The Stories of Eva Luna - Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is another author I adore who is very good at putting together characters that catch your attention and hook you. I've read The House of the Spirits, but not Eva Luna yet. (This book was a present from my Aunt Judy and Uncle Gary.) I was excited to finally read this collection, started it last month on the plane to visit my family in Ohio and finished on the plane ride home. This is a collection of short stories that create and involve people from every kind of social background. There is an element of Fantasia to these "mystical realism" stories; the worlds and characters in them are full of magic and unusual possibilities. In the prologue, Eva is lying in bed with her lover Rolf Carle, a European refugee and journalist. He asks her to tell him a story "you have never told anyone before". Eva's answer is in the twenty-three stories that follow. They are romantic, rich, enchanting stories of different people and different places.

We are lead to believe that most of these stories are pure invention by Eva for Rolf. In fact, Allende slyly adds an excerpt about Scheherazade from A Thousand and One Nights before the prologue: "The King ordered the Grand Vizier to bring him a virgin every night, and when the night was over, he ordered her to be killed. And thus it happened for three years, and in all the city there was no damsel left to withstand the assaults of this rider. But the Vizier had a daughter of great beauty, named Scheherazade...and she was very eloquent, and pleased all who heard her."

But the last heartbreaking story of the book, "And of Clay Are We Created", is Eva writing about a natural disaster that strikes and that Rolf becomes directly involved in; an earthquake that looses an avalanche that buries a great deal of people, animals, and land. "Much later, after soldiers and volunteers had arrived to rescue the living and try to assess the magnitude of the cataclysm, it was calculated that beneath the mud lay more than twenty thousand human beings and an indefinite number of animals putrefying in a viscous soup. Forests and rivers had also been swept away, and there was nothing to be seen but an immense desert of mire", page 354.

During this last story, Rolf goes out in his television helicopter to follow the story, and befriends a young girl, Azucena (Lily), who is hopelessly trapped in a mire of mud with only her head above ground. Despite his struggles to help her, he fails and he is with her when she dies, watching her sink below the surface. What makes the story especially sad is that there was a very obvious way to help the girl; Rolf is trying to obtain a special kind of pump that will save her from being sucked into her tomb, but help came too late because all the officials and people making decisions had more important things to do. I cried while reading this story and cried again later, when the images and emotions were still in my mind. This is the last passage of that particular story, Eva is observing the changes in Rolf:

"You are back with me, but you are not the same man. I often accompany you to the station and we watch the videos of Azucena again; you study them intently, looking for something you could have done to save her, something you did not think of in time. Or maybe you study them to see yourself as if in a mirror, naked. Your cameras lie forgotten in a closet; you do not write or sing; you sit long hours before the window, staring at the mountains. Beside you, I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal. I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before" page 367.

And the book comes to an end, with a small and final excerpt from A Thousand and One Nights:

"And at this moment in her story, Scheherazade saw the first light of dawn, and discreetly fell silent."

Children of the Mind - Orson Scott Card

This is the fourth and last book of the Ender series. Hurray, I've read them all! And although I enjoyed this story a lot, I would probably give it fourth place out of the four. Why?-It was as enjoyable as it was unsatisfying.

A quick premise of the plot: the Starways Congress has decided to destroy Lusitania and all the beings who live on it, human, pequinino, and bugger because the descolada virus could potentially get out and wreak havoc. Good old government. Only Jane, the evolved being who lives in the ansible Net, can save everyone but the Congress is also deliberately shutting down the Net and Jane is losing the ability to move ships outside the known universe and back. Soon she won't be able to help her friends in their mission to find the origins of the descolada virus OR save her life. And while being moved in this way by Jane, Ender's personality/soul/aiua is split into three different beings, himself and his "children of the mind".

Typical of Card's writing, there are multiple interconnected story lines going on, involving a diverse group of people from different species and cultures. While there was a lot of dialogue involving philosophical ideas that I found interesting, not all of it was necessary to get the point across which made it tedious. And there were other characters who interested me, but you don't really get a chance to get all that attached to them. I liked Wang-mu to start off with, but I thought her relationship with Peter was unrealistic and it ruined her for me. My least favorite character was probably Ender's wife, Novinha. Since she was introduced in the story, she's been in dire need of a sharp kick in the butt. Granted, her life was full of tragedies, but in Novinha's case, her personality makes a life long tragedy out of everything. She just seems like such a completely unlikable drama queen, the more so because she's so determined that what she decides is right, that's she's acting out of someone's best interest so the ends justify the means. I have zero patience for this thinking in real and fictional people! You have to wonder what someone like Ender sees in her. She does do the right thing at the end of the story, but she doesn't get there by herself. Valentine has to coach her not to be a selfish cow. Ugh, Novinha.

Card originally planned Xenocide and Children of the Mind to be one cohesive story. And I think he should have gone that route. But despite some lumps, this story is still enjoyable and brings up all kinds of thought provoking ideas, i.e. with the "birth" of the new Peter and Valentine added to the existence of Jane, Card asks the question, do we have to have a physical base to have a soul? And which came first?

Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide are well worth reading if you haven't already and I highly recommend them. And while I'm glad I read Children of the Mind, I can't say I wasn't disappointed overall. The ending was left open enough, you have to wonder if OSC is planning to do something else with these characters. After reading this novel though, I hope he just leaves them where he left them.

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

This was a reread for me. I actually finished it several months ago, I'm still way behind on blogging. I've really been wanting to check out the television series of this story that was made recently with Eddie Redmayne and Donald Sutherland, but first I thought I'd read the original story again so it was fresh in my mind. And I'm all set now to read the sequel, World Without End.

This story has a lot of layers. It spans about fifty years of time in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, in 12th century England. You follow the fictional characters as they live out real historial events. You get a detailed look at the main characters lives and life during the time period. There are social and religious power and political struggles, and the lives and fortunes of the main characters are centered around the building of the Kingsbride Cathedral. What is going on out in the wide world, the struggle for the throne between Maud and Stephen, directly affects small town life in Kingsbridge. I think the characters are well written. Their stories intertwine and affect each other, and the way the book is wrapped up is very satisfying.

Through his writing, you learn about the author's love of medieval architecture and how he projects it onto some of his characters. My favorite characters are Ellen, Jack, Aliena and Phillip. Here is a clip from the t.v. series they made. It looks well done, I can't wait to see it. And I luuuuv Eddie's voice. ^-^

Solace of the Road - Siobhan Dowd

This was apparently Siobhan Dowd's last novel published, posthumously. I first heard about Bog Child over the summer through a friend, but when I went to buy a copy, I decided to purchase Solace of the Road first, after reading a review. It was on a whim, I really liked the sound of the title.
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I loved this story. I immediately got caught up with Holly/Solace and her self discovery quest. She's likable, self reliant, sarcastic, creative, and restless, with a forward looking attitude. She has personality traits and runs into situations that just about anyone of any age can identify with. I loved it when she compared herself to Jane Eyre when she lost her luggage. And as the title suggests, when the open road beckons, there's comfort in moving along it. Sometimes you just need to be moving forward to be able to see things differently.

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Holly's had a tough time with life so far and decides to take fate by the horns. She leaves her current foster parents' home to head for Ireland, where her imagination leads her to believe her alcoholic mother is waiting for her. She's armed with nothing but a tough cookie attitude and an ash blonde wig, calling herself 'Solace'. She's tough enough to hit the road with virtually no money, but she's still childishly naive enough to think she'll be happy at the end of her journey. For me, this was really where the "bittersweet" side of the story comes out; Holly is a fourteen year old girl, and doing her best to cope and do what she thinks is right in a world that just isn't always kind or fair. She meets all kinds of characters along the way that help shape the direction she's headed, as she ultimately learns to accept who she was and is. Like the Bonnie Raitt lyrics say, "We can't change the past, but we can leave it behind."

In the Woods - Tana French

First of all, let me just say that I can't adequately express my feelings for this story without giving a lot away. But don't worry, I'm not in the mood to write spoilers so I'll just be vague.

There are two story lines you follow while reading this book, most of the book focuses on the police investigation of a murdered girl in Knocknaree, Ireland in the present. Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox are the partners working the case. But the big complication is that Rob, actually Adam Ryan, is the sole survivor from an unsolved incident that took place in Knocknaree when he was a kid, in which his two best friends end up missing and he has no memory of what happened. He becomes as much drawn up in his past as he is in trying to focus on the Katy Devlin's murder in the present.

Now, I'm a fan of stories that make use of how the past touches the present. And I'm even okay with the fact that not all stories have a satisfying sense of closure. But when I finished the book, my general feeling was "that's it?". Not only because the investigations didn't satisfy me, neither did the way the main characters left things or who they ended up with. It made me sad, actually.

I began reading this book for the Ireland reading challenge armed with the knowledge that this was the author's first published work, so I tried not to be too judgmental. I enjoyed the read, but I also figured out the "whodunit" part maybe halfway through. It seemed kind of obvious. The characters themselves were more interesting to me than the plot. I enjoyed that the author made them human enough to make mistakes and did a good job of exposing what makes them fragile or predatory, but there were still some elements of the unrealistic to their relationships. I'd give you examples of what I mean, but it would give too much away.

In the words of Levar Burton, "You don't have to take my word for it." If you have the chance, give it a read and see what you think. I've been told her novel The Likeness has some of the same characters, so I will probably get to that at some point. But it's going to take a while, I'm going to have to get over feeling depressed about the previous story.

I Met Marc

Wow, time goes by way too fast. I've been doing a lot of reading and some random writing, but not a lot of blogging. Oh, and I got to hear Marc Bekoff speak at the Erie Library last week! (The lecture was called The Emotional Lives of Dogs and other Animals.) What a character. I was crazy happy to shake his hand and get my copy of The Ten Trusts signed, and I think he saw the hero worship in my eyes. He teased me, said now I just had to get Jane Goodall to sign it too. Spot on Marc, introduce us please!

Well, I was really looking forward to hearing Kate Solisti speak tonight at the Carbon Valley Regional Library. But fate had other plans. I had a hell of a time finding the place! AND I had the wrong time anyway! But fate wasn't in a totally bad mood. I did get to briefly meet Kate and shake her hand. And the librarian could tell I was super disappointed and gave me a copy of Garth Stein's novel, the focus of the lecture series. I can't wait to read it, I've heard nothing but good things. And the story is in the point of view of the family dog. Makes me think of Harold from Bunnicula...

Garth's a cutie, isn't he?

The Forever King - Molly Cochran, Warren Murphy

I was in the mood to reread this last month. I guess you'd call it historical fantasy and a good book to pick up at the airport. The authors take the Arthurian legend and drop it in the twentieth century. Basic premise: Arthur and Galahad are reincarnated and the good guys are trying to keep the cup of eternal life out of the bad guy's hands. It's not great writing, but it's fun. Got kind of an Indiana Jones vibe from it. And Saladin is a pretty interesting, evil character. I bought a copy online for a buck (+ shipping), but if you live near a Half Price Books or the equivalent, swing in and look around for a copy of this. It's a good travel read.

Whose Body? - Dorothy L. Sayers

I finished this the middle of last month. The first Lord Peter mystery I read was Strong Poison ( I love the character Harriet Vane). I've also finished The Nine Tailors and Have His Carcase. It feels good to finally have finished the first one. As usual, Lord Peter's energy was contagious straight from the pages. And as always, Wimsey's faithful manservant Mervyn Bunter played assistant detective with his photographic skills and patience in suffering fools. But the story itself is a little disappointing, you know early on who the murderer is because there's no other reason for introducing the character. I spent a good part of the story waiting to hear the murder details explained, but not the murderer. And the other reoccurring characters come on more...what's the word I'm looking for...overdone? than in later stories. No criticism against Sayers, she does a fantastic job of developing her style and characters down the line. I think she's making fun of the British upper class, but I could be wrong, satire isn't my strongest suit.

It's an entertaining story, I enjoyed it. But I think if I had read this first written Lord Peter mystery first, I would have been disappointed. If you're new to Lord Peter or Dorothy L. Sayers, I'd suggest working your way backwards and start with a later publication. Just my two cents speaking from experience.

The Telling - Ursula K. Le Guin

I read The Left Hand of Darkness years ago and loved it very much. I really don't know what my excuse is for not reading more of Le Guin sooner! (Although I have read and love the short story Catwings and had read A Wizard of Earthsea before.) As I said in my review for the Earthsea trilogy, she is the master world builder. I borrowed my mom's copy and read this Locus Award winning novel while staying at my folks' farm last month.

The Telling is set in the Hainish Cycle. Sutty is an earthling and an observer for the Ekumen (like Genly Ai on Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness), staying on the planet Aka. The society there is run by the Corporation, currently in "The Time of Cleansing", and systematically destroying all knowledge, writing, and practices of the planet's past. Anyone caught using the old ways is "re-educated". Sutty digs carefully but deeply into the culture she's observing, starting out in Dovza City and traveling to Okzat-Ozkat, far up in the mountains. What she finds there can only be described as the truth.

I LOVE Le Guin's style! The people of her stories are fictional but live in perfectly crafted, realistic, complicated societies. There is no window she doesn't look through in her writing; there are anthropological, historical, ecological and environmental themes going on, and like in The Left Hand of Darkness, she addresses sex and sexuality. She takes relevant swings at our own contemporary culture with the Dovza people's favorite morning drink 'akakafi', which can be purchased at the Corporation brand 'Starbrew's'. And on page 127, Le Guin made my day with the phrase, "a world of words". Darned if I can remember the exact sentence, but that's what I get for taking so long to write about it, rats. I can't recommend this author's writing enough. If only the people making decisions like this were required to read these books, I think the world would be a very different place.

The Gripping Hand - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

"Humanity's finest minds have spent the past quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered- a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function. Master. Mediator. Engineer. Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed- or die. And the single wall standing between them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble...." -excerpt from the dust jacket

Another trip to Jupiter for the Mind Voyages challenge. Last week I finished The Gripping Hand, the sequel to The Mote in God's Eye and a book that was apparently eighteen years in the making. It takes place 25 years after mankind's first encounter with the alien species known as the "Moties". There is a wormhole that allows ships to pass from the Mote system into normal space, protected by a military blockade to prevent the Moties from leaving their solar system. The Moties two biggest problems are that they are in a state of constant population explosion and exhausted resources. A new Alderson Point (wormhole) is expected to materialize, although exactly where and when is open to interpretation. And so the plot begins, with new and returning characters.

There were elements to the story that left me disappointed, in both the book and the authors. One was a saying that was frequently used by male characters to express exasperation or surprise that left me kind of angry and to be honest...well I can't honestly say why the phrase "rape my lizard" bothered me, but it did. I'll just leave it at that. And there were characters (Jennifer and Terry) whose fate was never concluded to the reader, and I was looking forward to that part. And lastly, as a woman reading this novel, there was a lot of blatant sexism. I was really starting to like the character Commander Ruth Cohen, who isn't heard from again after Renner's had his fling and leaves her behind. The only female characters that have any real bearing on this story are an overly sexualized aggressive reporter who (surprise!) uses sex to get information and a just turned legal age "I have authority issues" aristocrat who bats her eyes at her sometimes boyfriend to get him to fly her into the Mote in his racing space yacht. The MD to Horace Bury turns out to be an assassin/martial artist/concubine, and her job is to be whichever her master needs when he wants it. It's like the authors are working out sexual fantasies through their characters. The pilot turned Captain is a man, the Imperial Trader with Motie experience is a 116 yr. old man, the scientific advisor/astrophysicist is a man. Although Glenda Ruth Blaine, the young aristocrat, does have the important job of carrying a special cargo that may help the Moties to change their fate. But once this is done, her importance in the story fades out too.

There were elements to the story that I enjoyed too, such as the authors making use of different aspects of human cultures to explain how the Moties dealt with their situation and communicated with humanity. The phrase "on the gripping hand", as in "on the other hand", was picked up by human people from the Moties, since most Motie biological forms have two slender six fingered right hands, and one big muscular left hand. The human characters are also picking up Motie body language, learning to shrug without moving their shoulders, for instance. There are a lot of scientific and mathematical explanations of space travel and space warfare too. I think Niven and Pournelle have some sort of obsession with coffee too. Every chapter mentions coffee! Drinking it, trading it, producing it. If they were trying to tell me something while referencing coffee, I couldn't pick it up. Unless it was that their characters are caffeine junkies?

I would definitely recommend reading The Mote in God's Eye first. And I definitely enjoyed that novel more. This isn't a sequel that can be easily enjoyed or understood without understanding what happened 25 years earlier in the storyline. But honestly, if you don't get around to The Gripping Hand for a while, don't sweat it. Entertaining, sometimes. Disappointing, YES!