Recent Reading

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

There are two stories in The Weight of Ink (published 2017). Within these stories the author combines several genres including romance novel, historical novel, novel of ideas, feminist novel, and academic-professor novel. (A bit heavy! The word weight in the title is like a warning.) 

The frame story is about two people doing academic-literary-historic research in the year 2000. These scholars, one a professor of history about to retire, the other a graduate student, are called to look at a collection of seventeenth-century manuscripts discovered in a historic mansion near London. They are tasked with reading and interpreting the documents. A predictable story of discovery and rivalry among scholars ensues, with lots of memory and personal anguish. 

Interspersed with this classic tale of academic politics, jealousy, self-doubt, and ambition is the second story: a historic novel, the story of a Sephardic Jewish family in Restoration London. One of a few Jewish families who escaped the Portuguese Inquisition and found refuge in Amsterdam, these individuals then moved to England where Jews were just beginning to be tolerated. It is the post-Cromwell era, and these refugees lived through the plague and the great fire and quite a lot of drama!

The central character of the seventeenth-century events is a young woman who has managed to be educated despite the usual prohibitions of her time and her milieu. Her story to me seems to be the expression of the author's wishful thinking. As the two readers in the year 2000 read her letters, and as the narrative of her life is presented in alternate chapters, she becomes more and more philosophically accomplished, writing down many thoughts on contemporary philosophical developments, including famous thinkers  and early scientists of the age. Her papers are a major part of the document collection being interpreted by the twenty-first century scholars. There are several themes that also seem designed to suit the twenty-first-century reader, including a gay character whose life story is also something of an anachronism in the 17th century.

It would be nice if a woman could have found a way to accomplish so much as this character did, but based on my own reading about the history of that era (which I did intensively for a time), I don't feel as if the story is really plausible. In other words, it's a pleasant fantasy. To tell you more I would have to put in some spoilers, as the plausibility becomes more and more tenuous right up to a surprise ending.

The Mill House Murders  by Yukito Ayatsuji

The Mill House Murders is one of a number of Japanese classic mystery novels, based on the love of the American and British classics, especially locked room mysteries. Originally published in Japanese in 1988, this new edition was just published this year.

I think this is one of the best and most suspenseful and relatable of these Japanese classics that I've read. Every character in the isolated and eccentric mansion in the wilds of Japan is a potential murderer. They were in the habit of meeting at this forlorn place only once a year, on September 28, and they all suspect one another. Two meetings are included: September 28,1985, when a murder and a disappearance took place, and September 28, 1986, when the survivors return again and attempt to discover exactly what happened one year earlier. In 1986, a detective figure also arrives at their gathering unexpectedly. Determined to find the culprit, he disbelieves the police conclusion about what had taken place. The explanation of the murder and disappearance are totally wonderful -- and no, I won't give away anything!

I have read an earlier mystery by this author called The Decagon House Murders. I didn't like it as much as I like this one. (Reviewed here: link.)

Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

Will I ever read through all of the vignettes in this book about the history of Black people in the US? I want to read it, but it's very hard to concentrate on such a wide variety of writers and poets. This is one of many books published this year in response to numerous troubling events recently, and to the unfortunate resurgence of racism in our society.

From the introduction by Kendi:

"Black America can be defined as individuals of African descent in solidarity, whether involuntarily or voluntarily, whether politically or culturally, whether for survival or resistance. Solidarity is the womb of community. The history of African America is the variegated story of this more-than-400-year-old diverse community." (p. xiv).

To reflect the diversity and complexity of this community, Kendi and Blain chose 90 writers and poets to write brief essays that connect to each five-year period in the history of Black Americans, beginning with 1619. These essays do not form a connected narrative, but a reflection of each author or poet's perception and historic consciousness. It's a fascinating idea, but hard to follow as there's no total focus for all the material. I'm really trying to read it, but my mind doesn't really work this way.

Reviews © 2023 mae sander

Shared with the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz