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.  

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023--San Antonio

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett is a slow-reveal novel.  A woman in her late 50s finally tells her 3 adult daughters the story of her younger years when she was an actress, had a 3-month affair with an actor who became famous, how she met her husband (their father), and how the actor and his brother remained occasionally intertwined with her life.  It has been a very popular novel since it was released last month.  I had to wait about 8 weeks to get it from the library using Libby for my Kindle.  It's a fascinating story with the two main characters (the mother and the actor) going their separate ways and what it means in terms of their happiness.  Plus, the slow-reveal aspect means that new twists occur every few pages.   I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023--San Antonio

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng is historical fiction that takes place on Penang Island (which I have visited twice) during the period beginning slightly before and through WWII.  Although fiction, the story blends with the known details of what the war was like in this part of the world--the fierce terrorist acts by the Japanese occupiers in China and the other Asian countries (including a complete failure to follow generally accepted rules of warfare), the harsh treatment of and conditions for prisoners, etc.  The story centers around the mixed race (half Chinese/half English) son of one of the wealthy British families that had been operating a trading house (supplying rubber, tin, spices, etc., to Britain and bringing in exchange needed items to the market in Malaya) for centuries.  As a half-cast, the boy has never felt as if he fit anywhere.  He has no close friends.  He spends much of his time alone on an uninhabited island the family owns that he can reach by rowing a small boat from the family estate.  When a Japanese man arrives and rents the island from his father, the son feels betrayed.  But the man has been raised by monks and trained in the practice of Aikido, a centuries-old martial art.  Seeing both the loneliness of the boy's life and realizing how befriending him could be of benefit in accomplishing goals he has been assigned that are the reason he is in Malaya, the man offers to become the boy's teacher.  The story describes the rituals of the martial arts training, the development of the friendship, the eventual use of the boy to gain critical information, the tension as the Japanese military invades the island, the decision the boy has to make to protect his family in a way that he is uniquely qualified to do so during the occupation, the horrors that take place during the occupation, and the constant strain between the boy and his teacher/friend during the occupation.  It's a good book that vividly describes almost all aspects of the story. It's easy, as the reader to become emotionally involved.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black

Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023--San Antonio 

Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black is an emotionally moving story about a Black man raised in rural Arkansas by his strict grandfather and loving grandmother.  I could identify with so many things written in it--even simple things like aluminum markers on graves because people were too poor to buy tombstones, girls who got pregnant in the 50s being shunned by the community, families keeping secrets from the past, men not being able to show or verbally express their emotions, believing and behaving the way one does because that was how you were taught to believe and behave, not even thinking of questioning things, etc.  The book consists of a series of writings during the last days of life for the man to his estranged son.  He tells his family history, his personal story, his regrets, his growth in understanding and accepting over time, etc.  The reviews make a big deal over the fact that he is writing to his GAY son, but the same story could have been about him writing to a shunned daughter who got pregnant outside of marriage or to someone after some other reason that estrangement has occurred; the author just decided to make the estrangement be over the son being gay.   It's a great book because of what it is telling about the father's life--what it was like for him as a child, how he met his eventual wife, how his beliefs and how he was raised caused problems in his relationships with both his wife and son, how he eventually began to change as a person, and his suffering and his regrets as he did change and looked back at his life during the final days of it.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.  

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023--San Antonio

I started reading Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Larua Warrell three weeks ago.  It has great reviews from others, but I kept putting it down without motivation to pick it back up.  Finally, after reading 5% of it, I decided to start another book.  At the end of reading that book, I really wasn't motivated to pick this one back up yet.  So I started reading another book; it, too was rather boring although I finished it hoping all along that it would get better because BBC had listed it as a top book of 2023.  I have now started a third book because of a lack of motivation to pick this book back up, especially after the last book was also boring to me.  I can't even remember what happened in the part I read of this book.   So, I am quitting this book at 5% with no rating.