Books This Week

 

The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant doesn’t live up to its promise as a family saga. It tells the story of an immigrant Jewish family who come to Liverpool, England, just before the first World War, and despite their intentions of continuing onward to America, somehow never leave. It’s clear that this book is an effort to reconstruct the author’s own family history, based on rather sketchy information and a few often-retold stories. Indeed, it’s much too close to the way personal stories come off: a bit vague and tentative, somewhat pointless, lacking the power of a strong narrative voice or a really vivid central character. Wimpy. Sad. Not up to some of Linda Grant’s best fiction, of which my favorite is When I Lived in Modern Times, which won the Orange Prize in 2000.

Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) was a fantastically imaginative writer, and I’ve read many of her books. This was her last book, published in 2008. It’s based on the Aeneid of Vergil, which I have never read, so it was entirely new to me, and I have no idea how Le Guin’s novel borrows from the original. I know only that Le Guin says that the title character, Lavinia, was only named, not developed by Vergil, and the detailed life of Lavinia was thus entirely her creation. Of course Le Guin brings the character to life in a wonderful and very readable way, and this book is genuinely a good read.

In the Afterword, Le Guin makes a point that I find especially important in thinking back on my experience reading this novel:

“From the Middle Ages on, the so-called dead language Latin was, through its literature, intensely alive, active, and influential. That’s no longer true. During the last century, the teaching and learning of Latin began to wither away into a scholarly specialty. So, with the true death of his language, Vergil’s voice will be silenced at last. This is an awful pity, because he is one of the great poets of the world.

“His poetry is so profoundly musical, its beauty is so intrinsic to the sound and order of the words, that it is essentially untranslatable. … More than anything else, my story is an act of gratitude to the poet, a love offering” (p. 359)

We never miss a new novel about the Navajo detectives Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito. In this one, published quite recently, Chee and Manuelito — a husband and wife, both police officers — are subject to all kinds of terrible risks, and are both almost killed by the criminals they are investigating. Poor Bernie, she’s always a victim of some violence, but of course she outsmarts her opponents every time and quickly gets over whatever injuries she suffers. No surprises here. 

Shadow of the Solstice is interesting for the author’s focus on actual current issues for Southwest Indian tribes. There issues as a driving force in the two intertwined detective assignments of Chee and Manuelito. One issue is the continuing problems on the Navajo reservation caused by uranium mining in the past, and the necessity to block new efforts at destructive and damaging extraction of minerals from the territory. 

The other plot element is based on an actual series of fraudulent claims for social benefits in which criminal scammers tricked members of the tribe into cheating the government. These fraudsters exploited their Indian victims and left them in desperate straits, including homelessness, worse addiction, and even death. In the novel, the scammers are caught and the victims mainly rescued.

Joe Leaphorn, the original detective in the series, is mentioned but he never actually appears in this novel. After the original author of the series, Tony Hillerman, died in 2008, his daughter has continued to write a book just about every year, and though the detectives age slowly, it’s apparent that Joe must be well into his nineties and not really very active even as a retired mentor. Jim Chee first appeared in 1980 in the novel People of Darkness. But we won’t calculate how old he would be if he aged like real people.

There are now around 25 books in the series beginning with The Blessing Way in 1970. I’ve read them all, and reread some of them. I like that the detectives still enjoy a stop at a diner for coffee at a tense moment, or some fresh, home-made fry bread like this treat enjoyed by Jim Chee:

“An irresistible aroma had begun to fill his patrol unit. He could tell without opening the bag that Mrs. Yazzie had given him fry bread, freshly made in her own kitchen. He started to salivate. He reached in, grabbed the piece on top, as big as a dinner plate, pulled a bit free, and took a bite. He chewed slowly, savoring it as if it were his last meal.” (p. 174)

I wouldn’t say that Shadow of the Solstice is the best of the series, but it’s ok.

New Mexico landscape from our 2015 visit. The landscape is always a big part of the story in all the Navajo detective books.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Magic

 

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke,
illustrated by Portia Rosenberg.

I could not tell you why I decided to reread Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, except that its uncanny magical universe has something to do with a short new book by the same author. It’s a very long book: 850 pages, and it took me around a week of reading and being rather engaged with the history of the Napoleonic wars as experienced — and altered — by two English magicians and their circles of friends, relatives, acquaintances, and enemies. The magicians’ main enemy is a Fairy, a malevolent and self-centered creature. The fairy appears to many characters in the novel, and never means any good to them.

 

The fairy was described at his first appearance in the novel:

“a tall, handsome person with pale, perfect skin and an immense amount of hair, as pale and shining as thistle-down. His cold, blue eyes glittered and he had long dark eye-brows, which terminated in an upward flourish. He was dressed exactly like any other gentleman, except that his coat was of the brightest green imaginable – the colour of leaves in early summer.” (p. 90)

In the illustration, you can see the fairy who is obviously up to no good. Specifically, the magician Mr. Norrell has summoned him from a fairy realm beyond England to bring a beautiful young girl back from the dead. The bargain that’s made between magician and fairy is at the heart of many of the events in the novel. If you’ve ever read a fairy tale you wouldn’t be surprised at the consequences of such a bargain.

Another of Portia Rosenberg’s illustrations.

Mr Strange and Mr Norrell Take Tea

There are many plots and subplots about the two magicians Strange and Norrell and the magic that they do for the government of England, for individual noblemen, for their own interests, and in the case of Strange, for his wife. A number of other Englishmen want to be magicians as well, and they also play a role in the elaborate plot of the novel. All is tied together by the personalities of the magicians.

Both magicians are fond of taking a cup of tea, which is viewed as part of their deeply rooted Englishness. Being both typical and loyal is important to them and to the atmosphere of the novel.  When Mr. Norrell tries to offer his services to a Captain Harcourt-Bruce, the captain expects magical drama, troops of enchanted soldiers and swashbuckling magical victories. Instead, Norrell is rather an ordinary Englishman, not the leader of ideal fairy knights imagined by the military man: “That was Captain Harcourt-Bruce’s idea of a magician. That was the sort of thing which he now expected to see reproduced on every battlefield on the Continent. So when he saw Mr Norrell in his drawing-room in Hanover-square, and after he had sat and watched Mr Norrell peevishly complain to his footman, first that the cream in his tea was too creamy, and next that it was too watery – well, I shall not surprize you when I say he was somewhat disappointed.” (p. 107)

There’s even a reference to the supposed civilizing virtues of tea, concerning a captain who was  “entertaining the American savages and teaching them to drink tea (presumably with the idea that once a man had learnt to drink tea, the other habits and qualities that make up a Briton would naturally follow).” (p. 477) 

Mr. Norrell loved the comforts of his well-appointed home, and didn’t go out if he could help it. He preferred to stay in and read one of the thousands of books of magic in his collection; for example: “On a day in late December when storm clouds made Alpine landscapes in the sky above London, when the wind played such havoc in the heavens that the city was one moment plunged in gloom and the next illuminated by sunlight, when rain rattled upon the windowpane, Mr Norrell was seated comfortably in his library before a cheerful fire. The tea table spread with a quantity of good things stood before him and in his hand was Thomas Lanchester’s The Language of Birds.” p. 127.

Strange also finds comfort in his tea when he has some difficult issues that he calls “a wretched business from start to finish.” As he considered them, “he sipped his tea and ate a piece of toast.” (p. 441) Later when Strange is on the battlefield in Spain, he finds some Scots military men, and gives them some hard-boiled eggs he was carrying: “The Highlanders gave him some sweet, milky tea in return and soon they were chatting very companionably together.” (p. 473)

All this is in deep contrast to the foods that the fairy with thistledown hair has to offer his captives: “Here is a haunch of roasted wyvern and a pie of honeyed hummingbirds. Here is roasted salamander with a relish of pomegranates; here a delicate fricassee of the combs of cockatrices spiced with saffron and powdered rainbows and ornamented with gold stars! Now sit you down and eat!” (p. 500)

The famous military leader Wellington interacts with both magicians, especially with Jonathan Strange. He too enjoys English comforts even in the battlefield areas of Spain where the war is going on. His servants make sure to feed him properly: “As Wellington and his companions rode up to the castle they had just begun to lay it with plates of bread rolls, slices of Spanish ham, bowls of apricots and dishes of fresh butter. Wellington’s cook went off to fry fish, devil kidneys and make coffee.” (p. 347)

The appreciation of a typical English meal is shared by other English magicians, for example a man called Secundus, whose landlady brings him “a breakfast of two freshly grilled herrings, tea and fresh milk, and white bread and butter on a blue-and-white china plate.” (p. 26)

A woman in a weakened state begins to recover: “It was soon learnt that Miss Wintertowne had left her bed and, leaning upon Mr Norrell’s arm, had gone to her own sitting-room where she was now established in a chair by her fire and that she had asked for a cup of tea.” (p. 96)

Aromas and Odors

Now I’ve indulged myself by describing the way the author uses food and tea to create an atmosphere around the characters and their unusual lives. I should get down to business and actually review the book, but that’s been done by lots of other people. So I’ll just keep telling you a few things I found amusing.

I also appreciated the use of aromas and odors in the novel, especially the unpleasant aroma associated with an elderly woman whose cats create a rather potent situation (but I can’t say too much because this is quite a big part of the plot). Or the aroma of land and sea: “Instantly the sea became more ethereal and dreamlike, and the wood became more solid. Soon the sea was scarcely more than a faint silver shimmer among the dark trees and a salty tang mingling with the usual scents of a night-time wood.” (p. 667)

Here is a passage that describes the relief felt when a very dark magic spell is lifted from a city:

“There was a sudden rush of scents upon the air – scents of frost, winter earth and the nearby river. The colours and shapes of the park seemed simplified, as if England had been made afresh during the night. To the poor servants, who had been in some doubt whether they would ever see any thing but Dark and stars again, the sight was an exceedingly welcome one.” (p. 782)

More Magic

1871 Edition of The Princess
and the Goblin

Evidently, I enjoy books about magic. I didn’t give this much thought, but my fellow blogger Deb at Readerbuzz listed some magical fiction she was reading and I realized how much I have always liked certain types of magic in books, such as the magic of Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea. Erin Morgenstern’s Night Circus entertained me, as did Harry Potter. (Lev Grossman: not so much.)

In childhood, I enjoyed the Oz books (which Deb is reading this year). I was very fond of The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. I also loved fairy tales such as those by Hans Christian Andersen. And who doesn’t love the fairies in A Midsummernight’s Dream?

Here are a few books from Deb’s list that I have enjoyed reading in the past.

• Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett 
• Babel by R. F. Kuang
• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

For more of Deb’s choices, see her blog post: Magical Books I Loved that You Might Like to Read.

Review © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Deb’s Sunday Salon

Imagined Creatures from Studio Ghibli

"My Neighbor Totoro" Movie Poster from Studio Ghibli (1988)

What are we watching on TV? We are watching the Studio Ghibli films, newly available to stream on HBO-Max. We have watched "Castle in the Sky," "Tales from Earthsea" (based on the books by Ursula Le Guin), and "Kiki's Delivery Service." There are many more! Most of our favorites are by the studio's founder, Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote scripts, song lyrics, and created much of the magic in the films.

The cat that's a bus -- from "Totoro." 

Studio Ghibli has invented some of the most wonderful imaginary creatures I have ever enjoyed. The large gentle creature called Totoro, that helps the two little girls in the film "My Neighbor Totoro" was (I think) the first I ever saw. "Spirited Away" takes place at a bath house where ghosts and many other supernatural creatures live -- at the end, the little girl heroine, Chihiro, rides on a dragon that turns out to be the real identity of one of the more human characters. A dragon similarly transforms from a character in "Earthsea." I want to dream about these characters.

Chihiro rides the dragon in "Spirited Away."

Movie poster from "Tales from Earthsea."

Calcifer, the fire demon, from "Howl's Moving Castle."

If you think these films are for children, you are mostly right, but you can love them no matter what you are.

This blog post by mae sander for mae food dot blogspot dot com.

Images from around the Web.

Ursula Le Guin

To honor the memory of Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018), who died a few days ago, I decided to read one of her books that I've never read before. I chose The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia because Paul Krugman tweeted: 

I enjoyed reading this book, which was published in 1974, but which takes place thousands of years from now, on a pair of twin planets 11 light years from earth. Of course I liked the fact that the most important person in the story was a brilliant and original physicist, a man named Shevek. I also enjoyed Le Guin's depiction of a utopian society on the planet where he was born. It was a utopia of many sorts, especially a utopia of equality between the sexes, while the planet's twin, where Shevek visits, was a model of inequality between the sexes, as well as of general inequality between classes of people. Both fictional societies in the book offer insights into idealism and reality as applied to our own society, and offer thought experiments about things often taken for granted. Obviously, skillful plot and character development make this a readable and enjoyable work of fiction, not a diatribe or theoretical description.

As always, I watch for ways that food highlights social issues and other themes in novels that I read. Here's an example of food ways on Le Guin's utopian planet, where all meals were served in central canteens called refectories. The food in the refectories was supposed to be equal for all members of the population, whatever their contribution to society. Realizing that the ideal was undermined by special treatment of scientists thus affected Shevek:

"There was always a dessert at the Institute refectory at dinner. Shevek enjoyed it very much, and when there were extras he took them. And his conscience, his organic-societal conscience, got indigestion. Didn’t everybody at every refectory, from Abbenay to Uttermost, get the same, share and share alike? He had always been told so and had always found it so. Of course there were local variations: regional specialities, shortages, surpluses, makeshifts in situations such as Project Camps, poor cooks, good cooks, in fact an endless variety within the unchanging framework. But no cook was so talented that he could make a dessert without the makings. Most refectories served dessert once or twice a decad. Here it was served nightly. Why? Were the members of the Central Institute of the Sciences better than other people?" (The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, p. 111). 

In the past I've read other novels by Le Guin, and I agree with the generally held view that she was an imaginative creator of literature and that classifying her work as genre fiction disrespected her accomplishments. However there are many many obituaries and older appreciations of her work that do justice to the past and to her oeuvre so I don't have to.

Our very own SecretBurgers?

"The secret of SecretBurgers was that no one knew what sort of animal protein was actually in them: the counter girls wore T-shirts and baseball caps with the slogan Secret Burgers! Because Everyone Loves a Secret! ... The meat grinders weren't 100 per cent efficient; you might find a swatch of cat fur in your burger or a fragment of mouse tail. Was there a human fingernail, once?" (Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood, p. 33)

I particularly was thinking about Atwood's horrific imagined burgers when I read a NY Times article about hamburgers -- which many food writers have since been talking about. Trail of E. Coli Shows Flaws in Inspection of Ground Beef points out that actual non-secret burgers, from Cargill, which sickened people recently, were "a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria." Another article pointed out that meat from as many as 400 cows (some maybe sick) could be in a single hamburger.

The Year of the Flood includes many seemingly idealistic characters. The most sympathetic ones try to maintain an organic food and generally green lifestyle in the face of a deteriorating, and eventually catastrophic, environment. Many of them take a vegetarian vow, thanks to the food supplies that they have available. But wait: this is a distopian future, not a book about reality.

Maybe. Ursula LeGuin in a review of the book points out that Atwood refuses to classify her works as science fiction. Instead, Atwood claims: "everything that happens in her novels is possible and may even have already happened, so they can't be science fiction." Well, maybe it's so. Especially about SecretBurgers?