Archive Book Nook News: Vol I, Issue 3, August 1997

Chasing Cezanne and Anything Considered by Peter Mayle

You’ll notice I find one author and read him or her to death…

OK, I think I’ve figured out Peter Mayle’s style:  Start with England or America.  Add one out-of-luck or down-at-heart bachelor with a heart of gold and cosmopolitan tastes.  Add a believable reason to go to the south of France, throw in a girl and some lunch and some sort of scam.  Let the adventure begin.

Both Cezanne and Anything follow this pattern (in Cezanne the scam involves a stolen painting; in Anything Considered it’s the truffle industry at stake), but Mayle writes so wonderfully, so wittily, so deliciously, who cares?  The adventure and situations are believable, but you know it will turn out right in the end, in time for the next meal.  I find reading one of his books as gratifying as taking a day off from work.

Army of Angels by Pamela Mercantel

A novel of Joan of Arc.  What Mercantel tries to do is not write of Joan of Arc, the saint, but of Jehanne the Maid, the girl.  Who was the person, the human being behind the legend?  Who or what were the voices she claimed to have heard all her life, the voices that encouraged, drove, and helped her win France from the English?  Who were her family?  Her friends?  And why, why, in the end, was she forsaken and betrayed to the enemy?

For me, Mercantel succeeds, and it’s a beautiful, incredible story.  I love historical fiction, but I had trouble staying with this one…because I knew what was going to happen in the end.

Patchwork by Karen Osborn

This was pure hidden treasure…it fell off the bookshelf when I was reaching for something else.

In a saga spanning three decades, two sisters and the daughter of a third recount life in a rural South Carolina mill town.  Sounds simple, but it’s a beautiful, moving, complex drama of women, sisters, daughters, mothers and grandmothers.  It’s about circumstances and choices, set against the grueling work conditions of the cotton mills.  There is Rose, the eldest, the wise and steady one, married with children and managing to plod along, keep her life going, keep the family ties from unraveling, and keep her faith in God.  There’s fly-by-night Lily, married to the mill-boss but unable to keep her hands off her first husband Charlie.  Julie, the youngest, who marries above her station to the town banker and is then institutionalized for attempting to murder her baby.  And Sylvia, Julie’s daughter, taken in by Rose and smitten by Rose’s son Benjy, unaware he is her own cousin.

The title is perfect; Osborn has pieced a quilt of female voices, each unique and compelling.  It’s not a dramatic story, but I couldn’t put it down.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

This book weaves difficult themes--justice, racism, the weight of memory--into a seamless, sensitive narrative.  Set in a small town on an island in Puget Sound in 1954, the story revolves around the trial of a Japanese-American accused of murdering a white fisherman he had known all his life.

This is a very dramatic story.  Not only for the resolution of the murder case, but for the  flashbacks to the forceful interning of the Japanese residents during World War II; for the tender coming-of-age love affair between a white boy, now the editor of the local paper, and a Japanese girl, now the wife of the accused man; and for the shifting trust and enmity between the two communities.  But the drama is quiet, gentle, meditative, like the warm rains that fall in Seattle.  It has lyrical, beautiful language, and powerful, almost cinematic imagery…I know I’ll be looking for the movie in a few years!

Renaissance Moon by Linda Nevins

Tale of a beautiful scholar whom the cold moon goddess Artemis drives mad.

Selene is the daughter of Professor Sterling Alva Catcher, a Greek scholar at Cambridge who holds moonlit rites to Artemis and tells his students that the pagan Moon Goddess is the true goddess of mankind.  Selene knows that as a baby she was offered to the goddess, and she grows up hoping to be an initiate as loyal as her late father. At first she has an active sex life, but then takes a vow of chastity; her hatred of men eventually grows into a mania, poisoning her life.

When the legends that have shaped her view of the world erupt and spill over into her personal life, Selene, who has an obsession for Italian Renaissance paintings, becomes a bloodthirsty pagan whose newfound attitude colors her interpretation of Christian art.  She publishes some impressive works on Annunciation paintings of the Italian Renaissance, coming to believe that the Virgin Mary is an incarnation of the Moon Goddess

I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would.  It only gave the slightest taste of the myths of Selene-Artemis-Hecate, known as the triple Moon Goddess of the Greeks, which is the part I was expecting more of and looking forward to.  Also it keep me from truly understanding what motivated Selene.  After a while, I found the whole thing a little dark and disturbing.  I’m interested in goddess religion and mythology, but this was a little too cultish for me.

Linda Nevins also wrote Commonwealth Avenue.          

After years of being a film production assistant, Zoe Hillyard's big break comes with the assignment to work on a movie set in 1890s Boston. Returning with reluctance to the city of her childhood, Zoe is confronted by the secrets and familial rivalries of the Hillyard mansion on Commonwealth Avenue.  The book moves between the events of present-day Boston, and excerpts from Zoe’s grandmother’s diary.  The attention to detail which bogged down Renaissance Moon, works beautifully here as Zoe uses the Commonwealth Avenue mansion to design her movie, The Gilded Age.

Serenissima by Erica Jong

(This, I believe, is the original title, and was later released as Shylock’s Daughter)

Jessic Pruitt is a popular Hollywood actress who has come to Venice to be a judge in the Venice film festival.  She begins receiving roses and sonnets from an unknown admirer who beckons her to leave the narcissistic present and enter an enchanted past.

Jessica goes deeper and deeper into Shakespeare (with heavy allusions to the Bard’s Merchant of Venice) and the history of the city which the Venetians call “la Serenissima”.  While exploring the Jewish ghetto of Venice, Jessica suddenly finds herself transformed into a Venetian Jewess of the sixteenth century.  And who does she meet but Will Shakespeare himself, come to Italy to escape the plague in England.  Jessica experiences the great sensual love she has always been seeking, a love that history decrees cannot last, except in the timeless world of poetry.

Interestingly, when I took this out of the library, there was a piece of paper taped on the inside jacket titled “readers comments”.  Here’s what our anonymous guest critics had to say:  “Great fun!”  “Enjoyed every minute”  “Unfortunately, rather boring”  “Waste of time.  Read ¼ and returned book.”  “Extravagant and too fevered, but wonderful, too.”

Well, I wasn’t too fazed by the mixed review because I know Jong is not for everybody, but she’s always been high on my list of favorites and the story sounded interesting (appealing to my interest in Italy, etc.), so I took it out.

Good Grief!  What a disappointment!  I mean, it wasn’t pathologically boring, but it wasn’t the Jong I know and love.  Usually I can’t put her work down; I had to press to keep going with this one.  I think she got a little over her head.  She’s so earthy in her writing, that once she delved into the Elizabethan speech of the 16th century, it sounded ridiculous and cliché.

If you want vintage Jong, stick with Any Woman’s Blues or Parachutes and Kisses.

Archive Book Nook News: Vol I, Issue 2, June 1997

The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel (author of Like Water for Chocolate)

The story of a passion that survives from the fall of Montezuma's empire to the Mexico City of the 23rd Century. Azucena is an "astroanalyst," a sort of a highly evolved psychotherapist, who ministers to the karmically challenged.  As an enlightened soul, Azucena has finally caught the brass ring of reincarnation: she is allowed to meet her twin soul, her true love,Rodrigo.  But after one night of supreme passion, the lovers are separated, and Azucena must search for Rodrigo across the galaxy and through 14,000 lives.

The concept of this book is quite interesting – it’s meant to be a multi-media experience.  The secret to the past-life therapy is through music.  The book comes with a CD, and at certain points in the book, you are prompted to play the CD and experience the music as the character experiences his or her past lives.

Because of the CD accompaniment, this isn’t the most convenient book to read on-the-go, as I always am.  But I taped the music and took my Walkman along and it worked out just fine.  I’m not a huge fan of futuristic science fiction, but being tied in with past-life regression and reincarnation and Laura Esquivel’s zany sense of humor, I found it easy to follow her vision of the 23rd century and I really enjoyed the story, the music and the illustrations.  I liked that the book touched so many of my senses, one of the big attractions I found in Like Water for Chocolate (food does not play such a major role in Law of Love, however!). 

I can believe in the philosophy of paying off your karmic debts, of repeatedly coming in contact with the souls you have hated in past lives until you learn to contact them in love, all with ultimate goal of finding your true soulmate.  I also hope there will be such things as aerophones and crime-free societies.

And if you end up not really liking the book, you still get a nice CD of music…

Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Divakaruni's book of short stories, Arranged Marriage, focuses on family-arranged matches, a centuries-old tradition in India. These stories about Indian immigrants to the U.S. show how the dislocations of immigration are making this tradition problematic.

I wouldn’t say that these are happy stories.  They are beautifully written and they evoke strong images, but the overlying feeling between the pages, to me, was of such sadness and despair and frustration for these women who exist solely for their husbands.  Women who from the day they are born are looked on as a burden, a dowry price, until finally they are married and subsequently the property of their husbands and in-laws.

Yet there remains a sense of pride, strength and courage in these women, and with some of the stories I felt hopeful at the end.  The woman whose husband is murdered decides not to go back to India, but rather to stay in the U.S. and find her own way.  Another woman is determined to sponsor and see her dearest friend safely to America, for the latter is being encouraged by her in-laws to terminate her pregnancy because she is carrying a female, not a suitable sex for a first child.

Arranged Marriage provoked many of the same emotions I had when reading Mists of Avalon, the utter inability to comprehend a culture or religion that is so unfair to women.  But the women each have a story to tell and I was glad to read them all.  And I hoped they would be all right.

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. 

A magic realism tale on Tilo, a woman from India who is given immortality by the gods as long as she remains chaste. In her old age Tilo ends up California, running a spice shop and helping immigrants. One day enters Raven, a handsome American and Tilo transforms herself into a beautiful woman for a night of love. Now she must pay the price.

There is nothing like a story written by someone who really  knows her stuff.  In the same way the Passion Dream Book made me want to be an artist, or Like Water for Chocolate made me hungry, or the Sixteen Pleasures made me long to go to Italy and experience the art of Florence first hand, The Mistress of Spices got me itching to learn more about this mysterious Indian art, and delve back into my books on herbology and aromatherapy.

There’s such a wonderful duality to Tilo, the Mistress, because she is sage and wise and magical, but at the same time there is a poignancy to the sacrifices she has made to her powers.  Not only must she remain chaste in a sexual sense, but she must remain always detached, emotionally, to the people who come to seek her help.  She must never leave the store, never reveal that she immediately and instinctively knows their troubling situations; it is the people who must come to her and voice their problems, never the other way around.  Tilo’s conflict is not only with Raven, the American Indian with whom she falls in love, but to Lalali, the battered wife, Haroun the troubled chauffeur, Jagjit the young boy falling in with the dangerous gangs of Oakland, the falling-out between Ramu and his daughter Geegit because Geegit is in love with a Hispanic.  As Tilo is drawn deeper and deeper into the lives of these people, the spices speak to her less and less, and she is forced to take stock of her life and choose between her powers as the immortal Mistress of Spices, or to forsake all to be a normal woman in love, an ordinary woman with friends and a home.

I loved it.  Divakaruni writes so beautifully, with such simple words weaving together plot and characters.  She tells a wonderful story.

The Nun’s Story by Kathryn Hulme. 

Picking this up was truly a whim.  I had just seen the movie with Audrey Hepburn and loved it, and was curious as to how closely it followed the book.

If you are a reader who gets annoyed or distracted by side stories or tangents, this is a book for you.  Hulme writes briskly, sticking to the subject, moving things along…it’s as if she is using her simple, concise language as a metaphor for the nun’s life, because within the unadorned narrative is a rich, complex, emotional and bewildering tale…much like the character of Sister Luke.

It’s a very revealing peek into life in the convent, into the training of the Brides of Christ, and raises some very interesting questions and choices a nun must make.  Absolute selflessness, and Sister Luke’s own nemesis, absolute obedience.  Her desire to do good cannot be kept within the context of her vows; she cannot reconcile the nurse within her and the nun within her.

I thought it was a very engaging, powerful story, but again, it’s a matter of taste.  I just thought I’d throw it out there.

Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

I know at least 2 of you on my distro list will say it’s about time I got around to Peter Mayle, and I stand thoroughly chastised (thanks, Linda, for making me take it off your bookshelves).  I can’t believe I didn’t read this sooner.  In keeping with my books-about-food theme, this story is a feast.  I only wish it were called “Decade in Provence”.

This book made me so happy!  It was delightfully, wittily written, much like the style of Robert Fulghum, whom I love.  The plot isn’t complex, in fact it centers around day-to-day life, but the settings and characters and situations involved are described in such a way that you end up with a very in-depth look at Provencal culture.  And the food is out of this world.