Mayflower

Alice got home from her overnight trip to Plimouth Plantation this afternoon. For those who have never been, this is a fascinating educational trip. The Plantation itself is staffed by actors in period costume, who stay in character the entire time and are able to answer many questions on life in Plimouth for the early Pilgrims. Just outside the plantation wall is a small Wampanoag community. They do not do period recreation, but they are also an interesting source of information about native life. We had a great talk at dinner about her trip, and Alice and I shared information we had learned about the Pilgrims. I chaperoned when Emma took the trip with her class three years ago, and Alice’s recounting of her experience brought back some good memories.

In preparation for Alice’s trip, I read Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (nonfiction, 415 pages) last week. First off, let me say that I hate the title of this book. The Mayflower returns to England on page 101 and is never heard from again. Plymouth would have been a much more appropriate name for the book. That said, I don’t have much more to quibble with over Philbrick’s fascinating history of the Pilgrims and early-Anglo New England history.

In Philbrick’s history, neither the Europeans nor the natives were painted as all good or all bad. Philbrick traces the origins of this early American settlement from the departure of the Pilgrims from Leiden, Holland, in 1620; through their initial exploration and settlement in Massachusetts; their treaties, early disputes, and agreements with the natives (in particular with Wampanoag leader Massasoit); their acquisition of land from the natives and their increasingly contentious relationships with them; and finally into their war with Massasoit’s son, King Philip, and the rest of the area natives. Throughout, Philbrick highlights the points at which poor judgment, by Europeans and natives alike, worsens relationships between the parties and leads to an avoidable, catastrophic war.

Near the end of his book, Philbrick points out that most Americans think of American history as the first Thanksgiving and the American Revolution, with nothing in the 150 years between. I think that’s a fair statement, and I appreciated learning about some of the “between” history.

Overbooked

I started Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra this week. I’m finding it interesting, but fairly slow going (lots of flipping back to the glossary), and at over 950 pages, I suspect it will take me a while. And this is a problem, because I am overbooked.

My book club meets next week to discuss The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. I already had it on audio, so I’m listening to it rather than reading it, and I have about 7 hours to go. I agreed to discuss The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies in May with an online group, and my book club meets again late May to talk about The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. At last night’s Big Read discussion of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury at the kids’ school, people enjoyed getting together and talking about the book so much that we made a date for a next meeting–June 5, to discuss The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I’m also expecting two Early Reviewers books (Strange Ways by Rokhl Faygenberg and Love Marriage by V.V. Ganeshananthan), for which I feel I should drop everything and read so I can write the reviews.

“Speaking of reviews, Chris, how’s that review-writing resolution going?” Funny you should ask. I’m woefully behind! I haven’t yet written reviews for The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, John Adams by David McCullough, the aforementioned Fahrenheit 451, The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Nancy S. Lovell, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick, and Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde.

So many books, so little time!

The Enchantress of Florence

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (fiction, 349 pages, publication date June 3, 2008 )

In Salman Rushdie’s new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, a historical adventure set in the Mughal empire and Renaissance Florence, a mysterious blond stranger arrives at the court of Akbar the Great with a secret that is cursed for all but the emperor’s ears–the story of Qara Köz, the hidden princess, who left India and traveled to Florence and beyond. Rushdie warns the reader up front that this will not be a straightforward narrative:

The traveler had money in his pocket and had made a long, roundabout journey. This way was his way: to move toward his goal indirectly, with many detours and divagations. (The Enchantress of Florence, page 10)

and indeed, the story works back and forth between settings and time periods, with the narrative folding upon itself in many ways. Characters in one location or time have mirrors in another (and Qara Köz has her own Mirror who travels with her), events and phrases occur and recur, and questions of religion and identity and truth are brought up again and again. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story.

Rushdie put years of research into this book (those interested in learning more can peruse his long bibliography, which he claims is not a complete list of books he consulted), and much of the background of the story has firm pinnings in historical fact. Akbar was a real emperor, who tried to embrace all religions and encouraged philosophical thought. Machiavelli is also a main character, and Lorenzo di Medici, Vlad the Impaler, and Queen Elizabeth I all make appearances. For the most part, Rushdie works these figures, and much of his research, organically into the story.

The Enchantress of Florence is out now in England, and reviews are decidedly mixed. I liked it for its adventure/historical novel/Rushdie-ness, and as always with Rushdie, it left me with quite a bit to think about. I’ve been reading some interesting takes on religion lately (primarily in Purple Hibiscus and Fieldwork), and this just adds to the mix.

It’s not a book I would recommend whole-heartedly, because it’s not going to appeal to those who have no patience with post-modernism in general or with Rushdie in particular, or with magical realism. Also, and I think this is typical of Rushdie, even in a book where the title character is a woman, it’s all about the men. The female characters have no existence without the men (one of them literally so–she was imagined into life by a man), nor, it seems, do they want to. Akbar’s explorations of religion and humanity and goodness will earn Rushdie no currency with those who already condemn him:

If there had never been a God, the emperor thought, it might have been easier to work out what goodness was. This business of worship, of the abnegation of self in the face of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail. Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path. (The Enchantress of Florence, page 310)

However, it’s this questioning, this reaching and searching that elevates the tale above the adventure, and will stay in the reader’s mind long after the story itself has faded.

Sometimes, You CAN Judge a Book By Its Cover

Life, and most especially taxes, have been getting in the way of my leisure time. In lieu of actually writing a post, I thought I’d send you over to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, to check out some truly awful romance covers. (Thanks to GalleyCat for the original link.)

Fieldwork

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski (fiction, 356 pages, 2007 National Book Award finalist)

In Mischa Berlinski’s first novel, Fieldwork, a young American expatriate (named Mischa Berlinski) living in Thailand gradually uncovers the intertwined stories of an American anthropologist who was studying the Dyalo people, and a missionary family who was trying to convert them. At the heart of Fieldwork is a mystery surrounding a murder committed by the anthropologist.

Berlinski creates a believable, textured world in his novel, with a strong anthropological sense of the Dyalo (a fictional group, but apparently based on several real Thai groups). The lonely life of a field anthropologist was well realized. Berlinski’s biggest achievement, for this reader, was his sympathetic take on the realistic, flawed missionary family. I found this a particularly interesting read in such close proximity to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, which was more about the negative effects of missionaries on native culture than the natives themselves.

The narrator teases out the anthropologist’s story slowly and painstakingly, and my one disappointment is the narrative voice Berlinski finally used to wrap up the mystery. Some of the book felt quirky for quirkiness sake (why did the narrator have to have the same name as the actual author?), but the clarity of the writing made up for this. All in all, a strong first effort by a writer I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Tom Jones

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (fiction, 886 pages)

I’ve been meaning to read Tom Jones for years. In theory, it hits right in my sweet spot. Classic novel? Check. Big, fat novel? Check. Witty? Check. When it ended up on the list of books my book group planned to read, I was almost disappointed. I wanted to read it right then. But I held off, until finally, it came up as our March read.

You know the punchline, of course. I hated it.

I grant that it is a great book. As one of the first novels, it holds an undeniable place in literary history. I appreciated the structure, and I marveled at the feat of its construction. But I didn’t like the story or the characters, and therefore I couldn’t bring myself to like the book.

**Caution: What follows necessarily contains SPOILERS. I think that’s probably fair enough in a review of a book written almost 260 years ago, but if you haven’t read it yet, and plan to, please stop reading now.** 

Primarily, I didn’t like Tom Jones, and, while I didn’t much like Sophia either, she was a good, sweet, honest girl who didn’t deserve to end up with a pathological womanizer who was clearly going to start cheating on her during the honeymoon. I did not want Tom Jones to end up winning the girl. When you’re rooting for the hero to fail, you know you’re reading the wrong book.

Women came off particularly badly in this book. Almost all of them were portrayed as bad people. Sophia, who was almost the only exception to this, showed her only backbone in going against her father and not marrying the man he chose for her. Tom Jones’s guardian, Allworthy, in describing why he likes Sophia so much, explains that it’s because she would never think of expressing her opinion to a man or thinking herself anywhere near his equal.

I know that I am coming at this from a 21st-century perspective, and that I am inserting too much of the reader into the book. But I can’t help it. I can recognize that it’s a great book, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.