The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylvainen

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023--San Antonio

The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylvainen is a fascinating novel that was a finalist for the National Book Award this year.  It takes place in Lappland and is the story of the end of a lifestyle that had existed for centuries--ended by a combination of factors including governments deciding to close borders that had allowed natural migration for the Sami people and their reindeer, governments deciding to provide settlers with free land within the natural seasonal migration routes of reindeer, and conservative Christian missionaries supported by the government-sanctioned church enforcing lifestyle changes (due to their belief that only their religion was right and that native non-Christian people should be forcefully converted to it while taking advantage of them in very non-Christian ways).  It reminds me a bit of what has happened in so many places such as North and South America, Hawaii, etc.  The book follows the lives of a number of Sami family groups as all of these changes are occurring and also the lives of members of one extended family of religious leaders.  Traditions of the local area are being suppressed while the incoming settlers and ministers are trying to uphold their own long-held traditions in this land where they are the newcomers.  The description of the Sami people's lives is told in such detail that the reader is enlightened while also suffering along with them as the story spirals downward toward tragedy.  It's a sad story, yet so enlightening.  I gave the book 5 stars out of 5.

The Words that Remain by Stênio Gardel

Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023--San Antonio

The Words that Remain by Stenio Gardel has been short-listed for the National Book Award within the category of Translated Novels.  It has a unique format.  And it does an admiral job of trying to address the problem of people not being able to comprehend and empathize with persons who are different from themselves.  In this case, it is with matters of sexuality.  The story is built around the life of Raimundo, an illiterate Brazilian peasant.  As a young man, he has come to realize he is different--that he has no sexual interest in females.  He and his best friend have fallen in love, but they know to be cautious.  When their relationship is discovered by Raimundo's father, there is no tolerance for it.  He is forbidden to see his friend again and is severely beaten on the back nightly with a belt for 16 days because the father says "the only right thing" for a man is to marry a woman and have children which will eventually lead for grandchildren; it is the responsibility of a man to do this rather than to bring shame on himself and his family.  But he learns that he is not the first in his family.  His father had a brother who was gay and the grandfather indirectly killed him by forcing him, as a non-swimmer, to swim into the middle of the river where he drowned.  Raimundo's mother is no help.  Only a sister who does not know the whole story shows concern for what is happening.  When his friend misses an appointment for a secret meeting together at the river where Raimundo has planed to propose running away, Raimundo feels betrayed by the love of his life.  His sister brings a letter home from school that the friend has given her to relay to Raimundo even though Raimundo cannot read.  Instead of allowing his sister to read it to him, he leaves home taking the unread letter with him wondering for years what it has said.  Eventually, when he is in his 50s, he starts going to adult classes to learn to read and write so he can eventually read the letter.  During that time, however, he has tried to hide his sexual orientation from everyone and has mostly worked as a laborer for trucker drivers traveling routes around the country.  But a transsexual prostitute he has encountered outside an adult pornographic cinema won't let him hide.  She publicly calls him out among his friends after, he, too, has shown intolerance and inability to understand why she is the way she is.  It takes decades for him to accept himself without shame.  He eventually leaves the trucking business because the heavy lifting has caused health problems, and he even befriends and becomes the roommate of the transsexual prostitute.  Eventually, he makes the trip back home to find that his parents are deceased and that his sister still cares for him and is glad to see him.  It is revealed at that time point that his young lover has married and had children and grandchildren, but just as Raimundo has never forgotten him nor quit yearning to be with him, the lover also has never forgotten Raimundo or quit yearning for him.  Both have lived lives that were not satisfying because of intolerance, shame, and miscommunication.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023--San Antonio

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride proved to be thought-provoking in terms of the discrimination that minorities--racial and handicapped--face and have always faced in America.  Set in a small city in Pennsylvania in the 1930s, when vaudeville was still alive. the main characters are mostly among the Blacks who have moved north from the south and the Jews who who have migrated there from various parts of Eastern Europe.  Some of these live in a mixed (Black and Jewish) neighborhood apart from the main town--an area ignored in terms of city services with dirt streets, water only from a public pump, etc.  It is the type of area where redlining was used at that time too keep the undesirables of society forced without special sections of a city.  For the most part, the Jews and the Blacks are friendly with each other and disliked by everyone else.  They have learned to take care of their own with as little interaction as possible with the police and the main families of the city (other than working for them as maids, drivers, laundresses, etc.)  The first half of the book establishes these relationships and what life is like, in general, in the town.  It's the second half of the book where certain characters come alive and grab our attention: the 12-year-old Black boy and the childless couple who informally adopt him when his mother dies in a stove explosion that makes him deaf and temporarily blind, the Jewish theater owner and his wife runs runs the grocery store that serves the community, the woman who is called "Paper" because she provides the news of everything happening in the community to all those who will listen to her, the adult brother and sister who don't talk with each other over long-held grievances, etc.  Then in the last quarter of the book, there is the most interesting character, a young boy who suffers from cerebral palsy and has been abandoned by his family to live in a state hospital for the mental patients; I dare any reader not to fall in love with him!  It's a fascinating book.  I gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.