives not too far away.  The daughter is deceased but she has a daughter who has turned up along with the son of an old business partner.  Ah …the long time butler? –  Besides that there are any number of people in the small town nearby who really do not like Simeon Lee – long held grudges there.

But never fear,  Poirot has no family obligations on Christmas Eve and he’s quite pleased to show up.  So resolution of the case is expected from observations and logic.  No bothering with chase scenes or rounded characters.  This is the Golden Age of mysteries and the clues were the thing.

An engrossing novel of WWII heroics aimed at saving a certain man from the death chambers of Auschwitz.  The US wants him so bad it’s willing to kidnap him out of that horror actually,  because he has information vital to the Allies war effort.  He has the knowledge necessary to build the atomic bomb.

*******
The One Man
by Andrew Gross
2016 / 432 pages
read by Edoardo Ballerini 12h 45m
rating: B+
*******

I wish this were a true story or based on a true story because it certainly is suspenseful.  It actually  feels a bit like a “based on the true story of …” kind of thing.   But none of it is.  Or at least nothing I’ve read about the book or about WWII science says anything like that.

Alfred Mendl, a leading German physicist, his family and other Jewish people from Lisbon,  thinks he is en route to freedom when their ship is rerouted and ends up in a French detention camp.  From there it’s but a short train ride to Auschwitz. The trouble is Mendl is one of a handful of scientists who have information about the creation of an atomic bomb.  His papers are destroyed but he remembers. And he teaches what he knows to a young chess champion named Leo,  another prisoner.

Meanwhile the US has been working to get these passengers, because of Mendl,  out of danger.  That first plan was hijacked and that’s how they landed in France.  Now they’ve decided to send Nathan Blum,  an escapee to the US from Poland, into Auschwitz to see if he can kidnap Mendl and get him out.  That’s that’s the outline.

Certain details are included so I suppose it is an historical novel,  but it’s mostly stuff like  the Farben plant was next to Auschwitz as was Buchenvald.  and there were lines for everything and brutal guards who instilled  the unremitting fear of what the prisoners knew by this time was going to be their fate.  (I did read  Ravensbruk by Sarah Helm back in May – about the women’s prison.)  There are many books which have detailed information about the camps and I would hardly call reading those to be “extensive research.”   Gross simply used this horror to develop a fiction.   And much of the fiction is on the lowest denominator common to WWII concentration camp books, the “how gory can it get” level.

All that said,  it is a pretty good imaginary tale – original and lots of suspense (in part because we don’t know the specific ending – we know how the war ends for the world,  but not for these characters. And the characters are sympathetic and well enough drawn for the reader to care about.

The sections dealing with the escape plan from the side of Mendl the physicist and his young protege a champion chess player along with the side of Blum who is assigned the task of getting Mendel out)  are sometimes broken with sections dealing with the people working to get them out as well as sections from the Nazi point of view.   This fairly common device worked will in adding characters,  interest and tension.

On the down side much of the story seems contrived and the romance is a bit pulpish and there are just a few too many lucky coincidences.

http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-one-man

Featured Review: ‘The One Man’ by Andrew Gross

http://www.criminalelement.com/stories/2016/08/the-one-man-new-excerpt

Amazing book for the times – prescient.  And it was published in 2015!,  but … well,  it’s about how social media (think Facebook or Twitter) tricks can affect a presidential campaign.  (YES!) –

At first it seems like an odd mix of a whole lot of standard plot twists. Then the hard-hitting second half hits – the meat –  the election is “rigged” bit.

*******
Terms of Use 
by Scott Allen Morrison
2015/ 368 pages
read by David Colacci 12h 21m
rating:  B+
*******

Sergio Mansour is 50 years old,  a research executive at  “Circles,”  the social media company he created.  The company itself thinks all their data (and there is a LOT of data) is completely secure and Sergio is working on what he thinks is a really fool-proof system.  But there are a couple of people who definitely know that nothing is foolproof.   Then the company’s whole system crashes – Circles is down.   There’s a confrontation.  A teeny bit later the chief security officer is found murdered and  the flash drive he had is missing.   But Sergio gets it and is then he’s  the person the really bad guys want to get.

There’s quite a lot of chasing for awhile,  but then the figuring out starts –  I honestly couldn’t see how it could end in anything other than disaster.

Rainer Maria Rilke, the brilliant early 20th century poet,  was about 30 years younger than his mentor August Rodin, the brilliant late 19th century sculptor when they met and became fast friends.  The friendship lasted many volatile years and affected Rilke profoundly.   He had wanted to see like a visual artist and believed that’s the ability Rodin gave him.

This is the story of two lonely, unhappy and somewhat odd people as they live through the course of one full day  in London.  Meg is younger, single,  an alcoholic,  trying to hang on to some sobriety through AA while dealing with her other life/physical  issues.   Jon is older,  a newly divorced civil servant with a grown child.  Jon wants a woman he can be kind to and enjoys writing letters to lonely women.   He also has problems at work. These are mostly due to severe problems with his lack of self-esteem.    The main thing these two do is go through a fairly normal day while thinking about themselves, their pasts and their predicaments.  It’s quite negative,  but they’re both trying to find some satisfaction within their lives- or at least justify their existence.   After many delays  they meet and …   (It’s a long story but worth it in the end.)

*******
Serious Sweet
by A.L. Kennedy
2016 / 488 pages
read by Simon Mattacks 14h 34m
rating:  8  general fiction
(Booker Prize long list) 
*******

The stories of Meg and Jon are told in third person but with large sections where they think in first person. These stream-of-consciousnes parts are in italics   The time frame of the main story  is the course of one day from 6:42 AM until the next day’s 6:42 AM, but there are quite a lot of flashbacks to catch the reader up on what has gone on to this point.  This is very reminiscent of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and maybe Ulysses by James Joyce.

Interspersed with the longer sections which alternate between the two main characters are little vignettes of various characters going about their daily lives  – a man with a child,  a couple hugging,  a woman falling on an escalator and so on.

On the plus side,  it’s nicely written and pretty funny as a satire on what some folks try these days to improve the emptiness of their  lives.  But if you start identifying with the characters it could be a serious downer.   The sweet part is how hard they try to be good and decent human beings caring for others and not getting hurt. The serious part is how they take this desire so very seriously.

Inspired by News of the World by Paulette Jiles I noticed her recommendation of Captured by Scott Zesch.  This was in the Author’s Note at the end.   Well! – that’s me – inspired by the book and interested in the subject for a long time –  since I first heard about it back in college days.   Also,  Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynn (read in 2011 so scroll down on the link)  has information about Cynthia Ann Parker who was captured and had a child,  Geronimo,  with a Comanche man, a fascinating  but very sad story. Probably the most famous Indian captive child.  And the rather academic book The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen fascinated me, although it was about their economic confederacy more than child abductions.

So – there it was at Audible – and yes,  I purchased  the audio version first.  Then I discovered that the Kindle version includes maps, photos,  notes, etc. and yes, Dear Reader,  with that I proceeded to read and listen to Captured.

*******
Captured:  A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier 
by Scott Zesch
2004 /  362 pages
read by Grover Gardner  10h 18m
rating:  7.5
*******

It seems the author’s great-great-something uncle was one of  dozens of captured children.  Zesch had heard the stories as a child, about old Uncle Adolph Korn who never really lost his Indian way.   But  it was when he came across  the man’s  virtually unmarked grave it motivated him to find out more.

Adolph Korn was just one of dozens of children captured by the Kiowas and Comanches of the Southern Plains.  The victims were not just white children who were taken and “adopted,”   blacks, Mexicans, Germans, and other Native tribes were represented  – it was an equal opportunity experience.  There was a land war going on for much of this time and atrocities were committed by both sides.

To understand about these children  the situation of the Southern Plains circa 1840-1880  has to be considered.  In 1836 Texas had just achieved the status of an independent nation and the Indian/Anglo relationship was that of a hard-won peace with frequent breaks.  But  in 1846 the Germans settled on the Comanche side of the dividing line with intents to go further.

One day Adolph was simply snatched from a field in the Hill Country  where he was watching sheep with his twin brother Charlie who was also taken.   This was in 1870 or so.  They family had arrived as one of many families of German immigrants 1862.

Indians had been challenging white settlers since the 1840s but after the Civil War things seemed to went from only a bit tense to war. .

Zensch basically follows the trails of three captives,  all of German immigrant families,  Adolph Korn, Rudolph Fischer and Herman Lehmann,  but there is also information of other captives.  He considers various ideas about why they lost their ties with their families of origin so quickly,  including the Stockholm Syndrome.

It gets a bit long in some places,  but some of the tales are fascinating.  There is no academic type of study on this phenomenon and I think Zesch has done as much as can be done considering the scarcity of information.

http://www.texfiles.com/llanotexas/llano-texas-history/alicetodd.htm

http://www.celiahayes.com/archives/2250

https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-captured/

Lots of hype about this book by Paulette Jiles who is normally thought of as a poet but has also written novels.  And the book  is different.  I’ve read so many “western”  books over the years and I thnk they’ve changed so much,   from Louis L’Amor to Larry McMurtry to  Patrick DeWitt and now Pauletter Jiles.  Even Nathanial Hawthorn’s Leatherstocking tales are Westerns of a sort – from a different era – a different West than we usually read about.

*******
News of the World
by Paulette Jiles
2016 / 224 pages
read by Grover Gardner 5h 58m
rating –  9  / literary western
******* 

Anyway,  in this novel of post-Civil War Texas,  Captain Jefferson Kile Kidd, a 70-year old US military man who has fought in 3 wars,  is a self-employed traveling news reader.  He comes to a town,  sets up a forum and read to his paying audience from various national newspapers    His focus is on non-Texas matters.   As the story opens he’s just accepted the job of transporting a 10-year old girl from Wichita Falls back to her family near San Antonio, a journey of hundreds of miles through rough and lawless terrain.

Johanna, the name Kidd gave the captured girl, was held by Kiowa Indians from the age of about six and for the last 4 years has  lived with them as part of their tribe.  During that time she forgot everything she knew about western ways  including her name and the language,  how to wear shoes, bathe and how to use eating utensils.  But she’s bright and brave as well as stubborn.

As they travel the odd pair has adventures both  large and small. At first Johanna tries to run away back to her Kiowa family.  But she also slowly learns that the Captain is her friend and they bond.

Jiles is no stranger to novel-writing,  but she’s a poet at heart and the narrative shows it.  The descriptions of the Texas landscape come from the hands of a true wordsmith.  This is not a page-turning thriller, but it kept me up late last night until I finished – good ending!   I’ll be going on to read “Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier”  by Scott Zesch which is recommended by Jiles to readers who are interested in the subject of children (any ethnicity)  kidnapped by Native tribes of the Southern Plaines.

I read Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty series all the way through and they got better and better – the last was published in 2016.   But his Junior Bender series debuted in 2012 and for some reason I avoided it – the sample didn’t appeal to me,  the idea of being in a bad-guy’s head wasn’t enticing – I don’t know.   But when I was looking for Christmas mysteries to read these last couple weeks of December I saw his Fields Where They Lay.  But it was #6 in the series already!   –

Oh well – I’m not that much of a stickler for series order,  it really depends on the series and how much over-arching plot line there is.   This is the same way I found the Monica Ferris series – I started with a Crewel Yule (#8) for a Christmas read and have kept up all these years.  I have no idea which James Lee Burke I started with more than 25 years ago,  I think it was In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) – #6.  And I’ve kept going.   With the Hallinan,  I hope I’ll go back to book 1 and read them this  upcoming year.

*******
Fields Where They Lay
by Timothy Hallinan
2016 / 384 pages
read by Peter Berkrot 10h 41m
rating – A+
*******

On to Fields Where They Lay –  It seems there is a plague of shoplifters and an extra Santa at the sad, rundown Edgerton Mall in the suburbs of Los Angeles.  Junior has been called in to stem the tide,  but it seems there is something else going on,  something a tad more intense.

Unfortunately Junior is not a happy camper and Christmas brings out the Scrooge in him.  As a favor to an old “friend” and mall worker, he meets with Tip Poindexter,  a real estate tycoon.  Turns out  Poindexter , aka Vlad, is a Russian thug who owns the mall.   Junior returns to the mall  from his lunch with Poindexter to find there’s been a murder.  He talks to one of the Santas,  a wonderful old Jewish man named Shlomo who eventually relates a pieced-out backstory of miracles from WWII. .

Meanwhile, in his private life,  Junior is now settled into a nice apartment with his semi- long term girlfriend, Ronnie.  But she won’t even talk about Christmas – something is wrong.  And his daughter who lives with her mother needs a gift but … what would that be?  She’s intelligent, funny  and for awhile,  possibly in danger.  It looks like she might be the vulnerable target of some very bad people.

The book is smart,  good humored,  sometimes thoughtful and even heartwarming  – alongside having the expected murders and chases.   Fun –  I’ll be reading more of the series – probably start with the first one  – Crashed.  

I don’t  believe I’d ever actually read the Dickens classic,  A Christmas Carol,  before this,    I’ve only seen various movie/television productions.   I was advised that this version with Tim Curry reading was wonderful.  It was on sale and I got it.  So here it is Christmas time and I’m baking cookies and wrapping gifts so listening is probably the right thing to do.

******
A Christmas Carol 
by Charles Dickens 
1843 /  80 pages  
read by Tim Curry
rating –  10
*******

The advice was right on – Tim Curry is an absolutely excellent reader.  He gives each character’s voice a distinction,  he’s got the speed right and his British accent is easy enough to understand.  Kudos.

There seem to be differences in the narrative from what I’ve seen on the screen –  maybe not so much from one of the older black and white versions, but it’s definitely different from the animated version.

It’s Dickens all right – and I’ve read quite a lot of Dickens –  the characters are close to stereotypes, the situations are pathetic for the good people who are forced to live in filth and poverty while the business folks make money.  There’s plenty of symbolism to the point of allegory and a huge Christian sentiment.  And there’s a political element as was common in his later books (see Hard Times).    It’s a tad saccharine

Dickens first self-published A Christmas Carol because he felt there would be more money in it that way – and he needed money at the time.   His career was undergoing a little stall and his other books,  like Barnaby Rudge and  Martin Chuzzlewit,  were not doing so well on the market.   Dickens made several changes before the book was actually available to the public,  but when it did it proved to be an instant best-seller as well as getting mostly favorable reviews.  And the best of Dickens was yet to come.

Apparently, Dickens got the name Scrooge from the word  “scrunge” (scrounge?) or possibly from an old gravestone.  It’s come to mean miserly with a particular grudge against Christmas,    “Bah humbug.”  Where “humbug”  means trick or a hoax.

Washington Post review of a newer edition:

A Glossary –  

I’d heard of Stead because of her more famous work The Man Who Loved Children but The Little Hotel sounded intriguing. So I nominated it for the discussion at the ReadingGroup List and it made the schedule.   THEN!!   I found that my blog-buddy,  Lisa over at Anzlitlovers.com , had written a review and it all fell into place.

Why did it intrigue me?   I’ve read some great hotel novels going back to Arthur Hailey’s Hotel and including Mrs Palfrey at the Clairmont by Elizabeth Taylor,   Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel by William Trevor,  Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner ,  Hotel World by Ali Smith,  I Hotel by Karen Yamashita and  A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.   There have been others over the years, I’m sure.   Hotels make for  intriguing settings.   The whole transient atmosphere of a hotel is a  rather closed and anonymous yet intimate, somewhat artificial but at the same time quite real to its residents.   (See character list at the bottom of post.)

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The Little Hotel
by Christina Stead
1973 /  191 pages
rating –  9
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In the case of  The Little Hotel we have an establishment which is distinctly not top-of-the line,  but has a very nice owner.  Living there are Mrs Trollope an English woman and Mr Wilkins who pass themselves off as cousins but are really a long term couple.   There’s also a  mad mayor,  a rich but eccentric princess with a singing dog, a couple of Americans and a woman whose rich doctor husband just really doesn’t want her to be at their home – and she’d rather not be there anyway.   (see character list below)

The setting is Switzerland not too long after WWII when the world was restructuring round the Cold War fears of Communism and the advent of the Americans on the scene,  coming to Europe with all their cars and money. But the older generation including those staying at the hotel were not quite ready to forget racial issues and social status was still important although most of it now depended on money.

There are a couple sections where Mrs Bonnard , the owner,  acts as 1st person observing.  The rest of the novel is in 3rd person omniscient following the adventures of Mrs Trollope (note that name) as she tries to get through another year in another hotel away from her home in England in order to stay with Mr Wilkins who really treats her quite badly after many year together.

On the surface it’s really quite funny in its own way, but also sad as well because Mrs Trollope has been trapped by her love.  Some of the other residents are trapped different ways,  Miss Abbey-Chinald by her age and illness,  Mrs Blaise by her drugs and the rejection of her husband.   And it seems to me it’s a completely character driven novel – there isn’t much plot although there is one and it’s obvious by the last 1/3 of the book or so.

Characters:
Mrs Bonnard – Swiss owner of the hotel (favorite)

Roger Bonnard – her husband – French farm boy, uneducated, admires Germans –

Mayor of B – Belgium – nervous troubles, nuts, drunk, etc. doesn’t like germs or Germans (no one in the hotel is German).

Mrs Powell – American widow- hard of hearing, worries about Communists, rich but tight with money. Looks much younger than her 78 years. Seems racist. Dislikes Mrs Trollope – calls her an “Asiatic” – also doesn’t like Mrs Blaise because Blaise complained about Powell’s snoring.

Mrs Lilia Trollope – English – main interest – wants to marry but … (like Stead with Wm Blake?) – friends with Mrs Blaise. She’s nervous about money and the future.

Mr Robert Wilkins – English – Mrs Trollope’s married lover who is living off her. He’s irritable – irritating. Says he’s bound to his mother by a promise made years ago but he’s really just not going to marry anyone ever.

Princess Bili di Rovino – rich American widow was married to old Italian prince – rich – wants to sell her dog, Angel.

Madame Blaise – from Basel Switzerland – fat – negative about everything – money in US – friends with Mrs Trollope.

Dr Blaise – husband who visits Mrs every weekend – feeds her drugs as needed – lives a pretty high life.

Miss Abbey-Chilland – English, very poor and ill, picky eater and cheap, can’t pay her bills but the hotel expects reimbursement – she has nowhere else to go.

There are a few others thrown in – housekeepers and other hotel residents.

I actually finished my second book by Saul Bellow!   I have tried to read Bellow’s works for many years and only one time got through more than a couple chapters.  That book was “The Adventures of Augie March” –  I wasn’t impressed –  it was tough.    I’ve also tried “Herzog,”   “Humboldt’s Gift, ”  “Mr Sammler’s  Planet,”  and “Henderson the Rain King,”  trying “Herzog” more than once.  This has been ongoing since the 1970s.  Just as with “Augie March,” ” Mr Sammler’s Planet”  was a reading group selection.

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Mr Sammler’s Planet
by Saul Bellow
1970 /  288  pages
read by Wolfram Kandinsky 11h 35m
rating:   8 (for the theme)   / US classic 
(both read and listened) 
*******

Mr Sammler is an old Jewish man who lives in New York in the year the book was published  – 1970.  He’s cranky and arrogant,  but he has very interesting thoughts about many things.   Furthermore,  he is a survivor and a widower of  the Holocaust which was still not too far from some people’s minds at that point having occurred only 35 years prior.  Actually,  I think it’s a big part of the book – just in the background.

The story consists of a series of little adventures which involve his daughter and son-in-law, a few friends and relative and a large elegantly dressed black man who works as a pick-pocket and flasher (he pulls it out to impress Sammler – Sammler is horrified – the book continues).

Although the writing is lush, the characters interesting and  the ideas are thought provoking,  the result. on the whole, is this book is mostly incredibly boring.

I was listening and reading which is what I often do with complex novels. – The narrator might have been part of the problem as he had a gravelly-nasal tone to his voice and read at an incredibly slow rate.  I came to realize at about 30%  that this was his idea of a New York Jewish accent.  Maybe it was good – his southern accent and European accents were great.

Because it’s a novel written by a middle age man in 1970 there are a lot of references to sex – it seems to go with the territory.   It’s about how he thinks the world (generalizing from his own little corner of Manhattan I guess)  is obsessed with sex.  I’ve seen other middle aged writers seem like they wish they were young again – or recount the sexual adventures of their youth.   Sammler wants the old days back – pre-mini-skirt.

Bellow really was quite the intellectual so there are plenty of literary and other kinds of allusions and probably because Bellow was Jewish there are lots of Jewish references, jokes, observations.  And I guess because 1970 was the year of the US moon landing there’s a chunk about that –  but that’s just Sammler wishing he were going elsewhere to start over.   lol –  He loves H.G. Wells.

The structure is basically a picaresque like The Adventures of Augie March –  this is NOT my favorite structure.  That said there is a plot of sorts which concerns the imminent death of Elya Gruner,   a rich doctor who has been supporting Sammler for a long time. There are other winding plot threads concerning Wallace Gruner who is trying to find money he thinks his father has hidden and Shula,  Sammler’s divorced daughter,  who steals a manuscript to help her father.

And the narrator makes it worse reading very, very slowly with his gravelly nasal voice. Imagine the following read aloud:

“Numbers also bear an important relation to people. The series of numbers is like the series of human beings— infinite numbers of individuals. The characteristics of numbers are like the characteristics of matter, otherwise mathematical expressions could not tell us what matter will or may do. Mathematical equations lead us to physical realities. Things not yet seen. Like the turbulence of heated gases. Do you see now?”

For the most part the book is boring,   but there were some parts which held my attention really well – that’s when I thought about the possibility of a reread but …

I need to tell you all that the ending is good.

Also,  I found a mention of Hannah Arendt which sparked some interest about the possibility of a “message” of  “evil is NOT banal,  it’s real and we have to fight it.”   That kind of stirred my soul for about an hour.   lol –