Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a contemporary Nigerian novelist who has won many awards for her earlier books. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), is a coming of age story set in post-colonial Nigeria. This novel focuses not only on the social upheaval of those times, but mirrors it with the domestic violence found in the upper-class home of her 15 year old protagonist. Purple Hibiscus was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War, 1967-1970. This was a civil war following Britain's departure in 1960 and the formation of Nigeria as an independent country. Britain, like other colonial powers, failed to consider ethnic differences and already established territorial monarchies when they imposed colonial rule in 1912. Thus when they left, the southeastern provinces attempted to secede and form the Republic of Biafra. Adichie writes compassionately about the impact those events had on her four main characters--a noted political hero, a professor, a British citizen, and a servant.  She won the coveted Orange Prize for this book.

Now with her third novel, Adichie takes on an entirely different theme.  In Americanah, she explores the experiences of an educated Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, in the racially-charged United States. The time frame is very contemporary, discussed in flashbacks during and including the 13 years prior to the election of Barach Obama in 2008.

We first meet Ifemelu in a beauty shop getting her hair braided. She has just taken a long train ride from Princeton, where she has a post-graduate fellowship, into a seedy area of Trenton, New Jersey--about 13 miles away. This is the location of a run-down hair salon that caters to black women. Ifemelu is preparing to return home to Nigeria despite her apparent success and United States citizenship.

The book weaves back and forth through time. We come to know Ifemelu as a teenager falling in love with Obinze. Both are in high school.  Obinze's mother is a professor-- beautiful, and forward-thinking. He is a bright and considerate adolescent whose relationship with his mother is very close. Ifemelu's mother, by contrast, suffers from depression and searches for relief through a variety of churches. Her father has lost his job on the grounds of insubordination and he has been unemployed for some time. Family life is not pleasant and Ifemelu is determined to succeed.

Before graduation, she applies to a university in the United States and is accepted. There she struggles to supplement her scholarship with employment but is met with one rejection after another. Is it her race, her Nigerian accent? We never know for sure but the reader is led to suspect her "otherness" might be the cause. Her white roommates are portrayed as self-absorbed and trite. Desperate, Ifemelu accepts a sexual job--one that robs her of her self-respect and throws her into a year-long depression. She now drops all contact with the devoted Obinze, throwing him into a tail-spin of worry and confusion.

From here, Ifemelu's life improves. Through the help of a friend, she secures a job as a nanny and meets a wealthy, white young man, and eventually, lives with him. Adichie uses this relationship as a vehicle to highlight Ifemelu's sense of alienation in upper class white society. She finds even well-meaning people making careless and ignorant remarks.

Obinze, now in England doing menial jobs, is having a similar experience. He is not as lucky as Ifemelu.  She has found a sponsor and has a green card.  He is scrubbing toilets and trying to get an illegal national security number.  This will allow him to work legally and get health insurance. He is also trying to get an arranged visa marriage through shady brokers. Adichie depicts this nether-world with its inherent terrors.

Both characters, although in different countries with far different histories, have similar experiences as middle-class, educated immigrants. When Obinze meets an old college chum who has married a Brit and become a citizen, he is invited to a party at his home. It is there that Obinze, perhaps speaking with the author's voice, feels especially alone.

(All the guests) understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape the ominous lethargy of choicelessness.  They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well-fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction...were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving or raped...but merely hungry for choice and certainty.

During her relationship with a white boyfriend, Ifemelu starts writing a blog about race. This blog becomes successful and eventually, earns her money and enhances her reputation. It is through this blog that Ifemelu connects with an African-American professor. Yet another layer of complication ensues with this relationship--namely, an assumption that an African should completely understand and empathize with issues of race.

Americanah is an issues driven book with good characters and an interesting plot. Ifemelu is as full of contradictions as is society itself.  She is arrogant and prickly and seems unable to truly grieve or to truly love. And she suffers because of these very traits. It is a bold step for an author to create an unlikeable main protagonist. But create her she does in this epic tale of love across continents, of race, and finally, of hair.

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The Book of Gin by Richard Barnett

It took until my 30s to discover that my drink is gin. I enjoy beer but it affects my sinuses, wine is fun but can make me sleepy, vodka gives me a nasty hangover, and while rum and tequila can be fun they are basically novelties. For whatever reason, I am typically able to function fairly well the day after drinking a few gin and tonics and, as far as I can tell, a couple of gin martinis gift me with a charm that I otherwise might have been lacking.

The Book of Gin, by Richard Barnett, has everything that the gin drinker needs to know about the history of a drink with (dubious) medical beginnings in alchemists' laboratories, and which has been banned, looked down upon and celebrated in popular culture, from Hogarth to Mad Men. Richard Barnett, whose previous book was a history of medicine and medical care in London, has done his research and gives us a history of gin that also serves as a rich social history of the countries where it has been both enjoyed and condemned.

Though it is unclear exactly where and how gin was created, it seems that alcoholic drinks with juniper oil were being distilled for medical reasons by the Persians in the seventh century AD. The Dutch acquired a taste for "genever" (a juniper flavored grain alcohol) in the 1600s, and soon the popular drink was being denounced by preachers and the press in England, which was the country where the gin craze was the greatest. For many Brits beer was celebrated as it was served at the pub, which was a social place for the working man to relax and discuss issues of the day. Gin, on the other hand, led to poor health, poverty and crime. England tried multiple times to tax or ban gin production (similar to the United States' attempt at prohibition) but eventually found itself unable to control its citizens' desires for the drink. And of course gin has had a profound history in the US as well, with bootlegging and bathtub gin becoming familiar concepts by anyone who has seen a gangster movie.

The book is full of anecdotes and literary references from the people who struggled to either condemn or justify the enjoyment of gin. Many people know that gin and tonics initially became popular as a way to battle  malaria. However, you may not know that bitters were initially mixed with gin in order to treat gout while the gin gimlet was a way to deal with scurvy. Also interesting to dry martini drinkers as myself (I prefer the Winston Churchill martini, or a glass of gin with a nod in the direction of the vermouth bottle) is the fact that in the 1930s, when cocktail parties were in vogue, a martini would typically be made of 1 part vermouth to 3 or 4 parts gin. Only in later years did just a touch of vermouth become the standard way to drink a martini.

I will confess that the book is a bit dry in parts (no pun intended) and I found myself skimming as Barnett offered one literary anecdote after another. However, the book's comprehensiveness and willingness to take its subject seriously are what make it a definitive history of a drink with a strong effect on the cultures where it has been enjoyed.

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The Last Runaway

Another good read from Tracy Chevalier, an author who can be counted on for an excellent story - well written, with varied and interesting characters, and accurate historical setting and details.

In The Last Runaway the setting is Ohio from 1850-1852. Honor Bright, the main character, is a 20 year old Quaker woman who travels from England to Ohio. She leaves England distressed at the end of her relationship and planned marriage. She faces hardships on the voyage and arrives in Ohio alone and uncertain of her future. The story is told through narrative about Honor and through her letters home to England.

There are many elements of interest in this easy to read and not long novel. Slavery and the underground railroad are a primary focus.   The way of life of Quakers and their principles is another major focus. Among the other elements of interest: strong woman characters in very difficult circumstances, life in rural Ohio, quilting and millinery work, marriage and childbirth.

The differences between life in a small town in England and small town and rural Ohio life add further to the novel. One example, is the scene in which Heather eats fresh corn for the first time: "Honor ducked her head and studied the ear of corn, each kernel like a translucent tooth....Honor hesitated. 'I have never eaten it on the cob.' ... Honor closed her eyes and bit down...Then she couldn't stop, and bit all the way up and down the cob until it was bare."

This is the first American historical fiction work by Tracy Chevalier. She knows the details about which she has written. The Ohio setting is in the area where she (and I ) attended college.  She has  attended a Quaker camp and been to Quaker meetings. She took up quilting as part of her research for The Last Runaway.  

Her website provides further insights into the book and its background.
http://www.tchevalier.com/

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The Submission by Amy Waldman

This is a fascinating read that I can't stop thinking about.

A blue ribbon panel has been appointed to select a fitting memorial to be erected in memory of 9/11. As the panel considers submissions from various architects, they discuss the plans by number: the identity of the designers are kept secret in another location. After much debate, a design for the memorial is selected, and the architect's name is revealed. And he is Muslim. Born and raised in America, apolitical, but nonetheless Muslim.

What should they do? Refuse him the prize? Change their minds? Ask him to submit under another name? Of course, news of the selection is leaked, and becomes front page news. 

An intriguing book: so much to think about and it will be excellent for book groups. 

Nancy's Picks, Fiction

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The Humanity Project

The Humanity Project, by Jean Thompson, is a masterfully written drama highlighting contemporary issues. The author paints the lives of her flawed but all too human characters with great sympathy and respect.  She understands that chance often dictates our fates and that lives can be shattered in a moment. We were afraid of so many things (the omniscient narrator reflects): of our children who lived in their own world of casually lurid pleasures, zombies and cartoon killers and thuggish music, of our neighbors who were buying gold and ammunition and great quantities of freeze-dried food and who were organizing themselves into angry tribes recognizable to one another by bumper stickers...

Our politicians were no help at all. We feared those people who we believed meant to do us harm, although such fears fluctuated along with the most recent headlines. There were people who hated us with ancient, inexplicable and undying hatreds. They might look harmless enough, unexceptional, but without warning, they might precipitate some majestic destruction that we could not imagine or know.

Against this backdrop, we meet a cast of misfits. Their individual stories are woven into interlocking chapters, each chapter ending with a cliff-hanger. Sean, for example, father of the teenage Connor, is barely making ends meet in this depressed economy.  As a carpenter and handyman, he can no longer find work and is struggling to pay the rent.  He reminds this reader of Richard Russo's fictional and real-life father--a ne'er-do-well most comfortable in a bar.  Like many people with no savings and no health insurance, he is one step from disaster.  His poor judgment in women and his attempt at a one-night-stand have consequences not only for him but for Connor. But despite his hard luck, Sean is ever optimistic and a source of humorous insights. 

Similarly, Art is an under-employed professor whose immaturity has led to divorce.  He is a better-educated, wealthier version of Sean. But whereas Sean has tried to be a decent father, Art has lived his life avoiding the responsibilities of parenthood. Pressured by his ex-wife into allowing his 15 year old daughter, Linnea, to live with him, Art is now over his head. She is a troubled and manipulative teen coping with the aftershock of a high school shooting. Not surprisingly, she finds in Connor a kindred spirit. Both are outsiders in the affluent, sheltered world of this California suburb. Both have fathers who are ineffectual bumblers with good intentions dimmed by poor judgment.

Then there is Christie, Art's neighbor. Christie is a nurse working at a public health facility. She is portrayed as a rather cold young woman who remains aloof from the suffering and poverty surrounding her professional life. She studies Buddhism and meditates in the hope of finding inner peace. Sean is one of her patients at the clinic. Likewise, Mrs. Foster, a wealthy and quite batty elderly woman, is a former patient from Christie's days as a home health-care nurse. Mrs. Foster's request to set up a foundation to help humanity (The Humanity Project) provides another element of the satire and comedy that pervade the book. Her $5,000,000 bequest to the foundation is set up under the assumption that one can pay people to do good. Other minor characters, such as Mrs. Foster's daughter and attorney, provide comic relief as well.

Jean Thompson's uses satire as she pokes fun at donors, lawyers, and whoever else takes himself too seriously. Mrs. Foster's house of feral cats--most beyond rehabilitation--and her broad intent on saving humanity from itself adds levity to hardships of Dickensian proportions. The author's serious commentary on everything from environmental carelessness to economic downfall is seamlessly embedded into an engaging plot.

The Humanity Project satisfies on many levels. First, the cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter draw the reader further into the tapestry of the characters' lives. It is a truly gifted writer who has the ability to create characters who are unlikeable yet sympathetic Thompson has, once again, proven herself to be a writer par excellence.

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Jungleland

Christopher Stewart writes about his adventures in the Honduran jungle while searching for the last "White City." Stewart became obsessed with find this city after reading the journals of Theodore Morde, who had tried to find the city on 3 occasions. Morde who has some experience in extreme climates and jungle exploration was way ahead of Stewart who had neither. Stewart had traveled as a writer and heard about this lost city while researching an article about the Honduran drug trade.

Stewart sets out to find this city. He studies Morde's journal thoroughly, outfits himself and teams up with Christopher Begley, a real life "Indiana Jones," who has actually done a similar search. The city is supposed to be located in the Mosquita, a 3,300 square mile area of rain forest and swamp on the Honduras/Nicaragua border. Legend has it the city contains "gold, priceless artifacts, overgrown temples and buildings and monkey gods."

There is actually some history surrounding this area. Christopher Columbus mentions a city ( or rumors of it) he heard after he landed at Trujillo. Herman Cortes also mentions a hunt for the city of Hueitapalan (the old land of red earth) and that he didn't find it. Charles Lindbergh saw a large area of white ruins while flying over Central America in 1927. So, in theory, the city should be there somewhere.

Stewart and Begley head off. The jungle is a nightmare, the politics of the region are a nightmare and Stewart is second guessing himself. Pirates, drug runners, outlaws, treasure hunters, jaguars, and howler monkeys all have runs in with the Stewart expedition. As the journey goes on, Stewart becomes more morose as evidenced in his writing.

The book moves back and forth between Morde's journey and the current one. Interestingly enough there is actually a map  from a local mapmaker indicating where the city is thought to be. Morde's journals talk about the city at the conversion of 3 rivers. But there is nothing there except some jungle covered ruins. There are lots of hints at the location but no hard data.

This story is similar in feel to Grann's Lost City of Z. Middle aged man goes off to find lost city and has an adventure. A fast read, I thought the most interesting part of the book wasn't really explored - was Morde a spy during the second world war or not? That said, the book is an adventure story of a contemporary man. It's interesting in it's humanity of both the author and the characters he meets on his journey.

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The Child's Child, by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine

If betrayal mixed with sex and murder is the type of cocktail you like in a book, then drink in The Child’s Child by Barbara Vine, a pseudonym for Ruth Rendell. Under the name Vine, Rendell is known for creating works that deal with family dramas and the problems caused by secrets kept and by secrets told.

The Child’s Child is the title of this book as well as the title of a book that Grace, the main character, is reading. Grace and her brother Andrew have recently inherited their grandmother’s London house. Instead of selling it, they decide to move in together. Soon afterward, Andrew’s lover James settles in too. He makes quite an impression as Grace observes: “James was very bright indeed. He was—well, is— tall, slim, dark, and seems to have a permanent, perfectly natural tan. His eyes are dark blue; his teeth are like Americans’ teeth and have apparently been looked after by a dentist from Boston. He’s a flawless man with perfect, long-fingered hands and feet, which I saw bare in the in the garden on a hot day.”

What could possibly go wrong with this trio living under one roof? Actually, probably more than you can imagine. But in the midst of this family drama, Grace starts reading a long-lost work from the 1950s called The Child’s Child. More than two-thirds of Vine’s story is devoted to this novel within a novel that was never published because its twin foci - unwed motherhood as well as homosexual love and erotic encounters - was too scandalous for midcentury 1900.

This inner tale also revolves around a sister living with her gay brother. When 15-year-old Maud becomes pregnant, her parents refuse to let her stay with them; however her older brother John offers to have her move in with him. Like Andrew, John is gay, but he lives at a time when most of society frowned on such an acknowledgement.

John has an idea: What if Maud moved in with him and they told people they were married? Then townspeople would think the baby had a father, that Maud had a husband, and that John had a wife and child? What could possibly go wrong with this trio living under one roof? Once again, probably more than you can imagine!

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