REVIEW OF SPIES

ERIC’S REVIEW 

SPIES 

Michael Frayn

We all have secrets or inventions which we believe to be secrets. And there is nothing more powerful than the inventions of a child, for whom imagined dangers lurk everywhere. In the smells of nature. In the blackness of night. In the terror of the ordinary. In the wonders of a hidden world which reveals little of itself.

Spies is a reflective and intense journey back into the past of a childhood, where everything is not quite as it seemed. 

It tells the tale of young Stephen, his family and boyhood friends in a small village in rural England during WWII as recounted in the first person by the elderly Stephen. 

Smells of plants take on a life of their own. A cottage name echoes down the ages, dredging up intense feelings. Secret hiding places no longer exist as development has erased much of the countryside but are easily recreated by the narration of the man who lived a story which left many questions unanswered. 

But as the book says: some things must never even be known. 

Recounting what this story is actually about would ruin it. Suffice it to say that the writing is of such high quality that it transports you back so that you can actually feel a part of the time, live characters and events through the eyes of a child and gradually unravel the secrets which present themselves. 

Spies is a tale of many threads in the hands of a master weaver. It is the type of book that makes you nod your head in appreciation of the artistry the minute you finish it and give the same nod a few days later. 

Bravo.

4.5 stars

#83 SPIES Michael Frayn

 

SPIES

Michael Frayn

REVIEW OF HEIRS TO FORGOTTEN KINGDOMS Joe Igoe

 Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms Review
Joe Igoe
 
I thoroughly enjoyed the topic of this book and saw reading it as a great chance to add depth and context to terms such as Zoroastrian and Druze, which were vague, undefined terminology in my head.  
In that sense, this book achieved my goal- and I assume- its goal of informing and educating me about a part of the world and its religions that had neither been included in my formal education nor my further reading.  
The depth and breadth of the information, including Biblical and modern political history and references, is impressive.  I particularly enjoyed the insight into the story of the goodSamaritan and how it revealed the context of the story as opposed to the rather two dimensional moral drawn from it today.  Similarly, the final chapter on the Detroit diaspora from Iraq- and the fact that Aramaic is still being spoken there with more native speakers than in Bagdhad- was very interesting and enlightening.  Their experience in America as told mirrors, I believe, that of many immigrants.  The positives of American society are many and powerful, but there is a cost.  That cost is assimilation, which is almost complete over a few generations.
There were also many interesting stories of exploration and encounters with communities in Iraq, etc. I came away with more knowledge of and a better understanding of these religions and peoples.
Despite all of the positives, the text still read like a textbook in many places.  The personal encounters were generally engaging, but all too infrequent and could have been framed differently (in my opinion) to make them more poignant and memorable.  As an example of this I refer to works by John McPhee, an American author, who has written on a varied number of topics ranging among other things from the geology of the United States, how to make a bark canoe, tennis, oranges, and Alaska.  He is a “pioneer of creative nonfiction” and a master of what I call “faction”- factual writing that reads like fiction.
I enjoyed this book and am glad I read it- I certainly would not have done so on my own.  I will, hopefully, refer to it every now and then to refresh my memory about the many religions and areas it covered.

#82 HEIRS TO FORGOTTEN KINGDOMS Gerard Russell

 

HEIRS TO FORGOTTEN KINGDOMS

Gerard Russell

A guidebook to seven minority religions which have survived the dominance of the world's big religions. Zoroasterianism, Druze, Yazedi, Mandeam,Samaritans, Copts,  & Kalasha  

JFDI MEETING 2024 6FEB-A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

The assignment by James was to choose a book from the ones we have read over the past twelve years and reread it to judge how our perceptions might have changed.

THIS INSPIRED THE FOLLOWING HAIKU:

Twelve years is a long time.

-----------------------------------

JAMES- FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON- Daniel Keyes  Still *****

TOM- HER PRIVATES WE- Still *****

PHIL- ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE- ***** (unfinished....surprise surprise)

ALASTAIR- CHRONICLE IN STONE- Ismail Kadare 4.5 STARS (no surprise either, that elusive ***** is still in the tank)

JOE- BILLARDS AT HALF-PAST NINE ***** still

ERIC - ALEX'S ADVENTURES IN NUMBERLAND- JFDI'S FIRST BOOK, 6TH AUG 2012 -***** again

NICOLA- DEAD SOULS- TB CONTINUED

REVIEW OF TREMOR Teju Cole

By TOM WELLS

Tremor by Teju Cole

 

It may say "A Novel" on the cover, but "Tremor" by Nigerian-born, American-educated, Harvard-employed creative writing professor Teju Cole comes off as a series of essays about myriad topics, including musical and visual arts, spousal relations, casual racism, and horrific Western brutality toward indigenous peoples, all wrapped around 24 snapshots of Nigerian life, appropriately related by the professional and academic photographer Tunde.

 

In a written style not unlike the hypnotic drone of a chant, Cole weaves between the achingly personal and the cataclysmically historical. One of the standout conceits of the book is Tunde's observations on the Turner painting "The Slave Ship," a work the artist originally titled "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On." Neither title speaks to the pure evil of the incident, which took place 59 years before Turner's painting was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1840. In 1781, the captain of the British ship Zong, on which drinking water had run low, ordered 132 chained slaves—not just the dead and dying--to be thrown into the sea in order to collect insurance money that would not have been forthcoming if they had died of thirst and related maladies.

 

For those of us unfamiliar with the Zong incident, the news of its occurrence is deeply shocking. Yet Tunde/Cole's telling of it is done with such dispassion that the reader reacts more out of historical interest than visceral horror. This tone of academic calm that pervades the various story lines, including the Nigerian "snapshots," acts like a verbal tranquilizer, blunting the reader's emotional response and underscoring "the stubborn gap between what he is able to think and what he is able to do." As Tunde/Cole writes about serial killer Samuel Little, who confessed to 93 murders, "All that the story teaches is that human suffering is a useless mystery," especially when considering that Little became "the most prolific serial career" in an America built on First Nations genocide.

 

If atrocity is abstract and historical, then happiness is personal and fleeting. Nothing illustrates this juxtaposition more than the story of the husband of Tunde's friend Lucas. The husband is on a break from a business trip in Haiti when he invites a young man on a picnic. He described the hours with the boy as some of the happiest of his life. "That's what he and the boy were in the middle of, a happiest day, when they felt a rolling motion underneath them. Looking up they saw in the distance the city from which now a great cloud of dust was rising." The city was Port-au-Prince, the earthquake magnitude was 7.0 and the death toll would exceed 200,000.

 

It is left for Tunde's partner Sadako to give balance to the riot of observations this book contains when she is given a voice in the final pages and describes a gathering at their house. "Bowls are passed around with heaps of white rice on which gumbo is served and it's as though people don't realize how hungry they are until they begin to eat. Drinks are expected at parties but real food isn't.  But we love to feed people. What a gift to get to do this in community.  How great is what surrounds us, how insubstantial what preoccupies us. I make eye contact with my love, the one who keeps me from losing my head, the one I keep from losing his footing."

 

***½ raised to **** after JFDI meeting

 

REVIEW OF HAMNET

BY TOM WELLS

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

 

Open kimono. The reason I didn't rate this book one star is that I didn't want to appear sexist in regard to the winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. But in the afterglow of the latest JFDI gathering, I've come to regard it as not just bad but contemptible. For here a writer, of all professions, portrays the greatest writer in the language in which she writes as, first, a callow Latin teacher, later, an absentee father and, finally, a canny real estate investor. Forget his other-worldly facility with the written and spoken word. 

 

But then it's the novel's greatest strength that Maggie O'Farrell avoids exposing the weakness of her own prose (rhetorical questions? really?) by going toe-to-toe with The Bard. Instead, she opts for a hackneyed cast of characters--the abusive father, the shrewish mother-in-law, the sensitive boy, the sickly girl--straight out of a Harlequin romance before pivoting to a heroine cribbed from the Twilight series.

 

For Anne "Agnes" Hathaway is not just your run-of-the-mill 16th C. wife and mother. No, she has powers far beyond those of mortal men, even (or especially) one who cranked out 38 plays and 154 sonnets in 24 short years. She is clairvoyant. She communes with nature. She gets to the true soul of plants and animals and people, not wasting her time on merely making memorable, incisive and enduring observations about the human condition. 

 

Sadly, she lacks healing powers, and so her daughter suffers from a host of childhood maladies while her son dies of a sudden illness. That son is Hamnet, a name interchangeable with Hamlet. The way that Agnes is interchangeable with Anne. The way that this book is interchangeable with loo paper. 

** but really *